Charting Moods for my Own Sanity

I can't remember exactly how many times I have figured this out, but writing out my negativity, my pissy moods, my frustrations, my anxieties, etc always helps. It might help a little, just to get it out of my head, but any time that I finally just feel crushed and write EVERYTHING down and REALLY pay attention to how I'm feeling??? Complete change.

Seriously, this "Mood Monster" has been going on for too long! 

Really?  Another MAJOR Mood Monster!?!?

Add to that a kick ass workout and I'm wonnnderful. Say what you will about chicks who lift weights, but this shit makes me feel fantastic. EVEN THOUGH I had a gimpy knee and couldn't do all of my workout (had to supplement with other things), I STILL left feeling pumped up. I may end up being one of those buff chicks, because the "afterglow" is AWESOME.  Anyway, we came home and I wasn't even beating myself up over the gimpy knee, the cold shower because the kids used all the hot water didn't even piss me off, and I sat on our couch with Patrick and just wanted to cuddle, talk and be close (WHAT????  Where did THAT come from?  I don't give a shit... just took advantage while I could!)

So, forgive my pissy writings, I'll try to mostly keep them to myself, but sheesh... I feel awesome.

(And yes, I've been diagnosed as bipolar before)

I woke up this morning and my first thought was, "I feel WONDERFUL!  What did I DO???  I must JOURNAL EVERY DAY!"

And no, I don't have the dedication or desire to be THIS buff (although I wouldn't mind a bit, its not my goal), but this woman, Dana Linn Bailey is hot as hell for some reason. And she reminds me of P!nk for yet another reason. In part, I think its just the personality and attitude... but there is something.  

Charting Moods & Meltdowns

**Language Warning... 

So I decided to pay really close attention to my moods for a while, to chart what I eat (and when) what supplements I take (and when) and note my mood/frame of mind every few hours. It has seemed like I've been on a HUGE rollercoaster lately, and since I have no way of testing ANYTHING without money and really without insurance, I only have my own observations to depend on.

I swear, JUST the act of writing down how I'm feeling and paying close attention to my moods seems to help them stabilize. Maybe it makes me feel less crazy?? I don't know.

I just made a little chart thing in google drive:

Anyway, it was something I decided to do after just a little introspective observation... that was made after THIS mood-related-honesty yesterday:

"Its like if PMS lasted 3 weeks instead of one (so far), and made you want to kill someone in their sleep (or maybe when they're awake so it will last longer) for moving the fucking pepper that you use every single morning on your eggs so you have to go hunting around the damn kitchen like a dumb ass ESPECIALLY when there are only two fucking eggs left so you can't have your 1 egg, 2 egg whites like you always do and you want to start throwing all of the nice plates and bowls onto the tile just to hear the crash but you won't because then you'd cry because you're too damned cheap and even garage sale dishes cost too damn much and besides, then you'd have to spend time cleaning all the broken shit up and speaking of which, can anyone ever clean up after themselves? I mean, REALLY.

That is a tiny snippet from inside my head for about 3 minutes of my morning, with most of the cussing left out.

And if you have an actual solution that I haven't tried, feel free to suggest it. Keep in mind that I'm already taking supplements as in fish oil, liquid B12, women's multi-vitamin, liquid D3... I eat healthy foods and I don't deprive myself (I'm not hungry or craving things), I exercise daily, I'm still (heavily) perioding regularly, so I don't even think its "menopause" shit yet, either. At least today it was anger instead of sobbing. I guess that's something different, at least?"

The Mood Monster, The Diet Bet & Progress!!!

The Mood Monster

Oh my WORD, you guys, I don't know what is UP.  About a week ago, I started feeling really emotional.  I was really stressed out about finances (what's new), and things were getting tighter and tighter, but my moods seemed to be extreme, even for all of that.

Then my beautiful, blissful SLEEP went away.  Suddenly, instead of falling asleep without trouble at 10:30 or 11... I was still up, tossing and turning until 12:30 or 1:00 and then trying to force myself to sleep only to wake at 3:30 and then again at 5:00...

Yesterday was the worst of the worst.  I woke up feeling awful and I burst into hysterical tears no less than 8 times.  It was ridiculous, but I was losing it.  I kept running to the bathroom and sobbing into a towel.  Between times, I was mostly fine, but Sheesh!

My poor family probably felt like this

GIFSoup

THE GYM

We finally got our butts to the gym, but honestly, I was pretty drained.  I was feeling a little bit hopeless and just irritated.  I was determined to do my workout just out of pure stubbornness.  I think that my facebook page is keeping me accountable, even if I don't have that many followers, I am getting some nice feedback and those people are honestly helping me to stick with it!  The support already means so much. So I did it.  I went to the gym and I did a major bicep/tricep workout... OWW!!!

My Wednesday Workout

As you can see, I suck... really, completely suck at doing cardio.  My son, my workout partner already does an hour of cardio for gym class at school, so he doesn't need to do it, and we almost always have to leave for his practices/work, so I can't do them then.  This means that I need to get off of my ass and do my cardio during the day or *gasp* IN THE MORNING.  I really need to start doing that if I want to lose fat faster (and I DO)...

SO... I entered an online diet bet.  One of the facebook pages that I follow posted this diet bet, and my husband agreed that I should do it, so I entered.

The Anti-Jared Diet Bet

The "bet" is to lose 4% of your body weight in 28 days.  Since it took me a few days to get my photo taken, I have 26 days.  This means that I really need to step up my cardio.  I'm losing body FAT right now, but I'm putting on muscle at a fast enough rate that without cardio, its not going to show on the scale.  Since one of my biggest goals and motivators is fat loss... I want to DO THIS THING!

Progress!!!

One of the things I had to do for the contest was take a before photo on the scales.  This meant that I had to get ON them.  My weight was 202.5.  Although this is only 1 pound down in the last two weeks... when I took my body fat %, I went from 40% to 38.5%!  So I'm losing fat AND gaining lean muscle.  I'm happy.

And sore.  If you want to see my weights/workouts since Sunday... here ya go!

Back to the Gym!!!

I made it back tot he gym last night!

It felt SO good to be back.

I was feeling extremely crabby and frustrated.  Mostly because I had just finished two cleanse days and a lack of sleep, which makes me cranky, not to mention taking before photos and having to upload them and see myself... for real... with no baggy clothes to hide behind.  I know its for the best, but its hard to do when you are the only one in a houseful of people making such a drastic change.  Not that our 'clean eating' or even the 'slow carb/paleo' eating is a big change, but I'm doing a ten day cleanse to get a jumpstart, because I'm the only one with 70+ pounds to lose.  The rest of the family just wants to stay healthy.

I find it beyond frustrating that it is so much harder for me to lost weight than it is for my husband.  Seriously. He can just think about it for a minute and he can lose weight and gain muscle.  Ugh.  Men.  It makes me feel like he doesn't appreciate all of the sacrifices I'm having to make and he's just asking me why I'm so irritated at him, when really, I just feel like I'm alone in this.  I hope this phase passes quickly!

Anyway, I went to the gym and tried the treadmill.  Even though I wore my back brace, I still felt a little too anxious to try the elliptical.  As it was, I was only able to do 2.6 on the treadmill without feeling like I was going to re-injure myself.  That in and of itself was really depressing.  I felt like I wasn't going to be able to make any changes with that little work!

I have to say, I had a HARD time staying focused and staying positive.  It was really hard for me not to beat myself up for being back at the beginning again.  I did the best I could, and every time I found myself putting myself down or feeling like "I am NEVER going to get into shape again, I'm going to feel awful FOREVER." I would forcibly change my attention to one of the many "Transformations" that had encouraged me and just pictured myself at the end of my journey.

I tried to be purposeful in my movements with the weights and make sure I was focusing on each muscle as I worked out.  I worked on chest, shoulders & triceps from a workout plan I found online for working through a back injury.  I left out the military bench press and seated shoulder shrugs because they put too much strain on my back.  I ended up doing:


Day 1
1/13/2013
Time  6:00-7:15
Cardio Treadmill for 10 min. @ 2.6
Chest/Shoulders/Triceps
Flat Bench Press *20x12 40x12 50x12
Incline Bench Press 20x12 20x12 20x12
Dumbbell Bench Press 15x19 15x12 15x13
Dumbbell Flys 8x12 8x12 8x12
Front Raises 8x12 5x12 5x12
Tricep Push Downs 20x12 30x12 30x11

*I wrote each set with # x how many reps.

I am really excited to keep track of my weights and reps, because I know that I'll be able to see a lot more improvement that way, especially since I can't do much of anything cardio wise for at least another week or two.

When Working Out Makes you feel Pathetic

Holy shit balls.

So I went to the gym with Patrick tonight... and apparently he sadly over estimated my level of fitness.  He laid out the plan.  I was going to do 10 burpees (after a good warm up), then go hard on the elliptical for 3 minutes, then 10 burpees, then chill and go slow on the elliptical... repeat.

Anyway, I started on the warm up and good lord, the cramps started almost immediately.  Knowing that they tend to fade after a little bit of warm up, I decided to just keep going... and going.  The cramping was getting better until he upped my resistance and incline... and then it got worse.  Hip to toe, it seemed like every single muscle in my legs was knotted up in one hard knot of pain.  I tried going for a little bit and then it felt like I was going to literally tear something it hurt so much.

Patrick was standing there and asked if I was alright (this was literally in less and two minutes) and I said, "I think you are WAY overestimating how out of shape I am!"  He slowed the elliptical and asked what was going on and then told me to stretch.  Even stretching was painful as hell and I had tears running down my face.  Fortunately, I was in a downward dog type position, and I was sweating even more than I was crying, so I doubt anyone else knew, but it felt humiliating anyway.

I felt like a failure.  I had done two pathetic burpees and less than 8 minutes on the elliptical, and 6 of those were just slow warming up!

UGH!!!

Then he set me up on the treadmill and had me go slow for another 5 -10 minutes to warm up more slowly.  He checked on me every once in a while until I was ready to go at a higher pace.

Anyway, even longer story short, I ended up on the treadmill for about 45 minutes total (once I accidentally shut down the thing for a minute and restarted it), but I was really feeling shitty for not even being able to do 2 minutes on the treadmill.  I could see my reflection in the screen (I had forgotten my headphones, so there wasn't even anything to distract me) and I was so thoroughly upset with myself that it was all I could do to now just stand there and cry.

I hate how quick I am to think negatively about myself.  I hate how ingrained this negative self image is.  That may be the hardest part of this journey... learning to truly like myself and believe in myself.

What do you do to fight against that inner voice that is putting you down?

Day #5 of my Awesome Transformation: Insomnia Improving!

Insomnia:  It still took me a while to get to sleep last night, and although I woke late this morning, I felt like I had ACTUALLY SLEPT.  That is huge.  I still had tons of dreams and some of them were a little bothersome, but I slept!  Yay me!!!

Then I woke up to two huge piles of dog shit in the house because my kids all slept in, too.  No, I didn't just wake up to it, I STEPPED IN IT.  I must say that its a testament to the fact that I must have slept pretty freaking well, because stepping in a big pile of cold dog shit first thing in the morning didn't elicit either yelling or cussing from me.  Not even under my breath!  

Having big sweet dogs that apparently don't feel like they should wake the kids to let them out has its downfalls.  I think I'll scrounge around for alarm clocks for the kids for Christmas, because that was gross.

Working Out:  *emailing whenever with my P.T. a perk of being married to him?

Me:  What are we working on today? Just wondering.  I was going to plan on a PiYo either this afternoon or before bed...
Patrick:  Plan a strength-centric PiYo.  I'm going to make you hate me through the vehicle of cardio machines tonight :)

P.T. knowing when and how to best kick my ass?  A downside to being married to your personal trainer?  Or a perk?

I'll report back on how badly he kicks my ass later tonight.

For now I'm focusing on Goal Setting and Tracking Progress.  I'm trying to find the best way to track my progress, to make sure that I'm actually keeping up with things and paying attention to progress.  I am measuring every Tuesday.  I weigh every morning, but my scales are very crappy and can vacillate within 5+ pounds within the same two minute period, so I don't hold much with those.  In addition to that, though, I want to make sure that I track my strength as well.  A month from now, I want to be able to look back and see how much stronger I am... how much longer I can hold a plank or how many more reps/weight I can do with a particular exercise.  Being able to see progress is HUGE for me.  It is one of my biggest motivators.  After all, who wants to kick their ass day after day for nothing?  Not me.

Tracking:  I'm trying to decide if I want to stick with an online program like Fitocracy or Spark People, or if I just want to create my own printable workout logs and chart them on my own.  I like the idea of an online app, but I don't like the lack of choices when it comes to work outs.  Maybe I just haven't figured them out yet.  What do you use?  In some ways I'm almost partial to pen and paper.  I can always upload it into a google doc or something.  I don't know.  I can't figure it out!!!

I'd be happy with THIS size, and this was after I'd already gained nearly 30 pounds when my metabolism crashed on me.

Secondly, I'm trying to figure out What My Goals Are.  Because I don't have much of a clue.  I want to get back to my prior 'fit' state, but I don't know how to quantify that.  I also don't know what kind of time frame to put on any of it.  This is so confusing!  I definitely need goals, though.

For now, I'm going to make my Top Five CHANGES that I want to make:

1. Drink at least four 52 oz. glasses of ice water every day
2. Take my supplements EVERY morning
3. Eat protein within 30 minutes of waking every morning
4. Stop drinking alcohol & Change bedtime routine/habits and learn to sleep without it.
5. Stick with exercise plan set by trainer and PiYo/Yoga at least 3-4 times a week, either for strength or relaxation before bed.

What are your goals?  If you don't have any set in stone yet, what changes do you want to make?   Let me know in the comments, and link to your blog if you're blogging about health, fitness, nutrition or weight loss!