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Weight Gain Confession

On a site where I have journaled about my weight loss adventures and posted tips on fitness topics, it feels really discouraging to have to admit that I recently gained weight and have not been able to effectively remove it. I know 8lbs might not be a big deal to many people, but it really is to me. For all the hours and work that I put into fitness; for the three years that I’ve been able to maintain a steady weight; for all the things I know about weight loss, I haven’t been able to come to grips with this quite yet.

I thought once one or two of these pounds came on, I would easily lose them like always and there would be nothing to talk about. But the 8 lbs came on suddenly three months ago, and they seem to be stuck. But I don’t want to gripe about them or keep them secret any longer. So, I’m setting up a game plan instead, because I’m just proactive like that. Ha! Here’s how I’m hoping to combat the creep:

1. I need to set up an appointment to rule out anything health-wise that might have caused this. Hopefully, some basic thyroid tests and such can rule that out. I did have one medical health change in October, and I’m now wondering if it may have had an effect.

2. Adding 1 more day per week to my exercise schedule. I met with a fitness expert who advised this step (even though she said I look slimmer–thank you!). I have a hard time hearing that I’m not doing enough (I already work out hard three days a week, walk to and from work some days, walk on my lunch breaks, have an astonishing amount of self-control, etc), but I am willing to try this out. Two concerns: one, finding the time when I already pack in the workouts and two, my level of soreness and burnout after a solid week of working out.

3. Minding my Peas and Cucumbers: I’ve found in the past that tracking my food is one of the most effective ways for me to combat weight creep. Just being aware of my calorie intake is enough to fend off weight gain. I like to do this only about a week at a time or it feels overwhelming. Which leads to my next step:

4. Set up an appointment with our dietitian at work. Perhaps she can look over my food intake and tell me what I can do better, because there’s always room for improvement.

5. De-stress. A job loss in our family also happened in October, which has led to a lot of stress in these last few months. This may have had an effect on my frame as well. I need to carve out time to deep breathe and dream until the situation changes. I also need to get my butt to bed a little earlier to decompress.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Letter to ExerciseTV

Dear ExerciseTV,

Please don’t go!

I went to your site yesterday and saw this:

I am in complete denial that this is true, so please tell me that I am seeing things. Is there a petition I can sign or something? This is the biggest travesty to the fitness community that I could ever imagine. Such a shame.
Yours truly,
Avid ExerciseTV user
P.S. to my readers, you can buy a few of their workouts for download for only $1.00. It’s like the Dollar Store of workout videos, only the quality of the product is much more savory. Best buck ever spent. And I’m really excited to do this workout tonight. At least there are still some free workout videos out there. If you know of any others out there, please let me know.

Boun-sing Back!

I had a short little hiatus here from work and blogging, but I’m so glad to be back. Just a few weeks more and I’ll be taking another one for Christmas. I have encountered a surge of ideas this Monday morning after my little “refresher,” which makes every bit of the break sooooo worth it!

This past week I have enjoyed:

1. Making a new Christmas wreath and matching garland (ideas and images coming soon).
2. Thrift shopping for longer than is considered reasonable.
3. Beginning a new exciting project involving old hard covered books, picked up at said thrift store.
4. Staying at a friend’s parent’s house while my husband hunted deer. After finding three deer, our chest freezer is now fully stocked.
5. Making new friends, adult and tot-sized.
6. Feeling genuinely thankful for our home and family, Thanksgiving or not.
7. Putting lots of thought into Christmas gifts, and checking a few names off.
8. Planning Christmas decorations and traditions (daily readings with hot cocoa, Christmas movies, cutting a tree, etc).
9. Working out extra hard and coming out on the other side of the holiday 1lb lighter.
10. Going to a neat indie craft fair and soaking up the art inspiration and holiday excitement.

How was your week?

Vintage Running Clothes

I love this little article over at The Sew Weekly about vintage running clothes. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately too. All the new moisture wicking running clothes, which really is an emerging field of apparel, looks very contemporary. A few coworkers and I were discussing the amount of “pink” we all have in our running wardrobes, because that color seems to be pretty prevalent in the workout clothes department. Along with pink, gray, black and aqua blue seem to hold the highest rank. The cuts and styles are all very similar as well. Curating a personal athletic style is almost impossible because the apparel choices for the everyday female runner are slim.

And vintage running clothes? Forget about it! Not that we’d want to wear vintage running clothes, because of their outdated/non-existent athletic technology. The shoes especially were quite inept by today’s standards. But I’d sure love for someone–or even myself–to design some cute vintage-inspired, moisture-wicking, sun-blocking, anti-static garments with cute little flower prints on them. Is that asking too much? Maybe for now it is. But I can see it coming. Tell them you saw it here first.

Ok, maybe Nike already thought of it. Of course they did! This little pamphlet is a hoot. Check it out.

Well, at least we’re not required by a phallocentric bureaucracy to wear dresses! Am I right?

Catching My Breath After Skipped Workouts

I’ve noticed another side effect of skipping runs during the week. I can’t breathe! I run Monday, Wednesday and Friday like clockwork. Sometimes Sundays with a friend too. Last week, after helping a desperate husband work through his homework two nights in a row, rescuing a sister with a dead car and fully enjoying a “date night” said husband planned out completely for us, there was little time or energy left for a 3-mile run. And I never use the “no time” excuse, because I don’t believe in it. But staying up so late was taking a toll and my body needed rest. I did sneak in a relaxing 30-minute yoga workout and my husband and I got a little sweaty playing darts on our date, so it wasn’t like I completely abandoned my active lifestyle.

But by Thursday and Friday, I felt like I wasn’t breathing right, like my lungs weren’t getting enough air. The shallow breaths and idleness of my body were screaming for cardio. I had to stop and do some deep breathing just to feel OK. Don’t get me wrong though, because I’m not complaining. These reactions are all the more motivation to keep running. Me and running, we’ve got a good thing going. We don’t like to be apart for long.

A Shocking Treadmill Experience

Anyone else have a problem with static shock when running on the treadmill? At the new gym I’m going to, the treadmill zaps me every time I touch the handles. I remember this happening at previous gyms too. And it happens on all different treadmills, not just one in particular. It doesn’t let up after I’m damp with sweat either. Maybe I’m just more electrifying than most people. Yeah, that must be it! Ha!

From the solutions I scrounged, I didn’t come up with any that really fit my particular situation. I have no control over the humidity levels in the gym nor do I have any control over grounding the treadmills (which I have confidence are already properly installed).

A few other suggestions were to wear those wristbands attached to the treadmill, but I don’t think these treadmills have any (plus they’re pretty dorky-looking). You can also go out and get new running shoes that prevent shock, but my budget doesn’t really comply as I just recently bought brand-new running shoes.

Now I don’t know if this is scientifically sound or not, but it seemed like when I rubbed my fingers on my cotton shirt (which holds a neutral charge) before touching the bars, I wouldn’t get shocked. I must somehow be dispelling the charge. Or maybe I’m just crazy. Either way, it’s worth experimenting with since this is the easiest fix I could fathom. And this article indicates that polyester and nylon clothes–typical in performance-wear–are good conductors of electricity. Cotton is not.

The most comprehensive solutions I found were in this Runner’s World forum.

None of this will stop me from running of course. It’s my drug of choice. I’ve been a runner for over 10 years now, and I don’t plan on letting a tiny thing like this prevent me from my chosen exercise. However, I do think it could be enough to deter a beginner or exercise-averse type, so it’s worth looking into.

Job Perks

It’s official! I am now a brand-new member of the gym again, thanks to my employer. Can you believe this place? Offering gym memberships to all of its employees, among all the other things they do for us? I went last night and, although I had never been inside that particular gym before, I felt like I was right at home. I even walked confidently over to the weight lifting area where all the sinewy dudes were grunting and claimed a bench for my own 20-minute strength routine. (PS, I know it’s not fair to judge other people at the gym, but some of those sinewy dudes had terrible form. I just thought I’d inject that lest you be intimidated by joining the gym because of the likes of these dudes. They are, in fact, imperfect, just like the rest of us.)

I remember walking into a first gym for the first time. It was like walking into a foreign country and not knowing the language, the etiquette, or the popular fashion. But once you start going regularly, taking the gym up on their offer for a free personal training session, attending group classes, and reading the trade magazines (for me, these are Self and Shape), you get to know the territory. If you start watching what other people are doing, you begin to notice habits and patterns. Maybe no one told you that you’re supposed to wipe down the equipment, but you notice several people grab the spray bottle while you’re on the treadmill. Ah-ha, take a note to self… Please, try not to be intimidated (though you will be), try to get into the habit, and just take a look around. We’re all glad you’re here. And you’ll be a gym rat in no time!

Will Work Out for Mental Health

I’ve been officially active for about 10 years now. I came back from a semester at college noticeably-to-others more overweight than I left, complete with comments from people who usually don’t notice. Obviously, I had to do something about it. A friend was redeeming a free weeks’ pass at a local gym, and she was given a free pass for a guest. After a week, I signed up and the rest is … well, you know.

Obviously, dramatic changes happened right from the get-go. I lost the Freshmen, ahem, 15. I felt more energetic and I even got sick less. I’d get one cold every few weeks in the winter pre-fitness and maybe one per year in my post-sedentary life.

However, other changes happened that were less noticeable at the beginning. Most recently, I experienced a few days’ sabbatical from working out. While some might roll their eyes at this, it is a big deal for me. More so than I thought. For instance, last week, due to a business trip in the middle of the week, I went from Monday clear through to Saturday without breaking an exercise-induced sweat. Let me tell you, my mental health did not benefit. By Friday, I was noticeably moody. Saturday morning I worked out, and the difference was profound. Same kind of thing happened the week before. I fell into a funk that only running for at least 30 minutes straight could remedy.

It’s official, I’m addicted to endorphins. My husband rolled his eyes at me when I insisted that I needed to get on the treadmill, stat. I told him, “Honey, this is not for my looks. This is for my mental and emotional health.” He did not stop me or say anything more after that. Probably because he was the primary victim of the exercise-deprived villain within me. Someone I hadn’t known myself until fitness became my way of life.

The Downside of Early Morning Workouts

Recently, I finally forced myself to get up early and work out before work as opposed to after. This workout time fixed a number of “problems,” but ended up creating some new ones. What’s a girl to do?

Pros of early morning workout:
1. Workout is done for the day right away–starts the day off on the right key. I go to work feeling truly refreshed with invigorated lungs.

2. One shower per day as opposed to two. Silly problem, I know, but that extra water and time loss was actually really bothering me.

3. I love the energy of the early morning…the way barely anyone is up and about, the way the sun hits the planet, the way the mist is still lifting, and on and on.

4. I feel like I’m left with more time in my day. I leave work feeling like there’s less on my “to-do list” and more time to spend with my family or getting other things done. When I did after-work workouts, by the time I clocked 35-40 on the treadmill and at least 20 minutes of strength, then showered, it was practically time to go to bed.

Cons of working out in the early morning:
1. I never have time to do the strength training after running like I did with my after-work workouts. And no, I’m not about to get up any earlier. The truth is in the numbers. In May, I clocked in 1260 workout minutes (I track this for our wellness program at work) and in June, when I started the morning routine, I only got 990 minutes. Although the scale hasn’t budged, the wiggle when I wave and the protruding-more-than-normal gut don’t lie. Believe me, I can tell the difference!

2. I just.can’t.get.up. Most mornings start with me being pissed off about getting up so early. It’s only about 1/2-hour, but it makes a difference. I’m not a natural early-morning person, so it hurts every time. I was starting to resent the early morning workout. I don’t want to resent it!

3. And trying to get to bed earlier never works out. With toddler bedtimes and leftover to-dos, I just can’t seem to hit the sack by 9:30.

I guess the pros outweigh the cons, but at least I gave morning workouts a shot. I’m really proud of myself, because I’ve only done morning workouts like three times in my entire life. To go three weeks was really a feat! At least I can pat myself on the back for that. We shall see if I decide to keep this up.

Babygazing has got to be located somewhere in the realm of the divine. An evening spent burying our feet in the sandbox, playing “fish” in the bathtub, and lap-reading for an extended time felt so great it was almost spiritual. Peering in at the little boy asleep in stillness topped the experience with pure bliss. Could it be that the free ‘Yoga in the Gardens” session that I went to last night carried over into my parenting?

Could be.

At this very time, I’ve also been reading a soulful book titled “The Creative Family” by Amanda Blake Soule. The book is filled with gentle reminders about the intricacy and delicacy of childhood. How it’s important to engage your children in meaningful activities, especially natural and artistic pursuits. How you should appreciate the sensitivities of a child. The passage that I remember the most was about how it’s essential to appreciate when your child goes jumping in puddles and playing in the mud because of the crucial learning opportunities they provide. These are natural, tactile adventures. It’s all about exploration and spontaneity and experimentation. You could get mad, or you could get mindful.

Soule points to mindful parenting in the resources section of the book. Interested in learning more about where Soule may have learned some of her own unique parenting skills, I did a little research about it. Bingo! Just what I needed.

When I was a brand-new first-time mother of a newborn, the most grounding habit I took up was my yoga hour on Saturday mornings. Afterwords, I approached my son much more gently and the intimidation of new motherhood seemed a little more surmountable. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Now I see that the connection between yoga and mindful parenting is phenomenal. Last night, while I was slowing down my breath and thoughts on that beautiful manicured lawn, moving my body gently on all different planes, and being reminded to feel the earth beneath my feet, my patience was restored and “hurry up” was eliminated from my routine. My relationship with my son last night was all the better for it as I was being mindful of the sand shoes on my feet and being sensitive to my son’s whims and curiosities.

I can feel what nurturing myself and slowing down does for my own body, and now I clearly and firmly recognize what it does for my child.