Laser Tag Therapy

If you've ever worked out with a trainer, or a tough workout partner that pushes you, or even a challenging aerobics instructor, at some point, no matter how much you like to push it or how strong your commitment, your feelings toward them can get....how should we say it...cross.  It's an irrational feeling brought on by a moment of exhaustion and desperation, but it happens to the best of us.  Sometimes when they're pushing us to our limits for our own good, we just want to roll our eyes, stick out our tongues, and tell them "No I will not do 25 more squats, one more mile, 8 more reps"...you get the point.  A good trainer will push you beyond where you want to go, regardless of how mad that makes you.  The good thing is that the cross feelings only last momentarily and then you're left with a giddy feeling of accomplishment that makes you believe you can leap tall buildings in a single bound. That's the magic of trainers and I've been blessed to work with some awesome ones.

That being said, when a bunch of us got together to play laser tag, my trainer Jeff included, I was chuckling the evil plan laugh to myself at the fact that I got to shoot at him with a laser gun and - what luck! - we split up into teams of guys versus girls.  Stepping into the smoky, black-lit, rock thumping arena, I had two targets in mind: my trainer Jeff and my husband Eric.

As with many things, my laser tag game looked a lot cooler in my head than in real life...  I was in full-on James Bond mode in my head as I slid along with my back to a wall, laser gun in both hands, head going back and forth, looking in all directions for the enemy.  Creeping down under a low wall, I darted up briefly to take a few shots and then jumped back down to safety.  Yes, in my mind I was a combination of all the Charlie's Angels and Lara Croft rolled into one and Eric and I were in our own personal version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.  In reality, I got off a few good shots but got hit equally as much if not more...let's just say my powers of stealth and battle strategy are in need of improvement.

All in all it turned out to be a great workout as we all emerged from the laser tag arena sweating like crazy.  I may not have won, but I got to shoot at both my trainer and my husband with a laser gun and that is prize in and of itself! ;)  It was good for the body and the spirit!

Get Up and Dance!

Until I found my way out of it, I never fully realized how held back I was by the way I used to live my life and the physical state I was in.   There is such a blessing in the hard work it is to constantly deny myself the food I want to eat and to push myself the way I do in the gym: the wonderful freedoms that are around every corner.   I don't think I could have truly appreciated them had I not experienced the cumbersome state of my former unhealthiness.  Reveling in this freedom is what keeps me pushing forward and makes every minute of this fight worth it.

This weekend I found the perfect place to revel: Wilmington's annual Greek Fest.   Let me back up for a minute to this time two years ago.  I was in the worst shape of my life and (unbeknown to me) about six months away from changing my life forever.   My husband and I headed out to the Greek Fest for the first time. It should have been a wonderful time but I honestly struggled even climbing on the trolley to head over to the event.   Not only that, at the time I couldn't walk very far or stand on my feet for any amount of time. I also couldn't handle warm temperatures very well...all traits that added up to having a miserable time at a spring festival.  I wanted to have a wonderful time, I wanted to walk around and see everything, I wanted to get up and dance the Greek dances with my husband.   None of those were an option for me at the time, and let me tell you, there is very little more depressing than watching what you wish was your life slide by.

Fast forward two years and many pounds lost later and I couldn't wait to head out to Greek Fest to celebrate my birthday with my husband and our great friends Millie (who's been by my side every step of the way, shedding pounds with me) and her husband Sergio.

Heading over on the trolley, feeling festive.

This year I knew I was going to enjoy myself very much and be able to do anything I wanted.  Our friend and Transformation Team member, Flo, was volunteering at the Fest and had promised to teach us the Greek dances.  Millie and I were totally excited and the husbands were, as always, along for whatever crazy ride we decide to take them on.  Everyone was starving so we sampled the food and vino first.

A toast to my girl! Love ya Millie!

The husband enjoying his lamb shank way too much!

We had an awesome time and hollered "Opa!" I don't know how many times.  Then it was time to work off our gyros with some Greek dancing.

Flo, Millie and I dancing round and round again.  It's blurry due to how fast we were going.

It felt exhilerating to hold the hands of my friends and my husband and dance round and round and round again to the wonderful music, knowing that two years before I sat as only an unhappy observer.  This time, my feet were light and my muscles endured for song after song (and Greek songs are not short by any means).  At the end of the dancing I was sweating, Step class style...the sign of a great workout!

If you're considering getting on a weight loss journey, or needing motivation to keep going or to start up again, take my advice and do it. Just do it.  It means the difference of sitting on the sidelines of your life or getting up and dancing.

Cold Showers And The Re-set Switch

A couple of days ago I discovered our hot water heater wasn't working the hard way by being blasted with an artic spray from the shower. Not my favorite way to wake up, I assure you.  After my teeth stopped chattering and my skin was no longer blue I began imagining the annoying process my husband would have to go through changing the elements out - and that was the best case scenario.   Shoes and coats and my collection of assorted tote bags and purses were hauled out of the hallway closet so that Eric could operate on the appliance, and miraculously after a few minutes of fiddling in the closet, it roared to life with a reassuring hiss of water being heated.  Grinning with with the joy that he could take a Sunday nap instead of spending hours worth of work on the water heater and a trip to the hardware store, Eric announced, "Just needed to flip the re-set switch!"

Wouldn't it be great if the same could be said of motivation?  Aren't we that have been on the journey for any amount of months in danger of becoming like the old hot water heater?  When we are first brand new and finding our first successes on the scales, we're fired up, full of heat, able to let the warmth flow on demand.  Then, over time and use, our temperature cools gradually...to the point that we may even cool off completely, letting those bad habits creep back in to decrease our temperature.  Sometimes there's a catalyst, a stressful situation or lack of results, that causes our breakers to trip.  What do we do then?

Simple: we clear out our closets.   We drag out not our collection of bags, shoes, and coats but rather our stresses, bad habits, and excuses.   We dig down past the clutter of life and find out what's wrong with our "machine."  Sometimes we simply need a re-set and sometimes we might need a little tinkering to make the machine work again...in the form of a nutrition over-haul or a mix-up of the workout routine.  

When an appliance stops working, we don't sit back and bemoan the reasons for it's malfunction.  We don't blame the appliance and resolve to live without it's services.  We simply repair or replace and move on with life.   Why can't we do the same for ourselves?   We don't resolve never to take a warm shower again when we know we can hit the re-set switch and be back in business.  The same can be said for getting back to business with weight loss, no matter if it's your first time re-setting your switch or the 575th.  The point is that you hit that switch.

2nd 5K!

The first time I did a 5K, I woke up early on a nippy December morning, amped and ready to go.  The morning of my second 5K, Saturday morning, was the complete opposite.  I was sore all over from a hard workout week and dragging from the lack of sleep I'd gotten in the previous days of my being the night owl that I am.  Before I didn't know what I was getting myself into, but this time around I was already anticipating each step of the three mile journey ahead of me.

But, it was the first 5K held by my town's Strawberry Festival and my husband had agreed to do his first 5K by my side.  Yawning but resolved, I pinned on my number and gathered with my husband, several cousins, friends, church members, and neighbors to await the start of the race.

Once again, everyone struck out ahead of me and once again I asked myself, "what the heck am I doing out here?"  I can pretty much do anything I want these days in the gym and have tested my endurance successfully in several two-hour Zumba marathons....no easy task.  But a race like this always tends to put me in my place so to speak.  Resolving to put one foot in front of the other and concentrate on doing my own race and not worrying about the pace of those around me, I drew from the positive energy of my husband beside me and got on down the road.   I will say that when my grandparents pulled up next to us near the halfway point on their way to their usual breakfast spot, I thought a couple of times about jumping in with them.

Doing a 5K for me is very similar to the weight loss journey: when you start out you wonder what you're doing and why you're doing it; sometimes you see other people shoot out ahead of you but you can't worry about their pace, only your own; sometimes your feet hurt and it's hot and you grow weary and want to quit; sometimes there are twists and turns in the course you aren't suspecting; sometimes you lag behind but then sometimes you get your second wind and surprise yourself; you can grow the most weary when the finish line is in sight; but, crossing that finish line brings with it accomplishment, a feeling of power and joy and you're never sorry that you did it.

Crossing the finish line.

Me and the hubs at the finish.

Workout Example

By request here is one of the workout poker routines we did.  All you need is a set of free weights (medium weight) and a deck of cards:

• Hearts: Push-up rotations (example)
• Spades: Curl/press (with heavy weights)
• Clubs: V-shaped crunches (example)
• Diamonds: Squat kicks (example)
• Jacks: Plank for 45 seconds
• Queens: High knees for 45 seconds
• Kings: Burpees for 45 seconds
• Jokers: 5 body blasters  (can leave out or modify if needed; this is a hard one: example)

Whatever number comes up on the card that is dealt, you do that many of the exercise of the corresponding suit.  We counted aces as eleven.  The face cards are not rotations but rather the exercise indicated for the time indicated.  The object is to go through the entire deck.  You can swap out any of the exercises for others that hit the same muscle group. This gives a total body workout with cardio and strength included.

**Again, disclaimer:  I'm not a doctor, nutritionist, trainer, or expert. Everything I write about is simply based upon my experiences. Please talk to your doctor before you start any diet or exercise plan.

The Wal-Mart Workout

Inadvertently I got a great workout at Wal-Mart today.  Let me back up.  It's been a sweaty week between the increasing temperature outside and the increasing intensity of our workouts.  I sweated through Scuplt class, Step class, karate class, and three days of workout poker with my friends.  This, combined with the usual business of work and home, found me dragging myself into Wal-Mart tonight with my husband and our friends, dreading the task as any person in their right mind ought to.

Every muscle in my body hurt, but the cat was expecting to eat when we got home and Minters don't get rolling in the morning without at least two cups of coffee in our systems, and of course it's nice to have light bulbs so off to Wal-Mart we went. 

First off: light bulbs and groceries are in polar opposite corners of your average Super Wal-Mart so of course you're going to get your walking in.  Secondly, fill your cart up with enough groceries and you get a bit of resistance going on as you push it along your shopping adventure.  And we all know that the item you need is at the top of the shelf where you'd have to have NBA skills to reach normally, so there's your stretching.

Once you've gotten your heart rate up from the cart pushing and hike from groceries to garden center and you're all limbered up from reaching for the last case of Aquafina on the shelf, you can cruise on over to the sports aisle where more available free weights and kettle bells await you than at your average gym.  No need to wait for the pair of tens - Wal-Mart's got at least five pairs right there on the shelf for your bicep curling pleasure.   No, I'm not sneaking a workout Mr. Wal-Mart greater.  I'm just testing this kettle bell here to see how it handles on the squat swings. 

Then if you're feeling real squirrelly as we were tonight, you can swing by the toy section and try your skills on the hula hoop.  We spent at least 15 minutes hulaing on the toy aisle, and believe me: you will work up a sweat.

So, no gym membership, no problem.  Super Wal-Mart's open 24 hours.  You can check off that chore list and get a good calorie burn.  And hey, don't worry about showing up in your workout clothes. Track suits are all the rage at the local Wal-Mart.