Category Archives: Goals

Quick Training Update

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I have to write a post on Stevia, but I forgot to take my pictures this morning, so that might have to wait for tomorrow. But since my very first 5K is on Saturday, I thought I would give you a training/healing update.

Whatever my chiropractor did to my back on Friday, added to the fact that it was already feeling a lot better, made it feel almost back to normal! So I was excited to train this weekend (while still being careful to listen to what my back had to say about the whole thing).

Saturday morning I met bestie at the gym and we did 45 minutes on the elliptical. This was a huge progress point for me since January when I started this process, because back then, the elliptical easily defeated me. 20 minutes and my thighs were screaming and I stopped, and we really had focused on the treadmill. The elliptical told me that I did 3.1 miles in 30 minutes when I started cooling down, and by the end of the 45 minutes it said I had done just over 4 miles. Good stuff!

Then on Sunday we went to the park where our 5k is going to be on Saturday.

We didn’t have a course map, but we thought we could get a feel for the terrain, elevations and temperatures. We did the 5K in 45 minutes. That’s slow, I know, but aside from the fact that I’m a hella slow runner, there were a lot of people on the trails to negotiate and a bit after halfway I started to really wish I could lose my top layer. Too hot Lo is an unhappy even slower Lo, for reals! Still, I’m kind of expecting that to be about my time on Saturday, and I’ve decided to be OK with that. In fact, as long as we cross the line at some point before the timers leave, I’ll be very proud of myself. I’ll worry about getting faster after I cross this hurdle.

This morning I did the weight circuit for the first time since my back injury. I did everything at 50% of what I had been doing it pre-injury. That went great as far as my back is concerned, but it didn’t feel like much of a challenge. I guess that’s a good thing. I’ll mention it to my chiro on Wednesday and see what he says I can try.

Tonight bestie and I are decorating our shirts that we are going to wear during the race. That should be a good time.

And this morning I signed up for our next 5K, May 20th.

Woot Woot!

Weighing Things

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I feel like I know myself fairly well at this point in my life. I know what motivates me and what doesn’t.

Being angry at myself does NOT motivate me and push me to work harder. I know it works like that for some people, but not for me. Publicly flogging myself does not often motivate me (although it’s probably necessary from time to time). For me, if I can pull something, anything, that I can truly call a success, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant it might seem, or how much I have to stretch to get there, THAT motivates me.

Right now, while I’m injured, I have decided that I’m not going to do weekly weigh-ins here on my blog. Note that I am not saying that I have given in to eating like crap every day and given up trying to get back running and dancing. I also did not say I was not stepping on the scale.

What I need to focus on right now is taking care of my injury and slowly getting back to the gym and to the activities that I love, as soon as my body is ready. I have to be willing to be gentle with my body and take things slow, maybe even take two steps back after I feel like I’ve taken one step forward. I don’t want to focus on my weight right now, publicly. Mainly because I think it’s inevitable that with my sudden and dramatic decrease in activity I’m going to gain back some weight. I know I can deal with that when I get fully back from my injury, because I was doing it before and I’ll do it again. For now, if I can pretty much maintain (+ or – 3 pounds) and heal, that’s enough for me.

Plans may change, of course, if I have to go a very long period without being able to truly get back to my fitness plan. IF that occurs I’ll have to really rethink my diet and eating all over again, and I will share that…but I really don’t anticipate that.

Feel free to comment if you think that I’m making the wrong choice here. I value your opinions!

Flippin’ Food Frustration

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You know how I was talking about cliches the other day? I thought of another one I hate: “Eat to Live, Don’t Live to Eat.” Now we all know that’s true insofar as it goes. We all know that we need to eat properly in order to fuel our bodies for what our day/week/life is going to bring. But that cliche brings to mind someone sitting in a small dark room in a folding chair at a card table eating kibble–alone.

I’m sorry, but going out to eat with, or creating a good meal for, my friends, sitting around the table laughing, joking, and telling stories is a huge pleasure for me. I like to eat well. I like to eat good food with my friends, or alone for that matter. I don’t want to reduce the act of dinner to something I could replace with a nutritionally balanced meal replacement bar.

I don’t think the above is incompatible with losing weight or a healthy lifestyle, do you? I think it takes maybe a little more thought, a little more planning, and maybe a bit of sacrifice when you make menu choices.

Yet, I’ve been having trouble in this regard lately. I’ve been getting frustrated and feeling like nothing that I want to eat is what I should eat. I’ve been craving wings, I’ve been craving fried anything, cheese fries. You name it, if it’s hard to fit in with a 1690 calorie a day diet (which is what myfitness pal tells me is the magic number that, when combined with exercise, will allow me to lose a pound a week) that’s what I’ve been wanting. I’ll fill my fridge and pantry full of healthy choices and then look at them and go BLERGH.  Oh, I know what you are thinking and it starts with an “m” and ends in “oderation.” But everything that I’m craving lately is a trigger food for me that only leads me down a path of more bad choices, more cravings, and well, “finishing the bag.”

Re: Finishing the bag, portion sizes are a big (heh, see what I did there?) thing for me. I like BIG portions. (I mean you had to figure that, you don’t get to be 230 pounds by eating your 3oz of fish) I like the look of big portions on my plate, and I like taking seconds. Yet, I don’t think that is completely incompatable with weight loss either. Emily over at Daily Garnish talks frequently about loving big portions and look at her adorable tiny cuteness!

I need to (re)tweak my mindset a bit.  So I’m going to list the following food goals:

  1. I know I like the feeling of taking seconds, so I’ll start with a smaller 1st helping.
  2. I know I like big portions so I’ll try to have something each meal that I can have a lot of, but still maintain my calorie goals. (See roasted Brussels sprouts, or a crunchy salad)
  3. I need to try some of the gazillion recipes I’ve starred on Google Reader for healthy, yet sweet and delicious (or salty and savory), treats. (See these, or this)
  4. I need to change up my healthy snack drawer at work. I’ve been restocking with the same pistachios, reduced fat peanut butter, and dried fruit strips for too long now and my tastebuds are bored. (And that box of Girl Scout Lemonades [150 cal for 2] is probably stale by now.)

I think trying to make even a few of the above changes will pull me out of this food frustration I’m in. I was making too much progress to get stuck in a plateau now.

What do you do when you get bored with your go-to foods? How often do you think it’s OK to give in to something you’ve been craving.

Acceptance

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The post I had planned for today was supposed to be about the Couch to 5k program. This is not that post. One of the healthy lifestyle bloggers I really enjoy over at Back to Her Roots had an interesting post today about how goals can change (back and forth) over time as you live your life. She was worried about her changes in direction–namely about maintaining v. actively losing weight–coming off as annoying or indecisive. I and many other commenters told her that we appreciated her honesty and that we’d struggled with the same feelings.

And it got me thinking. Why? Why do we question changing our mind about what is right for us with regards to our weight and our eating habits? Shouldn’t it be normal that what is right for me changes depending on what is going on in my life right now? If I simply didn’t account for that, wouldn’t I be worse off, even in denial? And wouldn’t that, then, lead to a lot more beating myself up for not meeting some goal that I made up in the first place?

The thing is, the popular “school of thought” on diet, exercise, weight loss, whathaveyou, changes frequently. One day some Doctors made this chart that said if you are this height and <other arbitrary statements> here is how much you should weigh. And BOOM! That was it, no getting around it, no build, no genetics, no activity level. Enjoy your number because it ain’t changin’. Then some people started to take other things into account here and there and maybe that number wasn’t so arbitrary after all.  AND THEN…

Then, for me at least, there came this eye-opening movement on the internet called Fat Acceptance. Whoa? What? There was this whole group of women out there of varying sizes who were saying “I’m fat! I’m sexy! I’m happy!” They were saying that society and the media and magazines and fashion and clothing stores weren’t allowed to tell them what they were supposed to look like. This was different from the “Health at Every Size” Movement. This was angrier, more politically active. I found their courage inspiring and their message necessary– “Here I am, take me or leave me. This is me and I’m happy with that. I’m not trying to lose weight to meet some arbitrary standard. Call me ‘fat’ that’s what I am.” I was blown away. I wanted to be OK with me like they were OK with themselves.

That was until I saw a couple of people get eaten alive when they mentioned Weight Watchers or losing weight because they wanted to be “healthier not thinner” on some of the forums. To me, it was exactly like what they were fighting against, only in reverse. Making someone feel less because of what they looked like or wanted to look like. That wasn’t healthy to me either.  Why couldn’t someone be happy with who they are RIGHT NOW but still realize that they have changes they can make to be even better. To me it’s like saying yes, I’m smart and I have a Bachelor’s Degree and a good job, but I’d really like to start working toward my Master’s Degree. Who would think that was strange? Why can’t you say “damn my boobs look great in this shirt, don’t they? But there’s a history of heart attack in my family so I feel like I could stand to lose a few pounds.” Or even “But this shirt would look even better matched with a pair of jeans that used to fit, but they don’t now, and I want them to fit again.”

I think knowing how diverse (and adamant) the ideas on health, eating, dieting, fitness and related topics are makes a person who puts their own life out in public (say, on a blog) feel damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It also makes you feel like once you make a statement like “I’m happy with my body and my weight”  or “I am trying to lose weight I won’t stop until I hit 170.” it’s  carved in stone and that’s who your public persona has to be from then on–You are the healthy eating girl, the vegan girl, the weight loss girl, the Weight Watchers girl. You are with them or against them. Watch out, it’s all in the archives!

Life just isn’t like that, people. Someone training to run a marathon can’t function on the same amount of food she was eating before. She needs more calories just to function. Her MO changes because she is working toward a specific goal. No one would say to her “hey too bad you can’t stick to your diet.” When my mom fell and broke both her feet and I was taking care of her daily needs, exercise and eating well fell by the wayside for a while. I NEEDED them to fall by the wayside, I could not handle being stressed about that as well, I would have had a nervous breakdown. Mom’s better now, I’m focusing on me more. Things change. We have to change with them, even if it’s going back to something that worked before at a similar time.

That is why, while my blog is still very new, that I shall tell you I don’t know exactly where I’m going, or how I’m going to get there. Just buckle up and hang on, I promise we’ll get somewhere.

To you all: Love who you are. But also love your potential.

Someone once said you never step in the same river twice. Life is like that too. If your goals and ideas never changed you’d be like one of those smelly stagnant ponds. They breed mosquitos. Nobody wants that.  

Thoughts?

Fake Arms ’til you Make Arms?

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This morning I was so proud of myself for doing 12 reps at 50lbs on the triceps extension machine. What I’m finding with the weights is that am actually capable of lifting more weight than I think I can, but 50 was a pretty big accomplishment. And this is good, because my arms? They need work.

While I’ve always been heavy (well since about 6th grade), I’ve been blessed with the luck to be fairly well proportioned. I carry the extra weight evenly distributed throughout my body, and I’m a fairly good height (5’6). I go straight up and down the same width the whole way, pretty much. But ugh, my upper arms, I do hate them. I know I shouldn’t hate any part of my body, but these upper arms are the bane of my existence.  I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve had to not buy clothes that would fit otherwise, but my arms wouldn’t. That makes LoLo a sad bunny.

So while I know that one can’t pick a specific spot on their body and work towards losing weight in that one area, I think (am I right?) that if I work on toning the muscles in that area, the rest will come eventually. Holy Hannah I hope so.  I don’t do a specific arm workout in my regimen, but when I’m doing the weight circuit I really focus on trying to be able to build up to more weight on the arm machines.

My goals here? To be able to un-self-consciously wear tank tops, especially to line dancing. I’ve braved it a couple of times but thought about what I looked like the whole night, and that’s not doing me any good, or letting me have any fun.

It feels like my upper arm area might be the last to see improvement, simply because they have the farthest to go. But I can report that I now have itty bitty guns, I know they weren’t there before. I guess I should take measurements now so I can see any improvement, but I really don’t want to.

Do you keep track of your measurements other than your weight? What areas are you working hard on to see improvement?

Can’t Fake This: Weigh-in Wednesday

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Well, I still don’t have a full-length  mirror.  This is about the best I can do picture-wise. It was an experiment. My hair is wet, I have a strange expression on my face, but here you go:

Thoughts off the scale

I didn’t feel like my week was as good this week as last week. Saturday I didn’t end up eating very much during the day because of getting ready for my apartment warming. So after we worked out on Saturday night (weights) I was starving, and I…well, I might have hit up the closest place to the gym, which is, of all things, a McDonald’s. But like I said, it was pretty much the only meal I had that day. (Disclaimer: I know not eating isn’t healthy, it was just the way things worked out that day and not something I make a habit of doing.) Sunday was the party and I didn’t keep track at all, I grazed all day on all the goodies I made, but I was mostly busy socializing so I don’t think I did too too badly.

Goodies including….

Monday we didn’t hit the gym in the morning because we were doing a bonus night of  line dancing that night, but it was at a restaurant so we ate there as well. I chose two smaller-portioned apps and I had 1 and a half pints of Guinness. Last night we line danced again but we were tired from the night before so it probably wasn’t as much of a workout as it usually is.  All in all, it wasn’t a bad week, but it definitely wasn’t my best week.

Weight goals

 Small goals: a pound a week, slow and steady.

Larger goal: 199, to be below 200 for the first time in my adult life.

Overall goal:  Not sure about this yet.

Starting Weight: 227

Today’s Weight 223.8

That’s a 1.4 pound loss this week.

Thoughts after the scale: I can really see the difference now between trying to lose weight with just reducing calorie intake and trying to include working out with that. When I was on Weight Watchers I wasn’t focused on exercise at all, and on weeks that weren’t great but weren’t awful I’d lose .4 or .6. I’d still feel good because it was going in the right direction, but really that sort of weight loss you can make or break by drinking a couple glasses of water or having a sandwich. I’m finding out a lot about the way my body can function when I’m eating well and working out.

Did you make progress toward your goals (whatever they might be) this week? 

Water – Liquid Make Fit

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This is going to be a quickie post. I’m swamped at work and busy during the evenings this week (THREE nights of line dancing instead of 2 this week!) and my new blog is the thing to suffer.

But I did want to talk with you all a bit about water. It seems that drinking enough water can cure most of what ails you, doesn’t it? It aids weight loss, because sometimes when you feel hungry you are really just thirsty. It aids fitness by replenishing you and cooling you off. It makes your skin look better. There’s more, I know…

I know all this, yet it’s still really hard for me to get in the required amount of water per day. Sometimes it feels like I’m floating, and I get tired of running to the bathroom every 10 minutes. Other times, I just get caught up in what I’m doing and I forget.

I  had a flash of brilliance the other day, though, and I wanted to share my idea with you. We’ll see if this helps. A few days ago I got a new tumbler and straws for water at work. (I had used the other ones for juice or something and they got a little moldy in the gasket and I couldn’t get them clean…anyhoo….) Here is my new one:

I was looking at the beauty of its clear plastic insulated cupness and I thought, “Hey, I bet you could write on that.” And then I thought, “Hey, I bet you could use a dry erase marker on that.”

x marks the spot

I use the little x marks to keep track of how many glasses I’ve had that day. When I get to four I know I’ve had my quota. And, as a person who makes paper lists just for the satisfaction of checking things off, it’s kinda fun. The marks swipe right off and I start over again the next day.

Do you make sure to drink the required amount of water? Do you have to trick yourself into it, or is it 2nd nature for you?

Monthly Misson – March 2012

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Gratuitous picture I took of boats that makes me think of Spring!

Welcome to March! I, for one, cannot wait for Spring to arrive. I know it’s been a very mild winter here in Pennsylvania, but it also has been a winter that can’t make up it’s mind. I’m really looking forward to starting a box garden and going to farmer’s markets again.

I was thinking how I wanted to mark the start of each new month here on the blog. I like NEW things. NEW implies a fresh start, a clean slate, any number of possibilities.  So let’s explore some of them every month with a mission.  Obviously, I’ll be participating, and I hope you will too.

Your mission for March is to try out something new in your fitness routine. It doesn’t have to be a permanent addition and it can be as small or as big of a change as you want.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do for this yet but some possibilities I’ve been thinking about are:

Trying a yoga class

Trying a kettlebell class

Run outside with workout buddy

Are you game?

Making Fit Requires Inspiration

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Who doesn’t like being inspired? Sometimes I just run across something that inspires me, but often on this fitness quest of mine, I find the need to go searching for inspiration. The bloggers on my blog roll (at the bottom of this page) often offer inspiration, whether it be in the form of a new recipe to try, or sharing a way they’ve found to turn a struggle around. Sometimes, it’s inspiring  just to know that you aren’t alone in struggling. So thanks for sharing that with me through your blogs, and on twitter (@lophoenix–but I warn you I’m a random and prolific tweeter), and elsewhere online.

Another place I turn for inspiration is a one of the only sports I follow closely: Women’s Artistic Gymnastics. These young ladies are tough, with a capital “T.” You can’t fake their fitness level, and by the time they are on the international stage they’ve made incredible sacrifices and attained a level of mental toughness that I can only imagine. Sometimes I use them to push myself to go to the gym for my measly 30-60 minutes because I know they spend multiple hours a day there.  Or I use them for examples of having a goal and not stopping until it is achieved. There are a lot of great examples on YouTube.

or watch on youtube

or watch on youtube

(SOOOOOO excited for London 2012 Olympics by the way!)

Certain songs are also an inspiration to me. Anything from the lyrics to the right beat. When I run I usually have Pandora on my Black Eyed Peas station because I know that will give me a good variety of upbeat music. I love it when I’m at the last leg of one of the running intervals and I’m watching the clock sloooooowly tick down thinking I won’t make it, but then a song comes on that totally makes me want to go faster and run longer.

You know that we can’t do this all alone. What are your inspirations? 

Can you fake it on the weekend?

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So it’s finally the weekend. All week long I tracked my food, exercised, and stayed within 100 calories of my goal. I have a bad habit of treating the weekend like a free-for-all. I mean, planning is harder, opportunities arise, things happen.  I’m also not usually sitting in front of a computer all weekend like I am at work, so the bookmark for the tracking site that I use  isn’t staring me in the face.

I want to work on stopping this little bit of self-sabotage. I feel like I took a step in that direction by committing to an hour workout one day of the weekend. But my weekend eating habits really need to change.  I don’t have a plan yet, but I know I don’t want to completely lose the fun of a spontaneous night out, or a special weekend treat. That’s one of the ways I’ve messed up before, being entirely too strict. As Cassie says, “Everything in moderation, even moderation.”

One thing I’m going to try is having the kind of breakfast I have for work, like a Chobani, so I start out with some protein. I also need to get better at grocery shopping so I have things on hand that I WANT to eat. (I just moved into this apartment so grocery shopping has been at the bottom of the to-do list) I’d love hear anything that has worked for you!

How do you handle your eating on the weekends?