Running, NSVs (and everything else) roundup - Week 3, plus weigh-in

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Pretty good week this week on most fronts (well, running aside - that didn't go so well, but you get that sometimes).

I've had quite a few Non-scale Victories (NSVs): a couple of pairs of pants that have DEFINITELY been fitting more loosely, and one that I've had to retire due to being silly-loose now. I also had a white summerweight work-shirt that I'd been putting to one side till I'd lost enough weight to fit into it again... except that when I tried it on just to see whether I could wear it yet, I discovered I'd missed my opportunity window, and it was, in fact, too big now. And, on top of that, I had a workmate comment that I was looking really good and healthy, so that kind of made my afternoon.

The best one, though, was going out on Friday night for dinner with my husband for our wedding anniversary. I'd told myself that I basically had permission to eat what I wanted, but I still found myself making *reasonably* healthy choices for the entree and main (which were seriously DELICIOUS). Then I ordered dessert, because it sounded so good, but when it came out it was... OK, but really not worth the calorie investment. So I had maybe a third of it, before deciding that, no, y'know, I just wasn't enjoying it - and left it. No drama, no big deals, no angsting. I just left it.

Exercise-wise, it's been a pretty damn AWESOME week in which I managed to make, and exceed, pretty much all my weekly goals (except for that running one I keep mentioning - see writeup for Saturday):

• Monday 22 Nov:  5.5km neighbourhood loop walk. Daily Burn: 390
• Tuesday 23 Nov: 8.6km running session, with 4 running intervals of 17, 16, 12, 6 in there - definitely had difficulty with that last interval - may need to back out a bit. Daily Burn: 709
• Wednesday 24 Nov: AM: gentle 4.5km neighbourhood walk. PM: hard-out "conquering the mountain" 12ish km walk with a friend who's offered to 'push me' a little to get the intensity up. Daily Burn: 1,291
• Thursday 25 Nov: Complete rest day - and ye gods, I needed it!
• Friday 26 Nov: AM: 1 hour of boxing (yay, my trainer is back!). PM: 3km of walking to meet husband for anniversary dinner Daily burn: 500
• Saturday 27 Nov:  Attempted an 11km route with 3x 20min running intervals.  Managed 18 on the first, then everything kind of went to custard from there. Still, when all the little intervals were added up, they totalled ~43min and ~5.6km, so not a total loss. Daily burn: 877
• Sunday 28 Nov: Repeat of Wednesday's walk with my friend. This time with a different HR monitor on, though, and the calorie burn looked somewhat different. Daily burn: 850

So for my overall week's exercise, I did 8 sessions, with a combined total of 4,600 odd calories. So I think I'll definitely up my weekly goal here for December.  And I covered 53km,which I'm well pleased with, even if not as much of it as I would have liked was running.  If I can do a little more of the same this coming with (but with a little more of it running and a little less of it walking), I'll be a happy Starfire


Weight-wise, I'm pretty happy as well - I've dropped another 800g, putting me on 80.7kg.  The which I am SERIOUSLY happy about... although I'm also trying to remind myself that, hey, it's just another marker of progress. It's good, but not the be-all and end-all.  But yeah. It's looking like I might well be able to manage to break 80kg by the end of the year :-)

So that was my week. How did everyone else go with their weekly goals and exercise/eating?

Ambivalent goals: AKA "Well, hello there again, hipbones!"

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I mentioned back in my "Give me a Reason" post that a couple of my reasons - the ones I'm least comfortable with, funnily enough - revolve around visual appearance.  I don't like that they're reasons, but as mentioned in that post, I don't think I'm really doing myself any favours by trying *desperately* to pretend that they don't motivate me.

One of them was about the appearance of muscles. I love the look of muscles moving under my skin - especially when I'm working out, but also those "surprise, bet you weren't expecting us!" appearances I used to get sometimes when I was getting dressed in front of the mirror and there'd be like... whoah... abs... are those really MINE????

What I'd forgotten, when I wrote my reasons post, is that I also used to like being able to see my hipbones occasionally. Now before you panic and figure the Beast has got its hooks well and truly into me again, I should probably say that I'm NOT talking about the angular, gaunt, protruding hipbone look. It's more... when I was lying on my back and I turned my leg to one side, I'd occasionally have this moment of... hey... there's a bone under all that curviness and muscle and flesh.

It's getting hot during the day here in New Zealand, and yesterday was hot enough that I was lying around in some reasonably loose pants and a sports bra. And my husband asked me something and I moved, and... there was one of those hipbones of mine. Still well and truly covered by muscle and... well, not-muscle... but definitely there. For the first time in a long, long, long time. And I could see/feel it moving!  Which prompted a moment of glee, followed by an experimental *prod* *prod*, and then a distinct thought pattern of  "Well, hello there, again hipbone! Long time, no see!" and finally a sense of "Cool! Human anatomy is an awesome thing, and hey, look, I have some!"

As usual when it comes to this kind of stuff, I'm trying REALLY hard to keep it in perspective. It's a mark of progress. Which is nice. But it's not a particularly important one.  It's not like, for example, being able to run an entire 5k without stopping to walk at any point. Or finishing a 10k in less than 1 hour 20. Or being able to do 50 full pushups without stopping or breaking decent form. All of which are current short-to-medium term fitness goals that I will be celebrating like nobody's business when I finally manage to achieve. But it's still a mark. And I'm kind of enjoying it, even if it's mixed in with some... ambivalence.

And I wonder, am I the only one with goals I'm not always 100% comfortable with? Do you have weight loss or fitness goals that you're just a wee bit ambivalent about wanting in the first place, let alone conflicted about actually achieving? How do you deal with the ambivalence?

Running (and everything else) roundup - Week 2, plus weigh-in

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A bit of a mixed week this past week. On the minus side, I seemed to be heading back towards injury-ville after Tuesday's run, and spent much of the week with a sore adductor/hip flexor combo that seemed to fluctuate between serious OW and just niggling.  So I backed off on the running completely until yesterday.

Also, with having been at a viking/medieval-themed wedding on Saturday night, my eating for the day was... not so great, and I ended up forgetting to track my intake for the first time since I found that tracking ap.  And of course, from a psychological viewpoint, there was the resurgence of the Beast earlier in the week too.

That said, on the plus side, I still did a reasonable amount of exercise despite pulling back. I still walked. I still had at least one date with workout-pr0n Bob. I still ate reasonably well, and I didn't blow out completely at the wedding (my personal favourite in the "I didn't deprive myself but didn't go crazy either" list was ignoring the brandy snaps, chocolate fountain and assorted other cakey type noms for a bowlful of fresh strawberries and a little of the dark cherry pottage - yum!).

And my personal victory of the week is actually a/ packing my running gear to take down to the wedding with me; and b/ getting off my butt and using said gear in a 10ish km running session along Wellington's waterfront, which was gorgeous, even in the drizzly rain. It's actually quite a neat feeling running in a strange city - it's only the second time I've ever done it (the first being in London earlier on in the year). So the week ended up looking like this:

• Monday 15 Nov:  4.5km amble-pace walk... basically intended to be a recovery walk from the 12km running session I did Sunday, without spending an actual rest day. Daily Burn: 287
• Tuesday 16 Nov: 8.4km running session, with 3 running intervals of 16, 16, 17 in there. Daily Burn: 669
• Wednesday 17 Nov: REST DAY after developing some potentially nasty adductor/hip flexor shennanigans
• Thursday 18 Nov: morning: 5.5km walk. Evening: strength workout pr0n with Bob. Daily burn: 677
• Friday 19 Nov: 5.5km walk because I just didn't feel up to running. Daily burn: 354
• Saturday 20 Nov:  5ish (estimated) km walking around Wellington. Daily burn: 321?
• Sunday 21 Nov: 9.8km running session along Wellington's waterfront. Daily burn: 728

So for my overall week's exercise, I did 7 sessions, with a combined total of 3,000 calories. So again, no problem with the exercise calorie goal.  And I covered 38.7km, which isn't quite the 40 I was aiming for, but it's still damn close.


I'm going to be aiming to up the kms a little this week - probably not to quite the same level of crazy as in Week 1, but if I can get them somewhere between 40-50, I'll be a happy Starfire. I also want to do at least two workout pr0n sessions, and possibly work on acquiring another set of dumbbells for the using of therewith, since my little 2kg ones are getting a wee bit silly for some of the strengthwork.

Oh and weigh-in wise?  I'm pretty much in the same place I was last week - a slight drop of 200g, making me start this week at 81.5kg.  Which, given the way the week went, and the larger-than-expected drop from the previous week, feels total fair and reasonable, and hey, at least it wasn't a gain!  And, for a weekly NSV, my abs are apparently visible enough now for my husband to comment on them unprompted (for which, I suspect, I have Bob to thank)

So that was my week. How did everyone else go with their weekly goals and exercise/eating?

Grasping for control: I think the Beast is awake...

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Once upon a time, I conceptualised my eating disorder... disordered eating... whateverthehellitis... as a sleeping beast in the dark.

I commented, a few days back, that I'd been going for just over a year without really feeling the seductive siren song to just give in and go all out into calorie restriction and compulsive exercise.  Apparently, the universe took that as a challenge.

Yesterday and today... possibly with the frustration of maybe-possibly having buggered something up in my hips/adductors injury-wise, or possibly some other kind of persykologikal stuff, I've been hearing that soft whisper inside myself.  Again.  And there's no denying it. The Beast is definitely awake.

What's started as "hey, let's allow yourself to feel hunger mindfully, and then to notice what it feels like to satiate that hunger with healthy food", keeps turning into, "Hey, let's *enjoy* the hunger. Let's prolong it. Let's not eat and satisfy it until you're ready to let it go in your time on your terms. Let's stay in control."  Then there was the tracking my food yesterday and realising at the end of the day that I was well under what I'd set as my target. And instead of deciding to eat something (despite feeling hungry), I started thinking about just going with it. Because hey, more deficit = more loss. Especially since I'm doing less exercise this week. And... and... and...

Yeah. We can all see where that's going, can't we? 

I'm conscious that I have three immediate possible responses open to me here:

• I can dive headlong into it:  there's that oh-so-seductive promise of weight loss and those pretty muscles I want. And I can decide it's just too hard to keep fighting it, so I'm going to USE it to get me to my "goals" faster. That just requires a slight change in mindset. And a complete ignoring of the goals that don't fit in with the decision (like, oh, the running one, for example. Not to mention the balance one).   But it's an option. It's the tempting one right now.
• I can freak out and back the hell off from anything that resembles "dieting":  it's understandable, after all, that I'm scared. I've fought the Beast before and lost... running away when I notice it waking up makes perfect sense. But y'know what? If I don't face the battle, the Beast still wins. I give up on my goals. I let it define what I can and can't achieve. It's the path of least resistance, and something I've learned is that that path very rarely generates results I can be proud of achieving.
• I can notice the Beast and simply let myself be with it : I can acknowledge that it's there and hear it without doing what it says. I can thank it for sharing without accepting its goals as mine. This is my own mind, and the only power anything within it has is the power I allow it. If there are epic, dramatic battles to be fought, they're only dramatic and epic because I'm bringing the drama to them.

Just reminding myself that I have that choice of responses helps me to reframe the Beast from the slobbering, threatening monster about to leap out at me like the one in the image above, to something... more manageable.  Maybe the voice of that annoying kid in the movie theature who just won't shut up, when I'm trying to focus on what the characters are saying.  Maybe there's even some metaphor that acknowledges that the Beast wouldn't be there unless it was serving a purpose, so maybe it's some kind of dodgy friend that's trying to give me a constructive message, but has appalling communication skills and hasn't figured out how to tell me in language I know how to understand.

Meh. Not sure. But one thing I do know. I'm less afraid of realising that it's woken up than I was at the beginning of this post.

And that can only be a good thing.

I think I've found the soundtrack to my running/weight loss journey

Today, I discovered the soundtrack for my running and weightloss journey. I kid you not - I've been a down today because I managed to overdo it on my run on Tuesday and the brain squirrels from yesterday, and... general stuff.  Then someone linked me to this video, and it gave my eardrums (and possibly my soul) a SERIOUS happy. I think I may have to see if iTunes has it, because it totally needs to be on my exercise playlist :-)

(also? Moodwise, it probably doesn't hurt that I spent the first part of my evening watching/doing workout pr0n. I should probably be embarrassed by just how much I'm enjoying the Bob Harper Strength Burn DVD!)

Comparisons, pity parties and brain squirrels

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I'm usually pretty good with comparing myself to others.

By which I mean that I don't often compare myself; and when I do, I'm generally fairly easy with noticing differences, and just acknowledging them without putting a moral value on one being better than the other.

Generally.

Some days, though, my insecurities rise to the surface and I can't help a/ comparing myself; and b/ finding myself coming up short.  Especially when my brain squirrels are particularly active.

You know brain squirrels? They're those little rodent thoughts that go round and round and round in your head, chittering on and on, telling you all sorts of negative stuff you know intellectually is utter garbage, but you can't help believing because deep down, you're afraid it's probably true even if it makes no sense whatsoever when you look at it logically.  I think we probably all have infestations now and then, but when they're particuarly active, they can make us feel like we're the only ones who have this kind of crazy inside our brains. Yeah. Those are brain squirrels.

I've been experiencing a bit of a brain squirrel infestation recently around comparing myself to the fitter, more determined people in my life. My sister-in-law, for example, who was run down by a car on a pedestrian crossing back in February, was told she'd be in wheelchair for at least 3 months, and that she should say goodbye to her plans of running the New York marathon.  Two months later, she was on her feet again, a couple of weeks later she was walking with a cane, and a couple of weekends ago, she walked New York in the extremely respectable time of 6 hours & change.

Yesterday I was out on the road with one of the sports nutrition reps at work, who's a posterchild for using the products she's selling. She's training for a half-Iron Man triathlon; and is currently doing something between 2-3 hours training a day for it. She was talking to one of our customers about her training (after the customer asked, it should be acknowledged), and mentioning that when she started training, she was at 20% bodyfat. Right now, she's at 14%.  I have a "4" in my bodyfat levels too, if my scales are to be believed. But it comes at the beginning of the number, not the end.

I know we're all different, and we all have different goals and start from different places and we're all special, special snowflakes in and of ourselves :-S. I know they're them and I'm me.  But there's a part of me that was just feeling... huge and whale-like and lazy and excuse-ridden and impatient (and, let's not beat around the bush here, self-pitying) right through yesterday because I'm not where they are. It's the height of dumb, I know.  But it is what it is.  Or was, since I have to admit, I'm feeling a little less down on myself this morning after a semi-decent night's sleep than I was yesterday.

Part of the sudden onset of comparison-itis, I think is because I probably overdid my run on Tuesday a bit.  I spent most of the day afterwards with legs that were... not sore, exactly, but incredibly stiff, and almost dead-feeling - they just didn't want to move, and walking was slow, arduous and fairly limpy.  It was a little better yesterday (more sore, less dead, still a little limpy), but I took a complete rest day just in case.

I tried running this morning, but my legs told me clearly after about 2 steps that it was NOT happening, so I just ended up walking a shortened version of the route instead. And as I walked, I reminded myself over and over that my primary goal is to get to the end of the month uninjured (which I don't think I technically am YET) and that any and every other exercise-related goal is secondary. 

I also tried, while I was walking, to focus on being grateful for the knowledge that, whatever I've done, it can't be TOO serious, or I wouldn't be walking at all; and that at the end of the day, seen from the vantage of a long-term training plan, a couple of days out is far from the end of the world. And to be honest, that helped a little - plus I suspect just getting outside and doing something, even if it wasn't the run I'd planned, helped to play whack-a-mole with the brain squirrels that had survived the night.

I'm not sure whether I want to ask for support or a kick up the attitude here.  Maybe both? Intellectually, I know that comparisons between myself and others are less than useless. I know that having to take a few days out because I might have pushed things too hard is much better than having to take a few weeks (or gods help me, MONTHS) out because I didn't listen to my body when it first told me I'd pushed things too hard.  I know these things, but I'm having difficulty believing them deep down, because my brain squirrels' chitterings and chatterings keep on drowning the knowledge out.

What brain squirrels do you find yourself dealing with on a regular basis? And what do you do to quiet them down?

And now for something totally different: FMM question

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Kenz over at All the Weigh has a Monday tradition: FMM, or Friend Making Monday.  She posts a question that she invites anyone interested to comment on, and answer on their blog, and then visit and comment other other answerers' blogs.

This week's question is "What have you got on your DVR?"

Now, scarily enough, I'm not tech-savvy enough to actually OWN a DVR at this point in time, but I do have a metric frakload of DVD series that I'm watching, so I shall answer using those, on the basis that it's the same kind of thing.

1. CSI Miami: Don't ask me why, other than that I'm enjoying hurling abuse at the poor forensic science and Horatio's constant smug hokey-kokey with his sunglasses.  But it's brainless fluff, and there's the occasional pretty worth leching over.
2. Dollhouse: My s2 DVDs FINALLY turned up, and I'm lovin' me some twisted Jossian awesomeness. Also, neither Eliza Dushku nor Tamoh Penikett are exactly hard on the eyes. And Enver Gjokaj out-acts the entire planet in every single episode. What's not to like?
3. Burn Notice: Just finished watching s3 and itching to get my hands on s4. This is the perfect balance, for me, between warm, fluffy silliness and actual occasional edgy grit. Plus?  Dear gods, Jeffrey Donovan can MOVE during fight scenes. And I have a soft spot for Fi and Sam too.
4. Magnificent Seven: (don't laugh) - my beloved husband loves this series, and I have to admit, it's grown on me since we started watching it together. Plus, hey, again, neither Michael Biehn nor a young Eric Close are a sacrifice to watch (are we sensing a theme here?)
5. Criminal Minds: ZOMG... the writing. The acting. The complexity. The sheer awesomeness. This is the first of the ones I've mentioned where the pretty (nice as it is) comes in a distant last behind all the other awesome-itude. If only more TV was like this.

How about you? What are you watching (on DVR, DVD or actual TV) right now?

W1 Weigh-in: Woohooo - Happy Starfire is Happy

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Wheeeee - I just stepped off the scales from my weekly weigh-in, and today, they appear to be my friend (must be all that exercise craziness I did last week!)

Results today? 81.7kg, baby! (that'd be 179.7lb for those in the States). I was hoping to break 82 by the end of November, so that's that goal well and truly met AS LONG AS I can maintain it until the end of November and not end up going back up a little for the next two weeks... and hey, with the insane way my body fluctuates sometimes, that's not beyond the realms of possibility.

Also, this week's going to be a little less active than last week was, given that I'll be away for a wedding over the coming weekend, and even if I wasn't, I actually want to do a lower mileage week this week to give my joints some downtime after everything I put them through last week.  So that's me attempting to rock the scales of balance, as well as the scales of weight!

But yeah. For the moment, I'm feeling REALLY good about this result :-D

Running (and everything else) roundup - Week 1

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My exercise goal for each week in November was 2,500cal worth of exercise burn, and I'm deliriously happy to report that I more than exceeded that this week.  I was also aiming to cover at least 40km between walking and running each week.

NOTE: when I call something a "running session" below, I'm really not running the whole way. Basically, I'm working my way through the Bridge to 10k programme, or at least a modified version thereof, so my running sessions are actually broken up into 3 sets of x-minute runs, separated out with with a 1-2 minute walk. Session times also incorporate my warmup and cooldown walking time. That said, ladies and gents, allow me to present my Week 1 in review:

• Monday 8 Nov:  morning 7.3km running session; evening Jillian Michaels cardio + yoga DVDs. Daily burn: 1,103
• Tuesday 9 Nov: 5.5km walk. Daily burn: 356
• Wednesday 10 Nov: morning 7.3km running session; evening 8.5km walk with a friend. Daily burn: 1,127
• Thursday 11 Nov: REST DAY (needed like whoah)
• Friday 12 Nov: morning 7.9km running sesssion; evening, Bob Harper strength training DVD. Daily burn: 991
• Saturday 13 Nov: 9.6km walk doing errands: Daily burn 628
• Sunday 14 Nov: 11.6km running session, incorporating Kelly's 5k challenge. Daily burn: 844

So for my overall week's exercise, I did 9 sessions, with a combined total of 4,049 calories. Yeah, I think I rocked that goal. I also covered 58km, of which distance I actually ran a little over 24km.  *blinks*  WHOAH. Seriously? That's... kinda crazy.

I think this week is going to be a bit more sedate. For a start, this weekend I have a wedding to go to in another city, so I'll probably get to exercise Saturday OR Sunday, but not both.  Also, I suspect that given that I've increased my mileage from 43km last week to 58km this week, it would behoove me to make sure I do a lower mileage week before my joints put in a complaint to their union rep.  I also expect to have more than one rest day this week, which is probably no bad thing from a balance viewpoint either.

That said, I still want to aim for somewhere around that 40km mark. There are several Daily Mile challenges I've signed myself up to - not to mention the HBBC (Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge), whose logo you'll see on the righthand panel of this blog - so while I want to reduce the total distance, I don't want to drop it tooo far unless my body starts genuinely telling me it needs me to.

So that was my week. How did everyone else go with their exercise goals?

Finding the time to exercise without getting unbalanced

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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?