I have one picture of me that I like.  This is, mind you, out of probably hundreds of pictures that have been taken of me over the 39 years I’ve been alive.  I don’t photograph well and I never have. 

Pictures are especially abhorrent to me now while I larger than I want to be.  I don’t have a full length mirror in my house, so I don’t really get to see my body all that much.  I know I’m losing weight and getting fitter, because my clothes are fitting better, but I don’t really have a perception of how my body looks to others.  Until, of course, a photograph is taken.

This week we had to take an photo to run with an article I wrote.  I’d put it off as long as I possibly could, but it had to be done.  Since it’s written for publicity, not pay, I just had someone take a picture using a digital camera.  When we looked at the pictures, all I could focus on was how big I looked.   It was as if I had formerly been floating above the ground and someone had pulled me back to earth by fastening a lead weight to my ankle.  Suddenly I felt like I weighed 500 pounds.

I have to wonder if this is a common problem for people who are overweight.  Do those who are only a little overweight exaggerate their fatness in their own minds?  Are those who are overweight do their best to ignore their size until they’re confronted with it by something like a picture? 

As for me, I’m going to try to be more comfortable with having my picture taken.  Pictures are great ways to capture moments in time, and I have some pictures of friends and family that I truly treasure.  I don’t want to always be on the outside of those pictures because I’m afraid I won’t look as I want to look.  I’d rather be in the picture, smiling for the camera and enjoying the fact that I’m getting healthier every day.

At the present moment, my body feels like it belongs to a 90 year old grandmother.  I’ve got a muscle in the back of my right thigh extending up into my behind that hurts all the time.  My arms ache.  My calf muscles are cramping.  My shoulders are sore.  I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.  In reality all I did was a 2 1/2 mile aerobic tape yesterday and a weight lifting tape this morning.

I have to admit, while I’m doing it, exercise is starting to feel pretty good.  There’s a nice sense of looseness when my muscles are warmed up and I’m moving.  There’s a sense of accomplishment when I end a workout and my shirtfront is wet with sweat.  Exercise does relax me, and I know I sleep better and move easier.  People are telling me I look healthier, and I can see that when I look in a mirror.  So, except for one minor thing, I suppose exercise is good for me.

The minor thing, however, is quite literally a pain in my ass.  I hurt.  All the time.  I know I’m getting more stamina and my muscles are getting stronger, because I can do more and go farther every time I exercise.  At the same time, however, I find that the harder I work, the more I hurt.  To compound the problem I’m on warfarin until September.  This means I can’t take any commercial pain relievers.  It’s one thing to hurt when you can take an aspirin for relief.  It’s entirely another when you can’t.

I know that exercise is of benefit.  My blood pressure is down.  My heart rate is down.  My clothing size is down.  My weight is down.  None of that would have happened without exercise.  I just wish I didn’t have to go through this stage where I hurt so much.  I know the old saying is “no pain, no gain” but I thought we all realized that ”feeling the burn” was old school a while ago.   If it’s all the same, I’d much prefer a little less pain and a little more gain.

I went out with friends this evening.  It was the first time in a while that I had done something like that.  I made up my mind before I went that I wouldn’t drink, it was just too risky with the meds I was taking.  I did however decide I might splurge a bit when it came to dinner.  That turned out to be a good decision.

One of the things that always concerned me was the possibility that, if I splurged, I’d never get back on track.  Tonight has proved that theory wrong for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that, even though I did splurge a little, I still tried to make fairly healthy choices.  I also kept in mind the dietary restrictions I had and tried to pick items that feel at least a little inside them.  Second, I’m already thinking about how I’ll get back on track tomorrow.  I know that my little foray off my diet was just for tonight. 

I’ve never been a strict diet kind of person.  I went through too much food restriction and questioning of everything I ate when I was growing up.  Now I try to eat in a healthy way as much as possible but I also recognize that there will be the occasional moment when I decide to veer off the healthy eating path a little bit.  I figure if it only happens once in a while and I’m back on the straight and narrow for the next meal there won’t be much harm. 

 I guess time will tell if I’m right.

When I first got out of the hospital I couldn’t lose weight fast enough.  Every morning I’d step on the scale and be another two or three pounds down.  I lost about 23 pounds in 2 weeks.  Of course, it was all water weight from the fluid buildup that resulted when my heart wasn’t working well.  Also, when that weight stopped coming off, I was back to what I’d weighed before I started having issues.  So, really, I hadn’t lost any weight at all.

Most of my life I’ve had a battle with the scale.  I joke that I can look at a piece of chocolate and put on two pounds.  I’m not really kidding when I say that.  I’ve always seemed to be able to put weight one easily.  The battle came when I tried to take weight off.   I’d exercise and starve myself and hope and pray and the weight would slowly, agonizingly come off.  Or sometimes it wouldn’t.  I’m not sure if it was slow metabolism or that I wasn’t working hard enough, or that I thought I was keeping a strict diet when I really wasn’t, but losing weight was never easy.

So, needless to say, when I stepped on the scale every morning and I was two or three pounds lighter, it was a wonderful feeling.  The only problem was that I new eventually the easy weight loss would stop and the work would begin.  I was right about that too.  Eventually I stopped losing three pounds a day.  Sometimes the scale went up instead of down.  I was officially in the work zone.

Since this whole thing began I’ve learned a lot.  One thing I’ve learned is that I can sweat more than I thought was possible for a human being and I can be happy about that.  I’ve also learned that there are muscles in the human body that can cramp like nobody’s business and that aching muscles are just part of the journey.  The discovery that my body could do more than I thought it could was a welcome one, the discovery of just how much more I had to do to get fit was not so welcome.   Mostly I’ve learned that, if I really want to get healthier and thinner, I have to stop looking at the big picture and start celebrating the small gains.

That’s what I’m doing here today.  I have now lost 15 of what I call the “official pounds”.  These pounds are the ones I had to sweat for, and eat right for, and stay positive about when I really wanted to do nothing more than eat all the foods I knew were bad for me.  I still have a long way to go, but I’m proud of each and every pound I’ve lost so far.

I should be.  I quite literally sweated my ass off to lose them.

Generally I love to cook.  I’ve been cooking since I was about 10 and I’m fairly good at it.  I have to say that this new way of eating has been challenging my cooking skills though.  It’s like I have to learn a whole new way of thinking about cooking.  I’m also finding out that there aren’t as many low sodium recipes out there as I had hoped there would be.

My problem is really two problems.  One is that I tend to like food with a lot of flavor and it’s hard to tell the level of flavor a dish will have just from reading the recipe.  I’ve made some recipes that sounded great on paper but didn’t translate well in to real life, at least as far as I was concerned.   It’s not that I ever salted my food excessively before, or that I really ate a lot of processed food, but I did tend to use a lot of cheese and sauces that aren’t currently on the diet.  I know eventually I will find a bunch of recipes that suit both my tastebuds and my need to be healthy.  Right now, I guess I’m still in the hunting and gathering stage.

The other problem I have is that most recipes not only have to be good the day I make them, the leftovers have to be good later.  Obviously I’m not running out to the local fast food place or sandwich shop to buy my lunch while I’m at work.  We do have a kitchen there, but I don’t have time to be cooking lunch every day.  I need leftovers that I can heat up in the microwave and they will make a nice meal with a piece of fruit and a cup of yogurt.  So that’s an additional challenge.

I guess my biggest challenge is the fact that I have to cook all the time.  If there are deli meats and such that are low salt I haven’t found them yet.  So, I either end up eating an English muffin or something, or I need to roast a chicken or make a pot roast so I’ll have left overs for sandwiches.  When I don’t feel like cooking I end up mostly eating salads, which is nice for my waistline, but pretty boring after a while.  I also don’t get a lot of time to cook during the week, since I work some long hours.  By the time I get home and exercise it is often almost 8 p.m.  Who wants to wait another half hour or longer for food to cook at that time of night? 

Maybe what I really need is a chef that specializes in healthy low-sodium meals.  That would solve all my problems. 

I can’t, of course, afford anything like that, but hey, a girl can dream.

So I went to see my doctor tonight.  This is my regular doctor, not Cute Cardiologist, who recently turned me loose until August.  I had a blood draw last week and my blood sugar came back borderline high.  Regular Doc called and wanted to discuss what the next step should be. 

I did some research before I went so I knew that, should the blood sugar be on the border between problematic and normal, the problem can often be eliminated through diet and exercise.  Unless Regular Doc had a very good reason why I should pursue some other plan, I wanted to try that before I went on any medication.  I’m on enough medication now, I really didn’t see the need for another.

Sure enough, when I got to the appointment, she told me my blood sugar was just above the level that they call problematic, and suggested going on meds.  I presented my argument for exercise and diet.  I told her what I was already doing and she had evidence that I was losing weight right in front of her.  To make a long story short, Regular Doc agreed to try things my way.  I have another appointment in August, so we’ll see where things are then. 

So, it seems everything comes to a head in August and early September.  I do another heart monitor in August.  I’ll have another blood sugar test in August.  I see Cute Cardiologist in early September and will hopefully be taken off coumadin then.  I guess this Summer is my real test.  Can I maintain my new eating and exercise habits?  Only time will tell.  

As I said to Regular Doc today, I’ll never have more incentive to stick to my new resolutions than I do now.  I’m motivated and determined, so here’s hoping all my hard work will pay off when I go to my appointments in August.

So, I set a new goal for myself.  The area where I live has an extensive system of hiking, biking and walking trails.  Many are interconnected and almost all of them pass through some pretty scenery.   I’ve been thinking for a long time that I should start hiking some of these trails, but I never really got motivated to do something about it. 

Since my afib episode I’ve become seriously motivated to get healthier.  I do some sort of exercise tape about 5 days out of the week.  The tapes are great and varied and I always know I’m getting a good workout, but there is something missing.  I can’t feel the sun on my face.  I can’t hear the birds singing.  I don’t come into contact with other people, if only for the space of time it takes to say “Hello”. 

I’ve been wanting to do something in the outdoors and something that offers the potential to be at least a bit more social.  Hiking the local trails seems a good way to do that.  I’m also planning to buy a relatively inexpensive digital camera so I can take pictures as well.  Hopefully I’ll be able to post some photo essays of my hikes and document my progress in losing weight at the same time.  I’m generally camera shy and don’t care for pictures of myself, so I’m not sure about the second part, but I know the first will definitely happen.

I’m excited about this.  I think this is really the first physical challenge I’ve ever set for myself that I have a reasonable expectation of carrying through to the finish.  I can’t tell you how proud I will be if I really do see it through until the end. 

I’ve been having an internal debate with myself for the last few weeks.  On most blogs like this, where someone is working to lose weight, there is usually a place where the current weight is listed.  The idea is that you’ll see where the person started from and be able to monitor their progress as they (hopefully) lose weight.   The whole idea does make sense unless, of course, you’re me and don’t ever tell anyone what you weigh.

I’ve made it a point for the last few years to not even know what I weigh.  When I go to the doctor I ask them not tell me what the number is when I step on the scale.  I tend to judge my weight by how my clothes fit and how I feel.  If I’ve gain weight, my clothes are tighter and it is harder to do routine tasks.  If I’ve lost weight, my clothes are looser and I can move more easily.  It’s not a very accurate method, but it has worked for me.

With the advent of the whole afib thing, I’ve been needing to weigh myself more regularly.   I have a scale in my house for the first time in years and I use it.   So, for the first time in longer than I can remember I have real time data about what I way.  I could, were I so inclined, track my weight here on this blog.  I’m just not sure I want to.

Part of the reason why I’m not sure is probably vanity.  I weigh more than I should and not just by a few pounds.  My knowing the number is bad enough.  Seeing the number here on the blog and knowing anyone who wants to do so could read it just makes me uncomfortable.  I guess, in the end, I feel that my weight is really no one’s business but my own.  If I choose to keep the number to myself, than that’s my right.

I’m still not sure what I want to do about this issue.  After all, this blog is meant to be a chronicle of my weight loss and increasing fitness and it seems like tracking the lost weight should be part of it.  On the other hand, it seems like it should be my right to keep that number secret if I choose.  One compromise I’ve thought about is simply chronicling the pounds I’ve lost without mentioning the actual weight.  I’m thinking that might work.

I’m also wondering what other writers who write about fitness and weight loss do regarding this issue.  Were you ever uncomfortable about putting your weight on the blog?  If you did track your weight loss by showing the actual number of pounds you weighed, did it encourage you or discourage you?  I’d love to know what others have done.  I’m thinking it could be a bit help when I make my decision.

I saw my cardiologist on Monday and everything looks good.  I have a ways to go before we’re sure I’m completely out of the woods, but the news was positive.  My echo looks good.  There was no evidence of afib on my heart monitor.  My blood pressure is good.  I’m losing weight.  All in all, everything points to relatively good news.

As I was sitting talking to my cardiologist he said one thing that shook me a bit.  It was a simple phrase “We don’t know what caused it”.  He was referring to my afib, and basically telling me that they don’t really know why it happened.  For some reason, I found that knowledge somewhat alarming.  I guess the superstitious part of me thinks if I take the meds and eat the right foods and exercise and lose weight I won’t have to deal with this problem again.  That becomes a little less likely when I realize we don’t have any idea if what I was doing before had any bearing on the problem at all.

For me, this brings up two problems.  One is that I start to worry.  Every twinge, every cough, every moment of breathlessness becomes a potential harbinger of afib.  Even though my weight is still going down, my blood pressures and heart rate are generally good and I feel fine, there’s still a small part of me that is always monitoring and worrying.  It’s maddening and stressful at the same time. 

The other problem is that I need my belief that doing the right things, losing weight and eating right and exercising will help keep afib at bay.  If it makes no difference what I do, than why do the right things?  If I’m going to have afib issues anyway, why not eat the foods I most enjoy and only sweat when I want to?  Being healthier is its own reward, but it’s only a reward if you get healthier.  If you don’t, it is simply a lot of work for nothing.

Mostly, right now I take it day by day and sometimes hour by hour.  I probably worry and stress myself out more than I should, but I’m working on that.  I keep telling myself that I’m doing the right things and that it will all work out.  I’m also working very hard on believing that to be true.

I’ve never liked to sweat.  When I was a kid I always was concerned that I had a body odor problem.  In retrospect I’m sure I didn’t, but to me sweat always translated to stinky and stinky was something I shouldn’t be.  It certainly didn’t help that exertion and heat make me sweat a lot.  I don’t get a ladylike glow, I get rivulets of sweat running down my face and soaking my shirt.  It never has been the most attractive look.

Given my aversion to sweating it probably comes as no surprise that any form of exercise more strenuous than holding a hardback book in front of my eyes doesn’t find much favor with me.   I always thought that my ideal form of exercise would be one that required no sweating at all.  Unfortunately, that form of exercise also doesn’t help you stay physically fit or maintain a healthy weight.  The cold hard fact is that being fit and not being fat requires sweating, whether I like it or not.

I’m working on changing my attitude toward sweat.  Now, when I finish a strenuous workout and my t-shirt is wet with sweat I tell myself I’m releasing salt and toxins from my body.  Exercise and the sweat that comes with it gives my skin a healthy glow.  Sweat signals that my body is working hard, which means that my cardiovascular system is getting more fit, something that should make my cardiologist very happy.   Getting wet with sweat also means that I’m burning fat which means I might fit into my thin clothes sooner than I think.

I don’t think I’ll ever be an exercise junkie, but I am learning to love moving my body.  I’m also starting to enjoy the feeling I get after a hard workout and a good sweat.  I feel like I’ve accomplished something.  There’s even a bit of a smug, virtuous feeling, one that lets me play on the computer or read a good book without feeling guilty, since I know I’ve already worked up a sweat.  I may never love working up a sweat, but I am starting to see the benefits of doing so.  For me, that’s a big first step.