****Contact me at gatordeb@gmail.com !!!****

• What is the meaning behind "Debbie Tough" ?
• Introduction (please read first)

• Update - 8/29/11
• What I've learned from the dizziness so far - 2/24/11
• Burning out, binging, re-purposing, and the road to the end (another random, unfinished entry) - 1/12/2011
• Losing it all - some random thoughts, an unfinished entry - 12/10/2010
• Vertigo - and finding out what you want. - 11/10/2010
• The BodyBugg - 10/31/2010
• Dizziness and vertigo (July 2010 - Present, published 10/30/10)
• Losing the reason to run - and gaining it back (July-August 2010)
• The Aftermath (6/26/10-October 2010, published 10/30/10)
• The Marathon (6/26/10, cue Jaws music, published 10/30/10)
• Motivation (published 10/27/10)

Weekly posts, 2010

• 6/21-7/4
• 6/14-6/20
• 6/7-6/13
• 5/31-6/6 (Dad's Death Day 1-year-anniversary)
• 5/24-5/30 (Went Skydiving for my birthday)
• 5/17-5/23
• 5/10-5/16
• 5/3-5/9
• 4/26-5/2
• 4/19-4/25
• 4/12-4/18
• 4/5-4/11
• 3/29-4/4 - Shifting gears a little bit, more info on me sprinkled in with the exercise blogging
• 3/22-3/28
• 3/15-3/21
• 3/8-3/14 - Zumba training, willPower and Grace certification.
• 3/1-3/7 - BOOT CAMP LAS VEGAS ADVENTURE BEGINS (and ends), Schwinn training.
• 02/22-02/28 Last gym week before Boot Camp month. New instructors: Nancy (TKB), Anita (TKB).  Injured my back during Monday's Lift, knee pain, dropped a dumbbell on my finger, Ride2Recovery.
• 02/15-02/21 TKB certification.  25 gym classes, 7 classes in one day.  New instructors:  Lola (Zumba), Albena (BodyCombat), Patrick (Zumba, one-timer), Erin (BodyCombat)
• 02/08-02/14 Still sick, took five days off, weight and fat # down; AFAA training, taught first "segment," got over fear of performing in front of people.
• 02/01-02/07 Still sick.  Still moving.  Can't exercise.  Niacin adverse reaction ("Saturday Night" update); killed the virus!!
• 01/25-01/31  Moving houses, modified week (11 classes only); new instructors, Ginger (Zumba), Glen (Lift), old instructors, new classes (Linda, TKB); sick
• 01/18-01/24  New instructor, Megan (Zumba), and old instructor new class, Beth (TKB)
• 01/11-01/17
• 01/04-01/10  1/8 == free BodyBugg, already ordered

Weekly posts, 2009

• 12/28-01/03    12/31/09 == half-year mark
• 12/21-12/27
• 12/14-12/20 
• 12/07-12/13  (24 classes in one week at 24 Hour Fitness)

^---Blogging starts here with all entries going forward---^

• 11/30-12/06
• 11/23-11/29
• 11/16-11/22
• 11/09-11/15
• 11/02-11/08
• 10/26-11/01
• 10/19-10/25
• 10/12-10/18
• 10/05-10/11 (started continuous logging)
• 09/28-10/04
• 09/21-09/27
• 09/02-09/20
• 09/01/09 - Started going to fitness classes
• August - Slim-in-Six, not blogged closely.
• July 3rd, 2009 - Started going to the gym.

24 Turbos In A Row At 24 Hour Fitness (on hold until February due to (good) Life Stuff).

The measurements post (Latest measurements:  12/18/09).  Have new measurements, will update next week.

The picture progression post / The start and current picture post (will update next week).

Food logging shorthand explanations - work in progress, will have links up by the end of February.

Aflac Iron Girl Sprint Triathlon - May 15th, 2010 - Training info

(The following are all outdated, will update one day):
Nutrition info
Shakeology Recipes
What week are we on?
24 Hour Fitness vs. Las Vegas Athletic Club
My favorite gym classes
My reward when I reach 110 lbs (adjusted from 140)

Update.

It's been a while since I posted.  Whew.  Well, I guess there's some catching up to do.  I'm around 135 lbs.  4 weeks ago I started a new push (8/1/11) to be 115 lbs by the end of the year.  Had gotten to 131.5 lbs and I've kept the 7K deficits per week but I've lost inches and am at 29.5 " at the waist, so I'm losing inches and gained a  bit of weight.  Not despairing about that yet.  I had gotten as far up at 149 lbs.  Eating normal, chicken, cereal, milk, peanut butter, fruits and vegetables.  Yep, went to a Vitamix demo and got inspired to take the Vitamix out of the box (a year and four months after I bought it).  Now I love this carrot/roma tomato/spinach/mini pepper soup with Italian blend seasoning... 50 calories per cup and delicious.  So now I eat (well, drink) vegetables, and LOVE IT.

Dizziness still there.  So it wasn't the vegetables (or lack of).  I'll throw in some random stuff to catch up a bit.  I learned to control my eating, and some days I stay at the 700's and 800's and one day I even went to 240 calories (3 apples, 3 classes... because of the dizziness I can't do classes without food, and apples hold me up pretty well... I wouldn't chance a class while fasting even though I can get through the whole day without working out fasting).  I know I'm going into anorexic mind-set territory, and maybe it's arrogant to think I can dabble in it and not be sucked into the mentality.  I.e. I can have and exercise power over food but to the degree that I want, while I'm staying in control, instead of it taking control over me.  It's like going into an asylum and being sure you can make it back out sane.  There's some degree of risk that it'll take you and suck you in.  Maybe that's what makes it thrilling.  If that's what it is.  Eh, at the end of the day I love food too much to be anorexic, I restrict when I need to and let loose the rest of the time.

Some days I'll have as high as 2700 calories.  As long as I'm at a 7K deficit at the end of the week, I don't care how it's distributed.  Works out to about 1450 average calories a day.  No going into Monday.  End of Sunday, 7K deficit.  I've done it (with deficits like 7007) the past four weeks.  No compromises, and I think that's why it's working again after being stuck at 140 lbs forever.

2-year anniversary of group classes Thursday.  Going for 25 classes this week.  2 down, 23 to go.  Whew.  I was in the middle of class #1 when I decided to go for it.  I don't think I can out-eat 25 classes.

I decided I was too scattered.  First get to 115 lbs.  Then gain muscle.  Then train for triathlons.  Ironman one day.

I have a shoulder injury that's still healing, about 7 weeks now.  Took a BodyPump Sunday and 2.5 lbs on each side was hard, so I'm going to keep it at that.  I went back to BP too soon a few weeks ago and re-injured it.  So there I was taking BP and I'm shaking so hard out of fear.  My body's terrified of getting injured again.  I was surprised how hard I was shaking and breathing shallowly.  Definitely an emotive reaction to it.

I found out that if I put my water bottle in front of me and focus on it I can do squats without getting dizzy, and it's awesome to be able to do them again.  It also weakens the dizziness for a bit.  Never gone, but better sometimes.  It's been a year.

When I got the shoulder injury I was in the middle of Zumba and all of a sudden I couldn't raise my left arm.  Freaked me out.  I cut it down to just Turbokicks because I could do them without using the left arm at all (and burned around 75% of the calories which makes sense because I was using 75% of my body... but I burned more calories than staying at home!!) and spins  TKB was easy to modify.  Zumba uses both hands a lot so it was harder and I skipped it for a few weeks.  Then added some moves with the left arm, then everything.  Repeated punching with the left arm still bothers me a bit, as does cycle sometimes.  I think I hurt it at a Groupon boot camp I was trying out.

At least the BP didn't make the shoulder worse.  That's promising.  I lost a LOT of strength!!  I have a new focus, though, this time 115 will happen.  Then the muscle building.  Then the triathlon training.  I don't have time for everything at once.

Met this awesome instructor named Rachel over at Charleston and Lamb and love her TKB and Zumba (which I've restarted).  Two years later, still meeting awesome instructors.

I'm FINALLY liking what I see in the mirror, I look skinnier.  Although I still want to lose 20 lbs more.  107 is unhealthy, 115 is good for me.

I've monitored sugar so I don't have low blood sugar (it's right at dead center of healthy, 100 is dead average, I was 101), but apples hold me up through anything.  I was in the middle of a TKB and felt I was going to faint so I walked out, ate an apple, and was able to come back and finish and literally felt like somebody was holding my body up by my armpits.  Apples are my safety food.

A bit scattered today as I catch up on things.  Had John this morning and then Rachel's Zumba, Kelly's TKB tonight to round out Monday.  Body feeling great.  Can't wait to do this !!

What I learned being dizzy - Part 1, initial thoughts. 2/24/2011

I've been trying to sit down and write it all and that hasn't worked so maybe I just need to write some, and then tomorrow some more, and just little entries instead of one big one.

On August of 2010 I started suffering from dizziness.  The room doesn't spin, I don't spin, it's more of a feeling that I'm vibrating.  At the beginning it came and went, came and went, and progressively got worse and worse.  Went to two general doctors, a neuro-ophthalmologist, a balance center, and an ENT.  Had an MRI, sinus CAT scan, bloodwork.  Conclusion:  They don't know what's wrong, or how to fix it, and I just have to wait it out.  Today it is February 24th, 2011.  Almost seven months.  In the last few days of July I got really sick at Camp Turbo (last year), so maybe that's it.  So I just have to wait it out.  The ENT said worst case scenario a nerve got destroyed and it takes 18-24 months to regenerate.  So that's hope, it's not forever, it's just right now (where have I heard that before?).

I gave up exercising (TurboKick, Zumba, Spin) for various reasons.  I feel like I'm going to faint and I get nauseous.  Right now I equate exercise with fun, and I don't want to start equating exercise with something negative, so that when the dizziness goes away I can step right back into it.  And I've tried not to develop a victim mentality and I think I hung on as long as I could, but I really think I'm not in physical conditions to exercise aerobically right now.

So I'm stepping it up with my food.  139 lbs right now, 90 days left until my birthday.  Going to see if I can monitor food and go to the goal of 115 lbs by then.  24 lbs in 3 months, doable.

BodyPump, a weight class, is even hard on me.  I had to give up martial arts too.  Pretty much anything, I can't seem to do cardio on my feet.  Maybe do the recumbent bike for my cardio.

There's a class at the gym called SilverSneakers.  It's a mix of balance drills, weight training, and some other stuff involving a chair.  It would get out of the house and into a group environment.  And it's something I can manage.  But it's mostly for older adults and I feel conscientious going to my first class.  It's funny because when I was 76 lbs heavier I never cared if I was the fattest in the class, but I'm very conscientious about going to a class that may have mostly older people there.  But I'll try it once.  I can take two on Tuesday and two on Thursday.

I walked out of three of the last six classes I took at the gym.  The last one was a TurboKick class.  I walked out after five minutes, the warm-up.  And as I walked to my car I just started crying, like I did when I could barely go downhill that day at boot camp.  Losing physicality has a great mental effect on me.  That's what I want to be careful.  I love group classes still, and I want to keep it that way.

And it's funny but it's very easy to get depressed if you spend a lot of time at home.  I've been surprised to find depressive thoughts that I used to have before, and depressive feelings.  But I've found that for me personally it takes three aspects to be depressed.  The feelings, thoughts, but there's a third part... I don't, the actions part?  That completes the cycle and allows depression to exist.  And THAT part is gone.  It's not there anymore.  I left it behind that day during the extreme challenge and never picked it back up.  So I'm not depressed even though I find myself going, whoa, there's that depressive feeling, I thought I left THAT behind.  But it really is like I lost the ability to be depressed.

And there have been benefits to the dizziness.  I was afraid that if I was unable to exercise I would regain the weight back, and I didn't.  And I even can lose weight without exercise with everything I learned about food.  And I found that I'm miserable in bed without being able to move and I miss my aerobics classes.  So Fat Debbie really is gone, never to reappear.  I mean, I had all the necessary components to be Fat Debbie again.  And I didn't.  And that's a huge, no pun intended, weight off my shoulders.  I can say now with even more certainty that I'll never be fat again.

The dizziness will be gone one day and I'll retake my aerobics classes with even more gusto than before.  And I against using smilies in my blog, but ":)"

You know, it seems to be I have to be strong through this, there's not really a choice.  But part of me WANTS to be a victim, I want to curl up and feel sorry for myself, but after everything that happened through the working out and all the transformation that happened inside, I can't.  It's just not in me anymore.   I was always a fighter, but I learned how to put it into action.  But I was thinking I don't WANT to go through hardship and I don't WANT to be strong, but I don't really have a choice.

Well, that pretty much sums up what I've learned about the dizziness so far.  Maybe now I can go back to regular blogging :)

Burning out, binging, re-purposing, and the road to the end (1/12/11)

4545. That's the amount of calories in the following: Little Caesar's cheese pizza to go (2000 calories, 8 slices at 250 calories each, cheesy bread (1300, 130 each times 10), hot wings (400, 8 times 50), crazy bread (800, 100 times 8), and crazy sauce (45). Of course I can't eat the whole thing in one sitting. Eat as much as I can and then nibble throughout the day. That's my cheat meal/day of choice. Had 4 of those (or may even have been 3) in the past 18.5 months. So I guess in the numbers I'm still ahead. And I look forward to more of those meals in the future, but not until I hit 115 lbs. Want some comparisons? 4545 calories equals about 56 apples or about 26 boxed meals that I eat at 170 calories each. About 22-30 bananas. 568 strawberries. Etc.

I've been going up and down and up and down between the lowest of 129.5 lbs and 140 lbs since April of this year. I even got up to 145 lbs (one more lb and I would have been considered "overweight" so I've still kept my "normal" weight since April) after this last "binge" (what's the difference between a cheat meal, a buffet, and what society calls a binge?) and now I'm down to 137.5 lbs. But something changed after that last cheat/binge meal. I'm not going back up again. 22.5 lbs more lbs to go, but each time I hit a number, I know I will never see that number again. I'll never be 138 lbs again. There's a determination that has finally gripped me and is helping me to the end.

What's funny is that I wasn't trying to make myself feel good with that meal. I wasn't trying to fill some deep void in my soul. I wasn't trying to make myself happy. I just like how it tastes and I wanted the instant gratification of that taste. I think that's the difference now, if I eat food like that I know exactly why I'm eating it, so there was no guilt at all after every meal because I did exactly what I wanted. What happened was that the calories set me back too much (that's about 1.5 lbs in calories) and I just don't want that many calories in at once until I reach my goal weight, at which time with the working out that I do I'll be able to eat whatever I want (up to a point, but we're talking ~2800 calories a day to maintain or even more).

In other news, I burned out. I was there in the middle of a Zumba class and I thought I just can't do this class anymore. I know 90% of the routines used at 24HF and Gold's. Over and over and over and over and over again. It's like I couldn't do just one more dance without my head exploding. The next day I did a cycle and then waited an hour for a TurboKick and walked out of the gym 5 minutes before class time. I just couldn't bring myself to take the class. I was done.

The following Monday I started my triathlon training. By that Thursday, I was done with that. I skipped the $80 marathon I had paid for and I plan on skipping three other events I paid for for a total of $320. I feel so very close to hating working out, and so far working out has been fun. If I push myself into either triathlon training or doing the events I run the risk of going back to Fat Debbie. For $320? No way. I have to be careful. That was last week. And this week I went back to the gym and I've been enjoying it again, although I definitely need to try some different instructors because I need a change. No matter how much you love the class or the instructor, you burn out sooner or later. It took me 16.5 months of group classes at 2-5 classes a day to burn out. That's at least 1000 classes and that's a low estimate. And I keep trying to make myself into something that I'm not. I can't do the same thing over and over and over again, I need a little bit of everything, to be able to switch from one thing to another on a whim from one second to the next. Rest of January, gym (YMCA for the last two weeks to get some new instructors and classes), February is Cross Fit, March is Bikram Yoga, April is a boot camp program at a gym. By then I should be at 115 lbs. Also bought some games for the PS3 (Zumba, Your Shape, Active 2.0), XBOX (Biggest Loser, Dance Central), and Wii (Gold's Cardio Workout) to add some variety and ease of scheduling.

So no more triathlons, no more rules, just wake up, pick what to do, have fun. That's what works and I don't know why I keep trying to change it. But at least I guess it's comforting to know I can spot a burnout and take steps to halt it and reverse it.

As an endnote, here's some stuff I wrote on Facebook about food:


Hey, sounds simple, but after 18 months of almost daily weighing, it becomes a habit... brush teeth, comb hair, scale. Gym, scale. Scales everywhere!! You really do get scared that you're going to gain all the weight back if you don't monitor it everyday :)

---

Since April I've been losing and gaining the same 10 pounds. Been up and down around 4 cycles now. You really do get a point where you ask yourself, really? Is food really worth pushing the goal back over and over again? Because trust me, it's not that I don't WANT to go back to pizza, burgers, and hot dogs (the three main food groups). And you start thinking that you can't do this to yourself any longer and that you have to tighten up for one last push and finish off what you started, and you can't keep sabotaging yourself.

And I was thinking about how there's always going to be "a special occasion." There's New Year's, December holidays, 4th of July, birthdays, weddings. We have taught ourselves that we deserve to be happy and food makes us happy to we deserve to eat and we equate food with happiness. Society as a whole. Add that to a brain pre-wired to want to eat in excess, and it's all downhill from there.

So you get a to a point and you get sick and tired of the whole thing and start looking at why you want to eat at that particular moment and if it's not out of hunger, you decide you're worth more than that instant gratification and just say no. You realize you're not going to starve and you know how much is a reasonable amount per day and you put your foot down and decide to just say no.

Or something like that ;)

Because it's not that you can turn off cravings or that you don't pass a chocolate cake and don't want to eat the whole thing anymore. It's just that you become tired of doing that to yourself. And you finally understand that passing up on dessert is not "denying yourself." We have this whole thing about "denying ourselves." And it goes back to we want to believe we are good and if we are good we deserve to be happy and food makes us feel good so we think food makes us happy so we want to eat. And if we -don't- eat then we are castigating and denying ourselves of, ultimately, happiness. That's the world as it exists right now. And our brain plays right into that happily.

Losing it all - some random thoughts, an unfinished entry - 12/10/10

So here we are, 17.5 months after I started working out.  I always say that I didn't lose the 75 lbs, that it was all somehow given to me.  That it was easy.  One day the cravings just stopped and the working out just starting, like flipping a light switch.

I got to 130 lbs and I'm back up to 140 lbs.  I've been gaining and losing these same 10 lbs for months now.  I've gotten to 130 lbs twice and then back up.  Down, up.  So now I'm at 75  lbs lost from 215lbs on 7/3/09.

I used to, a long time ago, eat four hamburgers at a time.  20 cheese sticks.  Two McDonalds Breakfast Deluxes (not all at the same time, each one of those was a meal).  I'd get this urge and I'd drive to the drive-through and it was like I couldn't stop myself even if I wanted to.  All that stopped on 7/3/09.

These past few weeks I've been getting this hunger that I can't seem to satiate or stop.  Yesterday I have 10 fiber bars, about 200-300 grapes, and 3 boxed meals.  I'd say about 2500 calories.  And no exercise.  So that's about 700 calories over.  I haven't had a deficit in over a week.  Eat, eat, eat.  The feeling that I can't stop myself.  And the vertigo medicine is making me feel not sleepy, but so exhausted that I can't get out of bed.  Although it takes the symptoms away completely, it makes me so tired that I stay in bed anyway.  I see the specialist in 8 days so at least there's an end in sight regarding the vertigo.  Or at least a checkpoint.  Hope.

I thought it was the vertigo medicine that was making me feel hungry but I'd stop it for two days, enough to rid my system of it according to the balance center, and the hunger is still there.

It's as if someone said, here, we got you to 140 lbs.  Now we're leaving, and you'll be left at the same point as you were before, with that hunger and inability to stop eating and dragging yourself to exercise.  Have fun!  It's as if someone gave me training wheels and now they're being taken off and I have to take it from here.  And you know what I decided it will take from here?  Courage.  Because I have to believe I'm strong enough to resist the eating urges.

It's like the depression.  Let me tell you a story of how I "beat" depression.  From the time I was 10 to the time I was 31, 21 years.  It affected every area of my life.  I had to drop classes in college because of it.  It affected jobs.  Everything.  Then one day I was behind someone important to me and they had hurt their foot.  And we were walking back to our car with this group of people from working out in the river.  And I told her she could lean on me and I'd help her back.  She said no, of course.  She was too tough for that.  It was actually one of the qualities I liked most about her.  So there I am, walking behind her, looking at her feet moving and double-stepping now and then through the pain.  I will never forget those minutes.  It's like when time stands still.  And I thought to myself, that if I want someone to lean on me, they have to, at least for that specific moment in time, feel that I am stronger than them.  It's just common sense, if you lean on something weaker than you, it breaks and you fall.  You lean on a wall that will stand your weight.  You lean on a person that can, at that moment in time, hold you up.  So then I started thinking that I wanted her to feel like she could lean on me so I had to be strong enough in her eyes for that.  And then I started wondering what that entailed.  And all this internal dialogue took a couple of minutes at most.  And it was then that I decided that I would never be depressed again.  Not that I couldn't be depressed again, but that I wouldn't.  (that for me is a huge difference) And it has been months and I haven't been depressed since.  Those first few weeks I'd feel myself getting depressed, and I'd say out loud "No, Debbie."  I'd be in the car, pop open the mirror (parked), look into my eyes, and say "No, Debbie."  Out loud.  I haven't had to do that lately, now I just don't get depressed.  After 21 years, it was ironically that easy.

What makes something happen at a specific moment in time?

Vertigo ... and finding your choice (11/10/2010)

Since early August (it is Wednesday 11/10/10 today) I have been suffering from vertigo.  First it got me for four days, then went away, then came and went in spurts.  When it came I'd stop exercising for a day or two then go back to it hard again.  I kept my credo of what you can, when you can.  I woke up fine, I worked out.  I woke up with vertigo, I stayed home.  The times I exercised with vertigo it was very hard on me.  Then 8 days ago, last week Tuesday, it came and hasn't let up.  I've spent the whole 8 days working or in bed.  Even walking has been hard.  It's like that feeling when you're about to go down a roller coaster, that queasiness just as you're going to go down, but -all- the time if you're not laying down, and sometimes even if you are, and this feeling of things just vibrating, and feeling your eyes twitterring (back to the glasses which do help but don't take it away, and I tried an Antiver-generic anti-vertigo medicine along with a water pill to get rid of sodium but neither helped), and the nausea.  I'd stumble around just walking and this whole roller coaster dizzy as hell feeling I'd get whenever I'd get up.  I almost tipped backwards going up the stairs.  Dad much?  I do wonder if this could be what happened to him.  Because something I'll never know is whether he died because he fell down the stairs or whether he fell down the stairs because he died.  It's been getting progressively worse.  I seriously thought of taking short-term disability time away from work.  I'm sure the symptoms were having a mental effect on me.  I just want the vertigo to stop.  I want my life back.

My previous doctor told me to eat more and exercise less.  All of a sudden losing weight is being used against me.  If a heavy smoker goes to the doctor with a cough, the doctor's first instinct is probably going to be lung cancer.  Well, work out a lot and lose a lot of weight and everything physical that now happens to you is because you work out a lot.  So now I have that bias going against me.

Underwent some blood tests and switched doctors and the theory is that it's vestibular.  That there's inner ear crystals that have become dislodged and cause the inner ear fluid to go one way while the body goes the other confusing the brain.  I have an appointment later today to go to the Werner balance center for assessment and treatment.  Get the crystals back in placed through vestibular therapy, solved (you can Google for the details).  Hopefully I can get this fixed and back on the road.

Throughout the past year I've had my physicals up and downs and whenever I have a down I know exactly what I'm missing now, and I didn't before.  Right before this bout of vertigo I had my taekwondo midterm and I have a picture of me in mid-air kicking, with some respectable air.  That's my body, and I am amazed it can do it.  I probably haven't lost a lot of that in a week out of commission.  I've been eating over what I've burned but I allowed myself that also.  Know when to fight, know when to push, know when to back off for now.  I don't see the point in exercising with vertigo that may be fixed in 2-3 weeks.  Stay in bed, eat reasonably, get this fixed, come back.  Gain a few pounds?  I'll lose them.  Ironically I've lost a few pounds and I'm now at 130-132 lbs, with a lowest-ever at 129.5 lbs when I fasted for Yom Kippur this year (including 24 hours of no water).  I was around 135 lbs a week ago so probably the same weight with fluid fluctuations.  200 calories over burn is 1 lbs over two weeks.  I can deal.

So I wasn't worried about the not working out.  I caught up on my reading.  And I wasn't worried about the food.  I'd bounce back from anything.  Hopefully I can get this fixed and come back hard.  And I was trying to find whether I wanted to do triathlons and marathons and ultramarathons and find that drive inside of me and I was having trouble finding that.  I went back and forth, I want to, I don't want to, I want to, I don't want to, and I couldn't make up my mind.  Then this latest bout of vertigo. 

And I was in the bathroom today washing my hands and I looked in the mirror and I knew.  I just knew.  It wasn't even a particularly long glance, just a quick glance, but I knew.  Just in the same way that back in January I would look at myself in the eyes when I ran the LVAC track and would pass by the mirrors and I had this feeling that I was seeing the Debbie I was going to become and she was telling me just wait, you'll see it all in time, this time it wasn't like seeing a future Debbie, this was just like being able to see inside of myself and have a clarity and an understanding.  I'm in it for the long haul.  I am giving my body fully to it.  I am going to push.  I am going to become an endurance athlete.  I know what my choice is now.  The vertigo helped me realize that.  I -am- scared that it will be hard to start exercising again after the rest (I have  been playing video games also and watching Netflix.... the horror).  I've had fears that I'd fall back into old habits and not "come back."  But I know I will push and I will start exercising again and my body will slowly and gradually improve.  I like that jumping kick body and never realized all this cross-training (gym classes, triathlons, marathons, martial arts) would benefit each other interchangeably.  I don't want to give up that body and I want an ever better one.  It's not about losing weight at all.  I want the best body I can have, I want to do amazing things with it.  And as this year dies down with my first triathlon and marathon, I'm thirsty for a challenge.  I want the Half Ironman, fully ran marathon, and Full Ironman next year.  I want to go back to Running with the Devil in June and beat it.  Run it all the way.  Then in 2012 do a 50 mile, then a 100 mile, keep doing Ironmans, etc.  I want, and I saw it in my eyes in that mirror.  I honestly didn't know whether I wanted it or not a week ago, but I found out through this experience that I do, after all.

And it keeps happening.  The times when I learn the most keep being the times when things don't go my way.  I know exactly what I've gained, and I like it.

The BodyBugg - 10/31/2010

When I joined 24 Hour Fitness they had a new member program in which if you did a certain number of things you got a BodyBugg (http://my.apexfitness.com/) for free.  The BB is, in short, a device that estimates how many calories you have burned that day.  It also tells you steps, estimates the amount of time you have spent in moderate to vigrous activity, and has a "trip" feature.  Reset it before a class and look at the numbers after the class.  It needs a web subscription program for $10 or less a month depending on how many months you pre-pay and the website allows you to track your food and has charts and graphs.

I got it and started using it in January.  Around May or so I got the challenge to stop using it and measuring life, and I did.  After a couple of months, it came back on.

So there's the two camps, the camp that thinks that you shouldn't measure life and the camp that thinks you should.  Which is the right answer?  I honestly don't think there is one.  I have tried it both ways and I think both sides have merit.  I think the BodyBugg can be used as a convenient tool.  I like 1000 calorie deficits so I just eat 1000 less than what the BodyBugg says I burned that day (and after all this time I can now estimate how many calories I have left to burn pretty accurately and what different activities burn).  Before the BodyBugg I used a Polar Heart Rate monitor to measure calories burned during exercise and the 24 Hour Fitness website to estimate calories burned throughout the day, and when I did one day comparing both, I ended up with a difference of about 25 calories using both methods.  Pretty darn accurate.

I also think there's a point to enjoying life without measuring, to living in the moment.  To run just to run, to swim just to swim, to exercise just for the heck of it, without worrying about how many calories you are burning.  And there definitely is a point to not swap one unhealthy way of living for another.

In the meantime, mine stays on.  Maybe it will be different once I'm a goal weight.  I'm always of the mindset that things are not "forever," just for "right now," and something that may be "right" now may not be right in the future and vice-versa.  I found that when I took the BB off I still kept tallys in my head.  After 16 months I just know how many calories food has and how many calories I probably burned in a certain hour of exercise.  You just become accurate at estimating.  All the BB does is it actually lets me not worry about all the calculations and just gives me a number, and so does the food logging website.  So for me it actually makes it simple and faster.

I think it's a great weight-losing tool and can be functionally used in a healthy weight.  Once at goal weight, however, it may be time to let it go.  The good thing about it?  It's always there if needed.