Stepping It Up

In the 6 months since my last post, I have not lost a pound. In fact, I've gained a few. Between a full time job, the twins, housework, etc., I have so little time or mental capacity for eating right and fitness. I stepped on the scale last Saturday and just about had a stroke. When your sweat pants start to fit more like skinny jeans, something has to change. Rather than being depressed about it, however, I decided to be proactive. I went upstairs, got on the computer, and joined Weight Watchers! I'm doing the online version and I love it. I've only been a member for 4 days, but I've already learned SO much about my eating habits and why my previous attempts at weight loss failed. My goal is to lose 100 lbs, which would put me at the healthy weight I was before my thyroid started to spaz.

Sunday, I took a 3 mile walk outside. Monday, I did yoga out on the deck. Last night I went and re-joined the gym and I have an appointment with a personal trainer on Monday. I feel more in control than I have for a long time. If I can lose 2# a week most weeks, I'll be at my goal weight in just about a year. Sweet!

Here's to changes to come!

A Grocery Cart to be Proud Of

While the phrase "The waist is a terrible thing to mind" has always made me chuckle, its only true to a certain extent. Those of you who know me in person know that I'm no twiggy. I'm 6' tall and I have always sort of justified my weight by my height. I also have hypothyroidism which makes weight gain very, very easy, and weight loss quite difficult. So there you have my recipe for fitness apathy.

I had a wake up call recently. As you know, I had twins 6 months ago. I only gained 22 lbs the entire pregnancy and the babies were born at 5 lbs 2 oz and 6 lbs 3 oz, so I didn't gain a whole lot of body fat. After they were born, I nursed them for 3 months. Yes, twins, for 3 months. I lost a LOT of weight. I don't own a scale so I don't know how much, but I'd guess around 30 lbs on top of whatever was left of the baby weight. After 3 months, I was just not able to produce enough milk to meet their nutritional demands, AND I went back to work, so I stopped nursing. Anyway, I went to the doctor's last week to get my thyroid levels checked and, as always, they weighed me. Much to my surprise, I had gained back everything. I only weighed 7 lbs less than I did right before the babies were born. Ouch.

Now, I have just about every justification in the world for being overweight. I'm tall. I work full time. I have twin 6-month-olds. I just don't have the time to eat right or exercise. But, at the end of the day, no amount of justification changes the fact that I need to shed a few. Scratch that- a lot.

While I have never been one to do the yo-yo fad diets, I have tried cutting calories in the past. I am usually able to lose about 10 lbs before I end up using all of the old justifications to give up. Like I said before, hypothyroidism makes every pound a fight.

After stepping off of that scale at the doctor's office, I came to a series of realizations.
1. My daughter is already in the 97th percentile for height, even though she was born a month early. She is going to be tall like me.

2. Both of my kids are going to be watching what and how I eat and how I take care of myself. What kind of example am I setting?

While I was in the doctor's office, I decided to bring up the weight-loss issue. I asked her what I could do to affect long-term changes in my weight and my overall health. She told me to cut way back on the carbs. She said that Atkins had it all wrong- all carbs are not created equal. Apparently an apple is not the same as a twinkie. (Seriously, is anyone surprised by this?) She said that the human body can get all the carbohydrates it needs from fruits and vegetables and that breads and pastas should be considered a treat. For some reason, that really clicked. It wasn't really any new information, but the way she phrased it somehow made it easy for me to do.

Since then I have switched to diet soda, cut out the morning bowl of cereal, and added lots more fruits and vegetables. I don't know why, but this time it seems to be working. I don't feel like I'm dieting. Its much easier to look at weight loss in terms of making healthy choices than in terms of what I can and can't have. I'm not perfect at it by any means, but The Hubs and I have almost eliminated white flour from our diets.

The first grocery shopping trip after this decision was awesome. We bought everything from the outside perimeter of the store - deli, produce, dairy, and whole wheat bakery rolls. When we got to the checkout counter and I saw the conveyor belt full of wholesome goodies, I had a real sense of pride.

My one struggle thus far has been finding healthy recipes. It seems like half of the healthy recipes online are for fish, which I'm severely allergic to. So, if anyone has any great healthy recipes to pass on, I'd love to try them!

ps- shellfish is ok, just not fish fish.

What does one say?

I have an friend who is the mother of four less-than-beautiful children. By less-than-beautiful, I mean slightly terrifying. My friend and her husband.... well, lets just say the only runway they've ever been on is at the airport. My friend, (we'll call her..... Quasimodo? That's a little harsh. How about Helen?) Helen, is always emailing pictures of her "gorgeous" children. Even though I know what the emails are going to contain, I still have to repress the impulse to recoil violently.

"So what?" you say. "Big deal! Everyone thinks their own kids are athletic supermodel-geniuses." While this is decidedly true, Helen's fantasy runs a little deeper than most. Helen wants to enter her two youngest daughters (3 and 5) in a beauty pageant.

After the initial shock and subsequent fit of laughter, I became immediately grateful that I received the news in an email and not over the phone. I'm not that good a liar. I replied to the email, stating my feelings about pageants at large (for the record, I abhor them,) and tactfully avoiding discussion of her daughters' err... shortcomings. She replies that she figured that's how I would feel about pageants, but that she wanted to know whether or not HER kids should enter. Since my last email (apparently) wasn't specific enough, I had to employ every ounce of diplomacy I possessed. Ever see the movie "Little Miss Sunshine"? Good. Now imagine that it was a horror film and you'd get the picture. These girls winning a beauty pageant would be like Paris Hilton being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship.

Helen then sent me a recent picture of her 5 year old and another of the dress she was considering buying for her. As the phrase "A face only a mother could love" entered my mind, I was touched by the love-goggles that my friend had for her kids. In her eyes, they are perfect, and I guess that's all that really matters.

Its sweet in a blindly delusional sort of way.

In the Thick of Things

While browsing around the internet today during the rare but blissful synchronized twin nap, I remembered my long-neglected blog. My extended absence from the blogosphere can be attributed to my two little angels who, to protect the not-so-innocent, I will dub Bonnie and Clyde. They were born happy and healthy and currently occupy about 23.75 hours of my day. I did, however, get a little break from them today to go to the dentist. (Notice the distinct absence of angelic choirs.) Temporary filling with a 40% chance of root canal in the near future.

My quest for self-improvement has taken a turn for the... different? While I still aspire to a clean house and a hot dinner on the table, I have had to throw the to-do list out the window and cut myself some slack. As a self-proclaimed type A control freak, this has been no small feat. I have, however, managed to work part time, care for my twins, bake my own bread, make my own butter, keep the kids, The Hubs, and the (now pregnant) dog fed, and still keep the household dirt diwn to an acceptable level. I recently baked a pretty fabulous fruit tart and am currently sewing a dress to wear to my cousin's wedding in May. (Please forgive the somewhat boastful nature of this paragraph. I feel rather entitled to a little back-patting.)

Well. Pardon the abrupt ending to this post, but Clyde is starting to fuss. And there's.... wait for it.... Bonnie yowling as well. Ta Ta.

Double Trouble

Now that I am out of the first trimester and, for the most part, past the throwing up, the desire to sleep 22.5 hours a day, and the inability to string a coherent thought together, it is time to get back to the business of...well, er...whatever it was that I was doing before.

Most of you who read this blog already know, but for anyone who doesn't, The Hubs and I are having twins! I am currently 13 weeks and they were both healthy and strong as of our last ultrasound a few weeks ago.

Now, onto the show.

Lately, the improvements I have been making to my life have felt more like trying to keep my head above water whilst baking two buns in the oven. Cooking dinner after working a ten hour day felt like a major accomplishment and after hauling myself out of bed at 5:00 am for an entire workweek, I felt like I deserved a medal. However, as the first trimester unpleasantries have started to fade, my focus has been staying on top of my house work. It is soooooo terribly easy to say "that dirty kitchen can wait til.... someday in the not-too-distant future...."

I have always been more of an Amelia Bedelia than a Martha Stewart, but I want to raise my kids in a clean, organized, put-together environment. I am sure that my definition of those particular adjectives will change a bit once I have two newborns to care for, but I figure its best to get a habit established anyway. I have been making an effort to at least stay on top of the laundry, do the dishes more than once a week, and keep The Hubs' shirts ironed and presentable-looking. The Hubs was recently asked to start wearing shirt and tie to work, so the throw-it-in-the-dryer-with-a-wet-towel trick doesn't quite cut it anymore. Suprisingly, however, I have found the regular ironing to be quite enjoyable. It is a chore in which no scum is involved (such as shower scum or baked-on food scum) and the results are so crisp looking. I feel positively June Cleaver-ish while I'm ironing. Maybe I should start wearing an apron and pearls...

Tomorrow, I am going to bathe the dogs and tackle a long-neglected and scum covered shower. The dogs love baths so that will be the easy part. (We regularly find our younger dog, Lucy, just hanging out in the tub...) The shower, on the other hand, is full of soap scum, dirt from Lucy's paws, and hard water stains. Not an easy mixture to clean. I have previously used Arm & Hammer shower cleaner, but that has strong fumes that I can't bring myself to consider safe for gestating fetuses. So I will be trying Ajax, a heavy duty scrub brush, and a lot of prayer.

I realize that my cleaning routine probably doesn't interest much of anyone, but I am trying to embrace the idea that once these babies are born (and I have recovered from the c-section,) I am going to be taking sole responsibility for the upkeep of my house. I will not be working outside the home, won't be going to school for a while, so I want to be able to take pride in my little kingdom. Bring it on June Cleaver.

I do, however, promise not to regale you with tales of the babies' latest bowel movements or any other gore of that nature, and that's just going to have to be good enough.

A New Reason to Improve

As of Thursday morning, I have an entirely new reason to do the things I do, to be come a better person- Thursday morning, after ten long months of trying, I found out that I am finally pregnant! It is just barely sort of starting to sink in that I am going to be somebody's mother. I feel prepared and inadequate all at once. Anyway, in order to prevent this blog from becoming a "Johnny threw up today" kind of blog, I will stay brief and just say that I am excited beyond what words can express. So in the spirit of my announcement, the artist I will feature today is Anne Geddes ;) (No analysis needed).

Bosch and Scale

The next artist I'd like to feature is a fascinating sixteenth-century Dutch painter named Hieronymus Bosch. There are so many reasons why I love Bosch's work. Let's take a look at the painting that is cosidered his masterpiece: The Garden of Earthly Delights



I apologize for the somewhat poor quality of the picture, its the best I could find online. This is oil paint on wood. There is an INCREDIBLE amount of detail in this painting that you just can't see in small scale. I encourage all of you to go to the library and look up a book with a larger image of this painting- its amazing. Here are some close-ups of the right side panel:









Now- why do I like these jumbled, slightly disturbing paintings so much? Firstly, consider the period in history in which they were painted. The Garden of Earthly Delights was completed in 1510! Martin Luther wouldn't post his Ninety-Five Theses for another seven years! This was a time in which portaits and religious paintings were the norm. To my (very limited) knowledge, although they contained religious content, nothing like these paintings had ever been done before. Look at the surreal creatures and objects in the close-ups. Its plain to see that later surrealist artists like Salvador Dali were heavily influenced by Bosch's work which was so entirely ahead of its time.

So how did Bosch create such a surreal, even nightmarish mood? It wasn't just his use of strange creatures- look at how he messes with the scale of everyday objects. All of the human figures are propotional to one another, but the flute, the bagpipes, and the animal skull, for example, are all gigantic in proportion to the humans. It gives the viewer an feeling of vague uneasiness which the theme of the painting only enhances.

Scale is an interesting tool that artists use to inspire certain feelings in the viewer. Consider the Sistine Chapel, for example. A viewer's breath is simply taken away by the massive scale of the work. Then after the feeling of overwhelming awe subsides, the viewer can look at the individual frescoes. As you're out and about looking at various advertisements, buildings, landscape designs, etc., consider how the creator used scale to convey his point. In advertisements, a product is often portrayed as being much larger than it actually is. Like this ad, for example:




If the bottle were actually this big, it would take an NFL player to lift it. But the proportionally large scale of the bottle draws your attention to it.

On a somewhat unrelated note: Donovan McNabb, I hope you enjoy the death of your career with the Washington Redskins.