Tag Archives: tough

Being Sick (or Feeling Off)

Posted on September 28, 2016 | 1 comment

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, I was having some trouble with my workouts because I was feeling off one day and sick another day. Fortunately, I’m finally feeling more like myself now but this bug that I caught just took it out of me like I wasn’t expecting.

This all started on Wednesday when I was feeling fine except for a weird sensation in my throat. It’s almost like a feeling of insatiable thirst. Whenever I get this, I’m usually about to get sick so I was trying my best to take care of myself. I was drinking lots of water, eating as healthy as I could, and making sure I got extra sleep.

Thursday morning, I woke up at 4am feeling like I had daggers in my throat. That’s never a good feeling and I was on my phone right away to see how early urgent care opened at Kaiser (urgent care is a $45 co-pay for me but the ER is a $500 co-pay). It wasn’t going to open until an hour before I had to start working and I didn’t want to ask for time off, so I decided I was going to make it through the work day the best I could.

I did let my manager know that I was feeling sick, but since it was only my throat hurting and no other symptoms, I was guessing that I had strep throat and figured I would go straight to urgent care after work and get whatever prescription I needed. My throat continued to feel worse and worse as I worked and I finally asked my manager if I could end work an hour early to get to the hospital. I promised I’d make up the hour and she let me log out.

I had an interesting adventure at Kaiser. I was starting to feel a bit more sick than before and I got really confused on where to go to check in for urgent care. Somehow, I ended up signing up for a nurse’s visit to get a strep test without confirming that I didn’t need a regular appointment. It was all corrected in the end, but I was so confused and my head was starting to hurt.

Before I had my tonsils out almost 8 years ago, I got strep throat pretty regularly. I was used to doing throat cultures and just assumed things would be easy for me this time as well.

kaiser

It wasn’t easy this time and it hurt so much that I almost punched the nurse helping me! I felt so horrible after that and kept apologizing, but she was really nice about it all and said that it happens all the time.

After being at urgent care for almost 3 hours, it was figured out that I didn’t have strep and was sent home with instructions to get rest and drink plenty of fluids. I thought maybe I’d only have a really bad sore throat for a few days and would be done with it.

Turns out, I was pretty sick with a cold. The entire weekend was spent on my couch trying to catch up on sleep (since I wasn’t sleeping well at night), drinking lots of water, taking decongestants, and just getting through the day. I hate being sick like this because I really wanted to get stuff done and was supposed to be working over the weekend. But the best thing for me was to lay low and just let this bug get out of me.

Even though I’m finally feeling a bit better now, I’m still feeling off. Being sick with a cold is usually a longer recovery process than any of us would like to put up with and I’m trying to be patient with my body. I know that I might not be totally better for another week or so and I’m trying to be easy on myself. Sleeping is getting better so my mornings are better than they were over the weekend, but I’m still getting really exhausted by the end of the day.

It’s been almost a year since I was sick like this. If I get sick once a year, that’s not too bad. And once I’m feeling better, I’ll be getting my flu shot so I can do my best not to catch the flu this year. Hopefully I won’t have to be doing another sick day post for another year and I can remind myself that sometimes we don’t get to control how we feel and we just have to get through it.

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Posted in Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged doctor, health issues, hospital, lazy, sick, struggle, tough

Taking It Easy (or Trying Not To Be Hard On Myself)

Posted on September 26, 2016 | Comments Off

This past week of workouts were a bit off for me. Part of the problem was that during the second half of the week I wasn’t feeling ok (more on that tomorrow), but the workouts just didn’t seem to mesh well with me for some reason.

Monday was a strength day so I didn’t get to do much running, but it was still a pretty good workout for me. I walked all of the hill work for the push paces, but we also had some flat incline pushes. So I was able to run those plus the all outs which were on a flat incline as well. I was even able to do 6.5 miles an hour for one of my 30 second all out paces. That’s a little too fast still for me, but I can handle it for 30 seconds especially since the treadmill takes a bit of time to get up to speed.

The floor work on Monday was a lot of arm work and for some reason when I started I had some weird shoulder pain. I’m not sure what caused it because it’s gone now (maybe I slept funny?), but it made me a bit concerned so I did lighter weights than I normally do. I didn’t want to hurt myself so I knew I had to take it easy. I was also having that same pain for some of the body weight work that we did (walkouts were the main one that hurt), so I did my best but also wasn’t able to do as many of each thing as we were supposed to do. I didn’t feel great about my workout, but I also didn’t know that I would have a worse workout later in the week.

On Wednesday, I was feeling a bit off. I thought I might be getting sick, but I didn’t feel too bad so I figured I’d be able to do a pretty tough workout. This day was endurance, strength, and power so there were more opportunities for me to get some running done. For the endurance section, we had a couple of 1 minute push paces followed by 30 second base paces. I’ve been doing a lot of 1 minute run/1 minute walk things, so this was pretty good for me. I think that 30 seconds to walk between running is a bit short for me, but it was nice to try and hopefully will make future runs a bit easier. During the strength section, I walked since it was hills. I thought about trying to run on hills again, but since I was feeling off I didn’t want to push it. And for the power section we had some 1 minute push paces followed by 30 second all out paces. I was able to run for all of that which was awesome and I finished with a 1 minute all out pace at 6.3 miles an hour.

On the floor, we had rowing for each block. The first block was 200 meters (I forgot to track my time), the second block was 300 meters (I did it in 1:09), and the third block was 600 meters (I did it in 2:41 which shocked me!). The rowing didn’t feel as awkward as it has in the past which may explain how I did some really great times on my rows. It was another day focused on arms and I was able to use some heavier weights than on Monday since I wasn’t having that weird shoulder pain. Even though I was still feeling off at the end of the workout, I was feeling great about how I did in class.

Friday was not a good day for me. I’ll explain more about what happened to me on Thursday, but I decided to stick it out and do my Friday workout. But I knew I had to take it easy no matter what I did. So I skipped the treadmill and went on the bike. It’s been a while since I’ve used the bike and it was a bit weird at first. But I got back into the groove pretty quickly. I didn’t focus a ton on what the workout was that day (sorry Bruce), but I tried to increase the gears on the bike when we had push paces or all outs. I wasn’t doing as much as I used to during my 4th workouts of the week on the bike, but it was better than doing nothing.

For the floor work, we had 300 meter rows (I did them in 1:24, 1:19, and 1:13 which is weird because I usually don’t get faster throughout the workout) and some arm work where we were either in a plank position or on our backs on the weight bench. It was tough to do those things because I was feeling dizzy in those positions, but I did better for things where we were sitting down or standing up. I had to use some lighter weights again and they felt really heavy to me that day. But I just had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t hurting myself by doing a workout and it was better to do this than to not come to class.

I don’t have the highest hopes that this week of workouts will be better. As I’m writing this post (on Sunday), I’m still feeling off. I’m sure my Monday workout will be affected by it but I’m hoping by the end of the week I’m back to normal again. I don’t like to take it easy because I’ve been making such huge improvements lately, but I also know that it’s better to take it easy than to overdo it and not be able to work out the next time.

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Posted in Fitness, Tough Stuff

Tagged Orangetheory, sick, struggle, tough

More Eating Disorder Research (or Reading About HDE)

Posted on September 13, 2016 | 3 comments

I’ve been keeping up with my monthly challenge to read a book about recovery every day. I’m pretty much doing the 10 pages a day (sometimes a few extra pages in a day) so that I’m not overwhelmed or feeling like I need to do a ton of reading each day. I think this was a really great challenge to set for myself and I’m happy that I’m not finding it too difficult to continue doing it each day. I think that it can only be a positive thing for me and I’m excited to see what I’ll learn with each book I read.

At the rate that I’m reading, each book takes a little more than a month to finish. So I’m getting close to finishing my second recovery book now and I’ve been learning quite a bit. The book I’m reading now is called “How To Have Your Cake And Your Skinny Jeans Too”.

hde

I’ll admit that I didn’t love the title when I saw it the first time (I’m not a fan of gimmicky books), but there was something about it that caught my attention and it was on sale as a Kindle book so I got it. Since each book is taking me so long to read, I have to buy them instead of getting them from the library (I only get 3 weeks with library books), but I’ve got quite a few that I’ve already bought and I’m sure that buying 1 book a month or so won’t be too expensive.

When I started to read the book, I wasn’t quite sure where it was going with how it was going to discuss achieving recovery. But after a few days of reading and getting into it I discovered that it is all about hunger directed eating (or HDE). The idea of HDE is that you will eat what you want because if you don’t it may turn into a binge later. If you deprive yourself of something for too long you will go crazy when you have a chance to eat it.

The idea of depriving myself and then going crazy with the food is not a foreign concept to me. I’ve had that happen and it’s not fun at all. But the idea of eating everything that I crave and want is terrifying because I know that when I do that in the short-term it ends badly for me. But the idea of HDE is that while the short-term may be a lot of “bad” foods, eventually you will get sick of just eating those and your body will start to crave the foods that you should eat and your diet will have more variety in it.

Following HDE does seem like it could be something for me, but like I said the idea scares me so much. All of my fears are things that are written about in the book, so that does make me feel a bit better. Nothing I’m afraid of isn’t discussed in one of the chapters with a solution or explanation of how it will work out. So since it seems like I have totally normal fears of HDE I’ve been testing it out a little bit.

I’m not going 100% with HDE yet because I don’t want to have the days of endless eating of foods that I crave. Those will cause my workouts (and probably my work at my day jobs) to suffer and I can’t afford that right now. But I’m trying to follow my cravings more than I normally do and see where it takes me. Along with those cravings, I try to meal plan around it so that I can get my 3 meals in for the day but staying as close to my calorie goals as possible.

It’s not going too badly. Once I started to plan around the cravings I have, I’m starting to see how they can fit into my every day life. The issue I’m still having is the volume of the foods I’m craving that I eat. This is something discussed in the book and it is similar to the mindful eating that I’ve been working on. I need to start paying attention to how I feel while eating things (and not going into a trance) and see when my body is saying that it is ready to be done with the food I’m craving.

This is something that is going to take time and I don’t know if HDE is going to work for me in the long run. What I do know is what I’ve been doing hasn’t been working and I need to start trying other things (even if they scare me or seem like it could never work) to see what will work and what will be right for me. I’m just glad that I’m at a point in my recovery that I can try things out like this and not feel hopefully when I have a set back and just view it as a learning experience.

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Posted in Food, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

Tagged binge eating, books, eating disorder, reading, recovery, tough

Getting Out Of A Funk (or Focusing On Happiness)

Posted on August 26, 2016 | Comments Off

I think you could all tell from yesterday’s post that I’m in a low point right now. I hate when I have bad days like that, and I think the way that I get into a funk is why I was diagnosed with severe depression in the past (recently it was decided that it was a misdiagnosis because it’s not very severe or often). I’m still working on getting myself back to where I was before, but at least I’m working on it now.

Food is still a huge issue. I’m hoping it gets better soon and I’m working on some new ideas to make things easier on me and not requiring as much thought. When I have to think about food, it makes things worse. Meal planning should be best, but then I end up not wanting to eat what I plan. I’ve got some ideas from friends that I’m testing out and it’s really just trial and error right now. I’m trying to focus on the idea that at least I’m working on this instead of giving up like I have in the past.

I’m also working on focusing on my happiness checklist. I do fill that out every single day still and it’s a good reminder that even on days where I isolate myself from everyone there are things I can do that make me happy. My happiness checklist is an app now (it’s easier to do that than to always carry around paper to fill it out) and I do try to look at it midday to see what I’ve done and what I will be doing to make sure that at least a few things will be checked off every day.

Fortunately with the checklist, some of the things are pretty much a guarantee for me. Writing these posts (or other blogs I freelance on) are a part of that checklist. And reading is one that I get done every single day without fail. I’ve been reading a lot lately because it is an escape for me and it takes my mind off of things that are stressing me out or making me upset. Thank goodness for my library card to get e-books because I’m going through more books a week than ever and I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars a year on books!

I read a pretty big variety of books. Right now, I am reading 10 pages of an eating disorder recovery book every day, but that’s not my main reading. I read a lot of fiction and I try to get some non-fiction in there from time to time. If you want to see what I’m reading, I’m trying to stay up to date with my Goodreads account and tracking what I’ve been enjoying. Books have always made me happy and I’m glad that they continue to do so.

And I’m letting myself be lazy and watch tv and movies after work. It’s not the best thing to do all the time, but sometimes you have to just do it and not worry about the lack of movement and activity after work. I finally caught up on all the Olympics and ceremonies so I’m moving on to other things. Most recently, I watched “Stranger Things” on Netflix. Everyone has been talking about it since it came out last month, and I’m finally catching up.

Stranger Things

I’m happy to say that it is just as good as everyone has said it was and I wasn’t disappointed at all. I had to break up my viewing since it was 8 hours of a show and I didn’t have 8 hours without needing to work or sleep. But I think the way I broke it up (2 episodes one day and the last 6 the next) worked out well. It is a bit scary at times, so I don’t recommend watching it right before going to bed unless you have something happy to watch right after this and before needing to sleep (which is exactly what I did).

I am feeling my mood getting better, I’m not feeling as sick as I was earlier in the week, and the food is still not ideal but it is better. Overall, I think I’m on an upswing to things and I’m just hoping that it will be back to normal soon. I’ve got some fun things coming up next week so I think if I’m not back to normal by then, those fun things will improve my mood right away!

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Posted in Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged happiness, reading, tough, TV

Having Bad Days (or Did I Make Myself Sick)

Posted on August 25, 2016 | 1 comment

This week, I was supposed to attend the book launch for “Tacocity”. I was so excited to go and I really do love Rob’s book! I haven’t seen Rob in person for a while so this book launch was going to be my opportunity to see him in person and catch up somewhere else than online.

But of course, things don’t always go as planned and the night of the party I got sick. I’ve been pretty lucky with not getting sick too often. I was much worse off before my tonsils came out about 8 years ago (I was getting strep throat 2-3 times a year) and I’m grateful that my health is doing much better now. But when I get sick, it seems to take me down quickly and harshly.

I ended up skipping the party and I know that Rob totally understood. Nobody wants me to be there when I’m sniffling like crazy and look like I should be in an insolation room. But it still made me a bit mad because I was wondering if it was my fault that I got sick.

The few days leading up to the party were some pretty horrible food days for me. It was a bit out of control and I was trying to find a way out of the eating disorder hole that I felt like I fell down. I was trying everything I could, but I couldn’t stop it. I gained back all the weight that I lost last month (although I’m still hoping some of that weight gain is water weight and will go away quickly) and I’m just feeling really horrible about myself.

The sick feeling I get when I’m in an endless cycle of my eating disorder is completely different from the sick feeling I was feeling when I had to skip the party. On the day of the party, I felt like I had a summer cold and just couldn’t shake it. The sick feeling I get with the eating disorder is more about nausea and feeling shaky. But even though those feelings are different, I still wondered if my eating disorder incidents caused me to come down with the cold.

I know that when you are eating better your health is better. When you are getting in the nutrients you need, your body can fight off bugs better. So by eating crap (and I was eating crap), your body doesn’t have what it needs to fight off things. So there is a chance that because of my poor eating I did cause my body to come down with this cold.

And I know that there is a chance that it’s just coincidence that these things happened back to back. I’m not sure if thinking that the eating disorder caused me to be sick would help me in any way in my recovery. The day after missing the party I was feeling really down on myself and having horrible guilt about what I did. I know those feelings aren’t helpful in recovery so I tried to focus on just having a better day than the days I had before. It’s not easy when you feel so awful about yourself, but all I can do is try.

I know that recovery is going to be difficult. Most people don’t have to encounter their issue 3-5 times a day to stay alive and that’s what I’m forced to do in order to live. I have to find a way to create a healthy relationship with food and I’m struggling with it today. Maybe tomorrow will be better, and I hope it will be. But so much of recovery is me learning how to get through the bad days, stop blaming myself, and moving forward.

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Posted in Food, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged binge eating, eating disorder, health issues, missing out, recovery, tough

Another Peak Performance Week (or Working Extra Hard)

Posted on April 11, 2016 | 4 comments

This past week was Peak Performance Week at Orangetheory. I actually have come to love Peak Performance Week. It’s a great way for me to check my how I’m doing compared to how I’ve done in the past. It’s the same way with Hell Week. It’s nice to have workout benchmarks to compare to because I know I make improvements in my workouts even if the scale isn’t going down.

I would have loved to have done 4 workouts during Peak Performance Week this time, but with my 5K race on Saturday I knew I wasn’t going to work out on Friday. I added a Thursday workout in, but since I didn’t want to do 4 days in a row I had to keep it at 3 days.

Since I was pretty stuck with what days I could go, I’m glad that the workouts on the days I went were pretty much the ones I would have wanted to go to anyway.

Peak Performance Week

Monday was the 1 mile challenge. This one is the one I have the most feelings about. I feel like my mile time means so much to me and I know what times I want to get to. So since this is the most important one in my mind, I’m glad it was first so I could get it over with.

Our last Peak Performance Week was about 4 months ago and I was able to do a 16:58 mile then. My PR is 16:30 and as much as I want to get back down to that, I knew my body wasn’t there yet. I really had hope that I could at least do better than what I did 4 months ago. When we started the treadmill, I was at 3.5 miles an hour and 6% incline. I pretty much stayed there until I was 3/4 of the way done. By then, everyone around me was already done with the mile challenge and on to the next cardio block (thankfully my coach let me finish it even though power walkers only have to do a half mile).

I was really hurting toward the end of my mile and I kept bumping up the speed because I could see that I was going to be really close to my last mile time. And when I was done, I was a little bit slower than last time.

1 Mile Challenge

It makes me so mad how close I was because all it would have taken was a little more speed for a such a short amount of time to get to where I was last time. There’s nothing I can do about it now, but it was making me feel a bit off about how my 5K would go on Saturday.

After the mile challenge, we had a run/row to finish out the cardio block. Since I had taken so long, I really only had time for a little bit before we moved onto the floor (where we were doing a ton of lunges and my legs felt like jello).

Wednesday’s challenge was a 1000 meter row. I had looked at my past records and couldn’t find what my PR was when I went to class (I now know that it is 4:58.9). So I just sent my goal time at 4:50 thinking it sounded good to me. I had warmed up on the treadmill first before getting on the rower and then when it was my group’s turn to row I got strapped in. I really didn’t focus on the computer on my rower at all. Since I had set it for distance I knew that the timer would stop when I reached 1000 meters and chances were that I would know when I was close. So I just tried to look straight ahead at the treadmills and not think about the rowing at all.

By the time I was halfway, I was exhausted. I really thought about taking a few second break to stretch and catch my breath, but I decided against it and kept going. Somehow, I did my 1000 meters without taking a break once. Honestly, no matter what my time was, I would have been happy just knowing that. But my time was pretty awesome too.

1000 Meter Row

I made it 1/10 of a second under my goal time! I just barely made it under my goal time, but it still counts! After I got of the rower, I was a bit wobbly. I know I really pushed myself hard on that and my body was feeling it. It ended up being run/row day on the treadmill so I still had more rowing to do, but they were all pretty short compared to the challenge. On the floor we did a bunch of upper body work, especially on the TRX straps. I know my arms were done because by the end of class my form had gotten really sloppy and I was needing a bunch of corrections.

Thursday was my last day of Peak Performance Week. I knew it was going to be another treadmill challenge involving hills, but before I got to class I didn’t know much more than that. What it ended up being was a 13 minute run for distance. Runners and joggers had to be at 2% incline (normally they are at 1%) and power walkers had to be at 6% incline. So basically for me, this was going to be a 13 minute push pace (normally the longest push pace is 3 minutes).

There was a white board on the side of the room that showed how far you should be able to go in 13 minutes. For power walkers, it was at least .8 miles so I assumed that was based on being at 3.5 miles an hour (the slowest power walkers are supposed to be) for the entire time. So my goal was to beat .8 miles. I did 3.5 miles an hour for the first 10 minutes (that was a challenge in itself!). Then the next minute was at 3.6 and the following minute at 3.7. For the last minute I bumped up the speed every 20 seconds (so 3.8, 3.9, and 4.0 miles an hour). Clearly the chart showing how far we should be able to go wasn’t correct for power walkers because for all the extra speed I did at the end I wasn’t able to get to my goal distance.

13 Minute Hill Challenge

I actually don’t know how fast I would have had to go to get to .8 miles, but I only set that as my goal because I assumed that it was based on 3.5 miles an hour. I still did 13 minutes at 6% incline and did the entire thing at 3.5 miles an hour or faster! I think I might need to start playing around with my base pace again because I think I might be ready to be back at 3.5 miles an hour very soon.

For Thursday’s floor work there was some rowing (500 meters) and a lot of heavy weights for me. I was using a lot of 20 pound weights for squats, lunges, and deadlifts. After working so hard on the treadmill the 20 pound weights felt like 50 pound weights, but I stuck with it (and just took breaks to help me catch my breath).

Even though I didn’t always beat my past Peak Performance Week records, I think that this week went really well. I struggled from time to time, but I kept going and I know that whenever the next Peak Performance Week comes up, I’ll be ready to see if I can beat these records or my other ones.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fitness, Fun Stuff

Tagged Orangetheory, progress, rowing, tough, treadmill, workout

Just A Bad Day (or Focusing On Good)

Posted on April 8, 2016 | Comments Off

Yesterday was a pretty bad day for me. I really have no clue what started it. I was feeling fine when I went to bed the night before. I got a decent night sleep and didn’t have any issues waking up with my alarm. I didn’t even hit the snooze button a million times so I wasn’t groggy when I got out of bed. It really should have been a great day, but it wasn’t in the cards for me.

I usually don’t do errands outside the house before work, but I had to go to the grocery store to get a couple of things for meals the next couple of days. I think the first mistake was not eating anything before going to the store (it was 8am and I wasn’t hungry get). I bought a couple of things that I probably shouldn’t have gotten. And then I ate some of those things as my breakfast.

When I’ve eaten “bad” foods before, I sometimes feel off and a little sick. I have felt pretty sick on occasion, but that’s pretty rare and it usually doesn’t happen until that night or the next day. But this time, I was feeling sick about 10 minutes after I ate. I won’t get too graphic, but my body was basically rejecting what I had eaten.

This took me by surprise. Obviously, I don’t want to like the “bad” foods so feeling awful afterward was not the worst thing ever. But I don’t know why this time my body reacting so badly and so quickly. While I have been doing better with my food, it’s not a huge difference like it has been in the past. So I would expect that my body would have had worse reactions when I had been “good” for a week or more and then had a binge. But that wasn’t the case this time and I think this was the worst I ever felt.

I felt pretty bad all day long, but the worst was over before my work shift started. I was feeling pretty low and depressed all morning. There was no reason why I had a binge and it made it mad that I had done it. I wish that I had more control, and I’m getting there. But yesterday was just out of my control in the morning and my body (and mind) was paying for it.

Instead of focusing on how badly I felt, I tried to find some positive motivation online to get me into a better mindset. I found a bunch of sayings that I liked and since I couldn’t pick just one I made a collage of them.

Motivation

The most difficult part of recovery for me really isn’t the recovery part of it. It’s getting over setbacks and relapses quickly. It’s so easy to think that you just ruined everything and you might as well wait until Monday/next month/next year to start over. I’m happy to say that after my bad morning I was back on track for lunch and dinner. I wasn’t feeling hungry for either meal, but I made myself eat because I knew if I didn’t that I would get very hungry either late at night or by breakfast today and that’s when I make some of my worst choices. So I ate small healthy meals for both lunch and dinner. I know I’m still over my calories for the day because my morning was so bad, but at least I’m a bit more on track now.

Even though I got back on track by my next meal, my morning did affect how I was feeling the entire day. Part of it was the physical sickness which was a reminder of what I did. But despite my best efforts I was still thinking about what I had done and was mad at myself.

I’m hoping that today will be a better day and maybe I learned something from this (and will handle it better if/when it happens again). All these little lessons will one day build up to help me be in recovery and I just need to keep reminding myself that baby steps are better than no steps at all.

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Posted in Food, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged binge eating, eating disorder, recovery, tough

New Challenges In My Workouts (or Breaking Some Of My Own Rules)

Posted on February 22, 2016 | Comments Off

I had a full and challenging week of workouts last week. Not only was it a 4 workout week, I did 3 workouts in a row! That’s a double whammy in my mind! But even with the possibility of things being really tough for me, it wasn’t that bad of a week.

I did get off to a very odd start on Monday. I don’t know if I was too tired or just feeling out of it, but for the first time since I got them I forgot to wear my calf sleeves for my workout. I have no clue how I did this (my heart rate monitor lives under my calf sleeves so I had to move them out of the way to put on my heart rate monitor), but it happened.

The calf sleeves are good for helping my calf feel stronger, but they also help my shin splints so I was extremely nervous to work out without them. It was a 30 minute treadmill block and while I had a little pain, the treadmill wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected it to be. I did try to keep things a bit easier for me since I was so scared to injure myself, so I didn’t push myself too much with the incline or the speed. But it was worth going easy on myself if that is what kept me from getting hurt.

After the treadmill block, I tried to be tough on the floor work. I ended up going lighter than usual on the arm work, but I still tried to be kicking butt on everything else. We had some rowing on the floor blocks including a 250 meter row. And I was able to do my 250 meter row in 56 seconds! That’s not a personal best, but it was better than my goal time of a minute! The only downside on the floor work was when we had to be in a plank position and I did it on my toes (which I’ve been testing out doing instead of being on my knees). I didn’t think about doing it without the calf sleeves and I felt my calf muscle pull a bit. It wasn’t a painful pull, more of pressure, but it still scared me and I dropped immediately to my knees so I didn’t risk hurting myself.

All things considered, my workout without the calf sleeves wasn’t bad, but I don’t plan on repeating that mistake again anytime soon.

Forgot Calf Sleeves

Tuesday I was thinking that maybe I would be on the bike (to help break up my 3 workouts in a row), but then I saw that my friend Amanda was in class so I took a treadmill next to her. Everything was in 5 minute blocks and we did do switching between blocks so I was pretty happy. When we switch, I don’t hurt as much on the treadmill so I felt like it was a bit of an easier treadmill day. The last block of that day was a partner block, so Amanda and I got to work together. One person had to row 200 meters and the other person had to do squats the entire time. It wasn’t an easy block and I’m sure that Amanda was wishing that I would row faster so she could stop with the squats, but we got through it without too much trouble.

Wednesday we were back to not switching between blocks, but since we had a switch day the day before I was ok with that. We had a 3 minute push pace, which is still one of those big challenges for me. I was able to do it at 6% incline at 3.5 miles an hour, so I was pretty happy with myself. I’m starting to think that I’m almost ready to have my base pace back at 3.5 miles an hour. I might test that out another day when we have switching between blocks because it won’t be a solid 30 minutes at 3.5 miles an hour or faster. But since I’m able to do the longer pushes without too much trouble, it’s a really good sign. I also decided to test out my speed on my all out pace. When we had one, I decided to go a bit crazy (for me) and set the treadmill at 3.8 miles an hour. It was super tough for me and I know that I’m not ready to have the treadmill at that speed on a regular basis, but I got through it and it was a nice little challenge for me. After all that speed on the treadmill, my legs were feeling a bit weak by the time I got to the floor work. There were a ton of pushups that day, so even though my arms were so tired my legs got a break.

Friday should have been my day to be on the bike since I’ve decided that my 4th workout of the week will be on the bike to make sure that I don’t push myself too hard. But when I found out it would be a run/row day, I knew I wanted to be on the treadmill (it’s easier to transition quickly to and from the rower from the treadmill for me instead of the bike). I figured since it was a run/row day that it would be ok to push myself a bit more because the treadmill time would be a bit limited.

The treadmill segments were .125 and .15 miles and I was doing all of them at 3.5 miles an hour and 8% incline. That’s a high incline for me considering that the treadmill segments took me over 2 minutes each time. I typically only do 8% incline for all outs which are always a minute or less. But I was able to do all my treadmill segments like that (I just had to take a little break after each segment to catch my breath before moving on to the rower) and my rows were ok. I wasn’t pushing myself as much as I did earlier that week, but I was still doing my rows within the recommended times.

The floor work was a pretty good variety of moves. We had some lunges, arm work, ab work, squats, pushups, and leg work. I was able to do my lunges with one foot on the workout bench, but I wasn’t able to hold weights in my hands because I needed to keep balancing myself on the wall. I’m very unstable balancing on one leg, but I really want to get back to where I used to be with my balance. And the only way to do that is to push myself even when it’s not the most comfortable thing. I also pushed myself on the TRX straps. We had to do lunges to single leg squats, and I used to always do double leg squats instead. But on Friday, I decided that I was going to go slow and see if I could do the single leg squats. They weren’t pretty or fast and I had to use my other leg for balance, but I was able to do them for the first time! Again, I was pretty unstable and unbalanced, but the more I’m able to do these the better I’m going to get.

I felt like almost every workout this week was a different challenge for me, and I think that I succeeded in all of them. This week will be a bit easier for me, but now that I know some new limits that I can push myself to, I’m going to test them out if I can!

Comments Off on New Challenges In My Workouts (or Breaking Some Of My Own Rules)

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff

Tagged challenge, injury, Orangetheory, tough, treadmill, workout

Feeling So Much Love (or Embarrassed By People Complimenting Me)

Posted on May 15, 2015 | 1 comment

On Monday after my workout, I posted the following photo.

I took it because during my workout I realized that I did a horrible job of taking of my mascara from the night before and thought it was pretty bad that I had mascara smudges and sweat marks on my face. I’m usually much better about removing makeup pre-workout. I was also pretty proud of the workout I had just done, but I’ll share more about that in my Monday post where I recap my workout week.

Right after I shared that picture online, I started to get lot of really sweet comments from friends of mine. Some shared them publicly and some shared them in a private message. But they were all pretty positive and made me feel pretty great.

Then that evening, I shared this photo online.

I was celebrating having my new mattress in my house. It was a crazy morning having it delivered and the first time I got to lay down on the mattress was at bedtime. It felt like a hotel mattress and I felt so spoiled. So that’s why I shared that picture (also to thank my parents and Grandma for letting me have the mattress). I really didn’t think much about it when I posted it.

Again, I got lots of positive comments on the photos.

I love all the love that I got from everyone, but sometimes I feel like a fraud when people tell me that they are inspired by me or how they are so proud with how well I’ve been doing. I question if I deserve that positivity or if I’m not sharing my true self online (I hate when people only share the good of their lives and not the good, bad, and ugly).

I’m still struggling every day with my eating disorder. In fact, I feel like I’m struggling more than before because I feel like the Vyvanse should be doing more than it is. I wonder if I’m doing something wrong that is making the medication not effective for me. I wonder why I can’t have it work for me the way that the drug tests claim that it worked. Because of this, I’m harder on myself every time that I have an episode.

Sometimes I think that I don’t deserve people to be inspired by me or proud of me. People should be looking up to people who have conquered their struggles, not are in the battle with them.

And I’m sure I’m being too hard on myself. I know that I look up to people who are public with their struggles. But I usually look at them as someone who is done with the struggle, not in the middle of it.

But maybe I do need to look at myself the way that others look at me. I should be proud of myself for working out 3-4 times a week (a lot of people don’t do that), for continuing to battle my eating disorder (and not just give into it), and for just trying to do everything I try to do.

I’m going to work on seeing myself the way that my friends do. Using them as the mirror to see myself in and hopefully not being as hard on myself in the future.

1 Comment

Posted in Fitness, Food, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

Tagged binge eating, eating disorder, friends, photos, positivity, tough

Checking Things Off The List (or 4 Workouts In 1 Week)

Posted on November 24, 2014 | Comments Off

This past week was the first week of workouts for the Nike ID Challenge that my Orangetheory is doing. I have every intention of winning those shoes and I’ve been planning out how exactly I will accomplish each task (although I do still need to find 3 people who want to take a free class before 12/17).

Monday’s workout was a tough one (as always), but definitely doable. At the end of the workout, we had the Monday Challenge. One of the tasks for the Nike ID Challenge is to do 2 Monday Challenges. Since I do them every week, this is probably going to be the easiest thing to check off my list.

The Monday Challenge this past week was a 2 minute row. We have done this challenge before and because I push myself so hard in the first minute, the second minute is always a killer. But I tried to pace myself much better this time. The second minute was still tough, but it didn’t seem unbearable until the last 30 seconds. And I got 50 more meters this time than I did the last time we had a 2 minute row for the Monday Challenge!

Before Wednesday’s workout, I had a chance to do one of the Instagram tasks for the Nike ID Challenge. I got a picture of not one, but two of my favorite Orangetheory coaches!

And yes, we deliberately posed like that so we could get the Orangetheory logo in behind us.

Friday’s workout was possibly the toughest one yet. There were a lot of hills and I had a lot of trouble catching my breath again when we were doing the walking breaks between the blocks of treadmill intervals. As soon as I got home, I started regulating my painkillers because I knew that the next day would be one of the most challenging yet.

In order for me to get 15 workouts in before the end of the challenge, I have to go 4 times a week most weeks. Part of the issue is also that next week I will only be at my Orangetheory location for 2 classes because I’ll be out-of-town most of the week.

So this past week, I also worked out on Saturday. I’ve done back to back workouts before, but this is the first time that I’ve had 4 workouts in a single week.

I was hurting pretty badly from Friday’s workout still, but I knew I had to try my best.

Before class, I checked off another Instagram picture for the Nike ID Challenge.

These fabulous ladies that I’m with are Sarah and Brittany. They are my workout buddies. I used to get to work out with Brittany every class, but she switched class times. So I don’t get to see her unless I’m doing a class that isn’t a part of my usual schedule (like Saturdays). Sarah takes the same Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes that I do. She always saves my favorite treadmill for me and motivates me throughout the class to keep going. We had to take a picture for the Challenge of our Orangetheory family, and these ladies are a huge part of my family there.

The Saturday workout wasn’t necessarily a hard class, but my soreness made it seem that way. But I got through it and burned a ton of calories.

This week will be a 3 workout week. 2 at my usual location and 1 at the location in La Jolla (which doesn’t count for the Nike ID Challenge). It will be a nice break from my 4 workout week this past week!

Comments Off on Checking Things Off The List (or 4 Workouts In 1 Week)

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

Tagged fitness, Instagram, Orangetheory, tough, workout

Tag Archives: tough

Being Sick (or Feeling Off)

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New Challenges In My Workouts (or Breaking Some Of My Own Rules)

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