For Fit Sake: Week Three

I’ve definetly hit the point where I’m battling excuses. I was so sick over the weekend and everything hurt. I felt like I belonged in a nursing home I was so stiff and off balance.  While that was a good reason to relax and heal, now that I’m feeling better I feel the excuses creeping up like maybe I’m just too busy today or maybe there’s some small reason that I’d let stand in my way and stop me from staying dedicated.

So I know this is where either this effort fails and fades, or it gets stronger and becomes a habit. I have been here and so many times I’ve failed and faded. Now I’m ready to double up my efforts and push through the excuses.  I have a relatively active weekend planned and looking ahead to my schedule next week I have lots of time to work out so I’m getting on top of and ahead of scheduling that time for myself.

That’s honestly one of the biggest game changers for me.  What made it so easy to slip into excuses this week was thinking I’ll just get my workout in at some point in the day.  Weeks one and two I really put emphasis on getting my workout in as early as possible.  Sometimes I got up early to do it before work.  If not before work it was as though the race was on to get it done ASAP and I want to get back to that. When I put that pressure on myself to get it DONE right away I worked out harder and I kept the positive effects of the workout, along with the focus on my health, all day!

When I wait all day before working out I rush through it at the end of my day and my whole day lacks any sort of focus on my health.

What I really love is when I’m able to workout at home in the morning and then squeeze in a little gym time on my evenings off.

Along with being unfocused this past week I’ve been slacking on instagram so I’m hoping to improve that accountability this week, too!
How are you doing this week? Where are you in your journey?

Carmen

New Series: For Fit Sake

Okay so obviously I wanted to write about my fitness journey or health journey or weight loss journey – whatever you want to call it – when I started this blog.  In my mind it would have a bit of everything from my life and right now the three most important pillars that define my day to day life are my love life, my career and my quest to get healthier with the side effect of getting smaller.  If I’m really honest it starts with wanting to be smaller and I just know that the truth is I need to be healthier if I want to shrink.

Notice something about the blog? Two of those things get posted about all the time but something is missing. I haven’t been able to write honestly about my fitness journey because truthfully it’s been a mess.

Like anyone else, I prefer to write about my successes. I imagined myself writing these posts about having done this exercise or eaten that food and seeing results that made me happy.

Well here I am at my heaviest.

Damn it – that sucks to write. It sucks to admit publicly and to even think about going on, talking and writing about being here. It feels like the same old same old – I’ve been ‘at my heaviest” for some time now, except that number, what that phrase means on the scale, has been creeping up.

One of the most successful strategies I’ve had for losing weight in the past has been when I posted more regularly to my fitness-focused instagram. Of course I plan to get posting and engaging there again because it helped but I realized that this blog was always meant to have fitness on it so why shouldn’t it be a part of my accountability posts?

For Fit Sake is going to be an ongoing series posted every Friday where I’m making myself stay accountable about the week. I don’t want it to be just a diary so i’m going to encourage myself to learn each week and have something with a bit more substance to share and hopefully in the process of creating a series I’m proud of I’ll also be building a lifestyle that matches.

Things to look forward to this Friday and in near-future Fridays:

• I’m starting again with the Body Love app by Anna Victoria. I really like her workouts and her as a fitness coach – she’s created a great community and a beautiful app so there’s no reason for me to go somewhere else at this moment. (Hint: 1 week in it’s going well!)
• Updates to my fitness journal – what it looks like, how I use it, I’ll try to share.
• Setting up space for myself to workout. I’ll share what working out at home means to me and how that’s changed.

You can find my instagram if you’d like the daily updates and details, too! My fitness focused instagram is @fitish.kitten

Since I’m starting here I want to know – what are you biggest struggles in creating a fitter or healthier lifestyle?

100 Healthy Days

I haven’t talked about my weight loss and fitness journey a whole lot even though it’s one of the main things I planned to blog about.  The truth is that’s because I haven’t really been focused on that journey as much as I intended to be.

It happens to the best of us – we were moving, traveling, socializing etc.  Life got busy and I lost focus on my weight and fitness goals.

So I got to thinking about ways I might re-focus on these goals.  I have always enjoyed a good challenge.  It adds structure to the goals and gives me a structure for measuring progress.  Perhaps more importantly, they can take the focus away from the struggle.  If I’m focused on meeting the challenges I’m less focused on the ups and downs of working out and losing weight.

So this is the challenge I’m planning now, starting today. 100 Healthy Days is more of an idea than a set challenge – while there are lots of challenges you can find written by trainers and other health professionals that have set rules and food plans this challenge is different.  As the name suggests, it’s time-based.  The way I am setting up and thinking of the challenge is to make good choices for these 100 days.  Rather than set or subscribe to a specific plan that would dictate these aspects of my life I’m maintaining control and decision making.

There are different mini-challenges and experiments that I will try within these 100 days.  For example, my girlfriend is challenging herself to go as carb-free as possible for three weeks and assess the presence of carbs in our diet after that,  and I’m gladly following that effort to see how it will affect me.  Plus I really am a bit of a bread-o-holic and it wouldn’t hurt to reign that addiction in a little (there’s a good chance it’ll be a good step in reigning in the waistline!)

I’m also looking to return to my yoga practice beginning with a 30-day challenge from Do You Yoga and a 30 day “Original Yoga Challenge” from Bad Yogi on Youtube.

Our treadmill is currently buried from moving but my husband has made a plan to unbury it this week.   So I should be back to my couch-to-5k training next week.  I might have started training outside this week but it would appear here in Canada April is having an identity crisis and acting like an angry November so that’s not happening.

So there will be different mini challenges and experiments for me to work through and post about throughout the larger 100 days challenge.  Stay tuned for how focusing on my health and fitness goals for 100 days impacts my life and progress!

Since fitness is a visual journey there may also be a few extra updates on Instagram so find me there @OhMyMermaid.Blog

What’s your fave way to challenge yourself?

For the Love of Fitness

Real talk: There’s a lot I love about fitness, of course. But I’ve fallen off the wagon so instead of talking about what’s happening or going well today I need to talk about what’s not happening on this journey and how I ended up where I am now.

I’ve been thinking about the factors that hinder my fitness journey.  I mean, you’d think if I really wanted it then the commitment would be easy, right? So how am  I sitting here at the heaviest I’ve ever been feeling like today I’m at the beginning, again? (or still?)

Of  course, I’d be starting today because it’s a Monday – all new journeys are best started on Mondays.

But what makes it so hard to get anywhere with this journey?

This week I realized that one of the biggest factors has been the source of my motivation.

You see, the very first time I even thought about a treadmill or “getting in shape” it was because I hated my body.

But the longer I’ve been on this fitness journey the more I’ve found it’s a journey of love, not hate.  It’s a journey that encourages us to love what we do. Be it yoga, running, lifting, swimming or a sport – we’re supposed to enjoy it. And when it comes to our bodies, we’re supposed to love them too. Love them because they carry us, support us, they are how we participate in that activities we enjoy. So we owe them some appreciation.

How can I enjoy an activity I’m only doing to change a body I refuse to love? I was trying to enjoy a lifestyle that is full of positivity but I was approaching it with all the wrong ideas about motivation and dedication.

Hate only gets you so far.

There are lots of enlightened quotes about karma and positive vibes and letting go of the negative in our lives.  We usually think of these mantras as survival tips for jobs, and friendships and family.

But they work in fitness too.

You have to let go of that negative energy and not act on it.

I get about two and half weeks of progress when I’m working with hate. I get two and a half weeks of routine treadmill time, vegetables and daily water quotas.  I get two and a half weeks of forcing myself to do all the things I’m told will help me leave behind a body I hate and build the dream bod.

And then…

I focus on things I love.

Because it’s easier. And more pleasant. And feels more natural.

However if choosing to eat right and work out were only things I did in response to negative thoughts, those objectively healthy habits get left behind when I start seeking all things positive and pleasant.

It’s like a natural process for self preservation or some other psychological babble – I can only live a daily routine based on negative thoughts for so long before I’m unconsciously procrastinating activities based on those negative thoughts and favoring anything with positive associations.

So it’s Monday and I’m trying to change how I think about this beginning.

In the past I’ve thought about how I weigh too much – I need to eat less. I am too big – I need to work out. I can’t do things I want to – I need to eat less and work out.

Today I’m remembering that working out comes with an endorphin rush, the positive effects of which cascade through everything I do.  I’m thinking about how much I value taking time for myself and working on myself in a tangible, physical way. I’m thinking about what my stronger, fitter body will be able to do and not just how it will look.

I have a fitness instagram account and that’s where I’ve discovered a community that has shown me the love that fitness can come from and inspire. Feel free to follow for more routine updates there – @fitish.kitten

Comment with your thoughts  =)