Mar 31: Plateaunic

Sisters and brothers,

What's the word, now word up? Rhetorical question. Okay, so, how's everybody doing in the Battle of the Bulbousness? Are you sweating and grunting your way through thrice weekly workouts? Training for a marathon of aerobic smugness? Contemplating the idea of one day maybe taking the stairs? Forsaking second breakfast and feeling that's good enough for now? Some where in between? Let me know. Let us aaaaaallll know. Here at D-Weighted, we do not judge. Well, we judge, but not openly. Kidding, kidding! I keed because I love. You know that.

So, you want to know about me? How kind. Since you clicked, I will tell you. My last weigh in, on Caturday, was a little disappointing. I gained .2 of a pound. (How do you say that? "Point two of a pound"? If I was quick on the uptake I would say "a fifth of a pound" but calculation doesn't come as fast as the chatter. I mean, it's fine when you're blogging, but... 'k I'm bored with this aside.) So yeah. Up a fifth. Whatever, it's pretty insignificant and I'm not crying myself to sleep on my huge pillow or anything. But it always sucks to gain, especially when you ran four times that week and observed the Rules of Jenny.

Well, except for the previous Saturday night, when I polished off most of a bottle of wine, some cheese, a couple of one-bite brownies, and 2 pieces of Popeye's chicken w/ fries on the way home. Okay, when you put it that way, dang. It didn't seem so bad at the time. Maybe the double digit blood alcohol level affected my perspective (and my willpower) a smidge.

Even without the Saturday slip, I feel like my body is starting to dig in its heels (um, I am digging in my heels... but like, metaphorically... whatever). Plateaus [plateaux?] are inevitable and all one can do is suffer through them. When I've done all I can do (okay, not ALL, but a Saturday night slip once in awhile is called "living") in terms of eating right and exercising, I just have to feel okay about the fact that I'm healthy and this sort of fluctuation is out of my control.

This weekend I'm headed home for Easter with the fambly. My mom is also doing Jenny so that might help me stay straight. We shall see. Hope to get out for a hike with the Miaouw on Good Friday - the forecast is a glorious 25°C / 77°F and sunny. Bonus: my shorts fit again. And I will pack my running gear, try to get in a run on Saturday or Sunday morning. I asked/cajoled my brother about an Easter Egg hunt on Sunday morning. Being the younger sibling, it of course pissed me off the year my mom decided she'd had enough of hiding eggs. He got three more years of hunts! I threw a tantrum which resulted in my 16 year old brother buying two cartons of real-egg-size chocolate eggs and hiding them in the most elaborate, impossible spots imaginable. I think we were still finding eggs 3 years later. Anyway, he has two late-teens to frustrate and delight with his torturing skills this year. If there is a Hunt, I will present them with any of my kills, as a cat presents her mistress with the still-twitching small bird of the backyard.

Happy Easter or Passover or non-religious enjoyment of a Stat Holiday, everyone!

Mar 25: Googlers

Hey, have a paw:

==3

Just thought I'd check in, say hey, extend the paw. Jenny serves me well - I lost another pound last week, word. The Cancer Ladies also serve me well - my cardio capacity seems to be improving, as are my run times. I did 3 miles on Sunday in 35 minutes and change, and then two days later I did the same run in 34:12. Tonight after work is a 2 mile run with the gals. I expect to huff and puff and hate every minute of it, but running with faster folks seems to be pushing me to extremes I wouldn't do on my own.

So, I use Google Analytics to obsess over who visits this blog. I happen to know, very few. That's fine. I mean, I was hoping by now to at least have my own TV show, but let's face it, I'm no Diablo Cody. (I totally would have worn the shoes.)

Anyway, every once in awhile somebody stumbles onto this blog as a result of a wayward Google search. By far the most popular entry for non-recruits is the one I wrote last April about the Google Maps pedometer. Somehow it got indexed by Google, and now shows up at the bottom of the first page of results when people search on "google maps pedometer". Hunh! Well I hope it's been helpful.

For shits 'n' gigs, I looked at the search terms used over the past year that brought people here (one at a time, for the most part). Here are some faves:

• "president's choice" + decadent chocolate chip cookie
  So referenced in the comments section of a blog asking what foods people cannot keep in their homes for fear of total annihilation within hours.



• crazy lola say: i don't know what to say, he cheated on me with some girl for 5 months
  This one made me laugh my ass off. So random.



• fondle my biceps
  Right on! I love that somebody searched this term, and that they came to my photo with the marked up biceps.



• i really hate myself
  Sad. I hope whoever searched on that term stopped feeling that way. Glad to say I did. (Not to say I didn't return to that feeling, but thankfully it's not a permanent condition.)



• im 19 and bored (related: im frucking bored and depressed)
  Wonder if Iggy Pop helped ease the pain for these two?



• stale cereal calories
  Another winner for the Cereal Killer post! Did the person searching these terms think stale cereal had fewer calories? The food is dehydrated, therefore less fluid, therefore less mass? Wow, I could be like a science genius.



• what is the meaning for the sentence "hotter than i should be"
  I love it when I am able to answer the tough questions for people.



• mandibular disfunktion
  This one had me stumped until I checked the comments section. My girl Cookie was referencing Temporo-Mandibular Joint disfunction. I had never heard of it when she mentioned it, and promptly forgot all about it until just now. And once I finish writing this sentence, I'll forget about it again. Did you say something?

Well alright, that was fun. Time to get back to work. Fondle your Google today!

Mar 18: Rump likes being rump

(or, Notes on the Miaouw)

My cat-fetishizing significant other, referred to on this blog as the Miaouw, and by other qat-related monikers elsewhere, is an appreciator of RUMP. This is a fortunate thing indeed, since mine is ample. He was already half way in love with me without ever having laid eyes on my rump (plus it was significantly less ample back in the day), so I don't worry about him taking off like a cat out of hell once I finally shed some of this asstacular caboose.

Sometimes when I'm in the kitchen preparing a meal (read: shaking out some bagged salad, pressing "START" on the microwave, etc.), he will sneak up from behind and grab one of my cheeky protuberances and growl, "rrrrrrrrUMP!" appreciatively. Man that is a nice feeling.

I can't say for sure what it is about rump that attracts the Miaouw. Perhaps he is fascinated by it because of his decided lack of rump. There's barely anything there! Instead, he has a nice layer around his middle that he refers to as his "rind". He laments rind's spillover muffin-top effect, and makes sporadic attempts to fight the "fat tax", as he calls it. (I showed him my loosening trousers the other day and he said, "hey, fat rebate!" encouragingly.)

The Miaouw could stand to lose a few pounds, it's true. But he is a fan of gnaing [ŋīng]. He likes to gnaing wings, fries, pizza, and Ruffles All Dressed chips. (The latter is a Canadian culinary delight - a potent mix of barbecue, onion, garlic and salt and vinegar flavours. Gnnnnnaing!) Used to be the Miaouw could gnaing all the time and gain no weight. Apparently he was a skinny little bitch in high school who actively tried to gain weight. This led to the acquisition of really terrible eating habits. It gives us something in common, a foundation to build on

Two summers ago, he went on his very first diet and complained bitterly to me about how difficult it was for him, going from eating whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, to having all these restrictions on his freedom to gnaing. Moved me to tears, it did. He eventually forsook the portion-controlled approach that I use, and now uses the "skip a meal" diet plan. He eats a bag of All Dressed, and then he just... skips a meal. Then he gets on the scale and the fucker has lost 5 pounds

Meanwhile, this week I have mysteriously gained 1 or 2 pounds, depending on the scale's mood. Okay, I had some chocolate and a couple handfuls of All Dressed on Saturday, but that's weigh-in day, and I let myself have a little treat on Saturdays to keep myself in line the rest of the week. Since then, I've worked out a couple times and stayed on the straight and narrow as far as Jenny is concerned. There is no explanation for the weight gain - and DON'T say water retention because this has happened to me before and the water does not go away. Seriously, sometimes I gain weight inexplicably and I look to the next week to lose it again and... I don't.

The Miaouw was spooning me in bed this morning - sometimes he demands rump, and who am I to turn him down? - and he said, "Maybe rump doesn't want to leave. Rump likes being rump!"

If you have a more plausible explanation, I'm all ears. Anyway, it's nice to know that rump can stick around for as long as it wants to, and at least one family member will be happy about it

Mar 16: Yogging

Hello smatterings!

-- Shout out to non-clickers. Where were you yesterday?! You totally missed the Freudian self-diagnosis and admission of latent pomoherotic lovemaking with my digitus primus! Well, I left it up for you just in case.

So, yogging! Tonight after work I am running with the Ladies of the Cancer. I believe I may have mentioned that a group of us are going to train twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) after work, in preparation for the Sporting Life 10k on May 2. Last Thursday I went out with them for the first time - we ran 2 miles, and it was humiliating, yo's.

Normally when I run on the treadmill, I go for around 10-12 minutes before taking a walking break. I start fairly slowly, then gradually increase my speed - every minute, I ratchet the speed up by a tenth of a mile (goes to counting obsession, Your Honour). I usually do this until I'm running at around 5 to 5.5 mph. So in point of fact, all this time I've been talking about "running", when really, as Ron Burgundy would say, "I believe it's jogging or yogging. It might be a soft j."

But these ladies, these... Sasha Fiercies... well, they actually do run. After we'd been out there five minutes and forty seconds, I glanced at my watch (so as to properly call the time of death). Oy. I was ready for a walking break but we'd only run half the time I normally run before taking a break. I pushed through to 9 minutes and then walked for a minute. We had planned to do 10 and 1s, i.e. run 10 minutes, walk 1. I normally run 12, walk 2. Maybe that's bad form. Well, I finished the run - did it in 25 minutes. Actually, that's about average for me, when I have been running 3 miles in 37-38 minutes. The next day I ran 4 and 1s at 5.5 mph at the gym, and did 2 miles in 24 minutes, so that seemed like progress

Tonight's run is slated to be 2.5 miles. One of the ladies suggested we do 5 and 1s. I am nervous that I will underperform again. But the ladies are all very encouraging and the main thing is, we are all out there gettin 'er done.

But, yeah. I feel fraudulent calling myself a runner. From now on, I am a yogger, and proud of it.

Mar 15: Orally fixated

Pre-blog orders of business:

1. Beware the Ides!

2. Lost another pound and a half this week. Jennytotal: 11.4 pounds. I am grateful for the results but I still want to punch Jenny, and in particular I want to swat Sara Rue for her new perktacular commercial, losing 30 pounds in 12 weeks (GAH! Bitch!), and lisping. If it weren't for those three items, I would like her. She is very pretty.


On to the pornish blog title...
So I had this blog title in my head, kind of as a joke, because I wanted to talk about how (especially at work, when I am in full resistance mode) I have this behavioural issue around constantly ingesting. Most of the time this means I always have a can of DDP and/or bottle of water on the go, which ensures frequent trips to the bathroom to break up the monotony of editing the business users' manual for... zzzzzzzzzzzzz thunk.

Whooooops, fell asleep talking about what I do at work.

Anyway. In addition to the constant sippage, I spend a great deal of time thinking about my next meal, watching the clock in anticipation of the next opportunity to stimulate my mouth. So in preparation for this blog, I looked up "oral fixation". I remembered it vaguely from studying Freud in Psych 100 - the oral stage of development being the first experience of pleasure in a person's life, plus all this maternal relationship imbalance stuff. I find the psychosexual stuff and the matri/patricide fantasizing dodgy at best, and can remember feeling 100 years-too-late rage at Freud when studying his patriarchal condescending sexist theories, but okay, the guy had some ideas.

According to my buddy Wikipedia,

Oral fixations are considered to contribute to over-eating, being overly talkative... overindulging in sugar, chewing on straws and toothpicks... Other symptoms include a sarcastic or "biting" personality (known as "oral sadistic" qualities). Another indicator is constant nail biting, putting fingers in the mouth as well as biting any future sexual partners they may have.

Hunh.

Confession: I shit you not, I sucked my thumb until I was 18. I lived in constant fear of my brother outing me to friends, and in particular to my first boyfriend. (Ha! Totally beat him to it with this blog!) I don't remember how or why it stopped. Thankfully this hearty maxillary never required correction through orthodontics. Who knows, maybe I was destined for an underbite and the thumbsucking actually saved my parents thousands!

Anyway, yeah. Looking over the symptoms of oral fixation here: over-eater, check. Chatty, to be sure. Sugarholic, hello Beuller? Read the archives much? Sarcastic - see previous. Nail biter, why just this morning I destroyed my left ring fingernail. Finger sucker, not so much in the last 20 years, but, yeah. Biting sexual partners... well, it does say future sexual partners, so I think that buys me a bit of time on that category.

Well anyway, isn't it fascinating? Wikipedia doesn't say what to do with this information. I don't know if there is treatment. It seems this condition comes about during the breastfeeding process. Weaned too soon or not soon enough. Should I find myself a wet nurse and fashion a do-over of the breastfeeding stage of development so I can finally move on to anal fixation? Maybe hire a videographer so I can make a little something on the side by selling video to online fetishists?

I don't know, I think I may be on to something.

Mar 5: I'm still here

Fwiends! The frozen core of my listless heart is at last beginning to thaw. Every day there are drips of sunshine and optimism gathering in a slushy aura that continues to grow. The tide is rising! Soon I'll be overflowing with... happiness? Okay, this metaphor is getting out of hand. I don't want to overstate it, but it's nice to feel something other than... nothing.

I've been faithful to the Microwave Diet for a month now, have lost 8.6 pounds (love the digital accuracy - even if you have a shitty week, you can say you lost .2 pounds), and last week when they took my measurements I was ASTOUNDED to hear I'd dropped almost 12 inches. This from chest (2 inches), waist (4 inches - cha!), pooch aka abdomen (3 inches) and hips (3 inches). Of course my first and lingering reaction is to assume she made errors in every measurement, but even if she was off by an inch at every spot, that's still pretty effin good. So this is encouraging.

Also, sunshine. Warmth. The Olympics. And, I think possibly upping the medication by 50% may be playing a role. But it's so hard to know for sure. There are environmental factors at play, as well as physiological ones, so who knows. It's just good to feel... better, if not great. It's supposed to be 10°C (50° American) and sunny this weekend. Sa-weeeeeet.

Some ladies from work are starting a running group after work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to train for the Sporting Life 10k, which I'm going to do again this year. Sunday May 2nd - mark your calendars.

And, though I continue to have mixed feelings about my reliance on portioned meals, I do very well on the Jenny Craig program. It's easy to stick to, and there are tasty foods and snacks. I confess I spend much of the time between meals thinking about my next meal, but that's standard procedure. At least I know I'm enjoying the meal, not bitter about what I don't get to eat while I'm stuck eating boiled chicken and mmmmm, broccoli! Tonight I eat my petite Fish and Chips (ketchup food, yessss!) avec salad, plus my eensy chocolate cake with dollop of sugary chocolate icing on top for dessert. I can live with it.

About the only thing that's still pretty meh-inducing is my job, which fails to inspire, frequently enrages, but mostly just bores. My contract comes to an end on July 31, and then I'm taking a bit of a vacation from the working world and office culture. So that's the chocolate bar in front of the horse at the moment. Screw carrots.

How's everybody else doing?