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ZIRCADIA's Recent Blog Entries
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Friday, January 14, 2011
So, after Monday's 2.5 hr snow bucketing festival (only one snow shovel meant the rest of us helping to clear the driveway had to get creative, I ended up with a bucket as my weapon of choice!), I have declared myself on rest period for a 1 week minimum - the only thing I am allowing myself to do are pushups and crunches. Granted, I haven't done any of those since Saturday so I'm not exactly doing fantastic on that front either.
Basically, the snow days happened after a Saturday wherein I was out all day from eating lunch out at a nice healthy favorite place (a place called the Happy Tummy, fresh, homemade food with good ingredients and many healthy options - I got an AWESOME chili w/ curried carrot corn muffins that I gave away 1/2 as well as samples of my chili), and ended up eating a slice of pizza, a couple pieces of bacon, and a couple pieces of birthday cake w/ homemade fondant on it (my first try of fondant, a friend of mine made it - marshmallow fondant, and it was amazing).
So I had busted the sugar dam wide open and it has continued. I have made attempts here and there of not overdoing it with the food and making healthy choices, but my will power level is SO LOW right now. It's like, ok I decided to eat this healthy thing - wait someone's offering me something delicious and unhealthy? YES PLEASE! Whereas before, my will power was iron. I was turning down things left and right.
Right now, I haven't been tracking. I know that's a bad thing for me, but my motivation is like zilch since I'm not working out. It SHOULD be the opposite- no working out means food needs to be ON POINT. *sigh* But the mojo just isn't there right now. We have already planned to go out to eat tonight. It's a special occasion, we're driving over an hour to meet some friends that we haven't seen since we moved, and I hate to restrict myself when I'm eating at a place that I will rarely if ever go to again... but they do have their menu online, so I'm going to review it and see what healthylooking option looks also really delicious to me. It shouldn't be too hard to find something with a good healthy/delicious ratio since it's a mediterranean type place. LOVE.
Starting tomorrow - I am kicking myself in the butt on this no tracking thing. I'm not going to bother tracking today since I've already eaten and will still eat some somewhat unquantifiable things... (namely an unnumbered amount of peanut butter & white & milk chocolate chip cookies at my first break of the day - I literally do not know how many I ate. 6? 8? and dinner at a restaurant without nutrition info)... but - I have a healthy lunch packed and I didn't pre-serve the serving, so I won't feel compelled to eat whatever I packed, I can dish out something smaller, whatever will make my tummy feel happy. It's not happy about all the sugar right now. :(
I also joined a Scale Back Alabama Team w/ co-workers- I may have mentioned that before? I don't remember. The first weigh-in is 1/22. On the one hand, it makes me feel like not doing anything until then. On the other hand, that's stupid. So don't be dumb, Dana. But it does make me feel a little better about the fact that I'll be resting my achilles and therefore not meeting my 2lb per week weightloss goal as originally scheduled for right now since I am at a healthy weight and dropping that much without doing something unhealthy is just not really feasible for me when not exercising. (more than pushups and crunches!)
One of my scale back teammate potentials was saying I couldn't join because I can't lose skeleton. BWAHAHA. She is nuts. But I have to admit it made me feel less like a gigantic blob.
It's hard to be above the lowest weight of a long loss - I think I've mentioned it before. Because it was always going down, going back up just makes me feel 300lbs again. I'm not 300lbs. I'm a healthy weight, I'm still fit even though I'm probably losing a little fitness with the less working out and now no working out for a bit, but I'm no lump. I was a snow bucketing CHAMP on Monday. It's hard to retain perspective since it's been so skewed at several times over the past 17 years or so of my life. I'm guessing when I got to be around 10 is when I started caring about the fact that I was chubby... maybe sooner. When I skipped grades from 3rd to 4th grade is when I first got teased for my weight. so I was around 9-10 -- I skipped halfway through 3rd grade year.... so I was almost 10 (birthday in Feb). THAT REMINDS ME! I'm almost 28! So closer to 18 years!
Back then I wasn't like OBESE, I was a chubby/fat kid, and stayed a chubby fat kid for a long time. I dunno at what point I obese - I just checked to see if I was extremely obese/morbidly obese at my heaviest and apparently I was under that- close though. BMI of 38.5/39 and 40+ is where that starts.
But I felt like the fattest kid ever. And the fattest girl in high school... I had some confidence about my appearance at times, but never about my body shape/size. I thought I had good style, a pretty face, good hair... if only everyone could just ignore everything from the shoulders to knees. (I was ok w/ my calves.) Someone said that on What Not To Wear the other day and it almost made me cry because that's exactly how I felt. Anyway -- then I started losing weight and it took me a long time for my mind to catch up with my body. Then it kind of did - but still sometimes I forget. Especially when I'm having a "fat day" as every woman calls it when you just feel puffy. And when I've been eating poorly and not exercising - definitely feeling like that. and "fat day" to me takes me back to the beginning.
ANYWAY. I can do better. I know how, I have the tools, I DO have the strength, I'm going to do it. No more moping and willy nillyness.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
SO!
I feel like a bit of a broken record in some regards, but at the same time - many are the same sounding when the specifics aren't added in.
Run better.
Live healthier.
Get fitter.
OK we can all do these things, right?? :) Maybe someone out there is living as healthy as possible, is the best runner they will ever be, and is at their peak of fitness, but that person isn't me.
But let's think about what goals I had for 2010 and new and different things that I achieved:
1. Spring Sprint Regatta - I did it! It was not perfect, and unfortunately since it is a costly and expensive type of thing for me to have done, I was unable to immediately go back for vengeance. But the training for the regatta was fantastic - I felt so strong! There was that great thrilling part of our race where we were gaining on everyone... :)
2. Half marathon - never did one, did TWO this year! Set my initial PR and then raised the bar by about 5 min on the second one, only a couple of months later. :)
3. 2nd marathon - DID IT. Still finished under 6 hours - somewhat of a disappointment since I did not PR, but on the other hand I apparently was battling PF leading into it and during the race triggered that into some Achilles issue that I am still rehabbing, so I am very proud of myself for completing it so near to my last years time, and not getting swept off the course. AND! Not starting out AS fast - I still had a heavy positive split, but although my total time was a couple minutes longer, my split between first and second half was smaller than last years race. I also completed this and all long training runs with NO MUSIC. This was a big mentally scary thing for me. I wasn't sure how I'd last through a small, not a lot of spectators type of race without that added support/distraction - but I did it. And I was able to exchange words with volunteers at times, and with them and myself I was able to push through! :) It was a great experience! If I run a marathon that allows headphones, I'll probably bring the music along as a backup, but I don't PLAN on running with them again.
4. 15K - this wasn't really a goal so to speak when the year started, but hey - I established a baseline PR for a distance I've never raced before!
5. Did a lot of the New Rules of Lifting for Women ST program - LIFTED WEIGHTS WITH A BARBELL FOR THE FIRST TIME!! did squats and overhead crap. Granted I stopped when I didn't have my gym membership and didn't start it over when I got one again... but I did confront and do something that was new and scary for me.
6. New Fitness Classes - Hula Hoop, Bellydancing, Body Pump, TRX, Power Boot Camp, Power Yoga, Gentle Yoga, Salsa -- Cool right??? :)
7. Worked with my fitness strap on my own, ran in the dark for the first time, got a headlamp to facilitate said darkness running - good stuff.
So yeah, there are lots of achievements I can be proud of in 2010. :)
New Specific Goals for 2011:
1. Lose this fluff I've been toting since mid 2009 - yeah I haven't let it get out of control, I have stayed in my healthy weight range, but I'm done. DONE with it. I want no clothes off limits in my closet anymore.
2. Maintain after achieving goal #1 - this shouldn't take me too long. Right now I'm on starting week 3/11 weeks to awesome. So I'm partway there. And that's to a number that I think might be lower than I want to go - assuming I lose 2lbs a week, which so far I've lost 2+ lbs per the first 2 weighin's average, but the first week was a lot due to water weight and last week was only 1lb - but I know why. I missed 1000+ calories of burn goal and had an extra splurge meal on the weekend. I might change the speed of goal 1 and end up starting maintenance later in the year, but I'm giving the aggressive method a shot for a while first.
3. Build a consistent running base of at least 30 miles per week. Right now this goal is just NAGGING me because I can't run at the moment. I want to run so bad so I get get going on this goal, but this goal will have to be accomodated by me being HEALTHY to run, of course.
4. Work on running speed. Sub goals: More miles (30MPW base), More faster miles (actually do some speedwork, even if it's just fartleks once a week or something).
5. Run more Half-Marathons - I feel like I have the potential to improve my performance here more in the near future and will see the most improvement at this distance with the goals I'm setting now than I will in the marathon. If I can get a great base for being really well trained for the half marathon distance, then build on THAT for marathon training I hope to see some improvement there, but I expect the improvement in the marathon to be more of a longer term goal - like a 5-10 year type of goal.
I love running marathons - I want to be better at it.
I am going to try to work on my patience this year when it comes to my running - first in injury recovery and then in my long term distance running goals. I got this "feeling" that running more miles just wasn't working for me. The real truth is, I wasn't running "more" miles- I was running just enough to get by. My Long Runs were more in the longer range for this training cycle, but the mid week mileage was kinda sub -par. So my weekly totals looked better than last year but I'm not convinced I really did better training than last year.
There was an article in Runner's World recently talking about "less is more" - well, they didn't REALLY mean less overall is more. They meant less long runs and more mid week running. Running nearly every day and then doing a middle/longish run for the Long Run - peaking at 16 miles for the longest run - for marathon training, but making sure the volume and intensity leading up to that long run was such that you were taxing your body in a way that would prepare you for the marathon. I think the name of the team coming up with this plan was Hansen? Hanson? Hansen? anyway. You get the gist.
I was doing essentially the opposite. HAHA. *shrug* There are plans out there that do this, but I think I might benefit more from trying things a different way. Or at least, even if I don't go all Hansen on it, beef up my midweek miles and my weekly mileage in general leading up to marathon training in order to be stronger at it.
I reallllllllllly realllllllllllllllllllllllllllly reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllly want to run the Chicago Marathon this year. But, if I'm not able to register for that... I'm going to consider not running a full marathon this year. I'm not saying that's definitely the plan if I don't do Chicago, but rather that I'm not DEFINITELY going to do a marathon just because it's a new year and I want another notch on my belt. I think I'll take the approach of feeling when I feel ready to move to that goal again instead, and maybe that'll still mean going for one this year and maybe not. I don't want to make any definitive statements about such a thing when I'm currently sidelined, ya know?!?
I think that about sums it up for health and fitness goals.
Some other goals:
Continue networking in the local music community - I played my first paying gig on New Year's Eve and it was AWESOME. I passed my email&phone to a few people in the band so they will be getting in contact with me about other future opportunities. I may also have some trombone instruction opportunities, which would be GREAT.
Progress my own education once DH gets a job - I talked a bit about this nearing the end of last year but now it's really happening - the dissertation is DEFENDED! WALKING IN MAY!!! :D WOOTWOOT, Dr. Hubby! Anyway - while I would like to go back to school for Music Education, I'm also considering Nutrition, Exercise Physiology, Personal Training Certifications, getting certified to teach Zumba, etc.etc.
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Yes, this is my 3rd Happy New Year in the normal/healthy weight range BMI for my height.
WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!! :)
P.S. -- 2008 was pretty close, I started the new year under 200lbs, but 195 is the top of the healthy BMI if you're 6'2", so not quite there for that ringing in of the New Year. :) Still! 3 New Years in a healthy range!
Friday, December 31, 2010
So.....................
Apparently barefoot zumba SUCKS for my foot/heel/etc.
I should have known better, but I thought, well I can't wear my shoes, and I was dancing all night at the Christmas Party in some like nothing flats... so. why not?
It's not the same.
Tuesday wasn't so bad because it was only 20 min I guess, but last night we did the full 50min workout and then this morning when I got out of bed I could barely stand on my left heel.
Gonna fashion a better homemade Strassburg sock ASAP, maybe tonight after my NYE gig, so I can really get rid of this PF. I've also heard that sleeping in something like that can help AT as well, so I'm going for it.
As for today, I rolled my foot out on a tennis ball, and then walked a bit to see if that was enough for it to feel good to work out - NOPE.
And I realized Saturday the gym is CLOSED for New Years, so no gym tomorrow either.
It was hard for me not to go this morning but I am trying to be good to myself and not stubborn.
NEW RULE LEARNED: No Zumba until I can comfortably wear my properly supportive athletic shoes again!
I am going to see if tomorrow I might be able to get in a nice at home hula hoop session. It's warming up so I should be comfortable outside to have space and I can do a lot of hooping without doing much more with my feet than standing. All is of course dependent upon whether my feet/ankle/heel feel good for it. I will try wearing my shoes even though I prefer to hula hoop barefoot.
I'm sooooooooooo sick of this injury crap. This is week 3 of no running and I'm going bonkers.
But today: after waking up to the clear signs I was not doing myself a service, and I iced my achilles last night but not my plantar fascia area, I came to work, rolled my foot and heel on a frozen water bottle I keep in the freezer her at work, took some anti-inflammatories, stretched out my calves for a while...
I'm working on it! I'm impatient. But I'm trying to be patient.
Food was probably a bit over last night, but not by a lot. I really do not know how to track what I ate, but I looked at some guesstimates for sushi and know I was pretty well within range with that. I had another Reese tree, and some peppermint bark, but not a lot. So probably a little over but untracked on purpose just because I'm not sure how to do it.
I'm going to try to guess track this morning's work supplied bagel and cream cheese. I can see that I'm getting sloppy with tracking so I need to really try to be more on it, but I still FEEL on track, I need to make sure I don't slip off track by making this little lazy things add up.
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Member Comments About This Blog Post:
. bleh. you will get back on track when you are all heeled (lol) up. i have oatmeal cookie issues... i could eat them to i puke. that is my big sugar dam.have one and i can't stop!
trainers say REST it!! If you push to the point of discomfort (which it sounds like you are trying to avoid) your will only prolong injury. I say rest/ h2o aerobics/ motrin to decrease inflammation in the tendon round the clock (if you can be sure your diagnosis of AT trauma is correct) for at least a week & if it is STILL hurting I be tempted to see a sports medicine doc/ orthopedic. Sorry Dana 
I agree with Jen about your intake.
