My word of the day is schlumpy. Not sure it’s really a word but it describes how I feel today, physically and emotionally. I thought I’d gotten my body and systems moving in the right direction. I thought I’d fought past the stall. I was wrong on all counts.
I’ve know for a while that I needed to step up my cardio exercise. It’s still too chilly to use my pool for at-home water exercising and the local classes are held too late in the morning for me to go, work out and then shower and change to get to work at a reasonable hour. I thought I was doing better with my walking but I guess I haven’t been pushing myself enough.
Last night, determined to increase the cardio, I popped in a Dancing with the Stars cardio dance DVD. Did okay through all of the warm ups and confidentally progressed to the cha cha. Oh Good God, what was I thinking? I flailed around trying to keep up with those graceful, totally fit dancers. Even the eye candy motivation of Maksim Chmerkovsky wasn’t enough to help me continue.
Reasonably, I told myself that I’d never done the DVD before and, perhaps, should not have expected quite so much of myself first time out. So, I switched to Walking Off the Pounds Express, an in-home walking DVD that I used to do on a regular basis. The leader is relentlessly perky and after a few dozen times hearing the same routine over and over and over gets tiresome, but it’s a convenient, easy way to get in 15 to 30 minutes of exercise at home.
Crap on a half shell, I am really out of shape. I knew I’d grown progressively sedentary over the last year or so as my weight steadily increased, but I expected more out of myself! I could barely get through stage one! What a complete bummer. I turned off the DVD and sulked. Then I called a good friend and told her I just needed her to listen to me whine without offering any suggestions of rationale. Sometimes we need to whine and get it out of our systems, right?
Once I’d dumped it all out in words I could look at it rationally. 1) Yes, I am terribly out of shape. Even though I’ve recently lost 50 pounds, I’m still obese. 2) I’ve lost 50 freaking pounds! I know just in walking from my car to work or to the store or anywhere that I’m already moving with greater ease. 3) I may be out of shape today but if I stick with it, one day at a time I will improve. Even the paltry amount that I was able to accomplish last night advances me on the path to better fitness. So does the Tai Chi.
I felt better about it all when I went to bed. I’m commited to doing that walking DVD five days a week. I might do it more often, but the five days comprise my rock bottom commitment.
I woke up, ready to take on the day and realized that all systems were not go and when I got on the scale, the number was the same as it has been all week. Not an ounce less. Maximum suckitude! Damn this stall!
In trying to bring a better attitude to the battle, I know that this stall shall one day pass and the numbers will go down. In the past, this would have been enough to send me off of a diet to do a 1 1/2 twisting somersault in the pike position into a vat of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Today I sat down and thought about it rationally. I decided that I’d be kind to my body. If it still needs time to adjust to food, I’ll give it easy food. So I started with a 1 1/2 shot protein shake for breakfast. I have a cheese stick for a snack, a container of Greek yogurt for lunch, and some unsweetened apple sauce for an afternoon snack. Tonight I have some barley soup to eat for dinner. With the exception of the cheese stick, everything is more liquid or really soft and slide-y. This will make my stomach and, hopefully, my digestive system happy. I’ll also make sure to step up my fluids. I think I’ve coasted a couple of days and not gotten in the whole 64 ounches minimum that I’m supposed to drink.
So, there’s the plan. Hopefully in a day or two I’ll move past schlumpy and back to feeling great and seeing results!
Weighty Matters 
I am SO out of shape. I had a tough personal year, so I didn’t beat myself up about it. But now that I’m in a more clear space, I’m figuring out where to re-intro the exercise.
And remember that with exercise come lots of NSVs, some you can’t even see. Your metabolism getting better, muscles getting stronger, body just chugging along in a more efficient way. So if you don’t lose weight right away, or hit another plateau in a month… ne panique pas! 🙂
I always joke about not being able to spell exercise (i had to use spell check here) much less do it. But i got an awesome treadmill, tv and great tunes and kick myself on it at least three times a week. Celie walks me till i about die on the road. She said it is onlh a mile and a half, turns oout to be two miles and some change. I am better now and still havd to push it. I got wii and do fun stuff on it that is movingand rewarding. Good luck u can do it
Next you come down, maybe I’ll be able to join you on a bridge walk! Keep at it, Susie. You can prevail!
Thanks Mary, I cant wait to come down. I am 99%sureat i am coming down with Celie in June when board meetings take place. I go to my first bariatric center meeting April 23. Until then i have been losing weight. 8 lbs so far. Your blogs are so helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Eight pounds is a great start! Keep up the good work! Let me know how it goes with your meeting. One step at a time, girlfriend.
There are no insignificant victories and Ya gotta start *somewhere*. So you’re starting at stage one, it’s as good a place as any. Congratulations on making it through that first stage – I can’t wait to hear about your next conquest! I recently started doing a “Couch to 5K” program on my iPhone (courtesy of active.com) – thanks for inspiring me! Every level has been a challenge and every time I progress I think,”OMG- there is NO way I’m going to jog 2…or 3…. Or 5(!!!!!) minutes!” (and I use the word “jog” loosely…. Its a fast walk for some folks but its a jog by my standards). But I try, the first time I may barely make it and i may have to completely stop to catch my breath instead of the “brisk walk” my computrainer would like me to do. The next training day I try a little harder and by the time I get to the end of the level, if I’m still really struggling, I’ll do it again or maybe even go back to the previous level to help build my endurance.
It is rarely a straight and narrow path on the road to success and I know these stalls are driving your perfectionistic type A self CRAZY, but just hang in there girlfriend – you’re doing GREAT
I’ve had friends who did C25K. Like you they never thought they’d succeed, but they did. You can too.
Thanks for the encouragement. Maybe next year I’ll try C25K too!
Good for you for talking it through. I had a schlumpy day yesterday, and again today, and probably should have vented instead of holding it all in. But like you today I’m taking action, even if it’s only in small steps.
My husband and I call it venting. In the early days of our relationship whenever I needed to whine or vent over something he always wanted to fix it and would jump right in with suggestions and solutions and finally I had to tell him to just shut up and listen and let me vent. And, dang! wasn’t THAT a run-on sentence! Point is, sometimes you just need to vent.
I’m trying not to sit for too long. If I look at the clock and an hour has gone by, I will get up and walk around the house or carry something upstairs or walk the dog or something just to move. I think it helps.
You aren’t going to have a smooth downhill line on your graph of weight or a smooth uphill line on your increase of exercise. You’re human, not a machine. The overall line will be in the right direction, but the day-to-day and possibly even week-to-week will have peaks and valleys.
There are also a lot of fitness videos on hulu.com and netflix. All kinds of levels (not like I’ve really checked them out, but it seems to have all sorts of levels). And I need to get moving every day, which I don’t. The fact that you’ve had major surgery, have to completely change what and how you eat, AND you work on the exercise is amazing and stunning and inspiring. You are doing so much and stall or no stall it sounds like you are doing fabulously.
Yay for Mary Stella!
Thanks a lot! I know I’m still in the early stages, but I want to do it all now! LOL I have the Leslie Sansone DVD. Never thought about looking on On Demand for additional options.
If I really clean out my office, I could fit an elliptical machine in there. I really want to work my way up to where I can do a mile or two on the Seven Mile Bridge with the dogs. I used to do that regularly and the dogs wanted to stop before I was finished. 🙂
I started small with the exercise. Anything that is movement is helpful. All the standard suggestions … park at the back of the lot, yadda yadda yadda. When I started trying to exercise even before surgery, I could only manage about 5 minutes of ANYTHING before I was wheezing like an asthmatic racehorse & my back was killing me.
We got the P90X discs. SNORT. Himself & I sort of managed to limp through parts of the stretching one, but I thought I would die for the next week. Or more. We have yet to go back to P90X. I think I would still fall over dead if I tried some of that stuff even now. Maybe in another 100 pounds …
Slowly, I built up. Walking the dogs around the block. Then slowly building up to walking the dogs around 2 blocks. Found some good Leslie Sansone in-home walking workouts on On Demand (cable network offerings), & finally was able to do a mile regularly.
As I’ve lost weight and kept at the exercise, I’ve built up to 2 miles at a brisk pace on an indoor track & outside on sidewalks (often running off and on for a total of 1/2 mile, something I never thought I’d be able to do), and I’ve built up to swimming a half mile continuously at the pool at my gym. Sometimes 30 minutes on the elliptical; sometimes a few minutes on the stair stepper or the rowing machine. But you don’t have to pay a gym; I walk outside on my lunch hour sometimes and that’s free; so is walking the dog.
But I never would have gotten to where I am if I hadn’t started with the baby steps. They are frustrating, because you want to do more, but you will get better. It won’t take as long as you might think it will.
And the whining? Sometimes you just have to vent it, get it out of your system. It’s okay (& perfectly natural) to feel sorry for yourself on the journey from time to time. A lot of times, talking it out (even in the form of whining & raging, grin) helps us get rid of the emotion so we can look at things rationally. Just like you are doing.
Go You! You are trying, and you will succeed.