Downward Trend At Last

It's a sick day in the Ish household. I am feeling ok (just slightly queasy) but M is sick as a young pup. He's got some kind of stomach bug which I desperately hope I do not catch. Probably waaaay too late for that. I guess I'll find out tomorrow, won't I?

OK, enough with the bad news. Here is some good news: I put on my skinny jeans this week and they are finally, finally, finally almost as loose as I remember them being many months ago.

I say almost because I still feel that at one point they were a bit looser -- but it could be the mind playing tricks on me. In anycase, there's a ... smallness (for me, anyway) on some of my body parts that I haven't seen in a long time. My legs look better, my shoulders are straighter and slimmer, even the dreaded pear-shaped hips seem just a wee, wee bit less wide.

I have decided that next Tuesday, the day before my surgery, I will weigh-in and get an official tally of where I am at in relation to my second-lowest known adult weight ever. If I hit that milestone, I need to drop another 25 pounds to get to my lowest adult weight ever.

Er... let me clarify those definitions for you here. When I say lowest adult weight ever, I'm referring to the least I've weighed as an adult since I crossed the 200 mark (on the way up, obviously). So, on previous weight-loss efforts, I've hit these points, only to lose focus and rapidly leap back up to my most bloated state. Now I'm battling to get DOWN to those points again, and hopefully this time stay there and even go lower. Of course, 200 is my Rubicon. Once I cross it, I ain't ever going back.

Having my gallbladder refuse all fatty foods has left me bored and uninterested in eating. It is a new and weird feeling for me to be able to shut the craving door so easily these days. I think it's because my body remembers the pain of my last gallbladder attack (which I thought was acid reflux).

Sunday we were in the store and as we walked by the frozen pizzas I got a rush of "omygosh I would KILL for a piece of pizza right now." (I'm still eating lowfat cottage cheese for breakfast lunch and dinner these days)

Quick flashback to the night I spent curled up in our big brown chair, whimpering, as M said "like a wet dog that's been beaten." Guess what? Craving gone. Right out of my head. In a heartbeat, my interest in that pizza disappeared.

I am going to try and hold on to this new mystery gift, even post-surgery when the doc clears me to begin eating fatty food again! Maybe this should be my new system -- trick my body into thinking of pain in relation to fattening foods!

This week has been light on workouts because of the irritated neuroma nerves in the feet. They just can't seem to quit me, dammit.

But I discovered a neat set of stairs carved into the small rocky cliff in my neighborhood park. They are awesome for running up and down. I've gone several times now. Here's a pic of the circular staircase I start off with:

My workout consists of running up these steps, a walk/jog/shuffle about 100 feet to another set, down those, then back up them to return here and go down these again. That's one set, and I try to do as many as I can without really stopping (just a few seconds at the bottom to catch my breath so I don't get hurt).

I'm up to six sets. Sometimes I stop and do some wall push ups at the top. Doing wall pushups with my elbows out is fine -- I can bang out a decent amount. Woe to me when I tried to do one with my elbows at my side!! Damn, my triceps are WEAK! I could barely do one. It's much much harder.

This doesn't hurt my neuroma, despite the pressure stair running puts on the ball of the foot. I try to go carefully and use my leg muscles to power me up, not momentum. Man, does it get the quads and hammies burning!

It's funny, but 20 minutes of that is more exhausting for me than an hour at the gym on the elliptical. It takes so much more energy to actually haul your body somewhere than to use a machine (not that I am dissing the machines -- it's good to mix it all up, I think). I could feel my abs engaging in a completely new way as I ran up the stairs -- not like it feels when I pump on the elliptical.

Another little challenge that came my way this weekend -- this guy:

Sorry he's sideways -- can't get it to rotate. Yes, Saturday morning I woke up and he was on my third-story fire escape. How he got there, I do not know. He couldn't have gotten up from the ground below -- it's too high. So he must have gotten out of someone's apartment above.

He cried and cried and wanted to come in but M refused. Said he'd go back up to his home soon enough. I did slip him some food, but he didn't eat. I hate to leave any animal in distress, but it looks like M was right. We came home and he was gone -- probably someone upstairs accidentally shut the window not realizing he was on the fire escape and he went wandering. What a cutie!