Information Overload

Well, the Biggest Loser Bootcamp concluded last Sunday. My overall weight loss was not stellar, but I lost 5 lbs and 9.5 inches. The parts where I really improved were my overall level of fitness. At the beginning of the bootcamp, I could barely do a lunge and I definitely could not do any kind of jumping. By the end of the bootcamp, I am proud to say that I can do 15 burpees in a minute (minus the jump, just not there yet!), 20 full push-ups, and I am jumping and lunging all over the place. I also was able to beat my personal best on the Jacob’s Ladder by 100 steps, making for 350! And yeah, I think that’s a pretty BFD.

As I said, I only lost 5 lbs, but I totally own that it was all me. I have terrible eating habits, and the early weeks proved that all the exercise in the world wasn’t going to fix that. You can’t outrun your fork, people! After my last post, I found this site that basically told me that I was eating too much. The author was pretty much a dick about it, but regardless, it got me thinking about my food log and whether or not I was truly adding EVERYTHING I was eating. Well, it turns out, I wasn’t, so I started ruthlessly logging every little bite that passed my lips, and measuring everything I ate so I had the most accurate calorie count. That next week, I lost 3 lbs. Then we started shifts but I still managed to lose weight at a rate of 1 lb a week. Then-I got sidetracked yet again.

I wasn’t seeing results like other people in the camp, and so, of course, what’s my go-to? The Internet. The lovely, lovely, internet. I completely overwhelmed myself with information, and then I was questioning my overall diet. Should I go low carb? Maybe temporarily? Would Paleo be better? Maybe I should start hunting and killing and eating my meat (I laughed when I thought that. I like my meat on a styrofoam tray, wrapped in plastic, or flash frozen in neat little individual servings). Everything I read seemed to conflict with something else I had already read, or thought, or felt. It all started with a, “Hey, that recipe looks good” click, and I had opened the hydrant.

I went from Paleo to low carb to low carb/high fat to moderate carb/moderate fat/high protein. Grains were bad, sugar was worse, Fat was not the devil, as long as it came from x, y, z and not from a, b, c. Paleo sounded the best, I thought I could eat like that for the most part. But it seems really labor intensive to follow properly, not to mention the expense. I don’t have ready access to a large selection of organic produce. Grass fed meats are mega expensive and I don’t have that in my budgetmy budget can’t accommodate that. Also, the biggest drawback to the whole thing: I would be doing it solo, and I don’t have time to prep a bunch of food every week.

Then, admittedly, I got further sidetracked by a 48 hour crush on this hunter-athlete guy who doesn’t eat dairy, eats his carbs only early in the day, works out like a beast lifting and running several miles day, kills his own meat (with a BOW, natch!). I mean, how hot is that? Easy on the eyes as well, excellent example of physical fitness, blah blah blah. The life he leads is admirable, but ultimately, unrealistic for me.

But it had to stop. I *was* trying to drink from the fire hydrant. I was drowning in dieting information, man crushes, and eat this not that bullshit. I closed the browsers, but it was too late. The damage was done. I sort of just drifted along while I tried to process all the information I had gathered. There was just too much information out there, too many ways to do things, and no way to know what would work best for me unless I just straight up experiment.

So, on to the Next Big Thing. I have signed up for the Holiday Bootcamp, and also….I re-signed up as a Beachbody Coach. I bought the 21 Day Fix Challenge Pack to start and joined a challenge group to help keep me accountable. Yeah, I’m doing 2 programs. Yeah, I’m going to start doing the Coach training so I can be an awesome coach and make it my full time job. Hell yeah I want to get paid for being in shape and help other people reach their fitness and financial goals.

I managed to end the bootcamp at 233 lbs, officially. I made my goal for the Holiday Bootcamp to lose another 5 lbs in half the time. I can’t promise that in the future I won’t get caught up in more food hype. I might even try a few Paleo recipes. But for now, I’ll take my information in slow, steady sips from a glass, thank you very much.

Better Than Yesterday

In my last post, I discussed my decision to enroll in The Biggest Loser Fall Bootcamp. I wanted to post an update on the first 2 weeks of the program. First thoughts: It’s a solid program, the nutrition is good, if a little low on protein (for the food plan I selected), the daily motivation is good, and I like the little reminders and checklists they give every week to help keep you on track. You also set a mini-goal every week and you see it every time you open the page. The community forums are also nice, because you have people who have never done a bootcamp, to those who have completed several, and everyone has great advice and is really good about boosting each other up and keeping each other motivated.

Week 1. As I mentioned before, the first week of bootcamp I was off work, so at home and more in control of my food and activities. I stuck to the meal plans and only did not eat what was prescribed a handful of times, primarily there were 2 meals that I ate out. I did the prescribed exercises in addition to workouts I did on my own. Even with my meals out, and occasional off-menu snacks, I still managed to have a negative calorie deficit for every day, in fact, according to their calculations, I had a 9000+ calorie deficit for the first week. So, you can understand my frustration when I weighed in on Saturday and had only lost .5 lbs. Half a pound! I wanted to scream! Not only that, but some of my measurements showed a gain, so I also only lost 1.5 inches.

I was pissed and furious, and this my friends, is when I would have thrown in the towel. But the hubs told me to keep pushing and to at least finish the program. I tried to read everything I could get my eyeballs on about why I didn’t lose weight. This is where the forums really helped-I posted my absymal results, and turns out, I’m not the only one.

As the week went on, I could tell that my lack of progress was getting to me because I kept making poor food choices even when I had healthier options. Sort of a, “Who cares. I can’t lose weight whatever I do, so I’m gonna eat whatever I want”, attitude. I still pushed myself at the gym, and continued to make a calorie deficit, but I had that defeatist attitude through it all. A few days later, after I had missed a workout and then furiously tried to make up for it the next day, I came to a realilzation.

I had been asking myself what the point of all of this was. Well, the point was to lose weight, duh! But there had to be more than that, right? Reading the forums gave me the answer I sought. My priority couldn’t just be changing the number on the scale. I needed to also focus on learning to sustain myself after the boot camp ended. I needed to learn to feed myself for the rest of my life, not just these 8 weeks. So, I’ve readjusted my goals to focus not solely on weight loss, but also journey itself, and to make each day better than the last.

For Week 2, I struggled with the disspointment of my Week 1 results, comforted myself with the wrong kind of foods. I changed my overall goals for the boot camp, and decided that it was more important to learn what worked for me and what I can maintain for life than to focus solely on weight loss. In the end, I gained back that stupid half pound.

Going into Week 3, I am more determined than ever to make this week the best. I will be adjusting my calorie count and my macronutrient ratio because I don’t think I’m getting enough protein or enough calories to cover my Basal Metabolic Rate under the standard plan. So, we will see how this pans out and what adjustments need to be made. I can only operate under the plan to be better than I was yesterday.

 

 

Here We Go Again, Same Old Shit Again!

I’ve been away for too long again, but mostly that was by design.  I felt that I didn’t have anything productive to add, and I also felt that I all I wanted to do was bitch about how I keep gaining weight and how unhappy I am.  I didn’t want my writing to turn into the sort of “woe is me” type bullshit, when my unhappiness with my physical appearance is due almost entirely on the way I approach food.

Recently, I have been bitten once again by the fervor and obsession with losing this weight.  I have been scouring the internet, running numbers, scenarios, and planning my “next move”.  This all began at the end of August, when I feel like I officially hit rock bottom.  I had gained more weight (ugh!) and was on a trip to Vegas with my husband, my BFF and her boyfriend.

We were in the hotel room, watching a little TV while we got ready to go somewhere.  I was sitting on the corner of the bed, and across from me on the wall was a large mirror.  I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was me.  And I looked horrible.  I had never seen myself from that angle.  I can go on about how grotesque I looked, how I knew I was fat, but God DAMN!!!  Holy Shitballs.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  This was the pinnacle, the top, the rotten core of me, on display.  I did the only thing I could think of.  I took a selfie.

I will not post it now.  It is too much and too real, and I don’t need it spreading around on the internet as a meme.  As hard assed as I am, that would destroy me.  But I admit to taking other pictures of myself that showed me in the worst possible light.  I can’t explain why I do it.  Years ago, I would have said I did it to further beat myself down.  Now, I feel like I do it because it’s like an expose.  I can’t deal with it if I’m not honest about it.  I can’t deal with myself if I’m not honest about what I see.  I made a hard goal for myself then, and that was to lose 40 lbs by the end of the year, and I had 4 months to accomplish that goal.

So, I made that awful selfie my home screen on my new phone, and I chose a picture of Amanda Latona for my lock screen and a picture of Misty Copeland as my S-Health background pic. Every time I unlock the phone, I see this glaring reminder of my reality, and every time, I am struck not with despair, but with motivation.  Motivation to change myself.  Motivation to keep going. This month, I focused on trying to change my habits and eating less, especially at work. I started using the tools I had invested in, starting with logging my food regularly, and exercising regularly.  I managed to lose 6 pounds-the only weight I’ve managed to lose since starting work here!

The hubs and I have been fans of the Biggest Loser show for some years.  I know that the show isn’t realistic as far as losing weight, but the struggle of these people is real, and so many of their stories really touch me.  I can relate to many of their struggles. During a commercial break, they had the coaches selling their pitch for the Biggest Loser Boot camp.  Now, I am a cynic and a skeptic, but like anyone who struggles with their weight, I can’t help but pay attention.  So, I looked it up, and the hubs asked if I would be able to commit to something like that.  Of course, I wanted to sign up right away, but the hubs was right.  I was going to pay big bucks for this, was I going to be able to stick with this for the whole 8 weeks?  The eating, and the exercise, and the checking in?

After all, my track record for this sort of thing is pretty abysmal. Right now, I need that more accountability and that more structure this boot camp will offer me.  I feel like the start date was the perfect time to begin, because it’s the start of my week off and I will be working a regular schedule for the month of October.  The program ends right before Thanksgiving.  Previously, I spoke of the planets aligning, and everything falling into place, and I feel like this is exactly what has happened. 

It seems pretty solid.  So far, I have completed all the “Prep week” tasks.  Today was the first day, and so far, so good.  I haven’t done the prescribed exercise yet, but I did walk my kid to school this morning, and I had already planned to do this in the afternoon.   I’m excited, and I’m nervous. I want to succeed and I feel like I am finally going to make it.  I am determined not to make this phase feel like deja poo!

Yay for Monday! No, seriously.

Earlier I asked myself, “does sitting in my car in the parking lot count as going to the gym?”.  But, I made it in, I forgot my iPod, they were playing ho-hum music, but I got some weight training in followed by about 30 minutes of cardio.  According to my heart rate monitor, I torched a lovely 1000+ calories when all was said and done.  And this was in about an hour.  Plus, I had a pleasant conversation with the gal on the treadmill next to me as we were both on our cool downs.

When I got to the gym, it was about 8:45.  I didn’t want to go in.  I wanted to go home and go back to bed.  So, I let myself sit there for 10 minutes with my eyes closed, telling myself my appointment is at 9:00.  About 5 minutes till, I cut the engine and headed inside. 

The workout was okay even though I didn’t go through it with my usual vigor.  I just didn’t have any energy this morning.  I don’t know if that’s going to be the way it is because of my shift, or if I could do something about it.  I know I would probably be better a little later in the morning, but I also know that if I don’t get it done before my day starts, then I won’t go.  I’m sort of hoping that as I continue to workout, I will be more energetic.

It’s one of those awful catch-22s in life, you know.  You’re tired, but you want to work out.  You know that if you work out you’ll have more energy, but you don’t have any energy to work out!  Bah!  It can really get you stuck in a rut.

Well, I have another meeting with the boss at 2:00 before I head into work!  Have a great week and keep moving forward.

Just like starting over….Again

I will just warn you now, I’m going to be cursing and carrying on a bit in this one.  So, if I’m going to offend your sensibilities by doing so, skip this post.

---

Earlier, I mentioned not trying not to get into the mindset that I am “starting over”, but trying to convince myself that I’m just “picking up where I left off”.  Which is such bullshit.  I am starting over, and my starting point is so much farther back than before.  Picking up where I left off would imply that I never gained back this 30 lbs.  Starting over means I have to start at the beginning.  This wasn’t a race where I had to stop to pee halfway to the finish.  This was a marathon that I feel like I turned around and went back not just to the starting line, but maybe I went all the way back to my childhood home and now I decided to walk back and finish the race.  Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  But anyone who has struggled with their weight knows that this *is* exactly how it feels.

 I got on the scale today and took my measurements and they are disappointing and sad, but overall have not changed much all summer.  I updated my menu planner-it’s just a simple spread sheet I print out and fill in.  I took pics a few months ago, but I guess I should take some updated ones so I can mark my “true start”.  Is it obsessive?  Absolutely, but it’s what I know I need to do to keep myself straight.  A month ago-yes, I’m a slow starter-I made out a list of sorts that I titled : “Things I need”.  It is more than a wish list.  It is a map of sorts.  I started with obviously, what I need, which is mostly time.  I had to ask myself what is holding me back and what I wanted what I really want and how I plan on getting there.  I really tried to get into my head and be totally honest when I was writing about the things that are holding me back.

And the biggest thing at this point is my past, which is never more glaringly obvious than the fact that my birthday is coming up very soon and I have yet to meet one fitness goal I made for myself 8 freakin years ago.  8.  Fucking. Years.  What. The. Fuck.  So, yeah, it’s hard not to beat myself up over my failures, or the fact that my goals are even farther away than they were back then.  It’s hard to let go of the past when I make goals and I just see myself walking backwards from them without really understanding why I sabotage myself that way.

I figured out that one reason is I am afraid of being successful, of winning, of achieving something great just for myself.  See, I’m not a competitive person in the way that some people are, where they have to be the best, or #1, or first.  I just honestly don’t care about that kind of shit.  What I care about is being the best that *I* can be.  Me. Only me.  But I look back and see that most of the time I’m just being a mediocre me, or below average me.  Am I being too hard on myself?  Maybe, but as they say, we are our own worst critics.  That’s the other reason.  I have a terrible, awful, horrible inner bitch and she likes to tear me down

So part of my “moving forward” and “starting over” is just that: moving on. A friend of mine recently decided to leave Facebook because she had had enough drama and was in a too fragile emotional state.  A lot of the comments I read after her post were her “friends” telling her not to give up and to stick it out, that signing off meant that she was letting him win.  I sent her a message that despite what some of the commenters said, she wasn’t giving up or giving in, she was moving on.  I realized later that I needed to follow my own advice and lay the demons to rest so I could carry on.  Maybe this time I can move forward.

Till next time.

I’m baaack!

Yes, my friends, after an unexpectedly long hiatus, I have returned! With an extra 30 lbs, natch, but hey I’m here. All the times I told myself that I needed to start the ol’ blog back up, and all the new “likes” and new followers compounded my guilt until I was forced to come to terms. I do so need you guys to keep me accountable! Knowing that there are people out there reading my shit, and following my progress motivates me to keep up with my workouts, to eat right, and to keep moving forward. You can cut to the chase if you don’t want to read the drivel!

Some days, it’s a constant struggle with me. I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist, but I’m realizing that some of my “perfectionism” is really “avoidance” and “rationalizing”. Like I kept telling myself that I can’t write my blog because I don’t have anywhere to sit down and do it. Or, I don’t have any privacy. Or my personal fave: I don’t have any time. The truth is that I just can’t wait around for the sun to be in retrograde with Venus when the moon is in it’s third day of waxing and the wind blows less than 5 knots from the east. I am teaching myself that if I wait for the ideal conditions to do something, I will never do it. I am teaching myself the hard truth: there will never be any time if I don’t make it and whatever time that is, is the perfect time and there are plenty of places to sit down and bang out an entry when it’s time to write.

I fully admit I fell into a bit of a funk a little after the move. There were days that I did nothing but read. And read. And read. There were days that I spent all day away from home, trying to track down stores where I could buy this last little thing I felt I needed so we could be officially settled. But then, we were settled, and I was feeling pretty good. I had amazingly only gained 3 lbs during the whole move. I was able to stay active by riding my bike with my oldest to and from school, and then I started going on extended rides after he went to school. I was pretty stinking proud of myself! I had had this bike for 12+ years, and this was the most I had ridden it in all those years put together.

Things were going pretty good and then….I got a job. Which was totally awesome because it meant that we could get out of the financial toilet we’ve been in the last few years. The sucky thing is my hours are wonky as all get out because some of the time I work shifts for about three weeks at a time, and the other part of the time, I work more normal hours. My job doesn’t allow cell phones, and there are limited computers to use, which doesn’t matter in the long run because I wouldn’t be able to blog anyway (policy and they block a lot of sites). My co-workers are funny, and I feel we get along pretty well. There are 9 people in my particular office, 4 of whom are diabetic. You would think we would be a lot more health conscious. But no. The pink bakery box is a common occurrence in our office. I also admit there are times when things are slow and I get the boredom munchies. This is even worse when we move to shifts. I was working the swing shift, from about 4 p.m. to midnight, but then I started working overnights. Oddly enough, it was easier to control the snacking during the overnights, but I ended up eating more because of my wake/sleep schedule so either way, I felt screwed! I’m currently back on the swing shift but there are a few days here and there when I have to be in at different hours.

I also quit smoking. YES! I know! All this time, I was a total smoking fool. But I finally bit the bullet and decided to quit, not just for my health, but to set a better example for my kids. I feel better about myself, sure, and I love that I don’t reek of nicotine and smoke anymore. However, up till the time I quit, I had finally managed to stop eating my way through my shift. After I quit, I gained another 12 lbs to bring my grand total to 30 pounds. Boo to that! But it is what it is, and the most important thing is that I have quit and I am not going to start that shit again. Previously I had quit for nearly 2 years and started back up-bad judgement on my part.

It’s been incredibly difficult not to get in the mindset that I have to start all over from the beginning. I try to tell myself that I’m not starting over, I’m just picking up where I left off-it’s sort of working. I’ve been sporadically exercising in an effort to establish some sort of routine. So far, this is the routine: I start working out, and I make it about 4 days. Then, something happens to disrupt my schedule and I can’t go to the gym or work out at home and then a week goes by before I can get back on track. If I don’t have to be at work early, then I prefer to get my work out in before the day officially starts. However, if for whatever reason I can’t do it, no matter that I say I will work out later, I just can’t seem to make it happen. Sooooo, the best thing for me is get my ass up and exercise first thing, except when I work regular hours and that’s where it gets complicated. I will discuss this in more detail later like on Whiny Wednesday because it sure is a whine more than anything because I just can’t seem to get my shit together and be more flexible.

And I guess the other big change was I started logging my food a couple months ago. Wow-now I can totally see why I have a hard time losing weight-you should see the crap I just randomly put in my mouth and the crap that I put in there on purpose. Sometimes I feel like I have no will power when it comes to food. I took one of those random quizzes the other day purporting to name my psychological problem. Guess what mine was? Food Addiction! I was all, well, I really didn’t need a quiz to tell me that! I was just bitching the other day to the hubs that I felt like I was on the “seefood” diet, you know, I “see food and I eat it”. Yeah, I know, I crack myself up. I started logging my food and exercise back in March. I haven’t made any progress as far as losing weight, but I’ve also managed not to gain anymore, despite my poor eating and exercise habits. In relation to that, I will say that restarting Shakeology has been a lifesaver for me.

 

CUT TO THE CHASE:

Last year, we moved to this wonderful desert. Here’s a shot of the boxes that were outside for like a month. It was the middle of a heat wave and it was like 115 for a week when we moved in, but it was another 2 weeks before we got our furniture. My poor dogs didn’t know what to do with themselves. We spent a week organizing the garage and going through every box as we set our house to rights. Sometimes I hate that we have so much stuff. Part of that is I have a lot of interests/hobbies that require supplies that I don’t have time to use as much as I would like. The other part of that is that we have successively moved into a smaller house each move and it has gotten increasingly difficult to find a place for our furniture and our things. On the plus side, since my kids have to share a room here, we were able to downsize their toy hoard considerably. We also were able to get rid of more stuff that we didn’t unload when we moved the previous year because we didn’t have room for it, or I was finally able to convince the hubs that we didn’t need to keep something around for another 10 years.

I got a job a few months after we moved here. The work load is easy, but it’s hard to stay on track with my diet and exercise because of the hours I sometimes work and also I have a hard time saying no to food I should not eat. A combination of work related eating habits and quitting smoking caused a 30 pound weight gain over the last year. Which now I have to convince myself that trying to is not starting over but continuing on my journey to a lifetime of health. This psyching myself out doesn’t really work because I’m a realist, but I’ve resigned myself to repeating it as a mantra as a sort of “fake it till I make it”.

To help me maintain my “nutritional honesty” I’ve started logging my food and exercise with an online program. It has helped me see that even when I was eating the right things, I was sometimes eating too much or not enough. When I wasn’t mindful of the food I ate, and ate the way I would have normally eaten, it was incredibly clear why I wasn’t losing weight. It’s also a good way for me to see what I’m eating in relation to the number of calories I’m burning during exercise. I am working on being consistent with my eating habits and eating better.

As far as exercise, I have been doing it sporadically, but am working on being more consistent with my efforts because it is part of my bigger plan to be a successful Beachbody coach. I had to let my Coach membership lapse last year because I couldn’t afford to keep it up when I didn’t have any customers. My job allows us a little more financial freedom while we meet our other financial goals, so we are able to get our delicious Shakeology again. I absolutely love this stuff because it’s made from whole foods and helps me meet my daily nutrition goals.

Until next time, then.

 

 

It’s Monday-again

Funny how that just keeps happening, isn’t it?  It’s Motivation Monday and I wanted to throw out a quick blurb out there to everyone.  I am hitting it hardcore with the final packing this week before the movers come.  You know, they have all those pesky rules about what they will and will not ship.  Of course, that just makes it harder on those of us who are trying to leave town with little more than a few changes of clothes.

I found some time to do some research last week about staying fit while traveling.  You know, like tips to help me eat healthier, workouts I can do in a hotel gym or in my room.  I’ll share what I’ve learned later this week.  Also, I’ll be keeping in touch during our travels with shorter entries over the coming weeks.  Next week is going to be a doozy and I’ll be busy “supervising” the packers.  You know, like making sure they don’t pack the trashcans with garbage in them.  Don’t laugh.  It’s happened.

So, I’m leaving you today with this little gem I found online from Nike.  Gotta love their marketing department.  They have a way of making me want to get up and go for a nice long run a la Forrest Gump.  Well, I’ve spoken about greatness before, about feeling great, and being great, and making yourself great, but this really sums it all up nicely.  Have a wonderful day and don’t let ‘you’ keep you from finding your own greatness.  We all have it in us.

Don’t Look Down!

Hello, Motivation Monday!  It’s time to rock and roll, shake the cobwebs out, and get moving and a groovin’.

The weekend was fraught with peril-it was the hubs’ big 4-0, and Orthodox Easter (Kalo Pascha! to any other Orthodox out there).  Next weekend will be another whopper: our anniversary and Mother’s Day.  Will the insanity ever end?  Yes.  Yes it will.  Things are SOOOOO much less stressful since I’ve given up on the “all-or-nothing” attitude.  It helps me to put things in perspective, reminding me that a half slice of the hubs’ b-day cheesecake was not going to break the calorie bank, or undo all my hard work.

Of course, if I ate like I did last night, I would, but that’s the beauty of special occasions.  They are called so because they aren’t everyday occasions.  A big part of changing my life has been about changing how I think and react to things.  In the past I might have denied myself the cake.  Or I would have had it and then felt tremendous guilt.

These days, I like to redirect my mental energy into positively programming my subconscious.  Instead of focusing on what I want to avoid, I focus on what I want to achieve.  You know how you might be climbing to some precarious height, and someone else yells, “Don’t look down!”, and of course, the only thing you want to do is look down?  This is the same concept.  For me, this revolves mostly around food, but sometimes  around my workouts too.

For instance, I haven’t worked out yet today.  I feel bad about it, but I haven’t yet done anything about it.  However, when I was reading up for today’s entry, I realized that I’m the one holding myself back.  I have had rather dismal results in the weight loss department (I’ll post updates tomorrow), but I have lost significant inches in my hips and waist.  But instead of focusing on the improvements, I have unfortunately focused on the number on the scale.  So, in my head, I’m telling myself that I’ll never get where I want to be.  And of course, what is the outward result of that?  I ain’t done shit today!

I’ve determined I need to focus and shower myself with positive affirmations consistently.  I know, it sounds stupid, and my inner pessimistic cynic is sneering in mockery.  But here’s the truth:  if you’re already telling yourself that it’s not worth it, then it won’t be, whatever it might be.  Believing that positive thinking doesn’t work becomes a self-fulfilling negative affirmation.  You can’t think yourself thin, but you can change the way you think to make your fitness and weight loss goals totally achievable.

If I’m just sowing weeds with my negative thoughts, I’ll never see my goals achieved.  I have spoken before about changing my inner monologue, but like a lot of things, this is something I need to practice everyday.  And I have been neglecting that part of my growth.  Sometimes, I feel like I’m trying to juggle a toddler, a baby grand, a medium hippo, and 3 camouflaged balls, trying to keep up with all the things I need to do on the outside, I forget to work on the inside stuff at the same time.

So, instead of the voice in my head so insidiously whispering that I’m not going to workout today, so why did I bother with the sports bra? I’m whispering back to it that I’ll be working out when I get home from picking up my son from school.  That I will make time for anything I’m committed to.  That I love working out.  That the scale may not be budging, but my muscles are growing stronger.  That I am the only one responsible for my results.  To quit bitching and get fit.

Instead of telling myself not to look down, I’m going to tell myself to look up, and ahead.

 

The 6 Ps

It’s Tactics Thursday and sometimes I think of Thursdays as being a sort of calm before the storm.  The storm being the weekend.  I always welcome the weekends, but in the past, it was also wrought with tension and  stress because they are unpredictable.  No kids to hustle off to school, no waking to the droning of alarm clocks, etc. I kind of always felt that the weekends were a sort of battlefield for me whenever I was “on a diet”.  I don’t have quite the same feeling of anxiety that I had in the past about it, but still, I fear the way a weekend can sort of unfold and undo all my hard work during the week.

When I was growing up, my dad shared with me the idea of the 6 Ps, and said not to forget them.  Well, I do, on occasion, when I stomp my foot and refuse to take charge of my weekends. So, I’ve decided that I should put it to use in my little toolbox of knowledge and not let the weekends unpredicability get the better of me.  Perhaps in the future, I will lead a more regimented life, but right now, it’s a pirate’s life for me, ARRRR!

 I present to you, the 6 Ps, in all their simplistic glory.  May they serve you well!

One of my family’s greatest temptations over the weekends is fast food.  We get so busy doing things, and running around, and all of a sudden, we’re totally starving.  And, how convenient! There’s a Mickey D’s right over there!  But we already got chicken out or whatever! But by the time we cook it and sit down to eat, we could have already eaten our fat pills.  Hmmm….okay, let’s just get burgers.  See how that works?

And that’s usually how it is in this house.  I’m determined to change that though, by planning ahead and sticking to that plan.  I’ve been working on my extraordinary productivity exercises from last week, and I’m determined to stick with it through the weekend.  I will not worry about every little thing that crops up on my radar and worry about when I’m going to find time to take care of it.

I have my plan and my schedule of to-do’s, and I will write it down and do it when it pops on the schedule.  I’m big on planning and making lists, but I try to schedule too much, or I spend too much time on one thing, so then I run out of time.  You would think I would be much better about the time management, but I’m actually pretty terrible at it.

I have a friend that once told me that when I had to be somewhere by 2 p.m., I would arrive at precisely 1:59 and 59 seconds.  And sadly, I have to laugh, because it’s true.  I thrive on routine and schedules, and I admit I am a little disappointed I need to regiment my schedule like that.  However, I’m understanding myself a little better now and realize I need more than a list of things to do, I need to learn to schedule the time to do it within the time I have to do things.

For instance, I know I have pretty much from 9-3 every day to do what I need to do.  That may seem like an eternity to some, but I find I can’t use my time wisely: frittering away a morning to read, typing away on my blog, reading other people’s blogs, checking my celebrity gossip, taking care of my little one, or putting out unexpected fires.  Well, remember when I said I was done with being an ostrich?  That was about the time I had to fess up to myself that I was wasting too much time wasting time instead of doing what had to be done.  If everything is an emergency, and has to be done right away, where does that leave me?  I’ll tell you: it leaves me with a pile of mail that need to sorted and floors that still need to be cleaned.

And so, enter the Covey’s time management matrix, and now the 6 Ps.  I’m still struggling to learn to use the matrix, as I don’t have enough information about it just yet, but I can no longer wait till I have all the answers to start something.  I know how I’m doing things right now is not efficient, and I sincerely feel it would be a mistake to wait, so I’m really going to have to jump with both feet without testing the water first.  Maybe I’ll find the water is just fine.

Be Miserable

That’s right.  “Be miserable.  Or motivate yourself.  Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” (Wayne Dyer).

This is what I’ve been telling myself all day.  In fact, I tell myself this frequently, sort of in a “I think I can. I think I can.” kind of mantra.  When I first came across this quote, I fell in love with it.  It sort of became the seed that grew the whole “Quit Bitching, Get Fit” sapling.

 

Today was a bit rough due to Murphy’s Law.  That bastard!  All my careful planning about trying to start my week using Covey’s matrix for extraordinary productivity, and my Monday has all but been a wash.  I was in such a fog for most of it!  I have resolved to love Mondays because it means a new beginnings and fresh effort.  Mornings, however, will still be on my shit list. I can’t help it.

You see poor Gary the Snail?  That’s how I felt this morning.  Sure, we all have those nights of tossing and turning.  And those of us with kids also know the sheer “ugh”-ness of one (or more) or your sweet dumplings having  a restless night.  And of course it has to be on the same night! Otherwise, it just wouldn’t be worth commenting on.  And of course, this is what my night was last night.

Usually, I’m down for the count within 5 minutes of my head hitting the pillow.  Seriously.  And I sleep like the dead.  Last night, I don’t know what happened, but I tossed and turned and finally dozed off about 1 a.m., only to be awoken by my 3 year old who then crawled into our bed with a pillow, 2 stuffed dogs, and his woobie.  Then he got out of our bed, went and got his blanket and another pillow and got back in our bed.  Where he then played fish-out-of-water for about an hour until he decided to go back to his own bed.

An hour after that, I’m still lying there, wide awake, listening to my little bit talking to himself and making car noises across the hall.  Then he comes in and tells me he has to potty.  So, after a little trip to the bathroom for both of us, I lay down.  And hallelujah, my body finally gives the okay for some serious shut-eye.  But, before I did, I reset the alarms. (I hang my head in shame.)

I had figured out that I need to wake up super early if I want to have time to do what I need to do every day.  Super early being 5 a.m. I made up a little checklist of things I want to accomplish over the next three  days, along with some other odds and ends and notes for stuff.  Then, I tried to go to bed.  Maybe that was a mistake.  Maybe it was the equivalent of exam jitters, and my mind just couldn’t shut down because I was worried about sleeping through the alarm and thinking about all the stuff going on.

So, at any rate, I woke up at the usual time, had my shake, and eventually did my workout.  I also managed to get some of the other this-shit-can’t-wait-till-tomorrow off my list.  This morning, I could have just been miserable.  And in the past, in my old all-or-nothingness, I would have stayed that way, believing the whole day was lost because I couldn’t stick to my new schedule right out of the box.

I just kept repeating “Be miserable. Or get motivated” over and over again till I got the most important things done.  Even though I might have only been 20% motivated at first, it got me through the first tasks, so that by the time I finish this blog, I will have completed 4 of the six things I needed to complete today.

And I think that is just outstanding!  I will still have time later on to work on the other 2 things later this evening.  Some people may say, what’s the BFD?  And it may not be a big deal to a lot of people.  And some may be saying, well, she didn’t do the other 2 tasks.  It’s a big deal to me, though, and it’s my opinion that matters.  It’s not about what I didn’t do today, it’s what I have done today that matters most.