| Wednesday, May 16, 2007 |
| Competitive Nature |
I can see myself slipping quite easily into the competitive road that is running. Looking at my time from yesterday of 52 mins for a peasly 5km was a bit disturbing. I find myself thinking "Hell, I can do way better than that!". So my mind is there, just a matter of getting my body there too. As much as people say it is mind over body I can't seem to get my body to submit to following what my mind tells it. Perhaps not enough mind? Heh. What I mean by this is that the speed at which I'm running my lungs don't give out on me anymore (as they used to) but my muscles in my legs just get very fatigued. Is this normal when starting out? Does it get easier? Can anyone remember what it was like in the beginning? I'm guessing like cardio fitness and muscle gain the length of time in which I can run will increase but does it take long?
Oh and I'm not running with any music at the moment, much to my disgust as my Mp3 player is broked! Have to organise to take it in and get it fixed. Hope it is sometime soon. It is SO much easier to get into 'the zone' when I have music.
Food
I feel like I really ate well today. I stayed within my weight watchers points and ate quite healthy. I have realised that when busy I need to keep my hunger under control because if I leave it for too long I go searching for food...and don't really care what it is. I managed to rein this feeling in yesterday and was aware of it for the rest of the day. Being in tune with my hunger signals is going to be very valuable to my ability to achieve my weight loss.
Exercise
Carried out my 5km run/walk. Although I have to say it more resembled a walk with a tiny bit of a run. It took me 52 mins. I'm estimating the run portion to be 1.5km and although it may sound ridiculously small to other people I must say I'm kind of proud considering when mapping my run on www.mapmyrun.com I hadn't considered checking altitude and ended up spending 1/3 of the distance going up and down pretty decent hills. I also recognise it is only my starting and point and I am sure I will improve :-) I also did some basic resistance training of my major muscle groups - quads, hamstrings, calves, abs, triceps, biceps, chest and lower back. Today (the day after) I can definitely feel some stiffness and tightness in the muscles which means they must have been working yesterday. |
| posted by Sam @ 11:58 PM |
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| Tuesday, May 15, 2007 |
| Weight Watchers, Accountability and Exercise Plan |
I had my first weight watchers meeting this evening and although I now consider myself a little disenchanted with the company in general, I have a funny feeling it is actually going to work for me. Weighed in at 72.7 kg which I am content with. Means I have just over 5 kg to lose to get into my healthy weight BMI range. From there I might refocus my goal on something a little lower. At this point I am estimating that it will be near the 60kg mark which happens to be right in the middle of my healthy weight range. My reason for being disenchanted with weight watcthers is that should I miss a week of a meeting I must then pay that weeks payment back at the next meeting. Also my leader gave me a deal that involved me paying only $15 to join and for the first meeting but I would have rather had the deal where for $17.90 both my friend who took me and I would receive a free cookbook. This $17.90 deal was something she didn’t even tell me about. Anyway despite these two dissapointments I believe the accountability is going to really work for me. I also found out she is not the regular leader, something I am thankful for. Just means that theres a chance the regular one might actually be sincere and nice. Despite the money hungry company impression (because I guess after all weight watchers is a business) I do believe the level of accountability is what is going to make this work for me. Also the little lectures on issues related to food and exercise and the 6 weeks maintenance course and things that will help me change behaviours to make this health kick a life long thing!
I have worked out that I have 12 meetings before my 21st birthday and would absolutely love to be at goal by then. Mind you this is just an aim of mine and I accept that I am an in no way allowed to be disappointed if I don’t make it as it would require a loss of just over 1 kg a week. Not very realistic long term weightloss. But I might be close to the 60 kg mark by then. Just want to look hot for my 21st birthday!
Tomorrow will be the beginning of my first day of counting points and my new exercise program. A combination of walking/running, weights and yoga. I am attempting to find some form of balance in my life and a combination of cardio, resistance weight training and flexibility is what I believe will help me achieve this. In correspondence with calorie control I am hoping to achieve some good results.
The Exercise Plan Involves…
Monday – 5km run/walk and basic resistance training
Tuesday – Yoga
Wednesday – 5km run/walk and basic resistance training
Thursday – Yoga
Friday – 5km run/walk and basic resistance training
Saturday – Yoga
Sunday – Rest
Totally manageable I believe. Even with my lack of time due to study, work, clinical practice and meal planning, preparing and cooking.
Just wanted to make mention of an absolutely eye opening blog post made on Om Bites yoga journal titled-Wanna, Gonna, Shoulda. This is copied and pasted to save time, hope I havn't done anything illegal considering I linked it...
"Give yourself about 15 to 30 minutes a day to practice. If you don't have 15 to 30 minutes a day, try 10 to 15 minutes a day. If you can't find 10 minutes a day, you know you have no interest."
Kevin Farrow, The Natural Alchemist
Stop being the wanna, gonna, shoulda person. If you really want to do something, do it and enjoy it. Stop tormenting yourself with something you think you "should" be doing, saying or even how you think you're supposed to behave, especially if it's not really your thing. You're only lying to yourself. Focus on what you really want to do, find out how to do it and then go for gold.
You will only succeed if you really want to and succeeding is not about reaching an end, it's about the growth, the journey and where it takes you.
This post really resonated with how I am feeling about all my talk of health and fitness. That I just need to get my butt into gear and do what I enjoy which is eating healthy, running, lifting weights, and doing yoga. If I have managed to make up my program out of things I love then I really have little reason not to do it. Everything has its ups and downs and sometimes you just need to get on with it and stop talking about it! |
| posted by Sam @ 3:06 AM |
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| Thursday, May 10, 2007 |
| Disappointed to Elated back to Disappointed Again... |
Well so much has happened since my last post. So many emotions. From disappointed, to elated and happy beyond words, to relief, guilt and back to disappointed again.
Pre-apology for the choppiness of this post. It is sort of representative of how my thoughts are floating around in my head right now but more likely related to my lazy writing.
It all started with an essay due in last friday morning. Got up at 6am, went into Tec to try and get it finished. I had been procrastinating doing it for so long I had once again left it to the last minute. Turns out I had written over a 1000 words over the word count. I promptly entered a state of hysteria. Drove to my boyfriends work and burst into tears. This is the first disappointed emotion. I knew I could have done better in that essay if I hadn't procrastinated so darn much! Anyway he ended up dropping me off at the hospital (had a clinical experience shift from 2.30 to 11pm). Was a good shift. It continues to amaze me just how much actually getting into the work side of nursing makes me re-commit to my studies. I want to achieve my best in my training, to give the best care to my clients. So I was in a relatively good mood. My man came and picked me up after my shift (he is such a sweetheart considering bed would be a far more tempting offer at this time of night) and said he wanted to take me to 'our' spot (the place we had our first date) to cheer me up from this morning. I was okay with this as it was friday night and so we drove the 30 minutes up to a lookout hill over cambridge where you can see all the beautiful lights. We got out of the car and I could not believe what happened next...He got down on ONE KNEE!!! And said "Every day that I spend with you I fall more and more in love with you. I cannot imagine my life without you. I want to be with you forever...will you marry me?" I promptly burst into tears of happiness and squealed "YES!" over and over again. So hence the elation and happy beyond words emotion. We jumped back in the car had some wine. He said we needed a song so we flicked through the radio to find one. We found this song, 100 years - Five for fighting it's one that I have always loved and I'm really glad we didn't end up with something like Christina Aguilera's 'Dirrty'. :-) We spent the rest of the weekend visitng and spreading the news to family, friends and everyone else we could pretty much. On cloud nine the whole time! But had to come back to normal life at some point, maybe with just a little bit of spring in my step?
Monday came and I went and spoke to my tutor about how annoyed with myself I was over my essay and she said as long as it makes sense, is logical and reasoned she doesn't really consider word count. So that was the relief emotion.
So here comes the downward spiral. I couldn't believe that through this time I had not managed to get one single run in. It is now friday (exactly one week after the engagement) and I have still not managed a run. Maybe I needed some down time? Maybe I was just being lazy? Either way I feel terribly guilty. I was all gung-ho in my first post and being accountable in this blog makes me very aware of those things I don't achieve. When I write something in here and don't achieve it I become disappointed in myself. The running program needs to start all over again and the calorie-count thing got off the ground for one meezly day. In the past counting my points and doing weight watchers worked for me so this Tuesday I am joining up to begin this way of monitoring my nutrition again. I have 12 kg I want to lose but I want to become fit and healthy not just slim. I need to re-motivate myself for exercise. I need to find something that does the same thing for my running and health as clinical experience in the hospital does for motivating me in my study. I will be beginning the training programme Monday again...this is non-negotiable. I'm anally retentive and have to do things at the beginnings of weeks. I have this issue where I can't just commit to starting tomorrow. Maybe that is alluding to an 'all-or-nothing' mentality? I think that might have to be a topic for another post. Ciao for now. Will be updating Monday evening. If anyone has an ideas for regarding motivation or anything related please leave a note to share them.Labels: reflection, running, study |
| posted by Sam @ 4:11 PM |
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| Wednesday, May 2, 2007 |
| Second Run Pushing It |
In terms of recovery from my first run I had very few aches and pains and those I did have I think are due in part to a pitiful attempt at stretching which is now of much noted priority after runs from now on. Felt energised for the rest of the day. Very helpful :-)
Today's run was a little bit more difficult. I felt as though I was working a lot harder this time and I have come up with two possible reasons for this. The first is that when I was heading out (at 10am) I had only had my first mouthful of water for that day 5 mins previous. The relevance? I think I might have been a little bit dehydrated which increases my blood viscosity which in turn means the heart has to pump harder to push blood through the venous and arterial network. Oh this might be a good time to mention I'm a nursing student and currently in my second of a three year degree. Hence the physiological explanation. The second possible reason for the extra effort I felt I was needing is that in general I felt as though I was moving a little bit faster in the runs by focusing on keeping my chin up and chest out to give me good posture. I'm trying to build good habits from the start with this as I have flat feet (an article on this) and I don't want to have bad form to begin with, get shin splints and end up having to take a hiatus or worse have to stop completely. Having noted these two reasons I think it might be a combination of the two that caused the extra exertion. I just thought they might be relevant for me to take notice of in future training days.
On another health related note I have started exploring nutrition in relation to running. I'm not going to being going stir crazy with it but I have found a nifty little site called www.calorie-count.com that has a nice calculator and database of foods. So for now I am just going to plan days to a limit of 1500 calories and if I go over by adding stuff I won't beat myself up just as long as I am eating that which I have planned. The reason for this is the site also gives an analysis that makes it possible to see if you are eating the right percentages of different things to be meeting your energy and health needs. Will keep everyone updated on how this works for me. In the past I have been aware that if I spend too much time thinking about the food I'm eating, about to eat, or planning to eat I get very weary of it and just splurge just so I don't have to think about what I am eating. So to counteract this I plan on getting up early each morning, entering my plan for the day online, making the meals I can and then forgetting about it. At the end of the day I will pop back and see if I stuck to it and add anything else I ate. With a hopeful time allotment of about 1.5 hours thinking about food in total. Another reason this is important to me is that I am focusing on health here and being healthy does not involve obssessing about food 24/7. Being able to live life with little concern for weight is where I want to get so developing habits that come naturally is what is most important to me. Okay so enough about plugging for calorie-count. Off to study. |
| posted by Sam @ 4:10 PM |
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| Tuesday, May 1, 2007 |
| Beginning With The First Run |
Here is the first post of my journey to becoming a fitter, healthier, more confident, capable, strong willed and happy young woman.
- Fitter to deal with life’s challenges physically and make the most out of every day.
- Healthier in terms of nutrition to fuel my body for those physical challenges.
- More confident in the body that I have knowing that I work hard for it.
- Capable of handling situations of stress by using exercise as a daily stress reliever.
- Strong willed in the knowledge that if I can conquer my physical challenges and goals related to fitness and being healthier then I have the power to conquer any emotional or psychological problems I might come across.
- Happy that I am making the most of those opportunities I have to live and love life to the fullest.
Hi my name is Sam and above is a summary of my reasons for taking up running. Through many weightloss and fitness journeys I have seen people gain power and control over their lives. To take direction and guide their paths to where they want to be. I am hoping to achieve the same through running and taking more interest in fuelling my body with nutrition rather than junk. I am beginning from the lowest possible fitness level and will build from there. I have started this blog to record my progress, give me something to look back on for motivation in difficult times, a place of accountability and way of splurging any thoughts related to running and life.
Please bear with me in terms of the posts, I have faith that in time they will improve in readability and interest factor. *fingers crossed* J They will also undoubtedly be much shorter than this one most of the time.
I might come up with a range of short term goals and long term goals in the near future but in the meantime my one and only goal is to be able to run non-stop for 30 minutes. To achieve this goal I am taking the view of “slow and easy” to help me form good habits of running frequently and to make them gradual improvements to not put extreme stress on my body. The following program is what I will be following over the next 10 weeks…
10-WEEK TRAINING SCHEDULE
Week 1
Run 2 minutes,walk 4 minutes. Repeat 5 times.
Week 2
Run 3 minutes,walk 3 minutes. Repeat five times.
Week 3
Run 5 minutes,walk 2.5 minutes. Repeat four times.
Week 4
Run 7 minutes,walk 3 minutes. Repeat three times.
Week 5
Run 8 minutes,walk 2 minutes. Repeat three times.
Week 6
Run 9 minutes,walk 2 minutes. Repeat twice, then run 8 minutes.
Week 7
Run 9 minutes,walk 1 minute. Repeat three times
Week 8
Run 13 minutes,walk 2 minutes. Repeat twice.
Week 9
Run 14 minutes,walk 1 minute. Repeat twice.
Week 10
Run 30 minutes.
As for frequency four workouts a week is the aim. Preferably Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. The above workouts do not include a 5 minute warm-up and cool down.
My First Run
This afternoon/evening has started the lessons already. My area isn’t really the safest so lesson one is…
1. Run while it is still light should your neighbourhood be even slightly comparable to some scenes from the film “Dangerous Minds”.
I discovered this after beginning my run just on dusk and kindly yet nervously greeting 3 separate groups of young (but dodgy looking) youths. They all replied unthreateningly but this seemed to have little impact on my legs moving just that little bit faster each time I came across a group. It was at this point that I became thankful for my decision to run on the side of a main road (SH1 none the less) so that there would be plenty of people driving past should anything happen. What I didn’t realise is that running directly next to a road that is currently undergoing re-surfacing makes for a lingering taste of dirt in the mouth. Lesson number two is…
2. Running next to roads that are being re-surfaced will result in a taste in the mouth that is reminiscent of your two year old garden slug eating days.
And finally with this running thing being a new experience with new sights and sounds I found myself constantly looking around. I suspect that I provided much amusement to those drivers passing by as I tried to look at one of these sights and nearly ended up face planting it into the ground. I’m sure all those drivers were just a little bit disappointed when I not-so-gracefully recovered.
3. Though something may be interesting to crane your neck to look at as you pass by it won’t nearly be as interesting as the gravel that will be in contact with your face should you forget to look where you are going.
Despite having discovered these nifty little insider tips on my first run I am very pleased with how it went. Beginning motivation is high and it was easy to just put my clothes on and walk out the door. Some runners say this is half the battle it wasn’t for me today but I’m sure there will be days where it will be nearly all the battle for me. The two minutes running was rather easy and four minutes to recover was more than enough. I really pushed myself in my last run to do a speed that I never thought I would be able to maintain for 30 seconds let alone a whole two minutes but found a rhythm in that two minutes that I just zoned into and focused on. Loved this feeling! A total disregard for everything around and only thinking about my body moving through the dust of the air, over the lumps and bumps waiting to trip me and past those youths that I think are just as scared of the short chubby friendly girl as she is of them.Labels: lessons, training schedule |
| posted by Sam @ 2:29 AM |
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