Tuesday, 3rd of August 2010 at 11:43:34 PM OR, This Time It’s Going to be Only Regular Difficult. Plus, a small entertainment at the bottom of the post.
Where I actually walk in real life.
I started three weeks ago, walking briskly almost every day, lifting weights and cutting down my food portions. My pants are looser, my big tummy a little smaller. And my weight? PRECISELY THE SAME. I understand that I’ve lost fat and put on muscle blah blah, but DAMMIT.
The Stelara is doing an excellent job of making me able to walk and do things and my toe is mostly mended. Next is to further slow the hand-to-maw exercise. (P.S. Thanks SO MUCH for all of your reading recommendations. I plowed through over a dozen books that weekend and wasn’t disappointed in any of them. Delightful!)
I don’t have a precise GOAL in mind, like a level of fitness (I want to be back to running four miles a day, but that’s a very long-haul goal, like maybe six months or more) or a specific weight (lose until I feel right; probably talking years here.) I just want to be in that PLACE, the place where I feel strong and brave and pretty.
Don't wear red in Pamplona.
I can’t do Better U for several important reasons. First, they use the letter U for “you” which I find profoundly irritating. Second, the website is www.goredforwomen.org. I understand that it’s supposed to read “Go Red For Women” but my brain unfortunately sees “GORED FOR WOMEN” and immediately produces images of brave bull-runners in Pamplona allowing themselves to be impaled on wickedly sharp horns for the sake of all womanhood, and I can’t encourage that sort of thing. Terribly dangerous for all involved. Thirdly, I have to sign up to register and give my information. I never do that. And the last and most dreadful reason of all: I’m too cynical and curmudgeonly to want to JOIN anything.
I am doing these three things: [exercise thing] Walk a minimum of two miles a day for a minimum of five days a week. [food thing] No white flour anything except for Cake Day once a week. [health thing] Be absolutely virtuous in remembering to take the supplements the doctor wants me to take which I haven’t bought from the pharmacy yet. She told me a month ago.
There will be no fail. I love to be outside walking or running, dreams in my head, iPod music in my ears. I may be slow, I may be goofy, and I am certainly fat, but I’ll get more fit, slim down some, and have a lovely time doing it. Because I must. You are all watching…
And now for the fun part: a game.
I’m going to tell you something embarrassing but true about my fitness plan. Then, should you wish to, you may tell me something embarrassing/silly/charming about yours. We’ll all chuckle indulgently at one another’s irrepressible eccentricities.
Um...yes you do.
I wanted some kind of fun way to spice up my mileage, and I was messing around on the internet and found The Eowyn Challenge. You chose your Middle Earth journey and look up your mileage on these detailed mileage charts. Today, according to the chart, at mile thirty-five, I kept a stone’s throw left of the road to avoid the Black Rider I saw a couple of miles back; slower going now. Only six more miles until we meet up with Gildor and company. I can’t wait to eat the elvish food. I hear it’s great.
“I will go east, and I will make for Rivendell.” Then I’ll head for Lothlorien and beyond, and simply walk into Mordor.
I’m dying to hear your stories of clever or ridiculous tricks you use to keep motivated.
Um, yeah. I need ridiculous motivation tips too BECAUSE I HAVE NONE. Motivation that is. It dried up and disappeared sometime in the middle of June, and I’m pissed that it abandoned me and is hiding so I can’t find it again. I pledged on Monday to join in this little project, and since then I’ve done no exercise and have eaten manymanymany bad things. So no matter how ridiculous the motivation tip? I want it. There must be something out there to get me off my lazy butt and acting proper again.
Well, after all of my brave posturing when I wrote this post, I didn’t work out yesterday. Instead I woke at four, fiddled around the house til eight, then went back to bed ’til noon. WHen I woke up, some of my extra daughters were here, and I ddi stuff with four young women all day around the house.
(My daughters friends were in and out of our house for years as they all grew up together and they are my kids too, in my heart, and they are all home for the summer and I can’t miss a second with them before they all march off to grad school and the like.)
So here it is six in the morning and I’m all set to go out except for shoes and socks. Here is my tip: Do it today. Don’t worry about what you ate yesterday, or if you’ll work out tomorrow. Just do what you can on the day you’re in. That’s a victory as far as I’m concerned. You are awesome.
Sadly, I don’t have any stories of ridiculous tricks. The Eowyn Challenge looks hilariously awesome though. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from The Office-
“Jim: Dwight, if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Dwight: I CAN travel anywhere, except Cuba, and I will travel to New Zealand and walk the Lord of the Rings trail to Mordor and I will hike Mount Doom.”
“I WILL HIKE MOUNT DOOM.” Haha! I think at the end of my walk someday I’ll collapse on the lawn and say to my husband, “I’m glad you are with me Sam, here at the end of all things.”
His name isn’t Sam.
I think (other than the pavement, I suppose) your walking place looks like it could totally be in the Shire. And I think of “gored” for the Go Red thing as well. How violent.
Let he tell you a secret (here on the Internet where NO ONE will see) I have the sound track CDs from the movies and listen to them as I walk or run, while the morning mist rises off of the water, the birds twitter in the trees and the bunnies hop beside me on the trail. Just to make things interesting, there are sometimes mountains lions up there, too.
In the early spring the place is loaded with flowers. High up on the grassy hillsides small Basque shepherds and their little dogs tend flocks of goats. The ring of the goats’ bells floats like wind chimes across the lake. /happy sigh
I was just bemoaning the fact that I spent a week away from home, passed up all sugary snacks, walked a minimum of 5 miles a day, ran a 5K, and gained two pounds.
Here’s my motivation. I’m going on a big vacation in November. I don’t like having my picture taken because I’m not happy with my body. My goal is to be satisfied with my vacation photos.
That’s a good goal. I’m going to a convention on October so I have an expiration date on this body, as well. I secretly want P90X for myself but I might be too old for it. It looks so, so SWEATY.
My motivational tip: get a dog. And if you’re really ambitious, get a big dog. Even if you’re not in the mood to go out and do exercise they’ll always be there needing a walk or a good romping play time in the back yard which will get you moving. Even if it’s for only 10 minutes, it’s better than just sitting there. Plus you’ve always got a buddy to walk with so you don’t have to go it alone.
Well, I think yours is an AWESOME mileage thingy and motivational tool!
I tell myself stories in my head as I walk or run, mostly involving running a romantic B&B among vineyards in the south of France. It’s amazing the people who stop by there…
I want to be the healthy, sophisticated person in my own stories, so I keep running.
This is awesome. A woman after my own heart.
I LOVE where you for real walk. . .that is truly lovely and worthy of the ARWEN challenge. I think the Eowyn challenge is just awesome and not silly one single bit as she was strong, strong, strong, and also gorgeous.
Last year, I lost 25 lbs. thanks to eating healthy while breastfeeding. Turns out if you eat for one while you are feeding two, then you can lose weight super fast. Sad to say, though, that I am slowly gaining the weight back. However, I am motivated to start losing it again because I gave away all of my fat clothes. Now that my skinny clothes are getting snug, I no longer have that trusty pair of fat pants to console me and fool myself into thinking it’s just water retention for two months straight. So my motivation tip: Give away your clothes the second they become too big for you.
That one never works for me.
I just get fat and have nothing to wear.
My motivation is not silly, as it’s health related. Girl stuff. However, I face an extra challenge because I work at a restaurant, and we have a Most Amazing Chef who regularly hands out warm cookies and smoothies and coconut cream pie and homemade potato chips. In order to resist I imagine that the food is moldy or has bugs in it. When we go out to eat I put the napkin over my plate when it’s time to stop and that magically converts the food to garbage. As soon as I perceive food to be garbage I can’t touch it – it literally gives me the willies.
I’ve been working at this for 11 days, and I’ve lost 5 pounds. Before you think I’m losing to fast, I’ll add that I’m eating around 1800 – 2000 calories a day and I have about 140 pounds to lose, so it’s normal that it goes quickly for the first couple of weeks.
Someone else I know does that, it might even be you in another comment once. I also remember a character in a book doing it…Good in Bed maybe? Or a Wally Lamb novel?
Anyway, it’s awesome! And I wish I would lose five pounds in eleven days. Grats to you!
PEE ESS. I hope you feel better soon.