Almost There

Leading up to my decision to start Weight Watchers, I wasn't exactly a fan of the program. I viewed it as I did pretty much all diets, it was for people who were too weak to exercise and control their calorie consumption. Not ME. I was accidentally overweight. MY weight was due to a difficult pregnancy. And it was just a matter of time before it fell off of me. Fell off, people. But three and a half years and it wasn't falling off. I was working out like crazy and feeling like I was eating sensibly, but I wasn't losing weight. Clearly, I was one of those people who couldn't control my calorie consumption.

So one day while sucking down a milkshake at Chick Fil A, (And I wondered why I couldn't lose weight. REALLY?) Katie suggested we do Weight Watchers together. I should note here that Katie is a very dear friend for doing this with me because she didn't really need to lose weight but she knew, cause she's intuitive like that, that I needed a nudge, and maybe that nudge was someone to go to meetings or weigh-ins with me. So that very night we went to the neighborhood Weight Watchers and signed up.

Since then I have been to exactly two meetings. But I go for my weigh-ins every week and I follow the points system religiously. And people it is WORKING. I've lost 30 pounds! I'm down two sizes and, most surprisingly, a half a shoe size. I'm running more and faster and easier. My heel spurs are gone. I didn't realize how much weight I was carrying in my face. I swear I've lost a pound of nose alone. I'm smaller than I've been in eight years. I look like me again.

I'm not to my goal yet. And frankly, I was hesitant to write a "look at the fabulous job I'm doing" post yet because I really want a big before and after reveal when I hit my 40 pound goal. But its been a long road and I felt like talking about it a little. So there you go. Status updated.

Itsy Bitsy

I went to the gym this morning, as I do most days, all part of the continued effort to recover my 25 year old derriere. After depositing Sophie at child care, I headed for the locker room. I dropped my bag off in one of the lockers and walked toward the long mirror that runs along the wall across from them.

As I approached the mirror, I adjusted my iPhone armband and reached up to tighten my ponytail. Now just a few feet from the mirror, I noticed a small black spot on my neck. Peering closer, I noticed that the spot was MOVING. I reached up and brushed the spot, looking at my hand as I did. Which was when I realized that the spot was actually a tiny spider and quickasaflash I whipped my hand out with a scream, flinging that spider off into locker room oblivion.

With the threat now gone, I chuckled at my reaction and gave thanks that I was alone in the room. I'm not especially freaked out by spiders. In fact, I generally like that they eat all of the other little creepy crawlies that I really don't like. I am not a fan of having them ON MY BODY, but barring that, I'm a pacifist. Live and let live, I say.

But then the itching began.

A spot on my arm. Another on my leg. On my head. My chest. My skin was crawling like a meth addict coming off the crank.

Now, I couldn't actually see any other spiders, but I am fairly certain that hundreds of the little bastards were working their way up my body. My best guess is that they were hatched from an egg sac in my belly button and they were on a mission towards my brain where they planned to burrow in and take over my body. I was ground zero for a massive spider conspiracy to take over the world.

Damn my innie genes. If only I had an outie, the rise of our arachnid overlords could have been averted.

War and Pees

Three weeks ago, the prospect of my daughter using the toilet was still just the stuff of fantasy. Her reactions when faced with that option were violently negative. So I went out and bought another giant box of diapers and resigned myself to more more more diaper changing.

But we hadn't given up. We regularly talked to her about how big girls go on the toilet and that she HAD to be potty trained to start pre-school this fall. Truthfully, I didn't really think it was sinking in because her typical response to the big girl argument was that she didn't need to because she was a "wittle girl."

But then last Saturday we decided to give it a go. Institute our own version of potty training boot camp. I wasn't optimistic, but she's well behind most of the kids we know her age in this department and we felt maybe it was time to make a hard effort. So as of that morning we said no more diapers. During waking hours anyway, we're not insane.

At first, we took her to the toilet every 15-20 minutes, but we very quickly found that she only actually used the toilet when she instigated the trip. So we stopped setting our timers and let her lead the pace. And just like that, the switch was flipped. Since last Saturday, eight days now, she's had maybe a half dozen accidents and the bulk of those were in the first couple of days. On the third day, I took her to the gym with me, nervous to leave her completely to her own devices, but when I picked her up, the report was that she had gone three times, all on her own.

We're only eight days in, so the final tally is hardly set, but thus far I am completely blown away by how well she is doing. I had prepared myself for more accidents or to struggle with going #2, but she has been a rock star in both. I would like to pat myself on the back for my fine parenting but it's all her. The only thing I did right was exercise a little patience and wait for her to be ready before pushing her towards it.

So now the big question is, would it be a bad example if I used some of those leftover diapers myself? I haven't made it through the night without a bathroom visit since she was born and I could really use the sleep.

All I've Got Is A Photograph

 

Sorry for the long absences, friends and fellow denizens of the internet. Turns out kids take up a lot of time. Who knew? Sure as hell not me. If you'd asked me before Sophie, and I'm basing this on the behavior of the soap opera watching baby sitters of my early youth, taking care of kids was a piece of cake. The reality is, this stuff is work. A lot of it may be fun work, but make no mistake, it puts a real damper on a person's laying around, bonbon eating time. So fun stuff, like writing blog posts, talking on the phone (I used to talk on the phone?), and most other forms of normal human interaction have been abandoned.
 
I have a metric ton of stories of the goings on around here lately. Visits to the nature center. Camping on the surface of the sun, also known as Virginia in May. Touring amazing natural wonders. We've spent a little time in the Emergency Room. Not to worry, we're all fine. At some point, I will post about that. There's blood and drama, the very hallmarks of a fine blog post, if I do say so myself. My weight loss journey continues, successfully, but I won't really talk much about that now because, SNORE, aren't you all tired of hearing me go on about it? I'm tired of talking about it and I love talking about me. Obviously.

So anyhoo, this was just a quick HI! to let you know that we're all still alive. And that hopefully I can get my diminishing posterior in gear at some point and write some posts, because I miss this. And all of you.

*In case some of you were fooled by my masterful Photoshop skills, that is not an *official* Def Leppard Size 3T concert tank top. I KNOW. It's uncanny. I am an artiste.

Last Dance

The good news is that we spent three hours yesterday out of diapers and there were no accidents. The bad news is that at the end of those three hours, she was crying and pleading and screaming for me to put a diaper on her. She even got one out and sat down on it for me to do up the tapes.

I think I've been pretty cool on the subject of potty training. All of the parents that I have talked to, particularly those that have 3, 4, 5 kids, have said that it happens when the kid is ready. It's like AA, they're never gonna give up the diaper until they're good and ready to quit. Some kids that's 18 months. Some, like mine, that's 42 months. SIGH.

I remember when she was much, MUCH, younger and she showed interest and I was so excited that she would be an early adopter. Alas, that was not to be the case. Despite constant encouragement and more than a little cajoling mixed in with a healthy dose of peer pressure from all, and I do mean ALL, of her potty-using friends, that interest dried up faster than you can say "tinkerbell underwear." Except when stalling bedtime. Then, why she's all about the potty. Even cries in mock distress that the "poopie is coming!" Which, of course, it never is.

When she's sitting on the toilet, and we do a fair amount of that, I'll run the faucet and make the appropriate facial expressions associated with the activity, maybe even throwing in a grunt for good measure. But still nothing. We sit there, read a few books, maybe do a puzzle as it teeters on her little knees, and then she declares herself done and we go about our day.

I've been patient, but I am so done with changing diapers. More importantly, I am sick to death with BUYING them. Mama needs a new pair of espadrilles and they cost about the same as a box of diapers. I want to do a three day commando bonanza where diapers aren't even an option, but I feel like if she's screaming and crying for a diaper that she's not really ready. I was never good at "cry it out," in sleeping or anything and it goes against my nature to do it now, but am I doing her a disservice?

So I put it to you, friends and denizens of the interwebs, do I force it on her? Or do I wait just a skosh longer and see if the lightbulb goes off? But the bigger question is should I go ahead and buy those espadrilles? They're really cute. Parenting is hard.

Smiles

There's a lady at my gym. She's 85 if she's a day, her back is hunched, there's more hobble than walk in her gait, and I have never seen her without a smile. I've spoken with her briefly on a few occasions as we came or went in the locker room. She's quick to laugh and easy with a story in her thickly German-accented speech.

She makes me smile. Even when we don't talk. Just the sight of her working her way across the main gym floor makes me happy. I've always been intrigued by older people. I love their feathery skin and crinkly eyes. The personality in their hands. There are those that will bend your ear as long as you'll allow to detail their many ailments and there are those that will regale you with tales of tragedies or victories of days long gone.

I see this lady, with her smile, and I wonder about her. Is it a magic of biology that she survived the sorrows that any lifetime will dish out and still finds so much joy in every moment? Is it sheer force of will? Are there tears hidden away when others aren't looking? I see so much unhappiness. For every person like my smiley gym lady, I see a dozen sour folks. Faces pinched. A lifetime of sucking on life's lemons.

I lie in bed at night, the day's events running through my head and I find myself too often having to relax my tightly pursed mouth into a more natural pose. They say kids laugh a hundred times a day but as we grow up that diminishes until we're lucky if we get even a couple belly laughs out of every day. Do I laugh enough? Do I spend too much time frowning, yelling, scowling? I don't want to be one of those pinched face old ladies and I'm afraid that's the path I'm headed down.

So I'm making a choice to be happy, to smile as much as I can. Life is just too short, no matter how long you live, to be miserable. And you know what? Laugh lines? Are gorgeous.

Watching

If you are watching your weight now, you will be watching it for the rest of your life. 

The leader of one of the first Weight Watcher's meetings I went to said this. Maybe all WW group leaders say this at some point, I don't know. At the time, I heard it, but I was too busy taking in my surroundings for it to really register. In the weeks since then, it has marinated in my brain. I have said the words out loud to myself on a number of occasions driving in my car or looking in the full length mirror in our bedroom. I have rolled them over in my head a hundred times. Dissecting each word.

When it finally sank in, its simple profundity took my breath away. The fact is that without voicing it or ever really even thinking about it, I had fully expected that once I lost the weight, I could go back to my carefree life. I could eat whole pizzas and super size Big Mac meals. Drink Dr Pepper by the gallon. And when I realized that this really did have to be a lifestyle change, that I could NEVER do that again, that is, if I wanted to not weigh 200 pounds, it was the quintessential come to Jesus moment.

But for this instant gratification junkie, the real surprise is that the last eight weeks haven't actually been that hard. In fact, easier than I ever expected. I think the divorce from McDonalds has been harder on my child than me. We drive by almost every day. She will look upon those golden arches longingly and say "freeeench fries." At first it was with expectant suggestion and then enthusiastic hope and now it is mostly in sad remembrance, tasting the salty words in lieu of the actual thing.

But that meeting leader's words were rolling around again in my head tonight as I tried on pair after pair of pre-baby pants and they were fitting. Not just fitting, as in I could get them on but I would never leave the house in them because they were really too tight, but FITTING, like my regular pants are just too big now and these smaller ones are the ones I should be wearing. Anyone who has ever struggled with their weight, and how many of us haven't at one point or another, can appreciate the jubilation of fitting into the next size down.

I am the lightest I have been since before Sophie. I am looking in the mirror and not cringing. In fact, some days, I actually even think I look good. I'm a long way from skinny. In fact, I was this size when a former friend told me REPEATEDLY that I was a BIG girl. So I'm not letting this go too much to my head, but I am trying to revel in my success just enough to keep me motivated to push on further.

My goals when I began this journey were modest. But now I'm starting to think bigger. Or smaller, as the case may be. And I will meet them.