Lemons

This past week has been pretty darn crazy and life decided to throw me a few curve balls. It was just one of those weeks where many things didn't go as planned (anyone who knows me will know how much I despise my schedule being screwed with!!) and I had something scheduled every day after work this week. That made getting my workouts in a little more challenging than usual.

Monday was, well it was Monday and that means usually something crazy happens. It seems so long ago that I can't even remember what happened during the day - clearly I was so traumatized I just blocked it out of my memory :) I had my regular rehab/chiro appointment on Monday which means getting to the gym later than I like to but that's not THAT bad. Andy got home super duper late from work and the house was a mess. Ok not that horrible of a day.

On Tuesday I started feeling crappy. Thank you evil flu that has targeted the entire population of every single person I know in the area. I had a planned dinner that night with some work visitors from out of town so I did get to sleep in a little so that I wasn't at work beyond 12 hours (my breaking point!) I also knew this meant straying from my usual dinner and 2nd workout but I knew about it in advance so could mentally prepare myself for my routine being thrown off. There was a little work drama during the day too which added to my stress level. Our dinner ended up being later than planned but I ate a VERY clean salad so I felt pretty good about that. I didn't get home until 10 so clearly I didn't get my leg workout in but life goes on.

Wednesday is when the flu bug decided to hit me like a ton of bricks in the afternoon. I had an appointment after work that I made it through and then got myself home and into bed. I had this master plan to have a really beasty leg workout but with a fever and all that didn't seem like the best idea. My body wanted some serious rest! I managed to suck down a protein shake for dinner because NOTHING sounded good but I knew I needed to get something in me.

Thursday brought some more work drama. At this point, I was REALLY looking forward to working from home on Friday! I participated in the Cystic Fibrosis Stair Climb after work but I was determined not to miss a weight training session so before the stair climb I took a trip to the gym at work and got in a beasty little back workout. The gym was almost completely empty  however the gym at work lacks a lot of equipment. I improvised and got it done!

Friday rolled around and I woke up feeling like death. I still attempted to log in to work and the universe decided to tell me to go back to bed. Wait, maybe that was my boss . . .Anyways, I couldn't get logged in and popped back in bed and slept most of the day. It was clearly what I needed even if it wasn't what I had planned for the day.

I finally woke up Saturday feeling WAY better, maybe a little slower than normal but knew I needed to get my ass out of bed and to the gym. I ended up getting a lot done yesterday and some extra sleep!

So the moral of the story of my week is that I turned some silly little curveballs, schedule disruptions, craziness, etc. into an opportunity for some extra rest and practice at not freaking out when things don't go as planed. I'm a creature of habit who doesn't like my schedule disrupted. When life gives you lemons, make some damn good lemonade . . . .or a protein shake :)



As I read what I just wrote about my week I'm actually laughing because compared to some other shit I know people are going through right now, my weeks seems pretty darn tame! It always helps to put things into perspective when you feel like the universe is against you. Ok, maybe my week wasn't really THAT bad after all!

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

Almost There!

Since I've been wide awake in the wee hours of the morning the last few nights, I thought this would be the perfect time to do what might be my last "pre-show" post! I can't promise that this will be coherent . . .

The last few days have flown right on by! This weekend I was dragging A LOT and felt like I could collapse at any given moment. I think I could pretty much fall asleep anywhere! I actually started to fall asleep in the middle of the kitchen waiting for the oven timer to go off on Sunday night! I also reached a new all time low when I saw an empty Skittles wrapper on the ground outside of Target and for a split second considered picking it up and licking it out just to get a tiny taste of candy - don't worry, I resisted this enormous temptation :)

Despite being exhausted, I have not been able to sleep more than 2 hours straight since Saturday night. Basically, I fall asleep at 9ish, wake up again between 10:30-11, get up, back to sleep until midnight - 1ish and then up again! Monday morning I just got up at 1:30 and never went back to sleep. Here it is 1:39am and I'm wide awake! I will probably read a few chapters of my book and then fall back asleep until cardio time (3:15am!) I go back and forth between being exhausted and feeling completely wired like I've had tons of coffee. The really funny thing is that I only had one small cup of coffee yesterday and one thermogenic for the caffeine which is nothing compared to my normal caffeine intake! I will probably just do without today in hopes that I can get a normal amount of sleep.

Thursday will be pretty crazy - I have a few little errands to run in the morning, will probably get in one last shorter cardio session, packing and then heading over to Bellevue to check into the hotel near the event. I am planning on doing early registration on Thursday night - one last thing to worry about Friday morning and then we also have a walk thru to get a chance to experience being on stage in our snazzy Barbie heels! I will get the first coat of my tan sprayed on Thursday night also!

Friday morning will be crazy again - up early for another coat of tan and then off to hair/make-up at 7am. Luckily I will have a little down time before the competitor meeting and then stage time!

I will be sure to post lots of pictures along with a full update! The picture above is from me during my mini posing practice on Tuesday night at Golds. Gotta love the little ankle socks :)

Zombie Mode

Wow, I can't believe that in a week I will be resting at home, taking a break from working out, and snacking away! Only 4 more days until go time!

The last week has been pretty interesting. Everyday I think to myself "is it possible to be any more tired??" and then the next day I realize that it IS definitely possible! The human body truly is an amazing thing! I have been amazed each and every day that I have made it through two workouts a day without taking any shortcuts. I'm pretty much delirious by the time I get to round 2 of cardio. The good thing is that I get to start cutting back on cardio starting tomorrow night (hopefully!) It is now a day by day process depending on how I'm looking each day. And yes, I'm seeing changes EVERY single day now!

So what have I learned this week?

It is possible to drink 2.5 gallons of water/day more than two days in a row without drowning or wetting my pants
Peanut butter might be the most amazing food in the world
It's hard to workout without chewing gum (yes that's right, I had to cut out gum)
Old men at the gym make amazing cheerleaders (luckily they don't wear cheer outfits!)
It is possible to drink a buttload of coffee and immediately take a nap
I hate tilapia - unfortunately I have to eat it at least once a day
Cardio without an iPod is an enlightening experience - I had to do without one day this week and it wasn't soooo horrible, kind of a nice change for a day
Dairy Queen commercials are evil

One more load of laundry to do, packing my food for tomorrow and then I'm going to plop myself down on the couch for awhile!