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Fitness Challenge

On August 21, 2011   /   Fitness, Food & Diet, Health   /   Leave a comment

For the last two years, I’ve been trying to get closer to the ideal weight for my age, height and gender. For vanity but also health reasons.
So I got fanatical and watched what I eat and worked out – a lot! During moments of frustration/madness, I also tried a few extreme diets. One involved drinking this crazy maple syrupy drink that was sprinkled with cayenne pepper. It was the Beyonce inspired diet.
Now I knew it was crazy, just like all the others, but when you count calories and work out regularly and yet the scale doesn’t budge, you get desperate.
Anyway, not wanting to consider myself a total failure, I began to take comfort in achieving and maintaining a weight which is only twenty pounds from my ideal weight. If I fell off the wagon, I’d fret as I got closer to the number at which I decided, I must take drastic action. Thus, I weigh myself every morning.
This perhaps would be a bit much for most people but I’m not yet at the stage where I have my weight under control and so this is one of the things I must do to make sure I don’t backtrack.
In the middle of last week, I was two pounds away from the must take drastic action weight. As I’d been emotional eating for about ten days, it wasn’t really a surprise. Heck, I eat a 425g tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough Ice Cream on Thursday night all in one sitting.
Ben&Jerry's_CookieDough.JPG
The frustrating thing about this situation, is that I didn’t have the ice cream at home. I left my house around 9pm after an hour of internal dialogue trying to decide whether or not to go get it.
I felt so guilty about not having enough willpower to resist temptation, that even though I eat it all in sitting, I didn’t really enjoy it. And not surprisingly, when I got on the scale the next morning, I was heavier – by three pound to be exact! Yikes!
Then and there, I decided that starting at the weekend, I was going to recommit to working out. The recent boy drama was a trigger for backsliding but no point in letting things spiral out of control.
Enough with the takeaway meals and oh yeah, being so lazy that I don’t want to get up and out for my morning walk which has always been such a positive start to my day.
So I’ve set myself a new fitness challenge. What exactly? Well for the next twenty one days, I am going to walk for at least an hour a day – roughly three to four miles. Also, I am going to spend about 30minutes each day doing exercises to strength my lower back and knees.
Why twenty one days? Well research has shown it takes roughly twenty one days to successfully introduce/reintroduce a new routine into your life.
How am I going to keep myself honest? Well I’m posting activity to my RunKeeper account which updates my Facebook and Twitter feed. Also, by putting it here on my blog, I know I’ll do everything possible to successfully complete the challenge.
Failure is simply not an option. I can’t afford to relapse. Definitely not over boy drama!
So stay tuned. I hope to lose a stone (fourteen pounds) to get me back squarely in the comfort zone and on way to ideal weight.

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Walking

On August 6, 2011   /   Health, The Great Outdoors   /   Leave a comment

I walk a lot – either regular or Nordic walking. It is my primary way of toning up the body and keeping weight under control.
Ideally, I’d walk every day, first thing in the morning since I enjoy the great outdoors and feel that it sets up the day nicely. I usually feel invigorated and ready to take on any challenge before me.
However, most morning, I find myself hitting the snooze button because really – who wants to get up at 5am? Definitely not me!
That said, today was different. I was up and out quite quickly and walked 16 miles.
The initial goal was 8miles but then I was still some distance away from my house on the loop back and so goal became 12 miles. Then on getting closer to my house, realised I wasn’t going to make the new 12 miles goal, so headed in a different direction and ended up walking 16.54miles to be exact.
I know the exact mileage, duration, pace, speed, elevation climb, calories burned and a whole host of other variables because in the last few months I’ve started to use an iPhone app called RunKeeper when I’m out exercising.
RunKeeper.jpg
The summary for the day, month and then year to date helps to keep me honest, motivated and in many ways has pushed me to go further. Heck, prior to using it, there’s no way I would have walked 16 miles in one go.
Sure I had ambitions in the past to run the Chicago Marathon, but in that I’ve got shaky knees, I gave up on that dream long ago. But who knows, perhaps I can increase my walking speed to finish a marathon in a respectable time.
Not committing to anything just yet – but definitely think I should train for a race.
So perhaps I should look at training to speed walk a half marathon or maybe a 10K. That’s only 6.4miles.

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Fruit Cravings

On August 5, 2011   /   Food & Diet, Montserrat   /   Leave a comment

It’s 70 degrees Fahrenheit in London today. Hot, but not hot enough for August! I’d like it to at least 80 degrees. Since the probability of that is slim, I’d to be in the Caribbean – in Montserrat to be exact. My time there in June was way too short and I didn’t get to eat enough fresh fruits.
Mangoes.jpgI want more cherries, guavas, guineps, sour sop, sweet sop, coconut, mamisiporte and mangoes, mangoes and more mangoes! Heck, the craving was so strong today that I went to the grocery store in search. And while there were some mangoes, they had didn’t look all that appealing.
So instead of fresh fruit, I got some white chocolate cookies – five in fact which I totally devoured. Now I am feeling kinda sick and oh yeah guilty as one really was enough. Oh well! Just means I’ll have to walk an extra mile or two tomorrow to burn off the calories.

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The Facebook Diet

On August 2, 2011   /   Food & Diet, Health, Social Media   /   Leave a comment

UB_June2011.jpgI have a love/hate relationship with food. It all started around September 1988 when I left the comforts of Boston for college at the University of Michigan. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I had gained the freshmen ten – heck, who am I kidding fifteen pounds.
Since then, my weight has been like a roller coaster ride – sometimes up and sometimes down. The frustrating thing is that I don’t really overeat or binge on cookies, chocolate, etc. I just don’t always make smart choices about what I put in my mouth (i.e. given the choice between a baked potato and french fries — I’d take the fries!). So, with each cycle, I get frustrated. I hate the fat stages. My self-esteem dips, most activities make me uncomfortable and really I just want to hibernate.
But I think I’ve found the solution to help manage my weight and turned it around for good. I’ve coined it the Facebook Diet. No it has nothing to do with weaning oneself away from the popular social media site due to other personal or professional commitments. It’s more about making conscious choices when it comes to food because I don’t want to be “the fat one” in the pictures!
The reality is that I am a single woman with a lot going on and I can’t be on Facebook all the time to quickly untag myself in unflattering photos. Also, I don’t want to go to the extreme and not allow myself to be tagged.
And so while sort of shallow, I’ve been following the Facebook Diet since January 2011. This has really forced me to look at food in a new light and really work on getting my weight under control through healthy eating and exercise. I can’t say that I’ve got everything figured out or that I haven’t tried a crazy food plan since then to lose a few pounds, but pleased with progress to date.
Therefore, I can’t afford to let things backslide — not just for vanity reasons but for health reasons as well. I’m getting older and it is getting harder to lose weight. Plus excess weight is a contributing factor in many health conditions. Thus, I need to maintain and continue to lose until I reach my ideal body weight. With twenty more pounds still the shed, the objective is to reach target by January 2012.
Once I reach goal, maintenance will begin. And while I’m sure I’ll have some difficult days/weeks/months/years — the thought that I might be once again “the fat one” in the picture will be enough to get me back on track.
So you see — Facebook isn’t all bad. It is helping to keep me accountable and motivated. Thus it has become one of my secret weapons in living a happier and healthier life!

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Nothing Fits Anymore

On December 18, 2002   /   Food & Diet   /   1 Comment

Today I had my annual physical. Despite the fact that I’m fighting my third cold/flu this season, according to my doctor, everything checks out. I’m just a little run down from all the drama that went on this year. But one issue that needs working on is weight. No surprise there. This is something I have battled since college. It’s so frustrating. Every time I think I have the problem conquered, something happens to throw me off. I suppose I need to start thinking of my weight in terms of my health and not just in terms of my physical appearance. So no more diets or quick fix schemes. In the New Year I plan to spend sometime working with a nutritionist. Also, I plan to get back in the gym. I’ve been away for over a year.

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