So here is where I back up all that nonsense I committed to for this new year. Two of these goals are going to need some pretty hardcore planning, I think.

the ass kicking:

I’m starting Jillian Michaels 30-day Shred, which I’m doing 5 days/week rather than daily, but I’ll do it for 6 weeks rather than 30 days. Anyway, it’s hard, but I guess it doesn’t really feel like enough. Maybe I need to start out on level 2? But the fact of it is, I’m used to exercising for 60-70 minutes per session. The Shred feels like it’ll do an awesome job at sculpting, which is what it’s intended to do, I guess, but I’ll be combining it with a 45-minute yoga/fitness blend on cold days, and on warmer days I’ll do my regular 4 miles outside.

Speaking of the regular 4 miles on ass-kicking hills, I had no idea my calves had been so neglected, because Shred makes them want to cry, lol! I guess hills really don’t do much for calves. My ass though, chubby as I might be otherwise, is pretty damn tight

Honestly, it’s not the working out that I’ve ever had trouble with, but my terrible eating habits. It sounds like it should be so easy, you know, just don’t eat so damn much? I’m going to try to fall back on South Beach Diet again. It’s worked for me in the past, and I am obviously not to be trusted with carbs. I’ve tried to live in harmony with carbs, and it just keeps not working, again and again. I do much, much better when I just cut most of them out.

the novel:

The hardest goal for this year (we will not say the word “impossible”) is going to be the novel. I think an ambition of this magnitude requires a schedule. (Because I’m a Virgo, and super-dorky!) Let’s make a schedule, shall we?

February: finish part 2
March: finish part 3
April: finish part 4, the end
May: pull everything together, polish a bit, and done

June and July: novel sleeps? How long should a finished first draft sleep for? Maybe just one month, since we’re working with the near impossible here

(July?)/August: commence hacking it to pieces.
September/October: out to beta readers.

October/November: get feedback back (lol).

November/December: with feedback, instead of NaNoWriMo, we’ll do a NaNoRevMo, lol! Carry on into December, before Christmas eats us all alive again. 2nd draft done, by the end of the year, and ready to be thrown out into the world first thing 2011 (you know, since we might as well wait until after Christmas is done eating us all alive).

Of course, anyone who’s actually done this process before is welcome to shed some light on how my timeline is destined to fail because of my glorious noob-ness.

And has anyone ever tried a staggered beta-reading process before? I read a novelist blogger (Allison Winn Scotch maybe?) who said she liked to have her first 100 pages read and get feedback, and then she knows if the rest of the novel will work or not. I think I might try something like that. I feel like I need somebody else’s eyes on this mess so that I know it’s headed in the right direction.

So, in that light, I’ll probably be soliciting some beta readers around the end of the month, for my first seven chapters (estimated 70 pages). Ack! I said it out loud, people! We’ll also let this take the place of the promise of my first chapter after the new year. Seven chapters is better than one, right?

progress report for the three weeks I haven’t been blogging:

These past three weeks have probably been just about as productive as everyone’s past three weeks, which would be a big lazy mess of Christmas/New Year. I did actually add maybe 4000 words that I managed to steal from some old notes and drafts (it’s not cheating if you steal from yourself), and the first part is done. Did I say that out loud? Done, ugly, sketchy, but done!

Part two is officially in the works. Part 2 is roughly chapters 8 through 15, I think. Parts of them were very eager to be born last month, but I welcome the rest of them into existence, if they would be so kind to join us

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions (they’re always just begging to be broken), but I do have some goals for 2010. Maybe resolutions and goals are the same thing? For some reason, a goal feels less likely to be broken than a resolution. Who knows… Anyway, I shall put these goals out into the world so that I might be held accountable

health:
- cook more, eat out less, less prepared convenience foods
- exercise 5 days a week (currently doing about 2 or 3)
- more strength training (trying out Jillian Michaels Shred to start!)
- lose 25 lbs before I get knocked up
- 1 glass of wine a day is healthy, 2 or 3 glasses not so much…

hardcore writing goals:
- novel finished, revised, and out to agents by the end of the year! (Whoa, that’s ambitious! Can I get some cheerleaders on this one?)
- get Dylan in preschool/part-time care for daily writing time, so I can accomplish my ambitious goal of finishing my novel by the end of the year
- publish a short story
- keep up with my weekly progress reports
- pre-draft novel #2 during NaNoWriMo 2010

family life:
- get a babysitter and go on regular dates with my hubby again
- as a possible side-product of all those dates, get knocked up… (but no sooner than March/April, so that I can finish my novel by the end of the year)
- save a downpayment to buy a house next year

Good luck on everyone’s goals for 2010! Let’s make it a good one!

So last week kind of fell into Thanksgiving and got dissolved, and then like a black hole, it sucked up Monday, and then Tuesday as well.

I didn’t work on my novel a single word last week. I’m okay with that though, little breaks can be efficient sometimes. And I just finished reading over everything I have, which is several segmented chapters, adding up to about 40-something pages so far. It’s beginning to resemble the first part of a novel. It’s shaping.

Last week’s questionable second-person short story got worked into third person after all, and I think I might be happy with it. Still poking at it – you know, turkey coma and all…

I tried to do a kick-ass yoga video last week, but the child vetoed that idea really fast. Yoga isn’t really so productive when he thinks downward-dog is like a bridge he can crawl under. Ah well… I walked 6.5 miles last week, which wasn’t a complete flop. We’re moving out of walking weather this time of year anyway, so I’ll take whatever I get. We might have a day or two this week.

(I hear you saying, “Dude, did you really just talk about your walking schedule in relation to the damn weather?” Yes, I did. Sorry about that.)

Yesterday marks the end of NaNoWriMo, so I hope everyone was productive with their novels last month, whatever stage of writing that might be. My official word count for the month was about 5000 words. Hey, no scoffing at my words! I’m pulling the “mommy of a crazy three year-old” card, and dammit, they were very good words!

Plan for December then… I’ve got 3 full weeks before Christmas madness sets in. I should at least be able to match the word count I wrote for November. I’d really like to get the first part (seven chapters) done in a solid way and get a couple readers for it after the new year, to make sure it’s going where I want it to go, make sure the characters are who I think they are, make sure it’s actually working ‘n stuff.

Some kind of ‘fess up Friday

not a writer:

- I got out of bed in the middle of the night this week and wrote a little flash-fiction story. That was very surprising. One minute I’m trying to sleep, the next I’m downstairs on my laptop in the dark and cranking out a little story. I’m calling it fiction even though in its beginning stages it was about 95% true, but I don’t think there is such a thing as flash-memoir. Or even if there is, after revising it’s only about 75% true, so fiction it is!

Surely there must be other writers in the world who get out of bed in the middle of the night to write, right?

- The novel continues to be written. 21% done. I don’t know how to measure it’s progress, actually. I just have this idea of a final number in my head, and I know what I have already written, officially, which is two chapters and about 23,000 words. But then I have a huge amount of notes and random scenes for the rest of the 11 chapters, but not counted officially because as the story gets written for real, who knows if they’ll actually stay or not.

I guess there are probably about a hundred ways to write a novel. I guess beginning to end isn’t really my style.

not a housewife:

- My novel seems to have eaten my housekeeping skills, and it generally looks like a disaster around here unless I’m in the mood to avoid writing for some reason. But I did discover that I can iron hubby’s work shirts during Grey’s Anatomy! That will get it done at least once a week, which is much much better than never.

Speaking of, I thought last night’s GA season finale was pretty darn lame and cheesy, and I’m pretty darn lame and cheesy myself, so that’s saying something.

totally not a YMCA member:

- But I did walk outside about 5 days of the week, so about 15 miles. I really have been meaning to get to the YMCA to workout, and Dylan loved playing there with the other kids, but I just can’t bring myself to take the car during the day with gas being so expensive like it is. It’s already a 20 mile round trip to hubby’s work and back, so to drop him off would make 40 miles in one day, and being the tree-hugging hippie that I am, I just can’t bring myself to do it. I wish I could talk him into arranging some kind of carpool once or twice a week and leaving me the car. You reading this, honey?

That, and he wont let me buy a bike to ride around town with Dylan, since you know in Detroit, cyclists are worth bonus points. Even more than old ladies with little white fluffy dogs! But I think that with gas being as expensive as it is, a lot of people will be biking more. I already see it. I’m all ready for a big fat car boycott, but *sigh* hubby puts his foot down.

Sweets from my valentine. (note the grubby little hand going for my chocolates )

If this week could be defined in one word, that word would be CHOCOLATE! Even before Valentine’s Day, my dear husband brought home FOUR boxes of Girl Scout cookies. He didn’t know that we are boycotting the poor girl scouts for their use of hydrogenated oils, but besides that, who did he think was going to eat them??? Because you know, if you have Samoas in the house, they have to be eaten immediately! So I did.

He is obviously, very, very sweet to me, so we forgive him.

But the best thing about today is that I happened to discover my old weight tracking charts this morning, and I found that right now I am smaller at every point on my body than I have ever been in the last five years. (But maybe not after I finish all of this chocolate!) Even though I do weigh a good five pounds more than my lowest weight. Hell, I’ll take a smaller waist over five pounds on the scale. Here is where it pays off to be the kind of nerd who keeps charts of her weight and measurements dating back almost five years.

I hope you all had a happy and indulgent Valentine’s Day

This is part of my practice I guess. Write something. Anything at all, just to get the cogs in my brain turning. Any writing is better than reading emails and mommy boards. After I clear this junk out of my head, maybe I’ll write another paragraph of fiction, LOL!

It is 7:10 and I have only just sat down with my first cup of coffee. Dylan will be awake any minute now. I actually don’t even have that much time anyway. I have to get our stuff ready to go to the Y.

Yes, I have joined the YMCA!!! They have free child-watch which Dylan absolutely loves. And their treadmills are like running on a cloud! I like to go in the late mornings, when it is mostly older people and other moms. There is a nice absence of beef-cakes at 10 a.m. I’m still finding it really weird to exercise in front of other people since I have been doing it at home for so long.

Dylan is getting older, his naps slowly diminish every month like the days get shorter in the fall. He will be two this summer. And then someday he wont be taking any naps at all. And Good Lord, I want to do this all over again with another? Yes, at least one more I think.

This, my friends, is why there is preschool!

Parenting (and keeping a sane mind while doing it) is a constant state of revision. Nothing works for very long and then you’re on to the next challenge, the next puzzle to figure out.

We kept our bedroom door closed this morning so that maybe Dylan wouldn’t hear our alarm clocks. It’s now 7:30 and he’s still sleeping. So now what to do about the neighbor who starts up her janky car about now every morning and runs it for 15 minutes?

Today, in its entirety, was spent helping Dylan birth molar #2 into the world. We will name it Oscar, after his favorite-of-the-moment teddy bear.

In other news, because the rest of the world does go on, even if this household is teething – Tuesday marks the end of a 12-week “Biggest Loser”-type challenge I have been leading on one of my mommy boards. It has been so much fun to share my enthusiasm and little bits of knowledge with those wonderful ladies, and they have been the support and camaraderie that I needed to lose 11.5 pounds and almost three inches off my waist.

I’m not usually one to boast, but I feel pretty happy about this. I still have 34 pounds to go, but I don’t doubt I’ll get there. It’s just a matter of time now. Exercise has become a part of my regular routine. The bad habits have been changed. I noticed it especially over this Thanksgiving holiday, the desire to fit in workouts even though I was busy, and the freedom to eat what I wanted without eating too much.

It’s not about the diet – it’s the lifestyle. It’s the healthy choices you make every day of your life because you want to. Because it feels good to. You hear these kind of things over and over again, and then one day, like now, they finally make sense.

From the November 2007 issue of Women’s Health,

In a study published in Physiology & Behavior, researchers found that exposure to temperatures above the “thermoneutral zone” — the artificial climate we create with clothes, heating, or air conditioning — decreases our appetite and food intake.

This article talks about laying off the AC in the summertime, but we can also relate this to winter. A lot of us are trying to skimp on the heating this winter, whether because of high natural gas and oil prices, or because we want to do our part to save the planet, so don’t forget to throw on a warm sweater and some socks. We are not bears and we do not need to hibernate! So keep warm, and avoid your body’s natural instinct to pack on the pounds!

If you don’t mind learning about weight loss from a chubby girl. The way I figure it, no one knows more about losing weight than a girl who’s been battling it her whole life. Unfortunately, knowing the stuff and living the life are two entirely different things

Today I’m going to teach you about your total daily energy expenditure You will not need to weigh yourself for one whole week. It will be freeing and empowering. You don’t need to measure your progress on a scale because you will measure it with your actions.

If your weight loss has stalled, here is some sad news. For every 5 lbs of fat you lose, your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) drops by 50-100 calories. This is part of the reason people see weight loss plateaus. Your body is smaller and doesn’t need as many calories anymore. You need to eat less to compensate.

Keep a notebook in your kitchen. Keep a calculator beside it. That way, every time you go to make a meal, or grab a snack, it’s right there for you to write in. There are also handy (and free!) websites like sparkpeople.com where you can enter your food journals online. Or if you’re going the old-fashioned way with a notebook and pen (like I do!), you’ll want to check out calorieking.com to add up your calories.

Sure, nobody wants to be writing down every bite they take, and carrying around a calculator all day. In a perfect world, we would all eat sensibly, we would stop at 2 cookies, we would not finish off the baby’s waffle. For some, like myself, these are habits we need to learn. It will get easier, and you won’t be doing this forever. You will learn your portion sizes by sight. You will remember the calorie counts for your favorite foods and wont have to look them up anymore. You will work out a rough calorie plan for your day, evenly spaced and sized meals and snacks. And before long, you won’t even be thinking about it. It will be the way you live.

So how much should you be eating? Here is where it gets fun for us math nerds! Your body has a basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is the amount of calories you would burn if you just stayed in bed all day. There are fancy formulas you can use to find this number, and you can read more about those here, but for our convenience, we will use one of these handy calculators. After you’ve figured your BMR, you can calculate your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). This is your break-even point, the calories you need to maintain your current weight.

For your TDEE, multiply by your activity level for most of the day:
Sedentary = BMR x 1.2 (sit at a desk, driving, reading, or watching TV, and don’t usually exercise)
Lightly active = BMR x 1.375 (light housework, playing with young children, standing work (chef, cashier, sales) or exercise lightly 1-3 days/week)
Moderately active = BMR x 1.55 (heavy housework, walking job (waitress, nurse) or exercise 3-5 days/week)
Very active = BMR x 1.725 (physically demanding job (construction) or hard exercise 6-7 days/week)
Extremely active = BMR x 1.9 (pro-athlete, extremely physical job or very long training sessions, like for a marathon)

Now you have your TDEE. It’s simple math. If your calorie intake is more, you will gain. If it’s less, you will lose. That’s all there is to it! As long as you’re honest with yourself – are you noting everything you eat? are you working out as much as you say? – you cannot fail. (disclaimer: of course, there are some medical conditions that can prevent weight loss, and if your honest efforts are not working, you should talk to your doctor)

It’s so much more empowering to praise yourself for the things you’re actually doing rather than waiting for a number on the scale to change. You can control the things you eat, or the amount you exercise, but you will never be able to control what the scale says. It’s not even an entirely accurate depiction of what’s going on inside your body. With muscle gain and water weight fluctuations, you can easily give or take 2-5 lbs at any point in time!

But this is why it works. When you know your TDEE, and you know that 8 cookies will send you skyrocketing over your limit for the day, then that knowledge might keep you from eating them. Think of it this way, 700 calories over your TDEE, at 3500 calories per pound, is nearly º pound of weight gain in just one day. Keep that up, and that’s almost 2 pounds a week! (Can you feel your ass expanding by the minute?) But it also works the other way. On a day that you eat at or below your TDEE, say by 700 calories, you will have a º pound weight loss. As you will find out though, it’s a lot harder to burn 700 calories in a day than it is to eat them!

So here is the experiment, and a fun little adventure for math nerds like myself. Why not try to keep a running total of the net calories lost (or on some unfortunate days, gained)? And when you reach the -3500 point, you’ll know you’ve lost one whole pound of real weight. No scales needed! Focus your energy on what you’re doing, instead of what the scale says. Then commend yourself for every minute of exercise, and every healthy food choice, instead of what pounds are being lost. Because if you’re making honest efforts, the pounds will be lost. You might just find that the best way to get the scale moving again is to ignore it entirely.