When the judge’s opinion came down last week, I wanted to read it (really I did), but, as I said, not much of a reader.
Then I thought, “You know, I bet I’m not alone.”
So, as a labor of love, as the saying goes, today I pulled up the document, and I read it into my computer.
You can hear drills/hammers/saws from a neighbor’s construction, I lose my place a couple of times, and I’m most definitely not a professional audiologist. (Trolls, please don’t go crazy in the Comments affirming that remark.)
It is saved as a .WAV file, and unfortunately I had to compress it & store it in Dropbox – because it’s a HUGE FILE.
HERE is the link to the Dropbox link where you can download it if you like. You’ll need to press the “DOWNLOAD” button at the top right, then uncompress the file. (Maybe it would be easier to just read it after all heh heh)
And HERE is the copy I read from, in case you want to reference anything.
I took Friday, Saturday and Sunday off (mostly), which always feels great until, of course, Monday. I got up early and opened my computer to find . . . 312 emails to address. Oy.
However, our FITera.com weekly challenge was to ramp up our exercise. (Last week’s challenge was to work out in the morning.) So I DID ramp up my exercise per the challenge – from one TRX class in the morning to two.
However, today was kinda an accident.
The teacher for the 8am class – Gardie – is SUPER DUPER hard. The teacher for the 9am class – Chris – isn’t so hard . . . or, they are different. Gardie makes you do all sorts of crazy stuff fast or super long. Chris concentrates on form and goes slower. So you work up a sweat in Gardie’s, but Chris’s you are more trying to feel what’s working, stretching, etc.
Ahem.
Gardie SUBBED for Chris today.
Even HE thought I was a bad *ss for doing his class 2x in a row. 😉 We only had two of us in the 2nd class, so though the bulk of it was the same, he modified part of it. The first class concentrated a lot on core (planks, etc.) – which he replaced with hamstring work in the 2nd hour (stirrup work).
hamstring “march”
The hamstring stirrup work goes basically like this:
1. Lie on the ground on your back. Put your heels into the stirrups/handles of the TRX.
2. Bridge your hips up (butt off the ground).
3. Now “march” your feet in, slowly, one at a time, for 90 seconds.
4. Rest 10 seconds. Bridge back up.
5. Now do it bringing BOTH knees in and out instead of one at a time.
6. Rest 10 seconds. Bridge back up.
7. Now spread your feet out as wide as you can, then back in, for 90 seconds.
8. Rest. Bridge. Curse.
9. Now “frog” your legs in to your chest – sort of like #5, but with your knees out to the sides and your feet together.
10. Rest. Bridge. Cry.
11. Now do all the above, but with each move a count of 3-2-1 in, hold, then 3-2-1 out, sloooowly.
Right now, every muscle in my body is sore.
Because I had to do all those emails before heading to TRX, I let the dog out instead of walking him, and “banked” the coals of my emails as best I could. Then I went to TRX, came back, and washed the dog (and me). Then washed the tub of 10 pounds of pibble fur. How the heck does this dog do it every week?
Winston the pibble.
Then I took Winston (my dog) to his Scenting class.
He’s learning to be a Scenting dog. We’re only on our third round of classes, but he can scent now on birch, the first “non-food” scent of 3 (birch, clove, anise). (Each set of classes is once a week for six weeks or so, but you get homework too.)
HERE is a video of him doing a search. It’s only 9 seconds because he found it fast! The scent is on the side of the bench – neither the handler (me) nor to dog knows where it has been put. This is just a one-box search – I have others of him searching for more, but this gives you an idea.
Today they had 12 equal-sized cardboard boxes lined up in two rows. Only one box had birch in it (the others were empty), and he found it on his first pass. I was SO proud. When you do the actual test, they put food in some of the other boxes. Dirty buggers LOL.
Then I came back and worked and worked and worked and worked.
And am still working.
When I get stressed out, I pull up an old video I did in Kona. It’s manta rays. A “manta ray ballet.”
This was just filmed on a little Samsung camera, floating on the surface . . . no diving apparatus, etc.
Manta rays are my “air” and “water” totem.
I don’t have an air (bird) totem, I have manta as both. I went through a spirit quest quite some time ago. My earth animal is the buffalo.
Anyway – if you’re feeling stressed, here’s the video.
At Crossfit yesterday, we did good mornings, Tabatas, and a 6 minute AMRAP of pull ups.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say things like “AMRAP,” you might want to go back in my blog (linked HERE) and scroll down to “Crossfit lingo.”
barbell good mornings
Good Mornings work your hammies.
You can see what a good morning looks like in the photo. Deceptively simple. Put a barbell behind your head, and then bend down (keeping your back straight, not rounded), then come back up. How far you can get depends a lot on how flexible your hamstrings are.
It was 5 x 5 good mornings – I did it at 35 kg.
This is because there’s a gal in the morning I always check the Whiteboard on, and she did it at 32 kg 😉 I can never really compete with her 99% of the time, but when I can, I do. A little personal competition that I carry out in my own widdle mind. 😉
We superset this with “rollouts” – which are basically from Satan.
barbell rollouts
If you look at the photo here, it shows you what someone without a bad shoulder, with abdominal muscles, etc. will do to perform a roll-out. I’m lucky to be able to push the silly barbell out a foot. Harrumph.
After this, we did a 6 minute AMRAP of pull ups.
Because I can’t do a pull up with my body weight where it is, I added a couple of bands. What that means is you loop what are basically gigantic rubber bands around the bar, put one foot in them, and use them to help you lift your weight. I did an assist of something like 45-50 pounds (blue and red bands), and got to 53 pull ups.
Finally, we did Tabata situps.
A “Tabata” is named after the guy who figured out that if you do any exercise all out for 20 seconds, then rest 10 seconds, for 8 cycles (4 minutes), it winds up doing more good than any other method. I was able to average 9 per round (I did 10 one round, 8 another, but 9 all the others) – which I was happy about.
this – of course, after doing TRX in the morning.
Oy! I even got some grocery shopping and about 6 hours’ worth of billable work done yesterday. Yay, me 😉
So, THIS morning, my hammies feel like lead!
Holy cats! I knew when I did them that the good mornings were very heavy for me. I had to really stabilize my core and my back to do them with good form. I wasn’t particularly paying attention to the fact that this is a hamstring exercise.
Um, I know now . . .
my house is on the other side. Down in the valley you can see the (white) farmhouse.
Thursdays are my favorite day.
I try to start out by taking my dog down into the valley, then up the mountain on the other side. A bit of a hobble, with tight hammies. Especially the really steep bits.
This takes about an hour. If I don’t have my act together – because I do a lot of stuff on Thursdays – I miss out. I need to get out of the house before 7 a.m. to do it.
After the hill hike, to the Farmer’s Market.
I love the Thursday farmer’s market, because it’s the one the chefs go to. They come out of San Francisco, Michelin starred restaurants, to get their veggies at our little market. It’s great.
You can always tell an important one, because he or she has a minion running to and fro gathering things saying ‘Yes, Chef!” “No, Chef!” (Yes, really.)
I get a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box there, eggs, and whatever else I fancy. I love the fact that, by picking up the CSA box at the actual market, I can ‘swap out’ anything in the box that I’m unlikely to eat that week.
The market was brimming with berries and cherries this week – I got a pint of the most gorgeous, “bluer than blue” blueberries, and some great cucumbers and daikon for a salad my hubby loves. The rest was the “usual”: lettuces, spring garlic, new red potatoes, mizuno, chard, carrots, etc.
From the market, off to Pelo.
the sun coming up this morning, before I started my walk
My hammies were so sore, I actually mentioned to the teacher today that I might need to decrease my “Power Number.” How Pelo works is you actually are fit to the bike, and you have a “Power Number” that’s specifically your own, based on your own fitness. That way, you can ride next to someone who is just starting out, who’s riding next to Lance Armstrong, and you can all get the same amount of workout. When she said that we would be doing a lot of “tempo” riding – meaning, cadences over 100 beats per minute – I nearly walked right out! But I persevered, and didn’t even lower my Power Number! Yay, me!
After Pelo, various errands, then time for work.
I’m nearly done with work now – just two more clients to do. But I’m proud of myself and my little hammies, that we not only got down our mountain, up the other mountain, down that mountain, and back up our mountain, but then we persevered during the Pelo tempo ride!
I’m averaging about 16-17 miles each Pelo ride, and about 400 calories. The bikes that are used in Pelo “really” keep track of your calories, because they know your personal perceived exertion (because, remember, you’re specifically geared to them). So the calories always “seem low” compared to the effort you put out, vis-a-vis a “standard” treadmill or spin bike.
That’s because “standard” spin bikes and treadmills are like the sizes on expensive couture dresses – they lie 😉
Tomorrow’s Friday!
I’ll be going to TRX and Pelo in the morning, and the plan is to take the rest of the day off. My hubby and I were super lucky to wrangle a reservation at The Fork tomorrow – so that’ll start our weekend off right!
I don’t know if it’s because my parents never really drank water. Probably. But I can go an entire day without drinking water (or, really, anything), and feel fine about it.
I know water is healthy.
I know that water feeds your cells. I know that often if we feel hungry, we’re really thirsty. I know. I know. I know.
I’ve tried all the tricks to get myself to do it.
There are apps. There’s having “infused water” in the fridge. There’s filling a big bottle up and just keeping it at your desk.
Camelbak Eddy bottle with rubber bands
But finally I think I’ve found a trick that “works.”
If you go HERE, the trick is discussed. This is one of those websites from which I get MailChimp emails, because I signed up for some free download a while back. But this trick is well worth knowing about, if you have trouble remembering to drink liquids like me.
I was pessimistic this would work for me.
Surprisingly – it is working! If you don’t want to click on the link – here’s the deal.
Get a bottle & some rubber bands.
I have blogged before about the “Camelbak Eddy” bottle. I like it because you don’t need to tilt it to drink. You just pinch the rubber straw-thing on top with your teeth, and sip.
Surround the bottle with the number of rubber bands that represents how many bottles of water you’re supposed to get in, per day. (This should at least start with “one more than you think you can drink” per day – conventional wisdom says half your bodyweight in ounces, but that was way too much for me to start with.)
When you drink a bottle, take the rubber band off the body of the bottle. On the Eddy bottle, as you can see in the photograph, it has a little “hanger” thing on the top. I put the rubber bands representing bottles I have completed there.
That way, the rubber bands and the bottle stay together.
Simple? Yup! Super simple
. . . but it seems to be working for me, where all sorts of other methods have failed! Getting that Eddy bottle (at the suggestion of my friend & client Claire) was the first really great step. It makes it so easy to drink water, that it’s nearly worth the price tag for the bottle 😉 But the rubber bands added to the Eddy bottle were the game changer.
By just looking at the bottle, I can see at a glance how far I’ve come – & how far I have to go.
Genius!
By the way – linked above is a great little video about making different sorts of infused water. There are some combos that sound interesting – like grapefruit and rosemary. I’ve tried the apple and cinnamon, and it’s super tasty. I actually have grapefruit in the fridge and rosemary growing rampant outside – so I might make up a pitcher of that one today and see how it goes.
Every morning for the last week, I’ve sat down with a cup of coffee & had an “unsubscribe” fest.
Is your email inbox like mine? You subscribe to something, and then within a few months, that “something” has proliferated into about 100 “somethings”?
chop chop chop
Usually, I have an “unsubscribe fest” before traveling.
I unsubscribe from the stuff that I’m not reading – and if I think I might want to re-subscribe, I unsubscribe anyway, then put the email into a folder that says “Possible Resubscribe” under my Inbox.
You know what?
You guessed it . . . I never do. But having ones that I think I “should” like reading in a little folder – so I haven’t “lost them forever” – makes me feel better about getting out the hatchet.
One of the best inbox “managers” I know is FollowupThen.com.
After I’ve finished axing my morning quota of newsletters, I spend a bit of time with FollowupThen.com.
If you don’t know about it – you need to check it out.
FollowupThen.com allows you to “forward” emails to yourself (or to others, more on that in a second) for any period of time. Want to deal with an email in an hour? Send it to 1hour@fut.io (fut = FollowUpThen). Want to deal with it on Monday? Send it to Monday@fut.io. Want to deal with it in 3 months? Send it to 3months@fut.io (you get the picture).
FollowupThen.com also allows you to get an email forwarded to yourself “until you do it.” These are called “recurring” followups. So if you have something that you keep pushing off (and want to keep pushing off, until you do it), you can forward it to yourself, to come back to your inbox every Monday until you click it completed.
Followupthen.com also allows you to re-ping other people.
Let’s say that you tell a client that you will “remind them on Thursday” to do something. You can set up a FollowupThen alert for Thursday – and it will send an email to that client (and you) – from you – stating that this is their “reminder” that you said you’d follow up on Thursday.
Genius!
I use both the “follow up with me every week until I do it” reminders and the “just follow up with me one time on this set date or time” reminders. Since it sends you back your email, if I am using the second sort, I put the word SINGLE in the Subject line – telling my sometimes absent-minded self that if I delete the reminder, it won’t be coming back! On the recurring ones, I don’t put anything on the Subject line. So if a FollowupThen shows up in my inbox and it says SINGLE, that means that I have pushed it forward for the exact date or time that it is right then. If it comes up and it just has the task on the Subject line, and I don’t have time to do it, I can delete it, knowing that I will get another reminder at the interval I set.
If you set up a “single” reminder, you can continue to push it forward – it’s just the software doesn’t do it “for you.”
So, here’s an example. I need to get in touch with the guy who does our Long Term Care Insurance. We’re supposed to talk with him annually – and you know how that goes. So I set a “single” reminder the LAST time that we talked with him to contact him now. Well – “kinda” now. The date that I set was February 15@fut.io – I set it February 16th of last year – so this year on February 15th, the reminder, Subject line “SINGLE: Long Term Care Checkup” came up in my inbox.
Um, it’s been coming up for a while now.
How? Because when a “single” reminder comes up (with the email attached to it that you are pushing forward), it conveniently gives you the option to push it forward 5 minutes up to months. You just click on how far you want to push it forward, and it will do it. So – in my case – I’ve been pushing this dang thing forward by 1 week since (ahem) February 15th. Why not put it on a “recurring” followup? Because I really do want to get this done – and having to actually push it forward makes me feel guilty about it 😉
What sorts of things do I put on the “recurring” reminder?
Basically “low low priority” things. As an example, a friend of mine and I want to do a send-off on the song “ice, ice, baby” – we have even written the words to it – but we haven’t gotten together to film anything. It’s a silly thing, but I don’t want to completely forget about it. So every 4 weeks, I get a reminder that says “Ice Ice Baby” on it – and in fact, it even has the words to the satire in the body of the email. And I delete it, because I don’t have time to do it – but some day, I will. And then I will mark it “COMPLETED” and FollowupThen.com won’t remind me any more.
I’m sure there are other programs out there that do this.
Theoretically, “Tasks” do this in your Calendar. But I use FollowupThen.com for inbox and email maintenance – and it’s so easy that it’s well worth the annual fee.
This is the photo you get when you put “BELLY” into the photostock search engine.
Belly.
It’s such a nice sounding word. Cute. Sweet. Happy. Probably comes from the holidays – even now (yes, I am in my 50s) I get together with my dad on Christmas Eve, and he reads Clement Moore’s “Twas The Night Before Christmas” to me. (I even put out a note to Santa still – it’s pretty funny going back through years and years of these. If you have kids, keep the letters!)
You know how it goes: His eyes–how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
(It wasn’t until I lived in England in my 20s that I discovered that “jelly” meant Jell-O, not “jam without seeds.” I could never figure out the illustration on that page as a kid…)
So. Belly. Meaning, well, “that stomach area.” Or, more particularly, “that stomach area, described in a way that none of us want it to be described.”
Whatever happened to poor “Belly”? Maybe the link to Santa/”little round…”? No one wants one. Poor “Belly.”
…and this is what you get when you put the word ‘abs’ into the photostock search box.
As opposed to…Abs.
Short for rectus abdominis, this is the word that you want to have applied to your “stomach area.” It basically indicates that you are so bad-*ss that you have no fat in that area, so you can see the muscles of your core.
This word is current currency for a great midsection. Like, “Wow, she has such great abs!” (You wouldn’t hear someone saying “Wow, she has such a great belly!”)
While this word denotes kick-*ssery, it’s also not very friendly.
I personally am more in the “Belly” arena than the “Abs” arena.
I’d certainly like to be more in the Abs arena . . . and (sad, so sad) basically was for the bulk of my life. As I’ve blogged before, I didn’t even really think that much about it. It’s just how I was. Now, I’m a “Belly” person.
I just think that it’s a shame that we can’t have a more kick-*ss name for “abs” with some fat covering them – or a friendlier name for the opposite.
Anyway – that’s what came to me today on my drive to go work out.
I didn’t do much over the weekend.
Saturday was taken up with being dragged (oh, oops, accompanying) my husband to tile stores, etc. We’re remodeling our master bathroom, and he’s the design “maven” of the two of us – so I wind up basically tagging along and trying to decide which one of something he likes best, and choosing that one. Sometimes I get it wrong. Then I have to back out of “my” decision. It’s like a special marriage game.
Sunday was Mother’s Day, and I made a great brunch. While champagne was flowing a bit too freely, the biggest change was that I didn’t buy any danishes for the meal.
We only have “sweets” on special occasions.
So on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Easter (“brunch-y” situations), my Mom always picks up some bakery-fresh, gluten-free, kick butt danishes. She always gets like 9,000 of them too, for the 4 of us. I took over making brunch for the 4 of us years ago – but always kept the danish tradition. This year, I decided that I would just skip’em – and no one noticed. Yay! As Coach Pam says – “baby steps,” and just making better decisions.
It’s Monday, so, back to the old grind.
Today I went to TRX from 9:00-10:00 a.m. Our regular teacher is on holiday, so we had a substitute. She was exceptionally “perky” – and brutal.
The good thing about shake-ups like that is that substitutes never cut you slack.
They don’t know how “good you’re doing” compared to when you started. Like, our regular teacher knows that if I can even pull my knees in with my hips off the floor, that’s way way better than when I started, and he gives me all sorta kudos for doing it. This gal – nope. She kept urging me to get them higher, do splits, pull both knees in . . . Ay Carumba!! (She was Latin, and played salsa-type music – it was quite different than Chris, our usual guy, and his fairly mellow 80s music.)
One of the gals I’m always in class with, Amy, just started to laugh at one point … when the sub was trying to get me to pike up with one foot in the TRX, and then “Just take your weight off the other foot, Mommy.” This would have had me in a plank, with my feet about 4 feet off the ground. (See the photo.)
Amy (who was able to do it….b&tch… LOL) knew that this was miles outside my comfort zone. There were only 3 of us in the class though – and the other gal was completely new to TRX – so the sub spent the most time with her. Amy and I would look at one another when she’d tell us to “just do” this completely new and slightly impossible move – however, except for 2 moves (including that
see how the TRX is around her ankle in this photo? The next move is to kick the other foot up to “meet it.”
“flying plank”), I actually did everything I was told to do. So there you go – stretch your boundaries.
Today at Crossfit at 3:00 we did a bunch of pre-workout stuff, then the main WOD was split in 2 parts:
1 pood – 16kg – is 3rd row down on the left (green). 40 kg is bottom row, navy kettlebell, far right.
PART ONE: 5 rounds of 30 seconds max kettlebell swings (1 pood), 30 seconds rest, 30 seconds plank left, 30 seconds rest, 30 seconds plank right.
PART TWO: 5 rounds of 30 seconds max kettlebell deadlifts (40kg), 30 seconds rest, 30 seconds max burpees.
In part one, I got on average 14-15 swings in the 30 second period, and was able to hold the planks.
In part two, I averaged about 16 deadlifts per 30 seconds, and 5 burpees. (The deadlifts were actually only supposed to be 1 pood, but I found the heaviest kettlebell I could find and used it. Because I am pretty good at deadlifting.)
It was only Chad, H, and me – Chad worked on his max snatch in Part One – H did Part One with me, but then H moved over to Performance with Chad for Part Two, which was actually doing bar deadlifts and then lateral burpees. I was fine working with the kettlebell, and it was a different move.
view on our walk this morning
My biggest issue today is forgetting to eat/not making time to eat. I walked the dog for about an hour in the hills before heading over to TRX, and it was so nice outside that I didn’t get home fast enough to make a breakfast. So I wound up having a Quest bar.
I need to get more with the program. However, on Sunday, I did a ton of meal prep. So I feel good about that. It was just more “cutting up veggies” and lunch/dinner-type prep. I like to have a sweet potato, eggs and some fruit for breakfast, which takes basically 3 minutes to make – so I didn’t really “prep” anything for breakfast. Silly me…
Today, three of us (in this photo, the three of us with the pumpkin-colored hat on) got our “20 workouts in 30 days” Spring Challenge hats. The other gal in the photo is one of the awesome instructors. Georgia.
In this photo, we’d just finished doing Georgia’s “Coachella” ride – her playlist was all bands she’d seen in the desert – hence, our sweaty selves 😉
I’m such the Swag Hag.
The Spring Challenge was a brilliant “marketing plan” by Alan, the owner of Pelo. It was free to sign up – and if you did 20 workouts in a 30 day period (April 15 through May 15), you got a “20 in 30” hat.
What it really made you do was come more … try out different classes … and consider bumping up your membership.
I hadn’t tried the TRX classes before starting the Spring Challenge. And that’s part of the brilliance of the program . . . it makes you check other things out.
our TRX class
In fact, before the Challenge, I only went to Pelo 2x/week – for their T and Th classes. Otherwise, I was doing Crossfit 3x/week (M, W, F), and then hot yoga T and Th (well, kinda – see yesterday’s post heh heh). The Challenge made me swap things around a bit, adding TRX strength training into the mix. I think now that I’ve “got ze hat,” I will probably go back to just 2 of the bike classes a week – but I think I will keep up the TRX.
TRX is like an “old school” strength training class.
You use straps and your own body weight. Crossfit, on the other hand, is all about “functional fitness.” In other words, in Crossfit you’re not doing “isolations” (e.g., bicep curls), you’re doing a movement that could translate into something in real life (e.g., carrying heavy kettlebells, which could translate into carrying buckets; deadlifting a barbell with good form, which could translate into understanding how to lift something heavy off the floor).
After doing Crossfit for a few years now, I’ve sort of been indoctrinated into a mindset that isolations are “bad,” because they’re not “functional.” But the thing that TRX has taught me is that isolations (when combined with functional fitness) can actually be useful, since you’re working on building your strength and seeing what “pieces” of your functional chain need work. Then, by strengthening them, you can perform functional movements better.
Looking at these photos makes me embarrassed, though.
Man, I weigh so much more than I weigh “in my head”! I think that’s part of my problem. I don’t spend a lot of time in front of the mirror. And I’m usually the one taking the photos. So when I see photos of myself, I think “Who the Heck is that chunky monkey?”
I really got caught short today.
I got to class early today, so I chatted a bit with Alan. He praised me for doing so well in the Challenge, then he told me “how much slimmer” I looked. He made a particular point of saying how much slimmer my face was.
My face, to me, looks like a big round tomato. This isn’t my face! And the fact it had been bigger – at least, in the perception of the owner of the gym – makes my stomach hurt.
this is how I still think of my body – I’m the one in the red
And my body? I’ve always been bigger “at the bottom than at the top” – but never like this.
this is how my face (& body) looks like to me in the mirror.
Well, not really “never.” It’s not like this happened overnight. I just haven’t paid attention. Obvs.
It’s been ten years that my weight has been slowly, slowly, ever so slowly creeping up.
The thing that really pushed me over the edge, metabolism-wise (so says my doctor) was doing a ton of endurance stuff over a short period. I did an Ironman, then a couple triathlons… then in a year’s period of time, I did a swim from Alcatraz, 5 marathons, and a triathlon. My doc says that put my stress-related hormones out of whack.
Also during that period, I had to have some “female plumbing” yanked out due to issues, which put me through menopause – and more hormone havoc.
But the photos above are how I have continued to perceive myself. And they just are not how I look any more.
I’ve talked about this in posts before – how I don’t seem to have a lot of “body perception.”
And I think part of the problem is that I have always been pretty slim – “Beanpole” and “Chicken Legs” and “Scarecrow” being “terms of endearment” from my formative years. I didn’t really learn how to control my eating, because I never had to.
Now, I’ve “not paid attention” myself into a body I don’t recognize.
The crazy part is that I don’t feel like I have been “ignoring” the problem. I have had a blind spot. It’s like the opposite of what you hear folks with anorexia do. They look in a mirror and see a fat person, even though they are skin and bones. I look in a mirror and see a slim person.
I honestly can’t believe that the photos that I just posted above are ten years old. That’s a little crazy. Though I’ve tried to steer the train back onto the tracks over the years (see all the previous blog posts!), I haven’t really been all that motivated. Sure, I’ve slowly grown out of the clothes in my closet. But my hubby still tells me how beautiful I am, I can basically get out and do what I want to do, etc.
I need to own the fact that I’m 30-40 pounds overweight – and just stick with the program ’til I’m not.
I need to remind myself that my hubby telling me that I look great doesn’t mean I couldn’t look “greater.” (This is how my mind works… He thinks I look fantastic – so why not keep doing what I’m doing? Pass the mashed potatoes please…)
I need to do this for myself – and keep my “Oh! Shiny Penny!” self fixed on staying with it until the scale is back in range.
Winston – bestest dog ever. (He has one eye because he had cancer.) #WhoZaGoodBoy??
My angel & devil working overtime…
So, yesterday, I went to the Farmer’s Market, did Pelo, got together with a friend I haven’t seen in forever for an hour-long hill hike with my dog, and then I said that I’d convinced my bff Moddie to join me at yoga . . . so I’d be sure to go to yoga.
Nope.
I gave her the choice of coming over and drinking wine on our veranda and catching up and snuggling with the dog, or going to hot yoga.
. . . Devil . . .
I’ve written about her before – we applied to the Amazing Race together (twice – once in video, once in person). She and I have done weight-loss-related challenges before, and so I had her re-do my Before photos for Fitera. Then, I actually had her put on one of my bikinis, and I took her photos and told her to go join Fitera!
Moddie and me at The Amazing Race intake
. . .Angel . . .
Fitera also wants you to do a one-or-so minute “Before” video. I took one, but I am going to do what I did for our Amazing Race video – I’m going to cut in some photos of where I want to be, weight wise – photos of myself 10 years ago. It will be motivating for me to go back through those photos, and show that “just a few years ago,” I was where I want to be.
SO, you probably want to see those photos, huh?
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, I hope that you will say – “Hey! You look better than some of the photos that you’ve posted before!” And I’d tend to agree with you. I had some good success with the Haylie Pomroy program. But that was just ten pounds – and there wasn’t any community support, so I totally fell back off the wagon. I have 30 pounds to lose.
When last we left our intrepid heroine, she was trying to decide how to get a newspaper to hold in her photos . . .
Yup, no photos here. Why? Because I had work that I needed to do, starting at 6 a.m., then I didn’t even walk the dog (#WorstMomEver), because – fine, start shaming – I cuddled with the dog and watched Kojak.
(“Who loves ya, baby?”)
Then it was time to make coffee, make breakfast, make Bulletproof coffee for hubby and bring it to him in bed, put laundry in the dryer, then head over to Pelo.
They’re having a (very clever) Challenge, where if you log 20 workouts in 30 days, you get a hat.
Being the Swag Hag that I am, I, of course, jumped on that bandwagon with both feet, going from 2 workouts a week there to 6. (Clever, clever, clever . . . here, take my money, gimme that hat!)
There’s apparently always a Weekly Challenge goin’ on at FITera, too.
This week, it’s basically doing something that you don’t already do, exercise-wise. That’s great – fits in with this 20 workouts in 30 days thing. The thing that I’ve added is TRX workouts. If you don’t know what a “TRX” is, it’s a strap thing invented by a Navy Seal, who wanted something that could fold up into his duffle bag and use his body weight to punish himself – oh I mean work out – while he was on missions.
It looks like a brightly-colored D&S device . . . 😉
Today I did the TRX workout, then did the Peloton workout after. (HERE is a video of the workout – you can see me – the one laughing – at 1:03.) I was SO TIRED!
Then I had to get my butt back to the office, and I’ve been sitting here working at the computer ever since. The plan was to go to Crossfit at 3:00 with my husband, but I was on a conference call with a potential new client, and still had a bunch of other stuff to do. He put his head in and “mouthed” about going to the workout, and I pointed to him and mouthed “No, you go.” He’s about 30 pounds overweight too (maybe more), and I need him to go even if I do not go.
However, just now, I heard him downstairs.
Sigh.
Sometimes, it’s hard to be the “motivator” in the house for stuff like this.
Right now, I actually need to not only still take a shower from working out this morning (#TooMuchInformation . . . ) but I also have to figure out what to make for dinner. I didn’t go shopping, and I don’t really want to go out. So I’m contemplating asking hubby to go get Take-Out (which we never ever do, because I always, 360 days out of the year, make a balanced, organic, “palm of meat, good starch, veggies” dinner). I don’t think I can face shopping and then coming home and making dinner. I can’t believe I just typed that.
Today I got an email from Coach Pam about Nutrition.
I think I mentioned that yesterday’s was about water. It had a great trick – and I just realized that I started the day and drank 2 big 20-ounce water bottles full . . . but I left my bottle downstairs and have been upstairs juggling work-work, trying to answer questions about a rental we have up for lease in Hawaii, faxing documents, answering other questions on a property we’re selling, marketing to potential new clients, etc. for the past seven hours. Crap. #WaterFail . . . This is a big deal, because I know I don’t drink enough water.
The Nutrition email and video were great. It basically reminds you that you can chalk up a “meal” of 1,000 calories in a few minutes, and that would take you like hours of exercise to “balance out.” Not that it’s calories in/calories out – as all us Jonathan Bailor/The Calorie Myth aficionados know – e.g. not all calories are the same – but you gotta “eat right.”
My issue is timing my meals – and preparation. I wind up in a situation like I am right now – I had breakfast, and then a (balanced – e.g., Quest) bar for lunch (yes yes, I know, bars aren’t lunch . . . ), but nothing else. I get working, I forget to eat.
FITera is very much about what you eat, and when. There was a handout that came today with the Nutrition piece about this very subject. Which I printed. And which is lying downstairs, on the printer. And has been. For six hours.
As you can see, though today is “Day One” of FITera, I’m still sort of working into it.
However, tomorrow is Farmer’s Market day, which will be great, because it will allow me to go get a bunch of veggies that I can cut up and put in the fridge – at least I will have that. Tomorrow I also have Pelo again, a walk with a friend I haven’t seen in forever, and then bikram yoga, because I promised another friend I will meet her there. Then she’s coming over to my house after.
I was back into yoga there for a few weeks, but the “20 in 30” thing pushed yoga back off the calendar in favor of TRX, so I asked my friend to meet me there, to have a non-negotiable “must get to yoga” calendar entry.
My life is not very balanced.
If I get a lot of work tomorrow, I’m not sure when I will do it. Sometimes I long for the “ole 9 to 5” – not only did you get paid every week on time (even if sometimes that week you didn’t do much), but you really knew what the boundaries were for work time and non-work time. The “guaranteed $” part being a biiiig thing I miss . . .
But I like the fact that, in and amongst the flurry of emails and calls that were work-related, I got a FITera email. Not only that, I actually know that Coach Pam answers her texts. Even the “owner” of FITera, Chad, comments on the Community Boards.
I already feel less “alone” than in the last program.
That said, it’s probably time for that shower . . .
I’m not even going to talk about, or link, all the diet “programs” that I’ve tried while keeping this blog.
I will also try not to be embarrassed by myself.
Two posts ago, I discussed “failing” at WAG – Working Against Gravity – the latest “hit” program for weight loss. It’s particularly aimed at very athletic, alpha people. It makes you sign up for three months, at about $130/month (it’s a Canadian company, so that’s “about” what it costs).
I know! Pricey, right?
They promise you lots of things, not the least of which is your own “personal coach.”
I have tried other programs (as those of you who follow this blog know). I actually have had success using a number of them – but I get bored, and unmotivated. I don’t really have a “tribe” that is tied to the program, so no matter how great of success I have (which usually equates to about 10 pounds lost), I slack off and then just stop.
I think I am trying to see if anyone notices. No one does.
Well – my mother does. But she’s been pointing out issues related to my weight (she’s perennially slim and trim) since 6th grade – even though in actuality, I haven’t really had that much of a struggle with my weight (as I pointed out in my last blog post).
So, two days ago, I got one of those email solicitations.
You know the ones – something you signed up for a while back sold you to someone who sold you to someone, who is now trying to sell you something. You get the program “for Free,” but then if you want an actual hard copy . . . or you want it on a DVD . . . or you want personal training . . . or you want a metabolism “kick starter” to get you going “faster” . . . or you want a special place to log your meals/exercise . . . you pay (and pay, and pay).
I have so so many of these programs saved on my computer, they have their own digital file folder.
It’s stuffed. It’s embarrassing.
Every time I get one, I tell myself “THIS ONE I will do.”
They promise online support, groups, blah blah blah. I never even get past first base.
The interesting part about this is that you can get a personal coach. Now, I’ve heard THAT before – supposedly in WAG I got a personal coach – but I was only to “ask her one question at a time, daily,” and I had to “wait 24 hours for an answer.” I also was chastised by my coach once for asking her three questions in a day (I discussed that in the blog post.)
Also, you supposedly get a community. Discussed that in the blog post too. In WAG, it’s a private Facebook group. So what you have is a group of folks who are all paying to be there like you are, and a “trail” of texts. Not super helpful, if you’ve ever found yourself trying to find an entry that you “know” was in any Facebook group you’ve ever been a part of.
Also in WAG, there were no daily emails or “Atta Girls” of any kind. I did get a quarterly “newsletter” of sorts, but by that time, I’d already given up. (And when I gave up – e.g., didn’t report in on my day – I heard nothing from my coach – not a peep, not a word.)
So here’s my Day “Zero” experience with FITera.
You get a big huge workbook to go through and a short “Executive Version” of the same. I haven’t read the workbook yet (tonight), but in actuality, it looks a lot more detailed than the WAG one.
You also get a welcome video from the founder, and from your coach (if you choose to pay for one – want to say it’s $45/month). The coach states that they are available 24/7 for you. You get their cell/text, a Skype number, email, and phone number. Also a private Facebook group, and a portion of the “Community Boards” on the Fitera website. Fitera itself is free – it’s the “add-ons” that might cost you. Like the personal coach.
I am still trying to find my way around the FITera website – but it’s not hard.
You’re counselled to fill out a worksheet (similar to WAG), to fill out your profile, and to visit the boards. You’re also given a “day one” video about things to start thinking about – surprise surprise – this one was about water. But they gave you a “trick” on how to remember if you’re getting enough water in each day, which might prove helpful. Water is one of my biggest downfalls, and I know it.
I had a couple questions, though.
I thought about posting them to the Community Boards, because they were pretty easily-answered ones. The first was whether “non-caffeinated hot drinks,” sparkling water, and also water with like a packet of Emergen-C or Nuun in it would “count” as water. The second had to do with their contest (more on that in a bit).
So, I texted my coach.
No way, thought me, is this going to work. I figured I’d ask the water question, not both at once
In 1 minute, I had an answer.
I sat there, staring at my phone, slack jawed. I think I might have even said “Get out of town!” out loud.
So I asked the other question. They have a 12-week program going, where you do a “Before” photo and video, and then an “After” photo and video. The Community apparently gets to vote on it, and the top vote-winners get an all-expenses-paid trip for a week to a resort that looks pretty amazing. My question had to do with the fact that you need to take the photo with a newspaper, and we don’t get the newspaper.
My coach texted back and forth with me – even “laughing at” my suggestion that I just get up super early tomorrow, steal a neighbor’s paper, do the photo, put it back in the bag, and bring it back to their driveway.
Quick, and with a sense of humor? What?
My coach in WAG was in her 20s. She seemed really nice, but the way that she would try to answer my issues just did not work for me. It might have worked for “me at 20,” but not “me at 50.” In fact, it was very frustrating. My current coach seems to be somewhere between late 30s and 50 (though of course one knows never to “ask someone’s age” lol) – and even in her “welcome video” she seems very grounded and down-to-Earth. (No welcome video or really much “information” on your coach from WAG – I happened to stalk mine on Instagram to even see what she looked like, but that just depressed me more . . . she could almost be my grand daughter.)
Fitera also counsels you to keep a blog in their online Community. I don’t think I can keep two blogs going, so I’m going to see whether it’s possible to just link this over there.
I’m very very cautiously optimistic, in my first “hours” of sign up.
Quick post for a big effort…
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