Finding the time to exercise without getting unbalanced

Image courtesy of the Stock Exchange

I was out having lunch with my best friend today, and talking about questions that other people had asked us.

"What I really want to know," she said, turning to me, "is how on earth you find the time to do all the exercise. How do you fit it all in?"

It's a really good question, with a very simple, if not a satisfying, answer.  I don't. I don't fit it all in.  I don't even have very good excuses for not fitting it all in - I don't, after all, have kids or other dependents to look after.  I'm lazy as hell when it comes to stuff around the house - it's pretty much the "bare minimum" I can get away with to keep things hygienic and not TOO stressful when I finally do have to get around to dealing with them.  I don't work incredibly long hours at my job.  I don't have huge demands on my time, at this point in my life, from anything I don't choose to accept.

And even with the incredibly limited responsibilities and time-sinks I have in my life, I can't do it all. And when I finally get my butt into gear and get exercising the way I love to (which is, I'll freely admit, *a lot*), I can't keep doing all of the few things that I was doing before. Something's gotta give. So I let it. I read less. I watch fewer DVDs. I see less of my friends (or at least, I did last time I started on an exercise kick... this time around I've had about 2-3 years of being a hermit, so it's less of an issue).  And, gods help me, I sleep less. It becomes a tradeoff for me. I only get one shot at using a given chunk of time. So it ends up coming down to the question of how do I want to use it to do myself the most long-term good?  And when I'm on an exercise kick the way I am now, the answer to that question is almost always "by moving my body".

It's really easy to let that get out of balance. Y'know the juggling metaphor where all the parts of your life are balls you have to juggle, and some you can afford to drop and just pick back up again, and some you can't because they'll break? Part of me suspects I'm actually heading in the direction of out-of-balance exercising at the moment, and that I should probably dial it back a bit - not because I'm on the verge of injuring myself or overtraining or anything, but because I can feel myself dropping balls that I could be juggling instead of exercising... and some of those balls may well be breakables ones I don't want to allow myself to shatter.

But damnit, I *like* moving this much. I *like* feeling all strong and active and mobile. I *like* taking all this time out for me.  I guess the question is whether it's sustainable, and whether the endorphin rush I get and the fact that I feel good about all the activity IS actually a valid tradeoff for the long-term consequences of dropping any balls. 

So I'm curious: how do you attempt to balance the "right" amount of exercise in your life with everything else that you have going on?  Do you wish you could do more? Worry you're doing too much? Or are you pretty much happy with where you are right now?

Chalking today up for a win on SO many levels

Image courtesy of The Stock Exchange

Today was a good day. Not just exercise and eating-wise, but on other levels too.

A couple of friends were having their "minus-1th" anniversary do - which, translated, means that they've finally set their wedding date for this time next year, and since they didn't have an engagement party? Well, this is going to be their Minus-1 anniversary!

The party took the form of a casual meetup at Mission Bay - one of Auckland's beautiful beaches - sitting around, chatting, singing, eating, enjoying the sunlight (with sunblock, of course). And while I was looking forward to catching up with folk I hadn't seen in a while, I wasn't sure how well I was going to be able to deal with all the omnipresent junk food I was almost certain was going to be there.

So I sat down, beforehand, and had a think about strategy. What did I want to end the day having actually done? What did I *really* want to enjoy if I had the opportunity, and what could I happily sacrifice to stay in balance?  What could I do in advance to make sure I wasn't likely to blow out, but if I did blow out, it wouldn't be a big drama?  And if I felt like using today as a treat day (because it felt like a good occasion to do so, given the context), what kinds of treats did I want to say yes to, and what other kinds did I want to say no to?

The first thing I decided was that I was going to walk there. If I took a direct route, I could get there in a little over 7km, but I decided that, since I hadn't organised a long walk this weekend, I might take advantage of being over in another part of town, and actually plot a twisty, turny route through some nice streets with some awesome views, and then along the waterfront to the beach where the meetup was happening. I was aiming to get something around 15km (9 miles and change), but the route I picked ended up a little under that. No worries, it was still a great walk - one that burned something in the realm of 900cal - and I enjoyed it immensely for its own sake.

Another major win about it, aside from the inherent enjoyment, was that it involved a couple of major hills, one of which was steep and long and had been a major slog (complete with gasping, wheezing and emphysemic budgie impressions) to walk up last time I did the route back in... February, I think.  This time? No worries. Yes, sure, I knew I was going uphill, but I didn't find myself having to slow down to deal with it; and according to my Garmin, my HR never broke 145 the entire way, which means my impression of finding  it easier this time wasn't just subjective.

Once I got there, the first person to greet me (someone who hasn't seen me in six months, and whose opinion means rather more to me than I'd like, but that's another story) sprang up to give me a hug and the first words out of her mouth, "Wow, you look FANTASTIC!"  I just stood there, hugging her for a moment, absorbing the compliment, and not feeling any desire to block it or shrug it off. It was... really nice.  And definitely another win.

Foodwise, I'm really happy with what I ate and the balance I managed to maintain. I took part in what I wanted of the unhealthy stuff while I was there, but only a little of each thing, making sure to enjoy each mouthful mindfully; and I grabbed a basically healthy lunch that still felt like a treat despite all the other tempting options on offer around me.

And for the most part? Food *wasn't* my internal focus during the gathering. I chatted to folks I hadn't seen in ages and caught up with what was happening in their lives. I sang when one of the guys brought out his guitar. I just enjoyed being *social* for a bit, after entirely too many months of not having the emotional spoons for larger gatherings.  That's quite an achievement too. See, previously, if social occasions coincided with a time that I'd been wrestling with the "beast" of my disordered eating episodes, the occasions would become all-or-nothing events where I either held onto my control over what I ate with white-knuckled, tightly-clenched fists... or I just threw it all away for an evening and had whatever was there, regardless of whether my body actually wanted it or not.  Either way, food ended up being my major focus the entire time I was there. Today wasn't like that.  I knew what I wanted the overall results of the day to be, and I was willing to trust my body to fill in the specifics by letting me know what it wanted me to do and when.

So yeah. Results?  I had an awesome walk, spent a lovely afternoon being social, AND I totally met my goals around eating, exercise and balance.  There's no way a day like that doesn't get chalked up as a win.

Goals for November in the Starfireverse (dum dum dum...)

Image (as usual) courtesy of the Stock Exchange

It's been a while since I actively sat down and set goals for myself.

That's weird, because I've never disputed the value of goalsetting. After all, if you don't know where you're going, how on earth are you meant to get there, right?

I kinda sorta set a weight goal by default (by which I mean I joined up to the LJ weight_comp group and picked at target that seemed semi-reasonable to aim for by Boxing Day) But somehow, I still didn't do any conscious, mindful, what's-really-really-right-for-me-at-this-time goalsetting.  And I find myself curious as to why.

I used to really enjoy the process of setting goals, once upon a time. Thinking long and hard about what I wanted. Thinking about what I figured I could do. Thinking about how I could realistically get there. And then... that magic moment when I committed it to paper (or screen), and bang... I was on my way to either making it happen... or not.  Either way, I at least had a direction to head in, and I tended to end up achieving more than I did without the process, even if I only occasionally achieved the actual goals.

Quite a few of the blogs I've been reading this week have had posts about the author's November goals in them. And it's... y'know... got me thinking. What are my goals?  I must have them, or I wouldn't have any reason to be keeping this fitness and weightloss blog, after all.

I've been thinking about that this evening, and for what it's worth, these are what I've come up with on the eating and exercising front:

• I want to keep tracking my food every day this month. I'm actually enjoying the tracking process in and of itself, and I'm definitely finding it valuable. My goals aren't so much about what I eat, except in that:
• I want at least 80% of what I eat to be vaguely healthy stuff - y'know - for the most part, things that actually used to be alive and either grow in the earth, or run around/swim in it. I don't have to have cooked them myself (although that's good too), but I do have to be able to class it as "food".
• I want, each day, to eat approximately 100-150 calories under my maintenance level. A couple of hundred calories over or under that is fine. Blowing out once in a while is also fine, as long as I track it... and then get myself back on track afterwards without drama.
• I want to continue to burn at least 2,500 calories of exercise a week. That sounds a lot when I write it out, but y'know - it's only 5x 500 calorie sessions.  I'm actually doing a bit more than that at the moment, but I want to give myself the option of taking a second full rest day each week as the runs (and thus calorie burn) increase in time.
• I want to log a minimum of 40km each week. Much like the calorie total above, it sounds a lot, but some weeks, between the walking and running, I'm already doing it. I just want to make it a formal goal to keep up the good work over the month.
• I want to have FINALLY made it past W2 of the Bridge 2 10k programme: So far, I've spent 5 sessions in W2 of the programme, and I can't yet do 3x 15min runs in a session. In fact, I can only really do one, and then the others quickly collapse. So the past 5 sessions, I've been aiming for 3 sets of running 13 min, walking 1, running another 1, then walking one before I go onto the next set. Next week, I'm going to try running 14, and then walking 2 and see how I go. If I can manage that? Then I'll attempt the full 15. And if I can do that 3 times? Then woohoo! I'll have met my goal, and be ready to move onto W3!
• I want to lose 1 more kilo.  Yep. That's all. Just a single kilo. More's nice, but ONLY if it comes through keeping my calories up just under the maintenance level, by exercising to a level that's safe and enjoyable and fun for me, and by meeting my final, absolutely 100% non-negotiable goal, below...

 

• I want to do all this without letting myself get dramatically out of balance to meet ANY of the above goals.  I mean this. The good gods above and below, please witness - it's OK to have a week where I blow out on my food. It's OK to have a week where I take more rest days than I'd planned - or even where I don't exercise AT ALL if that's what needs to happen that week. It's OK to still not have made it past the 13 minute max runs I'm doing at the moment. It's even OK if I end up gaining weight. It's NOT NOT NOT OK to achieve ANY of the aforementioned goals by pushing myself so hard I end up injured (again) and unable to exercise the following week (again), or obsessing so much about what I'm eating that I end up heading back towards disordered-eating land (again). This journey is about loving myself, being good to myself, and being the best me I can be. It's about breaking past patterns and learning from past mistakes.  And if I meet none of my first five goals but still meet this one, then I SWEAR to you, I'll consider November a successful month worth celebrating

It seems weird to be setting goals in one breath, and in the next, acknowledging that it's perfectly OK not to meet them.  I guess that's the thing with setting short-term goals for a long-term journey. It's never going to work out 100% the way I expect it to, but if I'm flexible enough, I can keep on heading in the same overall direction, even if I end up off course for a bit every now and then.

Do you set monthly goals?  If so, what are yours (if you're comfortable sharing, of course)?  And if not... do you have a general direction you'd like to be heading in for November?

Ups and Downs - c'est la vie, I guess

Image courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1093387

The past few days have been a mixed bag when it comes to diet and exercise.

For a start, something I ate Friday night violently disagreed with me all night (and much of Saturday) which had both positive and negative repercussions. On the (sort of) positive side, I pretty much didn't eat anything all Saturday. On the (definitely) negative side, after almost no sleep and the aforementioned inability to eat anything, I was also in no condition to go hiking with my team for our Trailwalker training walk either.

Sunday saw me all but recovered though, so I decided to go for a long-ish walk within the city on my own, and went for a wander around to a friend's place. The route ended up being 11.5km (I have no idea what that is in miles... I'm guessing somewhere around 7 1/2) over mild hilly terrain; and including the time it took me to stop and wait for various lights to change, it was just under 3 hours, with a calorie burn of 1,150.

I was semi-healthy eating-wise for the day as well - certainly I could have done better, but I could have done a lot worse as well. So I'm officially writing the weekend up as a partial victory.

Monday was a complete rest day from exercise - mainly because I was having something called an 'oesophageal manometry and 24-hour impedance study' done to see if they can narrow down the cause of the cough o' doom that's been plaguing me and stopping me sleeping since back in January now. This involve sticking tubes down my nose and throat and leaving them there for 24 hours, then instructing me to 'go away and do everything I'd normally do'. Unfortunately, many of the things I'd normally do (including eating normally) were rendered impossible by the dificulty swallowing, talking and breathing around the damn tube... so I ended up eating less, and more slowly than I normally would... which probably isn't a bad thing.

Yesterday I had the tube taken out, and spent the day waiting for the resultant soreness in the back of my throat to pass. Which meant I didn't eat as much as I normally would (again), but at the same time, also meant I didn't make it to the gym. I did, however, walk in to work and back, so with that and my usual wandering around in the course of daily life, I managed to clock 4km on the pedometer: not great, but far better than nothing.

I'd planned on going to boxing this morning, but to be honest, when the alarm went off at 5.15, I was just in no condition push myself. So I promised myself I'd walk in to work again today (and maybe walk home again for lunch if the weather doesn't pack in). Work and back twice will give me a total of 6km for the day, before daily wanderings are added into the mix. So if I can do that and then use today as a chance to focus in on my eating... eating mindfully and choosing foods that are more healthy, rather than less; I think that overall, I'll be able to chalk up the day on the side of success.

Blessings


Starfire