Month: July 2016

Total KnockOut Challenge!

I do my best thinking when I am driving, and yesterday was no exception.  I was driving to a meeting for work when suddenly, out of the blue, I had the idea for a personal challenge to help motivate me and get me excited about losing weight again.

I have said more than once that it’s overwhelming to think about all the weight I have to lose and how far from my goal I am.  Driving along, singing loudly to my music, it popped into my head to make a challenge out of focusing on just 10 pounds at a time.

I instantly thought of setting it up like a boxing match.  I’ll divide each 10 pounds into a round.  So each round, the goal is to lose 10 pounds in 5 weeks.  If I haven’t lost 10 pounds at the end of 5 weeks, there’s no need for drama, teeth-gnashing, or wailing: I will just start the following round at my current weight and set the next 10 pound, 5-week goal.  (Hey, a brand new start every 5 weeks!)  And just keep going that way, round after round, until I feel like I am looking and feeling healthy and strong and fit, and then declare myself the  bad-ass, undefeated champion, ha ha.

I’m going to get it all started with a 3-week kick-start, with the goal of losing 5 pounds during that time.  Round one will start with whatever weight I am at when I finish those 3 weeks.

I’ve set up a page on my blog to keep track of my challenge.  I’ll use my weigh-in tomorrow morning for my starting weight, so the challenge officially starts tomorrow (ding, ding!)

Let’s get it ON!

It’s Too Hot!

I’ve tried to get here to post an update the last few days, but it’s been so busy, I can barely breathe. But here I am!  I weighed in on Saturday to a very small loss: 0.2 pound.  I’m surprised it wasn’t a gain, to be honest.

No workouts over the weekend, because I did a lot of yard work.  When I know I’ll be spending a few hours in the yard, I don’t really want to start off already worn out from a workout.  I don’t count yard work in my exercise ticker, even though most of the time, it’s pretty intense manual labor.  The temperature was pushing 100 degrees this past weekend, so it was grueling.  I even broke down and chugged a Gatorade instead of my beloved Coke!

Today my fiance invited me to lunch, and I was happy to spend the time with him, but I made some pretty bad food choices.  Eating out is a struggle for me and obviously something I need to work on.

The week is far from over!  Plenty of time to turn it around and have a good weigh-in on Saturday.

Check-In

I promised to check in today about whether I worked out yesterday evening.  Well, I decided that scarfing down a quart of rocky road ice cream while plopped comfortably on the couch, watching hours of TV, was a far better plan for my night.

Just kidding!  I did a 40-minute Turbo Fire workout online.

This is the second Chalene Johnson workout I just couldn’t get into.  I loved Turbo Jam, but nothing she’s created since then lights my fire.  Her cuing seems off, like she tells you what to do, after they have already started doing it.  I am not the most coordinated individual on the planet, so I need plenty of warning when the movements are going to change, and what is coming up next.

I used to have her Chalene Extreme workout DVD set, but I sold it and at least got my money back.  I laughed when I saw this review and discovered I am not the only person who was not a fan of the workouts, or the questionable workout attire:

Can’t say I’ve ever got my sweat on while wearing knee-high laced-up boots, but maybe I’m just old-fashioned that way.

Junk Yard and Journals

 No workout for me yesterday, since I was far too exhausted (okay, lazy) to get up early for a morning workout, and I barely had an hour after I got home from work to spend with the kids before it was time to load up and reluctantly head back to their egg-donor.  I decided to hang out with them instead of rushing off to the gym.

When we dropped the kids off, I couldn’t help but notice that their other home looks more and more like a junk yard.  I love pulling into our driveway and seeing flowers, potted plants, bird feeders, all the things that make it our home and make it so damn cute.  I couldn’t stand trash scattered from end of the yard to the other, crap randomly tossed wherever it lands, and sure as hell not redneck, gutted vehicles rusting out on the grass.  I would say “to each their own” and shrug it off, except it makes me wonder how clean the inside of the house can possibly be.

No excuses this evening: no matter what, I am working out after work today.  I’ll check in tomorrow to let you know what I did.

One of my friends mentioned a fitness journal that she has, and I am looking at good, old-fashioned, paper journals today.  I love the food diary on MyFitnessPal, but I really need a change of pace.  I like the idea of being able to scribble down some thoughts, ideas, rants, frustrations, or celebrations, depending how the day went, while I summarize the day.  It feels old-school to go back to a paper food diary, but there is just something about putting pen to paper that feels more real, intimate, and hey, no wi-fi required!

Deep Thinking

 I said I would use the holiday weekend to do some thinking, and I did.  Mostly I examined the question of why this time is so different for me.

Years ago, when I had decided to lose weight, I burst out of the starting blocks at a sprint, fired up, pushed myself, never let up, and didn’t stop until I had reached my goal.  I had a lot going on, a lot of stress, yet I didn’t let it slow me down.  Why is it that now, so much as a hangnail hurls me off track, and it takes me months to get going again?

I came up with these reasons:

1. I feel like I can’t.  I lost weight before, and I even reached goal weight.  But I gained it all back, which was a huge blow to my ego and has left me feeling like I just don’t have what it takes to do this.  Otherwise, as the logic goes, I would have successfully done it a long time ago.

2. My goal is so far away, I feel overwhelmed.  I’m not trying to lose those pesky, last ten pounds.  I’m not just trying to tone up a little bit.  I’m aiming to lose a LOT of weight, about 70 pounds.  Combined with #1, it leaves me feeling like I can’t do this anyway, so there is no motivation to even get started.

3. I am crazily, stupidly, insanely busy.  After buying a house in December, my fiance and I have a lot of plans for the house and the yard, so I spend my weekends on home improvement projects, and I’m still in the obsessed, honeymoon phase of owning a house.  I want to plan, shop, arrange, re-arrange, dig in the yard, plant flower beds.  On top of that, I can barely come up for air at work, I’m so swamped.  I have little energy left for much else, and time feels like it is flying by.  For example, it may feel like I have been off the wagon for a few days, when it’s really been a week!

4. I’m burned out.  Even when I’m gaining weight and not putting in any effort at all, I subconsciously track calories and note how long it’s been since I worked out.  It’s become a rote, going-through-the-motions, knee-jerk reaction instead of a valuable learning activity.  Logging, tracking, counting…lord, it all makes me just want to vomit by now.

So…solutions?  I am tempted to try a common sense approach, stop logging my food, since I already know how many calories are in the foods that I eat the most.  I know what I need to cut back on (eating out, soda, sweet snacks), whether I log my meals or not.  And it’s not like I’ve ever been instantly struck by a thunderbolt or delivered an electric shock for logging “bad” food or going over my calories by roughly 30 million, so it’s become almost like it doesn’t matter what I log, anyway.

Clearly my biggest obstacle is #1: feeling like I can’t do this anyway.  Past failures have left deep scars. It’s easy to say “get over it”, but actually doing it and feeling it in my heart are very different.  I’m not quite sure how to get by that hurdle.

Normally, logging and charting and tracking are motivating to me.  I love that stuff.  But I’m just so over all of it right now.  I am going to take a break from logging my food, but I will keep tracking my workouts.  It’s too easy to pretend it hasn’t been that long since my last workout.  I want it in black and white, on paper, so I can’t fool myself.

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