I’ve been feeling out of my groove lately. It’s a lot of things. Things that I shall slap numbers in front of in a handy list format.
1) The winter. I should move to the equator where there are no seasons and I can sit outside and sweat all my weight off. The days here have gotten shorter and it’s so much harder to convince myself to work out in the morning when I can’t find my dumbbells without turning on a light switch. Dear Australians, please give me back the sun. I miss it. I miss going out on the trail too or taking my bike for a ride. Never mind that my back tire is flat and my bike is 13 years old and I need to pony up some cash for a new one before I can go riding. I just miss exercising outdoors. Which leads me to…
2) Workout burnout. I need to spice up my workout routine. I’m getting tired of the same old weights and Pilates and running regimen. I need something new, like when I tried TurboKick and tennis. However, those classes were both a bit of a drive away. I need to find something closer that I find interesting and isn’t too terribly expensive. I should really do that, oh yes I should, instead of just writing about it.
3) Life changes. No, not the change of life. I’m still kind of young for that. Back in November I started a contract job at a new work place. I go to lunch with co-workers now, so there’s a new eating schedule and new eating temptations. It’s also a shorter walk from the parking lot, though I still take the stairs to the top floor of a building. I walk around more during the day, but it’s in fancy shoes instead of sneakers, and OH MY GOD my bunions have been hurting. I’ve been handling all that rather well actually. I still haven’t purchased anything from the Starbucks on campus, I’ve gotten sushi and salads at the cafeteria, and I’ve turned down lots of cookies, but it’s still been an adjustment. In mid-January I start a full-time job elsewhere that I’m rather excited about, but yet again it will be a life change and who knows how many cookies they keep in the building? But I’ll get to wear sneakers, so at least my feet will be happy.
4) The holidays. The holidays haven’t been the cause of my problems, but they certainly didn’t help either. I don’t regret eating it up during those times, but it probably would have been better for my weight if Christmas was held in April this year.
5) Too much free time. Okay, that’s not something you typically complain about, but I had a week and a half off for the holidays and it’s been very bad for my eating. I need structure. I need to be away from the kitchen or else bad things end up in my mouth. I saw a news program recently that said people who retire need to find something to do or else they’ll go senile and die earlier. For some reason I always find the idea of hanging around doing nothing to be appealing, but in reality it just makes me go crazy.
6) The evenings. If we’re holding Christmas in April, we should also find a way to go straight from the afternoon to the night time, totally circumventing the evenings. I do fine during the work day, but when I come home I’ll eat too much because I’m bored or lonely or depressed.
All of this adds up to little progress in the weight loss department and a general malaise on my part. I think I’ve probably gained 5 pounds back, though it’s hard to tell since my weight fluctuates several pounds during the week naturally. I don’t want to regain any weight, but I’m finding it harder to stick to the healthy eating and exercise regimen that has gotten me this far. This weight loss thing, it is hard, eh? I don’t want to give up either. I’d just like to live in a universe where couch sitting was high cardio and ice cream was diet food. But I also think it’s important to cop to the fact that I’m starting to have problems right now. If I don’t catch it early I’m just going to gain back 20 more pounds. It could be far worse anyway. At least I still am exercising and eating reasonably well, if a little too much. All my clothes still fit. I just never appreciated how great my groove was until my wheels slid out of it.
I’m glad I’m running the Indianapolis mini-marathon in May and that I signed up for a training program, otherwise I might be facing serious trouble here. But I know I’m going to be running a lot in the next couple months and hopefully I’ll make some friends in my training program and hopefully the sun will come back from whatever hole it’s been hiding in and I will get my oom-pah back. I may be out of the groove, but the only way to get back in the groove is by wearing it down again.
Sometimes I get comments from people who think I have it all figured out or think I know the magical secrets of the universe or something. I’d just like to tell you that, no, that’s not true, you must be reading someone else’s blog. I am far from perfect. Sometimes I wish it was all over and done with, but I also know that’s a lie. You’re never really done. You don’t just get thin and stop. You have to keep earning a healthy body every day. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down. I’m sort of down right now, but at least I know it and I’m trying to get back up again. Hopefully picking myself up will increase my lower body strength.
I wanted to write all that down because in the flurry of everything that’s been going on in my life lately, I haven’t been as self-analytical as I have been in the past, which might be part of the reason I’m having problems. I haven’t had the time to write the in-depth blog entries that helped me work through so many of my issues in the past. I’ve been writing more to entertain my audience than for myself, which is probably bad for both of us. Blogging and thinking have a lot of overlap for me. A lot of times I’ll be figuring out things as I write an entry and realize, “Oh, that’s what’s going on, isn’t it?” I’m more out of touch with myself than I have been in the past and that’s going to start showing up in my body if I don’t do something about it.
I don’t think the problem is even so much the eating and exercise in itself. Lately I feel like there’s something missing from life. I’m not really sure what it is or how to fill it in exactly, but I know I need to figure it out. I need to become more involved in the community and be more social or take piano lessons or something. I need to find something in my life to direct my energies towards and the weight loss and exercise will fall in after that. I have to keep growing and learning. Someone emailed me last week and said “I have a lot of junk in my life to clean out and my weight is just one of them.” I think that’s so true. Once you clean out the junk in your life, many times the weight-loss and improved health will follow.
Tomorrow I’ll talk about the specific plans I’ve made to get my groove back.I suppose it’s a new year’s resolution, though honestly the timing is just a coincidence.
