The World According to Jennyfur

I decided to re-join Weight Watchers online plan and program on Friday to track my food intake versus activity.  Weekends aren’t the best for deciphering medians and averages, but I’m starting to see some patterns emerge.  Currently, I need to be at about 24 points per day to lose the 20 pounds I gained. I’m averaging anywhere between 29 and 35, which isn’t terrible all things considered, but I still could be more diligent.  I’ve burned through  25 of my 35 bonus points already, but have also earned 20 activity points already since Friday from walking upwards of 25 miles a week and from doing yoga.  At least, there is some balance there and I can contribute the increased food intake to increased activity levels.

One would think though that all this would balance out in the end so I’m not sure where the 20 pounds came from. I am cutting down my alcohol consumption to a minumum. I was imbibing more than I usually do. I’m a pretty light drinker in general, but cutting out a drink or two a night should help.  If I cut out the wine on Saturday and the mimosa on Sunday, I’d have an extra 4 points at least.

The only area that I can see or feel where I’ve gained weight is around the abdomen, bust and upper arms. My face doesn’t look any fuller. My legs are shapely and muscular. My hips and butt seem fine as well since my size 10 pants/shorts still fit fine. I’m more sensitive to the weight gain around my waist and overly self-conscious about it too.

I discovered that Whole Foods carries a brand of soda made with stevia as opposed to aspartame and high fructose corn syrup. I need to check it out. I forget the name. though I know it was -Evia in it somewhere. The black cherry was quite good.

Here’s to hoping this 20 pounds finds a new home preferably not attached to my body sooner rather than later.

Sometimes I think I am my own worst critic and that I tend to guilt trip myself over minuscule offenses. I guess this is probably a good thing and a bad thing.  I’ve been feeling guilty that I haven’t really either had the time to work out or the impetus to work out very much this week. Its been off and on like this since November.  Its not to say that I’ve been hibernating in a cave by any means. I’ve just wavered from sticking to a 20-90 minute daily workout.

I made it out to an Align & Flow yoga class on Tuesday at Dhyana Yoga in Olde City.  I got my usual daily walking quote in Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I was under the weather on Thursday so I took a sick day for my yearly internal server maintenance. My body demanded to be taken offline for 24  hours and I obeyed. This week promises to be a little more enterprising. I have the potential to take yoga classes Wednesday and Thursday, in addition to the arm balance clinic I signed up for at the Mainline Dhyana Yoga.

In comparison to my activity levels prior to  January 2009, even at my most epic slacking these days, I am still leaps and bounds more active than I was back then. I just end up feeling guilty when I am not constantly pushing myself. I wasn’t feeling overly energetic this evening, but managed to squeeze out an hour long yin yoga / restorative yoga session at home. I think I needed it more mentally than physically, but that is one of the great thing about yoga — heals the body, mind and spirit and depending on your needs you can focus on the area most deficient.

I guess I wouldn’t feel so bad with the fluctuations in my fitness regime had my weight and appetite not also been in flux. My weight has been fluctuating around for the past few weeks. I’ve gone anywhere from 157 to 165. I weigh myself daily and its up and down and up and down. My appetite has been elevated lately, but I think that is because of the time of year and that it is cold. I’m trying to reign it in a little. I adjusted my Weight Watcher’s maintenance points down to 25 from 26 since I was burning through most of my flex points for the week, at least this will hopefully keep me in line and I will level out back around 160.

Following up to my last blog post about the problems I had been having with my hips… I am happy to report that those issues have seemingly resolved a bit. I found the perfect hip strengthening DVD: Yoga Link: Hip Helpers with Jill Miller. I’m trying to schedule in the practice once or twice a week since it takes time to strengthen the hips. The constant nagging pain has been gone for a couple weeks now.

I’m closing in on the one year mark of my journey into health, fitness and vegetarianism. I started Weight Watchers a week after New Years. Its been an interesting journey to say the least — one which I wish I had embarked on much much sooner.

The journey has not come without its challenges. Modifying my diet and cutting out all meats except for fish and seafood were the easy part. I’ve never once this year felt deprived of the foods I love and enjoy. I don’t feel like I am dieting to the point of not enjoying eating. All that said I’ve managed to make it through the hardest time of the year when it comes to dieting — the dreaded holidays.  My weight has been relatively stable fluctuating throughout the low 160′s.

The majority of my challenges are overcoming my physical limitations and recovering from the damage that being overweight caused to my physical being. I’ve had to spend a lot of time focusing on strengthening target areas. When I first started doing yoga I had to build up my upper body and arm strength because even the simplest of poses left me quavering upon collapse.  Those areas leveled out over time and then I had to work on building up my core muscles, which has been a work in progress. Since I carried a lot of my weight in my abdomen, it has been very hard tightening up the loose skin and rebuilding muscle mass. This also started to help improving my balance issues. I’ve always been somewhat flexible and that wasn’t ever an issue — it all comes down to strength and balance.

My biggest physical issue to date is in my hips — while they are flexible they lack strength, which contributes to balance issues among other things. Basically, the problem I am having is that the bones in my hip joints seem to be grinding together, which is terribly uncomfortable. It used to only bother me when I was working out specifically doing hip flexibility exercises, but it has gotten worse over the past month. I probably am going to make an appointment with an orthopaedist who specializes in sports medicine. I would never consider myself an athelete, but I want to make sure that doing yoga is not aggravating the problem more.

I realized recently that my inability to do yoga inversions (headstands, handstands and forearm balances) stems from these hip issues. I understand the mechanism of the poses and how to do them — its just getting my hips to work right and to do the right things. Hopefully, like the other physical issues I’ve had that this will resolve itself over time.

Aside from the hip issues, I feel great — I feel healthy — I feel younger and I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since highschool. I do have my regrets. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to address these issues. I wish I had the courage to change sooner than later. The moral of the story is that its never too late to start the journey.

Post Meat Consumption Update
I’m two weeks into pescetarian mode and haven’t run into any major obstacles yet. Although, I need to rethink my work lunch strategy, since going pescetarian it eliminated probably about 90% of the frozen lunch/packaged crap options since each brand has a very small amount of vegetarian/fish/seafood options. I’m not saddened to be leaning away from that stuff since even though its low calorie and low fat its still processed to hell and back and loaded down with sugar and sodium. I defaulted to the pre-packaged option since I lack any preparatory wherewithal in the morning hours to make something… heck sometimes I barely have the time to throw a diet soda, frozen lunch, yogurt & muffin into a bag and go. I also am terrible with leftovers so I rarely make anything beyond the meal at hand. Although, I did whip up a pot of vegetarian chili over the weekend, which should be good for a month or so.

I think I need to start planning in advance, which is a complete contradiction to my mood based decisions. If I am not in the mood to eat something no matter how much I love it, it will be a wholly unsatisfying meal. I usually try to balance out my meals into categories. I rarely will sit down and just eat a large quantity of one thing. Trying to pre-plan a significant portion of those options is mind boggling to me.

• Breakfast – usually a diet soda, tea, Weight Watchers muffin, or English Muffin with egg, cheese & vegetarian Canadian Bacon or any kind of cereal or granola, meal bar. I really don’t stray too far beyond those basics.
• Lunch – a beverage (water, soda etc), a main lunch item (sandwich, frozen thing, packaged thing), some sort of side dish, which can vary in combination’s of fruit, yogurt, veggies, cottage cheese and/or occasionally a starch item and some sort of dessert (perhaps a piece of dark chocolate, any of the Weight Watchers desserts, fruit leather, 100 calorie snack packs etc)
• Dinner – a beverage, main dish, side dish(es) and dessert
• Snack – varies, but usually defaults to popcorn, nuts, sorbet, Weight Watchers products, or cereal

Otherwise, the conversion is going well, I haven’t had any major meat cravings or longings. If anything, it is forcing me not to be a lazy ass in the kitchen and to be more creative with my options.

Abs & Core Galore
Seeing as over the course of 2009 that I have lost nearly 40 pounds and have gotten into pretty darned good shape for the first time in my life, my abs & core sorely need more attention. I carried the bulk of my weight from hips to tits. When I lost that weight I ended up with a lot of loose skin and poorly developed abs/core muscles. Looks can be deceiving when I am standing upright I have a relatively flat belly, but as soon as I lean forward the skin just hangs there. Think about it this way try on your regular bra size, then try one on that is a few cup sizes too big, the same principle applies to skin elasticity. Its very common to have to redevelop more extensively certain problem areas. My biggest complaints are the stretch marks on my chest, hips and thighs;  and the loose skin around my waist and chest. All are easily correctable if you have the means to afford plastic surgery. Otherwise, its a daily regiment of skin firming lotion, stretch mark lotion and toning exercises to target those problem areas.

I picked up a copy of Prevention’s Flat Abs special magazine. It is still on the shelves in most of the local supermarkets and booksellers I have seen in the area. I highly recommend it, more for the workouts than anything else. I’ve been doing 3-4 of the workout segments on most nights coupled with some cool down yoga poses and have really been enjoying the workouts. I highly recommend, whether you pick up this guide or not to invest in a stability ball. I picked up one from ACE, which is fine, but the workout DVD it came with was horrible. I swear it looked like it was filmed on a crappy home video camera in 1988 and was transferred poorly to dvd and as if it had been filmed in the lobby of some office. The exercises were pretty basic and some where just stupid… like I really don’t see how dribbling a stability ball does anything other than making you look silly, but I digress.  Otherwise the stability ball is fine.  I’m trying out some various stability ball work out dvd’s.  Balance Ball: Core Cross Train is pretty decent. It has three 20 minute workout segments focusing on upper body, lower body and back/abs. In general, I like the fitness and yoga dvds under Gaiam and Acacia the best.

In one of the recent issues of Yoga Journal, they had a feature on abs & core yoga with a series of  maybe 10 poses for increasing core strength. As much as I love yoga,  its not as core developing as pilates and other workouts. There are some poses that are a fusion of yoga, pilates and other core strengthening exercises. I usually do the sequence of poses from the article in addition to the core work from the Flat Abs workouts.

The main reason I have been focusing on so much core work for the past couple weeks is, not only for physical purposes, but my lack of core strength impacts my yoga practice in terms of balance for certain standing poses and doing any sort of inversions (headstands, handstands, forearm balance) Although, I did manage a forearm balance by leaning off the side of the bed since I have a hard time hoisting my lower half upwards. Even after a couple weeks, my balance has improved dramatically, I can stand effortlessly in Tree pose without looking as if there was a tornado approaching.  I can even glide effortlessly into Warrior 3 and Half Moon Pose and other standing leg balances.  I still have a way to go before my core is strong enough to attempt the full inversions properly. I have the arm & upper body strength and the leg strength, but in between is lacking.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for awhile…. On July 11, 2009 in Philadelphia, a celebration took place cleverly called a “Flesh Mob for Fat Liberation” to promote fat acceptance to celebrate persons who are overweight or obese. At least the event promoted some physical activity i.e. running up the art museum steps ala Rocky and a post-BBQ dance party. I have to say at the very least I am conflicted about how I feel about celebrating being fat and/or obese. I agree with the basic mission of the event and that yes, fat people are people too, who deserve to be loved, accepted and whatnot. I would never advocate body dysmorphia and do think that we should accept our bodies and more importantly who we are as individuals.

I am conflicted about this as someone who has struggled with their weight for the better part of their teen and adult life. I’ve gone from both ends of the spectrum to thinking I was grossly overweight at 128 pounds to being grossly overweight pushing 220 pounds and being okay with the fatty & happy lifestyle.  I certainly was much healthier when I was within the weight range for my height and that overlaps anything from 135 to 169, so there are 34 pounds of leeway depending on other factors. As I grew more and more overweight, I became increasingly unhealthy as a result. Not to mention, when I was at my heaviest having to wear a back brace most of the time because I was in constant pain from carrying around so much extra weight on my torso.

Back to the event, I’ve been tracking some of the conversations happening in response to this event and some of the photographs taken at the event. I find the commentary on both sides to be enlightening. I think people should be happy with who they are as people and accepted as such, but always be working towards improving themselves because let’s face it — no one is perfect and should live in a constant state of status quo.

One of the arguments I’ve seen come up time and time again is that overweight & obese people are a marginalized  minority and the media is constantly shoving thin/skinny is better mantras down our throat. Really? Statistics show by 2015 that 75% of Americans will be overweight. So how marginalized is 75% of the population of this country? Wait, I’m not great with math and numbers, but I think that when something is at 75% that signifies it being in the majority. That remaining 25% minority is comprised of the people who are either within a healthy weight range for their height and lifestyle and the probably even smaller minority of people who are underweight, my guess there is that would be all those size 2 super models and actresses in Hollywood, meth addicts, coke head hipsters and extremely improverished persons.  So, perhaps the healthy and fit are the marginalized ones here? I’m curious, as always, to see how well a “thin pride” event would  go over.

Obesity related problems costs the health care system tens of billions of dollars a year and as Diabetes rapidly approaches pandemic levels. Unless, you are genetically predisposed towards it, its treatable and preventable with diet and exercise. I worked in health care for a few years back in the late 1990s and have seen how devastating diabetes can be on the human body. I have to ask will these people be celebrating their fat pride when they have to have their toes/feet/legs amputated? when they get wounds that won’t heal? when their flesh rots away from ulcers? and so on and so forth. I’ve seen it all in various degrees. This is the reality of the situation that cannot be ignored. The last point in contention related to the above and event in general, is that people seem to be offended by the “fat isn’t healthy” argument as if it shouldn’t be mentioned at all. What are the health benefits of being overweight or obese? I don’t know of any offhand, if you do please enlighten me. Isn’t not mentioning just how unhealthy our nation is part of the problem?

Personally, I don’t want to live in fear and I do want to enjoy life. I am a firm believer in moderation and balance. If you live every day in excess, it is going to take a toll on you throughout the course of your life.  Since I have lost 35 pounds since January, I have become a happier person, not because I am thinner, but because I am healthier.

Hopefully I haven’t offended anyone as that is not my intention. I am on a journey through various forms of thought on health and fitness since it is a whole new area of exploration for me.

I’ve been chronicling my health and fitness journey since January 2009 in random places mostly in Livejournal and Facebook and decided to compile all the information here on my blog since both Facebook and Livejournal require login/password and friending in order to access the information I have posted on my journey. I have to say, it was an interesting process of backlogging all of my posts over the past six months and seeing the progress clearly laid out in front of me.

Stay tuned for more updates. I have a couple of new posts in the works, which hopefully I will be able to crank out in the next few days. You can add the health & fitness blog feed to your Google Reader or RSS

I think my sinus infection is *finally* disepating, which is a good thing seeing as I just finished up the antibiotics for it. I really need to practice the various methods of deep breathing associated with yoga. Its hard to do when you can’t breathe through your nose.

I’m kicking ass at sticking to a daily exercise regiment of varying formats. I’ve been going strong on doing yoga daily. Sometimes I do an entire workout, other times I practice poses and transitions and test out new things. I’m more flexible than I think I am, but my balance is complete shit, but only for standing poses, surprisingly backbends and inversions are fine. I almost fell into the eliptical machine during a standing variation of sun salutation b switching between warrior poses and triangle side bend things. I’ve also been sticking to weight training more so than the elliptical machine, though I still use it from time to time. I am really trying to build my upper body and upper arm strength, since that is the other area I am lacking beyond balance. At least my transition to and from plank to downward facing dog are getting better, however my transition from plank to chaturanga to upward facing dog is still awful. I never was able to do push ups, gravity (read: boobs) and poor upper body and arm strength always worked against me. I get to a certain point and then belly flop on the floor and trip over my own feet in the process. I’m sure the cats find it endlessly amusing.

I’ve been incredibly snacky for the past two days for no apparent reason. I’m still doing fine on the diet. I just am curious as to why one day I am fine and the next day I want to eat constantly.