Jaybird Takes Flight

I have asthma.  Most of the time, I don’t even notice it or think about it, but over Christmas I had a rough time of it.  As a kid I was told it was “allergic asthma” and as an adult I can see why.  If I spend more than a few hours around a dog, or if I accidentally wear wool, or if I fall asleep on a wool rug or with a feather pillow or down comforter, my lungs tighten up and I have difficulty breathing.  This breathing difficulty will last for days and sometimes will follow up with me catching a cold, which is weird, but whatever.

Not being able to breathe well makes me cranky.  My asthma has been bad enough that awhile back my doctor had me buy a nebulizer and I have albuterol that I put in the nebulizer.  It takes about 10 minutes to do a nebulizer treatment with albuterol – it is boring, it is loud, and then I spend the next several hours with shaky hands and a feeling like I want to jump out of my own skin.  I often wonder if this is how people feel on meth, but then think it couldn’t possibly be – who would want to feel like that on purpose?

Anyway, as Will and I have been getting over being sick, my lungs have still felt pretty tight, so I have been using my nebulizer.  Friday morning, prior to Crossfit, I did the albuterol treatment and went to Crossfit, and felt like a crazy person.  Side effects of the albuterol nebulizer for me are: shaky hands and a general all over feeling of vibration, anxiousness multiplied by a thousand, intense nausea, and occasional weepiness.  These side effects mean I have to need to breathe pretty acutely to use the nebulizer, because otherwise I am a nauseated crazy person that cannot sit still but feels like puking when I move.

Good times.

The warm-up yesterday was a pretty long one, and with our trainer, Scott, now focused on improving our running skills, the WoD he had set up for us included a lot of running.  I was done with the warm-up ahead of Will and basically sat looking at the white board with our workout on it while mentally freaking the hell out about it.  It was one of those WoD’s that I read and thought, “There is no way I can do that.  I want to cry and go home.”  Now pride and sheer stubbornness will not allow for me to cry and go home, but also, I can usually tell when my emotional reactions are way out of whack with reality.  Yesterday at Crossfit, my emotional responses were completely out of step with reality, and I knew it, and I knew it was because of the albuterol making me anxious and weepy, but sitting there waiting for Will to get done so we could start the WoD had me on the verge of tears anyway.  Knowing that your emotions do not reflect the reality of the situation does not always help keep them in check.

When he finally came out to the field to do the WoD, Scott asked if he was ready and Will said no, and I just explode.  Being on a central nervous system stimulant tends to make me talk faster, as well as have poor impulse control, so I basically, in one breath in a sentence that probably came out sounding like one long word said to Will, “You know how I am anxious on a normal day and the albuterol makes me even more anxious and I had anxiety dreams last night about working out and I am very crazy right now?” to which Will, ever the unflappable smart ass, said, “No.”  I replied, “I need for us to start the workout now.  RIGHT NOW.”  He said, “Ok.”  I’m sure the edge of hysteria in my voice helped.

Me being anxious and crazy is almost as unpleasant for Will as it is for me, although I am sure he would say it is worse for him.

The WoD helped burn off a lot of the vibrating, unnatural energy energy that I had, but this did mean I was able to go faster.  Due to the side effect of nausea, I spent quite a bit of the workout simply working to not throw up, which when you are working out for time is frustrating, because the minutes just keep right on ticking away.  I did manage to finish before Will, which is a rarity, but I walked a lot more than I wanted to simply due to nausea, although lack of air was an issue as well.

What I got out of the experience is that the side effects from the nebulizer are more of an impediment to me working out currently than the tightness in my lungs.  I have a rescue inhaler, and I think I will bring that to Crossfit in the future just in case, but otherwise, I am going to force my lungs to just deal with it on their own.  Will’s vehement agreement with this plan of action assures me I am on the right path – he likes for me to be able to breathe, but agrees that the time I spend trying to not throw up is probably greater than the time I spend catching my breath on a normal day.

Overall, though, yesterday was just one of those days.  I had fairly vicious and exhausting anxiety dreams all night, so I woke up tired and somewhat sad.  Then, I started off the day with my phone going into the toilet – prior to flushing because without the grossness factor where would be the fun?  Thank goodness it was only number 1.  So, my phone is dead and my replacement won’t arrive until Monday.  Then I had the insanity of being anxious from anxiety dreams all night, compounded with the albuterol making me even more insane, then working out was more difficult than it had any reason being, and finally, when I went for my daily run around the block, instead of making it half way around the block as I did the two previous days, I barely made it a third of the way before I needed to walk.  It felt like an entire day of backsliding.

Overall, it was an intensely Off Day, at least on the exercise front.  I got my 100 push-ups in (well, 200, I spent Thursday writing my project all day and everything else fell by the wayside, so I had to make up for missing a day of push-ups, although I did mange to run).

I often wonder though if this whole exercise thing is easier for people who are not totally neurotic/anxious/crazy.  I also wonder if people like that actually exist in the world.  I tend to think not.  It’d be very lonely for them. 

The heat wave last summer really killed any desire to continue running for me, so it fell by the wayside.  I went from improving to really not doing well on the running front.  We missed days over Christmas from Crossfit, then Will and I got sick, so we are not back to where we were and the running has just gradually declined in general since I stopped doing it.

New task from our trainer, Scott, this morning is to run every day.  Now, he is being kind and having us start off running a quarter of a mile until we can do so without stopping to walk, something that I cannot do at this point in time.  Around the block is .29 miles, so it pretty much perfect.  Once we get around the block without stopping to walk, we up the distance until we can run a mile without stopping.  Scott’s goal is to have us running a 10 minute (or under) mile.  It would be a personal milestone for me as in the history of my life I have never run a mile – let alone run a mile in 10 minutes or less.

Scott is also going to torture us with running as a warm-up every Crossfit day.  We were doing that for a while, but then it got cold outside.  However, due to our supreme suckage (and to be fair, mainly MY supreme suckage, Will is actually pretty good at running and quite a lot better at it than I am) we will be doing running inside if inclement, or outside if clement.  I am not going to whine about this – at least not too much.  I make no promises about WoD’s that have a lot of running – I may whine a smidge, but mostly in my head.  Hopefully, just in my head.

Will balked at the whole running every day thing, especially when I clarified that Scott meant in addition to Crossfit on days we have Crossfit.  Will cited not having enough time.  Back when we were running around the block we would go around it three times and it was less than 15 minutes, so considering how much time we spend on our computers, or watching television, I figured once around the block would not really cut into our schedule too much.  Therefore, I argued with Will about it, and convinced him that he did, indeed, have the time to do this.  Even when we get up to needing to run the full mile, hopefully it will be less than 15 minutes.

There is a really great article I read at NerdFitness about not having enough time to exercise.  Basically, it breaks down why the excuse “I don’t have time” is crappy and says that a better sentence would be “It is not a priority for me.”  I really took that particular post to heart and started paying attention to how I spend my time.  How much time am I on Facebook?  How much time is spent reading?  How much time is spent watching programs on Roku?  How much time am I prioritizing sedentary activities over activities that actually get me moving?  A great deal of time.  Therefore, it is enough time to do 100 push-ups a day and run everyday, especially when Scott deems it necessary.

Will knocked his running out of the way early on in the day, pretty much right after Crossfit.

I did not.  I procrastinated.  A lot.

I have a writing project due for one of the places I freelance.  My due date is this Friday, but I am hoping to finish it tomorrow.  Now, writing is about 70% procrastination and 20% research and 10% actual writing for me.  When I have a project due, I clean my house instead of writing.  I do laundry instead of writing.  I have actually painted a whole room rather than write.  I will dust, and I am not some one who notices dust too often as most of the surfaces in my house are well above eye level for me.  It is not legal to hang out with friends as procrastination, because that is not progress and cannot be defined, even loosely, as “work”.  Watching television or reading for pleasure also cannot be defined as “work” therefore they are also no-no’s when it comes to the art of procrastination.  Procrastinating writing must fall under the header of “work” in some fashion.  There are rules to procrastination.  When procrastinating writing work the procrastination has to be something productive, otherwise it cannot be rationalized as a good use of time.

An interesting thing happened today, though.  Instead of procrastinating transcribing my interviews, I procrastinated running by writing instead.  Apparently, I have a Hierarchy of Dread.  The tedious task of transcribing is usually the thing I have to force myself to do, but today it came rather easily as my other option was running.  A quarter of a mile.  Around the block.  I spent roughly 3 hours transcribing ALL of the interviews for my current project, something I normally break up into days, simply so I could put off the time when I would have to run.

Will balks initially, but I am really the problem child.  I have a thousand ways to talk myself out of doing things I suck at.  Even though I know that if I do them, at some point I won’t suck at them.

Eventually, I had to run.  It was either run or admit to Scott and Will that I am the weak link in the chain here, and really, that’s never going to happen.  Also, the Spartan Sprint is in April.  It isn’t the Spartan Mosey.  It isn’t the Spartan Lollygag.  It isn’t the Spartan Saunter.  It is the Spartan Sprint, which says to me there is a certain amount of running that must be accomplished.  Since my anxiety about the Spartan Sprint is larger than my Dread of Running, I put on my shoes and ran around the block.  And I actually did quite a lot better than I thought I would.  I made it farther without stopping than I thought I would.  Not the whole way, but I ran the majority of it, with a walking break to breathe.

It took 4 minutes and 39 seconds.

See what I mean about having the time?  It takes me 8 minutes and 30 seconds to microwave some broccoli for dinner.  I could pop a bag in the microwave for dinner, run around the block and still have time for some pushups.

It is just a matter of doing it.

I also have to state for the record that running in 20 degree weather is way easier than running when it is 100 degrees outside.  Way, WAY easier.  When it is cold outside, you don’t feel like you are running through soup, which I think is a plus.

My main point in all of this is that I think Will is going to have no problem running everyday.  I may bitch and moan about it, though.  And procrastinate.  I foresee meeting writing  deadlines early and having a clean house by the time I get to a 10 minute mile… But it doesn’t matter if I procrastinate until it is almost dark, it only matters that I do it.  Every day.

I think that writing is therapeutic.  I think that even people who do not consider themselves writers benefit from writing out their thoughts, feelings, to-do lists, what have you.  You should write a blog.

Blogs are fun because you sometimes get feedback from people.  We all have these private thoughts, private struggles, and what we think are weird ideas, but when we share them with others we find that our thoughts are not so personal or intimate – most experiences are not singular to ourselves.  The human experience is a universal one in many ways, and blogs have a tendency to help you find like minded people.  It is always nice to know that we are not alone in our struggles, our thoughts, our weird ideas, and not alone in the world in general.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to help me focus on working out and the journey I am on to be in better shape because it is brand new to me.  I spend a lot of my time second guessing myself, wondering if what I am going through is normal, wondering if everyone has such a struggle with staying on target with diet and exercise, and basically doubting myself.  By writing out the different things I experience, I am able to sort through those thoughts, focus on the successes instead of the failures, and gain perspective that helps me keep going. The focus is more on the journey itself instead of the destination this way, which makes it more palatable.  Will was joking the other day about being physically fit.  “Ok, we are now physically fit and we don’t have to worry about exercising ever again!”  If it actually worked that way!

The other reason I started this blog was because I am not thin, I am not svelte, I am still working my way there, and even when I do get to where I want to be, my body shape is never going to support thinness.  It would be nice to be a regular size and muscular, but my hips and chest are never going to allow my physique to be willowy and delicate, which is cool by me.  I would be happy with looking like a muscular fireplug of a woman. Right now I am still fat – according to the BMI calculator I am still in the land of obese, I am just an obese person who happens to be working out.  My next goal is to simply be overweight. 

I read a lot of Crossfit and paleo/primal blogs and what most of them have in common is that the writers are often life long athletes.  I am not.  I am a life long couch potato that finally decided maybe the Jabba the Hut look wasn’t exactly the fashion statement I wanted to make and that maybe having knees that always hurt and being out of breath after a half flight of stairs wasn’t something a 36 year old should be experiencing.  In two years I have lost 60 pounds, which is not a major success story, but if I focus on how far I need to go to get down to the weight/size I wish I was all that happens is I get discouraged.  If I focus on where I’ve been and how much progress I have made in those two years, I don’t get discouraged as easily, because even if it has been slow, at least it has been progress.  Slow and steady wins the race.  If it takes me another two years to lose another 60 pounds, that would be a bummer, but it would also be progress.  If I focus on the journey instead of the destination, I am much more likely to keep at it.  This blog is for my own personal thoughts and struggle as well as for all the couch potatoes out there, all the non athletes, all the people who struggle with the choice of cake and cookies vs. veggies and fruits.

I have a couple of other blogs I write as well.  One is about my marriage, and why I love my husband.  I started that one because I have a tendency to complain about the problems but never really talk about the great things that go on.  This blog focuses on the great things in my relationship and helps me focus on the positive.  Also, my husband is witty and fun, and I find a lot of joy in our interactions.  Writing about the joy in life helps me focus on it more.  My tendency is to dwell on the negative or be anxious about things I cannot control, so focusing on the positive aspects in life helps me be more positive in general.

That said, not all of my ideas for blogs are positive in nature.  I think that sometimes you have to purge yourself of the negative and writing out all of the bad helps get it out of your system.  Instead of obsessing over things that make you miserable, you can purge them through writing them out.  I’ve gone to counseling for various issues over the course of my life – I think everyone can benefit from counseling if you get the right counselor – and one of the things I’ve been told when I am upset about something is to write it out.  If you are mad at a person, write a letter to them about why you are pissed.  Don’t to send it to them, you can just purge yourself of the unhappy thoughts and feelings.  Hate blogs are tremendously popular, from people writing about why their work life sucks, to why they hate a particular performer or artist, to people who simply write reviews of things they hate intensely.

Have someone in your life driving you crazy?  Start a hate blog – just make sure you don’t list people by name because it can be considered harassment, slander, etc.  Hate your job?  Start a blog about why it is awful – but be sure you use a different name for yourself and your employer because you could get fired.  Work retail?  Some of the best anecdotes in my life come from working with the public.  The public is crazy to retail personnel so often that it ends up being quite hilarious.

One of the fun things people did on Facebook during Thanksgiving was 30 days of thankfulness.  Every day they posted what they were thankful for.  A thankfulness blog would be cool.  You could write a little something about why you are thankful.

My blogs are almost always public, but if you just want to keep a journal online somewhere, you can make them hidden and private.  WordPress also allows for a blog to have up to 20 people who can contribute and write for it.  Work with people in retail?  Start a blog together focusing on the various funny/interesting/annoying things that happen at work.  I’ve got a few writer friends that I have thought would be fun to start a Bitch Blog with – just a blog where we complain about movies, television, books, work, or whatever else suits our fancy.  Blogs that are not about anything other than your life would be cool, too.

Writing is therapeutic, and I think that blogging is something that many people could do.  You don’t have to make long posts, you don’t have be a writer, and really, I think that anyone could have a blog.  So, you should write a blog.

I had the best of intentions for Christmas.  I was going to let myself splurge here and there, but I was going to try to eat mainly on my primal/paleo diet, I was going to do WoD’s at home, and I was going to ignore the sugary sweet call of cookies.

All I managed to do successfully was stick with 100 push-ups a day.  Hooray for that win!  Go, me!

Christmas this year was somewhat idyllic for me.  We were watching my in-laws home while they visited with our family in Virginia.  They have a beautiful place, off the beaten path, and I knew that it was going to be great staying there when a flock of turkeys (and because my husband will correct me, they can also be called a rafter, a gang, or a gobble of turkeys) just kind of meandered around the back yard in full view of the windows.  They were in no hurry so I got to watch them for several minutes Christmas morning.

Then we got snowed in.  There was that lovely ice pellet rain we normally get in Southern Illinois instead of snow, but when we woke up on the 26th we had a foot and a half of snow!  It was fantastic!  Not if you had to go to work, or didn’t have a truck – then it was kind of impossible to go anywhere, but as Will and I had no where to go, a truck if we needed to go anywhere, we got to sit by a toasty fire, eat the scads of food I had brought (we were supposed to have a couple of friends come over Christmas Day and they ended up being no-shows, which was actually good as we then had enough to eat during the time we were snowed in), and play around in snow.  It was awesome.

We also were able to drink the wine we had brought.  I spent 3 days drinking wine throughout the day in between drinking water, eating meals, and playing outside.  Then two days later I read somewhere that 1 bottle of wine takes 5 miles of running to work off.  Yikes!  I would have been better off eating cookies!  Oh, wait, I ate cookies, too…

After the roads were clear and we were finally home, our trainer was still snowed in so there was no going to Crossfit.  I could have asked for a WoD to do at home, but opted to eat junk food, watch television, and laze about with the cats.

I basically spent 11 days being completely slothful and gluttonous – two out of 7 deadly sins down, only 5 to go!  What did you get for Christmas?  I bet someone got something I could envy! 

The last time I did a workout that wasn’t romping in 18 inch snow was December 21, so I knew today was going to hurt.  I did not want to go to Crossfit today.  I was scared of it.  After 11 days of eating and drinking like diet doesn’t matter, plus not doing much other than 100 push-ups a day, I knew that today would suck.  When Will and I both weighed ourselves this morning and found the very sad but not surprising weight gain, I was even more trepidatious about Crossfit.

I wanted to talk our trainer out of working out this morning.  Last night when texting him to see if we were on for this morning, I sincerely hoped he would say Friday instead.  He did not.  I told him that I guess we had to get back to reality at some point.

Christmas and New Year vacation is over.  Back to reality.

In addition to reality involving working out 3 times a week with yoga twice a week (although tomorrow I have work and will miss yoga, which is beyond frustrating, grrr) reality for me means going back to eating right.  I have to admit that while Christmas was completely off of my diet, I had been letting things slide here and there for a while.  Therefore, I am going to start over again with the paleo/primal diet gig with a strict 30 days of not cheating.  After I get through those 30 days, and what I am sure will be another sugar withdrawal period, I can have a cheat meal or snack every once in a while, but for now I really need to be eating healthy.  I feel better, I am happier, my acne clears up, and generally speaking most of my weird, chronic maladies go away when I am doing the diet the right way.  If the weight loss weren’t good enough incentive, the other positive factors really do help me stay on track with it.

However, during the sugar withdrawal I may be grumpy.  You’ve been warned.

We went grocery shopping today and I stocked up on veggies and chicken.  Got some avocados and other ingredients and I am going to have pico de gallo and guacamole on hand and made up as they really help make whatever I am eating taste better.  Tons of sweet potatoes for both Will and I, as he is going to go back to really counting the calories in everything he eats.  We’ve done this before, we just need to get back on track.  We are successful when we pay attention.  When we aren’t being lazy.  I do not regret being lazy over Christmas and New Year’s – I enjoyed 11 days of being lazy and having fun and sleeping in (even though I did work in there, too).  It is just that now it is time to get things back on track.  The Spartan Sprint is in April.  If I am going to be climbing over walls, I want there to be less weight on me to hoist.

Our trainer knew that it had been a while and took pity on us today and gave us an easy WoD.  He let us use kettlebells and wall balls that were lighter in weight than normal.  He gave us an easy version of what everyone else was doing.  And the WoD still kicked our butts in a very humbling way.  I think that now that we are over the initial hump of first day back it will get progressively easier, but I still have Wod Dread for Friday.  Sometimes, Crossfit causes anxiety.

In other news, I got a very nifty, very complicated watch/pedometer/heart rate monitor for Christmas that I will figure out eventually (it is a very clever device, far more clever than I).  My hope is to master it today.  Once I do, I am going to start tracking how much I walk in a day and then double it.  After a month of successfully doing that, I hope to then double that number.  They say that you should take about 10,000 steps a day, which is difficult to do when you have a sedentary job like I do.  Therefore, I need to just monitor what my normal steps are in a day and then make sure I am going above and beyond that.  I think that this will be accomplished with audiobooks on my iPod.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!  I hope that everyone’s new year’s resolutions work out well!  Time to get cracking in the real world again!

Friday we had a very long partner WoD.  Will is always my partner.  For some reason, I was having issues breathing on Friday and I was slow and sluggish.  Meanwhile, Will was hilariously full of energy, which is nice when doing a partner WoD, because he did a lot of the tough work.

This WoD took almost 50 minutes and consisted of 100 pull-ups, 150 Med Ball Tosses, 200 Kettlebell Swings, 250 Squats, and 300 sit-ups.  The only thing that saved it from being totally awful was that since it was a partner WoD one of us would work while the other rested.  With the exception of the Med Ball throws.

Our trainer had us throwing a medicine ball back and forth during one of our partner WoD’s when we were out on the field a while back and I really had fun with it.  As the field was really crowded on Friday, instead, he had us stand an either side of the taller pull up bar and toss it over the bar to each other.  Will normally uses a 20 pound med ball, while I use a 12 pound med ball.  On Friday, we used a 14 pound med ball.  The only thing we really had to do was throw it to each other, so it did not have to be a full wall ball shot where you catch the ball and go into a squat and then throw it up to a certain height.  Will barely needed to bend his knees for this, but he can also touch the pull up bar without the aid of box, something I cannot say.

Will is 8 inches taller than me and significantly stronger*.  For this exercise, he basically just stood near the bar and lightly tossed the ball to me.  Meanwhile, in order for me to get the ball over the bar, I really had to work at it.  I did not have the height advantage or strength advantage, so I really had to use most of the force and momentum of my body to get the ball over the bar.  This means I am going almost into a full squat so that the upward momentum of my body helped propel the ball over the bar.

This meant that Iwas getting winded.  Wall balls always wind me and on a day where I was already have some breathing  issues I was seriously winded.  I couldn’t really breathe to talk and Will said, “Why don’t you do like I am doing and just catch it and throw it back?  You don’t have to go all the way down into a squat.”

I wanted to tell him that he was 8 inches taller than me.  I wanted to say that we were using a ball that was 2 pounds heavier than my norm and 6 pounds lighter than his.  I wanted to say that if I didn’t get all the way into a squat, the ball simply would not make it over the bar.  I wanted say “Are you freaking kidding me?!”  However, I did not have the breath to say any of that.  What I managed was an outraged sputter of “you… taller… ball” then I gave up and just gave him the finger – which was really what he was going for.  He looked extremely pleased with himself for reducing me to sputtering followed by a rude gesture.  Will cracks himself up.

It was one of those moments where I thought it was just Will and I (and our trainer, who is used to me flipping off inanimate objects because any time I think he isn’t looking or isn’t around, like a ninja he is there seeing me act inappropriately to the gym equipment – gym equipment that on rare occasions feels like torture devices and therefore needs to be flipped off) but a lot more people were behind us judging by the laughter that erupted when I did this.

I had several kind people tell me that Will had the easier part of this particular exercise, giving me exactly the reasons I did not have the breath to articulate at the time, and it was nice to have that solidarity.  Crossfit people are an awesome bunch.

At one point during the med ball toss, Will was giving me a moment to catch my breath and noticed that my lips looked a little blue.  He figured it was lack of oxygen because I was having breathing issues and made us rest more for the remainder of the wall balls. He even at one point tossed the ball over the bar, ran to catch it himself, and then tossed it over the bar again and ran to catch it.  He did a few reps this way, prompting our trainer to ask me if Will had stolen my energy today.  Will has a tendency to lay down a bit during the morning and ask for nap reps.

He also did a few more of the kettlebell swings than I did, and a lot more squats, but that is in part because I missed a day of doing my 100 sit-ups, so I had to do 200 hundred sit-ups that day anyway, so he knew that when we got to the sit-ups, I’d do two thirds of the work so it would even out.

Will really likes the partner WoD’s.  He likes the competition part where we try to out do each other and he likes attacking the WoD as a team complete with strategy on how we will accomplish it.  He is also really sweet with some of the partner WoD’s because he often gives me a little more time to rest while he gets in a few more reps.  Our trainer has even commented a couple of times, “What a gentleman” although there may be some sarcasm laced in that comment.

Overall it was a fun, but a rough WoD.  I couldn’t laugh, sneeze, or cough without my abs hurting for the entire weekend and had some soreness in my legs.  Meanwhile, Will was really sore in his legs.  We figure that means it was a good workout.

* Will’s always been stronger than me, but since Crossfit he has gotten really strong.  He is pretty solid, and while he still has a bit of extra weight to lose, what is underneath is solid and strong.  The other night I got up to go to the bathroom, and walking back to bed I walked directly into him as it was dark, I was still half asleep, and I did not expect him to be there.  It was like walking into a wall.  I almost fell over and Will, who didn’t a budge a bit, just sort of steadied me by grabbing my elbows and wondered why on earth I would just walk right into him.

He is strong enough now that I no longer try to get into any sort of wrestling match or tickle fight, because he can pick me up and he wins rather easily.  I initially thought that since I was getting quite strong myself I would be more of a match for him, but alas, no joy.  I keep asking our trainer to stop making him stronger, but he and Will have that whole male solidarity thing going on, so no joy there.  In all seriousness, though, it is really cool that Will has gotten so much stronger and more solid through Crossfit.

My friend Jen told me about this challenge she has started.  Doing 100 push-ups in 100 days.  As I said in a previous post, you can break this up into 5 or 10 or 25 – whatever increment you desire – over the course of the day.  The point is that each day you do 100 push-ups.

The other version – the one that Will is theoretically doing – is 1 push-up on day 1, 2 push-ups on day 2, 3 push-ups on day 3, etc on up to 100 push-ups on day 100.  This morning I was telling our trainer how difficult the 100 push-ups was for me.  I assumed since I could break it up throughout the day it would not be that big of a deal, but by yesterday my arms were tired.  He told me I could do the gradual build version if I wanted to as they add up pretty quickly.  I said that I really wanted to stick with what I was currently doing.  After all, I’ve already done two days in a row with 100 push-ups, so might as well keep going.  Yeah, it is hard, but that is part of the point.

When I first started at Crossfit in May of 2011, I could only do push-ups against a bench.  Some people start off doing push-ups against a wall – push-ups are hard if you are not used to doing them regularly.  Heck, I’ve been doing them pretty regularly and I still think they are hard.  Gradually, I graduated to knee-pushups, but then those became too easy.  Then I went to half knee push-ups.  I lower down from plank all the way and then with my knees on the floor I push back up.

I have not really felt like I have gotten noticeably better at these half knee push-ups and I’ve been doing them forever.  It feels like at least a year.  I have decided that I am tired of not doing full push-ups.  The whole point of this 100 day challenge for me is that I hope mid-way through it or at least by the very end of it, I will be able to do regular push-ups, no knees involved.  I am also hoping to build up my upper body strength.

As an extra, I’ve decided that today I am going to fold in 100 sit-ups a day, too.  My goal there is to be able to do 100 without stopping.  Right now I can do about 50 without stopping, but those last three are really difficult.

I have a little notebook that I am using to keep track of these two 100 a day challenges.  It is so easy to forget what number you are on that writing it down as soon as you finish a set is really helpful.  Also, since I am writing it down, that keeps me accountable.  I don’t want to get to day 14 and stop.  If I am keeping track through a written record, I won’t.

I feel like I get a lot accomplished in the three days a week I work out at Crossfit Simple, but I need/want something that I do every single day.  I think this will fit that need.  It has already changed the way I watch television.  You can do sit-ups and push-ups while watching tv.  It is more entertaining to have something that you are watching while working on the 100′s.

They put the 100 push-ups a day challenge on the board at Crossfit.  So far there are only a couple of people signed up.  I am hoping more people jump on board with this.  I need someone other than Jen and our trainer to whine to about my arms hurting! 

A few weeks ago, we had a really cool workout where we did a variety of different exercises.  I blew through this WoD pretty quickly and somewhat easily.  I was really pleased with myself for doing so well.

After the workout, our wonderful trainer took me through some of the exercises we did and made everything harder.  One of the nice things about Crossfit is you can scale things to your ability.  However, once you have mastered the scaled skill, then you have to make things a bit more difficult.  For example, one of the exercises is knees to elbows – you grab a pull-up bar and the bring your knees up to your elbows.  Well, for me, the scaled version is something called frog kicks.  I would bring my knees up to about a 90 degree angle or so instead of all the way up to my knees.  Apparently, being able to do frog kicks super fast and all at a go is too easy now, so our trainer decided it was time to bring the knees all the way to my elbows.  I went from being able to do 25 in a row without stopping to being able to almost 5, and that is a sloppy 5.  Significantly harder.

Yoga is another thing entirely.  We often start off with triangles.  Triangles used to kill me, but then I found that they became much easier and I was even able to balance myself by stretching all the way to the ground.  Yeah, that was because I was doing it wrong.  Our yoga instructor (who is awesome) had us do triangles while our backs were against the wall.  Apparently, if you are keeping yourself straight with a flat back (which is what the wall helped illustrate) and with good form triangles again become difficult and you simply cannot touch the floor.

One of the things I really love about working out is that progress is so easily tracked and accounted for, but it is somewhat disheartening to go from doing something easily and quickly to having the next level up be slow and difficult.  However, everything for me started off as slow and difficult, and I do remind myself that slow and difficult will eventually become quick and either easy or at least somewhat easier.  Everyone struggles with something, and everything is somewhat difficult.   You have to keep challenging yourself to keep improving.

One of the things I am currently doing with a friend as well as our trainer is 100 push-ups a day for 100 days.  It is difficult.  I’ve done this for only two days now and it is hard, hard, hard.  The good thing is that you have all day to do the push-ups, so you can break this exercise up anyway you want.  The first day I did 10 here and there throughout the day and the second day I did 25, now that is not a flat 25 without stopping, but more like 7, then 8 then two 5′s.  Because push-ups are difficult.

A lot of the people who do Crossfit have been life long athletes.  For me, this all pretty much new.  I think the newness is why I am amazed frequently at how progress works with this – hard to easy, hard to easy, hard to easy.  Basically, to keep improving, things have to keep being difficult.  I think in previous years of my life, things being consistently difficult would bother me.  I would be discouraged that it is always a struggle to complete the various tasks ahead of me.  However, as I’ve made so much progress slogging through the difficulties, stair stepping my way up this fitness ladder, things being hard do not bother me.  I consider the difficulties to be just another thing to master, because eventually each difficult thing will become easy and that is a lot of little successes to celebrate.

The past two weeks I have not been eating well. I would love to blame Thanksgiving, but really it has been a slow decline in effort on my part. Then the week before Thanksgiving I was sick and just did not feel well enough to cook for myself, so I ordered food and just ate what was easily microwaveable, ie, crap.

With travel and preparation for Thanksgiving, I also did not really stick to eating well. I can say that I did not eat as badly as I did prior to changing my eating habits, but compared to what I should be doing I ate awfully.

On the way back from Kansas City Friday, I was telling Will that I needed to get back to the sugar free, no processed foods way of eating I had been following.

Will is always willing to help me. That does not mean he is helpful, it just means he is willing to help in his own way.

His suggestion was that I start eating sunflower seeds, still in the shell. In all fairness, while driving home, I mentioned that I wasn’t feeling particularly hungry, but just “mouth bored” where you feel like eating to kill boredom.

Over the past ten years he has often suggested I eat sunflower seeds in the shell. I have tried and I do not like them. It is an awful lot of effort for little gain. The shell cuts up my tongue and mouth, they are salty which cracks my lips, and overall the entire process is unpleasant.

With Will, one cannot simply say, “No, thanks” or “I don’t want to” without a dissertation on the reasons why his wonderful and brilliant suggestions aren’t immediately embraced. Thus, he and I had a very long and annoying conversation on the various ways I could eat sunflower seeds without cutting up my tongue. I did explain that he has been trying to get me to eat sunflower seeds for years now to no avail, but he insists that I must be doing it wrong.

I have had more annoying and boring conversations, but most of them have also been with Will.

Today, he looked at me and said, “Hey, I am going to annoy you for a while.”

This piqued my curiosity as I had somewhat forgotten about his previous sunflower seed eating instruction. I failed to notice that he was eating sunflower seeds or I would not have been taken off guard.

He then explained step by step, how to remove the shell without cutting up your tongue. He showed me three times. He only deviated from his instructions to say, “You are looking away. Look at what I am doing or you will miss it.”

I stare at him in silence and he finishes his instructions to me for the third time. He then said, “Make sense?”

I replied, “No one but me would ever marry you.”

He found this delightfully funny, laughed for a bit while bouncing in his chair happily. I laughed at his laughter – one of his best traits is it is so hard to offend the man – and said, “Why would that kind of insult make you happy?”

“Because I don’t want to be married to anyone other than you.”

He makes it so difficult to stay annoyed at him. I think he is sweet to me on purpose as a diversionary tactic.

The other ways Will has helped me stay with my goal of ridding myself of sugar and processed food that actually are immensely helpful:
- He prevented me from going to Dairy Queen to get a malt last night and instead made me a banana milkshake that was not full of sugary evil. He did this even though I was ill tempered about it.

- He looked up ways to make malts online that would be more in keeping with my diet. When one of the suggestions was whey protein, he looked up to see if protein drinks actually helped people lose weight or if they were merely for people looking to add muscle and bulk (per my request as I have been wondering about this for some time). BTW, they can help with weight loss according to several sites he visited.

- Since my primary weakness foodwise is ice cream or shake related he came up with several ideas for making better shakes that work for my diet, including freezing bananas, freezing milk in ice cube trays, and a few others.

- Often when I am craving something unhealthy, he helps me analyze what exactly it is that my body is craving – sometimes your body craves candy/cookies/ice cream when really it wants fruit, but we think sweet and think candy – and he helps me find what would be the better alternative.

- He is supportive in general and helps me think long term instead of focusing on instant gratification. He has a lot more patience than I do, so this is tremendously helpful.

- While he is happy that I am losing weight, he likes me and loves me at whatever weight I am at. When he helps me with my diet focus it is because he wants me to be happy and he knows that when I am eating right, I am happier and healthier than when I eat crappy food as I am sick less, I eat less because I don’t suffer from huge blood sugar crashes, my mood is more stable in general, and I stay more motivated in general.

There are countless other ways he is helpful, which is why I will listen to how to eat a sunflower seed with its shell with only slight irritation and boredom instead of staging a revolt.

In short, Will is awesome in spite of his sunflower seed instructions.

I am cold.  A lot.  I’ve gone from weighing 246 to weighing 185, which basically means that I’ve lost 61 pounds of insulation.  This summer was one of the hotter summers I can recall, but I tolerated the heat much more easily than I have in past summers.  However, now that we are entering fall and winter, I am finding that I am cold quite often.  Movement helps – 50 sit-ups or 100 flutterkicks while watching television is better than a blanket, but still, I get cold a lot.

I first noticed that my internal thermometer was different when Will kept rolling down his window in the car while I had the heat on full blast.  Was he crazy?  I was freezing!  However, I remember the exact opposite situation occurring in years past.  I would be in short sleeves in winter, Will would have flannel over long sleeves and a coat on but I would be dying from heat while he was freezing.  I guess I get to learn this winter how it felt for him to be freezing all the time.

Another thing I have recently discovered is that not all sizes are created equal.  I am at this awkward weight where I am no longer able to wear plus sized clothes, but regular sizes seem weird to me.  Normally, I would buy yoga pants (not just for yoga but also working out – stretchy without being spandex-y and super comfortable) from the Old Navy’s Women Plus.  Their smallest size for plus is 1x, or a 16/18.  Their largest size for regular Women’s clothing is 1X or a 16/18.  However, when you look at their online sizing chart it is different.  For Women’s Plus the size in inches for a 16/18 is Waist: 37.75-39.25 and Hips: 47-48.5 but for Women’s it is Waist: 34.5-37 and Hips 45.5-48.  Basically, size 16/18 in Women’s is a size smaller.  What if someone couldn’t find the color they wanted in a Women’s Plus 16/18 and looked at the Women’s to see if they had that color?  They’d be kind of screwed because they would be getting a completely different size.

I know that there isn’t uniformity in clothing.  I hate it, but I know it to be true.  However, it does make trying on clothes a bit more arduous than it needs to be and a bit more frustrating.  What size am I?  Depends on where you are shopping.  I am glad that I lost weight.  I am glad that I continue to lose weight, but man, buying jeans has become this dreaded task of epic proportions.  I got two pairs of jeans this week and until they are falling off of my body, I am not doing that crap again.  When did they change jeans size to be not just the regular sizes, but also a style type for your body?  So I have to find the right size and the right number or letter?  Are you kidding me?

So, yeah, I am cold a lot and hate shopping for clothes.  However, increased energy, happiness, and health do outweigh the negatives, so I am going to keep on trucking with my Primal Diet and my working out.  Probably going to fold in a little more walking and running, too, just going to make sure I am thermal underwear on when I go outside.

Cleans are difficult.  Hang cleans are more difficult for me than regular cleans.  If you would like to see an example of a clean, feel free to check out this YouTube video.  It is a short one, I promise.  This is just to see what they look like.

There are many steps to keep in mind and for some reason yesterday, I flubbed most of them.  If I remembered to not jump out too widely, then I would forget to jump under the bar.  If I remembered to jump under the bar it was because I jumped wider than really is reasonable if you intend to stand up again.  I messed this up a million different ways yesterday, and it was a self perpetuating cycle.  I would make a mistake, then get a bit psyched out, which led to more mistakes, and so on.  By the last three, I had to break the whole maneuver into bite size steps and even those I barely did correctly.

I told our trainer that I’ve done cleans better than this before.  I felt like it was mostly my brain messing me up.  As I told our trainer yesterday, “This is mostly mental and the problem is I am crazy.”

Today was much simpler – shoulder press.  Take a barbell from the rack position, lift it over your head.  No jumping the feet, or getting under the bar, or squatting to remember.  Just lift the barbell.

When going for a new personal record, I try to pay as little attention as possible to how much weight we are putting on the bar.  The heavier we go, the more likely I am to psych myself out.  This is also why our trainer knows our PR but I try not to remember what they are if I can help it.  I don’t want to sabotage myself or have a preconceived limit screaming in my head.  Also, as I have stated before, I often tell myself that I cannot do it and when lifting weights, I try to listen to our trainer telling me I can, versus my brain telling me I can’t.  Our trainer is usually right about the can while my brain is wrong about the can’t.  The less information the brain has to sabotage me with the better.  See above: my earlier statement of me being crazy.

Today, our trainer told me that my PR was 100 for the shoulder press, so I am looking to get up to 105.  As we go up in increments from the 33 bar, I am noticing that this is getting heavy.  I get to around 83 pounds and the bar isn’t moving.  I tried it twice just to make sure.  After all, if my best is 100, surely I should be able to lift 83.  Alas, I couldn’t.  Which made me swear in frustration.

It is at this point that our devious trainer smiles and tells me he lied.  This weight is my PR, 100 isn’t.  All frustration leaves and joy replaces it!  Huzzah for me!

I am happy at this lie for several reasons.  One, I didn’t suck as bad as I thought!  Hurray!  I mean 20 pounds lower than my PR would have been something I would have obsessed about.  Am I losing muscle?  If so, why?  Do I need to change my diet?  Should I do a million push-ups a day?  And on and on and on…  Again, see earlier statements about my crazy.

However, holding steady I can live with.  Losing ground = bad, holding steady = good.  Also, our trainer took into account that I mentally psych myself out of a lot of the weight lifting maneuvers and gave me confidence going into the lift.  Normally I go into some of these lifts with a distinct lack of confidence, as weight lifting is still new enough to me that I worry over it.  Running, jumping, sit-ups, throwing a ball against a wall, jump ropes – yeah, I got it.  Barbells?  Maybe…  We’ll see.  Unless I already had it once in which case, I am pretty cool.  Not cocky, but definitely not freaked out or psyched out.

I know people say that honesty is the best policy, but I am happy that our trainer will work with our different mental ticks/defects.  It makes the process easier overall, I think. I said yesterday that most of the weight lifting for me was mental, so he found a way to help me compensate.  Effective.

Also, I’ve never been so relieved to hear someone say that they were lying!  Whew!

In other news, I have decided to combat the seasonal affective disorder that seems to cast its pall around this time of year by going outside as often as I can.  I am currently waiting for Will to wake up and then I think I am going to drag him to the woods for a walk.  This is also what I plan on doing in order to combat my desire for sugary things. 

From October through December, I normally bake brownies and cookies and treats.  Halloween is the first excuse – homemade pumpkin pie with real, steamed pumpkin!  Then Thanksgiving followed by Christmas.  I want to bake.  I think instead I am going to try to either run or walk.  Wish me luck.  I hope this year to avoid the three month “holiday” weight gain.  Again, I am somewhat ok with holding steady but I do not want to backslide.  I read somewhere that you can combat sugar cravings via exercise so I figure I will put it to the test.  I will let you know how it turns out.