Why smoke crack when you've got cardio?

First and foremost - I'm sorry for the gap in posts! I've been having some issues with not wanting to be accountable for doing mostly nothing for the past month.

I want to be more realistic in my expectations for myself so it's not really fair to say that I've done "mostly nothing" .. I've started a small and not yet profitable business on Etsy.com selling vintage clothing and hopefully soon - homemade baked goodies and treats, I've also been sewing (though not as much as I would like), trying to keep my house more tidy (with some, but not total success!) and trying to be more available to my 'tween daughter while she rides the hormonal rollercoaster of pubescence (major. drama.). So, it goes without saying that the aforementioned activities have kept me quite busy and too preoccupied to do much exercising. Yes, yes, I know - self care is the most important thing.

Which is why I am back on my game, and with a vengeance. I had changed my gym membership from the most expensive club "on the plateau" to a more reasonably priced place 10 minutes away with the hope that the cheaper place will have more fatties and I won't be so embarrassed to show up in the first place! My pal Esther and I used to sling our chub at the 24hour fitness in Seattle and I liked the cardio machines they had, so I bit the bullet and joined up at the new, schmancy one in Issaquah (Oh, precore crosstrainer, how I missed your ease and gentleness on my joints!). I had almost managed to forget that I had purchased said membership when I got what my mother refers to as a "wild hair up your ass", pulled on my most flattering moisture wicking gym shorts, layered on a few sports bras (to avoid black eyes and suffocation) and reluctantly drove on down to the pain factory with the promise that it was okay if I just looked around and came home if I felt like it. As you know, getting your ass there is 3/4 of the battle and I felt a renewed sense of purpose when I saw all the sweat drenched 30 somethings who, just like me, have less than perfect physiques.

This was Tuesday. Tuesday I pushed through 2 miles and 350 calories (but who's counting?) on the crosstrainer and still had wind enough to do the stationary bike at a leisurely pace for 30 minutes while I watched soap operas with no sound on the TV's hanging from the ceiling. Today I decided to challange myself a little more and upped the elevation and resistance and churned out 3 miles and 500 calories on that darling machine and caught up on the soaps to the tune of 30 minutes on the stationary bike. I still, STILL, felt energetic enough to do some weights!

Hours have gone by and my mood is so much improved from last week that I am considering going again tomorrow. Seriously, I feel like I did when I first started Prozac - in love and loving it! I even have more tolerance for my husband and those assholes that drive really slowly in the left lane!

I reeeeeeally hope I don't forget how good I feel right now...

Is it cheating if ...... ?

Remember that whole deal with the metabolife being, "like, the best-thing-EVAR" ?

I've never been much of a coffee drinker. I think the stuff tastes like crap, personally.. It's bitter, only palatable when blended with ice cream into a milk shake or thickened with enough chocolate syrup that it coats the back of a spoon.. but I'll be damned if it doesn't curb my appetite (especially for baked goodies) and give me some of that pep I'm usually lacking as a result of my good ole' pal Chronic Depression.

So, taking drugs to lose weight is "bad" .. extreme dieting is "bad" .. is weight loss and energy gain with the aid of coffee "bad" ?? ..

My dilema is being moderate in my caffeine usage. I've always been an all or nothing kinda gal. How do I police myself with the cuppa' joe? How much is too much? ... I'd really like to know because I don't want to end up taking Folger's enemas a' la Janet Jackson.

2 glazed doughnuts with a side of motivation please?

I can't be the only one that finds it difficult to muster the energy to put on shoes that tie.. I can't be the only mom out there that sweetly asks their children to run upstairs to get the cellphone I left charging because I just don't feel like dragging my own ass up there and I need to make a call, damnit. I've got important things to do, y'know?! ...... but it wasn't always this way.. I wasn't always this lazy, lumpy, wheezing sugar junkie. 10 years ago I was svelte, walking around 6 miles on most days, kickboxing at the local self defense gym.. then I got a boyfriend that didn't make me feel like I was and always would be completely dependent on him and less than a year later - TADA! I was pregnant with my first (and to this day, only) baby! ... oh, happy times! I didn't have to walk everywhere around this hilly city because my boyfriend drove! How convenient! No lugging 10 lb bags of groceries 3 miles in the rain back to my apartment! I ate what I wanted, more often than I needed and reveled in my body's ability to grow entirely new people!

I bet you can guess what happened after my lovely and beautiful baby was born... Yep - I stayed fat. For a while, anyway.. Until I found some magical beans, I mean pills, called metabolife! YAY! ... although they made me behave like a crazed lunatic, they also gave me so much energy (of the nervous sort) that I began walking 6 plus miles a day (with my baby strapped to my chest in a sling, of course) and working out at home with Billy Blanks! ... I dropped 40lbs in about 2 months. Going from 180 to about 138. I was smmmmokin' hot! ... but, I was also chronically depressed, agitated, irritable, I couldn't sleep, had zero attention span and had violent mood swings. Good times! ... This helped to facilitate the breaking up of my "babbydaddy" (which should have happened anyway, thank goodness!) and I. So, in addition to all of the above things that were going on as a result of poor choices, OTC diet drugs and poorly managed chronic depression and anxiety, I was started on valium by my doctor in combination with an SSRI.

As I slowly got mentally and physically healthier and happier, I quit the metabolife (well, it became illegal, so actually -it quit me) and slowly but surely became addicted instead to the lovely feeling of ok-ness that came with valium. So much so that I developed a tolerance and eventually tried to quit it cold turkey - which was a big mistake and best saved for another blog!
During all of this drama, as you have probably already guessed, I got fat again. I turned to food to provide the ok-ness and was still poorly managing my depression and anxiety...

Fast forward several years and here we are - with fairly well managed depressed and anxiety, althought not perfectly managed, yet. .. and yep - you knew it, still fat.

There was a healthy stint around september 2007, where I was running a reasonable amount, at a reasonable frequency until december 2008 when I got pneumonia.. I tried to pick up the running habbit again in february 2009 and a few weeks later, had pneumonia again.. Being the superstitious and brilliantly lazy slob I am - I took this as a sign from the heavens above that I am just fated to be fat. That's my place in the universe.. the fat girl.

Well - the pity party is over and I refuse to accept my role as the token fat girl anymore! .. I don't have to be the token "skinny girl", or the token "super buff" girl, or the token anything girl. My goal is to be me - only healthier, and able to walk up a flight of stairs without wheezing, and able to play soccer with my kid without desperately trying to find some excuse not to because I "just don't have the energy" .. the energy is there - I just need to claim it.

..... now if only I can get off this couch....