I love this image from an Asics postcard I got in my SWAG bag for the SLC 5K. She’s titled Sadness:
It’s like running (or any strenuous exercise) gives you a mental shower, washing away all the negative emotions and feelings. I’ve felt that effect before, but I have never depended on exercise to provide a release. I am still using food when I am feeling bad. It’s time I got into the habit of going out for a run or bike ride every time I feel like turning to food when I’m not hungry.
Every time I get out of the habit of eating healthy and exercising, I go back to the basics. I make a list of all the things I want to accomplish every day and give myself a star each time I do it. Seeing the stars pile up is really motivating to me and helps me get back into healthy living. Inside, I’m just a little eight year old girl who desperately wants approval. Aren’t we all?
It’s a HORRIBLE clunky, program that is barely usable, so I’m not recommending it, but it DOES give me that satisfaction of seeing those virtual stars for each habit that I am working toward.
The awkward interface of Touch Goal isn’t my problem. Even keeping my goals isn’t a problem. The problem that I have is that I KNOW that in two months, when everything feels natural and I think I’ve assimilated my new habits into my life, I’ll stop giving myself stars (or in the case of Touch Goal, little green dots).
I’ll continue with my good habits for about a month and then something will happen. Maybe I’ll go out of town. Maybe I’ll get really sick. Maybe I’ll injure myself and can’t run anymore. Whatever happens isn’t the cause, but the effect will be that I will totally lose my good habits and I’ll have to start all over again after a weight gain, negating everything that I achieved while developing my new habits.
This isn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is a cycle that I have noticed in myself over the last few years and I don’t know how to break it. I’ve had good habits for two weeks now, so I only have about six weeks before I stop giving myself kudos for keeping up with my good habits.
This really seems like a no-brainer. “Duh, Laura! Don’t stop giving yourself stars!”
Yeah, I thought of that one, thank you. Keeping up with the stars is easy enough to do, but somehow it falls by the wayside.
Maybe I need to make of habit of praising myself for a job well done…
Since I am working on my habits, my goal every day is a minimum of exercise. My goal is miniscule. All I require of myself is to walk one single mile every day. It has to be conscious exercise, not the walking accumulated by my regular activities. It needs to be time spent exercising, but all I have to do is one mile.
It’s a hilariously small requirement, but it’s the hardest for me to do each day. I procrastinate it every morning. Most days I put on my gym clothes and then proceed to do everything EXCEPT exercise.
The other day I read this quote. I’m pretty sure it’s a misquote because I can’t find a proper attribution, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
— Mark Twain
Apparently, my live frog is exercise. If I can do it first thing in the morning, then I feel better the rest of the day. My live frog could have been eating healthy oils or planning my meals, but for me, I procrastinate exercising more than anything else.
The next time you’re feeling frustrated with your healthy lifestyle, sit down and think about your own live frog. Is it writing down everything you eat? Is it planning healthy meals? Is it working all your vegetables into your diet? Whatever it is, conquer it as early in the day as possible and the rest of your day will go much smoother.
I had an epiphany the other day. I have been struggling with my eating and exercise. I will get everything in order and start exercising again. Then I’ll have to go out of town on a trip and I’ll forget everything I’ve learned because I get out of the habit.
I realized that habits are like baby animals. They are very delicate and it’s surprisingly easy to kill them. It takes only a few days of neglect and they die on me and I have to start again. I imagined my habits for healthy eating to be like a fuzzy weeple-like animal and I suddenly felt guilty for all of those I have killed over the last year.
If I had an ACTUAL baby animal who was depending on me to keep it alive, there is no way that I would leave it alone in the house while I went out of town. I would defer my trip, find someone to take care of it, or bring it with me.
Since habits can’t be sent to the kennel and I’m not willing to put my life on hold until I get to goal weight, I guess I’m going to have to take this baby animal habit pet with me when I go out of town again. If I think of my habits as a defenseless baby animal who needs to be nurtured and cared for constantly, what would I do differently?
Find a hotel that will allow me to have my pet: If I had a puppy that I had to take with me on my trip, I would need to find a hotel that allowed dogs. The same is true for new habits. I need to make sure that the hotel has an exercise room and a fridge in my room for healthy snacks and meals.
Take care of my pet EVERY day no matter what: Just because I’m out of town doesn’t mean that my habits should suffer. I wouldn’t allow my puppy to go without attention all day. I need to give just as much attention to my new habits as I would a helpless puppy.
Provide special food for my pet: I wouldn’t expect the hotel breakfast to have the proper food for a newborn puppy. Why do I expect it to have it for my healthy diet? The truth of the matter is that it’s possible to eat healthy at most complimentary hotel breakfasts, but depending on them to provide me with the food I need is just as stupid as expecting a hotel to have puppy chow on hand.
Make sure my pet has fresh water: I don’t know why I tend to skimp on drinking water when I’m out of town, but I continually find myself thirsty and parched. I can’t even imagine leaving a small animal without fresh water. Why do I do it to myself?
Imagining my newborn habits as a baby animal has made me more aware at how stupid I have been over the last year. I have allowed countless habits die of neglect and I have brushed each of their deaths off as “falling off the wagon.” If each of those habits had been a hamster, I would feel like a serial killer by now, but I’ve let them die with hardly a thought.
I always knew that nurturing my new habits was more difficult when I was traveling. Now, I have a visual representation of why it’s harder and what I need to do to keep my precious little ones alive while I’m out of town.
For the next few weeks every Monday, I’ll share a playlist of songs that I have in my Workout Playlist on my iPhone. I’ll include clips to listen to, where you can buy them and why I have them in my list. Just so you know, I do get a portion of the sales of these songs from Amazon, so if you buy them, you’re helping me out.
Get Up! (Before The Night Is Over) by Technotronic: I love this song at the beginning of my workout because those first few steps, I’m really tempted to just quit. I’m still close to home and I could just turn around. This song tells me to “get up and move that body” so many times that I just keep running, even if I’m feeling like going back home.
Sound Of Letting Go by David Guetta – Tocadisco – Chris Willis: This song has a great beat and it starts out with the phrase, “This is the point of no return because this is where we crash and burn. And now every time I face this pain, I can hear it coming back again. It’s the sound of letting go.” I know this song is about breaking up, but sometimes I just need to let go of my images of my old self. Sometimes I need to break up with the person I used to be.
Naturally by Selena Gomez and The Scene: The catchiness of this song is a given, but I love the idea of exercising coming naturally. I like to think that I’ll eventually become the kind of person for whom “everything comes naturally.”
Growing Pains by La Roux: This song reminds me that I am changing and I might run into stumbling blocks on the way. “Oh, I make mistakes and you just say it’s growing pains. When I feel ashamed you tell me it’s just growing pains.” Instead of continuing a binge, I can stop myself, put this song on my iPod and take a quick walk around the neighborhood.
I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas: I absolutely love this song. It has been playing EVERYWHERE, but despite the repetition, I still love this song. Will.i.am is telling me over and over that tonight is going to be a good night. Sometimes I need that kind of positive reinforcement. Fergie tells me that when I feel stressed out and I wanna let it go, that I should go way out and space out. Plus, this is the first pop song to use the phrase “mazel tov” since The Fiddler on the Roof Soundtrack.
You Da Boss by SkinnySongs: “This is your conscience talkin’. You don’t need that piece of pie. Gotta let it go pass you by.” This week’s song from Skinny Songs is a reminder that I’m in charge, not the food. I like to sit down and listen to this song when I’m tempted to eat, but I also keep it in my workout mix to remind myself of why I’m exercising. I’m the boss of my body, too.
Knock You Down by Keri Hilson: I know this song is talking about love, but there are a ton of other things that can knock me down on this journey. The chorus says, “Just get back up when it knocks you down.” I remember this when I slip up with food.
If Today Was Your Last Day by Nickelback: If today was my last day, I would eat all the food I ever wanted to eat. THAT is the kind of thinking that makes me binge because I deny myself when I don’t need to. Why should I hold off on my life until my last day? Every day, I try to eat something that I would have wanted to eat on my last day so that I don’t feel neglected. I work it into my caloric restrictions and I live every day like it was my last. Oh, and there’s all that other positive stuff that Nickelback says in this song.
Runaway by Cher: This song starts with the words, “Nobody said it would be easy. Nobody gives you guarantees.” It’s okay if exercise isn’t easy. It’s not supposed to be. If it were easy, EVERYBODY would have a hard body. Keep working and don’t focus on perfection. Cher continually singing for me to “run away” keeps me running when I want to walk and there is NO better motivation than Cher looking as awesome as she does in her sixties!
Listen to the clips for these songs. If you find just one song this week that motivates you to exercise, then buy it and make it your powersong when you’re working out this week. I bet you’ll find that you’re more willing to get your butt to the gym and your workouts are easier.
“Yeah. That wind is WAY too cold for a bike ride.”
“I guess I’ll walk on the treadmill tonight.”
“No, let’s just go outside for a quick walk.”
After much complaining, I got him to put on his coat and brave the icy wind and dandruffy snow for a walk by the lake.
“It’s bloody cold.”
“Yeah, but it’s pretty.”
We found ourselves in the lee of a hill, so the wind abated, but the sun tucked itself behind the clouds, keeping it cold. I pointed at the sky in awe.
“If we didn’t go for this walk, we wouldn’t be able to see that.”
At the end of December, Weight Watchers started including little magazine handouts at every meeting. This year’s New Year’s Resolution that I set was to attend Weight Watchers EVERY week so I could collect all of the handouts.
It’s funny how something as simple as a little paper handout can get my butt into the Weight Watchers door. The desire to “collect all 52” is so strong that I actually have attended meetings in Las Vegas and Del Mar already this year. Even though it was a pain in the butt to find a meeting in a unfamiliar city, I made sure that I attended my meetings.
Ironically, just getting my body into the door helps me every week. They always have something motivating to talk about and even if I HATE the teacher in the other towns, the members have stories that have kept me going.
I know Weight Watchers doesn’t work for everyone and I certainly accept that their program isn’t PERFECT, but attending the meetings every week has kept my motivation level far higher than it was last year at this time. And I can thank those weekly handouts for it all.
Everything You Know Is Wrong by Weird Al Yankovic: This song is kind of silly and the verses sing about everything EXCEPT working out (unless you count the Almighty running past your room in heaven). The chorus, however, reminds me that sometimes I believe things that aren’t true. If I’m feeling like I can’t finish my workout, listening to this song is really good at showing me that I might be wrong.
Apparently, this concept is new and can be a revelation to some. Here is a TED Talk about this very idea from Derek Sivers:
Derek Sivers, TED Talk: Weird, or just different? Nov 2009
It’s the truth. Everything you know is wrong. If you think diets don’t work, then you’re wrong. If you think exercise makes you hungry, then you’re wrong. If you think your diet is the perfect one for everybody, then you’re wrong. If you think hard exercise is the best way to lose weight, then you’re wrong. No matter what you think about diet and fitness, you’re wrong. There is always someone out there who does well on a wacky diet. There is always someone out there who reacts to exercise differently. We are such a diverse species that there is a way for everything to work and there is a way for everything to fail.
You need to find what works for you and keep doing it until it doesn’t work anymore and then start the process all over again.
The next time that you feel like you can’t follow your diet anymore, repeat to yourself, “Everything you know is wrong.” The next time you feel like you are going to stop your workout before it’s finished, repeat to yourself, “Everything you know is wrong.” Make it your mantra any time that little voice inside your head is telling you that you cannot do something and you’ll find out all the different ways you have been wrong your entire life.
For the next few weeks every Monday, I’ll share a playlist of songs that I have in my Workout Playlist on my iPhone. I’ll include clips to listen to, where you can buy them and why I have them in my list. Just so you know, I do get a portion of the sales of these songs from Amazon, so if you buy them, you’re helping me out.
Shining Light by Annie Lennox: This is a great warmup song. I like to think that maybe someone thinks this about me. I love the lyrics, “You are a force, you are a constant source, yeah you are a shining light.” When I’m starting my workout, I like to listen to this song to get me ready to work hard.
Move It Like This by Baha Men: This song is so fun that I just can’t help but run a little harder on the treadmill when I hear it. I know they are talking about dancing, but it makes me want to do better.
Everybody But Me by Lykke Li: This song reminds me how hard it can be to be fat and want to have fun with everyone, but you don’t. “Everybody’s dancing. I don’t want to. Everybody’s joking. I don’t want to. Everybody’s laughing. I don’t want to. Everybody but me.” Pushing past that anxiety has been the most helpful thing I’ve done for myself and my health.
Beautiful by Moby: If Lykke Li reminds me of how being fat can be, Moby wrote this song to make me feel beautiful. I prefer the Benni Benassi remix, but this one has the same lyrics and upbeat mood.
Working Overtime by New Order: This song reminds me that if I concentrate on work so much that I neglect myself that I’ll be like the guy in this song. It’s alright to take an hour a day to exercise. It’s worth it.
Think I’ll Go To Saks by SkinnySongs: I love this song. I’ve never been able to shop at the expensive stores like Saks or Neiman Marcus because those clothes just never came in my size. I love the idea of being able to try on the clothes in those stores, feel them fit me perfectly and just not buy them.
With Every Heartbeat – with Kleerup by Robyn: This song has a great beat to run to, but I really love the lyrics. “So I don’t look back/ Still I’m dying with every step I take/ But I don’t look back/ Just a little, little bit better” It doesn’t hurt that it has the word heartbeat in the lyrics, so it reminds me that it’s okay to hear my heart pump a little harder.
Movement In Still Life by Bt: “Dance to the beat! Shuffle my feet!” I don’t know why songs that tell me to dance get me running, but they work every time.
Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush: This is a great cooldown song. I really like how she tells him to keep going, “Don’t give up because you have friends. Don’t give up, you’re not beaten yet. Don’t give up, I know you can make it good.”
Listen to the clips for these songs. If you find just one song this week that motivates you to exercise, then buy it and make it your powersong when you’re working out this week. I bet you’ll find that you’re more willing to get your butt to the gym and your workouts are easier.
This postcard from PostSecret gave me a new motivation to get fit and thin.
It reads:
I often wonder if I’ve ever been caught in an obesity news segment.
The thought of seeing myself on the news as an example of the obesity epidemic made my stomach turn. I know they have the right to film people in public and show them on television as long as they don’t show their faces, but it just seems cruel and wrong to me.
It’s just one of the those reasons for me to get my butt on the treadmill every day. If eating healthy and exercising every day is what I have to do to keep myself from that embarrassment, then I’m ready and willing to do it.
PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.
Buy Walking Videos
I had an epiphany the other day. I have been struggling with my eating and exercise. I will get everything in order and start exercising again. Then I’ll have to go out of town on a trip and I’ll forget everything I’ve learned because I get out of the habit.
It’s the truth. Everything you know is wrong. If you think diets don’t work, then you’re wrong. If you think exercise makes you hungry, then you’re wrong. If you think your diet is the perfect one for everybody, then you’re wrong. If you think hard exercise is the best way to lose weight, then you’re wrong. No matter what you think about diet and fitness, you’re wrong. There is always someone out there who does well on a wacky diet. There is always someone out there who reacts to exercise differently. We are such a diverse species that there is a way for everything to work and there is a way for everything to fail.