Good News, Bad News, Bachelorette Finale.

Let’s start with the good news, shall we? I FINALLY STOPPED BLEEDING!!! A few days after my last blog post, the post-op bleeding stopped completely, and I’ve been “normal” ever since. I’m not sure what the blogging equivalent of cartwheels is, but I’m doing them. I can’t even explain what a relief this is. The pathology from the biopsy hasn’t come back, but I’m praying that it’s normal and that in a month or so, my real cycle will return and I can put all this behind me.

Now for the not-so-great news… I had my first gain this past Saturday (my weigh-in day). Instead of moving closer to my goal, I gained a pound back, and am back where I was two weeks ago, at 243. I’m disappointed, but I know it’s my own doing. I used my weekend in the hospital as an excuse to eat French fries and ice cream and not count calories for several days, and it caught up with me. I kind of half-heartedly counted calories last week, and even got on the treadmill, but I guess the naughty indulgences won in the end.

The entire month of July felt a little bit like a bust. I only lost five pounds, as opposed to my 12-pound loss in June. I know that there will be ups and downs, but I can’t help thinking that medicine has something to do with it. I started taking an antidepressant again at the beginning of July, since my anxiety struggles returned, and my weight loss has slowed way down. I am very happy to have those five pounds gone, though. There are worse things than not losing enough—like gaining! I’m glad that despite some of the health challenges I’ve had this month, I still managed to lose. I guess that’s a victory.

Another victory is that I didn’t let my 1-pound weight gain derail my entire goal. Instead, this week I’m back on track with a vengeance. I’m trying to eat a lot cleaner to give my hormones the best chance of coming back into balance, and I’m getting on the treadmill more, because I’m sure exercise will help, too. I’m feeling a little more energetic now that I’m taking iron and not bleeding profusely every day, but I still feel very weak when I get on the treadmill to walk. I’m walking a pathetic 2.8 MPH and lasting only 30 minutes or so, which burns like 150 calories. I hope my energy and endurance will improve as I exercise more and more, because I’d like to restart the Couch to 5K program sometime soon. 

In other news, who watched the million-hour finale of The Bachelorette last night?! I know, I know, the show is pathetic. I usually only watch to practice rolling my eyes for two hours straight, but then, inevitably, I get hooked on the drama and can't stop. I actually really like Chris, the guy Des chose. He was my favorite for most of the season, except for all the times he wrote and/or recited poetry to Des (which was every three seconds, I think). I am just not into poetry and that is the last hobby on earth I'd want in a guy, but hey, to each their own.   

Failure is most definitely an option.

Well, I had my first official Couch-to-5K FAIL today when I attempted day three of the training. As I mentioned yesterday, Fridays are days off for me, so getting up at 4:50 or 5:00 to go run was just probably never going to happen. Especially since the Heat/Spurs game went so late, and my brother is visiting with his girlfriend and I just didn't want to go to bed and miss out on everything.

I look so cute after exercise.

This morning I woke up (or was woken up by my brother pounding on my door and yelling at me to get up) at 8:15, and around 9:15, I decided to just go do it, regardless of how hot and humid it was outside. So I drove to the hospital to do my training around the pretty trail.

It was only 85 degrees when I started, and I made it through all the walk/run intervals until 55 seconds into running spurt number 7. And then my will to keep pushing myself just disintegrated. I felt like I was going to throw up, it was miserably hot, the sun was beating right down on me, and I just quit. I started walking, and walked through the final running spurt as well. At the time, I felt like I just could NOT keep going, and I resigned myself to it. I had pushed myself through running spurts 3 through 6 even though I wanted to quit then, too, but by the 7th 60-second run, I lost all motivation. I quit with 65 second of running remaining. Really, Me? Really???

Sigh. On the drive home, I decided to get my elliptical trainer back from one of my other brothers (I sold it to him a year ago, but he never uses it), because I am obviously a failure at running. Now that I've cooled off and the nausea his dissipated, I know I shouldn't just throw in the towel so easily, but I do think that having the elliptical would be nice. I can exercise more often, and from the comfort of my air conditioned home.

My body feels like jelly, and it's worse than how I felt on days one and two. Even my wrists and fingers hurt. Does the heat and humidity really make that much of a difference? Then again, I only did like two half-hearted stretches before I left the house.

The jury is out on what I'm gonna do. I guess I should just attempt day three again on Sunday, but this time do it before the sun comes up and conspires to kill me. Do I sound whiny enough? Cause I can try harder if I need to...

Good Stuff:
There are a few teeny victories to report today. First, I lost one of the three pounds that I gained when I started exercising! I was surprised to see that, too, because I felt like yesterday sucked eating-wise. My coworkers begged me to go out to lunch with them to this new, overpriced restaurant, and even though I was careful and ordered a salad, I ate too much. I had a few chips with guacamole before the salad came, ate almost my entire salad and half the dressing, and then I had four bites of a skillet cookie with ice cream that someone ordered because they hate me. Oh my word, it was delicious. After those four bites, I covered my dessert spoon with salt so I wouldn't take any more.

Another good thing is that I've been tracking the workouts I've been doing in my SparkPeople app, and today I saw that I've burned 1,103 calories exercising this week. For some reason, that made me so excited! I think it would be fun to challenge myself with a weekly calories burned total. It seems a lot more motivational than just tracking how many workouts I do.

I'm off to do something inspirational now, like watch episodes of Extreme Weight Loss... I need a little pick-me-up in the motivation department right now.

Couch to 5K - Day 2

I completed day 2 of the Couch to 5K program yesterday morning (yay!), and it was a lot harder than day 1 (boo!). After the initial 60-second run, I had to force myself not to quit every time the voice prompt told me it was time to run again. By the last few running spurts, I was pretty much ready to die. I was constantly checking the timer to see how many seconds of the minute were left, because I didn’t think I could keep going. I also felt as though I was breathing a lot heavier than I did on Monday, and everything just felt harder. Arg.

The important thing, I guess, is that I didn’t quit and start walking even though I really wanted to. The whole time, though, I was second-guessing myself. Do you really expect to start running at your size? You hate this. Running will never be something you enjoy, so why waste your time? I pushed through the negative self-talk, but I’ll admit that it is very hard to imagine myself running for longer than 60 seconds, much less a bloody 5K. While huffing and puffing, I tried to picture going for even a mile, and I about gave up and went back to be right then and there.

I think I just need to be patient with myself. I just started exercising after a two year hiatus (and I wasn’t exercising very much before that), so I’m super out of shape, and everything is going to be challenging. If I need to repeat week one of Cto5K for a while, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. For now, I do feel proud that I’m actually running (a grand total of 8 minutes every other day, but still!).

I get up at 4:50 AM to exercise, so it’s very dark outside when I head out. (I do it that early so I can get to work on time, but that’s really the best time of day to go anyway, because it is SO hot here, and running in the sunlight is utter misery. I also hate people watching me when I walk or run. I know I need to get over that, but right now I don’t want my neighbors all up in my weight loss business.) I only run in my little mostly-gated neighborhood, but it can feel a little scary if I let myself think about it too much. Today, two black cats ran right across my path while I ran, and while I don’t believe in that stuff, and know my protection comes from Someone much more powerful than cats, it still creeped me out a little.

My next scheduled day of the program is Friday, and I’m really not sure what I’ll do because I don’t work on Fridays, so it would be awesome to sleep in. But if I wait until it’s hot, I know I’ll be miserable. Maybe I’ll just get up early to get it over with, then go back to sleep... Yeah, maybe not.