The body is an amazing thing.  Though my knee still hurts and is clicking and snapping when I walk, it's not in constant pain like it was on Sunday.  Two days of rest have really helped, and I especially noticed a difference in each morning when I woke up.

I told my husband this morning, sort of tongue-in-cheek, that I'm glad I have my sports medicine appointment tomorrow, before it gets a chance to get too much better.  Seriously, though, I don't want to ignore this, as I need to know what's going on to be sure that I'm not doing something that will cause me to re-injure myself and that I do whatever I need to be doing to make it stronger in the long term.

The picture here (excuse the awkward selfie, but I wanted to show the dress, the American Rag Striped A-Line Dress, another Gwynnie Bee favorite (affiliate link)) was taken on Friday, before I messed up my knee.  Over the weekend, I had those two formal events, where I got dressed up and felt glamorous.  I bought the cute dress I'm wearing in the picture because it seemed so fun for warm weather.  I had been feeling very happy and confident and looking forward to a great summer.  On Sunday, after I injured myself, I felt instantly very sad, and I was moody and grouchy for a lot of yesterday -- I felt like all my hopes for the summer and were a pipe dream, that every time I got a little momentum, something bad happened. It wasn't far from there to fears about getting older, blah, blah, blah.

I'm feeling physically better today and my mood is lifting. I will say, though, that my mornings feel empty without a workout.  It throws off my whole routine.  But it's raining outside, and it's quite cozy in here with my little cat on my lap and some time to catch up on friends' blogs. Life isn't so bad.

Here's hoping the doctor has some good news for me. But I'm hoping that I have finally learned my lesson about pushing myself too far when I don't feel right.  Skipping a run is better than not being able to walk.

Going for a short run to try out my new shoes and compression sleeves. May be the only runner in the Glass City not at the marathon.
— PerfectImperfect ()

I wore black stockings to try to keep the dress from looking so obviously short (about three inches above the knee) and because it was a chilly night. I also wore a wrap, which I didn't photograph.  I thought about wearing a cardigan, but I thought it looked too frumpy. The cutest thing about the dress is the very tight waist and the full skirt, and with a sweater that got all covered up.

I wasn't sure what to think of the opera. It was a modernized production of Faust, and to me, it seemed very much like a modern musical, except that it was sung in French. That last part made it fun for me, as I enjoyed the chance to listen for the words in the subtitles projected above the scene.   I hadn't seen other operas, so I couldn't compare it to others.  It felt a little cheesy, to me, to which comment my husband said, "It's opera. It's supposed to be overdone."  I'd like to see a more classic opera sometime to see if he's right.

You can check out my other Gwynnie Bee posts here, and find out more here (full disclosure: I will get a free extra garment for a month if you sign up through my link).

Yesterday I listened to the High Impact Blogging interview with Roni Noone (of Fitbloggin' fame).  It was interesting to hear the story of how she built the Fitbloggin' conference and how her brand has expanded. I loved the podcast and am looking forward to catching up on the interviews with other bloggers I admire.

It was fun to hear her talk about the Social Media Cold Shoulder -- it's good to know that even an iconic blogger like Roni feels ignored sometimes. I think it's funny, though, that she feels ignored if one tweet or blog post doesn't get a response.  I would have quit this long ago if I felt that way. I have one or two regular commenters (thank you!) but mostly it's <*crickets*>.

I am going to make it a point to post comments on blogs more often -- I post a comment maybe 1 in 100 times that I read a post, mostly because going through feed readers makes it easy to flick through a bunch of posts. I also don't comment as often when I'm on my phone, especially if there is a 95-digit number I must type in to "prove that I'm not a robot" -- but still, I will be more generous with the blog love.

As weight-loss bloggers are so prone to do, I have been avoiding posting weigh-ins since my weight has gone up.  I didn't want to invite nasty comments.

However, I know how much it helps me when other bloggers present the whole picture, and not just the happy stuff.  In the spirit of Emily's "Transparent Tuesday" posts (even though it's Wednesday), I'll admit it, I have been having a tough time of it lately.

I toyed with the idea of going back to Weight Watchers, especially because I could be reimbursed for part of it by insurance, but then I decided to try to incorporate the parts of it that were the most helpful for me into my own plan. I always found that if I got my Good Health Guidelines, the other things seemed to fall in line. I have a little calendar that I'm using to track them, along with my workouts. I'm also putting in a star for the days when I got my 10,000+ steps in.

I can track the latest weight gain to the start of my work with The Diet Fix. That's not to say it's a bad book, but I don't find that eating before I get hungry, as The Diet Fix called for, has worked well for me.  Not in the absence of some rigid plan, at least.  I do think it is helpful to think about protein, but maybe not with such a single-minded focus. I found it hard to eat as much protein as I was supposed to with this plan without feeling too full.  Because fruits and vegetables don't have much protein, I wasn't eating as many of them, and they have always been my most reliable friend against hunger and overeating.

I'm down 3.4 pounds from the scary weigh-in on Monday, when I was above 185. Today I was at 182.   The next goal is to get under 180 again.  The graph of the last few weeks looks dramatic, but only represents a swing of about 5 pounds.



There's some good news too. It is definitely easier for me to get my workouts in now that the weather is nicer. I'm on something like a 21-day streak of 10,000+ steps a day (not sure why my UP band nags me about my sleep but can't congratulate me on my streak past 14 days?) because it's just so easy to get outside and walk.

I think it's time to shed the winter hibernation weight... Any others out there who have been having a hard time of it?

As much as I loved The Diet Fix, I'm finding it hard to operationalize the ideas in it into a weight-loss diet. I think the concepts in it are great, and I am still using some of them, but I don't find it easy to translate the ideas into a weight-loss plan.

I picked up The Beck Diet again -- I haven't touched it for a long time after the tone started to annoy me. Though I had my quibbles with it, though, at least it had a plan and some tools that I found helpful.  I'm going to try to take the book a little less personally and see what I can use from it.

Today I wrote my "Advantages to Losing Weight" card (Day 1) and realized that I needed to write down some other thoughts that were creeping in -- "Fears about Losing Weight." Many of the fears seemed silly when written down, but they were there nonetheless. Things like, "What if my relationships don't work if I'm not overweight?" "What if this just puts more pressure on me?" and "What if I still don't like my body?"

The assumption is that losing weight is an unmixed positive, but I am guessing that a lot of people who struggle with weight loss may have fears, articulated or not, about how losing the weight (or at least making weight loss a priority) might negatively impact their lives. That might be one reason that it's so hard to do.

I figured that if I wrote them out and compared them to my "Advantages" card, they would look less daunting, and they did.

I also did Day 2's activity, picking a diet and a backup diet. I am going to continue to work with calorie counting, but if I'm still feeling lost after a few weeks, I can always return to Weight Watchers. They taught me a lot already, and I am sure there is more to learn there.  I had some not-so-great experiences with the Core Plan but I think the Simply Filling Technique sounds a little saner and easier to stick to.

I still have some tricks up my sleeve to try to make calorie counting work better, so I'm going to try those first before giving up on doing this my way.

Summer's coming, though, and I don't want to spend another one feeling regret.

This post contains some affiliate links but is otherwise uncompensated and unsolicited, and reflects my actual experiences.

My school has a black-tie optional fundraising event coming up next weekend. I had thought to wear my Lace Shutter Sheath Dress (pictured at left), but I wanted some other options. Gwynnie Bee allows members to talk with (or email) a stylist and have items placed on high priority for a special event.  I actually have two dressy events in the same weekend -- the fundraiser and a trip to the opera with friends.

I felt like I got a lot of personal attention from the stylist. We emailed back and forth a few times and yesterday we talked on the phone about my event, my body type, my coloring, and my personal style.  It was fun to have such a detailed conversation about what I liked and didn't like.  In the end she made ten recommendations. I chose three of them to try and put on high-priority:

Coldwater Creek Lace Scroll dress (my favorite, I will miss Coldwater Creek)
Kiyonna Tiers of Joy Dress
Kiyonna Lace Cocktail Dress

A few of the other recommendations weren't right for me for various reasons, but it was great to have so many options.  I also looked around for other options and found these to add to the list:

ABS Python Jacquard Dress
Jessica Howard Polka-Dot Dress with Buckle

I had also considered trying Rent the Runway, but I haven't used them before. Unless I chose one of the plus-sized options, I also couldn't picture the dresses on me. And actual plus sizes don't fit me well -- the proportions aren't right.  The straight-sized models are so whip-thin that there's no sense of how the dresses would look on a more average body.  I might use this service if I had a serious event to attend, though, because there are such gorgeous gowns available, and I wouldn't have to spend a lot of money and closet space on a gown I'd wear once.

You can check out my other Gwynnie Bee posts here, and find out more for yourself here (full disclosure: I will get a free extra garment for a month if you sign up through my link)

Unsolicited, uncompensated review. Opinions are purely my own.

I heard an interview with the author of this book on Koren Motekaitis's podcast, and had to get a copy. As I often do with books that I want to read right away, rather than put on the shelf and get to "when I have time," I bought it as an audiobook through audible.com (link takes you to a site where you can try a membership for free and support one of my other favorite podcasts, This American Life).

At times, The Language of Emotions can get sort of woo-woo -- in the audiobook, there is singing that sounds like "woo-woo" to separate chapters.  In the figurative sense, too, when there are tales of how the writer saved neighborhood cats with her empathetic abilities.  Don't let this discourage you -- there is some great information here.

A lot of counterproductive behaviors -- addictions and compulsions of all kinds,  distancing and "checking out," controlling behaviors -- result from efforts to hide from so-called negative emotions.  The author outlines how emotions we perceive as negative, like anger and sadness, actually serve important purposes for us, and if we could succeed in an attempt to live only in positive emotions like joy, we would be manic and ungrounded. We wouldn't be whole human beings.  She takes readers through exercises to explore the gifts of each emotion and help show what each brings to a well-rounded life.  Emotions are not something we should learn to detach ourselves from -- even the name implies that they are there to motivate and move us. Anger, for example, is described by McLaren as a warning that a boundary has been crossed.  If we don't let us feel angry, we will let people push us around.  She says we shouldn't lash out, but should instead feel the emotion, understand its message, and then act mindfully.

I had a fellow member of the Half Size Me community contact me not long after I listened to this interview, wanting to chat. She said, "I should be happy, but I can't stop feeling sad." I asked her, "What if you decided to set aside some time and be sad?" She said that she instantly felt better when she thought about doing this.  Instead of hiding from sadness, she could just feel it.  Ironically, that made her happier.

A couple of warnings. McLaren discusses childhood sexual abuse in this book, which could be triggering for a lot of people.  She doesn't do it as a way of "pouring her pain all over you" (her words), but as an explanation of how she developed her own empathetic abilities.  I also think that some of the emotions discussed in this book, like depression and suicidal urges, should be worked through with the help of a counselor. McLaren mentions this, and thankfully, unlike other New Age authors, acknowledges the value of antidepressants and other medications to help manage emotions.  I think, though, that this book would make a great supplement to professional help as a guide to navigating these emotions more mindfully.

Though sometimes an author reading his or her own book can be clumsy or monotone, McLaren has an engaging and expressive voice. My only minor quibble is that sometimes she inserts laughter that feels false and forced -- but even this isn't too intrusive or annoying.

I need to listen to the book a second time and go through the exercises more carefully, but even by listening through the first time, I learned a lot and have felt more in touch with my feelings.  I highly recommend it.

Okay, so the scale itself is fine, but the number on it has been discouraging. It's funny, I felt so good coming back from San Diego until I weighed myself.

It's just a few pounds up, but it's enough to make me feel discouraged and ugly... so I'm posting another picture of myself on the beach as an antidote -- something to remind me that even while I get this weight loss thing figured out, I'm still sort of cute the way I am (people who have different opinions should feel free to keep them to themselves...)

I didn't get a lot of other workouts in, but I have definitely boosted my step count.

I am traveling for work today, but I am also the guest blogger at the Half Size Me blog today.  You can check out my post on body image there.

Select "More" from the bottom right of the screen, and choose "Apps & Devices."  The list of available devices will be different depending on whether you have the free version of Lose It! or Lose It! premium, but the the Lose It! Healthometer device is available for both versions of the app.  These photos are of my husband's phone, and he has the free version of the app.

NPR recently ran a story on the fat-free craze of the 90s that I blame for pushing me from someone struggling with her weight to someone who was genuinely fat.  I was at my heaviest at around 25, three years after Susan Powter's insane book came out.  This was the book that really recommended eating three or four bagels with jelly as a good alternative to eating one with cream cheese. Yes, one bagel with cream cheese is not exactly a healthy choice either, but it was definitely not better to have two or three instead.

I bought into this big-time. When it first came out, I was a runner trying to get those last stubborn 5-10 pounds off. Runner's World was suggesting that runners snack on fat-free pretzels and licorice twists as good fat-free refueling options.  I graduated from college and had a lot of other life changes around the same time, so ,I can't blame all the weight gain on this book and the crazy diet philosophy that went with it, but I do think that flipping to a diet composed of mostly white starchy carbs (after all, meat had fat in it) probably contributed to the fact that I was unhealthy, anemic, and struggled with injury after injury and a sinus infection that would not go away.  Plus, I was hungry all of the time.  This was back when the list of vegetables I liked included only: Potatoes, corn, carrots, tomatoes, celery, and lettuce, so I wasn't even balancing it out with fiber.

I had lots of people in my family who were always doing some variation of Atkins, and I can't recommend that diet extreme either, as they always were and continue to be fat.  They would confess to loving bread with the kind of shame I would expect from someone confessing to a deep-dark sexual perversion.  I think that someone who could actually stick to it might be able to make it work, but I have only one relative who managed to follow it successfully, and he is the most Type-A, obsessive-compulsive person I know.

I am waiting for the ALL protein diet to come into vogue.  It wouldn't last long, because humans will die if they eat only protein, but, given the history of diets, being crazily unhealthy wouldn't keep a diet from selling a lot of books and making the author rich.