Sunday, January 20, 2008

Are there Fireworks in Heaven? and other Random Thoughts from tonight's walk

Not every day raw is marked by profound revelations or progressions. Some days are just...days. It doesn't prevent me from wanting to fulfill my commitment to myself to blog more this year. Some of my favorites started out as a collection of musings and ended up having a point, after a fashion. This post will probably fall into that category.

When I ate mainly cooked food, I noticed I was usually starving in the morning or at least thought I was. Believing that I needed to eat was so strong, that I have no remembrance of actually feeling hungry, for, oh, I don't know how long. When I started eating raw, I started noticing that when I get up, my first thoughts are not of food. All of us BREAK fast at different times... and I continue to lose weight and get healthier and healthier, and upon occasion am not truly hungry until noon, or even early afternoon! Also the longer I eat raw definitely is having an impact upon my becoming increasingly attuned to my body and learning from it. When I was eating all cooked food and low-nutrient/high-fat/high sugar food, I seemed to be totally out of touch with my body.

Yesterday I let the day get away from me before getting to the gym to exercise before it closed, and it was chilly and rainy all day, and my precious baywalk was closed for this year's Gasparilla Extravaganza Children's Parade. So tonight I was especially determined to get outside to walk. I get down to the seawall, and it turns out they had closed Bayshore Drive again from Patriot's Corner where I usually stow my car while I do my run, northward, so I head south to my old starting point, El Prado. I begin a walk south towards Ballast Point, 3.6 miles roundtrip. The concrete walk along the seawall narrows toward the end of Bayshore, continuing alongside brick-paved streets gently winding to mimic the unseen curve of the shore just the other side of the townhomes on the east, ending up at Ballast Point Park.

As is always true after missing a day of exercise for any reason, I spend the first five minutes allowing Fat Brain and Skinny Brain to duke it out about who is driving Body, and whether or not we're going to "turn this body around and take it right home!"...Skinny Brain, as always, wins, even though Fat Brain had Faceskin and Fingers on his side, and Shrinking Torso was undecided. Then I start opening my mind to various and sundry thoughts to see what would come, and this is what I ended up with tonight:

  • I'm so glad I have all my extremities still with me to be able to feel anything, including cold. No matter how I might feel about war as a philosophy or in general, God bless you, co-citizens of this country, who have ended up losing any part of your body in the line of militaristic duty to which you felt called or honor-bound to perform you believed to be in the pursuit of freedom for your countrymen and countrywomen.

  • Pushing myself to complete the daily efforts to reach my goals is part of it... it never stops and I can never quit, unless I want to stop trying to reach goals.

  • After the first five or ten minutes, it's a moot point anyway--- I'm going to finish at that point.

  • Even if you're half-frozen, always take time to stop for a surprise fireworks exhibition...you never know if it will be the last one you ever see.

  • I've never seen fireworks dropped by planes flying in tandem before! The Red Baron Squadron's aerobatic performance was an amazing sight, especially the sparkly contrails...but watching them caused a tension within which detracts a bit from my unabashed enjoyment, because they fly too close to each other and I'm afraid of some tragic occurrence...

  • Are there fireworks in Heaven continuously? That's probably thinking too small...from what I've been told....I love fireworks.
  • Why does watching fireworks make you want to drink alcoholic beverages and light up a cigar and swing your hips around in hulahoop fashion and cry WooHOOO! Or is that just me?

  • Why are most of the shooting sparkles the colors of Christmas? Does magenta and hot pink and chartreuse cost more? Are our city coffers a bit constrained--like my own--- in the fireworks-display budget right now?

  • It is marginally more fun to watch fireworks displays--- especially when I'm experiencing physical discomfort--- with someone than without...but it's alright alone, too. Alone in a crowd.

  • It's tremendously cold for the Floridian species...47 degrees windchill back at the house, probably colder down here at the bay.

  • My tailbone hurts, perched on one of the concrete seats curving bayside at intervals along the seawall, and my hands form cloth-clad stumps inside the ends of each sleeve and are plunged inside the pouch at the front of my red and black hoodie. But if I leave now, I won't get to see the big finale...they always have a big finale... it is a battle of will to stick it out, especially as others begin to give up and move off towards the assured warmth of their respective rides or homes.

  • I want to see the big finale.
The evening walk ends up being a metaphor of my weightloss experience-- I tend to turn everything into a metaphor of my weightloss experience--- but it really was: if I can endure the momentary discomfort, I'll get to experience the pleasure of the Big Finale! And after I started to walk on to my car, after the big, wonderful, unusually explosive ending, a minute or so elapsed, and they had one more encore! Which I related in my mind to maintenance... more reward for continued effort.

Sitting in queue at the railroad tracks, it occurred to me the day ended up being a feast for the senses...face-deadening, finger-stiffening cold, startlingly awesome pyrotechnic display, delicious new fruit to taste, the sound of fireworks exploding, both shooting up and being dropped from planes into the night skies, the loud blare of the locomotive I had to wait for on the way home, the heater air slowly warming my toes, while the cold air above kept my nose and cheeks numb... of all the days there've ever been, this certainly has been one!

So, I'm thinking, I can't wait to see what kind of days this journey will bring me in the months ahead, and I want to stay...until the end, and beyond!

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

All I Gotta Do

My Fat Brain got some bad news in the last few days. A growing awareness in Thinbrain has led to the conclusion that the beatings will continue...the exercise will be increased in frequency, duration and intensity. This year is all about simplification, honesty, accountability, cleaning up and cleaning out. I am continuing to intensify my walking, and now running, exercise by now doing it twice a day, once easy, once a little more intense. Now I am also thinking about adding in extra toning and strengthening exercises. The focus is: I don't have time to play around with the weightloss... GET THESE TOXINS OUT NOW.

I've been paying more and more attention to the ladies I'm in contact with who have lost a lot of weight and kept it off successfully. I've also begun to research the subject, because me dealing with it this year is a reality, and I need to begin to prepare. The general consensus is, the more you lose, the more you have to exercise in order to lose more! Because there is less mass to burn the calories than there was before, and even if you strengthen and build muscle mass to replace and burn calories more efficiently, its very efficiency cannot make up for the volume that was formerly inside the body maintaining itself. The White Queen would no doubt tell me I've been living in a slow sort of country, because now, it takes all the running I can do, to keep in the same place. If I want to get somewhere else, I "must run at least twice as fast as that!"

In sales, you set goals and then you set quotas. You set the goal far out, and then you break down time in between now and when you want to reach the goal into quantifiable quotas which will accumulate over regular intervals during the given period of time to yield the goal amount.

I have a goal of 126. I know when I want to be there. I have now gone back and set weekly quotas for toxins to be released, which will result in reaching the goal when I initially planned. In order to effect that release, my intake of calories, which must remain fairly constant within a range of 1000-1200 calories, is less manipulable than the exercise. The amount of exercise I must do in order to work within the range of calories, given the projected weight my body will be on any given week, is therefore identifiable, quantifiable, and DO-ABLE! I have to burn a certain amount of calories, and there are fairly static basal rates for a given weight, and there are set calories expended by various types of exercise with relation to intensity and duration, and that is identifiable...ALL I HAVE TO DO IS STICK WITH THE PLAN AND MY GOAL IS A FOREGONE CONCLUSION!!!! You don't know how much comfort that gives me.

Now... I just have to WANT to stick with the plan hour by hour, day by day, week by week, for the next 22 weeks! That's all I have to do, and I will have completed the first step in restoring That Seventies Body to mois....in becoming Princess PHATso...and then the next tough part begins, but for now, all I have to keep my eyes on is doing my exercise and eating my fruit and veggies for today, so I can meet this next week's quota! I'm on my way!!! 22 MORE WEEKS!!! Two fiscal quarters! A pittance! A snippet of time!!!

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

What I Learned at Raw Food Boot Camp

All ten of us who read this blog may have noticed my absence the past, oh, let's just call it six weeks and be done.

Well, my goal was certainly to blog more often, and one of my new year's resolutions was to blog nearly daily, but a funny thing happens on the way to the resolution forum every year. I start early in late November-- to get the jump on the rest of the hoi polloi, you see-- but I suspect I have a hidden agenda about that, as well. I believe that the part of my brain (Fat Brain) where Little Voice dwells, lurking behind some algae-covered synapse, has subscribed to the RSS-feed--- I'm not exactly even sure what that is but I know it has something to do with instant notification of updated information--- of the other side of my brain (the side where Glenda the Good Witch stays when she comes to visit), and goes into overdrive to immediately counter-attack any planned positive changes. Therefore, the jumpstart on new year's resolutions serves as a counter-counter response to any insurgency on the part of Fat Brain, which results in said resolutions actually taking effect about...the first week or two of January, same as everybody else.

Then there is the whole maddening December thing my head goes on a tirade about, on any given year, ever since I lost both my parents and a favored dachshund during that season several years back. A few Decembers since 2000, I have absolutely had all I could do to function for the entire month. Much less make the journey, alone, into that head of mine, a necessary evil of the blogging process. And this year, I also had to deal with the contemplation of the end of a career path, continuing the raw food path, etc, etc, waaaah-waaaah, ad nauseum... there are my excuses, and I'm sticking to it!

Now we've got that out of the way, I had taken some time to reflect upon what the Raw Food Boot Camp experience had done for me after it ended November 21st, besides help me lose about 28 pounds. Fortunately, dear reader, I made a few notes and saved them in a text file for future reference for when I wrote my report, What I have learned as a Result of Boot Camp.

Three major things come to mind: getting back "in touch" with ME; uncovering and tackling some inner "work" that needed doing I didnt' know was there; and how to open up lines of communication with my husband, the benefit to the latter of which being re-evaluated on a daily basis. The biggest thing I took away was the realization it can be done, and it can be done by me. I had pretty much given up on getting below the number on the scales the ginormous amount of weight I managed to accumulate inside my skin afforded me. But I proved to myself I was about to give up right before the change. Now, I know it is possible. Now, I know that I can lose the weight--- it takes determination and sticking to the plan but I can do it. I am starting to see the old me, that I imagine I was at some point whether that has any bearing upon the actual truth or not, start to shine through. Now I am taking the excitement of knowing there is something that absolutely does work and converting it to action to shed the pounds! I really am so thankful for this experience!

I have also learned to incorporate exercise and keep it a priority in my life, because I have come to believe and admit that exercise is key to any successful weightloss program, and to keeping it off once you've lost it... and that harder isn't always the best if its the pounds you're really looking to lose. I've learned that I really can set goals and follow through. I've also learned that exercise is good and can elevate my mood more than ice cream ever could, or, as Dr. Stephen Gullo says, exercise keeps my moods out of my foods. I've also learned that all fruit is the best, most efficient way to lose weight, for me, for right now-- fruit always tastes delicious, it's portable, it delivers live nutrients at a moment's notice, it's beautiful to behold and it fills me up..... physically and emotionally.

Oh, a couple more aphorisms... after enduring a particularly difficult December:

It is better to be thinner and miserable, than fat and miserable.

There is no value high enough to be placed upon friends, cyber and flesh alike, who help you keep an attitude of gratitude....SPEAKING OF WHICH, please be good to yourself today and visit an AMAZING SITE that belongs to my new cyber-friend, Christy Murphy. She has tapped into something that is one of the major cures for depression, and has almost become a lost art in our society today...expressing thanks.

And if you are reading this, thank you.