This past weekend I had some time to make a few more dents in Half-Assed by Jennette Fulda. Every time I read parts of this book I have flashbacks of growing up overweight. While our life paths were different, our feelings were certainly similar growing up fat.
One of my vivid flashes this weekend was of my favorite vest. It was about the color and pattern of that striped couch cushion and I used to wear it all the time. When I picked it up at the Big & Tall store I thought it was stylish and made me look thinner. It might have actually been those things if I didn’t wear it constantly. I wore it with dress shirts, t-shirts, and polos … I wore it out to class, around the house, out to movies, and grocery shopping. It was pretty much my fat security blanket for almost an entire semester at school. I don’t know why it made me feel skinnier wearing it … I think because it was largish on me so I could wear it buttoned or loose and it seemed kinda hip and cool.
I distinctly remember to the day when I stopped wearing it. It was around the holidays, before everyone went home. Around that time every year the freshman in our house traditionally put on a holiday skit. This year it seems they decided to include me in the skit … well maybe not me exactly, they chose my vest.
Their topic for the skit was to make fun of almost all of the other people in the house by highlighting they habits and/or personality quirks. My part came about half way through the skit when I saw one of the thin freshman come in wearing my vest. That itself wasn’t so bad except that they had to stuff like 5-6 couch pillows into it just to kinda fill it up. He then proceeded to come in, chat up some of the others, and then order a pizza. The whole rest of the skit they poked fun at my being fat and made my vest into different props involving pillows (to fill the vest) and pizza.
Needless to say I wasn’t very fond of the vest, or the freshman for that matter, after that skit. I knew I was fat but I certainly didn’t visualize it like they portrayed it with the couch cushions and ordering of pizza. To me the vest was a great accessory that allowed me mentally to feel fashionable and somewhat thin. To others it was a plot device to highlight how fat I had become and poke fun at my bad eating habits.
I went home that holiday with very low self-esteem and pretty much ate myself into a comfort fat coma.
In hindsight I wish I had used that evening as a wakeup call. To get my butt moving and use my time at school to not only mentally prepare myself for life but to physically prepare myself as well. Unfortunately that wakeup call didn’t occur for another five years.
Do you have an inspirational fat vest or other article of clothing?
I’m really enjoying the book so far, even with these flashbacks. They’re giving me pause to really appreciate the journey I’m on and they’re motivating me that much more to make this a permanent lifestyle change. Check it out if you have time, it’s definitely a worthwhile read.
Food Indiscretions
I’ll just come out and say it … I didn’t make the best decisions this weekend in terms of food. Part of it was me giving into temptations and part of it was me being very tired. I also blame the fact that we didn’t shop for groceries until Sunday which meant the entire meal schedule for Saturday was made on the fly which historically I’ve a bad track record with. Sorry, I’m full of excuses right?
Well to start I had a great lower body workout on Saturday and followed it up with a tasty new Full Strength chocolate shake blended with some natural peanut butter. After that I made the bad food choices that while not horrendous certainly weren’t ideal. It started with a chopped pasta salad from Corner Bakery for lunch (~900 calories) and was followed with a Hobo Skillet (3 cheeses, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and sausage in a skillet @ ~1100 calories) for dinner. For some reason I was really craving breakfast for dinner so we all went to a local restaurant and that was what I gave into.
My total for the day was ~2800 calories which combined with the ~800 calories for my workout brought me to just a hair under my 2000 budget. While I was under budget I certainly failed my goal of eating solid all weekend and trying to make up my free meal calorie overage from Friday night.
Running Pain
On Sunday I got up early and knocked out my 2.5 mile goal for the Weekend Warrior Challenge. The running felt great but my feet were feeling a bit sore toward the end. I think part of it was running further than ever before and part of it was me still training my feet to run in these Vibram Five Fingers.
I followed the running with 10 minutes on the stationary bike and followed that up with some elliptical trainer. About 2 minutes into the elliptical I had to stop as my left foot was really seriously hurting. Turns out I has a nice size blister and a bruise on the bottom of my left foot … yikes!
I spent most of the rest of day limping around when I wasn’t wearing shoes. It actually felt better to wear shoes, believe it or not, because they were padded. After groceries, house cleaning, baby shopping, and cooking I finally called it a day.
While Sunday was much better than Saturday in terms of meals (we made some great healthy Spaghetti & Meatballs) I can’t help feeling like I failed my first challenge weekend. I did hit my running goal but it wasn’t without incident. This is two weekends in a row that my feet are hurting the day after running. I may just have to walk it for a while or maybe do intervals until I drop some more weight.
Anyhow, as for the scale goal I came in at 312.0 which is 0.6 pounds over my weight from last Wednesday. I don’t have my Saturday morning weight because it’s the morning after my free meal and it usually shoots up like 3-4 pounds all of which is usually gone by Monday. Friday morning my weight was around 312 as well. So in all my weight is about where I expected it though a bit high as Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are usually the days I see the scale go down each week.
Summing up my first challenge
In short I won’t call the weekend a failure as I did hit my running goal and my weight wasn’t way out of line. I do have regrets but that’s the point of the challenge isn’t it? To keep us accountable and striving to do better each and every weekend. The weekend is always a difficult time filled with temptations and speed bumps that constantly test our resolve. Ideally we’d all hit our goals but part of goal setting is failing and learning from those failures to set better goals and push yourself to new heights in the future.
I hope you had a better inaugural Warriors Weekend than I did, see you next weekend! Mine looks to be quite interesting with my daughters second birthday followed by a Monday delivery of my second child, *gulp*.
I wanted to send a shout out to my fellow inaugural Weekend Warriors. Best of luck hitting your goals!
- Carla from The Right Fit
- Lynne from Losing Lynne
- Steve from 265 and Falling
- Kat from Kat’s Adventures in Dietland
- Frank from Male Weight Loss Now
- Mac from Get Fit Slowly
- Andrew from Andrew is Getting Fit
- Karyn from Fitness Road Trip
- Josie from 35 and Shrinking
- Marissa from Fatty Slims Down
- Jeremy from Stellar Path
- Mike from SUB6
- Andrew from 100 Pounds in a Year
- Erin from Erin Takes Control
- Alissa from Gluten Free Pumpkins
- Craig from My Life, Take Eight
- Ryan from No More Bacon
- Chad from Reconstructing 30
- beej from Journey to Satisfaction
I’ve also set my own goals for the weekend as a part of the challenge. So far I’m on track but yesterday I consumed more calories than intended at my free meal so I have my work cut out. Everyone in the first Weekend Warrior Challenge has set some great goals … I was surprised how many are running and how far they are shooting for as well. They make my goals seem simpleton at best.
I hope your workouts went as well this week as mine did. They were very challenging and sweat inducing, that much I can tell ya. As you’ll see I’ve been favoring Circuit Training again this week. It may seem like I’m in a bit of a rut but I don’t think I am … yet. Because circuits are constantly changing during the entire routine my body is forced to adapt. Another thing to note is that I’ve been rotating through two different circuit routines and I’m investigating adding more, maybe even P90X soon.
This Past Week
Here’s what my workouts looked like this past week.
- Saturday, Morning (65 min)
- 15 min 1 rep max upper body weights, 25 min running on treadmill @ 5.0 mph, 5 min walking @ 3.0, 10 min stationary bike > 100 rpm, 10 min elliptical. It felt great to run again but that night my right shins were really sore and made it hard to walk. OH the joys of overweight running, am I right?
- Sunday, Morning (55 min)
- 25 min high resistance on the ARC trainer, 10 min stationary bike high resistance > 100 rpm, 10 min on Nortic Track incline trainer ~40% incline @ 2.5 – 3 mph. I wanted to run today but my shins were still bothering me so instead I pushed it on the ARC and tried the new incliner trainer, it was fun.
- Monday, Evening (40 min)
- 5 min warmup, 25 min circuit training, 10 min upper body circuits. I had a lot of trouble even working out tonight, I was in a lazy mood. Instead of giving up though, I thought of my Wednesday weigh-in and all of the progress I’ve made. That motivated me to move my butt and do the workout.
- Tuesday, Evening (35 min)
- 35 min of upper body weights. I did 6 sets of 12, 10, 8, 6 of one movement/body part to failure with <60 seconds of rest followed by a superset of 12, 12 of the same body part but a different movement with no rest between those sets. I did the entire upper body including chest, shoulders, back, triceps, and biceps.
- Wednesday, Morning (50 min)
- 5 min warmup, 45 min circuit training (6 exercises * ~30 seconds * repeat twice * 7 different circuits). I skipped the cool down as I was running a bit behind schedule.
- Thursday, Off Day
- Nada, zero, zippo exercise today.
- Friday, Morning (50 min)
- 5 min warmup followed by 45 min of circuit training. I really like working out on my free meal day. It makes me feel less guilty of that meal.
So I did pretty good this week … there were no major snafus in terms of workouts. I did have trouble hitting my running goal I set last week though (I wanted to run on Saturday and Sunday). Saturday went really well but as you can see Sunday my shins were really sore so rather than make them worse I decided to not push it. It wasn’t the kind of pain that required pushing through. It was the kind caused by overweight running stressing my body … I knew to not push it.
My other goal of the the 20/20/20 commercial exercises was half successful as in I did it about half of the time I was watching TV. Something is better than nothing right?
Goals for next week
Since I’m participating in the Weekend Warrior Challenge I’ve already set the goal of running 2.5 miles this weekend so there’s that.
I also want to set the goal of doing a hardcore lower body weight workout. I notice I’ve been favoring my upper body in the past few weeks. I use lower a lot in the circuit training but I don’t want to ignore the lower in terms of weight training. So I’m going to change-up one of my weekend weight training sessions to a hardcore lower body session.
That’s about it … have you set your fitness goals for next week?
I thought it would be helpful and fun to make a new blog entry every Friday about the things I learned or want others to learn in health & fitness. Things that’ve helped me through the week, month, or years. I’m calling it Learn(ed) Fitness Friday, or LFF for short.
So lets get to a few things that hit home for me this week.
- Constant change is good
- The past few weeks I’ve been constantly changing up my workouts. As a result my muscles are often sore, I’ve yet to be bored with my workouts, and I’ve had some really great losses every week (averaging over 3 pounds per week). Forcing those adaptation responses by your body by constantly confusing it really works.
- Don’t wait until you your in that rut to change your workouts. By that point you’ll already be frustrated, confused, and may even be ready to give up.
- Planning is your crutch
- This week was very busy at work and home … crazy deliverables on projects and preparing for our new sons arrival is quite draining. As a result I’ve been tired each and every night. I’ll be honest, it was hard enough working out. Had I not planned the meals and workouts for each day I’m certain I would have been forced to make some hard restaurant based decisions. That decreased temptation meant the healthy decisions I made by planning paid huge dividends.
- It takes time to get it right
- Finding that groove with any life change, especially losing weight and getting healthy, isn’t easy. For me it’s taken years of starting and restarting and restarting and restarting. Every time I’ve failed I’ve tried to learn something and adapt next time. Heck, over time I even made the same mistake multiple times. I’ve perfected failure, there I said it.
- Don’t be afraid of failing, it comes with the territory. If this was easy everyone would lose weight … heck, they’d never gain it in the first place right? Honestly … my failures were almost all due to not planning but it took many failed shortcuts to figure that out.
- Sometimes you need space
- I’ve failed so many times that I’ve grown tired of talking with my family and friends about it. I’m not embarrassed, seriously I’m not. I just need to live it before I want to share it this time. They know I’m working out and losing weight but I don’t think they understand my resolve this time around.
- Smoking stinks
- Last but not least, Charlotte had a rough week trying to exercise near a human smoke stack and lived to tell the story. If you smoke, please do us all a favor … nuke the clothes, take a shower before working out, or take the treadmill in the far corner.
“The difference between a rut and a grave is the depth” — Gerald Burrill
“Failing to plan is planning to fail” — Winston Churchill
“In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.” — Henry Miller
“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.” — Joseph Campbell
I hope those weren’t too cliché or simpleton. I know they could be seen as generic but they nevertheless were fundamental to helping me through the past few weeks.
If your interested in sharing some of the things you learned this week (or in the past) and want to participate in Learn(ed) Fitness Friday you can do any or all of the following:
- Post a Comment — Just drop on down below and post a comment on something you learned this week. As the list grows I’m going to post some of the best user lessons learned.
- Post on Twitter — Create a tweet using the tag #LFF sharing a lesson you learned. I’ll use some of the best tweets in my weekly post.
- Post on your Blog — On your own site just reference Learn(ed) Fitness Friday and link back to my site, preferably one of the LFF posts.
Did you learn something new this week? Share it with everyone and participate in Learn(ed) Fitness Friday.
