Monday, October 17, 2011

Weekend Workouts

Well, I got in a couple of workouts this weekend, that's the good news.  The bad news is that they were all in the same day, so I'm pretty sore, hahaha.  We went for a little family overnighter in the mountains of PA to see some family, and came back before lunch Sunday.  The weather was VERY PERFECT, and I was really jazzed to get in a nice long brisk hilly walk around the neighborhood and soak up some sun and fresh fall air in the process.  I did 4 miles in an hour and 5, and even though I felt ready to sprinkle in some jog intervals, I didn't, 'cause I knew I had a hockey game later.

But wait!  We played a little side yard baseball, too, and I did a lot of arm swinging and ball throwing and fetching.  And THEN later that eve I played hockey.

Am I sore today?  Of course!!!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

If You Can’t Fix it (Yet), Twist It!

Here’s a question for you weight losers in progress: can/should you change your broken mentality first, to enable you to achieve your weight loss and fitness goals, or does moving forward with some health improvement first in the form of fitness and healthier eating (with the resultant weight loss that will come) make changing your broken mentality more possible, even inevitable? 

Notice how on The Biggest Loser, for example, people are “pushed” by the trainers to work out and eat right and get results, and THEN as they start to realize the beginnings of success and dramatically improved health they are then able to work through the mental crap that’s been causing them to be heavy in the first place.  Which in turn ensures their continued success.  However, for the rest of the dieting world, it is often “taught” that you have to fix your mind before you can truly and permanently fix your body.

 I think all this time (3 or so years now) that I’ve been thinking and writing about the subject of wanting to lose weight and improve my health, I’ve been trying to figure out how to fix MY mind.  It seems like that must be the answer to being able to stick with the fitness and healthy eating, right?  And it’s what that chick wrote about in “Women, Food, and God” that Oprah and everyone else on earth swore was so genius on the subject.  I tried to read it, and then although it seemed to speak to me at first, I kind of fell away from it and lost interest.  So, after blogging about myself for 3 years, observing other successful people, asking a lot of questions, and reading about weight loss, fitness, self-improvement, etc., and learning a ton about myself along the way, I still have yet to crack “fixing” my mental code as the first step. Further, on the other side of the coin, I do have fits and spurts of working out, but I haven’t pulled it off long enough or consistently enough to make it a continued and reliable habit to build on.  I love going to my gym (as long as it’s not too late and I run out of steam), and I am scheduled to do so 4 days a week, hoping to work my way up to 6, but so many things come up that easily interfere with that plan.  Instead of working to implement alternatives, I tend to let things derail me easily.  I prefer to walk/run, so if the weather’s bad or it is already dark or I am not able to get to the gym because the husband is working late, I let it go.  I could do a home workout video, or at least some moves around the house, but I don’t.  You know, on account of the inertia that I haven’t quite gotten past and all.  Inertia is evil.  My comfy couch in front of the TV, wrapped in a blanket and laying on a pile of pillows is, sadly, one of my favorite places on earth.

So, if I don’t have a Bob or a Jillian yelling at me to just do it with nothing but freedom from responsibilities and time to work out; and if I can’t just make myself feel and behave and treat myself the right way just BECAUSE, what’s a girl to do?  And then this morning it dawned on me: maybe until I can truly CHANGE the thought process, maybe I can just manipulate it to my benefit instead?!  I’ve kind of thought about this before, but never fully thought it through enough to make sense of it.  For example:  I apparently don’t give a rip about hurting my body and health by filling it with terrible unhealthy foods and too much of it and being utterly lazy, but I would never in a million years dream of doing that to my son or letting him do that to himself.  By no means am I a perfect nutritionist for him, but I make an effort to ensure he gets a decent amount of fruits and vegetables in his diet, enough protein, keeps the salt and sugar in check, etc.  And I make sure he is active enough, and doesn’t watch too much TV or play too many phone games.  One of the issues heavy people commonly have is “not loving themselves enough to take good care of themselves”.  I still don’t entirely get this in my case, because I like a LOT about myself, I truly do.  But somewhere down in there is clearly a glitch, because I apparently do not love myself enough YET to take better care of my body.  So what if I take this incorrect thought process and twist it around so it helps me, until I am better equipped to fix/work thorough correcting it?  I would never dream of letting any harm come to my sweet boy that means the absolute entire world to me, maybe I should look at it as not letting anything harm that sweet boy’s mother that he needs and would be crushed by the loss of?  You’re not SUPPOSED to think that way, but maybe I can try to use it as a crutch to manipulate myself into going down the right path and then embracing the right reasons to take care of myself for the sake of MYSELF along the way.

 Thoughts?

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Weekend Workouts

My workouts yesterday and today have consisted of about 5 hours of nonstop garage work on Saturday, as in pulling stuff out, sorting it, unpacking boxes, gathering trash and giveaway items, repacking etc.  I sat down only twice for a combined total of about 20 minutes.  Never was it cardio intensive, but it burned a ton of energy and calories, and made every limb and my back sore.  We made fantastic progress toward finishing getting it unpacked and set up, too!

Today I took advantage of the spectacular sunny and warm but not hot weather system we are in and took a long walk in the neighborhood.  I went 3 miles at about a 17.5 minute per mile average.  This seems slow to me, but it is where I am fitness wise at the moment, a starting point.  I wasn't feeling ready for run intervals yet.

Food-wise, I have been eating less sugar this weekend (although not none), but this evening I have a gigantic, throbbing  headache to show for it.  Detox stinks.  Happily, tomorrow is an extra day off to relax and hang out with my son.  :)

Friday, October 7, 2011

Step 1: Escape from Candy Hell


This is but a small glimpse into my current state of hell.  Halloween season (which I wholeheartedly adore) is the absolute WORST time of year for me, diet-wise.  All of the most damaging forms of my very favorite chocolate products come in these cute, deceptive little "fun sizes", but in sacs of like a thousand of them, filling the most prominent aisle of the store from floor to ceiling.  "I'll just have a few, it's just a little bit, only such a small serving"  I keep thinking to myself...  Until by the end of the day there are like 50 wrappers in my purse and I might throw up if I try to fit in dinner.  And forget about candy corn, that might as well be straight crack.  Not to mention that eating this much sugar makes me feel terrrrrrrrrrible, sapping my energy like a parasite draining its host, making my biggest pants tighter, making me want to sleep under my desk at various points during the day, etc.  And I know it going in, too- reaching for the first sampling of the day, I think to myself for just a second "I'm going to feel crappy if I eat this", and then I promptly eat it anyway- and then I definitely do.       Sigh...

With all these new and revived fitness aspirations brewing, I have to find my way out, immediately.  It's too early in October to continue to kill myself for a few more weeks until the shelves clear.  There are varying schools of thought out there on how to do it, too, some people believe in the all-or-nothing approach, others think moderation is the only way to be realistic and not feel deprived.  Personally, I've always been the all-or-nothing type myself, but most people do preach moderation as the healthier state of mind, which I am really bad at.  But I was vindicated yesterday when I asked my doctor about it, bemoaning how poorly my weight was making me feel and that lately it has been exacerbated by the candy problem.  She looks like she's never had a weight problem a day in her life, and yet she admitted to me that she "has to pretend she's allergic to chocolate" because like me she can scarcely control the urges to go crazy when exposed to it.  Wow!

I've actually been writing this post in bits and pieces for 3 days now, and as of today, I've eaten and given away the last of the candy in the house, especially the ginormous sack of M+Ms that I stuck my coworkers with whilst still imbibing in them myself here and there today.  Frankly, I have eaten enough of them now that I actually don't WANT any more, lest I explode, and I feel ready to relax at home for a 3-day weekend of a good start to a healthier path.  Piss off, candy, I'm all done with you, for the indefinite future! Let the "rehab" begin, cold turkey...

Anyone else out there suffering from the same plight?  Makes me feel less freakish to share.  ;)

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Inspired to Aspire


I might have mentioned before that my bestie and her family uprooted and moved to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii earlier this year.  (If you want to read about their adventures, check them out here.)  So this week in Kona, swarms of world class athletes have descended on the town and everybody is abuzz for the Ironman World Championship which is taking place this weekend.  Those amazing specimens of humanity will be swimming 2.4 miles in the Pacific Ocean, biking 112 miles, and running a marathon, over terrain which is NOT flat by any stretch of the imagination.  The race starts at 6:30 am for the elite athletes and 7:00 am for the “regular” people, as if anyone even considering such a feat could possibly be considered regular.  On the other end, the course closes at midnight.  MIDNIGHT, people!!!  If you’re at the back of the pack and struggling you might be racing for 17 hours and still not officially finish.  Holy crap!
I have definitely done a few fitness events here and there, including triathlons, and I love them.  LOVE.  Unfortunately, I’ve never fully trained as well as I’ve wanted to do for any of them, and have always put in a back of the pack finish.  Happily, I’ve never entered an event and had to DNF (not finish), but I have definitely registered for my share of events that I didn’t start, which is a bummer.  And I did finish last once!
Anyway, as a continuation of my thoughts on getting ready to regroup and hopefully restart this mission, I did some thinking over the last couple of days about my next fitness goals.  They are as follows:  1) workout on my recently established schedule of 4 times a week, through the winter, improving my fitness in the process and getting back to running.  2) Enter some races over the coming year.  Short ones like 5Ks, but with some frequency, and actually work on improving my finish times.  Throw in the sprint triathlons I've done before in my neighborhood toward the end of the summer.  
Considering this starting point, my much, much longer term goals will probably sound a little nutty, but they go along the lines of: a half marathon (13.1 miles) and/or Olympic Distance triathlon sometime in 2013, a marathon sometime in 2014, and (drumroll, please), maybe, MAYBE if I've done all these things and really achieved my weight loss and fitness goals in the process, MAYBE I'll consider making the leap to a Half Ironman in the year or two after that.  There's one every summer just a few hours from here on the Eastern Shore in MD.  The amount of training needed to do an event like that would be pretty huge, and I'm not entirely imagining how it wouldn't fit into my life, but my kid will be 10 or 11 by then, and maybe I can do it if I really want it.  I've even got the support of my honey, he actually did not laugh when I told him all this!  Maybe I'm just pipe dreaming.  But you have to shoot for the stars if you want to be sure you'll at least make it to the moon, right?

Monday, October 3, 2011

Back From the Dead- My Weekend



(This is my early Halloween table, with the addition of roses from my Mom.  I am a HUGE Halloween person!)

Hi.

Apparently if I get tired enough I don't  want to type anything, or even open a computer.  This past week I was fighting an infection, and the first antibiotic I got didn't work.   I was only barely keeping up with the absolutely required and most important to me parts of my life toward the end of the week and over the weekend, but thankfully I'm getting better now, thanks to a change in meds.  I'm feeling better enough to start thinking about a refocus on my fitness plans, about working on healthier eating, and about improving my overall health and well being.  (She says, eyeing the Halloween candy bought rather prematurely...)

I found a really good list of upcoming running events, carrying even through most of the winter.  I've got the husband's buy-in for a return to my gym schedule, hopefully tomorrow.  I bought groceries with which I can make some good meals.  I'm excited to watch and hear about Ironman Kona this weekend, which is where my dear friend moved to, so they'll have a front row seat.  (Did you know Tara Costa from Biggest Loser is competing in it?!  So inspiring!)  And this coming weekend is a 3-day weekend for me and my son, with NO PLANS.  (Except for one soccer practice, but at the rate we've been going I hardly even count that.)  That means I'll be able to catch up a bit on chores, enjoy some family time, RELAX, and refocus on ME.

I smell a good restarting time...