Okay, I lost some of that extra weight (the six lbs.) that I was bitching about.  Not all of it, but most of it.  One might assume it was because my knees were swollen from the “new” exertion of bike riding?  Hubby and I went out again yesterday for a 4-mile ride and I felt really good… until today, that is.

My left knee (the one that was injured in the accident in December) keeps “going out” while I’m walking and causing a very sharp pain like I’m being stabbed with a knife.  It scares me because I cannot canNOT be forced to be inactive from an injury.  CAN’T.  I have to be active, I have to if I want to lose weight and I DO WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT.

Please, please, God, please let my knee be okay.

Meanwhile, I am learning to eat in the real world.  It’s pretty cool because both hubby and I enjoy going out to eat.  We love to have coffee brought to us and we love to talk and play cards while we wait for our food.  It’s one of the features of my “old” lifestyle that definitely supported my ability to gain weight - and so now if I can change it up enough to allow it to support my ability to lose weight, I won’t have to scrap it altogether.

Which is good, because - realistically - I probably wouldn’t.

Anyway, I have found myself scrounging through each menu to determine what I “can” have.  It helps to know that I can have anything I want - but - at the moment I want something that won’t drive my calorie total through the roof.  For example, I know from looking at the nutritional menu at Chili’s that their food is ASTRONOMICAL when it comes to calories!  My hubby’s favorite meal there, Chicken Crispers, has a whopping total of 1800 calories - yeeeeowww!  My favorite, Cajun Chicken Pasta, has 1500.  That’s like a whole day’s worth of calories.  Not my favorite anymore.  Nuh uh.  So I ordered a grilled chicken breast and asked for broccoli for my side.  It came with mashed potatoes (a huge helping)  of which I limited my intake.  No bread.  No breadING.  It was, in a word, yummy.  I was both full and happy.

Tonight’s challenge was Burger King.  I could have ordered the grilled chicken but I really really love their tendercrisp chicken.  Anyway, hubby ordered a whopper and large onion rings and I ordered the tendercrisp chicken sandwich.  Took the food home.  I made myself a big plate of salad and proceeded to remove the patty from the bun, wiping mayo off the patty.  Discarded bun.  Looked up tendercrisp patty on the bk website and it was 320.  It’s probably the biggest single thing calorie-wise that I’ve had to eat in weeks.  But it fit within my calories for the day and omg it was awesome.

I know I’m not actually losing weight yet but I will.  All this attention to what I’m allowing into my mouth has to pay off eventually.  I had all those years and years of paying NO attention whatsoever to the caloric (or nutritional) value of what I was eating, it’s interesting now that I am so obsessed with it.

I will lose weight.  My knee will heal.  I will exercise.  I will get fit.  I will.

I don't understand this.  At all.  I thought I totally understood the math of it all but even counting in "fluctuations," this does not make sense!!! 

In just five days - FIVE days, I have gone from 279.6 up to 286.2.  I *now* weigh a pound more than I did a month ago when I started this!!!  How is this possible?!?

Okay, I got discouraged ONE day and had a 2300-calorie-day - but it’s not like I just scrapped the plan completely and ate like 5000 calories! 

Sigh.  I’m still sticking to it but it is very hard to be motivated with results like these.

My monologue yesterday about the joys of REAL bicycling apparently had a real-world effect on me.  Today Mike and I were in the car and he asked me the Sunday question.  You know what I mean… Sundays are open - we can choose our diversions on Sunday so every week we discuss the Sunday question:  What do you want to do today?

I hesitated, then spoke my thought out loud:  “You mentioned you wanted to go to the bookstore today…” (really our favorite “date” - to go to B&N or BAM and read expensive books that we’re not going to buy while sipping overpriced coffee) ”… or…” I actually cringed, not sure what I wanted his response to be, “…we could go for a ride on our bikes.”

He didn’t hesitate for even a second.  “Or we could do both.”

I knew right away what he meant.  We could RIDE to Books-A-Million.  Ride our bikes.  Now.  Today.

“I’m not sure I could do that.”

I was scared!  I knew it was stupid, I knew it was silly, but I was honestly scared nevertheless.  Here’s why…

When I got my bike last March, it was a “reward” for having quit smoking for more than two months.  I was way overweight before I quit smoking and I was starting to gain even more (as I replaced my nicotine addiction with my food addiction).  I wanted the bike.  I wanted the exercise.  I wanted to experience exertion without wheezing like a smoker.

I rode it around the block and thought I would die.  My legs were like rubber, they were not strong enough to haul my 250-lb body around.  The bike then sat, unused, for almost two months.  At the end of April, I decided to try it again.  I started out slow, just a five-minute ride, then a ten-minute ride… working my way up each day.  There’s a hill nearby (not a very big one, lol) and I tried to get up that hill without walking my bike partway.  On about the fifth try, I made it.  My legs were getting stronger.

Then summer came.  My husband works days in the summertime.  Every evening we’d go for a ride.  I got stronger and stronger and soon was clocking 3-5 miles a day and then 10 miles or more on weekend days.  Bicycling became our obsession.

Then I got sick.  I spent over a month in bed, between doctor appointments and test appointments to try to figure out what was wrong with me.  I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t even walk down the hall to the bathroom without feeling wiped out.  Finally they diagnosed me with Graves Disease.  There’s no cure for GD but there is a drug that can help with the effects.  Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned before, the drugs have the side-effect of slowing down one’s metabolism.

I stopped biking.  And I gained THIRTY pounds.  OMG, THIRTY.

I kept saying, “How can this be?  I’m not eating that much!”  But I was eating, secretly.  And I was sedentary.  No bike riding.  No exercise tapes.  Just hours and hours in front of my computer.  On my ass.

Fast forward to December15.  I had a little accident with my car and I hurt my left knee. Twisted it, tore the meniscus.  Ouch.  It’s been slowly healing but I still don’t have full mobility.  Bend it too far or the wrong way and it hurts.  HURTS.

So this is why I was scared:  This past summer, a trip on the bike up to BAM was a breeze.  It’s only two miles away and there’s only one moderate uphill on the way there, pretty much all downhill on the way back.  It’s a lovely ride, but I haven’t undertaken the challenge of that lovely ride since last August - six months ago.  And I hadn’t tried riding my bike AT ALL since my accident in December. 

I was scared when I got on the exercise bike, too, for the same reasons.  But doing even the “uphill” mode on the inside-bike is NOwhere near as hard as pulling my 280-lb body along up a REAL hill on an outside-bike.

I did it.  Wait, let me repeat that with more emphasis:  I DID IT!!!!!!!!

As soon as I got on my bike my left leg HURT - but it wasn’t on the down-push, it was on the up-bend.  Decreased mobility = stiff and sore.  I hadn’t bent my injured leg to quite that degree - on purpose - since I hurt it.  By about the 50th up-bend, my knee was screaming at me - but it still wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined it!  About 200 up-bends later, it stopped hurting so bad, it had warmed-up-loosened-up.  And I chose to think of the continued movement as “physical therapy.”  Apparently I needed to be bending that leg a bit more.  Hey, no pain, no gain.

So… today I clocked four-and-a-quarter miles… on the real bicycle.  More importantly, I clocked 40 minutes of smiling - big doofy happy smiling - because being out in the world with my hubby, making my own breeze, feeling my muscles moving, my body and mind wide-awake and ALIVE - is pure joy, no doubt about it. 

I know I’m not supposed to weigh myself every day.  I know I’m not supposed to put so much stock in what numbers come up because there are so many factors that can have an effect on them.  I know.  I know. 

I was so stoked, though, the past few days.  I’ve been getting exercise every day and finally the numbers were MOVING.  I had broken the 280-barrier and had ventured into the 270’s.  I lost three pounds in six days.  Getting on the scale every morning had turned into the highlight of my day!

The scale says I’ve gained back almost a whole pound.  My husband says either the scale is wrong or I’m full of shit.  Literally.  LOL.  I admitted to him that I have not done yet today what is usually done by now.

We went out to Cracker Barrel last night - but it was planned!  I had actually entered exactly was I was going to eat into FitDay before we even went to the restaurant!  Then once I was there, I ordered and ate ONLY what I’d planned to eat.  Mike noticed my leftover biscuit and asked, “Aren’t you going to eat that?”  No, I don’t need it, furthermore, I don’t want it.

So now it’s 2 pm on Sunday and I haven’t had a thing to eat yet so far today.  This is normal for us on the weekends.  Yeah, breakfast is supposed to be important but it’s not uncommon for Mike and I to eat our first bite of food at about 3pm.  I kinda like it when it happens because then I’m allowed to scarf down 1500 calories in just half-a-day instead of a full one. 

I hope by tomorrow morning I’ll see some progress.  I’m definitely getting on the bike later today!

I have this memory of when I was a child, probably about seven years old.  I got up one summer morning and I looked out the front door and it was a beautiful day.  I ran to get dressed and then ran, full speed, outside to my bike.

It was summer.  No school.  Totally free.  I could do whatever I wanted to do and what I wanted to do was ride.  It didn’t matter that my riding world was limited to my block only and that I basically rode around in circles again and again and again.  It was the feeling of speed - of the breeze I created for myself blowing through my hair - the feeling of pleasant exertion that translated into elation.

I remember sucking in a deep breath of freshly-mowed-grass-scented air and standing on my pedals, I coasted in the morning sunlight and just felt GOOD. 

This past summer, my husband and I rediscovered a bit of that when we started riding our bikes on a pretty much daily basis.  No longer limited to just one block, I wanted to discover something new during every ride.  Some days we rode the paved bike trail nearby, on other days we’d explore a new street or neighborhood.  We’d push our way up a hill just to feel that cool exhilaration coming down the other side.  I loved riding but when summer was over Mike went back to working nights and I lost my riding partner.

I didn’t much like riding by myself.  At all.

The indoor exercise bike isn’t about “bike-riding” in the sense that *I* think of bike-riding.  It’s merely a convenient form of aerobic activity.  I’m doing it because I want to burn calories, not at all for the joy of it.

I can’t wait for summer.

I have this pattern of obsessing on things.  I’ll get interested in something and then I’ll TOTALLY become addicted to whatever it is, and then I’ll take it to whatever limit feels like I’m “done,” and then I’ll drop it like a hot rock and move on to something else.

My obsessions don’t usually last a whole year.  For example, when I found an online Gin Rummy game, I played it.  I enjoyed playing with other real people over the net, and so I played it a lot.  Soon I was playing it every night, working on increasing my score so that I could play in advanced rooms.  Then I started playing tournaments, and oh man I came so close to winning a few times - and then, finally — I won.  As soon as I won that tournament, I lost interest in competing at online Gin Rummy.  I would say, altogether, that obsession lasted about seven months.

The longest obsession that comes to mind is last year’s obsession with quitting smoking.  It was necessary to be a little “obsessed” about it because it was such a difficult addiction to overcome.  I joined an online support group where I read daily and posted often, I made neat graphics with inspirational “quit” messages on them.  I researched every aspect of physical, mental, and emotional withdrawal from nicotine.  I lived and breathed “not smoking” for twelve whole months.

I need this obsession to last at least as long.

And yes, oh yes, it is an obsession.  The aerobic tapes, the shopping lists, the online support group, the blog, the calorie intake/burn spreadsheet, the exercise bike — it all adds up to classic-eileen-obsessionism, without a doubt.  I am fully committed and pumped and I’m in this to win — nothing less.  I need, need, need to be obsessed.

Have I mentioned that I have three teenagers, two of whom were diagnosed in their early teens with obsessive-compulsive disorder?  LOL, apple… meet tree.

Hit counter web design gallery.

Okay so did the novelty wear off already?  Must have, right, that’s why I’ve been gone from here for what, three weeks?

Amazingly, no it hasn’t.

I’m still “on plan.”  I’m still counting calories.  I’m still shopping carefully.  I’m still in the game, yeah.  Even though the rules seem to be stacked against me, I’m still in it.  I’m not giving up, nuh uh.  Even though I have like the slowest metabolism on the planet and even though I’ve actually GAINED weight instead of lost weight… I’m still in there, still committed, still OBSESSED.

Actually, yeah, I did gain weight — but I also lost a little too.  Right now I’m down three pounds from my beginning weight.  Not exactly the progress that I was hoping for, BUT… prior to beginning this journey I was gaining an average of HALF A POUND A WEEK, thanks to the Graves Disease effect on my thyroid.  SO.  If it’s been four weeks and I’ve lost three pounds and I WOULD HAVE in that period of time GAINED two pounds, then I’m really five pounds ahead of the game.

It’s okay.  Usually by four weeks into a “diet” if I’d only lost three pounds, I’d be throwing in the towel for sure.  I’d be saying “WHY BOTHER” and I’d go back to eating what I wanted when I wanted.  BUT I’M NOT LIVING THAT LIFE ANYMORE.  I have begun a new, heathier life, and REGARDLESS of the daily effect of the earth’s gravity (which is all “weight” is, after all), I’m not turning back to the old life.  Ever.

I went out of town for a week.  Went to Washington D.C.  Even though I stayed in a hotel and ate room service food, I managed to stay on plan.  Because it’s not a diet.  I am forming new daily rituals, CREATING NEW HABITS.  This way of eating will become just as much of a habit as the old way of eating was. 

When I got back from my trip, I found that my husband had surprised me with a gift.  He is awesome at getting me exactly what I want and he didn’t fail this time, that’s for sure.  There in the TV room is a brand new upright exercise bike, the one I had picked out to buy “when we have the money.”  It’s mine now and my daily routine has now changed to include some quality time with that bike.  We’re going to be good friends, me and the bike, I can feel it already.

Yeah, I’m back.