That was a long trip. I left for China Tuesday morning, January 15th, and got home Wednesday evening, January 23rd. By Sunday I was ready to come home. I missed my husband, my bed and I even missed blogging! The blogspot website is blocked by the Chinese government so I can't blog from there. I could have written posts and put them up when I got home and I tried to do that a couple of times, but for some reason I wasn't very motivated to write a blog post knowing I wouldn't be able to post it until I got home.
The trip went well. This was my third trip to China and the first time I went with my own agenda. I spent the entire time working with the accounting staff there and we got everything done that I wanted to get done. It felt very productive and worthwhile. We solved some of the problems we were having and I have a better understanding of their accounting procedures, so from my perspective, it was a good trip. The engineers also had a good a trip and had encouraging meetings with a couple of prospective customers. It's all looking good.
While in China I was able to stick closely to my training schedule. I only missed one upper body workout (I did not take losing a day to crossing the international date line into consideration) and I was able to make that up when I got home. Therefore, as of today, I am right on schedule. Here is a quick rundown of what my first two weeks of training have looked like so far:
Training Week 1:
Sunday: 1 hour of racquetball and 55 minutes (5 miles) running on the treadmill
Monday: 62 minutes (2300 meters) swimming
Tuesday: Strength Training - Lower Body
Wednesday: Lost - Crossed Date Line
Thursday: Bike 38 minutes and Strength Training - Upper Body
Friday: Run 5 miles on Treadmill
Saturday: Strength Training - Lower Body
Training Week 2:
Sunday: Bike 38 minutes and Strength Training - Upper Body
Monday: Bike/Run Brick (Bike 38 minutes/Run 5 Miles)
Tuesday: Swim 2000 Meters
Wednesday: Travel Day
Thursday: Run 5 miles and Strength Training - Upper Body
Friday: Strength Training - Lower Body
Saturday: Tomorrow
I am sure all of the exercise made a difference when it came to managing my weight while in China. I weighed exactly the same yesterday as I did the day I left. I never have counted calories while in China because it is so difficult to know exactly what I am eating. I'll start counting calories again, today.
I'm feeling a little jet-laggy today, even though I did OK yesterday. I got a very good night's sleep Wednesday, after my 24 hour travel day and going bowling Wednesday evening I was exhausted and went to bed at 10:30 pm and slept until 9 am. But last night I went to the gym in the evening and between the evening exercise and my body being 14 hours ahead of our time zone I was awake most of the night. It may be a rough day at work today. I'll get through as much of the day as I can, but I may end up calling it quits early, today. We'll see what happens.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Monday, January 14, 2013
1/14/2013: Defining Moments - Becoming and Athlete and Sleep Apnea
Training Week 1:
Saturday: 38 minutes spinning and Upper Body strength training
Sunday: 1 hour of racquetball and 55 minutes (5 miles) running on the treadmill
Monday: 62 minutes (2300 meters) swimming
As I was swimming this morning I started thinking about some of the defining moments in my life. I can't think too much while I am swimming or I lose count of my laps (I did 92), but the way I think about exercise has changed so dramatically in the last few days that I had to acknowledge this morning, somewhere around lap 50, that I am experiencing a defining moment in my life. The other moment that popped into my head this morning, during my swim, was the surgery that I had to cure my sleep apnea which I mentioned in my post, yesterday. So, even though these are seemingly unrelated topics, they are the two things I have decided to talk about today.
Athlete: n. a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.
Where this definition always lost me was in that one word, "gifted." Well, that's a lie. I think this is the first time I have actually looked up the word athlete. But I have always thought of an athlete as someone that is gifted in a particular sport or who has a body type that seems well suited to a particular sport. In my mind, these people had a leg-up or a head-start on people like me, who I have always considered to be slow and plodding and not particularly gifted at anything physical.
I missed that word, "or," which is in the first definition a few times. A person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina or strength. OK, I'm not particularly gifted, but I am training. I participate in exercise related events (though I have not thought of myself as a contestant...yet), and I may not be particularly agile, but I do have stamina and strength.
These last few days I have been wrapping my mind around this statement, "I am an athlete." The more I say it the more I like it and the more I know it is true. This has profoundly changed my experience with exercise. All of a sudden I am no longer exercising to burn calories, lose weight, to be in shape, or to "grow a little," but I am training. I am training for a contest. My first triathlon. I have not figured out why that mind set makes a difference, but it does. All of a sudden, this is more fun, a lot more fun. As I was playing racquetball with Jack yesterday I was a lot less frustrated with not being able to win. About halfway through our hour of play time I realized that my attitude about our racquetball playing had changed. I was no longer seeing it as a game I needed to try to win, but I was seeing it as another form of training. Racquetball is different from everything else I do. It requires hand-eye coordination, responding to immediate conditions, sprinting and springing, attentiveness, and many other things. It is skill building. I want to beat Jack some day because I like to win, but yesterday I realized that he is another one of my coaches and by playing racquetball he is teaching me a whole new set of skills. This was liberating. It made playing so much more fun.
When I was in the pool today I didn't feel like I was slogging through my laps so that I could get on the scale and weigh less. I felt like I was practicing for an event. It was a completely different feeling. Again, it was more fun.
I am an athlete. I like the way that feels. I am an athlete. I am going to be saying that a lot, for a while.
Defining moment # 2 for this blog post: Sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is serious business. Basically, sleep apnea is defined by a suspension of breathing for periods of time while you are sleeping. It has all kinds of serious repercussions. If a person has severe sleep apnea they never actually get into a deep sleep, they are always sleeping lightly and never getting to that REM place that you need to be to get good, relaxing, stress relieving, sleep. Severe sleep apnea affects your weight because when you don't get enough sleep your body releases different chemicals that stimulate your appetite, so you eat more. It affects your ability to deal effectively with stress because you are never asleep enough to truly relax. It increases the risk of heart disease and other cardio-vascular related illnesses. It makes you feel foggy all the time, you can;t quite put your finger on it, but you know you aren't as sharp as you should be.
I had severe sleep apnea my entire life, since I was a little girl. It was one of the things I was teased unmercifully about, my snoring. I was a terrible snorer. It must have been hell sleeping in the same room with me. Even as a child I would stop breathing during the nights. I remember my girl friends telling me that I freaked them out when I spent the night because I would stop breathing. They thought I had died in my sleep. A couple of them even went and got their parents, they were so scared. I didn't realize, then, what a big deal this was. I would fall asleep in class, a lot. Teachers would embarrass me by slapping yardsticks on my desk to wake me up. I would embarrass myself by snoring in class. It was awful.
As an adult, my snoring was just as bad, if not worse. When I was in college I went through two roommates before I found one that could sleep through my snoring. I went down to the cafeteria one morning to find my roommate mocking my snoring and telling everyone how obnoxious I was. It was humiliating. Sleep apnea is often associated with being overweight, but I had sleep apnea when I was five years old and at a perfectly healthy weight, when I was 20 years old and weighed 135 pounds, when I was 40 years old and weighed 200 pounds. My weight was not my problem, my throat was my problem.
When I was 40ish, I finally got tired of getting strep throat every time a child walked in the room, so I started talking to my doctor about getting my tonsils out to prevent future incidences of strep throat. It was in that conversation that I mentioned the severe snoring. He sent me to an ENT. The first ENT he sent me to sucked, in my opinion. He scoped my throat and nasal passages and acknowledged that I had over sized tonsils and adenoids. He sent me for a sleep study. He never called me back. I finally called his office and they said, "Oh, yes, we have the results of your study here. You have severe sleep apnea. We want to send you back for a second study and have you wear a CPAP mask all night." Well, that was not going to happen. The first night I was there they tried to put a CPAP mask on me and I freaked out. I got so claustrophobic I started to go into a panic attack. You see, in addition to having sleep apnea, I can't breathe through my nose. It turns out there are a couple of reasons for this. First, I had excessive nasal tissue in my nasal passages. Second, the "vents" on the side of my nose are too pronounced. Your vents are where your nose goes from going down to flaring out. When I breathe deeply through my nose, my vents collapse and block air from going through my nose. (That was another thing I was teased for as a kid, breathing through my mouth. I remember teaching myself to breathe through my nose when I was in 7th grade. I had to consciously think about it and as long as I breathed lightly, I could breathe through my nose. I would do OK until I took a test or did something that required concentration and then I would start heavy breathing through my mouth again. Then the snickers and snide comments would start from the kids in the class.) The CPAP mask was forcing me to breathe through my nose, which I couldn't do. As soon as I realized the ENT had not read the sleep study and didn't know I couldn't breathe with the CPAP mask I knew I needed a different doctor. I started asking around and found an excellent ENT.
When the second doctor examined me he did a much more thorough job. He said that everything that could be wrong with me between the bridge of my nose and my Adam's apple was wrong. From the vents that I discusses earlier, to huge tonsils and adenoids, to the angle between my chin and my Adam's apple. He said that some of the things could be fixed and some couldn't. The tonsils and adoids could come out. The vents couldn't be fixed. He warned me that surgery seldom cured sleep apnea but in my case he felt strongly that the tonsils and adenoids should come out anyway, and we would see what improvement that made. So we did the surgery. He removed my tonsils, adenoids, part of my soft palate, my uvula, and tissue from my nasal passages. It was pretty extensive surgery. My dad came out to stay with me and take care of me and the kids while I recovered. He spent the night with me in the hospital that first night. When I woke up the next morning I swear he was practically in tears he was so happy. I asked him what was up and he told me that I slept peacefully all night. That I did not snore at all. The very first night after surgery and my sleep apnea was cured. It really was. I don't snore anymore. I sleep soundly through the night. My life has changed so dramatically it is almost impossible to describe. That one decision, that decision to cure my sleep apnea, that one doctor, that amazing ENT, changed my life forever. It has made a profound difference in my quality of life. That decision 10 years ago was one of the first steps that allowed me to get to where I am today. I believe that with all my heart and soul.
I know sleep apnea gets a lot of press today and maybe people don't take it seriously, but I hope this post will help you see what a big deal sleep apnea really is. I will try to talk more about some of the changes it has made in my life tomorrow, I am running out of time, today. But if you, or someone you know, snores severely and stops breathing at night, please get a sleep study done. Curing sleep apnea is huge. Please take it seriously. A family member told me, "You just need to lose weight, you are crazy to get this surgery." Well, yeah, I needed to lose weight, but I had sleep apnea my whole life. I knew that the weight wasn't causing the sleep apnea. It was more like the other way around.
OK - I don't even have time to proof read and edit this post, which means it will have all kinds of grammatical errors in it. But I want to get it up and I have to go to work. I'll correct it later.
Have a great day.
Saturday: 38 minutes spinning and Upper Body strength training
Sunday: 1 hour of racquetball and 55 minutes (5 miles) running on the treadmill
Monday: 62 minutes (2300 meters) swimming
As I was swimming this morning I started thinking about some of the defining moments in my life. I can't think too much while I am swimming or I lose count of my laps (I did 92), but the way I think about exercise has changed so dramatically in the last few days that I had to acknowledge this morning, somewhere around lap 50, that I am experiencing a defining moment in my life. The other moment that popped into my head this morning, during my swim, was the surgery that I had to cure my sleep apnea which I mentioned in my post, yesterday. So, even though these are seemingly unrelated topics, they are the two things I have decided to talk about today.
Athlete: n. a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.
Where this definition always lost me was in that one word, "gifted." Well, that's a lie. I think this is the first time I have actually looked up the word athlete. But I have always thought of an athlete as someone that is gifted in a particular sport or who has a body type that seems well suited to a particular sport. In my mind, these people had a leg-up or a head-start on people like me, who I have always considered to be slow and plodding and not particularly gifted at anything physical.
I missed that word, "or," which is in the first definition a few times. A person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina or strength. OK, I'm not particularly gifted, but I am training. I participate in exercise related events (though I have not thought of myself as a contestant...yet), and I may not be particularly agile, but I do have stamina and strength.
These last few days I have been wrapping my mind around this statement, "I am an athlete." The more I say it the more I like it and the more I know it is true. This has profoundly changed my experience with exercise. All of a sudden I am no longer exercising to burn calories, lose weight, to be in shape, or to "grow a little," but I am training. I am training for a contest. My first triathlon. I have not figured out why that mind set makes a difference, but it does. All of a sudden, this is more fun, a lot more fun. As I was playing racquetball with Jack yesterday I was a lot less frustrated with not being able to win. About halfway through our hour of play time I realized that my attitude about our racquetball playing had changed. I was no longer seeing it as a game I needed to try to win, but I was seeing it as another form of training. Racquetball is different from everything else I do. It requires hand-eye coordination, responding to immediate conditions, sprinting and springing, attentiveness, and many other things. It is skill building. I want to beat Jack some day because I like to win, but yesterday I realized that he is another one of my coaches and by playing racquetball he is teaching me a whole new set of skills. This was liberating. It made playing so much more fun.
When I was in the pool today I didn't feel like I was slogging through my laps so that I could get on the scale and weigh less. I felt like I was practicing for an event. It was a completely different feeling. Again, it was more fun.
I am an athlete. I like the way that feels. I am an athlete. I am going to be saying that a lot, for a while.
Defining moment # 2 for this blog post: Sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is serious business. Basically, sleep apnea is defined by a suspension of breathing for periods of time while you are sleeping. It has all kinds of serious repercussions. If a person has severe sleep apnea they never actually get into a deep sleep, they are always sleeping lightly and never getting to that REM place that you need to be to get good, relaxing, stress relieving, sleep. Severe sleep apnea affects your weight because when you don't get enough sleep your body releases different chemicals that stimulate your appetite, so you eat more. It affects your ability to deal effectively with stress because you are never asleep enough to truly relax. It increases the risk of heart disease and other cardio-vascular related illnesses. It makes you feel foggy all the time, you can;t quite put your finger on it, but you know you aren't as sharp as you should be.
I had severe sleep apnea my entire life, since I was a little girl. It was one of the things I was teased unmercifully about, my snoring. I was a terrible snorer. It must have been hell sleeping in the same room with me. Even as a child I would stop breathing during the nights. I remember my girl friends telling me that I freaked them out when I spent the night because I would stop breathing. They thought I had died in my sleep. A couple of them even went and got their parents, they were so scared. I didn't realize, then, what a big deal this was. I would fall asleep in class, a lot. Teachers would embarrass me by slapping yardsticks on my desk to wake me up. I would embarrass myself by snoring in class. It was awful.
As an adult, my snoring was just as bad, if not worse. When I was in college I went through two roommates before I found one that could sleep through my snoring. I went down to the cafeteria one morning to find my roommate mocking my snoring and telling everyone how obnoxious I was. It was humiliating. Sleep apnea is often associated with being overweight, but I had sleep apnea when I was five years old and at a perfectly healthy weight, when I was 20 years old and weighed 135 pounds, when I was 40 years old and weighed 200 pounds. My weight was not my problem, my throat was my problem.
When I was 40ish, I finally got tired of getting strep throat every time a child walked in the room, so I started talking to my doctor about getting my tonsils out to prevent future incidences of strep throat. It was in that conversation that I mentioned the severe snoring. He sent me to an ENT. The first ENT he sent me to sucked, in my opinion. He scoped my throat and nasal passages and acknowledged that I had over sized tonsils and adenoids. He sent me for a sleep study. He never called me back. I finally called his office and they said, "Oh, yes, we have the results of your study here. You have severe sleep apnea. We want to send you back for a second study and have you wear a CPAP mask all night." Well, that was not going to happen. The first night I was there they tried to put a CPAP mask on me and I freaked out. I got so claustrophobic I started to go into a panic attack. You see, in addition to having sleep apnea, I can't breathe through my nose. It turns out there are a couple of reasons for this. First, I had excessive nasal tissue in my nasal passages. Second, the "vents" on the side of my nose are too pronounced. Your vents are where your nose goes from going down to flaring out. When I breathe deeply through my nose, my vents collapse and block air from going through my nose. (That was another thing I was teased for as a kid, breathing through my mouth. I remember teaching myself to breathe through my nose when I was in 7th grade. I had to consciously think about it and as long as I breathed lightly, I could breathe through my nose. I would do OK until I took a test or did something that required concentration and then I would start heavy breathing through my mouth again. Then the snickers and snide comments would start from the kids in the class.) The CPAP mask was forcing me to breathe through my nose, which I couldn't do. As soon as I realized the ENT had not read the sleep study and didn't know I couldn't breathe with the CPAP mask I knew I needed a different doctor. I started asking around and found an excellent ENT.
When the second doctor examined me he did a much more thorough job. He said that everything that could be wrong with me between the bridge of my nose and my Adam's apple was wrong. From the vents that I discusses earlier, to huge tonsils and adenoids, to the angle between my chin and my Adam's apple. He said that some of the things could be fixed and some couldn't. The tonsils and adoids could come out. The vents couldn't be fixed. He warned me that surgery seldom cured sleep apnea but in my case he felt strongly that the tonsils and adenoids should come out anyway, and we would see what improvement that made. So we did the surgery. He removed my tonsils, adenoids, part of my soft palate, my uvula, and tissue from my nasal passages. It was pretty extensive surgery. My dad came out to stay with me and take care of me and the kids while I recovered. He spent the night with me in the hospital that first night. When I woke up the next morning I swear he was practically in tears he was so happy. I asked him what was up and he told me that I slept peacefully all night. That I did not snore at all. The very first night after surgery and my sleep apnea was cured. It really was. I don't snore anymore. I sleep soundly through the night. My life has changed so dramatically it is almost impossible to describe. That one decision, that decision to cure my sleep apnea, that one doctor, that amazing ENT, changed my life forever. It has made a profound difference in my quality of life. That decision 10 years ago was one of the first steps that allowed me to get to where I am today. I believe that with all my heart and soul.
I know sleep apnea gets a lot of press today and maybe people don't take it seriously, but I hope this post will help you see what a big deal sleep apnea really is. I will try to talk more about some of the changes it has made in my life tomorrow, I am running out of time, today. But if you, or someone you know, snores severely and stops breathing at night, please get a sleep study done. Curing sleep apnea is huge. Please take it seriously. A family member told me, "You just need to lose weight, you are crazy to get this surgery." Well, yeah, I needed to lose weight, but I had sleep apnea my whole life. I knew that the weight wasn't causing the sleep apnea. It was more like the other way around.
OK - I don't even have time to proof read and edit this post, which means it will have all kinds of grammatical errors in it. But I want to get it up and I have to go to work. I'll correct it later.
Have a great day.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
1/13/2013: Becoming An Athlete
Phase II now has a name that resonates with me, "Phase II: Becoming an Athlete." Writing Friday's blog post was illuminating for me. Before Friday I had not realized I had built a mental barricade against becoming an athlete, but while I was writing Friday's post I began to see how all of the pieces over the years fit together.
In 2007 I decided to do the AIDS LifeCycle Ride. The ride is a 565 mile bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic and raise money to help those with HIV and help find a cure. I had not been on a bicycle for 20 years but I decided to do it anyway. I bought a road bike, the kind with "clip-less pedals." The term "clip-less pedals" is a misnomer, because you clip into clip-less pedals. I think they are called clip-less because they don't have cages for your foot to slip into. With those clip-less pedals you have to wear shoes with special devices on the bottom that clip into the pedal. That way you are connected to the pedal and you are more efficient when you ride because you can pull up on the pedal as well as push down. Pedaling becomes a smooth, circular motion instead of an up and down piston motion.
This all sounds great unless you are like me and you happen to be uncoordinated and haven't been on a bike in 20 years. That first season training for the ride I fell off my bike 8 times. People started saying I should give up on the clip-less pedals, that it wasn't worth it. I said, "Screw that! I can figure this out." I also weighed about 200 pounds when I started training for the ride and the ride included lots of hill climbing, or more like small mountain climbing, so the extra weight was a burden. I started training in early February and the ride started on June 1st. In 4 months I went from my first 18 mile bike ride that almost killed me to being able to ride my bike 565 miles in 6 days. And I enjoyed myself. I did manage to lose about 20 pounds while training. I think I weighed about 178 pounds when the ride started. That helped on those hills. As I got better and better at riding my bike and started to look like I knew what I was doing, the training ride leaders started saying, "You are an athlete." I rejected that notion. I rejected it because in my mind, I am not an athlete. I also rejected that notion because I had learned to do one thing, ride a bike. It didn't matter to me that I could ride my bike 565 miles, I still did not feel like an athlete. I felt like a heavy person that managed to condition her body to accomplish one task.
In spite of not believing in myself as an athlete, I did start to see myself a little differently because of the ride. The ride felt like a huge accomplishment. Just like going from not being able to hit a softball to having one of the best batting averages on the team because of a lot of practise; I became a pretty good cyclist by practising a lot. I fell off my bike a lot. I kept getting back on it and trying again. I bonked while going up a hill and thought I was going to die. I ate some food and drank some water and got back on my bike. I pushed and pushed and got better and better. I learned a lot about endurance exercise. I discovered there was a sport I like. I truly do enjoy riding a bike. I am actually pretty good at it. I can ride a bike and go and go and go. I did the AIDs ride two more times, in 2008 and 2009. Early in 2009 I moved to Kansas City to marry Jack (Come to think of it, it took a lot of practice to get that right, too!) so 2009 was the last time I did the ride. It just wasn't as much fun to train for the ride here in Kansas City, by myself, as it was with all of my riding buddies in the Bay Area. A couple of summers ago I went on a 500 mile bike ride across Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, just for fun. For fun? That seems crazy, but it was fun. I was uncomfortably heavy for that ride, right around 220 pounds, but that did not affect my ability to complete the ride. I was pretty adamant about picking a ride that wouldn't be too hilly though. I knew mountain climbing would be terribly difficult at that weight. The funny thing about that ride, though, was how well my body held up compared to my companions' bodies. I was riding with my daughter, Carla, and my friend, Ryan. Both were in very good shape. Carla, of course, was young and Ryan just has that natural cyclist physique. His feet just touch the pedals and his bike jumps to life. By the end of day two (and they were two 100+ mile days) Ryan and Carla with both having trouble with their knees. Carla was having trouble with a hand by day 4. My body was fine. I ended up with a saddle sore for the first time in my life, but I think that is because my shorts did not quite fit. It sucks being a 220 pound cyclist, cycling shorts just don't fit very well. But my muscles and joints were fine.
As I get older I am more and more grateful for having a strong body. While I've never thought of myself as an athlete, I've known for a long time that I am pretty strong in spite of not having taken exceptional care of myself. I don't have joint problems or back problems. I don't have any severe chronic pains. I don't have any chronic illnesses. Basically, I've been blessed with pretty good health. Don't get me wrong, I've had my share of hospitalizations. From having to spend a month in the hospital during my first pregnancy due to toxemia (stress related, I am convinced) to having extensive throat and nasal surgery to cure sleep apnea (it worked - a whole different story that we will talk about some day), I've experienced some moments of less than exceptional health. But all in all, my body seems to be pretty resilient. One of the reasons I started this initiative last February, though, is that I knew as I aged I needed to take a more active roll in keeping my body strong. It was starting to get obvious that I was getting weaker at an increasingly rapid rate. As it says in "Younger Next Year," I could choose to decay a little each day or grow a little each day. I needed to take an active role in growing a little each day. Doing nothing meant decaying. Decay was the course I was on a year ago. I decided to change that.
My "Get Fit Initiative" started out as just that. Getting Fit. Getting fit means a very different thing than becoming an athlete. I could imagine being fit and healthy without ever going to "Athlete," in my mind. Losing weight and becoming an athlete are two completely different things. Every now and then, over the last 10 months, my sister would say, "You are an athlete!" I soundly rejected that notion. I have always know that I'm not an athlete. I've never thought of myself as an athlete. I never thought I could be an athlete. Becoming an athlete was such a foreign idea to me, such an impossibly out of reach concept for me, that it is something I never even aspired to. My mind firmly denied the idea of me being an athlete whenever anyone would bring it up. I just couldn't go there.
I now understand, thanks to Friday's blog post, that my anti-athlete emotions are all tied up with pictures I have of myself that were taken when I was a child. These emotions are all tied up with conflicting feelings that I had about myself, my sister, and my experiences in school. Many years ago in therapy I learned that those decision we make about ourselves and promises we make to ourselves when we are little are the ones that stick. I can't run fast, I'm uncoordinated, I can't hit a ball, I can't catch, I can't throw, don't even try. Forget about it. Move on and do something else. If I just accept the fact that I'm not an athlete I don't have to be disappointed in myself every time I try to do something and can't do it as well as my sister, or as well as my classmates, or as well as I think I ought to be able to do it. I learned to reject the notion of ever becoming an athlete.
So here I am, 50 years old, setting out to accomplish something I never thought I would set out to accomplish. I am becoming an athlete. That's the realization that I must accept and embrace. That is the realization that I am accepting and embracing.
My dad asked me yesterday if I feel a let down after accomplishing my weight loss goal last week. The answer to that question is an emphatic, "No!" In fact, it's just the opposite. I am so relieved that I don't have to think about losing weight anymore. And I am excited about becoming an athlete. I am excited about preparing for the triathlon in August. I am looking forward to being stronger and more fit next January than I am today. I'm thrilled to be embarking on Phase II of this journey. I feel very fortunate to be in this place.
Phase II is very different from Phase I, though. Getting fit, and by fit I guess I mean that widely accepted notion of fit that means being a healthy weight and having reasonable cardio-vascular health, required a certain routine that I had grown accustomed to. I knew my daily and weekly schedule. It was not something I thought about much, it was just something I did. There were moments over the last 10 months that I had to change things up, but once I figured out what piece had to change, it was routine again. I could get fit by doing a couple of very basic things, exercise an hour a day, six days a week, and eat between 1500 - 1600 calories a day. Oh, and I drank a lot of water. And I stopped drinking alcohol. And I started cooking my own meals. But, all in all, it was pretty basic stuff.
Becoming an athlete seems to be a little more complex than that. It seems like more of a mystery to me. That's kind of funny, isn't it? But it does seem mysterious. How do "they" do it? It's so not me. I am so in awe of athletes I have trouble visualizing myself as one. But no more. I am becoming an athlete. Just as tenmonths ago I visualized myself at 150lbs, I am now visualizing myself as an athlete. And guess what? It's fun!
I asked Ruth for a training plan to help me prepare myself for our triathlon. I am also working with Jeremy on strength training with the goal of reducing body fat. I don't think these two goals are mutually exclusive, yet they are different goals. One requires strength training, the other requires endurance training. The strength training will benefit me during the tri, of that I have no doubt. It will help if I am carrying as little additional fat as possible while competing in the event. The more of my body that is useful lean mass vs. fat, the better. The endurance training will help with fat burning, which in turn will decrease my body fat %. It is interesting, taking on both goals at the same time. It makes me feel like an athlete! But it is confusing, too. I can't just wake up and go to the gym for an hour, I have to give some serious thought to what I am going to do when, so that I can fit it all into my week. I only have so many hours in a day, I do have to work for a living, so I have to get serious about planning. I have to make sure I eat enough and eat the right things. I can't measure my "food consumption" success or failure by the scale anymore. Success means fueling myself properly so I can accomplish the physical tasks for the day that I want to accomplish and having the proper nutrients in my body so I can build muscle and keep my bones healthy and strong. This is going to require some thought.
I spent yesterday morning working on my training schedule and creating my new chart. I had made a chart at the beginning of the year but the more I looked at it the more I was rejecting it. It didn't reflect my true goals. Yeah, sure, I want an abundant life (in the title of my original 2013 chart) but that is too vague. My goal for 2013 is to become an athlete. So I made a chart to reflect that goal. Here it is:
I love this new chart! It reflects my goal to focus on training in 2013. Each vertical line represents a week and in the top section I have posted my first 4 week training plan. I will write in the actual training that I completed each day, compared to plan. The second section with the small boxes is my visual tool for illustrating what percentage of my plan I have completed each week. Each box represents 25%. I have a row for swimming, cycling, running, upper body and lower body. Each evening (or the next morning) I will color in the squares to represent the percent of goal that I completed that day. My plan is to get to the end of the first quarter without any empty squares. The lowest section of the chart is my weight line. It feels right that tracking my weight is a very small part of this chart, because all I am doing is tracking my weight. I am not trying to lose any more weight, but I know I need to keep an eye on it. This chart allows a 6 pound swing on either side of 150, though my goal is to keep my weight within 3 pounds of 150. The right hand column of the chart is for comments and observations along the way.
One of the more challenging aspects of creating this chart was determining my workout routine. How was I going to fit it all in? Armed with Ruth's schedule and Jeremy's schedule, I started filling in the days of the week. After a lot of trial and error, this is what I came up with:
In weeks one and two I had to account for the fact that I will be in China, indicated by the yellow highlighted cells. I also knew I needed one rest day each week. It was also clear that I was going to need to double up on exercise some days. So I wanted to combine lighter cardio days with strength training days. I also needed to work two bike/run bricks and racquetball into the schedule. Guess which of those two I think is more fun? Between creating this schedule and making my new chart, I spent most of the morning on this, yesterday; which accounts for the lack of a blog post. But it has already been worth it. When we were finally done with what we wanted to get done yesterday, it was 5:30 in the afternoon. Off the top of my head I had no idea what I should do for exercise, so I looked at my chart. The chart doesn't actually start until today - it's just easier for me to think of a week as Sunday to Saturday instead of Saturday to Friday - but I looked at a typical Saturday and said, "Oh, I need to do upper body and ride a bike for 38 minutes." So that is exactly what I did. I can't even begin to express how much easier it is for me to exercise when I know what am I supposed to do. I know this schedule and having my % complete squares on my chart are going to be hugely motivational for me. I'm looking forward to filling out my chart and having another win! I like those wins!
So you may be wondering what happened to my original, glorious chart. No, I didn't roll it up and stick it in the basement. It is still on the bathroom wall. I raised it up and put my new chart below it. Now our entire bathroom wall is chart. Check it out!
I like it. Jack seems to like it, too.
I feel good about the exercise piece now. I have a four week plan in place, along with a tracking tool. I also have the tool in place for updating my plan every four weeks. I now need to give just as much, if not more, thought into my diet. I think I should start reading books about training.
It's a racquetball/running day. I gotta go.
Have a wonderful Sunday!!
In 2007 I decided to do the AIDS LifeCycle Ride. The ride is a 565 mile bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic and raise money to help those with HIV and help find a cure. I had not been on a bicycle for 20 years but I decided to do it anyway. I bought a road bike, the kind with "clip-less pedals." The term "clip-less pedals" is a misnomer, because you clip into clip-less pedals. I think they are called clip-less because they don't have cages for your foot to slip into. With those clip-less pedals you have to wear shoes with special devices on the bottom that clip into the pedal. That way you are connected to the pedal and you are more efficient when you ride because you can pull up on the pedal as well as push down. Pedaling becomes a smooth, circular motion instead of an up and down piston motion.
This all sounds great unless you are like me and you happen to be uncoordinated and haven't been on a bike in 20 years. That first season training for the ride I fell off my bike 8 times. People started saying I should give up on the clip-less pedals, that it wasn't worth it. I said, "Screw that! I can figure this out." I also weighed about 200 pounds when I started training for the ride and the ride included lots of hill climbing, or more like small mountain climbing, so the extra weight was a burden. I started training in early February and the ride started on June 1st. In 4 months I went from my first 18 mile bike ride that almost killed me to being able to ride my bike 565 miles in 6 days. And I enjoyed myself. I did manage to lose about 20 pounds while training. I think I weighed about 178 pounds when the ride started. That helped on those hills. As I got better and better at riding my bike and started to look like I knew what I was doing, the training ride leaders started saying, "You are an athlete." I rejected that notion. I rejected it because in my mind, I am not an athlete. I also rejected that notion because I had learned to do one thing, ride a bike. It didn't matter to me that I could ride my bike 565 miles, I still did not feel like an athlete. I felt like a heavy person that managed to condition her body to accomplish one task.
In spite of not believing in myself as an athlete, I did start to see myself a little differently because of the ride. The ride felt like a huge accomplishment. Just like going from not being able to hit a softball to having one of the best batting averages on the team because of a lot of practise; I became a pretty good cyclist by practising a lot. I fell off my bike a lot. I kept getting back on it and trying again. I bonked while going up a hill and thought I was going to die. I ate some food and drank some water and got back on my bike. I pushed and pushed and got better and better. I learned a lot about endurance exercise. I discovered there was a sport I like. I truly do enjoy riding a bike. I am actually pretty good at it. I can ride a bike and go and go and go. I did the AIDs ride two more times, in 2008 and 2009. Early in 2009 I moved to Kansas City to marry Jack (Come to think of it, it took a lot of practice to get that right, too!) so 2009 was the last time I did the ride. It just wasn't as much fun to train for the ride here in Kansas City, by myself, as it was with all of my riding buddies in the Bay Area. A couple of summers ago I went on a 500 mile bike ride across Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, just for fun. For fun? That seems crazy, but it was fun. I was uncomfortably heavy for that ride, right around 220 pounds, but that did not affect my ability to complete the ride. I was pretty adamant about picking a ride that wouldn't be too hilly though. I knew mountain climbing would be terribly difficult at that weight. The funny thing about that ride, though, was how well my body held up compared to my companions' bodies. I was riding with my daughter, Carla, and my friend, Ryan. Both were in very good shape. Carla, of course, was young and Ryan just has that natural cyclist physique. His feet just touch the pedals and his bike jumps to life. By the end of day two (and they were two 100+ mile days) Ryan and Carla with both having trouble with their knees. Carla was having trouble with a hand by day 4. My body was fine. I ended up with a saddle sore for the first time in my life, but I think that is because my shorts did not quite fit. It sucks being a 220 pound cyclist, cycling shorts just don't fit very well. But my muscles and joints were fine.
As I get older I am more and more grateful for having a strong body. While I've never thought of myself as an athlete, I've known for a long time that I am pretty strong in spite of not having taken exceptional care of myself. I don't have joint problems or back problems. I don't have any severe chronic pains. I don't have any chronic illnesses. Basically, I've been blessed with pretty good health. Don't get me wrong, I've had my share of hospitalizations. From having to spend a month in the hospital during my first pregnancy due to toxemia (stress related, I am convinced) to having extensive throat and nasal surgery to cure sleep apnea (it worked - a whole different story that we will talk about some day), I've experienced some moments of less than exceptional health. But all in all, my body seems to be pretty resilient. One of the reasons I started this initiative last February, though, is that I knew as I aged I needed to take a more active roll in keeping my body strong. It was starting to get obvious that I was getting weaker at an increasingly rapid rate. As it says in "Younger Next Year," I could choose to decay a little each day or grow a little each day. I needed to take an active role in growing a little each day. Doing nothing meant decaying. Decay was the course I was on a year ago. I decided to change that.
My "Get Fit Initiative" started out as just that. Getting Fit. Getting fit means a very different thing than becoming an athlete. I could imagine being fit and healthy without ever going to "Athlete," in my mind. Losing weight and becoming an athlete are two completely different things. Every now and then, over the last 10 months, my sister would say, "You are an athlete!" I soundly rejected that notion. I have always know that I'm not an athlete. I've never thought of myself as an athlete. I never thought I could be an athlete. Becoming an athlete was such a foreign idea to me, such an impossibly out of reach concept for me, that it is something I never even aspired to. My mind firmly denied the idea of me being an athlete whenever anyone would bring it up. I just couldn't go there.
I now understand, thanks to Friday's blog post, that my anti-athlete emotions are all tied up with pictures I have of myself that were taken when I was a child. These emotions are all tied up with conflicting feelings that I had about myself, my sister, and my experiences in school. Many years ago in therapy I learned that those decision we make about ourselves and promises we make to ourselves when we are little are the ones that stick. I can't run fast, I'm uncoordinated, I can't hit a ball, I can't catch, I can't throw, don't even try. Forget about it. Move on and do something else. If I just accept the fact that I'm not an athlete I don't have to be disappointed in myself every time I try to do something and can't do it as well as my sister, or as well as my classmates, or as well as I think I ought to be able to do it. I learned to reject the notion of ever becoming an athlete.
So here I am, 50 years old, setting out to accomplish something I never thought I would set out to accomplish. I am becoming an athlete. That's the realization that I must accept and embrace. That is the realization that I am accepting and embracing.
My dad asked me yesterday if I feel a let down after accomplishing my weight loss goal last week. The answer to that question is an emphatic, "No!" In fact, it's just the opposite. I am so relieved that I don't have to think about losing weight anymore. And I am excited about becoming an athlete. I am excited about preparing for the triathlon in August. I am looking forward to being stronger and more fit next January than I am today. I'm thrilled to be embarking on Phase II of this journey. I feel very fortunate to be in this place.
Phase II is very different from Phase I, though. Getting fit, and by fit I guess I mean that widely accepted notion of fit that means being a healthy weight and having reasonable cardio-vascular health, required a certain routine that I had grown accustomed to. I knew my daily and weekly schedule. It was not something I thought about much, it was just something I did. There were moments over the last 10 months that I had to change things up, but once I figured out what piece had to change, it was routine again. I could get fit by doing a couple of very basic things, exercise an hour a day, six days a week, and eat between 1500 - 1600 calories a day. Oh, and I drank a lot of water. And I stopped drinking alcohol. And I started cooking my own meals. But, all in all, it was pretty basic stuff.
Becoming an athlete seems to be a little more complex than that. It seems like more of a mystery to me. That's kind of funny, isn't it? But it does seem mysterious. How do "they" do it? It's so not me. I am so in awe of athletes I have trouble visualizing myself as one. But no more. I am becoming an athlete. Just as tenmonths ago I visualized myself at 150lbs, I am now visualizing myself as an athlete. And guess what? It's fun!
I asked Ruth for a training plan to help me prepare myself for our triathlon. I am also working with Jeremy on strength training with the goal of reducing body fat. I don't think these two goals are mutually exclusive, yet they are different goals. One requires strength training, the other requires endurance training. The strength training will benefit me during the tri, of that I have no doubt. It will help if I am carrying as little additional fat as possible while competing in the event. The more of my body that is useful lean mass vs. fat, the better. The endurance training will help with fat burning, which in turn will decrease my body fat %. It is interesting, taking on both goals at the same time. It makes me feel like an athlete! But it is confusing, too. I can't just wake up and go to the gym for an hour, I have to give some serious thought to what I am going to do when, so that I can fit it all into my week. I only have so many hours in a day, I do have to work for a living, so I have to get serious about planning. I have to make sure I eat enough and eat the right things. I can't measure my "food consumption" success or failure by the scale anymore. Success means fueling myself properly so I can accomplish the physical tasks for the day that I want to accomplish and having the proper nutrients in my body so I can build muscle and keep my bones healthy and strong. This is going to require some thought.
I spent yesterday morning working on my training schedule and creating my new chart. I had made a chart at the beginning of the year but the more I looked at it the more I was rejecting it. It didn't reflect my true goals. Yeah, sure, I want an abundant life (in the title of my original 2013 chart) but that is too vague. My goal for 2013 is to become an athlete. So I made a chart to reflect that goal. Here it is:
 |
| 1st Quarter 2013 Goal Chart |
One of the more challenging aspects of creating this chart was determining my workout routine. How was I going to fit it all in? Armed with Ruth's schedule and Jeremy's schedule, I started filling in the days of the week. After a lot of trial and error, this is what I came up with:
 |
| 1st 4 week exercise schedule |
So you may be wondering what happened to my original, glorious chart. No, I didn't roll it up and stick it in the basement. It is still on the bathroom wall. I raised it up and put my new chart below it. Now our entire bathroom wall is chart. Check it out!
 |
| Bathroom wall |
I feel good about the exercise piece now. I have a four week plan in place, along with a tracking tool. I also have the tool in place for updating my plan every four weeks. I now need to give just as much, if not more, thought into my diet. I think I should start reading books about training.
It's a racquetball/running day. I gotta go.
Have a wonderful Sunday!!
Friday, January 11, 2013
1/11/2013: Phase II, Day 1: What is this going to look like?
The format changes today. No more posting my weight and calories counts. No more conversations about losing weight or obsessing about a number on the scale. Now...what?
I figured out how to lose weight. I knew how much I needed to eat and how much to exercise. I counted calories, worked hard at the gym, drank my water, and took my vitamins. I was committed to a goal and I achieved it. I felt like doing victory laps all day yesterday. During the few moments yesterday that I wasn't flying high as a kite and I was thinking about what comes next, I was grateful that I was prescient enough to come up with a plan for Phase II before Phase I ended. If I had gotten to yesterday without a plan for what comes next I would have felt completely lost. As it is, even with a plan, I feel a little lost. This is a whole new ball game we're talking about here. This is uncharted territory. I'm talking about becoming serious about becoming an athlete.
Athlete and myself are not two images that I have ever held in my mind at the same time. My sister is an athlete, not me. I've envied her drive and determination to be an excellent athlete most of my life. Growing up I was torn between two diametrically opposed desires. I wanted to be just like my sister. I wanted to be nothing like my sister. I envied her and hated her. I wanted to be her and I wanted to kill her. I think of the word, "Athlete" and I think of Ruth. In many, many ways, taking on this next challenge, to become an athlete - for real - is finishing what I started in therapy 20 years ago. I will finally have to banish from my head, forever, the images that I have of myself as a little girl. The chubby little uncoordinated girl with thick glasses that always got picked last for dodge ball, soft ball, or any other playground game. The girl that was teased for being slow and not being able to hit a ball. I have always been bad at ball sports and I have always been slow and those two things together have always convinced me that I will never be an athlete. It's funny though, I love to play games. I like playing softball and volleyball and racquetball. I'm just not very good at them. I have a hard time with the timing. I have learned though, that if I work really hard at it, I can get better.
A great example is softball. My last year of high school was spent in New Delhi, India. The high school there was so small that you could play any sport you wanted to play. So I signed up for basketball, softball and intramural soccer. I have to admit that I stopped playing basketball half way through the season for the good of my teammates. I was so uncoordinated and my peripheral vision was so bad (this was before I started wearing contact lenses) that I kept stepping on my teammates. I just couldn't do it anymore. But I loved softball. We had a very long season, from October to May, or something like that. It was split in two halves. For the first half of the season I had a perfect batting average. Perfectly awful that is. 0.00. I did not get a single hit. But I was determined not to give up and I didn't give up. Again, I had help. It seems like everyday, but it was probably more like once a week, my dad and I would go out and hit softballs. He would pitch to me while I would swing away. It took me months of practice and thousands of swings and misses, but eventually I started hitting the ball. As I recall it, I had one of the highest, if not the highest, batting averages on the team in the second half of the season. In fact, what I do remember clearly, is my teammates being surprised when I did not win the highest batting average award at the end of the season. I had to remind them that for the first half of the season I did not have a single hit. What I did win was "Most Improved Player." I was 16 years old and I had my first trophy. That may not seem like much to you, but to me, it was everything. I felt like a winner that day. Just like I felt like a winner yesterday when I reached my goal weight. With practice, lots and lots of practice, I can get good at athletic events.
So here I am, beginning on a brand new adventure to become a triathlete, (with Ruth's help, I should add) and I am staring down this remnant of emotional baggage that I have tucked into a corner of my psyche. How surprising is that? I guess it will give me something to talk about as we plow through training regimens, pain, the boredom of training indoors, and the many other challenges of preparing for a triathlon. It'll be an interesting 7 months. My sister and I have worked hard on figuring out who we are as individuals and as sisters throughout our adult lives. Over the last 30 years we have both made a lot of progress. I feel like this last 46 weeks has brought us closer. My relationship with my sister is one of the most special relationships in my life. The things you work hardest for are the things that you value the most in life. I know this next year will be transformative, as well. Ruth, I guess I need to ask if you are OK with me talking about some of the past as we move forward. I'm a bit surprised by how the emotional and the physical are still linked together pretty firmly, but they are. Crap...too many thoughts whirling around now and I need to go to work. This is not where I expected this post to go but here we are. I have to start somewhere and I guess we have found our starting place. Phase II, Day 1. What an interesting and exciting place to be.
I figured out how to lose weight. I knew how much I needed to eat and how much to exercise. I counted calories, worked hard at the gym, drank my water, and took my vitamins. I was committed to a goal and I achieved it. I felt like doing victory laps all day yesterday. During the few moments yesterday that I wasn't flying high as a kite and I was thinking about what comes next, I was grateful that I was prescient enough to come up with a plan for Phase II before Phase I ended. If I had gotten to yesterday without a plan for what comes next I would have felt completely lost. As it is, even with a plan, I feel a little lost. This is a whole new ball game we're talking about here. This is uncharted territory. I'm talking about becoming serious about becoming an athlete.
Athlete and myself are not two images that I have ever held in my mind at the same time. My sister is an athlete, not me. I've envied her drive and determination to be an excellent athlete most of my life. Growing up I was torn between two diametrically opposed desires. I wanted to be just like my sister. I wanted to be nothing like my sister. I envied her and hated her. I wanted to be her and I wanted to kill her. I think of the word, "Athlete" and I think of Ruth. In many, many ways, taking on this next challenge, to become an athlete - for real - is finishing what I started in therapy 20 years ago. I will finally have to banish from my head, forever, the images that I have of myself as a little girl. The chubby little uncoordinated girl with thick glasses that always got picked last for dodge ball, soft ball, or any other playground game. The girl that was teased for being slow and not being able to hit a ball. I have always been bad at ball sports and I have always been slow and those two things together have always convinced me that I will never be an athlete. It's funny though, I love to play games. I like playing softball and volleyball and racquetball. I'm just not very good at them. I have a hard time with the timing. I have learned though, that if I work really hard at it, I can get better.
A great example is softball. My last year of high school was spent in New Delhi, India. The high school there was so small that you could play any sport you wanted to play. So I signed up for basketball, softball and intramural soccer. I have to admit that I stopped playing basketball half way through the season for the good of my teammates. I was so uncoordinated and my peripheral vision was so bad (this was before I started wearing contact lenses) that I kept stepping on my teammates. I just couldn't do it anymore. But I loved softball. We had a very long season, from October to May, or something like that. It was split in two halves. For the first half of the season I had a perfect batting average. Perfectly awful that is. 0.00. I did not get a single hit. But I was determined not to give up and I didn't give up. Again, I had help. It seems like everyday, but it was probably more like once a week, my dad and I would go out and hit softballs. He would pitch to me while I would swing away. It took me months of practice and thousands of swings and misses, but eventually I started hitting the ball. As I recall it, I had one of the highest, if not the highest, batting averages on the team in the second half of the season. In fact, what I do remember clearly, is my teammates being surprised when I did not win the highest batting average award at the end of the season. I had to remind them that for the first half of the season I did not have a single hit. What I did win was "Most Improved Player." I was 16 years old and I had my first trophy. That may not seem like much to you, but to me, it was everything. I felt like a winner that day. Just like I felt like a winner yesterday when I reached my goal weight. With practice, lots and lots of practice, I can get good at athletic events.
So here I am, beginning on a brand new adventure to become a triathlete, (with Ruth's help, I should add) and I am staring down this remnant of emotional baggage that I have tucked into a corner of my psyche. How surprising is that? I guess it will give me something to talk about as we plow through training regimens, pain, the boredom of training indoors, and the many other challenges of preparing for a triathlon. It'll be an interesting 7 months. My sister and I have worked hard on figuring out who we are as individuals and as sisters throughout our adult lives. Over the last 30 years we have both made a lot of progress. I feel like this last 46 weeks has brought us closer. My relationship with my sister is one of the most special relationships in my life. The things you work hardest for are the things that you value the most in life. I know this next year will be transformative, as well. Ruth, I guess I need to ask if you are OK with me talking about some of the past as we move forward. I'm a bit surprised by how the emotional and the physical are still linked together pretty firmly, but they are. Crap...too many thoughts whirling around now and I need to go to work. This is not where I expected this post to go but here we are. I have to start somewhere and I guess we have found our starting place. Phase II, Day 1. What an interesting and exciting place to be.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
1/10/2013: 150.0 lbs at 50 Years Old. Not Bad...Not Bad at All!!
Morning Weight: 150.0
This Morning's Exercise: Day Off
Yesterday's Evening's Activity: Bowling
Yesterday's Calories: 1485
Vitamins: 1-A-Day, D, B-Complex, Calcium, Glucosamine
How do I express my excitement in words on a page? My chart is complete!!
I yelped so loudly when I weighed myself and the number 150.0 flashed up on the scale that Jack practically jumped out of bed. Then I ran wildly through the house naked, looking for the camera, so we could take a picture of the number on the scale. I got back on the scale and Jack stood there with the camera, ready to snap the photo. I didn't stop and think about cleaning off the display on the scale...sorry about that...I was too excited to even think about anything but getting a photo of that number. But there it is, evidence that I achieved the goal that I set 45.5 weeks ago! Wow!! What an awesome feeling! My chart is complete. I pasted this morning's picture in the upper right hand corner of my chart but I have room for something else up there. Perhaps when I buy a new outfit that I really like I will paste up another photo or maybe I'll write something. I'm not sure what else is going to go in the upper right corner of my chart, but something will go there. Inspiration will strike, I'm sure!!
And here I am this morning:
Happy, happy, happy lady!!!! That's me! I think back to that winter day, February 26th, 2012, and making the decision to do this once and for all. The chart is my brother George's idea. He told me he made one for his bathroom wall and ever since he told me that it sort of nagged at me that it might just work. I've tracked progress before, but it was always on an excel spreadsheet, never on a great big chart right there on the middle of my bathroom wall. Once I decided to make the chart my mind was made up, "This is it!" I said to myself. You can't see the title of my chart anymore because it is so covered up, but it says, "My Final for the Rest of My Life Weight Loss Grid: Beginning March 2013 Healthy Living Will Maintain Healthy Weight!" I guess that says it all.
At first the chart just had weights going down the vertical axis, dates going across the horizontal axis, and a goal line. It looked so big and bare. That is when inspiration struck to post my photo every Sunday. So my start photo was taken and I taped it to my chart. There were many things about the chart that helped me in this endeavor. Simply writing weights going down the vertical axis on the very first day made me visualize myself at each of those weights. Just the very act of making the chart cemented my goals in my mind. Then marking the chart every Thursday and Monday became such a ritual. I would think about it before I went to bed on Sunday and Wednesday nights. A "Mark my chart day" was never very far away, so I never strayed far from my plan. I hated seeing that red line go up!! The photos were and continue to be a huge motivation. It took a while, a few months maybe, before I could see a real difference in my photos, but after a while I could stand back and look at my chart and go, "Wow, look at me! My waist is smaller and look at my neck! My face looks so much thinner!" It helped a lot. When times got rough and I started to stress out I would stare at my chart and recommit to my goal. I would write comments on it regarding what I was stressing about. It all helped. Jack would sneak a comment on my chart every now and then and when I saw his comments they would make me smile. Yes, the chart was hugely motivational. Yeah!!!! I feel like slot machine bells should be ringing furiously all over the city! Winner!!!! Winner!!!! Winner!!!! We have a Winner!!!!!
Phase II starts today. I'm ready for it. Strength training, toning, getting very, very fit. Preparing for a triathlon. Lowering body fat %. All exciting and worthy goals. I am glad Phase I is complete. I will no longer post my weight on my blog unless something crazy and unexpected happens and I need to focus on weight again. I will continue to weigh myself daily and track my weight on my 2013 chart, but my goal is no longer to lose weight. My weight goal is simply to stay within a few pounds of 150.0. My blog will now become about training and preparing for my first triathlon, getting very fit, and getting the most out of life after 50!
Thank you for being part of this journey!! We made it!!!
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| Scale Reading: 1/10/2013 |
Yesterday's Evening's Activity: Bowling
Yesterday's Calories: 1485
Vitamins: 1-A-Day, D, B-Complex, Calcium, Glucosamine
How do I express my excitement in words on a page? My chart is complete!!
 |
| 1/10/2013: 45.5 Weeks; Start Weight - 224.0, Today's Weight - 150.0, Pounds Lost - 74 |
And here I am this morning:
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| 1/10/2013: End of Phase 1 Photo - 150.0 lbs |
At first the chart just had weights going down the vertical axis, dates going across the horizontal axis, and a goal line. It looked so big and bare. That is when inspiration struck to post my photo every Sunday. So my start photo was taken and I taped it to my chart. There were many things about the chart that helped me in this endeavor. Simply writing weights going down the vertical axis on the very first day made me visualize myself at each of those weights. Just the very act of making the chart cemented my goals in my mind. Then marking the chart every Thursday and Monday became such a ritual. I would think about it before I went to bed on Sunday and Wednesday nights. A "Mark my chart day" was never very far away, so I never strayed far from my plan. I hated seeing that red line go up!! The photos were and continue to be a huge motivation. It took a while, a few months maybe, before I could see a real difference in my photos, but after a while I could stand back and look at my chart and go, "Wow, look at me! My waist is smaller and look at my neck! My face looks so much thinner!" It helped a lot. When times got rough and I started to stress out I would stare at my chart and recommit to my goal. I would write comments on it regarding what I was stressing about. It all helped. Jack would sneak a comment on my chart every now and then and when I saw his comments they would make me smile. Yes, the chart was hugely motivational. Yeah!!!! I feel like slot machine bells should be ringing furiously all over the city! Winner!!!! Winner!!!! Winner!!!! We have a Winner!!!!!
Phase II starts today. I'm ready for it. Strength training, toning, getting very, very fit. Preparing for a triathlon. Lowering body fat %. All exciting and worthy goals. I am glad Phase I is complete. I will no longer post my weight on my blog unless something crazy and unexpected happens and I need to focus on weight again. I will continue to weigh myself daily and track my weight on my 2013 chart, but my goal is no longer to lose weight. My weight goal is simply to stay within a few pounds of 150.0. My blog will now become about training and preparing for my first triathlon, getting very fit, and getting the most out of life after 50!
Thank you for being part of this journey!! We made it!!!
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
1/9/2013: This is why I get up at 4:20am to exercise
Morning Weight: 151.0
This Morning's Exercise: 1 hour on the treadmill at 5.5mph. This is the first time that I ran the whole hour at this speed. I'm slowly getting faster!
Yesterday's Exercise: None!!!
Yesterday's Calories: 1573
Vitamins: 1-A-Day, D, B-Complex, Calcium, Glucosamine
I had a real deadline at work yesterday that I had to meet so I got up early and went to work without going to the gym. I had real intentions to workout over my lunch hour but within a couple of hours of getting to work I had another project with a quick deadline plopped in my lap. I knew exercise was out of the question. I was at work until 9:00 last night and did not get away from the office for lunch. I packed my lunch and dinner, so my food was OK, but I did not exercise at all yesterday. Some people think I am nuts for getting up so early to exercise but I always tell them, "Nobody can take my mornings from me." And it's true. Nobody cares what I am doing at 4:45 in the morning except me. My mornings are my time and I need to keep it that way. Exercising first thing in the morning is what works best for me!
Part of the problem yesterday morning was I was so tired I did not want to get at out of bed. It may have been because I did not sleep well on Sunday night. I slept so soundly Monday night that I just didn't want to rouse myself out of bed Tuesday morning. It occurs to me that it might also have been because of my brick on Sunday. That really did wipe me out and maybe my body just needed to rest for a day. Whatever it was, I am fine today. I woke up easily when the alarm went off, got out of bed, and did my hour run on the treadmill. All's well.
As you can see I am still at 151.0. Pretty soon...we'll see the needle move again...it's pretty exciting stuff...
This Morning's Exercise: 1 hour on the treadmill at 5.5mph. This is the first time that I ran the whole hour at this speed. I'm slowly getting faster!
Yesterday's Exercise: None!!!
Yesterday's Calories: 1573
Vitamins: 1-A-Day, D, B-Complex, Calcium, Glucosamine
I had a real deadline at work yesterday that I had to meet so I got up early and went to work without going to the gym. I had real intentions to workout over my lunch hour but within a couple of hours of getting to work I had another project with a quick deadline plopped in my lap. I knew exercise was out of the question. I was at work until 9:00 last night and did not get away from the office for lunch. I packed my lunch and dinner, so my food was OK, but I did not exercise at all yesterday. Some people think I am nuts for getting up so early to exercise but I always tell them, "Nobody can take my mornings from me." And it's true. Nobody cares what I am doing at 4:45 in the morning except me. My mornings are my time and I need to keep it that way. Exercising first thing in the morning is what works best for me!
Part of the problem yesterday morning was I was so tired I did not want to get at out of bed. It may have been because I did not sleep well on Sunday night. I slept so soundly Monday night that I just didn't want to rouse myself out of bed Tuesday morning. It occurs to me that it might also have been because of my brick on Sunday. That really did wipe me out and maybe my body just needed to rest for a day. Whatever it was, I am fine today. I woke up easily when the alarm went off, got out of bed, and did my hour run on the treadmill. All's well.
As you can see I am still at 151.0. Pretty soon...we'll see the needle move again...it's pretty exciting stuff...
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
1/8/2013: Slept in a Little Today - I Gotta Run!
Morning Weight: 151.0
This Morning's Exercise: I slept in a little...just couldn't get out of bed this morning. I think it is because I did not sleep well Sunday night and I was just plain tired. My plan is to run at lunch today. There is a gym just a few blocks from work.
Yesterday's Afternoon's Exercise: 38 minute brisk walk at lunch
Yesterday's Calories: 1604
Vitamins: 1-A-Day, D, B-Complex, Calcium, Glucosamine
I don't have time to write this morning as I want to get to work early so I can run at lunch. I thought I'd update my stats just in case you checked in to see if I was any closer to goal. I gained 2/10ths of a pound, which is not a big deal - or even a little deal. It's to be expected when I lose 2 pounds overnight. I feel completely confident that I will reach goal before I leave for China a week from today. Thanks for checking in and keeping the vigil with me. I am excited about the prospect of having my red line cross the x-axis any day now. You'll probably hear me whooping and hollering from here, wherever you happen to be!!
This Morning's Exercise: I slept in a little...just couldn't get out of bed this morning. I think it is because I did not sleep well Sunday night and I was just plain tired. My plan is to run at lunch today. There is a gym just a few blocks from work.
Yesterday's Afternoon's Exercise: 38 minute brisk walk at lunch
Yesterday's Calories: 1604
Vitamins: 1-A-Day, D, B-Complex, Calcium, Glucosamine
I don't have time to write this morning as I want to get to work early so I can run at lunch. I thought I'd update my stats just in case you checked in to see if I was any closer to goal. I gained 2/10ths of a pound, which is not a big deal - or even a little deal. It's to be expected when I lose 2 pounds overnight. I feel completely confident that I will reach goal before I leave for China a week from today. Thanks for checking in and keeping the vigil with me. I am excited about the prospect of having my red line cross the x-axis any day now. You'll probably hear me whooping and hollering from here, wherever you happen to be!!
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