Love Not Lipo ... Live a Little, Love a Lot

Although my progress often feels somewhat intangible to me, it was pretty powerful to take a look at some before and afters 6 months into personal training:

 

Before…                                                After….

(If you want to see the ORIGINAL and most dramatic ”before,” check out the “about tab” of my blog.  At one of my lowest and sickest points, and 80 pounds heavier 15 years ago)  Yes it really has taken 15 years to heal.  This is a process.

Forgive the cheesiness of the myspace-esque self portraits and the scary wallpaper background, but here are a few more “afters” :

My trainer Terry Muscleflow at Global Fitness in Malta and I did a lot of hard work together these last six months, but I would say the biggest shift for me during that time was establishing a new habit of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.  I experienced the sensation of really pushing my body to the physical limit and this is something I never would have been able to do without someone introducing the concept, and motivating me to learn I could do it.  The awesome thing about committing to something for a significant chunk of time is that you establish a new habit or ingrained behavior.  In other words, it no longer feels unatural to work this hard, and in fact it feels unnatural if I work out too easy.

It is at this point after 6 months of personal training that I am going back out on my own armed with these new tools.  I have worked out since I was 16 years old, but I have never felt so innately connected to my physicality, and my bodies need for nutrition and hard core exercise.  The fitness lifestyle is no longer something I have to endure, but rather something that I crave and need to feel “normal.” I’ve noticed that I do not feel upset when I eat certain foods or miss a workout, for I am so certain that these behaviors are hardwired into my lifestyle indefinitely, and therefore there’s never any reason to obsess or feel scared about outcomes.  This is not a race.  Just a lifestyle.

Examples of my lifestyle include an awesome rain soaked run in the state park with my dad and brother, (and Todd and Jake, not pictured):

Plenty of fish and dark green vegetables to eat:

And one of these now and again:

I love visualizing and talking about my body as an efficient fat burning machine.  Thinking in this manner not only makes me feel more relaxed and confident, thus keeping cortisol levels balanced in my bodyand contributing to weight loss, it also makes me feel motivated to continue being active because I am constantly giving myself the message that I am an active person.

Being on my own again without scheduled sessions with my trainer has required that I figure out a way to make sure I am getting a variety of forms of exercise into the nooks and crannies of my week, and balancing that with the proper nutrition the majority of the time, and opportunities to ejoy my favorite foods from time to time as well.  Today I handled this by waking up early and doing this time management and healthy lifestyle exercise:

1)Take a piece of white paper and draw lines vertically dividing it into 4 columns.

2) Above one column write “This weeks meals” and numbers one through six with adequate space between each number, below it.

3) In the second column write at the top “Grocery list”

4) In the third column write “workout schedule” and label it Monday through Saturday with enough space in between below

5) In the forth column write “to do”

Now move forward in filling each colum out.

6) I have no problem eating the same things every day for one week straight.  I eat six small meals so there is enough variation throughout the day, and it saves money and time doing one set menu for a week, then changing it out the following Sunday. In the “this weeks meals column” think of six small (200-300 calorie) balanced meals and write one next to each of the numbers.  Here is my meal plan for the week as an example:

1. 1/2 cup old fashioned oats, mixed with 2 Tbsp dried cranberries, 1 Tbsp Chia seeds, and 2/3 cup unsweetened almond milk (I do not cook my oats, just eat them raw. They absorb the milk and are chewy and delicious.  Sometimes I mix it all together the night before and put it in the fridge and it’s even better.
2. Arbonne protein shake
3. 100 calorie whole wheat bagel thin with 2 oz turkey, spinach, cucumbers, basil and whole grain mustard
4. 1 cut up empire apple, and 1/4 cup mixed nuts
5. 5 ounces salmon or tuna, 2 cups raw spinach tossed with 1 Tbsp vinagrette dressing
6. yogurt, or fruit bar, or skinny cow ice cream sandwich, or fruit salad

7)  Write in the grocery list column anything you don’t have in the house for your weekly meal plan.

8.) In the “work out schedule” column, make a list of everything you intend to do, working it around your committments for the upcoming week. Here’s mine:

1. Sunday (today): Run in the AM, 15 minutes of strength training DVD, plus 20 pushups, and 20 dips
2. Monday: 5am run in the park
3. Tuesday:AM- 5am run in the park PM- stair mill at the gym, 3 sets of lat pull downs, chest presses
4. Wednesday: 5am run
5. Thursday: AM- 5am run, 15 minutes of strength training DVD, 3 sets of each leg-1 minutes of jumping on one foot, hands in prayer position
6. Friday: AM- 5am run
7. Saturday: rest
8. Sunday: AM- run PM- 15 minutes strength training DVD, 20 pushups, 20 dips

9) And finally in the forth column, make a list of everything this week that you need to accomplish that is out of the ordinary.  I have a list of about 8 things listed that have to do with my evo-life business, and my arbonne business.

Todd and I are off to my moms for dinner and wedding planning.

Have a great week!

Oh Wow!! At the risk of sounding cliche, I can’t believe how busy I’ve been!  I miss writing to you guys.  Things have finally settled down and gotten back to some semblance of normalcy.  Here are the updates:

my poor honey injured himself pretty badly playing basketball.  He is miserable, and I am certainly never going to take for granted all the amazing things he helps me with on a regular basis.  For example, what it feels like to be pounded with snow for the bazillionth time, except this time while he’s out of commission.  I hope my poor baby gets better soon, but I have to admit I have thoroughly enjoyed going out with him for the last two sundays for my favorite meal of the day, breakfast, whereas usually he was at the Y with his boys playing bball.

The next big piece of news is that I did some analysis and determined that the largest barrier to my getting to the gym these last few weeks was the agony of packing and unpacking all of my stuff at night to be ready to get up at 5:30 when I’m already dead tired from all my other activities.  And so because I was not adequately prepared, I was missing workouts.  so I made the big decision to join a gym up the street from me.  I was very reluctant, as I feel very safe and comfortable at Scotia Planet fitness which is spotlessly clean with all new equipment, and is CHEAP!!  My new gym has older equipment and is a little more expensive.  However, it has turned out to be a life changing decision, and I am back in the full swing of my normal routine, and am feeling amazing again!  I can actually just roll out of bed, throw on my gym clothes, then return home to get ready for my work day.  No packing, no figuring out clothes ahead of time, no forgetting things and having to stop at walmart to buy a bra before heading to work!!  Listen, time is money, and I’m working 1 full time and 3 part time jobs, and I need to figure out where I can cut corners.

Here is where else I’m cutting corners:

Food has been all about merging health with convenience these last couple weeks.  Healthy portable sustainence like almonds, hard boiled eggs, Larabars, bananas, Ezekiel flourless cinnamon raisin english muffins with almond butter, and finishing the day off with my Arbonne Shakes (which the way I prepare them taste like total cake batter) for dinner have been a light and economical alternative.

• 1 cup vanilla almond milk
• 2 scoops vanilla Arbonne shake mix
• 1 banana
• 3 ice cubes
• cinnamon
• 1tbsp peanut butter (or not)

Aside from the fact that I’m doing well nutritionally, my grocery bills have been about $50 less than usual for the last two weeks.  I guess “letting things go” can really have an upside!!

This is the project that occupied my time ALL WEEKEND LONG and prevented me from writing in my blog:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

My home office is finally cleaned and organized!! It involved moving all of the food out of the pantry and into the kitchen.  Moving the kitchen stuff into the  mudroom to make room for it all, and inserting file cabinets into the built-ins.  These pictures may not LOOK like a big deal, but this was an extremely labor intensive project, that brings me an incredible amount of satisfaction and relief, and will enable me to manage my businesses more effectively.

And the highlight of my last two extremely eventful weeks, is the commencement of my Arbonne partnership with my first beautiful business partner, Nancy.  Her courage and tenacity gives me the motivation and inspiration to get up every day and work as hard as I can, with an awesome attitude towards every aspect of my life, because she deserves nothing less from me as her sponsor.  Every amazing place I am about to go will be largely credited to her influence in my life.

One of my informal New Years Resolutions is to do more structured relaxing.  Hahaha!  I laugh because I still can’t just “relax,” but  ”structured relax,” possibly.  My favorite method of structured relaxing is catching up on my magazine subcriptions.  Like my Netflix account, my magazine subcriptions are underutilized, and the pile of glossy, juicy pure entertainment beckons me from my bedside table longingly most nights.  The last few nights however, I have spent 20 minutes or so, usually dedicated to blogging, browsing through the pages of an Oldie but Goodie, Self Magazine.  I say Oldie but Goodie because I remember reading Self back in high school, and being oddly intrigued, but not totally relating….honestly I don’t think that relating more to Cosmo made me the picture of emotional health in those days.  Well these days, not only do I relate and more to Self, I am inspired and practically emotionally moved as I read it. 

I extremely connected to my philosophical belief that people evolve into products of who they hang around with, what they look at, watch, read, and hear about.  Self magazine does a very nice job of infusing me with a quick shot of positivity and mental and physical energy.  And besides the overarching benefit of reading Self, I was so excited by the 2011 Jump Start Diet Feature in the January issue.  I wasn’t excited that it was yet another diet story, nor was I excited that it featured Jillian Michael’s who in general I think is kinda scary and over the top, but it had like a bazillion really balanced, really creative, really simple meal, snack, and desert ideas.  Plus it touted a higher calorie, nutritionally dense food plan, and shorter more intensive interval training workouts.  All things right up my alley, with lots of specifics for inspiration.  They have a whole online program so you can actively participate as well.  If you never have before, or if you’ve forgotten about it in recent years, I recommend checking out Self magazine again.  But more importantly, I recommend remembering the joy of spending half an hour alone with your thoughts, and those wonderful glossy pages.

Vegetarian Burrito

Mom: “So how do you feel on it?”   

Me: “Ummm, I think I feel good, I’m not sure I feel any different.  I’ve been worried about adding all those grains and legumes.  I’m not used to eating all those carbs,”  

Mom: “Well do you feel tired or logey on it?”

Chicken Vegetable Curry

Mom: “Do you feel hungry on it?”

Me: “I’m never ever hungry.  In fact I feel like I’m eating all the time to the point that I can’t even finish the snacks sometimes.”

Mom: “And what happened on weigh in day?”

Me: “Mom remember, I’m not weighing till November,”

(Regardless of what happens on the scale, we already know what happened clothes shopping Saturday night.)

Mom: “So it sort of sounds like it’s going pretty well for you then,”

Me: (laughing) “Yes, I suppose it is!”  

 I am far more excited by the menu items this week then last week.  In week 1, I think I had tried to make foods that would appeal to both Todd and me, and instead ended up making things both of us tolerated but neither one loved.  So this week, although it was kind of a ridiculous amount of work, I cooked some separate foods for him that I knew he would like so that I could make what I really wanted and not worry about his perception of it. 

 For Todd-   

Breakfast: oatmeal, strawberries, and vanilla sweetened almond milk.

Lunch: roasted pork sandwiches, with rice pudding, Nutri-grain bars, and Sunchips. 

Dinner: bar-b-que chicken, brown rice with butter and salt, and cauliflower and broccoli with butter and salt. 

The brown rice and vegetables, (sans butter and salt, which I added afterwards for him) were overlaps for the two of us.

Here is what I am eating this week:

Breakfast: hot brown rice and mashed boiled in plain soymilk with ground flax seeds and walnuts on top.

Snack: brazil nuts and an apple

Lunch: black beans, salsa, avocado, onions and cilantro on a whole grain tortilla

Snack: brown rice crackers with 1tbsp peanut butter

Dinner: Chicken and Vegetable Curry over brown rice

Snack: coconut and 1 oz dark chocolate**

 **Ultrametabolism phase 1 calls for 2 snacks per day.  I added up all the calories and with the amount of cardio I am doing lately, I do not feel it was enough food (the portions are very conservative) so I added another snack.  It is more than enough food. 

I’m not gonna lie, the amount of time I spent cooking and preparing this week was outrageous.  But I handled it by doing a little here and there.  I grocery shopped after work on Friday, so when I got up Saturday morning I was all set to go.  I got half the stuff done Saturday before I went out with my mom, then Sunday I did some more before going running and meeting Melissa for coffee and shopping, and then finished it all up when I got back.  When I was in the kitchen, I lit a big yankee candle (Thanksgiving) and watched HGTV while I cooked getting myself into the mindset that this was relaxation time for me. 

Now I can face a full time job, private practice clients, recovery, an orthodontist appointment, a hair appointment, spending time with my Honey and my stepson, week 7 of 10K training, managing LoveNotLipo, and stripping the wallpaper in my living room with a fridge stocked with everything I will need to be healthy and lose weight, and not have to be bothered with preparing a single meal this week.

Some people say they are just not willing to do all this.  That is understandable and I am totally accepting of that, and will never judge how others opt to live their lives.  For me, I have determined that the kind of outcomes that I expect and successes I plan on for my life are intrinsically linked to basic human self care, (nutrition, emotional and physical sobriety, fitness) and are worth every sacrifice I have to make to that end.

Today I decided to train for a 10k. Inspired by what the girls are doing on some of the wonderful blogs I follow (I still haven’t figured out if you’re allowed to just say someone’s blog in your post–stay tuned), I bought a $10 album on Itunes that is a training program broken down by day to have you running a 10K at the end of 8 weeks.

I put it on my Ipod and headed off to the park, somewhat skeptical. My skepticism melted away fast and was replaced by an energy level I haven’t seen in weeks, all thanks to the structure my “trainer’s” monotonous voice explained to me.   Putting aside the fact that the music was frightenly reminiscent of an instrumental soundtrack from an 80′s movie with an athletic plot of some sort, it actually really did make me run faster. Perhaps it’s placebo, or perhaps excercise scientists and marketing gurus really hammered out that music in the same genre as “Eye of the Tiger”, “Oh What a Feeling”, and “Danger Zone” can physiologically make you produce better results. Whatever gets the job done.

I have been highly anxious about the coming of winter, and even sooner than that, daylight savings. Not too many after work runs in the park left for the year.  Returning to the scene of my five year rut, the gym, is less than thrilling. Especially considering that saying my physical activity and fitness level is a little more public than in years past, would be the understatment of the decade.

It’s an important lesson for me to remember.   Not just in excercise, but in life, you gotta keep things fresh.  If it’s not bringing you the joy that it once did, instead of getting scared and quitting, reinvent it.  Take it to the next level.   

I started my day anxious and pressed for time. So much so that I actually contemplated not going on my run. My $10 itunes investment, and the symbolic investment in myself, ensures a far more positive perspective towards life when I close my eyes for the night in a couple minutes.  It is this return to center, (repeated over and over and over, because that’s what it takes), that makes women beautiful.

Love her or hate her, Drew said it best:
“I think that your body is in tune your mind and your spirituality and your heart. If things are going better, I just think you look better.” – Drew Barrymore

So all I do is commit to not quit, and in 8 weeks, I can run 6 miles…..?

Amazing. Just amazing.

I had an awesome weekend. Isn’t it amazing how we often don’t realize how enjoyable something is until it’s already a memory? Far more rare are those times that we are able to be in the moment, fully aware of what we are currently experiencing. First of all, I hesitate to even write this, as it’s practically sac-religious to say, but my weekend felt really long! I don’t know how I was able to fit in to this weekend what felt like twice as much as usual.

This week we bought a new sofa. It was delivered on Tuesday. A beautiful chocolate brown sectional. I have saved up for it for almost a year, and we bought it for a steal from some people on Craigslist who had bought it new, and then brought it home just to find out it blocked their living room door. This is my first real couch, and this is my first weekend owning it. I don’t think the quality of this weekend was any kind of co-incidence. We moved into this house last October, and since then have been getting by with a white slipcovered loveseat Todd inherited from his ex-mother in law. He thought it was Pottery Barn, but it being the least comfortable love seat I’ve ever sat in, left me not at all suprised to discover it was IKEA when I was stripping the slipcovers off one day. Why was I stripping the slipcovers off you ask? Because Todd’s pet, Ted, who I inherited, is basically as dirty as an outdoor dog even though he’s an indoor cat.(?) So without going into all the details, I am so happy to have a chocolate brown couch now. Ted has his own cozy little corner of the sectional, covered in a towel so he can shed away, and do whatever else he does. I stripped the white loveseat (again) washed and bleached the covers, and set in up in our sun porch. Pretty cute.

But back to the sectional, it has changed everything. I knew I was excited to get one, but I underestimated how far reaching the benefits would actually be. Our house has a heart now. Quite simply a foundation where I believe we’re more grounded and connected as a family, where day dreaming and planning finally have the proper launch pad, and from this throne, my creative energy abounds.

Along the same lines, I spent a great deal of time this weekend working on my business plans. I accomplished a lot of reasearch, reviewed and made a decision on my branding proofs for Lovenotlipo, met with the Google Apps guys, and bought a new Blackberry. Aside from the business endeavors, I still managed to grocery shop, cook healthy food to have on hand for the whole week, do all my laundry, run on Friday and Saturday, meet with my mentor yesterday afternoon, read a whole trashy magazine, read a couple chapters of a non-trashy book, go on a date with Todd Friday night, have a Saturday night debate about who knows more lines from Top Gun and Jerry McQuire, me, or him, and write in my blog twice. Not bad….and actually a really good lesson for me.

My perception of how much time in the day there is, is so directly connected with how clear or foggy my head is, and how much I’ve respected or disrespected my body. The cycle continues in that with my creativity harnessed, my appetite for life increases, and my appetite for food decreases. Food becomes an afterthought. I have never in my life been a “food is an afterthought” kinda gal. Nor have I ever been a person who can just comfortably and fully enjoy the purchases I make, trusting that the cosmos will ultimately balance it all out in the end as long as my spirit is alligned. It’s a big deal to spend large sums of money, but buying to dull an empty ache leaves me feeling anxious, and guilty, which was a big part of my story. Buying to support future goals, however is a whole different kind of fear. A healthy fear, symbolic of the fact that I am in fact serious. I am going to follow through on my committments, come hell or high water until I reach my dreams, and I have the courage to put my money where my mouth is. Scary for sure, but a lot more thrilling, and a lot less anxious. I am noting these dramatic changes in how appetites and fear manifest in me, and taking it as a sign that I am on the right track in other areas of my life; that the feeling I keep calling fear, is really about risk, and is probably actually a facet of being the closest to the truest me, that I have ever been. There is always going to be a cycle. It’s up to me if it’s going to be vicious, or virtuous.