I began this post yesterday and here is what I wrote:
“I skipped my lifting Wednesday night. I lifted Monday,
ran/walked 4 miles Tuesday.. and then just didn’t have the energy to do much of
anything else once we got to Wednesday. So little energy that I couldn’t even
be bothered to move at all most of the day, as evident by the meager 3,000
steps my UP band informed me I made yesterday (my average is 9,997). -.-
So, what I’m realizing is in somewhat typical Jessica
fashion, I am now feeling depressed and hating myself and decided that I would
just go ahead and eat about 1200 calories at lunch today, because why not? I
mean, I’m obviously unmotivated and always going to be fat anyway.
WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THIS NEGATIVE THINKING?!
Theory: hormone cycle. I feel like it was around this same
time last month that I started feeling all run down and emotionally all over
the place. You would think being on birth control, that the hormonal changes
wouldn’t have such an impact on my moods – apparently not so. And what
terrifies me a little bit is that when the day comes when I will no longer have
to take birth control (because my husband loves me and will obey my wishes that
he make it so that we can no longer make babies – read: vasectomy), will I be
just a total emotional wreck all the time?! With terrible cystic acne
overtaking my face on top of it all?? (Seriously, guys. My acne gets terrible
when I’m not on the pill. It’s like being 15 all over again.)
Research and study tells me that if I wasn’t eating so much
processed junk (I’ve gotten quite a bit worse on my eating this past week and
seem to get in a habit of poor eating around this time each month from looking
at my food diary), that I might have any easier time maintaining a positive
attitude and might not experience such dramatic hormonal shifts. Junk food canhave a serious effect on one’s hormones, making major differences in estrogen and progesterone production and function
along with all the other important hormones.
Now that I’ve caught on to this subconscious trend of mine,
I guess I should probably do something about it and start focusing a little
more on how my female-ness drives my food cravings.”
So I was feeling all super fat and crappy and down
on myself. I felt unmotivated and like I just wanted to eat all the things all
the time just as shear punishment to myself for being such a terrible, awful,
fat human being. That emotional eating… that is not normal for me at all. And I
found it kind of disturbing to be thinking that way sort of out of nowhere. But
here’s the twist: I did my workout last night as soon as I got home and got
some dinner on the table for my kids, and today? I feel awesome.
I feel like I’ve said this a million times, but it
just continually amazes and surprises me at how well I respond emotionally to
regular exercise, how skipping just one normal workout day and not getting at
least SOME physical activity in (short walk, etc.) just makes me nose dive into
guilt and depression. I normally only exercise Mon-Friday and I think the
reason I don’t get this way on the weekends is because I’m active with my kids,
running errands, cleaning house, etc. Sundays I sometimes find that I struggle with
that end-of-the-weekend depression, but now I’m wondering if that may come from
Sundays being “lazy days” more oft than not. Maybe if I just make myself take a
walk or run I won’t experience that quite as strongly. I think it warrants a
little experimenting.
Now for some checking in and up!
After a month of not weighing myself, I stepped on
the scale Monday morning to this:
Official
weight @ 06/03/13: 192.2 lbs
To say this was disappointing might be the
understatement of the century (and may have begun my depression spiral that so
fully kicked in Weds/Thurs). I felt so
sure that I had lost at least something this month; my clothes are fitting
better, I can see how different my body looks, I once again enjoy seeing
pictures of myself because I feel like I look awesome and no longer
“overweight”. It’s such a hard thing getting that number out of my head,
though. I’m hoping when I take measurements this weekend I’ll see enough
positive change there to make me realize the scale is a dumb way of measuring
my current progress and may just be a useless tool to me at this point that
serves no purpose other than making me feel terrible about myself.
May
goals in review:
1) No
weigh-ins until June 1st – check. Stupid scale. Go die.
2)
Get back on lifting program – check, check, and check! Feeling good,
gettin’ strong!
3)
QUIT SMOKING – Didn’t happen for May, but I’m currently 5 days, 12
hours without a cigarette. I am especially proud of myself because I have made
it through socializing with smoker friends AND my mom without having a
cigarette! I reeeeallly wanted a cigarette last night, but I went to bed
instead. *thumbs up*
On Monday I wrote down all my reasons for wanting to
quit smoking and have been toting that around with me. I just look at it
periodically to remind myself. Oddly enough, the two main things that have kept
me going are: not feeling like crap in the morning and better circulation (no
more waking up in the middle of the night with numb hands). I’m also constantly
having to tell myself, “You are not a smoker.” Getting away from always
thinking of myself as a smoker is going to be the key and also the hardest part
for me, I think. Getting it into my head that smoking does NOT define who I am
or how I think and operate is hard. It sounds so stupid and probably makes very
little sense to people who don’t/have never smoked, but I really did use it as
a definition of me as a person pretty much my entire adult life. Now all of a
sudden I have to define myself by something else, or even harder – nothing at
all. Maybe there is no definition of who I am as a person and maybe that’s
okay.
In conclusion on that topic: So far, so good!
So here are my new goals for June:
- Take progress pictures/measurements and weigh-in every 2 weeks
- Continue cardio twice a week (oh oh! I haven’t even talked about this yet! Please hold.)
- Quit smoking
So. Cardio. That thing I hate. I still hate it, but
have made a conscious decision that it’s something that needs to regularly be
happening in my life. Part of this revelation came after attending the Virginia
Tech Hokies Ladies’ Clinic last weekend and getting to sit through lectures
from both the Strength and Condition Coach and the Sports Medicine Coordinator.
There was lots and lots of talk about how these young footballers train, and
while strength/power is the main focus of all workouts and where the most time
is spent, the importance of interval training/agility was focused on as well.
This got the gears in my head turning a little faster than they already were (I
did some track sprints last week in hopes to get a jump-start on quitting
smoking per some advice my brother-in-law who recently quit gave me – I guess
Kyle is good for SOME things), and I realized that if I want to be able to
really apply the strength I’m building to anything (chasing children… LIFE), I
need the endurance behind it. A couple months ago I had been doing a HIIT (High
Intensity Interval Training) routine that I found on FitnessBlender (awesome site!), but I got
bored with it very quickly and quit doing it. Also, I realized when I tried to
run last week (for the first time in YEARS), that actually running on a track,
the street, a treadmill, whatever, is a LOT different than just jumping around
in one place in your basement. The amount of soreness that happened within just
an hour of returning from the track last week… it was ridiculous. It made me
feel ridiculously out of shape for being a person who’s been working so hard to
get in shape. And that advice that my brother-in-law gave me? It was good.
Sprinting/jogging/running/whatever definitely makes me never want to smoke
again.
The bottom line is: I hate cardio, and will probably
always hate cardio – but I want my heart and lungs to be healthy, so track
sprints are going to be happening in my life regularly. I also really enjoy
taking walks, so those will definitely continue until the weather gets too cold
for me to bear it. It's all about balance.
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