November 2017 – Sweat & Sparkle

Has Anyone Seen My Motivation?

I’d offer a reward to anyone who can hunt down and bring back my long-lost motivation, but I don’t even have the energy to do that. I skipped a workout yesterday because hey, everyone needs a rest day, right? Ummm….doesn’t everyone need two? In a row?

Just not feeling it. And no sign of feeling it again any time soon.

Motivated or not, my plan tonight is to go for a run. I don’t care if it’s a snails-pace, barely-moving run, just so long as I do it.

Yesterday I printed a workout schedule to train for a half marathon. The runs aren’t going to run themselves, now are they? Although that would be nice.

I haven’t gotten a response yet on when registration for the half marathon opens. It will feel more official, more real, when I have that email confirmation telling me my name is on a list somewhere, and my butt is expected to show up and run 13.1 miles!

Happy (Late) Thanksgiving!

thanksgiving-funny-pictures-0 A few days off for Thanksgiving was great. Why don’t we skip right to the days off for Christmas and New Year’s and just take the rest of this year off? All those in favor…?

Thanksgiving Day was pretty much perfect. My husband made an awesome meal, not a turkey in sight, since none of us really likes it. Leftovers didn’t last very long. I made homemade whipped cream, which disappeared fast too.

After our meal settled for a while, we went to the park and played basketball (where I performed dismally) and tennis (where I performed even more dismally). My husband won our tennis tournament, but may the record show that he only beat me by one point! Okay, maybe two.

None of us are in any danger of being scouted for the Wimbledon, but it was still a lot of fun. It was the perfect day for it, not too hot, a nice breeze. We got a lot of exercise chasing down tennis balls and running after way-out-of-bounds shots.

I went running the morning of Thanksgiving and am proud to report that I logged 4 miles before coming home to a feast. I haven’t officially started training for that half marathon, but on my to-do list today is contacting the person in charge of that race to see when registration opens, and printing a half marathon training calendar. I am 99.9% certain I am going to go for it.

Lord knows I need it. I have sunk into that holiday mind trap, you know, the whole “Go ahead, enjoy yourself! It’s the holidays! I can start over after the New Year” crap. I’ve eaten enough over the last week to let me hibernate for several winters. I can do a LOT of damage in a month if I don’t snap out of it, so no, there will be no waiting until the New Year to get back on track. Why start the new year with even more weight to lose?

Camping and Half Marathons

It was so hard coming back to work this week! My husband and I skipped town and went camping, which I love. I know a lot of people dream of vacations with fancy hotels, expensive restaurants, spas, resorts…not me! Give me a crackling fire, dinner cooked over a flame, and snuggling up in a tent, listening to the breeze in the trees and watching the stars in the night sky.

I was picking on my husband and asked him if he and Psycho had ever gone camping together. He looked at me like I was insane and said no, she didn’t like to do things like that. He said she mostly liked to complain a lot and ruin vacations and trips. I like that this is something special that we do together, have fun together, and enjoy so much. We have already reserved our next camp site.

The kids are with us this week for Thanksgiving, which makes being at work very difficult! Hopefully we will close early today so I can head home.

I’ve been slacking off with my workouts this week and was brainstorming how to get back into a groove. I found myself looking over a race schedule for next year. It sounds crazy, but I might sign up for a half marathon. A few years ago, when I was really into running, I ran the half marathon distance on my own, but I have never completed an official race and gotten the t-shirt to prove it! So today I subscribed to a running magazine as a Christmas present to myself and will print out a half marathon training schedule. I’d love to accomplish a half marathon in the new year.

Old-School Tae Bo

Another busy day, so I got up crazy early again and worked out in the darkness of too-early-to-be-awake o’clock. Remember the original Tae Bo? I found a grainy video online and punched and kicked my way through an old-school Tae Bo workout this morning.

What is that man wearing on his feet? Ha ha. Okay, it’s easy to make fun of it, but I still adore Billy Blanks and all the Tae Bo workouts. I have some bookmarked so I can go back and do them again when the mood strikes.

I’m so glad it’s Friday! This has been a rough, hectic week. We were just in Hickville (the hillbilly, inbred town where Psycho dragged the kids after the divorce) last night for one of the kids’ events, and we are heading back tonight. Yay.

I love seeing the kids, but I absolutely hate going to that town. Let’s just say that intellectual pursuits, personal hygiene, and physical fitness are not among the top activities of any of the genetic mutations that inhabit that place. I can see why Psycho and Uncle Fester (my affectionate nickname for her no-neck chunker of an arranged-marriage husband) insist on staying there. They fit right in. The kids don’t, though, and I hope they never will, for their own sakes.

No matter how late we get home tonight, though, I am still going for a run in the morning, as planned. Then, due to rearranging the kids’ schedule, my husband and I have tomorrow and Sunday morning wide open, and we are taking full advantage of it! I can’t wait. I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for weeks.

Now that the holiday season is knocking on our door, I know it’s time to start planning and prepping to make sure I get back on, and stay on, track. I already printed a workout schedule for next week and will hang it up in our workout room, where it can’t be missed. No excuses!

Overdrive

I can’t believe it’s Thursday already! This week has been on crazy-hectic-overdrive speed, too much to do and not enough time to do it.

It doesn’t help that my husband and I end up constantly picking up Psycho’s slack when she doesn’t feel like being a parent, which is pretty much all the time. We are an hour away, yet we spend more time tracking the kids’ grades and attendance, talking to them about why they missed any school or why a grade was on the low side, talking to teachers, reminding the kids about assignments, etc. I don’t get upset at the kids for it. We do it to help them and because we care. But I do get upset about being forced to over-parent to make up for Psycho’s complete lack of parenting. We deal with it at our home, too, when the kids are dropped off with knots in their hair, overgrown fingernails, holes in clothing that I repair because apparently needles and thread are in short supply anywhere but at our house, toenails wrapping over their toes, etc. If she spent even a fraction of the time on the kids that she devotes to obsessing about me, she might even begin to vaguely resemble an almost-acceptable parent.

I spent most of my drive home from work last night fabricating excuses to not work out. I just can’t shake this frustrated, “whatever” attitude. But I changed clothes when I got home and hit the gym, protesting, mumbling, and grumbling to myself all the way.

We have plans after work today, so I knew my only chance to work out today would be before the crack of dawn. Bright and early, I dragged myself out of bed and did a tough step aerobics workout.

Today I am back to logging my food, no matter what. It may not be pretty, it may be a million calories over, but I am going to make myself log everything and get back into this habit.

I did a lot of thinking yesterday about why I can’t shake this negative mood about my weight loss efforts. I have a lot of mini goals that I had set, that I should be hitting right about now, and I’m not. Not even close. It’s discouraging. It leaves me feeling like I have one more failure, one more goal not met.

Today I was using the “Look Inside!” feature on Amazon.com to preview Shaun T’s new book, “T is for Transformation“, and this sentence popped out at me: “If you feel stuck, maybe it’s because you have tools you’re not using or lessons you’re not applying.” I love Shaun T, so he could recite the phone book and I would find it mesmerizing, but that quote made me stop and realize it’s quite true. I have so many tools and support in this journey, and lord knows I have had enough failures to collect volumes of lessons. Why aren’t I using either the tools or the lessons?

Hmmm. I ordered the book and will keep thinking on that question for now!