Plateaus

Getting fit is hard work! Anybody who tries to tell you that it's easy is either lying through their teeth or has

never truly tried to do it before. Or they're selling you some diet pill that down the road will turn out to cause cancer or heart damage or both. The first two months of the year I worked my tail off, both in the exercise arena as well as the nutrition arena. I was pushing myself hard and being very vigilant about what I ate. And it was hard. It's hard to decide every day that you're going to get up and work out even if your 4-year-old was in your room at 1 in the morning asking for water and then you couldn't get back to sleep for the next three hours. It's hard to pass up that brownie 9 times out of 10 (don't want to put myself into deprivation mode after all) and take the time to make a healthy meal as often as possible even though you know your kids are going to whine about it--again. So it's not terribly surprising to me that I've slacked off somewhat these past 2 weeks. My eating has really gone downhill--lots of treats, not enough vegetables. My exercise has been mediocre at best--I'm still doing it (most days) but I'm not putting quite as much effort into it as I was before. And I'm "escaping" more often, which means getting to bed way too late and waking up too tired to exercise or even to look forward to the new day.

And my weight has stopped dropping. Shocker, right? I lost a total of 11 pounds in the first two months of the year--11!--and now I am fluctuating between the same 2 or 3 pounds, unable to break through the 140 barrier into the 130s. I have officially hit a plateau. However, instead of whining about how I can't seem to lose weight, I am choosing to look at things as they really are. I have been a big slacker these 2 weeks, and it's absolutely no surprise to me that my weight has not continued to drop. It's disappointing, perhaps, that I can't lose weight without working; but not surprising.

I've been thinking today about what a plateau really is. If I were hiking up a steep mountain and part-way up I came to a plateau, I'm sure I would be happy and relieved to be there. The ground is flat, after all, which means less work and a chance to rest a little before I continue the upward climb. However, if the ground stays flat forever, I will never reach my destination. One way or another, the only way to get to the peak is to go up. And as nice of a reprieve as the plateaus are, the more there are, the longer it will take me to reach the summit. Seeing it from this perspective, I am recognizing that plateaus are actually an important part of my progress toward my goal. I do need a chance to rest a little after working so hard. But I don't want to stay here too long because that goal is still calling.

This little analogy is helping me to not beat myself up about these lazy last 2 weeks. Perhaps they are just what I needed to give me time to rest and find renewed motivation and dedication to my goal. And I do feel motivated again. I feel excited to keep moving forward, more excited than I have in weeks, actually. Hopefully the next plateau will not come for at least another 2 months. And when it does come (which I recognize now will be a good thing), I will take that time to relax and renew so that I can be even stronger once I start heading uphill again. Forward, march!

Exercise for the Brain

As I was literally spoon-feeding my 3-year-old son his breakfast this morning, as I do with at least a portion of every meal of every day, I once again found myself fast-forwarding 15 years and imagining myself feeding my 18-year-old his breakfast before he drives off to school or work for the day. I wondered if his wife will be willing to keep feeding him his meals when she takes on the responsibilities of being married to him. Should we include that in the marriage contract? Now, this is not meant to elicit comments about my bad parenting. I actually want to talk about this habit that I would guess many of us have of projecting ourselves into the future. While this is not necessarily a good thing when I am seeing my 9-year-old as a juvenile delinquent 7 years down the road because he runs off to play with friends instead of doing his chores today, or my 7-year-old flunking out of school and not being able to keep a job because she forgets to turn in a homework assignment, I do think it can have its uses if we choose to change the vision.

Our minds have so much power, more than we realize. If we will take that ability to project into the future and just change the picture a little, it becomes a very powerful mental exercise. If, for example, you lack motivation to do physical exercise at all, start envisioning yourself as someone who likes to exercise and who looks forward to getting up and doing something active every day. The more you visualize the future you want to create, the more you will lock that into your subconscious and get the wheels in your head moving so that that vision can start to be created. Most of what we do every day is controlled by our subconscious thoughts, so if we can just lock those more positive thoughts into our subconscious mind, the things we do when we are on auto-pilot will more likely be things that help us reach our goals. And in our conscious mind, visualizing what we want our future to look like will keep us motivated to keep working toward our goal. 

So take 10 minutes today and try it. Visualize something that you would like to see in your life, whether it’s a healthier body, a better job, an intimate relationship, etc. and paint a picture in your mind of just how it will look. How do you feel? What are you doing as a result of this change? Where do you see yourself? What are the sights, sounds, and smells, surrounding you? The more detail you put in, the more you will be able to lock it in. Take a few minutes to do this every day, and see how your life starts to change. You may surprise yourself!

P90x Week 4

Today marks the end of my 4th week doing P90x, which also means weigh-in and measure day as well as fit test update. Before I get to all that, though, I want to review the past 2 weeks since my last post.

Week 3 went relatively well for the first part of the week, but by the end of the week I started feeling really discouraged because I didn't feel like I was seeing any results. But I also realized that I had missed reading my scriptures for the past few days. For those of you who are not religious, this may seem odd and totally unrelated to exercise and fitness. But for me, my relationship with God is central to everything I do in life. The more I am able to enlist God's help in even things that might seem unimportant to Him (although I believe that if it's important to me, it's important to Him because He loves me so much) and the more I have faith that He will help me succeed, the more successful I am. So as I study the scriptures and pray, I receive insight and inspiration, for example, about how I can organize my time more efficiently to fit in all that I need and want to do during the day, such as exercising as well as spending quality time with my children. Anyway, I hadn't been reading my scriptures, so I wasn't feeling as close to Heavenly Father or feeling the help of His Spirit, and I just felt down. So I recommitted to making that a priority every single day, and I've been feeling much better as a result.

I also started to lose motivation to keep going with my exercise and fitness because I didn't feel like I was seeing the results I wanted to see by this time. But I immediately stopped myself from thinking that way and took the time to realize that even if I I'm not seeing results yet, that doesn't mean that improvement isn't occurring. I know that my body is becoming stronger and more fit every single day that I exercise and eat well and that eventually I WILL see big results. I recognized also that I have often given up by this point in any program I commit to because I get sick or injure myself and have to stop working out. But this time I am at a level both physically and emotionally to handle the strenuous exercise schedule I am following without burning out or getting hurt. These realizations have renewed my motivation and kept me going.

Another big help is my commitment to doing EFT every single day. I have tapped about my weight concerns, about my concerns that I'll get injured, about eating right, about cravings, and about so many other things, and I've done it just about every day since starting the P90x program. I have never been this consistent with EFT before, and I am noticing a huge difference. Whenever some big emotional issue looms up and threatens to sabotage everything I'm trying to accomplish, I have managed to weather it fairly well and not let it overwhelm me thanks to tapping about it. That's not to say I don't get down and discouraged some days, but those feelings last for a few hours rather than days or weeks, and I am able to pull myself up and forge ahead really quickly. I can't wait until I am trained to help other people deal with their emotional blocks this way. I know it is a powerful tool, and I really love the idea of helping others transform their lives both physically and emotionally.

It didn't hurt also that this was a lighter week in my training due to periodization (changing up routines from time to time to keep your body from getting too used to any routine), so I was able to give my body a little bit of a break.

So now to the results at the end of week 4: I'm down 2 more pounds today, and I've lost several inches over my entire body, including a half inch from my waist! I was able to do 4 pull-ups (that's right: FOUR!) up from 1.5 a month ago, and I was improved on every other part of the fit test as well (except for the heart rate maximizer, but I attribute that to a dying hr monitor battery the first time I did the test). Hooray! I feel like getting through that big wall of resistance I hit last weekend was like a test. Once I passed it by not giving in and giving up, my body let go of a bunch of fat and basically took a big step forward in its level of health. I feel so excited that I am seeing results, especially when I've been working so hard. I'm proud of myself and excited to see how much more I can achieve!

I have improved so much and felt so good through it all for the most part that I'm actually going to move up to the classic P90x, which is a little more intense than P90x lean, the program I've been following so far. I will start with month 2 of that program and follow that for the rest of the 90 days since I started. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

P90x Day 13

As of this morning, I've made it through the first 2 weeks of P90x workouts combined with healthier eating (Sundays are my day off). Overall things have been going well, and I'm excited to move forward. I have had a few ups and downs this week, though.
First of all, at the end of last week, at weigh-in time I had lost 3 pounds! I was feeling really good about how much better I was looking even after just one week. I imagine what I was experiencing was no more water retention thanks to the healthier foods I was eating. I was fine with that, though. You have to start somewhere after all.
This week has been a little tougher. I've struggled with more cravings and more hunger, something I didn't experience at all last week. I think part of it may be my body adjusting to a higher activity level as well as just my regular hormone cycle highs and lows. Part of it too, though, I believe has to do with how much I've been focusing on that and stressing about it. I did so well the first week and dropped that weight so easily that this week I started feeling all of this anxiety about every single thing I put into my mouth: "Is this going to make me gain weight?" "Are my portion sizes too big?" "Am I not eating enough and slowing down my metabolism?" "Is this really the best thing for me to be eating right now?" etc. I think I stressed so much about it and focused so much negative energy on it that it was constantly on my mind, causing me to think about food more and thus feel more hungry more often. By the weekend I had added back two of those pounds that I dropped last week.
On another note, this week I had a colonoscopy done on me. Six years ago I went in for one, and the doctor found polyps in my colon, something unusual in someone as young as I was at the time. As a result, I now have to go back every 5 years or so to get another colonoscopy. So this was my return appointment. On the upside, I have improved my eating habits and overall lifestyle choices so much that I knew he wouldn't find any polyps this time, and I was right! Everything looked great.
On the downside, the nasty, vomit-tasting stuff I had to drink to clean out my system in preparation for the colonoscopy combined with the anesthesia given to me during the procedure did a number on my system. Now, even though almost 3 whole days have passed since the colonscopy, I still don't feel quite right. I've been so tired, and I seem to now be fighting off some bug. Plus my body doesn't seem to be handling any food I give it very well. Every single time I eat now, I feel bloated and stuffed, only to feel quite hungry again within a couple hours. I think this weird reaction probably contributed to gaining back those 2 pounds this week.
Despite that, I am still glad I had the colonoscopy done. It was a testament to me that the way I'm eating now, i.e. a plant-strong diet, very little animal-based protein, no refined sugars, and very few processed foods truly are helping to create health and longevity in me. It really has been a long road of trial and error to finally find the right eating lifestyle for me, but I am grateful for how much I've learned along the way, and I'm excited to be doing something to share that knowledge with other people! (Did I mention that I signed up to be a Beachbody coach? I am so excited about it! Check out my website at http://beachbodycoach.com/coachdkmom. Beachbody is a great company with some really fantastic products!)
So, moving forward into week 3, I intend to really focus my energy on what I'm doing right and the success I've already had (like making it through 2 whole weeks!) rather than stressing about what I might be doing wrong. To help with this I will focus a lot of my EFT exercises on having confidence in and love for my body no matter what.
I'm also going to continue using a new nutrition product that I've recently discovered called Shakeology. I am really excited to see the results this new protein/nutrition drink will bring me. So far I've only been using it for about a week, but I really like the taste of it, so it helps me stay away from the sweets because I know I will be getting some Shakeology later in the day.
Third, I am going to focus on getting 8 hours of sleep a night whenever possible so I don't end up in overtraining mode. I am confident that as I continue to exercise, get enough sleep, and eat right, my body will be back to 100% very soon.
Week 3, here I come!