I'm Going to Kick Until I Need New Shoes

Monday, March 26, 2012

www.youtube.com/watch?v=haca2VY2fFY

Last week's photograph was from the start of the first 5K of the year. This photograph is from that same race's end.

Funny, how perspectives can change.

Last week, I was complaining about gaining 4.2 pounds, due to excess salt intake.

This week, I celebrate losing 6.26 pounds and going down to a tie for the lowest weight of this year so far.

I did it with, well, the same stuff I normally do, except I didn't go quite so silly with the salt. Salt is kind of a double-edged sword for me, as I need to get some in, in order to keep from feeling faint so often (I have low blood pressure. Very low. As in, the nurse checks her instruments low.). But of course with too much I have the same issues that anyone else does - I retain water.

Ah, a balance.

They are so difficult to find sometimes, eh?

And then I see the extremes, too, where I see the woman who was 346. And the one who was, perhaps, below 180 (hard to say if that was real as the scale was on the fritz). The stationary one of last week's photo. The one running all-out in this week's photo.

Who IS that?

And I am reminded that both are me, and that creating one persona, one face, one name, one life, one being, one look, one feel, one idea is wrong-headed, for we are many people. We are dieters and exercisers, to be sure, or we are trying to be. But we are also workers and lovers and artists and neighbors and businesspeople and children and sometimes parents and sometimes siblings and poets and mourners and mischief-makers and writers and photographers and philosophers and social networkers and patients and jokers and spectators and chefs and sometimes soldiers and freaks and animal lovers and fans and and and ....

And we are someone's painful reminder of what they can never have, or can never be. And we are another's amusing joke of how they will never allow themselves to become that way or cannot imagine themselves ever being there. We are someone's "you're going too fast" and someone else's "you're going too slow". We are someone's hero and someone else's villain or weakling.

I am not a fast runner. Photo notwithstanding, I do very little of the all-out stuff. I just plain don't have the stamina for it. I am s...l...o...w.

But yanno something? I figure, next time I fret about how slow I am, I just gotta remember how many people I am carrying around inside of me. And you are, too.

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

I'm Tighter than Airport Security Teams

Monday, March 19, 2012

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVWNWSTg9QI

The photo is from the first 5K of the year, which my husband and I (and 4,998 other people) ran yesterday in Somerville, Massachusetts. It was my 26th 5K (and I think it was Mr. j's 23rd).

Woof.

I am still a bit tired, albeit not too sore.

My time was pretty decent for the first race of the year - under 50 minutes for the gun time. Chip time was 46:23. See: www.coolrunning.com/results/12/ma/Ma
r18_Rasnah_set1.shtml

But when we were done, I ate like a horse.

Like a salt-addicted horse, I tell ya!

And so, after having run a 5K, I actually gained 4.2 pounds.

Yeah, folks, exercise is not enough to cut it.

It is a balancing act. And it can be an exhausting one.

Now, I am well aware that if I drink the water, do my workouts, stay within calorie and nutrient ranges and don't go nuts with salt this week, most if not all of it will be gone by next Monday.

Still, it's a kick in the patoot, to see just how damaging it all is when you slip up AND to see, and admit, just how addicted I really am.

It's a difficult addiction, yanno? I mean, it's not heroin or anything like that. But to be addicted - and in particular to be addicted to something that the body actually needs, so that going cold turkey is impossible - is hard.

And it's not just salt that's addicting. Negative self-talk can be as well.

After all, I ran a freakin' 5K! My 26th! Sheesh, jes, get a dang grip!

It's a small setback. It is not controlling. It is not me, it is not the future, it is not my fate, it is not the end of the world.

Eh, I'm probably just tired and projecting.

I ran a dang 5K.

I'll be fine in a week. ;)

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

You Better Start Swimmin' or You'll Sink Like a Stone

Monday, March 12, 2012

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCWdCKPtnYE

Most of the country (er, the US) yesterday went on Daylight Savings Time. I recognize that this is no big news to any of you, even if you're from some skeery country like Canada. ;)

In any event, what does this all means? Well, of course, daylight isn't actually "saved". I have read innumerable semantic arguments about that. That's nice. Now go play with your dictionary some more. Sheesh. It's really just a quick and dirty term for what happens.

The reality is far subtler. It's actually a large experiment (and a successful one every year, I might add) in behavior modification. Even the states that are unaffected ARE affected, for what happens when you drive across the border and into a state where DST is practiced? Or you call someone there? Truth is, it affects the entire world, for I have worked in more than one company where a call from a colleague overseas had to be rethought because suddenly the time difference was an extra hour, or it was one less than before.

So, behavior modification. We all get up an hour earlier. We wake up (as of now, although that's going to change in a few months) in darkness. We come home in light. And we change! Truth be told, the transition occurs over the course of less than a week, and over 300 million people (yes, really!) are transformed. The experiment is a success, and it is undone every autumn, when another experiment is conducted and the clocks fall back an hour and we are suddenly waking up an hour later than before.

And so I ask you - if you can do this - if you can change your behaviors based on a little old CLOCK, can you change them based on something else? Can you change them based on test results? Or on a scale? Or on what a friend says? Or on how you feel? Can you change them based on the latest research? Or on what the government says the food pyramid should be?

Can you change your behavior and, by definition, your life, because of outside circumstances and influences? Yes? Then, good.

And now for the harder question.

Can you change your behavior and, by definition, your life, because of inside circumstances and influences?

What do I mean by inside versus outside influences?

A lot of us think of weight loss in the context of what our doctors say. Or it's in the context of wanting to fit into a favored pair of jeans or the like. Or the context is how a person we love feels, or what they say. And these things are all well and good, and any weight loss that comes from them is, naturally, real weight loss.

But what happens when the doctor's message is garbled, or the research is inconclusive? Or the jeans are fit into? Or the person we love turns away, or leaves, or changes their mind? If we lose those exterior motivations, I think a lot of us lose ALL of our motivations.

So we need to cultivate inner motivations. The ones where we feel better, and not just because we fit better in our clothes. Where we feel healthier, and not just because a doctor shows us a bunch of studies and numbers. Where we feel that we've accomplished something, and not just because of a stack of finisher medals and commemorative tee shirts.

When you change from standard time to daylight savings, they always tell you to change the batteries in your smoke detectors.

What I am suggesting to you is to also change the batteries in yourselves, for the times, they are a-changin'.

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

She Sure Looks Different than the Way She Looked Before

Monday, March 05, 2012

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmZ-Gv-CnQw

This song is here for fairly obvious reasons - the lyric makes a great weight loss title, plus, of course, there is Davy Jones's recent death. I didn't think it would affect me but, it did. It reminds me of youth.

And with youth comes a lot of great stuff, such as far, far easier weight loss. And getting in shape is easier, and you spring back from injuries more quickly. And, I don't have to tell you how your skin looks.

Ah, youth.

BUT!

This does not mean, as we hit 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or beyond that it's time to slack off, that it's somehow too late to do anything. Actually, what it means is - do it now.

And allow me to emphasize that.

DO. IT. NOW.

Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next year.

NOW.

Tracking? What, you haven't done it? Do it now, while you're thinking about it.

Cardiovascular Exercise? What, you haven't done it? Then do it now, while the weather is okay or at least not awful, or you're not too tired or it's light out or the kids are at school or you don't have a deadline at work or the stars are properly aligned or whatever. Whatever is the excuse for not doing it, assume that that excuse is in invalid and nonexistent. So do it now.

Water? What, you haven't drunk any yet today? Time's a wastin'! All of the things that we hate about water drinking (and I am speaking of many, many trips to a certain little room) are worse the more we delay. Start early, and you can spread it around better, so that there's less urgency. Do it now.

Strength training? What sort of invitation are you waiting for? Here it is. Engrave it if you must. Today is a perfect day for weight training. If the weather stinks, you're going to do it inside anyway. If your favorite show is on, you can do it in front of the TV. If the kids are bugging you, pump iron and I think they'll lay off a bit, eh? ;) So do it now.

Watching the salt intake? Start with reading labels, and watering things down when they can be, and stop shaking on excess. Change your grocery list to include more lower sodium foods, and build in an extra 15 minutes to check labels, or see if you can check any labels online and maybe do that legwork early. Do it now.

Counting calories? You guessed it, you can do that, now, too, by checking out just how many calories are in what you were planing to have for your next meal. Yes, your next meal, the one in a few hours. Spark has probably thousands of food in its database by now. And anything that isn't on Spark can usually be found online. Search. Decide whether a certain item is worth it. Change it up if you have to, in order to get the numbers to fit. Yeah, do that now, too.

Now, I know, life intervenes. So do it when you have those little snippets of time in your life. When you're waiting - if you've got a smartphone, just use the Spark app. No smartphone? Try a pen and paper and record for later what you're going to do. Everybody has little snippets of time. They can be used.

I rarely get insomnia. Wanna know why? 'Cause I walk almost every single day, and I think about my problems THEN. I don't wait until I'm lying in bed. So I'm tired at night, and I'm not seizing the moments when I should be winding down and trying to sleep and misusing them, for time to think about upsetting stuff. Time to worry is budgeted, and so is exercise. Multitasking, I end up doing both at the same time.

I know I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Don't wait. Don't hesitate.

Do it now.

  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

You Were Always Made to Want it All

Monday, February 27, 2012

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb6cBKE3WzQ

Alli experiment about to come to an end (I am done with alli on 2/28, at the end of the day). It has been completely meh. Today I lost the weight I gained during the experiment and am now down .6 overall for the five weeks. I'll check again Wednesday morning, when I'll be completely done, but I don't honestly think I'll be suddenly running around and screaming that I lost five pounds.

So, meh. Compare this, BTW, with the prior 5 week period, where I went from 213.2 to 212.2. Yes, folks, I weighed less and I lost more without it. This is not to say that people new to the drug will not see any effects. But I had taken it for a good two years or almost two years there. And it's been a good year and a half since I had last taken it. It remains decidedly ineffective for me.

But that also begs the question of what is really going to work? I walk every single day, and for 80 minutes or more, with hills. I do weight training. I lift 40# for 20 minutes every single morning. My intake numbers are all good, as can be seen on my tracker. I drink not 8 eight-ounce glasses of water per day, but 11. I am in training for my 26th 5K. I eat every few hours. I get 8 hours of sleep every night. I eat breakfast every morning.

In short, I do every single thing that SP tells me to do - and I mean EVERY.

Yet the weight and the measurements have stopped moving.

I also refuse to be a vegan or live insanely. And by insanely I mean, I already watch my food like a hawk. At some point, I do need a few conveniences. I rarely go out to eat. I rarely drink alcohol or soda, even diet. A super low-carb diet is not in the cards. I already don't eat red meat.

And I am tired, tired of being a hawk, tired of being isolated with my choices, tired of hypervigilance and in no mood to become even more vigilant. Bumping calories down by 200 - 600 calories will essentially remove a meal from my diet. Yes, a meal - and would likely kick me into starvation mode, not to mention building yet more isolation into my food choices.

I am tired.

So, while it's an overall loss, it reminds me that this race is not to the swift and sometimes it's not to the slow, either. And here I am, a little over 6 months before my 50th birthday, and I am tired.

Hence, hope is different.

Hope, right now, is not for big, glamorous losses. It is for staving off decrepitude. And I think that that can become the goal, in some ways, in and of itself.

Keep it going.

Keep the streak alive.

Keep moving.

Keep on keeping on, no matter how tired, no matter how fruitless it may seem, for fruitlessness is, well, it happens. But going backwards is worse, far, far, worse.

Go forward.

Don't go backwards.

You'll get what you get. You'll get there when you get there – and "there" might be a different "there" from what you had originally thought you wanted, or could do.

Here's to the new "there".

Go forward. Don't go backwards.

  Member Comments About This Blog Post: