Diary

I’m not sure if I’ve ever taken a break this long, from Tamara Shazam. I try to post at least twice a week, but sometimes life gets the better of you…
Like how it was the end of school! The wrap up for this year was exceptionally challenging. Finishing out the school year is always tricky- we have to pack up our rooms while continuing to teach increasingly less compliant children- but this year, with the move, I felt the emotional impact of my leaving acutely. Gracious, I’m going to miss my students. Squirrelly though they may have been, they were a kind, sweet group of kids who would have been great helpers next year… But I did say goodbye. Through a veil of tears!
Packing proved to be a bizarre reminder of my middle aged status- I injured myself by packing! Yep, the act of putting things in boxes, sealing the box with tape and affixing a label on it proved incredibly difficult for my right shoulder-blade-underarm-pectoral muscles. The repetitive motion proved too much for me and I started feeling a tearing/hot/burning sensation. For the past two weeks, I’ve been wearing my sports bra nonstop (so attractive!) and my compression wear. Holding my tatas down and any surrounding tissue has helped tremendously, but I have been unable to exercise or do much else. Even walking has been causing me pain (in my back?!) so I’ve been staying off my feet. Last night was the first night I slept without all the gear in two weeks and I didn’t have any pain, so I think I’m on the right healing track.
We headed to Idaho to see my parents the day after school got out and have been chilling Idaho style ever since! Hello SUMMATIME! Tomorrow I start a weeklong summer institute, but right now I’m not thinking much about that… 🙂

This morning I weighed in at 208! Woohoo! You may be saying to yourself, well, Tamara, that is a higher weight than the previously reported 205 pounds. Why are you doing a happy dance?
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You know how I’m all like, “I’m going to be totally real with y’all on this here blog,” all the time? And I’m all like, “This blog is the place for me to hold myself accountable with public airing of my successes and failures,” quite often? Welp, sometimes it’s hard to publicly fail.

I wouldn’t even say I failed, outright. Mostly I faltered, got overwhelmed, got frustrated… Failure would have been completely going backwards and gaining a blue million pounds. I didn’t gain a blue million pounds, rather I almost got to my holy crap! panic weight of 220 pounds! That is the magic number- I have promised myself that I will never weigh more than 220 again, and when/if I do, I have to fall back on my mad dieting skillz and lose it before the fat literally takes over again. I have no doubt in my abilities to reach 340 in record time, without even trying. Fortunately, I only got to 218. Revisiting 220 and having to hold myself accountable to my promise happened way faster than I thought it would, so I set my mind to it and I whittled myself down to 212-214 then kind of hung out there for a month. I decided to train hard for the half marathon and let go of the diet, to just work and work out. I stayed at the same 213ish and was pretty okay with that. 212, to me, is pretty stinking skinny.
I figured out that what was making me gain and maintain was that I started snacking at night again (the increase in activity made me ravenous, so I just let myself do it) and I figured out, again, that night eating is my greatest down falling, my greatest weakness, and my greatest opportunity to binge. Last week I reinstated my nighttime 12 hour fast rule again. That means that I try to truly make my breakfast an opportunity to break a fast. I stop eating at 7:00 at night and don’t eat again until 7:00 in the morning. I try to make my dinner loaded with veggies with lots of fiber so I’m not starving by 8:30 and it works pretty well.
Just that small change made me lose four pounds this week. If I had doubts before, they are vanquished. I have been practicing the exact, same eating habits, I haven’t been exercising beyond packing boxes and teaching, and I lost four pounds! I’ll take it!

One of the fun things about having a weightloss blog is that I get to share the weirdest, strangest things that are associated with losing a large amount of fat.
I was a big girl. Like I’ve said on a number of occasions, I don’t have a problem with big, I have a problem with unhappy. If you’re unhappy, fix that, and if you’re unhappy because of the fat or the fat’s side effects, work on that. So, anyhow, I was a pretty big girl. Of course, one day my skin didn’t suddenly split open spilling my innards and fat onto the floor, I streeeetched my skin out with fat over years and years. Then, for good measure, I got pregnant. Twice, while, I might add, weighing at or over 300 pounds. I really thought I was stretched to maximum before I ever got pregnant, but the babies definitively proved that idea to be false. You know, the babies were nice, but the skin? Meh.
Anyhow, today I discovered a new trick my body can do- I’m a real-life, Elasti-Girl! (My tag line is Growing super powers and losing other things… after all!) How do I qualify as a real-life Elasti-Girl? Well, when I have a scratch or bump or otherwise invisible-to-the-naked-eye skin anomaly in a hard-to-see area like the back of my knee, my butt or shoulder, I can simply grab it and pull it around the side of my body to take a look.
Nope. I’m not joking.
Like bread dough. Both really cool and unnerving…
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I’ve not been doing anything with diet or exercise this week. I haven’t gone off my rocker or anything, but I haven’t worked out. At all. I’m moving my classroom plus finishing up the year as a teacher – you know- still teaching the kids science and all that good stuff! Anyhow, I’m giving myself the weekdays off until the school year is out. Then I’ll kick my (elastic) rear back into gear. Until then, this is my life:

I loathe moving.

I know, I KNOW! I didn’t post a food diary yesterday! I know! So many of you tuned in, anxious to see what I ate, and I didn’t follow through. I’m sorry. Ok? If it makes you feel any better, I left my iPad at school yesterday and posting is hard without it. It was a shockingly difficult separation, my iPad and me. I was sooo glad to see it on my desk when I arrived at school this morning… Reunited!

I’ve been a good kid both days. We’ve been practicing the 12 hour fast each night, as well, and I think that skipping eating after seven has been pretty helpful. Especially since I haven’t worked out either night.
As I’m looking at my diet, I’m seeing a whole lot of opportunity to add healthier choices. Each time I entered white rice on there I thought it should be brown. It should be noted, however, that we aren’t that branded. Somehow, everything in the app is branded- even arugula. Arugula is arugula, amiright?!
😉
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It’s Camp Read A Lot in my classroom right now, and I am having the best time with my kids! This was today’s ‘craftivity’. I thought my sample turned out quite charming!

Yesterday we ran 3.7 miles. I set out to do around three, but I was quite surprised when all was said and done and we had gone that far. It didn’t feel like a really long distance! A three to four mile run, my run that is supposed to be my easy run, finally feels easy. That is a really good feeling and it shows me, quite clearly, that I am indeed making progress. The training is paying off!

I made a promise to myself that I would use my food journal app this week in an effort to kick start some calorie deficiencies. Today I entered all of my data in and came 48 calories from my allowance! Talk about cutting it close! I’m posting these all week in an effort to hold myself accountable, so bear with me this week while I post one each and every day. Also, it should be noted that all of my snacks for the day ended up in my lunch. I didn’t eat 1000 calories of lunch. 🙂

This was just funny to me. I was having a rather animated conversation with a friend of mine while I was finishing up a late afternoon at work today. Clearly it needed to be punctuated with many goofy selfies and I captured some real beauties!

Obviously a really big news day.

s

I was rather enjoying my school’s cowboy themed day yesterday. I’ve never worn a cowboy hat and have never owned a pair of cowgirl boots. I’m thinking that needs to change. The boots, that is. I’m not sure a Seattlite who does not ride horses in any capacity should be sporting a cowboy hat while simultaneously be taken seriously. Or should I…?

I need to seriously address the weight issue. I allowed myself to not worry about losing weight and focused only on exercise over the past several weeks. My hope was that by simply working out regularly and practicing solid eating habits I’d see a shift in my weight and, without doing much more than running and eating healthy, I’d also lose a bunch of fat and magically land at 170. What actually happened was that I got a good lesson in eating what my body needs to sustain itself. When I amped up the mileage and regular workouts I started eating to match my caloric output. It was wonderful to learn that maintenance should be a fairly straightforward aspect of my life in the future- as long as running and regular workouts are a regular aspect as well. It’s not disheartening, necessarily, but I am kinda sad I still have to focus on this nutrition thing. Welcome to life, huh?
So, anyways, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I need to figure out how to eat for days when I exercise and days I don’t so I actually start losing some poundage again! I need to kick my butt into gear and start limiting calories again. I’m sooooo resistant because it’s haaaaaard! And, I don’t wanna! It just seems hard right now. That said, I bobbed up to 210-212 a month and a half ago and I’m ready to finally see some movement down. I’m going to fall back on what kicked me into gear many moons ago- I’m going to start with the food diary again. I use the Livestrong MyPlate app for iPad and iPhone. It has a pretty good catalogue of food and has that nice feature for tracking exercise as well. That is always motivating. Whatever it takes to get off this plateau, though. I’m tellin’ ya.

The older I get, the more I realize that life is really just like a board game. You’re given this opportunity to travel the board and make decisions as you go. You can quit trying early and just pass go, collect your paycheck as you round the corner and passively surf through, the equivalent of getting really intimate with your remote control and sofa, or you can be proactive about your future and make decisions, play offensively, have great adventures and a varied, full life. Games make things interesting by offering up unique opportunities that you wouldn’t necessarily choose were they not presented to you in an enticing way at just the right time.
I drew a great chance card this year at just the right time: I’ve been given the opportunity to change schools and grade levels with a nice, juicy, fresh start. I decided to jump on it. It’s not easy to leave, but it’s time.
As we make our way around the game board of life we are constantly given choices: take a risk or stay safe. It’s hard to make the choice to step outside of my comfort zone to try something new. Today I was tearful about leaving behind the great community I’ve built around myself, the beautiful children who I sincerely love so much, their marvelous families who support me daily, my amazing, fellow teacher-friends I’ve made there, the para educators who make my classroom and my school complete… I’m going to miss them all so much. I’m going to miss calling it my school. I’ve never stayed put anywhere for that long.
But I sense my greatness is out there again if I just act on the opportunity that’s been presented, so I’m jumping. I did it a few years ago when I walked away from toxic relationships, when we built the house, when I decided to lose weight and when I decided to become a runner. Life has been more interesting after jumping. I’ve learned that taking the risk is often a very, very good thing.
Cheers to fresh starts and new beginnings.