Haven’t posted in a good chunk of time, as the Christmas Season usually kills me….not that I’m really busy or anything. I am a last min person, and stress myself out by not doing anything I should, when I should.

My last post was about how I was going to make all these wonderful healthy changes in my life, which is funny since all I have been doing lately is watching Lost Seasons 1-5 and eating Candy Canes. The Second to last episode of Lost is actually playing as I type this. LOST, BTW, is freakin insane, in a good way. I watched it often, but not EVERY episode until now, so I knew the major WOA moments, but it’s the smaller connections that is making it exciting to watch. I actually watched most of Season 5 as it aired, but watching it again, now with an understanding of all the other crazy not randomness,  is exciting.

Enough of my Lost babble, my goal of finishing this before Season 6 has killed all my reading time. I had to return three unread Library books, which I am ashamed to admit.  I am reading “The Maze Runner” now which totally fits into my Lost theme right now.

I’ve been having a bit of an issue lately, a kid guessed my age at 55, either he was busting me, or kids really are not skilled at age guessing, since I still get handed Children’s menus at age 27. I went to a Mary Kay party, and was told I have to use Anti-Aging products…Maria was told she was okay to use the young people’s products but I being above 23, am a GONER. THEN a girl told me that I looked like a teenager…except for my skin, which I WANT TO PRETEND meant that I have better skin than a teen…right? That’s what she meant…do I suddenly have wrinkles? AHHHH.

So at the Party I bought some anti-aging face wash, and moisturizing cream, and something for dark circles that I fully expect will not work.

I’ve never been a product, or makeup girl, I use just what I need to get buy, foundation, blush, and lip color. I tend to buy fancy cleansers and such and never use them, so I fully except this to be the case.

Maybe if I actually start using big girl makeup and products I will no longer look 12 to the older folk (I don’t think the 10 year olds thinking I look middle age is a true testament to how I look.)

I’m debating on buying a wii/wii fit for my exercise funk I am in….or winter running gear and just force myself out of the house.

I like to make lists, To Do Lists especially, which is one of the reasons I bought a smartphone, I can make electronic To Do Lists…well that and I felt peer pressure from my Twitter pals :P But the trouble with me and my lists, I tend to load them up soooooo long that they are overwhelming and they scare me so much that I avoid looking at them and checking things off. Yesterday I was making a mental list of all the things I need to do to be healthy and happy and it was just so long that I thought I might as well give up before I begin, when I had an idea. I could challenge myself to do one thing at a time, and work my way through the list every week, look at short term goals, and not the mountain of I NEED TO LOSE 30LBS and do this this this this this and this thoughts.

So this week will be the start of my HHC, a personal challenge to develop one healthy habit at a time, some of them will be very simple and relate straight to health matters (exercise and eating specifically), but I some will be more for mental health, learning to de-stress (if that is possible for me.) my HHC will be one simple change I institute for the week, so that I start slowly changing over my daily behaviors to create healthy habits that I can stick with.

Every week, on Sunday or Monday I will blog my HHC goal (and update on how the previous week went)….Please feel free to comment on the blog entries, it might guilt me into sticking into the challenges if I know people are reading this. If you would like to do a HHC for yourself you can comment on the weekly blog entry with your HHC post and maybe stop by someone else’s to offer support.

if you want to play along I think the first step will be to start brainstorming a list (I told you about the list love I have) of weekly goals you might want to try to reach, just to have a starting point. As I continue I will be adding to my list, and maybe even taking suggestions, sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book…but you know with exercise haha

The List

Eat Breakfast (I never do this)

Eat Lunch regularly (I…sometimes do this)

Eat Dinner regulary (you’d think if the lack of food I eat I would be skinny, but then I do things like eat a bowl of goldfish crackers in the bath and ice cream for a late dinner and…yeah)

Exercise in the Mornings (my walk away the lbs DVDS)

Exercise in the Afternoons or Evenings (I have a lovely elpitial machine that I hang my clothes to dry on)

Wean myself off juice (I am a juice addict lately)

Wean myself off candy (I am a diabetic waiting to happen)

Learn to cook

Set up a cleaning schedule

Watch a movie a week

Read a Book a week

Those are just some ideas that will be fleshed out as I choose them for challenges. This week my HHC will be to eat Breakfast Everyday which sounds silly, but breakfast eating (and really a eating schedule in general) is something I have issues with. I know what I am SUPPOSED to do, but I can’t make myself follow through, but maybe blogging about it will make me do what I am supposed to.

I’m going to hold off on the exercise challenges until I am over this sinus infection. I’ll keep up with my twice a week exercise date with the girls from work, but for today at least my running is out. Since I am coughing up a storm, I thought it was safer to start of my road towards eating like a normal person this week.

What do you all eat for breakfast that might appeal to an anti-breakfast girl?

My friends, I am a stubborn person, many of you already know this, sometimes I get stubborn about pointless things or really annoying things actually…but this is an example of when it actually benefits  (you know, unless I get sick)

I am now on Week 4 of the Couch to 5 K Program. It hasn’t been easy, mostly because I don’t have stamina, the actual running doesn’t hurt and the next day I feel fine, but mid-run my brain starts shouting at me “WAIT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DON’T YOU KNOW WE LIKE TO WALK, AND SLEEP, WE LIKE TO SLEEP, AND WATCH TV on DVD (on season 4 of Angel right now) WHY ARE YOU RUNNING, THIS IS INSANE!!!!

My brain is very loud. Sometimes it curses, sometimes it cries.

C25K Program: http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml

C25K Podcast I love with bouncy music: http://chubbyjones.libsyn.com/

So today was, run 3 mins, walk 90 sec, run 5 mins, walk 2 mins, then repeat, I believe. The first half I did decent, slow, the college boy and HS girl passed me out easy, but decent, as I out ran the mom-age lady on the track. Then, the rain came, slow at first, during my second three min run it decided to pour. The mom, HS daughter, and college boy all ran for the hills (or I should say, the hill, where we had all parked.)

I decided to take that famous stubborn streak and actually do something useful with it. I rain the three mins in the rain getting soaked, then looped around to the bleachers, grabbed my Hoodie stuck it over my head and kept going. The Rain stopped by the time I had to do my second 5 mins. That run was actually harder, maybe because I was not distracted by the rain anymore.

Hopefully Thurs when I go again I can do the run without flopping around like a dying fish, but hey, exercise ain’t perdy, in fact, it’s scary, SEE:

It passed quick but was rainy enough to make me look like a wet rat:

The fact that my shirt, keys, and shoes match was not on purpose,

I don’t even LIKE pink, it just looks decent on me with my annoyingly pale skin:

This Shirt WAS light pink when I started, the bottom still…sort of is:

Tired, Soaked, but accomplished, time for me

and the Corolla to head off into that sunset:

(Sure, it got pretty AFTER the run)

Before I talk about today’s running experience I wanted to post a writing exercise from a College Creative Writing Class. I wrote this as I began my first major weight loss attempt. I was told by a Dr. I had to lose 30lbs or he would reschedule my surgery, so I went a bit crazy with the exercise. It was hard getting into it, especially at the college gym, so I wrote this about what was going through my head, I feel it is fitting since I am starting this whole wacky thing again:

May 6, 2002

Step one, two, three, four….up down, up down….doing well, feeling that burn. The body is an amazing thing. It can be toned, manipulated, and stretched. We pull it, crunch it, tighten it, roll it, and sometimes (if you are the woman on the yoga tape I watched last night) you can twist it into a nice little pretzel. PRETZELS….my favorite thing to do with pretzels is to put them in vanilla ice cream and top the whole thing off with chocolate syrup and…

BAD, MELISSA, BAD!

Now where was I? Right, Right…the human body. The sense of power one gets from being capable of using it, attempting to conform it, mold it. Each step we take is a miracle, whether of science, or faith, whichever you choose. We are nothing but a mish-mash of organs, muscles, bones, and yet somehow everything can come together. Think of all the great things we as species have managed to do; without that first step we would have, could have, done none of it.

I marvel at this thing called the human body; I find it as complex and spiritual as the soul. Worthless clumps of clay we are not. Without this actual construct, there would be no purpose for individuality at all, no place to house this celebrated soul. We would pretty much be blobs, and I can’t think of any blob with a individualist mind set, can you? If I were a blob I would be far too annoyed to worry about being personal.

Now the count down continues. Still pushing…8 minutes left. Sweat falling, chest heaving, eyes watering, willpower faltering, legs turning into rubber…

KEEP STEPPING, YOU MORON!

The body is a great wonder, remember? What a wuss I am, the queen wuss….bow before me. I can’t even stand on this damn machine for a full 10 minutes. All of these women next to me look like something from a fitness magazine. How is it some people still manage to look like models when they are sweating like pigs, I ask you? There they are with their cute little gym ensembles, and those miniature bottles of water. Then, there’s me…hair escaping from my ponytail, bangs glued to my face. I bet I am a rather interesting shade of red right now, perhaps a deep purple. If we were on the road of life, these girls would be flying past, while I just concentrate on trying to walk without tripping!

Six minutes and 23 seconds to go. Time seems to have stopped….no, not stopped; it actually seems to be moving backwards!

GET YOUR MIND OFF IT…

Do anything…”Your a grand old flag your a high flying flag and forever in peace way you wave….” Okay, that cinches it…exercise has driven me insane. I’m on a stepper, singing patriotic numbers in my head to pass the time.

Who cares about the mysteries of human function and design? I feel hot, disgusting, and generally annoyed. Sometimes I wonder why we even care. I understand all the health concerns and the constant “be fit, stay fit” mentality. But is it really worth all the trouble? Is it worth the sore muscles, and the twisted ankles?

Why is there such a big focus on what we look like? It’s like this constant struggle uphill. If we slip we don’t start from where we left off, we usually roll all the way back down the hill.

You have to maintain it too. It’s not as if you work out for some amount of time, reach your goal and then you magically stay at that level…POOF! You have to always keep striving to guard all you sweated for. One wrong step, an ice cream binge or a month of laziness can push you down that hill.

I read once that the average woman is a size 12. What’s so bad about being average? Why do people have to live their lives trying to be something else, striving for ideals set by society. It’s your own ideals you have to worry about, they don’t have to mimic the ones around us. Supermodels shouldn’t be worshiped; it’s their occupation, nothing more. Some people fix cars for a living, some teach, and some match our culture’s stereotype for beauty.

Okay, finally done. I guess I could say that it wasn’t that bad…but that would be a lie. I’ll come back; I know that. Deep down there is a part of me reaching for that crazy ideal of beauty that I will never actually obtain. It’s as if it is imprinted on our DNA to be unhappy about the way we look, to always attempt to make ourselves into someone else. Exercise is good for you; I know that. It’s important not to let yourself go completely. Exercise is one way we can manually try for self improvement, something we can have physical control over in our lives. We live for the want of control. I’ve decided something though, while I stood on this demon machine for 10 minutes…I bet Hell is a Gym.

Week 1 Day 2 of  The Couch to 5 K program complete. Running in the rain isn’t really as bad as I thought it might be, plus some guy my age was running too so I didn’t feel that insane being out there with the drizzle (okay toward the end it was less drizzle more actual rain.) He passed me many times, not as many as the Grandma yesterday when I was only walking though, so that’s good.

The first week of this beginning runner challenge sounds very easy, run for 1min, walk for 2 and repeat. 1 min sounds like nothing, but when you are used to only walking it turns into one longggg 60 seconds. Like with the story I posted above, I often yell at myself (internally) when I exercise, calling myself names, I’m not very encouraging, unless it is for other people.

Today, I had three thoughts repeating over and over in my head,

1.) Quit, just Quit now, or maybe just do week one over and over again, because you don’t get any further than this. Is being skinny worth this? You’re not even fat, just short and chubby, you can totally live with short and chubby…you are running…in the rain….this is crazy!!!

2.) Why is this a big deal? I can do this, it’s just about moving my legs, which is not a problem I have. I’m not one of those people who refuse to wear SHORTS EVER to hide their legs, I live in shorts because my legs are normal, hell, they are even strong, all those years of dance classes. I mean I was doing all the wrong moves in Dance Class, and at the wrong beats, but it was 13 years of exercise, had to do something, so shut up and run already.

3.) I wish this guy was not here so I could sing along with the music on my ipod, but I can’t with this podcast anyhow. When I get an iphone I can DL the C25K ap and listen to my own music as I run, plus I will have to get the REMEMBER THE MILK ap, and some form of GPS and….

Apparently I am schizophrenic when I exercise.

I’ve been on a “HOLY CHEESEDOODLES HOW DID YOU GAIN THAT MUCH WEIGHT AGAIN, AHHHH YOU NEED TO EXERCISE AND…STOP EATING CHEESEDOODLES ACTUALLY” kick lately. Haha. In the last few weeks I managed to drop 5lbs by walking most nights and remembering to eat at least two meals a day. I have issues with food, I like food, I just don’t like to eat. I know my energy is low with no eating, I know I feel dizzy, I know my body stores fat and it kills my metoblism, so the common sense thing would be remembering to eat breakfast and lunch right? Apparently I have no common sense.
I think much of this goes back to HS where I would not eat lunch because I was concerned that EVERYONE was looking at me and thinking “Why is she eating at all? She is too fat to eat!!” Now, no one ever thought that mostly they were thinking “I wonder if Tim likes me, I know he is dating Samantha, but he looked at me during volleyball, and it was a meaningful look!” or “Damn do we have a quiz today in Psych, because I forgot to study because XFiles was on last night and it was a good black oil seeping from the eyes episode!” Well, maybe not…I imagine my classmates as love crazed geeks I guess, BUT the Black Oil Episodes from the XFiles were always good.

Where does this leave me? Inconsistant eater, non-cooker, it leaves me making mircowaved food and doing to Wendys at 10pm because I forgot to eat the thing I put in the microwave. In general, it’s bad. So I started trying to do this whole lunch thing, and it worked for a bit, breakfast, well breakfast is harder but I’ll get there.

I started finding places to walk, and then, one day in a fit of total stress, I started to run off some agression, I didn’t run far but it felt good. So I added that in more, and listened to my friend on facebook talk about the Couch to 5 K Program and decided to try. So I’m going to keep track of it via the blog. Today was my first day of week 1 and in general it sucked. Apparently running for a min then walking for 2 is HARD, maybe not the first time, but by the 5th cycle I started calling the nice man on the podcast profanities.

I am home for the Summer so I kidnapped my younger brother to do it with me, usually this would be a bad idea, David was always the sports guy in the family, so much that he seemed to not be related to Jeff and I. I suffered through softball by watching the butterflies in outfield and went to 13 years of Dance classes to talk to my friends and then swore every year I would break my leg on purpose to not be in the recital, actually I think Jeff ran track, so maybe I’m the only real sports issue. David was always something though, one of the best little leaguers I saw play haha and really all sports and outdoor activities.

So why on earth would I align myself with THAT? Well, this last half a year or so, due to some medicine he is on, David gained enough weight that I can now run with him without him COMPLETELY leaving me in the dust. Not good for him, but makes it so I don’t have to suffer alone!

I chose to run at a half complete park by my parent’s house, it was muddy and rocky, the next day I do this (THURS I THINK) I will maybe go to an actual park. I am going to my apartment Tues and Wed so I may have to do Monday, Thursday  and Saturday as my three days this week. I plan to kidnap Pam and walk at night as well, or my mother.

I know I am overweight, not exceptionally so, though I am only 5foot, so I am apparently supposed to weight 105lbs, HAHAHAAAA My goal is getting back to 130, which some girls would think of as heavy, but I’m not some girls, that was a good weight for me, so only 21lbs to loose! *drops dead*

Start of Week One Weigh In: 151.2lbs

My College had a 5 year reunion a few weekends back, which I attended with some of my ol’ college buddies. While sorting through my reunion pictures I could not help but do a compare, contrast with pictures from my college days. Things have changed, I was chubby at the start of college, skinny in the middle and chubby again, so all the pictures of me are…interesting. I got rid of those very lovely bangs I was sporting Freshmen and Sophmore year o’college. I…still look 12 though.

What I do know is, I have changed so much since 2000, it’s really insane to think about. Freshmen year of college I would never have imagined I would be able to drive down to York by myself as stupid as that sounds, or that I would have been living in Albany taking the bus all over the city doing lord knows what, or living here now, working as a librarian. Freshmen year I didn’t know myself at all, I was scared and quiet. I came out of my shell in college, as cliche as that sounds, it is true. I wasn’t worried about how I looked, I wasn’t worried about who liked me, I was having fun with great people. Since graduating I have started to revert back to the old me, the self-hating,  sad Melissa, which is something I am afraid of, and am not sure how to fix. But I’m not giving up without a fight. I would like to be confident, and not always view myself as a child, or as ugly, or as fat, or as stupid. (I have some self esteem issues apparently..oops!)

York College
2000-2004:

York College 5 Year Reunion
May 2009: