Post-Thanksgiving Report

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and I of course love the food involved with it. Turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie...! We had a small gettogether this year and my family managed to evade most of the leftovers. I did, however, go a little overboard on the shortbread cookies someone made and brought.

I'm now in the midst of pre-finals stress and exercise has been lacking. Which usually happens whenever I stop blogging for a while. Oh well. At least food has been all right. I haven't been overeating, surprisingly, but I haven't been restricting myself either. I'm planning a trip to Taiwan this winter, and hopefully I'll lose some weight before then. But if not, it's all right. My goal right now is to just get through the next three weeks, and then I'm free and out of the country. =)

I just finished watching the Republican YouTube debate. (I watched the Democrat one when it aired a while back.) I really enjoy these debates. I think the format is innovative and keeps things interesting and fresh, especially for younger viewers and the politically uncaring -- what's that word? I hate when I can't think of a word and it's just on the tip of my tongue. I loved that snowman in the Democratic candidates' debate and the ensuing hullaballoo with Mitt Romney.

Personally, I think that all the candidates from both sides fared pretty well. A few shone for both debates, of course, but there wasn't anything surprising. Mostly, the frontrunners did well, plus one or two others. Anderson Cooper was attractive as always, but not the most effectual moderator, although I can imagine it'd be hard to quell the voices of those tough politicos. I find politics to be interesting, and as a former speech/debate kid, I especially enjoy the use of rhetoric in campaigns and debates. Some candidates are obviously good speakers, some are not, and some are only good when they're called to speak on pre-prepared topics. It gets obvious the more you watch, and that's what I find interesting about the debates.

Anyway, that was a long segue. This is what I've been doing instead of exercising, haha.

Control Yourself. People Are Watching.

I love the plank. I like it because it's simple and it's a test of my self-control. Even when I'm about to collapse, I can always push myself a little further.

I remember a school hiking trip once, when we here walking along an icy trail (really only a few feet off the ground at this point). Everyone was scared and moved about an inch a minute, but the instructor said something that will always stick to me. He told us not to be afraid because our bodies are always under our complete control.

I like that. I think of that when I feel a junk food binge coming on, or when the TV threatens to divert me from exercise. My body is under my complete control. I am in control.

That said, I did indulge in some vending machine junk food yesterday--a bag of peanut M&M's and a pack of Ruffles. So much for control. At least I did get up early today to continue the TTBW workout though.

I have to say, I'm really enjoying this so far. Although it's only my second day doing the drill, I can feel my muscles slowly remembering what they're supposed to do. I sneezed this morning after doing the B workout, and I actually felt a twinge in my stomach. My abs might be returning from the dead! I decided to put off the TTBW intervals until tomorrow. I like that everything can be done without a machine because this leaves even less of an excuse not to work out.

Fortune Cookie

I love fortune cookies. Not eating them really, since they taste like baked sugar, but I love the fortunes. The light anticipation, the act of sharing them with everyone in a circle, the musing of how the red text on white paper reflects your real life.

I hate when you get the fortunes that say things like "You have a good sense of humor" and "Friends are always helpful in life." Excuse me, fortune writers, but fortunes are supposed to, you know, fortell something.

No, I didn't have Chinese takeout today, but one of my mom's friend was doing astrological readings so the topic is on my mind. The funny thing is that, even when I feel stressed out or depressed, my fortunes are always, well, fortunate. In any type of fortune-telling system. It's kind of odd, not that I'm complaining or anything.

Anyway, I guess I should write something about weight loss. ;)

Today was an OK food day.

Lunch:
1 bowl minestrone soup
1 serving turkey w/gravy + .5 cup stuffing
1/2 piece of generic white cake + frosting

Dinner:
1 eggplant parmesan except without the cheese. So, breaded and + tomato sauce.
.5 cup of rice + stir fry(?) veggies
3 small butter cookies (about the size of a dollar coin)
1 Lipton raspberry iced tea
1 unidentified pastry. It was sort of a tart shell + three dollops of cream (vanilla, chocolate, pumpkin)

So I could have done without the desserts, but I'm in a holiday mood. Which is actually not very good, considering I haven't even got to Tgiving dinner or the many food gettogethers and gifts. I'm a little sore from yesterday's workout, mostly in the back shoulder area and the legs when I walk up stairs. Tomorrow I get to try the "B" workout for TTBW Beginner Level. I'm excited!

Poor Lefty

It seems like whenever I work out, my right arm always ends up more sore than my left. I'm right-handed. Maybe I work my right arm harder even though or because it's the stronger one already. And stronger it is, as evidenced when I was doing side planks. Doing them on my right side was fine. It was a whole different story on my left, as I could barely even get my body up. Oh well. I'll try to work the left arm more in the future.

So the last entry was about yesterday's food day. It was-- let's just not talk about it. Let's instead talk about today's workout, which was pretty good. Following the advice of Maggie in this post, I checked out Craig Ballantyne's Turbulence Training Bodyweight Workout. Beginner level of course.

The moves are all very basic, so at first I was nonplussed. This is it? I thought. I can do this in no time. Except of course, that the exercises repeated and got harder and the muscle tiredness started setting in by the end. I actually worked up a sweat, which was great.

Didn't really feel tired, per se, so I decided to do the TTBW intervals jogging/running in place in my room. Like the bodyweight exercises, it started out so easy I was getting bored. While it didn't really become that hard (probably because I set my own pace), it did make me sweaty and slightly winded and worked out.

I had ambitious plans to start the Couch to 5K training tomorrow, but I think I'll just stick to TTBW, if I can even do that. It's 3 days a week for 4 weeks. The question isn't whether or not I can do it, because I know I can. The question is whether I will. And for my own good, the answer is yes!

On a side note, Britney's new album is great work out music.

Not the best food day ever

This is going to be the bad news entry, so I don't taint the entry about working out. =)

So I overate yesterday. Brunch was 1/2 cup of beef lasagna, 1/2 a plate of eggs-bacon-hashbrowns, and a salad with 1 tbsp honey mustard dressing. Which is actually OK, except I then passed the dessert buffet and saw my current nemesis:

(Picture from a wonderful post on pumpkin-pie inspired foods.)

Anyway, after eating the entire piece of pie and enjoying every minute of it (I've been craving pumpkin pie since the commercials started airing everywhere), I of course then had to get a sugar cookie. Which tasted actually like sugary cardboard. But I finished it. Because we all need more empty calories.

Went to the beach with friends yesterday and cooked two hot dogs over the bonfire, both of which I ate with relish (metaphorically only). Didn't feel like cooking a smore, so I just had two marshmallows. Except then I felt like having some chocolate. But I like my chocolate to have a bit of crunch, so I ate a graham cracker while eating half a bar of Hershey's original. So, in effect, I ate the smore anyway.

But here's the kicker for the day: After the bonfire, I got back and my suitemates had ordered pizza. Did I pass up the olive-green pepper-mushroom? The answer is no.

So basically I ate the equivalent of 5 or 6 normal people meals yesterday, and I feel gross even now and so not in the mood for any lunch. But that was yesterday and to be honest, there is a lot going on in my life now that is causing me an extraordinarily stupid amount of stress. I'm lucky I didn't just eat an entire pizza by myself.

It Was Fat Carol!

I just re-watched the episode of Ugly Betty where someone at Mode Magazine leaked info about the upcoming Holiday feature and that person happened to be a character everyone called "Fat Carol." The humor in it was that the girl was actually thin. In fact, I couldn't tell the difference between her and the other similarly thin women that were portrayed as working at Mode.

The barrage of jokes about Carol's "weight problem" reminded me of something though. As someone forever on the border between normal weight and over-weight, I have a problem with fat jokes. Yes, I'm no longer ten years old and the jokes are no longer about me. Now that I'm pretty much average in terms of weight, people feel free to joke about others' weight problems in front of me and expect me to join in. I noticed this shift near the end of high school, when people no longer stopped short in the middle of a fat joke when in my presence.

Yesterday a group of friends and I were discussing our friend's annoying boss. "She's probably a fattie," someone said, and everyone laughed. Except that, really, where's the humor in that statement? None of us, for the exception of the friend who's boss this was, has ever seen the woman. Thin or not, does her weight really have anything to do with her shortcomings as a manager?

Herein lies the problem. I'm at a weight level where I'm no longer the butt of jokes, which is great, but now the jokes are told to me, and I'm expected to laugh along just like everyone else. Except, unlike everyone else, I still remember when those jokes and insults were directed at me. I see how hurtful the joking is, but I can't bring myself to stop others when making those jokes, for fear that I'll be once again labeled as the fat girl, outside the world of people able to make jokes about that. What usually happens is that I'll just walk away or change the subject but a few times, I'm ashamed to admit, I've actually joined in. Part of me rejoices as, hallelujah, I'm not that girl anymore, I'm on in the inside, looking out at the outsiders in this healthy weight world! But the rest of me is just utterly ashamed that I would forget that little girl who remembered cruel comments for years and would cry about them at home, years after the comment was said.

I feel like those Americans who make fun of immigrants from their ancestral countries. I just realized that this is the first year of my life that nobody has called me fat or mentioned anything about me being overweight. Of course this doesn't mean that I've drastically changed in appearance or actually lost any weight. But it's a new thing for me, and I guess I don't stand up for those overweight girls because I'm secretly afraid that I'm still one of "the fatties." Mind over body, I guess. Hopefully next time someone makes a joke about another's weight, I'll do more than just change the subject.

The Weather Outside Is Actually Fairly Warm

...Although it is getting chillier by the day. I guess even SoCal has to experience autumn some time. I love the cooler weather, but it makes me have to fight to keep off the urges to bundle up with a good book and some hot cocoa on my comfy couch in my warm home. Or just stay in bed in my dorm room. Good thing the workout room is about two minutes away from my room. Bad thing is that the Mexican and Chinese takeout place is about two minutes past that.

I slept in on Friday and didn't do much exercise, but I ate all right. Tuna melt, bowl of udon noodles, and I think some sort of dessert but I can't remember, for brunch. Went out to a party but didn't drink and limited myself to half a cup of some sort of nonalcoholic punch. It was red and tasted like chemicals so I didn't finish. I did have more than a few handfuls of tortilla chips though, and a Moons over my Hammy sandwich + hash browns + root beer float at Denny's. At 3 AM. Let's just call that delayed dinner.

Brunch today was two bowls of chicken noodle soup* a slice of thin crust cheese pizza, and a plate of eggs, sausage, and hash browns. Which is a lot. And I feel very full. I also had half a cappucino. So basically I've been fighting the urge to sleep for the past 3 hours now, which should really teach me something about overloading on carbs.

I should really just listen to my body, like everyone says. I know I feel good when I eat certain things, and I feel lousy when I eat other things. The body loves fruits and veggies, but the dining hall doesn't except in the form of the omnipresent salad bar. The body loves salad bar, but the eyes love pizza, so it's hard to choose sometimes. However, I've never felt like sleeping immediately after eating a salad, whereas overeating carbohydrates always without fail makes my brain shut down.

Oh well. I'm going to try and get some work done. The plan today is to work (I have a lot of catchup to do), do laundry, and visit the gym. The plan is not to take a nap right now. I'll check in later about how successful I am at not falling asleep on top of my French textbook. We'll see how this goes. *Crosses fingers*

*The noodles were actually macaroni. I think we might need to retrain some of the dining staff.

Can't Walk a Mile in my YSLs

I've been listening to that Jennifer Lopez song on repeat for a bit now. It's a great pep-up song. I have a few of those. Headstrong by Trapt, Room for Squares by John Mayer, Get it Faster by Jimmy Eat World, Someday We'll Know with Mandy Moore and someone on guest vocals, New York New York by Sinatra, etc.

A few friends got me an iPod shuffle for my birthday this year, and I sort of believe that the songs that come up randomly have some sort of meaning to my life and state of mind. This is all tongue in cheek, but there was that time when I was depressed and RHCP's Otherside came on twice in a short time span. And that time I cycled through three Spice Girls songs after we bought tickets for the December show.

Anyway, I've sort of been emotionally in a not-so-great place for the past month or so, which led to bouts of alternating not eating from lack of appetite to binge eating for emotional reasons. Which is all well and good, except it's not actually well or good at all. I think I'm on the upswing now though, so I'm trying to surround myself with positive things, including positive music.

Yesterday was a terrible eating day. But today was all right. And that's how I'm going to take it for now--one day at a time.

On Again, Off Again. Hopefully More of the Former.

Seriously, my lack of commitment to weight loss and blogging is beginning to look like that on again off again boyfriend that you can't shake off. And I'm getting annoyed.

I haven't blogged for more than a month and my weight loss has been...zero pounds. Well, to be fair, at least I didn't gain any weight. But I did stop going to the gym and watching what I ate, and I did start eating more and more takeout Mexican and Chinese food. However, about a week or so ago, I decided that enough was enough and I was bored of not feeling healthy and not being able to run up the stairs to my room.

So I went to the gym twice last week and have started doing my random calisthenics routine. It's sort of this random mix of exercises I remember from gym class plus things I read in magazines and on the internet or saw on TV or whatever. Nothing's too intense, although if I work at it, I can get my heart rate up and feel all sweaty and worked out and sore the next day. The routine also varies depending on my mood, my surroundings, my time that day, and what body parts I feel need addressing. Last spring, I was hardcore on toning my stomach. I did 100 crunches a day for about a month and they worked! (Along w/diet and exercise) I still do crunches sometimes, but right now I'm focusing on getting rid of some arm flab. It's times like these that I think about buying dumbells, but then my thrifty side comes out and points out the water bottles and other makeshift weights already lying in my reach.

I have a new (single!) room this year, which is a bit small, but enough room for me to breathe in. It's the furthest dorm from campus, which is a pain, but at least I'm getting some more walking in--and uphill at that! However, the distance makes me less inclined to walk all the way down to Wooden, the official UCLA gym that's stocked with every machine you can think of and has a swarm of TV's and multimedia things to make working out as fun as possible. So I resort to the workout rooms in every building. The one for my building now is larger, mainly with more floorspace and mats for yoga or whatever. There are two treadmills, 4 ellipticals (2 types, one of which is new to me), and two cycling machines. Which is all fine and dandy, but I really do miss the workout room in my old building, with the stairmaster and the weights machine and the rowing machine. *Sob* I have a strange unnatural love for this machine out of all the exercise machines available at any gym. So much that it's actually made me walk down to Wooden for my exercise last week, just so I could visit it. Apparently, the erg burns a lot of calories for what seems like fairly light exercise. I mean, you're sitting, so it's easy, right? I love that the rowing machine works out every part of your body at once, instead of just focusing on legs like treadmills and bikes. Sure, ellipticals work the arms too, but most of us know how effective ellipticals are for weight loss. I also like that even when the gym's packed and there's a twenty minute wait for the treadmills, I can almost always still find a free rowing machine. Most people don't know how to use the thing properly, so I always feel like I'm in on some hush hush secret.

Anyway, enough professing of my love to the rowing machine. This post is long enough as it is. I'll write more tomorrow. And this time I actually mean tomorrow, and not two months later, k?