Achieving Kateness

It’s not often I say this, as I tend to be someone who feels like they could always be doing more, but the last few weekends the exercise has been FANTASTIC.  Two Sundays ago, I was sitting around bored when I said to myself “Fuck it, I’m going to get out of this damn house.”  I rode my bike downtown to have lunch, and after I was done eating I kept thinking “Man, Whole Foods is really not that far away…”  so I braved my fear of riding in traffic and  I biked up to Whole Foods, bought a few things, then rode home.  It was a raging success, despite me not having a bungee cord so I had to ride while holding my paper bag in one hand.
Last Weekend, I hit the gym on Saturday AND Sunday with Z., whom I’ve managed to con into signing up for Gold’s.  This works out wonderfully because he’s really into working out right now so he pushes me to go.  Last Saturday I got up early, took the dogs on the GreenBelt for about 40 minutes, then did Kung Fu, then went to the gym.  On Sunday, we went to the gym, then swimming in Barton Springs.

The dieting has been up and down.  I’ve lost weight – hooray!  And actually dipped below 250 lbs.   I noticed that I was eating too much overall when my weight stayed steady for one week, though, so I started trying to cut back on bad food at lunch.  No more buffets with the boss.  Turns out C. was thinking the same thing, because he informed me he was going to start bringing lunch in.  This lead to me having a hysterical crying fit.  I know it sounds stupid, and it makes me sound crazy, which I hate.  But us going to lunch was the last thing we did that was our thing and like everything else he tossed it away like it was so much meaningless trash.  I cried and told him between sobs that I’d lost my best friend and that he’d been stolen away from me.  Not my proudest moment.  Later in the week I managed to articulate things more clearly, and for once he seemed to understand.  He and his girlfriend are moving in together soon and he said he felt that would free up some of his time.  I find that hard to believe but at this point at least I feel like I’ve truly done all I can to preserve our friendship.

Anyway, back to the food.  The diet has not been great on the weekends.  I know what they say, you can’t out-train a shitty diet, blah blah blah.    I still lost weight.  Last Sunday I was eating a burger and fries and feeling guilty when I realized that I’d eaten healthy all day up to that point, and I’d worked out like a motherfucker, so you know, maybe one bad meal was not so bad.  I felt like the important thing was that I wasn’t binging – it was just one meal.   Sure enough, I lost 4 lbs. this week.  So as usual I need to chill out and stop expecting 100% on the food front because that’s just never going to be me.  But the funny thing is, I’m okay with that.  I was talking to a girl at Kung Fu and we were discussing Easter candy because J. said he was going to shoot the Easter Bunny (don’t ask).  We started debating if Peeps were good or not and she said she hadn’t eaten them in years and couldn’t remember what they tasted like.  I joked about buying her an easter basket full of chocolate and she just looked horrified and said it’d take her years to eat all that candy.   I know my eating needs a lot of improvement but I think no matter how good I get, I’m always going to be the girl who can eat an entire easter basket in a day – and I’m pretty much ok with that, as long as it’s not every day.

So, I had quite a week, fitness wise.  I attended every Kung Fu class I could, plus I went Kayaking on Town Lake for the first time ever!  Thursday was the best day – according to Fitday I burned over 1300 calories.  Between an hour of kayaking and 2 hours of Kung Fu, it feels like it.

My new plan was to start riding my bike to work every Friday.  That way I’d be adding in some solid cardio/leg work, and since Friday is one of the two days a week my company serves food, I could afford to eat a little extra and still be ok.  Last night I went to put a little more air in my tires when to my horror, the pump got stuck on the valve of my back tire.  WTF!! During my wrestling match with it, it broke the seal the valve makes.  SON OF A BITCH.  So now I have to take my bike into the shop early tomorrow and see if they can fix it, and also see if there are road bike tires that do NOT have presta valves because I swear, those are the source of all of my troubles.  Although I love my road bike, I still miss my old mountain bike.

In other news, the kayaking was a blast.  I can’t believe I’ve never done it before, considering I used to walk by the Texas Rowing Center every day.  I guess I always thought it was far more involved to rent a boat than it actually was, but pretty much we just walked up, handed them $10, they put our boat in the water and were like “See ya in an hour!”  As I was doing it I realized that I had relatively little anxiety about it.  I was a little concerned I wouldn’t get the hang of it (and it was hard!) but it never occurred to me that I flat-out might not be able to handle rowing a boat in a lake.  Compare that to 6 months ago when I probably would not have agreed to go, and it felt really good.  This is what being a fit person means – you can approach physical challenges without fear.    On that note, in Kung Fu on Thursday I made a concerted effort to push myself.  I felt like I did a lot better, I think I had been letting myself skate by a bit too much lately.  That’s one of the downfalls of being the fat girl, people have lowered expectations of your fitness level.  And because I feel like I can get away with doing less, I do.  That’s a bad habit to develop.  So even when it hurt (and it hurt a lot), I tried to keep up the effort.  The people who can push through it are definitely admirable.  I also overheard one of my instructors talking about when he got his black belt and he said he just trained all the time – literally like 4 hours a day at the studio plus whenever he was at home.  It made me feel really bad about not even finding time to run through my forms outside of class.

I think I had a pretty good week overall but next week I’d like to step it up.  Definitely more walking/running the dogs in the morning, and more kung fu practice.

A classic “thing” of mine has been to promise myself, whenever I attend an annual event, that “this is the last time I will be fat when I go.”  I imagine that by the time next year rolls around, I will have finally gotten my act together, and will be able to finally experience life as a thin person.

Yeah, not so much.

Still, though, what I learned for my belt test is time based goals can help if they’re not too far away.  The problem with the thinking above is that I’ve just had the experience – I’m not really focusing on having it again.  A year is a long time – that promise gets filed away in memory, never to resurface until it’s too late; then it just becomes another notch in the “you’re a failure” stick.

I had a revelation last week.  I run away from things that are hard.  I believe I’m capable of it, but then I’m afraid to find out I’m not.

Anyhoo, in 3 months, it will be FunFunFun Fest, a 3-day music festival here in Austin.  I don’t want to be this fat when I go.  My feet will hurt, my back will ache, and I’ll be miserable if I’m this heavy.  So if I could do one month before my belt test, then I can do 3 months before this festival.

I read a blog post by Skwigg the other day that talked about having to find the “it” that inspires you and makes you want to be healthier.  Is “it” the idea of running a marathon?  Is “it” having a set of perfectly defined abs?  Mine is definitely Kung Fu (duh).  Apart from the festival, I hate the way I look in class.  Particularly during forms – there are times when I’ll catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I’ll realize that I just look so huge.  And I’m so, so tired of that.  Interesting fact I learned – my instructor used to be fat.  Then he started playing hockey and lost some weight.  Then he started martial arts and lost some more weight.  Then he started teaching and was there like every night and now he’s so skinny, I once picked him up for a demonstration and he weighed like nothing.  Unfortunately that didn’t stop him from kicking my ass. 

Last Thursday, after class two girls were shooting a video audition tape which was about them getting attacked by “Kung Fu Warriors” and fighting  them off.  Well, even though I stayed to be in the tape, I hid in the back.  I was afraid of how terrible I’d look on camera.  In the actual scenes, you can’t even see me.  It sucks.  But that’s another thing that worries me – I fear I’ve become too comfortable at this size.  It’s not like I *like* it, and it’s certainly better than the alternative of earlier this year when I was so depressed I couldn’t get off the couch, but I also feel like maybe I’m not as hungry for change as I should be.  Still though, I have to remind myself of an old saying – “You don’t have to want to do it.  You just have to do it.”

The instructors at Kung Fu are getting shuffled around a bit, which is actually pretty awesome.  The guy who taught class today has a background in Tae Kwon Do which means he’s all about kicking, and he’s also excellent at forms.  I was struggling to get 3 moves down all last week, today I got more than halfway through it with him teaching.  He said that there was talk of making Saturdays pure form days with emphasis on stances which would be just great because I feel like the footwork and stances are really areas I need improvement.

One of the things I’m trying to figure out is how to work out to boost my Kung Fu and make it stronger.  I have all of these ideas, but the real problem is when do I actually have time to do any of it?  I go to Kung Fu for an hour on Monday, then two hours Tues, Wed, and Thur, then one hour on Saturday.  So that really leaves only two days to work out.  I could probably do another workout on Saturday, but there are times when I’m so tired I just pass out after class…ok, that happens like every week.  Plus if I ever want to have any kind of social life, I can’t necessarily dedicate every spare moment to being at the gym. We also know I tend to go a little overboard with scheduling things and I’m trying to keep in mind that it’s not really realistic to think that I’m going to wake up 6am every day to run 10 miles with the dogs, then practice forms, then go to work all day, then go do two hours of Kung Fu after working a full day.  Maybe I just need to manage my time better, or perhaps learn to sleep only every other day.

Thank God once I got back from Vegas the depression cloud was finally chased away.  Not that I’ve become Miss Sunshine but I feel like ME again.  Now I’m looking forward to a few months of uninterrupted routine without any visiting or traveling to get in the way.

253.6

So, I never did figure out how much weight I lost in June, although I know it was a substantial amount (I know I was at least below 250) because I never weighed myself before Vegas.  I actually really enjoyed not weighing myself.  Even though I was tempted at times, I realized that overall it was much better for my mental health.  Ever since Vegas I’ve been struggling to get back on track, and falling into old binging habits.  However, I don’t want to find myself back up to 270, and I certainly don’t want to start struggling in Kung Fu.  Plus, I was kind of enjoying feeling smaller.  So I’m rededicating myself as of today, to get back to an XL (rather than XXL) by the end of August.  I estimate I’ll need to be down to 225, so losing about 28 lbs. in a little over 5 weeks.

Our new thing in Kung Fu is running.  I hate it.   We can either run outside, on the pavement, which just kills my ankle, is hot, uncomfortable, etc. , or we can run inside, just in circles around the room with some obstacles (punching bags, mats for rolling, etc).  It’s so small & cramped it still is painful.  Have I mentioned I hate it?  I have this thing where it makes me really uncomfortable to have people running around me…so it makes me anxious and angry when we run inside and people are constantly running up on me.  But I know it’s one of those things – I have to do it because I hate it.  If I’m going to be 100% honest, part of the reason I hate it is because I feel like I can’t do it.  Nothing makes you feel like the biggest, fattest, person in the world like shuffling around while faster, fitter people leap on punching bags and tumble on mats.

Lately Kung Fu in general is frustrating me.  I got my green belt – now what?  Brown, Red, and Black are far away.  I feel like I’m not getting better as a fighter and a martial artist.  I’m at a plateau, I guess, which I suppose will break if I give it enough time.  I just want to feel like a real ass kicker instead of someone who hits pads and kicks shin guards.

I’m in Vegas right now, avoiding paying for the hotel wifi by using my work card.  I think it’s crap that hotels charge for internet access, and it’s not cheap, either – $14.95 a day!

Anyhoo, Work ended yesterday and today my vacation officially got off the ground.  I was hoping to be able to relax and mellow out for a while but that just hasn’t happened.  For one thing, things are so expensive here!  I keep worrying about money, and pinching pennies in Vegas is not exactly a good time.  I did, however, manage to win $20 at blackjack – woo!  Unfortunately I’ve already lost like $60.

Also, work has been going badly lately, and I just can’t seem to turn it off.  I used to be really good at pushing work out of my mind when it was time to relax but I can’t do that lately.  I never realized how important feeling like I’m good at my job is to me, but since I’ve become an FAE I’ve been miserable.  There are 6 of us, and I feel like I’m the worst one on the team.  I struggle to keep up and do my share but I just don’t have the knowledge base or expertise that everyone else does.  Plus, there’s so much pressure being put on all of us in general to do more work, take on more responsibility, and I just don’t know how to handle it.  They sent out an e-mail that basically said if you have to work late, suck it up.  I can’t keep doing Kung Fu if I always have to work late, but I can’t quit doing Kung Fu ’cause I’ll have a nervous breakdown.  It’s not that I mind putting in extra hours, but I need to have more in my life besides just work.

Anyway.  I didn’t intend to just babble about work.  Today I spent the day with a co-worker and his girlfriend.  It was an interesting, because all three of us are fat.  It was enjoyable, because I didn’t have to worry about being self conscious when eating.  We saw a show and even though it was kind of uncomfortable to have 3 heavy people squished in together, it was great not being the only one.  They say that the people who you spend the most time with influence how in or out of shape you are, and I can see how that’s true, but sometimes it’s nice to have people who understand your situation.

Depression is an interesting phenomenon.  It’s frustrating that it saps your ability to ask for help right when you’re at the point that you most need it.  I’ve heard people with ADD talk about how just having ADD makes it almost impossible to actually go and get medication for it because you can’t really focus on completing tasks.  That reminds me of depression, it’s like you want someone to help you, to notice, but there’s a wall between you and the rest of life that just prevents you from doing it.

I feel better now, mostly, but it was a rough couple of weeks.  That’s the awesome thing about Kung Fu, though – you get there, and for an hour (or two) nothing matters except punching the pad.  It takes you to another place out of your head, narrows your focus, and everything is right with the world.  It’s a shame reality has to interfere.

So the test was on Friday.  It was hard.  We started off with the Worst Relay Ever – someone pushes a bag to cones worth 5, 10, 15, or 20 pushups.  Some people went to 20 – bastards.  Then we did 2 minutes of chain punching – funny that I was so worried about that, but it turned out to be the easiest thing.  Glad I practiced anyway.  Next was 2 minutes of 8-count Body Builders – down, out, pushup, up, jump.  After that we got into groups of three, one person with a knife and a shin guard, one person with pads, for various techniques.  1:30 each of that.  Then, we were put into groups for forms.  I nailed every form perfectly because I’d been practicing it so much…EXCEPT Small Plum Blossom, because they had told us that was not on the test so I literally quit doing it a month ago.  CRAP.

So before I go further let me assure you – I passed.  I was annoyed that things they told us would not be on the test Thursday night (specifically knife fighting) were, but I guess that proves that the testing is unpredictable and they are not going to give us everything that’s on it.  For the group section I had all of these techniques prepared because they said it would be 5 minutes each…it turned out it was only 1:30 for each person in the group of 3.

They gave a LOT more leeway in forms than I expected.  For Small Plum Blossom I totally lost it half way through.  For the yellow belts, two people clearly didn’t know the forms and one girl even did the wrong one…but she still passed.  I feel kind of torn.  It’s not up to me to say who passes and who doesn’t but I felt like I worked really hard and that cheapened it.  Still, though, the brown & red belts were inspiring.  Their forms were intricate and complex and they all nailed it.  I stayed after to help with the black belt test and I felt really bad for both of them, because their test was relentless.  One of the women who tested, though…I dunno.  I have an image in my head of what a black belt should be – at that point I imagine punching so hard people’s shoulders get dislocated.  I imagine moving so fast no one can touch me.  But she was one of the “wimpy” girls, who hardly taps the pad during sparring and who certainly doesn’t have the strength and power I would want if I was a black belt.  And she passed!  I dunno.  I guess it means that you get out of it what you put into it and I can’t expect other people to set a standard for me.

Speaking of which, Saturday J. dragged me to Dallas to see the Legends of Kung Fu tournament.  I use the word tournament loosely because if you’re imagining Karate Kid, don’t.  It’s mostly people doing forms for certain styles and being judged on them.  One of the people from our school was competing, except he was the only one doing this particular form, so cool that he was guaranteed first place.    Watching that, though, made me realize how high I want the bar to be truly set.

I have to talk about my fantastic triumphs last weekend and this – I went drinking and DIDN’T EAT.  HUZZAH!  And the nights were fraught with temptations – Friday we stopped by Metal Pizza, and J. was about ready to take me to the hospital when I didn’t get my usual 3 massive slices of pizza.  The weekend before I was lit up when we stopped by What-A-Burger, but I still didn’t get anything!  Now granted, I may have snagged a fry or two from someone else, and I did eat half of a chicken strip from Z.  But that’s paltry compared to the 3,000+ calorie feasts I used to indulge in, so we’re going to call that an Epic Win.

Food has been mediocre.  I have not done anything really bad but calories are too high.  I do best at around 1800 calories a day and 80 net carbs, but it’s been closer to 2000 and into the 100 ranges.  Don’t get me wrong, that’s not terrible – I was thinking earlier that a month ago I’d have killed to be this good.  But it’s not my A-Game and that’s what I need to bring to the table for the next 3 weeks, so starting today I’ve rededicated myself.

I had another thought this morning as I struggled to drag myself out of bed – I keep making all these plans to get up early before work and exercise, practice Kung Fu, etc.  I need to stop.  I have to be at work by 8:30am now – its’ not like I roll in at 10pm like I used to.  It’s just not practical to think I’m going to bound out of bed at 6am.  So if I’m more of an evening person, why the hell don’t I just work on this stuff in the evening?  Yes, it’s kind of annoying in that it doesn’t leave me much downtime, but then if my downtime is just watching TV that’s not very productive anyway.  I’m going to try this tonight – after Kung Fu (thank god it’s only a single class), dinner, laundry, dog time, etc. I’m going to practice some forms and some chain punches before bed.  If nothing else it’ll wear me out until I sleep well. 

Once upon a time, I had a best friend, and like all best friends, we spent an inordinate amount of time together.  I would wake up on the weekends and just kill time until he called me.  Sometimes I would think we spent too much time together, but I’d inevitably brush those thoughts aside and enjoy time with my friend.  We did everything – from going out drinking to running errands at Target.
Then, my best friend got a girlfriend.  And then I no longer had a best friend.

It’s certainly not the first time it’s happened, one of the downsides of having mostly male friends is that girlfriends tend to displace girl friends.  But for some reason, this has just shattered me.  I spend the majority of my time feeling lonely, sad, bitter, resentful, angry, abandoned, and miserable.  I’ve established a pattern:
Arrive at work

At some point before lunch, Best Friend will say or do something inadvertently hurtful (like decide to have lunch with his girlfriend instead of me)

I spend the next several hours trying not to cry at my desk

Drive home, cry.  Where the tears start depends on how lousy I feel.  If they start at Ihop, it’s been a really bad day.  If they don’t start until the Jack In The Box/McDonalds intersection, that’s almost a good day.

Go to Kung Fu, feel better for the first time all day.

Ride the Kung Fu high until the next day, repeat.

In general, I think I’m the type of person who relies extremely heavily on my friends.  When I was a kid my family sucked so I bonded with other kids who had sucky families.  It taught me to rely on my friends for what I assume most people rely on their families for.  So the loss of a friend now is especially crushing to me.  Plus, at the beginning of the year I was not in the best mental state.  There’s a reason I got up to 270 lbs.  I fully realize the ridiculousness of being upset that someone didn’t go to lunch to me, but every time it happens it’s like reinforcement of the idea that I’m not needed anymore.  It’s like I was just a placeholder until someone better came along.  Other people seem to be able to accept the ebb and flow of friendship when this happens, but not me.

It’s not solely my fault, in my defense things did change rather drastically and rapidly and I was perhaps naively not expecting that to be the case.  I just assumed we’d all hang out together, not that I’d be excluded and cast aside like so much rubbish.  If nothing else, though, it’s led me to realize why people seek out relationships.  Apparently you’re supposed to get all this emotional support from a significant other.  I guess there’s a point to it after all.

I fully believe if I hadn’t found Kung Fu I’d probably be approaching 300 lbs. right now.  Fortunately I did find it and it’s keeping me sane and also on the path to losing weight (at least I hope so, have not yet slipped up in my quest to lose some pounds before the belt test).  Still, though, the emotional strain is wearing me down.  Good thing punching people is cathartic.

My Kung Fu Academy offers several classes beyond regular Kung Fu, that started around March or so.  One of them is a Cardio Class on Wednesdays, and one of them is a HIT (High Intensity Training) class on Thursdays.  J. and I started taking both.  They’re brutal in different ways, and I have a love/hate relationship with them.  On the one hand, it’s really, really hard.  Being so overweight, I frequently cannot keep up.  On the other hand, even though I haven’t necessarily dropped tons of weight, I’m definitely in better shape.  I can go a little further, work a little harder, last a little longer.  Yay.  When new people come in I like to imagine them thinking “Wow, that fat girl can keep up!”  I can do pushups now.  I rediscovered my loathing of lunges.  I punch harder.

The downside is, every now and then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and man, is it ever depressing.  There’s fat flying everywhere!  Mostly around the mid section, but it’s not confined to just that – let me tell you, jumping rope is NOT kind to fat people.  Neither are jumping jacks.  In fact, our first round of jumping jacks prompted me to go out and pay almost $70 for a new sports bra designed specifically for massive ta-tas because it was so uncomfortable to jump around (side note: how the hell did I manage running!?).
Anyway, with a month before the belt test, I had an idea…what if I use this to kick start my weight loss?  I could make some good progress in a month, and the short-term motivation is perfect.  Not that I’d get super-skinny in just 4 weeks, but I could at least get to the point where the people who knew me would say “damn, she’s lost some wieght!” instead of “Wow, it’s Kung Fu Hippo.”

Of course I have a little problem with dieting, known as Binge-Eating Disorder, and super-strict rules and calorie counting frequently make me have a nervous breakdown right into a box of cupcakes.  However, I think if there was a definite end in sight, it might be ok.  It works out that I leave for Vegas for work/vacation 2 days after the test so not only would it b doubly helpful, but I’d have vacation to unwind and hopefully un-crazy.

I’m going to do it…one month of eating well, exercising, and living/sleeping/breathing Kung Fu.