Good Monday all. 279 Days to the marathon.
Well, sorry to report that the scale did not budge this week. I remain at a total of 8.5 down. I’m not upset. I feel I stayed on plan on all week, I didn’t suffer and all things equal it is a lifestyle I can maintain. I think if I had been starving myself or eating just grapefruit and didn’t lose any weight I would be more mad. But I ate very healthy food, followed my plan and felt under control all week. I honestly believe my body just needs a week or so to readjust — it is trying to figure out what is going on.
One thing I think I was lackadaisical about this week was my water consumption. I think in previous weeks I was very conscientious about drinking more than sufficient water. This week I was drinking water but I think I just did the minimum. On a couple of days I realized at midday that coffee had been my only beverage so far.
Some of the triathletes on weight watchers play a little point earning game with themselves — it’s like playing poker for matchsticks — no real reward other than the knowledge that you won. You designate 5 daily goals for the week and earn one point each time you make the 5. In the week you have a total possible score of 35. At the end of the week, everyone reports how many points they earned. Here are my 5 daily challenges:
1 – Drink a minimum of 10 glasses of water a day (8 + 2 for workout)
2 – Take my multivitamin & Glucosmine (you’d THINK that would be easy)
3 – 1 hour minimum exercise a day — on the day when I don’t swim/bike/run that means strength work out or pilates.
4 – No eating at all 3 hours before bedtime — new rule. I’ve tried it a couple of times this week and it worked well. I’m not sure how it will work after practices etc. But this week I have no night time practices.
5 – Write in my blog and record all extra points consumed and earned. (the blog isn’t a problem, but I stopped recording points last week because I didn’t think I was using any — then when I thought about it I realized I had! I didn’t go over, but I did use some.)
So each day I will earn 1 point for each of these tasks I complete. At the end of the week I have a total of 35 points to earn. I’ll write in the top of each day’s blog the number of points I earned and note which I slipped up on. I think I’ll put a little index card on my desk so I can check these items off. Maybe I’ll give myself shiny little stars……
So, here we are, officially arrived in the trenches of my journey to fitness. The flush of the new romance is over and now is the time for me to see what stuff I am made of.
I am proud of myself for sticking to it for 4 weeks. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t drop the whole 10 as the first GTS is Saturday. (Who knows, maybe I’ll drop 1.5 by Saturday?) But I’d rather not carry the 8.5 pounds and had I not worked this hard for these 4 weeks I would still be carrying them.
I notice in a lot things I do — tennis, running, even work on complicated projects, when I feel like I just can’t go on any more — my confidence is not there, my muscles are too exhausted, or my brain is twisted from too many calculations, if I can push through that critical moment I am always surprised at what I can do.
As you read more of my posts, you’ll see I like to use tennis as an example a lot because like many sports, what happens on the court is often reflected in life (or is it the other way around?) For me, I play a power game. I am not comfortable just hitting it back and forth on the baseline. I look for any opportunity to come to the net and put the ball away. I have to work a lot on staying in a rally, sometimes that is the right thing to do. After I hit the 5th ball, I start to become aware that we are “duking it out.” As soon as I am aware of it, that’s when I miss. As soon as I say “oh, we’ve hit 5 balls” some equation in my mind gets completed and I drop the next shot. I have found, however, if I start right away with the mantra of “next ball” it gets me through many more balls than 5. I don’t count how many balls I am hitting, I just hit the ball, return to ready position and say “next ball.” If I invite the ball to return, I am not intimidated about staying in the point. Ironically, the opponent usually misses on the sixth ball. Hmmm, maybe they have the same problem? LOL
In running, the same thing happens all the time. As I’ve mentioned, it takes me a long time to get warmed up to running. The first two miles I am in mental pain. My body is fighting me tooth and nail and does not want to do this. I hear my bones creak and my body admonishing “We were so comfy on the couch, why are you doing this to me? Ouch, ouch, I can’t breath.” Then around mile 3 my lungs kind of release — I’ve heard this called “the second exhale.” Then I can breath normally, my legs have grown bored with complaining and now I can run without all that commotion. Miles 3 and 4 are my best miles, I usually feel I am running well (as long as my knee has not gone astray) and that is when my body usually says “hey, this isn’t bad, why don’t we do this more often?” Continuing on to five, six through ten all depend on how much I’ve been training.
My work too, consists of a lot of what I call “short burst” thinking. I have two jobs, farm out the work to the people who work for me and figure out the problem when they can’t figure it out. Often I have one small problem to figure out and it takes a day of mulling it over before I find the answer. It usually takes the same form, someone calls me “Connie, we can’t figure out how to xyz — uvw isn’t working.” My immediate response to myself is, “I don’t know, the gig is up, they’ll now find out I don’t know anything.” I wander around my apartment, mumbling, murmuring — I can’t figure it out, I go to sleep mad at myself because I can’t figure it out. Then almost every time, I wake up, take a shower and Eureka! The answer appears. It always happens in the shower — I don’t know why. And, even more interesting, I’m surprised every time! I’ve usually forgotten that I was even thinking about the problem. I’ve often thought I should just jump in the shower after one of those phone calls and save us all a lot of time.
The point is, in all of these cases, and I hate to be so cliche, but it is darkest before the dawn. The moment you feel like you can’t go on, you can’t hit one more ball, run one more mile, you can’t figure it out, the diet is going to fail, I’ll be fat forever — that’s when it is most important to push through because you are in the darkness before the dawn. It is hitting that one extra shot that wins the point. If you can keep running just up to that lamppost you’ll finish the race. It is thinking about the problem one more minute that finds the solution. It’s about not giving up.
The world is full of people who stop too short. It is easy to stop short. The fun comes in the final push — that’s when you find out what you are made of. There is glory in the groan of ONE MORE!
Andrew Carnegie said “Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately.”
Hey, I figure, good enough for him, good enough for me!
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