Old Jeans (with photos)

This week has been another slow and steady week.  No illicit snacking at the office combined with my regular meals and workouts (including a visit from Mr. Fitness) have combined for a loss of just over half a pound.  It would have been more, but for the debauchery of last Friday's street housewarming party, for which I was paying most of the week.

We had another housewarming party this Friday for friends and coworkers, but this time I managed to keep my snacking impulses in check.  Not only that, I tracked what I consumed, which made it easier to stay on the right path.  Still, temptation abounded, and I was lucky that my hostessing duties kept me pretty distracted (we had 42 people over) otherwise it could have been another snack food disaster.

This weekend has been hugely social, with the housewarming, coffee/shopping with the matriarch, a book signing for one of the Nerd's hockey buddies, and then a 40th birthday party BBQ for another friend.  I kept snacking to a minimum at the latter because the hosts, while lovely people, let their 2-year old lick all the fruit, crackers, and cheese and then put them back on the trays, so there was no way of knowing what food was safe and what food had boy cooties.  Better safe than sorry, I say, so I avoided it all.  I have no problem with boy cooties generally, but I am choosy as to the source.

On a completely unrelated note, in preparation for our big house move I spent a lot of time beforehand cleaning out closets and cupboards of unwanted or unused things (the way one does before a move).  One thing I discovered was my blue jeans historical stash.  I had been keeping one pair of each size of jeans as they no longer fit.  Because I started at a size 26 you can guess that this amounts to a number of pairs of jeans between the starting pair and my current size 14s.

To say my current self is a mere shadow of the clown pants that I used to wear is an understatement.  Put another way:

Those are some - shall we say capacious - pants right there.

They all went to the Goodwill donation box during the move, but I'll always have the photo of the jean archive to help keep me on the straight and narrow during social weekends like these ...

Move Complete - Settling Back Into Routine

Whew!  At long last, after what felt like an interminable period of time, the move is complete.  The boxes are unpacked.  The clothes are put away.  The usual patterns of daily living have been picked up again.  And not a moment too soon, I tell you!

When last we spoke I was just recovering from the end of the move.  I had managed to put on a ridiculous amount of weight, and ballooned up to 199 pounds (and more!) after all of my move-induced emotional eating and take out food consumption.  Last Sunday I got back on the path to righteousness by religiously tracking my food and engaging in solid exercise. 

The rest of the week was more of the same.  I tracked my food and I worked out as is my custom.  Mr. Fitness came by on Thursday to kick my ass with the dreaded high intensity interval workout - which I loathe...but still managed to complete.  Most importantly of all, I did not snack all week.  This sounds like such a little thing, but I know that the unbridled snacking is what killed me over the past month or so.  Because let me tell you, I can snack like a m-f-.  Some people are good at math, I am good at snacking. 

So this week was a big test of my ability to get back on track.  I have to tell you that the first day back at the office (the land of temptation) I was white knuckling it all day in an attempt to keep from snacking.  When I left the office to go home, I was in part fleeing all that temptation.  But it worked - I remained snack-free all day.  The next day was just a little bit easier, and the day after that was easier still.  By Thursday I wasn't even tempted by the chocolate covered almonds that one of my coworkers brought into our marketing approval meeting.  Well, not more than normally tempted - I am human after all - but it was comparatively easy to stand firm and avoid the treats. 

Friday I started strong, but then lost focus a few hours into our housewarming party.  I kept with soft drinks, mostly, rather than alcoholic beverages, which helped a lot.  But by the end of the night I went a bit off the rails and snacked my face off on the delicious party food.  It was all delicious, but full of sodium and I am sure all sorts of bad things.  However because I own my choices I tracked it, to an extent at least, by adding 600 calories to my food log for Friday night.  It may have been more, it may have been less, but that's as good an estimate as any.  The key thing is that I tracked it and owned it, which is critical - - my snacking binges of the last month went largely untracked. 

I weighed myself Friday morning (pre-party, thank god) and lo and behold after a week of sticking to my plan, working out, and not snacking, I lost 1.5 pounds.  I am back down to 197.5 pounds (again), and feeling pretty good.

A new wrinkle to my routine now is that I weigh myself before working out.  So that 197.5 is an honest weight, prior to any sweating-induced water loss.  I previously always weighed myself after my workouts so as to get to the lowest possible number.  This way feels a bit more honest - it's my walking around weight, after all. 

All in all it was a good week.  I saw positive progress back into my routine, I was able to resist temptation at the office, and our house held up to the housewarming party.

Here are some photos of the place (minus party-goers, of course):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really enjoy discovering the routines and flow of this house.  Our neighbours are wonderful, and I actually had a really nice time at our housewarming for the street last night.  

And now it is back to continue these routines.  I have some laundry on the go and I will steal some time to do a bit of weaving.  Ahhhhh....

Moving Induced Break in Routine

I suppose it's fair to think that I love moving house considering that I do it so frequently.  For one reason or another it just seems that I move every 2 or 3 years.  Trust me - I can explain each move.  They all make sense at the time. 

After all these moves, you would imagine that I have moving down to a system by now, and you would be correct.  That doesn't change the fact that routines get thrown out the window, bodies get injured, and nerves get frazzled.

The Nerd and I moved from our cool - but seriously overcrowded - St. Lawrence Market-area multi-storey condo unit to a rowhouse in Corktown near the river valley.  Because it's a house, the new place has 2 bedrooms plus a den plus a finished basement plus storage space plus a small back yard, all of which combine to alleviate the overcrowding issue we had in the old place.

But no matter how good your movers are (and ours, Collins & Greig, were amazing), moves are still exhausting.  Between the packing, planning, lifting, unpacking, and multiple trips up and down stairs both of us were completely knackered for weeks. 

On the good side there is, at long last, a light at the end of the tunnel.  We are virtually all unpacked (all that is left to do is organize our crawl space storage and back porch storage a bit more), and all of the main areas - living room, kitchen, bedroom, weave-ateria, and gym - are all finished, with furniture in place and pictures hanging up on the walls. 

This is the first weekend in about 3 weeks that we are no longer packing or unpacking, but merely living in our place.  We had guests over to watch the UFC fights last night and the place showed like a charm.  The Nerd and I are slowly discovering the traffic flow and process flow in the new place (for example, our desks / office space are in the basement rather than in the living room), but that's a fun discovery.

As an example of how fractured our routines were, this Thursday was the first time in three weeks that Mr. Fitness came to kick my ass.  Between his schedule and ours we had to cancel two weeks of sessions in a row.  I still worked out with weights a couple of times on my own, but it's just not the same as when he enthusiastically pushes me beyond what I thought I could achieve.  I missed that, and was frankly very nervous about getting back into our training sessions.

It turns out that the new gym space (in our upstairs den) worked just fine, although it was a little bit of a pain in the butt to move the dumbbells from the linen closet where they are stored when not in use (the new gym has less floor space than the old gym area, and there's not as much free space to leave dumbbells laying about).  As far as the workout went, however, it was just as intense as always, and I felt wonderful when it was done.  Completely done in, as well, but then that's kind of the point, isn't it?

 

With some minor adjustments there is more than enough room for one person to work out, and even enough room for me and Mr. Fitness to go through our routines.  The space is not quite as large as the old gym, but overall the new place has so many benefits that a slight reduction in gym size is worth it in the big scheme of things.

For example, now my view from the elliptical is a pleasant look into our back yard, as well as our neighbours' yards.  The old place looked out onto an alley where the garbage bins for our building were stored.  Ambiance central, not so much.

On the downside, I now have "closet weights".

So we're still working out a solution for those...

On the good side the move is essentially complete, the house is amazing, our neighbours are wonderful, and I can still walk to work in the morning (my commute is now a 15 minute walk instead of a 10 minute walk). 

On the bad side, I have managed to undo almost a year of progress with all the chinese food, burgers, and pizza we have been eating during this transition period.  I don't blame anyone - I certainly was too exhausted to even think of cooking most nights, and ordering in was just too tempting.  Add the emotional eating on top of that, and ... let's just say it's a good thing that I am back into my routine. 

I am counting today as official post-move Day 1, and the Nerd and I had a healthy day together.  We both worked out, we stuck to our delicious homemade meals, and we went for a long walk today.  The walk happened to end at an ice-cream truck, but that's kind of the point.  I tracked all the food (including the ice-cream!), as well as my exercise, and it was a good balanced day. 

That's 1 down.  13 more to go to re-establish my good patterns.  364 to go to see big improvement. 

But step 1 is done, so I've got that going for me, which is good.