Lessons

Much of life is about learning lessons, living through an experience and coming out on the other side wiser and better. Someone who has lived a few more lessons than me (but whose name I can't seem to remember at the moment) said that when we stop learning, we have stopped living. I have thought a lot about that concept since I first read about it, and I subscribe to it. Life is learning. Only when we lie lifeless in bed, completely devoid of interaction and stimulus, when our minds are taken from us entirely, do we stop learning, and that, my dears, is no life.

The last 18 months or so have given me many lessons, and it has underscored previous ones. Often, my heart aches with the knowledge of which I am now so keenly aware. Moments are fleeting and precious, and the people in our lives are what make them worthwhile.  In this vein, changes are afoot. After all, what good is a lesson upon which we do not act?

The weather in north Florida is on the change as well as autumn has brought its chill a bit early. We had frost yesterday morning! I never see a frosted patch of grass that I don't think about all the mornings I stood with wet hair waiting on the bus or huddled in the passenger seat of Daddy's '79 Ford F150 waiting for the heater to kick in. Daddy was always convinced that I was going to catch my death from that frozen head of hair. :) So the last two days, I've not needed a fan at all for my workouts. As a matter of fact, I've had to wear a t-shirt and capris and was still a little chilly. This is the first year I can remember when I actually have looked forward to the cool weather.  I guess we all really do change with time.

 At Moe's yesterday (I didn't have time to prepare anything before work), I ran into a couple I took care of a couple of weeks ago. They insisted on buying my dinner. What a lovely treat!

What Percentage Frowns?

Sunday, January 31, 2010
168.5#

The hubby and I made a short trip to Wal-Mart the other night, not something we do very often. We purposely avoid Wal-Mart (probably not a subject you want to get me started on) as much as we can, but sometimes living in a small town limits our options for acquiring specific goods and we are left with no option. Certainly, both of us going to Wal-Mart at the same time is virtually unheard of, so when we found ourselves together there the other night, we had an opportunity for some interesting conversation.

For an interesting anthropological experience, go to a Wal-Mart during a busy time and count the number of smiles you see on faces and the number of frowns you see. Though I've noticed that more people frown than smile pretty much everywhere (interestingly enough even in amusement parks), the percentage of frowns at Wal-Mart that night was staggering.

As we were getting what we needed, I felt the weight of worry and unhappiness beginning to settle on me just from being around these people. They were down-trodden, weary, miserable people. They argued amongst their groups. They ambled aimlessly through the store as if they had nothing better to do. Initially I smiled in greeting as I came up to people, but after the umpteenth "WTF?" look I got, I gave that up. I looked at the hubby and said, " I'm pretty sure the happiness could get sucked right out of us if we stayed here too long." He agreed. For an hour or so after we left, we talked about how surrounding oneself with misery invites misery. Part of fitness is happiness, and part of being happy is making a conscious effort toward being happy. We can choose to go to places and do things that feed our good spirit, or we can go places and do things and be around people who require sustained effort to be happy around, who virtually suck the happiness right out of us. I am coming to realize that choosing the happy places is not only okay but necessary. Fitness not only comes with good nutrition and exercise but also with the sunshine of happy faces and the comfort of pleasant surroundings to feed our souls.

Feeding our souls at home is our new addition to the family, Luna, our German Shepherd Puppy. She is ten weeks old, and we brought her home last Wednesday.

Big sister is NOT convinced that she is a "happy" addition. LOL
TODAY'S WORKOUT:

3 rounds of:

double 16kg c&P x 3, squat x 2, double 20kg deadlift x 3, rest 1 min

20kg C&P 1/1 x 2, Goblet squat x 3, rest 1 min

5 rounds of:

Black and purple band assisted pullups x 2, perfect pullup x 2

YESTERDAY'S WORKOUT:

5 Rounds of assisted pullups x 3, pushups x 3

10 12kg tgu, alternating sides.

FRIDAY: 550 20Kg swings in ~31min

TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY NO WORKOUT (Brought Luna home Wednesday).

Nutrition and Mood and Sleepiness

January 13, 2010
170.5#--39% BF according to my scale with an electrical impedence bf calculator

Chris J. asked in the comments of my last post what my body fat (bf) percentage is and why I don't tend to post it as well. Mostly, I tend to avoid measuring it with that feature on my scale because it makes me feel more like a lardass. I mean really, I'm almost half lard. Jeez. Also because part of me just wants to believe it's just so inaccurate as to be criminal and worthless anyway. BUT, I posted it.

One of the things that I noticed on my bender was how bad the crappy food made me feel. Granted, from an emotional standpoint, determining which was the chicken and which was the egg with regard to depression as a cause or a result of carbohydrate intake is difficult. Honestly, I think my mood contributed to my eating poorly which then contributed to my poor mood, and thus the cycle was born, and I didn't have the wherewithall to interrupt it at that time. As I was wallowing in my self-pity, though, I didn't lose all of my self-reflective nature, and I began to feel that link again to what I was eating and how I was feeling. Within about 45-90 minutes after a meal or snack that was primarily carbohydrates, I would get painfully sleepy and melancholy. After a night of nibbling all night long on the sweets brought to work for the holidays, driving the 20 miles home was like torture. At one point, I had ALL the windows down in 40 degree weather singing at the top of my lungs trying not to fall asleep. When I eat right, I have no trouble at all getting home in the mornings. I ached all over and generally felt like doody. After recognizing this correlation, I wondered how long I would have to eat well again before I felt the return to more-or-less normal. Turns out it's not long. Within only a couple of days I had begun to notice a difference, and now I'm feeling much better. So I'm trying not to obsess too much over the weight being up and not wanting to budge back down but instead focus on how much better I feel.

More pics from the visit...

WORKOUT:

I got up late today and only got a short workout in, but I opted for that instead of no wait at all.

Double 16kg C&P x 3

Double 16kg squat x 2

Rest 1 min

20kg C&P 1/1x2

20kg Goblet squat x 3

Rest 1 min

3 total rounds

YESTERDAY'S WORKOUT:

Only got a few rounds of greasing the groove with assisted pullups and pushups

MONDAY'S WORKOUT:

16kg swings 900 (920?) in 43'12"

Small Epiphany

Monday, October 19, 2009

165#

I think that sometimes we cruise along oblivious to change. Sometimes that change is around us. Sometimes it is within us. Perhaps we are too busy evaluating other areas of our lives, scrutinizing them, trying to change them, that we miss important changes in other areas, changes that are really right under our noses.

In a lot of ways I have been a small bit of an emotional basketcase lately--for no reason at all really, except that estrogen is a bitch. As always, at least a piece of this dissatisfaction manifested itself in a frustration with how I look. A few days ago, though, I tried the pullup with only the black (~10-15#) band for assistance and darn near got my chest to the bar (My chin was there for sure)...almost got a full pullup with only that little bit of assistance, so I was dancing around, playing with my workout buddy, and generally being a fool when I started thinking about the workshop this weekend and how maybe, just maybe, with a little tweak in form I could do a full pullup this weekend (!). I have been quite excited, actually, about the possibilities this weekend holds for me both during the weekend itself and later as I apply the principles I hope to learn and come closer to mastering. As I was thinking about the almost pull up and the possibilities of the weekend, it hit me, that teeny epiphany, that small glimmer of personal insight. My journey has changed its course. In the beginning of the journey, I desperately wanted the aesthetic benefits. They were the focus of thought and planning while other, more performance-oriented goals, were secondary benefits I knew would come. I have by no means reached my aesthetic goals. On the contrary, I find my being so far from them a constant source of frustration. But...I find myself more concerned with losing the 25 or 30 extra pounds I need to lose more because doing so will most definitely make pull ups easier. Heck, if I were currently that light I'd be doing pull-ups! I find myself thinking more about the day I can do multiple pistols and pull ups and push ups at will than the day I look rockin' awesome in a bikini. Maybe that is more because right now the pull ups and pistols seem more attainable, but I like to think it's because in some small part, I have changed and come to see that function is way more fun than form.

TODAY'S WORKOUT: 5 5-rung ladders of black and purple-band assisted pull ups and perfect elevated pushups.

Between rungs:

1st ladder-knee together squats with one-legged pulses at the bottom.

2nd ladder-partial pistols 1/1

3rd ladder-plank x 30 sec

4th ladder-knee together squats, laddered reps

5th ladder- 4 burpees

Finished with 16 burpees.

YESTERDAY'S WORKOUT: 75 Burpees, 5 min of 16kg snatches (80).

SATURDAY: No workout

FRIDAY'S WORKOUT: 5 rounds of

20kg press 2/2 Double 16kg press x 2

I'm getting 2 strict 20kg presses on the left for 3 rounds usually, then having to go to a push-press for one of the presses. On the right, I can do two strict presses for 1-3 rounds. I'm still not back to where I was with this before the pneumonia, but I'm getting there.

20kg Goblet squat x 5

Perfect pushup x 3

double 16kg OL Dead 3/3

High Plank x 30 sec

Burpee x 5

After the 5 rounds, I did 8 burpees to get my challenge numbers for the day then did 20kg Tabata swings.

THURSDAY'S WORKOUT: See today's workout, but add 45 burpees to the end.

WEDNESDAY: No workout.

TUESDAY'S WORKOUT: See Friday's workout, add 5 burpees at the end of the 5 rounds, and add 2 12kg TGu per side to the end.

What Matters--And It's Not Meltdowns

Thursday, March 19, 2009
Work--160#

Sometimes, in the midst of stress, we find brief moments of the purest clarity. I had a nutritional meltdown at work last night. I spent my shift Wednesday night on the verge of tears, sometimes when it was slow and quiet allowing them to break through briefly. From the beginning of the shift, I fought the urge to send the tech out for some sugar-laden decadence during one of his McDonald's runs, and eventually caved in, getting a bag of cookies and a bag of M&M's from the machine. For whatever reason, this binge was not followed with the usual self-flagellating guilt. Instead, I crumbled the empty bag and I realized that that one bag of M&M's which followed that one bag of cookies was just that. One bag. And in the grand scheme of things, it really didn't matter. Neither did the bag of cookies. What mattered was that my mother was sitting in a hospital bed with a broken pelvis worrying that my dad might have a hypoglycemic episode that could kill him if she were not there to pick up on it in time. What mattered was that if it did, he would know that I love him and he is the most wonderful father in the world. What mattered was that she know that I love her and that I can never thank her enough for the years upon years that she has spent caring for all of us and worrying about all of us. What mattered was an infinite number of things--but all of them had to do with the people I love. Not a single one had anything to do with that bag of M&M's or that bag of cookies, or the 25 pounds I still need to get rid of. So the binge ended. Right there.

A few more pics of Ginnie Springs, one of the prettiest places on the planet.

TODAY'S WORKOUT: (Thanks, Mr. Calleo for the inspiration.)
10 20kg swings, 1 All-out Burpee (standing drop front to ground and come back all the way up into a jump with arms overhead)
10 20 kg swings, 2 all-out burpees,
10 20kg swings, 3 all-out burpees, all the way up to 10 all-out burpees...
Then do 10 20kg swings, 10 all-out burpees and work back down to 1 burpee.
It's AWESOME! :) I had a friend in small crisis during this and was having to text some on my breaks, but I did it in 33' 36". I like it.

Living the Moment & Multitasking

Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Work 6p-8a--154#

Today an internet friend posed a question to me that he had asked before, "Seriously, how do you make the time for everything?" A while back I explained to him that I really don't do that much; it just seems like it, but when he reposed the question, I did what I do each time I come across a question for the second time (be it a question from a friend or a patient who presents for the second time in a day or two), I revisit it from several different angles to make sure that I didn't miss something the first time around. As I was standing in the breakroom pouring some water, heating some tea in the microwave and cleaning off the counter, it hit me that multitasking is how I do what I do. I cruise the 'net while I snuggle with my honey and my puppy as we watch a movie on the couch. In the background, the washer and dryer are going, and I'm keeping my ears open for them to stop and signal a changing of the wash. Occasionally, I'll have a text conversation going with one friend or another while all the rest of this is floating along. Even now, I'm typing this as I wait for my labs on my patients and talk to the maintenance man about the sketchy doctor across the street (apparently he was "counseling" a patient's mother here at 0130 and got caught by our maintenance/security guy). I think the double X chromosomes mandate this kind of behavior. Undoubtedly the ladies reading this post will think, "Well, yeah, throw in a few kids with their homework, an elderly cohabitating parent and cooking dinner, and you've got my world." The men, however, are less likely to identify with this type of multitasking. They simply are not hardwired for it. Please don't mistake this for man-bashing. The linear way men think versus the branching way that women think is documented. But is one way of thinking actually better than the other?

As mentioned before, one of my perpetual pursuits is living to the best of my ability. For me, this means making the most of every moment while ensuring to the best of my ability that I will have as many productive moments as possible. Some would say that multitasking certainly seems to make the most of any given minute, but lately I actually have begun to try to multitask less. In my reading over the last year or so, I have come across wisdom from several different sources, most prominently from the Dalai Lama, that addresses the inability to truly live in a moment if we are constantly spreading our focus over several tasks. The concept is to fully place one's awareness in one thing so that the one thing can be fully engaged and enjoyed. Only by doing this are we really making the most of the moments spent with that one thing. Certainly, some aspects of our lives require that we multitask. The ED would come to a screeching halt if the doc did only one thing at a time. Other aspects, however, deserve our full attention as often as we can give it. Now, when I talk with someone I care about, either on the phone or in person, if I can, I stop everything else that I'm doing and truly listen to what that person is saying and pose interested and pertinent questions or responses. If I am with that person, I try to frequently look them in the eye. If I'm not, I think about what they're facial expressions would be as they speak. Now when I sit down to eat, I put away the phone and quit worrying about the rest of my day. Instead, I sit and enjoy the company and make sure I actually taste what I'm eating, fully experiencing all the texture and flavor. When I find myself on a fun road, I turn up the music, drop it down a gear and go.

Focusing fully on one thing is more difficult than it sounds, and I am far from mastering this skill. I have found, though, that it really does make life more enjoyable. I find that I seldom ask anyone to repeat themselves anymore, and I feel more connected to my loved ones, even after our conversations are long since over. I now suspect that maybe it wasn't that my husband had stopped giving me googley eyes. Maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention to see them. (Or I guess it could be a little of both ;) ). I can even follow the plot of a movie and laugh at all the jokes now. It's amazing how much more interesting a movie can be when I pay attention. And snuggling has definitely been upgraded by setting the laptop aside. So, maybe I do get a lot done, but I'm learning to accomplish more where it counts.

WORKOUT:
5 rounds of the following:
30 sec pull-ups assisted with the green and black bands
30 sec push-ups
30 sec of box jumps
30 sec low plank
2 pistols assisted with a door-facing/side.
1 min rest.

Then...5 double 12kg snatches starting at the top of the minute.

Changes to make to this workout at some point... I need to ditch the black band and start working with just the green. I won't be able to go with that for a full 30 sec, so I might have to just do partials...I'll have to think about this. I need to take about 10 sec of rest away from that snatch regimen and do 5 reps every 50 sec. I think that will be about right.