Project: Move it! Week Five

And I’ve passed the half way mark. While I’m still ungainly and cumbersome in the gym and with my movements, I feel the progress I’m making. Each time I’m a little bit better, remember the routines a little longer, put more effort into each punch or squat or technique.

My “Lazy Brain” has not been so vocal with all the reasons to stay in bed in the mornings this last week. The routine of toting gear to the gym for work later has become an exercise of efficiency and regularity. People at work have stopped being surprised at my raspberry-coloured face and sweat-slick hair after morning boxfit sessions.

I’ve also become very keen on closing my Apple health rings every day. Making sure I stand every hour, select a workout before each session and walk lots on campus during the week.

Screenshot from my Apple Health app which tracks my movement, exercise and standing metrics.

I’m loving the changes I’ve made in my food too. Cutting out bread as one of the main vehicles of fats into my body (toast and butter) has been an easy transition to make than I would have guessed. Making sure I eat protein during the day really helps, so do the snacks mid morning and mid afternoon. Who knew that eating more food was gonna be the key to me enjoying exercise??

Today I had smoked salmon on fat slices of tomato with a smear of buffalo curd - a flavour explosion that satisfies everything!

My weekends have been a bit loose over the first half of this Move It! challenge, but now I feel like I want to move. Going for a walk or popping down to the gym or picking up an extra class is a lot easier nowadays. I have miles to go but I’m just loving this project so far.

For the first time in my life I have set a weight loss goal.

In the past I’d say something like “It’d be nice if I lost 5 kilos before this time next month…” and then did nothing really very much to work towards that goal. Yesterday I decided to commit to a weight-loss goal of “cracking the ton” which means to drop below 100 kilos by Christmas.

That’s four weeks away in case you didn’t know.

It’s a goal that I’m going to have to work at to achieve. It’s not going to be attached to any “organic” weight-loss, it’s going to take a bit of extra work to get to.

My other goal is to do one chin up. And right now, that looks like pure fantasy!

One of the reasons I decided to do this 8 week long Move It! challenge was to break the back of my fitness. To jam into that 8 weeks so much movement and exercise that I developed a level of fitness that would take the edge off working out regularly. To develop the habit, to learn the form and types of exercise that I like doing, and to keep going.

This is one of the best things I’ve ever decided to do. I feel fantastic.

Charcoal ciabatta, buffalo curd, smoked salmon, tomatoes and pasteis de nata.

Project: Move it! Week Three

This morning I stood and looked at the mountain of clean laundry I have been living out of for the last couple of weeks wondering why it’s worse than usual. 

Laundry has always been my chore nemesis. I’ve never been in charge of it - ever. I think it’s due in part to never having much respect for my clothes because I don’t have much respect for my body. 

I don’t love my clothes and I don’t treat them well.

Usually I have most of my clothes away in drawers and the wardrobe, but there’s always one big basket left over that never gets put away because why finish anything, right? Plus it’s boring, and dumb, and the whole process is never ending. So I’m never quite all *there* with laundry. But this time it’s worse. *Nothing* is "there”: my clothes are half folded other here and half washed over there and half in the basket in there and half on my body right here. 

That’s a lot of halves, Michelle but it adds up to one big mess.

Contemplating the amount of work I have to get on top of this situation I realised this was the consequence of my Move it! project. DOY! Of course it is! Introducing 10+ hours of a new activity into a person’s normal weekly routine means something old has to give. 

Time has to come from somewhere - it’s finite, if you didn’t already know that. And for me the time has come from my weakest point: laundry.

So I need to make some choices about how to deal with this restriction on the amount of time I need to manage laundry. Given that it was already a problem before I reprioritised my time to the Move It! project, I have some long standing problems I need to address: 

1. Quantity (fewer items)

2. Storage (easy access and enough space)

3. Routine (structured, repeatable steps)

I culled my clothes about a year ago, but I’ll do it again now with Mt Laundry. If I don’t need or want it I’m not folding it or putting it away. I bag for the donation bin will be employed to remove unwanted/ill fitting/unattractive items. That goes for what is in my drawers because if I’m wearing stuff that in the pile, then I sure in heck not needing the things that are in the drawers.

Then I’m gonna do what any smart Internet person would do - go straight to Melissa Maker’s My Clean Home YouTube.com channel and institute her routine.

Project: Move it! Week Two

Week two of my Move it! eight week project done.

I thought showing up for the first session of anything unknown is hard, but showing up for the second session once knowns are known is even harder. Let me tell you - third time is actually more difficult again. 

Just a reminder, I am doing 40 sessions of scheduled group classes at the University of Auckland gym - 20 Boxfit sessions and 20 Summer Fit sessions for the eight weeks leading up to Christmas. Want to know which one is me? Look for the older woman with the bright red face gasping for breath.

Is that just me? Waking up at 6am on Wednesday morning my Lazy Brain is all like "You're a bit tired, it's okay to be tired, it's okay to miss one session, you need to rest, is your throat a little bit sore? Maybe you're getting sick and need a lie in..." This is the voice I fight with for every thing.. ev er ree thing - that involves any effort for improvement. That voice has my worst interests at heart and it's why I need to get enough sleep or I don't have the energy to battle it at six in the morning.

But at the same time, I am allowed to decide not to attend a session if I need to. I am a human and I have a life so I need to remain flexible and not try to "do it all". On Friday I decided to skip Boxfit's 7am start, instead I prioritised work over exercise. I'm glad I did to because I got to go home a reasonable time instead of two hours later if I hadn't made that decision. I've added an extra session of Boxfit to the end of my eight weeks so it's not being "missed" so much as "rescheduled" and also went to the gym* for 40 minutes of cardio before dinner that day so I did do something.

This, I had to be sure, was not an excuse from my Lazy Brain, but a plan from my Pragmatic Brain. Because that Lazy Brain is a master of disguise.

Part of my Summer Fit sessions included measurements - weight, fat, inches, all that jazz. 

Honestly, I don't mind my body. I mean I know it's big, and it doesn't serve me well due to my lack of care over many years, but I don't recoil in horror in front of the mirror, I don't really have negative self-talk (anymore). I'm really lucky, I think, that those battles are in the past. What I really want to be is a person who is fit enough to enjoy moving. To not stay in when I could go out. To be able to walk up a hill without nearly (or actually) dying. To be able to swim in the sea without being too out of breath to get back to the shore. To not feel that my weight stops me from flying or riding horses or chasing grand children or gardening or all those things that it might do if I don't do something about the situation soon.

Part of my Summer Fit sessions included measurements - weight, fat, inches, all that jazz. 

Honestly, I don't mind my body. I mean I know it's big, and it doesn't serve me well due to my lack of care over many years, but I don't recoil in horror in front of the mirror, I don't really have negative self-talk (anymore). I'm really lucky, I think, that those battles are in the past. What I really want to be is a person who is fit enough to enjoy moving. To not stay in when I could go out. To be able to walk up a hill without nearly (or actually) dying. To be able to swim in the sea without being too out of breath to get back to the shore. To not feel that my weight stops me from flying or riding horses or chasing grand children or gardening or all those things that it might do if I don't do something about the situation soon.

So I had my weight and measurements taken for a benchmark along with speed to row 500 metres, number of sit-ups, time to hold a plank. From now on I am improving myself to decrease my personal physical numbers and increase the benchmark numbers. 

I would tell you the benchmarks but I haven't even looked at them myself. They don't really interest me at the moment. I may share them at the end when I evaluate how the eight weeks went.

*On Friday after work I went to the gym to at least do something seeing as I'd missed Boxfit that morning. I decided to warm up on the rowing machine. Most under-appreciated piece of gym equipment in my opinion. 

I walked up to the rowing machine, straddled it and sat down. Unfortunately I completely missed the seat and hit the slide bar instead (girls who have borrowed boys bikes and misfired on these types of bars will know what I mean) and fell off the rowing machine. I was now turtled between two rowing machines and there wasn't enough room for me to get up. I had to reverse crab my way out into the space behind the machines so I could roll over and get up.

So if you think you're too shy to attend a exercise class or walk into a gym just remember that I do this kind of thing all the time and I just clamber up and keep going.