Adina’s Cute & Perky Blog!

In a complete and total single-mom-rush, I grabbed by oldest son’s hoody as I ran out the door last night.

I learned a new word the other day. Mami.

Isn’t it funny how when you hear something you’ve never seen before, but then you hear it everywhere?

An unexpected opportunity to worktout came my way yesterday.

 
I had planned to take an off day. Now, I didn’t want an off day, I just had more plans than I had hours.
Just mom duties. Games and such.

 
But my son decided after his game that he wanted to go to the gym instead of stay for the other games.
I didn’t have my gym bag, my shake, or my gloves, but I ALWAYS have exercise clothes in the car.
I only had thrity minutes, so I decided to do some cardio.

 
But thirty minutes later and my oldest was still not ready to be picked up.

 
So, I grabbed my old pair of lifting gloves that I keep in the car and worked chest.

 
And when I was through lifting, I grabbed the shaker bottle I keep in the car and added water to the powder already in it.

 
You see…

 
There is always a set of workout clothes and shoes in my car.

 
My old worn out lifting gloves stay where gloves should. The glove box!

 
I keep a shaker cup that I will never use in my car with exactly one serving of whey. Don’t we all have a million of those shaker cups and bottles that we never use?

And when I got back home I made sure the gloves went back to the safety of the box and I chose another demoted-from-regular-use exercise outfit to throw in the car. And yeah, another scoop and a half of whey went in another shaker bottle from my stash.

I have learned to expect the unexpected, and I plan accordingly.

Seeing the way Oprah Winfrey lost her weight was one of the things that inspired me to make one last ditch effort to lose weight myself before considering surgery.

I figured that if I ordered a prepackaged meal plan, it would be like having a personal chef. Everyone seemed to think that was the secret to her success, having someone cook for her.

So I tried it, and the rest, for me, was history.

But these days, I can barely turn on the TV or thumb through a magazine without being slapped in the face with the fact that Oprah now weighs in at 200 pounds.

Bless her heart. I don’t care how much money or fame you have, it’s not fun having to explain your weight to a nation, no make that world, full of people.

I’m into my third year of maintenance, I think. I’m not really sure. There was no magical day that I thought, “This is it. I’ve made it.”

Someone else had to tell me I made it, but that’s a whole different story.

Do I still look up to Oprah? You bet your bottom dollar I do. She figured out how to lose before I did. Long before I did. And she let the world share that journey with her.

And she still knows how to lose.

She just doesn’t know how to maintain.

It took me two years to lose. Two solid, hard, challenging years. There were times I thought I couldn’t do it, but I always saved myself with thoughts of, “This is only temporary.”

But maintenance is not temporary. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

While I could look into the future in see the end of my diet, there is no end to maintenance.

And it almost got the best of me. I ate 500 calories a day while exercising up to three times a day before a friend intervened, saying “Woman. You will never lose any more weight or keep it off acting like that.”

And that is when I learned that just like dieting requires a plan, so does maintenance.

But it’s a plan I can live with.

Oprah knows how to do it. She’s been down this road before. She just let herself forget that she is worth the time and effort it takes to figure out how to keep what she worked so hard to achieve.

I embrace my maintenance plan. I relish it, and I follow it. Because what it comes down to for me is this: there is no comparing the life I had before to the life I live now. And if all I have to do to keep it is follow a simple plan, I can do it.

A little magnetic tag reminded me of something yesterday.

You know those tags that are meant to keep you from shoplifting? The ones that should the salesperson forget to take one off, will make you turn three shades of red as you walk out the door when the alarm goes off and people come running. THOSE tags!

I was checking out yesterday with some jeans for my son. The stiff fabric made it hard to remove the tag. The sales girl tried over and over again to remove it, but she just couldn’t get it done.

I had already run into this girl. I needed a shirt that was too high to reach. She just handed me the pole to get it down. Usually they don’t like you to do this. Liability, I guess.

But I didn’t care. I just got it and moved on.

But there in the checkout stand, I was thinking, “Man. What is up with this chick?”

So I say, “Having a little trouble?”

“Yes. Now, when I slide this and you hear that little noise, can you pull off the top for me?”

“Surely.”

So I got it off, and the next thing I knew she was struggling again with the next one.

I knew the drill.

But this time I paid attention.

Her arms were about six inches shorter than they should be, and her hands were deformed almost to the point of unusable.

And no, I didn’t notice this before when I asked her for help. I look at faces, and little else.

So when she asked if I wanted the hangers, I said, “Whatever’s easier. I really don’t care.”

And I reached down to start folding the clothes for her, and she handed me a bag.

“Here. I have trouble with these too.”

So she scanned, while I folded and bagged.”

She had a sweet, happy little face with kind smiling eyes.

But you know why I helped her?

Because she asked.

Asking for help when you need it is not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.

I ran into a classmate in the grocery store yesterday. Actually, I ran into three, but this run-in had more meaning.

I had seen him and waved when I walked in. He was at the checkout stand, so I walked on. I mean, I hate it when people hold up the line. And I do like to visit, so I would have held it up.

But a few minutes later I found myself in the middle of a surprise hug! My friend had taken his groceries out and come back in to tell me, “You look absolutely adorable with your hair pulled back like that.”

I blushed.

And then I remembered something.

About a year ago there was a little tee-niny small picture of me in Oxygen magazine. They printed part of a letter I had written. I was proud, so I wanted to share it with my boyfriend.

I had my hair slicked back the way I had it at the store. And the only thing John could say was, “Slicking your hair back like that does nothing for me.”

No “congratulations” or even a “Wow. That’s neat.”

But, I have a choice.

I can listen to the one who said I’m adorable, or I can listen to the one who says it does nothing for him.

But isn’t that how it is? Just when we think we’re at the top, someone is there to remind us that we might not be.

And like with John and the magazine, those comments that tend to knock us down come when we’re at the highest rung of our own personal ladder of what we deem to be success.

But I have grown up girl ears. I’m not a little kid who has to listen and absorb everything.

I can choose to listen to what would lift me up or what would knock me down.

And y’all, I look adorable with my hair pulled back like this.

Yeah, I’m wearing it that way again today.

I think I’ll wear it this way every day, because my classmate says it’s a good thing.

And John? He just says, “Blah, blah, blah” …I can’t really hear him from up here.

I ran across a quote that said:

"Build upon strengths, and weaknesses will gradually take care of themselves."  –Joyce C. Lock

I thought of my friend the Nazi as soon as I saw it. He used to make me do wretched, horrible things at the track.

He would often make workouts for me to do at the field while his students were practicing football. He’s a football coach, and I logged many a cardio session with his boys! They’d be on the field, I’d be running my bleachers.

I would try to quietly leave mid-practice, but he’s always catch me and holler, “Hey, Zanolli. What’d you do today? Did you do what I told you to?”

“Yes, Coach. Fifteen sets of bleachers and walking lunges across the field and back.”

“That’s good, but you can do more. Next time, give me sixteen.”

And as you might guess, the number went up every single time. No matter how many I did. Even when I gave him one more than what he wanted!

But…he was building on my strength, and my strength was endurance.

And that endurance fixed many a weak area for me.

You run the amount of bleachers I did and top that with walking lunges across the field and back, you WILL notice changes in the gym! There is no doubt about it.

It took me by surprise one day.

All of the treadmills were taken, so I went to the stair climber. I used to hate that thing. It was a real weakness for me.

I always had to keep it on baby step mode. You know. The one people put it one and you think, “Why?”

THAT ONE!

But after a few weeks of lunges, that machine was nothing.

Like the quote said, I built on my strength and the weakness took care of itself.

In fact, every leg exercise at the gym became easier. I had to add weights to things I was barely able to do before.

So while I thought I was working on endurance, I was really getting rid of those weak spots.

Build on your strengths, and you might be amazed at what you find.

Before I won my battle with obesity, I saw things in a completely different light. Or was it darkness I was peering through?

Whatever it was, I failed to grasp the concept of how little time it would take to lose weight in the grand scheme of my life.

Yes, it surely did take me 2 years to lose the weight.

But…I am 39 years old. That’s not even one percent of my life!

It’s nothing. Not if you allow yourself to look at the big picture.

I used to make charts and graphs of how long it should take me to lose weight. Thing is, I underestimated the time it would take by a long shot.

I thought it would take one year. It took exactly double that. Two years. But y’all, I lost half my body weight. That’s a big deal. That’s certainly something worthy of my time, isn’t it?

Of course, it is.

Put those charts down. Stop calculating how long it’s going to take and just get after it.

If I had it to do all over again, don’t you think I would still give that small percentage of my life to do it? It’s not like I wasn’t living during that time. I was!

By the one year mark, I had it down! I was queen of my new lifestyle.

And that small chunk of time you’re giving to fix your life? You may be surprised that one day you will view it as the best of times. The moment you rose to the occasion and made your whole life better.

If no one ever told you, let me be the first. YOU are worth the time it’s going to take make this journey.

Hang in there. I’m pulling for you…and will be the whole time!

I remember waiting to join a gym, thinking I would eventually lose enough weight to be comfortable there. But after losing fifty pounds, I still wasn’t. Not one bit.

You see, going to a gym was outside my comfort zone.

It was so far outside my comfort zone it would have taken a mile-long piece of paper to be able to have my comfort zone and the gym on the same map!

And after that first fifty pounds were gone, I still had more than that left to go. So while I did look better, in my mind I still didn’t look better enough to walk through those doors.

I decided I would just have to live with my discomfort because I was going to have to have the gym in my arsenal of weapons against obesity if I were to make it.

Off to the gym I went.

Walking through those gym doors was one of the hardest things I have ever done. My face was flushed. My heart pounded. To say the least I was uncomfortable.

But isn’t that the only way to break out of your comfort zone? Don’t you have to go through moments of discomfort to get there?

Moments of discomfort lead to comfort.

It can be as simple as breaking in a new pair of gym shoes or as complex as joining a gym, but it all breaks down to the same thing.

I wasn’t going to get comfortable in the gym by exercising at home. I wasn’t going to be brave enough to move over to the free weights by staying on the machines.

And I would never have made it to where I am if I had stayed comfortable with the woman I was.

Being outside of your comfort zone is not a bad thing. Staying outside of it is.

I have a friend who is very anal. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but there is really no other way to put it! God love him. No, God tolerate him!

At the Christmas Party we went to last month, he brought LABELED Jell-O shots. He came armed with a cooler in one hand and a color-coded chart in the other!

Now I ask you, how many times have you been in a situation where Jell-O shots are involved and charts would have been of ANY use at all?!

Do you see what I’m saying here?

Well, our same group had a New Year’s Eve party. Money was pooled and $750 of fireworks were purchased. We were not kidding around here! We were going for the big show!!

But while the rest of us were relaxing that afternoon in anticipation of the night ahead, he was making a chart!

The smaller fireworks were separated from the bigger ones and not included on said chart.

And on this chart he left room for a rating system. Assigning one of our group to place anywhere from one to five stars beside the name based on crowd appeal.

In other words, if we made lots of noise it got five stars.
But his mistake was in leaving one blank line before the last one. The grand finale.

That was just the space I needed to write in one more firework name: ANAL ANAL ANAL DON! (Yeah, his name is Don.)

Because you see, I know my friend well enough to know he would have so much faith in his list that he would fail to notice it had been added last minute!

So, in the dark of the night, with flash light in tow, I hear him walking the pier saying, “Where is the one called ANAL? I know it’s around here somewhere. It’s got to be. It’s on my list.”

But you know what? That was important enough to him to make a list. And he WILL have that list at the ready for the next firework occasion. Because that is important to him.

It took a little extra time, but it was worth it in his eyes. It’s a tool he can refer to again and again.

And that is what my workout log is to me. It’s important to me and it’s a tool I have at the ready when I need it. Some days, when I’m just not sure what I want to do, I will pick up and old log and do exactly what I did on a previous day.

Or sometimes I just like to see how far I’ve come.

And you can bet it was fun when I was logging my weight and got to watch it falling from 256 to now!

It takes a little time and effort, but I’m worth it and so are you!
But just wait till I go to the firework store early next time and slap a label on a box that says: ANAL ANAL ANAL DON! Because I did put five stars by it after all.