Meals

I just spoke with my trainer today, who is enthusiastic about my results so she shared a diet plan with me. Hee hee. What I’ve been eating for the past few months isn’t quite as strict as her plan, but it’s pretty close. So I thought, instead of sharing some haphazard eating plan that I’ve been using, why not share a plan put together by a university-educated athlete trainer instead, especially since it is pretty close to what I’ve been doing anyway!

She explained this is a diet plan for someone who is working out regularly; to make sure you’re getting the nutrition you need to keep up with your workouts. So, the portions would depend on your personal activity level and weight loss goals.

Between 7am and 9am

Eat one lean protein from the following list and one carb from the following list. If you are working out pretty hard that day and you prefer a heartier breakfast, you may add a second carb.

Eggs, chicken, turkey, tuna, salmon, ground turkey or chicken
Lean beef or ground beef once per week only

Multigrain bread/toast, whole grain or steel cut oats, high-fibre organic cereal (no sugar added), any vegetable (veggies are carbs too), sweet potato, whole grain pasta, whole grain rice

11am

Fruit as a snack

12pm-2pm

Two carbs from above list plus lean protein from above list

3pm-5pm

Afternoon snack of nuts, yogurt, or veggies

6pm-8pm

One green veggie carb and lean protein from above list
If you have the inclination to snack after dinner before bed, try to eat your dinner a little later and drink unsweetened green tea or herbal tea to give yourself “something.” Try to avoid snacking after dinner. No starchy carbs after 4pm.

Allowed drinks list:

Water, milk, green/herbal tea, V-8

I’m about to get more strict with myself and follow this diet. But I did lose weight being less strict with myself. Just get started! One step at a time! If it keeps you going, have the occasional dessert or glass of red wine. Don’t feel bad about it. Keep moving! You can do it! Share your experiences with me? Who worked out today, even if it was difficult to work it into their schedule? Who ate a really good breakfast or lunch today even though they wanted to just eat donuts? Tell me about it! I want to know!

Also, this is just from memory, so when the trainer prints out a copy for me, I’ll make any necessary adjustments.

One Step at a Time

The purpose of this blog is not, primarily, to inform, for I’m sure most – if not all – of what I have to “tell” is pretty common knowledge (or at least easy to find elsewhere).  I’m sure you’ll all agree there’s a big difference between knowing something and doing it.  So the purpose of this blog is to remind, motivate and encourage people who, like me, want to do good things for their minds and bodies and want peers to share the experience with! 

With that said, I will begin with where I started.  Perhaps it will be a good starting point for you!  The first thing I did that began this current journey of losing weight and feeling better was I found a web site that counted calories for me.  I wanted to know what I was eating.  I am not promoting perfect adherence to calorie counting.  But I found it very helpful to get a good idea about what is in various foods I was eating and how much someone of my age, weight and activity level should healthfully eat when trying to lose a little weight.  I recommend livestrong.com.  They have a free service that calculates the amount of calories you should eat depending on how fast you want to lose or gain weight and a very easy-to-use program for tracking what you're eating.

The next thing I did was I chose a work out DVD and tool kit by Bally’s and decided to make myself do it!  You can find a wide selection at Walmart.  It only cost about $30-40, and it got me excited and feeling confident I could do this thing!  Never mind it took me several months to actually open the thing and start using it!  Ha ha ha!

What's your biggest weakness?  This time mine was eating way too much junk food for comfort.  When I started working out, the exercise replaced my need for comfort eating.  I was showing healthy love for myself by exercising and my mind recognized it, which made it easy to stop eating junk.  Could it work for you too?  Dunno!  I'd love to find out.  

If even the cost of the DVD/workout tool kit is too much, something else I did that can be free to you is following the simple interval workout recommended by a fitness instructor Dr. Mercola promotes.  It's very simple and can be used with any cardio exercise that is workable for you.  Take, for example, running/jogging.  

This is how it works:  Jog for about 5 minutes to warm up.  Then, run as fast as you can for 30 seconds.  Next, continue jogging at a steady but less intense pace for 90 seconds.  Then repeat 7 more times.  By the last couple sets, your heart rate should reach the desired bpm, which is what will trigger your body to respond to the exercise.  Best part is, it can take less than thirty minutes...and it was free!  Can you do that twice a week?  If you try it, tell me about it!

Next...meals.  

What I've Been Doing

My goal for this post is to create a brief overview of what I've been doing to lose weight, increase cardiac health and tone up!  I have another blog that I plan to begin writing regularly, if I can discipline myself to do it.

I will be having another fitness reassessment in a few weeks.  At that time, I am going to post my original measurements and test results along with my current ones.  In the mean time, I have some numbers to share.

I started at a size 16, which was my personal biggest ever.  I actually gained weight after Charlie was born.  I allowed myself to shamelessly eat over 3000 calories a day because of all the stressors in my life at the time - money, travel, children, sickness, death, moving (twice in six months), new baby, etc.  I think that's enough to justify it for a bit.  lol.

I finally couldn't stand it anymore.  I've wanted to have a gym membership again for years.  I always viewed it as a luxury and we don't usually have any "extra" funds to spend on luxuries on a regular basis.  But I was living in a tiny, one-bedroom attic on top of an elderly lady's house, was getting no sleep at all (literally) because we all shared a room and woke each other up all through the night over and over.  I was responsible to get everyone back to sleep so that the money-maker could get some sleep and keep us fed.  I was mentally slow, emotionally uncontrolled (more than usual for me - which is saying a lot), unhappy, tired and eating out of control.  So, when I was at the Booster Juice (Ontario's version of Jamba Juice) and a gym employee approached me with a special scratch card and I "won" a free 1 month membership, fitness assessment, and 2 free personal training sessions, I thought, "YES!  YES!  YES!  Gimmee!!"

Since I was so desperate and David was visibly anxious about my state of health and fitness, it was easy to get him to agree to my getting a membership.  I also paid for a small 6-session group of personal training sessions.  We broke them up into 30-minute sessions to make them last longer.  I was very fortunate to be put with a trainer who is a real athlete.  She's been competing in ice skating for ten years or more.  She's so great!  I'm hoping to get her to let me take a picture so I can post it.

At first my only real goal was to get more oxygen pumping to my brain.  I couldn't think straight and my brain is my most precious possession.  I wasn't aware of just what I really looked like until I went into a pilates class and saw I was the biggest person in there.  I kept seeing other people that I thought were heavy and then seeing us next to each other in the mirror and realizing I was bigger than they were!!

Once I started doing the intense cardio a couple days a week, I was more motivated to eat better.  So, I reduced my calorie intake.  I started eating unsweetened whey protein shakes with unsweetened almond milk and fruit, whole grain and multi-grain bread, lots of veggies sticks, a little cheese, lean meat.  I continued to eat about 6 small meals a day (cause I seem to need to - my blood sugar fluctuates too much).  I stopped allowing myself to gorge myself on sugary snack foods into the wee hours of the night, which was probably the biggest difference.  I started taking greens again, being more regular with supplementing my EFAs and high-potency B-vitamins, drinking water heavily.

After about 4-5 months, I was down to a size 10 and decided it was time to add strength training.  I am currently working out 4-5 days a week - cardio and weights.  My body is changing on a weekly basis!  It feels so great!

Hope this wasn't monstrously long.  I'll be more detailed as to work out routines, meals and supplements in my fitness blog.  I'm hoping to try different things, express my experience with them, etc.  Don't know how interesting it will be to the population at large, but it'll probably be pretty therapeutic for me. 

Thanks for caring!  More soon!

It's Not the Only Thing on my Mind - I Promise

As I began to type this up for public consumption, I realized this seems to be the topic I've written about most.  I hope not to seem redundant.  I do have other thoughts and feelings about other subjects.  It occurs to me, however, that none are as complete or beautiful as these, for now.  So, I will type this up before a bout of self-doubt sneaks up on me and I hold back.

The fact that my dad is gone is becoming more real and, somehow, less devastating.  It is still sad, but it's more of a muted sadness.  His dear widow sent me a box full of some of his clothes, some pictures of us together and a small trinket gift I once game him.  Looking through the things and recognizing them reminds me of being a child in those first layers of sleep when you're still consciously aware of some noises and movement.  I hear some milling about and soft laughter.  Adults converse around me, maybe at a gathering.  The sounds are distant even though I have the sense that I'm still in the same room with them.  I'm separated from them and yet still a part of everything.  It's comforting.

This kind of experience in the realm of reality was one of my favorite kinds of experiences.  I used to nap while at the homes of friends and, occasionally, when I had company over myself.  Fortunately, my company seemed to understand.

There is some longing to be a part of the happy conversation and activities, but the blissful tiredness is overtaking me, and I instead fall deeper into sleep.  I suppose, at some point, there is a choice to be made.  Will I wake myself up to the clarity of the memories and pain so that I may more fully experience them and keep them alive and fresh, or will I let myself fall asleep and move on?  I still have some time to decide.  But, for the moment, all is more sweet than bitter.

It amazes me how closed the door was to my own experience of this before everything happened.  It's amazing what empathy I was closed off from for other people without having experienced this piece of imperfect life for myself.  The door to connection with so many more people is opened to me now.  For that, I am grateful.

What's the Use in Being Good at Anything? I Mean, Really Good.

Something occurred to me the other day.  I was pondering my recent brush with art at the symphony.  We had a girl's night out.  It was cathartic, uplifting, and it brought back memories of a time when I had more time to devote to art and culture.  In order to be really good at something, in addition to having some natural talent, there is a need to immerse yourself in said thing.  Yet, this whole world is constructed in such a way that, if we are to do that, we must neglect all else.  Perhaps not entirely, but to enough of an extent for the neglect to be felt by, in most cases, THOSE whom we are neglecting for the pursuit of art.  Art is anesthetic for me.  It is powerful, mind-expanding, pleasurable.  The creation of art is like a powerful drug.  The consumption of art is on par with its creation. 

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to interrupt my thought.  There are too many things pulling at me.  So my thoughts are diluted.  I will hopefully revisit this post and finish it.

Missing My Brain

I sorely miss my brain.  Such a good friend it was.  We used to spend time together, reliving old memories, creating distant worlds...My brain found me to be insightful, funny, interesting, delightful company.  The feeling was mutual.  We were pen pals.  Yes, we'd write each other letters, in a beautiful leather-bound book with gold edging on the pages, immortalizing our time together.  It seems my time with my brain is almost as rare as my time with other good friends.  You know what?  It feels more rare.  How is that even possible?  Constant distractions, piercing cries of hunger or discomfort, arguments or play break the air at regular intervals, shattering the time I hold so dear - day and night. 

They say I will miss these times.  I'm sure I will.  But I think I miss my brain more. 

Wow, It's Been a While

Well, my brain kept me awake thinking about this composition.  So hopefully, despite the fact that it's almost 2am, I can do this thing some justice.

I've had moments of clarity, blips of inspiration, bouts of anger and sadness.  Today I was particularly cranky.  I went to the store and noticed some bottled smoothies and functional fruit juices which reminded me of going to the convention with my dad that last time.  Initially, I was attracted to them.  Then, as I tried to sort through the selection, I started becoming overcome with sadness.  Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy them again.

I've avoided writing some of the things I'm processing through because hind sight is better and I'm hoping to sort through all that's before me and understand it better before I share it.  I'm afraid of corroding the dignity of myself or my father and then looking back and regretting having had no self control.  I want to share and I'm also afraid that not everyone will understand that my process is just that...a process...moment by moment, day by day, ever-evolving, non committal dirges and purging.  What exists in one moment doesn't necessarily define the next.

I suppose I'll just have to compose some things privately and decide later whether or not to publicize them.  If it were just about me, I would throw caution to the wind.  But it's not just about me.  

Other fears holding me back are that I might concentrate too heavily on this one subject and sour the pallet of people who might otherwise enjoy my rambling.  We wouldn't want that, now would we?  ha ha!

I can't seem to resist.  I don't know that I'd be able to sleep tonight without putting this out there.  

In some ways, I shared with one friend, I feel like a true adult for the first time.  The person (character) in my head, who was inspired by my actual father, that made me feel small and unacceptable is quieter now.  But, since that character isn't really my father and never was - they're really a judgmental piece of myself that wants to put me down - I don't know if this feeling of "freedom" will last.  I feel free to write, empowered to give my time and effort to this endeavor, in a new way.  I don't feel held back by the fear of moral judgment.

In a related way, I feel more ownership over my own spirituality than I have before.  I think somewhere in the back of my head, subconsciously perhaps, I always gave a piece of my sense of responsibility for my own spiritual life to my father.  I don't even know if that makes sense.  I'll have to tweak this a bit in the morning when my brain is more fresh so that it does.

OK.  Maybe I can sleep now...