Coach - Facilitator - Trainer
Edna Didn't Get The Memo -- Colored Pencil on Coloring Book -- Gina Lynette
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
— George Bernard Shaw
Workout 1 on the new elliptical trainer is on the books.
36:41 minutes — 4092 strides — 301.1 calories
I do love me some numbers.
But even more than that, I love me some progress. So it feels kind of strange to be starting back at 1 almost exactly 6 years after this MegaChallenge got started. But… here I am.
The good news is that I’m not doing a complete rewind. I haven’t regained all of the weight I lost 6 years ago (and kept off successfully for another 4 years). I’m starting out about 10 – 15 pounds lighter than last time. I’m also starting out much wiser and — um — 6 years older. This means I know what works for me and what doesn’t and what needs to change to get my body into decent shape — even if my 40 year old self knows that it isn’t ever going to be 20 again.
I also know that the scale and my jean size don’t measure my progress. My stamina and ability to say yes to the things I want to do are what actually matter.
Being happy. Feeling good.
Those are my ROI categories as I restart this quest to exercise on a regular basis.
So, why the home version of the elliptical trainer — besides the fact that walking and dieting aren’t what keeps my butt fitting in my wardrobe? Because it means:
Ahhhh. Happy and feeling good.
All in all, I would have to say that the MegaChallenge is going very well. Sure, I have slacked some in my intensity and progress, but from what I gather that is typical. We all start out like gangbusters. It is the long-haul, day-after-day, month-after-month follow through that tends to get hard. So, the fact that I am still plugging along after 4 months of this fitness quest gives me great hope.
That… and the loss of another half pound. I am never this upbeat when I have stalled out! That puts me at 158 pounds – or 30 pounds gone since the start of the MegaChallenge. So, let’s move the car and pretend that no one notices that I haven’t worked out since Thursday. Okay? K.
Oh, and beefore I forget, check out Renee’s new site, Fatfighters. You won’t bee disappointed. 😉
Okay, so the gym was closed for Labor Day and I don’t do Tuesdays, so no gym progress to report. I still weight 162 lbs, so nothing new to note there. I am keeping track of food on FitDay, and it looks just like last week’s intake, so that isn’t news.
Yeah, I am fresh out of information.
I did get a papercut, yesterday. Yow! But, funny, that doesn’t seem blog-worthy.
So, on your way. Read something else. Nothing to see here.
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.
Having completed workout 30/200 today, officially hitting the 15% complete mark, and seeing 173.5 pop up on the scale it dawned on me that:
See, I have a medical diagnosis that gives me a “get out of guilt free” card on the fitness front. I am not going to tell you what it is right now because I don’t want every wanna-be-doctor on the web giving me advice on what to do about it. Just suffice it to say that I have used this diagnosis to buffer any thoughts of better health. As in: “Oh, I could never sleep through the night, lose weight, run a mile, etc because I have ____.” It is true that I have to be careful with myself so that I don’t push my body into a relapse, but there is nothing to say that I can’t move my body as long as I observe those limits.
Everyone in my family of origin is overweight. I am actually the smallest of the bunch. Yesterday, I saw a packet of information about WLS on my parents’ kitchen table and had to catch my breath. Without starting a blog war on personal choice, let’s just say that WLS would be a risky option for my stepfather, and the idea really caused me to pause. I have been following Allan’s progress as he follows the post-surgical diet without having the surgery, and agree with him on one major point: WLS does not remove all of the reasons you eat too much food, it just makes it physically difficult to do so.
When I asked my mom about the packet, she said that they had gone to the seminar because my stepdad’s doctor suggested it. They have decided that it would be too risky for him and are teetering between giving up on fitness altogether and looking for another solution. Seeing an opening, I mentioned that I had made a commitment to move 200 times this year and have lost about 15 pounds since the beginning of June. She looked at me like I had announced that I had earned a free trip to Mars and said, “How’d you do that???”
And that is when I realized what a zealot feels like. I have the answer, but it is going to sound like a brush off. The obvious answer is, “I exercise 4-6 times a week, and watch what I eat.” But the real answer is, “I came to a point in my wallowing where I decided that I had a choice in the matter and decided to make that choice. I still struggle with self-esteem, and all of the other stuff that gets in the way of my living my authentic life, but I am not waiting until I have all of the answers before I start moving in the general direction of where I want to be. That includes my health.”
What was the epiphany *for me*? It was redefining “fitness” from looking like a swimsuit model, running marathons, and wearing a size 4 to improving my endurance, making a commitment to move, and not giving up when that first rush of “I am going to look like a swimsuit model” wore off. The frustrating thing about an epiphany is that those aha moments aren’t easy to share. Of course, some folks are better at it than others. They are the ones who write the books, make the videos, and get the contracts. But maybe my writing that it isn’t magic or voodoo or money or talent that ultimately gets the pounds off, and that even *I* can do it – with all of my excuses and neuroses – it will inspire someone to say, “Hey, maybe I can tackle a personal goal, too. I have nothing to lose.”
Soap Box of the Day: Wendy has been ranting for a couple of days about some negative responses to the new Dove “Real Beauty” Ads. She has done such a phenomenal job of flogging the geniuses who think a size 10 female body is somehow defective that I am officially stepping off of the soap box for today to give her some extra space up there. Rant on, Wendy! (And in case you are a deluded schmuck who believes that a size 10 is “chunky” you probably ought to quit reading my blog, ’cause that’s the size I will be at my goal weight. So there!)
your thoughts