Welcome to May 2012 Move
More, Eat Well. I am Cathy Zielske on behalf of Big Picture Classes
welcoming you to the month of May – sometimes the month that more than any other
of the year causes our red flags of fitness to fly up that pole because in many
parts of the world, wow, well what do you know…swimsuit season is just around
the corner. What? Ahhhh…life was simpler in the olden days wasn’t it? Who would
have had any stress when your swimsuit looked like this. I mean really, you’ve
got your chub protection and your sunscreen built right in together, a one
package deal. But of course, today’s swimsuits, well, they don’t always look
like this do they? Why my brand new racing suit has exactly zero margin for chub
coverage. In fact, it has a negative factor which translates to this, the back
fat spills out and then some. But you know what? Tell that to the person I am
lapping when I hit the pool for my workout. Sometimes there’s more to the story
than the chub.
Hello May. Now here’s the
deal, swimsuit season, shwimsmuit shmissizon. We are on a journey. The
months are going to come and go and, guess what, we’re just going to stay the
course. We are going to keep saying, “so that happened” and refocusing our
efforts. We are making choices and changes that are not easy. In fact, they are
hard and many people out there they don’t even want to think about what we’re
doing. Now that’s what I call an inspired time of year any time of year. You
know what I am saying? You see it’s May, but it's also just another month on the
journey. The first is here and what do we do with that, well, we refocus and we
recommit. A new month is at hand.
Now I’ll tell you a story
that I’ve touched on on the boards and I’ve even blogged about it in the past
few months, but I’d like to tell you a bit more about it now. In late March I
hurt my leg, specifically, my calf muscle. I am not exactly sure what I did. I
was running on the treadmill, okay, something I do three times, sometimes four
times a week and everything was going fine for the first fifteen minutes and
then boom, something started to knot up and then it got progressively more
painful. And rather than get off the treadmill I just decided to just keep on
going and guess what, I couldn’t run it out. It just kept hurting more. When I
was done I figured, it’s got to be a Charlie horse, no big whoop. I gave it a
few days rest and took one day off of running and then the next time I headed
out to run which I decided to run outside, I got no further than one block. One
block in my neighborhood and I realized, rut roo, something ain’t right. Could
not run and it was very clear to me and then, you guys, I was bummed.
See I’ve been running since
January 2010, okay, not continuously nonstop mind you, but I have been running
since January 2010 and I have only had a few issues really, okay. One of the
main issues I’ve had is the dreaded plantar fasciitis, which I don’t want to go
into the medical details. I know there are many of you out there nodding and
going oh yeah. But it never tripped me up for the actual run, PF is not
something I ever felt when I was running, it was always an after run or first
thing getting up the morning that sore heel pain, but I did a lot of things to
work it out. I slept with a weird bizarre splint called a Strassburg Sock, which
keeps your foot at an awkward 90 degree angle and does not make for good
sleeping, but I iced a lot and rolled it out a lot, you know by and large it
started to go away after about a year. It was not debilitating, it was
annoying.
Part of the reason I was
able to figure out running too I read a book called Chi Running, because
when I first started running my knees kind of started to hurt and I was like oh
gosh, starting this at this age is this a good idea, but Chi Running was
a book that I read and it really clicked with me and it just talked about hey if
you’re going to run you’ve got to have good body position, okay, and if you have
good body position you’re not going to have the issues that a lot of people have
so I incorporated that. I made running part of my life and a part that I
actually like. I won’t say, like I don’t look at running like, oh this is so
great I get to go do this, but I do look at it like this is cool, I can do this,
and again it always just really just lifts me up. So here I was suddenly,
literally, unable to run. I could not run. You just know. This is not something
that I can push through. This isn’t like a tweaky little knee pain that’s going
to go away in a half mile. This I can’t do.
For a moment I freaked out.
Well, I mean freaked out, okay, maybe too hasty a description. Let’s just say I
was disappointed and I was sad and I let that wash over me for a full weekend.
Part of that involved sea salt caramels and crackers and a lot of junky carbs,
because that’s what I do when I feel sorry for myself. Sometimes when I
experience pain I give into my wants, desires that I know aren’t good for me.
Let that go for about a weekend and then I just said okay, enough Cathy, alright
so you can’t run right now. What else can you do? If there’s one thing I am
learning in this process it is this, I am not a one-trick pony. I, Cathy
Zielske, I have options.
Now for all the joking about
my back fat, and it’s there people, I was going to photograph myself in a
swimsuit for this slide but I thought you know, really, is that really
necessary, okay, so I decided not to. But for all my joking, I am a good
swimmer. I have to thank my parents for forcing me to learn and let me tell you
it was painful. As a six year old I was horrified of the water. Jumping into the
pool was like, I mean, you might as well have told me that I could never watch
cartoons again. It was painful for me as a child. It took a lot of effort and
pushing from my parents to turn me into a swimmer, but they did. They made me
keep at not only until I was competent in the water but to the point that I
ended up joining a swim team at the age of nine. I was competent to compete.
Now, swimming was something I was never really fast at, but I was always able to
do it. I realized that not everyone can swim and I am very thankful that this
low-impact exercise is one in my toolbox of fitness, definitely. I like how when
you’re in the water you are weightless. It doesn’t really matter what your body
looks like when you are horizontal in that pool working to increase your fitness
level. Swimming makes me feel powerful and strong. If I may say this, and I am
going to, it makes me feel like a bit of a bad ass, okay. That is not too shabby
an alternative to being able to run, you know what I mean. It’s an
option.
I can walk. I live near a
really lovely little lake with a great walking path and it’s very simple to lace
up and head out. Walking doesn’t hurt my leg at all, although I do tend to get
blisters when I walk in a way that I just don’t when I run. It must be something
with a different body position, but I swear they just always crop up. But still
if I walk the lake route it’s about four and half miles and it takes me a little
over an hour. It clears up my head, gets me moving. I also, when I am out there,
I listen to podcasts. I download episodes of Dishing Up Nutrition which
is my favorite podcast in the world. It is put on by the ladies at Nutritional
Weight and Wellness and these are the people who I kind of follow what they talk
about. They talk about the new science of weight loss and they talk about it
every week and you can listen to it streaming on the web and you can download it
to your iPod and I do and I listen and I walk and I always return inspired by,
okay that’s right all this sugar it’s messing me up.
Now I know, this is a fact,
in the future at some point walking is going to make more sense than running. I
am not going to run until I pound the heck out of my knees and I am limping
around all the time. If it makes sense for me to stop running, outside of just
being injured, I am going to walk. I think it’s a really good habit for me to
start now so I have been. I have been, we had a warm winter in Minnesota so I
actually got out for more walks than I usually do. Walking is good for me. You
never know how your body’s going to respond to what you are doing, right, so
it’s always a good idea to have a back-up plan and again, I can walk. I have
options. I can bike. Remember, I just told you I live near a really lovely
little lake with a great walking path. Well, there is a bike path as well. Not
only that but here in Minnesota where I live there are some really amazing paved
bike trails that go for miles and miles under a beautiful canopy cover of trees.
There was a route that I did a lot last summer. It’s about four and half miles
from my house to get there and I actually have to ride through the city streets
to get there, which I am always a little leery doing that because I feel like I
am going to get hit, but anyway, but once I get to the trail, it’s called the
Gateway Trail, it is a paved route for bikers and runners only. It’s just this
beautiful peaceful urban bike ride. It goes all the way out to a town called
Stillwater about twenty two twenty, twenty three miles out. I’ve never done the
whole route. I’ve turned around when my GPS tells me I am ten miles and I’ve
come back. So I’ve done these twenty mile rides which have been great. And guess
what, biking doesn’t hurt my calf either. So I really do have some choices which
means, for me, maybe I bask in a little misery for a weekend but I truly do not
legitimately have the right to sit and whine that I can’t run and what am I
going to do. You know I actually have options and I need to exercise those and
that’s a good thing.
There is my lovely daughter
Aiden playing the white witch in the Chronicles of Narnia the musical. There she
is tempting the young Pevensie boy, Edmund, with the delectable Turkish delight.
How wicked. How evil. No one can resist sugar! She is pure evil that one. But
another thing I can do, one of my options is, I can do my best to avoid
temptation and temptation for our purposes is just a code word. It’s just a code
word for junk food. Sometimes when my plans go askew, for example, the inability
to execute my normal workout routine, as I told you, I take out my frustration,
not in Turkish delight, but rather in those sea salt caramels and saltine
crackers. I’ll admit to you that this, outside of January of this year where I
was like there’s no added sugar hitting my lips, this whole first half of the
year, we’re not quite there, but it’s been a bit of a struggle for me to get off
the sugar because, of course, once you let it back in it makes it harder and
harder to get it out of the diet.
Even then you still have to
be mindful of all the things you eat that don’t have the obvious sugar but that
turn into sugar into your bloodstream anyway. Things like bread and pasta,
potato chips, a glass of wine. When they start to break down in your system they
turn into sugar. They affect your body in ways very similar to donuts and cakes
and cookies. I know it’s strange but it’s science people and it’s true. My point
is, when something in your approach gets messed up, you can’t exercise or you
can’t go to the gym or whatever it is, it is even more important to focus on
good nutrition. I’ve really been trying to focus on this myself and let’s just
say some days I give into the white witch’s temptations.
So what’s going on with you
this month? Everyone goes through this so differently. Some of you are on a
roll. Some of you are not. Some of you have thrown your hands up in frustration
time and again. Some of you aren’t even watching these videos anymore so you’re
not even hearing me. But the question is a worthy one, where are you today? It’s
so important to keep evaluating your situation, because as soon as you decide
not to you might find yourself falling off your plan before you know it. It’s
funny but even though I’ve had times in the past two plus years where I have
most definitely jumped ship, I have jumped overboard people. I have done that
but I have never completely lost sight of the fact that I need to take care of
myself, that my health is important. That, okay, I might be on a major muffin
kick but I am still going to get the move more part done. I haven’t given up.
When you check in with yourself, you give yourself the gentle or firm reminders
of what you were doing and why you were doing it. This is a key part of this
process if you want it to be successful. One thing I haven’t talked about much
thus far is the whole idea of self-image and attitudes about our bodies and how
all of this interconnects to the process of moving more and eating well.
Here’s another story for
you. Now, I have a trip planned for this month and it involves seeing my
lifelong best friend Molly. Now Molly, she loves me. We go back, way, way back
to the sixth grade. We have lived a lifetime of experiences together and she
knows me. She knows me and in spite of all she knows, she is still my friend. So
what is it? Why is it that I am kind of bummed out that even though I knew this
trip was coming I wasn’t able to get down into the 140’s before I saw her again.
What the heck is up with that? Because you know that, it’s just like getting in
shape for swimsuit season. It’s just like, I have a trip to the tropics coming
up and I am going to drop 25 pounds so that I look good and people like me more.
You know I’ve tried to stay away from this topic a bit because it is not one
that I actually feel like I am authorized to tell you the secrets to, or the
keys to making it all makes sense, because I still struggle with my self-image.
The reason I’ve
stayed away is that I personally am really trying to make a connection between
the idea that taking care of yourself it is not, is not, about being the
thinnest person in the room. That being healthy is about being strong, but there
is still this little tiny nagging voice in my head that will kind of pop in
uninvited and say, yeah but your butt could be a little smaller. So what do you
do with that voice? How do you begin to internalize that who you are and who
your life force is in the world is so much more than the package into which it’s
been placed. I don’t know, I think this is something that’s really worthy of a
discussion because, well, you guys know I’ve been doing some therapy work and my
therapist says that true self-worth comes from competence. From being competent
and knowing how to respond to a situation and knowing who you are and living in
the real world and making choices that are appropriate for any situation. That
the more you become competent, that is where true self-worth comes from. That
it’s not about, oh, look at how small my thigh is today, that that really isn’t
where the self-worth comes from. I don’t know, I think if I had the solid
answers to this I’d be a gizzillonaire because people would pay me and I’d give
them the secret and then we would all be really rich because I’d share the money
of course. But it’s something that is part of the process you know.
As I, myself, work through
trying to focus on being healthy, trying to stop that whole I am going to beat
myself up, I am going to feel bad about myself because I’m not tiny and I am not
this and I am never going to have rock hard abs. I need to always bring it back
around. I need to realize but I am strong and my lungs are clear and I can swim
in a pool for an hour and I feel good when I am done. I don’t feel spent, I feel
good. These are things that mix in and when I place my focus there, well, I tend
to be a lot more in the mindset of, you know what, this isn’t about just being
thin. This isn’t about my best friend won’t think I am fabulous. She’s not going
to laugh at my jokes any less because I am fifteen pounds heavier than I wish I
was, you know what I mean? It’s always something to think about. Again, I wish I
had all the answers you guys, you know. If I did maybe I wouldn’t be teaching
this class and you wouldn’t even know me because I would have the answers so I
would just sit in my house and I would just smile contentedly all the time.
That’s not who I am right now. Let’s just say work in progress.
But in the meantime while I
am working on all my internal issues, I can still focus on being a loser, but
maybe I am using loser in a different way than you might think. Okay, here’s
what I want to lose. Number one, I want to lose the attitude that I’ll never be
thin enough and I’ll never be pretty enough, because really what is the point of
that? What is thin enough? What is pretty enough? Yeah, that ties into all that
self-worth stuff and you know what I want to lose that. I am tired of that. I
don’t want that. That does nothing for my soul. You know what I am saying? Want
to lose that.
Number two, I want to lose
the belief that there is only one way to plow through this process. I think I am
doing a pretty good job of that because the thing is it isn’t about I am going
to eat less and I am going to move more and everything is going to work out.
There are so many factors involved. It’s about how you eat. It’s not about
starving yourself. It’s not about I am going live on low fat food for the rest
of my life. That’s not realistic. There are so many ways to go through this
process and part of your job and part of my job is figuring how to navigate.
Learning where am I at? What am I doing? How can I adjust what I am doing? How
can I experiment with different ways of eating? There’s always going to be more
than one way. Just like if you can’t run, you can walk. If you can’t walk, baby
you can sit and do arm curls with little hand weights while you watch a soap
opera. There is always something you can do. So, I am doing a pretty good job of
losing that idea that there’s only one way.
And third, I just want to
lose any doubt in myself that, not only can I do this, but I can thrive in this
process. I am going to lose that too. I want to know for myself that, yeah, I
can do this. The self-doubt, I’ve got to kick that to the curb. Now, bringing up
therapy again, I have to because I’ve got to get my monies worth right? It’s
just not covered by my insurance, but anyway, the woman that I work with talks a
lot to me, and has talked to me, about the fear of being a loser. But again, the
way she looks at it is a little different. She says that sometimes the way I
have lived my life as a very, and she has said this, self-absorbed person, that
I have approached things in my life from a very corporate standpoint. It looks
like this, put as little in as possible to get the most return back. That is a
very corporate sort of, almost a very cultural approach to things, you know, buy
low, sell high, you know what I am saying. She says that this is a mentality
that people buy into because they’re afraid that somehow if they give too much
time and too much energy to anything, they will be a loser. Is that interesting?
If you give too much away, you are losing part of who you are in the process.
She’s told me that I need to focus on, you know what, get over that. Give
everything away and give everything I can to the people I love and the things
that I want to put my passion into. She says at the end of the day I should be
spent. My reserves depleted as evidence that I have given my all to the
experience of my life every day. In short, she says, I need to become a
perpetual loser.
I know it sounds counter
intuitive and even a little weird, but I believe there is real nugget of truth
in those words. If we can give everything we have to the processes in our lives,
becoming a loser has very positive potential outcome. So as we near the mid-year
point, we are getting there, month five here, okay, I want you to renew and
commit. Even if you are sailing along with great success, always continue to
renew and commit. So you had a crap day. So you ate three donuts and chased it
down with some potato chips. So you missed your walks all week. So what, that
happened, renew and commit. I am always doing this you guys, always. Sometimes,
and I’ll admit, I get tired of the fact that I always have to renew and commit,
but that’s my reality. I have to renew and commit in order to stay focused and
to remember why I am doing this. I want to feel strong. I want to be healthy. I
want to be fit. I want my life to have a good, healthy, physical component to go
along with the mental one. That is my ultimate goal here.
So, that’s what I know for
May. A few steps forward, a few steps back. A little muffin top here and that
doesn’t mean I am not strong and focused and taking the best care of myself that
I can, from day to day. An injury might happen. A stressful few weeks can pass.
Unexpected events come and go and there you are still trying your best to make
the most of your time and your energy in your hope and effort to change. Then of
course, when you see a pound or two drop along the way, you take it. You take it
and you say “good for me” and indeed it is.
This month’s quote is,
“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” I’ve got to tell you that the
more I do this process and the more I learn as I get older, I am realizing that
my attitude is probably the number one influencer of every choice and every
thought that I have. It is all part of renewing. You choose to change your
attitude and then you are able to at least see more clearly the things you want
for yourself and then you can start working toward achieving them. It all starts
with attitude, it all starts there. And that healthy fitness, exercising,
fabulous people, that is my message to you for May. I am hoping that there are a
lot of you out there that really are starting to see change. I’ve seen it on the
gallery. I know that the gallery isn’t super hopping and I kind of figured that
would be the case. There are a lot of you that want to use it and do, but it is
kind of cool to see people’s pictures because, I’m sorry, I can see change. I
see it. It’s exciting to me. There are a ton of us in this class and I know that
any one of you who might have said, alright, I can’t do this I am dropping off,
this could be the month where you say you know what, no, no, I am doing it now.
So this idea of renewing and committing is going to be perpetual throughout the
year, throughout the coming years, you know. I want to encourage you wherever
you are today to think about what you want, think about the choices that you can
make, think about your attitude and renew and commit to moving more and eating
well. Again, I am Cathy Zielske for Big Picture Classes signing off for May and
I will see you on the boards.
