Resorting to Trickery

No matter how much your eye is on the prize, there are some days that you just don't want to be on your game.   I've been at this three hundred and forty some days straight.  In that time, I've worked out five to six days out of each week except for the two days I had bronchitis and also in that time I've only had one meal each week where I let myself have exactly what I want.  I call this meal treat night and it is what keeps me honest the rest of the week. But, as soon as this wonderful meal is over with, it's back to counting the calories.  I'm not going to quit, but sometimes I wish that life was like Tivo, just push pause, eat some Doritos and some Ben and Jerry's, rewind and away go the calories! 

That's a fantasy that won't be coming true and sometimes the road ahead looks nearly impossible.  My friend expressed the same feeling this week when she said, shaking her head and looking overwhelmed, "If I don't work out every day, I gain weight. I'm going to have to do this the rest of my life!"

So what do you do when you are feeling overwhelmed, when you're tired and don't want to workout, when you feel like all you eat are plants?  Much like parents use the airplane technique to get children to eat their vegetables or how you hide the dog's medicine in a piece of cheese, you have to employ trickery, this time on yourself.

Some examples of trickery I've used on myself:

• Yum! This spinach salad is just as tasty as that pizza they're eating.
• I'm not tired at all today.  I have lots of energy.
• My feet don't hurt.
• My arms aren't going to give out, I can hold this plank.
• Chocolate is gross!
• If I cover the timer with this magazine, these thirty minutes on the elliptical will fly by!
• That spot on the ceiling of the gym is fascinating and I don't even feel like my arms are going to fall off doing the speed bag in kickboxing class.

Some days you feel strong and full of energy and you don't worry about missing out on treats.  Other days you feel tired and sore and deprived.  In those times, if you have to resort to a little trickery, that's okay. 

"Sweat is fat crying."

It's been a busy work week and long hours staring at my laptop culminated in me ready to use the walls of my cube as a scratching post by the time this afternoon rolled around.  My brain muscles hurt and I had a lot of pent up energy.  When three o'clock finally got here, I tossed my glasses onto my desk and grabbed up my gym bag to hustle downstairs to meet my girls for Zumba.

A group of us met up in the group exercise room to do a DVD Mary found that really broke the steps down.  Now, I've been doing Zumba for almost a year and I keep moving the whole class, but I'm not always doing the steps right by any means.   If I miss what the teacher is doing, I'm liable to pull out my old move from the club (my cousin Devon calls it the "pull back") until I figure out the steps.

This DVD was great because it starts you out with the basic moves and builds upon them until you're truly doing the steps correctly.   We were doing salsa, calypso, reggatone, cumbo, and even a little belly dancing.  It was fun learning the steps together and we definitely worked out our core muscles by laughing at ourselves.  We're doing the next DVD tomorrow and have tentatively dared the guys to come Zumba with us.  We promised them that they could stand at the back and we wouldn't look at them (ha - yeah right!) but I'll be shocked if they come.   I told them Zumba is not just for girls...and it's a great cardio workout!  These days I'm not satisfied unless I come away from a workout with a drenched shirt and damp hair...and this DVD delivered.  It's summed up best by a quote my friend shared with me recently, "sweat is fat crying." 

In the meantime, there's always salad.

You'd think after almost a year I'd have this food thing figured out, but it is still a daily struggle.  Today I realized that how I feel is totally cumulative of how I've eaten during the week.  I've kept my calorie count in check this week, but have not been good at getting my protein in.  Several lunches have consisted of low calorie soup that was convenient, but didn't have any protein value at all.

Wednesdays are particularly hard because I do Step class at noon and so I don't want to eat my lunch before hand and risk seeing it come up on the floor of the gym, but you have to have something to fuel you on so what to do?  Today I ate some fruit and cheese before heading to class, but as soon as I got there, I almost felt hungrier than before my snack.  What proceeded was a limp noodle trying to work out.   My limbs felt heavy and didn't want to move, and I highly suspect that the third pair of tennis shoes in a year are on their last legs due to the way my feet were hurting.

I never quit a workout and refused to throw in the towel.  When I almost fell off one side of my step then the other, I finished the rest of the class on the floor.  It wasn't my shining moment, but I got through it and headed back to my desk to hoover down the grilled chicken salad that was waiting for me.

Later in the day, I found myself arriving home later than usual and discovered that the teriyaki beef that I'd gotten going in my crockpot this morning had literally turned into jerky.  Somehow we choked it down and thankfully there was salad too. 

No wonder obesity is an epidemic.  Eating right is hard. It's so much easier to hit the drive through, and a lot cheaper too.  But, nothing worth having comes easy, so I'm determined to figure this thing out. In the meantime, there's always salad.

Jenn and Millie's Day of Pain

Around lunchtime today I picked up my phone and dialed Millie's extension.  "So let's come up with our battle plan," I said when she picked up.  We're without our trainers this week and we'd previously confirmed our usual time with all of the girls, but we'd yet to come up with a plan. This normally amounts to us standing around for fifteen minutes trying to sort out what we're going to do.

She and I quickly hatched out a plan that would work arms, legs, and core as well as getting in cardio too and at two all of us convened in the gym.  We were excited to see most of the guys there too and quickly adjusted our workout to include them. 

It was a tough one and I was cussing myself not long into it.  But, it was also so awesome to see our group doing our thing without trainers.  We weren't just putzing around on the ellipticals either.  We were doing hammer curls, bench dips, kettle bell swings, burpees, crunches, squat/planks, curl/presses, and running running running. Everyone was hot and sweaty and breathing heavy at the end of it.  I looked at Millie and said, "Ha ha, we just killed these guys!"  She gave me a high five and said, "Yeah we did!"

Fluff Club

My Nanny had a cross stitched picture of a sheep hanging on her wall forever and ever that had the saying, "Ewes not fat, ewes fluffy".  You know those certain things around your grandparent's house that always stood out to you in childhood?  That was mine.  I always loved that little saying.

Tonight a group of friends and I met to establish a monthly night where we can come together and discuss our weight loss challenges, exchange recipes, talk about what motivates us and what gets us down.   We got the idea from the show "Ruby," a reality show about a woman who used to weigh 700 some pounds and now is down in the 300's.  She calls hers "Women's Fat Night," but we wanted to have our own name.  As we pondered it over, Amy mentioned that cute little saying about not being fat, but rather being fluffy and then she came up with the name, Fluff Club.  We all loved it!  I suggested our mascot could be a cute, fluffy sheep. 

And so Fluff Club has been born.  We're all on different legs of our journeys, but our destination is the same.  Vera's just about to her goal weight and looks awesome, but she still struggles with the same challenges that I do.  Amy doesn't have as much weight to lose as me, but it's still just as hard to her as it is to me.  I can't wait until the next meeting and also can't wait to try the yummy low cal crock pot carnitas recipe that Amy gave us tonight.

As I was driving home, I realized what a different and wonderful era we've entered into.   All of the shows like "The Biggest Loser" and "Heavy" and "Ruby," have brought overweight people "out of the closet" so to speak, and have de-stigmatized the challenge of weight loss.   I remember being so ashamed to say I was "on a diet" back in the day.   Now, with so many of us, no matter whether we are overweight or not, focused on wellness, it's easier to be out in the open about your struggle.  These days most people are trying to eat healthier and exercise, or at least they talk about it and acknowledge the benefits.  Restaurants are finally getting on board and offering healthy choices.  It just makes it easier, and hey I'll take any advantage I can get. 

So yay for Fluff Club!  I can't wait to meet up with you ladies again.  I have realized that it is so important on a journey like this to build a community of like minded folks around you.  Mine is made up of my supportive family and friends, my trainers, my Transformation team, my exercise instructors and the friends in class, my girls in the locker room, and now Fluff Club.  The stronger you can build your web of support, the better.  On the days when your resolve is weak, they are what get you through.

My Hate/Hate Relationship With the Stairs

My little sister is a student at ECU and the time of year has come for students to start moving back in.  My parents had gotten her mostly moved in last weekend, but today Momma and I followed her back to Greenville to move in the last of her stuff and have a girls day before heading back home without her.

Last year her apartment was on the first floor of her complex, which was great for old, lazy me who wasn't active and hated stairs.   Over this past year, Jeff and Marisa (as well as the rest of my gym buddies) have been slowly but surely curing me of this fear.   I remember back when I began working with Jeff, he started me on short risers and then transitioned me to the stairwell outside of the gym.  Nine months and a lifetime ago, after a workout where I had mastered the step bench with one riser, Jeff made me go out to the stairs by the gym where he showed me with the measuring tape how each step was the same height as the riser in the gym and made me go up and down the first flight.  I was terrified and so clumsy.

Next, Marisa and I started walking, first short distances and then longer and longer, having great conversations about everything under the sun, and soon I forgot that we were walking further each time. The end of these walks always culminated in doing the staircase from the parking lot back into the building. I huffed and I puffed, but I always felt victorious at the top. 

Shortly after this, Jeff started jumping out at me as I was about to board the elevator.  "Stairs Minter!" he would say and I would roll my eyes and get off the elevator.  My workout buddies followed suit.  What is the name of that psychotherapy where you're forced to immerse yourself in your greatest fear until you get over it?   I don't know, but this is what was happening.

Soon I drank the kool-aid so to speak and began parking in the outdoor parking lot at work, as opposed to the parking deck across the street, so that I would be forced to do those two flights of stairs each morning...the majority of the time loaded down with my computer backpack, gym bag, purse, and lunch bag.

Today we took my sister back to ECU and I was again faced with the stairs as she is now on the third floor of her complex.  This time I wasn't scared of being out of breathe or of falling.  As I slung the straps of one of her bags over my shoulder (the bag weighed fifty pounds, no exaggerating), my mom and my sister said, "Put that down, it's too heavy!"  I assured them I'd be alright.  The whole way up those three flights of stairs, they kept asking if I was okay.   I said, "Seriously guys, I got this."  And I did...in the heat, with fifty extra pounds, and three flights of stairs, I was okay.  And you know what, I went back for a few more loads.

A Beastly Workout

Today brought with it a much needed second wind and I was glad to be in the gym with my besties Millie and Sylvia.  Marisa had written up a strength training workout for us and Millie played trainer.  Even though I had to grit my teeth as I did bench rows with a 20 pound weight, it was cool to watch the muscles in my arms work.  We ladies are proud of our "guns"!

It was definitely a challenging workout, but did I expect any less from Marisa?  She's a cute little blonde thing on the outside, but make no mistake...she's a killer.  In fact, Dana has nicknamed her "Beastwood".

We were soon through our first beastly circuit and I wasn't paying attention to what was on the sheet Millie was reading from, so when she said, "Okay, pull-ups next," I was totally unprepared.

I silently followed the girls over to the pull-up bar, trying hard not to breakout into a cold sweat.  The last time I had attempted this, a couple of months ago, I clung paralyzed to the bar, frozen with fear as Jeff patiently tried to get me to attempt one pull-up which I couldn't do.  We lined up behind the bar, and all of those elementary school, self-conscious gym class fears overtook me. 

"Okay so we're each going to do four pull-ups and then go to the back of the line, and we do these eight times." Millie said, reading Marisa's instructions. Beastwood, what are you doing to me?  Millie laughed when she saw my face and pointed to the sheet where she'd written some notes next to Marisa's, and by the lines about the pull-up station Millie had written "machine where I cried that time."  I laughed, because we all have places in that gym where we've shed some tears.

Naturally, I got to the back of the line and watched as both Millie and Sylvia each did their first four pull-ups.  Then it was my turn.  I took a deep breathe and gripped the bar.  And paused. My cheerleaders cheered for me.  I took another deep breathe and concentrated hard on engaging not only my arms, but my legs and my core to pull myself up not once, but four times.  Then I ran through seven more circuits of those for a total of 32 pull-ups!

I was feeling like a rock star until it was time for the next circuit which included the place where I cried that time, the step up bench.  See a theme? All exercises that involve heights and the potential for falling.   A few months ago I found myself paralyzed and in tears with frustration at the fear of stepping up that high, not once but twenty times on each leg.  At that time, these wonderful ladies surrounded me and urged me on with a confidence in me that I didn't have in myself.  When I first started working out last year, I had a hard time going over a step on one riser, Jeff even had to hold my hand!  That seems so foreign to me now as I steadily lifted myself up onto four risers on one leg with no help.  I've been at this steady for almost a year.  I've worked out five to six days out of every one of those weeks, only missing two workouts when I had bronchitis and it still blows my mind.