It is a difficult thing to love your body.  I know of only a few who truly do.  This year I have worn a two-piece bathing suit (that bares my belly) for the first time since… EVER!  I’m 37, how did this happen?!  I look back at pictures and sigh because I thought I was fat THEN.

I’m blessed that my body works, my feet can dance, my arms can carry groceries, my hands can write. Yet, I often fail to appreciate those things.  When I was pregnant, and acutely aware of the power of my body, one of my mantras was, “my body was made to do this”.  Now I use the same mantra in spin class.  I was hit by a car when I was six years old. I spent three months recuperating, but I did. I healed to be a happy healthy kid whose body functions as intended.

We are so hard on ourselves, why? Wouldn’t we be happier if we accepted our bodies for their limitations, but worked within them to make them the strongest and healthiest possible? I think so.

You are young, vibrant, healthy. Love your body, you are beautiful!!!

I know how to do this, really, I’ve done it before. How could I forget the drinking water part?

To be perfectly honest I’m not much of a beverage girl. We have coffee in the morning, but if Jeremy didn’t want it I wouldn’t make it. As a kid I had milk or water with meals, but now I don’t. I don’t crave milk, juice or soda. I drink diet soda instead of grabbing a handful of cookies. And I often forget about water altogether. One of the things I often forgot in the first weeks of working out at the gym was my water bottle. After paying over $1 a bottle for water whenever that happened I quickly caught on to remembering my Sigg bottle. At home I rarely have a glass of water. At the nanny family’s house I’m more apt to keep a cup of ice water around (not sure why it’s easier there).

I do know however that in order to get the pounds off the scale (and my thighs) I’ve got to drink a decent to significant amount of water. For me the important time is after dinner. I usually want to munch something while hanging out in front of the TV. If I drink 2-3 glasses of water between 8-11pm I see a difference on the scale. No lie. This of course is in addition to working out and tracking my calories.

It makes sense, it’s just something I tend to forget. So I’m here to remind you, just add water. 

2100 calories on “rest” days

2400 calories on workout days, workouts ~500 calories, 5 days out of seven

This takes alot of trust on my part. Trust isn’t exactly my strong suit (stop laughing!) and 2400 calories sounds like, feels like and is more calories than it seems like should work. We’ll see.

2000 calories a day, 500 calorie workouts at least five times a week. This for twelve weeks.

Food is fuel.

Work-out #1 is complete, looking forward to workout #2 tomorrow. 

Strong, healthy girls! (By the way this what I tell our daughter when she asks why we go to the gym, “Because we need to be strong, healthy girls”)

I’m halfway to my original goal, ok, maybe more like three-fifths.  Still, I’ve got a ways to go.  Even though I’m extremely proud of my results thus far I knew I wasn’t going to be happy with myself if I settled.  So here’s to not settling!  Here’s to not being afraid of swimsuit season!  Here’s to being a strong healthy woman (and an example to our daughter).

Oh! did I mention I’ve committed to a 5K in May.  Yikes!

Beyonce channels Sasha Fierce when she’s onstage. Sasha does and says things that Beyonce may be uncomfortable doing in her everyday, offstage, life. She talked about this a bit on Oprah. It came to my mind the other day when I was at the gym and I realized how much of an escape it can be for me to be there.

In spin class I can be behind Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France going as fast as my legs can fly. In cardio funk/salsa I can be on a cruise or in Cancun shakin’ my hips to the music. I’m not anyone’s mother, I’m not in charge of what’s for dinner, I don’t have to be anywhere else. I can push my body and enjoy what my body can do. It has become, for me, a bit of an escape.

Over the last seven months when JD was unemployed my goal at the gym would often be to forget the stress. My goal was to be exhausted physically, to ask so much of my body that I would literally forget the stress. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, sometimes I hurt myself. It still felt good to try to get out of my head and to focus on one thing for one hour. One of the instructors actually jokes before class that her goal is to make us forget everything else that we have to do that day. Yes! I’m all for that.

The unemployment stress is dissolving. The constant nagging fear is dissipating. But I think I learned a helpful thing along the way. I learned how to focus and how to push myself (I didn’t hurt myself badly, a few days of VERY sore muscles). I don’t think I’m ADD or anything, but I sometimes have a tough time focusing on one thing to completion. If adopting a persona helps me get there I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

Now, if I could just channel Peter Walsh to get my house in order I’d be golden!

If you aren’t going to the link I’ll go ahead and tell you, it’s a milkshake available from Baskin & Robbins that has 2600 calories with 1220 of them from fat. I feel a coronary coming on just reading that. It’s a huge (36 ounce) shake, but I’m sure I could drink it. How many people are drinking these with no clue?

For those who need a little perspective, according to Cooking Light magazine a woman 25-50 years of age should take in no more than 2000 calories in a day. When I had my last heart rate test at the gym my number was around 1600 to lose weight. In a one hour spin class I usually burn between 500 and 600 calories. That means that if I drank (DRANK I wouldn’t even get to chew it!) this shake I would have to work my ass off in 5 spin classes JUST TO STAY AHEAD of the calories. And that doesn’t even account for the 59 grams of SATURATED fat. I wouldn’t be able to have a cholesterol test for like 3 months!

I guess my point is this, know what you are using for fuel. Fuel, that’s how I’ve come to look at food most recently. Is what I’m putting in my body going to help me do what I need to do? Is it going to get me through the day? through the stress? through the work-outs? If I eat crap I’m going to feel like crap. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of feeling like crap.

Eat consciously, be aware. Even when you splurge, be aware.

P.S. another possible word for the year: Focus

Outside of family responsibilities these two things (the gym and nannying) vy for my time. It is part of the balance I worked SO hard for in 2007. This fall and into the winter I over committed and was all over the place. It left me feeling like I was running in circles getting nowhere and constantly supposed to be somewhere else doing something else. No mas.

2009 a fresh start and a new schedule. My nanny schedule has changed. The family I work for doesn’t need me so late in the day anymore. I said goodbye to a few hours and while I wasn’t sure saying goodbye to the money was a good choice, the sanity it will bring to my day (and thus less stress to our family) makes it a good choice.

The last few months (Aug-Dec) I’ve been able to maintain my success at the gym, but truth be told I still haven’t reached my original goal. 2-3 workouts a week is not enough for me to reach that goal. Lifetime Fitness just put out their January schedule and I’ve mapped out a Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday routine that should give me the variety and results that I am working towards. Maybe Jeremy and I will even sneak in a few Friday night “date” work-outs. This schedule (minus the Wednesday workout) is one that I will be able to maintain in the future even if my nanny schedule changes, which it certainly will by the end of the year.

It feels good, a breath of fresh air into my schedule.

Oh!  And for what it’s worth I still don’t enjoy it or think of it as fun.  I love knowing my body can do this. I love how it feels to ask my body to move and it moves.  I love being able to go out and dance my ass off at Aftershock gigs.  I love how I look in clothes (did I really just say that outloud?!).  I love all that.  The actual working out not so much, but I’m OK with that.

Let me see, where did I leave off with my Lifetime Fitness saga? I think I left you somewhere around Christmas, on my own, without the trainer, and still trying to reach my original weight-loss goal.

Well, I did survive the holiday season while maintaining my weight, which means I was disciplined on my own to get my butt to the gym and work. No easy task mind you. I make deals with myself while I’m working out, “If I run two more six minute intervals I’ll only have to do the circuit twice (instead of three times)” “If I make it five more minutes on the treadmill I’ll do extra push-ups and sit-ups instead of completing my treadmill workout”. Again, When did this happen?!: When did push-ups become the EASY part of my workout? Seriously. Now granted I’m still talking the girlie push-ups, but still, I’ve NEVER looked forward to push-ups, EVER in my life. (By the way, because they’ve become easy the trainer would say it’s time to do more, different, or harder push-ups.)

Back on track. Christmas led to January and JD’s back surgery and some schedule craziness. We didn’t finish our taxes until the deadline so I didn’t know if there was any “extra” (I use that term loosely) money hangin’ around. All the while I still maintained and actually worked an additional five pounds off. Yeah me! My original plan after working with the personal trainer was to get at least ten pounds off and then utilize his help for the last ten. When it became evident that the next ten (OK, actually five, following my math?) weren’t going to come off easily (has any of this been easy?! OK, except for the aforementioned push-ups) and our finances cooperated, I hired him again, to kick my butt, again. And it worked, again.

I’ve tried to figure out what it is about working with a trainer that makes the weight come off. There are several things I’m sure, but the ones that have become evident to me are:

1. I have paid someone to meet me at a certain time so I don’t cancel (or make excuses as I would if it were just me having a PMS day)
2. The personal trainer pushes me harder than I would push myself. There is some trust involved here. I’ve got to say that after he’s told me what we are going to do I’ve laughed, but I’ve never not done it.
3. After paying someone to kick my butt I am much less likely to eat a whole sleeve of Girlscout cookies, or eat the whole box of mac and cheese, or pint of ice cream or whatever.
4. By working with a personal trainer I have added one more supportive person to my team who asks me if I’m reaching my goals and keeps me honest about it.

After the second set of sessions with the trainer (which got me through the summer by the way) I didn’t lose as much weight as I did the first time, but I did lose a little and my clothes definitely fit looser. For those of you who ask, “what did you do?” This was my summer routine: Monday Step class, followed by 30 minutes on the elliptical. Tuesday weights and maybe 30 min of cardio. Wed off. Thursday w/ trainer. Friday Spin class, followed by 30 min on elliptical. Saturday off and Sunday w/ trainer. I haven’t kept a food diary since November. Should I? Yes. It’s laziness on my part. I know I eat healthier when I have to look at it and calculate it. So to those of you who ask, “How did you lose weight?” The first part of the answer is, “I did not LOSE it, I do not want it back. I WORKED it off, it is not lost.” The second part of the answer is, “Diet and exercise.” It isn’t sexy, but it’s the truth.