The Willpower Beast . . .

is back!!!

I've been waiting for that magical moment when someone could dangle a bag of tortilla chips under my nose and I wouldn't say to myself "just a handful won't hurt". Well it finally happened! There aren't many foods out there that test my willpower but the salty, crunchy goodness of tortilla chips definitely does. Unfortunately Andy eats them . .like A LOT!!! I'm just not that evil to keep them out of the house when he loves them more than me. I'm the only one who can control what I choose to put in my mouth and what I don't.

I've been offered a fair amount of naughty foods over the last week and I'm happy to say that I have turned them all down (we won't count Thanksgiving which was a planned "re feed" event). I'm back in the zone I got into when competing for Emerald Cup last year . . .no excuses and give it 110% every single freakin' day! Ain't nothing gonna stop me from reaching my goals!!!

Sunday Funday

Oh how I love Sundays . . .well except for that looming feeling of knowing I have to head back to work the next day! I usually still wake up pretty darn early on Sundays. My body has decided it is just unacceptable to sleep past 5 a.m. anymore. Since I can't sleep in, I do let myself hang out in bed for awhile and snuggle with the dogs, drink coffee, and read. I'm usually still at the gym for morning cardio by about 6:15 or so.

Sunday mornings are usually my big weekly food prep day when I make my egg muffins, crock pot chicken, sweet potatoes and all my tilapia for the week. I prep some of my veggies too so that all I have to do during the week is prep some extra veggies and pack up my lunches!

Sunday is also my big cleaning and laundry day. I'm one of those weirdos that actually likes cleaning so it is relaxing for me. And the best part of Sunday??? I let myself nap!! I almost never have time to nap during the week and rarely on Saturdays so it's a nice treat to slip in some extra zzz's!

Today is a little wacky since I was stuck at home waiting for the Sears repair guy yesterday so I was able to slip in some of my cleaning and food prep. What does this mean? Extra nap time! Since Andy is working all day I might also rent a girly movie that I know he will never watch. . . .Magic Mike anyone???

There is one other little thing I decided to do on Sundays which of course came to me during morning cardio - that is where I do all my best plotting and planning :) I tend to stay on track better with my eating, workouts and my crazy life in general if I plan out my week in advance. Sunday is going to include some quality goal setting time for the week! Here are a few things I've come up with so far:

• Complete all workouts as planned (usually one that is easy to reach for me anyways but it helps to see it on paper!)
• Up my RPM while doing my cardio on the elliptical - stay at 165 or higher (I made a few changes this morning and was struggling to stay above 160!)
• Stretch after PM workouts (my back will thank me for this!)
• Stick to nutrition plan 100% except for Thanksgiving where I will not go totally crazy but will eat more than normal at ONE meal (not all day long!)
• Take at least 10 minutes everyday for some relaxing "me" time

Totally doable, right???

Time for one quick errand and then it's nap time for this girl!

Mindful Cardio

I know quite a few people who absolutely hate cardio. Luckily I am not one of them . . . .I actually enjoy cardio, especially morning cardio. It keeps me out of bed in the morning and gives me some quality time to reflect on the day ahead.

The other morning when I was at Golds on the elliptical and not feeling so hot, I felt like I was just barely moving and doing it just to say I did my cardio. I was sweaty at the end of the hour but not like I know I should be. This got me thinking . . .what can I do to really step it up? I want to be good and drenched at the end.

When I'm at home doing my cardio during the week, I pay more attention to my speed, etc because I'm on the treadmill and changing the incline and speed every 1 -2 minutes. After 35 minutes, I'm panting and drenched. When I'm on the stepmill at Golds I HAVE to pay attention to how fast I'm moving unless I want to trip on a step and go flying off (yea that's totally almost happened to me!) I love the elliptical but sometimes I just zone out and people watch.

So how did I solve this problem? A little mindful cardio this morning . . .instead of just watching the calorie count go up or my distance, I changed the display to watch my RPM and set myself a minimum number that I had to keep it at. I decided to stay between 145-150 RPM. If I dropped below 145, I peddled my little heart out and got it back up. At the end of the hour, I was good and sweaty, had burned a whopping 695 calories and gone over 6 miles! I also barely made it through Turbo Fit a few hours later so I knew I had kicked my cardio up to where it needed to be!

From now on it's only mindful cardio for this sweaty beast!

Perfection

Wow it's been a long time since I have blogged!!

Today started out a little rough - okay A LOT rough! I took the evil Series 24 test last month (worse than the evil Series 7 test last year!) and bombed it so I had to retake it. I walked into that testing room completely confident that I had it. I had studied my ass off and knew my shit. Or so I thought. Unfortunately I didn't pass and now have to retake it again. Ugh. I was completely devastated! I realized I was also extremely mad at myself. Pretty typical feeling when things don't go as planned.

I've been told my many that I'm a complete Type A Personality. Totally true! One website I found describes a Type A personality as a burnt-out prone stressed out overachiever. Okay, maybe that's a little harsh but that pretty much describes me in a nutshell :) It also means I'm pretty competitive and self-critical. This is where my blog title comes in . . . .

I am and always have been extremely self-critical from an early age. I'm pretty sure it started with a prior step-father who frequently had some fairly critical things to say to me starting when I was in fourth grade - not a good age to criticize a self-conscious girl about her weight, athletic abilities, grades, etc! I have some pretty darn high expectations for myself and am very hard on myself when I don't live up to these expectations. These expectations are present in pretty much every aspect of my life - work, my relationships, at the gym, at home . . . the list goes on!

After my reaction to the little testing incident this morning (that just sounds so much better than saying I failed a test!) and spending some time at the gym working through my anger while being a goofball trying to mask my feelings of being a total failure, I got home and spent some quality time reflecting on my morning.

I'm very aware of how harsh I am on myself and have been trying to work through that recently. I tend to have very high stress levels due to work and other things and over the past few months got to the point where I was physically ill (won't go into the details!) from stress. I know that putting extreme pressure on myself definitely does NOT help. Basically it all comes down to consistently reminding myself that I don't need to be perfect 100% of the time. I am really good at beating myself up if I stray from my diet - don't even get me started on Halloween's mishap! Or if I don't get everything done on my mile long to-do list on the day I planned on doing something. There are a ton of other examples I can think of but you get the point.

As cheesy as this might be, here are a few reminders to myself that will hopefully help me not use myself as a punching bag when things don't go as planned:

• It's okay to not be perfect
• Shit happens
• Treat yourself like you want others to treat you - heck if I treated others like I treat myself, I would be the mean girl!
• Breathe
• Relax and . . .jazz hands!! Seriously how could I get through a blog without mentioning jazz hands today?? 

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.  ~Confucius, Analects