Just for a quick update, since I know I need to write one, but I don't really feel like writing right now.
So the short version:
1) Only went to dance once this week, so no $15.
2) I did do some other exercise, so, there's that.
3) Same plan next week. Should actually happen because I have rested this weekend and work will calm down.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Sunday, September 23, 2012
When Life Got In The Way
Sometimes, things don't quite work out as planned, and that's okay. It's just another of those things I need to learn to work around.
Exercise
Life got in the way this week. I screwed up my sleep schedule last weekend by essentially not sleeping, and that messed me up so I couldn't go to class on Monday due to exhaustion. I did manage to go on Wednesday, and actually going made me feel better. On Friday however, going to class was pretty much out of the question, because it was impractical considering social plans and general convenience. It would've been a hassle for me to actually go. I hope this week I can adjust properly and avoid the issue, but it may turn out that Fridays just aren't days I can have dance class. I will figure out a replacement.
Food
I think I ate okay this week. I don't remember having any moments where I felt like I ate way too much at the end of the day. This is somewhat surprising because I still hadn't gone grocery shopping (I went yesterday) and we were eating out/Safeway scrounging all week. It worked out okay though I think. I need to get back in the groove of tracking, hopefully I will be able to do that this week.
Motivation
I am about medium motivated at the moment. I enjoy dance class and so that's why I go, so it's now less because "oh god get the weight off get it off get it off" and more "time to flail wheeee." That's better than it used to be. What else... I'm enjoying eating mostly whatever I want. I'm not really fussing at all about what it is I eat. Though I'm sure when I go in next time, the food will be what is on the slashing board.
We are officially going to Hawaii! I have dates and flight tickets!! I just bought them today. Super exciting. Now I guess I have an extra reason to try to go to dance class more. I will look into tuesday and thursday classes either this week or next, depending.
I am starting to worry a little that the $10 may not be enough motivation without a target. So I'm going to set a target. There's a pair of Tom's booties that I REALLY want. Trouble is they cost $89. So, those are what I am saving up for. So, to make it an obtainable reality rather than something that is weeks and weeks ( like 6+) away, I am moving the $10 to $15. So, it will still take a while, but it's a bit of a shorter while.
Because I am thinking that Fridays might not be something possible, and Tim said it was important for my goals to be something I think I can actually do,I am going to set it back down to 2 classes for now until I can do that reliably for 3 weeks. Then I will try to add the Fridays again.
So here's the plan:
What: Dance Class
When: Monday and Wednesday at 5:45
If I go to less than 2 classes, no $15 and no one step closer to these:
Friday, September 14, 2012
Checking In
On time. Like a boss.
Anyway here's the rundown from this week:
The goals were:
Dance class Monday and Wednesday
Exercise:
Totally did it! I love dance class. I mean, it makes me super duper tired, but other than that I haven't found that it does horrible things to my evening schedule. So yay! The extra walking to and from dance is cool too.
The only concern I have is still walking through the Mission by myself. It's actually kind of funny because the area I feel the least comfortable is the part of my walk where there are the most people, just outside 16th St Station in those plaza areas. Headphones do seem to work as a deterrent, for the most part. And I always keep my phone tucked away when I'm walking, even if I don't like the song Pandora gave me. When it's still light out, sunglasses. But still dude, can be scary. No incidents as of yet, though.
Food:
Normally, if I had eaten the way I have for most of this week, I would be super duper upset at myself for eating too much of the wrong things.
But the 700 calories burned in the combined dance classes make me feel way better. Mostly I think it's because I know that when I was skinny in high school, not including the times when I was not really eating, I ate basically the way that I eat normally now, complete with the back and forth between frozen lunches and purchased lunches, large amount of pasta mixed in with a random smattering of home cooked dinners (thanks mom), the occasional tiny tiny breakfast, and the vending machine type snacking. It really works out about the same. You could even substitute alcohol for sweets and it would round out.
So basically, as long as I'm dancing, I don't think I will be feeling so bad about food.
Motivation:
I'm pretty psyched, and feeling a bit better. Partly because I weighed myself earlier this week, after my usual 14-hours no food super-sleep, and I have lost a pound! Woo!
Anyway, rundown for next week:
What- DANCE CLASS
When- Monday, 5:45; Wednesday, 5:45; FRIDAY, 6:15
Adding the Friday. I was thinking of adding it just for kicks this week in addition to the others, but I decided that I was too tired generally speaking and I have some social plans for this evening so it would be better for me to go home and take a nap instead. Plus, I think it will be better for my body to ease in on the frequency/ amount. I've already done nearly 3 hours of extra exercise this week (with the walking to and from), which is really way more than my usual. So, in the mind of not killing myself, I will start the 3 days a week next week and do that up until my next meeting with Tim, and probably not change it for a while after depending on what he says.
In other news, almost have tickets for Hawaii. Was going to buy them yesterday, but the situation keeps changing so I have to wait until it settles a bit. Luckily, price would have to go up by at least $100 a direction for me to have a problem affording it, and I can always push it out to the cheap tickets. So, time isn't a big issue.
Oh and since I succeeded, I get $10. I think this puts me at $20? Counting leftover from when I went and bought things in August? Anyway, dunno what I'll spend it on yet. Something cool.
Anyway here's the rundown from this week:
The goals were:
Dance class Monday and Wednesday
Exercise:
Totally did it! I love dance class. I mean, it makes me super duper tired, but other than that I haven't found that it does horrible things to my evening schedule. So yay! The extra walking to and from dance is cool too.
The only concern I have is still walking through the Mission by myself. It's actually kind of funny because the area I feel the least comfortable is the part of my walk where there are the most people, just outside 16th St Station in those plaza areas. Headphones do seem to work as a deterrent, for the most part. And I always keep my phone tucked away when I'm walking, even if I don't like the song Pandora gave me. When it's still light out, sunglasses. But still dude, can be scary. No incidents as of yet, though.
Food:
Normally, if I had eaten the way I have for most of this week, I would be super duper upset at myself for eating too much of the wrong things.
But the 700 calories burned in the combined dance classes make me feel way better. Mostly I think it's because I know that when I was skinny in high school, not including the times when I was not really eating, I ate basically the way that I eat normally now, complete with the back and forth between frozen lunches and purchased lunches, large amount of pasta mixed in with a random smattering of home cooked dinners (thanks mom), the occasional tiny tiny breakfast, and the vending machine type snacking. It really works out about the same. You could even substitute alcohol for sweets and it would round out.
So basically, as long as I'm dancing, I don't think I will be feeling so bad about food.
Motivation:
I'm pretty psyched, and feeling a bit better. Partly because I weighed myself earlier this week, after my usual 14-hours no food super-sleep, and I have lost a pound! Woo!
Anyway, rundown for next week:
What- DANCE CLASS
When- Monday, 5:45; Wednesday, 5:45; FRIDAY, 6:15
Adding the Friday. I was thinking of adding it just for kicks this week in addition to the others, but I decided that I was too tired generally speaking and I have some social plans for this evening so it would be better for me to go home and take a nap instead. Plus, I think it will be better for my body to ease in on the frequency/ amount. I've already done nearly 3 hours of extra exercise this week (with the walking to and from), which is really way more than my usual. So, in the mind of not killing myself, I will start the 3 days a week next week and do that up until my next meeting with Tim, and probably not change it for a while after depending on what he says.
In other news, almost have tickets for Hawaii. Was going to buy them yesterday, but the situation keeps changing so I have to wait until it settles a bit. Luckily, price would have to go up by at least $100 a direction for me to have a problem affording it, and I can always push it out to the cheap tickets. So, time isn't a big issue.
Oh and since I succeeded, I get $10. I think this puts me at $20? Counting leftover from when I went and bought things in August? Anyway, dunno what I'll spend it on yet. Something cool.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Dance class!
I know it's Monday and Monday's are no longer regular update days but...
I just finished my first dance class since High school, and oh my gosh. Sure I could only follow half of it, and the other half I was sort of just flailing, but boy was it fun. Plus, flailing is what you do when dancing... Until you finally learn it and you look fricking awesome.
I seriously didn't realize how much I missed it.
My excitement aside, the class itself was 45 minutes of fast paced jumping around choreography learned on the fly. They have big set of songs and the choreography is repetitive but intricate and really cool (not so much of the exercise type moves and more dance, with spins and travel). I'm guessing that each class uses whichever songs out of the 30 years of repertoire they want for any class. There's a huge variety. There were 70s songs mixed in with dub step, hip hop (gasolina for example) and samba. The choreography reminds me a lot of the kind of stuff that we came up with in Dance Team in high school, that is a mishmash of jazz, hip hop and modern with salsa thrown in for kicks. It's a lot of fun, even when you have no clue what's going on.
So, we did crazy cardio for 45 minutes with a couple short breaks inbetween songs, and then the last 15 minutes were floor work. First we did some arm isolation dancing exercises. They wre easy, but my arms still hurt. Then we did some pretty hardcore abs that the instructor called the hardest abs ever, I managed it ok with some mods, so I imagine I'll survive anything else. Then we did some legs, which was really more butt, but I am totally ok with that.
It rocked. I'm going again. I'm going to take hip hop too. This is the plan.
I just finished my first dance class since High school, and oh my gosh. Sure I could only follow half of it, and the other half I was sort of just flailing, but boy was it fun. Plus, flailing is what you do when dancing... Until you finally learn it and you look fricking awesome.
I seriously didn't realize how much I missed it.
My excitement aside, the class itself was 45 minutes of fast paced jumping around choreography learned on the fly. They have big set of songs and the choreography is repetitive but intricate and really cool (not so much of the exercise type moves and more dance, with spins and travel). I'm guessing that each class uses whichever songs out of the 30 years of repertoire they want for any class. There's a huge variety. There were 70s songs mixed in with dub step, hip hop (gasolina for example) and samba. The choreography reminds me a lot of the kind of stuff that we came up with in Dance Team in high school, that is a mishmash of jazz, hip hop and modern with salsa thrown in for kicks. It's a lot of fun, even when you have no clue what's going on.
So, we did crazy cardio for 45 minutes with a couple short breaks inbetween songs, and then the last 15 minutes were floor work. First we did some arm isolation dancing exercises. They wre easy, but my arms still hurt. Then we did some pretty hardcore abs that the instructor called the hardest abs ever, I managed it ok with some mods, so I imagine I'll survive anything else. Then we did some legs, which was really more butt, but I am totally ok with that.
It rocked. I'm going again. I'm going to take hip hop too. This is the plan.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Alright, lets try this again
I failed the plan this week. To be honest after a certain point I expected myself to. I suppose that's a good part of why I did. But never fear I have a solution. But first, lets go through the usual sections
Exercise
So, I kind of balls'd it up this week. The plan was to dance at home last Friday, Sunday and Monday and possibly sometime later in the week. I managed it on Friday, and did a tiny bit (not the full half hour by any means) on Monday. Pretty much total failure.
Most of the problem was that Youtube did not provide quite the way I wanted it to. The easy videos I could follow along with tended towards too much repetition, super simplicity (as in not very interesting moves) and they were too short (usually one song long). Any other video of the same sort was just some random person being like "I choreographed this, here's the moves and count. Learn it from my full speed dancing." And me responding "uh.... that's a lot more work than I want to put in" and moving on.
I also grouped it all together at the beginning of the week, because I was unsure about my tiredness for the rest. And honestly, I was super tired for the rest. 4 day weeks suck. They are only good when they end. I've gotten a good amount of rest this weekend and I think I've rebalanced since my severe offset last weekend (3-day weekends and sleep are not friends). So hopefully this week won't be so bad. I also can't shake the feeling that I'm so tired because of my lack of exercise. But I think I have found a solution (more on this later).
Food
Oh god, I don't even want to talk about it. I mean I guess I haven't been awful everyday, but I've been tracking less because I'm guilty about what I've eaten and I don't want to see the number on the calorie counter, because I know that it will just make me feel bad.
Part of the problem is that I have been buying my lunches this week, and that causes a huge huge calorie boost, because purchased lunches are usually at least 200 calories more than any lunch I could bring in. Luckily I have been able to balance that with light dinners for the most part, but certainly not always. Several times this week I've had dinner when I wasn't hungry, or eaten enough to nearly make myself sick (though this happens with basically any full, restaurant sized meal now, it's definitely more mental than physical at any rate). So I have to work on that. I also need to go grocery shopping... I keep saying maybe tomorrow. Maybe I mean it this time? Who knows. We'll see.
Motivation
I'd say I am still pretty motivated. The trouble is finding the particular methods of succeeding, and finding things that motivate me beyond my desperate desire to get the weight off. Honestly this particular motivation is not sustainable and is easily worked around when faced with some taunting food or another, or when tiredness confines me to the couch or bed. I am motivated in that I want to do stuff, but not so motivated that I have true reason to do it. I'm hoping that my solution for the exercise problem will also help with this.
So what is this solution I have been mentioning? Dance class. I have decided that enough is enough and I can make the investment and go ahead and pay for dance classes. I found a place in the Mission that's pretty easy for me to get to from work (short BART ride plus 4 block walk) and has classes basically all the time, so they're convenient for me to get to from work. Tomorrow I am going to one of their Rhythm and Motion classes, which is basically a dance workout class but I talked to the receptionist and read about it online and it's a mix of semi-complicated choreography and a bunch of different songs so there's variety. She said that I should take the class about 5 times and then decide if it's for me, because it might take that long to pick up on the choreography and adjust to it. So, I'm going to do that. If it turns out that that's not what I want, there are all sorts of other classes I could try that are at my level and conveniently timed. So, I think that this will work out great. My only concern is walking through the Mission in the evening by myself, but it is on two main streets and in a little bit of a nicer area (I think) so it should be okay.
So yeah, here's the plan for this week:
what- dancing
when- Monday, 5:45pm-6:45 pm and Wed, 5:45pm-6:45pm (Both nights the same class, with the same instructor)
If anyone in the bay would like to join me (and srsly, please do), the place I am going is ODC Dance Commons, near 16th St BART in SF. The first class is free and after that they are pretty cheap (max $14/ class I think), plus apparently they have showers, lockers and the whole shebang. I'm pretty excited. So excited I bought new dance pants (mostly because all of my old ones are either too short or fall down). So yay! Dance class time for me.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Counseling: Why didn't I do this sooner?
As everyone who's ever been to a good counselor knows, and as I have just learned, there really is no substitution for the amount of knowledge they have and their objective eyes on your situation.
If that wasn't enough to tell you that my meeting went well, I don't know what is. I won't go into terrible detail about the whole thing, but he picked some things out about my behaviors that I didn't even think were bad. And I don't even mean things like food.
He pointed out that I am terribly hard on myself. But it's very subtle (usually). I think that I "should do" such and such and that I'm "lazy" if I don't. When really its just that whatever it is isn't fun for me, so I don't want to do it, or that my body needs rest. It's not called being lazy when I sit on the couch and watch YouTube. It's resting.
He told me that the best way to make a routine sustainable and most importantly EASY, is to be doing things that I actually like to do for exercise. Things that I would do for fun. There is no "I should do this" only "I want to do this because I like doing it."
His system is a triangle, one focus at a time thing. The three areas are tracking, eating and moving. His process is to focus on one part of each of these at once, and build it into my regular routine. Since I already have the tracking pretty much down, and I at least have some sort of start (perhaps even an overdone start) on the eating, the issue is the moving. The final goal is to get half an hour to 60 minutes every day. But I'm obviously not going to start with that.
He gave me a worksheet for each week, to set a goal. Here's the run down, starting yesterday. So my weeks now start on Fridays, rather than Mondays.
What will I do: Dancing! - I'm supposed to do something I like to do, so that it's fun and I keep it up. I'm going to start with choreography on youtube. Does anyone know of any good ones? I'm not looking for dancing fitness videos, but actual dancing stuff that will teach you steps (SLOWLY).
Why- Because it's fun.
Days of the week: Friday, Sunday, Monday and one extra day sometime later in the week if I can
Time of day: Afternoon/ evening
How I will track: myfitnesspal.com (midna07, if you'd like to friend me. Then you'll get all the juicy details of what I eat.)
Who will I share with: YOU. THIS BLOG. You are important and stuff. (Jon also gets special notification of course)
How I will celebrate: The usual way I have been. $10 into the pot.
I already managed to do it yesterday. It was pretty fun. I found some videos on Youtube, but I think I will mostly do different videos every time I do it, with a couple possible exceptions. There's certainly plenty there.
In conclusion, another note from the meeting. "Don't fight your body, your body will always win. We're going to work WITH your body to get where you want to be."
Next progress report will be on THURSDAY, not Monday. So check back then!
If that wasn't enough to tell you that my meeting went well, I don't know what is. I won't go into terrible detail about the whole thing, but he picked some things out about my behaviors that I didn't even think were bad. And I don't even mean things like food.
He pointed out that I am terribly hard on myself. But it's very subtle (usually). I think that I "should do" such and such and that I'm "lazy" if I don't. When really its just that whatever it is isn't fun for me, so I don't want to do it, or that my body needs rest. It's not called being lazy when I sit on the couch and watch YouTube. It's resting.
He told me that the best way to make a routine sustainable and most importantly EASY, is to be doing things that I actually like to do for exercise. Things that I would do for fun. There is no "I should do this" only "I want to do this because I like doing it."
His system is a triangle, one focus at a time thing. The three areas are tracking, eating and moving. His process is to focus on one part of each of these at once, and build it into my regular routine. Since I already have the tracking pretty much down, and I at least have some sort of start (perhaps even an overdone start) on the eating, the issue is the moving. The final goal is to get half an hour to 60 minutes every day. But I'm obviously not going to start with that.
He gave me a worksheet for each week, to set a goal. Here's the run down, starting yesterday. So my weeks now start on Fridays, rather than Mondays.
What will I do: Dancing! - I'm supposed to do something I like to do, so that it's fun and I keep it up. I'm going to start with choreography on youtube. Does anyone know of any good ones? I'm not looking for dancing fitness videos, but actual dancing stuff that will teach you steps (SLOWLY).
Why- Because it's fun.
Days of the week: Friday, Sunday, Monday and one extra day sometime later in the week if I can
Time of day: Afternoon/ evening
How I will track: myfitnesspal.com (midna07, if you'd like to friend me. Then you'll get all the juicy details of what I eat.)
Who will I share with: YOU. THIS BLOG. You are important and stuff. (Jon also gets special notification of course)
How I will celebrate: The usual way I have been. $10 into the pot.
I already managed to do it yesterday. It was pretty fun. I found some videos on Youtube, but I think I will mostly do different videos every time I do it, with a couple possible exceptions. There's certainly plenty there.
In conclusion, another note from the meeting. "Don't fight your body, your body will always win. We're going to work WITH your body to get where you want to be."
Next progress report will be on THURSDAY, not Monday. So check back then!
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