Day 17,976 The Epic Story Continues

Day 17,856 marked the day I started my blog.  Today, day 17,976 marks 120 days into the rest of my life. I have lost 16 pounds since my recommitment to myself and the rest of my life.  I have lost 1 pound for every 7.5 days. 

My twitter friend @Lose4Good has lost 45.4 lbs since Jan 29, and she said "slow and steady is okay with me."  She is Speedy Gonzales compared to me.  She takes only 6 days on average to lose the same pound it takes me to lose in 7.5 days.  She and I have bonded via twitter, and her successes are my successes.  I am very proud of her and happy for her every time she hits a milestone or just passes up the evil vending machine.

You may have noticed that I like numbers. . . I plan to be a middle school math teacher when I grow up, which will occur in May when I graduate with my Bachelor's in education.  I find comfort in figuring the averages of my fitness minutes over a period of time . . . I know I am a bit strange, but at my age, I am very gratefully okay with being a bit strange.

I have to lose 4 more pounds to get back to where I was a year ago.  Then it is off to the races.  My goal is to lose an additional 40 pounds by my May graduation.  According to http://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html I have 189 days to reach my goal, which means I must increase my effort by 50%.  I need to lose 1.48 pounds every 7 days to reach my goal.  I believe this is doable, because you cannot imagine how motivated I am.

Wish me luck, Godspeed, blessings on my efforts, strength to do the hard work, and clarity of vision and purpose.

Word/s of the Day:  FORGE AHEAD

forge
vb (intr)
1. to move at a steady and persevering pace
2. to increase speed; spurt

What Does Setting Realistic Exercise Goals Really Mean?

A couple of weeks ago, I set the goal of exercising for 500 minutes per week, which translates into 8.33 hours per week.  By the end of that week, I adjusted that goal to 420 minutes per week, which translates into 7 hours per week.   Twelve days in I knew I was going to have to adjust again.

On day 16 I knew if I kept a goal that I consistently could not reach I would hate myself and probably eat to punish myself.  Knowledge is power.

I have now reset my goal to exercising an "average" of 300 minutes per week which translates into 5 hours per week or an average of 42.86 minutes per day.  

The key word is "average."  I can do less than or more than 300 on any given week, and still meet my goal.  THIS GOAL IS DOABLE!!!

I am just excited that I have matured enough to see the forest for the trees.  Instead of complete abandonment of the exercise goal, I have regrouped, reassessed, and tweaked the plan.  I am so smart!

You know why I just said that, don't you?  Because that is what I would have said (You are SO smart!) to someone else who had accomplished a comparable task.  I am very good at patting other people on the back, but not so good at treating myself with the same amount of love and respect.

I am on track with my new goal.  If I have a bad couple of days, I can give myself a break.  The system has a built-in fail safe.  I was up late studying for a quiz the other night and legitimately needed to sleep an extra 30 minutes the next morning, but I can make up that time over the next week or two.  I am so excited!

Word of the day:  DOABLE!

Thank God for Music!!

I read some article somewhere where the author asserted that we shouldn't run or exercise to music, but should use the time to get in touch with our bodies!  Good for him, but PHOOEY on his idea, at least, for me.  I like getting in touch with my body with music playing that has a really good beat going!

When I am in my "den" gym, I use the Pandora function available on my Tivo.  Some days it is Thousand Foot Crutch, Hawk Nelson, Fireflight, Pillar, Linkin Park, and Disciple.  Other days it is U2, Simple Minds, and Coldplay.

Today, it was Michael Jackson, Earth Wind and Fire, KC & the Sunshine Band, Lipps, Inc., and Wild Cherry.

Disco music will never go away.  I am convinced it will and must play an important role in the future health of our nation!

Check out Pandora. You can used your computer to set up a favorite list of music to exercise to.

Word for the Day:  DISCO!

Failure is Not an Option

The infamous attitude of Gene Kranz and his team during the Apollo 13 manned mission was summed up by writers for the Ron Howard movie Apollo 13 with the words, "Failure is not an option."

My plight doesn't rise to the epic crisis of bringing a crew of astronauts safely back to earth after explosions created a life and death situation. However, this is my life, and it is epic to me. I must be the hero in my own saga. Failure is not an option.

I have used a lot of things as excuses to not exercise. My grown and almost grown kids have a lot of stuff in my house, and I have used that as an excuse not to exercise, because I "didn't have room to pull out the treadmill and the thigh trainer, etc....." But that has changed this week. I now have set up in the den, which has been my son's "space" previously.

Now you may think my new effort is somewhat anticlimactic compared to the reference to the Apollo 13 mission, but it is really the same. During the Apollo 13 crisis Gene Kranz and his team had to use what was available to the astronauts to come up with a solution to the problem. In the same way, I have had to use what I have to come up with a solution to the problem.

What I have available to me:

den

floor

pillows

dumbbells

thigh trainer

treadmill

tv

tivo

remote control

pandora

online stopwatch

Now I didn't have an explosion like the Apollo 13 mission, but in a way I did or do.

I have had problems with my back for 23 years now. It is a fact of my life and requires a certain amount of management and working around it.

All of the "trainers" do not seem to understand that I am never going to be able to increase my weights or jump or run. I can't do that little machine at the gym that you have to lean into. All of these things throw my back or shoulder or neck out, and I am in some level of discomfort ranging from mild numbness, tightness and tingling to debilitating pain.

If I do the regimen that I know I can do, it is a good regimen, and it works:

20-25 minutes of dancing to music I love with dumbbells in hand.

20-25 minutes floor exercises:  leg lifts, gut lifts, dumbbell arm exercises

10 minutes of Lateral Thigh Trainer

I have had to adjust the way I do my floor exercises.  There are no conventional abdominal crunches in my life. The neck can't take it.  I put a couple of pillows under my head and one under my butt.  I stretch my arms above my head and hold onto the underside of the couch which anchors my upper body, so things don't "pop" out.  Then I lift my legs instead of my upper body.  I do an assortment of leg lifts:  small movements up and down, longer movements up and down, bent knees pulled in toward my abdomen.  I make sure I can feel the use of my core muscles to complete the movements; because of my limitations in other areas, I tend to do higher reps than would be recommended for someone else.  I, also, turn slightly to each side to try to use the muscles on both sides of my rib cage.  These movements are my abdominal crunches, and, ironically, I think they are actually more effective than traditional crunches.

My explosion has lasted for 23 years.  I work around it every day of my life.

But that is okay.  I am still headed home . . to the place that I am supposed to be.  I am supposed to be me, in my real skin.  My real skin is not nearly so cumbersome or such a burden.  My real skin is a place of freedom to be who and what I want to be.

Home is the destination, and failure is not an option.

I WANT TO GET ON WITH MY LIFE!

Ginny Graves authored an article at prevention.com

 The Surprising Health Benefits of Sadness

Here is an excerpt:

"Antidepressants have become the most commonly prescribed drugs in America for adults.... At any given moment, about 10% of the adult population is taking them, double the percentage just 10 years ago, and about twice as many of them are women as men."

Interesting to me is that we don't always make the connection to statistics that say that almost 7 out of every 10 Americans are overweight or obese.  Many of the 68% overweight should be added to the 10% antidepressant takers to show a true number of people who are "medicated".

New study: 68 percent of Americans are now overweight or obese

My drug of choice has been food.  I eat to celebrate, to escape stress, to avoid what's really bothering me, to punish myself for not being able to control things outside my control, to punish myself for achieving things that I am not sure I deserve . . . you name it I can find an excuse to indulge in the endorphin increasing practice of eating to excess.

I am more aware than I used to be, but I still have a long way to go.  I am now relosing 20 of 40 pounds that I lost over the last 2 years, because I was blind-sided by some life circumstances and variables that threw me for a loop.  I felt that these circumstances were out of my control, and they were, but my response was to eat, to medicate.  Did it help?  Heck, no!  My way of dealing just hurt me.  I can look back now and see that I thought I deserved to be punished for not knowing how to deal better.  But I want to be more present in the present.  I don't like this hindsight crap.

Catherine L. Taylor@thinnerisms sent out a tweet today that is connected to some of this psychological messiness I find myself in from time to time.  She said,  "Are you a perfectionist or fault finder? These traits can leave you chronically disappointed that life can never live up to your standards"  and "Perfectionists have a hard time with #weightloss and changing habits. They expect too much of themselves in too litttle of time. #diet.

I had a principal when I was in 7th grade, say to me, "You are a perfectionist aren't you?"  At the time I didn't quite understand it.  As time went on I began to think, "I can't be a perfectionist, because nothing in my life is perfect."  After a few more decades, I began to realize that I was the definition of a perfectionist, because I never felt that anything was ever perfect enough.  I have moved away from wanting everything to be perfect, but I haven't yet escaped all the emotional garbage that came with wanting everything to be perfect.  I still feel guilty because things are imperfect - I can't keep my house clean enough, I don't make enough money, I don't know all the answers, I make typos and mistakes.  I feel anger, impatience, envy . . . blah blah blah.

But back to The Surprising Health Benefits of Sadness.  I love this next excerpt:

"a provocative theory newly gaining traction that questions whether depression is really a disorder at all. According to this theory, the pain and sadness we feel when we're blue has a purpose in our lives as a clarifying, healing force. "Depression may be nature's way of telling you to stop and focus on what's troubling you, so you can move past it and get on with your life," says Paul Andrews, PhD, an evolutionary biologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. He, along with his colleague J. Anderson Thomson, MD, a staff psychiatrist at the Student Health Services and Institute of Law and Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, have become controversial proponents of an idea that actually dates back to Aristotle, that depression may lead to better mental health."

I don't want to take "meds" or my drug of choice (food) for feeling sad or overwelmed or out of control.  I want to focus on what's really bothering me (only as long as it takes) and then move past it. 
I want to get on with my life!

Words of the day: Live in the Present and then move Forward!!

Open letter to me and to you

Hey, sorry you had a bummer let down with your weight loss at the beginning of the month.  I tend to retain water when I am traveling or outdoors in the heat too much and for me that appears to make my body think it has to hold on to stuff.  Weathering those periods of time is like psychological warfare.  I am not walking outside until the heat lets up here in Tennessee.  I need a psychological break from the negative affects of the heat on my weight.  Went to the mall yesterday to walk. A tweet from thinnerisms today was good for me, so I'll share:   Successful #weightloss requires persistence. We only get better at something by REPEATED EFFORT, and PICKING OURSELVES UP after we stumble.  But sometimes the stumble is not ours per se, but the reaction we allow ourselves to have to the stalemate on the scale.  On a good day, I choose to stay on course, knowing that the scale is just playing mind games with me that I am determined to win.  I sometimes have to wait 3 or 4 days (or longer) to see the scale give up and let go of the number.

WORD OF THE DAY:  WARFARE

New Day - Up the water intake

I probably drink more water than the average Joe, but I need to be a bit more consistent.  Yesterday was the 4th of July.  I spent a great deal of time outside, which means I was sweating more than if I had been indoors all day.  The result is that my body is now retaining water, and the scale is up 2 pounds.  But I must cognitively know and accept that this is not a "true" weight gain.  I must persevere.  I love the definition that thefreedictionary.com gives for persevere - remain constant to a purpose.

If I increase my water intake today, my prediction is that the 2 pounds will be gone tomorrow plus a few more ounces.

I am having Kellogg's Special K protein plus cereal with soy milk for breakfast.  I like this particular Kellogg's cereal because it has 10 grams of protein and meets my minimum standard for fiber at 5 grams per serving.

For me fiber is a higher priority than whole wheat.  I do eat old fashioned oats, steel cut oats, and other "whole grains"; however, I don't seek out "wheat".  A number of years ago, my husband and I read Eat Right 4 Your Type  by Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo.  According to his book, an O positive blood type metabolism does not work as efficiently with too much wheat.  Right after that, I started eating more meat (which D'Adamo recommends for O positive) and I stopped stuffing wheat down my gullet which was all the rage at the time.  Within 6 weeks I had lost 17 pounds.

I encourage everyone to listen to your own body and filter all the information out there.  Just because the morning news expert recommends something, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is perfect information for you.

My husband can eat far more wheat than I can, but his body reacts to it in a completely different way (i.e. no obvious weight gain).  It is important for me to understand that it is okay that my husband can eat different things than I can.  We are different in other ways as well.  He sometimes says that I have a bionic nose, because I can smell things that he cannot.  It appears to us that this may be one of the reasons why I don't always like a lot of different spices on or in certain foods.  I think they overwelm my senses.  He, on the other hand, is a lover of many spices and large quantities of condiments.  I call him the "condiment king".  He can practically make a meal of condiments alone!

Back to today. . . make sure I get the water I need, exercise, and remain constant to my purpose.

Word for today:  PERSEVERE

Losses and gains

I started this blog primarily for myself and to reflect and flesh out my thoughts, but I also started it to share thoughts that might help someone else in some small way. 

Truly I am an optimist otherwise I would not have survived my life to date as it has been a bumpy ride to say the least.  I must share some of the "stuff" so that those who might feel that I "don't understand" will know that I do.  I will try to be measured as to how much I reveal and how soon.

Today, I will share this with you.  I have lost a net of 20 pounds since January 1, 2009.  The net consists of a total loss of 40 pounds with a regain of 20.  I found myself not dealing with the stress of school this past fall.  Between October 2010 and May 2011, I managed to gain  20 pounds.  Fall semester was stressful in one way and the spring semester was stressful in a different way.  Either way, I gained weight.

 But I will prevail!  You will prevail!

Some people have said to me, "Don't worry, it is just the freshman 15."  Well, the fact is that I am not a freshman.  Technically, I have been a senior for 25 years, though this program classified me as a junior this past year.  I started back to school in January of 2009 and intentionally lost weight slowly but steadily until October 2010.

There were lessons for me about life between October 2010 and May 2011.  Were the primary lessons directly about my weight?  Of course not!  The lessons were mostly about people and secondarily about handling stress in a proactive way instead of a reactive way .  Haven't you heard that old saying that life would be great if we didn't have to deal with all the people?  But deal with people we must!

I am determined to learn the lessons that have been provided for me and move into the future as a wiser and more in-sync-with-my-life person.

Word of the day:  Prevail

Day 17,856 Losing weight

Day 17,856 marks how many days I have been on this earth to date.  I used this web site, timeanddate.com , to do the calculation for me. .  . I love the internet!  Today I start anew, in fact, everyday I start anew. 

My goal is to accomplish my 2012 plan.  I will finish my Bachelor's degree in 2012.  I will be 50 pounds lighter no later than 2012, and I will be a wonderful 50 year old.

Today, I woke up and could hardly move; my left hip was stiff.  The good news is that the stiffness is due to DANCING with my husband last night.  We didn't plan on doing that, but my husband, who is not Mr. impromptu, indulged me.  He loves me! 

We actually started the evening by stopping by Old City Java to see the Knoxville debut of artist Annie Rochelle.  Then we stopped by The Old City Wine Bar to see owner Ray Adelman.  On the way back to the car, we stopped by NV Night Club, where we found out that NV stands for "envy", duh!  We sat outside for about 30 minutes, before I had to find the restroom, whereupon, I discovered the indoor dance floor.  We danced for about 45 minutes!

So the point of all of this is that I was DOWN A POUND this morning!!

For better or for worse, I may blog in a stream of consciousness kind of way.  Just hang in there with me!