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!

One Marathon Down . . .

Wow! Has it really been an entire week since I ran my marathon??? I have definitely been remiss in my duty by not giving an update until now. Please forgive me. I'm still getting used to this blogging thing, and as any of you moms out there know, no matter how much fun blogging is, family takes first priority.

Just to recap, as I trained for this first marathon, I went into self-sabotage mode for a good 6 weeks or more, eating terribly and running very infrequently right up until a month before the race. At that point I kind of freaked out and kicked myself in the buns to get moving. For that last month, my runs and diet improved tremendously, and even though I knew one month of doing the right things wouldn't completely make up for an entire summer of doing the wrong things, I was still hopeful that I would get a decent time in the marathon. And admittedly, I still had dreams of qualifying for Boston floating around in the back of my head.

Well, perhaps needless to say, I did not qualify for Boston in this, my first marathon ever. But I still feel so proud of myself for finishing the race! Yes, I did finish, and I was crying as I stumbled across the finish line 5 hours and 15 minutes after the gun went off. I hurt soooo much, and I felt soooo proud that I had made it even though at times it was all I could do to keep moving. I am so proud of myself for pushing myself back into a run so many times in those last few miles when no part of me had any interest in running anymore. And I am so grateful and happy that, even though I started having stomach upset within the first few minutes of the race that then lasted through the ENTIRE run (I realized later that I had caught the stomach flu bug that had my 3-year-old throwing up 2 nights before the race), I still ran, and I still finished! So while I am not proud of the time I got on my first marathon--in fact, I'm really quite embarrassed about it--I am proud of myself for doing it and finishing it despite the setbacks caused by the lack of training and the stomach flu. As I look back on the whole experience, I feel very positive about the entire thing and very excited to do my next marathon.

My post-race recovery was extremely quick thanks mostly to Danny Dreyer and his Chi Running method. If you've never heard of Chi Running, you can find out more about it at http://www.chirunning.com/. I have been actively practicing Chi Running for about a year and a half now, and I'm completely sold on it. While I was so stiff immediately after finishing the race that I could only hobble, I recovered really quickly and had very little soreness in the days following the race. It was truly a miracle! I was expecting to hardly be able to move by Sunday or Monday, but instead I felt great! I did have some sore leg muscles, but they were mild and really only noticeable when I tried to walk down any stairs. That, my friends, is why I am so excited to become a certified Chi Running instructor (more info about that later)!

Finally, I would be extremely ungrateful if I did not take a few lines to thank my friend Kris for supporting me through this entire experience. Being the awesome friend that she is, she agreed to leave her family and drive up to the race city with me, where we tried not to stay up too late talking and giggling like school girls at a slumber party. She then got up at 4:00 am to help me get ready to go. And if that weren't enough, she drove her car up and, after running a few miles with some other friends of hers who were also doing the marathon, she met me at mile 18 and ran those last 8 miles with me, encouraging me and helping me to keep going at times when I thought I was going to die. Admittedly, I did threaten her life a few times during those last miles because she was just too dang cheerful! But in all honesty I am so grateful for her support and her friendship. I never could have done it without her and all of the other friends and family who were sending love and prayers my way that day.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to see how much improving my diet for the last month helped, and I have to say that if I had not changed my diet, I would not have been able to finish the race. I believe it was my whole foods way of eating that allowed me to keep going and fight off the flu bug enough to keep from throwing up or cramping up or collapsing in the middle of the race. My unsettled stomach caused me to not be able to consume more than a small fraction of the nutrition I brought with me on the run, but I still had enough energy to make it through 5+ hours of running! Healthy eating: I'm a big fan!

Week 1 Report: It's All About Consistency

Last week I mentioned in my blog that I was going to clean up my diet and get back on track for my marathon. It has now been one week since making that commitment. While I have not eaten flawlessly this week (it's hard to just stop cold turkey), I did WAY better than I have done lately, and I am feeling much better as a result. I did make 2 big mistakes, which I'll get to in a moment, that hindered my progress; but overall I did make progress. My weight is down a little, the pain in my achilles has subsided considerably, my energy level is up, and I feel much more emotionally on top of things. I feel more inspiration and focus than I was feeling before, and I feel much more on track to being prepared for my marathon (only 20 days away!).

The two big mistakes I made were first, I chose to take the day off from eating well on Saturday. I had been to an overnight mom's retreat (it was really awesome; it is actually meant for LDS homeschooling moms, and even though I don't homeschool my kids, I came away from it very enlightened and inspired; if you're interested in finding out more about it, go to momsretreat.org), and as a result I decided to take a retreat from healthy eating as well. That's one of my weaknesses that I am still working on correcting: taking vacations from eating right whenever I go on any sort of vacation. So Saturday turned into binge day for me, and it wasn't pretty. As a result, I gained back some of the weight I had lost earlier in the week, and I went back to feeling lousy for the next couple of days.

I realized--again--that when it comes to eating right, consistency is key! If we eat really well for a few days and then eat lousy for a day or two, we are seriously hindering our progress. Now don't get me wrong. I am in no way saying that you can never have a treat again. On the contrary, I believe the all-or-nothing approach is like trying to break up: If you're not emotionally ready, you are sooner or later going to rebound back and have a crazy binge of all the junk you've been so carefully or desperately trying to avoid. So consistency! Write it on your bathroom mirror so you won't forget. Or better yet, put it on the door of your fridge where you'll have to look at it every time you're going for that less-than-ideal treat.

The retreat I was at this weekend took place in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, and on Saturday morning we had the opportunity to go on a little hike and watch the sun rise from the tops of the hills. It was a beautiful and inspiring experience, and on the way back down, I was overtaken with the desire to run down. So I had a nice little run back down to my cabin and felt very satisfied by the time I got to the bottom. Unfortunately, my achilles did not feel quite as satisfied. In fact, it was so not satisfied that I found myself limping around for the next several hours. I suppose trail running was not the brightest idea I've had this week given my already tender achilles tendon. That was the other big mistake I made that accounted for not quite as much progress as I had hoped to see by today. It is feeling better now, but this little experience has reminded me of the need to listen to my body more.

So in summary, I would call this week a success in that I made progress in the areas I was working on, but I definitely didn't get the A due to a couple of poor choices. That's okay, though. Life is all about learning from our mistakes, so forward march!