And We Go!!

Back in the saddle again.  I have re-found my passion for working out.  It was a rough stretch for a few months where I put on 10+ lbs and lost most, if not all, motivation to push myself.  One simple change got me back, logging my calories.  Simple as that.  In the past, I have had lots of success with logging calories but would end up going off of that process due to said success feeling like I could do it on my own.  Once the working out would taper off and the food continues (or gets worse), that is when I thought all was lost.  I realized this last week and started randomly in the middle of the week.  I logged a day of baseline foods that I was not worrying about how the numbers came out but being honest with what I did take in.  That was shocking and devastating.  I had been pretty good that day knowing I would have to see the end number and I was 600+ calories over what it told me I should have taken in.  My tracker took into account the steps for the day, any cardio based on my heart rate and sets of stairs taken in the day.  This was not a randomly assigned calorie number but actually based on activities.  Not happy, I made the change immediately and it was like a switch.  I am extremely diligent to log all food as I eat it as to make sure I don't forget and to make sure it is accurate.  I am also able to scan anything that has a bar code to make logging easier.  This has been a great feeling knowing how much I can eat and knowing if I need to work harder during my workouts.  For me, my goal is to have 1,000 calories left by the time I leave work so that the nights are night quite as much of a grind.  As tough as it is, it helps fuel my competitive nature and is something else to work towards.  If I am hungry, I eat.  If I am content, I stop.  If I am full, I have gone too far.  It is all about filling up on the right things and knowing when I am just dehydrated or bored instead of hungry.  Getting back into this has been what I needed.  I am down a few pounds already and also seeing my resting heart rate drop shows me that my body just needed a change back to healthy foods and getting pushed.  Without seeing those changes, it would have been tough to get back to it.  Make one small change that you know you will feel and you will be hooked (again). 

-N 

Tough Stretch

Without question, the holidays are so much harder to keep at working out and staying motivated than any other time for me.  The food is so good, the weather is so cold and the couch is always teaming up with Netflix to beg me to stay one more episode.  As is the case, I relented and skipped out on 60% of my workouts from Thanksgiving through the new year.  Not good.  In that time, I put on 1+ inches on my waist and 8-10 pounds and it was all dedicated to sweets in my case.  I could not stay off of the sweet stuff and candy is my biggest vise and I do not discriminate: chocolate (milk, dark or white, I don't care), fruity, sour, etc.  It is all fair game.  I tend to not worry a lot about gaining this time of year as I know I can get back to it and get those pounds off again.  The slippery slope is how long I perpetuate that line of thinking.  If I tell myself that too much, I get right back to where I was before I started working out.  With this blog/online journal I hope I can break out of that thinking.  I need to find my new motivation for 2018.  It could be that I am expecting a kiddo this year and need more energy or that I want this summer to be the summer I make all my ex's jealous.  That is always a good one.  
The motivation I am going to pick are the pictures I see of the previous me and how it makes me feel when I see those pictures.  I look tired no matter what I am doing.  Just standing there made me look tired and ready to sit back down.  

                           

This first photo was me trying to be athletic and accomplishing the exact opposite.  The second was just a month or so ago.  One is me playing a child's game of kickball looking tired and wore down and the other is post workout, feeling good.  And don't judge, a gym selfie is sometimes acceptable when done in a private changing room to brag to your brothers. :P  At the end of the day, I don't want anyone seeing tired me ever again, especially my son who right now, thinks I can do/lift anything.  That is a more amazing feeling than actually being able to do/lift anything.  

-N 

New Gym, Different Feeling

In an effort to mix things up and wake up my excitement about working out again, I tried a new gym.  It was still a CF gym but closer to work and allowed me to break up my day with a new routine.  It was nice to see how other CF'ers workout and how the environment was different than what I am used to.  All-in-all, I was not all that impressed with the experience.  No one was there and the passion was missing for me that I get out of my other gym.  Part of that was there was only one other person in the boot camp style class and I like to feed off of others there to push myself.  Since this other person was brand new, I had to rely on myself which is not my strong suit.
What I really wanted to find out was if mixing up my routine would A) lead me to join this new gym and rekindle my passion for this or B) I would realize I have a great gym and really need to use it more.  Right now, I feel I just need to get into my current gym more and push past the hurdles that I am putting up.  That last sentence could not be more true.  I am putting up hurdles for myself.  No one else is telling me I cannot do it or that I don't have time.  The toughest part is getting there and once I do, I feel the passion everyone else has and feed off of that until we get started.  I just need to get my butt out of bed and get it done.  The framed art next to my bed that says, "Wake Up and Be Awesome" needs to be a mantra and not just framed art next to my bed.

-N

Metrics

 I am the type of person who seeks out progress in all ways in my life (as many of us would).  Our kids are growing up happy and healthy, check.  Our paychecks get bigger each year, check.  The same goes with my personal physical fitness goals.  I want to see progress and since I see myself every single day, it is hard to visibly notice over an extended period of time.  This is why I need data and metrics to pull from. This need had me going down a path of discovery to find some early data when I first got started and I finally found it.  It was a simple body scan I did at Complete Nutrition and the initial results were not good.  I was coming in at 218 lbs and 28% body fat in October 2016.  That was eye opening that just a mere 5% away from being 1/3 body fat.  I considered myself an athlete and this hurt.  It hurt mostly my ego but gave me the kick in the ass I needed.  After a year, I have new metrics to report.  I am now at 198 lbs and at 16.5% body fat.  In doing the math, I have dropped 11.5% body fat (28.4 lbs of fat) and put on around 8-9 lbs of muscle as of October 2017. This is the kind of data I love to see.  It really puts into perspective what I have done in the last year and makes it worth the money, time, pain and fun I put into getting here.  In the summer of 2017, I had actually been down to my lowest adult weight at 188.8.  This was a great thing to see but did not understand what my body was made up of.  What was my BF%, what did my internal metrics look like (glucose, cholesterol, etc.).  Now that I have the internal blood work done, I have the next thing I can focus on.  Ideally, I wish I would have done that first but better late than never.

-N

Finding your "Why"

Now is as good a time as any to bring this topic up as I am finding it tough to get back into the swing of things.  
Identifying your "why" can make a big impact on how you approach your daily activities whether they are pleasant or not.  It provides a reasoning and understanding of what drives all of us.  For some, it could be to be more active in our children's lives, for others it could be to improve your daily attitude.  And this isn't just for working out.  Your "why" drives each of us to pursue that in which makes us feel good about ourselves and what we have accomplished.  Your why can be different too for different activities.  I'll use myself as an example.  I truly enjoy helping people and making their day better.  This is a major reason why I love a job that most people would think that the job has "a face only a mother could love".  When it comes to working out, I tell myself (as mentioned in my previous post) that the feeling of starting my day off with a workout is so much better than the additional time in bed.  When I feel better about myself, I am more productive at work and feel like I have more energy at the end of the day to keep up with kiddo.  
I feel having this identified can be the difference between faking it and making it.  A lot of people can crash diet and have short term weight loss or "success" but that waivers over time.  Finding what motivates you and drives you each day to be better is going to be that push you need to get out of bed early or stay up late or push yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of.  Once you have identified that, I feel everyone can make steps towards long term success.

-N

Back at it

Time to get back after it.  I took a few weeks to let my body recover by only running, I am needing to get back to it.  With a pregnant wifey and little man keeping most of my attention, I fell off the path and it took me a few weeks to get back on.  I made it in this morning to the 5:45a class and it felt great.  Waking up at 5:15a was no fun but my logic seems to help when it is tough to get out of bed.  I have been telling myself on those cold, early mornings that an additional 30 minutes in bed waiting until little man wakes up (which I am more than likely not sleeping for that time) is not better than the feeling I have all day when I go to my class.  At first, I kept talking myself out of that thought process and chalked it up to cheesy "You can do!" mantra but it is true.  I feel it starts my day off so well to have that done.  It also gives me a chance to move around all day and keep soreness from setting in (at least I think it does).  I have not medical backing to that but I'll run with it.  
To piggyback on that, it also gives me an excuse to eat better.  More often than not, I find myself giving myself a cheat day because I was not working out.  Not a good idea when you are taking multiple days/weeks off to "recover".  On top of my body recovering, I also recovered 5 pounds I had once lost.  No bueno.  So finding a reason to eat good after a few tough weeks is another good feeling.  I try not to waste my workout days with eating bad.  If I can string a few workout days together, I will be back on track before I can get back into AmeriCone Dream (you are evil people Ben and Jerry).  

-N

Push-ups Update

Well... I made it 34 days and hit a wall.  Mostly a wall comprised of knowing I had finished my goal of 30 days and 3,000.  On top of what I mentioned in my previous post about tracking things better, I want to make sure I have a target that is perpetual in nature or have another challenge ready to go.
I am brainstorming what we are doing for November so stand by.  We will have something determined shortly.

-N