Yes it has been awhile

Race registration completed. In 8 weeks I’ll be at the start of a 10 mile race. There’s something that comes over me when I click the “submit” button. My mental focus shifts. And for some reason, it isn’t until I actually register that I start to get ready. The part where running long distance that is mental is absolutely necessary to the process. I’m going to do Advocare’s 24 Day Challenge in preparation as well. I feel like a good reset of my system needs to happen so that I can properly absorb nutrition and have the energy.

I have other motivations as well, and it seems that they keep piling up and telling me that additional lifestyle changes are in order. My husband has Hereditary Hemochromatosis. What this means, is in order for him to live a NORMAL life expectancy, he has to be more active and focused on health than the average adult of our age. But I’ve been reading up on this disorder. Tom was diagnosed early, really early into the onset of HH. In January his hemoglobin was normal but his ferritin levels were high. Since January his hemoglobin jumped 7 points. No wonder he started feeling like poo last fall as his body didn’t like being over-stressed. I’m lucky that Tom seems to be very in tune with his blood sugar and his body’s needs (and I’m a nagging pain in the butt and demanded he ask why he felt so bleh). We’re very blessed that his doc was on the ball, and it is rare to get a diagnosis at this stage as the progression is generally rapid and not all docs know to look for it.

 The great news about that lies in the fact that generally people who catch it, and start being active and focus on health live longer than those without HH. After all, as Americans, we’re not known for taking care of ourselves into our 50s and 60s. And there’s nothing like having a fire lit under your butt to get you back into the game. Tom took tennis shoes and a t-shirt to work today to go on his lunch time walk. His regular commitment to this is admirable and makes me feel better, as he’s taking care of himself though his energy levels are still low. So how can I not do the same and keep up my healthier habits? After all, with all of the heart disease, cancer and diabetes in my family, I need to be in the habit of taking care of my body and health now. It isn’t exactly going to get easier going forward.

So in addition to exercise, nutrition is going to play a key role in our lives. I’m not talking about eating a diet of plain veggies and dry chicken breasts. I’m talking about better quality of food. I need to get a small cooler for my husband, who has suggested that help me by doing the farmer’s market downtown on Wednesdays for meat. I not only want to support local farmers, but I want to know that my foods are not over-processed. With my interest in organic gardening, I want to learn what I can on the small scale so that when I have a yard, I can grow some things to eat as well. Hence, I’m starting my new project, y’know because I’m so full of free time. But then I won’t have time to eat because I’m bored!

Time goals and the finish line

Yes I know it has been a very long time.  I haven’t had much to say about my own health, as I’ve been worried about my husband’s.  But it seems that I’m back on the wagon again, after having gained 10 lbs. that threatened to stay, 3 have come off.  Race training really is the only way I LOVE to exercise.  Syttende Mai is the one looming 11 weeks away.  I wanted to do the Madison Half but I won’t be due to a mile time restriction that is a full 90 sec. more restrictive than the San Francisco Half.  If I keep progressing the way I have been, I will be more than ready to meet it by next year, should I choose.  But a hilly 10 mile race will suit me fine.  This will be my first race with a time goal.  I consider that a big deal.  I’ll let you know what that is when I’m closer to my race, but really I’m thinking 2:22 or less…  

I don’t know what it is about having a race in my near future that flips a switch in my brain.  But it becomes easier to want healthier food and to drink more water and stay up on my nutrition in general, but I’m happy about it.  After all, this is the year I will reach my goal weight and my fitness goals.  So I guess I need to keep setting up races to do since I refuse to lose weight any other way.  If I could trick my fat ass into being skinny some other way, that would have worked years ago.  And I almost thought about resorting to something stupid again to get the weight off once those 10 lbs came back in my panic.  But, my pill-popping, cabbage soup eating, no carb days are O-V-E-R.  And since there have been crazier things than I've even tried that have been introduced since then, besides stuff that can make you die, like drinking Chlorophyll and eating practically nothing (Not joking) then NO THANK YOU.  I'm not paying anyone to get rich from my personal weaknesses to get those fine print "results not typical."  I like actual food and nutrition so that I can sustain good health.  There are some great programs that really just retrain you how to eat correctly.  Some people need that.  Unfortunately I just end up paying someone to help me obsess about food and binge.  I don't need to spend money to make me feel like crap about myself.  I can get that for free, LOL.   I couldn't keep anything else up for the rest of my life.  But since I never plan to be 260 lbs. EVER again, I can’t wait to hit 145/150.  I can’t wait to wear shorts.  I wonder if I’ll ever want to wear running shorts…

Honestly, there’s no better way to blow off steam.  I can really FEEL my body when I’m running.  I am constantly aware of the stages I go through in warming up.  It takes much more work to get my heart rate up these days and I know that is because my heart muscle is stronger.  I know what it is to put stress on my body in order to improve myself.  I know what it is to work through pain and to push myself even harder as a result.  I’m capable of running a half-marathon.  Granted, I didn’t love the last two miles at all.  But I will do it again.  I find myself wondering if there will be a time I will not hate those last two miles like I did that first time.  I want to have a 12 minute mile.  If I can do that, I’ll be heading to San Francisco to do their half-marathon.  After that, we’ll see.  I reserve the right to change my mind.         

Focus and reality

It really is the little things that matter.  This morning was reintroducing myself to why whole grain toast with peanut butter and organic honey is my favorite breakfast.  I promised myself that I would start tasting my food again.  Honestly, people forget why they like food and then they end up eating too much so that the adrenaline rush from doing that is the only thing that feels good.  There is no actual secret to sustained weight-loss and health other than to eat less and move more.  The supplements I take aren't to replace food.  That would hurt my metabolism to starve myself in such a way and be unhealthy.

My goal is to be healthy, not necessarily to be skinny.  After all, I don't know if I'd be satisfied with thin if it was only temporary.  And I'd be horrible to live with. Why work so hard just to gain it back?  This is my life.  I want to live a long time.  In the wake of my husband's recent health scare, I realized that I never want to put my husband through what I've been through in the past week and a half.  So I will promise to take the best care of myself that I can, because I love my family and the best gift I can give them is to be healthy and be there for them.  As a mother and a wife, that is my job.    

Getting older and BETTER!

I know it has been a very long time since I’ve blogged.  To tell you the truth, I’d lost my way a bit in the pursuit of starting my own salon business.  I had to set priorities there, and while I was still working out, I was not as committed and I wasn’t making progress, and had managed to put on a little weight over the fall.  The weight gain, in the past, would have been my downfall.  This time I sighed at the scale at the Y and nodded.  I’m determined that the couple-of-pounds that made my jeans tight and my middle mushier than I’d seen it in a year was the only weight to come back.  Summer is a long ways off, and I’m happy to say I’ll be ready for it after my races this spring. 

I was also back to doing it for the wrong reasons.  It actually took something that my dear daughter went through at school to snap me back to reality.  There’s a group of kids at my oldest daughter’s high school that use any reason to poke fun of her.  This time it was the ever-so-popular, “You’re FAT!” insult.  I wish I could tell her that the insult wasn’t about the weight that she might want to lose, and it isn’t about how she looks.  SHE’S BEAUTIFUL!  (Seriously, if she got more beautiful, the boys would be insufferable, as if they’re not now.) At her age I was a size 7/8.  Yeah, um…I was called fat-ass all of the time.

I became fat because I stopped caring about myself.  It wasn’t about how I looked; it was about how I felt about myself.  You want to know why?  BECAUSE if I gave more of a damn about me, and my health, I would take care of myself!  After I ran that race last fall I didn’t care what size my butt was, or how I was not a size 7 anymore.  Stretch marks?  I had babies.  Was my heart healthy and was I in enough shape to run 13.1 miles on a beautiful Sunday morning in September.  YES!  Can all skinny people just go do that?  NO!  I was in, and still am in the best physical shape of my life as far as how strong I am and the cardio-vascular health I have. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep working on it and improve.  That’s all part of it.  I’m exploring areas of nutrition and supplements, not as a replacement for better eating habits and exercise, but in addition to that.  Really, all of those crazy methods that pharmaceutical companies are making PILES of money from people’s self-esteem issues are disgusting.  You can’t take a chemical instead of food and be skinny as well as healthy for life.  Well you can be skinny, if you want to keep making someone else who doesn’t care about you or the long-term health effects on your body rich.  That doesn’t sound like as much fun as the texture and taste of food in its proper portions.  I’m not proposing that, or saying that I do that.  I avoid the skinny tie guys at GNC like the plague.  They don’t care if my heart explodes or my pancreas shuts down as a result of their pills so long as they get paid. 

However, supplemental nutrition is important, as food is so over processed, and genetically manufactured that it isn’t what it used to be, unless you can afford a completely organic food budget.  Plus, in order to eat enough of the types of nutrients I need in order to have what I need, I’d do nothing but eat all day.  Every athlete needs a way to make sure they get what their body needs for optimal performance.  I didn’t believe that until very recently.  Honestly, it started for me with a multi-vitamin and started to grow.    

So now I have my vitamin and performance “cocktail” through  AdvoCare  during the day in hopes of just being in better health in general as well as seeing where I can take my fitness goals through it.  I’ll let you know how that goes!  Now I’m off to go work out for my third time this week.  Here’s to being back on the wagon and a little bit stronger through knowing my body more and more as I get older and better.    

20 year reunion!

Okay, well I’ve started my own business and I’m in the middle of an accelerated course term for school.  My work outs have slipped for the past couple of weeks.  But like any lifestyle choices, there will be times of struggle to get it all in.  Well, I need the work outs to mitigate the stress.  But since I’m also project oriented, I needed another reason to want to keep on trucking towards my final fitness goals. 

Can anyone say “20 year class reunion?” 

I not only have one, but I have two.  I have the pleasure of having attended two high schools, so my first high school has extended the invitation to those who grew up and attended Neenah High School but didn’t finish.  I’m sort of surprised, I guess, that they want me to come.  I was not a popular girl.  I would even say I was painfully awkward when I knew most of them.  But now that I’m on the other side of things, there are people I want to see, I even want to see the ones who were not so nice to me.  Why?  Well, they all matter in my life, even if my memory of some of them wasn’t so happy.  Every experience helped me grow. 

I will attend Middleton High School Reunion as well.  Fewer people remember me there, to be honest, because I was only with them 3 years.  But I have a general sense of wellbeing for all of the people I went to school with, because I’m in a very good place.  I hope they’re all as happy as I am, considering I had to come so far to be there.  I’m hoping that, by knowing how hard it was for me back then, that they can see that, and know if I can do it, they certainly can.  Life is what you make of it and what you bring to it.    

Plus, I’m living the movie reunion dream.

I own my own business.  It is a pretty good measure of success, isn’t it?  I have a beautiful family that I’m proud of.  All of the boys that didn’t know I was alive though I pined for them the way a young, unpopular, awkward girl does will get to meet the tall, dashing and handsome husband on my arm.  All the girls I envied for being popular and pretty can eat their hearts out ;) 

And there’s my fitness goals which are well within my reach by the time these parties come about.  Of course I want to look amazing!  Who doesn’t?  So with that last bit in mind, I am back in the saddle.  Last year I had Vegas.  This summer I had a race, and this year I have my 20 year reunion.  With that kind of motivation, I’ll be in the best shape of my entire life and feel more confident than I felt in the swim team photo.  

Excuses and the blame game.

I’m too tired.  I have no time.  I have kids.  I have asthma.  I have pain in my “insert random joint here” that prevents me.  I don’t like to “insert exercise type here.”  I’ll start tomorrow.

Then don’t complain if you don’t like how you look or feel.  Because I’m going to tell you, I was that person that used all of those excuses above.  And I’ve lost close to 90 lbs.  And I didn’t get here without a little inconvenience, pain and lots of hard work.  And I won’t get to where I want to be without being willing to keep on going.

What motivates me? 

#1  ME

I’m ultimately the one who has to get up in the morning or afternoon and apply the effort.  I recognize it’s hard and then make myself do it anyhow.  I don’t like being fat.  I like to eat.  I don’t want to die because I was lazy.    

#2  MY KIDS

I don’t want my kids to be fat like I was.  How I live sets the tone for how they live.  We tell them things like, “Hard work pays off.”  Here’s an example I’d like to set for them that shows them just that. 

#3  MY HUSBAND

My health and mood directly affects his life.  I care that it doesn’t affect him adversely.  I want to live a long time with him, and I want our quality of life to be good.  I don’t want to be constantly tired and down because I have no energy because I’m too sedentary.  Further down the line, I don’t want heart disease, obesity and diabetes (all running in the family) to affect his life because I had too many excuses not to get off my butt and take care of myself while I was young.

How do you start?  How did I start…I started simple.  I committed myself to 2-3 work outs per week at an hour a piece.  I gave myself contingency plans in case I didn’t have time, or I couldn’t get to a gym.  Even if you’re not going to get the work out you wanted, do something.  If you never get beyond a 30 min. walk three times a week, you’ll be healthier than most Americans. 

I got rid of cable.  T.V. is a time suck.  I have others, but that one was too easy.  That gets rid of the “I can’t afford a gym membership excuse.”  If you can’t afford a gym, you can’t afford cable.  I don’t belong to a fancy gym.  My entire family has a membership to the YMCA for $65. 

Need motivation still?  This is what I did to get myself going:  I stood in my underwear in the mirror every single day.  I looked at the flab and paunch and lack of muscle tone that made me feel bad about me.  Then I said this: You allow it to happen when you make excuses to not take care of your health.  It isn’t McDonald’s fault, your bosses fault or your kids’ fault.  It’s not Jean-Paul Gautier’s skeletal runway show that you’re feeling fat today.  The fault is entirely yours, Michele.  And unless you do something about it, you’ll keep getting bigger and unhappy.

Next time you look at a thin person and hate them because you feel fat, think about what I said.  Is it really their fault?  

I had to do that today, actually.  It was worth it.  What are you willing to give up in order being healthy?  I gave up making excuses and blaming skinny people.  

Yes, I'm still alive

Yes, I know it has been a long time since I’ve blogged.  My life has been busy, to be perfectly honest.  I finished another term in school and am preparing for one that will be much more grueling, as the school I attend online is switching to an accelerated format.  Oy…If my only goal were to just giter dun, then that would be fine.  But I actually want to learn what I’m paying money to learn.  The piece of paper will only mean something to me if that is accomplished along the way.  There are other things that are in the works as well, but I’ll share those once things have settled down.  If it wasn’t for my husband, I would lose my mind.

I’m back to the gym in full force and have five weeks until my next race.  I really like to enjoy Thanksgiving food.  I will enjoy it more if I burn off some calories first.  As a good share of my shorter runs are inside, I’m focusing on speed work.  I hate the treadmill.  Running on one is like watching paint dry.  20 minutes is like torture.  I can literally run for twice as long and enjoy it much more outside.  Look at how far I’ve come.

I gained weight over the summer.  I’m sort of kicking myself for that.  Too much food that goes well with beer, and I had gotten back into the soda habit a bit as well and have replaced it with Spark.  I’ve taken off 5 lbs. so far.  I would like to get another 5 off by Thanksgiving.  If I can hit a total weight loss of 90 lbs. by Christmas, that would be the best present ever. 

I realized recently that I don’t exactly have a final goal weight in mind.  Part of me is shocked that I have made it this far, actually.  I’ve only had a couple of 10 lb. backwards trends, and have gotten through them pretty well once I had found my rhythm again.  I want to see how I feel once I’ve lost 100 lbs. total.  I guess I don’t intend to stop doing what I’m doing and I’m sort of letting that guide me to the weight I’m supposed to be.  I haven’t been below 140 lbs. and maintaining that weight before I was as active as I am was difficult.  But I’ll know when I get there.