State of the Jill

As I've been absent from posting of late and when I have posted, I've cleverly avoided deep thoughts on health, weight loss and working out, I thought maybe I need to give you a big overview on where I am, philosophically (not geographically), on all these things lately. Cancel all of your regular programming and tune into this "State of the Jill" report. 

Working Out

Since January I've been pretty consistent with working out, logging about four or five workouts a week. I've practically* become a morning person, rising before dawn to work out. This is amazing, considering this post from a year and a half ago.  As I was telling someone last week, if I work out in the morning, there's only about five minutes each day when I can talk myself out of it (as I'm lying in bed contemplating my alarm clock). Once I make it past those five minutes, there's no way I'm not working out that day. On the other hand, if I plan to work out during lunch or after work, there are all kinds of things (you might call them excuses) that can crop up to keep me from my exercise. Another benefit to the "first thing in the morning" workout is there is no time to stop for breakfast on the way to gym.

Types of Workouts**

Since January and the onslaught of the morning workouts, I've been mostly walking as a workout, with an occasional swim or fitness class thrown in.  This was great in January as I had not been working out much at all in the fall, and I just needed to get moving again.  Now, though, I'm starting to get bored as I circle the track*** for the one millionth time each morning.  

This past weekend, I went for my first bike ride of the spring and loved it.  I hope to ride once or twice a week throughout the spring, and maybe get back to biking to work once the sun rises a bit earlier.  I've been toying with running again.  I kind of swore off of running last year as I got frustrated with it and with my weight gain.  However, my old running partner, Cindy, is running a half marathon in April and two of my cousins just did their first half marathons a month ago.  All three of these people regularly post their run stats on fb, which makes me curious and envious and basically makes me want to run again.  I have not started yet, but I'm seriously considering giving it another go. What can I say, I have a love/hate relationship with the darn thing and I can't quite seem to shake it.  Plus, as much as I say I hate running, I still really want to do another triathlon someday.

SIDE NOTE: IF YOU WANT TO HAVE THE MOST FUN OF YOUR LIFE AND ARE AVAILABLE ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 13 AND WILL BE IN CHARLOTTE THAT DAY, COME WITH ME TO CHEER FOR CINDY**** AT HER HALF MARATHON. TRUST ME, CHEERING IS WAY MORE FUN THAN RUNNING. Let me know if you are in.

Food

I am not in any way dieting or counting calories or trying to eat lots of fruits and veggies. I just can't bring myself to start anything like that. That part of me is kind of broken, and I'm not so sure it's natural/normal/healthy, even though it can be really successful.  I am trying to eat out less, but that's almost more of concern of the wallet than the stomach.  Or, really, both the wallet and the stomach. Anyway, the way I'm operating now, I pretty much buy the foods at the grocery store that I want to eat and then eat them.  I do make a few smaller meals at home each week, along with simple things like PB&J or cheese and spinach quesadillas. 

Being Overweight

Here's the way I see it.  If I'm not willing to cut my calories, then I can't really complain about being overweight. I am this way for a reason (I consume too many calories. And also, I blame genetics a teensy bit). I gained the weight back because of a reason (too many calories). For the most part, I'm not bothered by my size when I'm wearing clothes that fit.  Every once in awhile I catch a glimpse of my upper arm or my butt in the mirror and think a hateful thought. But I try to catch those thoughts as their happening and throw them out my mental window, because I'm trying to really cut back on that kind of stuff.  It doesn't do one lick of good.  Besides, I'm awesome.

Breakfast

Breakfast has always been a b**** for me.  Ask my mom. Even from the time I was little I hated figuring out what to have for breakfast.  Now that I'm working out first thing, I have to take a portable breakfast to work most mornings, which limits my choices.  I was eating oatmeal most days for several weeks until I got sick of the sight of it.  Then I created the wonderful concoction you see in the picture to the left.  It is a homemade breakfast sandwich!  Biscuits (out of a can) cooked on Sunday afternoon.  Then a pre-cooked (turkey) sausage patty and a bit of cheese makes a warm and delicious breakfast that I look forward to eating, but is about half the calories of a fast food breakfast.

Diet Coke

I still drink it.

There you go. That's an update on all of the topics we typically cover on the blog. Plus, lots of bonus embedded links to super old posts.  Let me know if you have any questions/comments/thoughts.  Sorry I've been such a lazy blogger lately. Experience tells me, though, that I can't promise I'll be better in the future, unfortunately.

*but not actually
**Seriously, is workout one word or two?  I seem to type it both ways, depending on if my thumb is feeling too lazy to hit the space bar or not.
***Since I'm working out before dawn in winter, I've been sticking to my gym's sweet indoor track.  Maybe once the sun decides to stop being a lazy bones and rise at a decent hour while providing an adequate heat source, I'll be able to go outside.
****I tried to find a great post about Cindy to link to, but it turns out I've never written an entire post on how awesome Cindy is as a running partner (or person).  But she's mentioned in about a million Thankful Thursday posts and they usually read something like this, "Today I'm thankful for my running buddy Cindy. She keeps me going even when I want to give up." Also she's mentioned in a bunch of race reports, because she is the person I'm most likely to run races with. Cindy, she's awesome. Let's go cheer for her, huh?

Spring

Isn't there just something about spring that makes you feel...
hopeful,
invincible,
happy?

Happy spring Friday!

Source: mostbeautifulpages.com via Erica on Pinterest

Some Days You've Just Got to Eat Cupcakes

Natalie, my 2 year old niece, enjoys chocolate cupcakes like I do.

Lessons Learned (And Re-Learned)

I successfully made it through one week with out going out to eat and drinking nothing but water.  I did celebrate last night by making a stop at Moe's on the way home, though. I savored every bite.

Here's what I was learning this week.

1) There is always food at home.
Do you ever stand in front of your pantry or your fridge and think "There's nothing to eat in this house?" I do. But get this - there is always something to eat in my pantry.  There's never like a piece of tumbleweed blowing across the pantry when I open the cupboard door. There are cans of soup that I bought years ago still in my cupboard.  There's always a little bit of left over pasta waiting to be cooked.  And always peanut butter and jelly and almost always bread.  And usually a frozen meal or two, sitting there from when I last had the brilliant idea to save time on cooking and just starting eating frozen meals.* I do not ever have to eat out.

2) I don't have to have a diet coke** to start the day.  I also don't have to have a diet coke mid-afternoon. I also don't have to have a diet coke when I eat salty foods or quesadillas.
I actually can survive a whole week without it. While I wouldn't say I felt a marked difference in general health or skin glow this week, it did feel really good to drink only water.  And my lips stopped being chapped, which I think is related. I did have a diet coke last night to celebrate the end of the week, but I'm gonna try not to drink them very often any more. We'll see.

3) Abwork does matter.
Sometimes, I start thinking that ab work (crunches, planks and the like) is silly and not worth the time.  After all, it's not like I'm going to do a few crunches every day and one day wake up with washboard abs.  But this week I've had an ab-wakening.  I went to a CrunchTime class at the gym this week and barely made it through this 20 minute ab-intensive class.  I couldn't even do more than half of the moves at all because my abs weren't strong enough.  But today, two days later,*** I can feel a difference that class made. Every time I move. Or cough. I like being sore in the abdominals. It makes me feel like I'm doing something.  And even if developing ab muscles does not give me a mid-riff baring stomach, I remember what it felt like to be ab-ulous, and I'd like to get back there again.

Sometimes I feel like I'm learning and relearning the same lessons over and over.  Seems a bit repetitive, but it is a bit easier to accept the 2nd (or 3rd) time around. Do you ever do that?

*I get this brilliant idea every few months and then I buy several frozen meals, eat one or two and realize that if they are the tasty kind then they are way high in calories and if they are the healthy kind they are usually not very tasty AND also not very filling. Then the remaining meals sit in my freezer for months.
**I realize diet coke is a proper noun and should be capitalized, but I like to think that by not capitalizing it, I'm stealing back a little of its power over me.
***You are always the most sore two days after exercise and not the day after.  Scientific fact.

How to Dance Like Jill Stuckey

Because sometimes, you might need to know how to dance like Jill Stuckey.
You might want to have some jamz ready to go, because when you're through with this tutorial, you're gonna want to get your groove on.

Tribute to a Fitness Guru

Lindy has been our on-campus fitness guru for somewhere around five years. She coordinates all of our group fitness classes, hires and trains all of our amazing lifeguards and personal trainers, and organizes bookoos of  fitness incentive programs for students and staff (including the five week interdepartmental challenge I talked about yesterday).  She personally teaches one of the best fitness classes I've ever attended, TurboKick, and she's full of great advice on how to improve your workouts. She's one of the most goal-oriented, energetic and fun people you'll meet.  On top of all that, she's also extremely motivating.

In just a few minutes, I'll be attending her last TurboKick class on our campus, because she's moving on and will soon start working toward her Ph.D.  (just one of many of her goals that she sets and then achieves). I haven't made it to a TurboKick class in awhile and that makes me a little sad, because it was definitely a missed opportunity for me. But tonight, I'm ready to push it extra hard.

Her motivating spirit and contagious enthusiasm has definitely made a difference on my healthy living journey thus far, changing the way I look at workouts and approach goal setting. I'm glad I'll be able to keep up with Lindy via Facebook after she leaves, but I'll definitely miss seeing her around the gym.

Do you have someone like this in your life who motivates you and challenges you to become a better version of yourself? If so, leave a comment and tell me a little about him/her.

Update, post class: The last class was super intense and made me remember my favorite Lindy quote (although she didn't say it tonight): "Don't you just love it when the sweat runs in your eyeballs?"
Here's a pic of tonight's workout crew, post class. This is sweat-tastic.

PS About the no eating out and no soda this week from the challenge? I thought I was home free after making it through the weekend, but the urge to resist both of these weaknesses of mine has been mega hard today.  Here's hoping I can use the last couple of days to change my attitude toward eating out and soda so I don't backslide too much this weekend when the ban is lifted.

The Week's Challenges

Yesterday was the beginning of the last week of the at-work challenge.  This five-week program was a contest between departments with healthy goals.  I think making it a team challenge, made it a lot more awesome.  I haven't exactly been in a steady healthy living swing lately and probably would've just quit the contest early on, except for one thing: my team.  If I had quit trying it would've really hurt my team and it turns out my coworkers are super competitive.

So here it is five weeks later.  Our team is in 2nd place. The push is on to bring in a lot of points this week and that has brought me to two crazy (for me) actions.

1) I'm drinking nothing but water this week.
2) I've pledged not to eat out (at all) this week.

I've been abusing the diet coke thus far in 2013.  And if you've been around this blog for any length of time, you know that I move in cycles.  I drink way too much diet coke, feel guilty, detox and go cold turkey off of it, that lasts for a few weeks.  Then I either forget that I have given it up or think I can just drink one and then I end up hooked back on the sauce with an ever-increasing consumption level.  So when I saw on Friday that "Drink nothing but water" was one of the challenges for the week, I thought it was time to go cold turkey once again.  Turns out this detox has been no big deal.  I haven't really even had a headache, and I've been clean three days now.  Sa-weet!

Another of the challenges this week was a Pick Your Own.  You could do whatever, as long as it seemed big enough to be worth ten points.  I decided to not eat out at all this week.  This is also big for me, because I've just really been hating cooking the last few weeks and even when I have cooked something, I don't always get around to eating the leftovers.  But the real challenge to this one is the weekend, and I've successfully made it through the weekend without eating out.  I even packed a lunch today to eat after church so I could go straight to the gym. So I think I can do it.   Of course, the trick will be next week when I am allowed to eat out again, and not going crazy with that.

I also plan to work out five days this week.

Now's your turn. How can you challenge yourself this week?