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It’s Official!! I’m a WW Leader!

Whewwwwww… what a DAY.

Got up super early because I couldn’t sleep. I think I was rehearsing/muttering my meeting points all night in my sleep. Showered, got dressed. (same dress/sweater combo as training weekend) Drove to meeting, got there about an hour early. Clipped up my flip-chart pages and then stood around and twiddled thumbs. Went to the bathroom. Paced the meeting room to and fro, loitered at receptionist desk, etc etc etc.  Finally the members began trickling in and the room filled up.  A few of my friends came in and I was so happy to see them: two who are already WW members, and one who decided to join TODAY. Yay! Then it was time to start. SHOW TIME.

All I can say is that it went well. I felt good. I was happy to have an eye on the clock so I was able to pace myself. I got everything in that I had wanted to.  People connected with the topic and with each OTHER, which is a key thing.  One of the things they did at training one day was to have us all stand in a circle and pass this ball of yarn back and forth; eventually it made this big criss-crossy web. Which was to demonstrate what we are supposed to be doing with our members, creating a web of connection between them. I felt like I could visualize this happening throughout the meeting time and it was way cool!

After the meeting, the leaders/manager sat down to give me Feedback. Overall, it was reallllllly positive. They had been taking notes (which they gave me) which said: “Very comfortable in leader role. Warm, enthusiastic, natural smile. Professional demeanor. Excellent approach to meeting topic, well prepared.” YAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!

Then they told me a few little “areas of improvement” which I totally agreed with and which were very helpful. But they were teeny tiny and just fine tuning. THEN they said, “So, how’d you like to lead an at-work meeting?” I said, “Sure, that would be great,” and then they said, “Starting today! In an hour?”

WOW. So I zipped out of there, did a quick errand I need to do at home, and zipped over to the office building where the At-Work meeting was. The reason for this incredibly rapid succession of events is that my leader was promoted to Territory Manager LAST NIGHT and now needs to find leadership for his 7 (!!) meetings. This was the first one. Now it’s mine!! So I led the meeting AGAIN, and he introduced me and basically turned it over to me.  It’s a small group and I really liked the people there.  That meeting had a totally different feel but I think it went well.

Then I came home and collapsed. Woweeeee!!!!!!!

I want to thank everyone for the great support you’ve shown me since I began this process. I feel like I’ve been so incredibly buoyed by everyone here and at Twitter. THANK YOU.

16

Clothes Shopping, Yay

imagesAs I have mentioned here many times before, I am not much of a clothes person. But I seem to be turning into one!  I used to regard clothes shopping with about as much enthusiasm as going to the dentist, but that has changed.  For one, I have to have nice-looking clothes especially as a WW leader. This stuff matters, and they tell you so.

I just realized that I have a fairly decent assortment of new-sized summerish clothes, but I have pretty much ZERO new-sized fall or winter clothes. O boy! So yesterday I had a little window of time and I went down to the outdoor mall near here. They have a new J. Crew store.  That used to be the store that I dreammmmed about when I was, um, larger sized. I could not buy anything in their catalog or store – it was all just too small. And looked bad on me. I used to dream (and this was akin to dreaming about winning the lottery, or bringing about world peace) that I could just open up any catalog or go to any store, and I’d find SOMEthing that looked good and fit. But that was not the case for many, many years.  Thank goodness for J. Jill with their flowing, oversized clothing. Thank goodness for classy, expensive, boxy Eileen Fisher whose clothing I could only afford to buy in small quantities so I had one pair of (elastic waist!) pants and I wore those pants every day for like three years. Ugh.

(OH – speaking of Eileen Fisher, I would like to gift someone a gorgeous pair of dark-dark green velvet Eileen Fisher pants. They are a size PM – petite medium- ie, for short people! and my guess is that they are an equivalent to maybe size 10-12. I only wore these beautiful pants a few times — I bought them when I could BARELY squeeze into them, and wore them once, while not breathing. Then, crazily, I lost weight and now they are baggy droopy.  So they have probably been worn half a dozen times. Or less. LET ME KNOW if you are interested and I would be glad to give them to someone for the upcoming holiday season. They are not elastic, they have an actual zipper!)

Anyway, back to my shopping yesterday. I was so happy to be walking around the J. Crew store. There was too much pretty stuff to look at.  I tried on a whole bunch but only ended up buying this corduroy skirt, and some dark charcoal tights. Now I need to get something to go with the skirt. Like boots. And something on top. I have super duper short legs, so I usually end up buying mini skirts, and it looks a lot longer on me. (ha) After J. Crew, I went next door to J. Jill and I was completely shocked to see that I pretty much wear a size S in everything there. And sometimes an XS. Wowee. And still, it’s too … er, flowy- to look so good. Although I did see this velvet (I love velvet!) vest thingie that I think I might spring for at some point.

Once again, I am semi-fretting over What to Wear for my WW final exam meeting tomorrow, but I think I will just go with what I wore at the training weekend. Although everytime I try this dress on, my husband says, “I’m not wild about it.” And he likes the way I look in a LOT of stuff so this must mean this dress is pretty ugly. I don’t really get it.  But it fits the slinky-plus-flowy combo rule, and it’s comfy, and it’s different than what I wear to work as a receptionist, which seems important.  I wish I had time to buy boots and a top for my new skirt, but that just isn’t going to happen today, so…….

hopefully by the time I log in here again I’ll be official!

Unless I decide to live-blog Top Chef tonight. 🙂 Which I might.

7

The Stress of Shame

I almost lost it last night. I was scheduled to be a receptionist substitute at a “traveler” WW meeting; ie one in a remote location, not an official WW Center.  At those locations, they use all manual/paper tallies to track everything, instead of the groovy computer system that is now in place at Centers. I only did a few weeks worth of those before they did the switchover, and boy was I rusty. In fact, I ended up forgetting to do a very important step – marking down all product purchases on the product sheet. This is super important for reconciling the $$ at the end of a meeting. When the other receptionist counted up the money and checked it against the product sales, it was like $80 off. Because I forgot to mark it down. This resulted in everyone having to stay almost 45 minutes later, to fix the problem. I felt terrible. I felt like slinking under the carpet and dying. The other staff members were pretty nice to me about it, but to be honest, I sort of messed up their night. Everyone ended up going home late, after a lot of stress. Caused by me.

I don’t deal with this kind of thing well. AT ALL.  Guess what it makes me want to do?

I drove home down this main road I used to take, after teaching evening classes several years ago. Back then, I didn’t normally have huge problems, but it was still stressful to teach on some level. There would be ONE student who had some kind of issue, or some thing I’d forget to do, and all the way home I’d be beating myself up about it.  One night I stopped in at a Jack in the Box and looked for the most anesthesizing thing on the menu: Bacon Cheddar Potato Wedges!! (omg, I just looked those up: 720 calories in a serving, 432 from fat! O boy!!) Soon it became a habit to just pull in to the drive-through on the way home and inhale a box of those. When I think of that now, it makes me really sad.

So what did I do with my stress last night? I started the evening with a full hand of nice fingernails. They’re down to little nubs now: chewed and torn away. Ah well, I didn’t EAT them so it didn’t cost me any calories.

All night I had recurring dreams of being horribly inept at one thing after another: I had to give a speech, but had brought the wrong one, and then I lost the pages, then I couldn’t work the AV equipment, and then and then…. AUGH I hate messing up!!! It upset me so much I couldn’t even do my regular Biggest Loser liveblogging last night. I did get home in time to watch the final hour, but I pretty much sat here and watched it like a blob. I didn’t really care one way or the other.

This morning, I went to my trainer and had a fantastic workout. THEN, FINALLY, I felt better. Much better.

I am glad that I did not veer into the Jack in the Box and take up old bad habits. I’m glad it didn’t really even occur to me, like it wasn’t a struggle to not do that. I just made a mental note as I drove past. But I still felt terrible.

I need to find ways to not freak out so much when I make a mistake.

9

Recharged: It’s All New Again!

It’s so funny. I used to have a very contentious relationship (in my head) with WW.  There were times when I loved it (actually, this was wayyyy back in the beginnning, when I first joined in 1997), times when I felt “eh” and other times when I was outright angry. I was one of Those Members who sat in the back row, arms folded, with an “I dare you to tell me what to do” look on my face. There were times when I paid to go to meetings for three or four months and my weight never budged. Or it went up and down the same two pounds over and over. I just was not ready (or willing, at ALL) to do the program. I’ve never had any doubt in my mind that if you do the WW program, it will work. The problem is all the junk in the way of DOING it.

Yesterday I received my leader prep materials for November, plus a preview package of some things that are new to the program for 2010. I got so excited! I pored over every single piece of paper, word, drawing with huge eyes. WOWEE! I kept nodding my head, saying, “Yeah, that’s right!”

But I remember getting those weekly booklets and just tossing them into the recycling. At one point, it was just all “blah blah blah blah” like Charlie Brown’s teacher. There was just no reception for it.

Last night I did a little practice bit of a meeting, no more than two minutes, at my regular meeting. We are supposed to share something about our own personal WW journey. As I talked, I was surprised (no? should I be surprised? Ha) that I got a little emotional about it.

I talked about how I first joined WW in 1997 when I was preparing to go to a high school reunion. I wanted to look good, or at least decent. I probably was 25-30 lbs over my high school days at that point. So, I got allllllmmmmmmmmost to my goal weight, but not quite. I was about 4-5 lbs shy at the reunion. Then it was over. I went home. All my incentive had evaporated. I stopped being “OP” (on plan). All that weight (plus more) boomeranged right back at me. That was my first mistake: to have a specific goal, and then not replacing it with a new goal right away. Oops.

Thus began my in-and-out, love-hate relationship with WW. I came and went many times more over the next several years, but never really had the same enthusiasm as my first time. Then it was replaced with dread and hatred as I failed over and over again. Until this last January, when I was in such a state of desperation with my diabetes diagnosis. Even then, I sort of slunk in to the meeting. I sort of did the program.

It wasn’t until I was within fingers’ reach of my goal that I woke up and realized what it had all done for me. And then I started maintenance, which is a whole ‘nother ball of wax, as they say. It’s then that I started really paying attention, and really complying. Really reading the materials and seeing what value they had for me. Really GETTING IT.

I don’t want to get all WW-evangelical on y’all, but this training has really opened my eyes even MORE to what a good, solid, comprehensive program this is. And if people engage with it, and really take in everything it has to offer, it’s such good stuff. Truly.

7

Follow the (Almost) Leader!

It feels like I’ve been waiting a long time for this day. Today I go to WW leader training  (today through Saturday). I’m excited. I’m nervous. Crazily, the pounds that leaped onto my body earlier this week are now gone. I have to say I don’t really understand this stuff. It’s not like I starved myself or ran a marathon yesterday. Maybe it was water retention. But whatever, I’m back in range and glad about that (whew).

The instructions were to pack two days of “regular” clothes and one day of “dress-up” clothes where we are supposed to simulate leading a meeting and looking as Nice (and probably, as skinny!) as possible. Of course I am fretting and deliberating over this. I’ve never really had a job where Appearance was an important aspect of the work. I remember when I was working as my first job – as a physical therapist – I’d be leaving my apartment building – in navy blue pants and a polo shirt, and big white sneakers – and the corporate neighbors in their suits and high heels would be all, “Hey, you have a day off today?” LOL.

I’ve had other jobs where I’ve had to look DECENT, but where it just wasn’t the main thing. In WW, it is really crucial that not only do you look good, you look healthy. I’ve been tearing things out of my closet all morning. Do I wear Spanx? (LOL) I think maybe I do.

I’ve got a ton of things to do before I hit the road – like get a mani-pedi (my fingernails look like some wild beast has been gnawing on them – oh yeah, maybe it has!) and get my eyebrows tamed. They’re looking like fuzzy bear caterpillars about now.

I have no idea what the Internet/time situation will be once I get there, and how much I will be able to share, but I will try to report back when I can. Byeee everyone, wish me luck!!

7

Listening to My Body: but what is it saying??

imagesThis ankle injury has been making me think a lot about this idea of “listening” to one’s body. On one hand, listening to my body got me into this trouble in the first place. But then part of me was trying to say something else. What if your body sends you mixed messages?

Today, the 3rd day of my injury, it is feeling a lot better than Sunday. I am limping just the slightest bit. It’s hurting about the same as it was 3rd-day-past, when I sprained it back in August. If I were “listening” to my body, I’d say I’m definitely ready to go to Nia class tomorrow, and running this weekend for SURE. But that’s not what the podiatrist said, and definitely not what I’m supposed to do.

It’s really hard to be compliant when your body is saying it “needs” something other than what you’re doing with/for it. Last night, I put my cast boot on at bedtime. At first (for the first twenty minutes) it felt comforting, like it was holding me in place. But I woke up around midnight and felt like I was encased in some medieval torture device. The plastic edge was digging into my toes, and my ankle was throbbing and searing in discomfort. I thrashed around trying to come into a comfortable position. But I am a diehard stomach-sleeper, and with that comes the position of having the top surfaces of my feet flattened into the mattress. I can’t do that with my ankle cemented at a 90 degree angle. I tried to negotiate with myself, but around 1am my body was shrieking, “GET ME OUT OF HERE!” I couldn’t take it.

And because I COULD, I sat up and ripped the velcro belts off the thing, liberated my lower leg – I told myself “just a few minutes,” fell back asleep, and the next thing I knew it was 6am, I was on my stomach and my ankle was in the Forbidden Position. (much like the illustration here) I felt guilty, sheepish and afraid. What if I had just stretched my ligament fragments even further apart?

Today, already I feel myself questioning the need to wear the dumb boot. Come ON! I feel FINE! It’s more of a pain to clomp around in what is essentially a ski boot, than to go barefoot and have a small limp.

Suddenly for some reason I am understanding why and how there are diabetics who pretty much ignore the fact of their disease because they can’t “feel” it. It was that way for me when I had high blood pressure.

I don’t know why it is that I feel that I need to be compliant re my diabetes no matter how I “feel,” but I am feeling more resistant about this ankle thing. Maybe because I don’t really believe that it will be harmful to go without the boot – because it doesn’t hurt. But diabetes doesn’t “hurt” either, not really. (not at THIS point)

It’s a short-term vs long term thing. Grasshopper and ant. I want to dance NOW. I want to run NOW. But if I do that, I could end up with debilitating arthritis. I can keep the vision of diabetic amputees, blindness and kidney failure at the front of my consciousness, because I’ve seen that, and I know it’s real.  Is it just that I haven’t seen people with debilitating arthritis who are saying, “Oh I sprained my ankle a hundred times, and never immobilized it, and look where I am now!” Do I have to see it to believe it??

15

Immobilized.

IMG_0641I went to the doctor this morning, our family podiatrist whom I really like. He trims my mother’s claw-like toenails, and he fitted me for my awesome orthotics which allow me to run without pain. So I really like him.

When I made the appointment, I told the receptionist (who happens to be his wife), “I sprained my ankle,” and she said “Oh!” in a way that *I* interpreted to mean, and you’re coming in for THAT? But who knows, I have been known to misinterpret one-syllabled utterances before. So I felt kind of sheepish going in there, feeling like, I’m overreacting, this is dumb, I shoulda just stayed home and put more ice on it…

His face said it all. He moved both my ankles around, the skinny one and the big fat one. The fat one moved a LOT further than the skinny one. He said, “This is bad. This is very bad.” OH.  He then went on to say that all of my ligaments were probably completely ruptured, and it was possible that I had a bit of a fracture as well.

I was pretty stunned. He said that it was really unfortunate that I didn’t come in when I had my first bad sprain back in August. Because basically I probably had a partial tear then, but then I’ve been running on it (and it became noticeably worse after the 5k over Labor Day weekend), not immobilizing it, and my ankle was just getting more and more unstable and compromised, and yesterday it just gave way completely. I could see that when he moved my ankle, there wasn’t any pain (bad sign!) it just was completely floppy and loose.

So now I am in this cast boot for a minimum of two weeks. I am not sure what is going to happen with the Nia Jam. I am GOING, for sure, and I will see what I can do within the confines of this boot. Swimming? Not yet. Running? NO WAY.

He said that I would have to wear the boot for weeks, and then a brace thing “forever” unless I get ankle surgery. He likened the ligaments to a nylon band and said that these things do not just mend like new, it’s not like bone or even muscle. I have to admit that after the appointment I went out to my car and cried for a while. (and if you’ve read my blog for a while you’ll know that that has become my M.O. after certain medical appointments)

The thing is, if this had happened last year (well, last year I would never have injured myself running!) I would have been secretly thrilled to have an excuse to not exercise. I would be like, OH DARN I can’t work out! and instantly take it as license to sit around and eat cupcakes. This year, I am devastated. Sure, I know it could be worse. I could have some dreadful diagnosis (yeah, more dreadful than diabetes!) — but the thing is, y’all KNOW how much it has meant to me to be working out this year. I have come to love it and rely on it and need it.

I know that my great trainer will keep me reasonably fit and busy. I can do a ton of upper body stuff (go, Michelle Obama arms!) with weights, sitting on the ball etc. and there’s all that fun CORE stuff. I can do a lot. But it’s not the same as Nia and running, which were both really important to me.

I’m lying on the bed with my boot on now. I have to say, this boot feels really good. Last night as I was trying to sleep, I could feel my ankle flip-flopping around all loose like, and that felt terrible. The boot makes me feel secure, like I am being held together. Which is good.

12

Weighing In Mess

I got an email from the WW people saying that my monthly official weigh-in was overdue (it’s taking me a while to understand the rules here) so I thought I’d check out a meeting out here in the Midwest. Found one just a mile from my hotel.

Now this is the deal with Lifetime. You are eligible for free meetings if you are no more than 2 lbs over your Goal Weight. (the weight you were at when achieving LT).  At my last weigh-in, I was almost two pounds UNDER. So today, I was 1.8 lbs over THAT weight, which meant I was .4 lb over my GOAL. (also, the clothes I am wearing are easily .4 heavier than my normal weigh-in outfit) And the weigher tsk-tsked at me and said, “Hmm, 1.8 up. Well, you’re on vacation, right?”

It affected me. WOW. Why did I let it affect me? I sat and steamed through the whole meeting (and btw the leader was TERRIFIC, not the same person as the weigher). It made me think, once again, about how sensitive this whole weigh-in thing is. People who do this can seriously throw people off.  When I do this at my job, I really try to be as positive as possible, as encouraging as I can.

I really liked the meeting, which was about restaurant eating. Speaking of restaurants, my daughter took me to this GREAT place last night. It was so uber-healthy and delicious! You basically go to this huge vegetable bar, load up your bowl, add some protein (if you want) and they stir fry it up and bring it to your table. You have total control of portions, ingredients, etc. It was incredibly yummy.

Anyway, back to the meeting. The leader had everyone fold up their nametags (good way to have people not walking around with tags on all day) and she did a drawing for a prize. The woman next to me said she does this every week. I’ll have to remember this. It was fun – she gave away a journal. I wonder if she gets these things in bulk or whatever, but I thought it was a great idea.

I came back to my hotel for breakfast. They have this free buffet thing with a decent assortment. I headed straight for the hot egg mcmuffin (actually a mcBagel thing). Definitely  not the best choice but I was still all messed up from the stupid weigh in. WHY? And why did it make me make a “bad” choice? I didn’t just have one, but two. (OK, two HALVES so I guess one whole bagel!) NOT a big deal in and of itself, but the fact that I was eating out of pure emotion. Hmmm.

Then after breakfast I was too full to go work out. But I’m not in the mood for hotel gym right now. I’m going to go to that Nia class again. I am hoping it will help calm me down.

Interesting what a crazy cycle it all is. If I had weighed-in at home, I would have felt perfectly HAPPY with my weight, which is just FINE. But that offhand little comment/facial expression whatever, just threw me. It THREW ME ACROSS THE ROOM. It made me eat all emotionally. How stupid is that? Or how…? I don’t know. I’m just feeling all discombobulated right now and I could really use some spacey music (or maybe some geriatric lavender aromatherapy, hm Mizfit?) to calm me down.

11

Exercise as Pleasure, Not Punishment

3388196563_528db7559eIt was not too long ago – less than a year – that I viewed exercise (or “activity” as WW likes to euphemistically call it) as painful, something to be dreaded and endured. Even though I was going to a personal trainer twice a week, I rarely did anything on the other days. And I often could barely get through my workouts. Sometimes I cried. Sometimes I threw up (I am not kidding). Sometimes I acted like a total whiney wimp so my trainer would have mercy on me and go easy on my poor pathetic self. It wasn’t pretty. I’d also use exercise as a tool to flog myself when I ate too much. Again, NOT pretty.

But things changed when January 2009 and this blog and my diabetes diagnosis rolled around. I knew that I was going to have to step it up or my body and health were in for big trouble. So I upped the trainer to 3x a week, and started myself on the Couch-to-5k running program. It was not so easy at first, but eventually my 60 second runs turned into two minute runs, then three and five and fifteen minutes. Around that time I actually began LOOKING FORWARD to working out. Once I began working out 5-6 times a week, I began feeling that endorphin rush that I had believed was a mythical state of being. I started feeling happier and more energetic. I stopped wanting to take naps every single day.

For many months, I felt like the longer, the harder, the better. I would go to the gym and go at the elliptical like a mad woman. All this was good. I got a lot stronger. I lost weight. All good!

But I started thinking, how the heck am I going to keep this up when I am sixty years old? Seventy? The idea of it made me feel kind of nervous and worried.

Not long ago, a friend of mine brought me to a Nia class for the first time. It was really one of the most unusual exercise experiences I have ever had. I was not sure what to make of it. I sort of mocked it but I had to admit that it made me feel good, and after that class, I really wanted to do it again (that’s always a good sign!). So yesterday I went to my second class. It was even better than the first one. I enjoyed it so much. The teacher had fabulous dimples (I am a complete sucker for dimples) and kept using words like “juicy” and “gooey” and “yummy.” She was just like that – yummy! and really happy. At the end of the class she put on this song called “Dream” and she was singing along with it really loudly and joyfully, just like you sing in the car with the windows rolled up. I mean, she really belted it out and it was so great! I did not have the guts to belt it out along with her, but it was great to hear.

Today I went to another class, at another place. This teacher was super graceful, elegant and willowy and just beautiful to watch. (that’s her in the photo above!!) She was so cool. The other two Nia classes I went to both made me want to laugh out loud (I did, actually) but today’s class had me almost crying in parts. I got really emotional and lump-in-throat as we were moving around. But in a good way.

If you look at the Nia website, one of the testimonials has this woman saying she used to pump iron and such, but now all she does is Nia and she is in super amazing shape. And I had to think, WOW, could you really be in such awesome shape from something that is so much FUN? It does not seem possible. And this is something that seventy year olds can totally do. And thirty year olds.

But I also did not think it was possible to lose weight while eating yummy foods like cheese, brownies, birthday cake and Prosecco. And here I am, doing just that.

It’s made me rethink all the ideas I had about “dieting” and “exercise.” Maybe it doesn’t have to be torture. Maybe the secret is that it CAN’T be torture.  🙂

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