I found this motivational poster and it really made me nod my head.
It reads:
You will get a lot more compliments for working out than you will for sleeping in.
It’s true and that might be a great motivation for some people. Here are a couple more iterations of the idea.
The truth of the matter is, I am pretty uncomfortable when I receive compliments, especially about my body. At the same time, I CRAVE them. It’s a strange dichotomy that I really need to work in my mind because the longer I maintain this loss and the closer I get to the weight the government thinks I should weigh, the more compliments I’m going to get.
This is one of those things I haven’t figured out yet. I crave compliments, but at the same time, I am uncomfortable when I get them. I brush them off, feeling that I don’t deserve them. A friend of mine the other day said that I was looking svelte and I literally waved it away and said, “No.” I want to impress people and at the same time, I am tremendously unwilling to take any compliments I receive.
This is insanity and I’m sure if I had a better self-esteem, it wouldn’t be a problem. I just don’t know how to get one of them self-esteem things.
The burpee is a full body exercise used in strength training and as an aerobic exercise. The basic movement is performed in four steps and known as a “four-count burpee”:
Begin in a standing position.
Drop into a squat position with your hands on the ground. (count 1)
Kick your feet back, while keeping your arms extended. (count 2)
Immediately return your feet to the squat position. (count 3)
Jump up from the squat position (count 4)
It is so much easier to SEE it, like with this animated GIF from Nike Women:
After watching this for a little while, I feel as if I could do a burpee or two. This is intense exercise that I have never been able to keep up for more than one day. I wonder what would happen if I tried.
Seventy pounds. I have lost seventy pounds and have stayed here for a few months. I still have thirty pounds to go to get to the weight that the government thinks I should weight. I don’t know if I will ever get there, but I do know that my weight loss has stalled and slowed down to a crawl.
And then I realized that I was expecting a change without making one.
I have lost these seventy pounds by limiting my calories without regard to the health of food. I know restricting my food has caused binges in the past, but ADDING healthy food into my plan never did.
When I dropped Weight Watchers for the last time, I dropped their healthy ideas as well. That eight glasses of water and five fruits and veggies a day checklist. THAT was a good thing for me. Why did I drop that?
It’s time for me to add those checklists back into my daily routine. They HELPED me eat healthier. They helped me stay away from unhealthy food. It’s time I made another change to my routine in order to see a change in myself.
I really loved to play DDR and really worked my butt off playing it years ago. Dealing with dance pads that kept breaking after only a month or so of play, however, just killed my love for that game. With Kinect, however, there is no dance pad taking a pounding. The camera just watches me dance and gives me a score based on how well I did. For the first time in years, I’m exergaming again and I LOVE IT!
I wrote that entry, played a few more times and then stopped playing and fell into a pit of depression and bingeing.
I’m out of the pit and I thought I would fire up the game to play again. I needed to get 30 minutes of exercise to register on my Apple Watch and walking the dog just wasn’t doing it. I’ve been playing for four days in a row now and I STILL love that game. The funny thing is, if you never bought the games back then, you’re in luck, because they are WAY cheaper to buy now.
There is an Xbox One version of the game that is available for download if you have already moved on to the new console. There is also the Just Dance 2015 game that I’ve never tried. Considering how happy I am with the old 360 version, I’m in no mood to upgrade. I just find it funny that I STILL love that game, despite all that I have went through.
The weird thing is that I read her book, Believe It, Be It: How Being the Biggest Loser Won Me Back My Life, and I never talked about it here, despite LOVING it. I find it so strange when there is something that has really helped me and I somehow forgot to mention it on this blog. This book is one of those things.
Ali Vincent is still very active and has her own website here:
The whole point of the entry is that exercise equipment hasn’t changed much in the last fifty years. For the last fifty years, our population has only been getting FATTER, so don’t bother buying any of those exercise machines that are available today because they won’t help you.
After I wrote that entry, I promptly spent the next hour researching stretchy fitness bands on Amazon and YouTube. I found the best resistance band exercises video. It’s short, simple and shows you the proper form for ten exercises.
I found an awesome printable poster for exercises for resistance bands from FitnessHealth.co.uk that you can just fold up and put in your traveling case.
I had JUST written an article about how simple exercises like yoga and walking have helped me way more than intense exercises like weight training and running. I had just written an article about not letting the health and fitness industry steal your money and here I was SERIOUSLY considering dropping the thirty bucks to get this resistance band set: BalanceFrom Heavy Duty Premium Resistance Band Kit with Improved Safe Door Anchor, Ankle Strap and Carrying Case at Amazon.com. Despite the fact that I ALREADY own a resistance band set!
I realize now that my disease took over a little bit at that point.
The sad truth of the matter is: my eating disorder loves to fantasize about exercising. Ever since the age of ten, I was told that if I just exercised that I wouldn’t be fat anymore. If I wasn’t so lazy, I wouldn’t be fat.
It was a lie I believed. It’s a lie that I still catch myself believing, even though I know what has helped me and what has hindered me.
After YEARS of research on my own body, here is what I KNOW for a fact:
Weight training makes me binge
Running makes me binge
Skipping meals makes me binge
Stuffing down my feelings, instead of dealing with them in a healthy manner, makes me binge.
Yet, I’m still tempted to weight train, run, skip meals to “save calories for later,” and just ignore my feelings. I keep catching myself thinking:
This time, I won’t train so hard
This time, I will only run a little bit
This time I will be able to keep my food under control
This time my feelings aren’t that big of a deal
“This time” isn’t going to be like “last time.” That is probably the biggest lie I say to myself: “This time, I’ll be able to do it.” Just like the alcoholic who tells himself that this time he will just have one drink.
My eating disorder loves to fantasize about exercise just as much as an alcoholic loves to fantasize about being able to drink moderately. It’s a fantasy that I need to discard and accept the fact that exercise will not make me thin. It will just make me binge.
Retrospace had a post about Argos Catalogues from Great Britain which was pretty much just about looking at half-naked women, but one page really caught my eye. It was the page from the Health and Fitness section of the catalogue.
There are some fairly typical things, like these weights and springs. The springs have been replaced by plastic stretchy cords in a variety of colors, but this equipment is still available today.
Even these body weight machines are still available today. Companies have slapped the word “Pilates” on the label, but other than that, they’re still the same. I talked about that here:
Even the stationary bicycles are still around. They look different, but they are still something that is recommended for losing weight.
The thing that bothers me is that we have been doing this for over fifty YEARS and we are just getting fatter. Don’t waste your money on the new versions of these products, they are just as silly as the old ones. Exercise can make you stronger. Exercise will help your heart, but I have never lost weight from exercising. In fact, it just made me hungrier. Don’t let them steal your money. Take a walk outside for twenty minutes a day and save yourself money and grief.
For me, that means CONSISTENCY. I need to do a little bit of exercise EVERY DAY NO MATTER WHAT. I do twenty minutes of something every day. Sometimes that’s walking the dog or doing a yoga video. Sometimes that’s weight training or running. Sometimes that’s just riding my bike to the grocery store. It doesn’t need to be go hard or go home. It needs to be GO EVERY DAY.
The next time you’re thinking of skipping your workout, remember this quote. Let us live in the harness, striving mightily!
While walking around Daybreak, I found this in the Rio Tinto parking lot.
It says:
Park Here To Walk Farther and Be Healthier
It was on the outskirts of their employee parking lot and I thought it was genius. This is one of the MANY tips that are thrown out to help you lose weight that never worked for me. It wasn’t that I needed more exercise. It wasn’t that I was eating too many calories. Both of those things needed to change before I could lose weight, but they weren’t the problem.
The problem wasn’t the food. The problem was WHY I wanted to eat the food.
The problem wasn’t the lack of exercise. The problem was WHY I couldn’t get off the couch.
I had been to therapy to take care of my mind. I had been to Weight Watchers and the gym to take care of my body, but I was missing ONE important piece of the puzzle.
My spirit.
It’s mind, body AND spirit that makes a whole person. As Overeater’s Anonymous says it, Emotional, Physical and Spiritual. I needed meditation. I need spiritual experiences. I needed a daily dose of monoamine neurotransmitters to combat the desire to eat more food and lie on the couch like a slug. It wasn’t until that spiritual aspect of my program was added that I started to make progress.
When I meditate, eating healthy is easier. When I meditate, getting out to take the dog for a walk is easier. When I meditate, the thought of parking at the far end of the parking lot no longer sounds like a punishment.
I appreciate the sentiment on the Rio Tinto parking lot, but spray-painted admonishments never helped me. What helped me was sitting STILL and getting my brain to release those feel good chemicals for fifteen minutes every day. How ironic is that?
Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.
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