Zero Dark Thirty

I saw the Zero Dark Thirty movie this weekend.  Amazing!!  I was telling my mother that I'd seen it when we had our weekly chat today.

"Do you know the film I mean?" I asked her, "It's the one about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden."

"Oh yes" she said "do they find him?"

That's my mother.  Finger firmly on the pulse of current events ;-)

Big mistake!!

I made a huge mistake this morning, do you know what I did?  I stepped on my scales is what.  Ugh!!  "Maybe it won't be as bad as I think it's going to be," I optimistically mused before I did the deed.  I'd been eating very healthily for a week and I'm back to exercising 6 days a week after 2 weeks off so I was stupidly hopeful it would have made a dent in my Christmas poundage.  Sadly the number on the scale was far worse than I expected!!  I'm not going to give any specific details, but let's just say it's 3lbs heavier than the weight I was when I visited Deesha the week after Thanksgiving - which was already 4lbs heavier than I wanted to be - and I am a whopping 15lbs heavier than I was when I last dared to wear a bikini, circa 2004, or the year that I accidentally lost 5lbs.  

Yes, accidentally!!  

The very idea seems completely out of the realm of possibility now, but at the time I was taking Pilates classes - although only 3 a week which is fewer than I take now - and going to salsa classes twice a week and while I was exercising a good amount I don't think exercise was the key, I think it had a lot more to do with the fact that I was out of an evening and didn't really have time to eat a more robust dinner, so for a year my dinner 2-3 times a week consisted of a cereal bar and the occasional slice of toast when I got home from class.  I didn't even own a scale and judged my weight by how my clothes fit.  At the time I was quite obsessed with Theory trousers and used to hit their sample sales at every available opportunity, I still have a few pairs of size 0 trousers that I can't bear to part with, but when I hold them up they look ridiculously small, like I've accidentally stumbled across a child's wardrobe.

I really can't imagine myself 15lbs lighter than I am now, as while I'm not exactly thrilled with my current weight I'm still comfortably a US size 2 - albeit a vanity size 2, equivalent to a UK size 8, although I'm also only 5ft 1, so fluctuations in my weight, even by a single dress size, are more apparent than I feel they would be on someone of a naturally larger frame - so the thought of losing 15lbs seems excessive.  7lbs maybe, but not 15, it feels unrealistically thin to me now, still my weight is bothering me at the moment and it would be nice to feel comfortable wearing a bikini again come summer, so I'm trying to do something about it.  I read in an Real Simple magazine at the dentist last week that the average American puts on 8lbs over Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I'm in good company.  I was commiserating with a work colleague this morning who claims she is 19lbs heavier now than she was this time last year.  We were both wondering whether it was old age catching up with us, which is an upsetting prospect as that would mean there's probably very little I can do about it.  I wouldn't mind if I was generally larger all over, but still in shape, but I'm not, it's all gone to my belly and my ham hock arms.  I looked down this morning when I was in the shower and I had to tilt my head to the side to see my toes.  Anyway I'm trying not to stress about it too much and just let eating more salads, vegetables, cutting down on alcohol and exercising regularly take it's course and hopefully in a month my jeans will feel less like they are trying to cut me in half.  Fingers crossed.

I think...

...that the fitness instructor who taught the 8am total body conditioning class this morning spent her holidays thinking up new ways to torture us!!  

Good God, I am sore.  Her class has always been one of the tougher ones I've taken - she does so many damn reps, at least 48 of anything - but today she excelled herself by re-ordering the routine - those 144 one legged squats she typically has us do off the step, 72 per leg, at the start of the class weren't quite so easy when moved to the end of the session - and throwing in a few new surprises, like the weighted side lunge with a core twist to work not only our inner thighs, but also our abs.  I'm acquainted with a few of the class regulars and this morning we frequently turned to each other to silently express our discomfort.  The end of class stretches never felt so good, although it didn't help that I'd also committed myself to taking a 10.30am Pilates class.  Yeowwwwwwwww!!!!

Love love love...

...Tom Odell...And he's playing at Pianos on the LES on Thursday January 24th for the bargain ticket price of $8.  Whoo hoo, I am sooooo going.

http://youtu.be/B4-OxOmsqR0

Friday night in NYC

Friday!!  Hurrah!!!  To say I'm pleased to see the back of this week is an understatement.  I've been lacking motivation these first few days back at the office in 2013 - happy new year by the way - it's just soooooo very hard to be there instead of laying on my parents sofa nibbling chocolates from Bon Bon while watching classic BBC drama series on TV.  At least everyone else I work with seems to feel the same way and it's not just me.  Unfortunately I do have to go into the office on Sunday to catch up on a few things, since I really haven't got as far as I'd hoped with an analysis I'm working on that's due on Tuesday.  It's partly due to my own struggle to get back into the swing of things, but a bigger reason is that I've lost some of the time I was expecting to have to focus on the analysis as I needed to work with my fellow team lead to come up a contingency plan for the department's upcoming workload after a member of her team resigned on Wednesday.  The resignation wasn't exactly unexpected, but transitioning the work across the existing team is a burden we could all do without since the team is already understaffed.  My colleague was already looking for someone to join her team but had been struggling to recruit the right person because our head of department continually vetoed perfectly good candidates who he claimed didn't have the right personality.  "I want someone who has a spark," he explained after expressing his reservations about a candidate that three of the four of us thought was perfect for the role.  Now we're in a hole and at risk of missing deadlines he's pretty much ready to offer a job to the next two candidates that walk through the door. In the meantime my colleague is having to borrow resources from my team, which means everyone is taking on additional work plus the two of us are interviewing as many candidates as we can which is taking time away from working on my client deliverables, hence the primary reason I need to go in on Sunday.  I was hoping to go in early this morning to get a head start, but I realized late yesterday that I had a 9am appointment for a teeth cleaning which put the mockers on the notion of getting to the office by 7am.

My resolution not to drink - at least mid week, let's be reasonable now - also took a hit last night as Deesha, my good friend who moved to Kansas City this summer, was in town last night and wanted to get a few people together, most of whom I haven't seen since I lost my previous job early last year.  Now much as I enjoy the company of the people who were going to be out I really wasn't in the mood for socializing last night since I'm still sort of on UK time, so I get tired pretty early at the moment, I'm exhausted from the work week and after the festive indulgences - we're big on the wine in my family - I really just needed a break, but after a lot of umming and ahhhing I coerced myself into going out and it was a fun evening, but of course I did not stick to soda water with a hint of lime, oh no, I excelled myself, I had 4 glasses of wine!!!  FOUR!!!!  Weirdly I don't feel horrible today at all, so clearly I built up a tolerance over Christmas.  "Ah whatever," I thought at the time, "it's just a one off, I'll just avoid alcohol this weekend instead", an easy enough proposition I assumed as the friend I was most likely to have made plans had to go out of town to attend the funeral of an elderly aunt, however when I got home Kim - who I surf with - had emailed to say there was a surf meetup happy hour on Friday and was I interested.  Ugh, I really wasn't, coming home after work and collapse in a heap on my sofa and eat healthy nutritious food while catching up on the shows on my DVR held massive appeal, however I like Kim a lot and since ours is a fairly recent friendship I was also keen to maintain the momentum we have going so against my better judgement I decided to accept her invitation, but I cannot tell you how happy I was when I got into work after my dental appointment and she'd emailed me to say that the surf meetup happy hour was cancelled!!  Yessssssssssss!!!

I'm going to totally sound like a grandma for saying this, but I'm so looking forward to going to bed at 9pm tonight and getting a good night's sleep before I'm up at 7am tomorrow for an early weights class.  Party on eh!!