M.J. Pullen's Blog, page 13

New Signing: Macon Barnes & Noble Nov. 21st

Just dropping in for a quick announcement – for all my Macon/Central Georgia friends and family, please mark your calendars for 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 21st. I’ll be doing an author appearance at the Barnes & Noble on Riverside Drive and signing THE MARRIAGE PACT.

If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll drop by and say hello! Please also feel free to share this announcement with your social networks, book clubs, etc. I’m looking forward to hanging out with lots of Maconites!

Come say hi!
5080 Riverside Drive
Macon, GA 31210

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The Back to Work Blog

I always make the kids do this. It only seemed fair.

Hi! Jeez it’s been a while. I’m so sorry. You look great, though! How’s the fam?

I so apologize for being one of those absent bloggers lately. I hope I didn’t give you a complex and make you question my love for you. The thing is, I started a new job two weeks ago (my first full time office job in…. um, almost 10 years) and the adjustment period has left me a little wiped out. It’s a communications job, which means my writing and psychology skills are coming in handy, and I really am enjoying it. It’s a young company, which is fun, too…

Loving my new job, except one intern who keeps calling me “ma’am.” Look for his dismembered body in the recycle bin soon. #indenial

— MJ Pullen (@MJPullen) October 18, 2015

I’m still working on the “finding time for my own writing” piece of the equation, but I’m confident it can be done. Lots of moms of young children work full time outside the home and still find time to write novels, right? It can totally happen. I’m not insane. Really.

I just won’t sleep for a couple of years. I’ll start writing weird psychological thrillers where everyone is hallucinating. It will be great.

So please bear with me if things are a little… um, erratic, at least for a while. I have so much to tell you (with the launch of The Marriage Pact just weeks away fun stuff happening at the virtual launch Nov. 3rd and the in-person launch in Atlanta Nov. 7th), but it may come in fits and spurts for the next few weeks while I’m finding my footing in the working world.

(In the meantime, if you post a comment here or on Facebook and I don’t get back right away, please know it’s just my addled brain, not a measure of my affection for you.)

COMMENTS: I’d appreciate any tips or advice from parents who’ve gone back to work after being at home, or writers who’ve juggled family and job and writing career simultaneously. I need all the help I can get!

As always, thank you for your amazing support.

xoxox,

m.j.

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A Writer’s Apology

Sundown tonight begins Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, and the time during which we fast in order to “afflict our souls” and try very hard to focus on atoning for our wrongs (rather than counting the minutes until sundown tomorrow when we can eat and drink again).

In between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are ideally meant to apologize personally whenever possible to those we’ve wronged in ways big and small. While I am somewhat inconsistent about this practice generally (sorry) (

For not always giving you my best work, I apologize.
For sometimes leaning on cliches, easy phrases and lazy writing, I apologize.
For every mistake and unnecessary word that survives the editing process, I apologize.
For failing to question my assumptions, especially about people and characters who are not like me, I apologize.
For neglecting this blog, and other social media, and then getting frustrated when readers don’t rush to comment and share my words, I apologize.
For giving negative feedback about my work a larger ear than the positive, I apologize.
For worrying about what is marketable rather than what is compelling, I apologize.
For failing to lift up others as I work toward my own achievements, I apologize.
For not tempering criticism with kindness, I apologize.
For not being brave enough to tell the whole truth, I apologize.

Ten seems like a good number so I’ll stop there. I hope my readers, fellow writers and friends will forgive my failures of the past year and help me to do better next year. Please feel free to respectfully comment with other things you think I (or writers in general if you don’t know me personally) could apologize for, or to make apologies of your own. I’m going offline soon, but I’ll check back in tomorrow night!

Wishing my Jewish friends an easy fast and a fulfilling holiday. And everyone else, a low-stress and fulfilling Wednesday.

Southern Ladies Don’t Sweat

At the gym the other day, as I wiped my sweaty brow for the twentieth time or so, I thought suddenly of my paternal grandmother. She used to say, “Southern ladies don’t sweat, they glisten.”

Yeah, right.

She said a lot of crap like that. I think she knew that we knew she was full of shit: I mean, she was a farmer’s wife in rural south Georgia who divided her time between the fields and a hot stove, of course she sweated. [Feminist Manda: farmer’s wife? Like he did all the work and took all the risks? You know what farmer’s wives should be called? FARMERS.]

But by the time I was around to listen to these platitudes, Mammy was old enough to be as full of shit as she wanted to be. Putting on absurd airs was one of the indulgences she’d earned over the years. If you knew her, you know she indulged. A lot.

Treadmill selfie: Here I am, glistening like a FREAKING CHAMP.

It got me thinking, though, how sometimes we women hold ourselves back from being as strong and healthy as we could be, because of our ideas of femininity. Girls aren’t supposed to sweat, we aren’t supposed to smell bad, we aren’t supposed to get too strong.  We are sometimes afraid to venture outside the trusty cardio area, allowing ourselves to be intimidated by those huge guys who seem to take over the weight equipment and carry around big jugs of unidentifiable liquids. What is that stuff? I saw some the other day that looked like curdled milk.

We’re afraid to ask to work in, or ask for help, or try new things in front of people. (And by “we,” I mean “me,” obviously). “We’re” embarrassed that we have to adjust the seats up and the weight down — like anyone cares! — and, oh my goodness I cannot bend over that bench and do the hamstring curl if there is a dude within a mile radius. I just. Can’t.

What’s worse, we worry how we look at the gym (I’ve voiced before my concerns about jiggling), and compare ourselves to the other women we see there. I consider myself a nice, rational person in general. I don’t believe in shaming anyone because of their body type or size. [Feminist Manda: Yes! Now we’re getting somewhere.]

But when a twenty-something in a string bikini comes traipsing into the locker room from the pool–after I have lugged my cellulite ass across the treadmill for half an hour, my face bright pink, and I feel (and smell) like a cross between a rotting corpse and a pregnant hippopotamus–I have to admit I kind of want to punch her in the face. Just a little. [Feminist Manda: Sigh. Back to the drawing board.]

Alright, so I’m not making any great strides for womankind. But I am trying to conquer my own fear and shame, little by little. I am venturing a little farther across the floor now, away from the comfortable cardio section into that jungle of incomprehensible machines and testosterone. So far, none of the big dudes has bothered me. Actually, they don’t appear to notice me. But if I feel intimidated, I will give the Dude Nod (you know it – the single thrust outward of the chin, sometimes accompanied by “‘Sup?”) to let the natives know I speak their language. And if I still feel intimidated, I will throw my water bottle at the guy and run for the safety of the yoga studio.

[LoseIt! app says: Running –> 6 mph –> 1 minute = 13 calories, Yoga –> General –> 20 minutes = 44 Calories. They don’t have “shaking with fear” listed.]

While I’m in the cardio section, I am trying to push past more serious fears, too. I’ve had a chronic ankle injury for over two years, and fear of making it worse has held me back and sometimes been a convenient excuse to take it easy. Now (in addition to trying to build the surrounding muscles and continue having it treated) I am pushing myself to brace the ankle, stretch as best I can, and RUN ANYWAY. If it hurts, I can stop. But I’m tired of letting fear of injury hold me back. PS: I’ve discovered that while braces and sports injuries make you look cool and athletic and intense in high school, at my age they just make you look… kinda sad. Total aside.

Two years ago, I started having occasional heart palpitations, and they scared the living crap out of me. Once or twice they happened to occur while I was working out, along with a sharp pain in my chest (which I now believe is muscular) and that made me nervous for a looooong time about pushing myself too hard during exercise. After lots of cardiac testing with two different cardiologists and no official diagnosis (except the one I gave myself doing internet research – la la!), I feel 85% confident that the palpitations are harmless and 99% confident they aren’t brought on by exercise. Yes, I measure my feelings in percentages. Time to power through.

The thing is, I’m almost 40. My body is not going to become more accommodating or easy to work with in the coming years, even less so if I spend a good portion of those years on the couch complaining about my “bad ankle” and my “heart condition.” Exercise and weight loss are much harder now than when I was in my twenties (even though I was never string bikini ready, even then); but staying fit will never again be as easy as it is today. If I let fear and shame and vanity hold me back, the terrorists win. Wait, that’s something else. If I hold myself back today, tomorrow’s challenges will only be bigger.

So I am pushing myself to work through the fear, and balance it with grace.  And I’m overcoming my vanity by posting a very attractive gym selfie for you guys. My heart rate in that picture was about 172 bpm. Try to contain yourselves, okay?

Happy middle age workout,

M.J.

Oh! PS – For those wondering how the weight loss challenge is going: Meh. I’m still losing, but slower than I’d like. I blame challah. And my total lack of will power. Separate post on that coming soon! xoxox

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Day 30: Mixed Signals – #90DayChallenge

Slightly blurry picture taken by my 6 year old, but you get the idea…

Well, I’m 1/3 of the way through the 90 Day Challenge at Lifetime Fitness with somewhat mixed results. I thought it would be a good time to check in with a progress update.

We’ll start with what’s going well:

– I have tracked all my meals nearly every day on the LoseIt app, (with a few missed dinners I was too tired to go back and enter later) and only skipped tracking one whole day so far

– I tried a BeachBody Shakeology sampler pack recommended by my friend Stacie, and replaced a few meals with it. I liked most of the flavors well enough (I mean, it’s not a mudslide or anything but it works), and it kept me full for a good stretch. I’ll definitely be ordering more, especially for the days when I don’t have time to make a healthy lunch or protein for breakfast.

– I’ve been to four of the gym’s “Try It Tuesday” classes: Nutrition, Kettlebell workout, Ab workout, and Dumbbells. Definitely adding some new moves to my routine. I liked kettlebell a lot (was sore for DAYS) but I found it much harder to do on my own than with the group — both to get the correct form (I strained my back a tiny bit trying one move I THOUGHT I remembered) and to push myself to keep going even when it hurt. Apparently other people watching is a big motivator for me. (Pause for snickering).

– As of yesterday, I am down 6 pounds in “gym weight,” 2% body fat, and 5.5 pounds on the home scale. To lose 25 pounds in 90 days, I should be down about 8.3 pounds right now. Not a huge gap, and 6 pounds down is 6 pounds down, right?

– Definitely noticing my (inner) stomach shrinking. There have been a few days when I felt so full after a splurge or hurried dinner that I was sure I’d doubled my allotted calories for the day, and when I logged everything in, it turned out I’d barely gone over, if at all. This seems like a good thing.

– My binge eating and snacking has been at almost zero this month. This may be the biggest deal. Between the ADHD meds and the public accountability, the urge to sneak into the DQ drive thru for a secret brownie batter blizzard so I can eat my feelings in private and not tell anyone has pretty much disappeared (though PMS week is still very, very hard). My eating has been much more intentional this month, alone or otherwise. Definitely a good thing.

– I am learning what works (and doesn’t). Tracking every day has really helped me notice when I submarine myself with a single meal or choice. In some ways, this is kind of depressing. I mean, half the reason I became Jewish was because I love bagels so much, but eating a bagel in the morning almost always signals going over my calories and feeling sluggish later in the day. Oy.

On that note, here’s what could be going better:

My stupid ankle. I’ve had this chronic ankle injury (which is starting to seem less like an injury and more like a structural problem) for nearly two years. When it flares up, almost every form of vigorous exercise becomes painful and discouraging. I think I’m doing everything I can with it, but it’s just a frustration.

Nutrition still needs work. I am making better choices, but there’s still room for improvement. I must make friends with portion control. (Ugh. Just the words make me tired). I also need to find some creative, easy ways to get more vegetables, especially at lunch. I’ve noticed that a protein-filled breakfast and a low-calorie lunch almost always lead to a successful day. But I have a strict 3-salad-a-week limit, and that’s pushing it.

[Aside] Salad, man. Is it just me? It’s like a workout you do with a fork. Salads are expensive to make, hard to keep fresh, and they take up so much space. Also you can’t eat them in the car or in the control room of a nuclear reactor. Totally impractical.

Weekends are killing me. If you’ve known me for more than ten minutes (or 1,000 words), you know that I really enjoy my beer and wine and social time out with Hubs and friends. Okay, it may not be possible for a therapist who comes from a family of alcoholics and addicts to say this in a healthy way, but: I really love beer. And wine. But lately it’s mostly beer. Not in a “swilling a six pack of Budweiser from the recliner” kind of way, but in a “let’s visit this amazing craft brewery and sample everything” kind of way. It turns out, your body doesn’t distinguish between the two.

While I’m not concerned that I’m abusing alcohol (though reading Sarah Hepola’s amazing book Blackout made me cringe in a couple of places – wow), beer is not good for the weight loss thing. I’m fortunate to have lots of close friends who live nearby and want to hang out with me for some reason, and there have been many fun things to celebrate in the past month. Birthdays, anniversaries, Yacht Rock coming to Piedmont Park, the simple fact of a Friday night. Many reasons to celebrate and relax, and maybe take your eye off the caloric ball for a a little while…

BUT. Not only are alcoholic drinks full of simple sugars and empty calories, but they also slow your metabolism and impair your judgment when it comes to what you put in your mouth after you’ve had a couple drinks. Triple threat. I think I’ve done well planning ahead for nights out: saving up calories, avoiding other carbs and sugars when I know I’ll be drinking, skipping the sweet drinks entirely and just generally drinking less. But there have been lots of nights out, and that may slowing my progress a bit.

Weekends are also a challenge because they are unstructured, and our family life tends to center around activities (Sunday cartoons in our pjs, movies, birthday parties) and corresponding meals (pancakes, popcorn, pizza, PB&J). I don’t take my ADHD meds on weekends for a number of reasons (unless I am Ass-in-Chair all day working on a deadline), so my appetite returns in force and the impulse control to resist temptation is back down to Usual-Manda levels. It’s kind of a perfect storm, and even when I try REALLY hard, a bad weekend day mitigates much of the progress I’ve made during the week.

SO, for the next 30 days of the challenge, here’s what I’ll be working on:

– Better meal planning and grocery shopping, to include weekends. This particular routine is still eluding me/us, so it needs some focus.

– Cutting back on alcohol and limiting carbs at breakfast, even on weekends.

– Adding at least one day a week of swimming to my workout routine, since I can get a good workout without stressing my ankle.

– Getting to at least one group class at the gym every week. I push myself so much harder when I’m not alone and there’s music and peer pressure. Just like high school.

How is your journey going? If you’re working on getting healthier like me, what are you learning about yourself and your habits? Your comments and commiseration are both so encouraging. Thanks!

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My Favorite Weekend (and a Deal for You!)

I love Labor Day weekend. For many people, it’s a good time to relax, or sneak in a last summer getaway.

Sept. 3, 2006: Don’t tell Sam, but I TOTALLY got the better end of this deal. ;)

Considering that it’s my anniversary weekend (9 years ago today: you brave, brave man), you would think we’d be packing our bags for a romantic inn. But there’s just too much happening to go anywhere!

Here in Atlanta, Labor Day is the worst time to try to do anything productive, or drive… anywhere, but the absolute best time to dress up, soak in the festive atmosphere and do some major people watching. During these three days, my hometown hosts the college football kickoff game, DragonCon, Black Gay Pride Week, and my personal favorite (by inches), The Decatur Book Festival, in addition to several other smaller music and food festivals around the city. If you can’t have fun in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend, your fun-erator may be broken.

My boys and I will be hanging out at the DragonCon parade Saturday morning

DragonCon Parade 2014

(best thing ever for little padawans), and then we/I will make our way to the DBF to rub elbows with the Literati and eat funnel cake. I’m not attending as an author this year (next year, perhaps…) but I will be stalking, I mean, having totally socially appropriate interactions with some of my favorite local authors and making faces at Becky Albertalli from the back of the room during her YA panels.

I love book festivals. No matter how digitized the world of publishing gets, I will always get a little high wandering sweaty between balloons and gyro vendors and stacks and stacks of books, discovering something new, meeting people, and occasionally getting to listen to an author I already love.  I will try to tweet periodically while I’m there, so follow me at @MJPullen or the hashtag #dbf2015 if you want to attend virtually from your seat by the lake, recliner, or beach chair.

NOW. Regardless of what you’re up to this weekend, you should know that I am celebrating my favorite weekend by doing a Kindle Countdown Deal on EVERY OTHER SATURDAY! If you haven’t had a chance to download my latest quirky romantic comedy, today is the day!

(Well, not today. Saturday. Saturday is the day. Sunday and Monday* aren’t bad either.)

Labor Day Kindle Deal!

*EOS will be just 99 cents for the first 24 hours of the deal, starting in the wee hours of Saturday morning, September 5th. Sunday and Monday, the price will go up to $1.99 (half the current retail price).

If you take advantage of the deal, leave me a comment here, would you? I always love to know who’s reading. (Reviews are very much appreciated too!) Or just tell me what you’re up to this weekend. Any interesting Labor Day traditions out there? Curling up with another book everyone should know about?

Whatever you’re doing, I hope you stay safe and take some time to relax this weekend, so we can all begin again on Tuesday with clear, rested vision.

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

James Whistler

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M.J. Pullen is a mom and the author of modern romantic comedies in Roswell, Georgia. You can opt in to updates and read her free short story, BODY ENGLISH, here.

 

 

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#90DayChallenge: The First 3 Weeks + Plateaus

I haven’t weighed in yet today (will do that tonight at before a weight training class), but I suspect I did this past week exactly what I did the week before — which is stay exactly where I was at the end of week 1 (down 16 pounds since April – yay! – but 0 pounds from two weeks ago – not-yay!). I know this both from the scale at home and from the experienced dieter’s spidey-sense: if you do this long enough, you know when you’re doing it right and when you’re phoning it in. Still, the past two weeks included both PMS and three (relatively) raucous nights out with friends, so I’m counting myself lucky that I didn’t gain any weight. [Here ends the rationalization].

Seriously, I promised I wouldn’t judge myself during this process, so I’m not. I am just noticing what happened and preparing to amp things up this week. I did track every day but one, and that was the day I was switching from my broken Android to my new iPhone–a major life transition, if you ask me–and I couldn’t consistently access my LoseIt app. I’m back up and running now, and here are the two mini-goals for this week: go to the gym every day (5 days in a row), and try out the Shakeology sampler I ordered from a friend. So far, so good on both counts.

Same difference, right???

I am noticing, the older I get and the more I do this, that being a serial diet-attempter works against me sometimes — especially combined with my ADHD tendencies to abandon things as soon as they get boring or tedious. I’ve tried lots of dieting approaches: Weight Watchers, Slimfast, etc.; and I’ve tried a variety of workout programs. Most of them work for a few weeks or a few pounds, and then I hit a plateau. Whether this is a physiological phenomenon or just human nature, I don’t know.

What I do know is that just 15 minutes of bad food-related behavior can cancel out 23 hours and 45 minutes of good food-related behavior, which seems patently unfair. It’s like my body doesn’t care that I was good all morning: Oreos are still Oreos. So by week 3 or month 3, those bad habits start sneaking back in, and then it feels like all the good stuff I’m doing is kind of pointless and why am I really doing this anyway?

This is usually the point at which I start making excuses, rationalizing, and pushing the hard stuff into next week. It’s where the line between “self-forgiveness” and “giving up” starts to get blurry. And later, when I’m back to struggling, someone will suggest Weight Watchers or low-carb or weight-lifting or tracking your food or drinking more water… and I can wave my chubby little wrist at them and say, quite truthfully, “Yeah, I tried that.”

It’s so much easier to know how to do something in theory than to actually do it, and do it consistently. Writing novels has taught me that — I’m much better at seeing the flaws in the work of others than I am at breaking through my own resistance to fix what’s wrong with mine. I’m much better at understanding calorie intake, target heart rates and sugar addiction than I am at changing my behavior. Theory is easy, execution is a bitch.

So I’m glad I’m doing this challenge at the gym, where there is some built-in accountability, and I’m glad I shared it with you guys, because that external motivation is helping me keep going even when my intrinsic motivation starts to weaken.

And, it’ll be back. 68 days to go!

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Re-Thinking the “Before” Picture

As you know, I am serving an eviction notice to about 60 extra pounds that have been following me around for the last several years. Decades, some of them. This venture includes a 90-Day Weight Loss Challenge at my gym, where they took these spectacular “before” pictures of me last week in my sexy purple Costco workout outfit.

Before Picture: Official Version

[BTW, I have exactly four sets of workout clothes and I’ve been wearing them in regular rotation for almost two years. They are all from Costco, and all the same: comfy, fitted black pants with a convenient pocket in the reversible waist band, and a coordinating Lycra tank top. The only thing that changes is the color of the top: purple, green, blue and (for fancy workouts) black on black. I have two things to say about this: first, they have lasted amazingly long considering each piece was about $16 and I’ve worn and washed them pretty much weekly for more than two years. They’re probably made of a material that will one day be involved in a class action lawsuit for causing quadricep cancer or something. Second, obviously my creativity is clearly reserved for writing, not fashion. Third–no, wait, I have three things to say about this–I can have new workout clothes when I can buy them in a smaller size. Maybe I’ll even let someone with a little fashion sense pick them out for me.]

Anyhoo. Back to the pictures. When I started the challenge, the sweet trainer who is my accountability guru at the gym told me they’d be taking pictures and asked, “Do you want to do shirt on or shirt off?”

Fifteen minutes later, when I had stopped laughing, I was posing–purple tank top mercifully in place–and the lady

This is my Before Picture – when my weight was (literally) bringing me down. See how unhappy I am? (PS, the more you weigh, the faster you zipline!)

with the camera said, “you can stick your stomach out, look droopy… you know, make a sad face.”

Make a sad face.

And I get it.  In our culture, fat is supposed to mean sad. I’ve seen the morose-looking before pictures from previous years’ challenges on the walls at the gym and I’ve watched a million diet infomercials. The sad face (and the droopy) make for a more dramatic transformation between the before and after pictures. Before, I was fat and unhappy. After, I am thinner, healthier and happier.

Here’s the problem: I’m not sad.

This is my Before Picture- the not exactly beachy beach body. CLEARLY miserable and suffering. (And maybe hiding behind my kid a little).

In fact, life in the before picture has been pretty great, whether it was at 235 pounds or 200 pounds or 180 pounds. I’ve done some spectacular things in “before.” I moved across the country and back. I met and married my husband. I’ve earned two Master’s degrees and written four novels. I had babies and nursed them and watched my body change in fascinating and likely irrevocable ways as a result. I’ve had (shhh… don’t tell skinny people) AMAZING SEX. I’ve climbed mountains and run races and survived hardships and loved deeply and been hurt and inspired and challenged. I have wonderful friends from both “before” and “before before,” people who I know will love and support me whether I choose the almond butter on sprouted-grain bread, or dive face first into a vat of queso and chips.

I wouldn’t trade my life or its blessings for the beachiest of beach bodies. And if anything, 39 years of love and loss have taught me to appreciate how fleeting life is, how hard it is to put a pin in any moment and keep it forever. I no longer shy away from the camera like I did when I

This is my Before Picture. I don’t think it’s possible to be unhappy at Fog Crest Vineyard – even if you take your shirt off and frown a lot.

was younger. I don’t try that awkward closed-lipped smile, hoping to hide my flawed front teeth, or suck in my gut and try to poke out my boobs to create the illusion that the latter are more prominent. I am who I am, and the people who love me don’t give a crap about that stuff.

That isn’t to say that I’m not committed to losing weight and getting healthier. And so far the challenge is going well.

I have tracked every day for a week, including the weekend when I went over my calories a bit, letting late-Saturday exhaustion and my affinity for cheese get the better of me. Before the cheese, I was down 4.4 pounds in “gym weight” (some of which is probably sweat and the big breakfast I ate before the initial weigh-in, but who cares?). That makes a total of around 15 pounds since I set the 60-pound goal in April.

This is my Before Picture, with two very good reasons for me to work toward a healthier me…

I am looking forward to losing more weight. I want to be healthier, lighter and more able to do the things I love (and be with the people I love) for longer. The transformation of my body from the beginning to the end of the 90 days is definitely a motivating factor – and if I manage this you’ll be the first to see the before and after pictures in November. But, I also believe that to do something good for yourself, you have to have an intrinsic belief that you are worth doing it for. Good comes from good. Positive change from positive thoughts.

My life is already pretty awesome. I’m just refining things a little.

And if something goes awry and I fail at this, or I get hit by a bus before I lose the next pound, it will be with the knowledge that who I am today is not perfect, but pretty damn amazing. So I choose to smile.

This is my Before Picture, at our wedding in 2006, one of the best moments of my life, at the same weight I am now. (No groomsmen were permanently harmed in the making of this photo.)

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60 Pounds of Flesh

If you’ve met me in person or seen any full-body pictures of me, you know: there’s a lot of M.J. to love. I have always tended to be, um… a person of substance, and for the most part I’m okay with that. But when Fozzie was born I topped out at 235 post-baby pounds. While some of that melted away post-partum, getting back to 200-ish felt like a longer struggle than I’d hoped it would be. With 40 approaching, I started having some unpleasant health stuff crop up (you know what I mean, Gen-Xers — nothing serious, just stuff that smacks you in the face with the fact that your body can’t do the stuff it could in the days of Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins). And it really is true that the older you get, the harder it is to lose extra pounds.

The Color Run with my longtime buddy Nan – Asheville, NC, July 2015

So in April of this year, I decided that I wanted to lose 60 pounds in one year (by the end of March 2016) getting me down into “healthy” range for the first time since, um…. high school. I also hoped I could shave off 40 of those — or close to it — by the time I turn 40 in November.

On my own (with encouragement from Hubs) I did really well at first. I started at 205-ish in April and lost almost 5 pounds a month for the first three months. I’ve been going to the gym pretty regularly (being careful of my tender ankle that’s been giving me fits for the last two years), and I even did the Color Run in Asheville, NC last month with a girlfriend from Cincinnati.

Also, I started taking medication for my ADHD, which not only can be an appetite suppressant (you have to be careful, though, because it can wear off and backfire), but it regulates the impulsivity and focus cravings that my brain often reads as sugar cravings. It definitely helps! I wonder how many of us who struggle with overeating are really self-medicating for ADHD? But I digress…

For a while I was using the LoseIt! app to track my calories. LoseIt! is a great tool if you actually use it, but when things get busy and the novelty wears off I find myself slacking. Slacking off one day leads to slacking the next, and just like with all healthy habits, it generally seems a hell of a lot easier to start over tomorrow. Summer has made things even harder – with my kids around more and lots of stuff still on my plate — figurative and literal — I found myself forgetting to take my meds and/or substituting ice cream instead. I think I heard myself saying “Just this once,” or “just as a special treat,” to myself almost as often as I said it to my kids.

Before the 90 Day Challenge

So for the last couple of months, I have been battling with the same 2 or 3 pounds, alternating good days and bad, good weeks and indulgent or stressful weeks. Now that school is back in session for the kids I’m renewing my commitment to myself: healthier routine, more accountability (public and private), and just to up the ante, I’m starting the 90-Day weight loss challenge at LifeTime fitness.

The pictures here (a couple slightly blurry) are from this morning at LifeTime, where I weighed in at 194.7 in my gym clothes, post-breakfast. That’s “gym weight.” As far as I’m concerned, “real weight” is me, naked, first thing in the morning on my bathroom scale: post-pee and pre-breakfast. Sometimes I deduct a half-pound for the ponytail holder and my wedding ring. Ahem.

ANYWAY. My goal is to get to 170 or less, gym weight, by my November 7th book launch in 90 days. That’s also the week of my 40th birthday, so it seems appropriate.

Here are my target strategies for the 90 Days:

Go to the gym 3-4 times each week, with at least one workout a week that really pushes me
Track my eating EVERY DAY for the 90 days (and if I don’t, subject myself to public flogging)
Plan workout schedule and family meals each weekend and shop accordingly
Focus on high protein meals, nutrient-rich foods, and DRINK MORE WATER
Reduce stress by being more selective on commitments, and plan time for self-care and relaxation
Stop judging myself. In all areas.

I’ve been inspired by a friend who is blogging his weight loss/workout journey this month, so I plan to post a blog at least once a week during the 90 Day Challenge to let you know how it’s going. And add another layer of accountability. Feel free to join me by posting your own goals and progress!

Here’s to healthier days ahead!

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July Winner: Kerry Burroughs

Congratulations to Kerry Burroughs, the email list raffle winner for JULY 2015!

Kerry Burroughs, July 2015 drawing winner

“My name is Kerry Burroughs & I am from Decatur, Alabama. I have four teenagers at home – a 17 year old and triplets who are 13, so reading is definitely an escape from our crazy and hectic life. My children make fun of me because my kindle goes everywhere with me!”

Kerry woke up to a surprise $10 Amazon card in her inbox one morning, just for being part of my email list. Not on the list? You can join here by filling out the form, or go this way and also get a free download of my romantic baseball short story, BODY ENGLISH.  Each month (or so) I send out a newsletter with updates and other fun stuff, and I randomly draw a winner from the email list to win an Amazon card. It’s a fun way for us to get to know one another, and I like seeing your smiling faces!

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