Outside Forces

Sometimes (often) the things that affect my ability to work out are completely out of my control. Last night was most definitely one of those times.

I was planning on attending a 7pm yoga class. Normally this is only a small scheduling issue. If I have dinner ready before I go, my husband can eat and feed the baby while I'm at Yoga, and I eat when I get home. Normally my husband gets home between 5:45 and 6:00, which gives me plenty of time to pack up and leave for class.

Last night he got home a little after 6:30.

I could have still gone. I could have shown up late I suppose, sometimes people do. But I'm one of those obsessively early people. I hate nothing more than walking in somewhere late.

"It's Ok." I thought, "I can still do a yoga video later after the munchkin goes to bed."

Except she didn't. She was up and wired until sometime between 8:30 and 9:00. For reference she's usually in bed before 8pm.

So I ended up, exhausted from toddler play time, collapsing on the couch and watching television in my yoga clothes.

I'm hoping to make up for that failure yesterday with a run today. It is incredibly windy out there, and I'm going to be running with the jogging stroller, so I don't have high hopes for a stellar run. But I'm determined to do something today.

I will not let the Blerch win.

Fall down 7 times, get up 8

Well I fell "off the wagon" big time this weekend. I ran out of Juice on Thursday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were a food free for all. I tried to eat well, and made healthier choices ( omlette for breakfast instead of eggs benedict, saying no to a second helping of crepes...) but I did not track, and I did not have juice for breakfast.

Saturday I was supposed to get up early (for me) and go to a free trial workout at 7am for a biggest looser challenge I want to do. Even though I went to bed (relatively) early (for me) I just could not drag myself out of bed at 6 Saturday morning.

After a tasty breakfast of homemade crepes with Strawberry Jam (and no Juice), I was feeling very....well for lack of a better term.... Blerchy. So I made a deal with myself. As soon as my daughter went down for her nap, I would go for a run.  It didn't have to be a long run, or a fast run, but I needed to get myself out there, and get some exercise.

I was kind of excited for the run, since I was planning on wearing headphones for the first time while running the canal path. The only other time I'd run while wearing headphones I had found that I ran further, faster and with less angst.

I could not however find the arm band required for carrying my phone with me. There was a moment, a dark tiny moment, where that was almost enough to derail my running plan. I decided, instead, to run without tech. For the first time in a very long time, I would go out and run without something tracking my every step.

I was planning on running on the Canal path, which I know very well, and where I know the approximate distances to various landmarks. This was enough to keep my anxiety about not knowing exactly how fast or how far from overwhelming my desire to run.

So I went. Without tech, without music, without knowing how far or how fast. And it was a great run. The path was practically empty. There was a light breeze blowing across the path and it was cool and partly sunny. The breeze was nice, and since it was blowing across the path, I wasn't fighting the wind on either the out or back. I really wasn't thinking about speed or distance, I just kinda ran.

Oh yeah, it felt the familiar awful on and off for most of the run. There was the ongoing argument in my head between the part of me ( the Blerch ) that wanted me to stop, and the part of me that refused to. I ran out to the first Lock from where I started running, took a walk break and ran back. Based on what I remembered about the distances I figured I'd run about 2.5 miles, give or take.

I was wrong. When I got home and entered my run into mapmyrun, I saw a number that I really wasn't expecting. 3.27 miles. Without meaning to, without planning on it, I had run further than a 5k. This was an epiphany moment for me. This was a moment where I realized that I can do this, that somehow, without me noticing, it got easier. I ran a 5k, my goal distance that I had trained to meet all last winter, without it feeling like a huge distance.

This morning, I'm back to the Juice. It feels healthier to be drinking it. It's almost 11 now, and I feel only minimally hungry. I still have a bit of juice left in my cup.

Tonight is a Yoga night. I'm going to need it, I did not do enough stretching after my run (and totally forgot to do any foam rolling), so my legs are tight and a little achey. I'm really looking forward to some time on the Mat and getting some of these kinks out.

But it was worth it, oh yes it was. If only to realize that I can do it.

I can run, and I can't stop me.

Day 2....Go!

Today is day two of starting my day off with juice. Yesterday went relatively well, I kept myself from eating until almost lunch time. I had a banana at 11, so a little before lunch, but I figured it was fruit so not so bad. 

I had a hard time not snacking all evening. I've been having a bout of insomnia along with the cold (yes i'm sure they are related,) so I was really tired and cranky. All I wanted to do was eat and curl up in front of the TV and then pass out. 

Mondays are usually Yoga nights, but with a head full of snot and a cough that could have knocked me off my yoga mat (along with, i'll admit it, a healthy dose of "I'm too tired for this",) I stayed home to sit on the couch and watch TV. Just like I wanted to.

Except I have a toddler. A very cute, very active toddler. Who loves her momma, and wants her momma's attention. So there wasn't much sitting and relaxing happening until later, when she was in bed.

Once the toddler was in bed, dinner was over and I was comfortably installed on the couch in front of the television, I no longer had the urge to snack on everything in the house. In fact I very resolutely turned down offered snacks. I was simply not hungry any more. 

But before that, oh man. I had been decent all day in the eating department. I had Ratatouille for lunch with a small bag of Kettle corn, 12(yes I count them out) animal crackers and two WW cheese sticks for snacks (I tend to snack all day instead of just eating lunch). I stuck to the one cup of coffee (I drank decaf tea instead) and with the exception of the banana, did not eat until after lunch. Once at home though, the battle started. Cake in the fridge, cookies in the pantry. The enticing smell of the pulled pork slow cooking in the crock pot. I caved and had a small piece of cake, but that was it. I only had one pulled pork sandwich (with minimal bbq sauce) for dinner.

I had trouble falling asleep again last night, although we did go to bed earlier, so I'm sure I was able to get at least a decent amount of sleep. I feel exhausted today. I woke up with a headache (I'm sure my caffeine taper has something to do with that.) I still have a cold. I've finished my "breakfast juice" and am sipping my one (cold) allotted cup of coffee. I'm already starting to feel hungry, and it's not even 10. I think today, with it's rapidly accumulating stress level, is going to be a challenge. 

Tonight is going to be another monumental diet challenge. Tonight is family dinner night at the in-laws, and since this past week was my husbands birthday, it's a birthday dinner. My Father In Law is a great cook, and usually makes relatively healthy, tasty meals (even though i do end up over eating even on the healthy food too.) This week however, since it's a "birthday dinner" we will be ordering out for food. It is very hard for me to find something healthy and within my diet when we order out. And I'm sure there will be cake, or pie, and cookies, and ice cream. 

Since I know it will be almost impossible for me to eat only healthy food tonight, I'm going to try to focus on eating small portions of each thing I eat. I will try to make healthy decisions, but I'm realistic about my ability to turn down cake, or fries for that matter. I think focusing on having a very small amount of these things might be a good strategy tonight. We'll see how well I do with it.

Juicing

Today marks the first day of my experiment in Juicing. No, not that kind of juicing. No steroids here, just crushed, pulped and liquified veggies and fruits.

I'm not going all out and doing a juice fast right off the bat. I think that would require me taking time off from work to deal with the caffeine withdrawal at the very least. Instead I'm starting by replacing one meal a day, at this point breakfast, with juice. Since I'm not a big breakfast person ( I usually don't really get hungry until around 10 or 11 when I wake up at 7) I figure having a juice in the morning will be an easy transition.

Part of my plan is to wean myself off of caffeine, I'm going down to one cup of coffee a day this week, I will switch to decaf next week. Hopefully this will avoid the worst of the withdrawal symptoms, since it would be very difficult to deal with the migraines and lethargy while working and dealing with the munchkin.

I taste tested two juice blends from Wegmans last week, and while I found one of them completely undrinkable, I found I actually quite liked the "Green Glory" juice. I've gotten myself a large bottle of that, and a smaller bottle of the "Triple berry" juice. I'm not sure if it will be enough to get me through the week of breakfasts. I can always make a run to grab another bottle if I need it.

The bottles are kind of expensive, the large quart bottle I bought ran me $8, so if this works and I decide to continue replacing meals with juice (or even supplementing them), I'm going to have to look into buying an actual juicer.

I'm hoping that I tolerate this well, and can eventually plan to do a 10 day Juice "fast", to really give my weight loss efforts a boost. I'm really nervous about this. My weakness, diet wise, is carbs. I usually crave something bread-y with every meal, and most snacks. I use crackers, bread, oatmeal, and cookies to "settle my stomach" whenever it's feeling off, so the idea of having liquid meals scares me.

I'm going to try to be as honest as possible here about my experience with this, so it might get a little TMI at times.

So far (yes day one is not very far into it but still,) it's going alright. I've got my large cup of "Green Glory" juice that I'm sipping. I did start the day with (most of) a cup of coffee. I left some of that in the cup so I can have another hit of caffeine later in the morning. I had a moment, before I started drinking my juice that I wanted to just skip it today. My stomach wasn't feeling awesome, and I got that queasy feeling when I thought about actually starting to drink the juice. I really just wanted to open up my lunch bag and chow down on some of the snacks I brought for lunch.  I did not want to give up before I started, though, so I took that first sip. I'm feeling better now, more optimistic about being able to sustain this.

The other complication I'm going to be dealing with is health related. Right as I was planning this change, I came down with a nasty cold. It's still hanging on, causing a lot of stuffiness, a sore throat from post-nasal drip, and a lot of coughing. We'll see if the juice helps me fight it off, or if the cold will win.

Feeling frustrated....and sore.

On tuesday, in a fit of "I need to get my ass in gear", I threw on Jillian.Michales 30 Day.Shred, and proceeded to sweat and curse my way through level 1. I forgot just how hard that video can be when you're as out of shape as I've gotten.

Mostly, my issue was (as it's always been) with upper body strength, or lack there of. I can do squats for hours, but make me raise my arms above my head and three sets in I'm shaking.

I'm still sore from this two days later. This also resulted in me slipping my 100 push up and 200 sit up challenge days by one, so that instead of doing them yesterday, I will be doing them today.

It also resulted in me eating way more than I should have last night. I didn't go over my points for the week, but I certainly ate into them (pun intended.) Which doesn't leave me my usual breathing room for the weekend. Maybe I can do some extra exercise and gain myself a few exercise points to trade in when we head over my parents this weekend.

My goals this week were to fit in one run, stick to my points, go to yoga, and to do the challenges. So far, I'm not doing so hot on those goals. If I can fit a run in and finish out the two more days on the challenges by the end of the week, I'll feel better about this week.

Honestly, like I've said before,  I want to get back to the point where I'm working out more days than not. I want to get myself back to the dojo, and before I do that, I want to be able to keep up with the push up and sit ups I'm supposed to be doing (hence the challenges.)

In the back of my mind, since I first heard my brother was thinking of proposing, is the fact that I will be going to his wedding. And like it or not, I will be photographed in a dress, and I will have to see those photographs, and lots of people will see them. I do not want to look awful in those pictures. Even though they haven't set a date yet, I can feel that phantom deadline looming. It terrifies me, because I have been so unsuccessful at loosing the "baby weight" so far.  And further back, I was unsuccessful at loosing weight before my own wedding.

The last time I was able to loose a significant amount of weight was back in NYC, when I was unemployed, but had the disposable income to afford a gym membership, healthy food, and new gear. I had the free time to make exercise my job, doing at least a half hour of some exercise a day, but more often doing two half hour sessions, usually one yoga session and one gym session (which to be honest was half an hour of running, and then half an hour of stretching/strength, followed by 10 minute walks to the subway and then from the subway home.) Not to mention just living in NYC was a more active life style. There was so much more walking.  Now, if I'm not careful, I can go an entire day where the most exercise I get is walking up the stairs in my house.

One step forward, half a step back?

This weekend I got the brilliant idea to rent a carpet cleaner and go ahead and clean all (well most) of the carpets in our entirely carpeted house. Seriously. The only rooms without carpet are the kitchen and the bathroom.

I have never used a carpet cleaner before, and despite reading the directions multiple times, I somehow managed to miss that after I filled the attached bucket with soap and water, I needed to pour it into the machine. I did not realize I had missed a step until after I had done the living room over twice, and waiting for it to dry.

I had decided to clean the upholstery on a chair the cat had "christened", and finally noticed that there was no water coming out when I pulled the "spray trigger."

The upshot was that, with cleaning the rest of the carpets, I spent most of the day lugging the carpet cleaner around. If that doesn't count as a workout, i don't know why. Between carrying the waste water bucket (with 3.5 gallons of water) back and forth, and the actual cleaning, I was exhausted by the end of the day.

I also managed to put some serious stress on my right leg apparently. Random parts of it have been bothering me since saturday. It started with my knee, and my heel (which has been hurting for a while but that's another post entirely), and then yesterday, my calf.

I had been planning on attending a Monday Night Yoga class, but the pain and stiffness in my calf got so bad that I couldn't hold a downward dog for more than a few seconds, let alone suffer through an entire hour of yoga.

The day was not an entire fitness loss however, as I did day one of the 200 sit up challenge and day two of the 100 push up challenge.

I've got some recommendations on things to try to ease the ache in my calf, and I'm planning on sticking to the challenges, so hopefully by the end of the week I'll be in good shape to maybe add in a run this weekend.

Diet wise, i've been alright. I'm pretty good at sticking to my points during the week, which leaves me a lot of wiggle room on the weekends. Last weekend I went over on points, and I think I saw that reflected on the scale ( no loss this week.) I'm hoping that this weekend I'll stay closer to my points goal, and thereby see the numbers budge on the scale.

And I was doing so well....

I've been truckin along, following WW loosely and working out sporadically. I'd lost some weight, although not as much as I'd have liked. I was trying to do at least one workout three days a week or more. I had Yoga on Monday nights, and I was doing videos in the afternoons.

And then I missed a monday Yoga.

And then the instructor went on Vacation, so the class was canceled for a while.

And then we went on Vacation.

And now it's been three weeks since I worked out. And even with my loose following of the WW plan (I went off diet while on Vacation for a week, and have been struggling to get back on track.) I have stopped loosing weight entirely, and even put some back on.

I've been struggling this past week, wanting so badly to get myself back on track, but lacking the energy or motivation to actually exercise. I've been doing alright diet wise, but I know from experience that wont be enough. 

Luckily for me Monday night Yoga is starting back up this Monday. That'll help, it'll at least give me one day a week where I'm working out.

I'm planning on starting the 100 push up and 200 sit up challenges as well. I think it'll give me something that I can do quickly while my daughter naps or plays quietly, without needing to get ready to go do or changing into different clothes for.

I've got the Apps on my phone to track my progress with the challenges, and I'm going to try to do updates on my progress here on this blog. I'm really hoping, after so many stops and starts, that this will be something that helps get me moving in a positive direction again.

This past Sunday my brother finished an IronMan race. Seeing him cross that finish was not only a huge proud moment for me (that's my little brother!) but also it highlighted just how far I've fallen from the girl I was in high school who spent every day (except sundays) at the Dojo. The girl who did six or seven classes a week, one every day but sunday, and two on either fridays (when there was a sparring class after regular class) or saturdays (later when they added weapons classes after regular class.)

I know I don't have the time or energy to drop myself into that kind of schedule again. I know that my daughter take priority to me, and my schedule does not work with going to hour long classes that start at 6 every day anymore. But I want to get back towards that. To the point where going to the dojo, or doing a workout every day is the norm, not the exception. 

I'm feeling this odd mixture of frustration, depression, and determination. It's like I swing back and forth between "I need to do this" and "I can't do this". I've never been here before, feeling like I need to do something, but having so many other things that have to take priority. 

Hopefully, I'll feel better after a week of taking small steps. Hopefully, the return to Yoga and the small challenges will be enough to shake the darkness off for a while and propel me forward.