Swimsuit? Already?

Have you ever tried to buy a swimsuit in mid-June?  It's not a pretty experience...especially for the "hippoesque" figure.  That's exactly what I spent about four hours doing today, and this was my second venture of the year.

My first venture was last weekend...and I scored black board shorts with POCKETS!  I was one proud momma, but we all know where pride leads to.  

"All right D.  All I have to do is find a top to go with these and we'll be good to go."

30 minutes later.  Nada.  My daughter was wide-eyed at the mistakes in fit.  Thankfully, she understood it was the poor designs of the suits.  After all, HER mommy was beautiful.

Today, all errors from that dressing room were magnified.  At least I know how to laugh about it.

Quotes from today:

"That sports top is so pretty.  I wish I could just wear that as a swimsuit top."

"Why not?" asked the sales lady.

"Honey, you don't understand.  I don't just have a muffin top.  It's an all out layer cake."

(Notice my tact in not mentioning my lower abdominal front-butt.  Oh come on.  You all KNOW your belly button gets longer with every baby..and I've had several.)

At another location, talking to another customer....

Her:  "No big flowery things.  I don't want to look attractive to bumble-bees."

Me:  "I hear ya.  And nothing too low cut either.  I don't need to look like a 'lady of the night.'"

At yet another store.  "This is pretty on the hanger, but it makes my boobs look like basset hound ears.  Not good.  Not good at all. It definitely needs more support."

Which brings me around to my general gripes about "womens" sized swim suits.  I want to know if the people designing them are a size 2, or male.  It's got to be one or the other because they tend to have at least one of the problems below.

Color issues:

1) Would you like Black or black with a bit of white?  Just black.  :  Most women do not look good in black, and it's hot!  Hello?  Do I want to look matronly and sweat? I think not.   It is not slimming.  It is aging.  Get it straight.  Going to the pool is supposed to be fun, not a kind of mourning.  Blinding neons are the other extreme.

2) Gaudy prints:  Whoever thought huge tropical flowers looked good on ANY article of clothing, mens shirts or women's swimwear needs to have their heads checked.   Oh, and the teeny-tiny geometrical prints are going to give someone a seizure one of these days.

Brassiere issues (or lack of):

1) Inadequate boob support:  You want to know why there are soooo many halter swimsuits on the clearance rack in the "plus" sizes....because plus sized women tend to have plus sized boobs.  Halter + D cup or above = disaster.  Likewise on that light lining with the spaghetti straps.  Nobody wants their nipples resting that close to their belly button.  Nobody else wants to see it either.

2) Inadequate strappage:   Even the suit I settled for really didn't have wide enough straps for a breastasuarus.  BUT they were there and didn't cut into the back of my neck, my shoulders, or let the girls fall down completely so they were a moderate success.

3)  Being "overlined".  I do not need a padded bra with structured cups. Trust me.  Neither does anyone else who wears a D, DD, or larger in real life. 

4) Being too low cut.  There are some parts of my body that are just meant for me and my husband.  There is such a thing as too sexy for a mom to wear in public.  My teen boys don't need to know I can go THERE.

A swimsuit, while it should fit like lingerie shouldn't look like it...at least one I'm wearing shouldn't.

General Style/Fit issues:

A lot of these have been mentioned above, halters, stuff that looks like it should be sold at Fredericks, horrible prints and limited colors...but my real pet peeve is the swim dress....and it's cousin, the swim "skirt."

To be fair, I can't wear a one piece to save my life because there's a full 2 size difference between my lower half and my upper, but my general peeve about these styles is that they force our legs to rub together in wet conditions.  Let's just say that can lead to some uncomfortable redness, to say the least.  I do like being covered, thus why I covet swim shorts...but I'd rather wear granny panties than those skirted things.

Especially since they like to make most of it black w/ some hideous neon-tropical print for the bra cups.

I really think it's a conspiracy to keep fat chicks out of the pool...but it won't work, because I found a suit that WILL this year.  

And I'll be celebrating the first day of summer tomorrow at the pool.

school has started again!

I know I haven't checked into hippoland for a while, but hey, I'm a mom.  Life is busy.
I haven't given up the fitness thing entirely..
Over the summer I clocked several hours at the pool, some of them doing aerobicish moves while my kids played, sometimes playing with them, and sometimes reading and sunning nearby.
We now live 1/2 mile from our kids school.  This week I walked to and from with them every day.  So 2 trips Mon & Tues, and three trips Wed, Thurs, and Friday, that clocked in 13 miles of walking.  
Next week I'll add housework.
And then, after that...my master plan kicks in.  With Si Guy gone from 8-11 every day, I can hit the 9am classes at the gym...or dust off my Golds Gym Wii game.  With Mr. man working from home, and how entertaining he finds it to distract me while exercising, I'm strongly motivated towards the gym.

Aqua at 9am

is a totally different experience than aqua at 5:45 am.
  1) there are about 7x more people there.
  2) I'm mostly awake.
  3) At least on Wednesdays, the teacher is a guy....who likes using water dumb-bells.
    I really enjoyed practicing my boxing moves I learned on the Wii underwater with weights.  I also enjoyed the relative anonymity in a group that size.  All was well until it was time for the dreaded noodle.
   I'm sorry for sounding sexist, but for decency's sake, a guy really shouldn't be teaching a bunch of middle-age/old ladies how to use a noodle...at least not in a pool.My inner juvenile thought "pole dancing" when the first thing we had to do was straddle it.  We were instructed on having a "happy noodle", and a "sad noodle" as well.  One lady near me shared my thoughts apparently, saying
"I'm not sure I can make mine sad under water.  It's kind of stiff."
  Soon after, we were all waving our noodles in the air.
   Everything after that was kind of anticlimactic.  We cooled down, shook it off, and stretched.  Overall, everyone was friendly, and really, Mr. D was an absolute riot.  Who knows, I may even go back next Wednesday.

Yes, i am back at MRCC.

Community center how I love thee.  Thy variety of classes at a reasonable cost.
The hours ranging from 5:45-12:00 for start times, and again from 4-7.
Yet there's not much variety in what I do. 
I'm back to Tai Chi.  Yes, for now, I'm back at the ever-controversial yoga.  I'm just not comfortable using weights, so my own body is my best resistance for strength training for now.  The extra flexibility is a bonus.  I've been to an aqua aerobics class....I'm going to try a mid-morning one tomorrow since getting up at 4:45 isn't my area of strength.   
This go round though, if I miss a day, I have back-up at home.   Today I chose to stay in bed at 4:45 this am when dh's alarm went off.  Therefore I used my "golds gym Latin workout" personal trainer on the Wii.  I was sweating at the end, so that's a good sign right?
   My husband was smirking at the end.  He was working from home today, and apparently likes the rhino dance moves.  I told him he should do it himself next time since he found it so entertaining.   This is why I need to get up at 4:45 to make my class....or he needs to go back to the office.

March!

March begins at the end of this week.  I have my clearance for the gym again.  There are no more excuses.
If I can't get to the gym, our Wii has 3 exercise programs at home, and a balance board!

The thing with the Wii is it isn't terribly accurate.  I suck at yoga.  This is a fact.  The Wii, through how it interprets my weight distribution from the balance board, thinks I'm adequate to great.
As long as I have the arm movements down on the dance games I'm golden.  Even though my feet are following about as well as a dyslexic elephant.
And a computerized trainer is not another human.  I like the human thing.
The Wii is still great fun.  I just think it needs to be an accent instead of the center of my program.

Goals.

    Did you read about the Romanian model on the news?  No girl should sit at home with a bag of mars bars wishing she was fat.  Just like no girl needs to starve herself wishing she was thin.
    Our goals should be about health, and whatever size we are when we are healthy is fine.  Yes, I am losing weight right now and happy about it.  Yes, I am tracking what I eat on Spark.
    Yet if I'm eating decently and exercising  4x a week or more and the scale stops at 200 that's fine.  If I get back to 180 that's fine.  If, by some miracle, I hit the number "I should be" on the chart, that's fine too....but I'm not going to stress about an imaginary goal. 
  There are plenty of other goals to be had.  I recently listed some I have for this year.  Here are some I've reached.

  1) I can now RUN, without pain.  Not very far or long, but even as I child I could not run without pain.
  2) Ditto with multiple flights of stairs going up.
  3) I am not wiped out by our bi-weekly grocery store gauntlet.
  4) I'm slowly learning to ditch the guilt about doing things for myself.
  5)  I am learning how to prioritize things better.  Kids wants do not come before my needs.   Needs come before needs.  Wants come after, no matter whose they are.   They need a healthy mother more than they want what they think they "need." 

January Check in.

    Well, I've been sidetracked by some pain issues recently, and it seems I have middle aged mom's syndrome and need my gall bladder removed.   The surgery is next week, so hopefully I will be back in community center form about two weeks after that.
    Yes, I said community center!  I have decided to keep resume to the aqua class & tai chi class I love, and maybe one or two others a week, or not.
   That's because I think I can do the cardio thing with the Wii.  I still play racket sports, and love the bull dodging and cardio boxing on the latin dance disc. 
(The Latin Dance itself, um, awkward.  My hips catch instead of roll it seems.  I'll keep trying.)   The kids love mimicking the instructors too, so it's something I can do around Si...but will probably be more effective when he starts school.
   My big thing this week is I've started tracking my food on Sparkpeople.com again.    It's good to see where I'm doing well, and where I'm still a work in progress.   It's nice seeing the little report at the end of the day.  It's also motivation not to just sit down and randomly graze, because I have to quantify it later!
   Sure there's still a lot of "in progress" to consider.
1) Getting fiber intake back up to 25g a day. 
2)  Consistently getting 60g of protein a day
3) Drinking enough water
4) Getting a "real gym" membership eventually
5) Using more than the nutrition tracker on Sparkpeople

BUT, I am doing something, and that's definitely better than nothing.  I'm a hippo that's about 30lbs lighter than last year.  That's something to dance about.