Day Four

As usual i am a day behind and a dollar short. Don’t know where that saying came from but i have always loved it because i can relate! Anyway, this is how yesterday went:

Cleaner eating: was a disaster…maybe. I had a respectable bowl of cereal and half a cup of coffee. I tried reheating the coffee and having another cup but somehow managed to let that one go cold, too. Maybe i just don’t like my husband’s coffee…i don’t know. The rest of the afternoon was spent “grazing” from the fridge: 1/2 cup cottage cheese (low fat), a handful of wheat thin crackers (low sodium), a handful or raisins (plain), a few leaves of lettuce…nothing really substantial until dinner. Meatballs and whole wheat pasta.

Weight Training: Followed Merrill’s training from the Oxygen magazine and did a bunch of situps and calf raises. Overhead tricep presses with 8lb weights. Four sets of 12 for everything.

Cardio: Ran for 40 minutes on the treadmill. Got as far as 3.82 miles. That makes 6.31 miles so far this month. Yay.

Yoga: Wednesday is balancing month and i think i need help with nearly every move. That’s not entirely true but here are the ones that are giving me trouble: Tree pose (i want to get my leg higher – say thigh high and still balance strong. Right now i’m hovering at the calf level). Warrior III (i love the way the sequence goes from tree to warrior III but i don’t feel my W3 is strong enough). Half Moon (not nearly as pretty or as strong as i want it to be. i feel as though i am out of whack). Eagle pose (Cyndi doesn’t have me sitting into the pose but i think i would like to).
Here are the poses I feel best about: downward dog split (although i found myself lifting the wrong left and threading the needle instead), chair pose with twist (my ankles are getting stronger), side inclined plane (love, love, love this pose!)
It’s funny, but i was watching Namaste Yoga yesterday and they ran almost this exact same sequence. Of course they looked amazing!

Day Three

Every morning is like Groundhog day to me. I roll out of bed, bleary-eyed and somewhat disorientated (dreams take me for some whacked out rides & sometimes i forget where i am when i come to a stop). I slip in front of the computer to check email and see what the work-out calendar has in store for me. Then, it’s breakfast and coffee. Shower. Maybe make the moves on the calendar…More coffee at work and maybe a 2nd breakfast. I’m trying to eat every four hours so granola at 11am is the most appealing. I have grown to love Kashi’s orchard spice. The mountain whatever isn’t that bad, either. I usually always forget my lunch so i’m either buying something in the cafe or standing in front of the vending machine – usually the latter choice because it’s the cheaper of the two. Such is lunch today – sun chips from Mr. Vending. Dinner, as usual is healthy – because i try to cook healthy at all times. Salmon marinated in all things Asian with steamed veggies. Brown rice on the side. Such is clean(er) eating. Bad habit to break: not bringing something (anything!) for lunch!

Weight training: nada…unless you count a pilates session as “weight” training. Lots of stomach (core) exercises and a few inner/outer thigh moves. No arm exercises.

Cardio: zilch. Tomorrow will be a 45 minute session to make up for the fact that last night was only 25, a real quickie.

Yoga: Tuesday is all about standing poses. Nothing really bothers me about this sequence. It’s literally a variation of warrior poses and Sun Salutations. Seemed straightforward enough.

Day One

Clean(er) eating:
Breakfast ~ red pepper, red potato, vidalia onion, veggie sausage, sauteed with shots of balsamic & Tabasco, served with two eggs (one whole, one white), 1/2 slice dry wheat toast & coffee two cups).
Lunch ~ with a friend. Sacraficed healthy to hang out. 5 large chicken fingers with sauces & a glass of water.
Dinner ~ Oriental chicken salad from Friendly’s. Ate 1/3 of the salad without dressing. Water with lemon.

Weight training:
30 shoulder presses (the last set with calf raises)
60 sit-ups (lower abs)
15 sumo squats

Cardio:
None since I ran two days in a row (Friday and Saturday).

Yoga:
Three sets of Sun Salutations.

Because today is Sunday I don’t feel this is a good representation of how my days will actually go. We’ll just have to wait and see…

Alone with me, myself & moi

I’m home alone so my thoughts turned to the three things I always do without companionship. Run. Assault the fridge. Scrutinize my face.
I started off by running. 3.52 miles. Nothing to brag about, sneeze about and even cough to admit. I’m calling my treadmill ‘G’ from now on – G for Gerbil, G for Get Off My Ass because even though it was only a 5k run, at least I did it. I plugged into BubbleGum and he sang me through 35 minutes of hills and hell. My brain worked a little overtime because I thought about my boss and how today was his last day. Earlier, I sat in his my chair in his my office and imagined my upcoming rein. I also thought about when I ran the 13.1 for LLS. All the while, reciting the names of the people with cancer I was running in honor of, in memory of. It was so heartbreaking to think I was running in honor of someone battling only to find out they died the day of my race. Honor became memory in a matter of miles. I remembered how my friend, at my celebration party, how she whispered to me “my mom has breast cancer’, yet she still got on stage and sang for me, sang for my triumph in the face of her personal tragedy. It’s hard to run when all you want to do is collapse and cry. Even BubbleGum couldn’t keep me from such sweet, self-induced sadness.
After the pitiful run I ravaged the fridge. Maybe it’s a guy thing and maybe that’s why I keep this secret from my husband, but I don’t know of many women who stand in front of their Kenmores, drinking milk from the carton, scooping yogurt right from the container -the only light in the kitchen coming from the fridge. I eat with my fingers when I’m alone. Tonight was no exception. Tonight I found Turkish apricots and wheat crackers. No need to hold the door open for those. I scooped copious handfuls of each and plopped on the couch, balancing the unlikely feast on my stomach. Watching me chow down it’s hard to imagine me being afraid of numbers like 120 or 40 (116 and 38 for those of you keeping score).
The only thing I haven’t done tonight is prop up the mirror and stare down my own reflection. Usually this is my opportunity to tweeze, pluck, pinch, pucker, scratch, pop and scrub what I see before me. I’m not in the mood to self analyze, scrutinize and criticize.
Maybe that’s a good thing.

A New Beginning

Point blank, I am sick of being me. I’ve spent the last 30 plus years being embarrassed by myself…as odd as that may seem. I’m not out to reinvent myself, or deny who I really am, but I do want to change the things that really, really bug me. Is that a bad thing? I am tired of being a wallflower. I’m tired of being out of shape, on the brink of being blobby. I am tired of being a blink in the eye of the beholder. Does that make sense? Here, on the other side of sleep I want to kick some ass. Take no prisoners. Take back my life.

Today, I made a decision to make this blog less about what happens in my sleep and more about my journey back to waking up. Here, for the record is my list of goals:

• Yoga! I keep saying I want to practice daily. I need to make that happen!
• Weight training – I want to be strong, body & mind.
• Eating right – stop the affair with the vending machine…
• 13.1 – need I say more?

I start tomorrow…