Thanksgiving pic

Oh, here's the most recent pic of me. Didn't come out great. It was taken after Thanksgiving dinner. That's coffee in one hand, and a forkful of cake in the other. :) This was just a day or two after I noticed my huge gain.



2005 pic

Well, TOM's in town so I will have to take it easy during my workout today, which is okay because I was planning on that anyway. I'll just take a nice flat walk on the treadmill, do that stairmaster, and some weights.

Oh, I tried the spinning yesterday. Never again! That was EVIL!

Today's my last day at 24 Hour Fitness. I'm busy the next two days, so I won't get back to Curves until Friday. By then hopefully TOM will have subsided a bit. Then I have to ask about the contract. I *think* the bank draft in mid-January should be the last, provided I make sure they know not to draft my account after that. So that's two more drafts for a total of around $80. It would be cheaper to get out of the contract if I can.

Ok, it's been a full 2 days since restarting my diet and Dr. Atkins in his book says something about the body only being able to store a 2 day supply of gycogen (or is it glucose? I get them mixed up).

YMCA

Called the YMCA here - they have a pool and everything - and asked them their prices. Let's just say that I don't even have to go down to look; I'll defintely be joining 24 Hour Fitness. The "Y" was more than $20 a month more that 24 Hour, and way more than the max I'm willing to pay.

Thanksgiving week aftermath

I'm so unamused. Forget getting into the size 12 jeans; now my 14s are tight on me. Jeez louise I gotta do something. I'm getting serious about cutting the carbs this week, and will hopefully get rid of these cravings by this time next week, as well as loose the water weight I gained. I know I gained some fat, too. Jeez people, this is BAD!

14s tight again

I'm so unamused. Forget getting into the size 12 jeans; now my 14s are tight on me. Jeez louise I gotta do something. I'm getting serious about cutting the carbs this week, and will hopefully get rid of these cravings by this time next week, as well as loose the water weight I gained. I know I gained some fat, too. Jeez people, this is bad!

Decisions

Well, I called the YMCA today to find out their prices. That cost more than $20 more than 24 Hour Fitness, and about that same amount over the max I'm willing to pay. They really do look nice - pool, more classes than 24 Hour, etc. Oh well, the decision has been made for me. 24 Hour is the best club within my price range. I will be joining it.

I'm afraid to weigh myself tomorrow. Still don't know if I will or if I will wait until next week and give myself a chance to lose some of this water weight. I think I also gained a couple more pounds of fat and am probably around 180. After seeing 177 before Thanksgiving, I can't bear to see anything higher after two additional days of bingeing. *sigh*

Quick Update

Not spending a lot of time online from home. Been SO busy. I have a 13 day pass to 24 Hour Fitness and I have to get up extra early to make it there and have any time to work out. I can now run 2 miles without stopping! Curves has gotten me in really good shape. I want out because I'm just bored there, which is why I am looking at 24 Hour. I really do love it there. My Curves contract isn't up until mid-February; I don't yet know how that will play out. If I can't get out of my contract I may very well end up paying two memberships at once.

Making progress on my poems pages. I have all the poems up and am now just proofreading and fixing the html. I want it to be perfect.

Weight issues are no fun. I got down to 167 without clothes or shoes, then a gained a pound and a half out of nowhere. Then I binged for a day and a half and gained 9 pounds in 2 days! It must be water weight, but I know that once I do lose it, I'll lose less. I know I gained fat from all the binging (Monday-Tuesday), which was followed by Thanksgiving on Thursday. And tomorrow is the potluck at church - I'll just give in and eat the carbs - and then my high school reunion tomorrow night, where I will have no control over the food put in front of me. Sunday I will start over with very low levels of carbs, and get into ketosis. I finally got to 170 with clothes and shoes, and, as I promised myself, I'd start weighing in just lightweight workout clothes and socks once I got there. And now even wearing only that I'm up to 177! :(

Hope your Thanksgiving was good. I had to work, but Brad (on the shift before mine) and I had a big ol' feast. Very nice. :) And pure high-calorie carbs. :(

Thanksgiving

I like excercise. :) And I'm trying to get as much use out of my free pass as possible because I won't be able to actually join until at least mid-December, maybe later. So I'll be going back to Curves for at least a short time. I've been overdoing it a bit; my left ankle often hurt when I work out and I'm worried I might be pushing that body part harder than I should. The rest of me feels great and I need to burn calories right now anyway.

Promise...Friday I'll be good, and Sunday I will start over with very low carbs and get back into ketosis and hopefully lose some of this weight by this time next week. Promise, promise.

Today is a carb fest. Brad forgot the sweet potatoes, so I picked some canned ones up on my way to work - pure carbs. And the sparkling juice - pure carbs. And the cake. And the stuffing. And the cranberry. Shoot...all the traditional food is pure carbs!

Tomorrow will be lost, but today I've been VERY good. About 1800 calories and 25 carbs. (You can pat me on the head now.) That even includes two Atkins meal bars, and some veggies with butter and shrimp for dinner when I get home.

Oh crud...I have to cook the stuffing tonight. Not that I'm going to eat any tonight...I just didn't need one more thing to do.

At least I ran 2 miles today. FitDay doesn't seem to think that burns very many calories but what a rush it was! I am in such good shape. I haven't run two miles without stopping since...many many years ago. Well, I did stop once. My hand accidentally hit my Walkman in its little cubby on the treadmill. It fell, hit the treadmill, and went FLYING off the back. I had to stop the treadmill and retrieve it. Other than that, no stops and I went 4.4 mph.

I'm also trying to play with weights a little to increase muscle or at least stop losing it. I look so puny playing with these teeny weights with all these buff guys standing around me. I might go tomorrow before work...haven't decided. If I do I'll put the treadmill at the highest setting of 15% grade and walk as fast as I can. I need to train myself for hills. I love 24 Hour Fitness. Screw Curves. I'll just pay both memberships for a while if I have to. I'm in love!

Saturday is the church potluck and reunion. I'll try to behave but I've screwed up so much this week, what's one more day? Well, I'll behave at the reunion at least. No potatoes or rolls at dinner, and no dessert unless they can offer me something sugar-free, which I highly doubt. For church, I'll just eat sensibly. Sunday I will be back to the grind and BEHAVE! I need to pick up one of those pre-cooked chickens at Safeway. That'll help me keep my carbs down.

WTF?!

Well, I cheated for a day and a half and somehow gained 9 pounds! WTF?! I felt like I'd gained that much (jeans tight, etc.), but I didn't know it was humanly possibly to gain 9 pounds in just two days. And with tomorrow being Thanksgiving I'll probably gain another 4.5 pounds!

Now I'm up to 177. I'll be good today but a gain of 9 pounds is more than a little discouraging. I didn't even eat 9 pounds of food!

:(

Oh yeah, I went to 24 Hour Fitness today and ran 2 miles on the treadmill (4.4 mph), then walked 5 minutes at 2.5 mph to cool down, did 50 sit-ups, some light weights, and 15 minutes on the stairmaster.

170!

Today I hit 170 wearing the exact same clothes I did when I first weighed back in February. That's 41 pounds lost (assuming the first scale was set correctly)! Without clothes or shoes I was 167. I still have to stay reduced calorie/low carb until I don't bounce above 170, so I'll keep doing this until Thanksgiving, which will be my pig out day, then weigh and re-evaluate if I can have my reward pizza. I'll try to stay at or below 40g a day.

Covenant promises

This is something that's a natural outgrowth of being involved in two faiths and having dealings with more than one G/god.

Okay, as many of you are aware, in Wicca there is a certain point where you dedicate yourself to the gods. Not all traditions have this, but in my coven, you were first dedicated to the gods, then trained for a year, then initiated. In both of these rituals, I swore my allegiance to them.

Fast forward four years and I find myself dedicating myself to a new God, and (over time He made it clear I had to do this) leaving my former gods behind. Over the past 8 1/2 years I've followed Him, I've tried to struggle free, walk off, do my own thing, only to get drawn back, first gently, and if that doesn't work, with His clue-by-four.

I've come to the conclusion that asking Him into my life, whether I knew it or not, was making a covenant promise to Him. He takes the covenants He makes VERY seriously, and seems to think that I should take mine seriously, too.

But this is not just true of God, but seems to be true in all of the spiritual realms. From the day I came back to God, SHE has never let up on me. She also seems to think that I need to take my covenant promises to her seriously. (A promise to God trumps them all, but she doesn't care.)

Where am I going with this? I'm not sure I have a point, except perhaps that covenants are alive and well today and we best be careful when making covenants with things bigger than ourselves. Due to my past of making a covenant with two opposing forces, I feel like I will always be trapped in the middle, with both sides claiming they have rightful ownership of me.

Trust

Been thinking about it this weekend.

My journey with God has been one of learning to trust more than anything else. Due to past experiences, He was on the negative end of my trust scale. I knew that if I was to get to know Him at ALL, I would have to learn to trust Him more; this is when I did the visualizations in the spring of 1996. Those visualizations helped me move Him from negative to neutral and finally just the teeniest bit into the positive end.

That teeniest bit turned out to be all I needed to ask Him into my life and become a Christian. However, it also made for a very rocky relationship with Him at first as I hardly had any trust for this Being I'd just committed my life to. It's only really been this year that I have been able to make significant progress. Trust is earned, and it took time and experience for me to trust Him.

Nearing a size 12!

This morning I pulled out the size 12 jeans in my closet and tried them on again and they almost fit. Granted, these are the "relaxed" ones and are therefore looser than the "stretch" jeans. Last time I tried them on I had to suck my tummy in to get them buttoned. This time I hardly had to suck my tummy in at all. They are still tight, but I am getting there. Maybe I'll be able to wear these by the end of the year, and then I can work on getting into the stretch size 12s.

This will be short because I'm tired and need to go to bed. We all know how the election turned out, so there's no point rehashing that. We just need to remember to keep Bush in our prayers, and the Kerry family as John Kerry's wife deals with breast cancer.

Joan of Arcadia, take 3

Ok, I was told to keep the Kleenex handy and I scoffed...until I spent the last 15 minutes of the program crying. That was more emotional than last year's season finale, which didn't make me cry, though I came close. This one--I just cried and cried. I know at least one person hasn't seen it yet, so I don't want to give it away. But dang. Keep the Kleenex handy!

Looking for a health club

Looking for a new gym. 24 Hour Fitness is actually looking pretty affordable right now. I still have 3 months left at Curves, but I may sign up anyhow, pay both for one month, then freeze the gym membership. They said if I wait until February the price will go up. I'm just so gosh darn BORED and stuck for 3 more agonizing months.

Did a free workout at Alameda Athletic Club today. They are affordable, but 24 Hour Fitness wouldn't cost much more, and has a lot more stuff. For example, testing my BMR would be included when I sign up, and that is something I want to know. I will check them out next week and get a free 10 day pass to get a flavor for it.

Old journal entry

I've been going through all my old journals looking for poetry to type up and put on a poetry site I'm working on. Some of the stuff dates as far back as 1990, the first time I attempted to keep ANY kind of records. Well, along with all the old poetry I'm reading, I'm also reading some of my old entries. After wading through some of the older journals today (1992-1993), I had to pull out my Walkman and put some Christian music on. I just couldn't take anymore.
I remember being the girl I see in these pages, but I don't recognize her anymore. It hurts. I put myself through so much needless pain, and for what? I can't think of a single good thing I gained.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you something I wrote about Wicca and Christianity back in March and April of 1993, about 3 years before I actually became a Christian. It's so sad and I wish I could have changed the girl I see here. Alas, only time and God can make that sort of change in a person. I was 22 year old when this was written.

---

3/30/93 and 4/2/93

The Craft is, to me, more a religion than anything else. I like that it recognizes the feminine as well as the masculine. I really like worshipping the Lady and the Lord. They don't seem to be like the angry, jealous Christian God. They seem fun, like to party, and have a sense of humor. They seem more loving.

I like the magick in the Craft, too. It empowers me and makes me feel like I can have some control over circumstances. I feel like I can do something. I'm not completely helpless anymore. When I was a child I wanted to believe in magick; now I know it exists. The Craft is a fun, empowering religion. It has more to do with Life and the here and now than with the afterlife, like Christianity does. It has so far proven itself to me.

Why else does Wicca make sense to me? Well, don't you think the Lord and Lady like to party? Don't you think they want us to be happy This cannot be accomplished by abstinence from anything fun. Christianity's main problem is that pleasure is a sin. If it is, then why did God give us THC receptors in our brains, and verve ending on our backs and erogenous zones? No. They were put there for pleasure and, of course, procreation. The Lord and Lady want the race to survive and be happy. The reason we feel pleasure and have alcohol, pot, peyote, etc. is pleasure. And when we party, don't you think they join in or at least rejoice that we are happy? They do not want us to spend our time trying to control biological urges, spend our time trying not to think of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There is a part in the Charge of the Goddess that goes "All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals." This, to me, is the kind of deity I want to worship. Not one who is going to send me to hell for fulfilling biological needs and partying on Friday nights.

May the Lord and Lady truly bless me in all that I do. So mote it be!

Weighty Matters

As TOM is here I am at my low weight for the month. Dropped 2 1/2 pounds of water weight since last weigh-in and am at 170.5 today. Just a half pound away from my pre-Zoloft weight! I expect to bounce back up some next week, but perhaps when TOM comes next month, the resulting gain won't put me above 170. At any rate, I'm still at least 6 weeks away from that pizza I promised myself. (I have to not just get to 170, but when I gain I can't go above 170.) Official weigh-in will be tomorrow. Oh yeah, that makes 40 pounds lost for me! :)

Got my ring, bracelet, and necklace back today. The ring is a size 7 1/4 and fits quite snug. Hopefully if I lose a little more it won't be quite so snug. We tried me in a 7 1/2, but it was too loose.

I'm trying a modified version of HIIT at Curves - go hard for a few minutes, then slow down and take it easy for a few. Back and forth like that. Supposed to be better and keep your body guessing so that you don't get into a groove/rut and make no progress.

2000 Replay?

In 2000 it all came down to Florida. This election it all comes down to Ohio. Who woulda thunk? Here's my attempt at a .pdf file, a picture of the U.S., who each state went to, and the popular vote. If I can make it into a smaller file later, I'll delete this, but the best I can do for now:
http://home.earthlink.net/~vicsblog/pictures/election.pdf. My first pdf file! :)

Anyway, no winner on Tuesday. We'll see about Wednesday. Provisional ballots in Ohio could push Kerry over the edge there and Bush has to win Ohio to won the White House. :( Now the ACLU has filed some sort of lawsuits over absentee ballots somewhere. Excuse me while I bang my head against a wall. *sigh*

A Quick Note From Victoria

I know that I haven't updated this blog in a week, with the exception of the Halloween entry below. I've been working on my poems site that I want to get up by the end of the year, including getting the bugs worked out. I'm also trying to not turn on the computer when I come home and just have dinner and go to bed. Especially last week with the nightmare I had with the bus. So I may not be updating as often for the next little while.

Hope everyone had a good Halloween, and remember to vote on Tuesday!