So sometime last year, I began what I termed Operation Goddess In Training, a body-mind-spirit program to make me the best me I can be. A lot of this was focusing on getting as healthy as possible, aiming for fitness and hopefully some weight loss, as well as working on managing the boatload of stress I just happen to live with based on everything I have to juggle. Such is life when you are being all grown up and responsible and crap, working multiple jobs while pursuing the thing you really WANT to do for a living.
I started tracking my body fat percentage last November. I’ve got one of those scales that measures it through some kind of mild electrical signal through the body. It’s not perfect, but it’s a decent rubric to keep me mostly on track. I’ve had lots of ups and downs this last year with life stuff that interrupted Operation GIT. As of this morning I have officially put on 3 pounds of muscle and my number of fat pounds hasn’t changed at all. :headdesk: Which is better than losing 3 pounds of muscle or going UP with the fat pounds. But still. Frustrating.
A lot of workouts have slid. I’m further out in the new house, so I don’t have as much time to do a quick lunch workout. It’s too blasted hot to walk with my coworker this summer. And walking the dogs no longer qualifies as exercise because we have to go slow and short for Daisy. Plus I’ve been giving myself the weekends off. So I’ve just had my morning workouts, which have been predominantly cardio.
Today I’m getting serious again. Over the weekend, I programmed 5 super circuit workouts into my Seconds timer–3 supersets of 6 different exercises done back to back with no rest. All the routines take from 11-13 minutes, and I’m aiming to do 3 a week before my runs. I really need to get back to weight training to build some more muscle, and I don’t want to give up any of the cardio I’m doing, so this seemed like the best means of accomplishing that. And I’ll be adding back a workout on one day of my weekend.
This morning I got up 15 minutes early and did my AM yoga, one of my super circuit workouts, and Day 1 of Week 6 of C25k. I was considering trying 10 minutes of tabata training in the morning and afternoon for my breaks at work, on either my little mini stair stepper or the pedal thingie I can do while in my chair. I really want to make a concerted effort to get back to doing all the mini workouts throughout the day that gave me such success last year.
I really want to drop 10 pounds by the end of the year. I’ve been trying to avoid setting goals in pounds because honestly, that’s not really in my control. What’s in my control is how much I workout, how much I eat, and whether I get to bed on time. Certainly all those things combine to lose weight, but the equation simply is not as neat and clean as calories in/calories out as it was in my early 20s. So I’ll say that’s the HOPE rather than the goal (See? Look at that cognitive restructuring there.) If I stay within my calorie budget (which is really quite reasonable) and burn my target calories of 1750 a week, I should make my goal.
Discipline. I have it in so many areas of my life. I just need to kick it into high gear.
2 thoughts on “Getting Serious About Operation G.I.T.”
In my opinion, health goals are so much harder than other goals. I can kick butt in writing sometimes, but kicking butt in exercise hasn’t happened. A few walks here, a few treadmill sessions there. I know you can do this. You’ve done it before. You’ll find the discipline in this that you have in other aspects of your life. And you’re making me ashamed that I haven’t done anything, because I have NO excuse. You’ve had all kinds of things going on, especially MOVING and all the things that have to get done related to that. And the thing with Daisy. Now I’m going to slink away with my head down, hoping I’ll do better, while I KNOW you will. I needed to read this post as much as you needed to write it, I think.
Good luck, Kait! I’m right there with you. After putting on 15 lbs in the last year in the maintenance phase of the Ideal Protein Diet, I’ve been very frustrated. I’ve finally decided I’ve got to commit to exercising – something I don’t enjoy – and worry more about being healthy and fit instead of what the scale says. It’s a matter of discipline, and you’ve definitely got it. I’ll be sweating along with you!