Ouch. (Whole75, Day 42)

My right shoulder is all messed up and sore. I don't know what I did, but very likely I fudged it by sleeping awkwardly on it. I'm not happy with myself about it.

Today will be the final workout of Week 4 in Couch to 5K. It has me jogging at 3- and 5-minute intervals. Next week it looks like it's 5 and 5, then 5 and 8, and then on the third workout a 20-minute straight run. I don't know if I'll be able to do that, but I'm going to try. Heh...I fully admit that I'm doing this training not to become a runner but to lose weight. If I become healthier and more coordinated, and develop better stamina/ balance/ clarity in the process, awesome. But I'm hoping somewhere in all the plodding and bouncing I can get rid of some of this extra chub that has sat around on me too long.

Food's been fine. A little boring, but fine. I've been too busy to get really creative with food lately so it's been a lot of the same stuff I usually have. I did go grocery shopping after writing my last entry, and while I got home late it was worth it to have the cupboards full again (and have our Thanksgiving turkey in the freezer.)

Work has been a particular sort of stressful this week. I've been doing a lot of copy writing, which I love and which I think I'm good at. However, I am learning the hard way that you can't be too sensitive (or too attached to your work) in this job. Something I write that I love (and that my manager and her impossible-to-please boss also like), gets to the third or fourth level of review and someone shoots it down simply because they don't like it. No constructive feedback, no explanation of why something that matches every criteria they asked for is unacceptable. "It needs more Stimulus." "It lacks the Delight in the product." This tells me nothing of how you want it to read. Telling me you want it to have more zip and zazz, when you have absolutely no idea how to explain the product yourself, makes me think you probably want a bolder font and perhaps more exclamation points.

Having to replace or amend my own work with the work of others who outrank me (and whose prose, I arrogantly think, aren't as effective) is really hard. It's especially hard with vendors (internal and external) for whom English is a second language...I feel like I have a good understanding of how to construct a sentence, a paragraph, a page, and then I'm asked to write "We are proud to have such beautiful hotels! And you know what! The best part is we are giving away a trip!" :-/

It's been, as I said on Twitter, a Week of Mondays. I'm thankful it's Friday and I don't have to work this weekend (with the exception of a single house-managing shift at the Fox on Saturday, but I can handle that without issue.) Tonight I claimed off from rehearsal - I'm seeing Panda's opening night of Man of La Mancha.

33 more days until I weigh myself and find out if this extended eating plan, and actually exercising every day, has paid off in the way I want to.

My lowest recorded weight when I was on Atkins in college was 160. The goal for this Whole75 is 170, and I hope to hit 150 in the coming year.

To be honest, looking at my body now I think I could probably build some muscle, improve my shape and get down lower than 150 (based on my frame and whatnot.) But I'll reevaluate that when I get to it.

My skin (not the skin on my face) is starting to show signs of weight loss. This is both good and bad. Good in that I know I'm losing some stubborn fat...bad because it's getting itchy and irritated and it looks really strange. I have lotion that I use that's supposed to work for pregnant ladies (firming up the skin on their tummies postpartum), but I don't know how well it'll work on someone whose tummy has been so big for ten years as opposed to nine months.

It's worth a shot, I guess. And I like the smell of cocoa butter, especially when I can't have chocolate.

33 more days.