The Girl Who Whines About Losing Weight

Yep, sorry, that’s me.  I will apologize in advance for this post.

I woke up yesterday morning feeling beat.  Hey, I’d done all that canning all weekend, after running four miles!   Canning requires a surprising amount of effort, what with all the chopping, carrying, and walking around the kitchen over and over.  It was pretty damn tiring!   But still, it was worth it, and I will do it again next year.  Here’s an example of my jam being put to good use. 😉

I was supposed to do stretching and strength training Sunday, but I decided that lifting 22 quarts of strawberries was enough strength training for one day.  😛 I did, however, take the time to do some stretching on Sunday before I went to bed…pretty serious, all-over stretching.  It actually felt very good, and I think this may have to become a post-canning routine for the future. 🙂

I tried to get a good night’s sleep Sunday night, but after my long canning weekend, even seven hours of sleep just wasn’t enough.  Still, I knew I needed to get in a 3-mile run before I began working from home yesterday, so I dragged my butt out of bed at 7am so I could be running by 7:30am.

We had a hot weekend inMichigan, and the heat + humidity still lingered Monday morning.

Seventy-four degrees at 7am isn’t too fun, but at least it was cloudy, so the sun wasn’t beating down on me.  I also dressed more appropriately for this run than my last one, in a pair of biking shorts and one of my (two) race shirts, which was short-sleeved.

I set out and realized almost immediately that there would be no sub-10 pace for me that day.  I was thinking I’d be lucky if I went sub-11!  I could feel myself dragging the whole way, and sweating, too.  At least this time I remembered to bring a small towel, tucked into the waistband of my shorts, to wipe off the sweat. I used it quite a bit, too!

Getting to the one and a half mile mark (when I had to turn around) seemed to take an eternity.  Once I turned around, I just plugged on, with the intent of not looking at my Garmin at all so as not to be discouraged at my pace.  Yeah, that lasted for about a quarter of a mile, ha ha!  I looked down and saw that I was actually doing right at an 11:04 pace for the second mile…not bad.  But of course, seeing that I was so close to a sub-10 pace, I had to increase it, just a bit.  Then I hit the beginning of the third mile, when the lap pace restarts, and suddenly my pace was down in the 10:40s!  At that point, because I’m ever-competitive (even against myself), I decided to try for the sub-11 run, despite the heat and humidity.  I didn’t have to go any faster than I already was, so I just kept plodding along, one foot in front of the other, and voila!

Yes, just barely, but it was under 11, ha ha!  My timing is kind of a mess, though.

My turn-arounds are always super slow, thus skewing my timing graph, which annoys me to no end.  How does one turn around faster??

After I recovered from my run (which included some time on the couch with a big glass of ice water), I did my usual Monday weigh-in.  Although I am at my goal weight (actually a little below), and made lifetime last week, I want to still be consistent about weighing myself weekly.  I have to weigh in at Weight Watchers once per month to maintain my free eTools (which I can’t live without), so I figure it’s best to keep tabs on it weekly, to make sure I am within the required 2-pound range for the Lifetime membership.

When I stepped on the scale, I looked down and saw this:

And then I said, “Oh shit.”  Because that meant I’d lost another pound, and I’m supposed to be maintaining, not losing!

Yes, I know, what a horrible problem to have, right? 😛  But for me to be at 120 was really a kind of an “eek” moment, where I started to worry that I was getting into unsustainable territory.  Granted, I’m right in the middle of my “healthy weight range,” according to all the standard calculators.  But I honestly cannot remember a time in my adult life that I ever weighed 120 pounds.  I can’t even remember a time in my teen years when I weighed that little!  When I started my senior year of high school, I weighed 135 pounds, and I remember thinking that was a fantastic weight! (And it was, until I met the boyfriend who introduced me to a love of Coney dogs and take-out Chinese food, so that I was at 145 by the time I graduated.)

I feel bad lamenting about having lost weight and weighing 120 pounds…I really do.  But it’s still kind of a “shock” moment for me, because I can clearly remember telling my friend Amy, back in February or March, that I was shooting for the low 130s.  My exact words were, “There’s no way I’ll ever make it into the 120s, because that would never be sustainable.”

And, yet…holy crap, look where I am now?!

Anyway, that’s where I stand this week as far as my weight.  I’ve decided to just add a point per day right now, and maybe use up some activity points, since I’m earning about 18 per week on average.  I talked it over with my husband, and he suggested trying to incorporate more protein, since I’m running almost ten miles each week.  So, we’ll see where I am next week.  I’m kind of shooting for gaining a pound—which sounds blasphemous, but I just feel like I need to be realistic about my goals and my weight.  And I just don’t see 120 as realistic!

Speaking of weights and weigh-ins…last Friday, I was checking my Google Reader, and I had to laugh, because the first three posts had almost exactly the same title:

“Friday Weigh-In”

“Weekly Weigh-In, Friday 6/8/12”

“Weigh-In Day”

I had no idea Friday was such a popular day to weigh in! 😉  I have been doing Monday weigh-ins for a long time.  I used to do Fridays, then Wednesdays, then I finally settled on Mondays because the knowledge that I have to weigh in bright and early Monday morning helps me keep in control on the weekend.  But that has me curious…if you are on a periodic weigh-in schedule (weekly, monthly, whatever), what is your preferred weigh-in day?  And why did you choose that day?

Thanks for listening to me whine. 🙂  Hope everyone has a great week!