Goals for the week

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Quote du jour: Of the blessings set before you, make your choice and be content.
- Samuel Johnson

Finally, finally, I finished the damn project.
Out of morbid curiosity, I went back and looked at what I'd blogged when I last worked on this project.

The last time, I wrote the following:

I need to change my behavior when chaos reigns around me. I tend to get resentful, which is natural but unhelpful. My work comes at the process, after a long line of other people's jobs, and if other people take longer than expected, the pressure is on me to complete the job on schedule even if that means working late hours and going short on sleep. Geez. I can't even describe it without resentment coming into the paragraph. That needs to change.

It's depressing to look back and see the cycle repeating itself time after time. Saying "that needs to change" is all very well, but what change to make? I need a plan.

Right now, of course, I need to de-stress to the point where I can make plans. The first goal is to unwind. I'm still steamed about stuff. I keep re-hashing arguments in my mind and re-living the stress -- why? Does it do any damn good? Of course not. I'm trying various ways to unwind:

Friday, I tried chocolate therapy, shopping therapy, pinot noir therapy, and early-to-bed therapy. I know I should've tried exercise therapy, but I was wound up so tightly that all I wanted to do was curl up in the fetal position and whimper, which does not lend itself to exercising.

Saturday, I tried elliptical therapy and weed-pulling therapy. Would've worked, too, if I hadn't had a couple cups of coffee. I was thinking it would give me energy to attack the weeds, but instead it just made me panicky.

Today, I figure gardening therapy is indicated. And kitchen cleaning therapy. I think cleaning therapy should do the trick. There's great benefit getting your life in order from the outside in.

Next week, I need to start figuring out how I can change the cycle.

Site du jour: Cammy, from the Tippy Toe Diet blog, has a post about how the New Improved Cammy deals with stress without derailing her balanced lifestyle

Four goals for the week:

• Spend 15 minutes a day reading Your money or your life.


• In the morning, before I do anything else, a minimum of 15 minutes on the elliptical, in addition to any walking, cycling, or other exercise I do that day.


• Devote 15 minutes a day to attacking some cleaning project.
  


• In the evening, spend at least 15 minutes doing yoga. That seemed to work last time.

Hate your job... there's a support group for that

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The whole point of this blog was that I should document my fight with my inner slug and how I vanquished it to achieve my ultimate goal of Fitness and World Domination.* What it's turned into, this past month, is a battle between Me and the Evil Bosses At Work. And by "evil", I mean people who have different priorities than I have. (Doesn't sound as dramatic that way, but it's true. They're not evil. They are -- some of them -- not seeing the whole picture.)

I took the weekend off.

Yes, that's what I wrote. I did not work this weekend.

That makes two weekends in a row that I did not work -- after about 4 months of working every weekend. The last three weeks, I worked every night until about 10 p.m., trying to make an unreasonable deadline. Now that it's passed, and I've been publicly outed for having Held The Project Back, for some reason people have started thinking that this is a good moment to start throwing in every kitchen-sink improvement to the documentation that they can come up with -- but if that holds back making the deadline, why, that's the fault of the tech writer.

Good thing I'm not feeling cranky. Or at least not unreasonably cranky. Or at least not extremely unreasonably cranky. Something like that.

I think there comes a time, after working 12-15 hour days for several weeks, where you get cranky as all hell and start writing blog posts about how unfair life is. That doesn't really accomplish much in the way of a productive result. What I've decided to start doing is setting limits. I do not want to work more than 10 hours a day, and I do not want to work more than 2 weekends in a row. I want to do a good job, but if that means sacrificing every part of the rest of my life including sleep, then I think that the powers that be need to reconsider their project.

There. I said it.

Exercise du jour: Hell. If I get a 1-mile walk at lunch, I will call it a victory. And I will give myself a gold star. I like the idea of setting for myself a goal that I might actually reach.

Well, I managed half a mile. Still a semi-victory.


*Um... that is, domination of the world I inhabit. I tend to the belief that we all inhabit our own separate worlds, spheres that orbit the same general sun yet which hold some radically divergent life experiences. Oh crap, I'm getting metaphysical again, aren't I? Sorry. I try to refrain from that sort of thing in public.

Ouch... that puts things into perspective

Quote du jour: The bad things seem minuscule and irrelevant to me now. They are firmly in perspective now. In fact, my main regret is that I worried as much as I did.
- Jo from the Life in Windermere blog.
(Her previous post mentioned that she'd decided to give up on the chemo treatments.)

What the hell am I bitchin' about exercise for? Or anything else, for that matter?

Exercise du jour: 2 miles jogging
Done. Finally. Better late than not at all.

Logic can take you to some pretty strange places

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I've been thinking. Always dangerous when that happens.

I've noticed that what Theresa said was true: simply doing the dishes is a way of organizing the universe, or at least the part of the universe that is within my circle of experiencing. Leaving all the counters and the sink clean at the end of the day, as the Fly Lady suggests, is a way of making sure that when I stumble out of my bedroom in the morning, my environment sends vibes of 'neat,' 'organized,' and 'in control' to my waking subconscious.

On the other hand, maybe this cleaning and organizing of my kitchen/life/world is futile and doomed. I mean, unless all the laws of Physics are wrong (and those Physics professors always sounded way too sure of themselves) then the universe by its nature goes from organization to chaos. So isn't cleaning my kitchen an unnatural act?

Exercise du jour: Speaking of unnatural acts, the goal is to drag my sleepy self out of my warm cozy bed and do 30 minutes on the exercise cycle before heading into work after coming home from work.
Done! Finally. The exercise cycle doesn't give the same feeling of getting somewhere while you pedal, but it is still a good alternative to the road on a dark and stormy night.

Sleep depraved

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Almost through the worst of the work situation. If I weren't so tired, I'd be done by now. I'm going slower and slower, which is dragging things out. Which is frustrating.

Exercise du jour: Walked 3-1/2 miles today.
Done!



Silver lining du jour: Alas, the walking was all done in the rain, which wasn't that much fun, but on the other hand I got to see the most beautiful rainbow ever created. I mean, this thing was huge, looked like it was a mile away, dramatically situated against a dark background. People on the street were pointing. I saw three drivers pull over to the side of the road so they could get out and take pictures. It was that dramatic.

Look, I didn't have my camera with me. Just imagine it, okay? Trust me. Worth imagining.

Weight Loss through Brain Washing

Depressing: to come across a spreadsheet from last year and recall that I'd lost weight then too. And then gained it back again. I let myself get fat when I wasn't looking.

Well, screw that. I'll just let myself get thin while I'm paying attention to other things, like the exercise du jour.

Anti-depressing: to realize that before the March Madness work overload, I went below the lowest low of last year. Maybe I'm getting better with practice. Sure hope so.

I look at the posts from January and February, and I marvel at how focused I was on exercising and eating right. That Merry was in many ways a different person from the one typing these words. A thinner one, for instance.

The first step now is to get my mind back into the Do Good mindset. I'm going to go back and read all those diet&nutrition books that I read before. My taste buds are currently on the fast&fattening setting. Taste bud settings can be influenced by the brain. Eventually.

If I read book after book after book about how good vegetables are for me, the mind will get the picture, and pass the message along to the taste buds. Not quickly, but it will happen. Eventually.

Exercise du jour: I promised a friend that I'd return her Billy What's-his-name Tae Bo DVD on Monday. Which means I need to try it out.

Note: Picture originally published on CrankyFitness.com. Used by permission. (Well, I gave myself permission to use it 'cause I made it in the first place. But anyone else should check with Crabby McSlacker first.)

Forget willpower, give me habit

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Little things really do add up.

Fr'instance, if I eat a piece of Saturated Fat, it is so much easier to have that glass of wine or chocolate eclair. On the other hand, if I do my scheduled run, it is much easier (alas, not "so much") to do the next scheduled run.

Success builds on itself, just as failure does. Alas, failure has gravity on its side: it's so much easier to fail than it is to succeed. At least, it is until I pound it into my brain and my body, over and over again, that I will exercise and I will eat right. Then habit, the body's love of the familiar routine, takes over and keeps me going.

Give me habit over willpower any day.

Of course, right now I'd settle for either. Have you seen my motivation anywhere? Could've sworn I had it a few weeks ago. I just put it down somewhere...

Exercise du jour: 4.5 miles jogging
FAIL. I did try. Ended up walking 3 miles instead. Will try again Sunday.

I want patience -- now! That or a magic wand.

The trouble with this whole 'getting fit' business is that you're trying to feel your way blindly. You don't get the satisfaction of seeing immediate results when you make good decisions. You know that -- in theory -- eating right and exercising will get you where you want to go. But theory takes a long time to translate into reality.

If I could just do One Thing that would make me fit, I would do it. But even though I'm doing several right things (exercise, keeping within the plan), it'll be months before I can look back and see "Yes, that helped... and that... and not having that second piece of cake, yes..." Right now all I see is the deprivation, and all I feel is the sweat and the ache. I want to skip all the boring middle stuff and get right to the end already.

I see little changes: I'm fitting into a smaller pant size, my face looks a bit thinner. I lost several pounds in a week, then I gained half of it back (then lost half of that again). Damn it, Jim, I want to see a big change already!

Yes, I know that's silly. Even people who get gastric band surgery still have to face the task of getting used to eating less and dealing with all the side effects of the surgery. There's no magic wand. But right now I really wish there were.

Exercise du jour: Jog 3 miles
Done! Slowly. Actually, since speed is relative and I was the only one around running, it was pretty damn fast. That's my story, anyway.

Hating math, but in love with numbers

Word du jour: Lassitude -- the attitude of a collie after little Timmy falls into the well for the 20th time. "Honestly, that kid needs to learn to swim already."

Alternate definitions:

1.	weariness of body or mind from strain, oppressive climate, etc.; lack of energy; listlessness; languor.

2.	a condition of indolent indifference: the pleasant lassitude of the warm summer afternoon.

-from dictionary.com

The legs are feeling a bit of the old lassitude today, and it is hard to set aside my pre-determined schedule to let my legs have an extra rest day.

I hate math, but I've fallen in love with numbers. I want to see the numbers on the sidebar go up and the numbers on the scale go down. I'm like a miser gloating over her hoard of choice numbers, going back to look at them again later and feel smug.

Silly woman, to value numbers over this body that's faithfully carried me around all these years.

Exercise du jour: Yoga. Maybe with a hot bath afterward.

Lassie photo courtesy:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacobwhittaker/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

It's working! Thank you all!

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I get it now. This blogging stuff really does work.

Working out is starting to become a habit. (Well, jogging and walking are getting to feel like habits. Cycling... I need to work on that.) Blogging my exercise six days a week has been a great way to motivate myself into actually doing the workout. I mean, I know you haven't been sitting here reading my blog every day, but for all I know you might be looking. Which is enough motivation to make me feel too guilty to not try working out. Thank you.

So... um... are you charging for this?

Next week: work on cycling more.

Site du jour: Hilary from The Smitten Image kindly pointed me to the Haitian Earthquake Support Center, which lets people help even if they don't have money to donate.

Exercise du jour: Walk to/from the Max, and of course the all-important hour-long walk at lunch.
Done! Well, more or less. I'd say more. I only walked 2-1/2 miles, but those tendons were being cranky and my stomach decided to get upset as well, and considering the way the day's gone I'd say 2-1/2 miles is a victory. I take my victories where I find them, thankyouverymuch.

Tomorrow is another week

Quote du jour: God has entrusted me with myself.
- Epictetus

Okay, this was a week of whining and whinging and working and wimpitude. I have decided that I do not like this week. Therefore, I have decided that this week did not happen. I hereby wipe it out from time and memory. Tomorrow is another week. Or something like that.

Hello Wall

I think I’ve just hit the wall.

Walls are hard. Never appreciated that before.

The arms were a bit sore on Monday from Sunday’s push up test. After Monday’s push ups I … was… very… sore…

How do you know when a workout is too much?

After the fact, generally.

And the push up challenges get harder next session. I’ll probably be repeating the 5th week.

Even drove my car to work today. Felt really odd driving to work. Now that I think about it, I've gone about two months without relying on the evilSUV to get me to my job. I used to drive every day without a second thought, and now it feels weird. This is good.

On the plus side, did the Presidential challenge thingie. According to them, even as I am now my push up fitness is in the 90th percentile, meaning that 90% of people can’t do as many push ups in a minute.

On the downside, I hazarded a guess at my aerobic fitness, and the P.C. sniffed that I was in the 5th percentile, i.e. 95% of the people out there can do 1.5 miles faster than I can. Probably true. I wish my foot would get better so I could run trudge again. It does seem to be improving, just slowly. Like the rest of my body. Just my luck. I've got a turbo-charged sense of impatience in a barely-faster-than-slug body.

Photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Could be worse

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Taking the day off exercising, mostly because a headache suddenly came up.

Haven't lost any weight in the last three days, despite the fact that I've done 5 hours of cardio in that period of time.

On the other hand, haven't gained weight either. (Gained and lost 2 pounds last week, which threw off my totals.) It could be worse.

Last week's totals:
Avg. minutes/day exercising: 80
Avg. weight change: +.06

On the down side, I just did 22 full push ups. Which means, according to the 100 push ups website, that I can go back to week 4 column 2. Wah. Don' wanna.

I've decided to compromise with my inner slug and do week 4, column 1.