Archive for the ‘2010 Resolution…For Real This Time’ Category
Wow, hard to believe I’ve stuck to any kind of resolution for more than the time it takes me to take a nap. While I’m not seeing the quantity of results thus far, I am seeing results. Luckily, that keeps me slightly motivated. That and fear of humiliation created by social media pressure here at the blog.
I’ve decided to change two of my initial goals. Yes, I know–we were to stick to them through the ten week period but I really feel they’ve changed permanently for me, and frankly, they’re too easy. So today will be my last fry and soda report. After today, I’ll be changing them to something that should help my results, even if minimally, toward even more health benefits. Read on to find out…
Eliminate fries and soda from my diet.
Done and done, with ease. I’ve had so much success I thought maybe I should put “candy” or “chocolate” in their place but that’s not going to happen. What I’m swapping in is “two ab workouts a week.” Yes, I could do three or four, but the next few weeks are ridiculously busy for me, so two will suffice. I’ll add a third when things settle down, probably the last week of February.
The workout plan I’m on (Wii Active 30 Day Calendar, if anyone cares) doesn’t seem to have an abs component. Sad and odd, so I need to supplement it with my own. I have several ab workouts as well as loving FitTV workouts. That’s realistic for me.
Walk the Dogger Daily
Woefully inadequate this week, when temperatures were below zero for most of the week. Not an excuse, but it’s not enjoyable and I compensated by wrestling with her for fun. This week it’s supposed to warm up, so I’m hoping that leads to a few more walks. Probably not the smartest goal to set in the winter. Duly noted for next year.
30 Minutes of Workouts 5 of 7 Days a Week.
I did five workouts this week, though Wii Active only recorded four since we had a power surge that shut things down about 25 minutes into the workout. I am feeling a difference from the Wii Active. Legs are feeling stronger, more flexible and the shoulders and arms are as well. Movement feels good. I’ve been extremely loyal to my lunchtime 20 minutes of walking at school, too. Even on the day I got a new student teacher I walked. No excuses not to.
15 minutes of yoga/meditation 5 of 7 days.
Yikes. You probably see the theme of “I wish I could, but” in this slot. I am stretching much more but I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as yoga. I am making a more deliberate effort to start and end my days with some positive ruminations, so if you’re being technical, that could be considered meditation. I wish I had a decent yoga studio nearby to make this easier. I really do miss yoga.
I’ve also decided to add a little extra to the posts: my weight. Actually, that’d be a lot of extra, if you think about it. Today’s Wii Fit Plus reading was 335.0. Down from the 348 (Dear god, say it isn’t so….) of several weeks ago, but not as much progress as I’d like to have made (and feel I’m making). My goal is another half-pound by next Monday, but I am hoping to blow that out of the water with a reading under 333. My first major goal is to hit 200. At 200, I’m good. I liked myself at 200 before. Enough so that I didn’t really work to get any lower….then. Times have changed and I want to ultimately end around 160. Sounds like a lot to you girls who have legs the size of my fingers but for me, that’s going to be as healthy as I can get. I can’t even imagine what I’ll look like then. I like 200. Maybe I’ll just stay there…
A few days late and mega-dollars short. Sue me!
Last week was, hands-down, the second worst week of my life. The first was almost exactly one year ago when my brother nearly died three separate times in a span of three months. That’s not something a big sister (he’s seven years younger than me) should have to endure, especially because I adore that little bugger (even if by “little” I mean 31 year-old bugger”).
What’s amazing is that I kept myself together as well as I could–physically, emotionally, food-wise and everything. Sure, I sucked in a couple of ways (when depressed, I can starve myself for weeks. I don’t feel hungry so I don’t eat. Period.) but I kept my eyes focused on the long term, the goal of meeting 40 with a decent body and successful stint on the weight loss wagon.
Here’s how I fared on those initial Ten in 10 Goals. All in all, I’m pretty satisfied (but know there’s room for improvement).
Eliminate fries and soda from my diet
Not even an obstacle. Not tempted once. I think I had one or two diet sodas, and even then they weren’t that great. If only the rest of my goals were as easily met…
Walk My Dog Daily
The part that stinks about this goal is when I don’t achieve it, I let the dogger down, too. We did walk at least three days, even though I forgot to put my “dog walked” sticker on my calendar. I know the hubby walked two of those days with us to the park. Now that all the snow’s melted here and the temperatures are above thirty, there’s no excuse not to meet this one daily. I know Dogger is happy to hear me say that.
30 Minute Workout 5 of 7 Days
Let’s see. I know I did Monday and Tuesday, not Weds, Thurs and off Friday-Sunday. Friday would have been impossible with hubby having a game, but Saturday I could have done one early, before leaving for all-day basketball tourney. Yesterday, no reasonable excuse. None. I even remember thinking about it a couple of times. When it was really time for me to do it, the kid had a bunch of friends downstairs. I workout upstairs, on the Wii Active, and it requires jumping and jogging. Here’s why I didn’t: embarrassment. I didn’t want those kids to hear me pounding my heavyweight fighter body on the floor (their ceiling) and making comments and thinking about how fat Jason’s mom is. That was my final excuse. Of course, I can make it up today (within one workout on the Wii Active Calendar) by doing two workouts today. I can do that…if his friends are gone.
15 minutes of yoga or meditation 5 of 7 days a week
For a woman who claims to love yoga (I do) and touts the benefits to all her friends whenever they will listen (I do) I have been LOUSY at this goal. Lousy is actually too generous–it gives you the impression that I’ve actually done something when I have done precisely nothing. Yes, that’s right. Nothing. Not even the Wii Fit Plus–since I’ve been doing the Wii Active exclusively, the Fit Plus has fallen by the wayside. This is one part of me I need to change a lot. Given the demon I faced this week, I need that silent meditation time more than I ever have at any point of my life. And I normally enjoy meditation. What’s in my way? Discipline. I need to go to bed about twenty minutes earlier so I can stop by the cushion for a short session or work a couple of minutes of yoga in after my Wii Active workouts. No reason I can’t start today. I deserve it and I need it. What else needs said?
One positive addition to my day that’s not on my Ten in 10 list has been that I’ve been walking–power walking–at lunch time. Instead of going straight from the 6th graders to a bowl of soup, I strap on my iPod touch and do a minimum of a mile around the school. I’m hovering around the 15/14 minute mile, which is good for me given that I have to dive between groups of kids at some point. The walk leaves me not hungry for lunch, which, given the demon, I’m not hungry for anyway. I’ve been eating a lot less (sometimes nothing, which I know isn’t good but, frankly, I don’t care. It won’t last) and saving my small lunch (usually a bowl of cereal and a piece of fruit) for my planning time two hours later.
The mid-morning (around 10:20) has been doing me a world of good. I feel better, warmer, stronger when I get back. Other teachers have commented and admire my determination (and don’t say a thing about how hard I’m sucking wind by the end of my laps). This was when I had planned to do yoga during my day but the walk is working for me. This week, now that the snow has melted, I might be able to take it outside around the block. We shall see.
That’s my week in a nutshell. How about yours? Am I still the only person still working toward my goals in the new year or are some of you finding success as well? I haven’t weighed myself this week, mostly from laziness. I’ll do that and let you know (why would you want to know if I don’t even want to know?!) And I’ll do better this week. I promise!
Over the course of achieving any worthy goal, there are going to be baby problems and massive obstacles. The key to success is to plan ahead for the baby problems on a daily basis–preparing both mentally and physically–thereby building your strength to face the massive obstacles when they arise. If it’s done right, it can be a really powerful 1-2 punch in your quest to win glory and fame by making your goals.
This has always worked for me in other areas of my life, and during the one period of time when I lost 40 pounds. (Of course, I gained it all back and then some, that’s why I’m here). I’d intended to do the same this time. Baby problems to me are always preparation-related: having healthy food when I’m hungry, working out like I plan to, keeping a tight rein on emotional eating and staying away from situations when I know my defenses will be low. Those are givens, the little speedbumps that should serve to make us stop and question our committment on a regular basis–they’re not necessarily the big problems that could derail us from winning.
Part of the reason I started another (hopefully, the last) weight-loss journey in January had nothing to do with the giddy ridiculousness of New Year’s Day and everything to do with the ebb of my calendar year. This is normally a slow time for me. Busy on the part of hubby’s basketball calendar but slow for me–few meetings, little reason to go outside, friends don’t normally visit or come into town. Time to focus on me and making myself better.
Only life thought it would be funny this time. Instead of starting slow, building momentum and confidence, it threw the biggest obstacle possible in my path just ten days into the new year. I’m not going to mention what it is because I’m still grappling with it, it’s hugely painful in an emotional sorta way and frankly, it’s nobody else’s business. Except when it come in the way of meeting my goals.
Even with this “issue”, I still want to hit my 40th birthday (and beyond) in a body I like. This time, the pull and the possibility of finally losing the weight was stronger than falling prey to the emotion of an “issue” that will, without question, change my life in one way or another.
Instead of crumbling into a mass of cake-seeking cells, I pulled myself together and made myself exercise–within ten minutes of finding out this little tidbit of information. I won’t lie–my initial inclination was to go upstairs, climb into bed and take this week off of work to cry myself into a stupor. But one of the changes I’m trying to make isn’t just with what I’m eating–it’s with what I’m thinking. I’ve realized that I’m a highly emotional decision-maker. In a nutshell, what that means is that when I’m faced with the decision of working to meet a goal or doing something against that goal that would feel better in that moment (not just eating here–exercise vs. watching tv, sleeping vs. planning, making dinner vs. eating out), almost exclusively to this point in life I’ve chosen the emotional reaction–no matter how stupid it might be. (The Great Donut Debacle of Easter ’09 is a prime example of that). I didn’t come to realize this on my own–it’s a little bit of a lesson I learned about myself as a writer from a recent writing workshop that seemed to make crystal-clear logical sense when I applied it to my life.
So, in trying to be more conscious and making more logical and less emotional decisions on this path, once I stopped shaking and tamped down the nausea, I sat down, took a deep breath and reflected. Let’s see…I was dressed for a workout. I’d just stopped to check something on my way to burn calories when this popped up. I had a choice and I truly felt as though I were at two major crossroads, one being my weight loss goals: I could sit with all kinds of horrible thoughts in my head, make myself achingly miserable over those thoughts and let it lead to a day of binging on sleep and Kleenex, which would only lead me to feel doubly bad after I came out of the stupor because not only would I have to face this demon head-on sooner or later, I’d also have skipped my part of the plan that I’d worked so hard to set.
After collecting myself, I worked out. I’ll be honest–it was more an attempt to do something with my body, a way to force my mind off the problem for a bit of perspective and fresh air and new blood cells than it was a wholly concerted attempt to be thinner by next April. There were moments of crying during the workout, and moments when my intensity was firecracker-hot crazy mad.
In the end, the important thing was that I focused on myself. This is a first. I mean, my focusing on myself usually means I give in to whatever pain reducer I can muster–sleep, crying, lethargy–but that never helps “myself” do anything but feel worse. After the workout, the sweating had a somewhat cleansing effect. I wasn’t over my anger by any means–hell, I’m still getting familiar with it because my tendency is to ignore and move on–but I knew I’d done something good for me. And that was good for me.
This demon is the number one issue I’ve faced in my life and the way I see it, if I can look him (demons are always male LOL) in the eye and stare him down, there’s really no excuse for not being able to move my fat ass and lose this weight. What doesn’t kill us can only make us stronger, right…?
I’m a creative mind. And as such, I have an infinitely difficult time making decisions. Of all kinds.
Coffee, tea?
Sugar, Splenda?
Blow dry, air dry?
Clean undies…ok, I never travel that route, much to my mother’s relief. Because you never know when that often-talked-about car will come out of nowhere and hit you…
It should be no wonder I can’t decide what form I want my WLR (weight loss resolutions) to take. Do I want to lose pounds? Inches? Sizes? Spare tires? (I do think the Michelin Man and I have far too much in common). Better eating? More exercise?
My god, it’s truly overwhelming to decide what I want. Even if I could make up my mind I wouldn’t know what I wanted.
Yesterday, I slummed around and thought about this goal. I’ve actually had a couple of ideas bouncing around on the brain cave walls, along with those cute monkeys playing the cymbals, for a few months on things I’d like to do:
1. Give up french fries and real pop (soda to you New Yorkers)
2. Work out 30 minutes a day, 5 times a week
3. Walk the dog 20 minutes per day
4. 10 minutes of yoga and/or meditation per day.
These sound like huge time-suckers, but what’s nifty in my life is that, for the most part, I have the time to do them.
I just don’t. Obviously I don’t or my ass wouldn’t be approaching a size where every cartographer I meet on the street does a double-take. I really have no one to blame but myself on this one. My lazy-ass self. Do you hear that, self?
I like these goals. Not resolutions, because resolutions suggest forever–and who’s to say I won’t be shipwrecked sometime on a remote desert island with a spear-toting band of natives and a case of Coke? But the goals themselves lend credence to the thought that I can do something, however small, to get this body at rest into motion. And we all know that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion (or, at least you should if you’re married to Mr. Science like me).
Now, to get to a section of this post relevant to the title…
These goal-utions (my word, goals + resolutions) have not been on paper (or, if you’re getting technical, pixels) until this very post. But, me in my big-mouth state, has been lamenting my fatness for some time. I make all kinds of mouth-promises I never keep: exercise, eat right, develop a stronger Spanx, etc.) One that I’ve said for a while is that I’m giving up fries.
I don’t even like fries. Ok, that’s a little lie: there are a few (two and a half) places who serve fries that I like. One is the little corner bar at the end of my street. They’re exactly like fair fries, not complete without salt and vinegar. Always piping hot and palate-blistering. Love ‘em. The second is Roosters, where the fries (not all that great) come slathered in cheese and bacon (all that great). I suppose I don’t even like the fries–I could technically get a dish of the jalapeno cheese sauce covered in bacon and keep to my goalution. And yes, there’s a .5 place where I like fries–like all red-blooded Americans, I love McDonald’s fries–but ONLY when palate-blistering hot. And getting them that way is a literal crap shoot. More often than not I eat a few and save the rest for the dogger. She loves her some fries!
I can give up McD’s no problemo. I don’t eat there but once a month at most. Roosters…pretty easy. I actually like their salad. Those aren’t words you hear every day. Or ever. I just feel nice today. But Memories’ fries are better than anything on the menu except the reuben. I could just eat a basket of those and no food. I’m going to have a hard time giving those up–not that we eat there a lot, either. (I can’t help it if the waitresses–and owner–know what we want without asking. They must have good memories or something…)
So, while I hadn’t written down these goal-utions, I’ve still blabbed enough about a few of them that even stoneheads like Mr. Science take notice. I’ve stopped ordering fries at Roosters, instead choosing to pilfer a few from the kid. So when we went to Memories last night with the in-laws, I wasn’t paying attention to myself or my goal-utions. I ordered a burger straight up and, without hesitation, the fries. After all–it wasn’t in writing anywhere. I didn’t technically screw up my goalutions if I didn’t actually set them, did I?
About ten minutes into our wait, Mr. Science turns to chat me up. “What did you order?”, he asks.
“Blue Cheese burger and fries.”
His gaze turns slightly thoughtful, slightly smug. “I thought you were giving those up for the new year,” he informs the table. Nothing says “I love you” while attempting to prove you wrong in front of parents.
“Oh, I thought about it,” I recovered. “I’m not starting officially til Monday.” I feel the need to slap the sneer off his face. “Besides, if I didn’t write it down yet, it’s not an official resolution. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
Well, since today is tomorrow, and I’ve put it down in writing, I guess I’m giving up fries forever and ever. and ever. I just hope when my plane crashes, it’s nowhere near Idaho. And Mr. Science isn’t around to rub it in.
I’m thinking that since I’ve just made two bold proclamations of my resolutions this year, I should actually come up with the aforementioned resolutions–for both you and me.
Plain and simple like a cake donut without glaze, I need to lose weight. In the past, that means I say I’ll lose XX number of pounds by XX date and go from there–which gets me nowhere, in reality. It’s too easy for me to say that and skedaddle. There’s never a time crunch or a real reason to follow through because, for one, I never tell anyone else. For two, if I don’t lose it, I still like myself enough to overlook the fatness.
But these last few months–even upwards of the last year–I’ve noticed some health issues associated to what I presume is my weight gain and basically lethargic and more sedentary lifestyle choices. (If I move around on FarmVille, my second favorite Facebook game, I really should burn real-life calories. I’m just sayin’…). My right knee, which I damaged when I fell on ice almost 15 years ago, shoots with pain when I climb stairs. My muffin top went from a mini-muffin to a Perkins oversized banana nut muffin. My back aches occasionally when I’m on my feet, due to the lack of yoga and core workouts I used to do religiously. And that’s to say nothing of the size of my ass, which may someday in the near future serve as a land bridge between the US and the UK.
And, more simply, the fact that when Christmas shopping this year, I thought I’d buy myself a new pair of jeans since the price was ridiculously low (and I really don’t buy myself new clothes more than once every two years or so)–but instead of picking up a 14 in the misses, I ended up across the great tile divide at Kohl’s…the women’s section…only comfortable in a 16W. That was the defining moment for me. Yes, big can be beautiful. But not if it’s embarrassed to buy something off the rack that has a second use as a table cloth. My commentary on bigger sizes is against me, not the bigger girls–because bigger for my body is unhealthy. (that may not be the case with other 16W).
Enough with the PC of my 16W. Needless to say, those pants are comfortable but they make me feel crappy that I’ve let myself get out of shape to this extent. For all the insurance charts that get shoved in our faces from weight loss companies, I know my “right” weight for my 5’8 frame is nothing in the 140s. I’m much more realistic about that than most people. I could be happy with something in the 160s or even low 70s. The lowest I recall since high school (where I was a svelte 140 in my senior year and still looked like a chunk of dough compared to my waif-like friends in the 110s) has been in the 190s. In the 190s I felt good. Strong. Solid. Skinny–although to be honest I hate the word skinny.
So, ultimately, I’m still wavering on whether my goal will be pounds lost, sizes shed or something else–possibly workout minutes per week or some such variable–but the final goal is my 40th birthday–April of 2011–in a size and shape never witnessed before in the adult years of Beth’s life.
And I will refuse to consider the fact that a land bridge between the US and UK might financially secure me for the rest of my natural-born life…even if it would be easier.
Like the hype of a crying quarterback from a swamp who led his team to a whomping of a team (sold out by their coach) that should have stuck with playing the small schools they were created to play, starting resolutions on January 1st is overrated–and here’s why.
Part of the reason annual resolution-making sucks is because we start on the wrong day. Hey, in case you missed it, January 1st is a holiday. Now, no big deal to some of you, but to us college football fans, it’s a pigskin-related excuse to eat all kinds of junk we wouldn’t normally eat on a regular day. Plus, there’s the prerequisite good luck food for the new year, based on whatever culture you associate yourself with: cabbage for the Germans, beans for the Mexicans, spicy chicken wings for the Buffaloeans. Being of Heinz 57 ethnicity, as mom likes to say, we go more for the Germanic cultural heritage than the Irish and Scottish on January 1st and require our family to eat some type of pork and cabbage-based product. Mom’s is roast and sauerkraut; mine is sausage and cabbage egg rolls. Who, in their right mind, wants to start of the new year by shunning the food that will bring them loads of luck in the upcoming year–only in the name of weight loss.
Not me. Plus, each time I ate an egg roll, the Buckeyes scored against the Ducks. What kind of person would I be to make my team suffer by not eating those yummy, home made egg rolls in the name of being skinny? I didn’t eat them for myself, I ate them in the knowledge that we’d finally improve our bowl record under Tressel and shed the misconception that the Big Ten-Leven can’t play with the big boys. A bowl win based on egg rolls…you’d better believe it. True, our quarterback can’t walk on water and heal the blind like *some* quarterbacks, but he’s a star in my book any day.
So, back to the original thought–January 1st is a holiday. It’s convoluted to start a resolution drive on the first. I did the sane thing and waited til today to officially throw down the gloves for the duel. Now that the gloves are down, what are my plans? Guess you’ll just have to tune in for the next blog post to find out…(I promise, it won’t be long.)
I’m not the resolution type. I mean–of course I’ve set resolutions in the past. I’ve resolved to be nicer (but I still hate certain people from my past who locked me in a closet at a Girl Scout meeting), resolved to be a better mom (and I have–I bought the kid a Wii after listening to his complaints for over a year, only to have him save his money and buy himself a PlayStation 3), resolved to clean the house more often (sometimes holidays just aren’t enough).
I’ve had differing amounts of success with resolutions. Some come and go, some stick around for a few years until I shed the need for them like a snake sheds skin. But one of them–ONE of them–that got started back in the mid 80s still hangs around my head in the New Year stretch of the holiday season like a buzzing gnat that refuses to die off in the cold, Ohio winters. Don’t act like you have no idea what I’m talking about here–you do. You just won’t admit it yourself at the risk of realizing you’ve been doing the same damn thing.
Weight loss.
If you’ve lived our American consumeristic, infomercial-based capitalistic society for any length of time and haven’t set a goal to A) lose weight , B)eat less, C)exercise more, or D) replace two meals a day with a powdered mix that tastes like a combination of cocoa, saccharin and sawdust, then my post does not apply to you. Consider yourself excused. Go flit around someone else’s blog–what we discuss here will bore you senseless. (But, if you’re lying to me and yourself by saying you’ve never set a diet resolution because you’re going to feel the guilty sting of a goal not accomplished and you don’t like feeling like a failure, read on at your own risk).
I really don’t set resolutions anymore, much. I have learned, through trial and error and failure, to set my writing goals by the quarterly change of the calendar. This keeps them fresh for me. It really does work, too. But in adopting this plan for my writing, I’ve left my weight loss goals in the dust. I don’t set them anymore because I know I’ll fail them. I’ve been working harder to accept myself–my overweight self–the way I am, and that’s not cutting it, either. So, as I pondered the new year, the fact that I am now into 16W pants again, a place I SWORE I would never be again in my life after eight months of carrot sticks and skim milk, I have to shift my thinking. Not into setting a resolution to lose weight so I can finally be the girl who fits into Jordache jeans (hey, I told you this started in the 80s. Don’t make me bring out the rest of those fashion memories…), but the adoption of a mindset that will lead me into facing my 40s (16 short months away) in a healthy body. I’m not after size or scale number (liar, but seriously), but instead a mentality that will have me searching for ways to cut out the crap and leave my life only with the good stuff.
And since I’m so easily embarrassed by social media public humiliation tactics, I figured–where better to start this journey and blab it all over town than my blog? I debated changing the name, but hey, I may eventually be in a size 12 but I’ll still love me some donuts. Plus–I am soooooo done with fad diets and all that stuff–I want to learn to be healthy and still sneak in a donut or two. Look at Homer–he scarfs them regularly and still leads a (semi) active life. I’m not talking cramming in a half-dozen at a sitting like I’ve done in the past, but everything in moderation.
Except my blogging. Once I realized the potential for publicly humiliating myself into action via blogging, I jumped at the chance. I suppose, like all writing endeavors, I will start strong and dwindle later, but with the addition of my new iPod touch (and a strong wifi connection), I may be able to blog more often. Shame they won’t be as rambling as this post, I know, but at least you’ll know I didn’t fall down a healthy, whole-grain rabbit hole on my way to skinnydom.
With all that said..erm…typed…let’s get this show on the road.