Lady Shanny Says

This morning when I got up, my lower half wasn’t feeling too bad, so off I walked to work.  For the next 10 hours, I had to keep looking down at my left leg because it was completely asleep from the knee down and I wanted to make sure it was still dangling there.

So that put me in a fine mood for the rest of the day; frustrated, upset, crabby, irritable, irrational and argumentative.  Lovely!  I was feeling totally defeated and I had the intense urge to just give up.  I should realize by now that this is the fourth week of the month and I get the ‘giveups’ at this time (and it’s weird because fourth week actually doesn’t coincide with any other monthly event).  I don’t want to drink the water, I feel like things are slipping away from me a little and I don’t want to play this game anymore.  I do the exact same stuff in the fourth week that I do the other 3 weeks of the month but it doesn’t bring me the same results either mentally, emotionally or physically.

Then I decided that I will just have to fight harder.  Do better.  Try more.  Because I am NOT giving up.  Not this week, not next week, not ever!  I will just have to remember that I’m going to feel a little crappy and tighten things up a little.  Because I want, no I expect to get the same results (mentally and physically) all 4 weeks of the month.  The fact that the feeling of doing well is missing is what kills me.  I don’t like it.  I can handle a tiny loss once in awhile, but I don’t like not feeling like things are going along well.  And it certainly doesn’t help right now that I’m suffering a bit (OK, a lot) with the exercise.

So I’ve made a Fourth Week Standard Operating Procedure that will hopefully get me through each month.  Feel free to borrow or steal part or all of the FWSOP for yourself!

FOURTH WEEK STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

Responsibility: 

It is my responsibility to know when this week is coming and to put the FWSOP into practice.

Objective: 

Maintain the feeling of well-being (or at least just the feeling that I’m doing everything I can)

Actions:

Be extremely accurate in counting points and measurements of the food that I eat and do NOT go over

Be very diligent about having just ONE cup of coffee and then pay attention to how much water I’m drinking.  Make sure I drink at least 3/4 of my requirement before I leave work for the day

Walk to and from work EVERY day.  If I’m hurting or not feeling well, walk anyway, just take it a bit easier

Have at least one thing to look forward to on the weekend (besides sleeping in)

Get plenty of sleep.  If that means going to bed early then go and don’t worry about the time

I think this FWSOP should go a long way to making me feel better emotionally and perhaps it might also even ward off Tiny Loss Week a bit.

(By the way, I haven’t put a recipe up this week.  I need to figure out how to do the weekly recipe without the links bogging down the sidebar.  I have some ideas and I’ll try them on the weekend.)

Big flippity-flippin’ surprise, I don’t like physio.  The lady was really good, very professional and kind of sweet.  She didn’t creep me out in the slightest!

But, OWWWWW!!!!  Here’s what she told me:  my sacroiliac joint on the left is inflammed, the two joints above that are ‘crunchy’ (her word, not mine), my pelvis is out of alignment and I have a pinched nerve in my lower back.  The ligaments that are supposed to be holding everything together are stretchy and loose (that’s bad) and because of that, every step I take causes the bones to rub together, increasing the inflammation and pinching off the nerve a little more.  It sort of makes me wonder how I’m getting around these days because all of that sounds BAD! 

Here’s the good news.  I don’t have to stop the walking and this is all correctable.

Here’s the bad news.  She wants me to go back twice a week for the next 3 months.  Ummm….no thanks?  First of all, if I’m going all the way out there twice a week that means I have to drive twice a week.  Second, it’s REALLY FAR and third, she only works late one night a week so I’m supposed to somehow make arrangements to do this during work?  That wouldn’t be a problem, but if I WALK to work I can’t come in much earlier because the Skytrain doesn’t start that early and I still have to get ready at work which takes me about an hour.  If I stay late to make up the time that means I’m walking home around 6pm which is not desirable.

So, although she’s very nice and she ’specializes’ in the SI joint issue, I think I’m going to have to find somewhere closer to either work or home.   Or somewhere that is on the Skytrain route so I can still get the walking in.

And here’s the REALLY BAD NEWS:  I’m not supposed to wear high heels or cross my legs.  Seriously?  You know I’m a girl, right?  Unless I’m driving, I’ve got my legs crossed and unless I’m in bed, I’m wearing heeled shoes (except for the walking).

So I don’t know.  Do I just suffer through the pain and try to correct this myself with stretches?  Do I go all the way out to Coquitlam twice a week and not walk?  Do I pretty much void all her evaluation work this evening and go find somewhere else?  I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do yet.  It seems that more thinking is in order.

This morning I did NOT have a good feeling about the weigh-in tonight.  I figured perhaps my tiny loss would be a week early (if you look at the chart on the Results page, you will notice that every fourth week my loss is negligable…I wonder why THAT is?  ) so I wasn’t too thrilled to step on the scale tonight.  But I had a good loss; -2.2 which puts me right on track to having lost 40 pounds by my birthday.

When I stepped on the scale, the woman asked me how I thought I did.  My answer was exactly what I outlined above.  I wasn’t trying to be all demure and coy about it, I really didn’t think it would be that substantial.  I think that so much has happened, body-wise, in the last 12 weeks that I have lost touch a little with how I’m feeling.  It changes so fast and so dramatically that it’s hard to keep up.  I don’t mind, don’t get me wrong, but obviously my body radar is a on the fritz.

Tomorrow after work I have to go for physio for the first time.  I’m not looking forward to that because I’ve never been to physio, but they have to do something, ANYTHING about the pain in my arse, leg and foot.   I’m also not looking forward to it because I am not a huge fan of the touching.  Really, unless I know you REALLY well (and even then sometimes….) please don’t touch me!  It was bad enough going to the doctor to get the referral to the physio (he’s good though…he knows that I get uncomfortable so he makes me laugh and then gets it over and done with) and now I have to spend 90 minutes having someone, a complete stranger, mucking about?  Eep! Shanny no likey!

I’ll give you the post-physio update tomorrow night….if I can move afterwards!

Sometimes I wonder if I am completely unbalanced?  If all my past trials and tribulations have affected me so much that I can’t react like a normal person.

Here’s the deal.  Today, a good friend told me that his lovely wife works with someone who she was thinking of setting me up with…a blind date, perhaps.  Sounds good, I’m in.  The next question he asked me was “Is your website something that this person could read?”.  And in comes the irrational panic!  I see his point.  I put all this on the internet for anyone in the world to read.  I give the website address out to people I know, even to some of my customers, so why wouldn’t I let Mr. Potential Blind Date take a look?  From my friend’s perspective, this would be a really good way for someone to get to know me right off the bat.   From my perspective, that gives me a pretty large disadvantage if I walk into a situation where a complete stranger knows every thought I’ve ever had.  It’s definitely harder to couch my craziness with my lovliness after the fact . 

Irrationally, I panicked and the first thought I had was “How do I delete my website, and what about the cached pages on search engines?”.  It’s irrational because I trust this friend and his wife and I know that they wouldn’t give that information out if I said no.  But trust isn’t something that comes easily for me.  It’s a foreign phrase that doesn’t roll off my tongue all that smoothly.  Think about it.  Think about how vulnerable you are when you tell someone, “I trust you”.  Because the more nefarious sorts, like those that I have trusted in the past, have compromised that trust and made it a difficult thing to acknowledge all these years later.  When not trusting someone comes easier than trusting them, the first inclination for me is to bolt.  And as we started to talk about this website address thing, I had to force myself to stay sitting there and have a conversation about something that made me so uncomfortable that all I wanted to do was crawl out of my skin and run away.   But there I sat, the blood rushing in my head drowning out most of the rest of the conversation, reminding myself that some people, particularly this person, are trustworthy, and all I will get from allowing old habits to take over are the same old results. 

If you haven’t figured it out from the first part of this post (and really, how would you?), my ‘Quiet Contemplation’ thing from the other day was thinking about whether or not I’m ready to start dating.  It’s been awhile, but I think I might finally be ready.  I’m finally back to a place where I respect myself and am willing to stand up for what I want (and what I don’t want).  I’m getting back to the place where I am comfortable in my own skin and am proud of the woman that I am.  The thing is, whoever I date needs to have the patience of a saint because there is no other way for me at this point but slow.  I cannot allow a relationship or another person overwhelm who I am.  I can’t lose myself to someone else’s desires again.  It has taken a lot of work to find Me again and I’m not letting her out of my sight.  The only way that I can see to have a relationship where I am still Me is to slowly allow the other person to get to know me.  To slowly get to understand what the other person is about.  Too many times in the past I’ve moulded and conformed myself to what I thought the other person wanted; to what I thought would keep that person with me.  It didn’t work and I lost a little bit of myself every time I did it.  I know now that the only way that someone will respect me is if I respect myself first.  And it is disrespectful to me to try and hide who I am.  I’m at the point now where I can’t pretend to be anyone that I’m not.  I’m finally OK with the fact that not everyone will like me.  Not every guy will appreciate my sense of humor.  Not every guy will tolerate my quirks.  Not every guy will think I’m attractive.  It doesn’t mean that I’m less than worthy of a relationship, it just means that it wasn’t the right person.   

I’m funny, compassionate, witty, caring, loyal and loving.  I’m also stubborn, loud, quirky and a little crazy.  I hate taking out the garbage but I love recycling.  I don’t make my bed in the morning, I make it before I get back in at night.  I will not share cutlery or drink out of someone else’s glass, it doesn’t matter who they are!  I don’t drink cold or hot beverages, I wait until they are at room temperature.  I have an infatuation with roosters.  The phrase “I’m sure it will be fine” puts me right off my rocker, it bothers me so much!  The Hippo Song that they play at Christmas makes me giggle everytime I hear it.  I love to laugh, I almost never cry and if I’m mad I’ll walk away or hang up on you.  I can’t walk past the bulk olives in Superstore because the smell makes me gag.  I prefer text messages and emails to phone calls and I loathe voicemail, both getting and leaving.  And I KNOW, in the depths of my soul, that there is someone out there that will be a perfect match for me, we just haven’t met yet….

I haven’t really been saying much these past couple of days (on here anyway).  I’ve been giving something some thought.  This ‘thought giving’ thing is something that is still fairly new to me (instead of running in blindly) so it takes quite a bit of my mental energy.  The last two things that I consiously gave thought to before doing were Weight Watchers and walking.  Clearly, the thought-giving works for me.  In addition to giving the thing, whatever it happens to be, some thought, I’ve pretty much kept it to myself until I was ready to talk/type about it. 

So pardon my absence, I’m still around, I’m just busy thinking….and making soup….and watching hockey and football (I still have to do SOME stuff ).

NOTE!  I’ve added a picture of the Morrocan Stew in Recipe of the Week.  I found that the pages were taking too long to load, so I’ve linked the picture with just the title.  I’m going to do just text links for all pictures from now on (except for Journey in Pictures).  That should make things load a little faster.

I almost forgot to put a new recipe up.  It’s there now….

Just a quick question.  Do you guys like the Recipe of the Week feature?  Do you look at them?  Try them?  If I didn’t put them up, would you be sad?

On today, this glorious sunshiny day, I left work at 1 and headed into Coquitlam for my doctor’s appointment.  It turned into not just any appointment, because my doctor has a medical student working with him.  So I got a rather intensive interrogation about the pain in my arse from the medical student. 

Anyway, evidentally my sacroiliac joint is inflammed, which causes the sciatic nerve to get all annoyed and ouchy.  So now I have to go to physiotherapy.  BUT, I don’t have to stop the walking.  Yay!  So I’m not entirely sure what is involved with physiotherapy, but I sure hope it fixes this problem.  I’ll keep y’all posted.

Go see my little ladybug cruising right along on the Results page.  (…evidentally, the S/F Purdy’s Hedgehog that I had on the weekend didn’t hurt me one little bit…and oh, my, it was GOOD!) 

I only have 8.4lbs to lose to get to my next goal of having lost 40 pounds!  Do you think I can do it by my birthday on December 18 - 4 weeks away?  I rather doubt it, but I will do everything I can to be as successful as I can every week!

I really have nothing else of major interest to write about today.  Life is still plugging along.  Work is really quiet with all the people gone, but we’ll be alright.  Walking is going well, but on Thursday I have a doctor’s appointment so I’m going to have to drive my car.  I’m going to the doctor to see if he has any recommendations about the sciatica/pinched nerve that is causing my left foot to get achy and then fall asleep.  It really is getting just about unbearable so instead of suffering, I’ll see if there is something simple I can do to correct that.  Because I will NOT be deterred!  I prefer to think of it as ‘working out the bugs’.

I received an email ‘request for an interview’ from a website that does success and progress stories about real people who are finding their way in the weight loss arena.  The website is WLTIPS and I’ll be doing my interview tomorrow.  I’ll post the direct link to it when it gets published.

And last?  In 6 days, we went from 5000 visitors at this website to 6000!  Thanks to everyone who comes to visit!

That’s about it for this Tuesday evening.  As with all the Tuesdays that came before, I hereby commit 100% to the next 7 days.

UPDATE:  I got an email from Natalie (the superstar of #4 in THIS post) this afternoon that said: “You are doing great, you forgot to tell all of your readers that you used to drive your hedgehogs thru cool whip so the fact that you now eat just one of the SF ones is a huge accomplishment.”  I thought about my hedgehogs-through-cool-whip days when I was savouring the one I had on Saturday.  My, how things change.  BUT, if you are ever in need of a ridiculously decadent, sweet, fat laden, fun snack, drive some hedgehogs through some defrosted Cool Whip.  

And for Mareuze, click HERE for a picture of the hedgehogs.  The Purdy’s website describes them as “…made with our creamy hazelnut truffle filling, in a lavish shell of milk chocolate - often imitated, never duplicated” 

(If you’re here from the Weight Watchers meeting in Surrey, drop me a note in the comments so I can say ‘Hi’.)

Alright, so I’ve noticed with all the walking that my legs and my arse are starting to look much better.  And I got to thinking (and talking…if you know me at all!) about how I could make my upper body start to match the lower.  So one of the boys at work lent me a DVD that he got with a set of dumb-bells. 

It probably seems kind of obvious what exercises you can do with a set of dumb-bells for the upper body, but as a NON gym go-er, I really didn’t know where to start.  Enter the DVD. 

So there’s me, standing in the living room on my yoga mat, in my skating reindeer nightie and slippers, doing concentration curls, hammer curls, flys and a bunch more upper body exercises.  Ha, nice image, right!  I sure do hope I can lift my arms to brush my teeth tomorrow!

It actually seemed kind of silly, but then I remembered a quote I’d read somewhere:  “I’m not there yet, but I’m closer than I was yesterday.”  So yes, it is probably kind of ridiculous for me to be lifting free weights in my living room, but you have to start somewhere and somewhere happens to be here, today. 

Building some muscle will help with weight loss in the long run.  For those of you ladies who don’t want to lift weights because you don’t want to get ‘huge’, just remember that the average weight training MAN only puts on 3-4 pounds of muscle in 3 months.  It is incredibly difficult for women to put on muscle, even when they are in the gym for hours a day.  Simply put, you are not going to put on massive amounts of muscle, you will just tone and tighten.  By lifting weights or doing other weight bearing exercises, you are going to speed up your metabolism (muscle burns more calories than fat) and strengthen your bones (especially important for women).   So don’t let the phrase ‘building muscle’ deter you.  You already have muscles, everyone does.  Just give them a little something to do and your whole body benefits.

Chances are that my pajama-clad weight lifting is not going to show any noticeable difference, but I will keep doing it because as far as stages in this journey go, I’m ready for this one now.

Penguin Reviews is updated.  Remember, to get to the newest review, click the word ‘Penguin’ at the top left of the Penguin Reviews page.

Friday afternoon I got to have a nice, unexpected visit with my friend who works back east.  We went for coffee and then shopping to the Asian Supermarket.  It was good times, we laughed, chatted and caught up. (this was, of course, before the freak out on Friday night)

Yesterday was a bit of a whirlwind day.  I went into Burnaby to buy myself a new walking jacket.  (Tarable, I got the light pink one from Running Room….Shanny likey!).  Then to my sister’s in Vancouver.  We then went to Richmond together.  Came back to her house to get my car, drove into New Westminster to the outlet mall, back to Surrey, into Langley, out to Aldergrove and then into the USA.  That’s a LOT of stops to make in one day!

Today is cooking day, I’m making Chicken Divan and Smoked Tofu Enchiladas (recipe available on the left) and watching football.  Tonight is hockey and dropping my stuff off at work for the week.

Why am I listing all the things that I did and am going to do?  Because I came to the realization (much of it inspired by the comments on the last post) that my life and my world are not defined by ‘that person’ or my reactions and emotions towards him.  In the overall picture, he is a speedbump that I have to get past.  I’m well on my way, it will just be hard initially when he’s around again all the time.  But I have a good foundation in this new lifestyle, I have great friends and family and a small but lovely social life.  So it will be hard, but I am going to be just fine!

For this to make sense, you should read THIS post first.

 Yesterday, I was told that he had signed up to work on a certain committee for the next year.  Which meant that he wouldn’t be back in the plant for quite awhile.  I was very pleased to hear that information.  And then, when he was in the plant today, he told me that he’ll be back working in our facility starting December 1st.  I am NOT happy about that.

With him gone, I was truly able to convince myself that I was completely over the issues and had moved on.  But now, even with just the knowledge that he will be coming back, and not so long from now, I’m upset.  I’m upset because I’m scared.  I’m scared that I won’t be able to control the situation.  I’m scared that all my hard work over the last 10 weeks is going to go to hell in a handbasket.  I’m scared that the bad habits and bad judgement of the last 3+ years have not been totally wiped away in the last 10 weeks.  I’m scared that the new lifestyle is not cemented enough to deal with this.

Am I over the feelings I had for him?  I like to think so.  I like to think that I saw the light and then moved on.  And I truly believe that I have, for the most part.  I know his game now, I can see the situation clearly.  I am more comfortable with me now than I was.  But I’m scared, because I cannot go back to that place.  It killed me inside.  It made me unhealthy and unhappy.  It broke my spirit and I lost who I was and I lost sight of my life outside of that situation.  It absolutely broke me into a million pieces, over and over again.  And it’s almost like the pieces are glued back together, but that the glue isn’t set.  There’s the chance that it could break apart again at any time, and I am positive when I say that I will not be able to put it back together for a second time.  I am normally not a cry-er and to be honest, I’ve never shed a tear over the last 3 years, or over him.  But tonight when I was talking to a friend about it, I came too close.  It’s not any feelings about him that are making me weepy and ridiculous, it’s the overwhelming fear that I am going to get sucked in again and not be able to do anything about it.  I don’t know exactly where or how it went wrong last time.  I have an idea, but I can’t pinpoint the moment that it spun out of control.  So it’s a bit of an unknown with him coming back into my life.

I look back on the last 10 weeks and I really like who I’m becoming.  I’m strong, I know which end is up and I’m in control.  I’m getting to where I want to be and it really doesn’t include him.  But when I told Carey this evening, that if he walked in the room and told me that he’d left his wife and wanted to get together with me, that I would say ‘No’ with no hesitation, I guess it wasn’t that convincing.  I really, REALLY want that to be the answer.  I NEED that to be the answer.  But to be honest?  I don’t know.  I thought about it all the way home, quivering lip and all.  I don’t know.   I don’t want to have feelings for him.  I don’t want to care about him.  Unfortunately, the very serious feelings over the last 3+ years are not so easily undone.  Do I still have feelings for him?  I truly don’t know and I don’t think I will know until he comes back.  That’s a bit like not knowing if your parachute works until you jump out of the plane and pull the cord.  It could very well be too late to find that out.   

As my dear friend said, it’s easy enough to be strong and keep your resolve when the temptation is nowhere near you.  But when it’s right in your face, that’s a totally different story.  The trepidation that I feel about his coming back leads me to believe that my resolve is going to be tested.  That I am going to have to spend a lot of energy and time being strong and reminding myself which is the right path.  I’m resentful about that, because with him gone, I could focus all my energy and attention on this journey.  I didn’t have to be strong.  I was just able to be.  But I suppose that I would never truly have been over it if he was just permanently absent.  I would have gotten off scott-free.  And while I probably would prefer that option, I think this will ultimately show me just how much I’ve grown, how strong I’ve become and remind me that only I get to make the decisions that affect my life.  If he had just vanished, I think I would have had to go through more heartache at some point down the road to learn how to truly move on. 

The more twisted side of this is that even though I do not want him, I want him to want me.  I almost want him to want what he can’t have.   I think it’s because it would somehow validate the last 3 years of my life.  It would prove that I wasn’t crazy or stupid but that I was right this whole time, that there was something there and for all the many reasons, it wasn’t meant to be.  I want the last 3 years not to be an embarassing waste of time and energy and emotion.  I want to be vindicated.  I realize that if I chase the urge to be ‘right’, that it could very well be my undoing because it will never happen.  Those admissions will never be made.  

I was asked this evening if my weight loss and this journey that I’m on are somehow motivated by that.  Of this I am sure:  it never, ever entered the equation.  I don’t know the answer to some of the other questions about the ‘boy’ situation, but this one I know for absolute certainty.  I have put so much effort and energy, both physical and mental, towards this and I feel sick that there would ever be one second’s doubt about why I’m doing it.  I guess I feel like if I were doing it for the wrong reasons it would be a complete betrayal of myself.  I’m slightly uncomfortable with the idea that eventually he probably will comment on my new figure.  Because it seems like that would cheapen everything that I’ve done.  I am not doing this for anyone but myself.  I’m doing this because, yes, I am tired of being single.  I’m doing this because I deserve so much more than what I was living.  I’m doing this because I need to be able to be strong and ready for life’s challenges.  I’m doing it because a lot of the weight was a toxic byproduct of the screwed up situation and I really needed to get rid of that.  I’m doing it because if I had stayed in the same place and at the same weight, I would have also stayed in the same mental state, protecting myself with food and fat.  I knew that eventually the time would come where I would have to let the world in and learn to be protected and safe without the buffer.  And in a way, I suppose that this is going to be a good trial for that. 

I am still scared.  I’m still anxious and nervous and upset.  But my hope is that I will not be ruled by habit or past feelings, by guilt or manipulation.   The reality remains to be seen.

1.  Just yesterday I was remarking on how I love being out in the ‘weather’.  How it makes me feel like part of the world.  I guess.  What it also makes me feel is really wet and cold and shivery.  Especially when it’s raining like someone turned on the garden hose!  I came home and had a hot shower and now I’m good.  Dinner is made, dishes are done, lunch is made, clothes are drying, blogs are read and this week’s recipe is posted.  It’s Moroccan Stew and it is GOOD!

2.  I got a lovely comment from my second ‘international’ reader today.  Lucy from England left me a comment and she is the SECOND person who is reading me from another continent.  “Lost” is the first and she’s from Germany.  Any more of you out there? 

3.  Last week Beth from Tales from the Scales asked me if I would be willing to be their Loser of the Week.  Unfortunately, last week I was in NO frame of mind to write anything so I took a raincheck until this week.  So tomorrow, the article I wrote specifically for Tales from the Scales ‘Loser of the Week’ will be published.  The article is still sort of grabbing me funny, but Beth insists that it’s inspiring and well written.  I’ll take her word for it.  Plus, she already has it so it’s too late to change now in any case.  I’ll put the link here tomorrow morning when it’s posted. Here is the link to the article that I wrote. Click HERE

4.  Tonight was something of an oddity.  There was a get together at a neighborhood pub for the four (yes, last week was 3 and today, one more person was let go) people who were terminated/downsized last week.  So we all got together for a drink and for the opportunity to say bye.  Now, I should mention that I do not like crowds and mingling-type situations all that much.  I still feel a little self-consious about my image (better now than before though) and then add in the sad/depressing/uncomfortable aspect of the whole thing?  I didn’t stay long.  I’m so sad to see the 4th person go.  She was the center of the ‘girl universe’ at work and we loved her.  She was caring and funny and dramatic and chatty and wonderful!  She was the bright spot and the good giggle in many a bad day.  She ALWAYS made time to talk to us or listen to us about whatever was going on in our lives.  She’s listened to us cry and bitch and yell and laugh.  Her office has had our flipouts, our struggles, our resentment, our victories and our tragedies.  She gave us advice and hugs and a shoulder.  She’s talked us up and she’s talked us off ledges.  She’s beautiful, classy, loving and genuine with the biggest heart and I’m terribly sad to see her go!   NATALIE, YOU WILL BE MISSED!!!!!!!!!

So, on that note, I’m off to bed.  Thank heavens that tomorrow is Friday!

I was the definition of craptastic this afternoon.  Cramps and irritation and bitching and bullshit, oh my!  I was SO looking forward to getting outside and walking away from it all.  By the time I got changed and was heading out the door though, it was getting dark and a bit chilly out.  Not to be deterred (I REFUSE to be deterred by even shin splints, blisters or the flare-up of sciatica in my arse, never mind the weather), out I marched.  Down the street, across the cross-walk, up the sidewalk and….oh….look……Starbucks has its heaters on…..it looks so cozy and indulgent….but I am walking home so I can’t stop……or can I?  About 30 steps past Starbucks, I stopped, turned around and went back.  The glow of the heaters, the promise of a gingerbread latte and the dusky light outside was too much to resist.  And why should I resist?  Just because I’m supposed to be ‘walking’?  I had nowhere special to be, no timeline to meet and dammit all if I can’t realize that the REASON that I noticed the heaters and got to stop and have a coffee was BECAUSE I was walking. 

I’m really looking forward to the first day that I’m walking and it snows.  REALLY, REALLY looking forward to it.  I grew up in a northern climate and I miss the snow.  I miss the snow smell and the snow sky.  I miss how falling snow can quiet the surroundings.  I  miss the magic of a first snowfall.  I want the big fluffy flakes to fall on me.  I want to make my footprints in the snow.  I want to see it balanced up and teetering on the bridge guardrails.  I want to hear my feet crunch in the snow or squish in the slush.  That’s one of the major selling points of this walking thing; not the snow, but being outside.  Being IN the weather rather than staring at it out the window.  I feel like I’m a part of the world rather than an observer when I’m outside day after day.  I feel like I’m in on a secret that not everyone gets to know.  Is that odd?  Do you get what I’m going for here? 

One other thing to note?  When it’s already dark outside and you are walking along at a pretty good clip, it is a bit counterproductive to also be laughing your head off and sending text messages.  Good thing for the rails on the bridge sidewalk or I would have been pate about 3 times.  That must’ve been quite a sight for people driving past; Lady Shanny in full safety gear, phone in hand, iPod cranked, laughing and texting and bouncing off the guardrails every 40 feet.  Nice!

Oh, and by the way?  One of you was my 5000th visitor this morning.   5000!!!!!!!!!!!!  That’s fantastic!  I get so much support and encouragement from you guys.  Quite often a commenter will tell me that they are inspired by what I’m doing and the pictures and the words.  It makes me blush every time I read that, but then, I’m inspired by each and every one of you!  Even those of you who don’t comment…..you come here day after day to read about what’s going on and I appreciate that so much!  We’re all living crazy lives with so much to do, and that you guys take 5 minutes to come and see what I have to say?  Well y’all are just remarkable.  Ultimately, I just wanted to say that if I inspire you I think that’s fantastic.  But you inspire me too, just by showing up!

I didn’t expect much tonight.  I had a really bad night, consumed A LOT of Motrin and hardly got any sleep.  All I wanted was to be down 0.8lbs so that I could get my next 5lb sticker.  What I was NOT expecting was to be down 3.2 POUNDS!  I also was NOT expecting to get the 25lb disc that Weight Watchers gives you for hitting that landmark.  It looks like a 1″ silver washer with ‘25′ engraved in it (really, that’s exactly what it looks like, I’m not posting a photo….). 

Sometimes it can seem overwhelming knowing how far I still have to go and how long it’s going to take so I find it easier to break it off into nice, manageable chunks. It’s Tuesday night, last week is officially over and I am again, for the 11th time, recommitting myself 100% for the next 7 days.

When I don’t feel like making my lunch, or I resent having to haul a week’s worth of toiletries and clothes to work and back on Fridays and Sundays, or I don’t want to go out into the cold, dark morning and get on the Skytrain with all the weirdos and then drag my sleepy ass over the bridge, I think of the numbers.  The number on the tag inside my pants, the number I’m heading towards and the number of pounds that I have shed in the last 10 weeks.  I also think about the number of hours of planning and organizing and thinking and writing and talking about this that I’ve done.  And I am not going to let a single second of that number be wasted by not doing everything that I can to be successful every week.

So here’s to the next 7 days!

The search words that bring people to my website can be really weird and random. 

Lots of people show up here after having searched some form of bodily function:

room temperature water make you poop

Can you pee out fat cells (and many variations on that one)

normal peeing frequency (again, many variations on that)

There also seems to be quite a lot of interest in penguins:

what penguins dislike

calories in a penguin (we’re really hoping these people were looking up the cookie, not the mammal)

penguin 2000 review

penguin comments

Some of the most frequent hits come from:

soft taco casserole

tofu cream cheese enchilada

chocolate muffins

sleep-crying

water retention and Advil/Motrin

And some of the weirdest search phrases:

evil greek bar

naked lady pee

bubble buts exercising

So how did you get here?  Friend?  Friend of a friend?  Accident?  I’m actually interested, so please share!

I got up this morning and decided that since I was on hiatus all last week, I should get out and march over the bridge this morning.  I also thought I should test out the NEW new shoes (picked them up yesterday) so I didn’t have to test them on Tuesday morning.  So off I went at 8am this morning.  NEW new shoes are better.  Definitely fit better although I will have a bit of a blister problem for awhile.  Nothing I can’t work with though.  The shin splints are still there a bit, but I took it a bit easier when they started to act up and made sure to do all the stretches that the pedorthist told me to do, so I’m hopeful that I will eventually get past that. 

I took this picture for you as I made my way over the bridge (click to enlarge)

So I’m all exercised up and ready for a visit with my grandparents.  It’s my Grampa’s 75th birthday dinner.  They haven’t seen me since August 12th, and I’m not really ready for them to start making comments about my personal appearance.  I was hoping that they wouldn’t notice that I’d lost almost 25 pounds, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to avoid it.  I’m not quite sure what I’m going to say yet.  Also, I know that they are going to be eagle-eying everything that I eat, which is another reason I hauled ass over the bridge this morning.  I definitely needed those activity points so that I can eat a reasonable amount of food (maybe a sliver of birthday cake) to keep the questions to a minimum.  I’ll give y’all the update either tonight when I get home or tomorrow morning.  Also, my sister is going to take a new picture of me for The Journey in Pictures today, which will be updated, again, either tonight or tomorrow morning.

I’m off to have a shower and a little nap before I have to go get ready.

I truly hope you are all having a lovely weekend. 

UPDATE:  The Journey in Pictures is updated with a new photo from this evening.  And the dinner went fairly successfully.  My hope was that they wouldn’t notice, but after having seen the pictures side-by-side, I realize they would have to be blind not to notice. My Gramma made one comment and did a weird eyebrow wiggling, winking thing (not sure where she was going with that), but my sweet sister diffused the situation and that was the end of it.  Dinner was good, a small piece of angel foodcake was eaten and now I’m home in jammies and on the way to bed. 

This last week has been a really brutal test of endurance and discipline and committment.  Let’s recap, shall we?

Monday ~ couldn’t get past my street due to traffic problems.  Came home, waited an hour, tried again.  Took an hour to go 1.5km.  Walked over the bridge (in the new shoes) with really bad shin pain.  Walked home Monday evening and then took the rest of the week as a hiatus which meant sitting in traffic every day, both ways for really long periods of time.

Tuesday ~ Major re-organization at work.  I don’t want to get into it here, but suffice it to say there are several people who are seeking new employment.  Big-wigs from production, admin and sales are in our office during this time.  Never an easy time.

Wednesday, Thursday ~ still on walking hiatus.  Starting to feel squirrely with no exercise.  More people from other divisions show up.  Large amounts of stress hanging thickly in the office.  Go grocery shopping on Thursday evening and come home to find that my house key has worn down to the point that it no longer works in the door.  Lovely!  Explain to landlord why it is important that she “look for your copy of the key, and NO, I will not wait an hour until your company leaves”.

Friday ~ well respected and good employee gives resignation due to ongoing health issues.

Friday Evening ~ Lady Shanny has a nervous breakdown….but then comes to a realization.

Realization:  This week is definitely in the top 3 for bad weeks I’ve had over the last couple of years.  The bad-ness of the week causes me to want to hole up in my house for 3 days (YAY Long Weekend) with a whole bunch of fatty, starchy, crappy food and comfort myself like there’s no tomorrow.  This is not an effective way of coping with the bad-ness though.  Mostly because it would undo everything that I’ve worked really hard at this week (even through the turmoil).  Because it is not a sustainable way to deal with stress.  Because the turmoil will not be lightened by consuming a large mushroom pizza.  Using food (especially that kind) in that way is what put me on this journey.  It’s ultimately a cop-out for dealing with the feelings and emotions, because if I eat the large amounts of crap I can focus on feeling guilty and failure-esque, instead of dealing with the issues at hand. 

There will never be a ‘good time’ to lose weight.  It will always require effort.  Life doesn’t stop and wait while you get down to the weight you want to be at.  Life doesn’t actually care that you are trying to accomplish something.  You just have to learn to accomplish your ’something’ while living life.  And unfortunately, living life comes with the good, the bad and the ugly (although The Ugly would be less so if she washed her hair and stopped over-using cheap perfume that smelled like the odor-eliminator garbage bags)(sorry, was that mean?).

OK, back on topic.  If food is the only way that you know of to cope with bad days, bad news, mean people, sadness, lonliness, unhappiness, anger and even all your positive emotions, then I’m afraid that whatever hard work you do and successes you accomplish will be undone by the eating. 

We have to find a better way.  We just have to, it’s that simple.  Suggestions for how you diffuse stress without using food are MORE than welcome.

Which means two things:

1.  There is a new recipe up on the left

2.  Tomorrow is Friday

That’s all.

This week I made it to the ‘lose 10% of your starting weight’ week at Weight Watchers.  Where I got this:

It’s a copper plated key chain.  The symbols are a ‘10′ for the loss of 10% of starting weight, a star which signifies reaching goal weight and a key which signifies lifetime membership.  As I understand it, as you do those things, you get little charms for your keychain.

To be completely honest, I’ll never use it.  BUT, it’s a very nice, physical symbol of what I’ve done in the last 9 weeks.  As is Little Nano, the ipod that I bought as my personal reward (remember how I didn’t want to go to the spa?  Nano is what I got instead).  Granted, I’ve been using Nano for 2 weeks now, but that was neccessary for the walking.

I’m a teensy bit annoyed that the ‘big moment’ came today of all days.  We had some HUGE personnel changes at work this morning that none of us really saw coming, so my moment (which the woman at the counter FORGOT about and then lipped me off when I asked her to mark it down for the meeting) was overshadowed with stress and unease.  Which is why, I believe, that the number on the scale wasn’t a little lower.  I KNOW that I’ve lost more than 0.6 this week.  I know because I can see it and I can feel it.  But this was a really horrible day and by the end of it I had a terrible tummy-ache (T-able, I can only imagine how you feel).  Also, I didn’t walk to work today (I’m off until at least Friday morning) and I can certainly tell that I didn’t.  So I’m a little disappointed in the result, but it’s probably not entirely unexpected.  I had the ‘good pants’ moment earlier this week and several people commented on my ongoing weight loss and those are the results you can’t measure with the scale.  Right?

I’m off to hibernate under the covers and hope for a better tomorrow.

Well folks, the new shoes are great!  Except for the excruciating pain I’m still feeling in my shins.  A reliable source suggested that I haven’t quite healed from the ‘ridiculous shoes’ pain yet and that by taking a couple of days off and then starting again, I may be able to eliminate or decrease the pain.

For those of you who have never suffered through shin splints, let me make it really clear.  The feeling is one of extreme muscle fatigue mixed with bone pain.  It’s not fun. 

Although I have no intention of giving up the walking, I do have to stop for a couple of days.  This morning after I struggled to work and got ready, I was sitting at my desk with full body chills and prickly heat.  I don’t know that one has to do with the other, but I can’t really afford to take the chance.  So I will be driving to work until probably Thursday.

I’m sad and frustrated, but in my heart I know it’s for the best. 

Turns out avoiding traffic is easier said than done.  I left the house at my regular time of 6:30 this morning and now I’m back, sitting on my couch.  The Patullo Bridge is down to one lane, in the fog, which means that I sat in the same spot for 40 minutes trying to get to the train station (which is at the foot of that bridge).  Evidentally, people were getting off buses and walking to the train, but with it being so foggy, many of them were coming very close to being hit by cars.

So now I wait for about an hour and then try again.  And instead of sitting here doing nothing and falling asleep, I’m going to do some of the stuff I should have done yesterday.  Sort the donation clothes, paint my nails, the stuff I didn’t do yesterday because I was too busy napping.

When I was putting my laundry away this evening, I was trying to shove the pile of ‘donation’ clothes over so I could get into the closet.  I figured since the pile is growing at an ever faster rate, I should make sense of it and then go and drop the stuff off tomorrow.  So I went through my closet (again!) to weed out that which has gotten too big.  As I was doing it I thought I should try on some of the pants that my sister gave me (nothing larger than a 14) and see how much longer until I could start wearing them.  And it’s a good thing I did.  One of the pairs was too big already and 3 of them are perfect.  There are about 5 more that should fit in about a month and 2 that will likely be sometime next year.  I didn’t think, for one second, that I would be wearing a 14 already.  YAY!!!!!!!!!

It’s funny though, because although I can see the difference when I look in the mirror, part of me still thinks that I am GIANT.  That’s why it’s nice to be able to put a certain sized garment on.  Even though all manufacturers cut clothes differently, and I generally don’t care about the number on the tag (anymore), it’s still a little boost to the ego and motivation to keep going to put on a smaller size.

I’ll put a new ‘Journey’ picture up, hopefully after next weekend.  I wanted to wait until I was 10lbs lower than the last picture.  So next weekend I’ll be with my sister who can take the picture (right?) and I should be at least 10lbs lower effective Tuesday evening.

Are you guys all sick of coming to my website and seeing, as Willamina so gently put it, a bloodbath?  Me too!

I went to Kintec today, got completely embarassed about the state of my pedicure, and got fitted for new shoes.  Nice shoes.  Expensive shoes!  Wanna see?

The guy at Kintec (they are all University trained Kiniesiologists) tells me that with some calf muscle stretches and these new shoes (with arch support insoles), I should be done with shin splints in 3 weeks.  YAY!!!!!!!!!!  If that’s the case, then the shoes are worth every penny!

Just this morning I was wondering when I was going to find the time or the desire to wash the kitchen floor.

Problem solved!

Thank you to all you lovely people who wished me strength and endurance. 

While I was at work today, dreading the walk home, I came to a realization.  I’m not racing anyone.  I’m not going to win a prize for shaving time off the walks.  Just the shear fact that I am out there doing it, every day, is absolutely enough.  So this afternoon, I left work and walked.  Not marched, not speed walked, not jogged, not walk-runned.  I just walked.  I walked quickly enough to get my heart rate up and get a bit of a sweat going, but not so quickly that my footsteps were really heavy and jarring.  (I am a heavy walker at the best of times)

And it was fine.  I could still feel it in my legs but not nearly to the extent of causing me to cry.  The walk actually seemed quicker since it didn’t feel like someone was hitting me on the shin bones with hammers every step.   And now that I’m at home, I feel refreshed and re-energized, rather than beat down and defeated.

Lesson learned!  Just like when you cheat on the diet, you’re the one that gets screwed.  Evidentally, when I try to compete with myself physically, I end up doing far more damage than good. 

Also, I think that the $20 shoes I bought at Wal-Mart 4 years ago are perhaps not sufficient for what I’m doing now and are a big reason for my shin and ankle pain.  So this weekend I will go and get new shoes.  Impact absorbing, gel cushioned, properly laced cross-trainers.  Because I need them and I deserve to have decent shoes!

Also, last night when I was looking at the hockey schedule (Beer League) and realized that we have a game tonight at 8, I could not for the life of me see going to it after having had to suffer through my ‘commute’ home.  But I didn’t suffer and now I’m totally jazzed about going.  I love going and I was a little bitter and twisted last night that my new exercise was starting to interfere with my already really small social life. 

I’m back in the game, baby!

HERE is a really good article on shin splints, what they are, why they hurt and what to do about it.  It tends to keep mentioning people who run, but walking, especially if you are heavy-footed and create a lot of impact when you walk, can also cause it.  It also mentions that ‘dramatically increasing workouts’ will cause this condition.