Goal Setting/Update

I did pretty well last week. Let’s look at my goals:

1. Go to the gym 3 times this week, and spend at least 30 minutes of each visit on cardio
Done! I went Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday. And each time I did do 30 minutes of cardio. Sadly, at least once, that was all I did.

2. Have one of those 3 visits be a morning workout – before work on a weekday.
Tuesday morning I got my lazy butt out of bed and actually made it to the gym before 6:15! Yay me!

3. Make my arms sore once this week.
Um…. Oops?

I did pretty well, considering. This week is going to be harder. I babysit this evening, I want to watch the inauguration tomorrow evening and Thursday night, Greg and I have signed up to tour a local brewery (yum!) after work. So that leaves only Wednesday evening and Friday evening for workouts. Blah.

But, good news! I entered in a drawing on my favorite fitness website – www.thatsfit.com – and won Pilates DVDs! I’m really excited, as I’ve never tried Pilates. I’m finally living in a house with a big enough living room to accommodate a workout with a video. They should arrive early next week, so I’ll be psyched (wow – did the 80’s just come back?) to try them out. I’m wondering if maybe I can work up enough discipline to get up in the morning and work out in the living room with the DVDs. If I could do that two mornings a week, and then work out at the gym 3 times a week on top of that, I think I would be really starting to shape up. We’ll see.

So, in the interest of looking ahead, I’m going to get my second week of goals.

1. Get up at least 1 morning this week to workout before work, but shoot for 2 mornings.
2. Make my arms sore at least once this week. (Really, do it. Or it will be a goal again next week.)
3. Take a spinning class once this week.
4. Drink a glass of water each night after I get home.

That’s it! We’ll see how it goes…

La-hoo-Za-Herrrr

I’m weirdly addicted to The Biggest Loser. I’ve told this to very few people, because most people who know me know that I am vocal about my hatred for reality shows. I really, really dislike reality shows.

Except for Biggest Loser. And Project Runway. They are my exceptions.

(I swear if you try to get me to watch a whole episode of MTV reality shows or anything akin to Survivor, I will claw you.)

But I think The Biggest Loser gives many people unhealthy expectations. This is a show were morbidly obese people lose 15 and 20 pounds in a single week. And unless you working out 8 hours a day, that’s all but impossible. On the Biggest Loser, they are doing a lot more work than they let on. Their “last-chance workout” as they call it probably lasts over 4 hours. But for us, it’s a 3-minute blip on the radar.

But the thing that I absolutely love about the show is that it’s all about retraining the mind, the emotions and the habits. Yes, they work out a lot. Yes, they have crazy trainers who scream at them. But they also are taught that you really can’t eat only cheese and meat and somehow magically lose 30 pounds. They’re taught that what you put into your mouth you have to sweat out later.

Another thing I love about the show is that it doesn’t dumb down how hard it is to work out. How much you really have to WANT it to do it right. People cry, they grimace, they whine, they collapse, they cough and sputter and look like they really wish they could die. I certainly don’t advocate exercise this crazy if you’re working at a normal pound-a-week pace. But at least it illustrates a point to all the other couch potatoes: Losing weight isn’t easy. It doesn’t come in pill form, and it probably hurts if you’re doing it right.

Unfortunately, even this show isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. I overheard one obese woman talking to another this morning as our company conducted “health risk assessments” for each employee. Part of the assessment was a height/weight/BMI calculation, and as one overweight woman was being shown her BMI, the other said,

“Oh, just go watch The Biggest Loser. You’ll feel a LOT better about yourself.”

Hrmph. I guess some people will use anything as a vehicle for rationalization. Awesome.

Facts.

In the interest of transparency, I am going to give you some unsolicited information. I’m baring my soul here, people, have the decency to listen.

• I’m 25, turning 26 in January.
• I am 5’6.5”
• I weigh 148 pounds
• My BMI is 23.5

So, looking at these numbers, I seem like a normal-sized person. Not overweight, not underweight, but normal. And I am. I’m not interested in fitness as a fix to a problem, I’m interested in fitness as prevention.

You see, my mother is 59 and obese. She’s been that way for most of my life. She’s always been overweight, but as she gets older, her weight becomes more of a problem. Diabetes, joint problems, high cholesterol and heart conditions run in the family. Both of my mother’s parents died young – mid-50s and mid-60s. So you understand why I worry about her.

And in turn, I worry about myself. My mother was a wonderful mother to my brother and I, and made sure we got exposure to a variety of fruits and vegetables. I never went hungry, and I certainly didn’t see fast-food as a staple around our house. She made healthful meals that introduced me to a way of eating that has kept with me throughout my life. Even now, I have little interest in fast food. But neither does my mother, and her weight has gotten the best of her.

The only difference I can see between the two of us is exercise. My mother, with her bad knees, bad feet, and other physical problems, has a hard time doing any exercise that has impact. Even walking hurts her after a while. She’s doing her best to work around it, but I don’t want to see myself in that place.

Hence, at 23.5 BMI, I am already having a little panic attack. A BMI of 25 is considered overweight, and I have merely 1.5 little points to make it to that place. That’s only 8 pounds away from where I am right now. I gain 8 pounds, and I’m in the “overweight” category. It just won’t do. I can’t have only a cushion of 8 pounds. It has to be more.

So, hence I want to get into shape. Lose around 10 pounds, and get myself to a BMI of 22 or less. That, to me, is healthy. It’s in the middle of the range, giving me a healthy cushion between me and the “overweight” BMI of 25.

So there you have it. That’s why a 25-year old with a healthy weight is so concerned about fitness. The more proactive I am, the greater chance I have of being a healthy 30-year old, a healthy 40-year old, and a healthy 50-year old. I want to see what life looks like when your 80, so I’m not going to let a lack of fitness be the reason I don’t.

Welcome to my nightmare.

Okay, so it’s not so nightmarish. I mean, I’m 25, in the right range of weight for my height and have a fairly thin body. But in the last year of my life, my ability to choose the right foods, drum up some willpower for exercise and really strengthen myself has gone kaput.

Why, you ask? (Or didn’t. I guess I’m the one asking.) Excuses are nothing but that – excuses. But here are some of my flimsy excuses for the flabbiness around my midsection, the sagging arms and the overall loss of energy.

1. I moved from my college town, with my college gym, where I’d established a routine in the last 5 years of fitness. I knew the restaurants with the most health-conscious foods, I knew how long it would take me to do a circuit at my gym, and I felt comfortable. Now I live in a different city, with a different gym and different restaurants. There are all new temptations and (even after a year there), my gym still feels a bit foreign.
2. I got married. As anyone who is married knows, after dieting your ass off before the wedding, the last thing you want to do for the next year is think about dieting again. But I’m cutting myself off at the bend. It’s been 3 wonderful months of matrimony, so it’s time I got myself back into fighting shape.
3. I fell in love. I guess this should come before I got married, but this is just the order I thought of these things in, so sue me. As anyone knows when you fall in love, you get this sudden compulsion to spend every waking moment with your other. And, every sleeping moment. So, getting myself up at 6:00 a.m. got harder and harder, as I wanted nothing more than to spend that extra hour in bed with my honey. But now it’s a habit, and a very bad one at that. My 4-times-a-week routine of morning workouts is a long-gone thing of the past. So sad.
4. I got a new job. At my old job, there was an understanding that twice a day, I would take breaks to scrunch in a 15-minute walk. I would power-walk it around the building I worked in and then run up the six flights of stairs 5 or 6 times a day for 2-minute mini-breaks. At my new job, there are no stairs, and there’s a culture of “stay at your desk for nine hours straight.” Getting up for these kinds of breaks does not seem to be encouraged. Regardless, I haven’t put a lot of effort into finding a way to do it.
   

So, it’s time to do something. A lot of something. But, as I’ve learned with myself in the past, it takes baby steps to do it right. With my other blog, I set weekly goals, and then reported on how I did on accomplishing those goals. I’m starting again. But I’m going to start with a set of long-term goals to give myself direction. Here we go…

Long-term goals
1. Track every ounce of food that passes my lips so I understand when, why and what I’m eating.
2. See a weekly increase in my arm strength, which has gotten to a sad state.
3. Establish a routine that works for me, makes me feel healthy, happy, and not too overwhelmed.
4. Find a way to work small fitness breaks into my day – lunges, squats, stairs or walks; whatever works at my current location.
5. Work fitness into my daily thoughts again, so that it becomes reflex to find a way to work out each and every day, and watch what goes into my mouth.
6. Begin keeping a fitness journal and be one of those dorky women at the gym who carries it around and makes notes as I work out. Record reps, weights, habits, calories burned on cardio machines and overall energy level.

This week’s goals (I usually limit myself to two or three to make them more attainable):
1. Go to the gym 3 times this week, and spend at least 30 minutes of each visit on cardio
2. Have one of those 3 visits be a morning workout – before work on a weekday.
3. Make my arms sore once this week.

This blog will be a place I talk about my setbacks, my efforts at developing a routine, my achievements and generally ramble about fitness. Maybe I’ll post some of the fitness debates that go on in the blogs I read. Maybe I’ll talk about The Biggest Loser, which I’ve become strangely drawn to. Maybe I’ll not post at all during the week and leave everyone hanging. But just watch it, because practically anything could be coming your way.

Wish me the best of luck. And wish my willpower the same, while you’re at it.