So yesterday... I go help my ailing parents with some storage problems, and before I leave their house, my mom tells me I just HAVE to see a beautiful video that my Sister made about her son who commited suicide a month ago. I sit through some messed up mamby-pamby montage of photos of him set to some mamby-pamby country song about "seeing you on the other side" blah blah blah and I ran out of their house in tears. I wasn't close to my nephew, but he had one of the saddest, painful, messed-up and wasted lives that I have ever known, so when I think of him, it's not sweet and it's not good. It's nothing but sorrow, regret, anger and helplessness.

Being thoroughly depressed and still crying, I go home and eat and eat and eat and sleep on the couch for 7 hours (this is my DAY OFF - What a WASTE) and don't exercise. I can't shake the gloom off of me. ugh.

Well, that was yesterday. Today, I feel better and am back on track. There's still a little residue left over from yesterday's depression, but I can tell it's gonna leave as soon as I start to work out - which is what I plan on doing in 15 minutes. WHEW! I knew I was an emotional eater, but yesterday really blind-sided me!

So, after a weekend of "controlled" bingeing, I am still at 162lbs today. I am cool with that. I'm not going out of town again till March 12, so I have a long while to stay on the wagon. I hope to weigh 158lbs by saturday. Yeah, that's 4 lbs in 5 days, but I AM cutting back pretty radically from my "norm", and doing great on the exercise, so I think it could be a pretty natural and healthy thing.

I looked into a women's fitness club last night that specializes in cardio strip-tease and pole dancing. It's too expensive, and I'd really have to pull from my savings to join, but I LOVED those pole dancing classes I took last year. However, I don't think it's really gonna work out. It sounded to me like it was kind of mamby-pamby. Like maybe they would teach a few spins on the poles, a few ass-wiggles and knee-spreads, and put it in different routines. I asked if I could occassionally do some practice on the poles outside of a "class", and the lady acted like it was just too weird to think about. And while spinning on the pole is fun, Climbing and posing is what gave me my muscles before, and I don't think they do that here. blah.

ANYway, the rep said she'd "Think about it" as to whether they'd let me come in a get a workout on my own time.

So, today, I'll eat 800 calories and workout for 30 min. YAY!

OK. So what's kinda fun, is, working out in the early morning with the exercise info-mercials. I jog in place, or whatever, and then when YOGA BOOTY BALLET or CARDIO JAM or BOBS MASTERBLASTER or whateveritis (it don't really matter) comes on the tube, I do what THEY do.

For some reason, it cracks me up...

I'm 162 lbs today. YAY!

So, a funny thing happened at the gym this morning...

the music was not LOUD!!!!! I was actually able to hear my IPOD, so I wrote a note to the counter person, and then I told him how pleased I was, and he said that he was knew and the manager told him to keep the music down a little and blah blah blah... how funny and great! Especially since my membership don't end till may, as i found out today.

So, I had a great workout. I did the treadmill slow with hand weights and alternated it with quick jogging spurts.

30 minutes. AWESOM!

163 lbs. Down one - YAY! I ate a lot of falafel last night but am still loosing that boozey water weight. GOD I hate looking like this! I am LOVING not drinking. I mean, I miss it in the evenings, but I sleep better without it and I think it really is helping with my weight loss.

I'm on my way to the gym in a minute. Last time I was there was late summer, before classes started. When I started college this fall, I COMPLETELY put my health on the back burner. I made all A's, and gained 10 lbs.

I hate my gym. It IS large and new and beautiful and spacious, but it plays nothing but Rap/Pop and "Soul" music and I hate it. If it weren't so mind-numbingly loud, it would be ok. Alas, even my "heavy metal" music on my IPOD can't drown out the croonings of some looser gangsta who wants to "get wit choo, girrrrrrl". I turn my IPOD up as loud as it will go and I still can't drown out the rap-crap, and I leave the gym with my head hurting and my ears buzzing from the impending damage.

Also, the male members like to yell and scream a lot - like it's a family reunion or something, and they are all deaf and slightly retarded. Then, they like to EAT on the equipment. I have found fried chicken, buffalo chicken wings, and cereal on the equipment and the floor. I'm pretty sure the staff can't possibly keep up with every asshole who decides to bring his Popeyes chicken in and yell at his friends across the room.

Yes, I've written to the management and I've talked to the staff. No, I'm not gonna pursue it - if they don't care, I don't care enough to renew my membership which is up in a few months. Besides, their aerobics/dance classes are REALLY crappy. I took a cardio Salsa class there and  the instructor was stiff and - well - she moved like a stick figure. Weird, considering that Salsa is supposed to be a hot latin dance. And since the instructor moved woodenly, the rest of the class followed in suit.  It was like Zombie Salsa.

BUT - I still have a few months of membership, and it's cold outstide, and I want a change, so I'll go there and listen to some woman singing about finding a man (probably some guy who likes to eat chicken in a gym and yell a lot), who will "put a ring on it" while I try to get rid of my big bootay.

164 lbs. It's coming off. My diet was GREAT yesterday unTIL - I had my perfect dinner, and afterwards, I ate SNACKS! I mean IMMEDIATELY afterward. I ate an extra 400 calories of snacks, over my 300 calorie dinner, just to get that FULL feeling that I crave. My body won't accept "satisfied" and eventually, after a few days, demands to be STUFFED with food. Obviously, it's psychological in part, but I am also wondering...

I drink Psyllium twice a day, before breakfast and dinner. I had heard that it helps one to feel full, faster at meals. Now I am just wondering if it has just increased my stomach's capacity, and craving, to hold more food. Could that be possible? I mean, I heard that stomach surgery reduces that size of the stomach so it takes less food to be satisfied, and I HAVE heard that we can stretch the size of our stomach's capacity...

I wonder if, by doubling up my psyllium with my meals, if I've expanded the size of my stomach so that it takes more to feel like I've eaten at all.

ANYway, I had a 700 calorie dinner last night at 6:30, and by 10:30 I still felt full and uneasy. Also, my skin itched! I felt like I was just itching my fat rolls. Disgusting. I will be glad to get this weight off. I am gonna stop the psyllium with my meals.

What will I do to work out today? huh. hula hoop with hand weights for 30 minutes.

I am energized! I was gonna go to the gym, for the first time in 4 months, this morning, but the roads are icey and there's accidents everywhere, so I'm gonna work out here at home. My favorite new thing is to pick a half-hour TV show - like MAD TV - and do aerobics during the show. When the comercials come on, I do weights or crunches or squats or other strength exercises. When the show's over, I stop. Today I'm going to eat 900 calories. Greens and beans and tofu! yay!

Today I leave till Sunday night for a party. My computer is going with me but it will be used 24/7 by my boyfriend and his friends for gaming, so I don't expect any chance to blog, but I DO have a small diet notebook that I carry with me. What I'll do, and I did it before on a week-long vacation (and it WORKED!) is to write my diet/fitness intentions in it every morning, then write in it again before bed to see how close I came. My intentions will include things like

1. walk dogs for an hour today

2. walk to grocery store and buy a few fresh vegetables

3. Get the girls to try some belly dancing with me

4. stretch for 20 minutes

5. eat one uncooked fruit or vegetable

6. drink 8 glasses of water

7. challenge someone to a crawl-race. (it's a big house)

8. Help someone move stuff

9. put spinach in something.

You know, blah blah blah - I'll have about 30 or 40 things on a list that I'll choose from - sometimes, I forget all my options for fitness and it helps to have a big list to remind me of some craftier ways to stay fit. Especially as I usually have a hang-over every morning and also am too excited to "get back out there and play" to write and think for very long.

160lbs today. Lost 2 lbs. Yeah, I know - water weight. Well, it has to go SOMEtime! In a few minutes, I'll do a 30 minute workout (cardio and resistance bands). I have to get my meals together too - 300 calories each. I also need to come up with diet/workout plan for my next 5 party days at my girlfriends house. No - I won't lose any weight, but if I can not GAIN weight, I'll consider my weight loss endeavor a success.