Joyce Harmon's Blog, page 4

“Don’t pay the ransom, honey – I escaped!”

So, um…. It’s been a while since we’ve had one of our little chats, hasn’t it? I can explain everything!

Let’s see. First there was Election Stress. Followed immediately by such a wild sense of relief that it felt like recuperating from a Serious Illness. You know, you’re going about your day, and then get hit by the realization, “I’m gonna LIVE!”

I was being pretty good about the diet. And then came Thanksgiving, and I completely ran amuck.  Once I came home, I immediately got back on the diet, and have lost about half the Thanksgiving weight gain. I’ll probably get it all off… in time for the Christmas weight gain.

Creatively, I’m drawing and plotting. And some housekeeping to free the chi.

But I’m here, still alive – thought you might want to know that.

 

Turmoil

Here in the mid-Atlantic, we’re getting ready for Sandy, or Frankenstorm, or whatever we’re calling it these days. Where I live, I think the main thing I need to be concerned about is potential power outages. I’m stocked up with ready-to-eat food, got plenty of candles and an LED lamp. Unless trees come down, I suspect my main concern will be internet withdrawal.

This week has been sorta weird, and I haven’t been to the Y to work out since Monday. Wednesday, I rushed to the dentist with what I was sure was a dental emergency, but turned out to be my TMD disguising itself as a toothache. (That’s issues with the jaw joint and muscles, sometimes called TMJ, though TMJ is actually the designator for the joint itself.) So I’ve been all about pain meds and muscle relaxers and hot packs and face massage for the past few days.

The book? What book?  I haven’t written a word on it for days, and suspect I won’t be able to make much progress on it until after the election, because I’m all election-obsessed and stressed about it. (Do I think that stress might be driving the TMD flareup? Um – yeah!)

The only area I’m succeeding, turns out, is the diet. Tuesday weigh-in was the first in two weeks, and I was down 6.6 pounds for those two weeks. I’m really sticking with eating the right things and writing them all down.

And BTW, that’s a good example of ‘negative self-talk’, when I say that the only thing I’m accomplishing is losing weight. Hey, Joyce, you’re losing weight! You’ve lost fifteen pounds! That’s awesome! Lose the weight and you’ll have more energy and everything you do will be easier – and then you can achieve amazing things!

(I need to work on reprogramming the Little Voice In My Head, because it’s such a downer!)

Why I miss junk food

You know what I miss most about junk food? It’s not the yummy grease and salt (though those are awesome) – it’s the convenience! Buy a bag of something, open the bag, eat the contents. How great is that?

What brings this up is that I decided tonight to make some sweet potato chips. Sweet potato chips are pretty good. Only problem is – you have to make them. And just to get one potato’s worth of chips, you’ve got to mess up two cookie sheets.

Tonight’s attempt was a fiasco. First? I sliced off the tip of my little finger. Really. Oh, it wasn’t a big chunk, just the very tippy tippy bit. But I thought I was never going to get the bleeding to stop. Bandaging the tip of your finger is hard to do. (At the store I’ve seen bandages specifically for fingertips, but I don’t have any of those.)

And then! Then when I stopped the bleeding and bandaged my finger, I went back to the chips project, got the slices all arranged and in the oven. And then I missed the 10 second window between the chips being limp and the chips being burned – so I wound up with no chips anyway!

*Siiiiiiiiiigh!*

Could some food processor out there please make us some healthy chips, sweet potato and otherwise, and not junk them up with every nasty food additive ever devised? Buy the bag, open the bag, eat the contents – and it’s good for you? Wouldn’t that be great?

 

 

Reporting in

No group meeting today, our leader is off to some conference or other. I’m down a couple pounds this week on the home scale, so hope to see some good movement next week on the official weigh-in.

I’m definitely stronger than I was when I started – that’s the biking. And being stronger makes me more willing to do things that used to seem Too Hard. But I’ll tell you the metric I’m really looking forward to – when do my clothes start feeling looser?!

On the book, I’m planning and arranging scenes, so I have no word count to report. Better luck next week?

 

Improving

Hey, I was supposed to update you folks on the Twelve Week Challenge, wasn’t I?

Well, the news is good. I was down 2.2 pounds, so I lost last week’s gain and a bit more.  My stationary biking is up to 24 minutes, and I pedal a bit over 4 miles.

The book? It’s at 15, 544. That’s 1354 more words than last week.

If it seems like the book is taking back seat to diet and exercise, that’s because it is. I’ve been reading The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business by Charles Duhigg. A lot of it is about basic research and about organizations (interestingly presented, though), but there’s also some good stuff about the bad habits we develop without meaning to and the good habits we try to develop and sometimes fail to create.

The author reports that some habits are ‘keystone habits’. Developing keystone habits makes it easier to develop other good habits and positive lifestyle changes once you’ve developed the keystone habit.

And exercise, it turns out, is a keystone habit. So — huh.

For exercise, I’ve been concentrating on the stationary bike. Why the stationary bike? I love swimming and my dog would appreciate a walk with me. Well, remember my knees? Quick refresher, I have very bad arthritis in the knees – the doc says they really need to be replaced. I’m about due for another round of Euflexxa shots, so they’ve probably worn off by now. But biking makes the knees feel better. Seriously – when I’m biking regularly, not only are the knees more flexible, but they hurt less. If you have arthritis of the knees, just FYI.

 

*Sigh!*

I suppose I should have known that first week’s lost of 8.6 was too good to be true. Second week’s weigh-in – a gain of 1.6 pounds. (And I haven’t been cheating, honest!) I’m trying to reimagine it as a seven pound loss over two weeks — but still. Oh well, onward.

On the book front, I have a word count for the week – 1,109 words, bringing the opus to 14,190. Now, a thousand words a week isn’t really all that good. If I continued on at the same rate, it would take over a year to finish this thing. But it’s progress. And 1100 words is infinity percent better than zero words. (Wait, is that right? Somebody check my math…)

 

Discouraging

One of the disadvantages of weighing daily is that some mornings you’re up, when you know you’ve been good. (Good? I’ve been awesome!) Today was one of those days – the first such since the Challenge began. I’m telling myself the home scale doesn’t really count, and it’s not a “real” gain, but probably an artifact of a large, late (but healthy) dinner… but still.

On the bright side, I’ve exercised four times this week, and I’ve written a few hundred words, so the book is inching forward.

At the Y, they’re putting up the Halloween decorations!

 

12 Week Challenge – week one report

Whooooo!

Week One – weight lost, 8.6 pounds.

Take a moment to let that sink in. Eight point six pounds.

AWWWright!

Word count… um – zero.

But I’m re-immersing myself in the Regency era, and have to ask – was there ever a time when the fashions were so unforgiving to the weight-enhanced? And then you read descriptions of the meals (we’re talking upper classes here, of course), and they were enormous and went on for a very long time — why wasn’t everyone the size of a house?! Granted, in 1812 people walked a lot more than in 2012, but still — all that food! Is it processing and additives in modern food that make the difference? Could I time travel back to the Regency and eat lobster patties to my heart’s content? (And would it be worth it when you consider the hygiene standards of the era? Umm… maybe not.)

 

Eat your salad with chopsticks

Mid-week report. The diet and fitness are going well. I’ve lost about 5 pounds on the home scale. (Hope I’m not jinxing myself; the official weigh-in is a different scale and different time of day.)

My knees have been feeling better, except for yesterday, when I prematurely and foolishly added some little wind sprints to my stationary biking.  Then they felt downright crunchy all evening. But they’re better today.

I’ve relearned what 2 tablespoons of salad dressing actually looks like. It’s just… so sad!

And I’ve started eating my salad with chopsticks, just to make it more fun.

There’s less to report on the book front. The manuscript has been moribund for so long, I need to become reacquainted with my characters. I’ve remembered what’s going to happen next and it should be humorous, so that will be fun to write once I regain the characters’ voices.

Today I took Maggie out to the yard and had her doing jumps and recalls. This is the sort of thing I want to get fit for. When I filled out the intro forms for this 12 Week Challenge, one block asked for fitness goals – I put “keeping up with my dog!”

She just looks so pretty going over the jumps! Wonder if I could film her on my new iphone?

 

The Challenge Begins!

This evening I had first meeting and weigh-in. We had thunderstorms rolling through here, and I really wanted to hunker down at home – but I just couldn’t admit to my audience that I’d wimped out of the very first meeting. So… yay you.

My starting weight was “X”. My ending weight will be “X-Y”. What, you thought I was going to tell you what I weigh?! Dream on. Tell you what, though, it’s rather disconcerting and a bit humiliating to be the largest person in the room, when the room is a weight loss meeting. Oh, well. Onward.

Fitness? My stationary biking is at 15 minutes. I swim 6 to 8 laps, and that’s not continuous. I walk to get around but don’t fitness walk; my knees bother me too much. (The knees? Osteoarthritis. The orthopedist says I need both knees replaced, but for now I’m making do with Euflexxa shots.)

Oh, but you want numbers? Here are some numbers – the book. Starting word count is 13,081. That’s 37 typed pages. I’ve written three chapters and part of a fourth.

So – it’s Day 1, and this is where I’m starting from.