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?

To quote the Corrs: "Give me a reason"

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I've been meaning to make this post for a while now, and Dani's post over at Battle of the Bulge about the things that have improved in her life since she lost weight has prompted me to get my thoughts out of my brain and down on screen.

Why exactly do I want to do this weight loss journey?

See, the first time I lost a huge amount of weight, back in my teenage years, I knew exactly what I wanted on the surface. I wanted to be skinny. I wanted to be able to wear skinny clothes. I wanted to finally, finally, finally look good, in a way my teenage brain had come to the conclusion that a fat girl never could.  Let's just ignore the fact that churning away below the surface, I also wanted some vestige of control over my life - control that had been ripped away first first by sexual abuse from a family friend, then the early death of my mother days before my 17th birthday, and then my Dad's remarriage to a woman who... well, let's say she had a host of psychological issues with long, interesting, polysyllabic names, and leave it at that.

The second time, I was older and wiser. Or so I tried to tell myself.  I was in my late 20s. This time I didn't want to be "skinny".  I didn't want to be "thin".  I wanted to be "strong". I wanted to be "fit".  I wanted to be "healthy".  But at the root of it all, I really wanted to be able to wear leather pants and short skirts and the odd corset or midriff top and look HOT in them (once again, at the back of my mind "in the way a fat girl can't").  The affirmations I said to myself were all around the numbers on the scale and the size on the garment label. And again, in a new country, in a job that I had ethical issues with, feeling out of control with pretty much everything else, I wanted control, damnit. Yeah, that ended predictably too, although at least I got to my goals by adding compulsive exercise in with my crash dieting. Which meant I at least I *looked* healthy.

So you can understand why, despite having been on my weightloss journey for slightly over a year now, I've been absolutely loathe to focus on the way I looked as the reason for my journey.  I've worked hard, over the past years, to try to change my core belief to one where beauty is a matter of attitude and confidence and strength, and not a matter of size. And I've tried my hardest to be beautiful with what I have and who I am - not holding out with the belief that I can't be until I meet a given set of numbers.  So instead, I took a functional goal I was aiming for - to complete the 100km Trailwalker 2011 walk - and convinced myself that I'd do a far better job of it than I'd done the first time around (wherein I got to KM#88, but couldn't finish the full 100) if I did it at a lower weight.

Which was all well and good, except that... well... Trailwalker 2011 isn't happening any more. I didn't manage to pull a team together for it, and it's something you can't do unless you can find three other suckers... willing volunteers... as crazy as you are.  And I couldn't. So now I'm left without my original reason for losing weight... but still feeling, very strongly, that I want to continue with the journey.  And I thought it was about time I started exploring why - what the reasons that are relevant to me now are.

Here are the ones that come to mind:

• Running more easily: I'm not entirely sure whether this is just my mind replacing one functional goal with another, but I'm enjoying the hell out of this "being able to run when I've never been able to before" thing.  I'm booked into 7 (count 'em *7*) 10k races from this December through to July next year, and then a half-marathon in August. And just as with Trailwalker, I just can't help thinking that the less excess weight my body is carrying, the easier I'm going to find it to run.
• The joy of *muscles*: I'm one of these women who puts on muscle really easily when I do any kind of resistance work. I love that about my body. I love that it makes me feel strong. And I love watching muscle move under the surface of my skin when I move. It's not about getting super lean and ripped or going all bodybuilder or anything (not that there's anything wrong with that if that's what floats your boat, but it's not a Starfire thing).  I just like seeing my own muscles. And yeah - I can see my muscles more easily when they're not hiding under ~47% bodyfat.  So losing weight *sensibly* can help me with that.
• The health benefits: I'm torn here. I *know* the research is conflicting, and that overweight women with healthy habits are likely to be healthier than average-weight women who live unhealthily.  But here's the thing. My genes give me a history of obesity on both sides of the family tree. My mum died of breast cancer before she hit 40. My dad has had to deal with heart disease, heart attacks and diabetes. Various cousins and aunts and uncles have or have had a laundry list of cancers and other ills.  If I live my life in a way that allows me to become or stay severely overweight, I'm *not* likely to be any different.  And people, I *CHOOSE* to be different.  I love my family, but I do not want their health issues.
• The looking hot thing: yeah, I debated with myself back and forth whether I was allowed to include this as a reason. What about beauty not being a matter of size, hmmmm?  What about the danger of focussing on looks to the detriment of everything else? Because, y'know, that's worked so well for me before.  Here's the thing. It is a reason for me.  I don't do myself any favours by pretending it isn't.  Despite the stupid practices I used to get there, I *loved* the way I looked when I lost the weight the last time.  I loved what I saw in the mirror - the strength and the lines of my body. I loved being able to wear size 12 (s8-10 American) leather pants.  I loved knowing guys - or girls - were looking at me and liking what they saw. I loved it. I'm vain that way. And gods above and below help me, I want that again. But I *DON'T* want it at the expense of all the other reasons, and I think I'm finally in a place (please? maybe? pretty please?) where I'm strong enough in myself that that's never going to be my most important reason again.
• The not being embarrassed about my body thing:  ooooohhhhh, I'm opening up a can of worms with this one. I know I am. I *hate* the concept that I have to be a certain weight or shape before I can be proud of my body. I don't want to be that shallow - that... conditioned by the media and what's supposed to be conventionally beautiful. But here's the thing.  I am. There was a day a couple of years back where I found myself making excuses to avoid going swimming with good friends because I couldn't face the idea of being in a swimsuit in front of them. Summer after summer, I wear long trousers and ankle length skirts because I can't handle anything that shows my balloony, swollen legs.  The ironic thing is that losing weight won't actually help with that last (it's a lymphatic condition, apparently). But the more things I have to be actively proud of in my body, the less I focus on the things I don't like.  And so yeah. This reason makes the list too.
• And finally? Because I've never been able to lose weight healthily and keep it off before:  I really, really don't like admitting defeat and accepting that just I can't do some things. That doesn't mean I don't have to do it sometimes - there are a whole host of instances where acceptance of my limitations is my only healthy option. But I haven't learned to like it yet, and part of me prays I never do.  I was the same way with running. For the longest time, I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that my body just wasn't built to run. I found lots of other things I could do instead.  Every now and then I tried. And failed. And injured myself. Which just proved I couldn't do it.  And then? After 37 years of knowing I couldn't run, I found Couch-2-5k. And suddenly, hey, look at me! I'm running! For interval sessions that last an hour!  I can do it! Finally, at last, I can do it!  And part of me wants to know... is losing weight and healthily, sanely getting to a size that I'm 100% comfortable with seeing in the mirror (and then maintaining it) going to be another thing I knew I couldn't do, but yet somehow I manage to anyway?

Y'know, when I go deep down and look at my motivations, I think it's that last one that really fires me up.  It's not about losing weight for a specific occasion (although I can think of plenty of them if I really want to).  It's not about being able to get into - or back into - clothes of a given size, or seeing a particular number on the scale. 

It's about proving myself wrong for every time I've said "I just can't do it" in the past.  It's about working towards something that's hard because if I just kept taking the easy way, I wouldn't in all honesty - be living the life I want to live. It's about stopping lying to myself about what I really want; and starting to become the best, strongest, most in-integrity me I can be.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm staying on the weight loss journey.  How about you? 

So *that's* sports massage, hmmmm? OW!

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Mary, over at A Merry Life, asks what lessons life's taught us today.  And I think that what *I* learned is today that Sports Massages can create some serious OUCH if you let them.

See, I figured that now that I was running regularly (for "regularly", read: sessions of approximately an hour, three times a week), organising a regular sports massage every now and then might be a smart move from an injury-prevention viewpoint.  I'd already noticed a tendency towards stiffness and soreness in certain muscle groups - despite a pretty thorough stretching routine that I follow religiously after running. It's not at the injury stage yet - for a start, it tends to be stiff and sore at the beginning of a run, then gradually ease up over the first 20 min or so of a session - but I can see it getting there if I ignore it.

So on Tuesday night, I hie'd me off to my physio (I think that's what folks in the States call a physical therapist, although the parallel may not be exact), who's also a qualified sports massage therapist, and asked what he thought would be needful, given the background.  I figured he'd be an ideal person to work with, since he's already worked with me through two separate injuries and he knows my history.  He asked a lot of intelligent questions - got me to contort in various ways to test my current flexibility in the affected muscle groups - and suggested a half-hour massage that started with my adductors and hip flexors, where most of the stiffness and soreness was, then moved around to my quads, IT band, and finally settled on my hamstrings... a kind of "round the world" trip of my thighs, if you will.  That sounded reasonable to me, so I hopped up on the table.

That's when the pain started.

Let me be clear... I'd been warned in advance from other runners that sports massages were NOT like the relaxing, soothing massages many people are familiar with.  Especially the first time you have one, if your muscles are a mass of knots and tension, these things can be bloody uncomfortable. And when I'm not being all paranoid-hypochnondria-girl about any discomfort I'm feeling being a sign of a potential injury, I actually have a pretty high pain tolerance, so that didn't scare me off.  I'd told my physio this during the initial consult, and pretty much given him carte blanche to do what my muscles needed, promising that if it really was too much for me to handle, I'd tell him, but otherwise I'd just aim to breathe through it.

So he took me at my word.  And wow. Ow. I'm pretty sure that session was the closest I've ever come to safewording in a professional setting ;-)  The session never actual *hit* my pain tolerance level, but it skirted very near the edges a few times - and yeah, I always let my physio know when we were getting close, on the basis that it was probably something he needed to be aware of to do his job.

Once it was over, though, my leg muscles were literally humming. Sore, but humming.  Yeah, there may have also been one or two endorphins involved, because my wiring's just crossed that way - such is life. So I figured it was all good - till I got home a couple of hours later and saw all the bruising. The vivid, dark, mottled bruising. All up and down the inside of one leg, and a little on the outside of both. Ow. Wow. I don't think my inner thighs have *ever* gone that colour before.

To be honest, I freaked a bit - wondering if I should have said something sooner to the physio, rather than trying to tough it out on the table - wondering if something had gone horribly, horribly wrong (basically, I instantly turned into paranoid-hypochondria-girl for a bit).  Some discussion on the LJ Runners group I'm part of reassured me that bruising certainly isn't unheard of after a  sports massage - some people found they bruised every time they had one, others just the first time. So that was a bit of a relief.  But I still called my physio just to let him know what had happened and we agreed that while it's nothing to panic about, nonetheless, next time (and yes, there's absolutely going to be a next time) , I'll get him to take it just a wee bit more gently.

Meanwhile, it made running yesterday morning, and walking today more than just a little painful. Ow. Just OWWWW.  Especially anywhere I came to a change in gradient, for some reason - and given that my route covers quite a few hills, that was fairly regularly.  It also slowed down my pace considerably for both sessions - although with both of them, I ended the session feeling way better than I'd started it, so I don't regret going out.

So yeah. I think, if someone was asking me whether or not to get a sports massage, I'd recommend it, but only if:

• ... they knew exactly why they were getting it done (in my case, because I think there's a good chance it'll lower my chance of injuring myself)
• ... they had a massage therapist they could trust and felt 100% comfortable communicating with to say that something was too much or too hard WITHOUT it being a huge deal
• ... they were prepared for it to be uncomfortable (and possibly actually hurt), not just during the massage, but possibly for a couple of days afterwards too

Have you ever had a sports massage done? If so, what was your experience?

Podcast Review: Inside Out Weight Loss by Renee Stephens

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I'll preface this review  by stating something that will probably be obvious from my profile - I'm a little weird. I spent most of my adult life as an Eclectic Pagan (right down to the pentacle tat over my heart chakra) - I'm not actually sure if that identity label still applies to me now, but I haven't found a better one yet, so I'll hang onto it for the moment. I do, however, still have a strong belief in the interconnectedness of mind, body and spirt; and I still use the word "energy" in a way that makes my friend, who has a doctorate in physics (the orthodox kind of physics, NOT the new age kind, and yeah, they're different), visibly twitch.

All of which explains why the whole concept of the Inside Out Weight Loss podcasts by Renee Stephens works so well for me. Caveat Emptor - your mileage may well vary.


THE BIG CONCEPT: PODCAST OVERVIEW

Inside Out Weight Loss (IOWL) is a very different kind of podcast to many of those I've found on iTunes (my primary podcast source).  It's about weight loss and fitness, yes, but it almost never talks about food or exercise. And before you roll your eyes, that's not because the host, Renee Stephens, thinks they're not important; but as she so frequently says, there are plenty of other podcasts out there that cover nutrition, diet plans, ways to move your body, and the physical aspects of losing weight.  What's missing - although some podcasts do touch on this, none seem to focus on it - is something that looks at the inner journey.

Here's the rationale. Most of us who've tried to lose weight over and over aren't missing information. We *know* what to do - we know what's good for our bodies and what isn't.  We just don't do it. Merely throwing more information at ourselves means we just have more information we don't do anything with.  Inside Out Weight Loss, on the other hand, starts from the inside. Episode by episode, it helps us to explore the reasons we overeat (or eat badly) and underexercise in the first place, and then gives us practical tools - often involving NLP and/or hypnosis techniques - to make inner changes.


THE DETAILS: LENGTH, STRUCTURE AND COST

Most podcasts are about 20-25 minutes long, split in two with an ad for something (usually one of the products on Renee's site) in the middle.  As of writing this review, all podcasts - including those in the archives - are completely free.



HOW LONG I'VE BEEN LISTENING

Probably about a year now. This is one that I expect to stick with because I really do get a lot out of it. I try to listen to each episode as it comes out, and I've taken to going back through the archives and listening to the early episodes as well, since they have a lot of good information in them, and they make great companions when I'm walking or driving.



WHAT I LIKE ABOUT IT


First up, I like the whole concept of IOWL. As someone who believes that mind, body and spirit are all bound up together, I don't see nearly enough podcasts that work from - or even acknowledge - this viewpoint. Most of them are way too caught up in how to do particular exercises, or which diet plan works best for what result.  Secondly, I like that - for me at least - despite being about inner work, Renee rarely goes off into what I call "affirmation-land". Change in IOWL is actually about doing inner work and letting the changes flow through to behaviour in the outer world. I'ts not about telling yourself everything is perfect when it's clearly not, or writing affirmations on your mirror and expecting changes to somehow magically happen.

I should also mention that I like Renee herself, as a host.  She comes off as a warm, caring, sincere person with a great sense of energy to her voice; and she's not afraid to talk about her own screwups or historical issues (and oh yeah, she has them) to illustrate some of her points. At times, her energy can almost seem too much to me, but that's probably just a culture clash with me being a Kiwi, since I've had the same feeling from other American podcasters as well.



WHAT I'M NOT SO KEEN ON 


The only real criticism I have of these podcasts is a minor niggle - the structure doesn't work for me.  I know from a marketing psychology viewpoint exactly why they're structured as they are, and I know Renee is running a business and don't begrudge her that. That said, I find that dropping me out of the flow of the podcast to tell me about one of the products and then trying to just pick up where we left off feels... jarring - especially in an otherwise relaxing podcast - and so far, it hasn't convinced me to try any of the products.



WHERE YOU CAN CHECK IT OUT

IOWL is available over on iTunes - in fact, it was the top result to come up when I did a search on "weight loss and fitness podcasts", which says something.  Or, if you don't have iTunes, you can find the podcasts (all the way back to Episode 0) over on her website at Personal Life Media.com.


So, what (if any) podcasts do you listen to regularly?