Letter to a Bosu Ball

Dear Bosu Ball-

I know I've let you down lately. Typical to my usual behavior, I get intensely involved with something and back off unexpectedly. We started seeing each other frequently, enjoying our time together, and experimenting with a closer relationship. I realize this week my behavior has changed. Without warning, I've been distant lately. It's not an accident that I've been making plans to see you and then canceling at the last minute. It's true that I've been ignoring your calls and avoiding situations where I know you'd be present.

I want you to know it is not you, it's me. I have serious issues with consistency and putting my needs before other responsibilities. It's not that I don't enjoy our time together or that I find you boring. In fact, it's the opposite - being with you always makes me feel better, and I truly see a need for you in my life. I just want you to know that I'm working on it. If you can just give me some time, I promise I will find a way to adjust to the new changes that being with you will bring to my life. I know I need to put you first and work you into my life; I'm figuring out how to make that happen and I need you to work with me on this.

I've let you down; I've let myself down, and for that I'm sorry. It is without hesitancy that I say that I want to continue our relationship. Though I may not get to see you too often this coming week as I sort through some issues, just know you are on my mind. This is not the norm; I'm in for the long haul.

With my sincerest regret,

Old Habit

Thank God! It's just a broken scale.

 Melissa Sykes:

Things were going and then...Chima...I tried my best, but it is Chima steakhouse after all. The dinner was a surprise outing; my willpower was sulking somewhere inside me like an abused child. Not only was this dinner way off "the plan," but it also revealed yet another weird thing I didn't know about my husband until now. While I tried to cut away any fat from my revolving meat, I had the following conversation:

Me: Would you eat this fat?

Hub: Why would I do that?

Me: Let's just say that I'm a hostage and the only way to get me back is to eat it.

Hub: Yeah, I'd eat it. I mean, I'd eat it anyway. It's just meat fat.

Me: So, you wouldn't eat the fat to keep me? You'd just eat it?

Hub: Yeah. Eating the fat isn't a big deal.

I immediately had a flashback to Ross and Rachel from Friends (you'll know it if you're a fan). This was followed by anger because he wouldn't eat the fat to keep me. Then I got grossed out and flipped my meat coin to the black "No thanks" side. Does anyone else nonchalantly eat the fat?! Gross. He's lucky he's an avid bike rider or he'd be the fat.

Anyway, I didn't do too bad, but I wasn't a svelte saint either. Obviously, I had to weigh myself immediately the next morning before work. Goodbye my hard earned 12! The next few days I was on overdrive, trying to fix what I had messed up. This morning I called on the scale again and it said I had gained 43 pounds. In 3 days. For a moment, I actually thought someone had switched my low sodium V8 and yogurt lunches with lard. Then I forced my dog to go on it and it said he weighs 198; I know he's a debonaire 93.

When my heart finally slowed, I realized my new fancy scale is a sham. The verdict is still out on whether I will be forgiven for my sins. In the meantime, I have to figure out what's wrong with my cruel, cruel scale.

A big weigh in. And the number is...

Last week I left my introductory Weight Watchers meeting with a smile on my face, fully prepared to follow the plan. Since joining this blog I have lost 15 pounds so I was confident that following the plan was a piece of cake. Boy, was I wrong. What happened? Single-parent responsibilities. Care taker duties. Work deadlines. Flu-like illness. Extracurricular activities. LIFE.

Realizing that I was not fully compliant with the program, I went into the meeting on Wednesday ready for the verdict from the scale. Did I lose weight? Well, I guess my haircut on Tuesday afternoon worked. I lost 4 pounds. I'm down 19 pounds! More importantly, my daughter Brittany has lost almost 40! I was lucky this week, but I realize that I must plan for real success. What will I do different this upcoming week?

• I will exercise in the morning at least three times a week. This won't be easy; I am not a morning person. But I realize that I am kidding myself when I say I will exercise after a 12-hour day. It just does not happen and I have to move it to lose it.


• I will plan, pack and track everything that goes in my mouth. If I don't know the points or can't calculate them, I won't eat it.


• I will sleep at least 7 hours a night and drink at least 24 ounces of water a day.


• I will learn 3 easy to cook recipes.


• I will plan to succeed by putting me and my health higher up on my priority list.

I have learned a very valuable lesson on my first week. Losing weight is like baking a cake, you must follow the recipe closely or you could very well face disaster. Until next week ....

Nancy Johnson

Sleeping Off the Weight?

Nancy Johnson

Since joining this blog, I have become a connoisseur of weight loss information -- from people, from the internet and from books and magazines. One piece of information that completely took me by surprise was an article in USA Today on a possible link between sleep and weight loss. Now, I know many of you are wanting to know how my first week on Weight Watchers' went, but since I don't weigh in until noon today, you will have to wait until tomorrow's blog for that update. The USA Today article summarized a study which indicated that people who are sleep deprived eat on average 300 more calories per day. The article provided a good explanation of why sleep is important to a healthy metabolism and what happens when you don't get enough sleep. This is really interesting news for me because those who know me know that not only do I burn the candle at both ends, on weeks like this one I also burn the candle in the middle and up all sides. Yes, I am very sleep deprived. Typically, I function on less than 6 1/2 hours of sleep but the THOUGHT of those extra 300 calories creeping onto me might be enough to scare me to sleep a little earlier tonight! I've always heard that sleep was an important part to a healthy lifestyle. Now I finally have an incentive to get more of it.

Question -- Am I the only person who doesn't get 8 hours of sleep?

No Short Cuts

I do most of my walking/jogging in my neighborhood in Matthews. Its a nice well established neighborhood with friendly folks and mature yards and trees to look at while I walk.

I do notice, however, that during morning and evening rush traffic times our quiet streets have extra traffic from people too impatient to wait an extra minute or so at a traffic light out on the main road. Cutting through our neighborhood means many twist and turns, speed "humps" lots of stop signs (which nobody adheres to) etc to get around the intersection in question on the main street.

I've timed both routes numerous times and find that seldom does it really save time to do this cut through abuse of my tranquil streets. I doubt, however, that most of the abusers of my neighborhood ever bother to actually time their impatient pursuit of saving another minute in their day.

Same thing happens to some of us in exercise and diet attempts. We "run" the stop signs and eat more than we admit. We "cut" out some of our planned exercise routines. Meanwhile, unless we are the type who log our calories and miles etc, we try to fool ourselves we are still on track. Or perhaps we wonder why we are not making the progress we assumed we'd make.

You don't have to berate yourself about not being perfect. We should, however, be honest with ourselves for our own sakes. We need to understand the cause and effect of our eating and exercise. Without this brutally honest understanding of what is going on in our lives and our bodies, we run the risk of either failing in our attempt or, reverting back to our old fat ways over time. So eat right, exercise right and keep track of reality. Now get out there and go for a walk. Then enter your time or miles into your exercise log.

Follow the Fitness Brick Road

 Melissa Sykes:

I've seemed to wander my way onto the fitness brick road to Healthville. Though things are progressing slowly (after all these vegetables, I should be 40 pounds lighter!), I feel like I'm embracing my lifestyle changes.

I'm trying to consistently exercise at least 4 days per week- Monday after Spanish class, Wednesday after meetings, and a combo of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday depending on when I can get moving. It's hard to put other things aside, but I rationalize my hours at the gym as a "treat" for my body. Sometimes that line of thinking works and sometimes I mumble a curse in response. I even tried a new machine at the gym that looks like a spider and makes me sweat more than Brad Pitt circa Fight Club. I probably looked really stupid doing it because it requires a mastery of leg and arm swinging coordination, but at the end of my scheduled 30 minutes I was convinced that I had burned off something since my body was on fire.

I also finally figured out that healthy eaters have to be Tupperware queens. I've started slicing and dicing veggies and fruit for easy access, and I've been trying to plan meals so my weekdays are much smoother and I can avoid the "I'm tired, we should order out" mantra in my head after work. I spent all Saturday chopping up anything that was green and leafy, and I even got some "veggie saver" containers to replace the scummy old ones that look dirty and are slightly tinged pink from spaghetti sauce even though I've run them through the dishwasher a million times. I felt officially health-minded as I chopped and washed, and I pretended that I was on a healthy cooking show to make things more interesting ("so now you want to cut the celery here and here..."). So far, the scale has been kinda stuck; I'm hoping if I stick with my plan, it will start to move in the right direction. If not, veggie party at my house!

PS - Any topics you're dying to have me discuss? I'm running out of ideas and want to know what you'd like to hear...

Paunchy Poetry

In honor of my growing gym devotion and new knowledge of healthy carbs, I decided to express my thoughts in poetry.

Elliptical Haiku

Little man lit up

Cardio run spray it down

Smells like an old sack

Gymric - Limerick

There once was an oversized dame

Who thought working out was quite lame

She knew she was lazy

Changed and ignored the crazies

And now she is not quite the same

Ode to a Sports Bra

Thou dedicated booby-holder,

h

ow I relish your support.

Unlike any other molder,

y

ou make my buxom bosom quite a fort.

Though my maidens can be restless,

t

here is no denying thee.

And my uni-boob is priceless,

f

or it averts a saggy me.

Alas, your fabric could be sweeter

w

hen I wrangle you over head,

But my teats no longer teeter

and

my fun bags don't fall like lead.

With a far over-reaching passion,

my ta-tas turn up towards the sky;

You will always be in fashion,

frontage appreciates an admiring eye.

Dedicated and devoted,

such worth cannot be praised enough.

Otherwise bosoms would be toted

around the bottom with other stuff.

Carb Awakening

Bread

Starchy, sugar-inducing sustenance

Doughy-larder; digestible-vitality

Complex, energetic nutrition

Grain