Weekend Wrap Up

Well it's Monday and I'm back at work. :-(

If you'd asked me a week ago, I would have told you I was worried that I would be bored and lonely over my holiday weekend since Andy was playing 8,000 Nutcracker shows. I figured I'd clean the apartment, maybe go through my closet and get rid of some clothes, and hopefully work on my running scrapbook to keep my hands busy and out of the kitchen cupboards. Friends... there was no need to worry. I was so busy I didn't have time to do any (mostly) of that stuff!

Thanks to some quick shift switching I was able to go to MXT on Saturday morning with Sarah. It was so much fun and now I'm extra sad that I normally work while that class is going on - at least I got to try it though! For you non-locals, MXT is "extreme training"... kind of like bootcamp mixed with cross fit, disguised to look like PE class in elementary school (think stations). While it wasn't my favorite station, I do wish I had video of Sarah and I trying to flip one of those gigantic tires. Those things are heavy... and extra hard to lift when you're laughing. ;-)

After class I went home to shower and eat lunch, and then it was time to head back to the club for job number two. The people that work in the afternoons have a cush job! It wasn't nearly as hectic as my morning shift, which was nice, but also made the time go by pretty slowly. Once my shift was finally over I resumed my Sarah-fest and headed to her parent's for dinner. I love her family! I'm glad they've adopted me. :-)

Sunday morning I got up and headed off to a Weight Watchers meeting. I give myself a gold star for going because I was tired and had a headache, plus I mean... who wants to weigh-in in front of someone on Thanksgiving weekend? While it wasn't a ton of weight, I'm happy to report that I lost another 1.2 pounds this week, bringing me to 162.8 - almost where I was for the marathon! Now I'll let my crazy come out a bit... I was actually a little let down that I didn't lose more. I know I know it was Thanksgiving blah blah, but I worked out a lot more than I normally would (since I had time off of work). Oh well. I still feel like this is a good program for me. Not weighing myself everyday has definitely helped my attitude throughout the week. And now for the details about the meeting:

Once again I went to a different meeting, and I think this is going to be the one that works for me. The day/time work well with my schedule, the people that attended were a little younger than the others I'd been to, and after talking to her afterwards I realized the leader and I are probably going to be friends - she struggles with binge eating handfuls of dry cereal and searching for things she can dip in Nutella (sound familiar?) and she also has done 3 half marathons! She even gave me her email address so I could send her the training plan I use. :-) It was meant to be!!

In the meeting we focused on "holiday survival." Katie (the leader) suggested we print out a calendar and only write down the special events we have for the month of December - that way we can get a visual of what days we will need to plan for, rather than saying "I have events all month, why bother trying?" because the truth is... you don't have events all month. Sure, you have more than normal, but there are a decent number of days that have nothing going on, so it's important to recognize those and stay on track whenever you can.

Why are my Mondays and Tuesdays so busy?

She also prompted us with these questions (I took notes on my phone like a geek):
1) What tempting foods are hardest to control? Could you avoid them? How?
2) Which everyday foods could you lighten up?
3) When could you add extra activity?
4) How do you want to feel January 1st? (think of that answer when you're faced with a challenge)

Not exactly mind blowing questions, but I do think taking the time to think about them will at least make me more aware.

Friends - do you have any advice for surviving the holidays?

My biggest challenge is always all of the baddies that people bring into job number one and number two. They always look good, and at some point at work I get irritated and stressed out and just want to shove my face in the middle of a tray of cookies (I love cookies...). WW Katie suggested I bring extra snacks to the office during the holidays. Even though I might eat more than I normally would, at least the snacks I would bring would be healthier than the garbage that gets brought into the office. I suppose I could also use Alyssa's tactic and just imagine they all baked the treats without washing their hands (maybe they sneezed in the dish too... you never know!).

Ok I got carried away with my WW meeting recap so I'll rush through the rest of my Sunday. Went to Zumba (fun) and then spent the rest of the day driving Andy back and forth to the Nutcracker so he wouldn't have to deal with parking, doing laundry, doing dishes, and watching Downton Abbey Revisted on PBS - sort of a sneak peak of season 3 that starts on January 6th!!!! It made me so excited!!!! Let's get these stickin' holidays over so Downton Abbey can start, haha.

All in all it was a super fun Thanksgiving weekend. :-)

Thanksgiving Festivities

Hello (insert your name here). I am thankful for you. :-)

I'm not doing so hot on keeping up with regular blog updates. Time to catch up!

Wednesday (day before Thanksgiving)
The office was open so I went to work, but this was basically a big joke. Aside from some people doing last minute Nutcracker preparations, NO one was in the mood to be productive. I don't even remember what I did, I just remember that I was happy to be wearing jeans since it was the last work day of the week. Oh, if only I could wear comfortable clothes to work everyday...

Wednesday night meant boxing with Rebecca! We went to the girls only class again - the basic format was the same, but "Coach Dana" mixed it up and Rebecca and I were pretty much dying. Sorry Rebecca if I overstated your level of exertion, but if that's true, I think I was dying enough for the both of us. :-) Thankfully we had enough energy at the end to document our hardcore awesomeness with a sweaty picture.

Doesn't it look like I don't have teeth? Like I took out my dentures
or something? Gross. Also, why does my head look so small?

We had a good time, and I'm glad I had Rebecca to go with because I really wasn't feeling like going - but you know what they say... you only regret the workouts you don't do (or something like that).

Thursday (Thanksgiving!!!)
Obviously Thanksgiving started with an intense need to burn some calories, and I must say I did it in my favorite way possible... running and Zumba with friends!!! Andy, Anna, Alyssa and I started off with a 5 mile run. The weather outside was perfect for a fall run. Our pace was good (around 9:30) and we had fun trading off who we ran with and catching up with each other. I freaking love running with friends!!!

We run marathons (just in case you forgot lol)

Lady Runners!

You'll notice Anna and I are holding zip lock bags - Alyssa made us very cute (and very delicious) turkey cookies! Andy got one too but I think his had already been consumed before we took these pictures.

We said goodbye to Alyssa, then Anna and I ran inside the club to get ready for Zumba. Get ready? Yes friends. What better way to kick off Thanksgiving than with 80's Zumba!! Sarah traded in her cheetah status for the day... with her crimped hair she looked more like a lion. It was awesome! And thankfully the yoga class for the day was an hour and a half instead of an hour, so Lisa bailed on yoga and joined us for Zumba (I only  wish we had extra 80's attire for her!).

Babs, Lisa, and Anna - check out our leg warmers!

I'm sad I didn't get a picture with Sarah's hair down,
but working out in sweatshirts and leg warmers makes a girl hot!

Our pyramid attempt was an epic fail

While the ladies got their 80's on, Bipul and Andy manned-up and lifted weights. So recap: I got to spend my morning with Andy, Anna, Alyssa, Sarah, Lisa, and Bipul. The only person missing from the puzzle was Katie, but she was too busy kicking serious butt at the Webster Turkey Trot! Friends - Katie averaged an 8:02 pace over 4.4 miles (strangest race distance ever). She is from the same Cheetah tribe as Sarah and Anna! I will try to work on becoming a Cheetah too. Maybe a three-legged Cheetah with a limp and ADD, but a Cheetah nonetheless.

After the fitness extravaganza, Andy and I stopped at Starbucks for some holiday latte action. I love those skinny peppermint mochas! Then it was time to get cleaned up and the hit the road - we were on our way to Buffalo. Side note: on the drive we listened to Alec Baldwin interview Dr. Robert Lustig on "Here's the Thing." The whole podcast was about sugar and obesity - very interesting although a little silly considering we were on our way to eat lots of pie. ;-)

Thanksgiving dinner was spent at Andy's Aunt Carol's house. It was nice to see everyone again, especially Andy's sister Ali who I think was most definitely meant to be my sister - she liked my spinach and kale greek yogurt dip from Trader Joe's and likes Lululemon. What more can I say? Anyway, I was very pleased with how I handled food at Thanksgiving. I let myself try everything I wanted, but kept my portions reasonably sized and didn't go back for seconds. Victory! I was even controlled with my desserts, which was not exactly easy since I had all of this to choose from...

Wall o' Pie

Andy and I both crashed as soon as we got back to our apartment. It wasn't even 10:00pm, but I suppose our morning of exercise and our full bellies were too much to handle. There aren't too many nights when I'm in bed before 10, but that was definitely one of them.

Friday (aka Black Friday)
Since I went to bed so early, I woke up early on my own. Well... might as well go shopping! I hit up two stores before it was time to head home to change for Zumba. I love not having to work and being able to go to Sarah's class on Friday. If only I could quit my job... haha. Anyway, then it was time to shower, eat lunch, talk to my mom on the phone, and then... MORE SHOPPING! It was another short trip because I had another workout date planned with Katie at 5:30. Admittedly I was late (but it was for the sake of a deal, I swear!). The class we were doing was called "Cycle and Core" = 30 minutes of spinning and then 30 minutes of core. I missed about the first 10 minutes of spinning, but it was still a good workout. The core stuff was hard!! It was worth suffering through to get to hang out with Katie for a bit. :-) Then I went home for dinner, hung out around the house... I figured the day's excitement was over. WRONG!

Happy Birthday Jackson James!!!

Congratulations to Elizabeth and Andy (not my Andy haha)!!!! At around 10:30pm I got the text from Elizabeth that JJ had arrive and was 8lbs 11oz. Wow! I'm so happy for them. :-) And I know this isn't the important part, but doesn't Elizabeth look great?? Yay Elizabeth!!

So much has happened and the weekend is only just getting here (of course I have to work job number two as always). Stay tuned for more!

Not Thankful for Faux Thanksgiving

Happy day before Thanksgiving! Today is a great day because 1) it is my last day at the office until Monday!! and 2) I get to go to boxing tonight!

Since nothing of note has happened yet today, I will tell you all about my super busy day yesterday - I was exhausted by the time I got home from job number two... my excuse for not posting last night.

Tuesday started bright and early for partner personal training with Sarah! Definitely the highlight of my day. Vinny took us back to the Kinesis room, but he mixed it up with some other things too. I like how every session is different, although I've not been even close to as sore as I was after the first time when we used the TRX straps. It's still a good workout though, and the best part is it forces me to do weights, which I never want to do on my own.

Job number one was a massive headache. The first hurdle was "Office Thanksgiving Lunch" - everyone brought a dish and we all tried to wedge into our conference room to pretend we like each other. :-)

Can you guess which plate is mine?

The office lunch caused a lot of anxiety for me. For starters, everyone brought baddies - I knew that would happen, which is why I signed up to bring a salad. I was very proud of myself for sticking to my plan: salad with turkey. But of course people couldn't resist making comments. WHY DO YOU CARE??? Andy said they just comment because my choices make them realize they should think about their choices, but they don't want to. Could be. But I still don't get it. Keep your thoughts to yourself and mind your own business. Or be glad that I'm not eating all the baddies - that means you can have more!! The reality is, I just don't need to eat two Thanksgiving meals two days apart. Enough said.

Then I had a meeting that will rekindle serious rage if I think about it too much so we'll just say it happened and it was miserable. The meeting made me 30 minutes late to job number two - bring on the next dose of anxiety. Plus two of my coworkers weren't able to come to their shifts at the very last minute! I thought I'd be in for it when I got there (frankly I should have been for being so late) but amazingly my boss was super nice and kind. Job number two can be tough sometimes, but after such a miserable day at job number one, it was almost nice to go there because the people there are really good people and I genuinely enjoy spending time with them, even if some of that time is spent reserving tennis courts for the rich folk.

So that was my day. I will say I am SUPER proud of myself for sticking to my weight watchers points despite the waves of frustration that kept crashing over me all day long. Go me. :-)

I'm a sucker for a sticker

Woohoo! I started my morning with a trip to Weight Watchers to weigh in and...

I got a 5 pound star sticker!

Looks like it works so I'll keep with it. Of course I don't expect to lose five pounds each week - according to the program you will level out to losing 0.5 - 2.0 pounds each week fairly fast. Even still, it was encouraging to see that it's possible to lose weight while not starving and not having to weigh lettuce. :-)

This is a short work week thanks to Thanksgiving, so I tried extra hard to be productive today. I got a lot accomplished, which helped the time pass. After work it was back to Weight Watchers for a meeting - since I had my race the day before I wasn't able to go to the same meeting I went to last week.

The theme of the meeting was Thanksgiving. Obviously! I really liked the meeting leader - she was well organized and I felt like we covered a lot of stuff (I wish I had taken notes because I can't remember it all now). But the general ideas were...

1) Try to set some boundaries before the day comes - it can be anything, as long as you've made a plan like, only one plate, or only seconds on the "special" dishes... or even half your plate veggies, one quarter turkey, and then the last quarter for sides (that way the bulk of your meal is veggies and lean protein).

2) What dishes can you live without? What dishes are must haves? These were good questions for me to think about. Our leader reminded us that we're adults and can get most food whenever we want. Like a dinner roll. If I don't have one on Thanksgiving, it's not like I've missed my chance for the year. But stuffing? I'm probably not going make that or even see it on a menu for another 365 days.... so I'll enjoy my stuffing and try to skip the rolls. You get the idea.

3) Fit in some extra activity. This should be easy enough for me to do. I realized while listening to everyone talk that I am quite a bit more active than the average meeting attendee. At first I felt a little uncomfortable, wondering what they would all think if they knew how much I actually exercise... but then I just decided to consider myself lucky that I've got that part of the puzzle solved.

4) And last but not least she made us write down what OTHER events we had going on this week. I was so focused on Thanksgiving that I realized I wasn't planning how to navigate the other events during my week (like tomorrow's office Thanksgiving lunch). The meeting leader reminded us that while Thanksgiving is only once a year, we'll have little events pop up left and right every week. I think I'll handle Thanksgiving a lot better if I make it through the rest of my week successfully. If I fail to plan for the smaller events, I'm likely to throw in the towel and shove my face in a sweet potato casserole and wash it down with a can of spray whipped cream once the holiday arrives.

I guess I remembered more than I thought. ;-) Week one of Weight Watchers was a success. Now I'm off to bed - Sarah and I have partner personal training tomorrow, I have office Thanksgiving lunch that I have to bring a dish to, I have a really big meeting (that I still need to prepare for), and then I have to work job number two. Yikes. See you tomorrow!

YMCA Turkey Trot - 5 Mile Race

Runner Babs is back in action!

Andy and Babs go back to the races!

Clearly we weren't scarred for life by the marathon because this morning Andy and I headed out to do a 5 mile Turkey Trot benefitting the YMCA. Over the last two years we've tried doing different turkey trots on Thanksgiving morning, but those turned out to be a huge headache. When I found out there was a turkey trot  the weekend before Thanksgiving we decided to go ahead and give it a try.

The weather was beautiful - crisp but sunny. The course had a few hills but nothing too terribly bad. Andy and I lined up pretty close to the start line with Marcia (she was the one that told me about the race) - not necessarily a mistake because I didn't get stuck behind any strollers, but... I couldn't resist trying to keep up with all of the cheetahs. I know better than that!!! Ugh. Andy was able to hold the pace better so he was gone after about three minutes. I finished my first mile in 8:30. Yikes. I paid for that fast start and felt pretty nauseous by the end. Even still, I managed to push myself and finished in 45:23 - a 9:05 average pace!!! My best 5 mile race time by FAR!! :-) :-) :-) I love starting my day with a PR!!!!! Did I mention I was 6th in my age group?

Andy kicked butt and finished in 44:10 (8:50 pace). Way to go Brown! Speaking of people who killed their races today.... Cheetah Sarah ran a half marathon with her brother in Philly and killed it in 1:51:56. Amazing!!! I signed up for text message updates for Sarah's race and had a lot of fun following her progress - especially hearing the text come in that she had finished while I was running my own race!

So what else is new? It's been about a week since I've posted and a lot has gone on. Here are the highlights:

- Partner personal training #2 w/Sarah was a success. This time we used the Kinesis machines... a good workout, but not quite as challenging as the TRX. I'm glad he's going to mix it up for us though!

- Boxing class with Anna, Katie, and Kristin! We had a different instructor who was more informative and also gave us a great workout. Super fun.

- Andy and I saw the James Bond movie... so good!

- Finally bought a 26.2 magnet for my car!!! 

Also I was a perfect follower of Weight Watchers this week. It was kind of "fun" to track my points (especially my activity points) all week long. Unfortunately my race was at the same time as my normal meeting time, so I will hopefully be attending a makeup meeting tomorrow. 

After the marathon, I took the first week off of life. The second week after, I got back into exercising. This last week I got back on track with food. So this week... I'm going to try to get back to regular posts on my blog! Lucky you!! I guess I'll just write about what goes on each day since I don't have anything specific to focus on... unless any of you have ideas of course. :-)

Confession

You know how the food part of the puzzle hasn't gone so well for me lately? Well I need to come clean with my latest adventure. I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting yesterday morning.

I wasn't going to write about it here. In fact, besides my Mom and Andy, I wasn't going to tell anyone because for whatever reason, I am super embarrassed about it. Why? I'm not sure... I guess partly because I don't have a major weight problem so I was worried people there would think, "Why is she here?" and also because people in the rest of the world probably look at me and think I look like a normal person so I probably have a normal relationship with food. Well... you all already know that I struggle with what I eat, and I really have tried to be very open and honest while writing this blog. So. There it is. I'm on day two of Weight Watchers.

Here's what happened at the meeting:

The meeting was different from what I expected. For starters there were a LOT of people there. They ranged from their 20s to probably their 70s. There were some pretty overweight people, but there was also a lady that was really tiny and ripped, and honestly everyone else looked... pretty normal. It just goes to show you just never know what people are dealing with. There were some men, but it was mostly women - and these women were feisty! They had no problem speaking up, making jokes, etc. I was honestly expecting it to be a bunch of sad people (I probably thought that just because that's how I was feeling) but it was the exact opposite. That was one confident crowd. :-)

When you first get there, you weigh. I have admittedly gained back almost everything I lost while training for my marathon (I know that's disgusting because it's only been what... two weeks?). In an effort to be really transparent, I'll just come out with it. My starting weight with Weight Watchers was 169.8. Now of course I was wearing clothes so I'd like to think maybe it's a teensy tiny bit less. ;-) I'm going to try really hard not to weigh myself again until the next meeting. I think taking a break from my scale at home might be the best thing to come from this entire experience. We'll see if I can do it - you all know I'm addicted to the scale. Once I had my weight I was given how many points I'm allowed to eat each day. In Weight Watchers, every food is given a points value. The healthier the food, the lower the points (that's an overly simplified definition) - so no foods are off limits, it just makes you think twice to decide whether or not you're willing to spend all of your points on a piece of chocolate cake. Makes sense... The thing I'm most interested about with this program is that in addition to the points you get each day, you get 49 extra points each week - so if you want ice cream every night, you can divvy the extra points up over the course of the week, or if you want to go out to dinner or to a party, you can use those extra points for that.... basically the extra points teach you how to indulge in moderation, something I am TERRIBLE at doing.

Ok back to the meeting. After weighing in, the meeting starts. The meetings are short so honestly not a lot is covered. The leader started by asking if anyone had tried any new foods this week - some woman had spaghetti squash. Boring... I can't think of many foods I haven't tried (except tuna, haha), but it actually turned into an interesting conversation because people started talking about different ways they prepare it, different recipes they use it in... I actually got a few good ideas. Then the focus shifted to activity and she reminded everyone that going to the gym every day doesn't make you an active person - it makes you active for an hour of your day. Good point. In the grand scheme of things I spend the majority of my day sitting at a desk, so I should focus on ways to move more when I'm not specifically exercising. Not rocket science, but it was a good point. And finally she talked about choices. She suggested if there is a food you can't go without, don't. Plan to have that food and then figure out how many points you have left to work with for the rest of your day. Seems simple, but I've never thought of it that way before. Usually I'd be like... ok I'm being good... no more peanut butter. But now I can say, you know... I really want peanut butter. Then I can have it. And then it just means maybe having my sandwich with only one piece of bread, or making some other sort of compromise that really doesn't bother me all that much. Oh and speaking of planning to have certain foods, she also recommended that we plan our dinner the night before - otherwise if we wait to figure out what we're having for dinner after work, well it's a lot more likely to go downhill. Good point!

Here are my thoughts so far:

It's kind of a hassle to look up the points values of each food, but I'm sure I will memorize them quickly, just like I've memorized the calories in most foods. Fruits and vegetables have zero points. Yesterday afternoon I had some grapes, and it was so nice to just eat them and not worry about how many grapes/calories I was eating. Same with a smoothie I made for breakfast this morning. I measured the yogurt and milk, but when it was time to add frozen berries, I just got to dump them in without measuring! And it was a lot easier to make a salad for lunch today because I didn't have to weigh my lettuce to know if I was having 7 calories of lettuce or 12 calories of lettuce (I told you I have issues...). Of course, each time I've had a fruit or vegetable willy nilly, I do wonder... is this really going to work? It's hard to give up control, but I'll know next week when I weigh-in if it's working or not. Besides - eating fruits and vegetables willy nilly is a lot healthier than randomly eating handfuls of cereal and scoops of peanut butter!

In closing - I promise not to turn my blog into a Weight Watchers adventures blog. But I wanted to let you all know what I'm up to, and I'll certainly highlight interesting things I learn. And hopefully report back a happy weigh-in next week too. :-)

Pump You Up

New fitness adventure #2:

"I am Hans." "Und I am Franz." "Und ve just vant to pump... (clap) ...YOU UP!"

PARTNER PERSONAL TRAINING WITH SARAH!!! Sarah had this genius idea just before my marathon, which was great because I knew I'd have something to look forward to once the race was over. We had our first session with Vinny on Friday morning and spent the majority of the time using the TRX straps - I was very excited because even though I've only used them twice before, I think they are really "fun." Our session was an hour long, and it was both fun and very challenging - I'm glad we are doing it, especially since I am not one to do strength training on my own... ever.

Well, now it is Saturday, and I can honestly say that Vinny managed to destroy every muscle in my body, haha. I knew I was in trouble last night when I woke up at 3:00am - I tried to roll over in bed, and my sore muscles woke me up! You know you're in trouble when it hurts to sleep... Anyway, throughout the day, I've felt relatively crippled. I thought once the marathon was over those feelings would go away! Wrong. This is a different kind of soreness though. It's a good feeling because it means I definitely did something, but it's also more of a total body soreness which makes everyday activities more of a hassle. It shouldn't hurt to put a shirt on, lol.

This week definitely restored my faith that exercise-life is not over now that my marathon has ended. I've had fun doing zumba and actually being able to jump around for a change while in class (since my knee hasn't been hurting), it was fun to do the elliptical and stair machine again, and then boxing and personal training are totally new and very rewarding in their own way. I still haven't gone for a run outside since the race and I do miss it. I was hoping to go tomorrow, but I'll have to see how sore I am when I wake up in the morning!

So recap for this week - exercise: 10 points. food: -1,000 points. I've put half of the puzzle back together - it's time to work on the other half. Which I've said a few times now... so I really need to do it!