Kangatopia

My youngest daughter is about to turn 5. In the first six weeks of her life, I ate a lot of brownies and other assorted crap. I remember the brownies particularly because I remember making a whole tray, frosting them, and then eating almost all of them over the course of a day, or possibly, even a night. I stayed up all night those days. Not so much because of the round the clock attention Winston needed, but because I didn’t want to go to sleep. This would probably help explain why I never seemed to produce enough milk to feed her properly. By the time Winston was two months old, I had gained about 5 pounds over my highest pregnancy weight. I think most women tend to lose a lot of weight in the weeks after giving birth, not gain it. So, when she was five months old, I peaked at 225 pounds. That’s a lot for a woman who is only 5 foot, 4 inches in height.

Over the next couple of years, I tried various things to lose weight and various things happened to me to inspire me to stop eating (a break-up, my mother’s death), so by the time I met the person with whom I was last in a relationship, I had managed to get down to about 180. He had lost a lot of weight himself, and so he was in a position to give me lots of support to help me go the rest of the way. Over the two years that we were together, I weighed 154 at my lowest and then yo-yo’d between 155 and 170.

Finally, this past January, I got on the scale at my annual check-up, and I weighed 169. Granted it was right after the holidays, but that still wasn’t an excuse. I should have been worried about weighing 129 at that point, and how I was going to get to 120. I was still riding my bike as much as possible, but I was eating a lot. So, I felt bad that I hadn’t just exercised more, but exercised more control.

In February I started going to the gym again, but I only used it when it was convenient and if I didn’t think I would be able to get in at least one good bike ride every week. I guess you could say I was kind of lazy and cavalier about the whole thing, but I wouldn’t really agree. The economy going to hell, the growing gas crisis, the dissolution of my relationship, homework, bedtimes, work - all of those things took precedence over my concerns of heart disease and diabetes.

But then the weather started getting warmer, and with a little creative planning, I was able to go on more bike rides. However, my bike rides were mostly sluggish. My energy reserves were low and I wasn’t pushing myself very hard. I wasn’t even sure if I was getting my heart rate up most of the time. (My heart rate monitor needs a new battery, but I want to decide if I am going to try to get a new one that will double as a computer for my bike before I do anything about it.)

So, in May I started going to the gym again. I talked to some personal trainers and got advice on how to use the machines, and how to work-out. I weighed 160 when I first walked into the gym again, but when I had a free fitness evaluation that the gym provided, I was 155.

For the next two months, my weight stayed within a five pound range. It would drop to 151, then go up to 154, then drop to 150.8, then go up to 152.2. Sometimes it would even get to 150.0, but never ever never would it go below 150.0. This is when I realized that my body was fucking with me, and the scale was in on it.

Today, I got up, I peed and then I stepped on the scale. It read 150.0. Of course. It doesn’t matter if I don’t eat for a month and work out for 3 hours a day, my body and my scale will never allow me to drop below 150.0.

But, wait, I thought, the first reading is never the consistent one. Sometimes the consistent reading is above the first one, and sometimes it’s below. By consistent, I mean that no matter how many times I get on the scale, before a shower, after a shower, whatever, the reading will be the same. Not even a highly productive poop will lodge it from the number it’s picked out for that morning.

So. This morning the consistent reading was…

147.8!

147.8? I can’t believe it. I didn’t just get below 150.0, but I got far enough below it that if I don’t blow it today by eating a bunch of crap, I might actually be on a downward trend that would mean that unless I start actively doing things to gain weight (eating a lot of ice cream and fried chicken, and not exercising at all) I won’t go above 150 again.

Do you know what this means? I’ve lost 77.2 pounds since my peak weight, and 52.2 pounds since my mother died. She left 3 and a half years ago, so my rate of weight loss hasn’t been high but I’ve at least managed to get myself to this point. My blood pressure is running at about 113 over 62, my hdl cholesterol is 90, my ldl is a little high at 101, and my tri-glycerides are also a little high at 154 (which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me) - but I am still in the best shape of my adult life.

I am also 37 years old. I don’t know why it took me so long to decide to do this, but I’m glad I didn’t wait any longer.

My goal is 120 pounds. The trainer who evaluated me at the gym said I should aim for 133 with 14 pounds of muscle. I would just be happy to be healthy with a decidedly low risk of heart disease or diabetes. I am going to keep up my work-outs and bike rides, and visit the doctor again in 6 months for a cholesterol check (which will coincide with my annual). I intend to work very hard to reach my goal before then.

Once I reach the goal, the trick will be to maintain it. I’m not doing this fast, and I believe I am doing a pretty good job of eating healthy foods. I do eat too much of them, but with the help of a food diary I am getting better at keeping that in check. The bonus is that I really love the work-outs, and I love the bike rides even more.

Now if our new president could just get our economy out of the very deep hole in which it is lodged…

The girls and I are having a nice, relaxed evening at home. Their friend came over to play, and now that the friend has gone home, we are picking up toys, washing dishes and finally, sprawling on the couch to watch a travel show about Greece. When we first switch it on, a cute blond girl is sitting in a boat near the shore of the Aegean Sea with something kind of slimy in her hand. We then see that somehow she has fished an octopus out of the water, and La, La, La, she is so happy because this living, pulsating thing has affixed its suction cups to her arms. The camera transitions from the octopus slowly slithering across the bottom of the boat to the girl, who is now sitting next to a fire on the shore with what looks like, Oh My God!, an octopus arm in her hand. Is that? Oh, Jesus, it is. She’s EATING the octopus. And not just eating it, she’s ripping it apart. La, La, La, she sings, I’m eating an octopus. Yum, salty.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Next we see her, she’s walking down a street at night, and she pops into a restaurant for a dinner to follow up her late afternoon snack. Into the kitchen she goes where the chef tactfully ignores her, and she picks up a fried lump of Octopus off a plate, probably belonging to the camera man who is wishing she would sit her ass down in the dining room at a table with everybody else, squeezes a little lemon on it, takes a quick bite and sets it back down on the plate before she pops into yet another restaurant to another 10 second dinner of Octopus. She proclaims it as healthy eating. It is? Really? It looks kind of fatty from here and washing it in sea water to give it extra flavor seems kind of counter-intuitive. Even Monkey is questioning the wisdom. Mommy, is octopus healthy? Well, I guess so, honey, if this cute, blond barbarian says it is. The poor octopus. Swimming along, singing La, La, La, and zoink! out of the ocean onto the grill or into the fire or God help us, made into an ice cream treat? All so this happy go lucky girl can prove to a grossed out PBS audience that she can adapt to any culture and be really Goddamned happy about it. I’m not sure what pulls me into this show more: the trippy exhibition of the octopus as food; the exaggerated appreciation of culture; or her glib cheerfulness, and the rate at which my disgust is escalating.

God, I feel like such a bitch.

I bought this new lipstick off of ebay this week. I really thought it was just the deep blue-red I’ve been searching for since I was a teenager, but alas! it’s way too pink. I would take another picture with Photo Booth, but I think I’ve posted way too many of those lately - and plus, I just took a couple anyway and I look old and tired and it was just too depressing of a task.

I’ve been working out like a fiend. I’m taking on average one full rest day a week, and on the days when I can’t muster up very much energy, I take a slow bike ride or only a 200 calorie work-out. I guess I’m making progress. I mean, my muscles feel damaged and my bipolar weight goes up and down at will.

The kids are all entrenched in summer. Bear is dreaming of a future as a video game designer, so he’s doing plenty of research to prepare himself. Monkey, ever helpful, sweet and compassionate - soon to be the long suffering enabler of her younger sister, has grown her hair out to be tortuously long. Her hair is very, very pretty but a real pain (literally) to brush. Winston wants to grow her hair out now just like her sister’s. Winston has also, somewhere along the way, developed a love for flip-flops. My daughters are very girly.

The girls and I are learning to ice skate together. We go to the rink, hug the sides, and try to keep ourselves upright. So far, so good. No injuries, but there’s still plenty of time. Except that I can’t afford to pay for it, I’m hoping that the girls will segue their love of dance into figure skating/ ice dancing, or as they will think of it later, fulfilling their mother’s lost dreams.

This is the best line ever!

Here’s the story….