Weigh-In Wednesday

Well, the  Dreaded Week Two has come and gone. In all honesty, I actually fared better than expected. As committed as I am to this process, I haven't yet hit that moment where I feel like I'm 'all in', if that makes sense. I found myself cutting a few corners this past week that I wouldn't do in the full swing of things...corners like not eating all my meals, not making time for my workouts, eating stuff I should stay away from at this stage....and finding reasons to justify my decisions.

That's a dangerous place to be this early on.

This coming week, I plan on working on a few areas to see if I can improve my game a little:


1.  I want to make sure I'm eating at my scheduled times.

                I really have to make myself stop working to do this, and that's very hard to do most days. I have to keep reminding myself that my lunch time and breaks are not special privileges that I only get to take if my work is caught up...they are necessary parts of my day, and I need to take them, for my body and for my mind.

2.  I want to make sure I'm eating ONLY what's safe for me to eat at this stage of my program.

                Justifying sugar, simple carbs, junk food, etc. is not beneficial.  Even though I stay within my calorie allotment, all it's doing is slowing down my metabolic rate. Later, after my metabolism has started burning well again, there will be options to add small amounts of things, sparingly. Now is not that time. 

3.  I want to make sure I'm drinking all the water my body needs.

               I'm terrible at slurping coffee all day. The rule is No Coffee After 12:00 Noon. I need to stick to that, because when I do, I have no problem getting all my water down...and then some....especially on days when I run.  Which brings me to

4.  I want to make sure that I'm getting my workouts in.

               Right now, that just means walking, but very soon, that will graduate into walk/runs and running.  That needs to happen sooner, rather than later. But I'm battling chronic exhaustion, so I'm trying to be kind to myself and listen. I know that the more I exercise, the less tired I will be, but that first step (re-establishing the rhythm) is a real doozie.

I don't plan on acing all of these in the next week...this IS a process, after all...but I do want to see myself a week from now, having put a serious dent in each area, and there's no reason that can't happen.  So far today, I'm doing pretty well.

As far as my weigh-in goes, this morning I managed to pull off a .2 lb loss, despite not being completely on track.  Not huge or monumental by any means, but not nothing, either.  And considering how much I battled this week, I'll take it with thanks. 

I made a commitment yesterday to get 5 miles in this week, but was so exhausted last night, I couldn't think straight.  Tonight, our plans include dinner out with a friend (planned weeks ago). I know there's a nice salad in my future, but that's not until 6pm, and I've got some time to kill after work. I'm pretty sure I can get a nice walk in if the weather holds, so that's my plan.

How about you?  Have you set any small goals to help you achieve your larger ones? How are they working for you?

It's Been a While....

...but everybody's got to start somewhere, right? And I'm starting over. Yes, again. But that's ok, because I know I've got it in me.

Funny how your outlook can shape your life. I know I've talked about that in previous posts, but no matter where we are on our journey, there's always something to be learned. I could not have foreseen it going into 2016, but last year turned out to be one of the hardest years of my life, second only to the year my late husband, Bill passed away.

 Last winter was brutal. So brutal, in fact, that we were literally housebound for three weeks. I couldn't even step outside the door without sliding down the mountain, and there were a lot of other days scattered throughout the season as well where outside workouts and/or traveling to a workout place (gym, track, trail) were just not possible.

 Still, I did my best to hang on, and although I gained back about 20 pounds, I still felt positive about getting back on track with spring just around the corner. I battled a grueling speed-training session to meet my 10k goal in March, a bum knee, and the absolutely unexpected announcement that although we were already incredibly short-handed at work, my department lead threw in the towel and retired. I was left holding the bag with two just-hired trainees who had no clearance access to the system (and didn't know anything at all, even if they HAD)....so not only did I have to do ALL the things (bi-weekly payroll for 2500+ government employees), I had to train the newbies at the same time.

I won't bore you with the details, but all the extra time it took and the pressure I was under caused my stress level to shoot past the moon, and my health suffered tremendously because of it. All my wonderfully cathartic, afternoon process-the-day runs were a thing of the past. All my carefully prepared meals and intake monitoring gave way to full-blown survival mode as I did whatever it took to get through the day.

For food, I either shoveled what was easy or in front of me, or ignored it completely, never leaving my desk through the week, working crazy hours long into the night to keep pace, trying desperately to catch up with home life on the weekends I wasn't working. For exercise, I stressed. I let go of every single thing in my life that wasn't critical. And I lost every shred of my personal life in the process. I can say this now, one year removed from the turmoil...that it is amazing that I survived. But I did survive.

These days, my life has finally leveled off. I am now the head of my department with a staff of four doing the job I did alone for the majority of the year. The training is not over, and probably won't be for some time...but they are all self-sufficient. And I can now go home at the end of my shift, secure in the knowledge that the building will still be standing the next day when I come back. No more overtime for me (unless there is an emergency, which may be once or twice a year), and there is now time to breathe, to focus on my health, and to bring my life back into alignment.

The balance that I had finally found was utterly lost last year, but it's time to reclaim that. I know I can do it. I've done it before, and I have the knowledge and the tools I need already in place. For Christmas, I made sure Santa brought me a new treadmill, so that I will never again be caught in the winter with no way to get a workout in. I went to the store and stocked up on new Tupperware containers and the foods I would need to get back in the swing of my everyday, pre-disaster life. I updated the My Fitness Pal, Runkeeper, and Rock My Run apps on my phone, and I finally stepped back on the scale to face the ungodly gain that was the result of months of bad eating, stress and inactivity expecting to have surpassed my highest weight, and pleasantly surprised to find that despite everything, I hadn't quite gotten there, after all.

One week ago...I began again to put it all into place, to rebuild once again the life I had worked so hard to attain. I know I can do it, I know because I've been there. I know because I want that life back so bad, I can taste the sweetness of it from here. This morning, I stepped back on the scale for my first weigh-in of the new age. And I had lost 4.6 pounds.  

Confucius was a wise, wise man. That single first step is everything.

Of Train Wrecks and Wagons

Usually when something happens to someone in a negative way, you would say something like, "oh, that person is a train wreck", "they completely derailed", or "they fell off the wagon".

But sometimes...it's none of those things.

If you think about it, all of the above happen suddenly, completely, and often without warning.  But not all things...even negative things (and sometimes especially negative things)...happen suddenly.  Sometimes, it can be a gradual shift.

Years ago, Keith and I decided to go exploring to find a remote local waterfall.  To get to it required navigating an extremely steep gully that we basically had to slide on our feet and butts to get down, holding on to tree branches, bushes, and patches of grass as we went.  As hard as it was to get down, life got really interesting on the way back up, when every few steps had us sliding back, reaching for anything to stop our descent before continuing to scrabble our way back up the slippery slope.

Sometimes, negative things happen like that.

I was so in the groove last year, I felt completely unshakeable.  My food was rock solid, my weight dropping slowly and steadily, and my physical fitness was improving more with every week.  I was running farther and faster than ever before, and I had even managed to finish out the year injury-free...a miracle in itself.  Even the holiday season didn't unseat me.  I was solid.  I was strong.

(climb that slope, sister)

And then...winter.

Days and weeks of forced inactivity, due to being snowbound. Nothing to do but sleep, eat, and watch endless TV.  My spirit drooped, and the scale climbed....imperceptibly, at first, but it was there.

(slip)

With the change in the weather, my hopes changed. I had signed up for a 10k in March that I was eagerly looking forward to, but after being out of commission for the better part of two months, it was a mighty struggle to get back to a point where I could just finish the race at all.  Regardless, after only two weeks of training, I was able to hold my head up high enough to gain a PR out of it.

(grab a branch, hold your ground, inch your way back up a little)


Then my knee started acting up.  Not much at first, just a little griping after my run.  But then it got worse. Soon, it was griping after the first few steps. So I was forced to rest it.

(wobble)


I tried to start back a few times, tried to walk some, even,

(grab a bush, hold your ground)

but every time, my knee (and soon both my knees) would start griping.  And I would stop again. 

Then, the depression set in.

(slip)


More and more food started inching its way into my day, and soon, I couldn't bring myself to log it into MFP....the totals would depress me even more.  My waistline started expanding again, my clothes felt tighter, the scale screamed "failure!!" every time I stepped on it, so that stopped, too.


(slide)


And before I knew it...months had passed, and I had gained back 25 pounds.


The day I realized that I was purposely ignoring all my social media because I was so ashamed of how far I had fallen, and how uncomfortable I had once again become in my own skin is the day I decided to dig in my heels.  Just because I have slid a little ways, doesn't mean I'm a failure. I'm not at the bottom of the gulley...in fact, I'm a long way from it. I'm much closer to the top than I am to the bottom.  There's no need to be so deeply depressed over this issue.

(Grab a tree, steady...STAND.)

Yes, I have a good way to go yet to reach my goal.  But reaching my goal was never the most important aspect of this journey...rather, it was learning how to reach it, and maintain it.  This is an ongoing process, and there are bound to be little slides here and there.  I've said often in the past year and a half that I didn't care how long it took me to get there, and I meant it. It may take me the rest of my life to 'achieve my goal'. The important part is that I not give up, because giving up and going back to the misery of my old life is not, nor will it ever be an option again.

So... where does all this leave me now?

Standing on a very slippery slope, not halfway down....but halfway up.  And determined as hell to get to the top.