Today was the day of the team challenge of our body challenge. It's held at Mt. Trashmore, which locals know is literally a "mountain" made of trash that has then been covered and made pretty. Most of the workout is like our regular group workouts. We work in groups and do 5 minutes doing various exercises working arms, abs, legs and chest. After 4 (?) weeks, this is still very difficult for me. And this brought me to my blog post today.
I've thought of a lot of different reasons that I'm motivated to do this, especially this week. As I posted earlier, I was having problems getting on track. I was pretty frustrated with myself. And was feeling pretty down about my prospects of being able to move forward.
But then on Thursday, I was able to do 40 minutes on the elliptical at an average stride per minute of 103. Friday I finished 45 minutes on the dreadmill, and kept that at an average pace of 3.6 mph... And then I had one of my most motivating things happen. The pants I wore were a bit too big and were drooping to mid-thigh. I noted this but didn't think too much of it when I lef the house. That was because when I lef the house I wasn't walking 3.6 miles per hour -- much less trying to jog a bit. About mid-way through my workout I realized that my thighs were rubbing together so much that I was sustaining the equivalent of a fairly significant rug burn. And that was mid-way through. I pushed through and managed to finish my workout, but I spent the rest of the day walking like I had been horseback riding for a bit too long.
Big motivation -- get thighs small enough to never have to deal with this again!
Then come back to today and the challenge at Mt. Trashmore. On our interval, the wanted us to run (ha!) up the hill and then come back down... backwards! I was already slightly mortified in previous intervals when the other people in my group were lapping me, but this was so much more mortifying... I couldn't run, I could barely walk. At one point I joked I needed a walker! And then coming down backwards? One of the trainers helped me most of the way down and the second time -- I didn't even go all the way to the top (I got a hall pass in the interest of keeping things moving apparently) and even then as I was backing down people who had been to the top were lapping me coming back down. I really wanted to die of shame.
Big motivation #2 -- get in shape enough to keep up with the pack!
Which of course the work that goes into #1 will help with #2.
As you know, I constantly struggle with this delicate balancing act of forgiving myself for not being able to do more and still pushing to move forward. I still don't know when I'm just stopping because I'm lazy or because I really should be stopping. And how can anyone know that? I can't find the exact post, but Ms. Bitchcakes once said that your brain is going to want to quit long before your body needs to. (For anyone who doesn't know this, this woman was one of the biggest motivators in my deciding to blog about my weight loss journey. She has the awesomest, shiniest blog like ever!) And that's the thing -- the biggest motivator -- I would LOVE to be the maniac. Like one of the trainers this morning who was so go, go, go that we all wanted to simultaneously kill her and BE her at the same time. It's a twisted thing. But that's not something I can expect to happen overnight. And it's not something that's going to happen without tons of work.
And I'm not there yet. I'm still working on becoming the me I want to be. But look how far I've already come, right??
I can work out for 30-40 minutes at a time without puking. By their scales, (which is another post) I have lost 13 pounds. I'm getting up most mornings and working out before I go to work. I'm eating better than I ever have in my life. I've gone from drinking most nights to confining my wino-ism to the weekends -- and then mostly just Saturday. My jeans fit out of the dryer.
And that's only a couple of months into my transformation. Aren't you excited to see what the year is going to bring??
Have a great weekend!
Hugs,
Heather
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