the tenacious ten: day three

I'm pretty sure exercise isn't supposed to make you cry. I'm just sayin'.

Okay, so I didn't cry. This time. But I wanted to. That and I wanted to throw up. Well, not that I wanted to throw up, but you know what I mean.

Exercise and I have never quite become BFF's. Oh, we're friendly and all—don't get me wrong. But believe me—I'd ditch working out in a heartbeat for reading a book or going out to dinner or even taking a hike, literally. The minute I get a better offer, all previous plans are considered null and void.

So it's not unusual for me to not like working out. It's also not unusual for me to avoid it for as long as possible. But what has been unusual these last two weeks has been both my sheer dread of exercising and my complete lack of energy and will power to do so. I just don't have it in me. And I don't know why.

For a month I was truckin' along with Jillian Michaels and her 30 Day Shred DVD. I was feeling strong, feeling energetic, feeling optimistic. I didn't LIKE it, but I wasn't dying. Not much, at least. But something has completely wiped me off my feet here lately, and I barely have it in me to finish my 3-4 mile walk, let alone get my butt kicked by "TV's Toughest Trainer." This doesn't bode well for trying to get Stripped, Shredded, or Slenderized.

Mostly what it does is make me feel discouraged and a little weepy, especially toward the end of a work-out, when there are still 50,000 crunches to go and I feel like I'm going to hurl already and I just want to lay on the floor and not move. But I have to move—I have no choice but to move. And that creates dissonance in my spirit.

I wish I could learn to love this path. I wish I enjoyed protein and veggies more than anything made from a grain. I wish I would rather lift weights and crank my metabolism with some interval training than stroll through the woods or read a good book. Or even a mediocre book. But I don't love these things. I've made peace with them, but that's just not the same.

I don't know yet what to do with this dissonance. I have peace, but, because I don't love it, I need discipline. I don't always have discipline. So I need motivation. I don't always have motivation, either. And frankly, what motivates me typically is FEAR, and that is in conflict with peace. In the end, I'd much rather have JOY in it all. But I'm just not there yet.

And I'm not sure what the path in that direction looks like.

I will continue ramping back up, yet again. I will fight and scratch and claw back to my previous level of fitness, only to have something else derail me, yet again. I suppose this is life. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. In the mean time, tomorrow is a rest day, by virtue of the fact that I work 13 hours. So I will give my body a rest, and then drag my fanny back in front of the TV on Friday, hopefully ready and raring to go.

And if it's not ready and raring, well, it will just have to hang in there and bear through the ride.

(not) weighing in on my week

I'm not weighing myself today, and you can't make me.

The week has been rough. My inner pendulum is swinging again. Everything within me is rebelling against restriction. The struggle has been intense, the mood heavy, the thought life consumed. I am fighting for peace of mind. I am getting closer, but I'm not anywhere near there yet.

I'm finding that, while the commitment to the writing is producing results in that part of my life, it is coming at a cost to other areas. Time, alas, is not a limitless resource. If I spend my time writing, I'm not spending it doing other things. Like, say, exercising. Which is a problem I've not yet determined how to remedy. My thoughts are a bit overwhelmed with it, as of late.

I've been thinking a lot, too, about this venue, and how to best use it. There may be some changes coming to how and what I post here. I think this is a good thing. It just is not quite clear yet what that will look like.

So between the low mood and the lack of exercise and the change of diet and the gray pallor of the day and the fear of the result, I am not weighing myself today. Which is, realistically, a victory. I have overruled the compulsion to seek comfort in the number on the scale. Today.

As for tomorrow, well, stay tuned...

the morning workout

(Subtitled: #@%$#*&%#@*#!!!!)

While five years of working out consistently has brought about a certain amount of discipline and routine, it has never brought about any type of desire or enjoyment. EVER. I keep waiting for that moment people talk about—I just couldn't wait to get to my workout. It felt so good to workout today. This experience eludes me. I workout because I HAVE to. I workout because if I did not, I would gain 50 lbs just by breathing. Truly. Writing, I enjoy. Creating art, I enjoy. Singing, I enjoy. Hiking, I enjoy. Reading, I enjoy. Working out? I do it because I MUST.

So this morning, because it is my writing day and I wanted to get a full six hours in, because I have to cart my kids to appointments after school, because I have a meeting at the church tonight, I got my warm, comfortable, almost pain-free body out of bed early and went down to a cold, damp basement and trudged away on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes when I could have been still in bed. For some of you, this will make you roll your eyes in the same manner as my pre-adolescent daughter. You do this daily. Well, good for you. I do not. I have chronic pain and I don't like mornings. This is not my norm. But I did it. I drug my butt out of my comfortable bed and made myself uncomfortable so that I can now plop my butt down in front of my computer in peace, knowing that I have battled the bulge already today.

The war is not over. But today's battle has been won, while it was still dark outside.

You have no idea what kind of a victory that is.

the first official work out of the year

Subtitled: "10 Reasons Not to Cry While On the Elliptical Trainer"


Despite some serious walking over the past few days and the discovery of kickboxing available to me on-demand via Netflix a week or two ago, getting my fanny back into gear for a serious workout was not my favorite thing I did today.


I've never been one of those weird people who LIKE working out. I LOVE to walk. Provided I have company, I can hoof it at a crazy pace for hours. I like spinning. Probably because I get to sit. And because my instructor would play Joan Jett while we climbed hills. THAT I can get into. I tolerate the cardio interval class at the gym. It's kind of almost like dancing, but with a lot more equipment. But strength training? I HATE it. After 15 minutes of lifting weights, I want to cry. After a full workout, I sometimes do.


That being said, I got back on the elliptical trainer today for 30 minutes of leg-numbing hi-lo intervals, then did an upper body workout just for kicks. And while I did not cry, I did not LIKE it, either. If I can walk tomorrow, or lift anything above my head, we'll be in good shape. Until Wednesday, when I torture myself yet AGAIN.


Remind me why I do this?

more of the same

This is the point at which I go crazy. (Nothing like jumping right in.)

I sat down tonight to a dinner consisting of a six ounce fish fillet, one cup of zucchini, one cup of asparagus, and three cups of plain salad greens. For the tenth day in a row. For someone who loves food as much as I do, this is tantamount to torture. The first night, it was pretty good. The second night, I cheated and put one tablespoon of dressing on my salad. By the fifth or sixth night, my portions were shrinking and my appetite exploding. By night ten, I could barely choke it down. I can’t eat any more.

Let me back up, as the big picture might be helpful. I have struggled with weight my entire life, sliding the little lever up and down the bar in increments that increase with each re-gain. Five years ago, with over 200 pounds on my five foot two inch frame, I determined it would not happen again. I was done. I was going to get to a reasonable, healthy weight and marry it for life.

Over the next year I lost 75 pounds and six dress sizes. At 140, I was in a size ten for the first time since probably junior high, and fairly comfortable with my stronger, trimmer, but still a little big-ish frame. Fairly. I filled my wardrobe with colorful, curve-accentuating clothes, and for the first time in a long time I felt okay. Not good, not out of the woods, but okay. And for someone who had not been okay for quite some time, okay looked pretty darn, well, okay.

I kept the weight off for four years, albeit with many points of struggle and frustration. But I kept it off nonetheless, and I was still hanging on to okay, if only by a thread.

Then came the half-marathon. The carb-craving-inducing monster that made me so hungry I could have eaten my God-awful plaid hand-me-down couch. Then came the injury, followed by the month of rest the doctor ordered right at the beginning of Christmas Cookie Season. Then came the vacation to Florida, and the four sinus infections in the last three months. Then came seasons two and three of Battlestar Galactica, delivered right to my mailbox in a pretty red envelope, paired with my increasing desire to sit on my tired, achy butt and not make myself in the least bit any more uncomfortable than I already was.

I gained ten pounds. My pants wouldn’t button, some wouldn’t even pull up. Tops wouldn’t meet comfortably in the middle—button amicably greeting hole without each pulling away from the other as if in great disdain. And so I did what anyone who has gained weight before would do. I panicked.

I reigned in my eating, when I wasn’t blind-sided by cravings for anything made out of starch of any kind. I tried to work out harder, when I could narrowly carve out the time and the energy to move a muscle or two. I tried to be reasonable. I tried to be moderate. I tried to be healthy. The scale didn’t budge.

Panic grew and spread like the layer of fat sprawled across my backside. My weight consumed my every thought—trying to figure out what to wear, what to eat, what to do. I was at a point of despair. So I did something desperate.

I went on a diet. A restricted-calorie, clean-eating, metabolism-bursting “lose ten pounds in three weeks” diet. I knew better. But desperate times call for desperate diets. I sucked it up and cut veggies and boiled chicken and broiled fish and I followed it 99% perfectly for ten days. The first five days, I lost four pounds. I was tentatively hopeful, but terrified to really let my mind go to anywhere vaguely resembling hope. I’ve been here before. I know the terrible truth. When push comes to shove, none of it matters. My body can’t be trusted.

The scale has read 150.2 for the last four days. I’m still following the diet. I’m exercising as I can. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do—I’m following the formula. I’m not losing any weight.

THIS is where I go completely crazy.