anniemiz

Workout Wednesday: Motivation, or lack thereof

Ugh.  So I was motoring along there for a while after the new year wrt activity and healthy eating.  Just moseyiing along, doing all the right things, eating all the right stuff, basically getting it all together.  And all along I'm thinking to myself, 'I've never kept this up for this long.  It's been a couple of months  now.  There have been days when the wheels came off before I was done with breakfast.  When is it the bottom going to fall out?" And by the bottom falling out, I mean 'When am I going to find myself parked on the couch with the remote and a pint of ice cream for several days in a row?'

Bc that's how it feels sometimes, like I just find myself doing that.  People talk about triggers, e.g., someone upsets them and they reach for the bon bons.  Or they've got tons of stuff to do so they snarf down a whole package of oreos.  I rarely can make that direct a connection; it just seems like I find myself in an unhealthy (wrt nutrition and/or activity) funk and have no recollection of how I got there.  I don't even see it sneaking up on me.  It's just all of a sudden I realize I'm off the wagon and it's been a few days since I fell.

So, finally, I found myself in that situation a couple of weeks ago.  Mike the Trainer Guy theorizes that I was setting myself up for the funk by thinking about it.  Not exactly sure what he means, but I think he means that my thinking about it as if it were inevitable kinda gave me permission to have/let it happen.  Again, I don't know if I understood him correctly or not; I may have that all wrong.

His other theory (again, IIRC; there was much discussion on the topic) was that it's a bodily response to a craving.  You know what, I really don't understand what all he said on this score.  It was more involved than just, say, craving chocolate and, since I don't remember/understand it well, I'll not put words into his mouth.

My personal theory is non-existent at the moment.  I thought that, by watching out for it I might recognize the funk before it hit and thereby avert it, but I missed it even so.  I didn't feel triggered by anything.  I didn't feel especially crazy-busy at the time (although I have felt crazy-busy since and I'm out of the funk).  Now, just bc I didn't feel these things doesn't mean I didn't feel these things, IYKWIM.  That is, just bc I say I didn't feel these things doesn't mean I didn't feel them; maybe I just didn't recognize them.

OTOH, in theory, I would like to be able to recognize it and save myself a coupla weeks of regression, plateauing, etc.  OTOH, in practicality, I think to myself, 'Okay, you lost 10 lb. in about 3 months.  Not the fastest and so you had a lull/backtrack there.  So what.  You did it.  You feel good.  Overall things are positive.  It's life.  Keep moving and, as long as you keep moving forward, don't worry about the nitty gritty.'

So, seeing as I currently have no idea what goes on when the funk hits, I guess I'll just go along with the practical approach and keep on keeping on.

Workout Wednesday: Space

So I'd been working out in the living room with Mike the Trainer Guy for some time now and I was sick of all the exercise stuff being out there in the room.  Kevin and I cleared some space in our most un-lovely basement for a workout area.  I got some of those thick, interlocking mats they use in martial arts classes (perhaps I unconsciously expect to land on the floor often) and we put them in that space.

 
Ignore that pile of kindling in the right foreground.  Kev cut the pieces to fit around the a/c thing.  Edison performed the QC inspection.  Miles and Lizzie also slunk into the basement while we were moving stuff down there.  They never get to go into the basement bc there's all kinds of dirty nooks and crannies and we don't want them getting tangled up in all the junk that's down there.  But they got to explore for a short while and,from all accounts, a good time was had by all.

 
So now everything's down there except the treadmill which is still on the third floor.  It's big, bulky and heavy enough that I don't know when -- if --that sucker will make its way to the basement.

There's lighting in the basement, of course, but there isn't any directly over that area.  There's some just outside of the area.  Right now, I'm using one of those lights you temporarily hang when you're working on the house, e.g., we used it this weekend while painting the inside of a dark closet.  Mike suggested getting more lighting and I might arrange for something to centrally light the area, but I gotta admit that I kinda like it not too bright.  I don't really want it to be as bright as, say, an office or bathroom.

Some people advised against using the basement for a workout area bc it is an old basement and it only has those high, tiny windows for natural light.  But again, I have to admit that I kinda like the dungeon feel.  I enjoy feeling like I'm withdrawing from the rest of the world when I go down there to do my thing.  No phone, no TV, no email, no doorbell, no nothing.

No one can hear me scream down there.

I am considering putting an old TV and DVD player down there.  There are DVDs I'd like to watch and I'd be happy having them in the background while I work out down there.  E.g., I just took out a DVD lecture series on cosmology.  I've had it out before and watched some of it with my butt firmly planted in The Comfy Chair, but I'd be happy to have it on while stretching, doing sit-ups, reps, etc.  Until I do put a TV and player down there, I can always watch it while on the treadmill.

Making this area was a good investment of time, space and money.  The stuff's always set up, i.e., I don't have to push the living room furniture out of the way anymore, so I can just noodle down there and do whatever I want...whether it's a whole hour of activity or short snatches of activity.  Just writing about it makes me want to go right back down there!

You don't see it here, but I did decorate the walls with big pictures of tuxedo cats from last year's wall calendar.  That actually made quite a difference; it made the space less drab and much more welcoming.  All in all, a good move.

Workout Wednesday: Ouch

Word is, I likely have a small tear in my right Achilles tendon.  I went to the orthopedist a couple of weeks ago.  He noodled around with my foot and figures that's the problem.  He suggested four things:

1. Aleve every day for a couple of weeks to see if that helps w/inflammation.  I dunno if he suggested Aleve in particular or if any NSAID is good.  I didn't think to ask at the time.
2. Physical therapy.  Still have to get that started.
3. Use those gel heel lift things.  Got those.  I dunno if they're really making a difference or if I'm looking for it.
4. And, finally, wear this attractive article on my foot at night:

And yes, those are snowman flannel pyjamas.  What of it?

I think this means I'm Officially Old.  I tried it for a coupla nights.  Seems I get part way through the night and then, at some point, I take it off in my sleep bc it's gone by morning.  It appears to be designed to treat plantar fasciitis, but I think it's used here to keep my foot in such a position overnight that the Achilles is stretched all night long.

I ordered it according to the instructions (basically, according to your shoe size), but I wonder if I need a smaller size bc my foot in it doesn't look like the snug fit in the pictures on the website or the paperwork that came with it.  And they talk about how you can walk a few steps in it if necessary; that makes it sound like walking in it should be quite difficult, but I don't have much difficulty walking in it at all.

I have to find out where to go, insurance-coverage-wise, for physical therapy.  I go in late tomorrow, so that's my charge for the morning: contact insurance, find out where I can go that's covered by my insurance and get on their appointment books.

It has helped quite a bit to avoid impact as much as possible.  Puts a bit of a crimp in workouts, but Mike the Trainer Guy comes up with creative alternatives.  I do still walk to work about half the week.  And I use the treadmill some days.  I wonder if that's good, bad or indifferent for my foot problem, but one can't really stay off their feet entirely, can one?  Stretching does feel very good for it and I expect the physical therapist will give me some homework involving stretching.  Mike always incoroporates some stretching into our sessions, but I should do it at home on my own, too.  Should, should, should.  So many shoulds in life sometimes. 

Anyway, it sounds like this could take months and months to clear up!  How boring.  Apparently, my left Achilles is pretty darn tight and a prime candidate for a similar injury, so I should do stretching and physical therapy to prevent that.  More shoulds.  I find shoulds to be very oppressive sometimes.

Workout Wednesday: Cred

I seem to have gotten my first workout-related injury, thereby immediately earning some serious workout cred (in my mind, at least).  This injury's worse than the bowling injury that beset my right middle finger for entirely too long, keeping me away from the lanes for over a year and putting a serious crimp in my bird flipping.  I think I did something to my Achilles tendon.  This website is very informative about Achilles injuries and notes the symptoms:

• Pain—aching, stiffness, soreness, or tenderness—within the tendon. This may occur anywhere along the tendon’s path, beginning with the narrow area directly above the heel upward to the region just below the calf muscle. Often pain appears upon arising in the morning or after periods of rest, then improves somewhat with motion but later worsens with increased activity.
• Tenderness , or sometimes intense pain, when the sides of the tendon are squeezed.  There is less tenderness, however, when pressing directly on the back of the tendon.
• When the disorder progresses to degeneration, the tendon may become enlarged and may develop nodules in the area where the tissue is damaged.

I have the first two; fortunately, I haven't noticed the third thing yet.  I started feeling sore about a month or so ago and mentioned it to Mike the Trainer Guy who cut out the impactful exercises.  In the past, we had discussed doing an outdoor session at the high school track, but never got around to doing it.  It came up again, but Mike said I prolly didn't want to do it what with my leg hurting and all.  I said, Let's do it!  How bad can it hurt?

We had the session this past Saturday and by that afternoon my leg hurt, as they say in the vernacular, like a mofo.  I did the RICE thing (rest, ice, compression, elevation) -- actually, I did the RCCE thing bc I didn't have ice cubes so used a bag of frozen corn kernels instead -- and that helped somewhat, but still!  And the next morning!  Who knew a body part could be so sore?!  Sunday, I woke up -- so far, so good -- sat up and swung my feet to the side of the bed and owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeee!  Merely hanging my leg unsupported in the air hurt!  I took more aspirin and did the RICE thing some more, but basically shuffled around the house like somebody's ogre sidekick.  Fortunately, it felt much better by Monday morning.  Oy.  I was just about to write, 'I'll never be that stupid again', but didn't bc that's not true.  I will be at least that stupid again and most likely more stupid, but perhaps I can confidently say I won't be that stupid in that particular way again.

Workout Wednesday: Wow

So.  Picked up again with workouts a week or so ago.  Mike the Trainer Guy asked me how I was digging the workouts.  I thought I noticed that the workouts were increasingly emphasizing cardio and Mike confirmed that he had changed things a bit.  This came up when he was talking about how the workouts - any activity, exercise, etc. - has to be fun or else you won't do it.  He asked me what I enjoyed about the workouts.  I really enjoy the weights.  When I work out regularly with the weights I always feel good: stronger, better posture, just generally more capable.

So the last couple of workouts have marked a return to more weight work and all I can say is, 'Wow', with an emphasis on the 'ow'.  I enjoy the actual weight exercises more than the strictly cardio stuff.  That's probably at least in part bc I'm not that good at the cardio stuff.  I mean, I do it and I do okay, but when there was more of an emphasis on cardio, in quanity and intensity, I found it very, very taxing.  And so I didn't look forward to it and had a bad attitude toward it.  Sure, I could change my attitude, but it might be easier and more productive to find cardio I like.

Now, Mike still incorporates cardio, but in slightly different ways.  E.g., these woodchopper things: feet apart; bend at the knees; hold a 10 lb. medicine ball lightly out in front; raise the ball from just outside my right ankle and then lift it up and across to my left side (then a set the other way).  It kind of mimics the move you make when you chop wood.  And by 'you' I don't mean anybody in particular.  And then there's always the classic jumping jacks, which I really didn't like at first.  Maybe I wasn't used to the impact, but my knees killed the next day.  But I'm used to them now and have fun jumping jack around the room, adding variations here and there to make it a little more interesting.  You can't go wrong with jumping rope either, although I do it at a pace more like when I was little, with that little double jump in between, not the boxer's rapid single jump.  I can't keep that up for very long.  I also like the shadow boxing bc it's fun.  It's very engaging in that Mike moves around and I'm to move around too, adjusting to better hits the mitts.  Plus, I get to punch stuff.  What could be better than that?

So it's great having two workouts with Mike per week.  What I have to work on is making my own activity on other days happen.  My appts. with Mike are like any other appt.: it's there to keep.  My own plans for activity are very vague and nebulous.  It would be good to figure out a way to make them more like appts. with Mike.  Perhaps I'll have some insight for next time.

Workout Wednesday: Busted. And I didn't even do anything.

And that was the whole point behind getting busted.  I worked out w/Mike the Trainer Guy tonight.  The last time I worked out with him was September 3rd -- 26 days ago.  In that time, I had the flu, I had a breast biopsy and Mike went to Italy.  So I was out of commission for a bit due to the flu and the biopsy, but I certainly wasn't out of commission for 26 days.  And Mike asks, what, pray tell, did I do workout-wise during those 26 days?

[cricket sounds]

Yup.  Nothing.  Zip.  Zero.  Zilch. Oh, sure, I went for a little walk here and there, e.g., to the carnival a couple of times over Labor Day weekend (where I ate zeppoles and funnel cakes), but that's about it.

So tonight we got back into the swing of things with (let's see what I can remember and these aren't in any particular order and most were multiple sets):

• shadow boxing - seems I do better when Mike wears the mitts and I hit them v. just swinging away at nothing; I think it just feels more natural actually hitting something (bc, you know, I do that kind of thing all the time)
• jumping jacks
• crunches w/weights
• dips
• lunges (oooooooooooh I feel this already)
• bicep curls w/the long bar
• presses w/the long bar
• something else w/the long bar that I forget the name
• on and off that damn bosu ball
• Superman!

So it was a good workout for getting back into things.  The weights did feel a little heavy tonight...hope to get past that soon.

Another thing I did not do for 26 whole days is write down what I eat.  I really find accountability is key.  I just stopped tracking it once I knew I wasn't going to see Mike for a couple of weeks...it's not like I'm going to read him two weeks worth of eats...so why bother tracking that whole time?  There is some logic to that...but it's subversive (as an aside, that's a really good word.  It sounds good: subsersive.  Say it with me: subverrrrrsive.). 

Sooooooo, back at it, working out with MtTG a couple of times/week and planning activity on at least 3 other days.  Of course, the eats journal.  I started another blog to track this stuff so that I can do it from anywhere in the world.   But it's a private blog bc I don't want my transgressions (miniature Reese's peanut butter cups anyone?) out there for all the world to see.  I'm self-critical enough for all of us...all 7 billion of us in the world.  The world can safely leave self-criticism to me.

Workout Wednesday: Not as painful as I thought.

That's a positive post title, innit?  Last Wednesday, I mentioned how I'd slacked off for quite a bit for 11 days.  I thought it might be tough working out last night after not only slacking off exercise-wise, but eating almost everything within reach, but it was not that bad.  And I'm only a little sore today.  I'm always sore the day after a session (and sometimes later that night!), but today wasn't worse than usual.

Later last night, I was thinking that it's sometimes refreshing to take break from exercise, healthy eating, perhaps anything you do for similar reasons, i.e., bc you have to or for your own good.  In a word: vacation.  Now, in this situation, I felt pretty comfy slacking off bc there was an end in sight: we had a session scheduled for last night (and I admit to hoping thinking I was coming down with something on Monday night and maybe I should cancel Tuesday's session, but did not).  I'm 99.999% certain that if we hadn't had a session on the books, I might never have got back on the wagon.

There's nothing like a little external accountability to get one back on the wagon.  Ideally, internal accountability should be enough, but we all know I'm weak that way. The other thing is that I never work myself as hard as Mike does so if he's coming over I can count on it being a kickass workout.

Kevin and I went for a walk around the neighborhood after dinner tonight.  Mike suggested what's now known as 'the Walmart walk', a trek into the hills section of town and including what Mike calls 'a good up', i.e., a rather steep hill.  The first time I did that walk a coupla months ago, I swear my heart was going to beat right out of my body like a cartoon character.  The walk we actually did had a coupla smaller inclines; it took about an hour, but we stopped a coupla times (to drop off some books for a neighbor who's currently on crutches, to drop off some newspaper plastic bags for neighbors who have dogs [i.e., poo bags], to chat w/my co-worker/friend/neighbor/fellow asshole Stephanie) so 1 hour less chat time and it was prolly really only 30 minutes.  That's going to have to do bc I just don't have the time to do these monster walks.  Sure, if I didn't want to do anything else tonight, I'd have enough time, but there are other things I want to do in life.

Found the equipment picture I couldn't find last week:

I'm pretty pleased with what I paid: $100 for the weight set and $125 for the bench.  As Kevin pointed out later, I prolly coulda got them for less than the asking price, but I think I was just so happy to get the stuff for less than new that I didn't even think to offer less.  And it's good stuff, too; the bench, especially: it's a tank.  Well, I think that's enough navel gazing for tonight.

Workout Wednesday: In the Beginning

Say hello to a new blog category: Workout Wednesday!  Recently, I somehow had the good sense to hire a personal trainer to teach me how to work out effectively and funly.  This category will help me:

1. track my progress
2. share my nascent workout skillz and experiencz

Right here is where I was about to insert a pic of my newly-acquired-via-craigslist-so-thrifty -- and green! -- weight set and benches, plus some other fun gear, but I can't seem to find the picture.  So.  Dig if you will the picture of:

• a basic weight set: 100 lb. in total; long bar and dumbbells; Joe Weider brand!
• a mat
• weight bench
• exercise ball
• jump rope
• shadow boxing: pair of gloves and a pair of mitts

This past Sunday, I did the following routine -- designed by Mike the Trainer GuyTM -- twice!

• shadow boxing - 3 min.
• jumping jacks - 50
• jump rope - 1 min. (it's harder than you think!)
• shoulders - 15 front raises on the bosu w/a 10 lb. wt.
• situps - 25 on the bench w/a 10 lb. wt.
• shoulders - 12 military press w/the long bar and 25 lb. wt.
• jump rope
• biceps - 12 dumbbell curls on the bosu ball (hateful thing!  hateful!) w/ 12.5 lb. wt.
• shadow boxing
• jumping jacks
• biceps - 12 long bar curls w/25 lb. wt.
• situps
• jump rope
• triceps - 12 pushups; these were not very deep, but it's getting easier to do a set of 12 w/o having to stop or falling flat on my face (hint: use a mat)
• jumping jacks
• shadow boxing
• situps
• triceps - 20 dips off the side of the bench

And let me tell you, those arm exercises came in mighty handy tonight.  Kevin and I went bowling as part of a fundraiser for the Parsippany Animal Supporters Society (PASS).  Bowling...what a pleasant pastime.  I might have to get my own shoes and get on the bowling league bandwagon.

But Mike is away for a few days and I'm booked on some of our regularly scheduled workout days and I have to admit I've been slacking off big time.  And the food!  I keep track of what I eat and every once in a while he has me read it off to him and let me tell you that while the trainer's away, the trainee has been eating everything not nailed down with a power tool...it would seem the entire world will soon be in mah belleh...from north pole to south pole and all points in between.  I gotta put on the brakes soon and repair the damage before next week when Mike gets back.  This is what I feel like: