I Guess I’m Just Hot, eh?

There are 30 days left in my Biggest Loser Challenge on SparkPeople and I’ve lost 1 pound.  Actually I lost 2 pounds, then gained 4, then lost 3.  This is due to my inability to stay on track.  I do think I’ve found part of the problem though — it’s too HOT.  I’m in the final stages of the Couch to 5K running program, but as yet have been unable to complete more than about 25 minutes of straight running without getting so hot that my face is beet red and I feel like I just can’t go anymore.

I even tried going to the gym today to run on the treadmill, but it’s hot in there too.  Not as hot as outside, but I swear, I think their thermostat is set on 75.  Plus there’s no breeze at all because all of the ceiling fans are behind the treadmills, so you get stagnant hot, stinky air.  Or else you get choked by the air freshener mounted on the wall when it sprays every 15 minutes.

I can’t wait for it to cool down a little so I can finally make it to running 5K.  As long as this weather continues though, I’m not sure it’s gonna happen.  There’s an Ironman triathlon going on today in Louisville.  It’s 95 degrees outside.  I totally don’t see how these people are competing in a triathlon in this gross weather…I can’t even take the dogs out without sweating.  I wish I knew their secrets so maybe I could overcome this temperature hurdle and finally make it to my 5K.  Hopefully before October so I can register for the Race for the Cure.

A Day at the Fair

I wanted to title this entry, “We should have taken a GPS and stuck it up her a**,” but that seemed a bit long.  (That, BTW, is just one of the very interesting things you can overhear at the Kentucky State Fair.) Anyway, my husband and I went to the State Fair today, because neither of us had been to a fair in years and it was only 15 minutes away.  This turned out to be a very expensive venture because food was ridiculously expensive ($6 for two slices of pizza, $2.50 for water, and $3.75 for 4 Papa John’s breadsticks…the best was the $8 milkshake though) and ride tickets were kind of pricy too.  They give you a strange number of ride tickets, so they basically ensure that you will have to buy more.  The sell you 22 tickets for $25, and most rides take 3 tickets, so you can essentially ride 7 rides then you end up with one leftover ticket, which you either have to waste, or buy companions for.  Sneaky.

We spent a few minutes in the overly packed exhibition hall were people were hawking their various wares, and decided to move on to the next room after we got sick of avoiding people who would run into you without even noticing.  So we went and looked at all of the crafts and photos and the confections that they have so evilly locked up behind glass.  After that, we decided to go ride some rides, and spent about 4 hours walking around Kentucky Kingdom with our ride tickets trying to decide what to ride, and riding some things in between.  We enjoyed the Giant Ferris Wheel and the Tin Lizzy cars, but the Sizzler (think Scrambler only faster) in the midway and Thunder Run roller coaster at Kentucky Kingdom weren’t as enjoyable.  The Sizzler was okay…I had to keep my eyes shut though.  And the coaster was awful…way too rough.  I could feel my brain rattling around in my head…not a pleasant sensation to say the least.  James thought he was going to come away with a back injury.  We were supposed to get 2 go-rounds for our 5 tickets each, but we hightailed it after the first.  I couldn’t even enjoy it because I was too busy trying to keep my brain inside my head.

So after we were finished giving ourselves major bodily injuries, we gave our last 2 tickets to a little girl who looked like she would enjoy them, and headed back to the air conditioning.  We looked at all of the 4-H and FFA goodies, then headed into the area where all of the cows were.  All I can say is, wow, why didn’t I take my camera?  There were cows in there as big as my car.  Crazy.  I had no idea cows got that big.  But I guess they do.  This one bull kept mooing at us, which was kind of funny.  People were petting them but I refrained, since I didn’t really want to get kicked by a cow, or catch some weird cow-borne disease.  If there is such a thing.

By then we were sick of walking and decided to head home, but first I had to have a deep-fried Snickers bar.  I have read a lot in the past week about deep fried “already bad for you and now even worse” confections and just had to try one myself.  I only ate half of it though, since I had already decided to split it with my husband.  I definitely could have eaten the whole thing–it was YUMMY.  The Snickers was all melty inside but still tasted the same.  One of the outdoor vendors had deep fried Reese’s Cups, which sounds good also but would likely require a fork.  If we go back next year I might have to try that one.

I had never been to a State Fair before, and man was this huge.  I’ve been to the Appalachian Fair in Gray, Tenn., many times, and it is nothing compared to this fair.  Although honestly I think I like the Appalachian Fair better, because it was just much less daunting, a lot less walking, and I’ve definitely never spent $88 before at the Appalachian Fair.  (And I didn’t even play any games today…that was all parking, admission, food, and ride tickets.)  This fair definitely had everything you could ever want, but to someone who has only been to smaller fairs, it was also a bit overwhelming.  Oh well, it was still fun.

Disturbing Scene

I came home to a very disturbing scene today, and I’m still not quite sure how to digest it.  As I was preparing to turn left into our apartment building’s parking area, there was a police car there backing out.  As I made the turn, I saw an ambulance.  I had to park several cars down because they were blocking our parking spaces, so I did that and walked toward the door, where a female paramedic cracked the front door open and said it would be just a second.  She then asked me to back up a little so they could get out.  So I pushed myself up against the iron railing beside the door.  But I really wish she’d warned me they were bringing out a body; I would have backed up a little farther.  Just because it creeps me out a bit to think that they rolled out a dead body about 2 feet from me.

Apparently one of our next door neighbors died last night or today.  The coroner came and asked us if we heard anything unusual, which we didn’t.  Now I’m wondering who it was and what happened to him.  The others who live in the apartment (it was four guys; now three) spent several hours sitting outside before they went back in the apartment…I don’t blame them; that’s got to be creepy.  It’s creepy for me just having watched them roll him out, and I don’t (didn’t) even know him.  That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a body bag, and I have no desire to see one again.

God rest his soul; I hope he is at peace.

Sometimes even I don’t get me…

So, last year, I lost about 35 pounds by tracking my food and exercise on SparkPeople.com.  Back then, it was so easy to stick to eating about 1400 calories a day and exercising for at least 30 minutes 4-5 times a week.  Then I got married, graduated from grad school, and got a real job.  Which led to the slow downward slide of “I’m too tired to exercise” and “I’m too lazy to track my food” and “McDonald’s is right next door to where I work.”  We see where this is going.

So I (impressively) only gained 5 pounds back last Christmas.  And I’ve been trying to get that 5 pounds off since January, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.  I don’t know why it’s so hard.  The only thing that’s different is I no longer have my wedding for motivation, but I’m currently motivating myself with the idea of a giant Lands’ End shopping spree in Chicago for all new size 4s or 6s or whatever size I end up in at that point.  Really that’s very exciting for me, so I don’t quite understand why it isn’t motivating me.

I can stick to the 1400 calorie meal plan for a day or two, then I just get out of it and I can’t stop myself.  I end up pretty much maintaining, which is why I have been stuck at 136ish for months now, and I realize that is far better than gaining, but I really want to lose.  Which brings me back to this endless loop of, “Why could I do this last year, but I can’t do it now?”

So I thought maybe I needed some exercise motivation…and I started running.  I set a goal to run the Crazy 8s 8K in 2009.  I am currently up to running about 25-30 minutes at a time, but I only cover about 2.5 miles in that time because I have short legs so my pace is slower than most.  I really thought running, being a far more intense exercise than anything I had really tried before, would help jump start my weight loss.  Not so.  Instead, I’ve been bouncing back and forth even more, and lately I’ve been going the wrong way on the scale for no reason whatsoever.  I always eat around maintenance…sometimes it’s slightly more but never enough to gain 2 pounds in a week.

I got bronchitis a few weeks ago and had to stop running for 2 weeks.  Last year, taking a break from exercise for a week broke a plateau for me, so I had hopes that this might have the same effect.  Alas, nope.  Still stuck bouncing between 136 and 137.  This is very frustrating.  And it’s not helping my motivation.  Which brings me full circle.  My lack of consistent motivation is apparenty hindering my weight loss, which is causing a great deal of frustration, which is making it harder to get motivated.

At this point I’m not sure what I need.  Or if I should even really worry about that last 5 pounds.  Maybe my body just wants to hold onto it and that’s why it refuses to lose it.  I really don’t know.  But I wish I did, so I could either stop trying in vain or finally do something right.

Hello, world!

I hate writing first blog posts.  I’ve done it several times, since this is probably the 4th or 5th blog I have started in the past 10 years.  I’m hoping it will be the last — that is to say, I’m hoping I’ll actually keep up with it this time. (And hoping people will actually care to read what I write!)

Anyhow, I won’t bore you by telling you all about myself — that’s what the “About” page is for, and the “Me in a Nutshell” box off to your right.  So I guess I’ll just jump right in.

As it says on my About page, I was inspired to start this blog after attending the BlogINDIANA conference in Indianapolis and meeting a lot of really cool people.  To be honest, I’m a bit jealous of all of the wonderful and successful blogs everyone runs.  I felt a bit out of place having no blog at all.  (My coworker, Jim, and I were attending for work-related purposes since we are hoping to start a blog for one of our company’s web sites.)  I learned about Twitter, and did a lot of Twittering (which is very addictive) and visited a lot of interesting blogs written by cool people.  I just hope my own blog will be as interesting to someone as theirs were to me.

My plan is to simply write about whatever I’m inspired to–what is going on in my life, good deals I’ve found at stores, funny things that happen, etc.  Above all, I’m going to be myself — crazy and all.