Sweating to the youngsters.

Today was my 3rd "conditioning" appointment.  First 2 times was with Mercedes.  Today it was Paul.  A guy.  I just love sweating in yoga pants and a tee shirt in front of a guy.  When I met him I told him I was old enough to be his mother so he needed to treat me the way he would treat his mother if he was making her exercise.  He looked so puzzled that for a minute I thought oh my God his mother is dead, or a witch, or belongs to a cult and he hasn't heard from her since he was 6 years old.  Gah!  No, apparently his mother is a skinny little thing who smokes like a fiend and would never listen to him so he can't imagine making her exercise.  Whew.  Dodged that embarrassing bullet.

I tend to talk a lot during all of these appointments.  I talked to Oscar the sleep study guy, emailed back and forth with Michelle the insurance gal, goofed with Mercedes and joked with Beth.  In my mind these people need to like me.  They are going to help me reach my goal and I know that in my job I will work harder and go out of my way for someone who is nice and makes me like them.  It's human nature.  So, I talk and I joke and I'm nice.  It's not like I'm acting or anything, but I need these people.

I guess you could say I'm charming them.  And really, these people deal with all kinds of people every day, as do I.  And I do appreciate the people who make an effort to be friendly or funny and goodness knows I appreciate - patient!

My dentist once told me I'm a good patient.  Hair stylists have told me the same thing.  I sit still and let them do their job.  I guess I am trying to be a good patient all across the board with this thing.  The journey of a NICE fat girl, to NICE thin girl.  Or maybe it would be more accurate - NICE HEALTHY girl.  That's the whole point.

Don't tell Paul but it actually kind of felt good to push myself today.  Sh-h-h .. I notoriously hate exercise, don't tell anyone I felt more like challenging myself.  Hate to ruin my rep.

Where I die .. one muscle at a time.

Sleep study is behind me, although I still have to see a pulmonologist to get the result interpreted.  Instead of re-posting about it, let's jump straight into yesterday and the little stick-figure girl who tried to kill me.  For 4 weeks I am required (my new favorite word, "required") to go see my personal torturer trainer rehab conditioning lady, twice a week.  I met her yesterday and she already has it in for me.  I don't know what I ever did to her!

For the record, I am shocked at how little I could actually do.

The stick figure girl's name is Mercedes.  Her job is to help me learn how to exercise and how to do it properly, and to get me to start moving again.  I mean honestly, I'm fifty-freaking-one years old, I KNOW how to exercise.  It's just that I have gotten too fat to do it comfortably or to do it without feeling like I'm gonna die!

Oh, and you just know that when we went into the torture chamber I was confronted with something I have been spending a few years totally avoiding - a WHOLE WALL OF MIRRORS!!  You just KNOW I wanted to be THERE!

Anyway, she did horrible things to me like made me stand on one foot for 30 seconds!  And she made me do it on the other foot too!  Then she gave me something squishy to stand on and I had to stand on it on one foot again - for 30 seconds, and then the other foot too!  The horror!  From there - there was an even squishier thing to stand on .. and oh .. I need to sit down.

So she concentrated on my legs, my thigh muscles, the one's that do most of the weight bearing.  Well - I'm walking around (sometimes) aren't I??  Sheesh!  After some squats (I know, right??!) and a bunch of lunges she directed me to the treadmill.  By then my face was bright red, I was out of breath and as the treadmill (on the lowest possible speed already) monitored my heart rate, SLOW DOWN kept scrolling across the read-out.  Mercedes asked me more than once, "do you have any heart problems?"

Yeah, not starting out well, this moving thing.  Hafta keep going ...

**Oh, that little girl who does not need to exercise herself - Mercedes?  She may actually be a nice young girl who is doing her job effectively.  Then again, she may really want to kill me.

I didn't just fall off the wagon . .

. . I let it run over me too! I'm talking eating well all day long at work because I pack my lunch and make sure I have a healthy snack for mid-morning, a healthy lunch, and a healthy snack for mid-afternoon. But then coming home from work and eating something ba-a-a-a-a-d which in my mind equals yummy!

I'm talking pizza, enchiladas, hamburgers, Chinese food, and basically anything else I want! And you know what? I haven't gained any weight. I know, right? I'm going to repeat that. I HAVEN'T GAINED ANY WEIGHT.

So what does this say to someone like me? My brain says - well hell - it's not hurting me, why eat all this food with no fat and no sugar and no yummy when I can stay the same weight eating all that bad (GOOD!!!) stuff??

Ugh. I have to stop it. I need to listen to my freaking brain and do what I know is good for me because even if I haven't gained any weight, I very well could be gaining plaque in my arteries, and pushing my glucose up again, etc. So I have to commit to exercise. I know I keep saying this but it is the hardest thing for me.

An hour a day. Even if I do it in 10 minute increments during the day. I have to make the promise to myself and just do it.

Sometimes I feel like I am the only person out here who whines about not being able to do this! I read blogs belonging to women who set their minds to changing their lifestyle and they do it. They write about HOW they did it, give tips and tell what they are doing to maintain their healthy changes. I haven't run across too many places where somebody writes about falling face first into a buttercream frosted cake and feeling like a loser. Maybe because it's a drag to read about and certainly not inspiring for anyone else. Blech.

Okay. Well, an hour a day. Exercise of some type, whether it's playing Wii tennis, climbing on my mini-stepper, going for a walk or (hat-tip to Cynthia) dancing in my kitchen. I'm the only one who can do it, right? Yeah, I know.

** Added - or over 10,000 steps - if I can just remember to grab my pedometer.

Kind of mad and late to the party

This weekend I discovered there are shoes out there being advertised as workout shoes in that - they help work your muscles when you walk wearing them. They tilt back just a bit and have a rocker type motion which forces you to use more muscles when you walk. Theoretically, of course. I'm sure everyone else already knew about these besides me. Always late to the party.

But me being me I'm like - yeah - I hafta try these! Seeing as I'm not getting a workout on my couch, the idea of shoes that practically do it for you appealed to me. Okay maybe the claims didn't go that far. Still - I started to shop. I found one brand, MBTs that are really expensive - around $250.00 a pair. And Reebok has come up with some called Shape-ups, still fairly expensive although less than the first. I searched and searched until I found basically the same kind of shoes sold through K-Mart, basically a knock-off called Thera-shoes. MUCH cheaper. Also? NOT available.

But the worst part? I spent the better part of a day searching the internet for these things and discovered that even if I could afford them, or find them in the case of the K-Mart shoes, NONE OF THEM WOULD FIT ME! I have wide Flintstone feet and not a single one of these shoes comes in wide widths.

GR-R-R-R-r-r-r ....!!! I'm guessing I'm going to have to get off my butt and do it myself. Exercise, that is. What fun is that!?!

**OOPS. Reebok has EasyTones and Sketchers has Shape-ups. Too many names too little brain!

Putting the laptop to work!

I wanted to find a way to use my laptop while on the treadmill. It seems TV is not interesting enough, music doesn’t keep me moving for any length of time at all, and the thing that has had me sitting on my butt for the last year really needs to help me reduce the size of that butt.

Okay, excuse the cat toys and the step stool jury rigged – but eh? EH? Pat me on the back and call me genius. :)

I LOVE this thing!!

I ordered this "Sunny Twist Stepper with Handle Bar" from Overstock.com. It was a tax return gift to myself. It was $108.00 with $1.00 shipping (the shipping is normally almost a whopping 3 dollars!) at Overstock. I ordered it without huge expectations, knowing that it was not a full sized, expensive machine. I read the reviews and understood what the drawbacks would be, and wanted to take a chance. The reviews were not bad at all, but I was still a bit reticent.

When it arrived I was able to assemble it myself, even though the pictures and instructions weren't the greatest. I mean really, assembling exercise equipment is not my forte. But I was able to do it - and I was happy about that. The worst part - trying to get the wire for the time clock thingy from the bottom of the stand through to the top and out a hole the size of a dime. That was hard but again, I did it.

Trying it out - I was very happy. It's actually quite versatile. You can step up and down as if the steps are only 2 inches high, or take the full size steps. You can point your toes straight ahead, to the center - or outward. You can go fast or slow. And I like it!

When I was exercising a lot back in the (omg) 80's - I had a treadmill, an exercise bike and a stepper. The treadmill died, the bike broke down and went out with the trash, and the stepper is still out in the garage. I loved that thing. But it's HUGE! I have a new treadmill, don't really want a bike, and now I have this little stepper which is light enough for me to pick up and move around the room - or from room to room if I want to. I have my yoga DVDs and I think I am pretty happy with my stuff now.

Apparently I am not able to just do one thing day after day after day. When I lost a bunch of weight by walking A LOT - it was because I was fueled by a lot of emotional turmoil. That doesn't exist now. I wish I had something pushing me that hard - but not that. So I think I may have found my niche.

We will see. Of course any of it requires me to get my butt off the couch. Follow through. So again, we will see.