The World According to Jennyfur

Friday is weigh in day and I’m not expecting to have shed any pounds as of yet, henceforth why I am posting the weekly recap tonight.  I did pretty well at sticking to my 24 points per day, but did burn through all 35 of my bonus points, plus a few activity points. That said, I managed to accumulate 40.5 fitness points. I think I was correct in correlating the increase in appetite to the increase in activity levels.

I’ve been diligently tracking my activity and I am on par to walk about 100 miles this month, which is about equivalent of walking from Philadelphia to New York City.  I wish I had more time to do yoga, but I fit it in when I can.

All in all, I think I did fairly well on my points consumption considering we went out to eat more often than not.

September marks my one year mark on living as a pescetarian. I can’t say I’ve missed eating meat at all. Plus it makes living with a vegetarian much easier to deal with in meal planning and shopping.

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.

I have no idea what is going on with my weight. I checked in a month or so ago and had dropped 10 pounds, I checked in last week only to discover that I gained 20 pounds. WTF? I’m more active than I have ever been. I’m walking upwards of 20+ miles a week now, whereas maybe I’d get in a mile a day at best.

I’m more active in general. I haven’t yet worked into a regular fitness routine beyond wallking all the time. It seems like every time I do something comes up preventing me from working out regularly. I exercise when I can. Something is better than nothing. I don’t physically feel like I’ve lost or gained weight. I feel a little thicker around the waist, but it seems like I just lost a little muscle mass from not doing as much yoga. My legs are awesome and muscular, but I don’t think that would account for a 20 pound weight spike. I like the cardio workout I get from walking, but I am starting to wonder if the calorie burn increases my appetite too much and then as a consequence I’m overeating.

In any case, I’m going to go back on Weight Watchers to see if I can sort out the details and balance my diet better. I know for awhile I was drinking more alcohol, but I’ve tapered that down for the past couple weeks.

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.

Change can occur over time and sometimes you just wake up and the change is there waiting for you to notice it.

Last Friday, I began a new journey on the road to health and well being, I decided to give up eating red meat, pork and poultry and to become a pescetarian (a vegetarian who eats only fish/seafood) or more aptly put a post-meat consumer. Now seems as good of a time as any to make the transition seeing as my dietary habits have changed remarkably over the past year. I’ve gotten away from so many bad food choices and my palate has changed so much since then.

I’ve given up red meat and pork before. I gave up meat in the mid-90s after getting ill every time I ate it. I did fairly well only consuming poultry and fish for awhile. Eventually, an Italian hoagie called my name and I gave in to temptation. Seeing as I have spent almost a decade living with my vegetarian husband, I never got into the habit of overindulging in meat. Sure, I loved my steaks, bacon and whatnot… but it didn’t bother me one bit to brew up a delicious pot of vegetarian chili or to use veggie substitutes in lieu of meat in other dishes.

I’ve always been in an ethical conundrum when it comes to meat consumption.  Its gotten harder and harder to balance my feelings about factory farming and animal cruelty versus my love of meat. I could justify it in perhaps if I could be guaranteed that any meat I consume was not born of mass produced horror and cruelty via the factory farming industrial complex. In this day and age, one cannot be guaranteed of this and many places that claim things like “free range” and “humane slaughter practices” are often guilty of absolutely horrible shit too.

Amongst friends, we’ve had many conversations about knowing and understanding in no uncertain terms “where your meat comes from”. While I would like to remain woefully ignorant and keep on believing it grows on meat trees in neatly cellophane wrapped packages… its just not the case.  I know and understand and just cannot make excuses for myself anymore. I have no problems with other peoples habits, but I think we should all be knowledgeable to our impact on the world around us.  I’ve never really been adventurous about straying beyond the traditional mainstays of beef, pork,  poultry, fish and seafood. I’m sure bunnies and duckies are tasty, but I would never eat something that I would coo over and want to keep as a pet.

Why am I continuing to eat fish, seafood, eggs and dairy? I’ve learned that I process change better over time and can be overwhelmed by too many changes at once. I feel slightly less guilty about eating fish and seafood than I do about mammals.  Factory farming of dairy and eggs is also problematic and I am researching alternatives to it. I actually discovered that Veggie Slices soy-based American cheese is quite good actually. I was expecting it to be horrid and was pleasantly surprised. I’m willing to revisit soy milk. I guess more to the point, I am trying not to delve directly into the vegan extreme. Not that I have a problem with veganism, I think transitioning that quickly would spell out an easy counce bounce back to being a carnivore. As a tried and true Gemini, I often tend towards the “all or nothing” mode of thinking. Some times you have to find the middle ground, which for me is some uncharted territory or mythological place like Atlantis.

Over the past week I started asking myself questions…. do I actually like meat? or do I just eat it because I eat meat and that is what meat eaters do?

Chicken and Turkey are so mild in taste and texture that you can pretty much make anything resemble it.  If I get a hankering for something prepared like that I am perfectly fine using any type of soy, seitan or other style of meat substitute. I can’t say I’ve ever craved Turkey or Chicken. Its just something I ate because I ate meat and things sometimes come made with chicken in them or I bought chicken for variety because that is what you do when you go to the grocery store, you buy meat, poultry and fish.

Pork products…. well now there is a loaded and problematic category. When I think of pork, I tend to think that I don’t like it all that much. I can do the occasional pork chop marinated in honey Dijon sauce, but lately the taste and smell has been grossing me out.  I will say though that losing bacon and lunch meat is tragic, but I’ll live… hopefully. To be fair, the last time I gave up meat and pork, it was an Italian Hoagie that lured me back. This was before there was a decent variety of vegetarian products. I still remember to this day the first time we made tofu hot dogs at my aunt and uncles house, maybe in the late 80s. They were so gross… the dog wouldn’t even eat them…. and dogs eat their own poo!!!

I will mourn the loss of a good steak like the tragic death of a good friend. Other than that I’ve already gotten so far away from using ground beef that it doesn’t really bother me beyond that. I have had the same ground beef in the freezer all year and couldn’t tell you the last time I actually used it at home. Since, I’ve been on Weight Watchers, I’ve probably had maybe 3-4 cheeseburgers this calendar year and am perfectly fine tossing a veggie burger into the mix.

I’m curious to see how this goes… if I stick with it… progress further into vegetarianism… regress to meat eating… or find some happy medium. I’m excited to learn new cooking techniques and recipes. I’m excited to not have to cook two separate dinners every night or fend for myself while my husband eats a plate of veggie sausage. I thrive on change, no matter how scary it is… wish me luck!

Once again my weight is fluctuating. Fridays, weight has  me down to 162, with fluctuations up to 164 over the weekend. I’m getting close to the 40 pounds lost milestone.  One of the things that I have come to realize is that my metabolism has changed. This is why I am losing weight when I am on the Weight Watchers Maintenance Plan. I still haven’t found the balance of daily points and exercise. I don’t mind losing a few more pounds and what not, but I would like to eventually level out a bit. When I started on the maintenance plan. I’d lose many a pound a month, now I’m losing upwards of three a month.

I feel like I’ve been on a bit of a fitness slump. I’m probably being too hard on myself, seeing as its not like I haven’t been working out at all. I’ve just not been working out every single day. This is also not to say that I am wholly inactive either. I tend to ebb and flow through the cycles of the month. Most of the time, I stick to my daily points with small overages that come out of my flex points. At least one week a month, I want to eat everything in sight that isn’t nailed down, which is usually followed by a week of having a low appetite. My daily fitness follows suit, normally I work out to some extent every day, then I go through some doldrums and either decrease the duration of the work out or don’t work out at all. I guess in the grand scheme of things 20 minutes of exercise is better than nothing.

In better news, I had to buy a dress for my sister-in-laws wedding at the end of the month, much to my shock, I now fit into a Size 10 or Medium sized dress without effort. I can’t remember the last time I was a size 10. I almost always was a size 12 and after the weight gain a size 14. It is definitely a nice feeling knowing that I can now buy clothing pretty much anywhere and have it fit. I was pretty limited for awhile since most places carry very little about a size 12. Suffice it to say, I can’t wait to go jeans shopping this fall since my size 14s and 12s will no longer fit… in a good way.

I’ve started weighing myself daily, more out of curiosity than obsessiveness, to see what my actual weight range is over the course of a week. My average on the high side is 165, while my low is 163. I seem to be skipping over 164 altogether. Its just fascinating to me, I’ve noticed my weight stays around the high for a few weeks then drops to the lower weight and stays there for a few weeks and so on and so forth.

I’ve been having an off week mood and exercise wise since last week. I’ve just been feeling really run down and unmotivated and consequently while I still try to fit in something every day I am not working out as much. I’ve been doing 20 minute yin yoga workouts and a couple other workouts as well. I really need to get back on the proverbial horse. I don’t want to fall into old patterns. I probably should be a little more lenient on myself. I’ve also taken a few more classes at Dhyana Yoga, so I should give myself credit where credit is due there. I took a wonderful Kundalini Yoga class. I think the best way I can describe kundalini yoga is “yoga for the soul”. I’m going to try and check out one of there yin vinyasa classes this week.

Despite my fitness malaise,  I finished up the Abs & Core workshop at Dhyana as well, which was awesome. Well, save for my complete failure at handstands and headstands. I’ve noticed on key thing through doing yoga, since I dropped 35 pounds this year, my center of gravity is off as is my balance and it varies from side to side. Its getting a little better over time, but I still have a way to go. I remember the first few times I did Warrior 1 or Triangle and toppling over or having to hold on to something. Now, I can do those poses without incident. The headstand/handstand scenario perplexes me. I used to do this stuff all the time when I was younger. Heck, I even took a couple of years of gymnastics before I got too tall to do it. I get to a certain point and then my mind and body freak out in the OMG YOU ARE GOING TO DIE if you do this kind of way. On the flipside, no pun intended, I can do backbends just fine, even with having a consistent strain in my lower/middle back.

I managed to drop two pounds this week. I had been hovering in around 167 for awhile and then was steady at 166 all week, then dropped to 165. I find it kind of funny since I am on the Weight Watcher’s maintenance plan that when I lose weight, I get these funny little messages saying things like: on the maintanence plan your weight should at best fluctuate two pounds in either direction of your target weight. If you are continuing to lose weight try using ALL of your daily points, your 35 flex points and activity points.  I actually balked at the idea of having to actually consume all those extra points during a week. I’ve never depleted the full 35 flex points, let alone delve into the 40+ activity points I get per week.

I’m actually quite happy losing  1-2 pounds a month even while on the maintenance plan. I’d like to maybe get down another 10 pounds, which would put me at the mid-range of the healthy weight range for my height (5’9″), which is 135-169. I’d like to be somewhere in the middle. In other news, my BMI (Body Mass Index) dropped from 25 to 24 since I lost an additional few pounds. I’m happy to have purchased and totally rocking out in two medium size t-shirts that fit nicely.

This week has been a little off as far as my exercise routine goes, mostly due to monthly girl problems… but I had the second part of the Abs & Core yoga workshop that I’ve been taking at Dhyana Yoga in West Philly.  I still have no idea how people do hot yoga or bikram. It was 85 degrees in the room and I sweat through every layer of clothing and then some. It has been a challenging class and a lot of fun.

Since I last posted, I am holding steady around 166-167, which is fantastic considering that I have been overindulging a bit, though to be fair, my idea of overindulging has drastically changed. My worst day I rounded out at about 40 points on the Weight Watcher’s method versus my normal 26. Granted, I have an extra 35 points a week for splurging that even at my worst I never burn through let alone the 30-40+ activity points I get through working out. I was playing around with the limits since I had been losing weight while on maintenance, which suggested that something was out of balance. I don’t want to revert to any bad habits, but my appetite has been a little more increased over the past couple of weeks. I think this is probably due to slacking on taking my daily vitamin regiment, which I am trying to get back into the habit of doing. When it comes to vitamins, I do really good for a few months and then slack for a few weeks.

Since my last fitness related post, I am happy to report that I have started taking some yoga classes at Dhyana Yoga (They have locations in Olde City, Center City and West Philly). Much to my own surprise I am really loving the classes. I’ve taken a couple different ones: All Levels Vinyasa, Vinyasa 101, All Levels Kundalini and am taking a 3 week workshop for Abs & Core strengthening. Its funny I think the All Levels Vinyasa was much easier than the Vinyasa 101 class. I still wanna try out their Yin Yoga classes and their Jivamukti ones. The Jivamukti classes are at odd hours that don’t really work well with my schedule, one is on Sunday mornings and one is during the week, but fairly late in the evening.

I’ve also picked up a couple new DVD’s and a book as well. I am so totally loving Shiva Rea’s Yoga Trance Dance DVD. Its so much fun, as it combines free form dance, some kundalini yoga exercises and some more fluid dance like yoga asanas. I always laugh when I’m doing dance workouts because I turn everything into variations of good ole’ goth dances, either swishy or stompy. I guess old habits do really die hard. The segments are much shorter than the Liquid Flow DVD I have of hers and much more suitable for beginners. I really like her DVDs alot. I got an Abs & Core one in the mail from Netflix that I am looking forwards to checking out.

I’ve been exploring the Jivamukti Yoga method created by David Life and Sharon Gannon. I picked up the book and their DVD Transform Yourself with Jivamukti Yoga. The workout is challenging as it includes some amount of backbends, shoulder stands and headstands. I can do backbends pretty well, but my lower/middle back has been hurting for the past couple of weeks so I can’t sustain it too long. It only really hurts when I do things like wheel, cobra or upward facing dog, so I have to modify them a little bit. I’m not a fan of shoulder stands for two reasons, one I end up drowning in my own boobs and two I have a lot of loose skin on my abdomen from losing weight (hence the abs & core focusing lately). I did learn a modification at one of the vinyasa classes I took recently, which helps immensely, by putting a yoga block under the base of your spine. When it comes to headstands, I have to get over the fear of breaking my neck and also the same issues from the shoulder stands apply. There are a couple modifications that I am comfortable doing in the mean time. In any case, I really like Jivamukti Yoga. I’m still reading the book, so far its been focusing on some historic yoga information as well as spiritual, karmic and ethical focuses in ones path towards enlightenment.