Birthday Restraint

I just celebrated my 35th birthday.  As always, my husband and I went out to dinner at a popular chain restaurant that serves obscene portions of yummy, bad-for-you food.  In preparation for this night, I was very careful with what I ate all day.  I ate lighter than normal.  I made sure I didn't load up on carbs.  I ate lots of fruits and veggies and mini-meals throughout the day.  I wanted to make sure I had plenty of room for all that food I knew I was going to eat.

I was able to eat a lot of food that night without completely gorging myself.  In the past I have made myself physically ill by eating too much.  I am happy to say that I didn't get to that point.  I didn't eat light by any means and definitely made myself a little uncomfortable with fullness but it passed quickly.  I also brought home enough leftovers for a couple of reasonably sized lunches. 

The big question is why can't I exercise this level of restraint every day? Why can't I spend all day being careful so I don't have to beat myself up if I have two tacos for dinner or a bowl of ice cream for dessert.  The anticipation of a splurge meal gave me more incentive to eat right than anything has in a long time.  I didn't feel hungry or like I was punishing myself. 

When I was on NutriSystem, I was careful to follow the plan throughout the day and at night I ate dinner with my husband.  He was not on NutriSystem so it was a regular dinner.  I tried to eat smaller servings at dinner but it was not an on program meal. I lost 15 pounds doing this. 

I am down 20 lbs from my highest weight but I probably have another 20 to go before I'm healthy.  I am at the weight where I always seem to plateau and then spike back up.  I have been this weight multiple times over the past few years but never for very long.  I am going to do my best to push myself through this wall that I keep hitting and find a new low in my weight loss journey.

I'm hoping my next birthday finds me in an even healthier place. 

Zumba Convention 2011

I have written about how Zumba has changed my life and helped me find myself.  http://onehappybitch.blogspot.com/2010/09/zumba.html

In 90 minutes I will head to the airport and fly to my first zumba convention.  Then I will spend the next 5 days with 6000 people who love zumba as much as I do.  I am excited about making new friends and learning new things that I can bring back to my classes.  But I am also very nervous.  There are a few things that I need to keep in mind to make sure that I have a good time:

1. Do not play a role.  It is never a conscious thing but I have a tendency to "act out" when I meet new people.  I am an obnoxious, outgoing person but sometimes it can be over the top.  I don't want to establish myself as the crazy one right off the bat and then spend the rest of the weekend living up to that.  Plus, I'm going to turn a lot of people off if I get out of hand.

2.  Do not compare yourself to other people.  This is the hardest one for me.  There will always be someone who is prettier, funnier, thinner, a better dancer, etc. than I am.  That doesn't mean that I am none of those things.  That doesn't mean that people are looking at me and saying "Oh, she's not as pretty/funny/etc. as this person".  I need to get out of my own head and just relax.  I have lost 20 lbs since I started teaching zumba 7 months ago.  I wear more fitted clothes and sometimes I genuinely love the way I look in the mirror.  I can't let the anxiety of a large group of people take that away from me.

3. Don't let rude/obnoxious people ruin my time.  This is not high school.  I don't have to hang out with people that get on my nerves.  I do not have to gossip about someone who is obviously not making a great impression. 

4.  Also part of the not high school thing- don't give in to peer pressure.  There is always a tendency for hard drinking and partying and overall ridiculous behavior at these sorts of things.  It happens at my corporate functions for my day job so I know it will happen here!  I'm not going to be partying until 2 am just so the youngest/party animal people think I'm cool.  I want to meet people that I have things in common with.  I want to make friends and not just crazy YouTube videos.

5. Make sure I have some me time.  I worry that my friends that I am traveling with might be a little clingy out of nervousness and suffocate me if they don't loosen up once we get there.  I am staying by myself in a different hotel than people I know.  I need to make sure I take the time to write, meditate, walk, and do other non-zumba things that keep me sane.  There will be mostly women at this convention and I have a tendency to tire of women very quickly if I'm not careful.  I need to set myself up to be as successful at being me as possible!

I will try to blog once a day and write in my journal.  I am very excited about this weekend.  I hope this is the first of many zumba conventions and other events that will take me out of my comfort zone (in a good way). 

Fireworks and Zoos

Every year at this time I find myself being the grinch of summer.  There are endless invites to fireworks displays and events at the zoo and I always decline.  I do not see holding wild animals in captivity or generating air pollution as acceptable ways to honor nature or celebrate our nation's independence.

Every year my mother always bought the giant fireworks variety pack from our local store.  In Virginia they have what many refer to as the "good fireworks". These are the fireworks that people cross state lines to buy.  These fireworks can also cause significant injury if they malfunction or someone gets too close.  My brother and our friends would sit in the driveway while my mom would set off our own private fireworks display.  All of our neighbors did the same thing.  The next morning our cul-de-sac looked like a war zone with burn marks and used fireworks everywhere.

When I was 15, I went to Washington D.C. to see the fireworks display on the national mall with my friend Laura and her family.   We watched the parade (I'm pretty sure this is when I started hating parades too but that's a different blog), had a picnic and then waited for the fireworks.  This was the biggest fireworks display I had every seen.  Patriotic music blared in time to the fireworks making it quite an impressive production.  There were American flags, "God Bless the USA" spelled out and even a giant bald eagle all with the reflective backdrop of the Potomac River.  It really was quite beautiful.  Throughout the entire display I noticed the giant pink cloud of smoke that was forming.  Before the smoke from one firework dissipated, another firework would go off and add to the cloud.  By the end of the display the sky was an unnatural shade of pink.  The cloud seemed to cover the entire city.  It was disgusting. 

On the drive home I thought about all the fireworks displays taking place in driveways and  in major cities.  I thought of the millions of pink clouds that were forming all over the country on Independence Day.  I wondered how the pollution generated by fireworks affected the environment.  How many days would it take for that pink cloud to go away?  Once the pink cloud disappeared were there secondary effects that we couldn't see?  There were no more fireworks for me after that.

My anti-zoo position took longer to form.  I am an animal lover.  I have always been fascinated by all animals (even the ones that scare me).  I had a membership to the World Wildlife Fund since I was a little kid.  We went to visit their headquarters in northern Virginia every year on a school field trip.  They told us all about the animals that they had saved and the sanctuaries that had been set up for endangered and injured animals.  For a long time I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian because I wanted to save animals for a living. 

We also had an annual field trip to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.  I grew up in the time of Ling Ling and Sing Sing, the famous pandas from China.  People from all over the world came to the zoo to see the pandas.  When they had a baby there was a live camera feed so the world could experience the miracle together.  I was very fond of all bears.  My bedroom was full of stuffed polar and panda bears and koalas purchased from the national zoo.  I also loved penguins, giraffes and animals whose names I couldn't pronounce.  Animals from countries and climates that were beyond my imagination. 

As I got older, National Geographic, PBS and Animal Planet added to my love of animals with tons of great articles, documentaries and shows about animals.  A lot of negative stories started to come through about animals abused while in captivity.  About the tactics that some trappers used to catch animals.  About the life of an animal in the circus or at the zoo.  I don't think there was one defining event that ended my love affair with zoos.  It just slowly built up over time and now I can't stand them.

It seemed like when I was younger there were a lot of zoos that acted as animal sanctuaries.  If there was an animal that was injured in the wild it would live in captivity until it was nursed back to health.  The public got a chance to see this animal up close while it healed.  If the animal could be integrated back into the wild, it would be released as soon as it was healthy.  But if that animal could never live a successful life in the wild because of its interaction with humans, then they would create an environmental that was as close to its natural habitat as possible. 

Panda bears are not native to Washington D.C.  Neither are penguins, polar bears, ocelots or most of the animals you will find at the zoo.  The 400-1000 square foot enclosures that they have created for these animals to replicate the hundreds of acres of forest/ocean they are accustomed to is a joke.  It would be like a human being's entire existence being scaled down to a 1 bedroom apartment. 

There are real animal sanctuaries that exist and do fabulous work.  But there don't seem to be school buses of children going to visit those.  There continue to be stories of animals being put down for being to "wild" with their captors.  Of animals abused into performing tricks.  Of shortened life spans caused but the unnatural captive life.  There always stories about the negative effects of holding wild animals in captivity but they rarely get a lot of traction. 

Every year the Syracuse zoo has an event called Brew At the Zoo.  This is a time for adults to come out and get drunk and walk through the zoo and look at the animals.  The Syracuse zoo has received a lot of bad press during the 6 years that I have lived here because of the untimely death of a lot of young animals.  Poor management seems to be the cause of these tragedies but the publication of that information does not seem to affect the popularity of this and other events.  I have been invited by friends and declined with as little political rhetoric as I could muster. 

Yesterday fireworks started in my neighborhood at 2 pm and continued well after midnight.  Tonight there will be giant fireworks displays at all of the local high school and parks.  I will have my radio cranked to drown out the sound of all the explosions and turn my chair away from the window so I don't have to watch the pink cloud form. 

Country Dogs and Outdoor Cats

I'm so sick of people being ignorant, lazy pet owners and then writing it off to having an outdoor pet or living in the country. Most of the people who I have encountered who use these excuses should not own pets. They should have fish or wall art. All they want is something that looks pretty and that they can show off to their friends but they don't want to provide any of the love, training or stability that a pet needs and a real pet owner provides.

One of my coworkers lives in a ritzy neighborhood where everyone has a couple acres of land. He drives a BMW and has a lawn service take care of his yard. His wife works part time. He has two college age children who do not live at home. He has a young lab mix who lives outside. He keeps him chained up under the porch when they aren't home and let's him run lose at night. His dog is often found at his neighbors house or somewhere else in the neighborhood. I asked him if he walked the dog and he said the dog is terrible on the leash and drags him everywhere. Imagine that, a dog that doesn't get any exercise or socialization and gets to run free without supervision doesn't walk well on a leash. Then I asked him what he does in the winter (here in upstate NY we get 140-200" of snow and the temperatures go well below zero). He said the dog has a doghouse on the porch to keep him warm. He can't being the dog in the house because the dog is too hyper and gets into everything and besides he likes being outside and doesn't want to come into the house; he's a country dog. Unfortunately, I'm sure this dog will eventually hurt some one's child or pet, or worse yet, get hit by a car. The dog will be written off as untrainable and my co-worker will get another dog (this isn't his first dog), never thinking that the dogs behavioral problems or short life had anything to do with the poor job him and his family did of raising the dog.

My husband's aunt recently told us that her neighbor's dog killed a small child in the neighborhood. She said "that's the price of living in the country" and went on to the next topic as if she were talking about they weather. She lives in a rural area outside of a college town. While I would consider this area to be the country, most of the people who live there are college professors and other high-level professionals who do not live a "country life". People's dogs and cats run around the roads all the time and definitely do not get any training or socialization. It is difficult to differentiate between strays and pets since they are all treated with the same level of indifference. Food and water are left outside. Pets are rarely brought into the house and usually have short, difficult lives. I do not enjoy going to her house. I feel like I am watching some bad after school special put together by the ASPCA. I feel completely helpless and sad every time we visit her. I am surrounded by animals that are in need that I cannot help and ignorant people that I cannot change.

In my suburban neighborhood I see more loose dogs and cats than leashed/contained ones. I do not live in the country. I have friends that live in downtown Syracuse who complain about the $2000+ they have spent on injuries to their "outdoor cat". When I asked why they had an outdoor cat in the city I was told that the wife grew up in suburban California (once again not the country) and that every one's cats were outdoor cats. I give up.

If people blatantly neglected their children as much as they do their pets it would be a national crisis. There would be public service announcements and campaigns to end the neglect. But because it seems to have become fashionable to have pets as an accessory. To have your dog sit in your purse during the 4 hours that you're at the bowling alley. To have him sitting in the car in the parking lot while you spend hours shopping. Because that's what the dog wants; because he wants to be with you all the time. I have heard of animal rescue groups that do not allow these sort of people to adopt dogs. Unfortunately there will never be a shortage of pet store puppy mills for these people to get an expendable pet. This is not a problem that will end in my life time, if ever, and that is depressing.

Staying on the Wagon

I envy people who have the will power to change a bad habit and stick to their program. When I did Nutrisystem a couple years ago I was very dedicated for 2 months. I had a couple days a week where I ate whatever I wanted but outside of that I stuck to the program. I managed to lose 15 lbs and felt great. But once I went off Nutrisystem, I went back to my old eating habits and put the weight back on plus a few extra pounds.

I love food. I'm sure there is an emotional component to my eating but I genuinely enjoy the way food tastes. I watch all these weight loss shows and there always seems to be a traumatic event that triggered the person being overweight. I had a stressful child hood but I have always eaten an obscene amount of food; I don't think there was one event that put me over the edge. Even when I was kid I was known to my friends and family as the person who could put food away. Maybe that's it, just the attention that I get from eating.

People that I have known for a long time seem to be obsessed with what I'm eating. If I'm eating healthy they tease and ask me if I'm on a diet. If I'm gorging myself there is an equal amount of negative attention. Eating a grilled chicken salad just isn't as enjoyable as getting a big juicy burger but people rarely comment when I order the really unhealthy stuff. I know I could never be on Nutrisystem or a program like that for the rest of my life but I wonder if I would have stayed on it longer if my body would have gotten used to eating less food.

I know that portion control is a big part of it. I know that a small fry from McDonald's is just as delicious as a large fry but somewhere in my brain there is a switch that tells me I'm not going to be satisfied if I don't get the largest size. There are days when I make good choices all day and then gorge myself for dinner. I am out of town for work this week and find myself feeling sick because I ate too much or falling asleep during meetings because of the food coma.

I try to remind myself of the Kate Moss quote "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" but my brain doesn't really believe it. I want to be one of those people that makes a life style change. I want to have a handle on my eating habits before I turn 35 this summer. I have a number of minor health problems that are either 100% caused by or totally aggravated by me being overweight.

I'd like to think that the self esteem boost that I would get from developing self control and being fit would be enough motivation for me but it hasn't been in the past. I will move forward and try to be better in the future and not harp on the past but it is much easier said than done.

The Fit Fat Girl

I have prided myself on defying people's assumptions about what a fit person looked like. But, as my waist line has expanded, I recognize that at this point I'm not being honest with myself. It's one thing to be a thick size 12 (like I once was) but I'm not that girl any more. A lot of people treat me like I'm still that girl but all that does is feed my ego and allow me to keep lying to myself.

I get offended when people assume that I'm a walker instead of a runner because of my size but realistically I'm not the picture of fitness and health right now. As I get more involved in Zumba, I love seeing instructors of all shapes and sizes. I recognize that these people are athletes and that they are fit because they're spending several hours a week teaching. But I also recognize that these people aren't as healthy as they could be.

I'm not ever going to be a skinny girl and I wouldn't want to be. But I would love to be that thick size 12 again. I want to get rid of my belly and tone up my body. I haven't been able to run as much during the past few months because I've been having so many joint problems. I know these joint problems are a direct result of my weight gain.

I am currently sitting in a hotel room 5 hours away from home. I have another day of meetings and catered meals ahead of me. I chose to hang out with my co-workers last night and enjoy dinner and drinks on the boss instead of working out. Today is looking like more of the same. I'm feeling pretty gluttonous right now.

My goal is to learn to not over-do the unlimited food and drink that comes with this job and to make time to get my fitness in even when I'm traveling. Tomorrow is a new day. I'm going to push myself harder because I know what I'm capable of when I commit to something.

Daydreaming My Problems Away

When I was younger I always daydreamed my life away. I would imagine myself married to famous people or in a compromising position with that guy I had a crush on. I would play the martyr to the people who I wanted to like me but who in real life paid no attention to me or made fun of me. My parents, strangers, celebrities, everyone admired and adored me in my daydreams.

My daydreaming contributed to my sleep problems because when I got in bed I would pick up where I had left off the previous night and spend hours spinning these fantastic tales in my head rather than sleeping. Sometimes I would write down these stories but they never seemed as fantastic on paper as they were in my mind. Recently these daydreams have returned to me.

I think that I daydreamed so much when I was younger because I was escaping from the reality of the drama in my life or creating a life in times when I was bored or in a rut. I'm not sure which of these applies now. I have found local success as a Zumba instructor which has added a whole new group of friends and social activities to my life. I continue to be active in meetup groups and have formed friendships with people there. I have been promoted at work to the job that I always wanted but wasn't sure I could get. So whats the problem?

I have two dogs that I love dearly but who have a lot of behavioral problems which drive me crazy. I can only walk my dogs in my neighborhood at certain times of day because so many people in my neighborhood let their dogs run offleash which makes the walks very dangerous and stressful for me and the dogs. There is also a lot of vehicle traffic in my neighborhood where people driving twice the speed limit on the main roads and run stop signs and take blind turns at high speeds regularly. The police are aware of the problem and have officers posted but after 15 minutes all the cops have met their ticket quota and leave the neighborhood until the next time a neighbor complains. I know this is not a problem that will go away. I feel like I'm dodging one problem or another everytime I walk out of my house.

We have a large fenced in yard but on two sides we have neighbors who also have dogs that enjoy fence fighting with our dogs. We take our dogs out on leashes when these dogs are out because the dog's excitement level gets too high if they are allowed to meet the other dogs at the fence. Another neighbor is a grandmother who watches her grandchildren. The grandmother stays in the house while the grandchildren play in the yard. The children stand by the fence and poke their fingers through the holes to taunt my dogs and actually bark and make noise to try to attract the dogs. I try to avoid them as well.

I know that everytime I walk out the door I am carrying the stress of dealing with any one of these problems. I know that affects my dogs; that they sense my apprehension. But I would tell anyone who asked me that the key to any dogs behavioral problems starts with making sure the dog gets enough exercise. I feel like a hypocrite because I know my dogs aren't getting enough.

My flexible work schedule and my husband's regimented work schedule makes this problem even more difficult. When he is available to help me with the dogs we are usually not comfortable taking the dogs out for long periods of time due to the external stresses. The dog's behavioral problems makes it difficult for me to walk the dogs alone unless I wake up early in the morning and drive to a nearby neighborhood with sidewalks and less distractions. In order to do this, I must fall asleep at a reasonable time so that I can wake up early.

Last night I couldn't stop my brain from daydreaming so I spent 2 hours in bed not sleeping. Then I got 4 hours of choppy sleep over the next 5 hours. I got out of bed at 7:30 am. Way too late to take the dogs out for a long walk. I feel exhausted because I didn't get any sleep and disappointed in myself because I didn't exercise the dogs. I am irritable towards my husband on mornings like this. I take the simplest acts, him watching TV the moment he gets out of bed, the wrong way because I am dealing with two dogs that are wound up and misbehaving before he wakes up and there is no break from this stress after he wakes up.

The dog behavioral problem has also taken a toll on our intimacy. With pets it is difficult to find alone time no matter how well behaved they are but it is even more difficult with misbehaving pets. So not only am I wound up because of the dog and sleep problems but I don't have the great stress relief that our intimacy used to provide.

I'm not sure if there is one solution to all of these problems but I know that I need to find a better escape from my problems than daydreaming. I need to make a commitment to taking better care of my dogs, myself and my relationship. But I know that is much easier to write than to implement.