Last week (and peppered across several
other weeks) I brought up the concept of the habit. I was challenged
to talk today about what happens when those habits don't stick. To
talk about defeat. It's something I've felt plenty of, but to be
honest this is difficult because of where I'm standing. Defeat,
obesity, poor health (even when you can't tell) are this mountain I
can barely see in the foggy distance when I look over my shoulder. I
shift my weight this morning; I'm walking backwards on my path,
squinting, trying to remember what it's like to fail.
And eventually, you'll have to do the
same thing. Because if I can do this, anyone can do it.
Determination and patience are what wakes up failure in the middle of
the night, screaming of nightmares.
Growing up, I didn't eat the healthiest
but it wasn't terrible. I weighed about 180 pounds from 8th
grade into high school, lost 10 pounds or so getting into the groove
of high school (plus I took PE for the first time since elementary
school my freshman year). We'd have your typical Southern cuisine.
Things were deep fried. Things were fried in bacon grease. You put
a scoop of bacon grease into your green beans because you can. An
aside, my grandpa used to be on several heart medications, even had a
heart attack, but sadly now that my grandma is gone and doesn't cook
for him anymore, he's off of them and has lost weight. I love(d) my
grandma dearly... but she had 7 inches of height on me, so 180 looked
a little better on her.
I think of growing up in Kentucky and I
don't want to make excuses, but it made it hard. These were habits
too. Saving bacon grease after frying up a pound of bacon for 3
people. Home fried chicken tenders. Margarine. These are habits
just like getting in 6 days of exercise a week. They're just bad
habits.
There were some things growing up that
were positive. We rarely had soda. If we got a case of soda it
usually stayed in the fridge in the basement, therefore out of sight
and it really was a treat. We also didn't eat out very much.
Those two things lead to damaging habit
creation when you become an adult. When you have your own fridge and
you make sure it is stocked with Coke. When you eat out at least
once a day in the land of 1000 restaurants. So then the weekend
before my Freshman Orientation at college, I met the boy I'd later
marry. And when you really have nothing in common... when you have
to change yourself because you want to be compatible with the only
guy that has ever shown any interest in you... you find the thing you
have in common and you overindulge. And that was food. Eating out.
Trying new restaurants. Trying recipes. He was 190 lbs when I met
him and he was a biker. By the time our lifestyle got the best of
our waistlines, I was 217 pounds and he was upwards of 240, if I'm
remembering right. I might be giving him the benefit of the doubt
with my memory.
So here I am, 217 pounds, and here are
my habits: I go to work. I work in an office and getting to go out
to lunch is the only way you can keep sanity. There were snacks
everywhere. Volunteers would bring in candies and cookies and things
like that to say thank you to us. Coworkers would bring in cupcakes
or donuts. And when your habit is to not show any self control, and
when others aren't eating it, you are compulsively eating three
donuts. Three cupcakes. I go home. At home we had every electronic
device under the sun. Pick your video game. Watch it. Watch
television. Anything that involves a comfortable corner of the
couch. Don't feel like cooking, so let's order takeout. As the days
before I walked out on my marriage came upon me, I was asking him to
bring me home McDonald's every night. When your mouth is full, you
don't have to speak. When something tastes good, it brings a certain
level of joy in places you don't normally feel it.
These things are failure at living a
healthy lifestyle.
I saw one of those “inspirational”
photos on Pinterest recently that describes exactly what I try to
preach: “One bad meal does not make you fat, just like one good
meal will not make you thin.” Yesterday was the perfect example.
I got to spend the day with my handsome gentleman and his kiddos. I
took my “rest” day from exercise, mainly for convenience and
because I had not had a rest day in 8 days (sorry, exercise addiction
forming here) but I'm usually pretty active when I see the kiddos.
There's always a large quantity of crab walking. Don't ask.
Anyhow, I weighed myself on his scale
which isn't as fancy as mine, just does half pounds... so I was 130.5
yesterday morning. Don't get so excited, I can usually add 2 pounds
to that, so for the sake of using this data, we'll say I weighed
132.5 yesterday morning. Eating is always tough because those skinny
kids like chips and such. I pass for the most part. HG made me
eggs, those were tasty. But by 3:00 we were starving so we got some
pizza. I ate half of a medium pepperoni pizza. I hadn't had
pepperoni in AGES. I tracked it on MFP like a good girl. 875
calories. That's less calories than a burger at Applebee's, so I'd
say I did pretty good for a bad meal.
This morning, I woke up and weighed on
my scale. 133.4. I was THRILLED! I ate half a freaking pizza!!!
Loved every minute of it.
The difference is I am not making it a
habit of eating 875 calorie meals every day. Giving yourself a
“splurge” meal every once and a while can actually give you a
weird boost. Even Bob Harper's “Skinny Rules” say to have a
splurge meal every week (I don't do it every week unless you count a
salad from a restaurant).
Here's failure... I'll diagram it.
Monday you eat well. You exercise...
hell, you run for 30 minutes and are a general badass. Tuesday your
legs are sore so instead of getting in some fitness, you decide to
take a rest day. Your friends invite you out for dinner and you eat
way too much. You eat way too much and you have leftovers, so you
take those leftovers home. Wednesday you take those leftovers for lunch. A meeting comes up and it's really stressful, so you go home
and you drink and entire bottle of wine by yourself and munch on
chips in front of the television. Thursday you feel like you have
zero energy, which you do, because you've been filling your body with
junk for 3 days. You do nothing. You go back to the couch. Friday
you go out to lunch at work. You've lost your endurance. You've
lost your healthy eating habits. You have to start over. You need
to “detox” your habits. This requires work. You decide it's not
worth the work.
In this example, bad habits killed your
good ones. Overindulging and not finding “the time” to exercise
can take your momentum down. You need to ride the ride. If you slow
down at a turn, know that when the sun comes up the next morning, you
will increase speed on the straight away. Don't let an unexpected thing stop you dead.
I've heard it said by so many... how
it's so easy to put on weight but it takes so long and it's so hard
to get weight off. It really is all about habit. Think about how
you get ready for work in the morning. I can use my shower routine
in the morning as an example. If I don't use shampoo first...
absolutely number one first, I will forget to wash my hair. And I've
been doing that since I was old enough to take a shower. You need to
make eating healthy and treating your body with respect so routine
that doing anything else seems foreign. If I forget to use shampoo
first and I start washing my face... and then I wash the rest of
me... and I turn off the shower. I start toweling off my hair and
notice it feels a little heavy and greasy... just because I forgot to
wash my hair first doesn't mean that I'm DOOMED to have dirty hair
for the rest of my life. I hang the towel back up, probably say a
few choice words, fire the shower back up, and I wash my hair.
I don't leave my hair dirty and say to
myself, “Well, I blew it for today” and then every time I walk
past a trash can, I reach it and rub a big handful of trash in my
hair just for good measure. I mean, my hair's already dirty, so what
damage is that going to do?
I ate a huge, fatty breakfast... so I
might as well stuff myself at lunch. I've already RUINED the day,
right?
No.
It has taken me 5 years to get certain
foods out of my system and to get to a point where exercise is a
priority. FIVE YEARS. You can not and should not be discouraged if
you can't do it in three weeks. It's a gradual journey. I used to
save up my Weight Watchers points so that I'd have 18 at the end of
the day to eat an entire box of macaroni and cheese. Now, right now,
I've got 1/3 of a box of Annie's organic mac and cheese in the
fridge. That's after eating 1/3 of it for leftovers and 1/3 of it
when I first made it. Remember how I had said I always cook a double
serving of pasta because I just love it that much. This week, I kid
you not, I cooked ½ serving of pasta. Because I didn't feel like
eating so much of it.
Sometimes, I get SO SICK of food
because of how often I have to eat it now. But that's my life now.
And you will get there too.
I have given lists of things to do
before, but I think this topic needs its own list of things to do.
Things to remember:
It's a lifestyle, not a diet. The
moment you stop saying, “I'm on a diet” is the moment you have
finally accepted that. That's the first step.
Learn to feed yourself before you
learn to exercise. It's so much easier to exercise when you've lost 20
pounds. You don't need to bombard yourself with changes. Once you
have learned how to eat and how to not go overboard, that's when I
would start picking up the exercise. I say this because before you
learn how to eat, you're not only going to be tempted to eat your
exercise, but it's going to be a feeling of difficult that you're
not going to stick with. Sweating when I was really big was the
most horrible feeling in the world to me.
Learning to eat is a journey. If
you eat a whole pizza every Friday, don't stop eating pizza. Cut it
down to ¾ of a pizza. Then ½. It's a lifestyle, not a diet, and
you need to take yourself off of drugs gradually. Just like my
macaroni and cheese example. You will wake up one day and not want
it at all.
Don't exercise a million miles
past your potential. If you've never run before, don't start a
half-marathon program. But that doesn't mean don't push yourself.
Change occurs when it starts to feel like too much. But don't
exercise on Day 1 in such a way that you won't do it on Day 2. Know
what you can handle and start there. You will get better.
You are allowed to deprive
yourself!!!! If your snacks are recreational, meaning have zero
nutritional value and it's just something to eat, it's OKAY not to
eat that! Don't feel like you have to have candy, cookies, cake,
just because you always have. I haven't had a soda for 5 months. I
don't look at my food log during the day and say, “Well, I have
enough calories to have a soda, so why not?”
Patience. You won't be able to
eat exactly the way you want to or should overnight. Take it slow.
Let your body become used to not eating the things you've been
eating for so long. Give your body time to adapt. Your body is
working even when you aren't. It's your job to move it and fuel it.
Eventually, what you fuel it with and what you do with it will click
and you'll find what you need to do for your unique self. Don't let
failure creep in because you're worth the fight.
I could make infinite lists. The first
challenge is believing that you're worth it. You might think you're
confident. I always thought I had a certain amount of pride and
strength. I couldn't have been more wrong. I didn't even know my
own potential until I got to where I never thought I'd be.
Well...
That was longer than I thought it would
be. Obviously I'm a little passionate about failure nowadays. Let
me share with you my week. I didn't share my food log last week, and
there really wasn't anything interesting in my food log this week, so
I think I'll go with that again. I'm having a little bit of trouble
with my eating recently because I don't think I've been eating
enough. I had a couple days that I felt unfed when I started in on
my exercise. Now that I'm almost up to 6 miles when running, going
to need to focus on altering my nutrition to make it that far. I
bought myself a book to start reading so that I'll be prepared for
May when I start training for my half marathon.
Speaking of training, I've signed up
for a few races and I wanted to share that. I feel that even though
I'm nowhere near being competitive with other people, signing up for
events gives me something to work for. It's hard to run with nothing
to run to... I say.
So March 16th I've got a 5k
sponsored by a local restaurant. Haven't done a race in Epping, NH
yet. I've had races in Concord, Nashua, Derry and Portsmouth...
maybe I'll just run around New Hampshire.
Then May 4th I've got an
obstacle race. 3.5 miles with 14-15 obstacles. Pretty excited
because my handsome gentleman is going to be racing too. He's doing
the competitive wave, I'm not... so it'll be nice to get to cheer him
on.
May 18th I've got a 12k. I
had been looking for 10k races but couldn't find any during the time
frame that I wanted it and a coworker brought me info on this race as
well as a $5 off coupon for the registration, so why not!
I need to find something to run in July
or August. Last year I didn't run in July because it was hot (well,
hot to New Hampshire...) but this year I want to try harder.
September 8th is my half-marathon.
I mentioned my yoga injury last week, right? I did a massive face plant doing crane pose. Here's what my knees look like this morning. They're getting better but they're darker. Then I have the bruises lower on my knee/shin area where my bone protrudes out if I do any of my push ups on my knees. In 30 Day Shred, I can do the first set of push ups all on my toes, but then after doing two sets of presses and a set of push ups, I do 3/4 of the second set on my knees. I try to stay off my knees for a lot of these things just to keep from bruising...
My fitness log this week looked like
this:
Monday: 30 Day Shred, Level 1, Day 3
and Bowling
Tuesday: Ran 5k during my lunch hour.
More on this later.
Wednesday: 30 Day Shred, Level 1, Day
4 and Tap Class
Thursday: 30 Day Shred, Level 1, Day 5
Friday: B210K, Week 3, Day 1. More on
this later.
Saturday: REST
Sunday: 30 Day Shred, Level 1, Day 6
My runs this week made me happy.
Reason one is that I was actually able to go out and do them with the
weather being so incredibly crazy here recently, and reason two
because I busted ass and it felt great!
My run during my lunch on Tuesday was
the first time I'd ever ran a whole 3.1 miles during lunch. I still
got back in plenty of time to change back into my work clothes and
freshen up. It was the first 5k that I logged on my app where my
first mile took more time than my second, my second took more time
than my third. My first mile was 10:13, my second mile was 9:38 and
my third mile was 9:35. Average pace was less than 10 minutes. I
felt great for the rest of the day after. So proud of myself.
My second run was my longest ever. I
was so nervous. I mapped it out on Google maps knowing that with the
step up to 63 minutes on the program, I'd probably go 5.6 miles. I
went 5.78 instead. It felt so good when I got to 4.5 miles and I
knew that the route I had picked out was going to work perfectly and
that I was able to do it.
The only issue I'm having while running
is the “ring” toe (the one next to the little toe) on my left
foot. By mile 5, every time, it starts burning because of the
blister that's forming on it. Not sure what to do about that other
than wrap a preventative band aid on it. If you know what I could
do, comment here please! I'd really like some tips. I'm sure it
just has to do with my leading with my left and how much toe room I
have in my shoes.
It's snowing right now, so that's going
to put a damper on the running for the next few days at least. I'm
doing good that I haven't fallen down yet. I've slipped, but stayed
on my feet. Exciting also is that this time last year was the first
time I'd ever gone out for a run. The last weekend in February last
year I did Day 1 of Couch to 5k. I've improved so much and I've lost
20 pounds since then!! Crazy.
So above I shared a bunch of before
pictures... it's so weird to me that I look like that, but when I'm
shopping online and my measurements tell me I could wear a XS/S
bikini bottom, I forget that I'm as small as I am. So here's some
pics from this morning. Post workout and shower, but comfy clothes
today. I'm wearing my new “Starfish Pants” from Lands End that I
got on clearance... I ordered Small but they're a little too big. At
least they're comfortable. They're baggy in the front. First world
problems.
Time to strap on the boots and go out
in the snow for some tasty groceries. I went vegetarian most of this
week (because I couldn't buy meat last week as I made it to the store
earlier than the counters opened up) so I'm looking for some salmon
today.
I have a whole new idea of time now.
Every moment is useful. Every day is a joy.
Before - Day Zero
