Some news is damn good news!

And great news it is!  After being two weeks into my diet (which I will ruin tomorrow, following by picking it back up after this party), I went from just over 180 to *drummmmmmrolllll* 174 pounds!  Yes, that's 6 lbs for an average of 3 lbs a week.  No, I don't expect the results to always be this excellent, but keeping to my 1200 calories (although there were a couple of days where I went to 1500-- this is mostly due to extra strenuous activities that necessitated some added protein and carbs) and the daily one-hour walks and 30-50 minute PiYo sessions is paying off.  I'm nowhere near as fit as Chalene Johnson, but I can effortlessly do strength and flexibility sets that people always try to say is easy until I get to be a LITTLE bit smug at their confusion when they fail.  Hey, people, I had to work on this for nearly 8 months daily to get this far, so let me pat myself on the back.  No, I'm not the arrogant sort, but because I'm not petite or a wall of muscle, I do believe people need a little demonstration to see how far I've come from the woman that could barely roll out of bed when my pain thresholds were at their worst.

So all these nights where I spread out that handful of bare minimum calories and had to sate my hunger with water and reminding myself of what I want more, they mean something.  I'm not gonna have that goal, that body, until fall (and this is assuming that I could plateau or sink down to only a pound or two of weight loss) even as I stay this disciplined, but I WILL do this.  My mom and grandma dying were hard blows but ultimately part of what drives me now.  My family is proud of what I am doing for myself, my nephews like to try to do the sets with me.

Yes, it is very much about the support too.  My best friend Joe and his wife Amy have really helped me pick the right workouts and diet ideas.  They're in beast mode, way ahead of me, so they help me understand the pitfalls and right motivators.  I am finding confidence in my strength, my clothes getting looser and the real possibility that those adorable clothes I couldn't fit into but bagged up will once again be worn.  I am overcoming chronic pain, a condition that inevitably hits harder with increased depression.  Yes, my moods are naturally improving.  I'm not dreading sinking into black holes of despair because even when the dark moods hit, I know how to ride it out.

While on the subject, let me quickly say that I've had very real reasons to be depressed, but sometimes it was purely chemical; not triggered by actual threats or a dreaded situation.  I still have to cope with invisible enemies and exercise is not a panacea.  I can do all the right things and still see no results.  This is temporary.  I have talents, I'm not a bad looking person, I'm not irredeemable or broken beyond repair.  Those aren't always things I can say and magically wave away the funk.  I resent it just as much as the next person when I hear someone who never struggled with weight go on a diatribe about getting your fat ass to a gym.  I have an elliptical, a recumbent, weights, my own little gym at home and I can hit those bastards twice as long as some people and still be overweight.  I can eat lower than maintenance calories and still not lose a pound.  It isn't so simple for all of us. Some people have medical or genetic conditions that don't exactly keep them big, but make it harder to even rev up their metabolism.  I'll make a muscle for you; they're there under the padding, but they aren't burning on overtime.  I am the healthiest I have been in a very, very long time.  And let me tell you, some of those gym rats; they aren't exactly healthy.  I've seen people going on crash and fad diets, using drugs, juicing, sometimes that hour they spend so they can be smug about it later?  Yeah, sometimes that's the only damn exercise they get.

It's just really important to know yourself.  For every time you feel good enough to meekly say you've lost 6 pounds working your ass off will be some snide chick telling you they lost 8 'doing nothing.'  There's math involved-- they are doing something, whether it's heroin or not eating.  Smile and tell them that's great.  Be the hard-working one that gets the great skin, muscle tone, and discipline to enjoy the time you have on this earth.  Make it last, savor it... reach those goals and sometimes eat greasy, unhealthy food that you'll have to work off later.  This isn't about bragging how many vegetables you can eat either.  You are working for what makes you happy-- make that the best news and let the rest roll off your shoulders.

Live by cliche mantras.  Make the only person you are trying to be better than the person that you were yesterday.

Honesty Counts

One thing I knew I wouldn't be able to do is write a blog without bias.  I will always be biased by my own experiences, my own obstacles and my own progress.  There's a lot of bullshit as you wade through the world of fitness and well-being, both encouraging and discouraging.  One thing I intended to be throughout my journey is honest.

Honestly, I kind of suck at discipline sometimes.

It's not just cravings, or life events, or many other valid excuses for why I have to break budget or skip a workout; like anyone else, sometimes I just don't wanna.

I've actually consistently averaged at 1200 calories daily since I was able to get back to a low calorie diet.  Except for that one day I really wanted that slice of cold pizza that put me at 1500.  Which, let's face it, is still weight loss calories, but I want to push harder.  It's not even unrealistic, just tough.  I've done better with my diet than I have all year, but to be honest, it can be miserable.  I eat the same breakfast and lunch every day.  Every. Day.  They're super low calorie, but full of the carbs and proteins I need for these vigorous workouts.  It's healthy fats, full of fiber, low in sugar and salt.  Doing the right thing feels good.  For everything but my stomach.  My stomach hates it, my taste buds hate it.  When you have strong feelings, you would think it would make you give up.  Still, despite my inner foodie hating it, my muscles love it.  My overactive nerves love it.  My heart rate and my breathing love it.  Desires can be strong, but they are ultimately temporary.  Guilt is long lasting.  Bad health is long lasting.  Chronic pain...  well, it's got the key word right there.

But hey, I have the last half of my day (and the last 1/2-2/3 of my calorie budget) to ease up a bit.  I can have yogurt and a couple of those low calorie cafe steamers.  Sometimes I can upgrade my black coffee to have light cream and sugar or go ahead and have a glass of soda.  I can even spread it all out until a couple hours before bedtime.  It's not a total drag as long as I understand the consequences of choice.  Sometimes it's worth it to go a little over on calories.  Sometimes I'll feel better just hoarding my calories so I can have a big calorie dinner.  Things like hunger and cravings are not going to be the same every damn day and I have to constantly be conscious of the choices I make.

Food diaries are a great way to do that, but honestly there are a few tracking apps that can make tracking food and exercise a snap.  Some people like to hand write everything.  My daily to-do lists satisfy that.  I like to keep food tracking short and sweet and find out which days really worked and why certain days might have bombed.  And I still fuck it all up sometimes in a moment of weakness.

I don't weigh-in again until Friday and I plan to post the results.  I have been bouncing between 175-180 for months with all the very real factors of trauma.  I hope to at least be on the lower end again.  I plan to cheat this Saturday at an annual 'Cinco de Mayo' party my friends have every year, which clearly isn't always on that day or even that weekend.  I also plan to take inventory of all that I eat and drink as discreetly as I can because I intend to be accountable and still enjoy myself.

This is the reality.  It might take me a full two years since when I started to reach my goals.  This isn't one of those rapid weight loss fairy-tales.  This is a lifestyle change.  It's gonna be gritty and a pain in the ass, but it's also a temporary restriction.  Maintenance calories are awesome.  I've sustained it for months happily.  It's the weight loss section that I have to buckle down on.

What else can I say?  Let's take it for what it is, excuses and all, and make it happen.

This should probably be a new blog post, but fuck it.  I did Hardcore on the Floor on PiYo today.  I wasn't exactly thrilled with how much this one hung out in beast, plank or down dog splits, which was the majority of the workout but I love doing v-sits and the Roman twist is a new favorite.  I also don't mind being told that it will get easier, but not in that 'not before I've had my coffee' disgustingly perky tone.  Let's face it.  I miss Tony.  Tony scared me at first, but damn it, I really just love P90X3.  It's the reason I'm challenging myself to do the original P90X and maybe P90X2.  He just has the right personality and push for me.

In case anyone is curious, I'll lay out my current meal plan.  It will be easier to find here for me too if I decided to switch it up later.

Breakfast: egg (with olive) on a slice of whole grain bread with tomato
                 1/2 cup lite yogurt/ 1/4 cup cottage cheese (I pick one of those two)

Lunch: Healthy Request low-sodium Campbell's Soup (1 serving or half of the can)
             1/2 cup of lentils (mixed in the soup)
             1/2 cup each of carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower, raw

Depending on the exact choices, it lands me between 400 and 600 calories here.  That's a full 600-800 to play with later.  I tend to try to boost my protein as much as possible with canned tuna, chicken, greek yogurt.  I've been getting my daily protein between 70-110g (50g is the ideal average).  I don't mind my carbs, but do steer clear of simple carbs where possible.  I get 5 hours of walking cardio in weekly and also clean a fish tank in a second floor room weekly, where I drain about 15-22 gallons of water into buckets and carry just as much back up to refill it.  I absolutely need carbs and protein.  People often gripe about how high in sodium the frozen diet dinners are, but I have been consistently taking in only 1500-2400 mg daily.  The high end is actually the recommended average unless you have special requirements like high blood pressure or hypertension that demand a super-low sodium requirement.  It's actually cheat day pizza that gets my sodium levels higher than the lower end.  Yes, the lower sodium soups definitely help.

Technically, I can eat anything I want.  Fitness gurus will encourage you with that, but it's important to understand the consequences.  Yes, you could lose weight eating sour cream glazed donuts.  If you only eat 3-4 a day and don't consume any more calories.  You can lose weight eating low calorie any-kind-of-bullshit.  But you're gonna be ravenous, I guarantee it. You'll probably take up eating your fingernails, hair, or giving up.  Don't know about you, but I end up going a bit mad when I'm hungry so my biggest focus is often getting to eat as much as possible and still staying in budget.  I don't just love food, I love feeling full.  So if I fail to feel full, I end up eating those guilty junk foods and blowing my budget because it takes high calories and large portions to get there.  This is part of the reason I go so low calorie early in the day.  I do my workouts then, I get most of my errands done then.  I need power foods and efficiency.  Later in the day, when I want to replenish and heal myself, it's more about comforting and restoring, not thinking "damn, I'm so hungry I can't sleep.  Maybe I should stay up until midnight and use some of tomorrow's budget."  Yeah, I've been there too.

I know, I'm pretty long-winded, but that's the point of this blog.  There are a lot of frustrations with those victories and I want people to take all that information out there and really look at it, play with it, and take it with a grain of salt.  Have a low-sodium tolerance of bullshit and find what works.  You don't have to make it a wheat grass and low-fat nightmare and you can't realistically expect to not change your eating habits and just exercise for hours every day to burn it off instead.  Use the numbers and use your instincts.  Find a balance rather than a quick fix.  Long term healthy habits don't have to be torture, but sometimes you have to work hard to get to where it should be maintained. It's possible.  But, as I have learned, be a little kinder to your goals when life throws a real explosion at you.  Don't be too strict when dealing with illness or extreme emotional distress.  You usually need every bit of your energy to get better.  You can always renew your discipline when you can cope.

Random series of updates

I've been mucking through the grief process slowly.  Haven't lost weight but I've resolved to get back on a stricter calorie budget this week.  My muscle tone has improved as usual and the skin tightens up a bit but the 40 pounds extra makes sure it has nowhere to go at the moment.  Gotta get that BMI down to normal and work from there.  Even if I'm being ambitious, I'm looking at 5 months AT LEAST of vigilant eating.  I'm not being hard on myself here; I needed some comfort eating to deal with the depression and grief and then to get through a cold, but now that my body can handle a stricter regimen, I'm getting right back on that.

I'll also be updating my Exercise Calendar blog post to reflect my PiYo challenge, leaving an entry for P90X to start following that.  Both programs are going to be essential to both physical improvement and calorie burning in the next four months.

I do have some new impressions of PiYo.  I may or may not have included my original impressions of PiYo in an earlier blog post, but when I had first attempted it, it was a real struggle.  I had gotten through the first week of the challenge with some difficulty, mainly in wrists that were still rife with carpal tunnel symptoms, but the second week had done me in.  The Core workout in particular was my undoing-- I had needed to wear wrist braces and revert to doing basic cardio workouts like Debbie Sieber's Slim in 6 while healing.

This round of PiYo I've gone into after two full rounds with P90X3, so I was in better shape to handle it but two big things remain: 1)There are a LOT of down-dog splits in PiYo, which is one move that is held far longer than I can handle still.  I end up in child's pose a lot when I just can't even.  2) My wrists are still screaming.  This could be due to still carrying too much body weight, but things like side planks and push-ups can be a monumental pain in the ass when your wrists are giving you hell.

That being said, PiYo does often decide to throw in some leg torture on workouts like Buns and Sculpt, but I feel like it too often goes after my wrists.  My ankles are adapting far better.  My advice to anyone who hasn't done PiYo before is push VERY carefully.  You will hear Chalene more often telling you to push than to remember there is a modifier (Michelle) to be mindful of if you're feeling seriously overwhelmed, but this is the downside to fitness videos rather than having a personal trainer.  They are usually far above you physically and they do forget to remember the little guy in those pre-recorded pep talks.  I find that Tony Horton does a far better job of engaging you with the science and the reality of your fitness levels, and this is even with him being competitive and showing off at times.  He often gives me the sense of what I can work for without making me feel I'm just not trying hard enough.

But this is about PiYo...  That being said, there were four more contenders as I branched into Weeks 3 and 4 that I feel are worth a mention: Drench, Strength Intervals, Buns and Sculpt.

Drench was an upgrade to Sweat and when I say upgrade, I mean this is a time hungry workout that immediately sells itself as being an upgrade.  You go into this one blasting for the warm up and it runs you pretty ragged in the first half before slowing down into solid but still challenging stretch routines you would be familiar with from the Lower Body routine.  Huge relief there, let me tell you because by the time it got to that round, I was ready to call it quits if it didn't change up.  I was not only drenched, I was completely out of power.

Strength Intervals is a short blast series, but it's definitely a short one because it doesn't take prisoners.  This one definitely focuses on squats and lunges out of the gate, but then brings the interval work to your core and upper body once your legs are out of power.  I will say this is one aspect of PiYo that I do like.  Even Chalene admits that, at any fitness level, there is only so much a muscle can take, which is why the intervals are stacked as they are.  Time under tension is the name of the game in the more advanced workouts.

Buns is a lot like Strength Intervals in the squats and lunges department, but it also takes the focus specifically to the lower body here.  I was definitely feeling that the previous week was taking a bigger toll on my upper body (Core is guilty of that with the roll-up side plank sets especially) so this was definitely the balancer.  I find that I really liked the bowler squats and the standing ab/core work actually feels good while doing it, definitely not just in the afterglow of a workout.  I find this one is actually less punishing, but mostly because my lower body just seems to be in overall better shape.

Sculpt takes a lot of sets from previous workouts but does a lot more in focusing on targeting groups of muscles.  The time under tension thing is so emphasized here that she actually does hold you with pep talks (just a little bit longer, you should really be feeling it but not much more).  I liked the chair work with the tricep dips and the hip bridges at an elevation.  I've mastered hip bridging from P90X3 (no mean feat, I assure you...  I struggled for months with getting my quads, glutes and lower back muscles to cooperate for that stability), so it was a nice added challenge to change that up.  Again, my lower body seems to be far more advanced in fitness, so this won't go for everyone.

I didn't want to go on and on and on about these reviews, just put out the gist.  One thing you PiYo newbies really need to know is if the first week kicked your ass, keep repeating it.  Workouts like Core and onwards can do some real damage at the intermediate stage, let alone advanced.  You really have to train yourself to look at Michelle and, in case you forget, Michelle is pretty ripped.  Sometimes you will have to realize things like that.  Take Chalene's 'gift' of child's pose any time you're feeling it to heart.  If you feel you're doing it too often, make friends with the pause button too.  I know some people are crunched for time and have to let it run its course, but if that's the case, let it run without you and catch up when you can.  Even after 8 months of doing this, I am still finding there are days where I have to admit I'm just not up to my usual game.  It's cool, it's normal-- every trainer will tell you, just aim for your personal best.  Not in comparison to any other day either-- that personal best is something you determine in that moment.  Keep records for that very reason!

Yeah, I'm still battling the bulge.  I've been on a long plateau after losing 40 lbs and having 40 to go. I'm not okay with it, but yet I am, if that makes any sense.  I am definitely rising above some of the hardest times of my life and not giving up.  My skin is better, my mind is clearer and I doubt I would have handled any aspect of my life so well if I hadn't started this.  We're all around healthier when every aspect is balanced, but we don't live in a damn bubble.  Focus your energies where life allows, never letting EVERYTHING go down the toilet.  Keep one or two things going to avoid the guilt of slipping up, let something bring you pride and pleasure in the hardest times.  Choose wisely.