Apr

3

Spectacularly boring diet update

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April 3, 2007

I see by my own handy web journal that I’ve been doing this dieting business for a little over a month now. I’ve also been dutifully exercising for nearly the same amount of time. My result to date as measured in actual pounds lost is fairly depressing—there has been annoyingly little progress on the scale. I weighed 139 this morning. AGAIN.

The good news is that my body has changed quite a bit. I can fit into all kinds of clothes that I haven’t worn in, well, years. It’s like having a brand new wardrobe! One that’s admittedly a little on the stale side of the fashion spectrum, but ask me how much I care about that. I shop at Goodwill, for crying out loud.

I bought a couple pairs of pants at Old Navy on Sunday, and I was eye-blinkingly pleased to find that a size 8 now fits perfectly. (Well, except for that one pair of jeans that I couldn’t even tug up past my knees, what the fuck, why must there be those anomalous styles that are sized using no discernible logic whatsoever? It’s like they exist specifically to make you hurl yourself to the dressing room floor and bray like a wounded donkey.) And here’s another dieting milestone: my belt is too big on its normal setting! I now wear it cinched one notch (a good-sized gap, maybe an inch and a quarter?) tighter, can I GET a hallelujah.

A couple weeks ago I just sort of stopped counting Weight Watchers points because I felt the initial process of analyzing everything I ate had served its purpose; I had figured out a rotating menu of meals and snacks that fit within the whole WW spectrum and I was sick of obsessively entering data into that slow-ass web tracker. I don’t know if I’d see different (faster?) results if I were adhering to the points-counting, maybe I’ll go back to it if I feel like I haven’t seen any progress for a while.

I think the biggest challenge so far has been letting go of the notion that losing lots of pounds is a requirement for getting in shape. It’s obvious to me now that I can make significant changes to my body without dropping a significant amount of weight (shout-out to Turbo Jam and its muscle-building, fat-burning workouts!) and yet every time I step on the scale I feel a little pang of discouragement. I know I should really ditch the scale altogether or at least squirrel it away in some unused closet for a while, but I can’t help myself.

I’ve also been doing the Inhale yoga workouts nearly every night, and I’m really liking how that’s going. When I first started I could only angle down a little bit while doing the butterfly stretch, and now I can put my goddamn forehead on the ground. Also, I can’t be completely sure about this but there seems to be some muscle in my ass now. Did you know the ass can contain muscle? I had no idea.

Those Inhale shows are a good workout but they’re a little annoying because 1) the host is kind of a dork, and 2) they seem to have paid for the copyrights on all of 5 songs, so they recycle the same music over and over and over. I’ve heard “Shy Guy” so many times I can actually tell you what the lyrics are:

But I don’t want somebody
Who’s loving everybody
I need a shy guy
He’s the kinda guy
Who’ll only be mine!

I don’t want to know this song that well, nor do I want to be intimately familiar with the smooth stylings of Marvin Gaye or Barrington Levy. So if you have a good yoga DVD to recommend, please do so. It would be nice to have some other home-yoga options, preferably without the easy listening soundtrack.

JB asked me what my end goal was for the dieting, and I said that I wasn’t sure but I hoped I would know when I got there. I had thought it would be tied to a number (125-130 lbs), but I’m less sure about that now. I can see where improvements can still be made (hi, saggy belly! WZZZZUP) and I like the feeling of getting stronger and healthier. My plan is to keep on with what I’ve been doing (although there’s a worrisome period coming up next weekend where we’ll be visiting JB’s family and all my familiar routines will be gone aaiiieee) and see what happens. If I’m not knocked up by summertime, then by god I want to be rocking a hot swimsuit. Maybe even a TWO PIECE.

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