Five ways I am making my foray back into fitness fun

I’m 5 for 5 this August.

5 days, 5 workouts.  I’m so happy! It feels so good to be sweaty and out of breath.  I am doing everything in my power to make it fun so that I stick to it this time. And so far, so good!  I am having fun. I look forward to working out every day.  If you have fallen off the wagon and you can’t seem to re-motivate here are a few of the things that are working for me.

1. Get new shoes. 

 

Running is not an expensive sport so invest in good shoes because truly it makes ALL the difference. You know the shin splints I was talking about in my last post? New shoes=goodbye shin-splints.  I got my shoes on clearance but they are good shoes. Count on spending at least $50 for decent running shoes on sale. Off sale you are looking at closer to $100 but my mantra in life is that “there is always a sale”.  $50 is still a lot of dough in my world but it’s less than $100.  I’m sorry. I know it’s painful to spend money on un-pretty shoes or to spend money at all… but not nearly as painful as shin-splints.  In the words of Nike (even though I wear Saucony these days)…Just Do It.

2. Consider splurging on a completely new workout outfit too 

This is a great time of year to shop for workout clothing. If you are struggling with motivation to return to a program this can really, really help to spur you on. When you hate the idea of working out you are going to doubly the idea of doing it in nasty old sweatpants and a huge old t-shirt from college.   I’m painfully frugal when it comes to buying clothing but I feel like getting nice quality running pants and a good bra is a great investment.   This doesn’t have to be crazy expensive. I got nice looking very comfy sweat wicking technical  Adidas workout pants at TJ Maxx for under $20.  I am a very tactile person. When I go shopping, I Touch All The Things. If I especially like the feeling of a particular fabric I am going to go out of my way to touch it. These pants have good quality nice touchable fabric and I look forward to wearing them.  PS: Every time I get all guilt stricken and stressed over spending under 20 bucks on myself for a pair of freaking running pants from TJ Maxx I consider the money I spend on soccer for my kids. Then I feel all angry and righteously indignant. Come on now.

PPS:  Can’t end this section without specifically imploring my female readers to at least find a decent sports bra.

If good running pants are nice a decent bra is critical.  Look running is tough enough. You don’t want to be thinking about/clutching/seeing your boobs hoving in and out of view when you run or hoping they don’t knock you or innocent bystanders out. True, a decent sports-bra can be upsettingly expensive.  But… what have a told you? There is always a good sale.  Find that sale and get yourself a solid over the shoulder boulder holder that can do the job quietly and effectively.  Close your eyes, fork over that cash, strap those girls down good and then forget about them.

3. Refresh your playlist.  People!  Music is second only to running shoes in being Everything.  If you are a natural, “born to run” blahblah runner then whatevs…go prancing forth in your funny little barefoot toe shoes with nothing but the sound of the wind and the twittering birds and your easy breathing in your ears and have a lovely time. If you are normal then you need music to drown out the sound of your ragged breathing. Hearing yourself breathing heavily is disconcerting and will make you feel tired even when you aren’t.  So! Music!  Do a little survey of your friends and family for their most motivating “get going” tunes and you might find a new power song.   It’s also fun to ask friends you grew up with to remind you of songs from your shared glory days…the blast from the past will be an excellent distraction.  Speaking of which..  I’d like to take this opportunity to thank AC/DC for Thunderstruck which has been a great motivator for me this week.  You’ve been….. thunderstruck…yeah yeah yeah (good luck getting that out of your head for the next day or two. You’re welcome)

4. Use your music as a training tool while you are getting started.  So now that you have your groovy playlist all ready to go consider really using it.  Here’s the thing. Right now the goal (for me anyway) is simply to get back into the saddle.   This means that you don’t want to be all  intense and mean to yourself while you are still a fragile flower who is easily deterred.  You need to ease yourself into it.  It’s all about making good associations with exercise until it can become a rewarding habit again.  So many people go all out the first day and then can’t walk again for a week or two and then the moment has passed. And whenever they think of working out they remember that time they couldn’t sit down on the toilet for a week without crying. Don’t be that person. 

You know how I love an analogy. Think of yourself as a dog.

I took our dog to the vet yesterday. She’s only moderately dumb so of course at first she was not so keen to go inside. But from the second she walked in they were plying her with treats. 

“ Hey Shemly come on in! Here’s a treat!” “Stand on the scale! Treat!” “Come into the exam room! Treat!”  “ I’m going to hurt you now but first here’s a treat!”  “ More pain now…treat!”  She never wanted to leave. Once she was done with the vet himself the treats stopped abruptly but the fact remains that Shemly is now a vet addict. Even after the shots and an unfortunate incident with a grouchy little bitch who tried to bite her face off. (I love being able to say that without being profane.) Ah swearing..I’m sorrynotsorry  I do rather love it…… Ok wait..where was I? 

OK yeah so treat yourself like a dog.  Leave yourself wanting more. Keep the treats coming baby.  For me music is fun and motivating and rewarding. And so I’ve been using my playlist as a very lenient personal trainer.treat dispenser.  Here’s my highly technical training system:

I put on a song….when it gets to a speedy motivational bit..I run….for as long as it is speedy and motivational. When it moves to a slower bit or the speedy part has been going on for too long, I walk.  To be honest I do more running than walking this way because my playlist is pretty hyper. This is not necessarily good because I am a huge believer in the Jeff Galloway run:walk method for avoiding injuries especially when you are starting out.  But if I feel like I have been running too long I just compensate by walking a little more later.  Like I say, it’s all very technical. Yes I am a certified personal trainer actually, why do you ask? ;)

5.  Keep your expectations low and slow.

I know.  I know couch to 5K programs are much beloved of beginners and people who are trying to return to fitness so I won’t diss them for a minute. I’ve gone that way myself many times and indeed they have their place.  But that wasn’t appealing for me this time.  I’m a dog now. It’s got to be as fun as possible.  Plenty of time for goals and pressure later.  For the next month at least I am not timing myself. I am not measuring my distance. I mean, I know roughly how far I am going and I could probably go further without too much trouble but I’m not just yet.  I’m romancing this whole fitness thing remember. Slow and easy baby.  Let’s not scare anybody off.  I have several reasons for this. I have had a lifetime of pain this last year and so I’m pretty invested in staying healthy and pain free for as long as I possibly can.   I’m definitely not doing this for weight loss purposes either. I’m doing it because I CAN. I can finally move mostly without pain-what a gift! I’m doing it for a sense of reconnection to myself.  I’m doing it so I can be less Mommy Dearest. I’m doing it because the weather is awesome and the trail is beautiful and  time to myself is much, much needed.  I’m never out for longer than 30 mins.  And that’s been plenty. 

If running/walking isn’t your speed try  the Scientific 7 minute workout on for size.  No matter how much you hate it-you can do it for 7 minutes.   If running used to be your thing but it just seems tooooo haaaaard these days consider that Running 5 minutes a day can have a profound impact on your health.  So start with just 5 minutes. It totally counts.

Any fun tips to add?

Adding this to WFMW at we are that family because so far…this is working for me.

The long awaited Beautiful Game..and why aging is kind of beautiful..in its own way…I guess..sometimes..

When we first decided to move to South Africa we had hoped to leave mid-July. Correction: I had hoped to leave mid-July. The rest of the family would hear nothing of it. Why not? you might ask? They wanted to enjoy their last Summer in the US? The boys wanted to celebrate their birthday with their friends?  Nope.  Nope.
The answer as it inevitably is when I am in conflict with my family was…of course… SOCCER.
We had tickets for a soccer match. And thus our life’s plans had to be adjusted accordingly. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times. “Soccer Rules Our Lives”.  And usually that rather infuriates and disgusts me.  But this time I couldn’t muster huge outrage. It wasn’t any soccer match. Kind of a once in a lifetime.  Here’s the thing. Benj’s all time favourite team Real Madrid played Finny’s all time favourite team Manchester United.  An hour away from our home. It was kind of a huge deal. 

Being so close to their birthdays and considering the lifelong consuming soccer obsession passion going on around here,  we figured that it would be a memorable family event and invested approximately 500, 000 dollars in tickets for the family. Really bad tickets actually (they sold out before they were supposed to even be on sale and we had to take what we could get.  Scalpers! You’re ruining it for everyone!)  Happily,  Benj’s coach scored some good seats and so we were able to get Benj and Gabe into those, but the rest of us were relegated to the oxygen seats. I didn’t have particularly high hopes with regards to actually seeing everything but figured it would be enough to be in the same stadium with such legends as Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney…and 109,000 other folk.
 
At last the day arrived. We squared away the dog and the toddler and were on our way. Yay!  There were two slight dampers on the day…the promise of thunder storms and news that Cristiano Ronaldo was injured and would not be playing.  But we were still plenty excited as seen below. (Ella is looking at this as I post it and is most indignant not to be included in the shot).
  
We left home with plenty of time to spare we thought but by the time we parked, walked a couple of miles to the stadium, consumed a 7oo dollar hotdog each  (this was some terrible planning on our part…..always, always come into the stadium well-fed my friends,) it was getting fairly close to game time.

I made them pose for this picture  before I would give them their tickets. Benj especially was delighted about it.

We came into the stadium and as we gasped for oxygen (we seriously were in the second to last row) the first thing our younger 2 kids saw, (the older 2 ditched us as soon as they were in possession of their $2,000 hotdogs,)  were some of their favourite players warming up.  That moment was pure magic. They both involuntarily gasped and shrieked. They were there! They were real! They were playing! In living breathing colour!  Even I felt giddy. It was the coolest thing. Worth every penny, even the ones for the terrible hotdog. And turns out there aren’t really any bad seats in The Big House.  We could see the action a lot better than we anticipated (don’t judge the view from the terrible phone picture).

The pre-game atmosphere was awesome and it got off to a stirring start with the national anthem followed by an awesome flyover (you can watch it on my instagram account). Being the the nosebleed seats meant that we were the closest to it….sooo neener.


These are our “yay! We don’t have a three year old with us!” smiles.
It was a great action packed game with a final score of 3-1

the halftime entertainment was cool..in fact a kid from the boy’s school was in there somewhere…

The weather ended up being perfect and toward the end of the 2nd half me and Gracie thought we saw a familiar face on the big screen…but surely not…yes it was! The pretty boy himself…warming up..the crowd went beserk.

Everyone regardless of which team they allied with was beside themselves. He’s a soccer god. It’s got to be hard to be humble and it’s also got to suck being on a team with this guy. Basically you’re just along for the ride.  But he’s not just a pretty face man, that guy’s footwork is just….well it’s beautiful.
This kid had to have been pretty excited. (He had CR 7 carved into the other side).
 
In the end, pretty boy not withstanding MY pretty boy’s team won and he was stoked.
 
And so naturally we were too. This picture taken by an extremely inebriated yet pleasant young man who claimed to be a professional photographer. He got us all in the shot…can’t ask for more than that!

We hung out for a little while after and got to watch some post game playing,  a fully clothed “streaker” who managed to evade several burly security men for an admirable stretch of time touching various players before he surrendered and was unceremoniously piled upon and handcuffed.  I’m sure the next few hours weren’t particularly fun for him but it’s something to tell the grandkids after all. I overheard the woman in front of me telling her very well behaved three year old. “You’re not allowed to run onto the soccer field but if you don’t do that at least once in your 20’s I’ll be very disappointed.” Who says soccer moms aren’t cool? ;)

And then it was time to return to the real world… the scenic walk to our car

practicing our newly discovered moves along the way was the fun part. A little less fun was waiting in traffic for a couple of hours while officials figured out how to get 109,000 people out a small area which had been (prudently) mostly closed for construction. It’s not as if they had any warning that this was going to happen….erhem.
   
It was touch and go there for some people who had not had enough sustenance in the stadium…we did not expect another 2 hour wait for dinner but happily everyone survived and we ended our trip with a frantic run on Trader Joe’s whereupon we acted like animals and ripped open packages of food in the aisles in a feeding frenzy. What we didn’t eat on site we bought because…never let it be said that we do not learn from our mistakes of find ourselves snack-less in a vehicle and after all…we had to get back in the car again to drive home. When I got home last night and surveyed what we had bought it can only be summed up as a Celebration of Carbs. Holy moses. 
The drive home was probably  my sweetest memory though. Much as we all adore the Ella-bee she does tend to monopolize our energies on trips and when she is in the car we are mostly focused on entertaining her or studiously ignoring her. But yesterday it was just the first four and we got to crank the (non-Frozen soundtrack or Pharrell Williams’ Happy) music and just be silly together.  I was reminded again of how much of my mojo was lost to my foray into later in life motherhood and it made me resolved to access the fun and silly side more often. Babies and toddlers awesome as they are tend to put one into survival mode more often than not.  It was just a great experience for all of us.
Speaking of accessing my mojo…project reconnect is still in full swing over here (hence the 3rd blog post this week…say whhhhhat???” and check it out…today I went for my first run…well mostly run with a little walking…well mostly shuffling with a little walking or as we like to call it “wuffling” in something like…forever.  It was wonderful and a tiny bit terrible. Hello shin-splints my old friends. But mostly wonderful.  Oh trail, how I have missed you. Oh discomfort from something that is actually natural and good and challenging…how I have missed you. Oh workout playlist…how I have missed you.  I even finished with some crunches and a say whhhaaat,…one minute plank. Don’t scoff. I used to be the community center plank queen don’t forget (3 mins 33 seconds or something not that I cling to faded glories or anything I mean, who am I? Napoleon Dynamite’s uncle????” but everyone has to start (again) somewhere, am I right? Oh it felt so good. It felt so.good.

I’ve gained some weight due to my various illnesses, minor surgeries and injuries and subsequent mindless eating over the last several months which is somewhat concerning knowing that my metabolism is increasingly not on my side, but not nearly as devastating as it once was before I had my life-changing weight loss/body acceptance epiphany. I know that when I decide to lose it (and I think I’m just about ready), I will, and that the whole process might be a challenge but that it’s totally in my control.  I am actually feeling pretty good in my skin lately which has nothing to do with how I look.
I used to think people said they loved getting older because they were trying to compensate for how atrocious it is to get older, but truly, while some parts of getting older are atrocious, there are some things about it that totally freaking rock.  Finding your voice, finding your courage, not caring about what people think about you as much.  Starting to figure out what does and what doesn’t matter, become less fearful in general.  I mean I have a million miles still to go in every one of those areas..a million and one. But I feel so much more accepting of myself lately, more patient with my flaws and foibles uncertainties and questions, less interested with fitting into an uncomfortable and unnatural mold where I will never fit and was never meant to fit. 
Speaking of aging, here are my handsome boys. I got some weird shots on their birthday so I took the opportunity to snap a couple (dozen) of them while they were still all beautified after church. Ok seriously, I felt like they got into a time machine for this first one and went back to 6 and 4 just as a special present for me….they are going to die if they see it but that’s what you get for being goofy every time your mom tries to get decent picture of you.  The brotherly hug was spontaneous by the way. Awww…
 
These boys live to mess with me. Jerks…<3
   
And here’s my newest baby.  I insist on daily picture and video of her and Thalia has been quite kind in obliging me.  I remember picking out this little frog outfit and thinking it was so cute.  OMG I had NO IDEA how cute it could be.
 
Happy SUNflowerDAY! Hope it was a good one for you too.

Project Reconnect

You guys! Thank you for the warm and generous welcome back to the land of blogging. Especially given what you had to work with! That post was such a marathon. I was literally just randomly clicking on photos and and stream of conscious rambling forever and a day and…yet several of you read it all the way to the end. That’s some human kindness right there and I appreciate it so much.
But hitting post on that behemoth was the best therapy. I really felt like I was coming up for air for the first time in a long time.  I can’t say I’ve been depressed, I’ve actually been feeling pretty stable lately. I’ve just been..absent. Like I can’t quite remember what I’ve been doing, where I’ve been. It’s the weirdest sensation that I can’t even articulate.  I’ve been busy as can be. Anxiously engaged. Focused.  But still that weird disconnect.
But today, I have a blog post up and that felt good. It felt like me.
Then I figured I would exercise because it’s been…forever.  I was suitably careful but I got a nice sweat going and that felt good. It felt like me.  I’m making a goal to exercise however briefly for at least 5 days a week  every week of August.  Brief being the operative word. I can do that. I must do that. I need a challenge.
And since the whole random, oversharing blogging thing felt so good yesterday I  figured, let’s keep a good thing going shall we?  Why the heck not?  Last night in my picture perusal I saw a few I wanted to share that did not fit in with the “cool stuff we did in July theme”.  Mostly from Spring and again…totally random. I ’m trying to keep my hand in there whilst actively trying to overcome my OCD perfectionist tendencies of picking just the right photos and editing them and putting them in the right order. So now you have some mediocre shots, minimal editing for no rhyme or reason…let’s call it therapy….bear with me.
She calls the scooter her roller-skate.

 
Escapee balloons on Finny’s birthday. I still need to do that post don’t I? ;)
 
Benj’s team after the most exciting soccer game I have ever seen. They were absolute underdogs who finally won against the 3 year state reigning championships after an 8 shot PK shoot-out. I mean….
  
The face of sheer mind over matter. I miss challenging myself like this.

Peek a BOO. She still believes that if her eyes are covered, I can’t see her. Every time I leave the room and return she has her eyes covered and I have to say, “oh no! Where did Ella go?”
 
She calls her toys, her “fwends”. I find this sad and endearing at the same time. She really needs to start preschool….and get some cousins closer by ;) But truly, I have never seen a kid so deeply committed to their toys before. She can entertain herself with them for hours.

Benj’s induction to the national french honour society.

Gracie and Miah after their orchestra concert and Gabe and Ryland, the orchestral jokers getting ready to perform.
 
Signs of Spring…just in time for the end of Summer… I liked the first day of August. It was a good day.   Goodnight friends.