Back home, back to my routine...

So it's been a rough week. Had to go away for a week for work and let's just say...it is really, really good to be home.

On my last business trip, I lost complete control of myself. Ate whatever I wanted, didn't set foot in a gym, gained three (okay, maybe four) pounds. It was a diet disaster of the grandest proportions.

So you can imagine how nervous I was about the prospect of another business trip. One that I knew would last a week. But I trained with Ms. A the day before I left and upon researching the hotel discovered it had a 24-hour gym.

I felt good going in. Good that minutes after checking in, I was sweating away on a treadmill, good that the gym had free weights, machines, and resistance bands--all the equipment I use with Ms. A. It was great.

Until I got to the first work event and noticed the meal. Salad drenched in dressing, creamy mashed potatoes, rice pilaf and fried fish with buckets of tartar sauce. I went with the portion control theory here...but the next day, my choices were chicken parmesan and cheese tortellini in a cream sauce. Oh boy.

Needless to say, I ended up in the gym every day of my trip but one. I told myself, "If I can't eat the healthy stuff I want, I need to exercise extra hard."

As a result--came home today, weighed myself and I maintained. I'll take it.

Especially since the day before my trip, I went shopping for a few business-friendly outfits...and two weeks with Ms. A have already brought me down a size.

The Bottomless Pit

There's one week a month that I swear, no matter what I do, what I eat or how much willpower I exercise, I feel just plain terrible.

Ladies, I'm sure you know what week I'm talking about.

This is the first time I've gone through PMS week since hiring Ms. A--and can I just say that yesterday's workout was especially brutal. I was dragging and struggling to finish every exercise. I was gaggy and gross and had absolutely no energy (Despite the fact I'm actually getting a good 8 hours of sleep a night).

I fessed up to what was going on and she suddenly understood...and told me it was absolutely normal. But she pushed me to keep going and keep going I did.

The dangerous part though has been the eating. I am a virtual bottomless pit before my period arrives. It's not that I crave anything in particular (Although today I fell prey to the siren song of some Wendy's fries--but I only ate a few before tossing the rest in the trash)...I'm just always hungry.

I can eat protein and it won't matter. Carbs do nothing for me. I just want to eat and eat and eat and eat. It's terrible.

Normally, I would tell myself, "Oh, relax. You have your period. You're entitled, have the cookies," and I'd indulge.

Now I'm trying to be a little more sensible and telling myself hunger--at least the hunger I'm feeling--won't kill me. I don't need to eat every hour on the hour. I am getting some nutritious meals in...I'm not really starving.

So what did I do when the mid-afternoon urge to eat hit?

Came to my computer, natch!

Progress, at last...

I'll be honest.

When I stepped on the scale this morning and saw I was only down a pound, I was disappointed.

I thought about all the work I've put in. How I've pushed myself like a madwoman at the gym. How I'm eating earlier and how I've given up soda.

I was thinking for all that effort, there'd be more than one pound gone. But it wasn't to be. And then as I sat there, upset, it hit me...

When was the last time I saw the scale go down, period?

The past month and a half (maybe even two months) have been nothing but gains or plateaus. Yes, I'm still higher than I want to be, but hello...a pound off is a pound off. How many times over the past two months had I wished I'd "only lost a pound."

So I'll take it. And I'll be happy. And I'll keep on going. One of these days I'll wrap my head around that...

I'll miss my WI next week since I'll be on yet another business trip, so really, it was good to see some progress. I'm really looking forward to stepping on the scale in two weeks...I think it'll be even better.

Ch-ch-changes

One thing I've learned as I've been trying to lose weight is that it's never enough to do this halfway. You can't exercise like a fiend and eat garbage. You can't eat well all the time and not exercise.

If you want to be successful, truly successful, you need both.

So yes, while my Tuesdays and Thursday torture sessions with Ms. A have been challenging (and exciting to finish, I must add), it's the things we discuss in her office, the things I need to do away from the gym that have provided the biggest challenges.

At one of my sessions this week, I had to bring Ms. A my entire menu for the past week--everything I'd eaten. Thanks to my BodyBugg log, this wasn't hard. But one glance at it and the first thing she did was say, "We need to lower your calories...this is why you're stuck. 2,000 calories is perfect, for maintaining..." The aforementioned 2,000 calories were what BB recommended for me. Ms. A suggested 1,600 on non-exercise days, 1,700 on exercise days.

Okay. I can do that.

But then she asked me about the times of my meals...

I'm Cuban. For many of us, eating late is the norm. It doesn't help that Mr. CCC doesn't usually come home until after 9 p.m. and we like to eat dinner together. Or that I often work late myself. Eating late has been a way of life for us.



So my heart leapt into my throat when Ms. A said no more eating after 7 p.m...if I wanted to have dinner with Mr. CCC, my dinner would be a sugar-free cup of Jello. Point blank, she wants me cutting down on the late eating. And she wants me to cut down on the carbs. And the Diet Coke.

That's a lot to adjust. A lot to change, and I'll be honest--it's been harder than I imagined. But I'm trying. I've gone a whole week now without a Diet Coke. And while I still enjoy my carbs, I am trying really hard to cut down on them.

The eating late...well, that's a work in progress. I'm still eating past 7 most nights, but I'm shooting to cut it off at 8:30. Either way, it's better than the 10:30, 11 p.m. eating I was doing before.

They're challenges, but no one said this would be easy. So I'll just keep plugging away, and working to eat my dinner before the sun goes down.

So that's what a workout feels like...

Silly me.

I've been working out regularly for a while. Pilates once a week, cardio at least 3 times a week, weights twice a week...

It sounded good to me (though I confess--I knew I should be doing more.) But still--I was exercising. I was being active.

Yet today, I learned everything I thought I knew about exercise was wrong. Why?

Cause I had my first full session with my trainer and wow...just wow. She put my body through hell. But that good kind of hell. The kind of hell where you feel like you're accomplishing something. The kind of hell where your legs are jelly but you are proud of yourself.

Squats. Lunges. Dips. Weights. Walking. Doesn't sound like much, but it was 40 minute of agony. On more than one occasion, I thought for sure I'd be losing my breakfast. On those moments where my muscles burned, my stomach flip-flopped and I just felt like I couldn't do it, Ms. A (My affectionate nickname for my trainer) was right there--telling me to push through, making me believe I could do it. She was right.

Since hiring Ms. A, I've had a few people ask me if I really believed the investment was worth it. Today, I learned for sure that it most definitely is. Why?

Because I know myself. And when that workout got tough, had I been on my own, I would have slacked. I would have quit. I would have tried something else.

Ms. A won't let me do that. She knows what I can do. She challenges me to follow through. And that, more than her knowledge of exercise itself, is what has already made me--after one session--feel confident that I did the right thing.

I may, however, learn to dislike Tuesdays and Thursdays pretty quickly, ha ha!

An investment...in me

A pair of $600 Manolo Blahniks.

A $1,200 bag from Yves Saint Laurent.

Had you asked me earlier this week what I wanted for my 30th birthday (which looms in July), that's what I would have answered.

Don't get me wrong--I don't expect anyone in my life to get those for me. Nor can I afford them. BUT, I wanted them. So I've been saving, diligently, for a while. They were going to be my treats to myself on a very big birthday.

But I can't explain how or why I woke up mid-week and said, "That's not good enough. I want more. I want better. I want a better ME!"

Okay, maybe I can explain it...after my new scale--which I am beginning to detest--showed yet another gain, I went bananas. It annoyed me, but it didn't make me sad.

Despite the fact I really believe the thing is broken (Weights very crazily from one moment to the next) the number pushed me right back into the gym and in the haze of my monotonous workout, I saw a poster out the corner of my eye.

"Five Personal Training Sessions for $199! Sign up now!"

So after my torturous treadmill session ended, I asked to meet with a personal trainer, a woman I'd seen kicking various shaped rear ends all over the gym. She wasn't there, but I left a message. When she called back, she let me know she had an opening the very next morning at 9 a.m....and asked if I was interested.

"That was quick," I thought to myself. But I booked the appointment. And in 20 minutes, that trainer had me sweating like I never sweat in my hour-long, boring workouts. It was brutal, intense and I realized hours later--painful. But it felt good.

So when we sat in her office, I asked what other options there were....I know five sessions ain't gonna cut it with me. She showed me the 16-session package. And said we could add the five sessions at the bonus price...pretty much giving me 21 sessions for the price of 16.

My head spun looking at the numbers. The training wouldn't be cheap. Mr. CCC would murder me for spending that kind of money.

Then it hit me. I had plenty of money in my birthday saving fund. It would cover the training. I'd have to give up the shoes and the bag, but what I would get in return would be far more valuable.

So I signed on the dotted line. 21 sessions with my trainer. I start Tuesday. And I couldn't be more excited.

Because if this doesn't work, I don't know what will.

And let's face it...if I'm giving up the money for those shoes and that bag, I'm making sure those pennies aren't wasted.

How's that for finding my mojo again?

Trying to get back the mo...

I'll be 100% honest, with you, with myself.

For the past month, my head and my heart haven't been in my weight loss efforts. I spent roughtly three weeks in a hotel room on various business trips. Events from early in the morning to late at night meant I had little time to work out--even though I packed my gear with me. Heck, I couldn't even use my BB because my travel laptop wouldn't let me upload data with the USB cable. There were limited options for dining...and while yes, I tried to stick with things that were grilled or steamed or from the vegetable family, I know my diet was far from what I'm used to eating at home.

It was tough and so I took a break. I needed to in a way...just stop obsessing about weight loss, weight gain, my progress or lack thereof. I needed to regain some control in a way.

While I was gone, my last two weeks of prepaid WW membership expired. I'll be honest--I have yet to decide whether to continune with meetings. In the interim, I've set up an online membership. I'm still logging my meals, my points, etc. But I'm nervous that I'm not making a good decision.

Fact of the matter is, I keep going back and forth about a lot of things with this. I'm very angry...at my body? At myself? I don't know.

I know that in my 29-year lifetime, I have tried to lose weight multiple times. Never have I stuck with a program the way I have with this one (even if my last few weeks have been lackadaisical). Never have I worked this hard in the gym, in the kitchen as I have since I started trying to lose weight in September of 2006.

And never have I seen this kind of slow progress. It's maddening. I know I've posted that for a few weeks already, but I can't take my mind off it. 33 pounds in 17 months? It's not much of an incentive to keep going, yet I do.

I think that's why that break was so essential for me. But now that I'm back to normal hours, normal workdays and oh yes--being in my own home again!--I just don't have the drive I did before.

I am proud of myself because this week I went back to the gym and back to Pilates--for the first time in almost a month. Getting there was the toughest part. Now I just need to keep it going. Somehow, someway.