No April Fool

I thought it might be a good idea to give some updates on what has been going on in my life lately, both the good and the bad. I did my weigh-in the morning of April 1st, and I was half a pound UP from where I was the first day of last month! I posted before about plateaus and about the fact that I was on one during the first part of March. Well, unfortunately that plateau lasted a good portion of the month; but rather than causing my weight to plateau, it actually went up, up, up until I had gained almost 7 lbs. Yikes! Given that, I'm grateful that I was able to get back down almost to the starting point, although I'm disappointed in my lack of overall progress.

As for my sleep experiment, after only getting to bed by 9:00 about 50% of the time, I decided to adjust it to  aiming for a 10:00 bedtime and a total of 8 hours of sleep a night. Even that has proven tough, but I'm working on it. I'm determined to see this experiment through to the end.

Interestingly enough, after several days of getting a full night's sleep, instead of feeling better, I felt like I had slipped into a full-blown depression. It was like my body felt like it was a good time to emotionally detox since I was finally giving it enough sleep. Depression=bad. I really don't like it. And after several months of dealing with some pretty severe mood swings, this was the last straw. I decided to be more proactive in addressing the issue. Any of you who know me know that I am not into just going to the doctor and getting a pill to fix my problems. Instead, I'm interested in getting down to the heart of the problem, figuring out what isn't working and why. In my search, I ended up in a natural medicine doctor's office, and he found that, among other things, my thyroid is not working well. So I started taking a natural supplement to support my thyroid, and within a couple of days I felt significantly better! I'm so excited and grateful to be feeling strong and whole again! So while I am still interested in getting to the bottom of why my thyroid was malfunctioning to begin with, at least I have taken a big step forward by discovering the problem and addressing it.

Finally, in reference to the 10,000 hours quandary I posted about a few days ago, I have decided to take this next month to focus on running, specifically Chi Running and Chi Running instruction. I have loved running for years. And during that time that I was debating about what to throw out and what to focus most of my energy on, I kept coming up with reasons why running wasn't right for me: it doesn't seem that important compared to some of the other options, I'm really slow, I don't have the right "look" for a runner (or a running coach), etc. But in the end I realized that if that is really my passion, it will lead me to far greater things and far greater joy than anything else that I try to force into the role of "my passion." So I'm going to test it and see if that really is my passion. So far I'm loving it.

Well, that's about all I have to report for now. I'll check in again soon.

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!

January's Results Are In!

This month has had a lot of ups and downs for me. And while I was not very good about posting regularly, and it may even have seemed that I had given up completely after my last pathetic post written on a very down day, I didn't. I kept going, never letting a day go by without exercising (except for rest days, of course, which are a very important part of any exercise program). And I did surprisingly well with my nutrition to the tune of 5 lbs. lost over the month! Yes, you read that right. I lost 5 lbs. in January! And I'm even happier to report that I shrunk 1.5 inches around my waist! So while I definitely had my setbacks over the course of the month and felt some days like for every step forward I was moving 2 steps backward, the persistence paid off. What a great lesson for me this has been. In the past I have gotten discouraged after 2 or 3 weeks when it didn't appear that I was making any progress, and with the discouragement came a huge hit to my motivation to the point that I stopped exercising or eating right or both. So what has made the difference this time? Well, I think there are a lot of factors involved, but here are just a few things I have recognized as making a difference this time around.

1) Weighing myself every day. I have always been strongly against this in the past because people tend to get too emotionally attached to the number on the scale. But what I found with myself is that weighing every day has actually helped me to decrease my emotional attachment to that number. Instead it serves to provide me with information about what/how/when I ate the previous day, and I no longer fear what number might appear when I step on that scale each morning.

2) Eating 3 meals a day with no snacking in between. I know this seems counter-intuitive because of what every personal trainer out there seems to be teaching, but this has helped me tremendously. I don't think we realize how many calories we are actually consuming in those in-between-meal snacks. Even though I definitely eat bigger meals now, my total caloric intake is lower, and my weight is dropping as a result.

3) A strong support system. Notice the word "strong." I love my twin sister dearly, and we have made dozens of goals together in the past several years. But despite how much we love each other, I would not necessarily say that we have been a strong support for each other--until now, that is. This time we have stopped having binges together when one of us is down, and we have set up small reward systems to help motivate us to keep going. We share our triumphs and setbacks with each other on a regular basis. I'm sure I would not have made it this far without my sis. So thank you, dear Sis.

4)Reviewing my goals. While I have set a million and one goals in the past, I often completely forget about them within a few weeks. But this time I have been reviewing them every single day, deciding what I can do each day to progress toward each goal, and finding small ways to reward myself every time I make a little bit of progress.

I can't say this is the formula for everybody out there, but for me these have made the difference. Will it make a permanent difference? I can't answer that yet, but I can say that I am optimistic about my future.