JJanet

I’m chicken shit. Since my last blog, I decided I really needed to be direct with umbrella dude. I didn’t want to involve anyone at the gym without another opportunity to be really upfront and honest with how uncomfortable he was making me. I gave myself a HUGE talking to every morning before my gym session. It sounded something like this:

“Be DIRECT with him! Tell him again about how you’re not interested. While talking to him, keep your voice neutral, make eye contact, give him a cool smile, but nothing on your expression should give him any indication that your indirect communication is contradicting what you’re saying to him. If possible, throw some humor in there, and joke about how you think he might be a stalker.”

So that was my game plan. Miraculously, I have not seen him for a few days. But this morning, I saw him. He was walking towards me, and I spotted him just as I turned the corner from the lockerroom. But he hadn’t seen me. Yet. I was unprepared. I forgot what I was going to say.

So I hid behind a plant.

I ACTUALLY HID BEHIND A PLANT!!! I mean, when I realized what I did, I pretended I was just moving out of the way to tie my shoelace. I’m SUCH A COWARD! I’m annoyed with myself! Shit. What made it even worse was that the stupid plant did not even remotely hide me. DUH! HAHAHAHA!!!! So he sees me of course, and goes, “What are you doing in there?”

“Ooh.. I’m just.. tying my shoe. I gotta run!” And with that, I fled. I was so busy trying to get out of there, I sort of ran into this woman pretty hard. Ughhhh. It wasn’t a promising start to the day. But once I got to the weights, I took a deep breath, looked at myself in the mirror and smiled at myself. I told myself it was going to be okay, there would be another chance to practice being assertive and proactive, and that I was a work in progress. Zorba the Greek once described himself as “the whole catastrophe”, and I often think of that phrase as I assess my faults, and nitpick myself to death! I know there is nothing wrong with bettering oneself… but something I also need to remember is that while I frantically ‘fix’ myself, I also need to accept all aspects of ME. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Anyway, I had a nice session at the weights (total body circuit training), with an hour of spinning afterwards! I also met another women at the gym. A fellow Canadian! I could NOT have been more delighted! I smiled all the way home.

My laptop, while temporarily stablized, will be giving out on me soon. I am starting to look around for another one, and am using this time to clean up all my old files. I found a picture of me from last winter, and think I’d like to get back to about this size.

And if you want a laugh, scroll down and have a look at my yearbook picture from the 12th grade. *Cringes*.

LMAO!!!!

May’s almost up, and I was thinking about how I did with my goals, and what I need to change in order to make June an even more successful month! Today marks my 20th workouts (yay to Redblokey and I for meeting our workout goal!), but my clean diet needs… a bit of work. My cheat meals/refeeds this month have been HUGE. They are like… mini-binges!! The gorge-fests have counteracted the effects of my workouts, so I am still pretty much in the same place. Hehehehe. To be honest, I rather like the way I look right now. My bodyfat is certainly not at it’s lowest (beginning of April), and neither is my weight. But I have TONS of energy, I feel FABULOUS, and with clothes on, I feel I am probably looking the best I ever have! So May was probably a good month to stay pretty much same.

But I’m going to be in a bikini for a week in June (going to Mexico! ), so for 3.5 weeks, I want to shift my goal towards looking good in a swimsuit, not just in clothes. Which means bringing that bodyfat DOWN!!! Here’s my plan for how I am going to get there:

- Workout 6 days a week, Keep calorie range below 1500, and 1 cheat ITEM (not meal!) a week. Also, I am doing a small experiment with my diet. I like to workout early in the morning, but my breakfasts were weighing me down. So instead of eating oatmeal and eggwhites before my workout, I am just sticking to a cup of plain greek yogurt (f-a-g-e). I know most people recommend having carbs before a workout, but I’ve done that for months now, and I would like to see if I notice any positive changes having a breakfast that is not quite so carb-heavy. So a typical day of eating will look like this:

Breakfast- Plain Yogurt

PWO - Sweet potato, whey/casein shake

PWO2- 1/3 cup of oats, 5 egg whites, serving of PB2, steamed green beans

Dinner - 6 ounces of ground chicken breast, 1 teaspoon of olive oil, spinach leaves

Snack - 1 cup of yogurt, 1 serving of PB2, celery sticks

Prebed Snack- Chicken breast, 4 ounces OR 1 can of tuna, 1 teaspoon of olive oil

And the breakdown: 1303 calories, 172 grams of protein, 89 grams of CHO, 30 grams of fat, bringing the percentages to 53% protein, 28% CHO, and 19% fat. Hmmm. The calorie range seems low, but there are several little things throughout the day that I don’t count, and my refeed item will be mostly CHO based, so I think I’m good to go!

I will take a progress picture on June 19 (ugh!). I have avoided taking those dreaded bikini shots because I felt sooooo horrible about myself for days after I took them, but it helps keep me focused, and the bit of accountability I have really steers me in the right direction. So that’s my focus for the next little while!

I have to tell you guys about a small victory I had! I met some new friends! They are fellow gym-goers, and last week, we went out to lunch after our workout! I could NOT have been happier! I do not know if it is the type of friendship that will be deep and lasting, but it was SO much fun to be a girl, and enjoy the senseless, useless gabbing we did! I don’t think I stopped smiling for days!! I’m so lucky!!!!

And an update on umbrella dude. He is officially getting on my nerves. I no longer feel like being polite to him. He is starting to ask more personal questions like, “What’s your address! I want to send you flowers”. And “When will you be at the pool next? What time?”, and “Where will you be going after you workout?”. Invasive much?! My new strategy now will be to, 1) Not smile anymore, 2) Not make eye contact with him, 3) Keep answers short and vague, 4)Remind him that I am not interested in any sort of friendship/relation with him, 5)Run to my new gym buddies for protection and get them all to give him a weird look. LOL.

Hope everyone is happy and healthy!

I’ve been taking a lot of classes at the gym lately to help with the cardio minutes (so that I can smoke bull-dogz in our cardio contest! hehehe!), and I’ve really been enjoying the spinning classes. It’s a fun way to make 60 minutes pass by in a flash, and forces me to work in intervals instead of my usual steady state sessions. But damn, sitting on that seat makes for a sore tush. At the end of today’s class, there were a few women standing by their bikes, discussing how wearing biking shorts alleviates a bit of the discomfort, and I asked one of them where she got the bike shorts she had on…

… and it turned out that she was not wearing any bike shorts.

She was really offended at my assumption. Yes, yes, ass, u, me.

Oops.

She hissed out, "I’m NOT wearing biking shorts. This", while gesturing towards her butt, "is EXACTLY why I’m GOING to these classes!". She sent me a glare that had me wishing I could blend into the walls, and she and her friend sent me one last withering glance before they left.

LOL. I felt SUPER horrible. But LMAO!! Why do I say the dumbest things to people?

I’m so bummed! My beautiful little laptop gave out on me. It was only a little over a year old!! Piece of garbage. HMPH! Yuck. I had sooooooooooooooooooooo many files on there that I am so SAD to be losing! I could just KICK myself for not copying them over to my external harddrive! UGH. So now I am stuck with my desktop. Which I hate. I hate vista. *rants*.

 Okay. Enough venting. I am grateful for my desktop, vista and all!

I have made my butt over to 10 of my workouts this month, so I am in line with the first half of my May goal! The clean diet part… well. I am eating cleanly, but something’s come over me in April and it’s carried over to May. I am just not willing to sacrifice the foods as much any more! I guess what it comes down to is lately, I would rather eat the dirty foods than see progress. On the plus side, I am doing enough cardio and lifting that it’s not doing much damage, but I am not progressing, either. A part of me feels like I’m just spinning my wheels and I feel frustrated that the desire to eat junk is stronger than my desire to see progress. A fairly simple problem with an easy solution, really. I guess I will have to find some way to want a tight and toned body more than being a social leper with my eating.

All right. So bring it! C’mon, you guys. Please remind me why I want the bod more than I want the foods! Shame me!!

So do you remember umbrella dude? Since I wrote about him last week, I have seen him almost EVERY time I’ve been at the gym! And I’ve seen him at Whole Foods as well, which is just down the street from the gym. LOL. Do you ever run into someone at the market, go your separate ways in opposite directions, and keep running into each other in the next aisles? And then it’s super awkward because you’ve done the small talk thing already and you have nothing else to talk about. So you move on, go to the next aisle, and then you keep running into them? So you get the bright idea to skip an aisle or two… which is GREAT… but they did the same thing as well, so you keep running into each other? No? Just me? LOL. A few days after he walked me to my car, we finished our workouts at about the same time, and we were both walking to the changeroom, and he asked if I wanted to grab a coffee. I declined, and since then, he is still really friendly… bordering on flirtatious. Like… giving me lots of compliments and such. Today, I saw him and he had noticed I wasn’t there yesterday. I was wearing this clip in my hair to keep my bangs out of my face, and he commented on how cute it was, and then he reached in and tucked some of my hair behind my ear, and goes, “There! And now you’re perfect!”. LOL. I laughed uncomfortably, and mumbled something about needing to leave. I changed reaaaaaaally slowly, and we still finished at the same time, and he walked me out to my car again.

Eh. It’s sort of an uncomfortable situation (I don’t need any assistance in solving it. I am just airing out some of my thoughts) that I got myself into. I am capable of getting myself out of it, too! I just… don’t like confrontations. I (am) contemplat(ing/ed) switching around my whole workout schedule just so I wouldn’t have to see him anymore. LOL. The old Janet would probably join another gym so she wouldn’t have to deal with it. LMAO. How funny that I am not even joking a little bit with that last statement. Old habits die hard, I guess. It’s strange being raised to value other people’s feelings and considerations more than your own, and making the transition to go the other way. Although… I can’t place the blame entirely on the way that I was raised because my sister is nothing like me, and we were treated pretty much the same way. So I guess it’s both nature and nurture showing its wicked passive head in me! All right, then. I’ve claimed it, I’ll solve it.

And just for giggles. I got some pictures back from when I traveled last winter. I went to Amsterdam and had some pot for the first time. Here’s a picture of me incredibly high. LMAO!!!!!

My fellow bloggers! I can’t believe May is already here! My goal for this month is to make a combined total of 40 workouts with this Bloke’s help! I tracked the exact number of days I was at the gym for the past few months and decided I needed the numbers to be higher and more consistent! So we’ll see how this goes! My diet has been sorta kinda clean. But not really. Okay, it’s sucked the big turd since I got back from Vegas. ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, if I must be completely honest. It sucked for ALL of April. *cringes*. Hehehehehe. But that’s changing now! May WILL be a month of GREAT nutrition.

Maybe.

I was talking to one of my closest friends. She lives abroad so our phone conversations are far and few in between because of the time difference. But anyway, we were gabbing like girls do, and I was marveling to her how NICE I think people are! For example, it was raining earlier, and I didn’t bring an umbrella (I never do - it doesn’t really bother me when I get a bit wet!), but this guy who was in the front area of the gym went out of his way to walk me to my car covering me with his umbrella. HOW NICE is that? So I was telling her that sometimes it amazes me how kind people are.

She rolled her eyes at me. (I COULD TELL!!!) And she was like, “Don’t be so intentionally stupid, Janet. He probably had NO kind intentions whatsoever, and was probably using it as an opportunity to talk to you and get to know you better.”

EH. So I ROLLED my eyes right back at her (And I know SHE could tell, too! Hehehe!), and said that I wasn’t about to assume that any time a guy did something kind for me, it was because he found me attractive. How stuck on myself would I be to assume that? It reminded me of fair Pixi’s entry about the dude and the email and stuff. I mean, I’m not a complete idiot, and sometimes they make it clear that they are interested in me, but other times when it’s just kind gestures like that, to me, that’s just human kindness.

It makes me wonder how hesitent people must be to do something kind for somebody else because their intentions will be misunderstood. For instance, I have taken to smiling at people all the time these days. Men, women, children. Men almost always smile back. Women seem to smile back about half the time, and the other half of the time, they turn away and avoid me. Children always smile back or glance away shyly, but I notice their mothers often seem to think I have other intentions or something! Sheesh, people! It’s just a smile!

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. A kind gesture is JUST a kind gesture. I would prefer to think people are good and kind rather than think they are interested in me. Does that make me intentionally stupid? Who knows. I’m just going to keep smiling.