Affirmation

Some days I wonder at all that I do.  Exercise.  Work.  Cook.  Doctors appointments.  Bank snafus.  Skinned knees.  Games of memory.  Laundry.  I live inside the routines I've created to cope with all my roles in life.  The noise and demands make me feel needed and necessary.  I sleep very peacefully at night knowing I've fully lived my life that day.  I can do anything in this realm.  To live this way is success.

Others are spent just doing.  Each fire that presents itself is stomped out and relegated to the side.  All routines are executed from memory without thinking of how they came to be or who they serve.  They must be done.  Now.  The people and tasks fly by without recognition.  I'm harshly effective, managing my life and those in it with impunity.  There is little time for understanding or forgiveness.  Success is the only acceptable outcome.

©2012 Susan Bearman @Two Kinds of People

I oscillate between the two modes of existence.  I prefer wonder.  Wandering slowly but effectively through my day loving the process of living.  Life wraps me up and I interact with the fog.  Not every step is sure but it is intentional.  I have a belief that I'll find the right path.

As I wander and wonder, the fog begins to burn away.  I cling to the peaceful feelings, but eventually everything comes back into sharp focus.  I see the individual tasks and all the steps necessary to get where I'm going.  When the fog burns off, purpose replaces it.  Just as the wonder is comforting, confidence is empowering.  I execute my plans knowing that I am on the right path.

I live most of my life executing plans.  However, life gets in the way of executing plans.  I'd even go so far to say it messes up good plans.  When operating on a deadline and under tight control, there is no margin of error, no time to slow down and interact.  I push forward knowing what I have to do and doing it.  One foot in front of the other. 

But fog gets thicker as you keep moving.  It obscures your vision.  Eventually fog fills your nose, persisting until you are forced to slow down, come to a stop.  I finally have no choice but to stand still and listen.  Life's all around me, holding my hand, helping me forget all my plans and deadlines.  I take a deep breath and remember where I was going.  While I can't make out my goal in all the chaos the surrounds me, I can see it in my mind.  With where I'm headed reestablished, I take a deep breath enjoying myself and feeling my life.  I tell myself "You can do this".  I take another step.  Not sure where I am on the path, I keep moving knowing eventually I'll reach my goal.

Reality Check

Yesterday I had to head home early from work.  My foot hurt enough that all I could think about was getting home and resting it.  So that's what I did.  I also made an appointment to see a doctor in the sports medicine practice I've been going to for my knee.  They can't see me until June 18th.  My only hope at an earlier appointment is to call back in every couple of days to see if they have a cancellation.  I will be trying that.

In the meantime, I'm attempting to stay off my feet and not feel sorry for myself.  That second part is kind of hard.  I'm not great at switching gears and this pain is causing a massive downshift in my plans.  Until yesterday afternoon, I was still pushing.  I kept thinking that the pain would just pass.  Sometimes pain does that.  Today I'm not pushing so hard anymore.  I'm not a doctor and until the doctor can tell me why this is hurting, I'm going to do my best to stay off it.

What does that mean for my workouts?

First off, no stairs.  By that I mean no climbing flights of stairs at work right now.  I have stairs in my house which are functionally necessary for me living there.  Just no extra stairs.  I'll erase my count and start again after I'm either cleared by the doc or the pain goes away.  Now I just have to believe that this isn't a failure.

Secondly, cardio will be done in the pool.  I'm planning two swim workouts each week.  This afternoon I'm going to go purchase some swim goggles (did I already say that yesterday?).  I'm also spending some time on the internet tonight to pick out a new swimsuit.  Mine is embarrassingly loose (Eek!!!) and over 10 years old.  The time has come.  And gone.  And come again.

Third coping mechanism, strength workouts will be done at home.  I'm compiling a list of PT exercises that I've done and focusing on the ones which don't require standing.  Thankfully there are more than a few.  Also, I have the arm/shoulder work that the personal trainer went over with me.  I'll plan on 40 minutes of strength training twice a week, the length of time it takes to make it through one episode of Buffy (don't judge).  If I find Buffy too distracting, I'll switch to the radio.  :)

And finally...  I promise to be kind to myself.  I promise to try to be patient.  My biggest hope is that I'm making all these plans which will be deemed unnecessary tomorrow when my foot magically stops hurting.  My reality is that I have lots of things I can keep doing while my foot heals.  Now I just need to do them.

Workout 120606: Flipper

I'm still concerned about my heel.  It still hurts.  But I don't want to ruin my gym habit, so to the gym I headed this morning.  My workout?

20 min Swimming

That looks to inadequate to me.  However those 20 minutes were hard!  I know how to swim, but I'm not a smooth swimmer.  I'm not overly coordinated at anything.  Keeping my breathing regular and timing my breaths for when my face wasn't underwater was HARD.  Plus there is the whole propelling myself through water.

This week I'll be doing a little research on how to exercise in a pool when you aren't going to drown, but are really uncoordinated.  I'm not quite sure how I'll phrase that for Google, but I'll share any particularly enlightening searches.  Also, I need to purchase a pair of swim goggles.  In addition to breathing while swimming, seeing would be useful so I don't run into things.  Thankfully there are ropes and walls to keep me from running into other swimmers.  And I guess I'm past worrying about looking like a dork at the pool...  Anyone who is really worried about it isn't working out hard enough.  Shame on them!

Also, yesterday marked my first full day elevator free after my momentary relapse on Monday.  At the encouragement of one of my co-workers I tried the stairs with my heel.  It didn't hurt more than just walking does, so I'm going to keep taking the stairs.  The added per there?  I noticed that I can take three consecutive flights of stairs without dying now!  How cool is that?  I am still a little out of breath when I get to the top, but not so much so that I would be embarrassed to walk up along side a co-worker.  That is super and I'm thankful someone convinced me not to give up.  Woohoo!

As such, I'm also making a note on my white board.  It will document my success in this area.  Here you can see it for yourself.

The Results Are In

Today's post is brought to you by the number...

224

....

Yeah!!!!  Woohoo!  Go Margot!  It's your birthday!  Have a party!

I am thrilled! Hesitantly thrilled but thrilled nonetheless. That number came as a bit of a surprise this morning.  I was hoping for 225.  After moving to calorie counting, I was more than a little concerned that my process would be found lacking against the proven system that is Weight Watchers.  Really I was a lot worried.  Today I know that worry is unfounded.  There is no one tool for success.

The biggest plus is that I like counting calories more than I do counting points. The first time I did WW I knew the formula well enough to guesstimate points from calories. The new point system has a much more complicated formula. And many restaurants only offer calorie counts on their foods these days which have no place in the new formula. I was finding that very frustrating.  Switching to calories fixed that.  I only have to add and the number is increasingly available.

My hesitation comes from the constant fear that this isn't real and the weight will return. I'm not sure if that fear will ever go away. I may reach my goal and always feel a 100 lb weight following behind me waiting to reunite. That might be the trade off for going through this process. By succeeding I know what both side feeling like.  I won't ever be an blissfully ignorant skinny person. This person who had a 100 lb weight loss goal will always be here.

That's not such a bad thing, but it is one more thing to consider along my way.  Learning to celebrate these losses is hard.  I should be over the moon with excitement for the progress I'm making.  And I am!  Sort of.  There's just more to it.  I guess there will always be more to it.

My total weight loss since May's weigh in is 6 pounds.  Since my first weigh-in in January my total weight loss is 16 pounds.  That averages out to 0.72 pounds per week, or 3.2 pounds per month, for this year.  I like the 3.2 pounds per month number.  It is solid progress, but definitely not too quick.  The slower progress gives me a little more hope that this is real.  I am making permanent changes in my life, ones that I can stick with forever.  Go me!  :)

Workout 020604: Fighting Discouragement

Yesterday my physical therapist advised me to not come in and take it easy.  After no workout in the morning and no PT I determined that I needed to do something at home.  Here's what I did:

5 min Bike
15 Hip Abductors each side
15 Crunches on a Swiss Ball
10 Bicep Curls*
10 Front Raise*
10 Side Raise*
10 Shoulder Press*
15 Swiss Ball Bridges
15 Reverse Curls
Repeat all above one more time
Stretch

*All the arm exercises were done while sitting on a Swiss Ball with a 5 lb weight in each hand.

I'll start by saying I'm exceedingly happy that I did my exercises despite it being 8pm and my heel hurting me.  Given that, I will also say that nothing felt quite right.  My exercise ball didn't have enough air in it.  My coccyx started to hurt.  My foot was not better (but no worse, thankfully) from the exercising.  And I couldn't find my stick to roll out my legs.

This is why I go to the gym.

That said, I'm not sure how much I can do at the gym right now.  This morning I stopped by to drop off the gift certificate for my training sessions, but I didn't work out.  It occurred to me half way through the morning that I can swim at the gym even if my foot is hurting.  That's what I'll do tomorrow.  I'm happy to have a plan of attack to keep moving through this foot thing.  It's only been hurting me for 2 full days, but it making me very nervous.  I've made so much progress and I'm very worried about derailing it now.

I told myself I would wait until Wednesday to make an appointment for my foot, but I think I'm going to get the appointment scheduled today.  Am I being a big baby about this foot?  I'm not sure.  But I'm so tired of being in pain.  I love that I was achieving entire days pain free.  Now that I know that is possible I find this pain to be intolerable.  I also worry that I'll just get used to it like I did with the hip and knee stuff.  Then years go by and I end up a ball of disjointed mess again.  Bleck.

So that's enough wallowing for today.  Call doctor to make appointment for foot.  Swim at gym tomorrow.  The plan of action has been determined.  Moving on!

The Calorie Edition

Today I did not make it to the gym.  My heel on my left foot is hurting.  I don't even have to stand on it for it to hurt.  While my sneakers help, the pin is still there.  I have PT this afternoon, so I'm officially resting it.  I also broke my elevator streak this morning at work.  *sigh*  I'm not thrilled, but I'm trying not to beat myself.  The minute the heel pain eases up I'll be back to my goal.  Someone out there help me stick to that, okay?

What I can offer on this fine Monday is a bit more thought on my calorie counting.

Friday, May 25	1536
Saturday, May 26	2045	Counted after the fact
Sunday, May 27	2656	Counted after the fact
Monday, May 28	1829
Tuesday, May 29	1655
Wednesday, May 30	1604
Thursday, May 31	1759
Friday, June 1	---	Tracked food but ate at a place with no nutritional data
Saturday, June 2	1812
Sunday, June 3	2136	Pizza is impossible

Last calorie edition, I said that anything within 50 calories of 1600 was a successful day.  That post claimed a 55% success rate.  Above shows a success rate of 10%.  I am not happy with that at all.  Adding all the numbers above together and dividing by 9 (since I don't have a total for one of the days) I get an 1892 calorie average.  That is 300 calories above my daily target.

That number does include two weekends which are higher.  To get a more well-rounded number I'll take all the days tracked over a full weeks (23704) and divide by 13 days which gives me a 1824 calorie average.  That's 224 over my goal, but better than 300.  I'm not in love with that number, but I'm okay with it.  Given that I'm trying now, I really wonder how many calories I was eating before.

In this process of trying to meet my big goal, I am learning a lot.

1. Pizza.  *sigh*  When you are dieting, don't eat pizza.  It really isn't worth it.  I ate 575 calories just in pizza crust yesterday.  It was wonderful, delicious and just what I wanted.  However, I would have been satisfied by making pizza out of a whole wheat pita which has the added benefit of being potion controlled.  Meals like that help me to understand how I've gained the weight I have in my life.  What felt like a reasonable dinner totaled 937 calories.  Not reasonable if it is anything less than an exception.
2. Weekends are hard.  Those are the times when I eat impulsively or intuitively.  I did better this weekend than last, but I was still much higher than where I wanted to be.  Keys to doing better include eating at restaurants which provide nutritional data and eating whole meals as a family.  Eating on the run with no insight into what I'm grabbing is disastrous almost every time.
3. Estimating calories in a dish is a needed skill.  Friday I did well, but I had an excellent lunch which I had no idea how to count.  The dishes were complex and prepared by a restaurant chef.  I can make an educated guess on the ingredients, but I know restaurants are notorious for fattening up otherwise benign dishes.  I need to figure out what to do on days when I eat foods which I have no idea how to calculate.  Maybe a flat number?  As a coping mechanism, my husband has agreed that we will only eat at one place a week where I can't figure out the calories with some accuracy.  I'm okay with that solution for now, but I'd like to become better at estimating this.

All that said, I will not be changing my daily target to account for exercise, at least not yet.  Until I get my weekly average down a bit more I'm not adjusting the numbers.  It doesn't make sense yet.  My weekdays are pretty solid, but they are making up for my weekends right now.  Maybe the focus next weekend should be to control my intake there a bit more and see how I'm feeling on Monday.

The tiredness could just be because I'm working hard to make ALL this happen.  The combination of exercise, job, kids and diet would make anyone tired, right?  So I'm holding steady again this week.  Monthly weigh-in is Wednesday which will give me another statistic to add to the pile.  I can't wait to see what spin it has to offer!

Workout 120601: FIVE!!!

My FIFTH workout of the week was:

35 min Treadmill walk (totaling 1.6 miles)
Stretch

Um, yeah.  I went to the gym this morning.  I really wasn't feeling it, but I was so sore I figured that moving was the only thing that would help.  I'm glad I did go, but man my heart was not into this morning.

But...  I went to the gym all FIVE mornings this week!!!  That surpasses my goal of 4 workouts a week and sets the standard for what I can accomplish in the post PT era.  I'm proud of myself for following through on my routine and really pushing during my workouts earlier in the week.  The biggest factors in making this happen were having my gym bag packed and ready to go the night before and getting to bed on time.

Not that getting to bed on time was all that hard.  I have been beat the past couple of days.  Last night I went to bed at 8pm a few minutes after my 3 year old laid down.  I'm not even sure she was asleep when I passed out.  I'm starting to wonder if I might be cutting my calories a little too lean during the week.  I make up for it with overages on the weekends, but maybe I'd have more control if I didn't limit quite so much during the week.

Either way, it is something I'll be thinking on going into next week.  My monthly weigh-in is on Wednesday and I've definitely looking forward to it.  It is good to know that I'm making progress for all the work that I'm putting in.  Those results in conjunction with how I've been feeling will help determine my course for the month to come.  More than anything I hope I maintain the happy I've achieved.  It's almost better than the weight loss.  Almost, but not quite.  :)