{rheality.check}

No, that is not a mis-spelling. That is pretty much how I feel right now. As I mentioned before I’ve been training for a marathon and it’s pretty near and dear to my heart as one of my cousins was just diagnosed with cancer, again. It’s a different kind than when she first was diagnosed and won her fight about 20 years ago but it’s just really jarring to have a diagnosis that it may be back in a new location and in a different form. Especially when it isn’t really something that’s been an issue for nearly 20 years. That’s a long time for it to be gone. I mean I guess it’s different I was just a child when she was fighting against it, so it just feels so much more real this time around. Though this time they caught it in the early stages, which is good. And they are treating her aggressively. Also, I will be allowed to see her this time because I will not be some germy little kid. It always sucks as a kid that you can’t see anyone who is sick because children are like a depot of diseases.

Anyway that is not why I started this. So running right now is pretty important to me. I try really hard to keep up with the long runs even if I’m not completely on schedule. So anyway this past weekend I finally decided I think my running shoes suck. Honestly, my knees have been hurting and I have crazy blisters on the insides of my feet. Thankfully one of the coaches from TNT recommended a place where I can go and said I should make sure to look for shoes that work better for people who pronate because that’s why I’m getting blisters (and possibly a black toe). So anyway, I was all set to go to the running store later that day. But as I was leaving practice my knee really started to act up. By the time I got home I couldn’t really bend it without significant pain. And forget about trying to walk up the stairs to my 3 story walk-up. That was the best time ever.

Now here’s the part where I really show my brilliance. I decide to stay in and ice my knee and give myself a break for the rest of the day, which was great and probably something I have needed for a long time. But the very next morning I got up early and headed out to my soccer game even though the knee wasn’t totally feeling better. It was definitely smarting at the beginning of the game – you would think this is a warning sign. No siree, not for me. I continued to play on it until the last 15mins of the second half when I literally couldn’t walk without limping. Because that, my friends, is S-M-R-T.

You know, running doesn’t seem like something that is initially incredibly complex but now that I’m training for a marathon I think there is a lot more to running than just putting one foot in front of the other. Such a huge part of training is a mental game, just being able to tell yourself that you can do it. First of all, I don’t consider myself a runner because I’m slow and I just don’t think of myself as a runner. I first started running any meaningful distance (read: more than a mile… ok actually it was like 3ish) in April when a coworker asked me to start running outside with her and to do a 5k. I have these trusty old running shoes that I have come to love a lot.

Since I started training for my marathon these shoes have served me really well but they’ve got a lot of miles on them now. And recently I’ve heard a lot of talk about these new shoes. Ones that are the closest thing to running barefoot. So I’ve decided to take the plunge and give them a try. I haven’t run in them yet, obviously since you can still see the tags.

As much as I deny being a runner and saying how much I dislike it, it’s seriously addictive. After I did my 5k I followed it with a 10k a few weeks later and then a half marathon about 3 weeks after the 10k. This was a pretty poorly planned set of races for someone who isn’t a runner. However, it did make me see that I really like running, it’s challenging in some great ways but it’s also difficult to run the much longer distances by yourself. I find running about 6 miles by myself is a great challenge and I like doing it alone. But the longer distances pretty much anything upwards of 10 miles is really really difficult for me to get through without help. So I am extraordinarily glad that I discovered Team in Training because not only do I have a great group of people that I run with, I am reminded that I’m not just running for my health or to challenge myself but also to help all those people who are battling cancer. I’m doing what I can to make a difference in the world. Perhaps it’s in a very small way but it is what I can do. It also reminds me to appreciate the journey I’m on. Life is one great journey and there is always something new around the corner and you never know what you find.

with body-image. I’m pretty sure I’m not all that unique in this struggle actually. In fact, I’ve found that most of my female friends have many of the same issues I do. I mean we all complain about different things and have unrealistic expectations of what we should look like. And each of us carries this burden in different ways. The most fascinating part about it is also that most of us have a view of ourselves that are skewed in remarkable ways. For example one of my friends recently got married and apparently put on a few pounds after her wedding. Now she’s my old college roomie, I’ve known her for over 9 years now (wow we’re getting old) and the weight she’s gained is barely noticeable. Seriously, the only reason I noticed is because she said something and then specifically pointed out all her problem areas. I mean yes, we’re not 18 anymore. None of us look the same. That’s totally unrealistic to expect that we will ever look the way we did when we were in our teens again.

I was recently thinking about this because my mom came to visit. And as usual she had a comment about what I looked like. Now last year I went through some major ups and downs which caused me to lose a drastic amount of weight. This is me in January:

This is me on Memorial Day:

So perhaps I have gained a little weight. And yeah the two photos are two totally different contexts so they look drastically different. But the main idea is that in all honesty, I haven’t gained *that* much noticeable weight. Even without the added input from my mom, I have noticed a certain unhappiness in myself with my weight and the way I look. To counter this I’ve used a few methods from my best fried, Ev, where I was taking status photos every week (now every month) to see where my body is at and give myself a more realistic view of what I actually look like. The problem is that I know I don’t necessarily see the right me even in photos. A lot of it is dependent on my mental state and how I think I should look. It’s amazing how frequently it interferes with my own well being. I know that I may be a little extreme but I don’t think I’m the only woman that beats up on herself over a pound here and there. The thing is I used to do this when I was 107lbs. I was teeny tiny and I thought I was horrifyingly overweight. I think it’s something that you have to really take with a grain of salt and start to appreciate your body for what it is and not for the super stick thin images that we’re presented with in magazines and on TV. I have a friend who has started to do that and I’m not sure how she does it yet but boy do I hope to get there some day.

Happy 2010! I’ve been contemplating a New Year’s post for a little while but I was struggling to figure out what to write about. This past year was… well eventful. In some really fantastic ways and in some really horrible ways. I’ve actually taken a little time to reflect on all of it and to be honest, I would do it all again given the chance. The good, the bad and the ugly, it’s all a part of what shapes the person I am today and I think I’m better for having had those experiences. It would be great to always have things be happy and everything work out for the best but how would you know just how much to cherish the good times if you never had the bad? And how would you know how precious all those moments are? Besides, if nothing bad ever happened you would never learn from your mistakes. I think it’s true that having truly failed, having tried your hardest and still failed builds so much character because it is learning to pick yourself back up and try again anyway knowing that you might fail again but to succeed would be a true accomplishment. So in 2010, I’m going to try harder. I’m going to try to be stronger, smarter and to be as open as I can. I’m going to make an effort to do those things that are scary and see what happens. Because I’d rather try and risk failure than simply accept mediocre.

I rarely make New Year’s Resolutions because I think most people have a tendency not to follow through and quite often I’m particularly bad about it. But this year I’ve made a few that I’m really trying to stick to:

• So for one, my friends started this fitness challenge and being the silly optimist that I am, I figured why not give it a shot? Who cares if I can only do like 2 push ups at a time. It’ll be fine… Haha I’m on day 2 and let me tell you I’m a little concerned. Though I will give it my all and really really try to get through it.
• I’m going to try to be a grown up and actually start cooking for myself again. (Thankfully one of my friends is moving into the neighborhood and he likes to cook too so we’re going to attempt to do this together).
• To start running every day before work and hopefully a little on the weekends too – doesn’t matter how much, I just have to do it (again, I was good half way through last year and then life got a little messy and I stopped so I’m going to try to go back to it).
• To be assertive about my needs and wants and to make sure that I’m taking care of myself. But to still remember to be kind to the rest of the world even though I am trying to be good to me.
• To start volunteering again.
• To get out there and start rediscovering Chicago and all of the things that I love about this city.
• To try and reconnect with friends that I’ve made here who I’ve been really bad about keeping in touch with. And to make new friends whenever I get the chance. (It’s great to meet new people and do new things!)

I think it’s a good list. And it’s not an unreasonable number of things to try and do. Obviously we’ll see how it goes but I think it’s a positive way to look out for the new year. I have faith that the future will be bright.

So I’ve lost 27lbs this year and really the bulk of it, 17lbs I lost in the last two months. I lost them strictly due to stress and anger. It’s amazing what the body can do when you put it in a stressful situation. And if you reduce your eating to about a tenth of what you normally eat and you don’t sleep for more than 4 hours a night (and even then that’s if you’re lucky). You’re really changing your body’s patterns. Not to mention that stress and anger burn calories all on their own like you couldn’t imagine. Combine that with a need to release tension and add a good several hours of exercise a day just to work off all the excess energy you have from stress and anger and you’ve got a sure fire way to shed pounds very very seriously.

Now in case anyone missed the sarcasm in my tone, I do not actually believe any of this is a good or healthy way to lose weight. Effective, yes. Healthy, not even close. However, the first 10lbs I lost the old fashioned hard work way and I really believe that is the way to go. I mean yes, I am happy to have a better body image due to my circumstances but I can promise you I felt much better about how I got my body to start changing when I did it the right way. It’s not by following some miracle diet. In fact, I didn’t follow any diet. I simply ate when I was hungry and an amount that lead me to feel full but not overly full and to institute exercise in my routine. I go to the gym (or play soccer) 6 days a week. I’d like to do it 7 but I know that realistically I have to allow myself at least one day off. Seriously, diets are not effective it changes your patterns for a short period of time and the weight will come back. If you just make healthy changes in your lifestyle and commit to raising your metabolism it will work. It will just take time. It took me 3 months to lose 10lbs but man did I feel really successful when I did it. I’d even say it feels much better than losing nearly 20lbs in less than 2 months because I know that the first time around I was trying and I was taking care of myself. The second time around was due largely to external factors. And of course, I’m a girl so I have my own set of body image issues but it really is far better to do it the way you feel accomplished as opposed to a way where you feel like you cheated the system.

So I recently moved apartments, I didn’t go terribly far or at least I wouldn’t call a block and a half away terribly far. During this whole process I learned that sometimes you just need to ask for help. Now I’ve been pretty bad at asking for help my entire life. This was really bad in college when your classes get more difficult and professors expect you to be smart enough to ask for help when you need it. Well, some of us take longer than others to learn that it is better to ask for help than to flounder in “I can do this on my own” land.

Back to moving, for the main part of the move I did ask a couple of friends to help me out, which was super helpful. But I really think it would have been wiser if I had asked, oh everyone I know in Chicago to help me because in reality having just 3 people (where two of us were pretty small girls) moving is not fun. Not fun at all, in fact.

You would think I had learned from that experience right? Since I’ve finally gotten mostly unpacked but I do still need a few things here and there to be put away etc, I decided to get this beautiful dresser from Crate & Barrel yesterday evening. I can’t tell you how much I thank my lucky stars that the stupid thing has to be assembled because man, is it heavy. And I swear if it had been one piece going up 3 flights of stairs with that sucker may not have been possible, at least not all by myself. Taking up the pieces that make it up on the other hand wasn’t so bad. But um, it only has 4 pieces so the big one is still a fairly large sucker for a small person such as myself to be hauling upstairs. Thankfully, I made it up there still in one piece, although I might’ve thrown my shoulder out and gotten a few choice bruises in the process.

Now that’s certainly an idea that never occurred to me until one of my childhood friends’ fiance told me that he had a bet with his best man that whoever lost the closest to 10% body fat by his wedding they would donate some amount of money to the charity of their choice. Now this was an especially interesting bet because the fiance is significantly more conservative than his friend so the charities that they picked out were specifically chosen to irk the other person and to give them motivation to do better than the other guy. I remember hearing this idea and finding it quite amusing but brushing it off as just something a couple of crazy guys were doing until I opened up my Thursday Styles to find: Dieting? Put Your Money Where Your Fat Is.

I currently find this a really intriguing idea because typically I think most dieting incentives that I’ve seen work for people tend to go hand in hand with dating. Actually one of my friends has an interesting theory that whenever people first get into relationships they start with this “must go to gym and get hot” mentality because of course you want to impress the person you’re dating. And according to her then it moves into the “happy fat” part of the relationship and if there is a break up then there is the post-relationship “get back in shape” to burn stress and then cycle repeats.

So I think this diet betting is an interesting idea to keep some of the motivation after you have found the person you have reached the “happy fat” phase. And hopefully won’t have to go through the pain of a break up to maintain a certain level of fitness. Or you know, you could be one of those motivated people who just likes to go to the gym. For myself, I find joining sports teams works as motivation to stay in shape because otherwise you end up letting your teammates down. And let’s face it, who really wants to lose? I mean everyone says losing isn’t a big deal, especially if you’re play for “fun” but I don’t think anyone actually means it. At least not anyone that has ever played competitively in their life. We may be willing to admit that we aren’t at the same level of fitness that we once were when we were competitive but by no means do we actually want to be a “bad” team.

I have been inspired by a friend of mine to reflect a bit on how I wanted to start the new year and how I actually started it. Now she had two separate posts on what she wanted and what actually happened but I think I can cover all of mine in just one (especially considering I started thinking about posting this just now).

So initially I actually had contemplated starting out the new year quietly, at home, by myself. I know this doesn’t sound particularly exciting but I’ve had an exceedingly busy and social year and I really just wanted some down time. I was thinking of a good book or maybe a stupid movie or better yet working on my website and playing around with some Ruby on Rails. That was my idea for a perfect New Year’s Eve. And to follow that with some loose resolutions (because I don’t really believe in resolutions) that I will be healthier and make time for myself amongst all my crazy activities.

My actual New Year’s Eve was spent with some of my friends in Austin, who I have not seen in years. And to be honest it didn’t really feel like a new year’s celebration, we went out for dinner and then to one of the bars downtown and ended up wandering around Austin for hours after the bars closed (it’s a long story, let’s just leave it at that). But it was not too far from what I had initially wanted because it didn’t actually feel like the typical New Year’s Eve celebration, it was more like a few very old friends of mine and I going out and “getting into trouble” as usual.

Actually it was pretty interesting getting up in the morning because we didn’t drink all too much yet all three of us (that went out and were crashing at the same place) still weren’t feeling 100% in the morning. And I dubbed it the “Adult Hangover”; you don’t have to drink excessively to be tired and cranky after a night out. It’s the grown up version of that lingering feeling of regret for going out partying with your friends. Except now, as adults, you are smart enough not to drink yourself stupid but you still get the consequences of not being able to bounce right back after a long night.

So for my first day in the new year I decided to visit my cousins who also live in Austin and I really couldn’t have thought of a better way to begin the new year than with people that I love that I rarely get to see because I live so far away. And after such a great kick off to the new year I decided to make some slightly more concrete new years resolutions: actually eating healthier, seriously trying to keep up a vegetarian diet and hopefully by the end of the year become vegan, go to the gym/exercise at least 4 times/week (excluding soccer and dance), have a more positive body image, seriously focus on my academics (no more lame excuses), be more positive and productive at work and last but not least make sure to fit in some substantial time (at least a couple of hours) every week to just be by myself.

And I did learn something while I was back home. “You can take the girl out of Texas but you can’t take Texas out of the girl.” I don’t know if I’ll ever live there again because I do miss seasons whenever I go south but I will always have a special place in my heart for Texas and everyone I know that still lives there.

So here’s the thing, I’ve been reading this book Skinny Bitch, which by the way is awesome, that has some really horrifying passages about slaughterhouses and dairy farms that are pretty darn disturbing. So the first day after I read it, I was a little put off the whole meat and dairy thing. Now, I find this interesting because well I read The Jungle and that had absolutely no effect on my eating habits or desires. So I don’t know when I gained such a conscience or perhaps the passages were just different from the ones included in this book, I read that over 10 years ago (for school) so I’m a little fuzzy on it. It might also have to do with the fact that I’m reading this book by choice and I was reading The Jungle because it was on the reading list in high school.

I’ll put a disclaimer on this here and now, I may not be a vegetarian/vegan permanently, I truly do enjoy my animal products, I just find it fascinating what one book can do to your life which is why I am writing about it here.

The thing that I find most interesting is that it has been a few days since I have read those horrifying passages and I can generally forget things I don’t want to know relatively easily (at least when it comes to food that I like and don’t particularly want to give up). But for some reason I am finding that when I go out or am in the office cafeteria I will actually opt to get something vegetarian and if possible vegan before I choose anything with meat or dairy. It’s almost as if the women who wrote this book got into my head and changed my psyche a bit. I choose to eat differently. And I keep telling myself that I miss meat but honestly, I don’t really mind not having it. It’s only been a week that I’ve been doing it but um, I’m also the girl that used to say she likes to “eat her steak still mooing”. I mean one of my good friends and I talk about how we like to cook our steaks “black and blue” which basically just means it’s very rare. So I just find it fascinating that just by reading one book I have made a huge change in my diet. It just jolted me into the realities of the industry and my opposition to eating meat and dairy really has more to do with the way that industry works than my taste preferences.

Also, what I have found in the past week is that you can find tons of really tasty vegetarian/vegan food out there! You don’t necessarily need meat or dairy to make yourself a fabulous meal. All it takes is a little creative thinking. And quite frankly half the vegetarian/vegan food is better for you anyway.

The only thing I will say is that my experiment with a soy latte was horrifyingly disappointing. I really didn’t think it would taste all that different but I don’t put any sweetener in my lattes and I swear the soy milk made it sickeningly sweet. I couldn’t even finish it. That was really sad because while I don’t drink lattes often, I do like them on occasion.

I’m curious to see what this difference will make in how I feel when I go to the gym. I injured myself last week so I took a week off but I’m back as of today I think it should be interesting. And I mean the book is called Skinny Bitch so I’m curious as to how much changing your diet so drastically will change the rest of your body image etc. I suppose simply making healthier changes should make it easier. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

So lately, I’ve gone on a bit of a health kick. Or maybe not a health kick per se but I have recently discovered many new active pursuits (such as biking and soccer) that in turn keep me healthier.

Now while I haven’t been actively seeking to revolutionize my habits/lifestyle apparently some of these little changes have had a much larger effect. So I made a couple of small changes, one being that I eat a smoothie with a little granola in it for breakfast every week day and it truly has given me more energy during the day/work week, it’s pretty fantastic actually. Another is that I’ve started biking to work a couple times a week (which is approx 6.5 miles and while that may not be much for an avid biker, it is quite a bit for someone that just took up cycling 2ish weeks ago).

Something interesting I’ve noticed since I started biking is that on the days that I play soccer or bike to work my body craves very healthy food that is generally high in protein. It’s just a natural reaction and kindof cool in its own little way. Now the reason for this post is that this weekend I decided that I deserved a break from being uber healthy and I was going to go crazy and get some junk food. I didn’t think it was all that crazy to think that one meal of Burger King would be all that bad, but after about an hour I felt the worst I have in ages. It was like my body was rejecting all the fried and awful food I had just managed to stuff into it.

I have never reacted that badly before and I’m fairly certain it wasn’t food poisoning because it just felt very different from anything else I’ve run across. I suppose I can only be thankful that my body is just naturally smarter than I am. Clearly, no more junk for me, I just can’t handle feeling as lousy as I felt last night and this morning over indulging myself in a little junk food. It’s really not tasty enough to qualify that kind of pain.