There's a spa downstairs in my office building and today William and I went down there and got 15 minute massages. It was a very interesting experience. First of all, my life is not really all about the touching. I don't really let people I know touch me very often, much less complete strangers. The other thing is, um, getting a massage kind of hurts like hell. I mean, it felt good afterwards, but during the massage my overriding thought was, "Dear GOD aren't you done yet?". But I was glad I did it...though my neck is tense again already...darnit.
I am really having trouble with the idea of not having a specific plan or diet or something that I'm working on. I feel the need for structure, but I know deep down that as soon as any structure is in place I will just rebel against it. These goals of mine just seem so insurmountable that I'm really having trouble remaining focused on them without some kind of reassurance that there is a specific end result and that it will take x amount of days to accomplish.
I have been working on this entry for over an hour now, just sitting here trying to figure out what to say about this whole situation. One thing that just occurred to me is that part of the issue is that I don't trust myself to continue to choose to take care of myself by exercising or eating well. I guess I feel like if I have a specific plan to follow then the decision is taken out of my hands...or at least it's simpler. It becomes a decision between complying and not complying rather than taking care of myself or not taking care of myself. I think this merits a whole lot more thought....I'll write more on it tomorrow.
One great thing T said to me today was that I don't have to think about the big picture all the time...that it can just be about what I am going to do TODAY. Very true. I am going to try my hardest to do something great for myself today. I'll tell you tomorrow how it went.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
An epiphany
I finally get it. I finally understand how I work, why a million and one diets and exercise plans have failed, why I have the body I have.
Over the past two weeks, I have been putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself. My training schedule has me working out at least five days a week, swimming and running, and when I miss a workout I feel really, really guilty. The bottom line is, this isn't really very much fun anymore, since I feel like I am always failing. Last night, when I went home, I felt tired and crappy and was really letting myself have it for not working out the day before. I tried really hard to get to the bottom of these feelings and why I was putting so much pressure on myself and it finally, finally dawned on me: this whole thing is MY choice. It's up to ME to decide if I want to run, swim, bike, roller skate, skydive, or anything else. I've got to give myself every opportunity to get out there and be active, but it's not helping for me to feel bad if I decide not to. Less than a month ago, my life consisted basically of work and the sofa. It is going to take time to transition to a more active lifestyle, and I can take as long as I need to get there. I have been spending so much time just living in the moment and only thinking three or four steps ahead, to finally look up and realize that my life is stretching before me like a long, long road is incredibly freeing and fantastic. Yesterday I finally felt, just for a second, like my life and its direction was actually about what I wanted, not what someone else said I should want. It was a fabulous feeling.
So I'm going to change my goals again. I'm going to make it my goal to work out at least three times a week, running, swimming, or whatever. No big plan, just whatever I feel like that day. Once I get used to that idea and it feels like a more natural part of my routine, I can think about setting other goals. Right now, the most important thing to me is to integrate physical activity into my life and make it something I actually want to do instead of something I feel like I should do. It's the same idea as the food thing, you know. Yesterday, without even thinking about what a pain in the ass it was to cook something instead of ordering in, I thought about what I wanted to eat, went into the kitchen, and made myself dinner (scrambled eggs, black beans, corn, salsa and sour cream wrapped up in a multigrain tortilla. so good!). I enjoyed the whole experience a great deal because I felt like I was taking care of myself and listening to what I really wanted instead of just eating something "good" or "healthy" or "easy".
I'm definitely still going to do the 5k though. Tomorrow I'm going to map out a 3.1 mile route in the neighborhood and go walk it so I know what walking that distance feels like and how long it takes. Once I know what that is like, I can work on reducing my time so I can stop worrying about being the last one to cross the finish line.
So I feel mostly great with a little apprehension around the edges. It is very hard to trust yourself to make the right decisions, since everything we're told from day 1 is about how we don't have the willpower or self control or good sense to make our own decisions which is why someone else (parents, advertising, government) needs to make them for us. But the bottom line is, all of those diets and plans failed because I didn't feel like they were really my idea...like I was really in charge. Those of you who know me well know that I can have a bit of rebellious streak, so it should come as no surprise that I regularly rebel against control, even when I'm the one who is exerting the control in the first place.
Over the past two weeks, I have been putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself. My training schedule has me working out at least five days a week, swimming and running, and when I miss a workout I feel really, really guilty. The bottom line is, this isn't really very much fun anymore, since I feel like I am always failing. Last night, when I went home, I felt tired and crappy and was really letting myself have it for not working out the day before. I tried really hard to get to the bottom of these feelings and why I was putting so much pressure on myself and it finally, finally dawned on me: this whole thing is MY choice. It's up to ME to decide if I want to run, swim, bike, roller skate, skydive, or anything else. I've got to give myself every opportunity to get out there and be active, but it's not helping for me to feel bad if I decide not to. Less than a month ago, my life consisted basically of work and the sofa. It is going to take time to transition to a more active lifestyle, and I can take as long as I need to get there. I have been spending so much time just living in the moment and only thinking three or four steps ahead, to finally look up and realize that my life is stretching before me like a long, long road is incredibly freeing and fantastic. Yesterday I finally felt, just for a second, like my life and its direction was actually about what I wanted, not what someone else said I should want. It was a fabulous feeling.
So I'm going to change my goals again. I'm going to make it my goal to work out at least three times a week, running, swimming, or whatever. No big plan, just whatever I feel like that day. Once I get used to that idea and it feels like a more natural part of my routine, I can think about setting other goals. Right now, the most important thing to me is to integrate physical activity into my life and make it something I actually want to do instead of something I feel like I should do. It's the same idea as the food thing, you know. Yesterday, without even thinking about what a pain in the ass it was to cook something instead of ordering in, I thought about what I wanted to eat, went into the kitchen, and made myself dinner (scrambled eggs, black beans, corn, salsa and sour cream wrapped up in a multigrain tortilla. so good!). I enjoyed the whole experience a great deal because I felt like I was taking care of myself and listening to what I really wanted instead of just eating something "good" or "healthy" or "easy".
I'm definitely still going to do the 5k though. Tomorrow I'm going to map out a 3.1 mile route in the neighborhood and go walk it so I know what walking that distance feels like and how long it takes. Once I know what that is like, I can work on reducing my time so I can stop worrying about being the last one to cross the finish line.
So I feel mostly great with a little apprehension around the edges. It is very hard to trust yourself to make the right decisions, since everything we're told from day 1 is about how we don't have the willpower or self control or good sense to make our own decisions which is why someone else (parents, advertising, government) needs to make them for us. But the bottom line is, all of those diets and plans failed because I didn't feel like they were really my idea...like I was really in charge. Those of you who know me well know that I can have a bit of rebellious streak, so it should come as no surprise that I regularly rebel against control, even when I'm the one who is exerting the control in the first place.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
I walk funny
Okay, so first of all, I am proud of myself today because even though I have been sooo tired lately, I managed to get myself out the door and walk my usual park loop. I have been feeling kind of run down for the past few days, so I was really tempted to just fall into bed and take a nap. Instead, I made a deal with myself: "I'm just going to put on my walking gear and my sneakers and if I still want to just sit on the sofa, then that's what I'll do." It seems like such a small thing, just changing your clothes, but it really did get me moving out the door and down the street. I made a second deal with myself that I was just going to get started and do my warmup, and that got me to the park, around the loop, and back home. It was fantastic, and I got to feel proud of the effort I made instead of disappointed that I hadn't done anything at all (though since I promised myself, I definitely need to work on not being disappointed, even if I only put my walking gear on and sit on the sofa).
The thing that was weird about my workout, though, was that I realized during it that I am not walking right. I have been dealing with this achilles tendon soreness for weeks now and I think I finally realized that a problem in my stride is causing it. Once I realized this about myself, I tried to pay attention to how I normally walk, and it seems like my left leg does most of the work and then when I step on my right foot, it's at a weird angle that puts a lot of pressure on the far right heel part of my foot. I concentrated for a while on walking with both feet straight, heel-toe like in marching band, pushing off of the balls of my feet, and I started to feel fatigue in muscles I didn't even know I had! I wonder if the weird alignment of my legs and feet when I'm walking has anything to do with how ineffectual my flutter kick is when I'm swimming. I'm thinking about getting a pair of fins to train myself to kick better, btw.
So anyway, I searched online for some advice about the proper walking form, and it turns out that there are a lot more parts of my body working when I'm walking than just my legs and feet. Apparently it helps a lot to have a strong back and strong abdominal muscles so you can maintain good posture while you're walking. There is a great page on runnersworld.com that outlines some strength-building exercises for walkers, so I may try some of them next time I walk.
Sometimes I feel like this is getting so complicated...like I need to bring a little notebook with me or something that has all of the things I have to remember about walking, running, or swimming written down. I guess I should give myself a break. I'm trying to learn to do a whole lot of new things all at once...it makes sense that there is a learning curve.
In walking gear news, I finally got my replacement pair of awesome walking shorts in the mail, and they are super-cool, but may be a little too big for me already. Maybe I'll hold onto the pair that was too small since I will most likely shrink into them. It's only a size or two. Also, I went to The Apple Store in Pioneer Square Mall yesterday and bought myself my very own shiny green iPod Shuffle! I already love it so much, it is ridiculous. It is so teeny tiny and it just clips to my sweater when I am commuting or to my t-shirt when I'm walking. So unobtrusive, so fabulous! At first I thought I was going to have to buy all of the music I wanted to put on it from iTunes and I ended up spending 45 bucks last night on music, but today I found an application called Tunebite that will take the music I download from Napster to Go and rerecord it in a format that will work on my iPod. It actually works, and is legal, which is a good thing. Boy, I wish I had figured that out before I spent my 45 bucks!
Things are just okay at work lately. I find that my workload tends to not be as continuous as I would like and a lot of what I am doing depends on responses from other people, so I find that I have more time on my hands than I am comfortable with. I suspect that uneven distribution of workload is an issue in our department anyway, so maybe I'll see if I can figure out a good way to deal with that. I really don't like feeling like a slackass because I'm waiting for partners to respond to my emails and my colleagues are working like mad to get hardware out the door. Maybe I just need to stop being afraid of looking stupid and help the hardware guys out some more. Hmm...
Tomorrow it's more swimming! I'll keep you posted...:)
The thing that was weird about my workout, though, was that I realized during it that I am not walking right. I have been dealing with this achilles tendon soreness for weeks now and I think I finally realized that a problem in my stride is causing it. Once I realized this about myself, I tried to pay attention to how I normally walk, and it seems like my left leg does most of the work and then when I step on my right foot, it's at a weird angle that puts a lot of pressure on the far right heel part of my foot. I concentrated for a while on walking with both feet straight, heel-toe like in marching band, pushing off of the balls of my feet, and I started to feel fatigue in muscles I didn't even know I had! I wonder if the weird alignment of my legs and feet when I'm walking has anything to do with how ineffectual my flutter kick is when I'm swimming. I'm thinking about getting a pair of fins to train myself to kick better, btw.
So anyway, I searched online for some advice about the proper walking form, and it turns out that there are a lot more parts of my body working when I'm walking than just my legs and feet. Apparently it helps a lot to have a strong back and strong abdominal muscles so you can maintain good posture while you're walking. There is a great page on runnersworld.com that outlines some strength-building exercises for walkers, so I may try some of them next time I walk.
Sometimes I feel like this is getting so complicated...like I need to bring a little notebook with me or something that has all of the things I have to remember about walking, running, or swimming written down. I guess I should give myself a break. I'm trying to learn to do a whole lot of new things all at once...it makes sense that there is a learning curve.
In walking gear news, I finally got my replacement pair of awesome walking shorts in the mail, and they are super-cool, but may be a little too big for me already. Maybe I'll hold onto the pair that was too small since I will most likely shrink into them. It's only a size or two. Also, I went to The Apple Store in Pioneer Square Mall yesterday and bought myself my very own shiny green iPod Shuffle! I already love it so much, it is ridiculous. It is so teeny tiny and it just clips to my sweater when I am commuting or to my t-shirt when I'm walking. So unobtrusive, so fabulous! At first I thought I was going to have to buy all of the music I wanted to put on it from iTunes and I ended up spending 45 bucks last night on music, but today I found an application called Tunebite that will take the music I download from Napster to Go and rerecord it in a format that will work on my iPod. It actually works, and is legal, which is a good thing. Boy, I wish I had figured that out before I spent my 45 bucks!
Things are just okay at work lately. I find that my workload tends to not be as continuous as I would like and a lot of what I am doing depends on responses from other people, so I find that I have more time on my hands than I am comfortable with. I suspect that uneven distribution of workload is an issue in our department anyway, so maybe I'll see if I can figure out a good way to deal with that. I really don't like feeling like a slackass because I'm waiting for partners to respond to my emails and my colleagues are working like mad to get hardware out the door. Maybe I just need to stop being afraid of looking stupid and help the hardware guys out some more. Hmm...
Tomorrow it's more swimming! I'll keep you posted...:)
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