Moving, Moving, Moving

Well, I know that Grant felt that my last post was an April Fool's joke. That's understandable since, well, um, Grant really knows me and knows how adverse I am to being less than a hedonistic slug. The fact is, though, that the strangeness continues.

I love doing my swords class.

I love biking.

I now am dancing around to whatever song I hear, and leap up to do whatever I want to do around the house.

I love swimming.

So there you go. The other day, I flexed my muscles to the kids as a joke, and they screeched, "MOM! You have REAL MUSCLES!" Wow. Yeah, I do, and I never have. Interesting. My energy has increased, and my mood (which is typically pretty good) has improved even more.

Can I keep this up? I have no idea. But I DO know that right now, as it goes, I love reclaiming my body one pound at a time. I've stopped at 10 lbs lost for two weeks, but this is one of those moments when I realize that it's still weight lost...but it's weight converted from fat to muscle. I can kick your ass and your uncle's, too ;) I am having so much fun practicing my sword! What happened? My body is tighter, more skilled, more precise. I'm thrilled.

On another strange note, I realized this last week that I'm a great cook. Yeah, yeah, those of you who have eaten my food have likely never doubted this ;) It's a long story. It invoves my sister's input on my mom's cooking, others who have craved this or that which I've fixed or asked for my recipes. But the end result is, when my sister tossed at me a pile of asparagus and said, "Do something with this," I was able to instantly look at her refrigerator/pantry and throw together something off the cuff without any recipe that everybody loved. I can look at my own refrigerator/pantry and decide what I'm going to do, recipe or not. I guess I CAN cook. That is awesome.

And I've been writing again.

And Alex plus the kids are still totally awesome. YUSSSS!

The only downside lately is that my cat chewed through the wire for our keyboard, and we had to use a backup keyboard for this computer. Ok, that seriously sucked. But 20 bucks is the cost of that keyboard, and pets cost you money. Oh well. It happens. Do pets chew through wires??? I have never had a pet who liked to do that, nor petsitted for somebody who did. Wires? WHY?

Yup, other than that, life is good. Sure, we don't have enough money to jet off to France to see Alex's family, but how many familes would like to have the only problem being, "We can't just fly off to France this year!" Yeah. So, I'm ok with life right now. I'm better than ok. Life is excellent!

The World Is Coming to an End

For the last four decades on this planet, I have been well-known as a hedonist. I love good food. I love good wine. I love reading and video games. All of these activities can be done from a seat, and that was fine by me. My hyper metabolism overcame all, and I still fit into whatever clothes I wanted. It's not like I'm lazy nor have anything against moving, though. I used to hike regularly before the kids were born, and when it's summer, I love to swim and splash in the water. But exercising? You have to be kidding me. That's crazy talk.

However, after abusing my really good metabolism for many years, it started to complain. IT complained. Not me. I would never complain that an excellent metabolism that let me eat a good 1000 calories over what I should eat without gaining weight cut it back to only 500 calories of overeating. That is still very lucky. I have too many friends who can eat right and exercise to no avail. If I had their metabolism, I'd be in competition for the largest woman in the world with how I eat and don't move. Note to naturally skinny people: you're naturally skinny, so don't go around pointing fingers at folks and telling them they just need to eat less and move around more. It doesn't work for everybody. But for me, I just slowly became aware that I was gaining weight. This shocked me because two years ago, all I did was cut out sodas, eat more fruits and veggies, and drink more water to lose about 20 lbs in total. I lost that over the course of one year. I felt good. I was able to wear the same dress that I had on when Alex met me. But then in the last year, I gained it all back...just as slowly. I can't pinpoint any changes in habits that caused it. I guess I'm just getting old :P

Anyway, when I arrived back on my doorstep from a visit to Grant in January, the scale told me that I weighed the most I've ever weighed without being pregnant. Shocked, I had to think about this one for a while. It took me a full month to have it really set in. One thing I contemplated was...at what point do I say, I don't care if I'm gaining weight? At what point does somebody start gaining weight (at least those of us who have control over these things) and just say, screw it, I'll continue to gain weight? If I continued to ignore this, would I then be a 300 lb woman that would travel to France with her family only to have French people point at me and giggle, "AMERICAN!" and run off? Would I get diabetes like my dad? The only reason why my dad got diabetes at 65 rather than 45, said the doctors, was that he had eaten heathily and exercised for decades (yes, Grant, I know these sorts of general rules don't apply to you, but they do to my family :P). It runs in my family. Do I want to get diabetes in 5 years? I needed to look back at my life and figure out what I was deciding I wanted for it based on what I was doing. This was very, very difficult for me because...well, see the earlier part about being a hedonist.

So, by the end of February, I decided to embark upon heathier eating and trying to find a way to exercise. I started out by adjusting to the concept of DAILY exercise. I ride a bike every day, and if the weather is bad, I do Wii Fit Plus instead. I took several of my son's TaeKwon-Do classes and last night, I took my first swords class. I began doing curls with 10 lb weights. As far as my diet goes, I cut back on sweets and started to make sure that the carbs I consumed were largely whole-grain (100% whole wheat bread and brown rice, but I admit to keeping my pasta not whole grain). I cut back on wine intake. I've already lost 7 lbs. Things jiggle less. I put on a pair of jeans I haven't been able to wear since last year (being a midget means that 7 lbs loss is like 14 lbs for a taller person :P). My energy level is up. And most shockingly, I rather like feeling like I could kick twice as much ass as usual.

I like what this moving around thing is doing to my body.

I never thought I'd say that. Ever. And in all my years on this planet, other than really enjoying swimming for a long time, I never have mentioned anything even close to this concept before now. But there we go. The world is coming to an end. I not only exercise to move my body but exercise because it's enjoyable.

There. I said it.