Motherhood

So, I've altered my running route recently. This new route, although not as long as I had wanted it to be according to mapmyrun, takes me directly past the school that my daughter will be going to for Kindergarten in the fall. This, of course, occurs right in the middle of various emotional experiences over the last couple of weeks, including my son (and last child) turning 3 and my teacher friend telling me that application for local schools starts soon. Either way, I run by this school that is very old, yet recently renovated two years ago, and quite beautiful and I have mixed emotions. It's such a good school that I'm proud that my daughter will be going there. Then again, I've never been away from my daughter all day on such a consistent daily basis. I'm not really concerned how she'll handle it as she has handles summer camps and other events like this quite well, I also know that I'll have my hands full with my son and the other's that I keep during the day. Still, it kind of shakes me with emotions I can't quite put my finger on.

Then, there is fear. As I run by the school, early before even most of the teachers have gotten there, I see a man walking between the fence of the school and the nearby creek running alongside the school. Now there was nothing particularly suspicious about this, but it still brings up the thoughts of whether I've taught my daughter sufficiently for the possibility that someone may try to grab her, while at the same time not terrifying her into think that every adult is out to get her. These fears are real and valid, and I don't think I'm being paranoid. Just this past fall a Kindergartener was grabbed by a passing man at this same school. She, luckily screamed and kicked the man and ran straight back to the school building. Then, just last week a Middle Schooler was grabbed by a man when she got off the bus in her neighborhood. Again, this girl screamed and her mother happened to be nearby and the guy let go when he saw the mother running toward him. But, I'm sure that, statistically speaking, my daughter will be safe and may never have any incident like this happen to her.

So with these new emotions coursing through my brain and body, I will spend the next few months trying to enjoy my last bit of 24/7 time with my daughter and try to reinforce that she is to never go anywhere with a stranger and to scream and kick if someone ever tries to grab her and take her somewhere anyways.

Men and Women

OK, every woman probably has a post like this on their weight loss blog, I've even seen a commercial utilizing this complaint to try to suck you into buying their weight loss product. Yet, here I am to get this old complaint off my chest and into the bloggosphere.

I've been running since May, I have done a fairly good job on my diet, although like many I have my bad spells (and no I don't mean one long spell, either). After 7 long months of running I have managed to loose enough weight to be were I was in February. To be honest, though, I gained weight between February and April, as evidenced by the photographs of my son and daughter's birthday parties.

You know if I were a man, I would have already lost 25 pounds and been very lean, possibly even while eating twice as much as I currently am. I actually talked to my Dr. about my lack of weight loss and she wants me to cut out carbs and wine. Honestly, I'd rather just remain running while fat than cut out my carbs and wine. She even admitted she wouldn't be having this conversation with a man in my position and in the rare event a man were to need her help she'd probably tell him to reduce all of his food rather than cut out one thing, since carbs don't cause them as much problem as it does for women. So here I am, running while fat and loving my carbs and wine.

Well, that's the end of my obligatory complaint about men, for now.

Before Pictures

Ads for weight loss products always have these “before” pictures that show some fat person sitting on their butt shoving food in their mouth at some birthday party or holiday event. I've always thought this was just insane, I mean couldn't they have tried to take a decent “before” picture? Or at least tried to find a decent photo of themselves, even if it is one of those posed Sears Portrait photos?

It wasn't until working on some digital scrap booking that I noticed that I have no “before” picture of myself. Most of the pictures of the “fat” me (or at least the fatter me) are of me at some birthday party or holiday event shoving food in my face. How did I become a cliché?

It was then that I realized that only way most fat people let people take photos of them is during special events. Judging by the number of photos with my head cut off or me turning away, I still have a problem even then with being photographed.

I also remember being told a long time ago that if you hold your arms out slightly away from your body when being photographed, your arms will look thinner. In almost all posed photographs I have my hands on my hips to hold my arms away from my body. Not only are my arms still fat, I look like I'm impatient to get this crap over with. But then, I probably am impatient to get this crap over with. I wonder if anyone has any advise on making your whole body look thinner. Maybe I should continue avoiding the camera for that one!

No, I currently have no plans to post said before pictures of me on my blog. Maybe when I actually have an after photo I will, but as you may have noticed from my previous blog entry, I don't actually expect that to happen.

Thinking on the run

I do most of my deep philosophical thinking while running, it's why I don't use an MP3 player (well, that and I tend to yell at it because it never has a song I'm in the mood for). So the other day while running I was thinking about what a friend said to me a couple of years ago. She had been reading a lot in her training to start doing triathlons. She said that in one book the female author spoke of how you can't wait until you are “in shape” before getting out there and getting involved in races, just to do it from where you are right now. I like this advice, as it's probably the only way I'm going to get involved in races.

Even in High School, when I ran Cross Country, I was never all that thin or svelte. So I know that the likelihood of even hitting the kind of body I had back then is far fetched, let along “in shape” the way we women tend to picture it.

I've decided to make an effort to take this practice into other parts of my life. No longer am I going to wait until I'm thin to wear short skirts, no longer will I wait until I'm thin to feel sexy! Of course, others might prefer that I wait to wear short skirts... HMMM! Can I feel sexy with a pair of jeans and a shirt long enough to cover my belly even in the event I raise my arms? Oh yeah, the shirt can't be too tight either, lest it show off the size of my robust figure. Oh well, I'll feel sexy at night in my pajamas watching “Bones”.

Time off and New Year's Resolutions

So I started a blog and then took the whole month of December off. Not just off of writing the blog, but off of running. Well, not the entire month, I did run a hand full of times.

Anyways, as it always is with me, I find that in a little over 2 weeks I have gained every pound that I have lost in the last year from running, and my clothes are tight again. I guess December is not a good month to take a break from running, but realistically I could have told you that before taking that time off running.

Of course, I decided to get back on schedule but found my self punching my husband every time the alarm went off this morning so that he would hit the snooze. Time quickly passed and I gave the excuse that it was too dark and too cold outside to go running and skipped.

I'm going to have to find something else to do in the freezing weather, or just grow a pair and go out anyways. I have Wii Fit Plus and Wii Active so cold weather should not stop me from working out, and it hasn't, but running burns a lot of calories and gets me going in the morning.

Well, enough of this depressing crap, I am moving on. This year I will do a better job of journaling my activities and food. I just need a single place to put it in because I tend to use mapmyrun.com for my running and activities, but don't really have a place for my food journal and I don't want to jump around from website to website. If you have any good suggestions I'd love it. Wii has some journal capabilities, but it's not as in depth as I'd like and I'd still have to use mapmyrun.com to get my courses and distances (not to mention it's tracking the wear and tear on my shoes). If only I could figure out and easy way to journal my food and calories on there without having to know all the conversion information in my head.

Upon contemplation

I started running a few months ago to loose weight. I started by running a little bit and then moving up the distance a little every few days. Being a mom to two, plus caring for an extra child during the day meant that I was on my feet, but also eating extra food that hadn't been eaten by the little ones didn't help matters. Unfortunately, with the closure of the gym that I had been going to, it also meant no time to work out. So I decided that I had to start doing something, and now. Even with regular gym attendance last year, I hadn't lost any weight and without gym attendance I started gaining weight pretty rapidly. Then my blood work came back from the Doctor's office and while my cholesterol levels were normal, my heart was inflamed. Well, unwilling to alter my diet that much I opted for movement and here I am running 3+ miles (except when it's too dark in the morning and I cut it down a bit), 4 days a week at 6:30 am.

I've noticed several things in my journey thus far and I wanted to start journaling them. Mostly they are conversations with friends, reactions from strangers and a couple of articles that got my brain rolling with thoughts. I've already run a couple of races, and did better than anticipated. I hope to continue with the 5K races and eventually move up to half-marathons (~13 miles) and marathons (~26 miles), but currently, I'm just going with the flow.

Oh yes, and I'm fat. In case you couldn't tell from the title, and no I won't change the title if I loose a bunch of weight unless I become disonected with these feelings of fatness.