Yeah, Write

In No Particular Order

My "healthy habits" initiative is still plugging along, and the March habits are still magneted to my fridge, inspiring me daily. In fact, on March 25, I decided to up the ante with this health thing and sign up for a 6-week, Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. boot camp with a local trainer.

And it has beek kicking my booty. For two weeks anyway.

And then the following happened.

• In the first week of the Boot Camp—in which I dutifully left my home at 5:45 in the morning only to work out harder than I ever have in my life for 60 straight minutes in a karate studio in my stockinged feet, causing even the muscles in the bottoms of my feet to be seize up—I gained 7 pounds. Yes. And all of my measurements went UP! Let me tell you how motivating that was. Even my calf measurementswent up. The culprit? I started a new prescription medication for something else entirely that has had some unintended side effects (extreme bloating, water retention, etc.), which I'm told should be temporary. So, no, I will not be reporting any weight-loss results for March because, seriously. This sucks.
• I've had company for 2 1/2 weeks straight. It's been wonderful, but boy howdy am I out of my routine.
• After making it through two weeks of this Boot Camp, I came down with the worst sinus infection of my life. I'm sleeping 10-12 hours a night and I'm still exhausted all day. And the coughing, oh the coughing. For two straight weeks. My trainer has this "oh, and you wanted to use it as an excuse not to show up?" kind of attitude, which actually works on me in a weird way. I NEED a trainer to call me on my excuses. But when you can't sit in a chair without coughing, you can't do burpees without bursting a lung. This is a burpee, and no I do not look anything like this when I do them:
  
   

• THE WORST WEEK EVER. Seriously, not only have I been sick, Keira also has an ear infection, the weather has been gray and depressing, and I was absolutely glued to the horrific news every waking moment. I can't resist sharing a quote from an article found on the fake news site The Onion (thanks for sharing, E.D.), which is terribly inappropriate overall, but it included this gem:
  
  “Maybe next time we have a week, they can try not to pack it completely to the brim with explosions, mutilations, death, manhunts, lies, weeping, and the utter uselessness of our political system,” said basically every person in America who isn’t comatose or a complete sociopath. “You know, maybe try to spread some of that total misery across the other 51 weeks in the year. Just a thought.”

So, if I can manage to get enough sleep this weekend to feel like a normal human being again (and if this cough continues to dwindle), I'll be able to rejoin my comrades for the final 2 weeks of boot camp. They in their battle-hardened fitness and me in my weakened state. But showing up is half the battle. Isn't that what G.I. Joe says? Or whatever.

I will post some new healthy habits for May. As I learned from Elise Blaha Cripe in her I Choose: Inspiration and motivation to make goal-setting fun workshop, you should NOT give up just because you haven't stuck to a stated goal perfectly. (Or because you may have failed to make a new set of goals for April, ahem.) Instead, she says you should just pick up wherever you left off and try again. And so I will.

Healthy Habits: March

So, February was a good warm-up month in our journey to living healthier. I stuck to my goals at least 90 percent of the time, and I call that a victory. (This is a new mentality I'm trying on. Previously, if I didn't meet a goal 100%, I'd feel like a failure and feel like giving up. But I'm now embracing that 90% success, or even 75% depending on the goal, is absolutely worth celebrating.)

Also worth celebrating? I lost 4 pounds. And for me, that's huge. Now keep in mind that my February goals are not responsible for ALL of that. On top of the specific goals I'm trying to achieve, I'm also just generally trying to live all the healthy living principles that I know in my heart but don't always have the discipline to follow, such as: eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, eating at home more often, avoiding refined carbohydrates and fried foods, exercising regularly, limiting the between-meal snacking, etc.

And with that, here are our March goals, gloriously printed out and posted to the refrigerator, since my printer wasn't broken* after all.

 

 

*Almost rivalling the time I called my husband and asked for his tech support assistance for about 45 minutes because the computer turned off and simply would not turn back on (because, it turns out, our power had gone out), our printer was never broken. Instead, Keira had turned off the power strip that the printer was plugged into. So, effectively, it had just been unplugged for a few weeks while I was reluctantly researching new printer options. 

Healthy Habits: My Plan

Now, despite what I may have alluded to yesterday, there's nothing revolutionary here. (Which is actually the whole point.) I simply ran out of steam to fit everything I wanted to say in one post!

Let me start by saying that discipline is not my strong suit.

When it comes to diet and exercise, I firmly believe that strategy is better than discipline anyway. (I did not invent this concept, and I can't remember where I heard it, but I love it!) The problem is, lately I've lacked the discipline to implement and stick to a strategy!

It's a vicious cycle of staying up too late, getting too little sleep, waiting until I'm already starving to plan or prepare meals, and generally being reactionary about my eating and exercise. 

But as I've been listening to one of my favorite podcasts, The Nutrition Diva: Quick and Dirty Tips for Eating Well and Feeling Fabulous, several ephinanies crashed together all at once.

1. I listened to one podcast about Weight Loss Myths, and here's the bit that hit me between the eyes: 

"Losing weight [too] quickly virtually guarantees failure. Rapid weight loss creates long-term hormonal and metabolic changes in your body that make it extremely difficult for you to maintain that hard-won weight loss.

Let’s say, for example, that Mary and Sue both weigh 130 pounds. Mary has been about the same weight since college. Sue, on the other hand, has just lost 50 pounds on a crash diet. Both women are now maintaining their current weight—but, in order to do that, Sue has to exercise twice as much and eat 15% less than Mary for the rest of her life. It’s horridly unfair but true.

If you want spend the rest of your life battling your weight, be sure to lose weight as quickly as possible. Otherwise, I suggest losing it as slowly as possible."

Whew. Rapid weight loss has NEVER been a problem for me. Maybe I can be grateful that my pounds melt off slowly, if at all. Maybe.

2. Then I listened to a podcast about sticking to New Year's Resolutions. The ideas that stood out to me from this podcast were:

 A. Be Specific. Rather than making a goal that says "eat more vegetables," make your goal ridiculously specific, as in "eat three servings of vegetables by 3 p.m. every day."

B. Stay Focused on Your Actions not Your Results. Aha! This one is for me. If I focus on a result of a certain weight on a scale, I feel discouraged all along the way. But if I focus on an action that isn't tied up in a result, then I stay more motivated. Like in 2002, when I did lose 22 pounds, it was because I was focused on an action (healthful eating and 5 hours of stringent exercise a week) rather than a specific outcome.

C. Make Your Goals Positive. Rather than making the goal "stop eating sugary cereals," make the goal something like, "choose cereals that have at least 5 grams of fiber and less than 5 grams of sugar." (Another of Nutrition Diva's tips.)

C. Go On Record. The Diva says, "To give your resolution a little extra staying power, share it with others. There's something about making your resolution public that makes it just a little harder to abandon."

These recent thoughts have been swimming around in my head, along with all of the information I've absorbed (but not implemented) about healthy eating over the years. Below is a simple strategy I'm going to try in order to get myself started on a healthier trajectory again, and break the bad habits that have kept me stalled for the last 2 years.

The Plan

Starting now, I will set one eating goal and one exercise goal at the first of every month in 2013. These will be small, specific, positive goals that are focused on my actions and not on an imagined result. I will focus on just these two goals throughout the month, slowly making them a part of the fabric of my life, until they become automatic and long-lasting.

I will print these goals and magnet them to my refrigerator where I can see them daily. And I will post them on my blog, so I will feel more accountable to stick to them. 

I will take a "before" picture of myself. But I probably will not be willing to post it publicly unless there's a reasonably apparent difference in my "after" picture. (Wink.)

My husband will join me.

We will continue to build on the foundation we set, and see what we're motivated to tackle from here. In other words, I will not abandon February's goal in March. Instead, I'll continue to stick to that habit while layering a new healthy habit on top.

My February Habits:

Travis's February Habits:

Do these sound too easy?

Here's the thing: I've set goals that are too lofty too many times in the last two years. And I've tried to make too many changes at once too many times. With the number of current demands on my time, I don't have the available energy to overhaul too much of my life all at once. I want to be realistic about my goals, so I can build up the will and the confidence to tackle bigger and better things.

I've been trying for 2 years, ever since baby Keira arrived, to exercise more regularly. And every time I make a goal of "5 days a week," it fails. I tell myself that I've done 5 days a week before, so I should be able to do it again. But back when I've done it before, I didn't have a toddler while maintaining a demanding work schedule.

So that's it! We're going to make 22 healthy new habits in 2013. And if we lose some weight, I'd love it. But once again, I am not going to make a number on the scale my goal.

Feel free to join us!

Note: Calendars are from the Paislee Press 2013 Calendar Kit, available here. I would have posted a picture of them magneted to my fridge, but the printer is also the scanner and, as I mentioned yesterday, it has just kicked the bucket. 

Healthy Habits: My Background

I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions. They never work. But still, 2013 is going to be a year of better health for me. And I'm starting a simple new initiative today, February 1st.

But before I share the details, let me share my background. 

I've struggled with my weight all my life. Both from a personal habits perspective (what and how I eat) and from a physiological perspective (I have the most stubborn body fat on the planet). I've also struggled with the fact of being fat, of course. In this cult of skinny that we live in, who wouldn't?

I am dead serious when I say my body fat is stubborn. It is, in fact, cemented to my bones. I've always been less jiggly than the average chubby person; mine is a very FIRM fat. And without even mentioning the fact that I have trained for and completed two half-marathons without losing a single ounce either time, here is further proof of the stubbornness:

Exhibit A: At age 25, I cut out all refined sugars and flour, eating strictly fruits, vegetables, proteins, dairy, and grains in their whole form (as in, no bread). I followed this eating plan 6 days a week, allowing myself a free day on Saturday. I ate weird things like brown rice with cottage cheese and tuna fish that I heated in the microwave, sprinkled with a bit of mozzarella cheese, which came to be known as "Angie's protein stir." My one daily indulgence was half a Luna bar or Balance bar. As for exercise, I did 60-minutes of spinning on M-W-Th, 60 minutes of weightlifting on Tuesdays, and 60 minutes of yoga on Fridays.

Results:  I did not lose one single pound, nor seeminly one single inch, for a full 2 months. I'm talking 8 weeks (56 days) of Hurculean effort, with absolutely nothing to show for it. Finally, my fat cells got the message that I was serious, and after about 8 months, I had lost 22 pounds—the most  I've ever lost in one sustained push. It felt like a miracle.

Exhibit B: In 2007, I buddied up with a friend and neighbor on a reduced calorie and exercise plan. We worked out together (as in the exact same workouts, done together at the local gym) and both followed a strict calorie plan that was scaled to our body weight and activity level, designed to result in a 2-pound weight loss per week. We both did this for an entire year. She started out about 45 pounds heavier than I was initially.

Results: She lost 50 pounds, nearly 1 pound a week or about 20 percent of her total body weight. I lost 15 pounds, a little over a pound a MONTH or about 8 percent of my total body weight. And it was a grueling year. (Granted: that year I was full-on into infertility treatments, so it's possible that I should feel grateful that I didn't GAIN 50 pounds from all the hormone volatility.)

These experiences, seen from my adult perspective, illustrate very clearly to me why it was so hard for me to stay committed to something for more than a week or two as a teenager. Already my hormones were raging and it was an angst-filled, turbulently emotional time full of self-image issues and feelings of absolute invisibility.

Add to that the fact that I would have had to stay committed to something for 2 straight months (when even a week feels like an eternity at that age) before I saw results, and it's no wonder I couldn't stay motivated. I never saw a single pound budge in a downward direction throughout all my teenage years, just a gradual creeping upward. 

I was an average sized child in elementary school. And I literally doubled my weight between the 6th and 12th grades. I felt completely out of control of my own body.

Click image for larger view.

My weight gain was a mystery to me at the time. I didn't feel like I was eating more than I had the year before or the year before, but the pounds kept piling on. Exercise was another matter. I went from a very active, bicycle riding, softball- and soccer-playing child to a sedentary teenager. This is partly because all of my favorite hobbies (reading, playing the piano, singing, writing) involved sitting or at most standing—and partly because exercising in public became more and more embarrassing. I never wanted to be seen exercising, and I never was very successful at burning many calories from the comfort of my bedroom. There are only so many sit-ups a girl can do! 

From age 18 to age 26, I managed to lose 70 pounds. Very, very, very gradually. And if there's one bright spot in all this (and I'll explain more about why tomorrow), I never yo-yo dieted. Or if I did, I yo'd up 125 pounds from age 12 to age 18 (some of which was due to growing taller, of course) and then yo'd back down 70 pounds by age 26. Always in a slow and steady trajectory.

I'm now 36, and in the last decade, I have regained 25 pounds from my all-time-low, with very little back-and-forth along the way (apart from that temporary 15-pound reprieve that lasted from 2007 to 2009 that I mentioned above). It seems that where I am now is my "resting" weight. This is where I stay unless I'm putting forth seriously focused, concentrated, and consistent effort.

But if you're counting, I'm still 45 pounds lighter than my heaviest weight ever, at age 18. Which is awesome. But less awesome when I remember that number used to be 70!

And this brings us to my latest "Healthy Habits" initiative, which came about because of a serendipitious turn of events that I'll share tomorrow. 

One thing I've learned over the years is that I have never EVER lost weight on a deadline. Not ever. I have never been able to make a certain number of pounds the goal. If weight loss is the goal, whether I'm aiming for 2 or 20 pounds, the weight doesn't budge. The weight ONLY budges if my goal is to be healthier. That's it. In 2002, when I was 26, I set out to become stronger and faster and to fill my body with natural, heathful fuel. And the weight loss was a very welcome byproduct of that mentality.

And that is my goal again. To instill in myself healthy habits that will take me through the next decade and beyond.

More tomorrow.

p.s. I know I have better photos of my at my lowest weight and worse photos of me at my highest weight, but the scanner went out today, so I had to rely on photos I already had in digital form. As for my age 36 picture, I have almost no full-body pictures of myself wherein I'm not deliberately hiding behind someone or something else. Apparently, old habits die hard. The pics below were my only available runners up. As you can see, if there's a group shot, I'll fight to the death to be on the back row.