Posts Tagged ‘Bright Spots

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15
Jun
12

Finally Friday!

By garagegym107 Leave a Comment
Categories: Living Fit Daily
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What a challenging week this has been!  My spousal unit has been battling kidney stones for the past 4 weeks.  Two trips to the ER and still no stone passage.  Talk about upsetting the whole apple cart and my training routine!   Long sleepless nights will do that. 

Dealing with someone in serious pain can wreak havoc on a positive attitude.  Out of respect and concern for my spousal unit I found myself keeping extremely quiet in an effort to prevent from disturbing him.  The quieter he got the quieter I stayed. 

I didn’t realize until just this morning that the effort has begun to take a toll on my mindset.  Normally I am a very positive person but the missed workouts, sporadic meals, trips to the ER and trips to the drugstore along with the medicine bottles and paraphernalia sitting in the bathroom, I realize even more how very precious a fit mind and fit body truly are.  I recognize even more how important it is to eat and drink the right things to properly nourish our bodies.

I’m resolved to make-up my missed workouts over the weekend and I actually look forward to spending some time in garage gym 107.  It’s got great MOJO.  It’s got a great way of breaking me down with a barbell and kettlebells and a pull-up bar, yet builds me up and makes me stronger.

This weekend I’m going to add something new.  I’m going to make some homemade Bulgarian Sandbags.  They look like just the ticket to mix things up a bit and will give me an outdoor project.

The interesting thing will be varying the material used to fill the bags so that I can make them full, but different weights.  I’ll report back and let you know how this project ends up.

If you are heading in to the weekend and feeling sad or down and out, get outside and move.  Whatever it takes to get some fresh air and renew your spirit!

14
Jun
12

It’s Not About the Weight

By garagegym107 34 Comments
Categories: Living Fit Daily
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Only DataI think back on the number of times I jumped on the scale and waited with held breath for that thing to tell me something I considered good.  And I remember the days I didn’t perceive the results as positive.  It took me several years to figure out that the scale is simply a data gathering tool. 

Have realistic expectations.  In the beginning I literally thought I could lose over 150# in 3 months.  Yes, I was that naive –Having or showing a lack of experience, judgement or information.  

My personal experience , which I am elated to share with you is that it takes more time than most women are willing to invest in themselves but that doesn’t have to be YOU.  

YOU can choose to be one of those women that resets your mind and commits to long-term success as opposed to a short-sighted solution. 

Women in general give so much credit and power to the scale that they will literally throw away months of hard work and effort if that scale doesn’t tell them what they want to hear.  I’ve been there.  The scale does not dictate your success or perceived failure.  STOP doing that to yourself!!

There are so many other things you are changing with fitness and clean eating.  

– Your body is getting healthier inside. 

– Your soul is happier because YOU are taking care of YOU and not waiting around for someone else to do it for you.

– You are gaining self-confidence with each workout and each clean meal you choose to eat.

– You can overcome set-backs.

– You are opening yourself up to new experiences.

– You are opening yourself to meeting new people.

– You can control your weight, your food and the outcome of both.

– You can trust and believe in YOU!

12
Jun
12

Don’t Worry Be Happy

By garagegym107 4 Comments
Categories: Living Fit Daily
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Sounds easy right?  Well during the night last night I tossed and turned and churned through a list of worrisome issues.  Guess what?  I didn’t solve a single one of the worries and lost a good nights sleep to boot.

What is really interesting though is that I got up this morning and was teetering on the verge of moody tears.  Everyone that knows me on a personal level knows that I’m not a weepy person.  I’ve raised three boys, I’m known for being rather terse at times.

I’m also known for being that hard*** person that gets things done instead of whining about what else needs to be done in addition to working out, working for a living,  clean eating, loads of laundry, groceries, dealing with a wrecked automobile, etc.  

I realized this morning when I got up that I had allowed myself to worry in to an uncharacteristic mood.  After acknowledging that I woke up in a dark place to one of my friends, I begin making a mental list of what is going on.

It is absolutely amazing to me that something as simple as a listing of what’s going on can help me see what takes priority. 

– What is needed to sustain life?  Got it?  Yep.  Asking myself that one question completely changed my mindset.  YES, IT’S THAT EASY. 

My goodness how quickly we can be sucked into worry and get lost.   We fail to see the positive by focusing on the worrisome issues.

– I have a healthy body and can take most of the physical load I place on it day in and day out.

– I have a day job that I choose to be good at.

– I love writing this cheesy little blog because it keeps me honest and reminds me of how far I’ve come. 

– I love reading other awesome blogs out there like Cultfit.com.

– I love proving to people you can overcome obesity once you stop playing the blame game.

– I love seeing the positive side as opposed to wasting perfectly good energy on worry.

Worry changes nothing outside of the wrinkles on your face.  Act on what you CAN change now.  Once you start acting on what you can change, you realize you are far more capable than you give yourself credit for.

 

 

 

 

11
Jun
12

Two Steps Forward, One Step Backwards

By garagegym107 Leave a Comment
Categories: Morphing of a Fit Woman
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Over the past few weeks I’ve been plugging along doing my thing.  I’ve also noticed that I haven’t been as passionate about my thing as I normally am.

Just this morning I remembered that some times you take two steps forward and one step back. 

I used to think that this was a negative, you know, to take a step back.  Over time I’ve learned that in reality it’s my mental mojo getting a running start for the next round of progress getting ready to take place.  

Think about it.  We can’t always be on the high tide.  If we were, we’d lose sight of how awesome that high tide is.  Down time allows us to really think about where we are and what we want to happen next.  It doesn’t have to be a huge transition to another set of big goals.  

It can be something as simple as a commitment to yourself to do XYZ over the next 3 months.   

For me I tend to train hard and heavy for four months and then go into this feeling of limbo like training for a couple of weeks.  I believe that limbo is my mind and body taking a much deserved break from the cycle of training I put it through.

After that two week slow down, I feel a renewed surge of desire and passion to get back to the hard and heavy training.  It’s funny, until I started writing this blog I didn’t really pay that much attention to the cycle.  But looking back to have a clearer perspective to write from, I’ve had this cycle going strong for 4 years now.

Not too bad for a former yo-yo’er.  Perhaps the true beauty in this realization is that the old, fat, tired and lazy me would have used this limbo period as a reason to quit.  The commitment to what I’ve become won’t allow the limbo to be perceived as anything other than a short, less intense training phase.  

Life feels too good during the high tide to do anything other than just paddle until the next big wave hits.

01
Jun
12

Speed Bumps in The Road

By garagegym107 Leave a Comment
Categories: Living Fit Daily
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Thank goodness for auto insurance!  Needless to say, the boy has learned a whole lot about responsibility from his decision to not notify the police of the accident. 

Note to all of my friends and anyone that I don’t know who is reading this blog:  I assumed my child understood that no matter what, when there is an accident he must report it to the police.  Don’t make the assumption that your kids know this. 

Explain to them that no matter what, it matters when it comes down to who pays the bill for repairs.  I’ve raised my kids with the understanding that in every situation they have choices and no matter what choice they make, they must be prepared to handle the consequences   The boy is better for the experience although his summer will be spent paying off the deductible debt he owes me.

I have been sitting here thinking about the rather crazy week I’ve had.  I’ve managed to get all but one of my workouts in.  I do intend to make up that workout at some point this weekend.  I usually take both days as active rest days.  I’m going to have some pull-up skill work and 10 x 100m sprints.   That ought to work me over pretty good and then I intend to stand-up paddle board if the mound of laundry will allow for it. 

My eats have been pretty close to 90% clean which I’m ok with.   I’ve run the gamut of the eat bad, feel bad, eat bad cycle and then transitioned over to the perfectionist cycle of 100% clean 100% of the time and plenty more phases smashed between the two extremes. 

These phases I now see very clearly and understand how they came about.  It has only been since I realized the difference between 90% and 100% is minimal in terms of my results that I’ve become more comfortable.  Now my body, mind and soul are a lot happier when I selectively choose my 10% meals.  

I do believe that 80% clean eats is a good solid goal for everyone.  I’m personally not as comfortable with that being my choice.  I prefer to keep a slightly tighter reign because I am more comfortable with that structure. 

For those struggling to find balance out there, it’s doable.  Just be patient with yourself and don’t be afraid to fall down from time to time.  Just don’t stay down because no-one will come along and pick you up.  You have to do that for yourself. 

Have a great weekend!

 

 

31
May
12

Bumps In The Road

By garagegym107 7 Comments
Categories: Morphing of a Fit Woman
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Last night the boy comes to the garage door that leads in to the house and says “mom, I need you to come here for a minute”.   There was something in the ashen color of his skin that gave away the truth that he was up a creek.

I walked outside to discover that the back drivers side bumper of his car was pretty darned crumpled up.  Then came the bad news. 

Me “honey, did you call the police?”  the boy “Uh no, but I got her name and phone number”.  Me “so no accident report?”  they boy “Uh no, I didn’t know I was supposed to”.   At that moment I had a flash to Bill Cosby saying “you know, I brought you into this world, I can take you out”.   But that would just make me sad. 

So this morning starts the search for Catherine C.  Ironically in the past an event like this would have resulted in the soothing food coma but my how things have changed.

Nope, nadda, ain’t happen in this house.  Clean eats for breakfast and lunch and not even the remote desire to be in a food coma. 

I used to use food to fix everything.  Food doesn’t fix things, it’s not out to get us with temptation, it’s not good or bad or even evil.  Food has no power.  It only gets power from us giving it power.   And for those of you who’ve never struggle with food, just remember you don’t know what trauma someone else may be going through.

For so long I lived as if food could literally make all of my problems disappear.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, it was just playing head games with me.  It has been a great part of the morphing of a fit woman.   At times it has been painful but over the past several years things have fallen into a good place.  Awareness is huge.

29
May
12

Old Behaviors Die Hard

By garagegym107 4 Comments
Categories: Morphing of a Fit Woman
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

In the process of morphing in to the fit woman I’ve learned some powerful lessons.  One of them is that old behaviors die hard. 

It’s not for lack of will power or discipline because I have a pretty good set of both of those tools.  It’s changing what used to be a normal behavior in to a new one.  

For the most part I do really well with the newer versions of behavior.   I prefer the taste of fresh clean foods over all others.  I prefer the flavor of water or water with lemon over the taste of anything artificial.  But inevitably boredom or even lonliness kick in from time to time.

All of that being said, the old behaviors like to live dormant.  They don’t simply disappear or find someone else’s head to live in.  They stick around but I’ve had to learn to control them as opposed to allowing them to control me.  I’m not perfect. 

All it takes is a weekend of inconvenience to have those old behaviors yelling “drink me, I’m diet, I’m refreshing, you are sweating puddles, come on, I won’t hurt you!” and in all seriousness, that diet soda tasted good for a few minutes.   The next thing I know I’m bloating up with water retention when water would have been just as satisfying. 

Or the other example, those famous sandwich cookies in the golden version, which used to be my favs.  One wonders what are they doing there in the first place?  The spousal unit is still a junk food junkie no matter what I do.   Yep I reached in to the cookie jar and pulled out a couple of cookies and proceeded to test the waters.   To my delight (yes seriously), all I tasted was the fact that those little devils were processed and that I could taste that clearly!  

Part of me had that little nagging thought of “you should feel guilty for eating that” but the morphing of a fit woman doesn’t allow for guilt or shame.  Neither of those are permitted to reside here.   Only acknowledgement of eating them and analyzing of data.    I ate them, yes.  Did they make me feel bad or good, no.  Will I do it again, not likely.   I analyzed the data and it says don’t waste your food pleasure on something that tastes like crap!

Those old behaviors will always be lurking.  Usually they are lurking with temptation in an effort to lure me back to the fat person that never really cared whether something was good for me or not.    

Now I practice “love me some me” instead.  I know that sounds so cavalier, but it’s not meant as such.  It’s meant as truth. 

This life attempts to beat us down from every direction.  It keeps us confused with too much data, it holds us back with thoughts of fitness being too demanding, both in time and financially and my favorite is why bother.   

I’ve seen so many people come and go from the gym because things eventually get hard or boring and they don’t get instant gratification so then they answer the call with “why bother” instead of sucking it up.

I bother every single day because I know how much better it feels living in the light of happiness and with the ability to help others.   When you start actually looking at all of the bright spots in your life, you realize this really is a great life. 

And just when you think you’ve got it bad remember that there is always someone else wishing they could be where you are today!

 

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