Day One Recap

I'm thinking about signing up for childbirth again---it's got to be easier than this YMCA challenge. Everything hurts: my thighs, my toes, that area where they say my abs should be, my arms....my hair.

And the worst part of all of this? I still look the same. Yup, day one in the books and I'm not even supermodel status yet. The disappointment is real, folks. Our first workout started with a fifteen minute "warm-up" that was easily the highest my heart rate has been since the Britney Spears' concert I attended in 2015.

We did butt kicks (literally and figuratively) up and down the court. There was time on the track; sprints on the bike. We wrapped TRX bands around our feet and did some crazy acrobatic stuff. It was like Cirque De Soleil up in that gym. We did lunges upon lunges upon lunges. I'm fairly certain the Willis Tower has less flights of stairs than the ones we ran. Up and down, up and down. I took a few breaks in the corner when I saw the camera come around. No way was I going to let them catch my backside lumbering up those steps like Chewbacca. Nope, not today WSOY.

So here's my predicament: day two of the challenge begins in three hours, which would be great...if I could move. I'm walking with my knees locked as to avoid using my thighs. Sitting is the hardest, which ironically is usually my favorite position. We're required to drink 64 ounces of water a day per our nutrition requirements. Seriously? I howl every time I bend my knees to sit down and pee. That much fluid will be the end of me! I thought about adding extra salt to my food to dehydrate myself a bit, but that would put me over the ridiculously low sodium limit. 

I stopped at the gas station on the way to take Amelia to school yesterday. I opened my car door and my favorite chapstick fell out onto the ground. I painfully realized that in order to retrieve it, I would have to bend over. I stared at it for a moment and considered leaving it where it lie.  I stood there outside of Circle K pondering life and I asked myself, "Is it genuinely your favorite? Are chapped lips really that terrible?"

I solved my problem fairly quickly upon returning home while also hitting a new rock bottom. I dug through Greta's toy box until I discovered one of these:

Judge me if you will, but ain't no shame in my robot claw game. 

Macros and Cheese

I fell asleep on the toilet last night. There I am, mid-pee at 2:30 in the morning, and BANG, I smack my head against the toilet paper holder. My whimpering is drowned out by Greta's babbling, which is also not quite loud enough to wake my hibernating husband. I contemplate throwing a shoe at his head, but decide it would take too much energy. It's off to the rocking chair I go. Heigh-ho.

I'm kind of in a bad place---not so much geographically, though I would prefer to be in Hawaii at the current moment (very mild flu activity). Greta Louise Hopkins does not sleep. No, seriously---like hashtag EVER. She keeps hours consistent with Las Vegas. It's actually quite incredible.

We've seen doctors. We've been to specialists. We've done the blood work and read the stupid books. We've done the cry-it-out method more times than I can count, yet it still results in Greta screaming, me crying, the dog barking, and Matt snoring.

I somewhat expected Greta to be a difficult baby early on. In addition to sleep, she hated baby food from the very first bite. From six months of age until her first birthday, all she would consume was a very limited diet of formula, squash, and oatmeal (kind of like me in college, I guess, except it was more like beer, Cheetoh's, and Tostino Pizza Rolls.)

Here I am with a 17 month old toddler and she's drinking formula like a newborn. Every other Tuesday, we drive to Springfield to visit a pediatric feeding clinic where we basically spend an expensive hour watching Greta throw crackers at the wall. We're literally paying someone to make her eat, whereas for $13.99 a month to Weight Watchers, I'm literally paying someone to make me stop.

You see I've lost the initial baby weight, yet I still have 27 pounds before I reach what I weighed back  in Switzerland. I'm on this vicious cycle--- I go back and forth on the Keto diet, and then I go back and forth to McDonald's drive thru.  So when Matt Whitehead asked me to join this Spring's YMCA/WSOY  ten week challenge, I hesitated, thought about it over Taco Bell, and then decided I had nothing to lose except those 27 pounds. It slipped my mind as I agreed to this fitness challenge that all of our workouts are videotaped and then broadcast online. I awoke to this realization in a cold sweat (one of the first sweats I've broken in a while). Not only do I have more of a radio body going on right now, but my coordination rivals that of a newborn fawn.

Part of this program includes a nutritional plan and logging our nutrition into an online application. We're to keep track of our "macros", which I just recently discovered was not short for macaroni. In addition, no fast food for ten weeks, and my sodium intake is seriously restricted. If you've ever shared a meal with me, you know that salt giveth me life.

So here goes nothing. Day one of my transformation. I spent my last day of freedom yesterday enjoying the heck out of some fast food and table salt. Warning: you may see a video of me later today in unflattering yoga pants gasping for air. Just please be kind and remember the camera adds ten pounds.