Coach - Facilitator - Trainer
My son is very interested in the tickers at the top of folks’ health blogs. Obviously, he has been exposed to plenty of them as I catch up with what y’all are up to. Anyway, he was concerned that I didn’t have one, so he designed this for me.
He wants to make sure that lots of people get to see it. Mainly because it involves a car. He really likes cars.
So, there ya go.
I did something I have never done before. I requested the nutrition information from the waitress at the restaurant this evening. She sort of cocked her head to one side, golden retriever style, but she went and found it. They had a binder with a page for each menu item, and I flipped through it to see what would be decent choices. I didn’t choose the healthiest thing in there, but I didn’t end up with a 2,000 calorie meal, either. (Their honey mustard dressing alone has over 300 calories per serving! OUCH!)
I did something else that was somewhat new. I ate less than half the food on my plate and asked for a to go box for the rest and gave it to my mom. She’s happy to have lunch for tomorrow. I am happy to have eaten a yummy meal and estatic that I avoided ruining it by stopping when I had eaten what I needed. Now, before you get the wrong idea, I have taken to go boxes before – but only when I have eaten way more “extras” like a basket of bread, appetizers, and likely a dessert, too. This time I stuck to eating my dinner without all the other, and still had lots of leftovers. I was pleasantly full, and actually recognized the feeling and – gasp – honored it.
Of course, all of this novel behavior is motivated by my continued fitness success. Having 46/200 workouts completed feels really good. Seeing 167 lbs on the scale feels really good. Wearing size 12 jeans feels really good. I like what I see in the mirror. I like how I feel. I like how well I am sleeping.
I love that I have gotten to the point in the game when my efforts are starting to show. Sure, I still have 18 pounds to lose, and 154 workouts to complete to reach my goals, but I have no intention of waiting until I get there to enjoy living.
Nikki asks: “Do you often take a break from healthy living on the weekends? If so, why do you think that is? If not, how do you manage to make being healthy part of your life 24/7?”
The quick answer would be that my weekends are just as “healthy” as the rest of the week. But when I really look at my life, I have to admit that I don’t do the 5-days-on-2-days-off bit in any area of my life. I am a college-attending, homeschooling, mother of 2. I don’t do a 9-to-5 M-F schedule that makes the weekends seem like mini-vacations. (What is the deal with all of the hyphens?? –) So, with that said, I can honestly reiterate that I don’t take a break on weekends.
I do, however, behave differently depending upon my circumstances. i.e. I eat out after class, which can be tricky if I am not careful. I also take class days off from working out because I (1) need a day off, and (2) already have too much to do on Tuesdays. So, in a way, Tuesday could be considered my “weekend.”
So, I suppose I should answer how I manage to make being healthy part of my life on Tuesdays. Well, it came from the realization that going out to eat after class didn’t mean that I had to consume a week’s worth of calories at one sitting. I don’t have to avoid activities that are different from my daily routine. I just have to look ahead and make sure that I don’t undo my hard work because I am unprepared.
Case in point: I won’t go into a whole rant here, but I am not a fan of McDon@ld’s. Regardless, we ended up going there yesterday. I was dreading it until I went on their website and found a salad and a dressing that would total 300 calories if I left the croutons and crackers off. The sodium content was higher than I would like, but overall it was a decent choice. Without the information from the website, I could have easily picked nearly 1,000 calories worth of food – ie a double cheeseburger (460 cal) and fries (520 cal) – based on price ($1 each) and gone backwards.
So, part of it is vigilance in being aware of my options. Part of it is finding that balance (yes, there is that word, again) that allows me to continue losing weight without dreading life.
For the past week or so I have been walking around hiking up my jeans every 4 steps. It finally occurred to me that I probably ought to pull out a smaller size. When I started the MegaChallenge, I was stressing the outer limits of a generous size 16 (so probably should have been wearing 18s or even 20s). So, even though I have been losing weight, I really didn’t need to go down in size.
Until now.
Well, folks, I am officially a size 12!! And not a lie-on-the-bed-and-suck-it-in-to-zip size 12. I can actually zip a size 10 – but it makes that unpretty bulge above the waistline – and I haven’t lost 20 pounds to wear pants that make me look like I have gained it. So size 12 it is! Happy dance.
I also met 167.5 on the scale earlier this week, and it has held in spite of my adding food back into my day. Today’s workout (44/200 – the first since swimming on Monday) consisted of a 35 minute walk at our local park. I am feeling a little bit better, but I don’t want to push it until I am sure I have licked this virus. The MegaChallenge requires 200 workouts, not 200 marathons. I have to keep reminding myself of that as my all-or-nothing brain attempts to take over.
All-in-all I am pleased with my progress. It isn’t in a straight line, but what in life really is? Unlike past efforts, which focused on getting rid of pounds ASAP and then going back to “normal” life, I am trying to make this new way of life stick. In order to have that happen, it has to be realistic. I am going to get sick/eat out/miss workouts from time to time, and I am going to have to learn to adjust my stride and keep moving. Though only 44 workouts into my “new” life, it seems to be a good fit.
As are my jeans!! Yay me!!
Well, actually it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But it was my first solid food in two days. And it tasted really good.
I hate being sick. I hate that sweaty, half-awake, groggy, nauseous, head-achy feeling. I am an incredibly whiney person when I am sick. I am really ready to be all better. Now.
Unfortunately, whatever virus has invaded my body isn’t ready to leave. So, I will keep this post short and spare y’all from the endless complaining.
You’re welcome.
Because there aren’t already enough wacky diets to try, I am helping to spread another one. It is the LexySmash Diet. It is so simple. You catch some horrendous virus and are reduced to a ball of dehydrated mess. It is hell on your schedule, so plan the diet for a week when you can pack the kids off to a camp somewhere.
Unfortunately, I didn’t do the advanced planning for my trip through sickdom. Does anyone want to move in for a couple of days and play mommy? No? Damn.
I plan to eat for the rest of my life. That means that I need to balance good, healthy choices every day with a few of those not-such-great-choice splurges once in a while. I will not go the rest of my life without pizza, cheesecake, martinis, and pasta.
Some folks may have read my posts the other day and tried to put them together: I reached the halfway point and “rewarded” myself with pizza. Not so. I reached the milestone and ate pizza on the same day, but they were in no way related.
I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about what I am going to eat, but everyone once in a while I get a hankering for something. I can live without it, but if an opportunity to eat that something comes up, I am going to go for it. The paradigm shift came with the realization that I cannot eat pasta in cream sauce 3 nights a week and maintain my health – but I don’t have to deny myself all access to it, either.
It’s that balance thing, again. Is it really neccessary *for me* to be absolutely perfect in my eating and working out? Um. Nope. As a matter of fact, perfectionism is an illness that I am trying to overcome. I am able to moderate what I eat and do and have managed to lose nearly 20 pounds without losing my mind in the process. Whether it takes me 2 months or 2 years to lose the next 20, I am heading in the right direction, and at some point I am going to want to maintain my weight. When that day comes, I do not want to have to re-learn how to live. Because, like I said, I plan to eat for the rest of my life, I figure the best time to learn how is now.
My approach to fitness is not for everyone. Heck, it probably isn’t for anyone but me! I am all about choice and self-determination. If you have determined that you cannot go off plan at all, you know yourself best, so stick with it. Either way, here’s to long, healthy lives. Oh, and pass the pasta. Thanks!
I made it to the pool for workout 43/200 today. Spending time in the (heated, indoor) pool felt great. I really babied my hip – which basically left me with arm strokes – so I don’t feel like I got that much of a workout. I didn’t work up a sweat, and I didn’t have a heart rate monitor and a stride counter flashing in front of me, so it is hard for me to judge my effort. However, I am not going to obsess over it. I miss my elliptical pal. Sniff. But, I will forge ahead, undaunted by lack of electronic feedback. I am going to celebrate my ability to be flexible and to keep moving and motivated in spite of the weirdness going on with my hip.
(Music swells and dies.)
On this fitness adventure we like to mark progress and milestones. By we, I mean I. Anyway, I am very resistant to writing everything down for fear of turning into my IronMan brother-in-law who is famous for his shoe mileage charts. However, every once in a while, I manage to jot something down that turns out to be very inspiring. Case in point: when I got home from my first elliptical run to nowhere, I wrote this on my calendar:
That is 7 minutes at 100 strides per minute. That statistic is meaningless unless you compare it to my last workout. I didn’t write it down, so this is an estimate, but it is fairly accurate.
That’s almost an hour at 122 strides per minute – and keep in mind that I was hurting the entire time. I can recall hitting nearly 9000 strides in previous weeks. That’s an hour at 150 strides per minute. Just over two months ago it was all I could do to move for 7 minutes at a walk. Now, some 40 trips to the gym later, I literally run for an hour straight and then go on to do weights and have energy left over to function for the rest of the day.
Our bodies are amazing.
I had to go and botch up my hip. Either that, or I am having a serious flare of arthritis. Either way I can barely walk. It was a little tender this morning, but I tend to have aches and pains, so I ignored it. Once on the elliptical, it didn’t loosen up. I should have quit about 10 minutes in, but I did all but the last couple of minutes of my hour run to nowhere (42/200). My pace was off quite a bit, but I still should have stopped. Bah!!
The good news is that the other branch of my gym has a pool. So, in spite of the fact that I don’t feel even close to ready to show off my body in a suit, I am going to venture into that forum tomorrow. My one saving grace is that school is back in session, so there shouldn’t be any 85 pound teenagers running around.
Oh, and at the risk of sending Allan into fits, I have to share what I ate for dinner. Pizza. Loaded. I thought about it all day, and decided that I really wanted pizza for dinner. I ate two slices and was full. But there was a whole lot of pie left, and I took the third piece without even wanting it. That was where I went wrong. I am sooooooo full.
The pizza made me think of the Discover Card adds that showed the couple digging into lobster and saying something about a splurge being an occasional thing. That’s what is different. Over the past couple of years tonight’s dinner had become routine. Now, it is a treat. Once in a month instead of several nights a week. And when I do “splurge” I actually get to look forward to it and enjoy it. How cool is that?
your thoughts