Round

I got on the scale this morning and was down one pound from last Monday.  Great, I’ll take it.

Especially because for the first time in a long time I’m feeling like what I’m doing now is decreasing the stress in my life and is enjoyable.  If I can live like this and lose weight, I can’t complain.

I ate generally healthy this week - not much meat as our beloved butcher closed forever, and what I did buy I stuck in the freezer when I realized I’d be solo for dinners most nights of the week.  I cooked a fair amount, and some of my old favorites and new one as well - I made chopska salad (Bulgarian), spring rolls (yum yum - that’s the new fave), last night I even made fish for myself, which is a shocker since I rarely eat fish, let alone make it, let alone by myself, but there was a small piece of my favorite fish (monkfish) at the market yesterday and so I grabbed it.

I had normal food during lunches (working ones) and ended up eating a fair amount of bread, as we had sandwiches 3 days running.  Plus one of the evenings a work dinner where I had pasta w a cream sauce (a mistake on my part, I should have asked more questions of the waiter, it wasn’t even very good for all those calories)…

Of course, quite likely the real reason for the pound of fat feeling free to leave me is the exercise.

Here’s how I did on exercise for the week :

• Monday July 7 : Swimming  45 min plus walking 40 min
• Tuesday July 8 : rest day
• Wednesday July 9 : 15 min light walking plus swimming 40 min
• Thursday July 10: 60 min light walking
• Friday July 11 : 40 min light walking
• Saturday July 12 :60 min serious walking, 120 min light walking
• Sunday July 13 : 40 min Swimming

I am not making a plan for this week because I don’t know what I’ll be able to do.  I am motivated to do a lot, but this week that might not be smart.

I will need to be more careful with diet if I don’t get in as much exercise, that’s for sure…

I am living that song : movin’ movin’ movin’

I have been bit by the exercise bug, and I am really happy about it. I got some unexpected free time last night and the thing that jumped into my head was to go to the pool (I did).

Today I organized getting to several appointments by walking, and chalked up 60 minutes. And I’m bummed I can’t work out tonight. I’m trying to decide between having my eyebrows done or going to the pool tomorrow evening (although doing both might work out in the end).

With today’s walking around I passed my first 500 minutes of exercise, which began on Friday June 27th, which was 2 weeks ago. Not bad at all.

So, I’ve earned my first gold star :

I’m eating reasonably well but possibly not at dieting levels. I haven’t been keeping a food diary but might add that back in the upcoming weeks.

Recently I’ve been trying to simplify my life.  I am throwing out a lot of junk, going through closets, getting rid of old magazines.  I’m also “unsubscribing” from a number of email newsletters that clutter up my inbox.  It was with just such a spirit that I opened an email that contained a link to a quiz on “how motivated are you?”.  What the heck, I clicked.  And the newsletter remains subscribed to, at least for now…

Click this link to take the quiz yourself.

Here are my results :

14 — 20 points:

Strongly Likely To Stick With It

• Based on your score, you may describe yourself as self-motivated, ambitious and achievement-oriented, but also balanced. You are likely to make exercise a priority even when tight for time.
• When exercising, you tend to stick with programs that are challenging and within your comfort zone, which keeps exercise from losing appeal.
• You are likely to seek out ways to maintain your exercise commitment by working out with a friend, hiring a friendly and knowledgeable instructor, varying your exercise activities, rewarding yourself for sticking with it, setting goals and exercising with music.

How To Stay Motivated:

• Although these strategies help you to avoid long periods of inactivity, you may still find yourself totally unmotivated for weeks at a time. There is no need to worry. Instead, enjoy your break. After all, even elite athletes take breaks to invigorate their bodies and souls.

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The interesting thing is that I would have had just about the same score before 2 weeks ago when I started to come back to exercise. 

The article mentions taking a few weeks off, but what if weeks become months become a year? 

Well, apparently you can get back on track even then.

Planning, planning, planning.

There is nothing that can take it’s place, is there? Without a plan things rarely take the form we’d like - even with a plan it can be hard.

There is no way I’m going to be able to get in exercise if I don’t plan it.

So here’s the plan for the week, written down, visible, committed and able to hold myself accountable.

• Monday July 7 : Walk to and from appointment (40 min) AND either swimming or elliptical
• Tuesday July 8 : Some form of serious cardio
• Wednesday July 9 : 15 min light walking (get off metro early)
• Thursday July 10: 15 min light walking (get off metro early)
• Friday July 11 : cardio
• Saturday July 12 : cardio
• Sunday July 13 : cardio

At least one, maybe more, of these days towards the end of the week might be rest days.
And just to report in on this past week - I made my focus coming back to exercise and I did a pretty good job of it.

• Friday June 27 : swim
• Saturday June 28 : walk
• Sunday June 29 : swim
• Monday June 30: none
• Tuesday July 1 : 15 min walk
• Wednesday July 2 : 45 min walk
• Thursday July 3 : 15 min walk
• Friday July 4 : 15 min walk
• Saturday July 5 : 75 min walk
• Sunday July 6 : 40 min elliptical

All in all it adds up to something that would not have me thinking I was a complete slug 2 weeks ago… Plus I’m down 3 pounds today.

There is one really good thing to have come out of the past 10 days downspin - I feel like I’ve come back to exercise. Having avoided most exercise for about a year, this is a major milestone.

A few weeks back I did an exercise of what I want my life to be like in the future (at a healthy weight) and I was surprised to see how much active lifestyle stuff was on that list. Things like going hiking, riding a bike, feeling up for impromtu exercise opportunities are all things I consider healthy people to do routinely. Add to that a discussion I had with a cardiologist who was very point-blank about the health benefits of exercise being totally separate from weight loss (not the calories-in, calories-out equation) and things were churning away in my head for a while on this topic.

It reminds me of when I started at the gym during my Big Loss — when I first met with the trainer she asked me how often I was planning to work out and my response of 20 min 2x a week was met with a firm response that it needed to be a LOT more to have much impact - 45 min cardio, 4 times a week is what she said. And she did scare me away for a while, I think it took 2 1/2 more months before I started to exercise, but when I did it, I did it, and the results were there. I needed a lot of time to think about it before I took action then, and I guess I did now too. A few weeks back I wrote about some of the reasons I’ve resisted exercise, and all of those remain true - but of course simple laziness is the number one reason!

But the bottom line is that for my health and my weight and my mental well being I am coming back to exercise. I’ve always felt better about myself when I’m exercising, and I’m giving it a big push for this summer.

What am I going to do? A lot of things, but what I’m not going to do is re-join the gym right now. I’m going to get a Velib card for renting bikes here in Paris. I’m going to check out bike paths that I can get to without getting killed on the city streets for my own bike (which is much comfier!). I’m going to keep going to the pool, keep going on walks. I’m going to dust off the elliptical machine and use that from time to time. I might whip out a DVD or two. I’m basically going to mix it up. This summer I hope to go hiking a lot - it won’t be too much, since I’m really out of shape, but just moving will be really good for me, body and soul.

I’ve decided to keep track via a minutes goal is in increments of 500 minutes, which I’ll also track to follow how long it takes me to achieve each set of 500 minutes. I’m pasting the ticker here, but it’s at 220 minutes right now.

500 Minutes of Exercise tracking :

• 1st set : June 27th - ???

Since last Fall I also started tracking my walking by working on a virtual walk to Bilbao (in Spanish Basque Country). There is a small amount of cheating (or creativity, if you will) - I count every 15 minutes of walking as one mile (which is not always the case). For this I’m picking up the ticker from where I left off -all other tickers have been reset to zero, but I haven’t been totally sedentary these past few months - this sucker was stuck at 192 for quite a while - but 192 miles is nothing to laugh at either!

Look for more Walking to Bilbao pitstops in coming weeks.

After months and months of not exercising,  I have to say it feels really good to be a little sore today.

My legs are stiff, my back hurts a little in all kinds of places, my belly is tender - all of it clearly muscle pain, all of it related to the fact that I have finally broken the inert freeze I’ve been in.

Yesterday I went out for a long walk, exercise-style, and realized after a few minutes that I needed to pick up the pace from my normal one if I was to call it exercise - which I did, and was walking at a considerably faster clip than usual for an hour.

I am needing to get a move on right now to get to the pool this morning before it gets too crowded.  How’s that for a change of pace, usually my Sunday mornings are all about lazing around!

Still, I’m not pushing myself too hard - a little sore is fine and hard to avoid when you start moving, but I don’t want to be worse than this, so I’ll keep my pool time today to 30 minutes again to make sure I don’t overdo it.

Thanks so much for the cheers - I really appreciate them!

Thanks so much for the encouragement to just go to the pool and see what happened.

I went and it was fine. Not wonderful (it was kind of run-down looking) but just fine, and the water was nice. I swam for 30 minutes, did 26 lengths of the pool. I could have gone longer actually, but was starting to get tired and then the decision was taken out of my hands, they told everyone to get out of the water about 20 minutes before closing time (the gyms in Paris do this too). I wasn’t too disappointed, as I think I’ll go back to the pool this weekend.

It was pretty crowded when I got there, and the first person I saw was some teenage girl with a knockout figure in a bikini standing by the edge of the pool flirting with a bunch of well-built young men. Yikes. I had that moment of hesitation and then just said to myself to suck it up and get over it, and from then on it was fine. Me, big, huge, in my full-coverage swimsuit, with my cellulite and puffy body, bad legs and all, walking around not worrying about what anyone thought from the moment I left the changing room until I was fully dressed again about an hour later. In fact, at the pool it’s like it is at the beach - you see ALL KINDS of bodies. There are of course some beautiful ones, but in general that’s not the majority, and at the end of the day those less-than-perfect bodies are all doing something for themselves, and that in itself is a really good thing.

The water was pretty warm, and although it was crowded the lap swimming worked reasonably well (considering we’re talking about unruly French people here). It was less chaotic than I’d expected, although much more so than swimming laps in the US. They had sectioned off the pool into 3 areas - one for horsing around (kids mainly) another for laps, and a third section in the shallow end where they were teaching an aqua-aerobics class. (Bonus! I got to see what one of those was like, since that’s also something that’s been bubbling in the back of my mind).

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I’d been putting off going to the pool for a LONG time. I first looked up the pool and it’s hours on the web last September, and I went by to get the information sheet in January. So how did it stack up versus my expectations?

Well, it was cleaner than I expected, although the tiles etc are clearly old and worn. The unisex changing room turned out to be a non-event, as everyone changes in little changing booths, which have real doors on them. The floor is kinda gross, but I’d anticipated that and brought my flip-flops, so I went directly from shoes to flip flops and my feet never touched the floor. Showers are communal too, but everyone keeps on their suit. Sure, you don’t rub down and wash yourself the same way, but I did rinse off and even washed my hair. What’s provided is pretty minimal, but I had thought ahead and brought my own towel with me and swung by a sporting goods shop on my way to the pool to buy a swim cap (mandatory for both men and women, someone had told me about this, that’s how I knew to do it). I had a 2 euro coin with me for the locker (returned) although I’d also brought a padlock with a key on a safety pin.

I forgot to bring a comb, and if I start swimming regularly I’ll need to find a French equivalent of Ultra-Swim shampoo. And probably the waterproof ear plug things, I tend to get ear infections when I swim…

All in all, I am SUPER PROUD OF MYSELF for going. I enjoyed it and can see myself working swimming into my life from time to time. I’d like to go back over the weekend to get another dose.

My healthy diet is getting easier for me.  I have had a really good week - focused, veggie-filled, not feeling deprived.

Going away for this weekend wasn’t so easy.  First there was the lunch my DH prepared just before we left.  Very sweet of him to whip up an omelette for us all, but it was loaded with butter…  We also didn’t have enough water with us for our hike, and although I made decent choices at dinner, I was over-hungry and couldn’t resist the bread (nor the chocolate buttons before dinner).

The good news is I did walk (well, very light hiking) both Saturday and Sunday.  It felt good to move my body and fabulous to breath fresh country air.  Every time we go hiking (which isn’t often) I’m reminded how much I like it, and it’s something both my husband and I would like to do more often.

Breakfast this morning was tough - huge basket of bread and pastries, no fruit in sight…  I had bread w jam (lower cal choice than the pastry) and a plain yogurt.  Skipped the sweetened applesauce (which is not very healthy) and had a ton of coffee.  I purposefully went light on breakfast, but paid for it later when I was starving after our hike and very grouchy… Of course I didn’t make the best choices then either, because the one thing you can usually find open in France on a Sunday afternoon is a bakery, so bread it was…

Still, to focus on the positive I made generally healthy choices, I got in some exercise, and at all times I stayed in control of my eating and ate what I considered the “less bad” of my choices.  Sometimes that was 8 chocolate drops instead of the whole pack, sometimes 4 slices of bread instead of buying a slice of quiche or a chocolate croissant, but at all times I did manage to make the choices.  And that, my friends, is real progress.

I’ll repeat again my mantra (in hopes of convincing myself of it someday) :

PROGRESS, Not Perfection  

Glad to be home again — especially because next weekend we’re away again — and it will be EVEN HARDER!

Quite unexpectedly, I went to a gym yesterday.

My plan had been to take a nice long walk in the afternoon while my DH took my DSS to an indoor rock-climbing place. As I was getting into the shower my DH told me that the rock-climbing place had a gym too. Did I want to go with them and use the gym there?

Now, to put things in perspective, I haven’t set foot in a gym for over a year. My over-enthusiasm to get in shape for my wedding last year had me pushing myself very hard at the gym and something I did aggravated a herniated disk I already had - and I ended up with severe, debilitating sciatica that had me out of work for months, on tons of narcotic pain-killers, in surgery, and canceling our honeymoon. Not to mention that gyms in Paris are always dingy and smelly and old and ugly and dirty too.

I wasn’t missing the gym here, but I do miss feeling good and I know exercise needs to be part of my life. Getting back into the gym habit is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, and while I haven’t moved to action I’m aware it’s a question of When, not If.

So I took the opportunity to go w my DH to this new-to-me location. Clearly it’s a climbing center, but they do have a lot of weight machines (forbidden to me since my back surgery) and a few rickety and very dirty cardio machines.

I’ve always felt the hardest part of the gym experience is getting there, and this was no exception. Once there I made the rounds of the machines, got on a treadmill, then took a few minutes on a stepper, back to the treadmill for a long walk at a reasonably rapid pace (faster than I walk when I walk for fitness around town for sure!) and played with moving the incline up and down every few minutes. I ended w 10 minutes on a bike. In all, I did one hour of exercise and was sweating (in part due to the lack of air conditioning, but it was also the most serious exercise session I’ve had in a LONG time).

I am very proud of myself for going. It was good to be w the family doing an active outing (even if I didn’t do the rock-climbing with them). It also really got me thinking about how to get more of the sweat-type of exercise into my life - either my DVD, my dust collector elliptical machine, or biting the bullet and going back to gym membership.

A friend suggested I do 5 minutes of exercise on my dust-ridden elliptical machine. She had just bought one and was excited to have it. I commented that I never use mine. Bought with the best of intentions, of course. And quickly abandoned.

So yesterday evening waiting for my DH to make it home I hopped on with a book in hand and reset the timer from when I used to go one hour… a lifetime ago…

5 minutes was HARD for me. I must have looked at the clock every 15 seconds or so. I felt my thighs burning and was breathing hard. Wow I am so out of shape.

But 5 minutes is 5 minutes more than I’ve done of serious exercise in a long time, and I was really happy with myself for doing it.