Annie: weigh-in week 32

Sorry for the delay in the post this week - I wasn't able to catch Blogger actually working.  :S


This week's loss looks really big, but I jumped back on the scale (ok, stepped gingerly) Wednesday morning just to check, and had already gained a pound and a half of it back. It's water week, and nothing makes sense - which is normal for me.


We won't know the real story this coming Monday either, since I'm out of town for my first (of many, I hope!) race, and won't have a chance to get weighed on my own scale until Thursday morning. So the timelines will be off for a bit.  My big goal is to return home next Thursday and find the number on the scale at least as low as it was this past Monday.


It's a big week


As I mentioned, the 5K I've been building up to since, well, since last fall, is finally here. We run tomorrow (Saturday) evening at 5 p.m. - it's the moment of truth! On the advice of my cheering team (including, of course, The Faithful Mo) I've changed my starting corral to 35-40 minutes, from the 40-45 I had originally signed up for, way back in December when I couldn't run 30 seconds consecutively. Why does it matter? Because if I stayed in the slower corral, I'd have that many more people to somehow get past before I could start running at my own pace.


Good thing I have so many experienced racers to advise me!


Mo took me to the race expo today, which was so much fun! As a beginner, I'm enthralled with all the "stuff" and had a great few hours wandering and checking things out. I bought this hat - likely very uncool to wear it  to the race, but then again, it might prove helpful, haha!

Tonight is the big carb-load dinner at my brother's place, as there are four of us racing this weekend: me in the 5, my brother in the 10, and The Faithful Mo and a friend of hers/ours in the full marathon.  I'm suspecting this may be my favourite part of the race!


Mo and my brother and sister-in-law, all runners, have given me advice about how best to enjoy the race, including:

• Don't eat within 2 hours of the race
• Take the corners in the middle of the road, because everyone else will jam into the corners to take them as tightly as possible
• Don't start too quickly and run out of gas, and
• Leave one ear-bud out, and enjoy the roar of the crowd!

I can't believe I'm about to do this, when a few short months ago it really seemed impossible to me. Not sure when (or if) it'll ever really sink in.

But no time to ponder that - I have pasta to eat!   :)

Loss this week: 5.1
Lost so far: 77.2
Still remaining: 22.8
Activity points earned this week: 24
Weeks to go: 20

Annie: George Eliot

I watched the season finale of Brothers & Sisters this week, and was struck by Nora Walker's quote from George Eliot at the end: "It is never too late to be what you might have been."

"Was" vs. "might have been"

I was "fat" in my mind long before my body was overweight.

I look at pictures from high school, and my heart breaks to see a girl embarrassed to have her picture taken because her size 12 dress is so embarrassingly huge.

It became a self-fulfilling prophecy: the less I believed in myself, the less I took care of myself. I hated my appearance and battled my weight throughout my teens, twenties, thirties (except for about a month after I lost the 70 lbs in 2003), and the first couple of years of my forties.

Then, after years of gentle support, The Faithful Mo broke through.

Not that Mo was responsible for this Thanksgiving Project - that was my own, latest "big idea" to get myself together. (It followed far too many other unsuccessful "big ideas" to even mention.) With that said, when I floated the idea with her (you have to realize this was likely the 50th "big idea" she'd had to listen to, and might well have expected to suffer the same fate as all the others), she was enthusiastic and promised to be a faithful reader (which, as you might have noticed from our comments, she is!).

But the difference between this time and all the other times is that this time, I'm actually liking my body.

Not how it looks naked - frankly, I don't know if that will ever happen! Had I gotten my act together in my 20s, maybe... But how it works, and what it can do. And that's where Mo gets the credit.

In 2003, I lost the weight, fine. But it was all about food, even then. I counted carefully, I journaled faithfully... until I stopped doing those things. And then everything was back to "normal" - I ate huge volumes of garbage, I didn't exercise, and I gained it all back.

Now, though the food remains a struggle (and always will), I am actually enjoying exercise, for the first time in my life.

As a kid I played hours and hours of tennis, and loved it - but not because it was exercise, because it was fun. Getting older, I didn't have all day and all night to play, and I moved away from my tennis-playing friends and family... and my body didn't cooperate the way it had before. While I had never been a particularly good tennis player, the playing had come easily (physically). Now, it no longer did.

So for decades now, I'd been hating all forms of exercise - until I started to run.

I won't say that running is "fun" for me, or even that I exactly enjoy doing it. But I love the feeling of having done it each and every time I go out -- and I love the feeling that I can do it. I never believed I could, but I can.

Mo, and her husband, and our brother and sister-in-law, and my own husband, all runners, told me I could run if I wanted to -- but for years I simply didn't believe them. My body had let me down in so many ways for so many years - orthopedic problems, arthritis, miscarriages, etc etc... I just had no faith that it could do anything beyond simple survival. Mo tried again and again, gently, to encourage me, but my faith in my own body was so low that I never even tried, until now.

Thanksgiving Project + Mo's 5K training program = the key

Today, I sat outside on the front step and changed out the laces on my running shoes to new special ones I bought at The Running Room (they apparently won't come untied while you're running - a big problem for me for some reason!). As I laced them up, I found myself excited for tomorrow morning's run, to try them out.

Me, excited to go out tomorrow morning and try out new shoelaces.

I still kind of can't believe it, and I don't think about it too much, because I'm afraid somehow the spell will break. After all, it's only been a couple of months, after more than 20 years of hating my body and having no faith in it.

But that Eliot line struck something in me, and somehow gave me permission to accept that maybe I can be a runner, and maybe I can be comfortable with my body, however it ends up looking.

I'm 42 now, and I'm angry to think of how my "good" years (beauty-wise!) were wasted in this vicious food battle. But, with luck, 42 isn't the end of the line, and if that's how long it took me to find my stride, then I should just be thankful that it didn't take me until 52. Or 62. Or, terrifyingly, until it was too late.

It's never too late to be what you might have been.

I have faith, and I feel good, starting now.

Thanks Mo.   :)

Annie:The view from Pikermi

Not long after Mae and I launched the Thanksgiving Project, The Faithful Mo ran her first marathon - THE marathon, from Marathon, Greece to Athens.

I was (and am still!) amazed by that tremendous accomplishment, and remember being inspired that, even though the road to a hundred-pound weight loss seemed impossible from where I sat at the time, Mo might have felt daunted by the road in front of her, too, in the beginning.

I began thinking about my weight loss as a marathon of my own - though obviously it's not really the same thing! But as challenges of commitment and focus go, this was about as a big an "ask" as I could think of making myself.

So this week, as I (finally!) hit my halfway mark, I wanted to see my progress on my marathon.

Mo - do you remember Pikermi at all? What's it like? How tired were you? Did the halfway mark charge you, or did you have any doubts at that point?

As for me, I'm pretty sure I'm going to make it to my finish line - though after the last 3 weeks of plateau, I'm not necessarily confident it'll happen by Thanksgiving. If it did, it would complete the narrative nicely - but this story is about so much more than that.

If it doesn't, I'll just keep running until it does. :o)

Annie: Inspiration

A few hours from now, my little sister will set off on her first full marathon - from Marathon, to Athens, Greece.

She's always been a runner, and has run a few half-marathons in the last few years; but she had made herself a promise years ago that she'd run a full one before she turned 40 (she even has a couple of years to spare!).

I always knew running a full marathon was an enormous accomplishment, but until following her training (as a listening ear, of course, not actually doing it!), I never fully appreciated what tremendous commitment is required over a long period of time, to build the physical and emotional stamina required to do it -- even for someone who was in excellent condition before starting to train.

Over the last two weeks, I've had my moments of weakness, when I've thought about doing the same thing I've done hundreds of times in the last 7 years: give up, eat some crap, skip the bike. But each time, I've thought about what my sister has had to do, and to give up, to get where she is right now: on the verge, literally, of living out a life-long dream.

It's been an enormous sacrifice, and it's also given her a tremendous sense of personal satisfaction and accomplishment.

And to me, it's an inspiration to keep going. My road over the next year is so far, far, far easier to travel than the one she will in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, halfway around the world. 

I wish I could be there for her tomorrow, when she crosses the finish line; but since I can't, I'll be here, in this very chair, watching for her bib number to cross on the race website. You can be sure I'll be bawling my eyes out with pride (and with relief for her poor feet!).

My finish line is far further in the future, but I have a feeling her inspiration will run alongside me every step of the way.

So to baby sister: run like the wind! And thanks.  : )