More progress!

It has now been 6 months since getting the official PCOS diagnosis, (though probably years that I've had it.) and 4 months since getting serious about cracking down on diet and exercise since all the pain started a year and a half ago.

Here's where things stand:
SEPTEMBER 2012

Weight: down 12 pounds
Neck: down 1 inch
Chest: down 3 inches
Waist: down 4.5 inches
Hips: down 1.75 inches
Arm: down 1 inch
Thigh: down 2 inches
Calf: down 0.5 inch

 

BP 132/84 (getting closer to that 120/80 mark!)

 

On September 8 , I finished my first official 5K race, A Run to Remember, in honor of the fire/rescue/police staff lost on September 11, 2001. I was not last;-) My time was 46:30. This was after working my first full week back in the classroom. These days, three weeks into school, I can finish in 42 minutes! My goal for next year is 36 minutes.

I only need to take off 6 more pounds to be able to say that I weigh less now than on my last day pregnant:-) The over all goal is 63 more pounds. 

Progress Photos:

90 day update

 So here we are at the end of the summer, 3 months into the workout plan that is going to help me beat PCOS. Progress is slow, but it is still progress. Here is what I've seen so far.

Weight: Down 8 lbs

Neck: Down 1 inch

Chest: Down 2.5 inchs

Waist: Down 4 inchs

Hips: Down 1 inch

Arm: Down 1.25 inchs

Thigh: Down 1 inch

Calf: Down 0.25 inch

BP: 138/86 Down from the stage 1 hypertension level to the "prehypertension" level.

Before photo followed by June 27, July 27, August 27:

Side view (No BEFORE because I didn't think of it until June 27!)

Also, I am running the entire 5K now! It takes me around 45 minutes from start to finish when I run on the road or sidewalk. For some reason, when I run on the trail, it takes a little less time. I don't know if it's just less fatiguing or if the mile markers on the trail are wrong...

Kicking it up a notch

I finished the 5 week 5K Your Way walk/jog program from Sparkpeople at the end of last week with a time of 40 minutes flat! I'm still thinking back to the beginning of summer vacation when 5K took me a whole hour! It's time to move on up to the next level.

Today I start the next level; the 5K program that will have me running the entire 5K before the end of this month! I am beyond excited! My goal in the next couple of months is to get down to a 12 minute mile so I can finish the 5K in 36 minutes. That will be my best time ever, even better than when I was running before Jude came a long and when I got sick.

We have another goal that Jeff and I both plan to meet in exactly one month from tomorrow. We've registered to run a race in Gwinnett put on by the Gwinnett County Police Department called A Run to Remember. This race is in honor and remembrance of all the 343 firefighters and EMS workers, and the 60 NYPD and Port Authority police officers that lost their lives in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The money raised from the race benefits their fallen officer fund. I couldn't think of a more worthy cause for our first race.

13.67!

Started week 5 of my C25K program tonight and I averaged 13.67 minutes per mile! I know this is no great time or anything, but at the beginning of summer break it was taking me 17 minutes to complete a mile and around an hour to finish the course. Today it too me 41 minutes. Yay for progress. Small steps, I know; but steps nonetheless.

C25K Week 4

Today was a milestone! It was the first day that I jogged (because I can't really call what I do running! I am sloooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwww.) for the same amount of time that I walked during the training session. This training session was walk 2.5 minutes, run 2.5 minutes for 6 cycles. 15 minutes of running and 15 minutes of walking. Of course, I always finish a the 5K out after the training session is over, so at this time, it takes me 42 minutes to complete the 5K or about 14 minutes a mile. But in reality what it looks like is 13.5 minutes for mile 1, 14.5 minutes for mile 2, and 14 minutes for mile 3. I have NO idea why that second mile is always so difficult for me!

Week 3 down!

The trail that was taking me an hour to complete at the end of the school year took me 42 minutes today:-) Starting week 4 of C25K Tuesday and it will be the first week with running periods longer than the walking ones. I'm excited!

Week 3

Started week 3 of my C25K (Sparkpeople's 5K Your Way) and let me tell you: my legs were SCREAMING the whole time! Last week's runs felt really good and easy, but adding that 30 seconds on per cycle really made a difference. It felt really good when I was finished though;-)

This weeks cycle has me walking in 3 minute increments still, but then running for 2. Day one and two I do 6 cycles and on day three I'll do 7. I'm still not seeing a ton of improvement on the scale, but in measurements I am and that's ok for me right now.

Remember, if you want to sign up for Sparkpeople, it is free and they have TONS of great resources! Just click the link I provided there and it will take you to the sign up page.

Week 1 down!

This morning I finished week 1 of C25K. I started this time with the walk/run plan because of the extra weight I'm carrying from the PCOS. The first week is a walk 4 minute/run 1 minute plan. Today was an increase day so I did this 5 times for a total of 30 minutes. The second week, which I will start on Wednesday is a walk 3.5 minute/run 1.5 minute cycle. I'll do that for 5 cycles Wednesday and Friday and increase it to 6 cycles on Sunday. Then I'll increase the run time an decrease the walk time incrementally over the last three weeks of the program and end with a "race day" where I officially record the time it takes me to run/walk a real 5K.

After I finish this run/walk 5K module, I am going to move on to the full out running module, which is also a 5 week plan. That should bring me through the end of summer and I am looking for an OFFICIAL race to sign up for in the early fall. My long term goal is to be ready for a 10K maybe in time for the Turkey Run in November.

This photo meme still really resonates with me, though;-)

The Train Station

Well, that's what Jude calls the Chattanooga Choo Choo, anyway. It's really a hotel with some restaurants and shops, but there are train cars there that have also been converted into hotel rooms and a couple of restaurants.

I had to go out there the other day to pick up some items for a regional gift exchange with some ladies I've never met yet feel like I've known all my life. Jude was over the moon. I'm going to miss the days when he doesn't love going out to visit the Choo Choo.

This is the hotel from the back. It's really a HUGE hotel.

On the tracks

 
Jude and the caboose

By the wheels

On the play train. He only gets on if you promise not to put money in!

Oh, and I received my swap package today, too! All the way from Jo in Australia! That was an awesome surprise!

Oldsmar

Someone in Oldsmar is really interested in my blog in the past few days. Want to share what you've found that's so interesting? If it's an old friend from school, come on out of the woodwork. I'd love to talk to you again.

C25K

Started Week 1 of Couch to 5K this morning. Again. I was really on a roll there for a while, running a solid 5K 4 days a week for almost a year before all hell broke loose in my body and those cysts rupturing took me too my knees for 10 months.

So anyway, I think I have all that under control now but man. It sucks to have to start back at the beginning. Oh well. I'm doing it. I've even scheduled a run/walk 5K race 5 weeks from now. I know that's too soon and I'll do terribly. But I'm doing it. Got to get back on this horse.

My heart is breaking

If you'll look to the left hand column and down a little ways, you'll see a button for sweet Veiyah, who is one week older than Jude. Veiyah's twin sister went to be with Jesus when they were born and Veiyah herself struggled through many operations for her own heart condition. But fight she did.

Last year some time, she made it onto the list for a heart transplant and early this year she was granted a Make A Wish trip to Disney. I am struggling so much right now to not have the arrogance to be angry at God. Wednesday, Veiyah's mom, Ani, posted on Facebook that they were on their way to the hospital that Veiyah had been life flighted to. She had been throwing up mucus and then became unresponsive. It turns out she had been having a heart attack and also aspirated the mucus. Last night she went into Jesus' arms and is probably sitting next to her sister, Aderah.

I know this is good news for Veiyah, but my heart is once again just ripped to shreds like it was and has been since dear Christina's sudden passing back in October. Who am I to question God? But still, I do. I will continue to pray for Ani and Jeremy Karg and their two older girls, Madi and Selah, just like I do for Jon and his girls every day since Christina went to be with Jesus and her babies that went on before her. My heart is shattered, but not without Hope. I know this life wasn't promised to be without troubles. But I am still just so sad. So sad.

19 days

I love teaching. Really, I do! But 19 days and I can breathe again!

I love teaching English, except when I don't.

I never planned to be an English teacher. When I started my degree I was planning on science or phys. ed. Then the Georgia's state DOE changed the structure of things and PE was no longer an option so my advisor looked at my transcript and said I already had enough course work for a social studies concentration.

O.k. Social studies it is! But I still planned on teaching science.

After searching searching searching all summer, I was hired to teach social studies at LMS in 2002. But the thing was that every teacher on each team also split a subject because of numbers. At this time, English and reading were separate subjects.

The summer after my first year when the principal called me to ask if I wanted to teach science I panicked. I was SO looking forward to getting into that second year groove where I had already taught the subject so that I would actually be GOOD at it instead of having to learn it right before I was teaching it. So he also offered me reading. That was the subject my team had been splitting. Since I had taught it, I jumped on that one!

The funny thing was, when I went to take the English/Language Arts Praxis, I scored higher on that test than I did on either of the ones I actually STUDIED in college. I LOVE reading, so all this stuff just came naturally to me.

The third year in, our school put English and reading back together in a course that they called Language Arts. So I was again learning some things before teaching them. (I didn't use to know what a pronoun was. And prepositions? Forget about it!! Don't worry. I'm an expert on that now!)

Move forward a couple of years and our county decides we need to really hit the writing hard in middle school. So I'm learning all this stuff again.

Like reading, I have really enjoyed TEACHING the kids to write. Narrative (telling a story) is especially fun since I really enjoy seeing the creative things my kids can come up with. I was surprised just how much I have enjoyed teaching expository (informational) writing. It is way more straight forward that narrative. Persuasive? Eh. 6th graders don't really know how to come up with convincing arguments, so I can take or leave that one.

But what I could REALLY do without? The part that makes me want to poke my eyes out? Grading. I sit here before 88 expository essays and a stack of grading rubrics and I need to get busy! Which is probably why I am blogging. Grading and passing back papers are my least favorite part of teaching, but I especially loathe grading the writing. . .

Hiding God's Word in His Heart

That's another thing Jude has been up to these days. So far he has:

Psalm 4:8

Genesis 1:1

Matthew 19:14

Psalm 23:1

and we're working on John 3:16. The video cuts off there because Jeff's iPod wouldn't send the whole thing and because he couldn't really say the whole thing, but rather announced that he had to go potty;-)

Necessity is the mother of invention

And Jude felt it necessary to have a cup holder and a footrest while watching Sonic the Hedgehog. That's a friend's PRINCESS lawn chair. Oh, and of course a fire engine for a footrest.

*** UPDATED about 15 minutes later ***

Well, it looks like he felt the need to upgrade to a REAL step-stool!

Turning a corner. (Maybe?)

It seems that I may have turned that proverbial corner where my health is concerned.

As much as I hate taking medication, I am guardedly thinking this new one may have solved the problem. It has been 25 days since my last ruptured cyst. Before that it happened every 6 days for a month, every two weeks for two months prior to that. Before that it had been once a month since June.

On the migraine front, since doubling my magnesium intake, I've only had 4 migraines in the last 50 days. Which is waaaaaaaaaay down from the 6-8 a month I've been getting for the last two years. (And then like the 15 years prior to going on those awful awful meds that screwed up my brain so much I STILL think I haven't gotten all my memory back. Went off those to get pregnant in '07 and only then did I realize what an idiot I was for taking them.)

I also doubled my B12 intake as well because I got strep TWICE in December. (in addition to that upper respiratory thing that I had for 6 weeks in October and November.) I worked two consecutive 5 day weeks for probably the first time all school year. Had a little sniffles this week, but after three days of drinking a shot of cider vinegar every 4 hours interspersed with a chamomile & peppermint blend 2-3 times a day and some fire cider mixed with honey when I woke up and went to bed, I think I kicked that without incident.

I realize that in the scheme of things, the illnesses and discomforts I have been dealing with since June (and the last 20 years with the migraines) are small stuff. There are people who have dealt with far worse than I. Pain is just such an isolating thing for me. My mind always has me convinced that people aren't going to believe me or will just think I am being overly dramatic. And I don't really know how to ask for/accept help when I'm not feeling well.

But all that to say, I really do feel like things are on the up now. Hoping anyway!