Episode 79: Feeling the DOMS

Owie! Owie Owie Owie!  I did my first Curves workout about.. 8 hours ago and now I'm feeling it.  My arms, my back, my legs, even my abs are sore like crazy.  It actually takes an effort to sit and type this because I have to hold up my arms.  I was thinking about going back tomorrow, but screw that! I need time to heal!

What I am feeling is called DOMS, or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.  It happens from up to a few hours to a few days after a workout.  When you work out, your muscles stretch and create tiny tears within the muscle.  You don't feel these tears during or right after a workout because your body is producing endorphins and adrenaline and stuff that makes you feel good and want to keep going.  I know that I felt awesome after my workout. I could have done more and wanted to, but two circuits was what I was told to do.  Now the endorphins and adrenaline and everything have moved on and gone back to normal levels and I can feel those little tears.  The pain is good.  The pain is good. (I have to keep telling myself this, or I will not ever go back!)  The pain is good because it means that my body is beginning to repair those tiny little muscle tears by creating more muscle tissue to fill in those spaces.  More muscle tissue burns more fat and more fat burning means a thinner, happier, lighter Tory.  Yay!

It also means I'm exhausted and ready to turn on the sheet and pillowcase show.  I hope the movie behind my eyelids is awesome tonight, because I'm going to be watching it for a while!

Happy dreams everybody!

Love and Lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 76: Happy!!

Every night before we go to bed, we sit at our dining room table, fountain pens in hand, and write on small 2"x2" pieces of paper that are cut from 24lb stock.  These pieces of paper are light blue and pink, the color of youth, the color of gender and for us, the color of happiness.  With my pen, filled with a beautiful hot pink ink called "Hope Pink" for breast cancer awareness I write my happy thoughts for the day.  Across the table from me, AM, with his turquoisish pen, filled with Bahama Blue, writes his happy thoughts for the day.  Our world is color coded in this way. When we are finished, we put them into an 8 cup Ball jar and seal the lid.  In this way, we record our happiness, one day at a time and fill a jar with love and hope.

We've been doing this since around February. Originally the thought had been to start January 1st, but we are slow to get organized.  The jar in the picture is our happy jar, with our happy thoughts color coded to suit us.  We put the day's triumphs, the happy little things that we did for each other, or that we talked about, or even just what we ate for the day.  They can be any thought, as long as they are happy and not negative.

The plan is to open the jar at the end of the year as a New Year's ritual and see all of the happy thoughts that we have created over the year.  Ideally, if we had started on January first, we would have 730 happy thoughts in it by the end of the year.  730 happy memories, 730 meals, 730 joys that we could share.  I am not sure what we will do with them as we review them. Perhaps we will create a scrapbook, putting them in order and gluing them to pages as a reminder of all the happiness that we had the year we got engaged and then got married.  Maybe we will let the jar fill (though it is already getting pretty full and we have to pack the slips down well) until our first anniversary, so we can have a record of our first year together and the time that we were engaged.  Maybe we will just tear them into smaller pieces and throw them over ourselves and our friends at our New Year's celebration.  We have a while to go until we pick out those pieces of paper and find out all of our happiness throughout the year.  I'm excited to see what he wrote, since our happy thoughts are private until the end of the year, locked up in our little jar on little pieces of blue and pink paper.

I hope that you all have your happy thoughts and that you share them with the ones that you love, today and every day.  Keep them somewhere safe, even if it is a journal or notebook, a planner or just in your memory, but my hope is that everybody has at least one happy thought a day, even if it is as simple as "the cute guy on the bus smiled at me" or "I ate all my vegetables" or even "I am still alive and my heart is still pumping blood through my body", everybody should be happy, every single day.

Here is to all of your happy thoughts!

Love and Lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 75: To market, to market

The cool morning air buzzed with the voices of the patrons and from the center of the market stalls, a single violinist fiddled away, singing folksy country songs  behind a metal can.  Familiar voices ring out from the stall and the scent of barbecuing meat wafts over the open market stalls.  There is no need for catcalls or showmanship by the sellers.  It is market day and there is very little reason to call attention to any particular booth, as all are busy with customers, some empty handed, some laden with goods from other booths, pick over the selection, chose their week's produce and go away happy.

This is the paradise I stepped in to this morning. The sun wasn't hiding so much as clothed gently in the wispy clouds, making the temperatures bearable in the early May morning.  I love going to the farmer's market.  We try to go weekly, but we will sometimes skip a week, but we are never really disappointed either.  WE go so often that we are beginning to know which stalls are our favorite. We are beginning to learn the names of the men and women who work behind the tables planted under canopies and tents.  They recognize us and smile and ask how we liked the selection that we took last week.  We mention soups and they smile, recommending cooking methods.  One merchant even gave us a handout with a recipe for red bean chocolate cake.  

I've written before about using locally grown produce, and about supporting our local economy and eating what is in season, what we find there at that market. It is wonderful to watch the colors change in the booths, from the verdant greens and yellows of the winter squashes to the bright beautiful redness of the ripest sweetest strawberries I have tasted in a long time.  We walk up the rows before we buy anything, checking prices against prices, looking for the best produce, never buying everything from just one booth.  

Market day used to be a tradition. It was a gathering place once a week for the town to get together and celebrate the harvest, celebrate the products that people brought out.  It was a chance for money to exchange, for a local economy to grow strong and for an area to flourish.  It kept the people together, and it kept the people's safe.  You didn't steal from the guy who sold you your food and if you were the seller, you didn't steal from your customers. In fact, you would often give someone down on their luck who was a good customer a deal on food.  

I think this is what we need to go back to. Create a community around these markets, create an idea that we are all in this together, and the world will be more peaceful!  Yay for market days! :)

Off to bed!

Love and Lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 66: Putting Color Into Life

Today we went to the Farmer's Market behind the Weberstown Mall.  We got up, even before breakfast, put on clothes, braved the cold, crisp morning (at 8:45) and went out to see what sort of fresh produce they had for us today.  What you see in the picture is what we bought.  Fresh veggies, raspberry jams and some pomegranates.  They are all glorious (and barely fit in our tiny tiny apartment fridge).  The plan is to make some really awesome veggie soup, since we're on a type of Weight Watchers.

 In fact, I'm sort of cheating.  I have no money and very little resources to rejoin Weight Watchers at this time, but I have all of my old book and all of my old program stuff, so we're using these as resources, with some help from some web sources, to create our own version of Weight Watchers.  I haven't given up on the whole milk or the whole fat yogurt, as they seem to be better for my digestion than the low fat stuff (I don't get nearly as may ucky tummies), but we are adding many more veggies and things to our diet.  I feel healthier.  According to my Wii, I have lost about 5 pounds in the last two weeks.

Just looking at that picture makes me happy!  The colors, the vibrancy, and I've noticed that since we have been eating better, cleaning our apartment more often and working out a bit more, my whole life seems to be coated in this new vibrant color.  A year or more ago, I was feeling kind of in the doldrums.  I lived in a beautiful place, I had everything I ever wanted, but it wasn't satisfying. I was unhappy.  I was overweight. I was lazy and in pain and everything seemed like crap.  I was taking medication for bipolar disorder and it wasn't helping much.  And the food I was eating was awful!  Looking back at my Weight Watcher's books from a year ago, I was eating fast food daily.  One day was Wendys. One day was Subway. One day was Taco Bell.  Fried foods, foods full of fat, foods full of fillers. These were the things that I was putting into my body, and my body fought back with depression, acne and weight gain.

Now I eat what you see on the table.  Fresh fruits, fresh veggies. I make my own breads sometimes.

 I take a vitamin daily, and I cook my own food. I have even, on occasion, made my own butter (which is absolutely delicious!)  I know exactly what goes in my food. If I write down a recipe, or a list of ingredients, I can pronounce every single one of them.  I still eat meat, though we do have our Wegitarian Wednesdays, and Pizza Fridays (our one little concession to the "how do you pronounce that?" foods).  We will eat out, but we go places where we can eat healthfully.  We found this great little sushi place (at Sherwood Mall, no less) that makes great rolls and you can watch them make them, so we know exactly what goes into them.  All of these things have greatly improved the quality of my life.

I plan on keeping up with this blog some more.  I want to write and keep track.  I want to post about how I organize my life, how I make it can make it better, and how I have learned to enjoy a life lived in less space and fewer calories but much more enriched.  I'll post some of my recipes that we have found particularly yummy, some ideas for keeping life organized, and my adventures of jumping off the high dive of life and just, well... Weighting in the Deep End!

Keeping happy and healthy!

ToryLynn

Episode 57: Point-less

A confession: Since AM has been here, I haven't really been counting points.  I haven't been eating awfully,and we are keeping each other on task for exercise and walking and being healthy.  I haven't been following the Weight Watcher's way, and I haven't been going to meetings, or even really weighing in.

But... I feel healthier.  I am happy.  I admit, my weight has always been a bit of a hassle for me, a bit of a sore spot, and it's not like I don't care about it, but I am happier and I think healthier even if I'm not really paying attention to points.  I eat my vegetables with (nearly) every meal. Instead of candy bars and carbs in my desk, I keep a small container of nuts and dried fruit next to my projector at school and munch a bit while my students are working.  Instead of ice cream every night (I was incredibly addicted to Drumsticks for a while), I grab a mandarin orange out of the basket on our table.

Don't get me wrong, I do still eat ice cream and brownies. I still make mini pies for dinner (bacon, mushroom and cheddar are my favorites), but I'm not constantly craving it anymore.  I'm not constantly in need of something sweet.  I do enjoy it from time to time, but my cravings are starting to go away.

I am watching my carb intake, and my sugar intake (although the White Chocolate Mocha I just had at Starbucks probably would kill any Atkins subscriber immediately), but I'm not starving myself, I'm not feeling deprived.  I feel healthier than I have in a really long time.  I do sort of envy the people who start and continue a program like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or even Atkins.  These are things I just don't have the mental toughness and will power to follow through on.  So, I will just keep on keeping on, making healthier choices without really depriving myself and I will just learn to be happier.  I"m learning that happiness, in the long run, means more to me than food.

I am finding other things to be happy about:  my Nook, my wonderful boyfriend, a shared meal at the dinner table, a good conversation.  I will always be thankful that AM has brought these things into my life. (Ok... ok... enough sappy romance.)

I will continue with my weight loss journey.  I will lose weight, but I will not obsess over it.  I will eat healthier foods (and share them with you, oh obscure reader).  I will strive to lead a healthier, happier, more active lifestyle.  For now, I leave with one parting thought:

It is not how much you weigh that will be weighed in the balance at the end of your life. Friends and family will not judge you on how large your casket is, but how large your heart was.  Be kind, gentle reader, to those around you.  It is the greatest measure of a person.

With love and lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 54: Starbucks Sunday

It is a beautiful day today.  The sun is shining, leaving golden streaks of light across the floors, there is soft music playing over the loud speakers and the woosh and swirl of coffee drinks being made fill the air as well as the chatter of my fellow diners.  My keyboard clicks pleasantly, and the cares of my week sort of melt away.  It is Starbucks Sunday, and I sit in my neighborhood Starbucks, typing up a new blog post and enjoying the companionship of AM.

It's funny sitting here, drinking my Grande Skinny Cafe Mocha (which we figured at 4 points) and eating my Noah's Everything Bagel Thin with Garlic Cream Cheese and Lox (7 points), for a satisfying, healthyish breakfast.  AM really fell into my Sunday morning routine pretty quickly, and nearly every other day of the week, is trying to feed me healthy foods like vegetables (gasp!) and fruits (swoon!) and even... even.. some Pho soup, which he makes pretty well! 

The last couple of weeks haven't been entirely good for my diet though.  My birthday came and went with two different chocolate cakes (I totally *don't* recommend the Chewy Fudge Bistro Cake from Safeway if you aren't prepared to die in a decadent chocolate heaven and want to eat the entire thing in one evening... which I did with the help of a few of my friends) and Valentine's Day as well as one of my students selling Girl Scout cookies.  Thin Mints are evil little minions of the diet devils!  AM finally hid the box of cookies for me on the top shelf of our kitchen storage in a place that I can't get to unless I use the foot stool. So, they are safe for now.  

So, we are rededicating ourselves to the idea of tracking points again, reading articles on the Weight Watchers website, and doing Wii Fit and walking to melt off the weight.  It is just as easy to buy and eat healthy food as it is to buy and eat junk food. There is a sign at the Weight Watchers that says "If you don't buy it, you can't eat it" and I was looking at that sign and thinking about how that is so true. If I don't buy the healthy foods, I can't eat healthy foods and get myself better.  If I don't buy the junk foods, I won't eat them because they won't be at my house.  I think that's a fairly good idea.  And with time, I will start to look at the vegetable aisle more than the cookie aisle; I will start to scope out the flavored waters instead of the Monsters; I will make a berry cobbler rather than a whole tray of cinnamon rolls.  I will be a healthier, happier person... and I will love myself more for it.

I have been eating a lot healthier than I was before, and amazingly enough, I am seeing the rewards.  My skin is clearer, my moods aren't fluctuating nearly as rapidly, and I can almost say that my bipolar disorder is a thing of the past.  I still get sad, and I still get happy, but everything seems so much more controllable. 

I am happy... and that is the best thing in the world.  Thank you to all of my friends and family for helping me to take care of myself.  Thanks most to AM who is helping me be a better person.  

Love, lollipops and hugs!

ToryLynn

P.S. I do plan on posting more often.  Hopefully I can get back to nearly daily updates.  I have a lot to think about and.. Spring Break in 2 weeks! Woot woot!!