A fairytale in which I talk about myself in third person.

Once upon a time, there was a woman on a mission to lose a little weight and fit into her favorite black dress. She joined Weight Watchers and started off strong, losing 5 lbs and feeling good about it. Then, a disaster happened. Not a figurative disaster, but a real and true natural one that overflowed a river in a major American city and caused destruction across several states. The woman suddenly had to travel to a sort-of-faraway land (it felt farther away because people said “y’all” a lot) and help people recover from a flood. It was exciting because she’d always wanted to go and help, but it was a little bit scary at first. What would she see? Would she know what to do? Would she have to sleep on a cot? Would she be forced to eat weird things? To ease this anxiety, she decided on the flight there to cease Weight Watchers during her deployment and to just try and stay healthy. It was an amazing experience in every way. She met many wonderfully patient and funny and compassionate people who were either helping or being helped. And she stayed in a nice hotel and got to eat a lot of good Southern food. And though sniffles and sneezes surrounded her, she stayed germ-free. By the time she came back two weeks later, she had gained back all 5 of those lbs. She didn’t care. She went out and bought a sexy size 10 Calvin Klein dress at the Rack to wear to a wedding mere days after her return. She felt good and gave herself some time to process what she had seen and done and to spend lots of time on the couch snuggling with her lovely boyfriend. Then, finally, today, she went to the grocery store and filled her house with veggies and tiny pieces of chocolate and other yummy things. We’ll see, dear readers, if that 5 lbs survives for long without being banished to its evil fat-ass kingdom forever. The end.

A Closet Divided

Do you know women who get stressed out and lose weight? I’m not jealous of them. But I’m certainly not one of them.

I should have known how much this time of year sucks for accomplishing anything in my personal life. First of all, it’s been busy as hell at work (with a beautiful beast of a fundraiser that is a huge success and a giant time suck). And not to talk about the weather, but the wintry discontent zone between my birthday and now is when I tend to get a little, well, depressed. Every dip below 40 degrees yanks on my patience for sunshine and makes me want to hide beneath the covers. Like, all day hiding. Or, it makes me want to snuggle on the couch for 3 hours on end with boyfriend. That’s a way happier pursuit, but not an active one.

Needless to say, not much progress on the exercising front.

I flipped my closet today, stuffing the sweaters into boxes and bringing out the summer dresses and tank tops. Ugh. Most of them don’t fit. Not that I tried them on, I didn’t need to. At the end of last summer most of my clothes had gotten a little snug, so I just put them in the box and figured I’d deal with it in the spring. Well, here it is, and I’m not any smaller. Or healthier, which I guess is the real issue.

My mother would admit to you that her closet is divided into “skinny” and “not so skinny” clothes. This used to seem extreme to me, but now I know all about the fluctuating wardrobe. And I’m kind of pissed about it. I don’t want to have two (or three) sets of clothes. I love clothes, and I want to wear the cute ones, not the giant black pants that tent my ass beyond recognition but are acceptable for work.

Maybe I should stop complaining and go for a walk? Noted.

So I pulled out one particular black cocktail dress and put it on the wall. It doesn’t look like much just hanging there, but when I could squeeze into it, the results were pretty damn hot. I bought that dress in Spain, and I remember my friend Susan helping me barely eek the side zipper up my side. Perfect.

How long is it going to take me to get back into it? Not sure. But having it there is a reminder that half of my clothes are waiting for me to get my ass in gear.

Do you succumb to the skinny/not-so-skinny wardrobe?

Shamrock shake for lunch

And a healthy dinner. Probably.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Posted via email from Where I'm At

Jillian scares me

Here goes nothing. I can do anything for 20 minutes, right?
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Posted via email from Where I'm At

Playing with posterous

Starbucks is not part of my healthy living plan. But it is helping my sanity.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Posted via email from kristinclaes's posterous

The Wagon

So I'm back in Chitown from a work/fun trip to Dallas. We stayed at a conference center where the rooms were pretty tiny (think cruise ship size) but the food was delicious and the buffet was open. Needless to say, I fell of the wagon. Hard. Into a pile of chocolate cake, pork tenderloin, margaritas and frozen yogurt. But I feel good--even if I piled on the calories, my body was ready to get back into the exercise groove. I went to yoga last night and felt rather smug about how deep I was sinking into my lunges and how very balanced I was. Not how you're supposed to feel in yoga, but whatever. I can save my centering and personal challenges for another day.

I promise to get one of those interviews up this week. Also, I'm having trouble commenting on your comments from my house, so I'll be doing that on lunchbreaks. Thanks for all your cheers and hellos! More soon.

Chitty Chitty Bangin' Bod

Bangin’ Body

After procrastinating about my resolution to try one of the scary cardio, non-yoga classes, finally today I went through with it. Left work a little early because my workout pants had somehow escaped my giant zebra purse/gymbag, and though I contemplated what might happen if I showed up to workout in just tights and a t-shirt, decided against it.

Did you hear it snowed in Chicago? Well it did. Kind of a lot. Not like the snow they get in DC, but enough that I was burning calories hustling through the muck on the 20 minute walk to the gym. And I was still late to a class entitled Bangin’ Body. Because who doesn’t want that, right?

The room was packed with girls in ponytails and their yogamats and bosu balls (thos half orbs of bounciness, really why weren’t these around when I was a kid?). Right away I noticed the teacher—a six foot tall Barbie in a hot pink tank top, perfect makeup and a flawlessly thin body. As I gaped at her and realized there were none of the magical bosu balls left, and for a second thought I’d gotten out of this. “Is the class full?” I asked her. “It’s crowded but we’ll make room” she told me. A girl pointed to a sliver of a spot front and center. Awesome. Same nice girl suggested maybe I grab a regular exercise ball to do sit-ups. Ok. Ready.

Holy bounciness, people. I do the elliptical, I do yoga. Sometimes I run after the Damen bus. But this woman immediately had us kicking and leaping and doing all sorts of things and I immediately realized that I wasn’t, uh, getting enough support. In the girl region. I found myself half clutching my boobs half running while I followed along. Soon enough I’d hurt too much to care about this anymore.

Lots of reps. I only have a set of 2 lb weights and 5lb weights. I’m goldilocks without the right chair, it’s just not working. the 2s make me look wimpy and the 5s make me want to die. I start to feel nauseated. Just when things are getting terrifying, nice girl gets nicer. Barbie asks everyone to start stepping up and down on the bosu ball (which I don’t have(, and this friendly neighbor offers to share. So not only do I run the risk of knocking noggins with her or falling over…I have to keep up with her. She steps up, I step up. Whoa. Is that my heart exploding? No. It’s not going to explode.

I can’t do everything yet. For whatever reason ab moves are particularly excruciating. It’s clearly amature time up here. But I made it. And at the end of the class, the nice girl asks if this was my first time in the class. Claro que sî, lady. She smiles and tells me to come back, it gets easier. I tell her I will.

There’s a difference between being determined and being committed. I’m not feeling a ton of determination right now. But I’m committed to this. And it helps that I’ve lost at least 4 lbs already. A pound per blog post? You'll be hearing from me more.

So, to stop the navel-gazing here, I want to interview some friends about how they’re being healthy, and how they’re not, and tell their stories here. Stay tuned. And let me know if you're interested.

Wheezy Whitney and the Search for a Routine

During a little dinner party while I made her stir the risotto in my kitchen tonight, my friend Em asked what I’m trying to accomplish with this little project—to lose weight, to be eat healthier, to exercise? Yes. I want to do all those things, and they go together, right? I don’t want to diet. My other amiga Kate and I discussed this in length this week: it’s about lifestyle or it’s not really about much at all. I do know one thing: the desire to fit into those hot Levis again is STRONG. And partially the basis for this mindful writing and exercising and eating approach is that I’ve never really TRIED to pay attention to these things. So here I am, trying in front of you. It’s going ok.

On the food front, I’ve sometimes been all about the veggie healthy wagon—eating a giant bowl of greens for lunch and including protein and all that; and then kind of falling off by having beer and ice cream and wine and Starbucks lattes. Is this what moderation is all about? Having veggies and exercise and lattes all in one week? Or is this just my bi-polar way of trying? One thing’s for sure: I need to do that wretchedly tedious food diary thing where you write down everything you eat. Because I’ve got to see what my attempts at eating well look like on paper, not just in my foggy memory of healthy successes and startling failures (have you ever eaten an entire bag of those honey twist pretzels in one sitting? Mmmmmm.) So, that diary starts tomorrow. Don’t worry, I’m not going to put the whole thing up here. Maybe just a highlights reel.

But now to the happy news: In the past 7 days I’ve worked out three times. That’s a coup for me in a big, big way. I can’t remember the last time that many actual visits to the gym were all concentrated in one week because, well, it may have never happened before in my life. So, it’s really going to be a new thing for me to embrace exercise as part of a routine. A brief walk down exercise lane:

In grad school, I just walked a lot around Madrid and across SLU’s campus, and that fended off pounds. In undergrad I’d visit the rec center in spurts, but I think mostly my metabolism was just keeping it real for my ass. Same goes for high school; back then I liked to eat sleeves of Starburst for lunch. Our HS gym class was lightweight stuff like archery and pickle ball and rotated with Religion, which did not keep me skinny but certainly made me very afraid of sex.

Anyway, end of flashback. At the heart of this is the fact that I’ve had pretty bad asthma since I was a kid, which eventually made me afraid to exercise. It was horrible to run around and then feel like I was sucking for air, especially since I sucked at running anyway. (I always kind of flailed my arms like the episode of Friends when Phoebe runs FREE.) Thanks to fabulous new medications, I don’t worry about that any more. (The wheezing part. The sucking at running thing can’t be cured.) I can take my asthma meds in the morning and then push myself on the elliptical until I’m a sweaty mess, and I won’t wheeze even a note. But a little bit of that fear remains. I’m not a runner, not a player, not an athlete. And it’s taken me a long time to discover what I like about working out—yoga, feeling awesomely sore the next day, rocking the elliptical by seeing which songs make me go the fastest. I’m open to more—those classes with balls and steps and weights that I’m entitled to attend since I paid that giant gym membership fee—but I need to stop being scared of them. I’m healthy. I’m not wheezy. I can go to Butts and Guts and Core Strength Mega Hour, and I’m not going to end up in the nurse’s office. Though someone might have to bring me an ice pack when it’s over.

The Joy and Horror of Being an Anti-Picky Eater

I work with a bunch of lovely women who really like to eat. One is vegan, another vegetarian, I’m holding down the meat-eater’s corner, but we all love to talk about food—what’s in your lunch, a new good recipe, plotting our next eating field trip. During one lunchtime chat about foods that we hate, I could think of, well, no foods worthy of my hatred. And I’m starting to realize this is a mixed blessing.

Sure, when I was a kid certain things were gross. Bratwurst. Beef vegetable soup. Asparagus. But now I love all those things. And it probably has something to do with my mother’s insistence that as kids, we ate grownup food. No one ever trimmed an icky crust off a sandwich for me, or made me buttery bland noodles. We ate Chinese, German, Italian, even a little French food (ok if you count French onion soup), and my mother is an excellent cook. Every night between 6:30 and 6:45 my dad would come home from work, and mom would put dinner on the table. Always a veggie, a salad, a protein and a starch, and it was 99% of the time some of the best food you’ve ever had.

Now it turns out I like all of the weird foods that make little kids want to cry. Beets, braunschwieger, lima beans, Brussels sprouts, broccoli (why do all of these foods have b’s in them?). I like anchovies and all types of seafood. Spicy food. Really, the only thing I could think of that sounded kind of nasty to me was cottage cheese. I reveled in that discovery and announced it. Then, two weeks later in a hospital cafeteria I threw some cc on my salad and thought it was pretty damn good.

Does this make me a garbage disposal? It certainly means I turn down less food than your average person. That sandwich has mustard on it? Bring it on. There are nuts in this muffin? Score. But it also COULD mean that I’m open to eating new healthy things all the time. Kale and quinoa and other such things I learned about at the Whole Foods salad bar. But that stuff takes effort. Whatever’s within reach in the vending machine and says either “chili” or “cheese” on it takes no effort and is ripe for the scarfing. So I guess what I’m getting at is that part of this little project is going to have to be stocking my fridge with more of those weird, yummy, healthy things I like. And then actually cooking them before they go bad. Sigh. But that is a tale for another day.

Kicking my own ass.

Oh dear. I’ve decided on that expletive instead of my effing favorite one, as I decide today that I need to do something active to get rid of the approximately 20#s that I’ve gained in the past two years at my desk job. Yes, TWENTY POUNDS. That’s a toddler. Or a really fat dachshund. While I was eating dinner tonight, I read some woman’s ONE YEAR journal in Self magazine about losing 28 pounds. Holy crap. If I’m only losing about 2-3 lbs a month, I’m totally going to give up! This lady in the magazine did Weight Watchers, which sounds great, but then I realize that I’m not even using the gym membership I have. So, people, you are my Weight Watchers. So don’t let me eat butter, ok?

Really though, I figure this is a good way to write and hold myself ACCOUNTABLE. I’m not sure if I’m up for this sort of commitment, but it kind of doesn’t matter. I come from a family where fat happens unless you combat it, and the product isn’t pretty. Heart attacks. Type II diabetes. I’m 5’5” and hovering around 150 right now (ok give or take 5 more, but I’m going with the 150 reported on my wobbly scale in the greeny bathroom that I step on every morning). Two years ago I weighed about 135 pounds on a bad day. That’s only 15 pounds, you say? Well, I was also 135 pounds five years ago when I was being really sedentary and survived on coffee, blueberry muffins and beer. I think I can do better.

So where the hell did 20#s come from? Well, I sit on my ass all day at a computer, in meetings, in the lunch room, in front of the internet at home, watching tv. I don’t work out (well, once in a blue moon I go to yoga, and I was riding my bike to work at a LESIURELY pace during the summertime, but I don’t have any sort of routine.) Also contributing to this is my lovely, sexy boyfriend who really likes me the way I am and takes me out to deliciously great restaurants and also loves food. I think it boils down to this: I’m really comfortably HAPPY in my life right now, which is ironic because my pants are getting tighter by the day, and that makes me SAD.

So follow along as I try to kick my own ass.