A matter of timing (Emily Sue)

Having spent weeks alternating between doing workout DVDs and walking on my treadmill, I have decided that I would rather walk outside while the weather is still nice. This is Melbourne, after all, and it's going to start getting cold a lot sooner than I would like. Might as well get outside while I still can.

I have mapped out a little 6km walk and have been doing that early every morning. "Early" means I usually start at about 5.50am. Never in my life would I have imagined I'd be doing such a thing. We're on daylight saving time here so the sun's not up some days and it's barely even light. I usually walk out my front door thinking, "Really? This is what I do now?" ;)

It's a walk with a few small hills - two are a short, sharp incline and two are a long, steady incline - and the rest is mostly flat. I usually do the walk in 70 minutes, meaning my average speed is (obviously) just under 6km/h. In the past few days I've been working on getting my time down - goal is to do the walk in 60 minutes or less, so I know my average speed is 6km/h or faster. Yesterday I managed to get it down to 67 minutes, which was the first time I'd been under 70 minutes. Yay! And today... today I did it in 63 minutes. How did I manage such a feat? Partly by walking faster, and partly by jogging bits of it.* Jogging. IN PUBLIC. (My route is mostly along main roads.) Believe me, this is NOT like me at all. I am not what you'd call a natural athlete, and certainly not a natural runner. I look awkward, I'm in constant danger of tripping over, everything wobbles all over the place and I start puffing and turn tomato-red in a matter of seconds. Which might be okay, except that I happen to have a very round face - so I'm not just red; I look like I ACTUALLY have a tomato for a head.

Kind of like this, only with less smiling and more grimacing.

So you see, I don't exercise in public. That's part of the reason I bought a treadmill, so I could turn red and work on my cardiac arrest in the privacy of my own home. And yet, there I was this morning. Huffing, puffing, wobbling and turning red while cars drove by. No one stopped to render medical assistance, so it's possible I didn't look as bad as I thought. And when I got home I felt great. My body is getting stronger and my attitude to helping it get stronger is changing too. That's a win, in my book.

* By "bits of it" I mean I jogged in 30-60 second bursts, 4-5 times. At my current fitness level that's roughly equivalent to a half-marathon.
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Getting there (ES)

I'm not sure how to measure what my success has been like lately. I'm mostly sticking to a good routine of getting up early to exercise, eating good food including loads of fruit (still loving those green smoothies for breakfast - check out this video) and lots of salad, because it's been too hot to cook much. I've had some not-so-great days with food and exercise but on balance I think I've mostly had good days.

So have I lost weight? Yes! And... no! My weight has been up and down so I'm not paying too much attention to it as an indicator of where I'm at. I'm trying to pay more attention to my body than to the scales. And my body tells me that the changes to my diet and exercise levels are doing me good. I have more energy and I feel stronger. I'm still a complete weakling, muscle-wise, but I'm finding many exercises are getting easier so something is definitely improving there.

The interesting thing about starting my day with the green smoothie is that my body now craves it. I feel more energised and alert, and when I start the day with the smoothie I find I tend to eat better all day, whereas on the days where I don't have it I am more likely to snack on things that aren't as healthy for me. Interesting and somewhat unexpected benefit. I suppose it's not surprising - I'm now having around 6 serves of fruit per day, compared with about 3 serves per week previously. Of course my body is enjoying the extra nutrients and fibre. I'd like to increase my serves of veges too... so I either need to wait for the weather to cool down, or expand my repertoire of raw vegetable dishes.

Calorie-wise I'm still tracking on My Fitness Pal. In truth I eat the same things most days so I could probably estimate, but at the moment I am still too likely to binge when I'm having a bad day. Tracking calories gives me some accountability, and is also helping me learn to allow for "bad" foods (eg, chocolate, takeaway) within my calorie limit. This is important for me because I struggle with disordered eating and my tendency is to see eating chocolate etc as a failure, and therefore decide I've blown it anyway so I might as well keep bingeing until I feel sick. Not helpful for my physical OR mental health. Being able to CHOOSE to eat less-than-ideal foods, on purpose and within my calories, is a big thing. I'm not particularly good at it yet, but never mind. The path to good mental health is a marathon, not a sprint.

So in summary - I'm not losing much weight but I'm getting healthier and stronger, and feeling good.
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Enough? (HJ)

I've been thinking yesterday and the day before that that I really need to add some challenges to my exercise routine. If I'm going to enjoy my time overseas, I need to be fit. And getting fit requires that the degree of difficulty is slowly increasing (time, or weight, etc).

So today...

Today I got up and did the steps 10 times, rather than the 8 that I have been doing. That's 160 steps up and 160 steps down. I WILL be able to get to obscure places overseas that require my body to cope with elevation.

Backed that up with 20mins rowing. Rowing is my core/arms exercise that also gets a little cardio-vascular on the side. It is my standard exercise that I really need to do to discharge my responsibility to myself to try to get/keep fit. I haven't rowed this week, so it was amazing that I managed it well, and I decided that with the extra steps and riding down to morning prayer I'd leave it at that. (Besides, Emily Sue said that 20 mins is her minimum and anything else is bonus. If it's good enough for Emily Sue...)

Then I decided that I'd cycle the long way down to morning prayer. I've been doing that a few times this week instead of rowing. It's about 20 mins instead of under 10. I should work out the distance.* About three blocks into the alternative route the chain fell off my bike, so I had to abort and head for the local Anglican church to be on time.

Then after prayer I thought, "Why the heck can't I do my extra circuit on the way HOME? After all, technically it's a holiday day for me today and I don't need to BE anywhere."

So I did.

On the way home I also did the few extra blocks to get to the little butcher that I patronise to pick up our Christmas ham. Thankfully it's pretty much flattish and downhill from there.

This afternoon I had to make the trip to Mum & Dad's, so being a lovely overcast, cool day I decided to take the bike. After coasting down the lovely hill from our place I had to start going back up the hill to their place and my legs decided that they weren't exactly fresh. I made it, though.

On the way back (which is mostly downhill until you have to go up our killer hill again) I think I nearly died. I think the pump that is my heart was really running out of juice.

I don't think I need to walk the dog this afternoon. Do you?

*The actual distance of my long, loopy way is 6.2km, the short way is 2km home again from there. Of course, the long, loopy way was selected primarily on the basis of the fact that because it follows the river most of the way it is pretty flat. I LIKE flat. But I would have done at least an extra 1 - 1.5 km in my aborted initial attempt and the detour to the butcher. It is not unreasonable to assume I did 10 km on the bike this morning, then another 4km this arvo.

My body can do stuff (ES)

So I've been pretty consistent with exercising every morning. I miss a few days here and there but I'd say I average at least 5 days per week (at the unholy time of about 5.45am). I don't appear to have lost any weight although I'm not 100% sure my scales are accurate. Yesterday I did the get-off-get-on-again thing and somehow gained a whole kilo. Did it again and gained another 500g. Kept doing it out of curiosity and managed to lose all that "weight" again in small increments over 5 minutes or so. Very strange, and it's the only time the scales have ever done that. I tested it again this morning and it was completely consistent, but of course now I don't know if the consistent weight it showed me is my ACTUAL weight. I think I might go with measurements instead.

A few months ago I finally got my act together and saw a podiatrist, who expressed great horror at a number of problems with my feet and ankles. She prescribed orthotics, which I have been wearing and noticing the difference. The pain in the side of my knee, which had been waking me up at night, has pretty much gone. I thought this all boded well, so a few weeks ago when on the treadmill I increased the speed to a jog. Not a good idea, as it turns out - I was limping within five steps because I had shooting pain in my knee, in a different spot from the previous pain. This is not unexpected because my knees and ankles are still getting used to behaving like normal knees and ankles instead of wobbling all over the place. Still, disappointing.

Earlier this week I decided to give jogging a go again, to see if the knee has improved. To my delight, I managed half a minute of jogging without pain. I've been testing it out each day, doing bursts of 1-2 minutes of jogging. And it's been fine, but the really great thing is that I am able to jog at a much higher speed than I've ever been able to do previously. When I was doing C25K before I usually jogged at a very shuffly and slow 6.5kmh, reducing to 6kmh when I got tired. I walked at 5-5.5kmh. Now I am walking at 6-6.5kmh and jogging at 7.5-8kmh. This is HUGE for me. I think I have jogged at 7.5kmh just once before, and I managed maybe 30 seconds. Now I'm doing 2 minutes at 8kmh and I'm still feeling okay when I finish. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about this. I said in a previous blog entry that I'm concentrating on health and strength... and I think it's working. I am actually feeling fitter and stronger. How great is that??