MONDAY NIGHT: On Monday we had abs day in boot camp, neck hurt with sit ups and crunches, did what I could while holding on to my neck for support. Ran a lot. Bought headphones that hook around the ear, no more fiddling with falling headphones. I want to become a skilled runner, biker, and swimmer, and don't mind putting in the time and effort to learn how to do them correctly.
Then went biking for 10 miles, MUCH better with cage shoes. Went around the boot camp area and the Towers area, saw a lot of beautiful huge foreclosed houses. That's a bit over half the triathlon length on my second day of training but the triathlon will have a lot more hills. Had a couple of hills where I just told myself I would climb them, and did. Tried to picture myself in Dallas' class with her telling us to go up the hill but it didn't work because real hill climbing is nothing like the experience at the gym. Had Zumba at six. Did not do ChaLean, didn't have the energy, I will rearrange days off so that I do the whole program this week but with different days off. It turns my metabolism into a furnace, from 60-70 an hour to upwards of 97 calories an hour at rest, it's just insane.
So on to some philosophizing. After being told last week that my body and mind still thought I was fat, I wrote that "article" that I posted last week. Won't repeat what I wrote here, I'd recommend reading it to get a better sense of the following discussion. So after I wrote that article I went to bed, woke up the next morning, went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and literally said "hi" out loud, like I was meeting somebody new. And in a way, I was. Fat Debbie died in my sleep. It wasn't traumatic, it was like sending ashes in an urn down a quiet sea. And that day I wore shorts and a t-shirt, kind of like training wheels for what I wore Monday. Wrote the article Wednesday night, wore the shorts Thursday and Friday. Then today I wore tight pants and a tight tank top. Feels great, more aerodynamic. And wore it to my first gym class, appropriately Linda, who was the first person to straight out ask me if I was ready to start wearing skinny clothes. So I thought that was the perfect class to wear real skinny clothes for the first time. It's funny because I didn't tell her and just showed up and saw her in the parking lot and she did a double take when she saw me. HA! (her favorite expression).
Wasn't self-conscious at all when I wore it to boot camp or when I went into the class. When I started MOVING ... let's just say jiggle city. It wasn't childbirth-level painful, but it was worse than I thought and made me very self-conscious. But by now I'm to the point that I can be very self-conscious and still move without a care in the world. And then in the middle of the class a woman just comes up to me (I've been taking Linda's classes for months now and I'm a regular at that particular class) and tells me that I look good. Just like that. I could get used to this. So there I am watching the jiggles in the mirror and this woman just comes up to me and tells me I look good. And at work I caught a guy giving me the once-over and smiling appreciatively. Can't wait to finish shaving off the fat and toning my body, now it's just a block of ice waiting to be shaped.
If you've been reading the entire blog or most of it you may know by now that I'm big into timing, and that I think I'm in a journey that someone chose for me and that I don't know where it leads and this is all happening TO me instead of me making it happen. And I think that article came just in time to be able to get that all down on paper before it went away. Fat Debbie's last hurrah, if you will. A way to say goodbye. That picture DOES look like it belongs in a memorial service. And once I got it all down I was free to let go. But I think maybe that article was the last step I needed in letting go, and it all built up during the week from Michele shattering my 24HF instructing dreams (well, I'm still fighting it) on Sunday to LVAC shattering my LVAC teaching dreams (that I didn't have) on Monday to a handful of people giving me the message that I act fat but I'm not fat early on in the week to the article on Wednesday night.
I've never thought of my body as something to be admired. And it's weird because I'm wearing the clothes and posing for Facebook pictures but it's more because what I'm supposed to do to train my body and mind to be thin. I try to keep my shoulders back when sitting and standing. I try to think thin, be thin. There's really no turning back now, I guess. I sometimes think about eating myself into being fat again. Not seriously, more as a what-if. And I know I can never let that happen ever again in my entire life. I'll gain weight like when I get pregnant, because I do want kids, but I am never being fat again. It's funny because I can have that life back. I can sit in front of the TV and eat on the pounds, and it's all within my reach and power. And yet I don't.
I'm having problems with ChaLean, didn't do it yesterday. Still on course to finish off the week if I do burn intervals/abs today, then Burn 3 Wednesday, burn it off/recharge Thursday, then start week 3 Friday with Burn 1 and then rest day Saturday. So if I can power through 4 days I can have a day off.
SATURDAY MORNING: Still not writing daily, which I really want to do. New week coming up. Can't remember what we did Tuesday, but Wednesday (legs day) we played Capture the Flag. We were on one of a big field, and on the other end was a hill littered with little flags stuck to the ground. Two people strapped themselves to a tire and ran across the field, each grabbed a flag, then back. My team came in last, I'd say thanks to me. I'm getting better in running but in this particular exercise still weak. On Thursday, arms day, we separated into two teams, one team dispersed stuff around the field (tires, weights, medicine balls, etc.) and the other team brought it back, etc. If you couldn't bring back all of it, you lose the round. My team won both rounds. Yesterday we went running a lot and threw rocks.
Got my hair colored red with blonde highlights and a layered cut, and it fits me to a T. I found my perfect hairdo. Red goes with my skin tones and eyes better than brown does, and the highlights bring out a sassiness. Still wearing the tank tops and tights to the gym but wearing t-shirts to boot camp because of the sun.
Weight holding steady. Thursday night I ended up in the emergency room (again). Was doing ChaLean Extreme cardio and I had just eaten right before for fuel and I started getting this pain in my abdomen (right above the stomach). Now to put this into perspective, it had been a very hard week for me doing CE because of time constraints and I was down to the last half hour of exercise to finish the week. I couldn't stop now! And even Chalene was telling me to push through it. I had to push through the pain, just 30 more minutes. But the pain was getting worse and worse. And I'm someone who never gives up, and was 30 minutes away from successfully finishing week 2 of a very hard week time-wise. It was 11:20p. And I gave up. I went to my room and lay in bed in pain. I will skip ahead a bit since we don't really need to know all that transpired. Let's just say I was not feeling well. Got up, walked around, told nephew I was fine, went back into the room, felt like I was going to drop to the floor, threw myself into the bed, unsure if I actually fainted for a few seconds or not, walked out, told nephew nope, I'm not ok, fell backwards taking a wooden bookcase with me, nephew pushed the bookcase to the side out of the way and I fell back against a chair that was next to the wall. This is when he decided to take me to the emergency room. By now the pain is bad. He wants me to talk to make sure I'm conscious, and talking is the last thing I feel like doing. We get to the hospital, wait to go in to a bed, doubled over in extreme pain, telling myself I'm boot camp tough, I'm boot camp tough, but the pain is just too much. I ask them to please give me something for the pain, they can't until the doctor sees me, the doctor can't see me until I'm on a bed, I can't be on a bed until they clean it. I almost told them to just give me a dirty bed.
Finally get into a bed, get seen by the doctor (the whole thing took about 6 hours, from around 1a to around 7a), and it turns out I had acid reflux so bad it turned into vaso-vagal acid reflux - acid reflux with faintiness. Who gets that? Seriously? I exercise seven hours one day and I end up in the emergency room because of fainty acid reflux? Hello? Gave me something for my stomach and pumped 4 servings of saline in me (no calories, I asked). Lots of salt, though. And you know what salt does? Grabs on water. 7 lbs of weight gained in two days. Lost 4 of them so far (now it's Sunday night, sometimes it takes me days to write a post), waiting for the other three.
So my performance Friday in boot camp suffered and I was last again, but we do what we can. I pushed as much as I could, even not being at 100%. I had slept a little while they pumped saline in me. And I found out losing weight makes it easier to get an IV in you. No more bruises!!
Saturday I skipped boot camp and took Kelly's TKB at the gym, hadn't taken her in seven weeks, four weeks sick during February then boot camp for three weeks, Saturday boot camp wears me out (and I went to Julie's instead one week, then the other week went biking, and the first of those three weeks I was just too pooped). Then took Olga's Zumba in the afternoon, hadn't taken her since 1/1 when I got kicked out of 24HF due to lack of bikes. Thinking of adding Charli's BodyCombat next week and having Saturdays be boot camp+Kelly+Charli+Olga. If I can manage it. Nephew's birthday, ate steak and baked potatoes with fruit at Gondon Biersch's. Sunday I took it easy and just took a Zumba with Pam in the morning and slept the rest of the day.
Have a lot to write about this coming week, still percolating in my mind. Lots of changes inside. But I'm closing off this week. I'll update food logs tonight, I keep up with them in my food logging website. Debbie out.
