A Leaner Cut of Chuck

Chuck is riding the mechanical bull of life changes right now!  And all of them good!  I am super proud of how he has made time to keep at it this month.  And I am grateful for his perspective, I think many of us have been derailed by projects big and small, dealing with unanticipated consequences, while keeping up with daily life.

I want to identify that every step you take to change, a thought pattern, an internet search, buying new running or walking shoes, counts.

I also admire the honestly Chuck is throwing down.  I think sometimes I can be a little stoic about the tue stress of changes and then think months later how hard something was.  Enjoy Chuck's thoughts! 

Well, I’ll be honest with all of you- it’s been a tough month.  I know that working out with Beth has been really good for me, but I haven’t been as consistent as I would like, and I haven’t been getting the results that I want.  I know that this is my fault, and my goal in the next month is to change this and really work on consistency. 

So, why did I go off track?  Well, it seems to be one thing after another.  My wife has this tendency to realize that some large house project needs to be completed right about when she hits the 7 month mark in her pregnancy.  Last year, it was to remodel our kitchen (which then went on to include installing hardwood floors on the whole second floor, and remodeling a powder room and 2 bathrooms- she has a tendency to bite off a lot at a time).  You read that last sentence and are now probably wondering what else there was to do?  Well, there was one big glaring green issue in our house that remained- the luscious emerald green carpet that covered the floor in our master bedroom, which is the third floor of the house.  This carpet would have turned people green with envy….. if it was 1988.  In this day and age, it really was an eyesore, and a project that we had talked about many times.  With the impending new baby, we both realized that getting those floors done would be much easier before the baby arrives, being that the fumes force us to vacate for a couple nights.  So, that is a long story, but it contributes to my lack of consistency for 2 reasons.  First, the whole process was stressful- moving everything (including my pregnant wife) out of our master bedroom was just very disrupting to our routine.  She and her Snoogle (a pregnancy body pillow she is never without these days) took the guest bedroom and with a queen bed, but she’s not the easiest to share anything other than a king sized bed with right now, so I found myself sleeping on the bottom twin bunk bed- it could be worse, but these were not the best nights of sleep.  And second, the master bedroom is where I do my workouts with Beth, and where I feel most comfortable doing workouts on my own.  When I was displaced from here, I just wasn’t able to adjust to working out elsewhere.  So, I slacked.  I guess this probably happens to anyone on a program like this, but I am disappointed in myself, and I know that I need to get back on track.  I also haven’t been getting out of the house to do as much walking as I know I should.  And, not to blame my pregnant wife, but I do enjoy walking with her, and she’s not the best walker these days, for obvious reasons.  She can do a little bit, but she definitely gets tired, and can’t go for as long as I need to.  

So in the next month, I’m looking to overcome these setbacks.  The good news is that the floors are done, and we’re back in our master bedroom (and the floors look MUCH better with hardwood!).  I have my sanctuary back, and a place where I can work out- complete with an area rug, which is just as comfortable but much more aesthetically pleasing than the emerald green carpet.  My wife and I are going to go and tour some gyms this week to get an idea of what would work for us, and Beth made the great suggestion of finding one with child care.  I love spending time with my son, but I also love the idea of going to the gym and getting an hour of time to myself.  I think that this is a respite that I have been needing, and would also be a way for me to stay motivated to keep going to the gym.  With the new baby getting here in a little more than a week, I know that life is about to get turned upside down again, but I also know that my wife is here to support me, and that I can make some more positive changes.  The nice thing is that she won’t be working for the next few months, and has also expressed a desire to get into a better physical program, so I think that she and I can make some changes together.

So, that is where I stand as of today.  The next month has A LOT in store for me and my family, and I have a lot of excitement…. and some trepidation.  Next month’s report will include a big announcement- baby #2 will be here! So, stay tuned, and keep your fingers crossed with me that I can get some more consistency this month and really look to my workouts to be quality time I get to spend with myself.

A GOOD LIFE: Back to Basics

Here is an update from Cathy! Here is some sweet insight to the link between taking care of home and body.

Check out my new place! This August I moved out of my parent's house and into my own apartment! It's clean, organized and I am intent on keeping it that way.

Which is kinda a new approach for me...

I've always taken my independence for granted. It wasn't until I lost my ability to take care of myself, let alone anyone else, that I realized how fortunate I had been to have that independence in the first place.

Really, I don't think I've ever been operating at full capacity. Depression has always been a sub-text in my life and made the world much harder to navigate. Basic care-taking requirements have always felt hard to me - like the idea of vacuuming sounded so hard I felt like crying at the prospect of tackling it most of the time.  Almost like working out sounded painful and unenjoyable? Something like that

The winter before I started blogging and sharing things I hit an all time low. I revisited this tough time when I went to Atlanta to clean out my storage unit.  I let go of 95% of my possessions, they had to much not so great energy.  The things I rescued were covered in pet hair.  As I took them off to the dry cleaner, I felt pain and joy.  The pain of the winter of 2012 when I stopped everything, caring for myself, my apartment, my pets, my health.

In late 2012, I suddenly stopped - the laundry piled up, the dishes piled up; there was no more picking up after myself, my husband, or my my pets. My parents came down for an early Christmas at the start of December and I did my best to tidy up before they got there but they had to do a lot of work to help me make the apartment nice for us again.

We weren't spending the holidays with our family that year and I had billed it to be "The Worst Christmas Ever" as a result. My depression took me over a cliff and I just stopped. Doing. Anything.

My closest friend drove down to Atlanta with me and helped me clean out the storage unit that I put everything in when I moved out of the apartment last year. I gave away 95% of my possessions mostly because I felt like they still had some not-so-great energy attached to them. I've found that letting go of that "stuff" has really freed me to make a fresh start and let go of the parts of my life that make me sad.

Empty storage unit = A fresh start

But, I recently took a few things to the dry cleaner that I rescued from that storage unit - curtains, winter coat, sweater - and they were literally covered in pet hair. Seeing that, reliving that as I cleaned out the storage unit, is painful. I felt super sad for myself for having gone through what I did. At the same time, I feel such profound joy about being where I am today.

So needless to say, now that I'm back to taking care of myself, I'm hyper-aware of not letting the apartment get dirty. And I'm really glad to say that taking care of my place no longer makes me want to cry. I have a very regimented schedule for cleaning things and it seems to be working.Being regimented, let's me love my home.  The work I do throughout the week, frees me up to enjoy my house.  I have such a deep appreciation for being able to stand on my own to feet these 20 months later. And because of that gratitude I want to clean. I don't mind taking care of the day_to-day requirements. I now understand how having a well cared for home contributes to my well being and that makes cleaning the bathroom much less of a chore.

But wait, isn't this a fitness blog? Well, yes. Yes it is. When I originally thought about this blog post, my thinking was about how my fitness and eating routine has been less organized lately. I haven't planned out my workouts, I've been more casual in my eating, and my weight has totally plateaued. My thinking his that this is the result of the time now required to manage living on my own and having a lot more responsibility to keep my world in order.

But now, thinking about the basics required to care for my home I see how analogous it is to my exercise and nutrition routine. I understand how having a well cared for body contributes to my well being and that makes working out and eating healthy a priority.

Admittedly, my eating has become more casual. I have succumbed to my sugar addiction more than a few times (frozen yogurt shops are back and I love it so very much) and in tracking my calories I see that I consistently overeat when I go out to a restaurant. But at the same time, my fitness routine has not lapsed. I've gone up and down in terms of intensity of my workouts but they have not fallen out. The gym is still one of my favorite places and exercise is a top priority in my life.

I have talked numerous times about the toll depression took on my body. I think of all the hours I logged in my recliner, and the first thing I think of is Cheeze-Its. Shoving Cheeze-Its into my mouth hand over fist. My weight sky rocketed and I only left that damn chair to get more food.

But today, rather than feeling bad about not being 100% perfect in my fitness/eating regimen, I am focused on what is working and feels good right now. I was inspired by Chuck's latest blog post to get a pedometer which has me focused on getting in 10000+ steps per day(which is seriously a challenge) and I've gone back to basics walking outside or on the treadmill as my primary form of exercise. I'm making sure to do strength training twice a week to keep from losing muscle and keep my back pain from flaring up. I'm maintaining my current weight and while I would love to see that number go down on the scale I also recognize that shaming myself pushing myself to a point that I don't enjoy at the gym or depriving myself of food wouldn't be sustainable.

At dinner the other night my friend made such a good point. "Change is inevitable", she said. "Even if you tried to not change at all there is no way to avoid it. So why try to force change to happen when there is really no way to stop it."

Okay, I'm off to vacuum.

Yup.