It always takes a little adjusting to get back into the routines once I get home from China. It is amazing how disruptive it is to spend a little over a week on the opposite side of the planet, with a 14 hour time difference, a completely different culture, living in a hotel, and existing in an somewhat artificial and definitely temporary environment. The way I stay sane is to exercise, a lot! I brought my schedule with me and stuck to it, even when sticking to it was incredibly difficult. I was traveling with 3 other people and I was the only one that went to the gym even once, and I went everyday. I also adjusted to the time change faster than everyone else and recovered from the Chinese New Year's festivities faster than everyone else and I am convinced that the discipline I enforce upon myself while traveling has something to do with that.
I was much better this time about not eating too late at night and getting to bed at a decent hour. There were still a couple of late night meals, but those meals were important; either taking a customer out or going to the year-end/Chinese New Year's party for the company. Other than that, I begged off of the late meals and just headed to my room and had a light snack at dinner time. Breakfasts were still big in China, definitely my largest meal of the day, but also my most normal meal. They have a decent Western breakfast buffet at the restaurant, so I have eggs, fresh bread, and fruit for breakfast; along with several cups of coffee. Lunches could be anything from McDonald's or Pizza Hut (can you believe it?) brought into the office or Chinese carry out. I vastly prefer the Chinese carry out, but the other travelers seem to enjoy the American food mid-day, and I am one against three. Everyone knows I don't eat beef and pork, so when they bring in Mickey D's I get a chicken sandwich and Pizza Hut (still the world's worst pizza, even in China) is a veggie pizza. This is why breakfast is big, it's pretty good and I can skimp on lunch, which is always iffy, if I have a big breakfast. When we go out to dinner it is almost always a shared meal, meaning many dishes are ordered and you just take what you want. This works really well for me because our Chinese hosts know I like veggies so they always order two or three green vegetable dishes, a chicken dish, and a fish dish; along with all of the other things for everyone else. I load up on my veggies at dinner, which are almost always some kind of steamed or sauteed green leafy vegetable and are usually delicious. I also eat a little chicken and a little fish. So, except for often being too late in the evenings, dinners are pretty healthy.
I miss blogging while I am in China. Blogspot and Facebook are blocked sites, so I don't have my social media outlets. I tried to start writing a couple of times, but it feels different to me when I know I can't post what I am writing that day. I have always liked writing letters and blogging is a lot like letter writing. I could never keep a journal, though I have started many in my life. I get bored writing to myself, I guess. But I really enjoy writing letters to other people and blogging feels a lot like that, unless I can't publish my posts, and then I just feel like I am writing to myself again. It occurred to me after I got home that it would have been good to write something daily and I could have published them once I was stateside again. I will try to do that next time I am there (March or April, maybe?).
Now that I am home I have relaxed a little and have been a little lazy for a few days. Well, lazy might not be exactly the right word, but I certainly have not been as disciplined as I need to be. I got home at about 4:00 on Wednesday, which is league bowling day. I slept about 3 or 4 hours of my 24 hours of traveling, but I did not want to go to bed early Wednesday night so that I could start to adjust my body to Central Standard Time as quickly as possible. I went bowling, instead of going to bed. I was tired and a little punchy and bowled pretty badly (averaged about a 113 instead of my normal 126) but it kept me awake. I went to bed at about 10:15pm on Wednesday and slept until 9:00 Thursday morning. I managed to put in full days at work Thursday and Friday so that I could use my comp day (we get a comp day for each weekend we lose to international travel, an informal policy, but a policy, nevertheless) to go help take care of my new grandson, James Craven McKown and his mom, Rebecca. I went to the gym Thursday night and did an upper body workout and 5 miles on the treadmill. The 5 miles on the treadmill after the 55 minute upper body workout was tough. I ended up walking about half of the last mile, but I got all five miles in. Friday morning I was back at the gym doing my lower body workout with Jeremy. As soon as that was done I knew I needed a day off soon, I had been hitting the gym hard for a couple of weeks, now. I was planning on taking Sunday (today) off, but yesterday a minor task, gluing in a tub tile, turned into a major home improvement project, so Saturday up being my day off from exercise instead of Sunday. After paying the bills, including reconciling our accounts and setting up our February budget (The credit cards now have a $0.00 balance and we are two months from having both cars paid off!!!!! By March 31st our only debt will be our mortgage!!!! And all 6 kids are done with school [well, Brianna has a couple classes left in the summer, but Kyle has helped her get grant money since they have been married, so for the last couple of semesters we've only helped with books and been paying for health insurance] so with the credit cards and cars paid off and no more school to pay for, we are looking forward to accelerating our savings for retirement. In the nick of time...I hope!!), going bowling (I averaged a 147 and Jack averaged a 172), shopping for knock-around sneakers, stopping at the hardware store for supplies, and working on the tub for about 5 hours, there was no time to exercise.
So where does the laziness, or lack of discipline, come in? you may ask. Well, let's just say I didn't mention the word "cook" in the above paragraph. I have not cooked a meal since I've been home. We had some leftover chili in the freezer, so that was our meal one night. But aside from that we have gone out or "scrounged" (Jack's word for hunting through the fridge and cupboards for something to eat) for our meals since Wednesday night. This has not been good for my weight. I have gained a few pounds and need to be much more disciplined this week. We have made our grocery list, I know what I will cook, and I will not eat out at all this week. Between cooking all of my own meals, counting all my calories, and working hard at the gym, I am sure I will be able to knock these few pounds out pretty quickly. I am not worried about it, I am within the range I set or myself, but I know I need to stay on top of my weight so that I never have more than a few pound to lose. I don't blame myself for not coming home from China and immediately cooking meals for myself, at the same time I can see the immediate impact on my weight, health and well-being from eating out vs. cooking for myself. It's not a bad thing to have that reminder. Not a bad thing at all.
Today will be a busy day. We need to finish the tub project, but we can't do that until this evening because the tile glue needs 24 hours to set before we can grout and caulk. Even though the project got bigger than we thought it would, I have to say I really enjoyed myself yesterday. I decided that since we had to replace a tile, I might as well recaulk the tub. When I was pulling out the caulk about 15 more tiles came off. And it turned out we had lost part of our backing board. So I had to pull off enough tiles to get to the next stud so we could replace a chunk of the backing board. Several of the tiles that fell off were broken, so I had to cut tile. I had never done any of this type of work before. Of course, this necessitated a trip to the hardware store for Jack, to buy backing board and a tile cutter. Luckily, we had spare tile in the house from when the previous owner had replaced the vanity. Unfortunately, it had a bunch of dried glue on the back, so Jack got the nasty task of scraping glue off the back of the tiles. But for me, it was nothing but fun. I had a great time figuring out how to cut cement backing board without the proper tools, cutting tile, fitting them in like a jigsaw puzzle, and gluing them in. I thoroughly enjoy this type of task. Tonight we get to grout and caulk and by tomorrow we should be able to use our shower again.
We will also go to the gym today, and I need to get some work (as in Castle Creations) done, and cook our meals for the week. By that time, the day will be done. And it is 10:13 in the morning and I am still blogging. I slept in a little later today, than normal. I am finally getting over the jet lag and was able to sleep soundly last night, instead of waking up half a dozen times wondering where I was.
In case you are wondering, the exercise is still going very well. Since reaching my goal weight and changing my focus from weight-loss to training, I have had a lot more fun. I have thought about this a lot over this last couple of weeks because I am experiencing such a radical and unexpected attitude adjustment. Usually I have to force attitude adjustments upon myself when I realize I have been behaving (or just thinking) badly. This time the attitude adjustment came along without any forethought on my part. I just realized I was having more fun at the gym. "What's up with this?" I wondered. After giving it a lot of thought, I realized that it has everything to do with my decision to allow myself to think of myself as an athlete. There is a huge difference between thinking of myself as a slow, fat, lazy person that has allowed myself to get totally out of shape and thinking of myself as an athlete. For 10 months, every time I went to the gym...well actually, for the last 30 years, every time I exercised, it was punishment for being fat and lazy. It was something I had to do in order to make up for the fact that I was overweight, spent too much time sitting on my butt, and ate too much. A lot of it was punishment for eating too much. I have always beat myself up for how much I like to eat. Exercise has been punishment most of my life. It was the dues I had to pay for being fat. There were two exceptions to that. Training for the AIDS Lifecycle ride and hiking. Training for and doing the ride felt like an accomplishment, something I achieved in spite of being overweight. And I loved it. Riding my bike turned out to be something I was good at. I enjoyed getting on my bike and having it jump to life under me. I could pedal for hours without tiring out. After some training, a 70 mile bike ride was pretty easy. I also love hiking, even when I was very overweight and fell a lot, I enjoyed it. Riding my bike and hiking didn't feel like exercise, it was play. But every other form of exercise was something I imposed upon myself as a way to "get in shape" or, in other words, fix my broken self.
Fix my broken self. For my entire life that is exactly why I exercised. Part of me as always felt like I was broken since birth. Like I was dealt a raw deal with this slow, awkward, near-sighted, over-sized tonsiled, narrow nasal passaged, mouth breathing self. As I aged, I began to have more gratitude for my gifts and feel less pitiful about my weaknesses. I started to realize how fortunate I was to have a strong back, endurance, and an optimistic outlook on life. When I was 40 I had those ridiculous tonsils and adenoids removed, along with additional unnecessary tissues, which cured my sleep apnea and reduced my need to breath through my mouth. That was the beginning of my transformation. I was finally sleeping at night and getting the rest my body needed. I was no longer living in a fog. I could think clearly without feeling like I was fighting through a cloud of wet cotton balls just to get through the day. All of a sudden I had clarity in my career and realized I was good at what I do. This gave me confidence to demand more of myself and to take some significant steps in my career. This, in turn, gave me confidence in other aspects of my life. Having Jack in my life has also made a bigger difference than I think I will ever be able to put into words. Knowing I am loved without qualification provides a stability that I have never known before. I have always known that I could count on my family (my parents and siblings) if I ever fell flat on my face, which I have done a few times in my life. When I have fallen and I had no idea how I was going to get up, my family was there for me, like a safety net. Perhaps I would have found a way without them, but I am not certain of that. But in spite of knowing they would never let me be destitute, I still felt alone. Does that make any sense? I don't know. But that is how I felt...alone. But with Jack, I have a partner, someone with whom I share my life. It's an incredibly stabilizing feeling. I feel grounded and have direction. I feel safe and loved and cared for. I feel like I have a steady foundation from which to build. It is amazing, after all of the years of struggling to stay on some sort of reasonably steady course, to be sailing on an even keel with relatively little effort. Daily life is no longer a struggle, which allows me to use my reserve for other things.
And that other thing turns out to be becoming an athlete. I am no longer slower and fatter than my peers. I am still very near-sighted and have a little trouble breathing through my nose, but hey, nobody is perfect! When I look at other 50 year old women I realize I am in better shape than most of them, and that feels pretty darn good. I know I would be able to outrun most of those girls (and boys) that were in my class 40 years ago that made fun of me for being slow and uncoordinated. I bet a bunch of them are dying their grey hair, too!! I am no longer beating myself up for being lazy and fat. I feel good about myself. Heck, I plain feel good! I am stronger and more coordinated than I have ever been. I no longer slip and fall a lot. I catch myself easily if I trip over a crack or the ferry comes to a sudden stop when I am standing (that happened in China). I can easily step over my neighbor's stretched out legs in an airplane or curl up in my seat to take a nap. My body is responsive and pretty darn nimble. I don't feel old anymore. So now when I exercise, I exercise because I want to. I am looking forward to my first triathlon in August. Exercise has gone from being punishment for being cursed and lazy to being training for an event that I am looking forward to. Exercise isn't exactly play-time, but it is pretty close. It is something I want to do, because I like myself. (Wow, I didn't know how that sentence was going to end until I wrote it. I knew I was going to write, "because I like ______, but I didn't know what the "blank" was going to be until I wrote the word, "myself." After I wrote "myself" I cocked my head and looked at it, not quite believing I wrote it. Then I nodded, said, "Yes, that is exactly why I exercise, because I like myself." This is crazy shit! But I love it!) It's all different now, and different in an amazing way. This last few weeks has been liberating and inspiring. I am happier and more content than I can ever remember being. Even when I am tired, jet lagged, and feel a little puffy from eating out too much these last few days, I am happy and content. Life is good. Fifty doesn't feel old, it feels like I am starting anew and refreshed. I've put so much behind me and I feel like I have so much ahead of me to be experienced and discovered. I am grateful for so much, including the hard times that have made me the strong and resilient person that I am today. I wouldn't go back and undo or redo anything, for fear that I wouldn't get to this good of a place if I had taken a different path earlier in life.
Blogging helps me put all of this in perspective. It helps me think in a linear fashion, rather than going round and round with my thoughts in my head. I am so glad I started blogging, almost a year ago. I am even more glad that a few people actually read my blog, because I have someone to write to. I write to you, not to myself. I don't feel like these are random words, just reverberating in my brain. I feel like I am communicating a message to people that want to know what I have to say for some reason, either because they care about me, or because it helps them a little bit in some way, or maybe just because it is a little distracting or entertaining. Whatever the reason, I know there are a few readers out there, and that gives me a reason to write, a purpose. It helps me straighten out my thoughts and make sense of the way I am feeling. It helps me make forward progress on a daily basis. Perhaps, in a way, it's a form of therapy. Whatever it is, whatever you want to call it, it helps. Thank you for being part of it, whatever it is.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
1/25/2013: It's Good to be Home
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.
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.
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:
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| 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:
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| 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!
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| 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!!!
 |
| 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:
 |
| 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...
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