62. Ooof

So I almost died last night. Well not really, but I definitely could have fallen asleep on the floor at the end of my workout. I totally got two of those hot flashes that Patrick talked about in his email. Buh bye fat!

I went to firefighter workout and then did the pcp workout when I got home (skipped jumps because my legs were dead, will have to do them in the mornings on fire class days). Those chest dips get me every time. I was already weak from doing 75 push-ups at class but I always struggle with the dips. I skipped the push-ups since I'd already done 75 and my arms were shaking so much from the dips that I figured I'd just fall on my face anyways. Also, I sucked it up on the planks, worse than usual. One of the team sexxaaay-iers, I think it was Tara, noted that they were way better at the planks when they weren't looking at the clock, and I think that might happen for me too. Watching the time click by on my watch makes it seem like it lasts so long and when I tried having Jordan tell me when to go up and down, I was just longing to hear his voice. Maybe without the longing for the end, I could redirect my focus to something other than how terrible planks are and go longer.

61. Team Badass - Time for a Regroup!

Ok guys. We are 2/3's of the way through. Team Sexxay just finished, so we are the big kids now. It's time to regroup and recommit. We've all fallen a little silent lately, myself totally included. It's time to jump back into blogging with a fervor and to taking the weekly pictures. Let's blog it out and really get these changes to sink into our psyche so that they stay with us for life, so that this 90 day period of craziness isn't all for naught. We can do it. We're so close.

58. Feel the burn ...

and the burn feels good. Man, the legs just about killed me yesterday. They were shaking so badly when I stood up to do shoulders.



I think the plateau feeling is from the fact that I'm not awed by how strong I feel anymore. At first, I couldn't believe how strong I was getting and now it's just a steady progress so there are no huge jumps in how strenght feelings. There's something going on under my skin and flab because I'm still getting thinner.



I guess it's like the food. Feeling strong stops being new and just starts to be part of life. That's good, right? :-)

57. on the plateau...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I've hit a plateau I think. Maybe it's my disasterous two weeks ago showing or maybe everything is just happening beneath the surface, but things don't seem to be changing much at the moment. That's ok. Still I plug on.

Also dealing with lack of not necessarily appetite, but lack of interest in food. I think I need to mix it up more. I've been eating an awesome curry for lunch but it hasn't been filling me with awe the past couple of days, so I guess it's time to freeze the leftovers and move on to something else. I made a chunky mushroom and tomato sauce last night and ate it with whole wheat noodles today and it was totally unappetizing. The sauce tasted mega sweet, like sweeter than I can remember any jarred sauce tasting and I didn't add any sugar. Maybe it needed onions or more garlic or something. It wasn't bad, just not what I wanted. Also, I'm going to be honest -- whole wheat pasta pretty much blows, at least the boxed stuff, fresh is ok for some things. On the things tasting funny tip, celery and cucumbers have been tasting super salty.

And another thing, to any potential future pcpers, keep this in mind - pcp will give you tons of energy, super tons of energy, provided you are getting enough sleep; if you're not getting enough sleep, you will be a zombie, for serious. Maybe being a sleepy zombie and my plateau are related, but dang am I tired and I've been getting like 6.5 -7 hours of sleep. Need at least 8!

Also also, I haven't even looked at today's workout. I'm going to print it out now. I'm scared. Everytime Patrick writes something like "this is the real pcp now" or "we're entering into a new phase of the pcp" I feel like what he's really saying is "prepare to suffer suckers, bwahahaha".

56. Things I don't miss

1. Cheese!!!!!
I was walking past the fancy cheese section of the grocery store the other night and there was a special on some fancy looking Camembert that was tugging on heart strings (or my stomach strings). I didn't get it, but couldn't stop thinking about putting some on my dinner apple or getting some nice stinky blue cheese for the salad snack. That was really the first time I've missed cheese the whole project, which is odd because I love cheese, or did love cheese. I love cheese so much just thinking about it brings me joy, but before this I was consuming a lot of cheese that wasn't bringing me joy. It didn't have an amazing taste, it didn't really add anything to whatever I was eating, all it did was add some mental fillingness. Cheese on tacos, cheese grated liberally on pasta, cheese on sandwiches, quesadillas, even alot of the cheese on pizza -- tasteless and unnecessary.

I never thought I could live without cheese on almost everything, but I totally can.

2. Nuts
Nuts, natures snack food, right? High in protein and fiber, high in fat and calories too but at least it's good fat, right? Hungry between meals? Have a handfull of nuts! Bored at work and feeling snacky? Have some nuts. Nuts are the healthy snack, way better than chips or candy. I have a feeling that most people would agree with those statements. I was one of them. Nuts were another of my everyday foods. I always had a container of nuts to combat hunger attacks in my desk (in fact I still have some sliced almonds in there, they don't tempt me at all). I don't miss the nuts or their diet busting calory richness or face puffing saltyness.

3. Crappy chocolates and sweets
Yesterday some people at work came around passing out bags of chocolate "from the leadership team to say thankyou". Nice enough I guess, but geez guys you're trying to say thanks for all you do, and you're passing out bags of Wonka chocolate? Why not give us something nice and indulgent like Lindt or Valhronna or omg why not support a local business and buy some stuff from the chocolate shop that I work at. Why not give a few nice pieces as opposed to a bag of the crappy stuff (oh that's right, the crazed junkaholics that I work with would complain about how little/small it was). So they gave us this chocolate. Mine was dark, so I figured I might try a piece just to be nice and then give the rest away. Well I put it in my mouth, started to chew, and first of all it wasn't good and second it was so sweet it made my teeth hurt (and this was the dark kind) so I spit it out and put the rest of the bag by the printer and it was gone within hours. Then later someone sent out an email that there was cake leftover after a meeting and it was like an f-ing stampeed as people went to go get that cake. Gross.

There will still be a place in my life for homemade dark chocolate brownies or cookies and baklava from the Palestinian sweet shop down the street, but forget about that crappy cheap stuff, it's gone.

4. Midmorning or midafternoon hunger attacks
Breakfast is a wonderful thing. Now that I'm eating a hearty filling meal at the beginning of the day and have my morning fruit and a great lunch, I'm not plagued by hunger attacks anymore. Hooray!

55. Butt = kicked

I got my butt throughly kicked yesterday.
Just par for the course in pcp land, right?
Not so fast ... I did no jump roping yesterday.
C'mon Haley, yesterday's exercises were hard but they weren't that hard, especially if you didn't jump.
That's true the exercises were hard, but normal hard.
What kicked my but was ... dun dun dun ... my first fire fighter physical ability test pre-conditioning class.

Man that thing was hard. Hard in a totally different way then pcp is hard. Hard in a "I think I had my first experience with exercise induced asthma' hard. I was pretty nervous going in, as Jordan had gone on Saturday and talked about how hard but fun it was and gave me the scoop on what they did. I figured I'd give it a go and stop if it was too much. So we did a bunch of stretches and then we did 50 jumping jacks, 25 push-ups, 25 crunches, and 25 mountain climbers. I calmed down because that was super easy. The new people then got sent to walk the running course and the people who had been there before did that set again. So the running course... run a 1/4 mile then up the stairs... 5 floors worth (so is that 10 flights because you go up one and then turn and go up another to get to the next floor) and then down and then 1/4 back to the start. So we walked that once and ran it twice. It was hard. Really hard. I did all the running on the flat ok, but the stairs killed me I tried to run the first set as much as I could, but it was hard and I'm super afraid I'm going to fall and knock my teeth out. The second set I walked. After that then up to the gym for sortof sideways skipping in both directions and backwards running, then more stretching and arm exercises.
All things considered I did really well. I was strong in all the areas and exercises that the pcp works and really just struggled with the intense cardio which we don't do. Had I just gone in without having done this for almost two months I might have died.

So yeah. It was hard, but it was really fun in a way that this isn't. It was a super encouraging atmosphere and it was just nice to work out with other people.

It's going to be a regular Monday, Wednesday, Saturday thing from now on because in order to go to the actual test pre classes where you get to practice on the equipment you have to go to the pre-conditioning. It looks like the last part of pcp just got quite a bit more intense.

53. Indulged

So I had my indulgence last night. I'm not sure that I deserve it due to the diet disaster that was last weekend, but I did anyways. I had pancakes from IHOP. I hadn't really been intending on having pancakes, but they were on the list of potential things to have, and when the situation arose they were ideal.

They definitely didn't taste as good as I'd hoped. I was expecting a rich, buttery, pile of fluffy goodness and I didn't really get it. The butter wasn't indulgently salty and rich it was just greasy. I ordered the buttermilk pancakes and the waitress asked if I wanted 3 or 5 and in my head I knew I should only get 3 but figured since it was an indulgence I might as well go all out and get the 5. I only ended up eating two of them and three cups of coffee with fake milk creamer and then I was totally full. Totally completely stuffed. My stomach was a little upset, I'm not sure from what but it wasn't that big of a deal. Man I was really expecting better.

Oh and I had half of piece of bacon dipped in Nutella. That one little bit of greasy, salty, sweet disgustingness might have been more fulfilling than the entire stack of pancakes.

The one good thing that came out of this and the past few days has been that I think that I've demonstrated to myself that for the most part I'm not an emotional eater anymore or am on the road to not being an emotional eater . I'm more of a didn't manage to pack lunch, buy groceries, or some other aspect of bad planning that leads to eating out all the time type of eater. I haven't managed to pack myself a good lunch the past few days and have been ravenous the past few afternoons. If I wasn't doing this I would totally have grabbed a candy bar from the vending machine or stopped to get something to eat on the way home. But I just stuck it out and tried to find the biggest apple in the fridge to eat for dinner when I got home. So there you go, bad planning leads to poor eating.

Also, prior to going to IHOP my two friends and I had spent about an hour standing out in the rain visiting our collective best friend Ali's grave. She died relatively recently and none of us are anywhere near being over it. The evening easily could have devolved into a giant chocolate fueled pity party, but it didn't. We did go to IHOP and we did all eat things we don't normally eat - me non-pcp pancakes, my vegan friend pancakes and eggs, my other friend who doesn't eat sugar nutella crepes, and we all had a piece of nutella dipped bacon, but we all stopped before we gorged ourselves to the point of sickness (although my friend who doesn't eat sugar had a total, hilarious sugar high). I stopped after two pancakes. I didn't even feel the need to shovel the rest of the pancakes down to try to fill the ache. The ache was there, but I really knew that all those pancakes wouldn't help.

51. Thanks

I really just need to say thank you to everyone for the encouraging comments. I read them in my still nuts everything is crap state and they made me cry and then they made me feel so much better. So thank you. You're all amazing and wonderful.

So I'm still here, still hanging on. I feel like I've lost the momentum that I had previously had. Everything feels like a slog now. The jumps drag on now that I'm not counting and the exercises take so long with so many sets now (not to mention they're super hard now). But I'm pushing through. Head down, not very much enthusiasm, but sticking it out.

47. oh dear

I'm reading this book right now called Women, Food and God that seemed to help some previous pcpers get some insight into their relationship with food and eating and things. And there's this quote in the book that says: "our relationship to food is an exact microcosm of our relationship to life itself." Had you asked me last week if I agreed with this, I would have said no way... my life is in chaos but my relationship to food is good. But if you changed the word food to pcp and asked me today if I agreed, I would say yes, a thousand times yes.

In order to go on, I'm going to have to do something that I haven't done this whole entire six weeks that we've been going down this path: be honest. Transparency requires a courageous honesty that frankly I just don't have in me to provide. I self-censor everything, all the time, for everyone. It's like if I don't tell the whole truth, the weight of the issues won't come crashing down on me. If I can save face and seem like I've got it all together, I won't have to admit that I'll failing miserably. I can say that things are hard because they are hard, or that the diet is going ok and that I like it because it usually is ok and I usually like it, or that I'm getting muscles because I am getting muscles. But to say that I've been slacking and to say that I've just stopped the exercise part for a majority or the last week or that this weekend I barely ate anything I was supposed to, well to say those things, is terrifying and brings me to the dark place that always seems to be hovering a few steps behind me.

Ok, so here goes. My pcp is rapidly becoming at risk for being a failure, just like most of what I've taken on in my life already is. I haven't worked out for five days or six days or four days, I can't really remember. I tried to yesterday but the exercises were too hard, so I quit. This weekend was also shitty for eating. We went to see friends and I packed a cooler with all my food in it, but then I . just . didn't . eat . it. I could blame it on spending all my time with my pregnant friend who has all these crazy cravings. But the fact of the matter is: I didn't say no to the chips and dip. I didn't stop after just a few. I just didn't. I could have. But I didn't.

I don't know if the cheating on the pcp brought on the darkness or the darkness led to the cheating, either way I can't shake this despair that I feel about the project and my life. PCP is a microcosm of life. I make it about half way and then I get distracted or lazy or just let up and the whole thing ends in failure or at least mediocrity. In this case, my attention turned to french onion dip and sitting on my ass. When the going gets hard, Haley gets going, just in the opposite direction. It happens so much it feels like destiny. Americorps job #1, things get hard / I don't feel like I'm making a difference -- think about quitting, cry all the time, end up finishing the year, but stop caring. University #2, science classes get hard -- don't study harder or get extra help, cry a lot, switch major to religion. Religion major, get distracted by millions of possible future plans -- start slacking majorly, lose inquisitiveness, still get ok grades but don't apply for grad school. Future career plans, start a whole bunch of applications and things -- abandon most of them, move home, take menial/boring/easy Americorps job # 2. Americorps job #2, feel like a loser for taking such slack ass, not big, not important, not well paying, not even real job -- don't put in any more effort than possible, don't really care, think about quitting to get interesting job, don't. 1st real job -- don't move away from home, don't apply to jobs outside of Cleveland, apply to many jobs, get two interviews, take first job offered, end up with job that a baby monkey could do (doesn't even require adult monkey skills or mental capacity), loathe self and life. And on and on. Start fail, start abandon, start give up, start fail, repeat ad infinitum. I know it's not, but it feels like a curse, or something in my genes, or something inescapable in my upbringing, or something like that. I know it's not, I'm just lazy and distractible, but damn if I don't wish I could just hunker down and finish something. It doesn't even have to be done spectacularly, just finished. What's wrong with me that there's the huge disconnect between the things that I aspire to and then things I can manage to get done? Where do these road blocks come from?

It's so embarrassing to write all this. To read your blogs and see your progress and read about how you struggle but press on, how you don't give up or cheat. It would have been easier to fade away, like it seems someone does almost every cohort, but I promised myself that I wouldn't do that. I knew from before I ever wrote to Patrick that there was a huge chance that I would be the girl that disappeared, who couldn't hack it. I won't do that, but I'm really not sure where to go from here. Do I start again today, with today's exercises, knowing that I won't be able to do the kung fu sit-ups, that I don't have a place to do the kung fu sit-ups, but with an inclination that I could probably slog through today's exercises and get close to the right number or reps, or do I go back; start from where I left off? And if I press on, what do I do about the things that I cannot do this weeks amount of, like the chest dips? And will I ever be able to move myself more than an inch or so on the chest dips?

I feel like I should be asking for your forgiveness and your permission to come back. I broke the pact that we made to work hard and support each other through this. If it's ok, I'd like to come back, I'd like to try again, and I'd like to be totally honest with you (although I don't know that I can absolutely guarantee that one).

43. New pictures

Found the camera cord so new pictures are up.

Too sleepy for any more blogging.

42. Not so much a valley ...

as a freight train veering off the tracks or one side of an overloaded balance hitting the table or a tornado leveling an unsuspecting town. It wasn't the valley or maybe it was, but it feels more like a temporary moment of psychosis. I was fine at work, even had a humorous ranty post planned about the ladies at work who complain about needing to lose weight and then in the next breath mention that they cheated on their jenny craig or weightwatchers or whatever by eating six cupcakes or swooping down anytime there are sweets in the office. I started to lose it on the way home from work and then walked in to a house that was infested with fruitflies and my pants were falling down and I was just done. There was no pulling me back from the brink. I fell over the edge into a dinner of cheezeburgers french fries and ice cream. Fortunately Jordan was around to talk me down and help me get back on track. I had been planning on skipping the workout but he got me to at least do the triceps exercises and 8 minute abs, which are the muscle groups that need the most work. So even by the end of the night I was perking up, although I did cry myself to sleep.

I'd actually forgotten what it was like to be consumed with that sort of irrational emotional craziness. It used to consume me a couple of times a month and I'd just lose it and cry and cry and cry and eat crap and just feel insane and shitty. Yesterday was the first time I truly felt like that since we've started. Yeah I've had bad days and angry days but nothing like yesterday. Maybe Patrick's prediction of emotional stability is actually happening for me.

Today is much better. I still feel the visceral effects of the crazy attack which are a tired heaviness with a little bit of frailty thrown in, but mentally I'm great. My diet has been spot on today and I'm looking forward to the jumps when I get home. I'm starting to plan what I'm going to take when I go back to Pittsburg this weekend and bought a cooler to keep it all cold. I got the actual requirements for the firefighting test and on the surface it looks doable. Lots of stair climbing. They haven't told us when the test is but it's sometime between Sept. 27 and Oct. 31 so I should be at peak condition for it.

Thanks for the support guys. We can do this. I can do this. Go Team Badass and Team Sexxay and Team Patrick!

Also, I really need to buy a belt that I can wear to work. And, I just resisted the people that came around selling bakesale leftovers

41. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

If you don't want to read a lot of angry bitching you might as well skip this post.

I am so f-ing angry and resentful right now it's not even funny. I'm sick of devoting my life to cooking and cleaning up after cooking and then eating and cooking some more and more cleaning with some really hard exercise thrown in. And this is supposed to be in a somewhat modified form a lifestyle? Yeah right only if I want to devote the majority of my waking hours to eating and exercising. I'm sick of thinking about food. I'm sick of doing dishes. I'm sick of carting stinky laundry out of the house to wash it. I'm just tired. I feel like I've lost my life. I feel good, I'm strong, and I've lost 17 pounds, but how in god's name am I supposed to continue on down this path and have any semblance of a normal life again? I'm tired of craving something sweet and then spending ages telling myself that I don't need it or want it. It's so easy to say yes, so hard to say no.

I'm doing this to get fit for the firefighting physical agility test, but there's no way I'll score high enough to actually get a job. My knee is fucked, I'm still grossly out of shape, and the underparts of my arms still wiggle. Kill me now.

40. Whirl of a weekend

We went to visit friends in Pittsburgh this weekend and it was really nice although the pcp suffered. It didn't go poorly just vaguely ok, instead of the usual good or great. The exercises weren't done with their usual care but instead were quickly slogged through. The eating was mostly ok, but I definitely wasn't totally prepared for pcp on the road. There was a bit of pizza and then a tiny slice of pizza because the taste was just so overwhelmingly great that I couldn't stop, but mostly I just watched everyone else eating having had my apple and egg beforehand but having forgot my milk. Then there was some frozen yogurt after dinner. It was supposed to be the new kind of "trendy" frozen yogurt that was just plain yogurt frozen and then topped with whatever fruit you wanted. I figured that some frozen plain yogurt could work as a substitute for my forgotten milk, but alas it was sweetened. It wasn't as sweet as regular ice creamy frozen yogurt but it wasn't plain yogurt and I'd swear that the kiwi I had on top was sweetened too. I had two bites and handed it off.

Maybe it's from my routine getting thrown off but I have had no appetite recently and have been having a lot of trouble falling asleep. I get really tired and have to go to bed but once in bed I just lay there and can't actually fall asleep. So I'm a little sluggish today, but am getting back on track.

Also, I really need to find that darn camera cord to post some new pictures.

37. Mystery Pumpkins

Somebody left three pumpkins on my porch yesterday. Score! I'm fully intending on eating these bad boys, but I'm not sure I'm ready for roasty toasty fall food yet. I'm still stuck on salads and smoothies (although without the banana the dinner smoothie doesn't work so well). It seems like I might be the only one who's enjoying the fruit dinner, which I definitely am. I really do feel lighter and happier with just the apple, milk and egg. I'm even glad the banana is gone, because it just felt like too much. It's almost like my entire metabolism shifted or something, because before the fruit dinner, the regular dinner was way too much and now sometimes it seems like a struggle to eat my veggie snack at the end of the the day.

So the diet is still good. And even the socializing thing is going well. I'm getting comfortable at ordering soda water at bars and resisting the munchies. I haven't been to a potluck, which might prove to be my downfall, but I did successfully resist donuts, coffee cake, pie, and candy bars at work yesterday and supposedly there were donuts today too. I didn't even bother to go look. Usually I would have told myself that I didn't want/need any of whatever it was and then gone over to check it out anyways and end up walking away with a little something, but I didn't even go over to look. Progress!

Workouts are good, except for the leg exercises, they're killing my knee. Yesterday, the pain after one of the frog jumps was so intense it took my breath away. I gave up after that one and sat for a while to regain my composure and then pressed on. My arms and back are getting so strong. I haven't tried a real pull-up because I don't have a bar yet (fragile old doorframes don't like pull-up bars) but I think (hope) that maybe I'm getting close to being able to do one.

34.5 With visions of pcp weekend dancing in my head

Best workout I've had in a long time. Felt strong again. Hoorray! That's crazy to say, that I feel strong, I've never really felt strong before. Despite feeling strong almost everywhere, my triceps are pretty much non-existent it seems. Triceps dips then double katanas is total torture.

And to clarify, an hour and a half is total time for everything workout related: getting dressed, finding music, setting up chairs and bands, working out, and laying on the floor moaning afterwards. The working out part is pretty consistently just under an hour, unless I'm having a super crappy jumping day.

34. 1/3 of the way done. Can't believe it!

It doesn't seem like it's been 34 days already. Time is flying. It seems like as good a time as any to take a minute and reflect on what's changed.

If I get nothing else out of this whole project, I will have gotten a really intense wake-up call about my life and habits. When I think about myself I don't see a girl who eats fast food a couple times a week, lunch out every day, and has a drink or three almost every day. I don't see a girl who drives everywhere, doesn't really get any exercise, and I certainly don't see a girl who weighs 160 pounds. My mental image was definitely living in the past, from when I lived in Montreal, walked, bussed, or rode my bike everywhere, and grabbed whatever was fresh from the market to cook every day. There’s been talk on mostly Elena’s blog about how when you no longer have dissonance between what you actually look like and what you look like in your head that you have a sort of glow. I think I need to work on not just getting my body to the point where there’s no cognitive dissonance but the rest of my life too.

With every passing day I get closer to that version of me that I hold on to as being the best or most authentic. I think that’s why the diet is so easy and so good; it’s just a return to what feels right (minus butter, cheese, booze, and delicious baked goods). The workouts are harder not just because they require more effort than cooking does. It’s primarily a time management issue. When you try to shoehorn an hour and a half of working out into a day that already feels too busy, the results aren’t real pretty. I feel squeezed and strained and start to resent the workouts. Really I just need to calm down and cut something else out. With school being done at the end of the week, it will be better.

33. Still crap

Workout was still crap.

This is the last week of a seven-month super intense period of life. I just need to make it through this week and I'll be fine. Just need to find the emotional fortitude to do it.

Pictures are coming. Camera cord is lost do to moving stuff around in the house. Was put in safe place. Who knows where that safe place is now.

32. Rocks for dinner???

Seriously, have I been eating rocks for dinner? The past two days I've felt like my body is filled with lead or rocks or concrete or something. I just can't get going. The most jumps that I've been able to do without tripping lately is 10. 1300 jumps take forever when you trip every 10 or fewer jumps. And the exercises are killing me way sooner than they normally do. It is a major struggle to finish out the sets. I just keep plugging away, but man it would be nice to get some strength back. Blarg.