Big But Bittersweet Day Tomorrow

The first time I ran the 10K and over 40lbs lighter

Ottawa has a big run event each year, Ottawa Race Weekend which takes place tomorrow and Sunday. The races take place over the next two days, with everything from a kids race to a full marathon. There are 48,000 participants registered for the various events and I am one of those people.



I last ran it two years ago, about 10lbs heavier than the previous time

I registered in December in the 10K race, I've done this event twice in the past (and 40ish lbs lighter). I had to stop running for sometime due to foot issues. I had developed plantar fasciitis in my left foot, again. This time, not only did I have this one problem but somehow I also developed sinus tarsus syndrome in that same foot. It was a long road to start running again, physio, sports doctor, naproxen, an MRI, and two cortisone injections later I was feeling ready to start running this past October. I took it in small steps and all was well. So I felt confident I could do a 10K by the end of May.




Fast forward to March of this year and while don't a bootcamp at the gym I started experiencing pain in my left heel again, but not quite the same as before. AND I was having pain while I was exercising where I the past it was after, it took a few weeks to get things under control. I also have pain in the metatarsals of both feet of I step on something uneven and my ankles ache! Things are not improving and I find even my day-to-day is even hurting lately and there seems to be two things I can wear on my feet that are okay. Either my running shoes (Brooks Dyad) or my cheapie flip flops. Even my Birkenstocks hurt me!

I need to go to the doctor, I really do... But I keep putting it off. I also need to be assertive and insist that I get probably an MRI and a bone scan to see what's going on with my piece of shit feet. I need to see a specialist of sorts, someone good! I don't want an X-ray and to be shipped off to physiotherapy, go through that for a month or two before the physio finally decides he's not being effective neigh and says I need a specialist to figure out what's going on.



Needless to say in still register in this race, and my feet were feeling pretty good up until a week ago. I started taking it easy just over a week ago because of this event. Things were getting better, until I did something stupid last night.
My friend Tracey and I went to pick up our race bibs/shirts last night and check out the Expo and I did t think to change from flip flops to running shoes. I'm still really sore today!!! Fuck!

I had it in my mind and was training toward walk/running the race. Now I have to wait and see how I feel tomorrow and I might just be walking it. Bit at least I'm going to do it and I'm not a quitter.




It was worth my while last night going to check out the Expo, there were some great deals to be had! I'm super stoked about these shoes!!! I got myself a new pair of my shoe! Brooks Dyad, but last years model and I'm really cool with that!



As you can see, I got a deal, because I paid full price for my 7’s and I NEEDED new shoes. Also this is not a shoe you find in stock in every shoe/sports/running stores. I even trolled the interwebs and couldn't find a deal.



I also spied these Adidas No-Slip headbands loved the colours and grabbed them! I have a love/hate relationship with headbands. Either they're too big for my wee head (I get migraines cause my brain is soooo big ;-) ) or they don't stay put because I have super straight baby fine hair... It takes paying a professional to get a single curl in this hair. Well, I wore one thos orning, and it didn't even last 15 minutes before I could feel it start to slide back, back, back. What a disappointment and a waste of money.

So wish me luck tomorrow, I'm hoping the running gods will smile down on me and let me run as much of the race as possible!

- thanks for reading!

Ummm Yeah....

A bit of silence there for a bit. I think part of it was I wanted to hide the truth that I suck at this weight loss thing. Also over the long weekend (Victoria Day here in Canada) I just didn't feel like being online.





Last week's weigh in was a fucking disaster, I went in Saturday morning and gained 2.4 lbs. I've gotten myself totally addicted to sugar and well...




These! Vanilla Bean Frappuccinos!!!! I think I had 2-3 of them last week. I am proud to say I've not had another one since Friday. So I've been 5-day Frappuccino-free. Yay me!

I'm trying to make a conscience effort to whittle down my sugar, I know I can't go cold turkey, but I'm going to try to get it down to help deal with these cravings that I keep giving into.




I weighed in again tonight, it's technically a new Weight Watchers week on Sunday. It's another gain, a small one but because I've decided to move from Saturday morning weigh ins back to Wednesday night. With summer here it gets hard to go on the weekend. So another gain. This time 0.4lbs. Really I think that's the difference between a first thing weigh in with not having eaten/drank overnight versus eating and drinking until lunch time.

So with these two gains I'm now at my heaviest weight since I first lost my weight. The last time I was 186 lbs was May of 2008! I need to get myself and my life under control and with each gain I feel things spin a little more out of control.

Which of course follows with lots of negative feelings about myself. Negative feelings leads me to stuffing a lot of shit into my face. Time to get my act together!


- thanks for reading!

Prepping For The Week Ahead

First if all I want to thank everyone whose taking the time to respond to my last post! I am glad I did the right thing, speaking up without outright confronting "rude lady". You are all so supportive, each comment just makes me feel better about this blog, myself and I'm looking forward with more optimism theses days. Thank you.

I know one of my key secrets to weight loss success is to "be prepared" and quite honestly for the longest time I've just sucked at it! As I'm bringing exercise back into my routine after a few quiet weeks due to migraines, life and a few plain old lazy days, I thought I should start being more organized again for the week ahead.

I work full time, but I don't have kids so my waking hours are not taken over by caring for a family. It's just me, Todd and the cats so why I get so lazy there's just no excuse. The time is there, I just find once I'm home for the evening/weekend and my big ass hits my recliner I'm done for.




So this evening while making my dinner and some cookies, I prepped food for the week ahead. I made a big container full of salad for my lunches, I find it'll hold up all week as long as you don't put things like cucumber or tomatoes (heaven forbid, I can't stand them!). I even portioned some for my lunch for tomorrow. While cutting up peppers to go in the salad I sliced the rest of the up and put them in a container, I like to pack a baggie with carrots, celery and peppers for an afternoon snack. This week I also picked up a cantaloupe it's now diced and in a container for the week (portioned some of that for breakfast tomorrow). The less I have to prepare on the morning the less last minute junk goes in my lunch bag.




While cookies were baking I also took the time to put my clean laundry away. I'm very guilty of not doing that and just digging out clothes as I need them. I even took the time to pack my gym bag for tomorrow. Since I've hot the trail, two days in a row now, I should do some wights at the gym.




Speaking do hitting the trail, funny I didn't notice the trilliums in bloom yesterday. Today they were in bloom all over the place amongst the shade of the trees! This is the flower of my province, Ontario.


- thanks for reading!

Weigh In & Rude People

I'm quite proud of myself this morning, not only did I get my sorry behind out of bed to go to my Weight Watchers meeting (and to face that dreaded white box), but I decided I had time to hit the Beckwith Trail before the meeting.

I admire those who can get up in the morning and get moving!!! This girl cannot! My body is like nu-huh, no way, not gonna happen! I find I spend the whole workout dragging my ass, I can't move fast enough, and I find even breathing hard. If I do morning workouts it's because I HAVE to, otherwise I won't get it done that day. Or, it's because of my wired-ass allergy! I have been diagnosed with exercise induced anaphylaxis ... In plain English, I'm allergic to exercise! I can't exercise after I eat at a restaurant, there is something in some food that restaurants use that I react to if I exercise 3-4 hours after eating. I break out in hives, I have trouble breathing and I will pass out and come to repeatedly. Soooo if I know I'm going to be eating out I HAVE to either plan to exercise before or decide not to exercise at all. Otherwise it's Mr. Epi-pen (blue to the sky, orange to the thigh), and an ambulance ride to the ER.






I'm flying solo this weekend so I decided I was going to take myself out for breakfast. This meant if I was going to earn a few Activity Points, it would have to happen this morning! I'm very proud that I followed through with that plan as I don't love mornings and morning exercise even less.







My weigh in was a nice little surprise, I managed to loose 0.7 of the 2.7lbs I put on last week! I really wasn't even expecting that as it's been a slow process getting back to eating right and not giving in to my cravings. I also had decided to focus on the food this past week and work on the exercise this upcoming week.

Now onto rude people... This morning at my meeting we were celebrating one of our members who had reached her 10% goal (lost 10% of her starting body weight). She talked about how this was her second time around and between these two times at WW she has now lost 35lb. One member spoke up and said "some of us have lost three times that."

I was just flabbergasted that she said that! It's all fine and great that you have lost over 100lbs and kept it off. But we were celebrating this young lady, who had reached her 10% goal! Way to steal her thunder. We weren't talking about you or your achievements. I couldn't help but speak up, reminding her and everyone else that we all come and go and we each have our own story and we may not know your story or saw you before you lost your weight, but every pound that we each have lost was hard won no matter how much we have to loose.

So please never criticize someone's weight loss (efforts) even if they have less to loose or more to loose. We're all on the same journey we all just take different routes and some of us reach that destination sooner than others.

- thanks for reading!

Bad Blogger/Bad Weigh In

Sorry for the lengthy silence. I do have every intention to blog regularly, but my migraine lasted 11 days in the end. There's a bit of recovery from that, I've also been down lately which doesn't help. And well it rained for almost a week and has been cold and miserable which I find really effects my mental state.



Last week I decided to weigh in on Friday at a WW centre close to work. It was not pretty. I gained 2.7lbs. Excuses, sure I can give you a few... Not my usual weigh in day/time of day. Not the scale I usually weigh in on. I also normally have a bit of a gain once a month. I felt like I didn't do anything wrong last week but I own that gain, it's mine and I have to accept it.



I had a lovely weekend away visiting with my friend Kathy. I only get to see her during the warmer months, so it was so nice to catch up since we last saw each other in November! We talked, we stitched and we checked out a local quilt show. I'm not a quilter but I admire the talent these ladies have.



Since Sunday I've let things go downhill... Again. I couldn't easily exercise while away because of the rain. Yeah you can go out walking in the rain but I'm not that hardcore! So I've not earned a single activity point since Thursday. On my way home I stopped to grab some road snacks that were healthy... I did okay until I decided to peruse the candy aisle! Besides the apples and carrots I grabbed I now was in the possession of King Sized Peanut Butter Cups, Swedish Berries, and a bag of Golden Oreos. I was quite well behaved during the drive eating carrots and apples and only 3 cookies. I think things went downhill at dinner time, we were invited out to a Chinese Buffet with Todd's parents. You can't hide in your home because you're afraid of eating out and family is important, we went without question. It wasn't the best buffet and the choices were not great. I was counting on being able to have beef and broccoli, a "safer" Chinese choice but they didn't have it and barely any vegetables. I did manage not to stuff myself, but that's where the mentality well I've already blown it so why not kicked in! Once Todd was in bed I proceeded to eat my chocolate and candy. I did have a guilty conscience over the cookies the next morning so instead of hiding them and eating them in secret I put them out and Todd was good enough to make them disappear.


Monday night I knew I would not be making a good food choice either. My friend Tracey and I drove to Ogdensburg, NY across the border. I had to pick up a parcel for my Dad that the company wouldn't ship to Canada. There really are very few places to grab a bite to eat there so after some shopping we stopped in at McDonald's. Now I go there about once a year, and if I'm going there I'm having a Big Mac, fries and a pop. That's what I had. I'm sire my body was screaming at me by this point with all of the garbage I had fuelled it with in the last 24 hours. I topped it off with a Dairy Queen dipped cone once I was in the car by myself, eating in secret again.

I try really hard not to let failures at the scale affect me, but they really do and I become my own worst enemy! I keep buying junk telling myself that I can be in control, I can say no. But I can't, I can't stop myself when I get my hands on something I shouldn't.

As this week has progressed I'm working my way back to eating right and I'm almost there.

I don't know what is wring with me, the first time I lost my weight I had so much self control and focus. The last 3-4 years I let the smallest thing derail me and I keep getting fatter.

This is so fucking hard.


- thanks for reading!

Buried Feelings

I'm not sure if I'm going to hit post on this or not... or just let it sit in my drafts.  Some feelings have come to the surface over the last twelve hours that I thought I had buried over a month ago.  I guess it really is still bothering me, that I haven't taken care of it.

Part of my problem is most of the time I'll speak up or stand up for myself and other times when it is important to just me I bury it because I think its silly.  Here's another hormonal woman all upset over "nothing".

All of us out there who are overweight, we're not just fat (yes I'm using the "F" word) because we like food. Yes that's part of it... but I think so many of us use it as a coping mechanism.  Something to make us feel better, something to make us feel in control when life is out of control.  I eat when I'm happy, I eat when I'm angry, I eat when I'm sad, I eat when I don't feel well, cause gosh darn it that food is going to make me feel better?  Right... wrong.  So many times I go with my instinct to eat the ooey gooies than to deal with what's bothering me.

So what has come to the surface again lately?  What am I being a hormonal, emotional, irrational female over?  Birthdays.  There I've said it!  I think over the last few years I've come to really, really, really HATE my birthday!

Every year I remind myself not to get my hopes up about my birthday, that its going to be a wonderful, special day.  Heck its an IMPORTANT day, cause I came into the world right?  Everyone should rejoice that I am HERE!  Almost every fucking year its quite the let down.

What brought this to the surface you ask?  Two main things really... one friend recently had a birthday and I saw though social networking and group chat some of the wonderful things that happened/she received.  Second...I am a cross stitcher, that's my passion if you've never taken a look at my other blog (which I've been writing for over 10 years now).  I read stitching blogs ... a lot.  Often its someone's birthday and either someone is showing off something they've done for a blogging friend for a birthday or the wonderful things they have received from blogging friends, family and real life friends.  

So often it brings up these feelings of jealousy, upset, anger... why does no one do something special for me?

One friend gets flowers from her husband every year for her birthday delivered to work.  Todd sent me flowers ONCE for our 16th anniversary (we're hitting about 24 years now).  That turned out to be a total cluster fuck because of one person's reaction at work that this has never happened AGAIN.  I'd love to get flowers at work, I really would.  Actually it would be nice to just get flowers ... period.

I've had to complain for many years to get a birthday card out of Todd, he's finally gotten the point... but I know he's always picking up that card on the DAY of my birthday on the way home from work.  Makes me feel like an afterthought.

I think this year's birthday has left me particularly bitter and I still feel that way.  Three key friends in my life who I thought would of popped a card in the mail didn't.  I've always made sure I've done something for them.  The childish side of me doesn't want to bother to do anything for them this year.  

One mentioned they forgot to give it to me when they saw me in March a few weeks before my birthday.  At this point really, don't bother.  Afterthought again.  Actually I only got three cards this year, one from Todd (again a day of purchase... and honestly does a girl really want a birthday card about farts?  For some reason guys think farts are halarious.  Trust me any male readers farts are not funny to girls!) and from two friends who live in my area.  At work the girls in the office often give me a card and get me a cake... well the card this year was a blank one with a photo on the front that I know one of the ladies always has on hand in her desk.  Then the cake they did get was a gluten and dairy free cheesecake.  Again I feel like an afterthought, like "oh shit its Danielle's birthday"

WHAT THE FUCK?  First of all I'm not gluten intolerant or lactose sensitive.  Also in the 12 years I have worked with some of these people I don't know how many times I've turned down cheescake and said I don't like cheese cake.  Like honestly it makes me gag I can't stand it, I threw up right after eating it once and that's what the thought of eating cheesecake makes me feel.  But I'm too nice to say yeah thanks for the cake I can't eat, cause I'm not that much of a bitch.  Nope, I picked at it complained I was just too full from lunch and threw it out when no one was looking.  It makes me realize how little the people I work with pay attention.  I felt especially bitter about it the next day when it was another of the girl's birthday and they went out of their way to get her fantastic cupcakes from a specialty cupcake shop!  Yup afterthought.

Anyone who knows me well knows I LOVE vanilla cake and/or cupcakes.  Cause cupcakes are little pieces of heaven.

Then there were the questions about where Todd was taking me for dinner that night.  Well he wasn't taking me anywhere and I feel like an idiot telling people, no I have no plans for tonight.  That's right.  I brought home my own pizza and my own cupcakes because if I didn't do that for myself no one else was going to.  Then that pizza had to sit in the over for over two hours because apparently Todd had an appointment at the chiropractor and I guess he thought it was a good idea to go out and get me something for my birthday.  Yup there's that afterthought feeling.

I give him credit, he got me something I've been asking for... but sitting around for TWO HOURS waiting to have MY pizza and MY cupcakes and thinking about that fucking cheesecake.  I was not in a happy place.  Also knowing that he didn't plan in advance or think in advance about my birthday gift, really just spoiled the moment.  He got me this nice silver Claddagh ring, I've been asking for one.  He of course tells me that the store said you had to order in advance if you wanted something with a real stone or white gold (I'm not a fan of gold, gold).  He also had no idea what the significance of one is, and I finally asked for one because at this rate this girl is never getting a diamond ring on her finger.  I refuse to ask for an engagement ring (or something to represent that).  There's that afterthought feeling.  For just once I would like him to buy me a gift that he chooses that would be significant.  He's good at getting me what I ask for but it would be nice to be surprised ... and not just get an iTunes card.

As for the ring, I've not shown it off, I've really not said anything to anyone about it.  Only three people have noticed it in a month.  Nor has my family noticed or said anything. I don't wear rings, I just don't but I finally wanted one from Todd and I hate that I had to ask.

So there it is I've put it all out there... I hate my birthday, I hate it when people show off all the wonderful things they've gotten or others have done for them on their special day.  I hate being an afterthought, I hate cheesecake, I hate not getting flowers because of other people, I hate getting cards about farts, I hate getting my own cake cause otherwise I wouldn't get one, I hate blank cards cause you couldn't be bothered to find the right card for me, I hate that I feel so bitter about my birthday this year and that I felt like I was let down.

Its just another day and I shouldn't count on others to make me feel good.

Saturday Scale Supremacy!

Holy shit, I seriously didn't expect a good week at the scales when I went to my Weight Watchers meeting this morning. Yes, I normally go on Wednesdays but as mentioned in my previous post, I was laid low with a week long migraine. Today, I'm finally feeling "normal". Of course the normal is in quotes cause that's a loose term, life is far more fun when you're a little quirky!!!







Anyhow back to this morning's weigh in! As you can see it was fantastic!!! Yay me! I'm not sure how I pulled off this great 1.2lb loss. I managed to walk a lot over the weekend, both in the Sugar Bush and on the Beckwith trail. But as of Monday when I've not been at work, I've been in bed trying to banish my migraine! Which also threw my eating off. I either didn't eat the right foods, under ate my daily points or over ate them. My tracking also seriously suffered.







I took this selfie on Wednesday while getting ready for work, despite feeling like shit I thought I looked a little trimmer! It's really hard to take a selfie or be in a picture when all you feel is like a fat, ugly failure! I didn't this morning!

I'm letting my now 2.8 lb loss since getting back to blogging help me focus for the week ahead! On my way home from the meeting I stopped in Wally World and I couldn't help but take a walk down the discount Easter aisle... I found a big Toblerone at 50% off. In the cart it went! By the time I reached the cash and had to wait in line I had reached my senses, and I dumped it in a nearby display. I'm very happy with this NSV. The old me would if bought it and started eating it before I even put the ignition of my wee red Kia!






See, icky out there!!









My next NSV for today was to hop on the treadmill (since it is miserable, rainy, damp, cold and all around shitty out there!) once my Wally World purchases were put away. I put in 5k on the treadmill, doing intervals of 5 minutes of walking, 2 minutes of jogging. I wish my feet would let me run! I miss it... I'm hoping once the majority of my extra weight comes off they'll stop causing me pain.







Now, I mentioned Wally World aka Wal Mart aka The Fifty Dollar store. I don't know what it is about this place, I go on for one thing (a new mouse for. Y computer) and I always seem to come out $50 poorer! Look at today's evidence!!! Can anyone get out of Wal Mart with just the one thing you went into get?








- thanks for reading!