There are things about my relationship with my body that I will only ever tell my therapist. Things that I struggle with and hope to overcome but that are proving very hard to get beyond. I really feel that exercising a lot will help me to overcome some of these issues - or at least take the edge off of them. Who really knows though? It's a mystery to me about how to manage these issues. When I think one strategy is working, the old ways of thinking and behaving pop up again. None of my theories seem to really be true and none of my solutions seem to ever work. I know this is all very secretive, but that is my own choice. It doesn't matter what the particualr issue/behaviour/thought pattern is because most women and some men struggle with issues of body hatred that manifest in a wide variety of ways.

I am going to try a 6 week plan to help break out of some habits that make the situation worse. This isn't a solution but just a way to get rid of some unhealthy habits around food.

I am going to try to eliminate one of these habits every week until I get to the third week when they will all be gone and then I am going to try three weeks without any of them. I'll see where that leaves me. And in addition to all of this I am going to keep up my attempts to exercise every single morning.

week one: Stop late night snacking (which is never about hunger) and staying up late (don't snack after dinner, go to bed by 11:30pm most nights)

week two: Stop grazing; eat two snacks and three meals and don't munch in between

week three:  Cut out sugar (I'll make an exception for my birthday) including cane sugar, maple syrup, honey, agave, dates, and other dried fruit

week four: stop emotional/bored eating; when I feel it coming on, go for a walk or run, meditate, do yoga, or have a bath

And here is the exercise schedule I'd like to follow

Monday: run 5km
Tuesday: boot camp and/or swim (belly dance in the evening)
Wednesday: hot yoga
Thursday: power class and/or swim
Friday: hot yoga
Saturday: run 8km (and maybe zumba!)
Sunday: run 12-16 km

My own path

I decided not to do the 1/2 marathon after all. It is happening right now and I can actually hear the cheers of the supporters because it starts and finishes at a park right by my buikding. But, I'm ok with not being there. I was really not ready and I'm also not ok with quitting in the middle of it and not willing to risk an injury (I need my legs to get me around!). I have failed before and I'll fail again. But I know I will also succeed someday. I know I will. I attended a great yoga class at the Yoga Shack last night and a lot of it was about figuring out your own truth. The instructor talked about being self-contained and that really resonated with me. As I understand it (or interpret it, at least) it means loving yourself fully; knowing you are intelligent, beautiful, worthy, good enough because you believe yourself to be so. It is about not looking for external validation for your existence. It is about being on your own path: not on other people's paths and not allwoing other people to direct you on your path.

Well, when it comes to fitness and health I am definitely on my own path. It is a very different path from someone who has been athletic all their life, It is a very different path even than someone who has a similar story in terms of weight, exercise, etc. It is my own path and I will stumble. I have also gotten distracted and deviated from my path. I have turned around a couple times and headed back to where I was. But I feel confident that I am going to get to where I want to go. I have come so far and when I've stumbled, I've dusted myself off and gotten back up; when I've headed down the wrong path, I've turned around. My goal is not to finish a particular half-marathon, or triathlon, or marathon. My goal is to be a fit and strong person who lives a healthy lifestyle - physically and emotionally. This half-marathon wasn't meant to be but I am going to keep going: I think I'll sign up for the Island Girl's half-marathon September 25 in Toronto. That gives me a long time to train so I can do it with confidence and happiness. It will be a pleasurable challenge.

Here are a few practical things I have learned from this particular stumble:

1. I don't want to run races in early Spring because I don't like training in the winter. I have to stop signing up for Spring runs! I run in the winter but I don't always enjoy it and it is somewhat sparadic. I get cold, sore fingers, and would rather mix up my running with warm activities like hot yoga, swimming at the Y, and fitness classes at the Y (zumba anyone?)

2. Running will never be my only physical activity. I can not just focus on one form of exercise. I get very bored and am easily distracted. I need to train for a looong time so that I can have time for other activities. If I get too bored, I will stop and that is counter-productive. I need time to dance, do yoga, bike, do fitness classes, swim, do weights, etc. And this all needs to fit into the rest of my very busy life.

3. I can't do the running clinics. There is just too much happening in my life. My work schedule is topsy turvy and if I miss classes and fall behind, I find it very hard to catch up. I need to devise a personal schedule and try to follow it on my own or with friends.

4. I am not the type of person who will run through the pain, or run in all weather. I don't like to be uncomfortable and exercise needs to feel good or I don't want to do it. I am never, ever going to be a top athlete and that is not my goal. It feels good to be strng and fit and that feeling is why I do it.

So, there are some things I have learned. live and learn, right? And, women, if you want to join me at the Island Girl's half-marathon let me know!!

http://www.islandgirlrunning.com/ 

Here's a little inspiration for me in all aspects of my life - not just fitness/health, of course! It ties into the message of that yoga class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI1IC90Rwp4&feature=related

Self-actualizing

I have been somewhat successful with my plan to wake up early and exercise. There were a few days when I was exercising before 7am which is an amazing feat for me! Before I had kids I was the type of person who went to bed at 2am and woke up at 12 noon (if I didn't have to work and if I did, I still went to bed at 2am!). One day I made it to the YMCA for a Boot camp class at 6:30am! I still am far from my goal of doing this every day of the week but I'm off to a great start.

One thing I am really going to try to push myself to do is to bike everywhere instead of taking the bus. I vowed to do this in March, as part of my yearly eco-resolutions,  but the weather in March was still fairly wintry so I didn't. Now it is April - a cool April but still it is no longer winter - and I have not started biking. It is hard to get back into the habit. My legs feel sore after short bike rides because those particular muscles have not been widely used over the winter. I am working at the edge of the city and like to wear pencil skirts and high heels so it just seems inconvenient. But there are always hundreds of excuses for not being physically active. Winter makes me a bit lazy and I need to wake up and get moving. So, I'm going to start biking to work every day (except not tomorrow because I work at night and don't want to bike home in the dark on a route that is unfamiliar to me).

When I am trying to create new habits, I always think about my goal which is, ultimately, to be self-actualizing. Now this is a somewhat academic term that I probably don't fully understand or use properly. But, to me, it means that I am creating my own reality, my own self. Of course, there are things that I have no control over that affect me all the time. But, when it comes to the things I do have control over, I try to acknowledge and exercise that control. And it feels quite liberating. I feel like I can take control of things that feel out of my control. I can change the way I think about myself and my life and I can actively resist the things I do not like. Now I am not a believer in the "law of attraction" at all. I think that in a capitalist, patriarchal society there are some really awful and negative things that happen over which people have no or little control. However, I do think that sometimes folks have more control over their lives then they think they do and can take really positive and libratory action. In terms of fitness, I was what you might call fat from age 8 until age 30. I was never fit in any way. I did not participate in any sports; I thought of myself as someone who would never be athletic. I was ok with being fat until I became single when I was 30. And, actually,  I think I had better self-esteem when I was fat then I do now. A topic for a different blog post. BUT, when I decide to start exercising, I really deciding to change something I had thought of as unchangeable; to become something I had never been. And although there are problems with having lost lots of weight (I alluded to some above), getting fit was a really fun, empowering thing to do; something of which I am quite proud. It makes me feel like I am a self-actualized person and has given me a lot of confidence in other areas of my life.

That is why I changed my blog name to Simone. Wrongly or rightly, I associate self-actualization with existentialism (I probably misunderstand both theories but who cares?) and Simone De Beauvoir is the only existentialist I find compelling. I don't agree with all her ideas AT ALL but I do like how she argued that women could break out of the box in which society tries to place us.

So, I will try to remember all this week that exercising at 6am and biking to work everyday in my heels is a libratory act of self-actualization: I can and will be who I want to be!

Making fitness a priority

Believe it or not, I have yet to start my daily exercising routine. It is just so hard to make exercise a priority when there are so many other things that NEED to be done. I co-taught a workshop on caring for fruit trees today and so I woke up early to prepare the handouts and work on my presentation. I had no time at all to go for a run or head to the gym. Many of my days are like that; I am parenting , working, volunteering, giving workshops, or - sometimes - seeing friends.  I am always busy and I think i always will be. However, I need to make fitness a priority as well. It is such a magic bullet for me in terms of reducing stress, helping me to concentrate and relax, helping to to think clearly, improving my sleep and general health. making exercise a priority means I can do all the things I need and want to with my life.

Tomorrow I have the morning free. The kids are at their dads. I have no meetings, no appointments, no workshops, no work. Well, I should actually do some work on a course I teach BUT I can make time in the morning to exercise. The plan is to head to the Y by 8am, run on the treadmill (I am too depressed by the cold and snow - I know I ran in colder weather but that was in winter! I refuse to run in freezing cold weather in the spring) for 45 minutes, head to a yoga class, then go back to the fitness area and do some strength training. I plan to spend almost three hours there doing it all cardio, strength training, relaxation. Just really make time for myself. yes, there are a million other things I could be doing, grading my students, revising my course, reading, preparing workshops, cleaning my house, doing laundry, talking on the phone, etc, etc. But I have decided to carve out one morning where I spend a few hours doing what is necessary for me to be able to do all those other things. 

And hopefully that will be inspiring and fun enough that I will get back in the habit of exercising and start heading every day (for much less time, of course) to the gym or the yoga studio or outside to exercise.

I have fallen so far off the wagon I can't even see the tracks. Oh dear. My fitness plan has not gone well. One lesson learned: I can not do running training clinics. I just will never complete one. This one was even more demanding than the other THREE I have failed to complete because they expected me to attend group runs or classes three days a week and that does NOT work with my life. I won't sign up for another one of those! Also running in the winter is not fun for me. I don't like being cold or uncomfortable. Another thing I learned is that fitness videos are really boring (in my opinion).

However, my ambitious fitness goals remain (almost) intact! I am not sure if I'll do the 1/2 marathon in 2.5 weeks but I signed up for a September sprint triathlon and an October marathon. Crazy? probably but I don't care.

My new plan for achieving these goals is to exercise very early in the morning. This is the only thing that fits into my lifestyle. I need to get up at, like, 5:30 and head out for a run or head to the gym. And be ready to start my day at 8am. This fits into my paid work and even into single parenthood since I worked out a way to get my co-parent to be present in my apartment for early morning exercising on the days I have the kids (yay for easy-going co-parents who are also neighbours).  Because I am ambitious, and apparently don't mind failing, I have a plan to do this seven days a week: hot yoga twice, swimming twice, and running three times.  And maybe I'll even be able to combine some of the above mentioned exercises with a Zumba class.

In terms of healthy eating, I tried to do a detox and mostly focused on the food, although other things were part of it such as daily meditation and getting adequate sleep. It worked at first. I avoided sugar, wheat, and coffee, and ate lots of raw veggies and even did one day of a juice fast. But I think the one-day juice fast broke me. It made me feel crazy. I was so hungry all I could do was think about food. I felt tired, weak, and just awful. Maybe fasting is a spiritual and purifying experience for some people, but not for me. I will not be fasting again. I do, however, want to keep up the avoidance of wheat, sugar, and coffee. Or, start it again, since I failed on the sugar and wheat front!
But I'm also going to be flexible and accepting. Sometimes I just really need chocolate or a date square.

So, starting tomorrow, my goals are to exercise everyday, avoid sugar, wheat, and coffee, and get enough sleep while waking up very early. I will be completely changing my biological clock with the early morning wake-up so wish me luck!

Why are good habits so hard to keep?

I haven't posted in quite a while and I haven't been doing very well on my fitness plan either. After falling of my schedule for the Jillian Michael's workout, I never got back into it. I have done ok with my 1/2 marathon training which is great but I have not started the regular swims and I have not gone back to doing yoga. It is so hard for me to keep going with an exercise plan. As soon as life gets busy, exercising is the thing that gets dropped. I  don';t feel too bad about because I know that I can get back on schedule. The amazing thing about running for me is that it serves as a constant example of what I am capable of. I so vividly remember when I could not run, rarely biked, and didn't even particularly like to walk more than 15 minutes or so. I was so out of shape for the vast majority of my life and now I (fairly) easily and (somewhat) regularly run 10 km.

I think I need to restate my intention and then just start doing it again. I have to, of course, be gentle on myself when life gets in the way. My work schedule is irregular and we are in the middle of flu season and I'm a single mama so there are some very good reasons why I might not always be able to exercise!!

So, this is what I am aiming for:

* Running 3-4 times a week with a distance of at least 25km per week
* Yoga class once a week
* Jillian Michael's video five times a week for the next six weeks (i need to be realistic - every day wasn't quite working)
* Roller derby once a week
* Swimming 1-2 times a week

That is a really ambitious schedule! I am always a little too ambitious. Speaking of which, I have signed up for a marathon class which begins at the end of May. My goal marathon is in October in Toronto!! I am excited. i really do believe I can do it although it will be a big challenge!

So, tomorrow I am going to try to start this new and ambitious schedule. I'm going to try to post everyday with an update on how I am doing!