February Mini-Update!

Here's a little update on how the beginning of our February of Fitness is going! 

Kate: 

This week has been a great example of real life intruding on your plans (those oh so idealistic things) and saying "oh you think so, do you?" I've recently started on a medication known for causing side effects of sleepiness (wanna go for a walk? no?), and major GI upset (Pro: eating less. Con: still don't want to go for a walk), and then I decided to spend 7 of the first 14 days of this month out of town.

Still, I can't help but feel that these are the kinds of things that goals are made for. It's easy to follow your plans when everything is going smoothly, but it takes dedication to do it when it's not easy! Am I dedicated? Well....somewhat. I've done my 10 minutes of stretching every day, and I'm already noticing that it's starting to feel a little easier. I've not been averaging 12000 steps, but I'm sitting at 9000, which isn't so bad. I haven't made it to the gym yet, but I have put all my scheduled gym days in my calendar so I know when I am going to go.

All in all, I'd say I'm telling real life to suck it.

Sam:

There is something fundamentally wrong about being awake for three hours before you even start work.  Especially when you start work at 8:00am.  This is now my life?  What did I sign up for?  I am glad that I only have to get up at 4:30am twice a week.  Thankfully my third mandatory run of the week can be a bit later in the morning, and any other exercise I might do on my non-running days will not be at 5am.  Things I have noticed on my 5am runs:  It’s dark.  Like really dark.  Like so dark I feel like I must have been captured by the Vashta Nerada (hey, who turned out the lights?)  It’s also cold and foggy and wet and quiet.  No one else is running at this time.  The cars on the road are very limited and I might only see one or two other people walking their dogs, but that’s about it for human life.  This can be somewhat disconcerting as the zombie noises coming from my Zombie Run app can make the imagination run a little bit wild.

 Andrea:

It’s official, I’m in love with spaghetti squash. I cooked it for myself last night for the first time, and it’s amazing.

Apart from fun new recipes, I’m also cleaning up in the steps department. My UP band is trying really hard to convince me I should up my goal to 13,000 since I regularly hit that, I haven’t yet, but we’ll see. It also means that I’m almost in Rivendell. I’m doing the Eowyn Walk to Mordor challenge. That’s right, someone mapped out how many KMs it took Frodo and company to walk to Mordor and back and made a challenge out of it. Let me tell you, those hobbits walked WAY more than me. I should finally hit this first milestone of Rivendell on the weekend, and then on to Lothlorien! 

I’m also doing the Zombies 5k training, although I’m not up at 4:30 for my runs, usually 6-6:30, a much more reasonable time, not nearly as dark, although I do get to run through a graveyard…

Yup, I’m totally keeping February Fit!

Oh! So you want to know more?

In our last post, the Jedi Council asked for suggestions on our plan and goals. Our lovely (and recently departed to the wilds of the Yukon) friend Jenn thought maybe more frequent posts (once a week) might be a better way to keep accountable. 

And we agreed. So here we are, our first, "Let's be accountable" post.

Andrea: 

This morning as I was getting my morning coffee, a co-worker asked me, "Andrea, are you losing weight?" To which I answered, "I sure hope so." She then asked if I was 'working out or eating better?' My immediate answer was "Both." While the scale's been pretty kind, and my clothes have been fitting better, it's certainly gives me the warm feels to know that my efforts are paying off enough for people to take a little bit of notice.

Also this week was a fun, food adventure for me. With my experimenting with Paleo comes a whole new world of recipes. This week I tried two that I really want share, both from the site Multiply Delicious. The chicken, sweet potato patties and the slow cooker chicken, sweet potato, and kale stew. Yes, you see a theme there, but it cut down on the number of groceries I had to buy! Other than that I've been really conscious about what I'm eating. Or at least I try to be. These are new habits that are being built, and while slip-ups have been rare, they're bound to happen.

On the exercise front, I've also been successful. Walking all over the place, racking up the steps like crazy. I've also begun to wake up earlier to workout. I'm a fan of the 'bodyweight' workouts, 'cause I can do them at home and I don't need any equipment. After starting with one I got from nerdfitness.com, I've branched out, searching for more, leading me to neilarey.com. I've picked a couple of workouts, but I've decided, since I'm already sharing the experience with you all, why not give you a say? Have look though the visual workouts and pick one for me to try! I like variety, and they're all pretty tricky, so it'll give me something to strive to complete! 

Let's keeeeeep goooooing!!!!

Sam: 

The Cake is a lie. One of the ladies at work brought in a beautiful cake that she decorated at a class she attended. Need I say more?

I read an article over at nerdfitness.com (Andrea's note: this site is my favourite). Most the articles they write I just sort of glance over, picking out a bit here and there, but this one had a Star Wars theme so I paid a little more attention. It spoke of the lizard brain, "As cavemen and cavewomen, our brains were rewarded with pleasure any time we found things that kept us alive (food!), did things that allowed us to reproduce (sex!), or took part in activities that kept us alive (running from predators!). When our body encountered anything that was biologically helpful to our survival as a species, dopamine would be released in our brain that encouraged us to continue searching out those things."

Ah yes, the dear lizard brain, how I hate you. It also talked about the things we can't stop doing. If I have just one potato chip, one bite of chocolate, one piece of candy I can't seem to stop myself from eating more of it, every morsel that's within my grasp. It's my lizard brain taking over. I found it helpful reading this article and knowing that I'm not the only one who experiences the need to polish off an entire bag of chips in one sitting, even though I know it will make me feel like crap for four days afterwards. I have been told by people that it isn't good have the all or nothing mentality, and while that may be true in some ways, for the moment I'm going to stick with what works for me. Oh, that piece of cake I mentioned? I didn't have a bite.

Kate:

I'm actually really glad we're doing this weekly update, but not for the reasons I'd expected. I'd thought it would be a good way to put me back on track when I'd strayed, and to keep me accountable to my goals, but it's done something even better, it's reminded me that I'm actually doing okay.

The past week has been a rough one for me, for reasons unrelated to the over-arching quest, and I've been feeling like an utter failure. My scale still says exactly what it did at the beginning of the month, my clothes still feel tight, and I've been feeling like it's just all too hard. So when I went to write my weekly update I was composing this whole things about how failure is just part of the process, and blah blah blah. And then I looked back at my goals so I could elaborate on my failures. 

Except I haven't failed.

Walk more? Well...it's not been drastic, but yes, I have actually been walking more. My pedometer confirms that.

Meal planning? Oh yeah...we now have a little weekly schedule up on our fridge for who is cooking dinner. And aside from the occasional night out with friends, we've stuck to it.

Healthy snacks in the house? Um...yup. there's a giant thing of pre-cut Costco veggies in the fridge and I'm currently drinking a green smoothie.

So, all that woe is me, I suck, I'm bad at this crap? That's just my brain being a jerk.

Shut up, jerk.