Rachel Cosgrove (The Female Body Breakthrough) talks a lot in her book about the importance of rest, relaxation, and recovery. Getting enough sleep, decompression time, and giving your muscles the proper time to heal and recover from a workout before doing another workout. If you don't put focus on these three things, your body will force you to put focus on them by... breaking down and getting sick!
Well, apparently my lack of sleep and my high anxiety last week caught up with me. Friday morning I woke up with a scratchy throat and a dry cough... by the middle of the workday it all got worse and it became clear to me that this was definitely bronchitis. I went to bed at 6:15pm, I couldn't function any more. I slept until about 9:30pm, watched Enchanted on Bravo, and went back to sleep until 10am Saturday morning. Saturday I felt so much better! I went and got my hair done, went grocery shopping (with both my kids in tow, no less), and headed to my parents for an early Easter dinner. Well, come about 10pm, I was done for and went to bed. I woke up with the kids Sunday morning feeling like I was dying. I had been up on and off all night coughing, and at that point my sinuses were all congested and I couldn't breathe through my nose. I went back to bed around 10am and slept until 1:30 that afternoon. Still no better. I went to bed at 8:30 Sunday night and could barely get up at 7 for work Monday morning. I DID go to work, though.
Today I FINALLY feel like a normal person. I still have the nasty cough, but at least I don't feel like I got hit by a bus. I'm not sure how doing a workout will go... and I'm not sure if I should try until I'm feeling closer to 100%. That temporary dip in my immune system may send me back into full-on sick mode again, and with this weekend being my birthday weekend, I'm not really trying to spend it in bed again. Maybe I'll just hit the gym and do some cardio and a toned down weight routine instead... I just really don't want to get completed derailed with my routine AGAIN.
*Warning! Warning! Pity Party Approaching!*
I'm trying not to focus on the fact that it's April, and I thought I would be about 10 pounds less than where I am right now. I understand that would have meant a pretty aggressive dive into exercise and changing my diet starting back in January, which I wasn't in the best position to do with a newborn at home, but I do worry that October will roll around and I'll only be about halfway to my halfway goal... instead of all the way to my final goal. The upside is, I'm only 10lbs away from my pre-pregnancy weight... the downside is: sometimes I feel like I've been trying to lose 10lbs for 2 years.
By looking at my weight tracking, I'm averaging about 3lbs/month. That seems so slow. If I stay at this pace, I'll be at roughly 171lbs next April. That's great, but I'd like to be there by the end of THIS year. That's roughly 8 months... 8 months at roughly 1.25lbs a week. That's seemed doable right? I mean, I'm not an insane person - I'm not over-shooting. A pound and quarter a WEEK, is just NOT. ASKING. TOO. MUCH. ...right?
So how to do I do that? Well, it means being realistic about my calorie deficit. It means working out 5 days a week, not two. It means 1600 calories a day, not 2000. It means restriction and daily motivation. Neither of which I'm good at. I think there's this part of me that just thinks this is magically going to happen for me. I never struggled with my weight until James was born. And I feel like it sort of magically happened in the 6 months leading up to my wedding... yes, I was going to the gym 4-5 days a week, but I was also eating Chipotle and bar food and drinking massive amounts of alcohol on an almost-daily basis. How does THAT figure? I'm sure only being 24 had something to do with it, also a starting point of 190 instead of 210 is a big difference. 20lbs is much less than 40lbs. Obviously. But sometimes, y'know, I really wonder if it did have more to do with the fact that I wasn't really obsessing over my food. I'm not even sure that I was counting calories.. or if I was, I was totally half-assing it because I didn't really give a crap. I just don't remember constantly thinking about how many calories I was burning or eating.
I feel like I have this little Fitness Life Crisis every few months. I'm sure you've all heard (read) it before... and then I up and change EVERYTHING I'm doing, only to go into crisis again a few months later because nothing is working... or, y'know, I get pregnant.
(THAT WILL NOT BE HAPPENING)
*End Pity Party Rant*
I guess I need to just sit down and figure out what I'm really comfortable with. What can I actually expect from myself?
There's this part of me that wants to say that it's more about being healthy and less about being sexy... but I have to be honest: today, right now, in this moment (and in most moments), it is ALL about being sexy. Healthy would be nice, too. But I am seriously more looks-centric right now, than I-put-healthy-stuff-in-my-body-everyday centric. Is that bad? Or is it okay, as long as I get sexy in a healthy way?
I'm not saying I'm going to get all disordered-eating over here or anything. I'm not saying I'm going to start lifting weights every moment of everyday or spending my life on the elliptical machine. I'm just saying, my driving motivation is pure vanity. The Jessica Hotness Plan, I used to call it. I think I've probably said that here once or twice, as well.
Okay, so, goal for this week: Write out what I can expect from myself, what I can honestly commit to, and what my top motivating factors are.
Moving on to other normal stuff... weekly weigh-in results are:
Official weight @ 4/07/2012: 207.4 lbs
Okay. Not bad. A loss is a loss is a loss. But for some reason I keep focusing on that 3 week plateau at 209... I'm going to try not to focus on that because it is past, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't effect my future goals and priorities.
My average calorie intake since my last post is 1,566/day. That is literally an average. I was, however, super sick over the weekend... I'm not sure a normal 5 day average would be anywhere near that reasonable.
I'm planning to NOT wait another almost-week before posting again. I'm going to plan on hitting the gym or the basement weights tonight. Stay tuned!
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