Category Archives: Tough Stuff

It’s Not Really A Transformation Challenge Fail (or Trying To Be Less Competitive With Myself)

Posted on April 6, 2018 | Comments Off on It’s Not Really A Transformation Challenge Fail (or Trying To Be Less Competitive With Myself)

I wrote previously about how I had signed up for the Transformation Challenge at Orangetheory but how I was debating about continuing it. I was at a pretty low point with my weight loss journey where I had been taking on lots of water weight and my body was puffing up. I was thinking about going to get some blood work done to see if it was my thyroid, but many of the symptoms I experienced (feeling cold, more hair loss than normal, the water weight gain) finally started to go away so I’ve postponed going to the doctor.

But because I was dealing with those medical issues, I pretty much gave up on the transformation challenge. I was feeling a bit depressed about how high the number on the scale was even though I knew that it wasn’t all “real” weight. But when you are a part of a transformation challenge that is based on weight loss, there’s no way to determine what weight I might have lost when the scale is actually higher than where I started.

I’m so competitive with myself and I thought it would be difficult to give up on this challenge. But the timing worked out well for me because the last part of the challenge was when I already started working out at the Culver City studio. And that studio wasn’t doing the challenge (new studios don’t do challenges right away) so I wasn’t facing it all the time and that helped keep it out of my mind. In fact, when the final weigh-ins happened for this challenge, I wasn’t at the Brentwood studio any of those days. I could have gone in just to weigh in, but I didn’t worry about it. And the staff there understood my reason and nobody there made me feel bad about it.

Of course, even though others didn’t make me feel bad about it, I still did. I know that I didn’t do anything wrong necessarily, but I still blame myself a little bit. And I would have loved to have won or placed in the challenge because I could always use that boost of confidence. But this time just wasn’t my time and I am working on understanding that. My stubbornness and competitiveness can be good things, but they can also cause me to be upset when there is no reason for me to feel that way.

So while I am feeling a bit down about not completing (or kicking butt in) a challenge, I am trying to think about what various therapists have said to me and focus on the positives. I knew that I wasn’t in the best place mentally or physically and made the smart decision to not continue the challenge. I think that if I did continue the stress may have made a lot of the symptoms I was experiencing worse. I also didn’t use the setback as an excuse to not work as hard. In fact, I think I was working harder to prove to myself that I wasn’t giving up in general but just giving up on this temporary challenge.

Being kind and gentle to myself isn’t something that comes naturally to me. It’s a skill that I’ve been working on for so long and it may be a struggle the rest of my life. Whenever something doesn’t go my way or the way I hoped, I automatically assume it is my fault or I was not worthy of something. It’s rarely the case that it is and I want to try to work on not having the negative reaction as my default. I’ve had enough good stuff happen to me that I should believe that I deserve good and I don’t deserve the bad, but as I’ve said before I think some of the things I heard as a child are just stuck in my mind and will always be demons I need to fight.

But for now, I’m not mad at myself for not completing the challenge. And for me, not being mad is a pretty big victory. And I am choosing to focus on that victory as the big win I had for this transformation challenge.

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Default ThumbnailAnother Weight Loss Challenge (or Getting Back On Track) Default ThumbnailWeight Loss Challenge Time (or Not Worrying About Winning) Default ThumbnailDoing A Transformation Challenge (or Maybe I Need To Change Things Up) Default ThumbnailSkipping A Transformation Challenge (or This Was An Easy Choice For Me) Default ThumbnailGetting Weighed In (or A New Orangetheory Challenge) Default ThumbnailEnding My Challenge Early (or I Guess I Made A Mistake)

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Posted in Fitness, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

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Remembering To Do What I Like (or Weird Disappearing Time)

Posted on March 28, 2018 | Comments Off on Remembering To Do What I Like (or Weird Disappearing Time)

I’ve written about being over-scheduled in the past, and this is kind of the same idea. But at the same time it’s different and it’s weird. But somehow it feels like my time is disappearing from me. And with that disappearing time, I also feel like I’m not doing as many of the things that make me happy each day when I know there is time to do them.

I seem to be losing my Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Those used to be my workout times, but lately I’ve been working out in the mornings and those afternoons are free. But somehow that time it going by without me realizing it and I’m losing that time. I need to be a bit more intentional with how I schedule my time so that I don’t end up sitting at my computer going down a YouTube or Buzzfeed rabbit hole after work and wasting those hours. I’ve had weekend days like that as well when I get up at 7am and then all of a sudden it’s 7pm and I have no clue how I spent my day.

And part of the disappearing time is realizing now that my routine is a bit different that I don’t have the same time to kill that I did before. When I was driving to the Brentwood Orangetheory location after work twice a week, I had so much time in my car. I spent about 30 minutes in my car driving there and driving home would take between 1-2 hours (I know that sounds crazy, but since I work from home I figured this was my commute). During that time in the car, I would listen to podcasts. I usually would get through at least 1 podcast each time I drove to my workout.

But now that I’m not going to that location when the drive would take that long (going on Mondays is a pretty fast drive), I don’t have that time that I’m listening to my podcasts. And that wouldn’t be a problem for that many people, but since I listen to over 50 podcasts they were starting to pile up! I’m not using those afternoons to listen to podcasts while I’m home, so that time to listen has gone away. So I’ve had to make more of an effort to listen to podcasts since the time that I used to listen to them wasn’t really there anymore. So now I’m trying to spend my time during work between customers listening to the backlog and I’m finally starting to get close to being up to date on them again.

I know that everyone has this problem and seems to lose track of time, but because I’m really trying to be more mindful of so much in my life I want to work on making this not happen as often. There will always been random days every so often where the day will be wasted watching lots of random things on Netflix. But I want those to be rare and not happening as often as they have been recently. The example of losing my afternoons and then also losing podcast listening time shows exactly what is happening. I’m losing that time, but I’m also losing the time that I used to spend doing something that makes me happy.

I love listening to my podcasts and I need to dedicate time to listen to them. In the same sense, I need to make sure I dedicate time to doing other things I enjoy. I do read pretty much every evening before going to bed, but I should make an effort to read more often. Reading before bed is only for a little bit of time because then I fall asleep. But I get so much pleasure out of reading and I should be doing it more throughout the day.

Scheduling fun things doesn’t necessarily sound like the most exciting thing, but I really do need to work on it. I think scheduling it helps me find the balance between being over-scheduled and under-scheduled and helps me plan where I have empty time in my schedule that I might want to fill with something else. While there is always time I want to use to watch TV, I don’t want to spend an entire day just watching junk. I’m working on only watching shows that I have recorded so that I limit how much TV I’m watching and I also can stop mid-way through a show if necessary (I do make an exception to this for news).

I’ve also realized lately that I haven’t been doing as many things from my happiness checklist as I was doing before. I’ve thought about maybe changing some of the things on the list, but all 10 of the things still are things that make me so happy when I do them. And I haven’t thought of something else that makes me just as happy or happier to replace them with. So instead of changing them (which is what I’ve done in the past), I am just trying to be more intentional and trying to make the effort to add them back into my schedule. I probably need to set some reminders on my phone or add them to my calendar so I don’t forget, but having reminders isn’t a bad thing.

Hopefully the combination of realizing I’m losing time to doing nothing and I’m not doing as many things that make me happy as I should that I can start planning better and that will just make me feel happier and not that I’m wasting time in lots of aspects of my life.

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Default ThumbnailStaying Calm In The Crazy (or Is This Month Over Yet?) Default ThumbnailWeird Workout Times (or My Final Workouts Before My 5K) Default ThumbnailWhat I’m Listening To (or I’m Not A Music Person) Default ThumbnailA Weird Workout Schedule (or Out With The Old And In With The New) Default ThumbnailIt’s Like I’m Back At The Beginning (or Muscle Memory Is Weird) Default ThumbnailFirst Week of Workouts After The Challenge (or Weird Workout Times)

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Posted in Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff

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My First Dri-Tri Relay (or Trying To Not Be Disappointed In Myself)

Posted on March 20, 2018 | Comments Off on My First Dri-Tri Relay (or Trying To Not Be Disappointed In Myself)

I’ve done a couple of Dri–Tris at Orangetheory in the past. And as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my 4th workout last week was another Dri-Tri. But this time, the Dri-Tri was going to be a relay event and it would be my first time doing that.

With the Dri-Tri relay, you have a team of 3 and each person does one section (rower, floor, or treadmill). I immediately knew I wanted to do the rower. First, it would give me a great opportunity to try to PR on my 2,000 meter row. Also, I knew how tough the floor work was for me each time and I didn’t think I was ready to do a 5K (or 1/2 5K as a power walker). So the rower was what made sense to me. I tried to get a team together, but many of my Orangetheory friends weren’t able to do the Dri-Tri. Fortunately, the studio would help find a team for me so I signed up to do the row and figured I’d find out the day of the Dri-Tri who my team would be (I wouldn’t be at the studio doing the Dri-Tri until the day of since I went to the new Culver City location).

The day of, a bunch of people who signed up ended up dropping out so there was a bit of work done by the staff to put together new teams. Also some people decided to do the Dri-Tri solo instead of being on a team. I thought about if I should do the full event, but I hadn’t really prepared properly for it so I didn’t push myself. But they figured out a team for me and since the rowing was first I got ready to start.

I knew that I didn’t want to overdo it with the row in the beginning. I’ve made the mistake in the past of starting too big and then not being able to sustain that. So I tried to start slower than I thought I should because it was at a speed that I knew I could maintain for a while. I had the PR time in my head and as I was getting further into the row I kept doing the math to see if I would beat my PR time. It seemed like I was on pace to do that once I got to the halfway point and I just tried to stay focused on staying steady and not focused on the time or distance as much.

I have to say that my teammates were so amazing while I was rowing. They were cheering me on and super supportive. I wasn’t expecting that and I never had that experience when I did the Dri-Tri solo so it was a nice surprise for me. It helped me get any negative thoughts out of my head when I was starting to struggle and they were able to tighten the foot straps for me (they sometimes get loose when I row) so I didn’t have to stop and do it myself.

Once I got to the last 200 meters, I realized that it was going to be much closer to my previous PR than I thought. There was a chance I wasn’t going to beat it and I wasn’t mentally prepared for it. Even though I had already been rowing for 8 minutes and was exhausted, I kicked my butt into gear and was rowing so hard that I probably was doing too much (I was starting to struggle to catch my breath but refused to slow down). And when I was done, I was pretty mad.

My previous PR was 8:45.2. I missed it by 2.4 seconds. That is pretty much like missing it because of 1 or 2 pulls on the rower that could have been a bit stronger. Honestly, I would have rather missed it by 20 seconds than missing it by 2 seconds. It was about 40 seconds faster than my last Dri-Tri attempt, but that wasn’t cheering me up. I had my heart set on beating my PR and I failed at it. I’m so competitive with myself and it was tough to know that I failed at something that I felt was so certain to happen.

But I couldn’t stay upset for long because I needed to go support my teammate on the floor. We were cheering her on and when she was on the second round of the floor work I was cheering that she was done with push ups/burpees/whatever the move was each time she was done. And then we went to support our teammate on the treadmill and we kept cheering whenever he hit a milestone. I don’t remember exactly what time our team was done with the entire event, but it was pretty much in the middle of the pack which was awesome considering I was the last person to finish the row.

After we were done, we were cheering on the rest of the people on the treadmill. The great thing about the Dri-Tri is that everyone seems to stay in the room and as each person is close to finishing their treadmill work they gather around to cheer. And it was the same this time and I loved getting to cheer for people. Some people hit PRs, some hit goals they thought would take months, and some completed their first Dri-Tri. Every person in the room accomplished something awesome (and yes, even though I was mad I had to be a bit proud that I rowed 2,000 meters without stopping and almost matched my PR).

And this year, they were giving out medals for the Dri-Tri! So of course we all needed a photo with the medals.

Even though it was good to do the Dri-Tri relay, I don’t know if I would do the relay again. While it was nice to not have to worry about doing anything after the row, I also felt a bit like something was missing. I think if I had worked harder leading up to it, I probably could have done the full one. But who knows how I will feel the next time we have one. Also, I might be doing the next Dri-Tri at the Culver City studio. I’ll just have to wait and see.

But for now, I’m just enjoying knowing I did another Dri-Tri and loving how my medal looks on my medal hanger.

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Default ThumbnailMaking Challenges More Challenging (or A Dri-Tri First For Me) Default ThumbnailLearning Something New Every Time (or Being Ok With My Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailThird Time’s Not The Charm (or Being Ok With An Ok Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Time (or Beating My Own Records) Default ThumbnailMy First Dri-Tri (or Beating My Expectations) Default ThumbnailBaby Steps Of Improvements (or Getting Ready For The Dri-Tri)

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff

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An Up And Down Week (or Working Through The Same Frustrations)

Posted on March 12, 2018 | Comments Off on An Up And Down Week (or Working Through The Same Frustrations)

This past week of workouts was a bit of a mixed bag of good and bad. I’m really working on not judging my workouts as much, but it’s difficult when I have previous workouts to compare it to. I keep reminding myself to focus on the fact that I’m there and that’s better than I was doing before, but it’s still not the first thing in my head a lot of the time.

Monday’s workout was a strength day. I knew I’d be going to Disneyland after my workout, so I planned on using the bike instead of the treadmill. But by the time I got to class, I wasn’t able to start on cardio so I started on the rower instead. It was a 3 group class and we had 2 rounds around the room so every block was about 7 minutes long. The rowing was pretty much the same with both blocks. We had rounds of sprint rows of 100, 200, or 300 meters. In the first block, we went up in distance and in the second block we went down. I tried to keep my rowing under my time goals and was pretty much able to do that each time.

On the floor, the first block had deadlifts, bear steps (which is kind of like a crab walk but face down), and lunges with upper cuts using weights. And in the second block we had sumo squats, alligators on the straps, and seated torso rotations. And on the bike, everything was pretty much 90 second push paces. Since the treadmill would have been at an incline, I tried to increase the resistance on the bike each time. And while I was tired, when we did have the all out paces on each block, I pushed myself really hard to pedal even faster. And that work paid off because I was complimented by my coach for working so hard!

Wednesday’s workout was a really interesting one! We’ve got a Dri-Tri coming up soon and this class was kind of like a mini Dri-Tri! We were in 3 groups again and I was in the group that started on the treadmill. It was supposed to be a 12 minute run for distance, but I’m still not really running yet so I walked the entire thing. I was hoping to get at least .7 miles done and I just got beyond that so I was pretty happy.

Next I was on the rower where it was a bit different from what we would do during a Dri-Tri. We had 10 minutes of doing 100 meter sprint rows followed by 20 power jumping jacks using a medicine ball. The goal was to do as many rounds of that as you could in those 10 minutes. I was able to do about 938 meters which was below the goal but I really did try my best. And after that I was on the floor where we had the same bodyweight exercises that we have during the Dri-Tri. But I was a bit more tired doing the floor work since it was toward the end of my workout. After that, we had a 1 minute tornado around the room with a 1 minute plank hold, 1 minute all out on the treadmill, and 1 minute all out on the rower.

Friday was a bit of an odd day. I wasn’t feeling totally myself and had some dizziness and vertigo issues in the morning while I was working. I thought I felt better when I got to the workout, but after my warmup on the treadmill I realized that I was still feeling off and I’d be better off being on the bike. It was also a strength day so I was a little bit happy to be avoiding hills on the treadmill and just working on resistance training on the bike instead.

Each block on cardio had a similar pattern with a base pace at an incline, a base pace at no incline, and a push to all out pace at an incline. For me on the bike, that meant working with increasing the resistance as a substitute for inclines. I didn’t get as high up in the resistance as I would have liked to, but I did match my highest resistance level from the recent past which was nice. And again, I tried to focus on my cadence and wattage to make sure I was replicating push and all out paces the best that I could.

When I was on the floor, we had 2 floor blocks and 1 rowing block. The first floor block was squat low rows with weights, triceps on the straps, and lateral raises with weights. The second block was a mini-band block. I’m still getting a hang of the mini-bands and this time I still ended up spending some time getting it straight on my legs and figuring out the best way to use them. This time, we had suitcase squats with weights, knee tucks, and side plank leg lifts using the mini-bands. I think I did better than I had in the past with the bands, but I also know there is a lot of room for improvement too. And the last block was on the rower where we had 3 rounds of 30 second all out rows followed by 30 seconds of recovery.

After an off day on Friday, I was a bit worried about Saturday. But I found out it was going to be a power day where we switched between blocks (plus it was a 3 group class) so I felt much better. Each block was only 4 minutes long so I wasn’t at any spot that long. So I felt much more comfortable using the treadmill this class. Each round on the treadmill was a similar pattern with a push pace, a base pace, a push to all out pace, a 30 second walking recovery, and a 30 second all out pace to end the block. I wasn’t doing my usual inclines and kept the push and all out inclines the same instead of bumping it up. But even with keeping the inclines a bit lower, I still felt the workout since there was minimal recovery time.

On the rower, each block was the same idea with counting pulls and seeing how far you could go. The first block was rounds of 10 pulls, the second block was rounds of 15 pulls, and the last block was rounds of 20 pulls. I was doing pretty great with 10 and 15 pulls, but when it got to 20 pulls I wasn’t able to do my super slow rowing that I can do with lower pull counts. And on the floor, each block had 2 moves. Those included uppercuts with weights, pop jacks, Y raises on the straps, sit-ups, squats, and hammer curls. The blocks were so fast that I really didn’t have time to think about getting tired so I was using some of the heavier weights for the weight work.

I sound like a broken record, but I’m really looking forward to when I will finally have progress in my workouts again. I miss feeling so accomplished every class. But then again, maybe this is what it’s like to work out on a regular basis for so long. I can’t always expect progress and I can’t use that as a motivation. But to have a little bit of that progress back again would be really nice.

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Default ThumbnailA Week Of Bike Work (or Working Through Nausea and Pain) Default ThumbnailAnother Week of Highs and Lows (or Not Letting One Workout Influence Another) Default ThumbnailThis Felt Like Hell Week (or An Unexpected But Fun Workout Week) Default ThumbnailMixing Up The Workout Week (or Still Working On Being Easy On Myself) Default ThumbnailAnother Week Of Taking It Easy (or Feeling Strong While Not Working As Hard) Default ThumbnailNot Exactly A Recovery Week (or Working With Different Challenges)

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Struggling Sucks (or Thank Goodness It Was A Short Workout Week)

Posted on March 5, 2018 | Comments Off on Struggling Sucks (or Thank Goodness It Was A Short Workout Week)

This past week of workouts wasn’t that great for me. I wish I could put a more positive spin on things, but that really is the truth for me. And I’m not one to sugarcoat the truth. I’ve been struggling a lot lately, but this past week took things to a new level and I really wasn’t mentally prepared for it. I had one ok day, one horrible day, and one bad day. Not what I was hoping, but that’s the week that I had.

I didn’t have a workout on Monday because I was in Palm Springs, so I only had 3 workouts this past week. But that ended up being for the best for me. Wednesday was a power day and it wasn’t too bad. I think I lucked out because we were switching between blocks and it was more like a 3 group workout than a 2 group workout. So we never really spent that long in one section of the room. The first round was 3 minutes at each section, the second round was 5 minutes at each section, and the last round was 3 minutes at each section.

For the treadmill, it was pretty much push paces and push to all out paces. I walked everything and was able to do my normal speed and inclines which really surprised me. I thought since I missed my Monday workout it would have been much worse, but maybe doing my hiking helped me not feel too bad. On the rower we had 2 rounds of distance rows with lunges between and one round of counting pulls for the rowing. For counting pulls, we were counting for 200 and 100 meters. The goal for 200 is under 20 pulls, but because I’ve been working on taking my time with these challenges I managed to do it in 13 pulls! And on the floor we had burpees, crunches, hop overs, skier swings, and sit ups.

Friday’s workout was just bad for me. I was dealing with pain and nausea and even though I took my medications right before class they weren’t helping. I thought I could do the treadmill since it was a power day, but after the warmup I was feeling so nauseous that I got off and got on the bike. I’m glad I’ve figured out that being on the bike helps keep some of the nausea away (walking is just too bouncy for me when I feel bad), but it’s still a little bit of a disappointment when I can’t use the treadmill. I’m working on getting out of that mindset, but I think the way I was feeling physically was affecting my mental state.

We had 4 blocks for cardio but we didn’t switch between blocks so we were on it for the first half of class. The first 3 blocks were push paces and push to all out paces. I really worked on my cadence with the bike and trying to work on increasing my gears for the push and all out paces. I did have to take breaks from time to time because of the nausea, but I managed to get through most of the workout on the bike just fine.

On the floor, we had 1 long block that was all Bosu and rowing work. We had pop jacks, sit ups, hop overs, back extensions, lunges, and side crunches all using the Bosu. Those were split into 3 sections and between each section we had a 250 meter row. I really had to take my time with the Bosu work, especially when there were exercises that went from standing to sitting or laying down. My stomach wasn’t doing ok with moving like that so I had to take breaks and go easy. With the rowing, the first time I was on the rower it took 2:21 to row (it should be around 2:15). The second time I rowed it was 2:16. And the last time I rowed it was 2:11. To improve with each row is good and I’m glad I finally got it under the time we were supposed to be within. But again, my nausea was kicking up a lot and before and after each row I had to focus on breathing and trying to feel better.

Saturday’s workout was one that I was very nervous for. I was still feeling pretty horrible (I had some blackout cramps before my workout) and I knew it was going to be a partner workout. I usually love partner workouts because it helps keep me motivated and I want to make sure that my partner isn’t waiting on me to finish so we can switch. But since I was feeling so badly, I didn’t want to let my partners down. When I got to class, it was a 3 group partner workout and it turned out that technically no partner was going to be responsible for the switch on their own.

We had 3 blocks that were each 13 minutes long. And in each block we rotated between the treadmill, rower, and floor. And the switch was determined by whichever of the 3 of us was finished with the work first. So even if I never finished first, my team wasn’t going to be stuck waiting on me. That was a big relief.

I used the bike again instead of the treadmill but I was able to use the rower and could do the floor work. The cardio was all short intervals (some of it was on an incline on the treadmills) and I was usually able to get the bike work done in about 3 minutes. On the rower, we had rows that were between 200-600 meters. And on the floor, it was the same work each block but we changed the number of reps each time. We had lunges, squats, crunches, and plank punches.

Even though I didn’t have to worry about my partners waiting on me, I didn’t want to be too slow with my work. And a few times I was actually the person that initiated the switch. I tried to take my breaks on the floor since that section was repeating each block, but there were a few times I had to stop on the bike to let the wave of nausea pass. It’s sad that I’m getting used to dealing with this, but since it’s possibly going to be like this for a long time I guess it’s a good thing that I’m learning to manage.

Overall, while this wasn’t a great workout week for me it was better than not showing up. It sucks to struggle and to feel like you can’t do anything to fix it, but I’m proud of myself for at least going to class. Working out won’t make things worse (except maybe walking making my nausea worse) and there is always a chance that it could be better after a workout. So I have to take the chance to see if it will help and if not, at least I’m keeping my commitment to myself to do at least 3 workouts each week.

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Default ThumbnailAn Off Workout Week (or Just Trying To Do My Best) Default ThumbnailAn Up And Down Workout Week (or I Love Having Workout Buddies) Default ThumbnailA Very Short Workout Week (or Having Some Sick Days) Default ThumbnailA Short Workout Week (or I Would Have Ended On A High Note) Default ThumbnailShort and Sweet Workout Week (or Taking It A Bit Easy) Default ThumbnailAnother Short Workout Week (or Still Can’t Believe My Milestone)

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Finding New Money Issues (or Looking At Doing A Fresh Budget)

Posted on February 23, 2018 | Comments Off on Finding New Money Issues (or Looking At Doing A Fresh Budget)

I’ve written about using YNAB to do my budgeting on here before. And I’ve written about doing a fresh start in the app when I felt like things weren’t moving the way I was hoping they would be. It’s been a while since I did that fresh start and things were getting much better and I was feeling so much more confident about money. My credit card debt was going down, I was saving money for annual expenses so they weren’t as overwhelming, and I felt like I was finally getting on top of things.

Unfortunately, that feeling has left me lately. I’m at a point right now where I have less in my bank account after paying my rent for next month than I’m used to. I think it’s lower than it’s been since I started using YNAB and that’s not a good feeling. I was trying to tell myself that this could be that I’m getting paid weekly instead of twice a week so I didn’t have a big paycheck recently. And I’m still waiting on a check from one job. Also, one of my day jobs recently cut back my hours by 2/3rds. They are hoping to find some other work that I can do to make up some extra hours, but there is no guarantee that I could do that.

Because I’ve been budgeting for a while now, I’m on a bit of autopilot. That can be a good thing because I don’t have to think about adding transactions to the app anymore. I just do it automatically as I spend the money. But because I’m on autopilot, I don’t think I’ve adjusted to my new income level and I have been spending the way I was when I was still working more hours. It’s a difference of about $800 a month which is a significant amount. I am looking at ways to make up that money, but so far I haven’t found another job to add to my collection.

I could just start adjusting my budget in the app to start reflecting the amounts that I should be spending in each category. I know that I could be better about meal planning so I spend less on groceries and I don’t buy as many frozen or pre-made meals (which are more expensive than just buying ingredients). And I know that I need to go through my monthly recurring charges to find what I can either cut back or eliminate completely. I can’t keep living as if I was making the same as I was before because it will put me into a really horrible financial spot.

But even though I could just be adjusting my current budget, I’m looking at doing another fresh start now too. In some ways, it would be nice to have a clean break from how my spending was before to what my spending should be like now. But on the other hand, it would be good to learn the skills I should have to adjust my budget when necessary. Money fluctuations will probably always be a part of my life and I need to be better about planning when things aren’t stable. You can’t always start over so I should know how to adjust and be flexible.

As I’m writing this, I’m about to have my taxes done (when this goes up, it will be the day after my taxes are figured out). I think that once that is done and I know how much money I will have left from my savings for taxes (hopefully I will owe less than I saved!) I can make a more educated plan on what I want to do with my budget. It may be the perfect time to have a fresh start because then I will know what my money situation will be like with what I have to spend. It is a bit tough to budget when I have one bank account that I can’t really touch except for budgeting for my taxes, so I’m thinking about eliminating that bank account from my budgeting plan. I think maybe it was misleading because I felt like I had more money than I do.

I know that budgeting needs to be a big focus of mine right now. I need to get back on the track that I was on and I can’t just believe that somehow things will work out. That’s how I got into the financial situation that I’m in right now. I was trying to believe that everything would be ok and that I didn’t have to worry about it. I was wrong. I should have worried and I regret not worrying back then. But now I am so much smarter about how I need to be in control of my money and how I am spending it and hopefully I can fix this problem quickly before it takes away the hard work that I have been doing for a while.

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Default ThumbnailGoing Back To An Old Habit (or Finding Control With Budgeting) Default ThumbnailBudgeting and Spending (or Sharing YNAB With A Cashier) Default ThumbnailA Fresh Budget (or Starting Over With YNAB) Default ThumbnailFinding Ways To Treat Myself (or I Wish Money Wasn’t An Issue) Default ThumbnailWorking On Money (or A Prosperous Heart Update) Default ThumbnailWorking on Budgeting (or Spending Money To Save Money)

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Using Podcasts To Better Myself (or Continuing To Be A Podcast Addict)

Posted on February 22, 2018 | 3 comments

I wrote a long time ago about how much I love podcasts. I’ve been listening to podcasts for so many years that I can’t remember when I started. But because I don’t really listen to music, podcasts are my entertainment in my car (and while I’m blogging!). I just looked at my podcast app and I’m currently subscribed to 55 podcasts! There are some of them that don’t have new episodes or rarely have new episodes, but many of them are weekly and I have to work to stay caught up.

I listen to a lot of podcasts about the entertainment industry and about eating disorders/food. Those are great educational podcasts for me and it’s an easy way for me to stay informed. And there are lots of fun interview style podcasts I listen to as pure entertainment and those are great for when I’m just looking for a distraction. Every podcast I listen to is important to me for one reason or another, but I wanted to highlight 3 (technically 4) podcasts that are really changing my life right now.

The first one is one of the newer ones I’ve been listening to. It’s called Forever35.

I found this podcast because one of the hosts is on another podcast I listen to. Since I like what she has to say, I figured I’d listen to her on a second podcast and I am so glad that I did! This podcast is really about self-care. A lot of it is physical self-care like face serums, face masks, and other beauty things. And because self-care and allowing myself to be a bit more selfish was something I’ve been working on recently, this podcast came into my life at the perfect time!

While I’ve always tried to have a regular skin care routine, I’ve been making adjustments to it lately so it feels a bit more luxurious. I’m still doing things cheaply (thankfully Trader Joes has some amazing skin care products!) but it’s nice to add something that feels special into something you do every day. My new routine is still very new, but I do think I see a difference in my skin. It may just be that my skin is feeling pampered and I’m finally taking time to myself so I can work on it, but that still is a result! And I’m so glad that I felt encouraged by this podcast and the amazing Facebook group for fans of the podcast to work on taking care of myself.

The next podcast that has been helping me better myself is Unladylike.

This is another podcast I found out through another podcasts. The hosts of Unladylike used to host Stuff Mom Never Told You and I listened to them on that show. So when they created a new podcast I followed them there (I still listen to the other podcast with the new hosts) and I love this one! This podcast is about feminism and issues that women are concerned about. Topics have included the history of women and bikes, yoga and what is a yoga body, and abortion rights. I’m a feminist and have always been one, but I have been more and more involved in issues lately and I’m glad I’ve found a podcast that is adding to my education about the issues that I may not have thought about before.

And the final podcast is actually more of a podcast network. It’s Crooked Media and the podcasts that I listen to in that network are Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It.

I learned about Crooked Media from a friend of a friend I met at a party. I think at that time they only had Pod Save America but now there are 8 podcasts in their network (I think that number is correct, but they are always adding more). I’ll admit that I wasn’t the most involved person in politics in the past. Even though as a teenager I was on the city council for the city I grew up in on the youth committee and I’ve always voted, I was only aware of the most superficial issues. I know where I stand on gun control, abortion rights, healthcare, and other issues that I’m connected to and which politicians agree and disagree with me. But when Trump was elected, I knew that I needed to make a change.

The hosts of these podcasts use to work for the Obama administration so they are extremely knowledgable about political issues. But they are in their 30’s so they can relate to how those in my generation are experiencing things. They also know how to make politics more interesting and less like they are lecturing you. Each week they discuss the current issues in politics (although when an episode is released there may already be a new issue as that is the trend in the current administration) and while they are Democrats they are not afraid to call out Democrats when they are wrong.

Lovett or Leave It is a game show style political podcast where guests and audience members play games related to current events. The games are fun, but I still learn a lot from them. And because I listen to Pod Save America along with other political podcasts, I’m so excited when I am able to figure out the answers when I am listening to the episode. It proves how much information I’ve been picking up from listening to podcasts and how much more educated I am about issues that affect me and others.

If anyone is interested in more podcast recommendations on what I’m listening to that is educational, fun, or just entertaining; please let me know. I’m such a podcast junkie that I just want to share podcasts with everyone because I love them so much!

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Doing A Transformation Challenge (or Maybe I Need To Change Things Up)

Posted on February 20, 2018 | 1 comment

I’m currently in the middle of a transformation challenge at Orangetheory. This time, the challenge is 8 weeks long instead of 6 weeks and it is the same as how the weight loss challenges worked. You have to work out a minimum of 3 days a week during the challenge and there are official weigh-ins at the beginning, middle, and end of the challenge. Sometimes the winners are based on fat percentage lost, but I think this challenge is based on weight loss (I’m not 100% sure).

I pretty much always sign up for challenges. Most of the time it’s pretty much what I would be doing normally and there is the potential to win. I was in 2nd place during one challenge. And I love having a goal in mind to work toward and having the support of others. Whenever there is a challenge there is always some camaraderie between those in the challenge and we encourage each other.

But this challenge things seem to be different for me. I still get the camaraderie between people in the challenge and I love to support others who are doing in. But my heart doesn’t seem to be in it this time.

I’m definitely struggling with food and weight loss right now. My new medication dosage is helping a lot, but there are other factors I have to consider now. I do still have binge episodes even though they are less severe and less frequent that before. But I also am not able to work out as hard as I used to because of the medication. Also, while I am adjusting to things I am being a bit easier on myself and indulging from time to time on foods I love. I’m not necessarily going crazy, but I’m not on a strict plan either like I have tried during other challenges.

I’m also dealing with massive weight fluctuations right now. I’m guessing these have to do with hormones but I had one week were my weight went up almost 20 pounds and then I went pretty much back down to where I was. That is frustrating when I am trying to see if I have made any progress. And when I try to use things that aren’t the scale to see progress, like clothing, I have issues when I am bloating and none of my clothes fit. I wanted to have a breakdown the other day when everything in my closet was too small even though I know it shouldn’t be that way. But then a few days later the bloat went away and everything fit again.

I don’t think it is bad for my mental health to be in this challenge, but it can’t be great that I am currently focused so much on the challenge. If I just tried my best and wasn’t focused on numbers and food, I think I would be a lot happier. And now that I’m halfway done with this challenge, I think that’s exactly what I’m going to try to do. I will still track food like I have in the past because the way I track food isn’t numbers-based. And I’m still going to make my best efforts to do what I know I should be doing.

But at the same time, I’m not going to be tracking my weight anymore. I’m taking a vacation from the scale. This will only be a temporary vacation because I do like having the scale to help keep me accountable, but right now I don’t think it is the best thing for me. If I feel like I need to step on the scale to see what it says, I will do it. But I’m not going to obsess about weighing myself every day and tracking it. Eventually I will be tracking my weight again, but I think I want to start over with a fresh slate on weight tracking so I don’t see the recent fluctuations.

I really doubt this plan will help me win the transformation challenge, but that’s not really a focus of mine. The only time I thought I might win is when I was doing the cleanse at the same time as the challenge. That was awesome and I’m glad I did it, but I can’t put myself into that same obsessive mindset again. There are so many other things I need to focus on right now outside of this challenge and I need the mental freedom to do so. And if I happen to place in this challenge, that would be awesome. But I think I’ll be much happier assuming I won’t place and just seeing what I can do over these last 4 weeks.

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Default ThumbnailWeight Loss Challenge Time (or Not Worrying About Winning) Default ThumbnailIt’s Not Really A Transformation Challenge Fail (or Trying To Be Less Competitive With Myself) Default ThumbnailSkipping A Transformation Challenge (or This Was An Easy Choice For Me) Default ThumbnailStarting The Year With A Lot Of Transformation (or Who Will I Be By Next Year?) Default ThumbnailGetting Weighed In (or A New Orangetheory Challenge) Default ThumbnailEnding My Challenge Early (or I Guess I Made A Mistake)

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We Need To Make A Change (or I Just Don’t Have The Words)

Posted on February 16, 2018 | Comments Off on We Need To Make A Change (or I Just Don’t Have The Words)

I’ve started and deleted this post dozens of times. This week there was another school shooting. I’ve written about gun violence on here before, and since that most recent post over 2 years ago we’ve had dozens of school shootings and nothing has changed. Honestly, I don’t know what I could write that hasn’t been said every single time there is a shooting.

It’s nice that politicians want to offer thoughts and prayers, but since they believe in supporting the NRA more than supporting what citizens want as far as gun control I really don’t care about their thoughts and prayers. A majority of Americans believe in universal background checks, not allowing those on the Do Not Fly list to have weapons, banning assault rifles, not allowing people with a history of domestic violence or mental illness to have guns, and to stop the sales of high quantity ammunition. But even though a majority of Americans want those things to happen, certain politicians feel like it would be wrong to prevent anyone (no matter their violent or mental health history) from owning how ever many guns they want.

Since the rights and ideas of the NRA are more important than the rights and ideas of citizens right now, I doubt anything will change. If having children shot in an elementary school couldn’t convince politicians that change needs to happen, I don’t know what will. And I understand that having some gun control regulations won’t stop all mass shootings, but they will stop many of them. The shooter this week had a history of mental illness and even posted on YouTube that he was going to become a school shooter. Yet he was still allowed to get a gun and the FBI did nothing about the warning they got from someone alerting them to the comment.

There are also some politicians who say that we need to respect the victims and survivors and not politicize this tragedy and at a later date mental health and gun violence can be discussed. But the students who survived this shooting are telling people to politicize this because they know change needs to happen. They know that if it doesn’t happen now, it will be forgotten and nothing will be accomplished. That’s what happened after Sandy Hook and Las Vegas. We were called rude and heartless for saying something needs to be changed after those tragedies. The Las Vegas shooting wasn’t even 5 months ago and people have forgotten about it because so many other horrible things have happened.

This is not ok. All shootings are horrible, but school shootings are just heart wrenching. I remember after Columbine (which happened when I was in high school) how scary it was and that was the only school shooting I was aware of. I was scared, but I also believed that it couldn’t happen to me because it was so rare. But now it seems like there are school shootings every week. There are some inflated numbers by how many shootings there have been in 2018, but the low number that even conservative news is using is that this is the 5th school shooting in 2018. There have only been 5 or 6 weeks of school in 2018 so far so that is about 1 school shooting a week. Why do some politicians think this is ok?

So many of my friends with kids have had to bring them to school after a shooting when their kid was terrified that they would be shot at school. I can’t imagine how horrible that would be. I remember after Sandy Hook being at a friend’s house and watching the news while her kids were playing. Watching them play while knowing that kids the same age were killed while at school that day broke my heart. I don’t know how you could have the strength to explain to a kid that they should be safe at school when you have no clue what will happen. Or how terrified you would be if you heard that there was a shooting in your city and you weren’t sure if your kid was ok. I wish no parent had to have that feeling anymore, but sadly I know that won’t be true.

I really don’t know what else I can say about this situation. And while I feel helpless, there are ways to help. The group Everytown has shared ideas of what to do to make sure we have politicians that will honor what the majority of the country wants in terms of gun control.

No matter what your political viewpoint is, hopefully you agree that gun violence is out of control. There are steps that can help reduce it that are not being implemented because the NRA doesn’t want them to happen. We cannot let the NRA determine what is best for everyone when a majority disagrees. And we cannot allow politicians to get away with claiming how gun control is getting rid of all guns. I know responsible gun owners and they agree that gun control is needed. It shouldn’t be easier to get a gun than it is to drive a car. If you are deemed a violent risk to be on an airplane, you shouldn’t be allowed to have a gun to use on the ground. If you have a history of hitting your spouse or partner, you shouldn’t have a gun so the next time you get violent you can kill them.

I agree with Everytown when they said we don’t have to live like this and we don’t have to die like this. We have the power to make a change if we are willing to take it.

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Default ThumbnailWe Are All Tired Of This (or When Will Someone Try To Stop These Shootings) Default ThumbnailAnother Shooting (or Enough Is Enough) Default ThumbnailWhat Is Happening? (or Why I Support Black Lives Matter) Default ThumbnailSandy Hook (or There Are No Words) Default ThumbnailBoston (or Again, I Have No Words) Default ThumbnailMy Love Letter To The Actors’ Network (or Sorry Kevin, I Couldn’t Keep It Under 500 Words)

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Learning More Patience (or Figuring Out Where I Can Succeed)

Posted on February 12, 2018 | Comments Off on Learning More Patience (or Figuring Out Where I Can Succeed)

This past week of workouts were up and down for me. I really thought I’d be doing better with my medication but I also ended up allowing myself to feel ok with doing what I can do. I feel a bit lackluster in some of what I was doing because I keep comparing myself to what I was doing recently. But I think if I wasn’t comparing myself against that version of myself and maybe focused on comparing to where I was in the beginning to where I am now I could be happier. But the struggle is real and I am really working on accepting it.

Monday’s workout was a strength based workout. I wanted to use the treadmill (even with having to do inclines), but I was dealing with some random and unexpected nausea that morning. I debated about using a treadmill, but I knew that walking would probably make me feel worse so I ended up on the bike. But because I’ve used the bike a lot lately, I decided to try to do things a bit harder than normal. There were two blocks on each section and for the cardio it was a pretty similar pattern with a push pace, a base pace at an incline, and a push and all out pace at an incline. With the bike, you use heavier gears to replace incline so I tried to make my gears higher than I normally do with the regular push and all out paces on the bike. I did end up at a gear that made it really tough to keep going, but I was able to keep my wattage up on the bike which is what my coach emphasized I should be focusing on for my workout.

Next I was on the rower and finally my nausea was starting to go away. The first block on the rower was rounds of 500 meter rows with some rest between each round. I don’t know if my rower was acting weird or I was just having a bad rowing day but all of my 500 meter rows were taking longer than they normally do. I was trying to go at it a bit harder, but I wasn’t able to get my time to what I’m used to. But with the second block, we had 250 meter rows with bicep curls using the rower handles between each row. And with that block, I was able to get my rowing to be just a bit longer than normal. But that it to be expected when I’m getting tired so I was feeling much better about the rowing. And I ended class on the floor. The first block was chest presses, lunges, and plank work. I was using some pretty heavy weight with my chest presses which made up for not using weights in my lunges in my head. And the last block was using the workout bands for hip bridges and plank side leg lifts. I put the bands lower on my legs this time (which made things much harder) and I did much better with the bands. They were still twisting a bit, but not nearly as bad as the first time I used them. And I’m sure that in time I will get more and more used to using them and will get better at it.

Wednesday’s workout was an endurance, strength, and power day. This was after I talked with my therapist about my medication and I felt much better about taking things easy. I still didn’t like doing it, but it seems like it’s not just an issue I’m having. And while it is frustrating having this issue last longer than I expected, it does help to know that my doctor thinks I’m doing the right thing and it’s ok to ease back into normal workout endurance. And as much as I wanted to try to run during the power block, I held back. And I knew I needed to because even walking at my normal speed was spiking my heart rate. During the strength block, I didn’t go too high with my inclines but I did work with them. I wish I had more interesting things to say about my treadmill work, but it seems like this might be the trend for a little bit longer.

On the floor we had one long block and I really enjoyed it. We had 1 rep of 5 different moves that were supposed to be done as a single movement. We had a deadlift, a low row, an upright row, a squat, and a shoulder press. I could have gone heavier with my weight for the deadlift, but because we were supposed to use the same weight for the entire circuit I used my normal deadlift weight (which was heavier than normal for the rest of the moves). After doing 6 rounds of that, we had 6 burpees and then ab work before we went to the rower. Then it was back to the floor to do it all over again. It was a challenge to do those 5 moves as a single movement, but it was a good challenge to have and I was really focused on my posture and form during the entire thing.

Friday’s workout was a special partner day for the Olympics. On cardio we were supposed to have teams of 4, but with my group there were 10 people so they did 2 groups of 4 and 1 group of 2. My friend Grace and I volunteered to be the group of 2. We thought it would be good because we were both stressed about letting a team down and knew we would be fine not worrying about that with each other. But it turns out having our group of 2 actually made things harder for us! It was a run/row format with 1 person on the rower setting the pace and the rest of the team on treadmills. When the first partner was done with the row, they tagged the next person and they rowed (and the first partner went to a treadmill). They went through all the partners this way. But because Grace and I were on our own, we were just tagging each other. So we had much less rest time between rowing than the other groups. In the end I was just taking my 30 seconds on the treadmill to catch my breath and drinking water, but I tried to do a bit of walking each time I was on there.

Once the partner workout was done, we were on the floor for the second half of class and it was much more of a standard format without the partner work. The first block was speed skater lunges, shoulder work with weights, and running men. The second block was skier squats with weights, regular squats, and sit ups. And the last block was Y raises on the straps, pop jacks, running men, and sit ups. The floor work was so tough after the cardio, but I tried to limit my breaks. But I was definitely feeling done mid-way through the floor work and I know that I wasn’t doing my best in class.

Saturday’s workout is where I feel like I turned things around. I could have used the treadmill, but I decided to use the bike. I was thinking about how when I started doing 4 workouts a week that I set the 4th workout to be on the bike. And I worked hard on the bike each time. But lately I have looked at the bike as a second choice, and while I have been working on it I knew I wasn’t working as hard as I could. It was an endurance based workout with 3 groups so I was on the bike for the first 15 minutes of class. We had longer push paces with base paces after each and I really focused on pushing myself on the bike. I wasn’t using as high of resistance on it so I could focus on pedaling faster. And it seemed to work because it felt like the hardest bike workout I’ve ever done! I’m thinking I should probably use the bike once a week or so while I’m getting over this medication issue and I bet it’s going to benefit me when I’m back to running.

Next I was on the floor where we had 2 blocks. We had upright rows with weights, bicep curls, and high rows on the straps in the first block. And in the second block we had squat low rows with weights, side plank pendulums, and lateral lunges. And I ended on the rower where we had decreasing rows with lunges between. We started with an 800 meter row and I managed to get within 5 seconds of my PR! Not bad for the end of a workout! I didn’t do quite as well with the 600 meter row but I did PR by 2 seconds on my 400 meter row which was the last thing I did in class! It’s pretty tough to do that well when I had been working so hard during the rest of class, so I was pretty impressed with myself.

The beginning of the week was a bit of a frustration, but I did come to the realization that I could focus on things I can do and try to not think about what I’m struggling with. And by the end of the week I was able to create new goals and accomplishments for myself which was awesome! I do still want to get back to running and that is going to be a focus of mine, but I’m continuing to practice patience and I think it’s finally starting to kick in.

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