This is not for the faint of heart. Before Couch to 5k:

After Couch to 5k:

This body is hard to move, it is hard to "jog" for 90 seconds. Truly hard. It is hard just walking up our hills. And I know this is why we (me) give up on exercise. When you're overweight, it's not easy. It's not easy when you're not overweight, but even harder when you are.

 Going into anything like couch to 5k or going to the gym or whatever with the mindset that it will be easy that you will be like one of those women in sports bras breezily running down the road will not be helpful. It's hard and it doesn't look good. Your face will be red, your legs will feel like they weigh 500 lbs. each. But you will get through it, you will live, and you will feel better for it.

I've learned two things through couch to 5k:

1. You have to eat good food. On days when I eat too much or too little, it is even harder to do. On days when I eat well, I do better, I can move faster and go longer. I have more energy. I challenge myself to do this on not so perfect days, it helps me see the reality of eating too much. Often I avoid activity when I'm bloated, but I feel like exercise should change my eating habits, not the other way around.

2. I need to stretch and exercise between sessions. It's hard to move a stiff body that sits at a computer all day. So when you combine sore muscles with sitting on off days, it's hard to get started again.

What does the title mean? It means that I finally decided to do Couch to 5k . I tweeted and Krissie delivered. Her post about how to get started was very informative and helpful.

I needed a fitness goal, so when she mentioned that she would be running the half-marathon in November in Huntington (my old college town) I thought to myself "I should do the 5k". That was two months ago. What have I been waiting for?

The 5k isn't my main incentive for starting this, it's motivation to start doing something...anything. I need a goal to work towards because "I should exercise because I need to lose weight, get healthy and feel good" apparently is not enough to pry me away from my to-do list and just do it. Having a schedule in my mind, is a no excuse zone. When Josh is involved there is even less excuse.

Yesterday afternoon I headed out on a mission: get a better sports bra, a stop watch and (totally unrelated) sunburst mirror for my studio.

Day One: 20 minutes. 5 minute brisk walk followed with 60 seconds jogging and 90 minutes walking, alternating the two.

It was 7pm. I put on my new bra (a tight xl mind you), exercise pants, baggy t-shirt, old sneakers and we were off. The walk started out up the hill on our road, I was panting. This is hard, I can do it, this is hard, I can do it. I am fat. This is hard, my legs are weak. I'm breathing heavy. I'm sweating. 5 minutes is up. Jogging begins. Downhill. I'm flying. My legs are moving at a pace I'm not familiar with. They feel okay, my breathing catches up. I'm still going. Somehow I'm jogging. I'm okay.

Round three of 60 second jogging and I'm moving in a fast shuffle, flailing my arms around saying to josh or me or the universe "I'm still going! I'm moving!". He yells from ahead "20 seconds left" "okay, I'm doing it, I'm moving" and then walking. Relief. It repeats and before I know it we are finished and headed home. 24 minutes total. Walking fast and jogging.

It was not pretty, it wasn't fast, but I pushed myself. I thought of Krissie, I thought of my future, I thought of myself doing this. I just needed to start somewhere, no perfect situations, no right times, not the right anything. Just put on your shoes and go outside. I need to believe that I can do this, and I do. Day two is Wednesday.

******

Eating.

Six weeks ago I started reading Women, Food and God with Josh and we're still only halfway through. The content is heavy and if you're open and ready, it will change you. Not overnight, and not without constant reminder. Roth speaks a lot about what we use food for: comfort, happiness, contentment, nostalgia, fear, sadness, joy, everything that we believe about our selves and our lives can be found on our plates.

It's a lot. And it couldn't have come at a better time. I will never diet again. Ever. Hear me blog? I am no longer a dieter. How scary and relieving is that statement? Scary because- does it mean I've resigned myself to being fat? No. Relieving because I have been using diets as a crutch. My diet tells me what to eat, what I should eat, what I shouldn't eat, when I should stop eating, when I should start. When my diet doesn't allow me to eat chocolate cake I can eat 2 slices today and always go back to diet tomorrow. Dieting gave me hope and direction. It was something I could trust when I couldn't trust myself. I punish myself with dieting as much as I punish myself with food. Balance was lost.

When I diet, it is either all or nothing. I have restarted more times than I can remember. I binge and say "tomorrow I will be better", "tomorrow I will diet", "tomorrow I will starve", "tomorrow I will only have protein shakes", "tomorrow I will only eat 1,200 calories". Tomorrow came, and sure I may lose ten pounds here, or 20 pounds there, but I set myself up to fail because I was looking to food to solve every problem I have. Fat being one of them.

I will lose x pounds by x date. Every year, like clockwork I need to lose weight by a certain time. I never do. I never will.

So what happens when you need to lose weight, but you stop dieting? You learn to listen to yourself, and it isn't always pretty. Sitting with the desire to overeat is painful and uncomfortable when you've depended on it for so long. If you're looking for food to do anything outside of nourishment, you will fail, every time.

One sentence that I repeat to myself every single day "if you eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full, you will naturally lose weight" every day. In and out. Many days I follow this, and occasionally my old habits sneak right back up on me.

So what is HUNGRY? When am I full!? I fear hunger and I think a lot of us with weight issues do. We fear the next meal, we order familiar meals at the same restaurants knowing it will a huge amount of food, we fear missing a meal or an opportunity to gorge (because we have to diet again tomorrow, right?), but food is not going anywhere. If it does, we will be okay. It is okay to get hungry. I tell this to myself every day. I will not die if I miss a meal. I can get by on less.

What is full? I always thought that full was a feeling of pain, but then I realized that it is the absence of hunger. The absence of hunger.

I'm not micro-analyzing every meal anymore. Am I getting enough fiber, vegetables, protein, fruit, folic acid? I trust that I will lead myself to spinach when my body needs it, or a banana or cheese or tomatoes or whatever else.

So how do I stop eating when I'm full but the food is delicious? I still haven't mastered this. Over the weekend while painting I got hungry and asked Josh to go to subway for sandwiches. I had a foot long and without realizing it I ate the whole thing. It wasn't the end of the world and made note that next time I will put the second half in the refrigerator as soon as I get home. Sometimes it just hard to stop and we have to know that about ourselves.

Instead of saying to myself "oh no! I ate the whole sandwich, no dinner for me!" I let it go. I said to myself "eat again when you're truly hungry and stop when you're full".

We had mexican food on saturday. I sat down and ate about seven chips with salsa, I wasn't counting or restricting, just being slow and mindful. My giant burrito came and I opened it up and ate about half of the content (carnitas, salsa, cheese, avocado, lettuce etc.) and then I felt myself go into over drive. I starting breathing and counting. I stopped to think, to readjust. No judgment. I just needed to check in. I was full. I covered my plate with my napkin and I was okay with the decision to stop eating.

I'm okay with not racing to weight loss anymore. I know the finish line is there and I'm okay with knowing it will take a year or two instead of months.

Follow me on twitter: @thetokenfatgirl

Ever wake up in a panic not knowing what day it is? That happened to me this morning around 7am. We set the alarm for 6am, but it was accidentally set for pm and it was daylight when I woke up. I was convinced it was Saturday until Josh informed me it was Thursday.

We finished up day four of Insanity. Today was a struggle for me...my sore throat from last month seems to be coming back and I'm just tired. Luckily today was 38 minutes of recovering cardio. Which was still hard, but nothing compared to the past couple of days. Want to see my GoWear Fit calorie burn?

Wednesday 2,703 total

Thursday 2,419 (so far)

And there you have it...keepin' on. Did you do anything today even though you didn't want to? Were too tired? Didn't feel well?

You know what? I love unintentionally active days. I realize that I can burn a bunch of calories and actually have fun. Well, for the most part.

Saturday started out innocently enough, we were headed out to our neighboring shopping center so that I could get a new phone and have dinner out. But, I naively drove down our very muddy and snowy driveway the night before preparing for a warmer weekend. Bad idea. We got stuck and between me, josh and his sister we finally dug it out after two and a half hours! Shoveling and pushing a car is hard work, my GoWear Fit says so:

See that 12-2:30 chunk of activity? That's me shoveling snow. Burning calories.

That 4pm-6pm is shopping! Who says shopping is a bad idea?

And in the evening we were invited to a dance club thing in Blacksburg, which since moving to Floyd is something we rarely do because, well, we live in Floyd. That started at around 8pm which you can see above and went on well into the morning:

That is from 12-4am. I forget how much I love to go dancing and realize that this is a fun way to get exercise. I'm not particularly good at it, not that that has ever stopped me. Do you guys like to dance? Do you go out dancing, or crank up the music in your home? Seriously fun exercise.

And now, I'm about to tell you something that will totally shock you (insert sarcasm): I saw an infomercial about two weeks ago and pretty much had to try to program. INSANITY. Have you seen the commercial? I mentioned it to Josh with my usual "you have to see the commercial! it will convince you too!" and so we bought it. I have to try new things, it's in my blood. Anyway, the DVD set arrived a few days ago and we started the program today (as recommended on the poster) with the fitness test. It. was. hard. There were a lot of things I simply could not do very well like jumping jack push-ups (how messed up is that?), but I did the best I could and started sweating withing 2 minutes.

Me and Josh were screaming by the end of each round, it put Jillian's 30 day shred to shame and this was just the fitness test that involved about 10-15 minutes of exercise:

We are going to follow the program for the full 60 days and I'm really looking forward to the challenge. I think I've mentioned that we are in the midst of buying our first home and we definitely need the stress relief.

What's your favorite unintentional/intentional exercise?

Tuesday I went into work with a gut feeling that I should have just stayed home. The weather forecast was ice, sleet and snow and barely two hours into the work day I decided to make it home before the storm hit.

Instead of retelling the story, I figured that my GoWear Fit activity log could do that for me:

See that chunk of activity in my otherwise sedentary day? That's when the car got stuck. About two and a half miles from home. I was halfway up the hill and I just started sliding back down. My actions before deciding to walk home were as follows: get out of car (that is in the middle of the road) and try to push it up or down the hill. That was stupid. Start walking up the hill assuming people could get around. Realizing (again) that wasn't smart. Walking back down, getting back in the car and somehow reversing the car so it was not in the ditch, but not in the road. That worked and I tried not to freak out too much when I realized that I was in full reverse mode in 2nd gear. Nice. So I started walking.

And you know what? I didn't even care. I wasn't mad, hopeless, or frustrated. I just walked home in the snow. I looked at it as an adventure. I didn't have my cell phone with me (which is a very bad habit, I'll admit) but I would have had to walk either way. I got cardio in, and by the time I made it home I felt really good from the exercise. Go figure. The car was towed home for free thanks to our car insurance and within 30 minutes it was as though nothing ever happened.

I realized that I'm capable of pushing myself even when I think I can't. I was fighting a cold and my left leg was bothering me. And both perceived ailments were much better after this walk.

As you can see, I set my calorie burn target really high! I love challenging myself to get in the 3,000 range. A normal day without exercise is in the low 2,000's.

We have officially entered day two of ice world here in Floyd. Ice is weird, unlike snow, you have absolutely no choice but to stay inside. With snow and a lot of determination you can at least go outside or plow your way out, but with ice simply stepping out on your welcome mat requires ice skates.

I'd be lying if I said I was upset about any of this. I'm a homebody through and through and have hours of projects to work on to occupy my time. As long as I have josh, food and the internet, I'm set. Yesterday I spent most of the morning making jewelry! I have a jewelry open house the weekend after next, hosted by my mom (yay!) and I've been busy trying to prepare for that. Want to see?

I love these necklaces so much! I really want to keep the green one.

Later on in the afternoon I started working on some freelance projects as well as a portfolio site. I feel good when I'm productive even though I ended up watching four episodes of LOST last night. That show is addictive! I curse the day I ever started watching it.

As far as exercise, I'm so excited about my GoWear fit. I'm not even kidding. I had to perform surgery on the arm band at the beginning of the week to make it bigger. I left the original band intact for future smaller arms, but needed to extend it by about two inches. Now, I never take it off except for showering. I will post a picture of my funny little extender in case anyone else is having the same issue.

We went for a walk in the woods behind our house on Tuesday and found a pond, a little waterfalls. It's like a  whole other world back there. I tracked my calories on the trip and noticed that the walk back up burned major calories. I set a target calorie burn and it's fun to push myself to match the calories.

I also tried out Dancing with the Stars workout DVD. I don't watch the show, but the DVD was a great workout although very hard to keep up with dance moves. Have you guys tried it? I was very sore!

Also, my February 1st weigh-in is approaching! My start weight for January was 290 and my goal for the end of the month is 278. I am over half-way there.

What was I so excited to share yesterday? My GoWear Fit arrived in the mail yesterday! I considered purchasing one for a very long time and Monday afternoon I got a wild hair and bought it. And just as an FYI, I bought this myself and was not contacted by the folks at GoWear Fit to promote their product, although I would have gladly accepted!

This is what it looks like:

What does it do?
Simply wear it during the course of your regular day, then plug it into your computer and upload your data to your personal GoWear fit Online Activity Manager. The Manager will help you establish your goals, track your progress, and give you tools to help you know how many calories you're eating, on average, per day.

Multi-Sensor Armband
Your armband is a small computer that measures a variety of physical characteristics, including motion, steps, galvanic skin response, skin temperature, and heat flux. It's the only multi-sensor monitor that can accurately track:
Calorie burn
Physical activity
Steps taken
Sleep duration
Sleep efficiency

I've always been curious to know how many calories my body at my current weight burns in an average day. Today I decided to wear it without exercise just to gage where I'm currently at. I read the reviews on amazon.com and they were very good. It is exactly like the bodybugg (used on the biggest loser) but more affordable and tracks sleeping patterns.

I took it off during my shower and so far it feels pretty comfortable. I have really big arms, which makes it slightly more uncomfortable for me and more noticeable that I'm wearing it than someone else with smaller arms. But, it is not painful or circulation inhibiting, you'd be hard pressed to know I'm even wearing it under my cardigan.

From the reviews a lot of people mentioned how the GoWear Fit device has helped motivate them to burn more calories during the day. The online tracker gives you target caloric goals for the day as well as a place to track the calories you are consuming. This tool is definitely not  needed for weight loss, but it is a nice to know where you stand with daily activity, something I struggle with.

I put it on as soon as I got up around 5:30am this morning, took it off for my shower, and then put it back on. I plugged it into my computer around 7:30 because I was curious to see what my calories burned were while getting ready for work. 922. This includes any huffing and puffing while put on hose which it no easy feat.

Tomorrow morning I will log how many calories I burned today and compare them with my calories tomorrow when I resume exercise. I'll keep you posted!!

Food for yesterday:

organic blueberry greek yogurt w/ 1T chocolate chia goodness, 1T carob chips, and a few frozen blueberries: 225 calories

chicken fajitas (grilled chicken, onions, green peppers, lettuce, 1 T sour cream, 1/2 C pinto beans) approx. 650-700 calories

1 serving pizza ( 410 calories)

1/4 C pistachios: 170 calories

Total: 1,480

My  Smooth Fitness Agile DMT X1 Elliptical Machine was delivered and set up for me today. Thanks to SmoothFitness.com for giving me the opportunity to try out their machine and review it on my blog.

When I got home to find an elliptical machine in the living room I couldn't believe that this is where my blog has taken me. Because of this I've met new people, tried new experiences, and also get to try new products. An elliptical! I didn't know exactly what to expect, but so far it has exceeded any expectation I may have had.

Josh used the machine for two hours while watching MSNBC saying "I feel like I'm not wasting time watching the news anymore, now I can get a workout". I agreed, now I can watch all of my guilty pleasure shows and movies, while working out. My first choice was Becoming Jane, because I'm a sucker for romance and couldn't justify watching it for a third time unless, well, I was exercising.

The DMT X1 Elliptical has personalized settings for up to six people (possibly eight, I can't remember) and keeps track of your height, weight, age, gender and specified fitness program. You can change your angle, and intensity. I kept my angle at about a 2 and my intensity at about a 4 (it goes to 16). I broke a sweat within the first 5 minutes and felt like I had a really intense workout after 60 minutes. I made it all the way to the dance scene where Jane and Thom first kiss.

There is a fan, programs with intervals of intensity, an automatic sleep-mode, a heart rate monitor and calorie counter. It is also very quiet. If it wasn't for Josh's random huffing or grunting I wouldn't have known he was even working out.

It's helpful and convenient for us to have a machine in our home, not only for watching TV (guilt free) but for rainy and soon coming snowy days when we can't make it outside for a walk. I like that I can wake up and throw on some clothes and not worry about scaring anyone at the gym with my morning face. 

The DMT X1 Elliptical from www.SmoothFitness.com:

***And. for the winners of my In Defense of Food drawing: Deb bel and Ered blue! congratulations and thank you all for your kind comments. I can't tell you how gratifying it is to hear that other people are on the same page as you are! I have so much more to explore on the topic of "real food".

Deb and Ered, send me your addresses to tokenfatgirl@gmail.com and I'll get your books right out to you.

We've made it to week four of our 5k training and thought I'd document the walk with photos:

Yesterday we had our third 3 mile session out on the road with Dog and I was definitely feeling the fatigue from Tuesdays walk. The hills were a little harder to push up today for some reason, even the dog wanted to be carried most of the way.

When I get home from the walk I have the same feeling that I do when I've had a hard workout. I've always downplayed walking as a "noneffective exercise", which is silly of me, especially when you have three heart rate climbing, sweat inducing hills to walk up. You don't hit them until the way home, so you have no choice if you really want to get home and lay on the couch.

That bit about walking being noneffective if a huge obstacle for me, I get in the "all or nothing" mentality with exercise (er most things) and feel like I have to do this huge amount of cardio to be effective which of course only burns me out in a very short amount of time. I'm learning that exercise doesn't always have to be this huge chunk of time or cardio that makes me look like a contestant on the biggest loser.

I'm reminding myself that even though it's not in the gym, it still counts and three miles is definantly a good workout for me.

I made a mental list of the food I ate yesterday and here it is, if you're interested.

Breakfast/lunch: quorn chik'n patty on a bun with honey mustard. This was really random, I was hungry and wanted something quick.

Later on I had a Sobe lifewater (100 calories for the bottle)

After cleaning I found some of the pecan pralines left over from the wedding and ate a handful of those.

Dinner was oven fried fish (2 fillets) and a salad with shaved Parmesan, green and yellow peppers and ranch spritz.

After the walk I was feeling hungry so I made some oats: whole oats, cinnamon, brown sugar, walnuts and water. I made this too sweet by not measuring out the brown sugar, I will do that next time.

I'm putting a lunch together for work this morning and will take a picture of it when I get there. We plan to walk another three miles tonight.