Lisa's fat camp

So I don't have $10,000 for fat camp, or the inclination or time to stop my life and do some fad thing. I've decided instead to put myself on a strict food/exercise program and have that be my top priority. I am just finishing up my eighth week and am pleased with my general downward climb, slow and steady as it may be.

Here's the plan: I am back on Weight Watchers. I stick within my daily points limit and don't use much if any of the extra weekly points. I aim for 30 activity points a week. (For non-adherents, how WW's current iteration works is this: You're allotted a certain number of "points" to eat a day based on weight, age and activity level. My daily point level is 23. It will decrease as I lose weight and as I age. If I took a job entailing heavy physical activity, it would increase. Foods are assigned points value based on calories, fat and fiber. Roughly, 50 calories equals 1 point, though higher fiber reduces points and fat increases points. In addition, you are allowed to eat 35 points more over the course of a week, though I have less success when I eat many of the extra points.) In addition, you "earn" activity points by exercising or engaging in strenuous activity. Activity points can be swapped for food points, but I think only after you've used up your additional 35 weekly points, which I never come close to doing. So I never swap them.

A lot has been written/said about Weight Watchers. While it has its down sides, I personally really like the program. It's fairly easy to follow. If you follow it, it works. It takes a lot of the figuring and guesswork and game-playing out of weight loss for me. No foods are prohibited, so if I really want something that's high in points, I just figure out how to fit it in or I eat a small portion or I take a hard look at myself and realize that really I don't want it because it's not worth the points to me.

My exercise plan, like my eating plan, has been to take it one day at a time. I have been doing something just about every day -- sometimes more, sometimes less, but something. I generally walk Bandit, when I get up, on the little dirt road that we call Fishwick down in Ganther Hollow. It's 1.8 miles roundtrip, and sometimes I detour up into the woods. It's about a 35-minute walk at a moderate pace. Then, I either go to the gym and swim 40 or 50 laps or I go for a longer walk without the dog. The longest so far was walking from my house in Baldwin to PNC Park on the North Side, a little more than 8 miles, with a lot of hills. It took me just under 3 hours with a few stops to get some water and rest my feet. I hadn't had much sleep the night before or I would've enjoyed it more but I couldn't complain. The weather was perfect -- cool and a little misty rain near the end of the walk. I love walking through neighborhoods and seeing all the little diners and bars and daycares and churches. Pittsburgh has a lot of character and generally people are fairly friendly. Some of the neighborhoods were pretty trashed -- Beltzhoover in particular stood out as rundown and depressing and really needing some street crews out there picking up garbage off the streets.

I ended up at the Pirates game and they looked awful. I did get a free T-shirt and was amused by the bleacher bums -- a guy in a gorilla suit and another guy dressed as a pirate. They let no bad play by the Bucs go unnoticed and the comments were often vulgar and funny. Still, I got freezing cold and hadn't brought a jacket. So I left just as the 7th inning was starting and drove home for a shower before heading back to work (Lou had driven the car in that morning for me and parked it in the lot at the Clark Building, where I work).

I kind of have it in my head, punishing as that walk was, to do it every time there's a T-shirt Thursday throughout the season. I wouldn't mind company for the walk though I was fine by myself too -- lots of time to think, and accompanied by my old college roommate and friend Carol Curtis singing her CD "Pink Cafe" on my iPod. I was pretty darn sore sitting at my desk all night after that walk on concrete and had to take the next day real easy -- just walked Bandit and left it at that.

priorities, priorities

So, Lou is gone for a week and I am trying to keep myself in high gear.

I kicked butt this last week on the exercise front -- walked South Park, end to end plus extended the route through the woods a bit (5 miles). Walked to PNC Park for T-shirt Thursday, including surmounting Knox Avenue, which looked like a mother fucking Alp when I thought I had finished all the hills, and turned off Brownsville just to see that Monster of a Mountain looming ahead of me (8 miles). Did an Ohiopyle scrambling hike with the Pittsburgh Hiking Meetup group -- not horribly far but a fast pace for a short person like me, over a lot of rocks and roots, and in my rush I twisted my ankle badly near the beginning and struggled with it the rest of the way (6 miles). Plus two other days I swam -- 40 laps the first day; 50 the subsequent time. And I was very careful with food, especially careful not to overcompensate for the workouts. I was real pleased with my effort.

And then I got on the scale at weight watchers and had lost a whopping 0.6 pounds. Yup, six-tenths of a measly pound in a kickass week. I didn't let myself get too down about it -- as long as I'm in this for the long haul, I know overall it will contribute to my success. And I'm sure it'll show up at the scale next week. And if not, eventually. As long as I can keep pushing myself. That makes 7.8 pounds in seven weeks, which is not Biggest Loser rate (ridiculously fast) and a little slower than I would like. But still, I'm OK with it. I feel a ton better than when I started.

This is how it goes with me. I am on and it is really fairly easy to keep with it; or I am off and it's a daily struggle. And I have been on this time for 7 weeks and that feels great. But I am nervous about all the traveling over the next eight weeks -- Chicago, Florida, Maine/N.J., Chicago. It is harder for me to stay on track when I am not in my routine. But if I can keep my exercise level high and be strict about food without being obnoxious to myself (I am going to eat that kosher prime rib at Dad's that they serve every Saturday night. All of it. It may be all I eat all week. I may do the treadmill three times that day so I can have it. But I will eat it, and love it.) then I will be OK. Then I will get back here and surface in mid-June, and hope I have lost another 8 pounds. If I have I'll be nearly at my first big 10 percent goal. And that would be sweet.

Next time: priorities. Funny, I didn't get to it this time...

i like my pittsburgh gray

I like my Pittsburgh gray
like silver with grit
bridge gray
steel gray
river gray
rain gray

the gray at the bottom
of bottomless
old coffee
gone gray with milk
explain that to the hapless fly
who thought it was liquid sky

The gray of the face of age
that answers the door
invites you to tour the knick-knacks
collected on off-season road trips
to the Outer Banks
to Pennsylvania's not-as-grand canyon
to the Maple Sugar Festival in Somerset
with the eighth grade in the '50s
whose alumni meet every ten years
at South Park or North Park or the edge of wood
behind the Eagles lodge
and wear pictures of themselves as teenagers
around their necks
like cutout dolls of historical eras
they read of and forgot
the thin gray smile
of been-there

4th Annual Yearly Commemorative Goofy Ass Post

OK, I admit, I can't get it together to write more than once a year or so. Life is bursting full and, much as I pretend in the back of my brain that I am a writer, I must not be, because, well, I don't write.

But I do have many ideas. Many, many ideas.

I want to write about the quirks of Pittsburgh, about the row of vinyl library-style armchairs outside the abandoned warehouse in Hazelwood and the old guy who sits in one of the chairs next to his dog, sitting in another, and how the two of them spend hours watching the trucks groan past, breathing in the smoky black crap the rigs spit out. I want to write about the Buena Vista Coffee Shop that opened on Buena Vista Street in the Mexican War Streets and the earnest owner, Brent, who never gets a day off and got roped into opening the coffee shop by his wife, who bakes all these amazing baked goods, even the biscotti; and how he wonders earnestly why, when he tells people his wife bakes all the amazing baked goods, all of us respond, "Even the biscotti?" I want to write of the entrance interviews of dogs conducted by doggie daycare centers; of great walks up and down staircases in great gritty neighborhoods; of Pirates opening day and the grand old tradition of cutting school to go to opening day and how it is that must be the only day of real hope in a Bucs fan's year.

That is not all I want to do. I want to write my "How to Cook Without a Cookbook Cookbook," where I lay out a general cooking guide for people who think they can't cook or need a recipe to make a cup of tea. It will contain the inspiration, the genesis of the idea that I got thirtysomething years ago, when my friend Roma (the eventual bridesmaid in charge of cigarettes) was broke but wanted a birthday cake for her boyfriend Ballistic Ed. Thank God Ed didn't make the cut eventually. But so when Roma says, "I don't have money to buy a cake," I say, "Why don't you make one," and she goes, "I can't bake," and I say, "Here's a recipe and all the ingredients," and she says, "But I don't know how," and so I read her the recipe, step by step, without embellishment, and she bakes a cake. And it turns out, yeah, fine. Except that it was for Ed, which is enough to sink any birthday cake and deflate any birthday balloon. It will contain the "add an egg" rule, the "add diced tomatoes" rule and I will have to spend days and weeks and months cementing the recipe ideas so they are reliable and yet not chalky and heavy like cement tends to be.

And I want to write kids' plays for schoolkids to put on, kind of plumped-up fairytales with wisecracking mice wearing shades and sucking on grass blades. And "Knit One, Curl Two: Combatting Sedentary Knitinaction with Good Eats and Ass-Kicking Workouts," a collection of knitting patterns matched with complementary healthful yet related recipes and Ass-Kicking exercise.

I want to publish Rob's "(my made-up title deleted so as not to leak the contents)" amazing book, and Cory's "Brave Little Tailor" play from when she was 12 and wrote it for PALS Players to put on so we wouldn't have to pay royalties. And Lou's book of Math Mysteries. And Riki's first book of poetry. And collections of Red-Eye Theatre Project's 24-hour plays.

And then there is Knitting and all the great Unfinished Projects.

And then there is Embroidery, and then Sewing, and all the great Unfinished Projects in this best of all possible worlds.

And so I say to you a goofy ass good night. We will see, we shall see, if I make any of my dreams come true.