Holy Life Change Batman!

Ok, I realize that I'm being kinda criptic with some of this, but it's an ongoing problem that really can't be talked about. So. Suffice to say that my employment situation is unstable. I am also moving this coming weekend.

My best intentions for going to the gym have been back burner-ed by the current situation coupled with my traitor ankles.

The ankles are feeling much better today. One of the major obstacles to my recovery has been the fact that I live in Brooklyn and work (for now) in Manhattan. Not walking is not an option.

I'm going to attempt swimming again this week, once I have a better idea on where things stand in the rest of my life, and start back on the Hundred Push Up Challenge, although I do believe I'll have to drop back a few weeks.

I'm trying to see this as a positive thing, change is inevitable, and I was unhappy with my situation as it was.

I've also lost about two pounds from this. It's not that I haven't been eating, although I've been having to force myself to eat. I just haven't been eating much. And the things that I can stomach right now are very lite fare. Like I mentioned before, apparently my body reacts to this kind of stress by imposing a forced diet on me.

Things will be a bit more settled and clarified after today.

Change is inevitable.
-Meg

Facing Workout Phobias

After a quick self diagnostic this afternoon, I have decided that I should be able to try swimming tomorrow. I hemmed and hawed about it, tried to convince myself that I really should give myself another couple days of rest, bartered with myself (I'll go to boxing on Sunday instead!) and ultimately decided that I need to face this.

So tomorrow I will face the fear and don a swimsuit in a public place. Once I'm in the water I will be fine, it's that walk of shame from wherever you leave the towel to when you hit the water that bothers me. Never mind that I picked the gym I signed up for (NYSC btw) because it had locations with pools. Never mind how much I love swimming (I had a brief career in competitive swimming cut short by my inability to focus on anything enough to actually train for it in elementary school) or how much I just enjoy being in the water (I also used to teach swimming). I haven't been able to get past that walk yet. I swim like a fish in my parents pool (which is located in their back yard, nicely screened from the outside world by a fence ) but ask me to put a swimsuit on in any kind of public location (beach, party, you name it) and that clenchy panicky feeling grabs me just below my solar plexus and I use every neuron in my creatively trained brain to come up with a reason, any reason that I just can't, so sorry maybe next time.

The last time I swam for fitness was back in 2000, when I was living in California, and had a pass to a 24hour gym with a huge pool and hot tub. I was overweight then, around 160, but I had been making strides towards loosing weight. I had purchased a very unfortunate silver tank suit, which I thought was The awesomest thing evah, and was all about getting my swim back. Until I realized that As I stood there on the deck, people could see me, and I came to the sudden realization that I looked like a shiny tube of paint. Totally cylindrical. So not hot. I panicked and plunked myself down in the water as fast as possible. I didn't go back.

The major contributing factor, this time, in my decision to face the pool again, is injury. I can barely walk right now, let alone get a decent workout on a treadmill or elliptical machine. I must find an alternative. The state of my body today is the direct result of a previous injury. Back in 2004 I was in decent shape, nay I was the hotness. I spent four or five days a week at the dojo. I kicked many butts. A knee injury ended all of that. Waking up one morning unable to walk, let alone kick, jump, roll, and knee people in the stomach, I totally freaked out. For a while I kept up doing modified exercises. I did all my upper body basics sitting in a chair with hand weights. I did massive numbers of sit ups and crunches and other exercises. But I slowly petered off, as I gave up hope that this was a passing injury. It ended up requiring surgery and totally incapacitated me. It's still not 100%, and I've learned to be nice to my knees, but it took me this long to get over the injury, and my subsequent failure at fitness.

I will not let this injury do the same thing to me. I will face my public swim suit wearing phobia down in the name of my quest to regain my fitness and eventually return to the dojo floor.

But I'm going to bring the biggest towel I own and I will be wearing it up to the very last second I can. One step at a time here.
-Meg

Modified Workouts

I couldn't face the gym today. After waking up and trying to walk to the bathroom, I wrapped my ankles, downed some Advil and decided to shoot for a Thursday return date at the gym. In the meantime I'm going to try and modify my workout so that most of what I do does not involve my ankles. I've been researching strength moves I can do to work various parts of my body with little to no equipment and without standing or using my ankles in any way.

So Far My list includes:
Push ups
Planks
SuperPeople
Sensei Mark Specials
Ab Choppers
Bicycle Crunches
Hamstring Ball Curl

If you've got any ideas on various workout moves I can try please let me know...I'm desperate here!

Of course I'm going to try (and I stress the try) to hit the pool to get some Cardio on Thursday. It's not that I don't have the time, or that I don't love swimming...it's well, er....it's the swimsuit issue. The idea of wearing a swimsuit in front of people I don't know makes me get slightly panicky. But since almost all forms of Cardio exercise that I can think of in some way involve my ankles, I may be forced (once again) to embrace a form of exercise that I've been avoiding.

I'm still bummed about the fact that I'm basically sidelined right now. Just when I was starting to catch the running bug, I manage to break myself.

Calorie counting is now of paramount importance. I'm terrified that if I'm not very careful I'm going to erase all the hard work I've done. Especially since I'm upset, and I'm an emotional eater.

Like tokaiangel said "Think like a surfer - 'stay stiff and ride the black wave'."
-Meg

Teh Pain!

The ankle pain is back again. I woke up this morning (afternoon for normal folks) and can barely walk. The pain is in whatever it is that is required for standing on ones tiptoes, or pushing off with the ball of ones foot. Now some background info, I did get new shoes this week, as my knees were aching something fierce from the instability in the old ones. Could this be the culprit? And if so why?

Tomboy post forthcoming. I got swamped with work last night...
-Meg

The girl hit hard like a barracuda baby

Last night I tried an experiment. Since I only have one ace bandage I wrapped up my right ankle and not my left ankle, took some Tylenol PM and went to bed. This morning, surprisingly, my left ankle felt better than my right ankle. I have no clue. In the process of getting myself up and mobile and to the gym I determined that stairs were no longer trying to kill me, and therefore I would be fine on the treadmill. So I laced up my sneakers and hit it.

I ran for half an hour and felt ok. I even pushed myself to run a little faster. My ankles started aching a bit towards the end but I figured I was alright.

I did day two of week six of the Hundred push up challenge, or rather I tried to. My arms gave out at push up 38 out of 42 in the max set. Part of my problem I've realized is that my palms get sweaty while I'm doing my push ups and my hands start to slide outwards slowly, making for progressively difficult push ups. Anyone got any suggestions? But anyways that means I'm redoing week six next week.

I kinda ran out of time for my strength set unfortunately. All I did was a set of 20 sensei mark specials. I'm planning on doing some more sit ups and squats on my lunch break to make up for it.

Then it was time for Treadmill Round Two! Yeah, no. Running produced a decidedly unhealthy shooting pain from both ankles. So I walked. I put the incline up to 5 and kept my heart rate up above 150. It was a fast walk, but it was most definitely a walk. So I sucked at the workout today.

I really need to figure out this ankle problem though. It's slowin me down.

I had this big long introspective post about me being a tomboy that I was writing in my head while I was doing the first half of my workout, but I've forgotten most of what I wanted to say...I'll try to remember and post a bonus post later.

-Meg

Back in the Big City

The vacation is over, and I'm back to the daily routine.

Exercise wise, the vacation did not go as planned. Family obligations took over my good intentions and Kayaks were not available for rent as we had hoped. We did do a lot of walking, and ran twice.

The first day we ran, I felt my body as heavier than ever before. We ran for a good long while before I needed my first walk break. I had forgotten my watch so I'm not sur exactly how long. We walked and ran (more walking than running) for the rest of the 3.6 miles, out and back through the woods, a long the paved road across the island.

I felt the run the next day. I didn't expect the ache across my ribs. We didn't do much moving at all that day. The day after that was spent doing a lot of running around and getting stuff done.

The second day we ran, I did much better at first. We ran for a full ten minutes, and got way farther than the first time. We later measured it out on the trip odomoter in the car, and we had ran for a full mile. We ran/walked the rest of the loop, and then on the way back, I had the inspired Idea to sprint across one of the bridges. About halfway across the bridge I felt this sharp pain on the inside of my hip. Every step shot pain from the inside of my hip to the outside of my hip, and down the inside of my leg. We walked the rest of the way back, and by the time we got home I was limping to favor my hip.

Two days and a lot of Advil later the pain was gone, and I'm still not sure what I did, but it resulted in me not getting a whole lot more exercise over the rest of the trip.

I finished off week three of the Hundred push up Challenge, but completely dropped the ball on even starting week four. So, I'm going to start week four tonight, when we hit the gym.

I'm convinced running is a better workout than the elliptical machine now, and I'm also equally convinced that I am not in good enough shape to be a runner yet. I'm going to start easing running into my routine, hopefully by the end of the summer I'll be able to do some running in Central Park before it gets cold.

I weighed myself this morning to see how I had done, since I had completely stopped watching what I ate while in Maine, and found that I hadn't done horribly. Not great, but no the disaster I was expecting.

Weight: 160 (up from 158.7)
Body Fat %: 32.9 (up from 32.6)

Now that I'm back in the City, I'm getting back to the routine. We'll see if the Holiday Weight Gain goes away ^_^

-Meg