Not the best start to the day

Yee-ouch!

Quickie

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good: D and I spent a lot of this weekend unpacking and getting appropriate storage to fit all our respective things in our smallish flat.  We also took a futon mattress and futon frame and other sundry things to the storage unit, which made a big difference in the floor space, especially on the stairs.  We were literally clambering OVER the futon mattress to get into the loft office.  Not fun.  While we were on our way to the storage unit and IKEA to get some bookshelves, we realized it was nearly 2 pm and we hadn't eaten yet that day.  The only place we could fit in time-wise was McDonalds.  I surveyed the menu, and made Smart Choices.  I had a deli chicken sandwich on wheat bread, a side salad in lieu of fries and a bottle of water.  All told, it was around 400-500 calories, which is much better than most any other choice I could have made.

The Bad:  Saturday night, we went to a friend's birthday party at Bloomsbury Bowl.  For some reason, bowling has become very trendy in London, and this is the second time in the past few months we've gone.  Surprisingly, I really like it!  Good fun and good people.  I was careful with my alcohol intake - just vodka soda, rather than beer.  But afterwards, D and I went to an Indian buffet for dinner before going home to do more unpacking.  And therein lay my downfall.  I ate pakoras and samosas and five kinds of curry including chicken korma which is just pure butter.  And I had poppadoms and raita and SO MUCH FOOD.  And I knew I was doing it.  As I stood along the buffet, I even said to D "I know I am overeating but I can't stop!"  Only it wasn't D, it was a random Irish guy, who responded, "yeah, but you sure get value for money here!"  I didn't finish my plate, but still ate more than I should.

The Ugly:  My weight the next morning.  Up about four pounds, back into 159-land.  Ew.

Resurgence of the The Good:  I was so careful yesterday!  I ate well and drank lots of water to flush the sodium out of my system from my curry-binge-fest.  This morning, I went to the gym and did another 30 minutes of swimming.  I feel better now.  The bloat is dying down, thank goodness.  And I really don't want to do that again.  That overstuffed feeling was miserable.  Blech.

Holy Cow!

Whatever I'm doing, it sure is working, because today, on my official WI, I saw a number on the scale I haven't seen in well over year, and then only for a brief day.  I haven't really been this weight since my first year of law school, which was approximately five years ago.

156.5!

Holy Shamoley.  In all fairness, I know what I'm doing.  I'm logging everything I eat, and it's a harsh realization to become aware of just how much food I was unwittingly putting into my mouth, thinking it was okay.  Clearly, it wasn't.  I was doing fine, I was maintaining at around 162, but that's not where I wanted to be.  The other thing I'm doing is exercising regularly.  A minimum of four times a week.  And guess what?  Less in, more out actually works.  I'm such a dope.  I could have figured this out ages ago.  I mean, empirically, I knew it.  I just wasn't putting it into practice.

Now it's time to stick with it.  I think I am going to rent a locker at the gym so I can keep my swim gear and trainers and shower stuff there.  Less to haul around means there's even more of an incentive to go.  I literally walk past the gym on my walk to and from work.  I have no excuse not to go at least once a day!  D is going to be working from Glasgow during most of the week for the next month or so on a consulting gig.  While I don't plan to be Jenny-No-Mates whilst he's away, I am seriously considering going to the gym twice a day every so often.  I can do my swimming in the morning and lift weights in the evening.  Might as well, right?

Oh, and the foot thing?  I've talked to some athlete friends of mine who think it might be a stress fracture.  It makes sense . . . pain on the top of the foot, hurts after exercise, hurts when wearing flat shoes.  I'll make an appointment to see the doctor next week to see if that's the case.  If it is, thank goodness I've discovered swimming!

Rediscovery

Remember when you were a kid and in the hot sticky summer days, there was nothing better than a trip to the community pool?  I do, at any rate.

Now, it's definitely not hot or sticky or summer.  In fact, it snowed last night, which is bizarre.  It's now all melted of course, but made for an interesting walk to the delicious celebratory new roomie dinner last night at my new favorite Japanese restaurant.  But as my foot is hurting today for some reason, and I still wanted to do cardio, I decided to swim at the thankfully heated indoor pool at the gym.  I've got a couple swimsuits in the office just in case the urge strikes, which it never has in two years.

Until today.  It was great!  I did around 30 minutes or so in the pool completing who knows how many laps.  A lot.  I loved it!  I can feel in my abs and legs and arms that I got a good workout in, but my knee doesn't hurt and my foot doesn't ache.  Awesome.

One Way or Another

So here's a proposition for losing weight.  Move all your boyfriend's many, many, many worldly goods from one place to another up and down a bajillion stairs.  Skip a few meals in the process.  Ka-BOOM!  Down three pounds.  Well, down three pounds from my last log-in to Daily Plate.  Down one pound on EP.

I know it's not the best way to do it, but it's a motivator to keep on trucking!

The Big Schlep

Well, that happened.  Let me tell you, moving is a real pain in the patoot.  Even this move, which went way better than I expected, has still made this weekend on the challenging side!

Friday night was a friend's party before leaving to move to Australia.  I went, of course, thinking it was my last chance to see her.  Turns out, she's not actually moving until this Thursday, so I could have spent the night packing and seen her on Wednesday.  Doh!  I went home early from the party and started moving things around my flat to make room for D's stuff.  I love my flat - it's colorful and in a great location and really lovely.  But.  And this is a big but.  It's up two-and-a-bit very narrow flights of stairs to get to the flat itself, and then the flat itself is on three levels.  It's a LOT of stairs.

And that became the theme of the weekend.  Stairs.  D's flat, just so you know, is also up a flight of stairs.  The movers came on Saturday at 11 to move the big stuff from furniture to storage and then from D's place to my place.  Initially, we had also planned a run from my place to the storage unit, but just plain ran out of time before the unit closed for the night.  The movers were great - they took a lot of care with everything and packed up the van using every single inch of usable space.  Nevertheless, it took two runs to the storage unit to get it all in.  I had suggested that perhaps, just perhaps, it would be a good idea to have EVERYTHING packed up before the movers arrived so that we didn't have to make a bunch of car trips afterwards.  You know, 'cause you pay the guys to move stuff, so maybe all the stuff should be packed in advance for them to move.  No dice.  We just didn't manage to get it done.  We had a lot packed, but not everything.  Of course, we weren't helped by the fact that D didn't buy boxes beforehand, and was relying on about four plastic tubs from IKEA.  This is all well and good, until you run out of the damn tubs and have to start throwing stuff in garbage bags to move it!

Still, the movers got all the furniture and several boxloads (tubloads?  bagloads?) moved.  D and I then continued to move loads on Sunday, packing the rest of the stuff up, then making one trip to the storage unit and two trips to my flat, finishing up at 1 am this morning.  Did I mention that with no traffic, it's 30 minutes between our flats, but with traffic, it can take up to an hour?  And that D drives a two-door BMW 3 series, which, while built to accomodate two golf bags, is not ideal for big chunky boxes?  And the stairs?  Did I mention the fricking stairs?

My knees are aching.

Still, it truly went better than expected.  Granted, we can hardly move in my flat right now (correction, our flat!) because there are so many boxes everywhere and there is simply nowhere to put them (we made an emergency run to IKEA for more tubs, and found that buying boxes was actually cheaper . . . surprise, surprise!).  And there's an old bed in the hallway waiting to be picked up.  And a futon to take to storage.  And a table to take to storage.  And a bunch of blinds to take to storage.

But you know what?  It's all fine.  My type-A OCDness, shockingly, has not flared up.  Sure, there is a veritable mountain of stuff to unpack and sort and move.  And we will need to do a massive purge because there is simply too much stuff to fit in the space, regardless of how cleverly we organize it, but we didn't know what would and wouldn't fit until we got it all in the space and started manipulating it and determining what we really want to keep.  All that still needs to happen.  But at the end of the day, we LIVE TOGETHER now.  It's been nearly eleven months since we first starting planning this.  That's nearly a year.  And now it's happened.

Hooray!

P.S. I ate McDonalds this weekend.  I had a grilled chicken sandwich and fries and half a McFlurry and a Coke Zero (my first in over six months).  And it was delicious.  But since I didn't eat from noon on Friday until nearly 8 pm on Saturday, I figured I could afford the calories.  And yes.  They are logged on Daily Plate.

Tallying Up the Week

Well, here we are, thankfully at another Friday.  And I have two very good things to report.

Number 1: Since coming back from the US on Tuesday morning, I have logged my food every day in The Daily Plate.  All of it.  I am becoming more aware of just how many calories are in things, and being more conscious of what goes in my mouth, since it's all getting logged.

Number 2:  I have gone to the gym Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and am getting a good cardio routine down.  I want to build up my running again, so I've been working on that.  This weekend I probably won't make it to the gym at all, but as it's the weekend of the Big Move, I think that's okay.  Besides, from my past experiences moving, you work muscles you didn't even know existed in that process.

And as of Monday, D and I are going to be roommates!!!  Expect an update on the move Monday morning . . . hopefully all goes well!

An Entirely Non-Weight-Related Post

When I was in Chicago this past weekend, one of my missions was to find a really amazing pair of black boots.  Initially, I had been looking for a pair of flat riding boots, given how much walking I do.  Then my sister found a gorgeous pair of Cole Haan knee high boots with a 3.5 inch heel, but a Nike Air sole.  Cole Haan has been putting this sole in a lot of their shoes, letting you wear fabulous heels and boots with much more comfort.  A and I both tried them on (in size 9 and size 8, respectively), but only I ended up getting them.  To top it off, they were on a good sale, making them reasonably costly but worth it, rather than obscenely expensive.

This morning, I wore my new superfantastic boots with tights.  On the walk to the train, I noticed that my feet were sliding around a bit inside the boots.  I looked at the bottoms of the boots when I got to the gym, and discovered that the reason they feel big is because they are.  I was wearing the size 9 boots, NOT the size 8!  The sales guy must have boxed the wrong pair when I bought them, despite me asking him to check.  I didn't know what to do - I had scuffed the bottoms so I couldn't return them, and Nordstrom online only has the size 8 in brown, not black.

Living in the UK, I have become accustomed to crappy customer service.  Had I bought these from a UK store, they would have told me it's my fault for not noticing the size issue before wearing them, and all they could do would be to replace them at my cost, with me having to pay shipping and customs.  I love many, many things about this country, but the customer service is not one of them.

Expecting nothing, I called the Nordstroms customer service line in the hopes that someone might be available at 5 am.  Lo and behold, an extremely pleasant and helpful woman answered.  She took down all my information and promised to get a follow up team on this straight away.  She said they'll track down the boots, in black, in my size, and have them shipped to the UK, duty free.

And that, ladies and gents, is how you build brand loyalty.  I always was a devotee of the Nordstroms shoe department.  Now, my love and affection is sealed in stone.