I have been a very bad girl...

because I haven't updated in forever!

I'm not sure what an accurate weight for me is right now, as it's been fluctuating a lot. One day it will say like 176, the next 180, but it hasn't been over 180 for a while which still translates to me losing something. I know I need a new picture for that milestone, I've just been too lazy to take one. XD

I finally heard back from the doctor about the $580 worth of blood work I had done. You'll never believe it, but my male hormone levels are high! *is shocked* I won't get a real detailed account of my results until I go back at the end of December.

He also switched me to the extended release Metformin since the regular ones have been making me nauseous. I haven't tried them yet though because I've been too busy to run by the pharmacy and get them.

According to my tracker AF is almost a week late, so at the moment I'm researching ways to induce it. Waiting more days/weeks/months for it to show up on its own causes too much anxiety. If you have any suggestions, feel free to share!

What week am I on again? I hear a bad memory is another symptom of PCOS.

Since today is Monday I weighed myself this morning and am now 181. I've noticed that I'm not loosing nearly as much as I used to, but that's not really a bad thing. Losing two pounds a week is actually really healthy. I feel like I'm about to plateau. I hope I don't for another monthish because then I think I can combat it with exercise. Right now it's still too hot and too humid, but once fall rolls in I'll actually be in the mood to be outside more than 2 minutes. We plan to start going for nightly walks together along with our other stuff. I'm hoping that change will get me over the wall once I hit it.

And anyway, even if I only lose an average of one pound a week between now and my cruise, I would still be way ahead of schedule. In fact, that would put me right around my goal for May! So I really can't complain much unless I just stop losing at all.

My pants seem a little looser but not as much as I would expect. I wonder if I could be losing boob weight? It's certainly not a bad thing if I am, Lord knows my back could use a break lol. Ideally of course I would be losing both boob and tummy weight though. Think I might take a new picture tomorrow even though I'm one pound early. Would rather do that then take it at a few pounds under.

What a lovely couple of weeks I'm having...

Since my last update I've spent most of my time either a)in pain, b)asleep, c)wishing I was asleep, or d)in a medicated haze.

I did in fact get my period, and while the cramps were as bad as ever the flow was actually pretty light. I only had to double up with pads and tampons one day (the rest using a liner just in case), and I actually got to use "regular" strength tampons some days instead of ultra or super plus! I'm not sure whether I should expect this to be the norm or if it was some fluke due to just going off HBC. For now I'm going to say fluke as to not get my hopes up. According to my tracker AF's next visit should be around October 10th so we'll see then.

Speaking of my tracker, I've just noticed that I'm scheduled to ovulate three days before my first wedding anniversary (19th). I'm pretty sure I won't actually ovulate but I would have been on the Metformin for about two months by then so who knows... Better be careful just in case. Also if my cycles stay around 45-50 days long I should be in the clear for my cruise. Josh and I have never been on a vacation together, and since this is counting as our late honeymoon/anniversary/Christmas/Valentine's Day/birthday presents to each other I'd hate to see AF ruin it. Oh well no use worrying about it now, I suppose. Back to what I came here to talk about...

Right when AF was starting to pack her bags, my lovely boss (I mean that, not even in a sarcastic way!) gave me the flu. I missed my Monday classes last week, but luckily for me the rest of my classes were cancelled for various reasons. I made it to work, but honestly if I had known it was the flu I would have stayed home. No need infecting half the student body, you know. But while I felt bad all week it didn't hit me that it was the flu till Thursday night after I got off. See when Ani told us she had the flu I though I was in the clear because I had already gotten it. But when I woke up in the middle of the night Thursday feeling like I had been run over by a bus, I realized that while I *did* get the flu already, that was almost a year ago and thus doesn't count lol. After a long holiday weekend and plenty of death flavored cough/flu medication I'm back to feeling about 75%. The last two days the body aches have almost gone away but I'm still struggling with migraines.

I did manage to weigh in yesterday and only managed to lose two pounds over the last two weeks (probably because I haven't done anything but sleep all day, which surprisingly doesn't burn many calories). While I was hoping to be down to 180, 183 isn't so bad. I've already reached my first goal, and I did it almost a month early. I'm not gonna adjust my other goals yet though because I'm afraid of plateauing. I'd think I could lose another 8 pounds over the next three months since I've lost 12 already, but I'd much rather meet my goals early than not make them.

I wish I was a man.

Well, that might be exaggerating a little... maybe I just wish I was a normal woman.

I've had more spotting since last week. Mostly nothing to write home about until today. Today I feel like I'm going to die. I hate it when I tell girls about my cramps and they say something like "oh, it's not that bad!". No ma'am, YOURS are not that bad. I feel like someone has taken a fiery hand blender to my insides. At least the week is half over and since I worked so much the last two days I'll be able to take it easy for the next three. I have class from 2-4:30 today and then I work until ~7:15 but then I can come home, curl up in a ball, and cry myself to sleep go to walmart because we have nothing to eat or drink. >.<

I went to my new endocrinologist today. His scale says I'm 5 pounds heavier than mine does. I've got another appointment in a month so I'm going to see if there's still a 5 pound difference. If so I'm going to chalk it up to scale configuration. I'm down to 185 according to my scale, BTW. He doubled my metformin dose and ordered a bunch of blood work. I know what some of it is for, but not others. This is what he's checking: 17-OH Progesteron D, CBC, CMP, Cortisol AM, DHEA-Sufate D, Estradiol, FSH, Insulin, LH, prolactin, Testosterone T&FR, and TSH. If you know what any of that means, feel free to leave a layman's definition in the comments. He also told me that whenever we decided to TTC I just had to give him the heads up and I'd have a clomid prescription. Even though that won't be for a while it's nice to know.

At some point a bunch of crap got piled up on the exercise bike that I should give a name. However I'm getting a much better strength and cardio workout at work than I would using that thing anyway lol.

That's all the updates for now I think. I'm gonna go lay down with my heating pad and listen to R.E.M now.

That Aunt Flow, she's such a tease!

I lied. AF did not come to visit. She just called to say hello.

I guess it was just some kind of break-through bleeding/spotting. I can't say I'm not disappointed. I was so hopeful that this meant my body was right on track and the medications were working. Of course, it does say that they could take 3-4 months to kick in.

On the bright side I won't have to start school in horrible pain.

Who knew not having your period AND not being pregnant could make someone so depressed?

I'm supposed to be happy about this... right?

You know how yesterday I mentioned AF was due to arrive in about a week? Well guess who showed up early! I guess the bloating was PMS related after all.

To be honest, I totally did not expect to get it again this soon based on my body pre-HBC. But this is good, right? This is one of the reasons I'm on the medications. It means my body at the very least isn't getting worse. I'm still late by the normal 28-day cycle (this one was 42 days), but it's an improvement over my last 46 day cycle. Seeing as that was when I was on HBC to regulate things I thought it would be much longer than that my first month off the hormones. Pre-HBC I could go as many as 9 months without even a postcard from AF.

So this is exciting. But still sucks, you know? Off to get some pineapple I suppose!

Week 3 update

That whole Day *insert number here* thing was getting old. I can remember what week I'm on much better. =)

I actually weighed myself yesterday (Monday) but didn't get a chance to update. Not surprisingly I didn't see much of a loss, only half a pound to be exact. Last week I was pretty bad and ate like half a gallon of ice cream and had pulled pork for three of my meals. I also only rode my bike twice. This weekend I got plenty of unconventional exercise though as we went through pretty much everything we own and rearranged our bedroom. I don't even know how many trash bags of stuff we either threw out or gave away...

According to monthlyinfo.com AF should be coming to visit in 5 or so days. I've been feeling kinda bloated (which would contribute to my lack of weight loss), so we will see if that's PMS or just my body hating me like normal.

I've got a post about how we view food and eating that I'm working on. I hope to finish it this week as school starts on Monday. We aren't quite finished with our room yet though, as as we waiting for some cables to come in that we ordered online.

I never knew a home, until I found your hands

*This post has nothing to do with my health or PCOS really, I just wanted to get it out and didn't want to resurrect my old blog just for this*

I can't believe in just over a month I will have been married for a year, especially since I wasn't supposed to be married till next month lol. I love my husband, I do. I would not give up being his wife for anything. But I still feel like we missed out to some extent doing things the way we did.

Josh needed surgery. The only way to get insurance was for us to get married. We were already engaged so we figured, why not? But then they fired him two days before his insurance kicked in. Obviously he still needed surgery, so good-bye wedding budget! Now we have no idea when we can actually have our ceremony, actually say the vows we chose for each other, and celebrate our love with our family and friends. One day, I tell myself, one day...

Today I listened to our ceremony music. I knew I shouldn't, but I did anyway. I still love it as much as I did when I picked it out over a year ago. I still love the dress I picked out but never got a chance to try on. I still love everything about it. But I love my husband more and that is what matters.

At least we are finally going to go on our "honeymoon" in December, right?

Couch to 19k

Several people I know are starting the Couch-to-5K® Running Plan. Unfortunately due to an injury I got in pre-k I am not allowed to run. :( So instead I have modified the plan for my stationary bike! My bike has 5 pre-set programs of increasing difficulty. They are all 30 minutes long but have different resistance levels, mimicking increasingly more difficult hilly landscapes. For example the first program starts off at resistance 1 and slowly builds up to resistance 6 over 15 minutes, then immediately goes down to R3 for 2 or 3 minutes. After that it climbs back up to R6 over 5-6 minutes, and then gradually decreases to R1 over the remaining 5-6 minutes. So P1 has two moderately high hills. P2 has three hills, one lower than P1's (like 4 resistance or something), one the same as P1's, and one higher than P1's (I think it gets up to R8). For the remaining programs sometimes the hills get closer together, sometimes they get higher, sometimes its both. My primary goal is to be able to do P5 twice in a row by our cruise in December. Yes, I know this is nothing like C25K, but it's what inspired me and that's what counts. =P

My secondary goal is to be able to bike 19k (or a little less than 12 miles) in half an hour on a low resistance. And how did I come to this number, you ask? Well I was trying to figure out what the equivalent of running 5k is for cycling. From what I understand a century = a marathon, so that is what I went off. A marathon is 26 miles and 5k is 3 miles. 3 goes into 26 8.6 times. A century is 100 miles. 100 divided by 8.6 equals 11.6. 11.6 miles is 18.7k. I rounded up to 19 just for fun. (Look Mommy, I did math and no one even made me!) Hopefully by building up my endurance through my above plan I will be able to make this goal. Right now I can only do about 6 miles lol.

Since C25K is broken up into weeks (9) I figured I should break mine up into weeks as well. Mine is 10 weeks because I can't do an hour yet, so I am starting off with only 30 minutes. If everything goes to plan I should finish mid-October, but everyone knows that doesn't happen which is why I've given myself till December 13th. I will be trying to do this 3-5 days a week, because otherwise I won't have improved enough to move on I don't think.

Week 1: Program 1 (started 8-8-10)

Week 2: Program 1 twice

Week 3: Program 2, Program 1

Week 4: Program 2 twice

Week 5: Program 3, Program 2

Week 6: Program 3 twice

Week 7: Program 4, Program 3

Week 8: Program 4 twice

Week 9: Program 5, Program 4

Week 10: Program 5 twice