I've been on and off the fitness wagon for a while. I'd exercise 30 minutes 3 times a week then skip for a week and then try another 30 minutes and even before I finished the first half I'd be heaving and panting and falling on the ground. And not in a sexy-damsel-in-distress-way. More like fat-manatee-flopping-on-the-shore-tangled-in-seaweed-way

Also I kept forgetting to jot down in my diaryland journal every time I exercised, I guess I was so disheartened because I'd work out really hard and find at the end that I'd only burned 67 calories or something. Poo!!!

In the interim I have done some very healthy and also some not very healthy things.

Here are some of the healthy things:

I started eating breakfast regularly. Not so regular that I eat it at a normal breakfast time: for example, if you're eating at noon you probably want to eat breakfast at about 6 or 7 am with a small snack at 10 am to keep you going. I've been eating my breakfast at 10 am, at work, with a snack at 11 am, then lunch... a bit too close together, I think. But at least I am eating.

I have also been bringing lunch, some frozen things from Whole Foods which I guess is a step up from frozen 99 cent processed cardboard meals from the regular grocery store. At least the things I've been getting are a reasonable portion with real brown rice and tofu, with real vegetables that have not completely lost all their life force yet... This is cheaper than my usual deli sandwich, and less drippy with bacon fat (although I did have half a BLT today, actually it was just BL, and they wouldn't sell me just half so I ate half, and a forkful or two of potato salad, then gave away the rest--my this is turning into a very long sentence isn't it?)

Anyway, I do walk quite a bit, since I am a PA and my boss has to have his Starbucks twice a day. So I spend about 15-minute bursts walking, four times a day (twice there and twice back), in high heels. The heels are not actually so high anymore since I started this job two months ago--I actually wore them down to a kind of kitten-heel height with all the walking I've done.

And I really want to buy a new pair of shoes, but I think I will be a good girl this paycheck and spend the money on a new pair of running shoes. I've never really owned a proper pair before. If anyone can recommend a brand I'd be really interested to know... leave me a note or send me an email.

Speaking of notes, because I wasn't writing in my diary or checking my email for quite a while I completely neglected the very nice people who wrote to me:

banefulvenus
jesbohn
summersands
illuminocity
rancidjunkie
freaknuraw
sinsear777
minstrelite

Thank you guys so much for your encouragement and I hope in some way I can also encourage you guys to get healthy and fit the right way. It takes a lot of effort and fits and starts and encouragement and sometimes deep dark despair but eventually we'l get there.

I am very lucky that my Guy is very into exercise and hiking, even though he is not a sporty person. It is very annoying to me that he does this and eats healthy and then smokes a lot. I have tried to make him quit several times this year, but he keeps giving me excuses, stress, work, his parents are driving him nuts, oh can I just finish this last pack... I'm really sick of it and worst of all is when I'm exercising and breathing hard and he comes in bringing a lingering cigarette smell along with him... bleccccch! It really puts me off and makes me want to just turn off the Xbox and sit on the ground and maybe have some ice cream to take the edge off.

I really have been noticing the bulges of my body lately. I try to hide them by dressing a certain way. I learned a new trick: take your old runny support hose, cut off the hose part and keep the support part to wear over your underwear so you don't have a visible panty line on the bottom. I have to cut the leg about halfway down my thigh otherwise the whole thing ends up rolling up my leg to my crotch and being very uncomfortable (not to mention unsightly). This trick works great with pants (usually with a skirt I have to wear the full pantyhose anyway) except if the pants are really tight to begin with, you'll end up with a yeast infection (and that's a whole 'nother diary entry--maybe next week).

Also I went to Victoria's Secret today, which I don't ever do because their stuff is so expensive, but this time I had a gift card for $30 that my friends gave me for my birthday last month. So I only ended up paying about $19 for the bra. I got an Ipex demi bra, 34-B, and the thing I like about getting your bra in a specialty store (JCPenney has this service too) is that they measure your bust and actually get you the right size. So anyway I was in the dressing room trying some on and I noticed this huge bulge of fat hanging down my back, not to mention my belly squooshing out of my size-5 jeans (I'm tight in a 6 now and I just squeezed into those because they were clean) and my arm fat jiggling every time I moved. Ugh. When other women tell me I'm not fat I just want to take all my clothes off and let it all hang out and say, I'm just as bad as you are, let's go work out together! because really I do want the encouragement and I want to encourage others too.

My friend who gave me the gift card, her husband and I have problems in common because of our bad backs. The other night we were hanging out and talking and he kept going on about their 24-hour gym membership and how he felt so good to be able to move again and recover quickly after reinjury... I felt really jealous of him and how hard he was working to get rid of his fat (he used to be really athletic when he was younger before he hurt his leg and back and gained tons of weight during recovery). He is a huge tall and big guy; his wife is just about my height and cute as a button but chubby as well.

(By the way she is an amazing and not at all stuck up fashionista grrl and someday I'm going to have her style my wardrobe... this is the only thought that is keeping me on my Automatic Savings Plan at INGDirect.)

Anyway what he said really plucked up my spirits more than anything my guy has said (I think mostly because our Big and Tall friend doesn't smoke) and I got back on the fitness wagon this week. I'm writing about it and everything!

On the days that I didn't work out this week, I made sure I did healthy things like drink a lot of water (including going to the bathroom a lot), eat healthy snacks in small portions throughout the day, drink my favorite green tea, share my lunch with others in the breakroom so that I didn't gorge myself on a disproportionally large meal in the middle of the day, and also go to sleep before 11 am. I am trying to sleep less than the usual 9 hours I try to go for each day; doesn't always work as evidenced by my being late almost every day this week but I'm trying. My guy will be gone next week and I never sleep well when he's away so I anticipate getting to work on time. I think.

Oh also we went to the LA Tofu Festival, which was a lot of fun, we had tofu nuggets and seaweed rice balls and a couple of pieces of sushi, some boba tea drinks and lots of mango soy coolers mmmm... The tofu nuggets were not at all bad and I think we might try working in a vegetarian meal once a week from now on.

We also walked around in sweltering heat a lot. There was a stall in the street selling sugar lollipops shaped like sushi, which was really fun--I gave one each to my three sushi buddies at work.

Anyway after the tofu festival we went home and watched the last six episodes of Firefly, which is my new favorite cancelled show (boo Fox tv for getting rid of it!!!). If you've never seen it, if you like any sci-fi/fantasy/action/western/comedy/drama/romances--well, anything really--get the dvds (buy/rent/ebay/borrow/download--whatever you have to do!!!) and watch the whole thing through this month because on September the 30th the movie version, Serenity comes out and it's going to be fantastic. I've already seen it and it's absolutely genius. (For the uninitiated, it's by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and Angel, two more of my favorite cancelled shows.)

Anyway back to healthy things... I have been eating oatmeal and wheat germ in the mornings, sometimes, instead of my two soft-boiled eggs because sometime I just forget to boil them while I'm getting ready. I also found that I can get away with keeping a box of Lactaid in the refrigerator at work, so I'm getting the calcium I need. One thing I definitely need to work on is getting more vitamin C. I haven't been very good at that and I think I'm getting scurvy (just kidding, but I really should do something about it).

I'm really bad at remembering to take pills so I think vitamins are off the list right now. When I do start exercising regularly, though, I think I will try those WeightSmart vitamins by One-a-Day. I used to take their Women's vitamins. I don't know how much good they really did but I was a lot more active when I was taking them, and thus less afraid of my body just turning the nutrients into fat-storing-type tissue. We'll see if I get into a better exercise routine after this week.

It really just depends on my mood--like tonight after dinner I just felt so distended, and then after looking at myself in the dressing room mirror for a bit I was jut disgusted but motivated to move, so as soon as I got home I popped the Yourself-Fitness game in and did a half hour of core-body workout. I burned 112 calories, which is 112 more than yesterday, for sure.

My boyfriend is going on a whole bunch of business in the next two months (he will be traveling 5 out of 8 weeks!) so I'm going to get him the Yourself-Fitness for the PC so he can work out from his laptop while he's on the business trips. Normally he doesn't have much to do except prep for the next workday or play with his Nintendo DS, which works your mind quite a bit (especially if you're playing my favorite, Meteos!) but not really your bum very much, unless you train yourself to do some sort of butt-squeezing while you're sitting down.