well almost....

Temptation is a powerful seductress that I have limited powers against.  My Guy hurt his back, so I went and got him some wine and food so he could relax and deal with the pain.  On the Fabulous side - I only had two glasses of wine (small pours) - which is a minor miracle and ate really well (rather than fried zucchini and pasta -- wanted badly).  I realized that letting My Guy refill my glass is good if I want no moderation or control in what I drink because the glass never empties - however when I do it...there is some control imparted.  Well at least last night.

My guy would have set me up, made sure I was good and then gone out running.  I on the other hand did nothing.  Work, TV the bit...but used it as a way out, which was a shame because before I knew he was hurt I was pretty ready to go face my demons.  He was all pathetic and my subconscious couch potato screamed BINGO!!

Today at lunch I could have had a beer - because I plan to drink tonight - but didn't.  I could have run this morning - but didn't.  A lot of mixed things going on but overall - trying to be better.  I would love to say I will run in the morning but I have an 8am meeting which means - HELL NO.  So tomorrow night - while My Guy is at his running coach I have to find the muster to do it alone.  Exercise in absences of being pushed out the door.  If I make it through some of this stuff, major hurdles and habits will be demolished...I did say if!

Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya Tomorrow! You're always a day away

Tomorrow is going to be a great night.  Beatles tribute band, friends and alcohol.   Tonight is going to be another wrestling war with the beast within and I hope I do better tonight than I did last night.  I can hear the voices already whispering about the heat, the work, the misery -- however today was not as sucky a day as yesterday so I feel more prepared to wage war against the inner couch potato.

Stew keeps reminding me to live and love the here and now.  He is right I probably should not exercise when I am pissed off but sometimes it helps to face the demon right in the eye and make a stand.  Last night I did NOT want to exercise and wanted a way out of working towards my goals.  By doing it regardless of my own voices desired I looked the devil in the eye...and survived - although it was not pretty - ask My Guy if you have doubts.

The trick is that I have created habits that prevent me from doing the things I want to accomplish.  I have well defined scripts that get right at the heart of me and eat away and my motivation and persistence.  The now is great, but I keep selling tomorrow for now and am disappointed tomorrow when I could not finish my marathon or my half marathon or a 5 Miler.   The problem with goals is how much do you want them?  Should they get in the way of today?   If you live your life now, can you plan for tomorrow?  Should you?

There is stuff I want to do even though right now I am doing pretty well.  My life is actually very good right now minus a few minor bumps.  I just want to get some of these thing I have always wanted to do done...the reason I have not done them...they are really hard.  The easy stuff I already managed to knock off the list already.  The stuff that is still on has some strong kick ass martial art type demons protecting them...people it is going to be a bumpy ride.

Anyone seen my inner athlete?

unraveling at day 3 not a good sign.  What do I want to do tonight...  have a nice big glass of wine, put my feet up veg on some TV and work ...like I always used to.  Tonight I actually got pissed that I had to go "Work"-Out.  You know they call it that for a reason - because it is work and it does suck.   A stressful day, tired, full of angst - sorry folks running or exercise just does not sound like a good time to me.  In fact, it sounds like more friggin work that I absolutely do not want to do.

I had a "run" which was small and pathetic and I didn't even run the whole thing because the war games in my mind about being tired and angry were stronger than my will to beat on my body.  I know this awesome woman she has a blog called Ramblings of a Regular Jane in Training.  Now I love this lady because she is amazing but if she is a regular jane, my ass is grass.    She has 2 kids, full time job and a dog and exercises all the time literally morning and evening most weekends getting up at ridiculous hours to get all of it down.  Of coarse she is in amazing shape and does fabulous in her Tri's, but Regular - no way.  

I am regular jane - someone who struggles to want to exercise and can't always win the mind games to motivate myself.  My Guy is one of "them" - decides he is going to do it and just does it.  I am somewhere in the middle - swearing and bullshit and doing a crappy job but not on the couch.  Some days I just want to surrender and say fuck it...but for some sadomasochistic reason I keep trying.  I may not have motivation but I have this dogged persistence to just be irritated enough.

I should run in the morning so I have the night off to relax, but I only need to refer you to this morning posts to conjure in your mind some of the intense whining I would do having to get up at 5:00 to "work" out.  I think it is my only hope so I get through this work all day work all night anger, but I bet I am a world of fun in the morning.

I don't wanna get up

The alarm goes off, well not the alarm the puppy and he wants to get up and play but I feel tired and sleepy and just want to stay in bed.  The snooze button becomes my best friend, trying to play with the pup and keep my eyes closed.  Anything for just another 5 minutes.  Although I should come clean...I am not talking 4 or 5am, it is 6:30 am and I still feel whiny about having to get up.

This is what I remember is the really hard part about starting to exercise, the exhaustion.  Just that one hour of exercise last night and bam I feel like a truck ran over me.  Honestly I felt this way last week when all I was really doing was not drinking.  It was not until Thursday that I felt like I wanted to get up and felt refreshed.

All the guru's say that exercise makes you less tired and I seem to remember that being true just not in the beginning when you are desperately seeking motivation to actually do it.  I have a dream of actually working out in the morning instead of at night.  I used to run in the morning and loved it because I was done with it all day and the mornings tend to be cooler and nicer than the afternoons/evenings.

The lure of staying asleep in bed is just so strong...curled up under the blankets my eyes closed refusing to start the day.  How do I pry my sleepy resistant body out of bed and make it go exercise?  How will I not succumb to the whining my mind will do today, maybe tomorrow about being too tired to exercise?

My Runner's World quote of the day is really good:

Don't be concerned with what you can't do. Work on what you can do - then count your blessings.  - Alan Robinson, 56-year-old partially paralyzed marathon runner 


Right?  Paralyzed marathon runner...and I complain about 1 hour of exercise.  

Gold star for me today!

That's right I was a rock star today.  It is only day 2 but I had one of those days were it all went as I hoped.  My day was  not too painful and relatively successful.

I had a great conversation with my son that was not only interesting but we started talking about his future in a way that made me happy we could talk so openly.

I ate well - I should have had breakfast but ran out of time, but I avoided the Jelly Bellies, Chocolate "Granola" bars, and all the other crap in the kitchen.

My run was much better than yesterday and although still not where I want to be, I sensed I could get back on this horse and be successful.  Not only that this is the first time that I got home from work and went for a run.  No negotiation for tomorrow or not to do it, just did it.

Oh - and not even a hit of desire for a glass of wine.  Although after my dinner at Craigie on Main last night (FABULOUS) I am not totally surprised.

All other angst for now be gone and I am just happy that today was a rock star day.

Maintenance versus Repair

I am bad about maintaining things...my teeth, my body, my car, my house... I know it is cheaper to maintain something that to let it run down and then have to do a big fix, but constantly in my life I wait until it is bad, really bad...unavoidable and then have to pay the big money or investment of something to get it fixed.

I wish I had just maintained my physical health rather than having to fix it.  I would love to trade in and get a new model that is in reasonable shape and I PROMISE I would maintain it.  Wouldn't that be awesome?  If tomorrow I just started running a 8min mile and all I had to do was just keep it up...I would be ecstatic.

So if I follow that logic through...why when I start getting better do I stop and go back to letting it all go?  How quickly I forget the PAIN to get back in to shape and just figure magic fairy dust will keep my muscles and ignore the obvious signs of flab forming.

I read this IAMA on Reddit about a horder and it is really fascinating to me because the frozen feeling she reports is often how I feel about doing things and although I am the opposite of a horder (I overthrow away - seriously I often recycle documents and get rid of things it turns out I need) I know that feeling that comes over me that is just paralyzing and puts me in a state of complete inaction.

My son and I were talking today about a strange stream of consciousness at lunch today. ...about our sense of time and if it is underdeveloped in humans, to the impact of connected on the internet but disconnected from people, to the reason that people go insane in solitary confinement, to the loss and impact of that loss of creativity... to my typical rant and rave about society having too much fluff and feeling completely unsatisfied which explains our weight, our eating and drinking habits and our debt.

We are all stuck somewhere...it is hard to get unstuck...and once unstuck ...it seems like it is hard to stay unstuck.  Maintenance may be easier conceptually but some how it takes the need of repair to drive me to do anything.

Master of the Obvious

Lesson learned from today's run .

1) Its frigging Hot and Humid outside.  I do not do well in the heat.

2) What you head and drink the day before matters.

3) Telling yourself right before your run to NOT think about your run, makes you think about your run the whole friggin time.

4) Run with My Guy is really motivating and keeps me going, without him it is harder.

So #2   - Let's review yesterday's eating/drinking:

Brunch - Huevos Rancheros, (2 fried eggs, some beans, 1/2 Cheese Quesadilla) jalapeno corn bread, 2 margaritas and 1 cappuccino

Dinner/Snack-ish - Chips and Salsa (only a half a basket between the two of us), 3 margaritas

Movie Snack - Shared popcorn with M&M's sprinkled in and a Slurpie (wild cherry)

Post Movie - Half a bottle of red and Half a bottle of white wine.  Pepperoni slices.

The good news - I got out there and did not spend the day talk about how I needed to go for a run.  Another upside - I have a great deal of room to improve :)

Game on my friends

Today is the day a few friends and I start our contest about getting back into shape. God I need it.  It is basically a daily point system that at the end of every month someone wins and the third month we have overall winner.  The prizes are $90 each month and $150 overall, but it is not the money that matters it is the accountability.  Having to say to someone else - either yeah I worked towards my goals or nope I blew it off.  So let it begin - GAME ON!

So I did my usual to prepare for this type thing - bought new gear.  My sneakers felt trashed and I bought some a few months ago that seemed to just kill my feet.  Arch Support and some stabilization and these new sneakers "should" be better.  Also bought a hydration pack for water because we are supposed to be doing long runs and really after 3 or 4 miles not having water really sucks.  We have tried belts and hand held water bottles, this small hydration pack is the last of the current options - so lets hope we like it.

Now all I have to do is gather the muster to want to run.  So i can see my running this morning (good thing) but now sure how far.  It is such a mental hell war for me when I am running.  If I think about the run, when I am running I feel tired, pain, should stop, cannot keep going....so the goal is to not think about running while running.  Which as you can imagine - is kind of hard.  My mind surfs to just about everything and the comes back to running.  It is almost like meditation really.  In meditation you are not supposed to think about anything.  When you realize you are thinking about stuff, you are supposed to just acknowledge you were thinking and then stop.  I do the same thing with running - except for at the end when it sucks and I want it to be over and all I can think about is every step I am taking.

I do wish I felt a little better this morning to go for this run.  After not drinking all week (Monday - Thursday) we hit it hard Friday and Saturday or we did our normal which is quite a bit of drinking.  This morning I woke up with a headache, stomach unhappy (late night pepperoni slice eating) and I feel so dehydrated and dry that drinking water makes me thirsty.  God I miss being younger and not feeling the impact of drinking.  It will be interesting if I change my overall drinking habits.  I missed waking up like I did on Thursday - rested, not dying for water, no headache.  If I drink all weekend - will the weeks just be recovery every time?  Moderation is not my strong suit and My Guy fills a wine glass faster than anyone I have ever seen.  This makes it seem I get crazy drunk, not so...but it still has a wallop of an impact.  Definitely counter to the healthy in shape goals I have set for myself.

Anyways time to go put all that gear to use and go for a run - counts as 1 point and will burn off some of the calories from the alcohol, m&m's and pepperoni from last night.

Mind the gap

Up early and I am at a loss.  I checked facebook, read my blog feeds, checked work and my mail, browsed Reddit and in the background I am watching a movie and in the end I am just not sure what to do any more.

When you grow up, who are you suppose to be?  All the hours hanging with the kids and now the kids have literally left the building.  Work used to fill the gaps but now there is nothing but gaps and work doesn't have enough legs to hold up my life alone.

I whine about this a great deal ...the loss of of purpose.  The feeling that I do not know who I am really.  How can that be?  Over 40 - had a lifetime of experiences, two beautiful children, a respectable job and I feel lost?   That is ridiculous really...but I guess this is what they call a mid-life crisis.  Things are put in a different perspective and you suddenly wonder.. about it all.

Yeah Me!

That is right I am going to blow my own horn.  Not because of my awesome race time - because believe me it was not pretty but because I managed to quell and silence the screaming of how much I suck through my race.  I have not trained and I have failed at most of my races in the last few months, so this is a pretty huge accomplishment. 



Things I did not do:
1) Apologize a gazillion times for how much I suck.
2) Beg My Guy to go ahead without me
3) Keep looking behind me to see how far behind I was
4) Get pissed off at myself for how much I suck.

Things I managed to do:
1) Thank My Guy for being so supportive 
2) Focus on trying to do as well as I could
3) Try to enjoy (even though I was dying) the run.

So pretty damn proud of myself because honestly ...that is huge for me.  Won the war...no way...but small steps need to be rewarded and acknowledged.  Of coarse, there are many battles left to fight and this morning I felt my crazy mind running away from me.  So I did pretty good ...I could do better....I could totally figure out an awesome training plan and get right back where I was and probably run my marathon in 10 weeks.   My other side starts with the insanity of but you cannot do that, you are tired, you suck, you don't have that kind of will power, 10 weeks - ARE YOU INSANE!

My mind literally becomes a runaway train between the hard ass that will do it and the wimp that will totally not do it.  Exhaustion comes over me as I have split brains fighting amongst themselves with me on the sidelines watching a duel of wits - literally.

This morning I thought I would provide some theme music to how i feel today...but not be one of those annoying sites that auto plays it.  - Enjoy.

• Runaway Train by Soul Asylum

More Soul Asylum music on iLike

How I feel right now...

Stop screaming at me!!

I have a race tonight and the nerves are already starting.  It is only a 5 miler and yet I know it will be tough for me.   I have serious performance anxiety on top of knowing I am in horrible shape right now.  I feel like everyone is faster and better and some how my slowness actually bothers them.  I feel like apologizing to the race volunteers as I am one of the last to pass them by.

All this anxiety about how other people feel about my running makes me struggle to enjoy running even more.  My guy tells me to not worry what others think and to get out of the mental battle and just enjoy the run.  How do I do that?  The hardest part about running for me is staying out of my head.  It is one of the reasons I listen to music to try to ignore the mental screaming about how I suck, how I can't do this, how embarrassing it is, how I should not be out with these "real" runners.  Man - it makes me tired just thinking about it.

Maybe tonight I will try changing the habit and just ignore that crappy side of me that keeps yelling at me all the time.  Is it possible to suck and still enjoy it?  How is suck defined - by me? by others?  Is trying really and being slow better than not being there at all?

Grammar Nazis be warned!

WARNING!!  If you have grammar nazi tendencies this is not the blog for you.  I am not a details person and really grammar is a detail to me.  I will use the wrong tense, the wrong word, incomplete sentences and make up my own words.   If it frustrates you or causes you stress...please just walk away. 

Motivation in the strangest places.

For the love of god this is exactly how I felt today.  Gaining weight sucks for a variety of reasons, but a big one is that your cool sexy underwear turns into a torture device. Walking around trying not to pick your underwear out...thrilled when you finally get home and pull them off off and freedom in the granny pants because it covers the jiggly mass that used to look good. Another good reason to motivate.

Don't be a hater

I hate to admit this but I love planning...planning everything.   The races to run, the exercise programs, the motivation events.  Seriously I get off on figuring out what I need to do to get back into the swing and get top of my game.  

Google calendar is my best friend in this manic planning phase.  New calendar - check.  Running, weights, swimming, races - check all in there.  Right now I have found two new races and a training plan.  

Then the bubble burst and reality strikes.  I realized suddenly that tonight, not only do I have to lift weights...but I am not drinking. BOO!!! I am tired, hungry, stressed out....really P90x Chest & Back! ACK!!  

How can planning be so awesome but the actual work be so...well...sucky.  I might whine about this a ton so you should prepare yourself....How do I get to the point that loving the exercise doing is more awesome than the planning?  I went 30 days into P90x, good eating and running regularly and I dropped it like a hot potato. (I always worry I will do a Dan Quayle on potato) 

I was reading this Habit Change cheatsheet and realized I am good at most of these 29 steps because they are all super mental.  It is the doing and sticking that is the real hard part.  I have read that you have to not hate it to learn to love it.  Ok that makes sense because you have to start more neutral...give love a chance type thing.

Habits are interesting...do you love them just because you get used to them? What about habits you have had for years and then just realize one day you are not doing it anymore?  It wasn't conscious choice or a decision making progress but just something with time that slipped away.  If I understood Aristotle correctly, even virtue was really just a habit.  You just did it because you should..not for reason.

Maybe I have to stop caring why and if I love exercise and just do it (Nike Ad) and forget how I feel about it. I guess I gotta stop being a hater.   Hmmm.. that is something to think about.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.....

So I should be happy with myself because I went out running for the first time in ages, so you think I would be all YEAH I am doing good.  But no, that is not how I feel.  I am pissed off and depressed and have started the mental beatings that tear me up one-side and down the other.  On another note - I am not sure where that saying comes from but ...it works.  I am slower now than I was when I started in the spring.  I ignore the fact that I was in my vibrams (that hurt my feet and i will talk about later) and I had not run in forever...but that is really no excuse, not to my self-critic and really I still just sucked.

I was so close to kicking my goal's ass in the spring.  For the love of (insert deity here) why oh why do I start to succeed and then just let it all go.  I have decided using the internets to diagnose me that I have a fear of success.  Every time I build up steam and start to make a real change in my life, I suddenly forget all my goals and just go crazy.  I am not making this up, even Psychology Today talks about it in this article.  Honestly I hate this stuff (yeah I know I was a psych major) because I want just get over it.  Trust me there are tons of articles in the web to help you releasing your blockages.  Life is too frigging short to get in your own way...please!  Still it is hard to ignore the pattern of goal setting, some success and then turn into the guy from Memento that has no idea I had a goal or exercise program.  What wine and feasting is not in the plan?  What plan?

So here I am...day 2.  I ate a little better, I did a little exercise, I diagnosed myself...now onto my math problem of my contest with my friends.  If Friend A has 4 goals and Friend B has 6 goals, how do you stack rank the results in a fair manner to see who did a better job meeting their goals?  Seriously anyone has an answer I would love to know!

A new day...or an old one take 100

I am constantly starting programs, creating plans, trying to persuade myself to do the things I "want" to do. First problem - I do not really want to do them. Yes I want to lose weight, be in shape, look like that 30 year old did in her bikini on Sunday. OMG I want to be able to run half marathons with relative ease, workout in the morning and night, be that girl that is just non-stop going, exercising and looking fabulous. But that is a lie really. I want to be the girl that eats great food, drinks lots of wine, is chilling and relaxing and enjoying the day. These two wants are diametrically opposed and I end up just hating myself. The one side hates that I am sloppy and overweight, the other side hates that I work all the time be it work or exercise.

My real problem is despite what I read and inspirational quotes I read, I do not really enjoy working out. I hear all these people talk about how they love to run, or feel so much better afterwards, or get "addicted" to working out. Seriously, I couldn't be one of those people that got "addicted" to working out. I am addicted to a lovely glass of wine and some beautiful food - not sweating, hurting and beating up on my poor body.

Find the exercise you can enjoy - I hear that a great deal. Dudes- I don't like any of it. It's a pain in the ass and frigging hard work. So I have to resign myself to giving up what I want to do for what I hate to do. Why? Why not just succumb and be kind of plump and enjoy?

I HATE being plump. I hate my stomach having rolls, my thighs not fitting into my pants,and the triple chin that starts to form. When I start to look bad, I start to feel bad, and then I beat myself up a ton about how much I suck, which takes the joy out of just about everything.

One of the things I am going to do on this attempt is to give up alcohol. First, ton of calories, second I feel like crap and don't exercise, third, I use it to forget about how much I hate myself for #1 and #2.

I read this article yesterday A Sobering Exercise where she does a thirty day alcohol free exercise.

Nina says this - The month felt long. I don’t mean time dragged--in fact, the long, free evenings I’d envisioned never materialised. I still went out all the time, and did precious little exercise (despite all those nights of quality REM sleep). But there were no elisions, no blurring of events between the first shared bottle and the second. For a month everything I did was clearly delineated.

So what else did I learn after a month of stone-cold sobriety? That it's over-rated. There is a reason why people drink proportionally more the less they like themselves: alcohol takes you, as so much slang for drunkenness has it, out of your head. I’m no self-loathing Hemingway or Parker, but a month is a long time in your own uninterrupted company...

I discovered that I use alcohol the way Susie Orbach claims women use fat: as a locus for blame, a red herring. Off the sauce, I was still tired, lazy and prone to overeating carbohydrates and chocolate. I still spent too much money, talked too much and went out too much. In fact, none of my problems can be blamed on drinking alcohol, except the one that involves drinking a little too much.

Great...so a likely outcome of this little experiment is that I am more aware of my inherent laziness and still have not really taken to exercise. Well at least the calories and cash will be an upside.

Tommorow - more about the "friends challenge" but yesterday's results.

Day 1
No alcohol
No exercise
Ate pretty well really.

Trying to find a good goal tracker program to embed into my blog so it will be easier.