Spinning and Running

Morning workouts are a struggle for me.  I don’t sleep very well, so getting out of bed and having energy for a regular day is hard enough, let alone having the energy for a workout.  I set the alarm last night for my 6 AM Spinning class with the best of intentions, but when that alarm went off this morning, I instantly started making excuses why I should stay in bed.  It’s too early.  I’m tired.  I can work out after work.  Mmmmm, pillow!

The Spinning class is pretty small, so you have to sign up ahead of time.  I hid under the covers and seriously considered going back to sleep, but I thought about the fact that signing up for class took a spot from someone who may have wanted to be there but couldn’t.  I would be a jerk to take that spot and then not show up.  Plus, my Spinning teacher is the one who prayed for me the other day.  Was I really going to let her down?

I reluctantly tossed back the covers and got up.  I can’t say I felt excited or eager to get sweating, but I got dressed and grabbed my water bottle and gel seat (one of the greatest inventions ever) and headed out in the dark.

I felt a bit sluggish during class, but I still got a great workout.  I left feeling very proud of myself and happy that my workout for the day was done already.  If I had reset the alarm and skipped class, I’d have felt more than a little disappointed in myself.

Yesterday I hit the treadmill for my 1.75 run to stick to my 5K training schedule.  At first I felt like crap and wasn’t sure I was going to make it.  At some point my body stopped fighting the workout, or my head stopped fighting itself, not sure which, but I made it to 2.5 miles!

When I came home and told my boyfriend and the kids that I did 2.5 miles, my boyfriend congratulated me, and then I turned it into a math problem for my 9-year-old stepdaughter, and she figured out how many extra miles I did.  I showed her how to break down a mile into quarters and how to work with decimals.  She came to me later with a notebook and gave me some math problems: “If I was supposed to run 7.6 miles, and I ran 8.9, how much extra did I do?”  I loved that she got into the running and the math!  I was more proud of that than my run.

Thank You!

After getting back into a workout groove this week, I have hit a brick wall in the form of my work schedule: I worked both jobs yesterday, again today, and long shifts on both Saturday and Sunday.  I set the alarm for 5:30 yesterday morning with the intention of fitting in a morning workout, but let’s just say that sleep deprived and stressed out don’t add up to feeling up to morning workouts!  I didn’t even bother pretending I’d work out this morning.

Now, all weekend, I need to shove a workout into what little time I have, after working a full shift and being undoubtedly exhausted when I get home, with my stepkids home and naturally wanting to spend time with them.  Sounds fun!

On top of it all, I woke up today with an upset stomach that hasn’t gotten any better yet.  My boyfriend asked me to have lunch with him today, and I feel like I have hardly seen him this week, we have both been working so much.  So I am going, even if I have to sip chicken broth to keep anything down.

Tomorrow morning is weigh in, and I hope the workouts I fit in earlier this week help me have a loss this week.  I feel like I have been eating better.  Not perfect, but better, more aware of what I am putting into my mouth.

I didn’t want to end this post without thanking every one of you who have taken the time to read my nonsense and to leave such supportive, uplifting comments.  They really do mean a lot to me.  Thank you so much!

Prayer

Despite my mother’s best efforts and intentions, I have not voluntarily stepped into a church in years. That doesn’t mean I am not spiritual.  I pray every morning, something that might surprise many people who know me in real life.  My praying consists mostly of questions and conversations instead of the traditional kneeling, hands-folded praying, but it’s what works for me.

A church not far from me started offering fitness classes, and I was apprehensive at first, worried they would preach and stuff Bible verses down my throat at every opportunity, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised.  I love the positive, supportive atmosphere, and the instructors are great.  Last night I went to Spinning class, and the instructor is the woman who is going to be leading the half-marathon training group in August.

I ended up being the only student who showed up for class last night, so there was no slacking off, that’s for sure!  My legs were burning.  I was the only student she had to focus on, so she watched my form and my speed and yelled out encouragement to keep me going.  It was an awesome workout.

After class, she asked me, “Can I pray for you?” Well, we were technically in a church (okay, the activities building beside the church, but on church property nonetheless), so I said okay.  She bowed her head and thanked God for me being there that night, for deciding to take a journey to better health, and for me to have the strength to focus on the future and not on past stumbles.  There was more, but I can’t put it as eloquently as she said it.

I was very touched by it.  Here was a very busy woman, who needed to head out to teach another class, and who has many, many students to keep track of and to train and to motivate, and here she was, taking the time to pray for me and encourage me and give me a lift I really needed.  Maybe there really was a reason that I was the only one who went to class last night.  Maybe it was pure coincidence.  Either way, I am glad I was there and that she took the time to do that.  It meant an incredible amount to me.

How can I keep abusing my body when she prayed for me, for goodness sake?  How do I brush off workouts and eat like a pig, when it would completely disrespect what she did for me?

I don’t know if I can explain why it meant so much to me or how I felt as I listened to her prayer or as I left the building, feeling like I have a true ally, someone who cares if I succeed or fail.

That sounds like I am crapping all over my boyfriend, but I don’t mean that he is not supportive.  I think he has just seen me yo-yo, go up and go down, start then stop, so many times, he doesn’t invest much in the process anymore.  I don’t blame him.  I was over 200 pounds when we met nine years ago.  Nearly a decade is a long time for a man to be my weight loss cheerleader!

I hung my 5K training schedule on the wall above my desk at home, and I am crossing off my workouts as I go.  So far, so good!  I don’t want to let anyone down, including myself.

One Pound, Baby!

This is not me 🙂

My original plan, after such an awful week, was to skip weigh-in on Saturday.  Why torture myself anymore than I’ve already been tormented?  But that’s a really bad habit for me to get into.  One skipped weigh-in turns into twenty, which turns into 50 pounds gained.  Okay, I exaggerate, but only slightly.

I tried to salvage something for the week by working out Friday night and again Saturday morning.  I got an email late in the week about a half-marathon training group starting in mid-August at the place where I take Spinning class sometimes.  We were advised to be able to run 3 miles several times a week before the group starts.  My first thought was “Yeah right, I’m too fat for this.”  Then I thought, “I have two months to work up to two miles.  I could actually do this.”

I printed a beginner’s 5K training schedule, and the first run was for 1.5 miles. So Saturday morning I laced up my running shoes and went to the gym with a mission: to finish 1.5 miles, no matter how long it took, no matter how much torture it was, and be able to cross off my first day of 5K training!

I did it, but it took me over 30 minutes.  Wow, I’m out of shape.  I used to cover 3 or more miles in that time.  It was a struggle, and I hated feeling how much I have let myself go, but I completed that first 1.5 miles and proudly crossed it off on my training calendar.  One down!

After that run, I decided to go ahead, face the number, and weigh in.  I weighed in at 210, down from 211 last week.  I’m sure it’s mostly water loss from the run, but it wasn’t a gain, so I don’t care if it was caused by aliens, I’m taking it and running with it and celebrating it!

I have to work two evenings this week at my second job, so I really need a plan this week.  I’m going to force myself to get to bed earlier each night so I can make myself get up for a morning workout on Thursday and Friday.  I have to work Saturday and Sunday (grrrrrrrrr), so fitting in workouts this weekend will be a battle.

My stepkids will be home Friday evening, and I always go with my boyfriend to pick them up, but I won’t even see them until at least 9:30 that night, after I get home from work.  I don’t like that at all, especially considering I’m working all weekend too.  Sometimes I seriously wonder if this second job is worth it.  I am trying hard to pay down debt, get us on better financial footing, move into a bigger place (we desperately need it), but the sacrifices along the way seem gigantic.

I will take this week one day at a time.  One pound down, and I’m taking aim at at least one more this week!

Broken Arm and Anger

This sums up Psycho perfectly.

I really just gave up this week.  Too much going on, too much stress, no excuse but I didn’t have anything left in the tank to deal with workouts and food diaries.  I got called into my second job several times this week, we had a board meeting and dinner event at work, and then the other night, the climax of the week: my boyfriend got a text that his 11-year-old daughter was in the emergency room, getting a soft cast put on her arm.

How this happen?  Glad you asked.  Psycho, his ex-wife and my stalker, thought it was a good idea to let an 11-year-old child outside to play on a skateboard, unsupervised, and with no helmet and no pads.  Predictably, my stepdaughter fell, and she fell so hard that she needs to undergo a procedure today to place the bone back in place before a cast can be put on.

I have so much anger about this.  Accidents happen, yeah, but they are guaranteed to happen when a so-called mother can’t be bothered to even strap a helmet onto a child, or bother peeping out a window when the kids are in her father’s pool, or perform any action or function that remotely resembles parenting.  I can’t even count on one hand how many ER visits the kids have had in the past year!  Let’s see: my younger stepson was in a wheelchair and neck brace while Psycho griped about him not finishing that football game; my older stepson ended up in the ER for a bump on his arm that never got cleaned or taken care of until it festered into a horrible infection; my younger stepdaughter just got a cast off her arm less than a year ago, which wasn’t her first trip to the ER either, since Psycho shredded the inside of that little girl’s throat trying to dig out a doughnut she was choking on for quite some time before Psycho decided to do anything about it.

When my boyfriend called his daughter the other night, she was still crying about how much her arm hurt.  In the background, Psycho snapped at her to not start crying again.  My boyfriend told his daughter to cry if it hurts, and if her mother had a problem with that, to put her on the phone.  Psycho refused to take the phone.  Of course she did.  She is a coward who bullies children and will not face someone willing to call her out on her bullshit.

Yet again, I have allowed the stress and anger and fury of fearing for the kids, and wondering why in blazing hell she is permitted to have custody of children, to derail me from taking care of me.  I get so angry, I can’t even think, except to keep coming back to: if my stepdaughter would have fallen on her head as hard as she did on her arm, with no helmet on…what then?

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