Category Archives: patience

Lovin’ the bagel and patience

Yep – it’s that day of the week!  We were both up very early and I suggested to John that we go have breakfast and then ride the bike trainers.  He pretty much jumped all over that suggestion, so we were out the door a little after 7 am for breakfast!  Normally I would be working out at that time LOL.  This was Adirondack Coffee Company.  Cute little coffee bean display here (with snow outside).

I had a wheat bagel with some Ethiopian coffee.

We talked more about the plan for the half bathroom.  This weekend will start the dry fitting for the plumbing, which is a little scary, but I know we can do it!

After we got home, I worked some and then hopped on the bike trainer.  I watched TV for a while and the Weather Channel says more snow tomorrow. 👿  That made me pedal faster out of annoyance.  Then I decided to read.  I ended up doing 12 miles in 45 minutes, which was quite a good clip!  Felt good, too.

Lunch time was a BBQ chicken sandwich on a magic roll.

I need to name them something else.  Both John and I get that song “Magic Bus” in our heads whenever I mention them and it is getting very old indeed.

Work was slow in the afternoon, so I practiced my guitar (which I have been quite diligent about – go me!).  I opened up to a new page to start work on a new song:

and saw this at the bottom of the page:

Have faith that the full extent of your aspirations can be realized with time and patient effort.

Nice, eh?  It can be applied on so many levels to life.  Sometimes we want results NOW! and it just doesn’t happen that way.

Time for addiction:

42 and still with dimples :mrgreen:  Funny how those stayed when I lost weight.  I thought they might disappear, but they didn’t.

Easy dinner tonight.  More of the SeaPak Popcorn Fish.  They are all gone now and we are for sure getting more!  They look like tater tots, don’t they?

Last of the strawberries as well.  I think we are going to run out of fruit this week as we shopped a day early. Ruh-roh.

Chocolate dessert was some rocky road dark chocolate from a package that Marisa sent me.  She went to Trader Joe’s looking for peanut flour for me, but came up with this instead.  So very thoughtful!

These are up high because it is so easy to eat a bunch!

Working tonight and singing “lalalalala” with my fingers in my ears so I don’t hear more about any snow overnight into tomorrow…  If I don’t hear it, it won’t happen, right?

Question: Are you patient?

Doing it all over again

The start of the weekend!  I got it going with a fantastic weight lifting session.  I got to the gym at 7:15 – I sure know how to sleep in on my day off, don’t I?

I jogged 1 mile on the treadmill for a warm up, then hit the iron:

  • Chin ups:  2 sets of 2, 1 set of 1 (this is never going to change….)
  • Barbell squats: 1 set of 10 at 65#, 1 set of 8 at 85#, 1 set of 6 at 95#, 1 set of 4 at 105# (YES!)
  • Barbell bench press: 1 set of 10 at 45 pounds, 1 set of 8 at 55#, 1 set of 6 at 65#, 1 set of 4 at 70# (new high weight)
  • Reverse lunge with single dumbbell: 3 sets of 8 with 20# DB
  • Dumbbell pull over: 3 sets of 8 with 25# DB
  • Face Pulls:  3 sets of 10 at 30#
  • Lunge with bicep curl: 3 sets of 8 with 15# DBs
  • Triceps pull down: 3 sets of 10 at 40#
  • Reverse crunches: 3 sets of 15

Man was I feeling it at the end!  Getting done with a good lifting session feels so different than running or biking.  It’s way more exhausting and I feel drained (but in a good way).  I am *loving* these longer workouts.

Do you love this or what? :mrgreen:  I so need this on a t-shirt.

I was staaaahving when I got home.  Needed those protein waffles to fill me up.

Sprinkled with some toasted coconut.  I had to consciously slow myself down with the eating.

Spent the morning relaxing, blog reading, and making some chocolate protein granola, which I had with lunch.  I will post the recipe tomorrow.

I had some of my newly minted granola with lunch topped on some greek yogurt, vanilla protein powder, 1/2 of a mashed banana, and cinnamon.

And yes, it was quite good!

For flashback Friday, I thought I would answer a question that Susan posed for me:

If you were to do it all over again (lose the weight) knowing everything you know now, would you do anything differently?

This is a really tough question, or I am making it tough to answer, I guess.  I try really hard not to regret any decisions I have made in the past or think about how things would have been different if I had done something differently.  There is part of me that wishes I could go back to my teenage self and tell her how to eat properly and exercise in a fun way so that I could have spent the majority of my life being fit.  Learning it right from the start instead of doing fad things and not learnin’ nuthin’ but how to yo-yo.  With that being said, I almost wouldn’t want to change a thing, because I really like the person I am now and I don’t know if I would be this person if I had been thin at a young age.  Know what I mean?  Maybe I might talk to my plateauing self a few years ago and really kept on her about not giving up, though.  That would have made things a little easier 🙂 This was probably a more complex answer to this question that was necessary, but that’s me in a nutshell LOL!  Short answer would be you can eat more than you think and lose weight.

Afternoon out and browsing shops led me back to the Chocolate Mill for some coffee.  They really improved their lattes quite a bit since the last time I was here!  Last time they were pretty substandard.  This time –

Nice latte art.  Maybe a touch bitter espresso, but still much improved.  John met me there, which is also nice 😀  I managed to just have the skim latte and avoid all of this:

(It’s funny, these pictures look like nighttime, but it was 3 in the afternoon!)

I just didn’t want something that rich today.  Think it is because I actually have eaten quite well this week and have gotten a lot of the sweet tooth out of my head.

Came home and started on dinner prep.  I bought a rutabaga at the store – and roasted it up along with some sweet potato.  I also made broccoli in case I didn’t like the rutabaga LOL!  It was pretty good.  I need to do a GVE post on this.

With some chicken and BBQ sauce.

Saving some fruit for an evening snack tonight!

Might top this with some nut butter or laughing cow.  Not sure which yet.

Think tomorrow will be an outdoor run day – woohoo!

Flashback Friday – The 24W edition.

Friday!  Yay!  Had a nice day off just puttering around and doing things 😀  Started off the day with a good gym work out:

Walked 1 mile on the hamster wheel, then did my lifting:

  • Chin ups:  2 sets of 2, 1 set of 1 (and a lame attempt at 2)
  • Barbell split squats:  3 sets of 8 at 65#

Super set:

  • Barbell incline chest press:  3 sets of 8 at 55#
  • Lunges with bar:  3 sets of 8 with 35# bar

Super sets:

Super set:

  • Dumbbell pliet squat:  3 sets of 10 with 40# DB
  • Dumbbell pull over:  3 sets of 10 with 20# DB

Then I did an interval workout on the stationary bike.  Felt good!  I worked the weights harder today as I am taking a scheduled lifting break next week (which I do every couple of months or so).

I was all set for grains this morning for brekkie!  I actually did that work out fasted to see what would happen (nothing).  I was hangry, though.  I made some banana custard oats with a whole egg today:

Topped with some raw honey and PB.  Yum!  This raw honey has some bee pollen in it too, which was interesting.

I was able to get up to all kinds of stuff with not having to work.  I made some maple coconut pecan butter (like a liquid praline 😯  )

and got some slow cooker stew started for dinner.

Flashback Friday:  I was flipping through some old photo albums last week and I saw some photos that just made me freak out a little.  When I think about how my mind’s view of myself has changed, these photos looks so alien to me.

Here I am at my heaviest weight in 2002, standing in front of our first home (John was probably at his heaviest, too).

I loved that house and the garden I put in the back.

And then this photo, a few months later.  I know I probably had a bulky sweatshirt or sweater on under this, but the jacket (24W) is almost bulging:

Same smile though :mrgreen:

These 2 photos make me laugh a little because the first one is little head on big body, the second is big head on little body 😀  More and more the 2nd picture is becoming the norm in my head.  It’s just taken a couple years for that to happen.

Which leads me to this FAQ question set:

Do you track calories or record your food intake at all? (besides what you record on your blog) Yes, I use Dailyplate or Fitday to record what I eat.  I have been experimenting with not recording food a few days a week as an experiment, but I will probably always have some sort of tracking going on.  It’s kind of a habit now.

DO you try to stay within a calorie range? Try would be the applicable word here 😀  I can lose weight if I can get my calories down to 1500, but that is really hard for me.  Maintaining is around 1900-2100 most days, depending on activity.

Best advice for someone who wants to lose weight? If I could say something to the old me in that photo, it would be that it is never too late to start, and it isn’t impossible, and it doesn’t mean you have to give everything up or become a social outcast to change your eating habits.  Start small, as all the little changes add up to big results over time.   And that it takes time.  Patience is so important, especially when you have a lot to lose.  It takes a long time, but that’s okay.  But probably the most important thing is to speak kindly to yourself.  Never, ever talk down to yourself because you are worth so much more than the weight on the outside.  Positive talk leads to positive self-worth.

I went out and did some consignment browsing today, but didn’t find anything I wanted to buy.  I did bring home snacks for John and I.

There were a few snacks today.  Not a good day as far as following my ‘no extra snacking’ thing I was trying to implement.  This is really hard!  I am craving bread type of things for some reason.

The stew I put in the slow cooker turned out awesome!  The stew meat was local grass fed meat from the smokehouse and it was really, really tender.  With some biscuits!

All day of cooking and 20 minutes of eating. 🙂

All in all, a nice day and to know that I also have Saturday off feels like a real treat!  We are taking my folks out for breakfast if the weather is okay.  Think I will save my run for the afternoon.

Question:  What is one thing that you would tell  your past self if you could?

It's not all or nothing for me anymore.

I tend to review in my mind the changes that I have undergone in the past few years. I think the biggest one is that I got rid of the ‘all or nothing’ mindset. Not just in dieting, but in a lot of areas of my life.

I tend to be a perfectionist – so to not exceed with the utmost of goals on the first try would be very discouraging to me. I think that’s why I couldn’t lose weight and keep it off. I would expect 2 pounds a week consistently, and if I didn’t get that, then I would just eat whatever and give up.

Or with a new exercise program – pop in the DVD and expect to be at the speed and fitness of the instructors (perfectionism doesn’t = smart, sometimes). And then be irritated with myself that I didn’t wake up fit the next day.

Patience really is a virtue, and it can be learned. I am proof of that, at least. I know that when I tried the C25K program a couple years ago, I gave up because I thought it was too hard, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just up and run, since I biked and worked out. Well, I needed to learn to be patient with my body while it learned a new skill. That’s what running is, training your body.

So, following the C25K with the mindset that I didn’t have to be able to run a 5K in 30 minutes by the end of 9 weeks was a big breakthrough for me. I knew I could do the 5K, but it just took me 50 minutes to do the first time. And I decided to celebrate that instead of beat myself up. I have now reduced my time for the 5K by quite a bit from 50 minutes, and now I feel victorious with each run (even though I still am not at 30 minutes).

I feel that way about the weight loss now as well. I know that I am unlikely to lose even a pound a week, and have now accepted that as perfectly fine. I also know that there will be times when the scale goes up, undeservedly – and I have to accept that as well. Since I’m not in a rush, and I have learned to be less self critical, the weight has come off and stayed off. I no longer have something off plan and then decide it’s okay to take the rest of the day off, or beat myself up. That has been the path I am following to radiance.

Maybe I could have learned this stuff 20 years ago, or maybe it had to take me until I got to 40 to figure it out. I don’t know. I am just glad to be at this point right now.