Time To Up the Activity

I had my vacation, I had my return down time, and now it's time to start seriously thinking about "training" for this triathlon.

My original intent was to lose a significant amount of weight so that I could hypothetically "catch up" to a fitness level where I could think about training for a triathlon by time my sister had her baby.

The baby is now 9 days old. My sister is in way better shape with the following exceptions: 1) her rectus abdominus muscle (the "six pack" muscle) separated quite a bit with the pregnancy, so she has to wear a supportive band to keep her belly from looking like she's still pregnant and 2) she's not quite ready to sit on a bicycle.

Otherwise, she's well ahead of me.

With my countdown steadily dropping, I'm needing to do something towards my goal daily. Even if it's just a little something, I have to really be more intense and serious about this. I'm not saying I haven't taken it seriously. It's just that I probably need to be much more careful now about keeping a regular schedule and thinking about an actual training plan.

As opposed to just trying to get to the gym more regularly and make sure I'm cutting back on "bad" foods.

These are definitely GOOD changes I've made, but they're not enough at this point.

So this morning I went on a short hike with one of my friends. Again, I didn't carry my daughter, and we only took a short loop due to time constraints.

When we got home, we packed up a blanket, lunch, and my calendar and headed off to a preschool class picnic to meet her teacher and classmates and sign up for work jobs through the school year (since it is a co-op).

We did walk to the school--it's only about a half mile, but I need the activity and as I'm discovering, my daughter needs to burn off her extra energy.

After getting home, she took a nap with very little resistance (yay!) and then we went to visit our naturopath. We are both going to get tested for mercury poisoning, so we had to go in for a consultation.

Oddly, the one part of visits that I normally DREAD, I was only partially dreading: the weigh-in. I wouldn't have been weighed except that she needed to calculate the dose of medication for the mercury test.

Last time I was weighed with this doctor was at my annual exam in early June. My doctor had asked if I thought I had lost any weight. I told her I thought I'd made a very small dent.

When she noticed that my "dent" was 10 pounds since my last check, she was very impressed. I kind of raised my eyebrows at her because for over two month's work (nearly three), it is somewhat frustrating that it is a small number.

She stressed that 1) I was doing a very very very good job and I should be very very very proud of myself and 2) although she knows I would rather the number be in the 50 range, that I'm more likely to keep this off than if I'd dropped that much anyway and 3) I was doing a very very very good job and 4) the time that I wasn't losing weight but losing inches, I was shifting from fat to muscle and 5) I should be very very very proud of myself.

It was so nice to have that positive reinforcement when really, it's averaged to about a pound a week I've been losing if I look at the whole time I've been working on this. Slow progress is good, but not as dramatically rewarding as I feel like it needs to be to keep me encouraged about the process.

We left a few minutes later than I wanted to get my daughter to her gymnastics lesson. Once again stuck in traffic (we had to cross the entire metro area in an hour during rush hour, good luck), we didn't get to her gym until 35 minutes into her 50 minute lesson. I'd already called and told them I'd be late--if we arrived at all and I was informed that there was a demo going on with the team girls nearby and we could go watch.

So I drove past the gym. My three-year-old, already a backseat driver (she takes after her mother) yelled, "MAMA! You're supposed to turn for gymnastics!" as I drove by the street the gym is on.

I felt awful, especially since I'd already told her that she would be going to gymnastics.

We got to the demo and I waved at the girls and the coaches (who I used to coach/work with) and they ran over to say hello. The gym owner said that they didn't have enough preschoolers for the demo and would my daughter like to participate?

OF COURSE!

We ran back to the car, got her changed into her leotard, and she had a BLAST. I got it on videotape, which I will do my very best not to bore people with, but of course I thought it was the most adorable thing ever.

What's even better is this week I didn't puke on my way home.