Here and now

I haven't logged in to Blogger in almost a year, and the back end is all crazy. Looks like the new Gmail interface. Weird. I'm not in love with the everything-hidden-must-hover-to-find, supposedly "clean" interface, but, alas, complaining about a free service seems ... petty.

I'm procrastinating at work, and I need to stop doing that. I also really need to stop being stressed out about all of the things I wantwantwant, and just do and love and be with the things in front of me here and now. I wantwantwant babies, goats, a farm, a dream job, better fitness, and those cute shoes I saw. I havehavehave a great husband, a good marriage (an entity quite deliberately categorized separately from the great husband), a supportive family that I both love and like, really inexplicably amazing friends, the cutest dog the world e'er did see, a well paying and interesting job, health insurance, the newly acquired ability to knit hand warmers, and some pretty good shoes.

I have a very good life. Living it well ... that's the challenge of my lifetime.

That one time ...

... at our wedding, my friend, who just got married herself, read this. I'm tipsy tonight, and it made me smile.

Love by Roy Croft

I love you
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.
I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.
I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find
I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple.
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.
I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good.
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.

You have done it
By being yourself.

A thing happened

So, when mistakes are made in my house, I say "A thing happened." For example, when I break one of my husband's fancy coffee cups, which I manage to do often, I say, "A thing happened to your coffee cup." Or, if I eat all of his leftovers from the night before, I say, "A thing happened to your leftovers."

For the very first time today, I was told by my husband that a thing happened. "A thing happened to your chocolate bar," he said. To the chocolate bar that I bought specifically for my quasi-diet (that starts immediately after I finish BBQ and wine tonight) so I could slowly savor one square per evening and quell all other fatty and sugary food cravings always and forever, amen. I am home alone on a Friday night, tipsy from wine, watching the Steve Carell's last episode of The Office and I want nothing more than a piece of chocolate.

But, alas ... last night as I innocently slept, a thing happened. A thing happened, and I need a better chocolate hiding place.

Random thoughts

• Boy, howdy, do I like being married. It's good times. Just wanted to get this out there before we attempt to finish our taxes tomorrow, at which point I will almost definitely feel different about marriage.
• I feel like a total elitist douche whenever I drink out of specialized glassware, e.g., red vs. white wine glasses, and our slowly accumulating specialty beer glass collection, which most recently includes tulip-ish Belgian ale glasses. I mean, the jelly jars work just fine. Why do I need to drink out of fancy, expensive, breakable glassware? My palate and nose are definitely not refined enough to actually taste the difference among beverages in different glassware, as long as it's glass instead of plastic or metal, which I reserve for camping and boating. So, I have no real reason for the glassware, except elitist douche-ism. Do you drink things out of special glasses designed for the beverage? Why? (PS, not accusing anyone of elitist douche-ism except for my very own self. I know that some people can actually taste the difference drinking out of different glassware and/or have a strong aesthetic or experiential preference. I don't; hence the elitist douche conclusion.)

February ennui

en·nui (n-w, nw) n. Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom.

Welcome to the annual occurrence of me deciding everything sucks! It's February. It was 20 below F last night. The late afternoon winter sunshine streaming into my office is as objectively beautiful as it was a month ago. I'm just ... not into it - or anything, really.

I've had the same headache since last weekend.

My winter wardrobe has devolved from mixing things up, fixing my hair, switching coats and bags, and wearing makeup and jewelry to two pairs of bigger jeans (to accommodate the winter pudge and long johns) + long-sleeved t-shirts covered by one of a rotating cast of 4 or 5 sweaters + boots. I cannot be moved to like one item of clothing in my closet nor to give a damn what I look like.

Everything I eat is ... fine. My attitude toward my beloved root vegetables has descended from aspirational to inspirational to apathetic to repellent. If I try a new recipe, even if it's good, it's still just ... OK. What I really want to eat is BBQ ribs and cinnamon rolls three meals a day. I guess I'd take some fruit salad, but only if it's served on a tropical beach. With rum.

I twisted my ankle on Monday so I can't work out this week. Running outside, which kept me sane in January, seems impossible with 10 below wind chills at the warmest parts of the day. With the help of the workout slump and eating out too much last week, I regained the two pounds I lost, plus another couple to join the party. I feel schlubby.

All of the things that brought me quiet, cozy contentment earlier in the winter - evenings of knitting and hot cocoa, admiring the beauty of the snow, walking on the frozen lake, writing, reading, napping - elicit nothing more than a sigh right now. When I read something fascinating, have a great debate or conversation, come across or (gasp!) think of a new idea, or even just have an enjoyable time with friends or husband, the spark seems to disappear as quickly as it appeared. It's an act of will to follow up on things, plan things, go to things, even if I know I'll enjoy them once I'm doing them. The drive to move forward with larger goals and schemes has gone completely AWOL.

I have (please and thank you, God; knock on wood; etc. etc.) not gotten really sick yet this winter. I've had two colds that other people might refer to as really sick, but they were normal and, for me, quite mild. I am grateful literally every day for my renewed health this year compared to what it was the last couple years. I am much more balanced, in shape, and resilient, and my immune system seems to be functioning again. However, every year for the past 4 or 5 years, I've been steamrolled by a Real Sickness in February. It's taken multiple forms, primarily sinus infections and bronchitis, but it has always featured sustained fevers up to 104 degrees, weakness so profound that I literally could not get out of bed to hydrate and pee, much less get out for medicine and food, much, much less go to work or school, all for a solid 8-10 days, followed by at least a month of lingering ick and desperately playing catch-up. I know it's superstitious, but I feel a low-level anxiety that February is stalking me, that I'll never make it out without the Real Sick, that I just can't beat this godforsaken month.

Of course, I recognize that all of this is self-indulgent drivel, that all of this will pass, that spring will eventually come. I'm healthy. I have, this week alone, one night of fun each with two different groups of friends, two nights alone, and a couple nights with my husband - perfect balance. I have opportunities in front of me, if I get up the oomph to take advantage of them. I have unlimited potential. I have warm clothes and a warm(-ish) house and a functioning, if odd-noise-producing, vehicle to protect me from the cold. When I feel like I cannot possibly eat another root vegetable, I have the option of throwing locavorism to the wind and going to grocery store for a pineapple and some salad greens. It's not like I'm some pioneer housewife in 1800s North Dakota in a dugout subsisting off flour, lard, and rapidly rotting potatoes. I have it good and easy and I know it.

It's just ... well, it's just February in the upper Midwest.

Without this, we'd never fully appreciate that first damp, sunny, 50-degree spring day where the first hint of goodness and greenness is on the wind and all the world unzips coats and lingers outside and smiles hugely.

Seasons turn, I know. My body just doesn't believe it right now. I will do my best to dwell peacefully within this one instead of struggling against it.

On the uselessness scale

With 0 being essential to life function and 10 being so useless as to be counterproductive and wasteful, I'd say the self-pedicure when it's 20 below outside hovers somewhere around 8.75.

What I would've posted on Facebook this week if I were using this month

• Happy Birthday, ___. (x 2 or 3)
• Arizona. So sad. Also, WTF?
• Too sore to knit!
• The prodigal hat returns, and its owner celebrates with a feast.
• Roast beast in the crock pot!
• Sick husband is sick. I am (knock on wood and cross your fingers and toes) not. This is miraculous. Apparently sleep, lack of stress, good food, and reasonable activity levels make my dysfuntional immune system work. (Oh, Lord, did I jinx it?)
• Soup is the best.
• On the diet cheat day list so far this Saturday: pizza, popcorn with butter, G's chocolate chip cookies + premium vanilla ice cream = CHIPWICH!!*
• Socks warm from the dryer after a hot shower make the temperature in our house tolerable.
• Snow run! Just like running on the beach, in that it is harder than running on clear pavement because of the foot shimmying and squishiness. Unlike running on the beach with the 15 degrees and the slipperiness and the dark ALL day things.
• Awesome that the new governor is staffing the DNR with people who have absolutely no background in natural resources. Makes as much sense as staffing the education department with mechanics and military affairs with teachers.

*Cheat day is the best thing ever. Whenever I have a craving, I just write it on my list, and I get to have it within six days at the latest. Woot! This diet is incredibly easy for me because it's really close to how I eat anyway AND I get a cheat day once a week. I don't think I'm losing any weight, but I'm not gaining any weight and I'm working out like a mo'fo' and not dying of hunger. Eventually, I'll have to do that dreaded portion control thing, but I'm just going to stick with the program for January because, well, I said I would, and because I like it.

My favorite things

So, I don't usually get too attached to stuff. I'm a pitcher, not a hoarder, though I do have a sentimental streak that balances out the pitching tendencies. I tend not to fixate too much on 'stuff,' but a mundane experience this week showed me how very attached I am to my favorite things.

I left the house Tuesday evening running a little behind and amidst light snow. I had to swing by the in-laws' to drop off some scrapbooking stuff and pick up some knitting needles and then head over for out biweekly 'winter fun' night, which consists of watching TV and eating. (Hey, it's winter in the Midwest, and there are approximately 7.5 hours of functional daylight. Anything that doesn't involve me wrapped up alone in a blanket on my own couch eating carbs is serious fun.)

Somewhere between leaving and returning, I lost my favorite winter hat. I immediately emailed my friend and my mother-in-law to see if I'd left it at one of their houses. I feared that I'd done what I've done countless times before: get hot in the obligatory defroster blast in the car, take off my hat or gloves, set them in my lap, and then get up out of the car with a bag or other handful of stuff and let the gloves or hat drop into the slushy grossness of the street and not realize it.

For some reason, losing this particular hat greatly disturbed me. It's not that exciting of a hat. It's cream-colored knit with a little bill in the front and a button on the bridge. (That description makes it sound terribly ugly.) It is the only winter hat I've ever found that manages to be both cute and actually warm. The other 'stylish' hats I have sit up above my ears and do nothing against temperatures below 20 and wind. The traditional stocking caps I have are warm but kill all semblance of a hair-do and are just incredibly unflattering to my large, square head. This hat is perfect. G. bought it for me in a sketchy army surplus store in a small town in northern Wisconsin two Octobers ago on our (incredibly cold, dreary, rainy, but much needed) weekend trip to Madeline Island. I love that hat, and, clearly, I'm attached to it.

I was mourning it already, but my mother-in-law called last night, and they found it in their driveway near where I'd parked. Oh, glory be! I am inordinately excited about reclaiming my beloved hat!

So, what is your relationship with stuff? Quick infatuation followed by boredom? Long-term loyalty to a few favorites? Don't give a damn, ever? Less is more, but only the best of the best?

Here is a partial list of things I'm inexplicably and irrationally attached to:

1. Apparently, my winter hat.
2. My orange scarf from Bolivia. A friend once told me it was the scarf incarnation of me. She was right.
3. My 70-year-old pawn shop engagement ring. It's really and seriously beautiful, but I also love that we bought it at a very small fraction of its value and that I found something I liked in a pawn shop when I could find nothing I even remotely liked in any normal jewelry stores. Victory! (Could probably also be stretched into some sort of metaphor for our marriage, but I'm not so sure I want to go there.)
   
4. My Cavalier. God, it's my third red Cavalier. I have only ever owned Cavaliers. That is truly pathetic. I publicly disparage it, but I got *such* a good deal on that car, it's been paid off for 5 years, and it still has less than 100,000 miles on it. I could drive it with my eyes closed because, well, they don't move the knobs much on newer versions of cars, and I've been driving one for (gulp) 17 years.
5. My green velour couch. My friend's aunt off-loaded it onto her for her college apartment, and her husband was about to banish it to Goodwill from their basement 8 years ago when I got back from Bolivia. I saved it. It has moved with me 7(!) times. It is, by all objective measures, ugly. It is also uncomfortable for anyone over 5'5" tall (short people RULE!). It is also the anchor of my living room and my favorite place to sit in the wide world. I recognize that I will someday have to get rid of this couch, but it will be a long, hard battle.
   
6. My Chacos. Yes, they are comfortable and functional, but I love them beyond what any practical concerns could dictate. I am a Chacos evangelist and wear them nearly exclusively for 5-6 months out of the year. Maybe they are the shoe incarnation of me? I killed my first pair in Bolivia, bought a new pair when I got back 8 years ago, have sent them in for repairs twice, and plan to stay loyal to them until I have the opportunity to kill them in potential Peace Corps, round II.

Happiness Weekly Woo-Woo: How do you deal with anxiety?

I'm admitting that the word "weekly" in the post title may be aspirational, but my purpose is to periodically (weekly-ish) share some of the good stuff I've heard, read, or otherwise come across as I'm working my way out of The Suck. Some of it is inspirational. Some of it is instructional. Some of it is saccharine self-help psychobabble. Some of it is spiritual. Some of it just made me think. The term "woo-woo" encompasses all of those things accurately, I think.

I got a lot of good woo-woo out of the book The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown, so you might be seeing future woo-woo from her as well. (aside: For some reason I feel slightly less pathetic reading self-help books when they're written by Ph.D.s, as was also the case of the excellent book The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky, which I recently borrowed from Loud.)

One of the things Brown talks about is becoming aware of your default response to anxiety so you can better understand why you respond to conflict or stress in certain ways and can better control your responses. When faced with anxiety, Brown says, we have a conditioned tendency to one of two responses:

1. Overfunctioning. In this case, we tend to take over a stressful situation, micromanage, and try to control things. The remedy to this is, when faced with anxiety, recognize that you are feeling anxiety, look inward, and embrace your vulnerability.
2. Underfunctioning. People who underfunction in response to anxiety let others take over and become less competent at dealing with the situation. They may become the disaster of the family or circle of friends, the one who everyone feels the need to look after. The remedy for underfunctioners is to find ways to amplify strenths and competencies in the face of anxiety.

So, how do you respond to anxiety and stress? Do you overfunction or underfuntion?

My natural inclination is to overfunction, micromanage, control, cover, make everyone feel better, do more, etc., etc. When I blew out my circuits, I think I withdrew, ignored, and became an underfunctioner in some areas of my life. Now, of course, my task is to learn to face anxiety without over- or underfunctioning, by standing still, staying peaceful, telling myself and others the truth about the situation (without shame or judgment), doing the best I can, and then detaching from feeling responsible for everything that happens and what everyone else feels. Heh, no problemo, right? It's a big task. Right now I'm focusing on two parts of this monumental process of re-learning how to deal with anxiety (with full recognition that life = anxiety):

1. Telling the truth, mostly to myself, about the reality of any given situation - neither judging too harshly nor explaining or justifying away ickiness, just telling it like it is and accepting it.
2. Making commitments very carefully, to myself and others, so I always mean and do what I say and don't rope myself into things that are wrong and untrue and resentment-making for me.

The summary of all of this thinking is captured in one succinct quote, also from Brown's book. It tells me what to do when I'm faced with stress, anxiety, or conflict. It is one of those things that, like most things that are profoundly true, is incredibly simple and incredibly difficult at the same time. It speaks to boundaries and respect. It has become somewhat of a mantra to me over the past few weeks. It is something that, when practiced, is powerful and empowering. It is this: When faced with anxiety or stress or conflict or anything hard:

"Don't shrink. Don't puff up. Stand your sacred ground."

2011 Happiness Project

So, the last couple years have been kind of hard. Nope. No qualifiers. Just hard. I failed largely, loudly, and more expensively than I ever have in my life when I decided to leave grad school because I hated everything about what I was doing, and not doing, and who I was becoming, and how sick I was making myself, despite the fact that I was oh-so-sure that it was going to be The Thing and despite the hours of work and worry I poured into it. Not only disappointing and depressing and self-esteem-crushing, but also incredibly disillusioning in the "Who am I? Who do I think I am? Who do I want to be? What does everyone else think I am/should be/do?" way. Ugh. Follow epic fail with a year of un- and underemployment, a mind prone to anxiety and over-rumination, and you've got one lost sista.

Concurrently, I also met and married my husband in the space of 9 months, and subsequently moved in with him and had a wedding. Slightly backwards, but it got the job done. That is a joyful, wonderful, dramatic thing, and I am grateful for it every day. However, it also involved a whole lot of financial, spatial, physical, spiritual, and emotional upheaval, as well as the attendant identity adjustments. WTF is this "wife" thing? Who says? What do I say? What does he say? On whose authority? Add to that we're both melodramatic, emotional, and stubborn people who are polar opposites in many ways and, well, it's been hard. Beautiful and fun and sometimes soul-stoppingly perfect, yes, but profoundly, drainingly hard. We're still learning how to support without smothering, where our boundaries are, how to trust ourselves and each other, especially in the midst of such upheaval, and how to fight fair. Marriage is the best self-improvement exercise I've ever encountered because it is daily, unavoidable, and has hugely high stakes. (My guess is that parenting is this x1000.)

In the midst of uncertainty and anxiety, my natural reaction is to control-freak it up. Because there were a whole lot of things that felt out of my control, including, most frighteningly, my own emotions and behavior and body and health, I just kept trying to control more and spin in faster circles and more and ahhh and faster and more and better and aahhhhhhhhhhh and faster until ... BOOM! I blew the circuits. I overheated, tripped the breakers, shut down, shut off.

At first I wouldn't believe it. I kept walking around and flipping the light switches and putting food in the microwave and pressing Start and being stunned when nothing turned on. It took me many months to stop wandering around the house and just accept that the electricity was off. It took me even longer to figure out why, and several more months after that to accept that it was a good thing. My (body's/mind's/soul's/Self's/whatever's) internal protection system worked just great. It shut me off and shut me down before I could do permanent damage to myself. Good job, self.

Here I sit at the beginning of 2011 no less settled. Still seeking work, still stressed about money, still figuring out this marriage thing, still not knowing where we'll be next year this time, or even where we want to be. The house still isn't aglow with a soft, welcoming light, but there's some stuff starting to flicker and work. I found the breaker box and I've started flipping some switches, cautiously trying things out to see what will turn on. I'm not sure if or when I'll ever be all ON again, or if that is even what I want. And, I'm pretty sure it looks like the scary mansion in horror movies from the outside, what with all the flashing lights and intermittent darkness.

It does feel like parts of me that have been gone for a long while are starting to flicker back on. The ambition part. The planning-for-the-future part. The giddy-little-kid-excitement-about-cool-stuff part. The I'm-not-a-hermit-I-swear part. The I-want-to-make-do-create-be-good-things part. Right now there are just flashes and fizzles. There's still a lot of darkness; the electrical system is still not up to code. But, there's life. Flashes. Hope.

So, I'm enjoying and nurturing the flashes. They are pretty. They are me. I like them. One nurturing exercise is our 2011 Happiness Project. Along with five other women, and modeled closely then loosely on The Happiness Project (book and site) by Gretchen Rubin, I'm working to be more happy this year, both in my day-to-day and in the longer-term, my-purpose-on-earth sort of ways. I'll probably write more in the future about how and why I'm choosing certain goals, successes and failures, nuts and bolts, and a little of the woo-woo that goes along with the project, but, for now, you know some of the why. And here are my January resolutions:

Health and Fitness

• Work out at least 3x/week.
• Follow 4-Hour Body diet for one month (first week with dairy, rest of the weeks without).

Writing

• Write in my journal every day. (Other writing, like this, strongly encouraged.)

Work

• Systematically, creatively, and aggressively find, apply for, and follow up on 5 jobs opportunities/week.

Decluttering

• Week 1: Take down and store Christmas stuff and deep clean house.
• Week 2: Purge and organize desk, bookshelf, and files.
• Week 3: Purge and organize closets/dressers.
• Week 4: Basement. Ugh.

End of Year Challenge Results

For those who care or are following along, I barely squeaked by with 80% success, but I did meet my goals for the 2010 End of Year Challenge, with the following cheats/modifications:

• I quickly dropped tracking and reporting on the non-fitness goals. Too much change at once. I'm working on the journaling as part of my new Happiness Project resolutions.
• During two weeks, I subbed amongst my food categories (booze for gluten, I believe), a tactic I'd originally planned to prohibit and generally avoided.

Learnings:

• I did A-OK on my workout goals. There were only 2 weeks out of 8 where I struggled to meet my workout goals, and I squeaked them in every time. Setting reasonable minimums definitely works, and I'll keep this up in the new year. The flip side is that sometimes I wimped out on a workout with the excuse that I'd already met my minimums, so I didn't really need to run another mile. Lame. Stop that. Minimums are minimums, not upper limits.
• I was fine with the food goals except on the weeks when I had special events. On those weeks, I tried to save all my "bad food" points for the events and felt I needed to eat perfectly the rest of the week. This led to "rebellious eating" on the regular days and then either blowing my goals or abstaining at special events and feeling pissy about it. My lesson here is that special events, which need to be narrowly defined and actually rare and special, not just "someone feels like happy hour," are in a whole separate category and I need to let myself go hog wild there. Reasonable limits work great for keeping a lid on eating during the workweek and allowing a few splurges for a dinner out or on the weekends.

I'll be carrying this knowledge forward into my new year fitness and eating routines. While I didn't do perfectly and I probably lost some of my muscle tone due to decreased exercise intensity, I ended the year weighing what I did on my wedding day in June. Unprecedented and heartening. Going into the new year, I'd like to lose 10-15 pounds (well, exactly 13 pounds, if you want to be specific about it) and run the Madison Half-Marathon in May. I've already thrown away my fat pants and put my ideal weight on my new driver's license, so there's no going back now. Onward and upward (or downward, I guess ... ).

Something I wrote

c. Fall 2009, mid-suck, hence the emo. Sort of a prayer, or, more accurately, plea to Self. Finally feel like I'm starting to come out of it. Anyway ...

Take me in.

I am bedraggled.

dusty.

exhausted.

done.

Be kind, be calm, be warm, be patient.

Love me. Listen to me. Then leave me alone.

Feed me. Hold me. Let me rest, build my reserves, become well again.

My joy will come back. It will. It's just hiding until the storm is over. It needs room and time and calm. Help me find those, please.

Let me nap - deeply, endlessly, guiltlessly.

Let me wander - deeply, endlessly, guiltlessly.

Let me heal. Let me rest. Let me cleanse. Let me dream.

2010 End of Year Challenge

With three fellow challengers, I'm embarking on an end-of-year improvement kick for the last eight weeks of 2010. We each created our own goals that we will track and report to each other weekly. (Tracking started the beginning of this week.) Some participants set weight loss goals; others set activity or eating goals; some of us have a combination. The incentive: each person who fails to meet her goals at her self-defined level of success cannot drink alcohol on New Year's Eve. Eep!

My thinking

For this challenge, I decided to not focus on a weight loss goal for several reasons. For one thing, I'm prone to all-or-nothing thinking, something along the lines of, "Well, I'm not losing weight, so f*ck it! I might as well give up workouts and eat all the cookies I want." This is counterproductive and feeds my perfectionist tendencies. I obviously want to avoid that and focus more on reinforcing good habits. Also, the reality of winter is that it's darker and colder, and I'm lazier. Also, we eat mostly locally, and so our food trends heavier, carbier, and fattier this time of year with the root vegetables, meats, and preserved foods of the season. To make matters worse, my body also grips onto weight harder this time of year. Given all that, maintaining weight, eating a healthy diet with reasonable splurges, and maintaining my fitness level are more reasonable outcomes than weight loss this time of year. I tried to set reasonable, measurable goals that would support these outcomes.

In addition to reasonable fitness goals, I also chose to use this challenge to track some other personal goals I've been working on. I'll be tracking and reporting these as a part of the challenge and counting them toward my success rate to determine if I can drink on New Year's. None of the other participants have added non-fitness goals, so this is all my doing. I set a goal to limit my non-essential internet activities so that I can be more efficient in my work (done mostly online right now) and job-hunting. I'm also trying to reinforce a move to restart my writing habit.

My goals

I seek to meet the following goals at an 80% success rate*****:

1. Eat gluten (knowingly) two or fewer times per week.*

2. Eat a sugar- or fat-bomb food two or fewer times per week.*,**

3. Drink alcohol two or fewer times per week.*

4. Run 10 or more miles per week.***

5. Do two or more strength/toning workouts per week.****

6. Write in my journal six days per week.

7. Limit non-essential internet browsing to 20 minutes or less five days per week.

The fine print

*For Rules 1-3, if a food belongs to more than one category, I have to count it in both categories. For example, a cinnamon roll counts for both gluten and sugar/fat-bomb; a daiquiri counts for both sugar-bomb and alcohol.

**Definitions for knowingly gluten-containing foods and alcohol are pretty clear, but #2 is a little more unclear. I will be pretty strict: sweet breads, muffins, desserts, ice cream, butter on popcorn, and chips/crackers all count. (These are the ones off the top of my head that I've eaten in the past few weeks and want to cut out.) Fatty cuts of meat, guacamole, unsweetened fruit items (applesauce, baked apples, Lara Bars, etc.) do not count, even though they're high in fat and/or sugar. Basically, processed things count; things in their natural state that happen to have fat or be sweet don't count. Fruit juice is a gray area. I think I'll count juice as a sugar bomb unless I'm a) sick or b) at a bar and ordering it as an alternative to alcohol.

***For rule 4, the 10 miles/week can include run-walk intervals, or, in case of injury (god forbid), walking or elliptical/stairclimber miles.

****For rule 5, this activity has to be at least 20 minutes in duration and strenuous and can include weights at the gym, Jillian video, yoga/pilates, or bodyweight exercises at home (push ups, crunches, squats, etc.).

*****I'm counting success/failure rate by total number of goals met, not by weeks of success. E.g. If I meet 6/7 goals one week and 4 goals the next and 5 goals the next, I'm at 71% success (15/21 goals met), not 30% (1/3 weeks at 80% success rate or better). I'm not allowing substitutions (e.g., if I do more than two strength training sessions per week, I can't drink three times and have them cancel each other out.) Also, there is no carryover between weeks.

Accountability and tracking

I'll update with my progress here periodically, but my real tracking is taking place in a zooty spreadsheet I made that tallies goal compliance, turns red and green for successes and failures, and keeps track of weekly and cumulative success rate. I'm excited for this one. I think I set reasonable, reachable, important goals for which I'm being held accountable. I think we're all going to succeed with flying colors and get blitzed together on New Year's Eve!

10K10lbs10weeks: Update-ariffic

So, what happened with 10K10lbs10weeks? Well, basically I failed.

1. I lost 3 pounds total. Progress, but not much.
2. I got a sinus infection in early October and a whopper of a cold Halloween weekend (annual occurrence, unfortunately). This threw me off training and into carb eating.
3. Turns out I didn't have to skip the October 30th race due to illness because, well, I'm an idiot and hadn't actually signed up for it in the first place. I think I had 45 browser windows open when I attempted to sign up, and I clicked over to something else while it was processing. Apparently, it timed out, and I was too distracted to notice the warning message or the lack of confirmation email. By the time I went to double-check everything for the race, it was full.

I guess I could chalk it up to a massive fail, but some improvement is better than none.

1. I got back into running, and my long runs are up to around 4 miles. This is a good fitness base to take me into the winter.
2. I was definitely more conscious of my eating during September and October, though I backslid on carb and gluten control.
3. I lost 3 pounds! My jeans fit, so I have something to wear this winter. I got rid of two pair of "fat pants," one of which was falling apart and one of which was terribly unflattering. Now all of my jeans fall in the fits-great-to-slightly-snug range. If I want pants to wear this winter, I need to maintain or lower my weight. Great incentive!
4. We have started a fabulous new group fitness challenge (see next post) with high stakes, and I've created reasonable achievable goals for myself that are not based on weight. I'm excited to succeed at it!

10K10lbs10weeks: Hunger-induced insomnia

It's the second night in a row I've been up between 1 and 3 a.m., unable to sleep for over an hour, and not bright enough to figure out why right away. Oh, yeah, the Kraken! Seriously, awakened by hunger? It's not like I'm living through the potato famine or something. I eat! A LOT! Often! A good mix of carbs, fat, and protein. Honestly I do.

I just don't understand. Especially last night, after I ate 4 suppers? (You bet your bippy I ate a couple leftover meatballs and some veggies before I went to bed, in addition to the other three meals. Gah.) Tonight, after I ate half a dinner and then snacked on appetizers, apple crisp, and a half bottle of wine for hours? Actually, tonight makes a little more sense because I ate a smaller lunch and had a lot of veggies, fruits, and carbs this evening, but little protein (just the cheese and yogurt in the stealthily healthy fruit and veggies dips I made), so that'll empty my stomach out faster.

But, this is getting ridiculous. It's not in my head, I swear. We're talking loud growly stomach, and that empty bottomless pit feeling, the lightheaded/racing heart/MUSTEATNOW loveliness. In broad daylight I can predict and prevent this feeling an hour in advance. When I wake up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason (i.e., husband's snoring is at manageable levels), it takes me 45 minutes of rolling around and readjusting and counting sheep to figure it out. But, it's the real deal: sharp physical hunger pangs. True that I have been working out like a mofo the last couple days (update: knees still hosed for running - did Jillian and a 4-mile brisk walk today). Regardless, if my metabolism is truly that amped, or, more accurately, that easily stoked, I must be burning fuel like a forest fire, right? I wonder what my base metabolic rate is? Shouldn't I be dropping 10 lbs. a week? Oh yeah, except that I must be eating thousands and thousands of calories a day. Ugh. I don't know how anyone ever goes on a calorie-restricted diet. I don't dare not eat when I'm hungry, as anyone who knows me has seen Ms. PsychoEvilHungryBitch emerge when my blood sugar drops. I actually arrange my life around not getting too hungry. You will very seldom find me away from home without a water bottle and a snack. It's just inadvisable, for me and for the general population. So this midnight stealth strike is shaking me up a bit, as well as tiring me out.

Ah, well. I guess I keep exercising to the limits of my knees and my common sense, and remember to eat something fatty-proteiny-fibery not long before bed every night (apple with cheese, apple with almond butter [apple surfeit in these parts], chocolate milk or almond milk with veggies or nuts, anything except the sugar-crashy stuff really). Maybe I can contain the Kraken and sleep through the night. The question is: can I contain the Kraken enough to actually lose weight? And, once the Kraken goes back in the cage, can I intuitively dial down the eating to my activity level? Jury's out, and I'm going back to bed ... after I eat a few more nuts.

10K10lbs10weeks: The good, the bad, and the ugly

• The good: Made up my missed long run from last week (still have a strength training session to make up) and did an interval run and a bike ride, too, all between last night and tonight.
• The bad: I'm dumb. Knees are hosed, particularly the right one, which is usually the "good" one, right hip hurts, and bottom of left foot feels bruised. Hello, Overdoing It. I know we've met before, and I can't fathom HOW I KEEP FORGETTING THAT. Consistency, wherefore art thou? Am icing and elevating right now. Hope I didn't screw up the rest of the week.
• The ugly: The work!out! hungries! are back with a vengeance. About to embark on evening meal #3 right now (1-banana and almonds between run and bike ride this afternoon, 2-spaghetti squash [lots!] with homemade veggie-ful marinara along with apple cider and some more nuts after bike ride, 3-now off for a fried egg with a cheese biscuit [gluten-free, deeee-licious, and muy filling, woot!]. I have a feeling there may be even one more snack after that before bed. I'll try to drink tea and drown it, but GRRRRRRR! the beast has awakened. Release the Kraken!

10K10lbs10weeks: Week 6 Goals

My goals and plan for this week (September 27 - October 3):

Goals

1. Lose 1 pound.
2. Increase running endurance to 4.5 miles with no walk breaks.

Plan

1. Run 3-4 times: once 4.0 miles/slow pace (makeup from last week), once medium-intensity/longer intervals, once 4.5 miles/slow pace. If possible, also run once high-intensity/shorter intervals.
2. Do strength training 2 times: 30-Day Shred Level II.
3. Incorporate better stretching before and after every run and strength workout.
4. Practice portion control and better spacing with meals. Limit snacks to only veggies (unlimited) or nuts (limited).

10K10lbs10weeks: Week 5 Progress Report

Here's my progress report for week 5 (September 20 - 26):

Goals

1. Lose 2 pounds (to be on track for -8 lbs. during the month of September). Fail. Lost 1 pound, the same one that I re-gained last week. Sigh. The online weight loss challenge I'm competing in ends Thursday. No way I'm making my challenge goal of 8 pounds, but I'd like to lose one more pound by then to have 4 lost for the month. Then, if I do that again next month (one lb/week), I'll be very close to my 10 lb. goal.
2. Increase running endurance to 4.0 miles with no walk breaks. Fail. I didn't get a long run in this week.

Plan

1. Run 3 times: once medium-intensity/longer intervals, once high-intensity/shorter intervals, once 4.0 miles/slow pace. Fail. I did one good interval run and one crappy interval run. I just had a kind of icky, low-energy week. And (stupidest injury ever!) I hurt my toes. I have no idea how. I don't recall kicking or dropping anything, but for two days the middle three toes on my right foot hurt to walk on, much less run on. Weird.
2. Do strength training 2 times: 30-Day Shred Level II. Fail. Only did it once.
3. Incorporate better stretching before and after every run and strength workout. Woop! I did one thing this week.
4. Practice portion control and better spacing with meals. Limit snacks to only veggies (unlimited) or nuts (limited). Fail. I ate popcorn, cheese, leftovers, and many other creative and sometimes unhealthy snacks. And then there was the apple crisp incident. Let's just say an 8x8" pan disappeared in a mere instant, and my husband didn't get his fair share.

Lessons for next week

• Ugh. Fail week. I need to get some positivity and energy back. I think I worked out too much the previous week and sort of burned out. I also intellectually know that exercising and eating well when I'm feeling stressed, tired, or otherwise emotionally crappy will help me to feel better, but my body doesn't get it yet.
• I'm going to make up that 4-mile long run early this week so I can do 4.5 next weekend. Gotta stay on the training plan. I don't know if I'll try to add it in to do four total runs for the week, or just skip an interval run and do two longer, slower runs. I guess I'll see how I feel.
• I'm not convinced that athletic training and weight loss go together. They say weight loss is 80% nutrition and 20% exercise. When I exercise a lot, I eat a lot. Right now, I want to finish that race way more than I want to lose these 10 pounds. So, I guess I need to de-emphasize the weight loss goals right now and focus on being consistent in my workouts. If I truly want to lose weight, I probably need to be harder on myself nutrition-wise: track everything I eat, weigh portions, cut out certain things for awhile, etc. I need to be honest with myself that I'm really not committed to doing that right now and be willing to live with the consequences (slow to no weight loss). On the flip side, I continue to be grateful that I like to cook and generally have very, very healthy eating habits (food choice-wise, maybe not portion size-wise). We all have different battles to fight, and I'm choosing to fight the lazies and focus on getting runs in this week.

10K10lbs10weeks: Week 5 Goals

My goals and plan for this week (September 20 - 26):

Goals

1. Lose 2 pounds (to be on track for -8 lbs. during the month of September).
2. Increase running endurance to 4.0 miles with no walk breaks.

Plan

1. Run 3 times: once medium-intensity/longer intervals, once high-intensity/shorter intervals, once 4.0 miles/slow pace.
2. Do strength training 2 times: 30-Day Shred Level II.
3. Incorporate better stretching before and after every run and strength workout.
4. Practice portion control and better spacing with meals. Limit snacks to only veggies (unlimited) or nuts (limited).

10K10lbs10weeks: Week 4 Progress Report

Here's my progress report for Week 4 (September 13-19):

Goals
1. Lose 2 pounds (to be on track for -8 lbs. during the month of September). Fail. I gained 1 pound this week. This reflects over-eating and -drinking at Oktoberfest on Saturday, with a Sunday morning weigh-in, plus general giant appetite this week due to daily workouts.
2. Increase running endurance to 4 miles with no walk breaks. Even though I did take two one-minute walk breaks, I'm calling this one a win. I ran approximately at a 12-min/mile pace. It sucked, but I finished it and felt like giving myself a medal when I got done. 4 miles is my long run in my training plan for this coming week, too, so I'm looking forward to doing a little better this week.

Plan
1. Run 3 times: once medium-intensity/longer intervals, once high-intensity/shorter intervals, once 4 miles/slow pace. Completed. I'm rockin' the running. I credit the weather. It's utterly glorious running weather right now.
2. Do strength training 3 times: 30-Day Shred Level I with no girly push-ups. Completed. I did two 30-Day Shred Level I workouts, still with about half girly push-ups. I am sick of Level I and moving on to Level II this week. I also did one Power Yoga one-hour DVD, which is a great toning workout.

Bonus workouts: Two longish bike rides (13 and 10-ish miles), 3 shorter bike rides to downtown for a total of another ~10 miles. Several brisk walks. Great workout week; did something active every day. I took a much needed rest day today, courtesy of a hangover.
3. Maintain reasonable food portions. Fail. With all the working out, I was a bottomless pit this week. I ate very healthy - lake trout, lean ground beef, roasted chicken, tons of veggies, greek yogurt, fruit, a few potatoes and a squash for starches - but I ate A LOT. Then I went to Oktoberfest on Saturday and drank several LITERS of beer and had salty, oily popcorn for dinner. I haven't been drinking very much at all this summer and can get sufficiently tipsy from one or two drinks. I've also had very little salt since I started eating differently a couple months ago. Hence, I woke up this morning hungover, headachey, sore, and bloated. I just kind of felt lazy and vague all day. I'm eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, a few carbs, and some leftover spicy meatloaf to get my energy back. Ook. I don't think I'll be repeating that level of indulgence for quite some time. Not worth losing a whole day.

Lessons for next week

• The portions. Seriously. I'm focusing on this hardcore this week - better meal spacing so I don't get ravenous, reasonable meal portions, no seconds, only veggies (unlimited) and nuts (limited) for snacks.
• I'm going back down to two strength/toning sessions per week. I was really sore this week and need more rest time. (I got a massage and the therapist told me my muscles were so tight that they were pulling my spine out of alignment. I need more rest and more stretching.) My main goal is to finish that race in October. To do that, I have to stay healthy and motivated and not overdo it.
• I'm going to suck the marrow out of this good weather and keep up the bike riding and walks and general outdoorsy goodness.