Tuesday, April 26, 2011

No more lettuce!

We (The Roommie and I) have been getting organic food delivered to us for about 3 months now, and you can tell it's not yet growing season. Most of the stuff we get is fruit from the tropics (mangoes, bananas, oranges) with a few hardy vegetables thrown in for good measure (squashes, root vegetables, cucumbers). Lately, though, we've been getting tons and tons of lettuce. Like, a bunch of it every week. And we are not good lettuce eaters. In fact, I hate lettuce, with a very deep passion. It has no taste, it takes up a lot of room in a bowl, and I feel like it's too much work to make it worth my while.

I know, I know. You're going to say that lettuce is the key ingredient in salads and I should be eating more green things anyway. But I refuse to make lettuce my green thing to eat. But I also hate letting food spoil so since we keep forgetting to switch out the lettuce for something else that would be much more delicious, we're stuck with eating four heads of lettuce before they go bad.

The Roommie hates letting things spoil more than I do, and so she's made it her mission to finish this batch of lettuce before it turns slimy. Her idea: cut all of it up and set it out on the table in plain view. Oh, and force it down my throat (just kidding about that last one!).

A crockpot of lettuce.
At one point last night, we had two massive mixing bowls of lettuce sitting on the counter, waiting to be eaten. But then we went out, imbibed (a lot), and got the drunken munchies. Only this time, we ate lettuce instead of chips. No joke. We killed one mixing bowl (about two heads of lettuce) between the three of us that were home. Wowsers! If these are my drunken munchies, then the only calories I have to worry about when going out for drinks is the beer. No more self-control issues when under the influence. Sweet.

I do have to say, I kind of like The Roommie's idea. Ever since she cut up the lettuce, I've been munching on it like it's chips. And I've had salad two days in a row now, which is highly abnormal. That may be due to the delicious raspberry balsamic vinegar she also bought, but whatever. Moral of the story is that her lettuce experiment has been a success! If only we could find a similar way to get everything else in our fridge eaten...

Friday, April 15, 2011

A blessing in disguise

My car has been having huge problems lately and thus I've had to go to the shop 3 times in the last week. Most notably, it was there all weekend and I was carless for a large amount of time (my fault for not picking it up...it was actually ready Friday at noon but Happy Hour, reading, and general lounging took priority over getting it back).

Anywhos, the point of this post isn't to complain that my car is a P.O.S., which it isn't. It's held up pretty well and there's actually not that much wrong with it now that the problem's been properly diagnosed.

The real reason that I'm writing about car troubles is that it's made me get off my butt and bike to school/work. I mean, I don't live that far from campus. In fact, it's a little over 1.5 miles from my front door to my first class. It's even closer to my office (1.3 miles). I should be biking every day, right?

Well, there's a small problem with this commute. There's a MASSIVE hill at about mile 1.


See? Totally flat at the beginning, then a 7% grade at mile one. If you don't get the idea, here's a little close-up:


I wouldn't mind it too much under regular bike-riding circumstances. (That's a lie. I'd be cursing the whole way up.) But my commuter bike weighs about 30 pounds (no joke, I actually weighed it) and I end up showing up to class with sweat stains up and down my back, and under my boobs and armpits. Not sexy. Gross, in fact. I even thought about buying a new t-shirt at the bookstore yesterday because I was so embarrassed.

Anywhos, another big problem I have is that it just hurts so bad to get up that thing. My quads burn, my lungs ache, and generally, it's just a miserable experience. Last time I pushed myself hard up that hill (and by "hard" I mean I pedaled just hard enough to not stand in place), it hurt to breathe for 2 hours afterward. So yeah, not my happy place.

But with my car in the shop and me not wanting to leave my house 40 minutes early to catch the bus when it takes less than half of that to bike, I was left with no choice but to try biking again. I used to be too embarrassed to even think about walking my bike up that hill (confidence issues, you know) so I suffered pedaling up that damn hill. But now I don't care. It's the only way I can get myself to consistently bike to work/school instead of driving and paying an arm and a leg for parking and gas. And this way, I can stay on campus as long as I want/need without worrying that I've exceeded my maximum parking time. And burn some calories on a daily basis. So many positives!


So yeah, the car problems have been a great blessing in disguise. It was perfect timing for me to have to take it to the shop because it's finally warming up consistently (if you ignore the snow storm we got yesterday) and thus it doesn't hurt nearly as much to bike everywhere. I even biked to get dinner the other day, instead of taking the car. Granted, I should've cooked something at home instead of buying 740 calories of Panera Bread, but little steps, little steps.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Getting it out of my system

It seems like I'm a once-a-week writer nowadays. That's ok with me for now since I've been swamped with work and school and rugby, but I've noticed that the more I write, the more involved/dedicated I am to weight-loss and thus I lose better. And since I haven't been posting much lately, that probably means I've been slacking with exercise and eating well. And that is very correct.

Acutally, I've been really disgusted with myself lately, mostly because instead of doing something about my weight and unfittedness (I totally just made up a word), I've been wallowing. And wallowing is not the way to go. The only way this weight will come off is if I work at it. I'm not going to one day wake up and be skinny. It's going to take a lot of sweat and tears (and probably blood, considering the fact that I'm back to playing rugby). I need to make exercising a habit and do it even if I don't want to. The question should be, "Would you rather be thinner and healthier, or sit on the couch for the hour or so it'll take you to burn some calories?" The answer should always be the former, although it hasn't been that way lately.

I've been using the excuse of studying and work instead of exercise, but in reality instead of doing something productive like that, I've been either watching TV or messing around on the internet. As a result, my weight-loss has stalled and my grades have been suffering. (That's another source of frustration...I know I can get straight-As. Not A-s, but A. It's just a matter of putting in the work. And I've been slacking lately and thinking I can get away with putting minimal work and still do well. Not!)

Ok, enough self-pity and beating myself up. I just needed to get that out of my system and get on with it. I figure if I say it enough times, then something's bound to change, right?

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Exhausting weekend, now get back on the wagon!

The rugby game went really well. They even got some shots of me running.


But with it being the first warm day in months and also just being Colorado, it was super dry and thus super exhausting to run at all. I had parched lips within 30 seconds of stepping out onto the field. Yikes! So yeah, I need to get in better shape.

In the end, I got to play about 23 minutes, which was plenty, and I had an absolute blast. The Roommie and I devised a running plan to help us get fitter and so far it hasn't worked. Well, it's mostly because I haven't been planning or scheduling the rest of my life accordingly and thus need to wake up early to do homework/study instead of the planned run. So this week's plan has been shifted by a couple days and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it all.

The same goes for food. I had a menu planned out and everything for the week's meals but then we had a potluck on Friday for the team and it all went downhill from there. It's like a bad circle of messing up...I don't eat well if I don't plan out meals, but if something throws my meal plan off, then I stop eating well and it all goes to shit.

The moral of the story is that I need to get my life in order and everything will go from there. I do really well when I have a routine and everything planned out hour by hour almost. Or at least some sort of plan will do. (On that note, I'm worried about the month of May when school will be done and I won't really have any sort of schedule. Even rugby is done. That leads to sleeping until 1 pm and wasting my life away. No bueno.)

And here's a parting shot of me picking up the ball and knocking a whole bunch of girls over.

Unfortunately that last part is not pictured, just the part where my gut seemingly gets in the way of bending over. Damn painted on jerseys...they accentuate all the curves I don't want people to see!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Down a bit in poundage and up a bit in happiness

I'm back to a 2-0-something kind of weight (207.0 to be exact), "dropping" four pounds since Monday. I think a lot of that had to do with TOM so I'm not really celebrating at all since I didn't have to do much to lose this weight, besides wait out a natural biological process. But it's still nice to see that I haven't gained any weight since my last weigh-in, and actually lost a couple pounds since my last legitimate weigh-in. I suspect I'm actually even lower than that since I've been feeling super dehydrated lately, so I've been drinking a lot of water the last couple of days to try to get myself to where I need to be. In fact, just writing that made me reach for my water bottle and take a long swig of it. You should too.

As for rugby...oh, rugby. We have a HUGE game this weekend against a spectacularly good team and my original goal for the season was to start in this game. Well, I'm not and I'm supremely happy about that. I mean, I would love to be good enough to start, but I know my fitness is not even close to that needed for an 80 minute intense match. So my amended goal was to be rostered (a substitute) and that's exactly what happened, which is awesome. I do hope I get to play a few minutes, although I don't think I'll be put in unless someone gets hurt, which is a bummer.

The good news on that front is I've beat out one of the girls I didn't think I could for a spot on the roster, and my coach has been training me in a new position, which would give me more depth. She also does think I'm rather good and so there's hope for me to make the starting side a few times next season if I keep improving (and in my opinion) get my fitness up and lose some poundage.

BUT, I'm kind of worried about the girl that's in my current position because she's super good, super fast, super strong, and everyone loves her. So there's no real hope of regaining my spot back, I think. Not only would I have to spend the summer in the gym (in addition to swim, bike, run training, work, and school, and some summer relaxation) to get stronger and fitter, but I would also have to learn a whole new position so that I don't have to compete against her.

If you're thoroughly confused about positioning, I'm mostly talking about the scrum. I usually play #3 on this team, have played #2 on other teams, and am now training to be #1 (at the top of the picture #1 is above the white #2, actually to the left of him).


The two positions, #1 and #3, are very similar except #3 goes into a scrum with both shoulders in, while #1 only has his right shoulder in and pushing. And that's what's been throwing me off. That, and binding on with my arm in the right spot.


Images courtesy of The Telegraph and Wikipedia, respectively.