Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Zug Zug – Splitting the Difference

I’ve had this window open for days and just haven’t had the motivation to write.  So here goes, this could be 50 words or 5000, but I’m giving an update tonight.  Prepare for rambles… while my blog posts lately have been just a little above Live Journal quality, this one may descend to the depths of “Dear Diary, I am a scatterbrain”.

I asked some of my artists to work extra hours this week to get a project done, so as a Producer, I have a conundrum.  It’s easy to say that if anyone stays, I should stay.  However, if I stayed when ANYONE stayed, I would rarely leave work and have a life, plus, by the time they’re working the extra hours, it’s actually my slow period and I’m really just moral support (there is NOTHING I can do to help these folks, I am no artist).  I’ve split the difference by asking my Associate Producer to come in a little early, and I’m staying a little late.  Instead of eating the crunch catered dinners, I run home and eat with Zliten, and head back to work for a bit.

It’s been nice to have the ability to have healthy dinners, but this means that ANY workouts have had to be in the morning.  And when I’m at work until 9ish, it’s not so easy to get up at dawn with anything but a scowl on my face.

So I’ve split the difference there too.  Monday, I did it with another epic bike/weights session.  Tuesday was v-day, so I actually was able to leave early (we did NOT make people crunch that day) and run outside after work.  My glute started to twinge a bit so I cut it short at 3 instead of the 5-6 I had planned, but right after work when it’s still light and cool enough is my FAVE running time.  Yesterday, I stayed up too late enjoying some v-day steak, lobster, baked potato, asparagus, wine, and vodka, so I took it as my rest day.  However, it sucks using up your rest day being a frikkin zombie and feeling all tired and hung over.

Today I had wanted to make up my swim/pilates I missed by doing a swim then group power, but I woke up at 6-something and scowled at the world, and figured I’d split the difference.  I went back to sleep and bagged the swim, but I got my ass out of bed for group power and DANG it was a great way to wake up.  So, I have a swim, a run, and some core work I want to get done (plus my race on Sun).  We’ll see if I can fit it all in.  It’s like a game of extreme tetris this week.  I’m accepting that I don’t have it in me to do 4 days of week for weights, so I’ll wait until 3 feels natural.

I am feeling a little down about the scale.  I haven’t been weighing this week and got on today – 180. 😛  I haven’t tried the body fat scale to see if that’s dropped, but seriously?  WTF.

Through some link surfing today I got onto Rachel Cosgrove’s site (pretty sure it was through m’lady Charlotte), and I think I may need to read her book for ideas, although I’m pretty sure the point that I’ve been able to surmise through her site is:

-Do lots of weights
-Make sure you fuel yourself with good food
-Make sure to have recovery food/drink with protein/carbs after your workout

At this point, I’ve gone through a lot of stages with this coming-on-3-years-plateau…

Stage 1: I get too hungry during race training and overeat.  I need to wait until off season to lose weight.  I will do this by cutting my calories really low (safe low, but low – 1200-1500), and doing shorter workouts. (this worked for very short periods and then made me miserable – both eating less and exercising less)

Stage 2: This sucks.  I want to race more.  I just need to make sure I train a lot and I’ll be able to outrun this weight. (not so much)

Stage 3: This sucks.  I’ll just be happy where I’m at for a while and keep training as long as it doesn’t affect me (then I gained enough for it to indeed effect me)

Stage 4: This super sucks.  I’ll just do short races this year.  I didn’t gain weight doing short races.  Also, let’s throw in a cleanse for good measure. (lost 5 lbs initially, then got it back plus some).

Stage 5: Started working with nutritionist.  Instantly FELT better while improving the quality of my food.  Gained 5 lbs.

Stage 6: Nutritionist has no idea why I’m not losing.  Cut grains to 1 per day.  No loss.

Stage 7: Nutritionist still has no idea why I’m not losing.  Going to calorie counting and getting super accurate estimates of what I’m burning so I can work on making sure I have a proper deficit.  No loss yet.

I’ve been wracking my brain as to what is the difference in between who I was back then and who I am now diet and exercise-wise.  The only two real major things I came up with is:

-I eat slightly more, but WAY WAY WAY WAY better quality food.
-I did weights religiously.  At least working over my whole body 2 times per week.

I’ve cycled now from “exercise is what will keep me fit” to “80% of weight loss is in the kitchen” to “weights are the key”.

While I’m not going to get to half ironman fitness with weights alone, I think I can accept that stealing some time away from the cardio for weights will not do bad things to me.

So, while I’m not going to drop the cardio, I am going to make the priority getting at least 3 days of weight training per week over anything else (at least 1 pilates/crunchtime class or core work, 1 heavy lifting/group power day, and 1 other strength day of my choosing).

Now, it’s time to go find my “thermometer jeans” and see where I’m at mid-April (8 weeks).  I’ll take pictures.  It will be humblingly fun…

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4 Comments

  1. Miz

    YES YES
    YAY YAY
    for that new.priority!!!!

  2. Les

    Hope you don’t mind a random comment from a serial noncommenter and weightloss well-wisher:

    I actually clicked over to Rachel Cosgrove’s site from your “thermometer jeans” link and ended up buying her book (Female Body Breakthrough) on kindle. (Though I hemmed and hawed over the 9.73 sticker price – then I remembered that I spend that much on organic apples on a regular basis.)

    Anyway, once you get past the super-girly tone (I felt like she was reassuring me of my femininity the whole time), the advice seems sound. It pretty much boils down to: intense weight-lifting (including challenging body-weight exercises and intense “warm-up” exercises – like jumping lunges) and proper fueling lead to fat loss. She seems to think that steady-state aerobic exercise (like endurance running) won’t make you skinny and might even encourage your body to store fat.

    I always finish reading diet/weightloss books feeling a little dazed, like I’ve just walked out of a six-hour long time share presentation: once I’ve escaped conference room B, I start wondering whether I’ll really be missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime if I don’t invest in a condo two miles away from the Vegas strip. Which is to say: I try to look at the breathless prose with a skeptical eye.

    Anyway, Rachel Cosgrove is nothing if not breathless, but the plan made sense in general. The eating portion of it is (at its least restrictive) good, common-sense sense advice: no sugar/bread/pasta/refined grains, eat protein at every meal, eat a fruit or veggie with every meal, eat every 3-4 hours, etc. There are other rules, too, but those are pretty much the fundamentals.

    The exercises she prescribes are really, really effective, by the way – I take a boot-camp style class 3-4 times a week, and the (male!) instructor uses nearly identical workouts as those in her books, right down to the warm-ups and cardio “finisher” moves. I’ve cut down my running to the bare minimum for mental sanity (a mile here or there every day or every other day, and MAYBE one medium-length – 5ish mile – run on the weekend). And I started to see results from that even before cleaning up my diet.

    Yeesh, I didn’t mean to leave a comment consisting solely of praise for Rachel Cosgrove – I just didn’t want to recommend the actual book without making a good case for it! (And I do think that if you’re interested in shaking up your workout routine, it’s worth buying the book just so you can get the pictures of the actual moves she recommends.)

    I feel for you on the plateau issue. I came down from a similar all-time-high-weight as you (I was 240ish) and plateaued out at 150 (size 8 or so), but was never lean (I still had plenty of pudge). Now I’m 10-15 pounds heavier (though I’ve shrank in size again since I’ve dialed down running in favor of bootcamp stuff).

    For breaking through plateaus, my approach is to pretty much try anything for a 4-6 week period and see if it’s effective. Maybe take a break from running? Take a break from working out entirely (maybe you’re overtrained?). Maybe you’re not eating enough fat (or, for that matter, not enough saturated fat)? Go alcohol-free for a month? Restaurant-free for a month? It’s probably not the most fun approach, but it might help you pinpoint what’s going on.

  3. I’ve got a question – how old are you? Could some of this difficulty in shedding weight be hormonally related? Just curious because some women enter the perimenopausal period quite young from what I’ve read. It may be beneficial to have your hormone levels checked. In any case – yay for the strength training. I need so much to do that more.

  4. Miz

    come baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack 🙂
    wheres our blog post from the weekend?

    xo

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