So Far So…

Life as a grad student is not really very standard. I’m starting to think that maybe life as anything isn’t standard and that predictability, calm and planning are myths that only exist in an imaginary world.

Straight biz. I haven’t been doing great. I did a bit of walking but not today and I only had a couple hours sleep last night because I was up trying to meet a deadline. I went to a workshop that is prompting the beginnings of what feels like a major mid-PhD crisis.

On the other hand, things are really going very very well because:

1. I did walk at least Monday and Tuesday even when I didn’t want to necessarily and so more walking does seem to be turning into more of a routine for me and a part of something I can truly be consistent about.
2. I have been on the verge of an emotional take away curry binge for about 3 hours and I have not given in. I ate some home made pre-prepped healthy chili instead.
3. I have been on the verge of an all out sugar binge and I haven’t given in to that either.
4. I am in the process of making sure that I try to avoid all excessive thinking about life goals, planning, list making and general… well really all thinking. I’m sitting, trying to get sleepy enough to actually sleep (tired doesn’t mean sleepy in my world) and I’m trying really hard to turn off my head. I know this is important because I’ve learned that this is what I do when I’m sleep deprived. I eat sugar and curry and I fret about my life in a major major way turning mole hills into mountains.

In the morning I will have had sleep and I will feel better and I will have the energy to go for a nice run and a long walk with my dog and I’ll be able to actually dig into DOING something about something instead of just making lists and fretting about it, which in my state is all that I really CAN do right now. So I am happy really… I’m melting down, sure, but I’m happy because I have finally learned not to pay any attention to myself in this state… Score one for ME!!!!! I’m about to have some hot milk or something and lie in bed til the sleep finally takes over.

I can’t wait to get some sleep and go for a run tomorrow… I really can’t.

Monday Monday

Talk about sore! I was so sore yesterday that I basically didn’t do any exercise. Today, still sore. I walked to worked and then had a mammoth session at work and didn’t leave until after 8pm so I decided to go ahead and wimp out and get a ride home. Tonight, I watched myself, as if having an out of body experience engaging in unhealthy emotional eating.

In a nutshell I talked myself into eating chocolate because it would feel nice because my day sucked. THIS, my friends is why the chocolate needs to not be up in here AT ALL! Oh well. I didn’t do too bad and calories, if I had the energy to work them out accurately would probably be in the reasonable range of around 1700 so I’m alright.

I have to spend about an hour writing something that I really needed to have done today and just didn’t get to so I can’t post for long (it is already 10:45 at night for heaven’s sake… I wanna go to bed already!). But I wanna plug Mizfit’s great Facetime and this week she is talking about consistency and so this week I’m thinking about consistency and I’m having all kinds of deep thought and I so agree that in my own life I’ve seen that what I can do consistently really is what ends up defining me. So many times though, this little perfectionist isn’t happy with that and that is when things can fall apart. I need to get myself surrendered to the idea that consistent but imperfect is a helluva lot more useful than sporadic yet heroic. The sporadic hero shit has gotten me into a lot of crap, particularly when the hero’s alter ego is a fricken maniac, dead-set on destroying my entire universe. Let’s here it for Captain Consistency! no one is going to write a comic about CC but I do believe it gets the job done. Thanks Mizfit… as always you help me work my shit out!

eeeGADs

I just did a kettlebell workout. 20 minutes of 20 sec rest and 20 sec work. I alternated swings and presses and snatches. Doing this after all the running this afternoon almost killed me but I feel really happy that I sucked it up and did it. My neck is feeling a bit stiff just now so I’m thinking that more small kettlebell work outs but maybe a little less intense would be a good idea.

Running, How I Missed Thee…

let me count the ways.

1. The sun came out and shone on me as I got all sweaty… ah vitamin D! Does a body good.
2. My legs got sore and tired and it felt AWESOME to being HTFU’ing my way to the end of a hard long run.
3. My tension and stress is all but gone and I’ve got endorphins to spare (one might say, in fact, endorphins for orphans… but I digress and that is maybe a little tasteless… sorry, I watch family guy and laugh (HARD). I am low brow)
4. When I got home I did a nice long stretching session and it felt great like only a nice long stretching session can feel when it is after a nice long run and everything is warm and loose.
5. I ran the longest I have ever run. I went out planning to push it a little and I did, I ran 7.2K!!!!! It took me about an hour and 5 minutes. I am a one hour runner. I rock.

There you go folks. I never want to take a long hiatus from running again. Running feeds a part of me that food can’t fill up and it makes life sweeter and hell we all need a bit of that. I think I’m riding out the world’s best runner’s high right now and having not felt it in a while it makes me want to giggle and sing and dance all at one. If you haven’t run in a while, lace up your friggin shoes and get out there mate!!

ummmmm Saturday Morning

What could possibly be better on a cold Saturday morning than two cups of espresso americano accompanied by a nice organic, gluten-free sausage and egg breakfast, enjoyed while watching a couple of episodes of Doctor Who.

It looks like the rain is stopping and so as soon as the breakfast settles and this latest episode of the Doctor is done I’m going to go out for a nice long, slow run by the harbour.

How’s the Plan Stan?

Alright, I had a plan. I really did. I planned and I wanted to do it but, sadly I didn’t. I achieved almost none of what I set out to do. Part of me wants to be really upset about it but the rest of me knows that I just need to stop for a minute, figure out what happened and move on, adjusting what I need to adjust to get it sorted and shifted in the direction I want. I can do this.

So what went wrong?

• I let myself blame the rain. Notice that I don’t claim that it is legitimate to blame rain. I have a free membership to the uni gym. It is a pretty bleak gym but they have all the necessary equipment so there is no excuse. It really did rain so hard a few days that actually getting to the  gym would have been a mission but still… shoulda and coulda. Nuff said.
• I ‘planned’ to stay off sugar and go lower carb (’cause I feel best that way) but I should know that I really need to pre-plan my meals whenever I’m getting back into the swing of it. Otherwise I fixate on distraction and too often I’m tempted to make poor choices. I gave in to temptation more than a few times this week. Always thinking… okay I’ll get my shit together and plan for X,Y,Z tomorrow. I never did. Most of the time I wasn’t awful, but I did eat stuff that makes me feel less than great. I do think it is cool that I’m not feeling guilty about the food. I’m just feeling the natural consequences and not liking it at all. I feel more sluggish that I would have if I’d eaten better and I’m learning to hate feeling sluggish and bloated.
• I didn’t treat getting the exercise in like the focus around which my day was built. I need to do that. There are times when I can’t exercise during a given day and times when I can and I need to pick one of those each day and then MAKE the exercise happen then no matter what shit comes up. Work and other responsibilities will always crop up and try to steal this time from me. I can’t allow that to happen.

So here I am at the end of the week. I’ve barely done any running this week and not a lot of walking either. I feel more easily out of breath already, I’ve had a headache all week (that didn’t help my tendency to want to eat carbs either!) and I just lack energy. Misery!  But as horrible as I’m feeling I’m battling with the inertia of not really getting moving much this week and that sucks a bit too.

Alright, onward! Today, the first day of August, hasn’t really gone the best but who cares. I have the rest of August stretching out ahead of me and tomorrow is Saturday and I have the luxury of being able to set my own priorities for tomorrow. The priority will be getting some good intense exercise in. I will also get my menu sorted out for the whole week. I know that takes a bit of work, but when it comes down to it, it is the best and most reliable way I know to ensure that I have a great week nutritionally. I really want to drop about 8 to 10 pounds this month and I know that will take a lot of work. I also know it will feel GREAT! and that is what I need to stay focused on. This week clothes are fitting different in a good way and people are really starting to notice my most recent losses. It has given me a little boost but I think I’m at risk of self sabotage right around now too so I do want to turn this ship around and quickly before the fear of real progress sucks me down and away from my goals.

PS it would be really really nice, if it stopped raining, even if it isn’t a good excuse for not working out, I still really really really want to remember what it is like to walk outdoors without getting wet and I’m starting to forget what the sun looks like.

In Writing

When I was following the C25K I never missed a run. I have had a lot less success getting other work outs in. I set out with the best intentions but they never “happen”. I need to do something about that but first I want to explain how I feel about this whole passive “happen” thing.

I have real problem with it and it is one of those things that I still really need to work on but I’m really sensitive to it in the people close to me (read: husband). My husband uses this as an excuse all the time and I hate it in him. So much so that I know it is something I am still dealing with myself. I have sort of clued in to the fact that I only get THAT annoyed at something I really need to deal with.

What am I talking about? Well hubby has wanted to do the C25K for a while. He keeps starting and then not really getting in his runs. I ask him at the end of the week “did you get your runs in?” and he’ll always say “no, it didn’t happen”. That drives me nuts. I want to scream, “dammit man, do you think running just freakin happens?” Of course I always calmly tell him that running doesn’t “just happen” you need to MAKE IT HAPPEN! Okay, maybe don’t always handle this as well as I should. I tell myself that I wouldn’t give him a hard time if he didn’t keep saying at the beginning of the week that it was what he wanted. I’m getting better at letting this go and in the process I know I need to deal with this in myself. I need to support him 100% no matter what he does and at the same time I need to set a great example. I need to MAKE more of my own shit happen.

Long story condensed, I’m not doing my other exercise because I’m not prioritizing it. How do you prioritize it? Schedule it and DO IT! Do it like your life depends on it. I can’t go through my days just expecting that the exercise I would like to see myself do in a week will take care of itself. I need to make the time for it and squeeze it into my life and if that isn’t working I need to reassess either the exercise goals or the rest of my life to decide what else needs to go to make way for my fitness.

I’ve draw up a schedule for the rest of the week. Basically I’m walking every day and each day I’m also fitting something else in, either running or kettlebells or a weight training session with my exercise physiologist. I’m looking forward to it. It is going to be good. Challenging but good.

Along with all of this thinking about goals I keep turning the idea of running a marathon over and over in my head. I really think that a half-marathon is something I want to challenge myself to do. I know if I set out to do it I can but if I do it, I want to do it well. I want to train well and I’ve recently endured a conversation with some people that “know some people” that run or have run and had a horrible time with running either 10k races or half-marathons. I’ve read enough race reports to know that with proper training it doesn’t have to be miserable at the finish line. How to get the mileage in to train for a half marathon might be tough if I also walk to work and back (which I am trying to do to save on fuel), so I’m wondering if I might be able to work out a way to run to work and back (potential of 7K each day I do it, broken into two runs). The only thing I’m worrying about is that a good portion of the run would be on a hill and I’m not sure how I would handle that. I wonder if I’d get used to it if I took it on slowly and did the hill as a run/walk starting out.  I’d also need to plan things out to avoid carrying things so I could possibly drop off clothes and food at the beginning of the week and then just leave my laptop at my office all week (I do have another one at home if I need it but it is my hubby’s and so it isn’t a Mac - ick!). I guess I’m just throwing this out there for any of you runners to comment on. Do any of you run to work? Do any of you have a route that includes a bad ass hill? Do you run it regularly and how does that work out for you? I remember when I started walking to work, it took a toll on me by the end of the week and now it is no problem, I’m thinking that with enough time to build I could do this with running and then just fit in a long run on the weekend and I’d have access to a base that could be as high as around 40K a week if I managed to get up to running every day both ways and depending on what the long run was for that week. Hmmmm I’ll keep thinking about it and keep walking it and see how I feel.

Blame it on the Leptin

Okay so it’s Monday morning and I’ve now got a sinus infection from the nasty eating on the weekend. I can’t PROVE it was from the nasty eating but I feel like I know it was. I’ve been fighting off what has been going around for ages now and it just feels like when I started eating sugar again my body decided to stop the fight.

But I’m back on track. Really I am. The fact that I just ate the left over, last little bit of rice pudding that was in the fridge doesn’t mean I’m not on track. LOL I blame leptin. Seriously check out the link because there is a great article on leptin at the end of it. Maybe someone somewhere will find a way to fight with this little chemical that likes to fuck with people who’ve lost weight by telling them they really really need some comfort food, NOW. But maybe we won’t and either way, the reality is that for me, it will always be a bit of a battle. Building a new habit greases the wheels and things do get a little easier as new patterns of living emerge, but I think I will struggle for a long time. That’s just how it is and I think I’m getting okay with that.

Getting okay with it changes my feelings a bit about this whole relationship between me and food and exercise. I think that I could read a million times about lifestyle changes needing to be permanent and I could KNOW that in my brain but until it comes round to being real for me it is just another piece of diet advice data. I think we need to feel things. Humans are crap about accepting opinions, even expert opinions, when acting on them means we need to do a little something unpleasant. When I was a smoker I knew I needed to quit but I didn’t feel it until, well, after I quit really. After I quit for the last time. Now I really understand that I can’t smoke, not even a little, not ever, even if, after a few cocktails, it seems like a good idea. It’s real for me and so it is how I live now.

In the past when I lost weight it was either terribly unhealthy or it didn’t stick. When I look at the latest time, I realize I did a lot of things right but when it came to maintaining I let myself go back to old ways. I knew I shouldn’t in my brain, but I never did what needed to be done to ensure that my new healthier life became ME - defined me. I think I get that now. I get that for me to be the healthy person that I want to be I will be the girl that brings fruit and cheese to a dessert potluck (because truthfully when the whole aftermath is considered, I would much rather some fine blue cheese and an apple with a tiny piece of chocolate on the side, than eat all the cake and spend two are three days getting my life back in order). It is just weird because, really, I was NEVER that girl. I was so not that girl that I didn’t have any friends who didn’t think that was odd. They would have all associated that with deprivation dieting and that really isn’t what any of this is about. I would have felt paranoid about that and I would have made chocolate cake and I would have eaten it, and the left overs. I’m not sure if I have friends that think this is odd now but I guess the difference this time is that I don’t care. I’ll take odd and happy thank you very much.

So now there is nothing tempting in the house. By that I mean that there is nothing in the house that makes me insane like left over rice pudding makes me insane or chocolates make me insane or really sweet and really soft, juicy fruit gummy candies make me insane. They are all gone. I either ate them or threw them away. Now I’ve got nice soup and roasted veggies and some plain unsweetened cocoa and splenda if I really need a little hit of sweet chocolate. I feel freer and happier already. It might take a few days for the sugar hangover to go away but I know how much better I’ll feel and I’m looking forward to eating well more than I have ever looked forward to cake or candy and my leptin can go fuck itself.

Yummy Smells

My house, just now, smells fabulous. There is a pot of red thai curry and coconut soup with lentils and celery bubbling away on the wood stove and just to one side of that same toasty stove is a rack with a fresh load of clean laundry that smells like summer lavender.

Chicken is roasting in the oven and will soon be ready to be taken apart for a half a week of lunches. A giant pan of roasted veggies and roasted buds of garlic (for dressing) is sitting out to cool on the counter. I’ve washed the hard wood floors and hubby vacuumed and we are ready for the week. So satisfying and it smells so DARN good! This is going to be a really good week if these smells predict anything at all.

Exercise and Work Re-Boot

The last two weeks I’ve been doing a lot of walking. I’m loving it. I’ve been working longer hours too. I don’t know if I can say that I love that but I do love making progress and feeling satisfied and if that is what it is going to take then that is what I will need to do. Constantly feeling the hounds at the door is no good way to live.

I posted a while back that it is all about balance. With the focus on walking and work and then the out of whack party induced sugar haze this weekend I’m a little out of balance right now. I feel like a washing machine that has all of the jeans packed up on one side. I’m spinning my little heart out and sliding across the floor and if something doesn’t come right soon I’m going to end up pulling my own plug out of the wall. It’ll be all bad and that isn’t what we are aiming for here.

Mostly what has been falling behind is quality time with the hubby, quality time in the kitchen (I’ve been eating fairly well but wasting a bit of food to bad planning and shopping and not using things up properly I could also do with some nice cooked dishes in lieu of cold hunks of chicken and chopped up veggies for a change) and quality time doing some of the more intense work outs that I really enjoy like kettlebell, weight training and running. If I’m going to be walking 35 to 40 kilometers a week and getting all of this in I need to plan a bit more diligently and get a bit more efficient here and there.

I have an appointment with an exercise physiologist this week coming up. He is going to have his students work with me on some plans for sorting out my shoulder issues so that I can safely work up to a full push up and build strength for pull ups and dips. Some day I know I would like to try crossfit but unless I can get some of my flexibility and other weak areas dealt with that isn’t realistic so I’m really looking forward to this appointment. Because it is with the students along with the supervisor I get a personalized session for like an hour or two for just 10 dollars and then I can do the exercises in their plan to address my weak areas and come back when I’ve mastered that to see what the next step is. Exciting.

The left shoulder has been hurting this week and I know it is because I haven’t done any upper body work to speak of. It generally feels so much better when I’m doing regular but reasonable weight training so I have the will and soon, after my appointment I will have the way I just need to plan my days right so that I can also have the time. Kettlebells and body weight work I can do here at home any time of the day. Running is better if I do it midday because when I’m at work I have access to relative flatness while near home all I’ve got are killer hills and I’m just not up for that kind of hill every day. There is rugby field near the house though so I could get out really early, climb the hill to the field and get some laps in the dark first thing in the mornings. Running on grass would be easy on the knees and it would be a good way to get a lot of easy short runs in through the week without needing to take time midday for a shower etc. My running is really slacking these days and think mid week long runs are terribly reasonable when I’m already putting in the time to walk 7+ kilometers to and from work every day. Two or three slow K in the morning, I could do and then keep the longer runs to the weekend.

There is just one little stub of a week left in July and then August is HERE.  Winter is almost over and I am so so so ready for it already! By the middle of next month the days will be feeling much longer it will be easier and easier to get an early start to the day or get outside for a work out after work. I want to push my limits in August. I know that I CAN and I know how great it feels when I do and things are in balance and they click. Time to set some August Goals to keep me on point!

August 2008

1. Run/Walk total mileage of 168 Kilometers!! That is a bit less than a marathon a week and it is just a bit more than my walking has been the last two weeks. Most of these miles will be walked but I want to run at least 42 of these in the month.
2. Get to 165 pounds by September 1st!!! Achieving this one means that, if I were to lose another 5 pounds by September 25th I would have managed to lose 50 pounds in a year. Last September 25th I was at least 210 pounds. That is about 9 weeks to lose 15 pounds. This is doable.
3. A minimum of 12, 20 minute minium kettlebell work outs. Instinctively, when I see this number, I want to shoot for more but realistically I just haven’t been getting these work outs in and I do NOT want to overshoot and give up. Start with 12 and then when I get there I can push for more. Also if I make 12 the goal and get 15, great!  Plus I’ll be doing some other work that the exercise physio gives me and I need to make time for that. I have a gymboss timer now so I will be able to kick my own ass just a little bit better with some structured work outs. I’m contemplating hauling my kettlebells to my field camp with me in September. They will fit in the back pack I’m just not convinced I want to carry them
4. Remain sugar free (to keep me sane) and journal my food (to see that scale go down). I know that journaling does it for me so I just need to stay the course with this one and realize that if I journal the pounds will come off. Historical this plays out, I just need to trust it when measuring shit feels like a pain in the ass.

Weeeee I have a plan. I’m feeling strong. Me and food are having a better relationship than ever and I’m capable of so much more exercise than I was just a few months ago. I hardly ever get sore anymore and I realized this week when I hit my knee on the bed in the middle of the night and bruised it that apart from this bruise, my knees haven’t been hurting even a little bit for maybe a month. That is a Non-scale victory that I started shooting for back when I started this blog!!! Yay! Another one bites the dust.

I think I’ll make a page or side bar blurb to track my August miles and workouts and successes and I’ll probably be back to blogging a bit more mechanically about my food and exercise - because I like to keep track, so I’m sorry if those posts get a bit dull. In September I’ll be heading into the bush and won’t have access to a scale or a mirror or a computer for like 5 months so if anyone is still here in Feb of 2009 we’ll see how “wee” I managed to get. Anyone care to join a challenge and see if they can boot camp it up and lose weight with me while I live in the woods. I’ll check in on you when I get back and we can continue this crazy journey from there.