How goes the plan?

So many long months ago I started (again) another little improvement plan. While I haven't been in the gym as much as I might have liked, I've changed quite a few things and I think it's going well.
The first thing I did was get a job that I liked. Actually, lucky for me - I love my new job, and I think it loves me back. I get to walk to work and home every day (about 1.2 miles), and I work like crazy when I'm in the office. One of my officemates (Dianne) and I have started walking around Greenlake each morning (3 miles), and that's been absolutely terrific. Lucy gets a walk early in the day, and I feel like my mornings get off to a good start.
I'm still in ballet class once a week, and now that I'm in my third or fourth session, I can really feel the difference in my legs and butt. This stuff takes time, but it's working slowly.
I head to a couple of day retreat to Canyon Ranch with Mom in mid-July and I expect that to be a much-needed reboot. More on that soon!

Painin' and Gainin', I suppose

Well, I've now been to the gym a couple of times and at yoga regularly - and although it's only been a week I can tell things are starting to shift. My eating patterns are changing a bit, but my muscles are where I feel the most change. Everything's achey after I do my workout - and I didn't even see the personal trainer this week. I'll see him next week and for a few weeks more, and after a month we'll have a weigh-in and progress check.
So do I have a goal for this whole thing? Well, I had to put numbers down, if just to give something the trainer to measure progress by (and my measurement of his abilities as a trainer). The bigger goal is 20lbs - not too much, actually - and the short-term goal (3 month goal) is 12lbs. He took measurements of my waist, thighs, calves, hips, bust - everything you can imagine - and gave me my fat percentage (not pretty). So for all those things, he gave me a goal too. I won't say what it is, but making it would be an accomplishment.

Jenny Improvement Plan

A long time ago when I was in Weight Watchers, I remember standing in line waiting for my weekly weigh-in. This older woman standing next to me was telling me about her goals - and how the only thing she wanted was the body she'd had at 20. I told her that I wanted to be great at 40. Screw 20, I'd never be that again.
So last week I hit 37 - while I don't obsess over a cut, lean body, I'd still like to look great at 40. Not a bad goal.
I'm pretty active - yoga weekly, heavy gardening, and a good amount of walking. And I don't eat all that bad - almost no soft drinks, rarely coffee, and lots of fruits and vegetables.
Yet my weight doesn't ever shift, and my clothes always fit the same way. I figured I'd plateaued, and it was time to shake things up a bit.
This week, I rejoined a gym and hired a personal trainer. Thursday I'm in for a haircut, and Saturday I'm off to the spa for a refresher.
I'll keep you posted on my progress!

Huh, wait...did that just happen?

A few months ago on my way out of New York, my doctor said offhand, 'oh, you're 35. It's time for your baseline and I'm going to write you a script.' For the less fair sex reading this entry, that's a baseline mammogram. A pancake test. A true test that you've hit the age to start worrying. Just that casual comment threw me for a loop - for years I'd heard that women don't need a baseline until 40, but here I was getting written up that I needed to have one before my next birthday. For a moment it was sort of exciting - I got to go first, I get to tell the other younger women in my life what it's like, what to expect. But after that excitement faded, the subtext of what she'd ordered set in.

The script has been attached to my fridge for months, curling at the edges next to the Eat Me magnet from Crif Dog. My first mammogram. This is the gateway test, the one that starts it all. From here on out, it's colonoscopies, bone densities, and other miserable exams to prove you're not yet dying but you're on the way.

But when are all of the things that usually happen at this age going to start happening? I didn't freak out when I turned 30 - and given the circumstances I had every right to do so. That first (and as of now only) silver hair? I protected it feverishly, proud to finally have earned a stripe. But it fell out soon thereafter and I've not found another since. And what about the clock? The oh-my-god-please-don't-let-me-fall-victim-to-my-body alarm clock? That's my name for it, the phenomenon that takes perfectly rational women and suddenly makes them hormonal and unpredictable. This, to me, would be like Spock getting Bendii Syndrome (look it up in Wikipedia!) - after a lifetime devoted to study and reason, the ultimate curse is losing one's mind. I have never been able to comprehend how a woman could wake up one day and suddenly decide it was time.

And then I realized it's a slow process, losing one's mind. It doesn't happen overnight, it's not so easy to see. Somewhere along the way while you've been struggling against it, you realize the struggle is the change. And that all of the hallmarks are there, that somehow you've subconsciously made changes in your life that you think will make you happy, but they've been stepping stones on a path your body tricked you into taking. But as soon as you wrote that you think, 'but I don't really feel tricked, I am really happy.' And then you realize it's already happening. It may not be the same for everyone; god forbid I wake up thinking ineedababypleasenowihavetogetpregnant. But there's something, I know it's there.

So here I sit in my kitchen looking at the yellowing script. Mortality is a post-it on my fridge and the tone in my alarm that will never let me sleep again.