Slipping Through My Fingers

Yesterday was one of those days that I never want to experience again. But, funny enough, it's something that has happened to me twice in the past six months. At the doctor's office, my blood pressure shot up ridiculously. 160/110. To me, that is unbelievable. It's even more ridiculous since I monitor my blood pressure daily, and it's never been that high. I have white coat syndrome, but that can't possibly be the reason behind why my BP was that high.

Seriously, bless my doctor. He's my allergist, and honestly, one of the nicest men that I've ever met. After the nurse showed her bad bedside manner to me (literally strapped a BP cuff around my arm and told me to sit there and that she'd be back), he took over. Took the cuff off of me, told me to get down off the table and have a seat on a regular chair and just sat there and talked to me to calm me down. After that he told me to lay on the table, close my eyes, and relax as he took my BP again. The number came down enough that he was okay sending me home, but he then spent the next few minutes talking to me about being active and eating right. I told him about my weight loss journey and how frustrated I've been over the past year, and he was empathetic. While I was talking, I realized what I needed to do, and how I need to go about doing it. Do I really want this to happen every time I go to the doctor's (which, yes, I already made an appointment with my PCP to have my BP checked out... although it is MUCH lower this morning, thank goodness)? Do I want to be pregnant and have to deal with being a high risk pregnancy because of my weight and my blood pressure?

The answer is no.

Deja Vu

We've been here before. I've been here before.

I keep having this *aha* moments (thanks, Oprah). But are they really aha moments when you don't follow through with them? I had aha moment #1 back in January. I was sick of the 15 pounds that I had put on and bought Jillian Michaels' "Winning by Losing." Per her instructions, wrote down my goals and my rewards for hitting those goals. I soon forgot about all of this and gained a bit more weight.

Aha moment #2 came in May when I had to dig out my clothes from last summer and realized I didn't fit in any of my pants. Oh crap. Time to lose some weight. So, I signed up for Weight Watchers online. I lost 7 pounds in the month of June... and gained them all back by the end of July.

I had aha moment #3 this weekend. Nothing is as unforgiving as facing yourself in the dressing room mirror. I'm in the same place I was over Memorial Day weekend. I didn't lose anything, and in two weeks, I need to face a classroom full of kids, and I'm not going to do it in clothes that are noticeably tight. So, I went shopping and realized that I looked pregnant in everything. I bought three tops and walked away not feeling great. I felt like I finally had clothes that fit me, but I was unhappy in having to buy those sizes that I thought I said goodbye to 24 months ago.

I've been making every excuse in the book not to go to the gym. My cortisone shot. Being tired all the time. Having tummy issues. Time to stop. Time to just focus on the end goal. Time to just get on that elliptical and move closer to where I want to be. I want to not be on blood pressure medicine. I don't want to have a high risk pregnancy when we're ready for kids in a few years. I don't want to look pregnant when I'm not. I don't want to be tired. I want what I had last summer... I felt fit, self-confident in my clothes, and happy. I got the happy part. Now it's time to journey onto the other two.

Ups and Downs

This week has been a rollercoaster of emotions. Mainly, it's been associated with the scale. I have a bad habit of weighing myself every morning. To me, it's a motivational tool. If my weight is up a little bit, I know I need to work a little bit harder, whether it's at the gym or through food, to get back to where I'd like to be. And, this week, since I've recommitted myself to eating better and hitting up the gym, I just expected to see the scale go down.

Um, wrong.

It went up. And up. And up. To this point where I was just SO uncomfortable with those numbers that were on the scale. What was going on? My weight NEVER fluctuates that much. A pound or two, sure, but never... ugh. Not to mention, that I was back to normal with my exercise. I went to spin class twice this week, did the elliptical on Tuesday afternoon, and considered some weight training but never got around to it. So why were these numbers upsetting me so much?

As one of my friends told me, I'm a scientist. I like to quantify everything. How true.

This morning, I woke up and weighed myself. Down FOUR pounds from that uncomfortable number. WTH? Maybe this is the lesson I need to step away from the scale and not depend on that for validation. I don't think I'll ever be one of those weigh myself once a week people, but I definitely don't need to upset myself every morning. Sigh.

Emerging from my cocoon

Hi y'all... I took a Kiki style hiatus from blogging, my job, and well, from life. Over the past six months, I've been on a sabbatical from my job as a tenure track assistant professor, and honestly, how it went was a toss up. Workwise, it was tough. I am a very structured person, and I love a schedule. Sabbatical = no schedule. It was hard to get myself to focus, even harder when my papers were rejected swiftly, and harder still when I put pressure on myself to accomplish as much as I could. Personally, it was crazy. I got engaged and moved in with my sweetheart, which made me SO happy, but at the same time, I never felt so isolated personally and professionally. Most of my friends are people I work with, and since I wasn't going into the office, I felt that most of my social life revolved around my honey and the cat. Fitness? Bwahahaha. Sabbatical means never having to put on real pants, and let's just say it's a scary situation when your sweatpants that are supposed to be comfortable become tight. I mean, seriously, I was squeezing myself into sweatpants. Who does that?

How did I go from a 172 pound Hard Core Kiki to a 193 pound (my high was 197) soft and round Kiki? Stress? Laziness? Elastic waistbands? All of the above?

Yeah, probably.

I figure the best thing to do was be honest with myself. I went from 250ish pounds to 172 pounds over two years. That's a 78 pound loss. SEVENTY EIGHT POUNDS. Wow. Now, I'm up 20 pounds from my lowest low. I can do this again. One thing that I did was create a game plan for when I come back from visiting family next week for my eating and fitness goals over the next five weeks. I have plenty of motivation... fit in clothes that are just sitting in my drawers right now, get off my blood pressure medicine, and (my ultimate goal, years down the road) be fit enough to have a safe pregnancy and live a long life.

There are things that I've realized. I'm not a runner. I never have been and never will be. I do love cardio though, and the endorphins that come from it. I like spending time in the gym, on various machines that are available to me like the elliptical and the stairclimber. I also LOVE spin class, which is something that I haven't done in a while, because my favorite instructor has been teaching at 6:15AM (did you see that lazy part up in the first paragraph? Yeah, that extends to my sleeping habits). I also LOVE feeling strong. Weights are my friend, and I really hate how soft my middle and arms have gotten since I haven't been weight lifting lately. These are things that I remember that helped me on my weight loss journey and things that I actually liked. By incorporating them back into my life, I can get back to where I want to be.

So, what's this blog going to be about, and why did I feel the need to start *another* new blog? Well, first, part of my job is publishing, and every academic loves the chance to "revise and resubmit" a paper rather than being outright rejected. That's how I feel about this weight loss journey that I've been on since Fall 2007. A paper hardly if ever gets accepted outright. I feel that a person hardly if ever is completely successful in their first stab at weight loss. It's easy to get stuck on a plateau (or like me, gain some of that weight back) and say, "ugh, I'm done, I'm never going to reach my goal weight." But that's not what I'm going to do. I'm going to look at what I've done and compare it to what I've been doing (uh, nothing) and... revise my plan and resubmit to my weight loss journey. This blog is about honesty with myself and allowing myself to share my thoughts on this journey.