Daddy Is Tired

This post was originally posted at the Shredheads blog on November 11, 2009 – feel free to comment over there.

We’ve been great friends for a long time now, and you’ve really helped me a lot.  In fact, in some ways you’ve carried me through the most difficult times of my weight loss journey.

Don’t get me wrong, you’re still wonderful, but it’s gotten to the point where you’re all I think about.  In fact, I long for you, often choosing you over who I should and that’s just not right.  So right now I think we need to spend less time together.

After last week’s accidental running out of Diet Mountain Dew, and the resulting caffeine withdrawal, I realized I needed to cut back. WAY back.  I don’t know how much I was drinking before, but it was at least 2 liters a day (probably more).  Don’t bother telling me how bad that is.

So this past week I’ve been making a 2 liter bottle last 3 days (filling in the gaps with water and decaf iced tea), and I’m noticed some big changes.  The strangest is that I’ve started dreaming again.  For a long time I haven’t had (or remembered, at least) ANY dreams.  Nothing.  And for the past few nights I’ve been having and remembering dreams.  I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I figure it’s a sign that I’m headed in the right direction.

I recently read a blog post discussing how what people say affects you.  I thought about that for a bit, but since my memories of childhood (and even adulthood) are foggy at best, I don’t recall a lot of specific comments about my weight or anything else.  I know they were there, but they just don’t surface often.

Anyway, I was just listening to a Def Leppard tune while doing dishes.  Do people still use the word “tune”?  While singing along I had a flashback to high school – if you’ll recall, I was the fattest kid in school.  I was in a friend’s house and his sister was talking to her friend about how she had tickets to Def Leppard.  I walked into the kitchen as she was saying something like, “He is SO hot!”

Then, and this is one of the few times in my life where my memory turns crystal clear, she looked at me and said, “I mean Joe Elliott, not you.”

I’m reasonably sure a few boxes of Oreos made the ultimate sacrifice for that one.

There was another good one in college.  My classmates and I were hanging out, and one of the guys who was really into fitness said to me, “Don’t take off your shirt, it’s going to be a flabalanche.”  Much laughter ensued.

My coping mechanism at that time was simple.  For dinner that night I guarantee I hit the drive-thru at Jack in the Box and ordered two sourdough jacks, two large fries, and two large cokes.  The two cokes were to fool the people into thinking there were two people eating all that food.  I had that meal a lot.

Good times.

It’s interesting that out of all the comments I’ve heard that those two should stand out so strongly.  They were just throwaway lines, and shouldn’t have mattered, but they did.  More than any complimentary lines, apparently, because I don’t easily recall any of those.  Except for one.

In graduate school I had an AMAZING set of friends who helped me start eating right and losing weight (the first time).  And they introduced me to Diet Mountain Dew.  (heh)  Shortly before I moved, we were getting ready to go on one of our regular hikes.  I’d just gotten to the base of Squaw Peak and as I walked up one of them said, “I hadn’t realized until just now how much weight you’ve lost.  You look great!”

You probably can’t imagine how that felt.  Even thinking about it now almost gives me goose bumps.

I like to imagine that my kids will never have to deal with hurtful comments, but my daughter already has.  About a year ago, a boy in her school told her (in soccer class) that she couldn’t play well because she was a girl.  One comment by that little POS and it took weeks to get her even to kick a soccer ball again.  Even when it’s not about food, words matter.

I just hope I can teach my kids to remember how great they are, no matter what anyone might say to them.

[Note: This is cross-posted at/from the Shredheads site...so if you've read that, you've read this!]

I was originally going to just run my usual 5K this past weekend…you know, to keep up with the BlogHer 5K.  But since I am trying to convince Sharon to let me run the Tiarathon I decided to do 10K instead.  But when @momslant boasted that she “saw  your 5K (on Thursday) and raised you 5K”, I couldn’t help raising the bar a bit and do more than 10K.  So I bumped it to 6.6 miles – that’s 1/4 of a full marathon!  Hence, the 1st Annual #notblogher Half-Half Marathon was born.

This year’s route was fantastic.  Sorry about the awful picture quality.

I started in Arlington at about 6.  As you know, I usually run earlier than that, but this was a one-way run and the train I was taking back didn’t leave until 7:25am.  First I ran to the Iwo Jima portapotties Memorial, then followed the trail down past Arlington Cemetary.  That’s a pretty amazing place if you haven’t seen it in person.  Take this picture and multiply it by a gazillionty.

After that I headed out across Memorial Bridge, and I still felt strong.  It was pretty cool running toward both the Lincoln Memorial and a beautiful sunrise.

After running past the Lincoln Memorial (and some tourists who were out at 6:30?), I ran along the reflecting pool and headed past the Korean War and WWII Memorials toward the Washington Monument.  I think I must have been showing off a bit (not on purpose) in front of the tourists because I noticed myself going pretty fast after I passed them.

After that, there wasn’t a lot to see as I ran toward the Capitol.  I’ve got to admit, when I passed the Washington Monument I started to run out of gas.  I’d meant to eat before leaving but didn’t, and combined with showing off in front of the tourists, I was really feeling tired.  Then after a pretty long stop at a stop light it was REALLY tough to get my legs running again.  Walking was great, running not so much, so at some point I ended up doing 1 minute run/45 second walk intervals.  But I ran by my metro stop (Smithsonian) as planned and went toward the Capitol.

At 6 miles I turned around and made it back to the metro.  Ahh…the sweet, sweet feeling of being done.

I ended up doing 6.6 miles in 1 hour 05 minutes (1 hour 03 minutes if you take out bathroom and picture stops).  I can’t believe I want to do 13.1 next year!

After I “finished” the 30 Day Shred, I was fortunate enough to be invited to guest post on a regular basis at the Shredheads blog.  This was a huge deal for me because (a) I’m a big fan of Kristen’s writing at Motherhood Uncensored, and (b) it was an additional source of motivation for me to keep working out.  The Shredheads were the reason I  started working out, and are also the reason I continue working out!  So posting over there was pretty exciting for me.

Plus, it was my ticket to the big time!  Fame!  Fortune!  Groupies!

Well, almost.  One day one of my friends was asking me how I was working out, and I told her about the 30 Day Shred and that I had an online support group – I didn’t use the name though.  She said, “Oh, I think I heard something about that on DC Urban Moms…aren’t they the ‘Shredders’ or something like that?”  (there actually was a post about the Shredheads over there.)

I was pretty excited that one of my friends almost knew who I was.  Hey, give me a break, I have low self-esteem!

My next big break came in the form of an interview at Mom’s Who Blog.  It was fun, although I have no idea why I was so nervous about it.  It was a phone interview for goodness’ sake and the article was really focused on the Shredheads site.  But the article was neat and I got my picture on someone else’s blog so that was cool.

And now, now I’ve got my third shot at the big time.  See the little badge below?  It’s also over in the sidebar over there somewhere… —>

That’s right, baby…another guest post!  Today, I’m a “featured blogger” at Diets in Review, where I talk about how much fun it is to lose weight over and over.  Either that, or I talk about how important it is to have support when you’re losing weight and working out.  Or both.  Who the hell knows?  All I know is that I’m movin’ on up!  So do me a favor and click on over there so I look popular.

And since this is my ticket out of nowheresville, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you – the little people – who made this all possible.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  (but please come back and keep reading, because it’s nice to see that all 2 of you read my blog regularly!)

If you got here from Diets in Review, welcome!  You might want to see here for my weight loss journey, including an absolutely lovely before picture…

[Warning, this article makes liberal use of  the "f" word - "fat"]

As a little kid I don’t recall having problems with my weight.  But then around the 6th or 7th grade I started to get fat.  Puberty was definitely not my friend – not only was I gaining a lot of weight, I was gaining it right when I was getting interested in girls.  Thanks, hormones.  But in 7th/8th grade I clung to the thought that at least I wasn’t the fattest kid in school.  I was 2nd or 3rd.  And that wasn’t so bad, right?

Then came high school, and I was easily (as far as I recall) the fattest kid in school – and I kept gaining weight.  Four years later I moved to college, and my eating habits (and slothyness) didn’t improve.  It got so bad that one of my friends kept making jokes about it.  Like the one about how when I took off my shirt there would be a “flabalanche.” Ha ha.

So in grad school I pulled it together and started dieting and getting a lot of exercise.  I went from around 280 to 190.  My legs were rocks from all of that steep desert mountain hiking – boy do I miss that.  Then I graduated and moved to Berkeley for more grad school.  I discovered the muffin shop just outside my lab and some of the weight came back on.  Then I started eating out for lunch every day, but I didn’t think it was so bad.  But it was – just after I graduated I’d gained 20-30 pounds.  Then we moved and I started working. Hmm…I wonder where this is going to end up?

Me, nearly at my top weight of 304.8.

In 2002, just 4 years later, I offically topped out at 304.8 (according to Weight Watchers).  Wow.  That’s not the kind of record I’m terribly fond of.  But this was my 3rd or 4th time with WW, and I stuck with it until I lost more than 115 pounds in 2003.  I was at goal!  I was a free lifetime member!  I worked for Weight Watchers, first as a receptionist and then as a leader!

At goal weight, meeting the Duchess with the family

I was at goal until we moved to Virginia in 2006, at which point I stopped going to meetings because, after all, I was a Weight Watchers leader and I KNOW how to do this (famous last words).  I gained about 15 pounds over the first few months, and then over the next 2 years I gained another 10-15.  After a stressful two-week period in which we put both of our dogs to sleep (unrelated illnesses), I gained another 20-25 pounds in October 2008 alone.

Fortunately I caught it before I gained ALL of it back, and I went back to Weight Watchers in Nov. 2008.  I lost weight steadily until the beginning of March, at which point I noticed that I was significantly flabbier than I had anticipated.  I was reading one of my favorite blogs, and Kristen was talking about doing some video called “30 Day Shred.” I looked at the sample on Amazon, liked that there was no modification of the jumping jacks for beginners, and figured “What the heck?”

30 days later I was a graduated “shredhead” – I’d lost a few more pounds, gained some definition in places I’d never had it before (hello, abs…or at least ab), and was feeling a lot better about where I was on my journey.  Kristen wanted to know if I would head up Team Jillian for April, and I jumped at the chance.  How often do you get to have that kind of motivation when you’re working out?

Now, 20 days into that second challenge, I’m down a total of about 45 pounds.  This brings me to 0.6 pounds away from goal (with my shoes on), which qualifies me for “free lifetime” again, but I want to get under the magic number of 192, even with my 2-pound Costco shoes!

I’m still improving, still motivated to work out, and still struggling with the same old eating issues I always have.  But at least right now I have both a workout support group and Weight Watchers going at the same time.  If I can keep that going I’ll have it made.

I’m very proud of myself. Yesterday I “accidentally” provoked Matthew into saying two of the weirdest things I’ve heard him ever say, and they were both naturally worked into conversaion. First, while he was on the toilet, he said “It’s time to pee, poop, or eat.”

The second thing, which I’m much prouder of, was when he was playing downstairs and he said, “But I really want you to hold my balls!”

Yeah, I’m 12.