I e-mailed this scan of The Girl’s homework to Kate at Shapely Prose, because I knew she would have something more eloquent than I to say about it; but either she didn’t get it or it is stupid. Kate commented and she is right; it’s not stupid I thought maybe it just wasn’t topical, I dunno. I was feeling insecure. 

When first reading the directions to The Girl I unintentionally skipped over the diet thing to just tell her what it was she needed to do.  At first it didn’t affect me, but then I started to really think about what they are saying to 5 year-olds.  That they are presenting the idea of  diets to children only a few years out of diapers.

I have such a negative self image that I sometimes find it hard not to make disparaging comments about my body, sometimes unfortunately when she is around.  I want her to have a better body image than I have, that a few extra pounds isn’t the end of the world.  I want her to have better eating habits. 

But it is hard.  Especially when you have Kindergarten homework planting the idea that hating your body is OK.

A while back I bought the book Dieting for Dummies, out of all the books I have bought on diet and weight loss it is the only one I read cover to cover and still use as a reference.  Can’t say the same for The Zone.

One of the things I used quite often is the formulas to calculate how many calories you really need to eat to lose and/or maintain your weight. I had an entire chart written out for myself and Big Daddy and would do the same for friends when they expressed their diet woes.  Not that I ever actually followed it, but it felt like I was doing something proactive about losing weight other than just complaining about it.

Their are many factors that contribute to your caloric needs such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Metabolism
• Genetics
• Body Shape
• Activity Level

All of which should come as no surprise.

To estimate your BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate, what your body needs just to breathe and exist, you can use one of two formulas. Your current weight in pounds multiplied by 10 (11 if you’re a man).  Example 184 x 10= 1,840 calories or use the formula below.  (Or use this BMR calculator)

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) – ( 6.8 x age in year )
This isn’t the formula in the book, I tried looking around online for the formula because I’m too lazy to type it out.  The book has different formulas for different age groups.

My BMR  for 184 pounds, 5′6″ and 37 years old= 1,591.70

Next you determine your activity level. 

Sedentary = BMR X .2 (little or no exercise, desk job)
Lightly active = BMR X .3 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X .4 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active = BMR X .5 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)

1591.7 x .2 = 318.2

Next determine how many calories are needed just to digest and absorb your food.  Which is 10% of your caloric need. (BMR + activity cal) x 10% = calories for digestion.

(1591 + 318) x 10% = 190.9

Your total calorie needs:

BMR + Activity + Digestion = Total Calories

1591 + 318 + 190 = 2,099 Calories per day is what my body needs just to go about my daily activities. 

To lose 1 pound a week you need to cut 500 calories; 1.5pounds = 750; 2 pounds= 1000. 

Once you lose weight and your BMR drops to a level where cutting 500-750 would put you in a calorie range below 800-1000 calories a day the 20% rule is safer to follow. Someone with a BMR of 1800 calories can  safely cut 360 calories and continue to lose 1/2 to 3/4 pounds a week.

My average meal at the Golden Arches is 1,300 calories alone.  I know! I KNOW!

It’s quite eye opening.

February starting weight 184.0  -7.5 since the start of the year.

BMI: 29.7  -1.2 drop in one month

The Girl was messing with my measuring tape when I had it out last month (and of course I never put things back where they belong either) so I don’t know where it is or even where to look for it. GRRR.

Like most of you I have been seeing the commercials for Alli.  When it was first being pimped before it was on the market, I thought I’d check it out.  Then I found out what it is.  And remembered what the side effects are.  In the late 90’s my cousin and her husband were on the prescription version and she complained about how gross it was.

• gas with oily spotting
• loose stools
• more frequent stools that may be hard to control

On the site they say:

You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work

and

While no one likes experiencing treatment effects, they might help you think twice about eating questionable fat content. If you think of it like that, alli can act like a security guard for your late-night cravings

and

You can use a food journal to recognize what foods can lead to treatment effects. For example, writing down what you eat may help you learn that marinara sauce is a better option than Alfredo sauce

Why not just make those changes without risking pooping your pants?

So I weighed myself this morning.  182.  6.5 since last Friday.  9.5 for the month.

However, as you know, Monday I was sick.  The rest of the week I have been such a huge ball of stress and anxiety that I can’t eat.  I have eaten a little because even though I just wish I were dead some days; I don’t really want to fall down dead.

I know it’s so bad for me not to eat, but I just feel so shitty.

Taking a brief moment of respite from my hours of ’quality’ time spent with my American Standard to say how much like ass I am feeling today. 

I have 2 more scintillating posts swirling around in my head, but feeling like I want to hurl and being scared to is filling my concentration at the moment.

I have eaten a handful of cheerios, 1/4 of a Starbucks low-fat cinnamon coffee cake along with a venti Carmel Machiatto (whatever) and a cup of chamomile tea so far today.  All of which are just making me feel even more crappy.  At least feeling this shitty might have a noticeable effect on the scale.

So I weighed myself this morning despite saying I wasn’t going to. 

188.5 which is 3 pounds since the first of the year.  Not bad for being a little really bad with the Eat Less of Better Things Plan.

I ran for almost an entire minute straight this morning. ROCK!

Went a little crazy at the Sports Authority.  Actually not really, there was so much more I could have spent thousands on (elliptical anyone?) but I kept my damage under $100.  I bought some better shoes, a cool supportive bra and some bands.  I also bought another pair of yoga pants and my favorite movie of all time Sixteen Candles on DVD (to watch while walking) at Target.  I so wanted the Dead Like Me season 1 and 2 sets.  Maybe next time.

I should be set for a while.

(Still haven’t called on the jogging stroller- there’s a reason my BFF calls me Super Chicken.)

I’ve had a tough week and I have been a bad girl. 

The thing with the baby and the Tylenol threw me into a tizzy that was further tizzified when Big Daddy came home and dropped the bomb that we need to find somewhere else to live and either sell or walk away from our house.  (I do not deal well with stress or change.)

I ate at McD’s 2 times this week which equals 2 large cokes, 2 large fries, 1 McChick.en and one of their ‘premium’ chicken sandwiches.  I got it grilled instead of the crispy so that’s not as bad.  Right?

Also, I loooove B&J’s Cherry Garcia, and Jack-in-the-Box has new cherry chip shakes.  I saw the sign, and everyday I would drive by I would tell myself NO!  Finally I gave in, only got a regular instead of a large.  It was not that great.  Had I kept resisting I would have built it up in my head and been coveting the hell out of it, but now; meh.

BUT! On Tuesday I was supposed to meet up with some of my Flab to Fab moms for a walk around the Rose Bowl, we all missed each other but since I drove all the way there and I thankfully grabbed my iPod at the last moment I decided to walk it alone- The Boy in the stroller, my bottle full of water and good tunes.

When I started out I set the sleep timer for a half-hour and planned that when it shut off I would turn back, go to target and get some lunch out.  (It’s a huge oval that goes around the stadium, a chunk of the parking lot and the adjoining golf course.)  After the half-hour I was about half way done, it wasn’t so bad and it was a beautiful day in the 70’s; I decided to turn my music back on and finish the path. 

I made many stops to try to stretch out this one strip of muscle in my lower calf/ankle that ALWAYS cramps up when I walk at a faster pace ( I think it’s residual damage from a sprain 12 years ago.).  Then, brace yourself, I actually JOGGED!  A little.  I would jog a few seconds and then stop. Rinse lather and repeat.  It wasn’t that difficult and could have continued a little longer had there not been a number of factors that would arise.

1. The cramp would worsen.
2. I wasn’t wearing a very supportive bra and my poor post-breastfeeding boobies were too bouncy.  
3. I had my cell phone in my bra on vibrate so I would not miss business calls and it would start to migrate south. 
4. My shoes are cheap pieces of crap.  I bought them when my local Kmart was closing and liquidating the stock not absorbed by other stores.
5. Either due to the crappy shoes, the persistent cramp or both, my entire right foot would go completely numb.  I have had issues with my toes/feet going numb when wearing shoes on the treadmill (so I bought a bigger size than I normally would wear), while skiing, rollerskating and rollerblading- but only the pads, not the whole foot like I was wearing a numb sock.
6. I felt self-conscious of my big bouncing butt.

After I was finished I felt so awesome that I scrapped the lunch out and just came home and ate.

So I’m going to buy new shoes and if I can overcome my social anxiety I will call on a jogging stroller I found for $30 on Craig’s List.

I think I am also going to weigh myself only once a month from now on, it’s so daunting to see no decrease on the scale every day week even though my endurance, fitness level, energy and self-esteem is increasing.

[insert inspirational quote here]

Something happened today to totally throw me off and ruin everything I have been working for.

The Boy got a hold of The Girls children’s tylen0l and ate 1/2 of the bottle (it could have been less but I honestly only know that the bottle was not brand new).  The guy at poison control said he’ll be fine*, that he would have needed to eat the whole bottle for it to be toxic, but it still upsets me greatly.  I tried to make him throw up, but trying to induce vomiting in a 19 month old is not easy.  I tried sticking my fingers down his throat, but it only caused him to bite me.  Hard.  Then I tried using his beloved toothbrush- not the best plan.  I gave up.

So to feed my fear, anxiety and grief I had a chili cheese burger, fries and a large coke.  I am so angry with myself for giving in.  I KNEW I shouldn’t and I told that side of me to fuck off. 

But to quote Scarlett O’Hara “After all… tomorrow is another day. “  That’s the best I can do.

*I just called poison control again because I was so freaked out this morning I really didn’t absorb everything he was saying and then I consulted the illustrious Dr G00gle so I was getting myself more in a tizzy.  He’ll be fine.

Last night I went to my first little get together of the work-out/ diet support group one of the moms in my moms group put together.  Last year she did one of those 6 week boot-camp workout things and has become somewhat of a role model for the rest of us.  She’s calling it Flab to Fab. 

I am by far one of the heaviest moms in the club. (I originally thought I was the heaviest, but then I remembered one mom that I never see.)   Very few of them I would even call overweight, which if you think about it, goes against the stereotype of stay at home moms.  Some I would even call too thin (BootCamp Mom included).

I am looking forward to some outside support as The Girl doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about; always saying do this or do that because we saw it on The Biggest Loser.  And then there is Big Daddy.  He is one of those people who give diet and exercise advice but are overweight themselves and do not follow what they say.  But men don’t have the same pressures as women do so he’s not as concerned with the extra 40-50 pounds.  (by some standards he’s 100-60 pounds overweight.)  He’s not mean or criticizing though.  Don’t think he’s too much of an asshole.

We have planned some walk and hikes during the week and are going to meet once a month to compare goals and progress, learn some new moves and discuss new issues that come up.

My only issue with the group so far is that one mom does marathons and the other once ran an IRONMAN triathlon!  How is my 190 pound sedentary butt going to keep up with that?