turning bad energy around

I’ve picked myself up and made a decision this week to start my health journey…again.  I’ve gained 12 pounds since returning to work in November.  I have abandoned clean eating habits. I have agreed to take on more than I can reasonably handle in my job and let the stress manifest itself through bad eating and skipping gym work outs. I wrote previously about being in a rut and not knowing how to turn all the negative energy I had running through my system around.  There are a few things I’ve done this month to make that change:

• In my new job, I find myself responsible for my organization’s wellness program. What a great fit for me!  We currently have our annual wellness event going on right now and it has included a health clinic for employees where you can sign up to have your blood pressure, cholesterol, and BMI measured.  I have never had my cholesterol levels calculated and to my surprise my total cholesterol is high! Whaaaat? I thought I ate pretty decently but maybe it’s time to look at changing my diet with the goal of lowering my cholesterol—a new challenge!  Also, sadly my BMI is back in the “overweight” range.  Again, whaaaaaaat?  That’s not ok with me. So I’m using this experience to kick start better eating.
• I attended a unique coaching course as part of my professional development through my job where we learned how to use art and sketching to coach clients. While this was meant to be a train the trainer course, I used my own issues about not being successful in losing weight and moving past that focus in my life. I was brutally honest about myself with my fellow course participants, and they helped me articulate what the problems really are, and what I need to do about it. I left that course having a lot more clarity.  Basically I realized I am really hard on myself. I am goal driven to the point of being handicapped by my goals—I get really focused and go all out. When I don’t make my goals I just give up out of frustration.  I also put words to why I feel so devastated about going back to work from maternity leave: my current line of work is not in alignment with my personal values anymore. My values have shifted since having kids.  And it’s important to me to align what I do for a living with what I value. So now that I have pinpointed what’s at the root of my unhappiness these days, I need to go about resolving that.
• It was recommended to me after getting my high cholesterol numbers that I should get a nutrition coach.  I’m all about coaching!  And it’s a free 12 week program that is offered through my organization. I am signing up for this next week. I also set up a meeting with another performance coach to talk about aligning my work with my personal values.
• This month I also made a decision to cut back on working in the evenings and weekends.  A lot of it is unavoidable.  But I am going to push back when clients ask for deadlines that have me working until midnight most nights. It’s not worth my health and weight loss goals. The briefing note coming a day later will not bring down the sky. 
• I’m sticking with my run clinic. I’m running my 4^th half marathon at the end of May, and have trained my way through a hip injury this winter. I can run 16K in just over 90 minutes.  Getting back into running after an injury has been an important exercise in discipline.

I’m recommitting to making 2014 my year to hitting my goal weight.  That is my primary goal this year, and I’ve been pushing it aside until now.

how it really feels to finish mat leave and go back to work

I wrote this post a month ago and chose not to share it with anyone. But how I felt a month is important to acknowledge so I have decided to share now. Things have changed for me since I wrote this and I will update very soon!

I will be blunt.  I am not in a good place right now.  I have not written a blog post for four months because I know it is going to force me to articulate some uncomfortable thoughts I’ve had recently going on in my life.  Time to write no matter what space I’m in. I remember the last words in my blog were something about being excited about what lay ahead now that my year on mat leave was coming to an end. Truth be told, I was not excited at all but thought, “maybe if I say it, I’ll believe it.”

I had no idea how heartbreaking it would be to return to work. For the first two weeks, I had tears streaming down my face as I entered my office building.  I would be wiping them off my face as the elevator opened to my floor, telling myself  "get it the F*** together already!"-- so mad that I was this upset about something that every other working mom does.  I am not a crier and I pride myself on being really strong. But this time, heading back to work felt wrong on many levels.

Suddenly there is almost no time for just me.  I’ve gone from working out 6 days a week to 3-4 times a week. My eating habits are BAD—not enough water, too much sugar and carbs, way too much caffeine.  I work almost every evening (a few times until 3am) and weekends, just to be ready for the next day. Truly this is not by choice—I took on a new job with high expectations and it has sucked every free hour out of me for the last 2 months.  I get 6 hours of sleep a night if I’m lucky. I am still getting over a sinus infection I picked up at Christmas—worst ‘cold’ in my life. I had to see a specialist about a hip injury caused from running this fall, and was told not to run for 2 months, and when I could start again I can only do it twice a week.  Running used to be my sanity regulator and with that stripped away it was the last straw.  It’s like everything fell apart between November and now: my body, my good habits, my focus, my happiness. I am on the verge of losing it every day—I cannot keep going on like this.

So here it is, March 1^st, and I find myself 10 pounds heavier than when I finished mat leave in November.  My clothes are tight…why did I work so hard last year just to gain all this weight back?  For the first time in 3 years I’ve thought about not showing up to the gym because why bother, I’m destined to be fat for the rest of my life.   My brain knows all the things I need to do to pull myself out of this rut: take one day at a time. Just show up to the gym.  Pick one thing for the week like drinking 3L water a day and just focus on one small change. Make sure I have healthy food in the fridge so I can make good choices. Blah blah blah.  I just feel so defeated I don’t even know how I can start doing these things again.

Ok. There ends the doom and gloom.  I may feel like the universe is hammering me from all directions, but really, I'm very much contained within the first world problems realm.  I do have one super amazing piece of news that has happened since returning to work.  Along with 2 other amazing women, I ‘won’ my gym’s ambassador challenge for 2014, meaning BDHQ picked me and 2 other women they believe in to be ambassadors for them and in exchange, I get free classes and personal training at both their locations  all year long. here we are at 730am on a Saturday morning about to get our butts kicked at bootcamp...

 I have no excuse—2014 is my year – the year I hit my goal weight, get super fit, and connect to the awesome BDHQ community. I love love love this challenge and I really am up for it. It’s time to face my biggest fear, which is never successfully losing weight and reaching my health goals.  Time to stop victimizing myself and overthinking everything, and just get it done.

in the last days of mat leave

There is a little bit of sadness this week as I do things in my year-long routine for the last time.  There is no regret, just sadness that this amazing year is coming to a close. 

I teared up today as I put Liam back into his car seat after our last outing together.  Every Wednesday for this past year, I have gathered up both kids and all their stuff and taken them on an adventure.  Sometimes it’s to the soul sucking indoor playground, but most of the time it’s been some sort of outdoor adventure.  “That’s it, Liam,” I said today as we got into the truck and drove away.  He had a little pout on his face and it broke my heart a little bit to think that at the same time a week from now I will be in some sort of office attire in a cubicle while he is in daycare. 

today was our last Wednesday adventure all together, out and about the town

almost every Wednesday included my good friend and her kids. here we are last week on our last big group adventure

On Monday I ran for the last time with Alex in the stroller. Every Monday for 9 months we have run the same route. When I started in January I could only run for 4 minutes at a time and did about 6k.  Now we do a little over 10k in under an hour.  As usual he napped and I listened to the rhythm of my footsteps plodding along the galloping goose and practiced just being in this beautiful moment. It was sunny and 15 degrees. People paddling kayaks, walking dogs, all the industrial activity across the inlet going full speed. Yes, this was just our morning jog but the fact that we did it in rain, wind storms, 30 degree heat, without fail on Monday mornings made it meaningful this last time.  

 

Tuesday was my last class of BDHQ’s baby bootcamp.  What an odd feeling to know this is it. Of course I will continue to work out and stay in touch with the friends I have made there but the breaking of a comfortable, healthy habit is kind of hard. 

 

These last three days have defined what my mat leave was all about – being really disciplined about doing something with the boys outside every day, learning to take care of myself as much as I took care of a new little life, bonding with my 3-year-old and meeting him on his active terms, and always challenging myself to ensure the routine didn’t get mundane, whether that was running faster or longer, finding a new adventure on which to take the boys, or whatever made sense to get better.

 I am thinking about why this year was so amazing, and in short, it’s because I worked hard to make it and perceive it that way.  I don’t think happiness happens to a person; you work on having an attitude that makes good thing happen in your life and deals effectively with the bad things that come your way. On my first maternity leave I returned to school to finish my masters when Liam was 4 months old.  I basically just survived—it was all about getting him down for a nap so I could study or finish an assignment.  In retrospect, it was not a healthy situation at all.  This time around I gave myself a major attitude adjustment.  I feel like a different person because of it.  I decided this year that I want to live my life with integrity and give out the most positive energy I can to others. I can get really wrapped up in achieving goals, and come across as really serious, sometimes a bit too judgemental and critical of others and myself.  I started thinking about how I could look for the best in everyone I met. How I could leave them better off when we parted ways. I decided to live in the present moment, not live for some future time (when I’d be thinner, happier, less tired, etc.).  I chose to be thankful for being tired, because it meant that I had children in the first place, and that I was able to take care of them.  I learned that when you intentionally set about your positive attitude, you acquire one.
Here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to Alex shortly after he was born.  It sums up how I feel about bringing my boys into the world and why it is so hard to tear yourself away from them a year later.

"We found out through an ultrasound you were definitely a boy. I thought, 'Ok, I will be living with 3 boys for the rest of my life and I better get on board with being the only girl in the house from now on!'  But the moment you were born and they handed you to me, I loved you so fiercely I could not imagine having just had any other child but you. I have my two beautiful and precious sons and your dad, and that’s all I need. You were perfect, and those were my first words after you were born. The moment your baby is born is what your dad and I call one of the 'heaviest' moments in a person’s life—heavy with emotions like joy, excitement, relief, fear, curiosity... Alex, I would do all of this all over again to have you. I really believe God picked you to belong to us and I wouldn’t want it any other way.   My heart grew a bit bigger the day you were born. I can only imagine what we are going to go through together on life’s journey, and whatever it brings, and whenever you are reading this, please know that I have loved you since literally day one!"

And so ends this chapter.  But like all things it means a beginning of something else, and I am excited to see what next week brings.

losing 10 pounds the wrong way

My stomach is eating itself right now.  Each day for the past four days I’ve eaten about 500 calories, drank 3 to 4L of water, and worked out in an attempt to drop 5 pounds.  I entered my gym’s 10 pound challenge 8 weeks ago, and the final weigh in is tomorrow morning.  If I don’t make it, I lose the $150 I used to enter the challenge. If I weigh 10 pounds less than I did 8 weeks ago, I get my money back plus the cash of anyone else who entered the challenge and didn’t make it.  As of right now I have 2 pounds to cut…basically by dehydrating myself.  I know my intentions going into this were good—I wanted to lose 10 more pounds before finishing my year of maternity leave, weighing less than I did before getting pregnant.  It started out well; halfway through these 8 weeks I was down 5 pounds, having lost the weight in a healthy way.  Then came the week of the half marathon.  I don’t know what it is about running long distances but anxiety plus the need to store energy for the run means eating lots and lots of carbs.  Then race day happened. Most of you reading this know that I ran my little heart out—and made my goal of finishing 21K in less than 2 hours. 1 hour, 57 minutes and 5 seconds to be exact.  I lost 4 pounds that day, just from sweating.  Then, my body went into a weird mode of gaining a bunch of weight, I guess because I needed to heal and it was storing energy to do that.  So here we are today…I am starving on purpose. It’s on my mind about every 5 minutes.  I know this is crazy and I am being stupid. Here are my lessons learned from this experience:

1)      When I set a goal and commit to it, I do it at all costs. This can be a good thing and a bad thing! Next time I set weight loss goals they will NOT be tied to money.

2)      Starving yourself is hard work and takes discipline.  Some people might be proud that they look good because of the discipline they employed in not eating. But wouldn't you rather put in the hard work doing something healthy and fun? From experience, I know it is WAY more fun to run a half marathon than under eat. 

3)      I promise you, I will never do this again!

32 days left of mat leave

It’s been quite the summer.  For whatever reason I've fallen out of writing each week in my blog.  It's not because I don't have anything to say! Part of it is because my iPhone camera got water damaged and I have been waiting for some updated photos to put in my blog. But from now on no more excuses; writing is healthy for me and I am back on it!

Today marks the last month I will be on maternity leave.  I have been really struggling with the upcoming adjustment in my head.  I have loved this year raising my boys.  I enjoyed my first mat leave but the stress of having a baby the first time around was so much greater and my eagerness to return to work and socialize with adults was a lot greater.  Perhaps it's because I know I am not going to be on maternity leave ever again and that this chapter in my life is closing. Perhaps it's a lot of things, but what I do know is I'm starting to spin in circles in my head thinking about the 4 weeks I have left, and how to make the most of them.  I can feel a big crying session is brewing inside me but it’s not ready to happen until I can articulate why.  I think part of it is knowing that for the rest of my sons' lives, they will be spending the majority of their days, year after year, with someone else.  A daycare, a school, friends, etc.  This is the only year in their lives that I get to spend with them for the majority of their waking hours and it's sad! Heartbreaking actually.  I will miss my Monday morning run with Alex in his stroller, which I have done for 9 months along the same path without fail.  I will miss my Wednesday trips to the park or the beach with Liam and Alex to visit their little friends and visit with my very good friend. I will really miss baby bootcamp and the wonderful people who are part of that community. But it's a choice we made that I need to return to work so I will "put on my big girl pants" as they say, and deal with it. 

So, with about 32 days to go before I return to work, I am in reflective mode on what I've done for myself this past year as well.  It's easy to start falling into a self-deprecating game. A little bit of being hard on yourself can be good motivation, but today I feel like being good to myself. I've done a lot if I think about it.   I am proud of the fact that I will have completed two half marathons while on maternity leave.  I ran a very hilly 20K last weekend in under 2 hours and didn’t even feel sore the next day.   This is the best quote I came across recently that describes how I feel about running:

 

And, I am proud that I shed all the pregnancy weight before returning to work. Today, I am comfortably back into my pre-pregnancy clothes, a size 8.  I don’t have to buy bigger back-to-work clothes.  AND, I am really proud that I lost weight the healthy way and am much stronger (physically) for it.  Perhaps the most important achievement has been acting on my words that my journey is never over.  I am not stopping now just because I achieved some major health goals.  I want to be in the best shape I've ever been when I turn 35, and in even better shape when I turn 36, etc. etc.  Why should I accept anything less than excellence for my health, right?   I just came across the picture below, taken at my heaviest, the week I walked into my gym, BDHQ, and started to change my life in 2011.  I cannot believe that is me.  That is humiliating and embarrassing and I've thought long and hard about whether I want to share these with anyone.  But I also find it inspiring that this is soooooo not me today, and it never will be again!

 

August 2011

October 2013 (30 pounds less)

 

 

p.s. As an exercise in being open about my weight loss journey, I agreed to be the subject of my gym’s blog today.  As I read what they posted my mouth was dry, I was so nervous.  But I think the right thing to do is tell you about it and let you decide if you want to read about my goals here for the rest of the year.

success on vacation!

For the past 8 days I have been away from home visiting family.  I have never gone on vacation and lost weight (or even maintained weight) because I feel as though I’ve earned the right to let everything I do with rigid precision at home go. Well, this time I am pleased to report a 3 pound weight loss, an hour or more of workouts 6 out of the 8 days, and most importantly, some learning about myself and what I am capable of doing if I set my mind to it.

Just thinking “wouldn’t it be nice if I ate healthy food and exercised every day while I'm away?” is not enough to actually get it done.  I told everyone I was visiting (my parents, sister and cousin) what my intentions were and asked them for some support.  I asked my sister to map me a running route around her house in Toronto so I could keep up with my half marathon training, where we are running 14K at this point.  I thought ahead about the fact that I would be travelling yesterday when our second 14K run was scheduled, so I decided to do it 2 days earlier in Winnipeg. Big thanks to my cousin who drove me around the Assiniboine River and showed me an 8K running path the night before.  My brother-in-law was teaching a hot yoga class in Toronto last week and I decided I’d try it out, plus run home afterwards (2.5 hours of exercise that day!).  I asked my bootcamp instructor, Trish, to help keep me accountable and she emailed me 3 different bootcamp exercises I could do anywhere (hotel room, park, etc.). I must admit it was a little awkward doing random plyometric exercises near a playground in Toronto while curious parents and their kids stared at me and Alex, but really who cares, I had to get it done. I basically woke up every morning, tied my hair in a ponytail, got into my workout clothes, and told myself I would have to earn my coffee, breakfast, and hot shower before any of that was going to happen (thank you Michele Shorter for planting that seed in my head!).  I also vowed I would not eat after I had dinner, and it was pretty easy given I was in a hotel room with no kitchen for most of the days.  I used the time I had to run to clear my head, practice being in the moment and appreciating little things like a perfectly placed/timed water fountain I came across in Toronto while I was lost running through some random neighborhood with no water bottle, and a beautiful little community garden along Churchill Drive in Winnipeg and the smell of this combination of vegetables and flowers that reminded me of my grandma’s garden in Rainy River.  I decided to play a little game with myself and say “hi, good morning” to every single person I passed on my 14K runs.  People in Winnipeg were all about it. Some people in Toronto were not but I know it’s because they weren’t expecting it. I felt great all day knowing I’d gotten my workouts out of the way in the morning and it made me want to eat healthy so I wouldn’t ruin the progress I’d just made.  I learned that if you do a bit of pre-planning it is really easy to lose weight on vacation, or at least not lose progress you’ve made at home.

I was so grateful for this opportunity to meet my new nephew, Jesse, who is named after my grandma Jessie who passed away last fall.  I was so grateful to be able to travel on to Winnipeg for a family wedding and catch up with family who I’d last seen under the sad circumstances of my grandma’s funeral. It was an important part of my grieving process to come back and celebrate a happy occasion with these same people. And through all of these joyful moments, it was nice not to feel gross and guilty (from bad eating and no exercise).



my first 14K run - from Willowdale and Sheppard to Yonge and Eglinton and back.  It included some rather long hills like this one, but no big deal thanks to run clinic hill training!

At my cousin's wedding--the dress fits!

 after the yoga class I attended that my brother in law taught. I realize my posture is totally wrong but if you can get past this and appreciate I was about to run 9K after an almost 90 min class, I'd be grateful!

Glendora Park in Toronto--I would run to this park (30min) every day and then do another 30min of bootcamp

this week’s goal: lose weight on vacation

Vacations for me have always meant eating in excess, indulging in every food that is not part of the Canada Food Guide’s 4 food groups, and packing tons of workout clothes only to wear them once (or not at all).  Tomorrow I head across the country to visit family for 8 days.  I’ve worked way too hard on both eating clean and exercising 6 days a week to let it all go. I want to step on that scale when I return home and see brand new numbers I’ve not seen for over a year.  So to try to set myself up for success, I have already asked my sister to find me a 14K route in Toronto to run this weekend as part of my half marathon training.  I also asked my bootcamp trainer to send me a list of things I can do in a hotel gym every day and I committed to running the hotel stairs on one of my days.  I also told my friend I would email her every day after my workouts and to expect news from me daily about what I’ve done.  I’ve never done this much thinking ahead about how to stay in shape on vacation so this will be a little experiment.

I have to say, this week I have felt amazing.  Finally, 3 weeks of working out 6 days a week, drinking 3L of water a day and some serious carbohydrate cutting are paying off.  I’m down 4 pounds in 3 weeks which is an indicator of things heading in the right direction, but what is even better is feeling so much more energetic.  Usually at bootcamp or run clinic when I hear, “let’s run up the side of this mountain…for the 6^th time!” I think, “Oh God, I can’t, I’m about to pass out.”  I don’t know if any of you have run or worked out to the point of tears where all the voices in your head that tell you you’re tired, you can’t do this, etc. come out and you feel like you are losing this whole battle to be in great shape. It’s happened to me twice this past month where I was surprised to find myself crying at the same time I was gasping for air.  This week, oddly enough, I’ve been thinking, “Ok, I can do this, I am totally going to kill it.” And I feel as though I have. Something is changing in my head about what I’m capable of doing and I feel awesome. So interesting how a person’s mindset, combined with good nutrition, being well hydrated and in a pattern of regular exercise contributes to success. 

new mindset!