1000 calories, a major reality check and back on track!

At 100 kilos, it was easy to burn 1000 calories.  Moving such a large amount of weight around used a lot of energy!  As I lost weight, I started to realise that I was burning less and less.  My workouts started to get easier as I got fitter and I had slipped into a habit.  I would start with a gruelling 20 minutes on the cross trainer, proceed to the rower where I would spend a moderate 20 minutes, then sit on the stationary bike for a final leisurely 20 minutes.  Twice a week I would reduce these times and spend 20 minutes training with weights.  If I were to do this workout now, I would burn maybe 400 calories.  The fitter you are and the less you weigh, the harder it is to get your heart rate up to burn big calories.  Simple.   

So a couple of weeks ago I wrote about not being ok.  Life has been pretty hectic as of late and all of a sudden I found myself in one big depressing hole.  I have felt like my whole world has come crashing down around me.  Yep.  I have taken the time to step back and realise that things are not as bad as they seem, things could always be worse.  Anyway, I have spent months up and down, the last month, has been very down.  My training has been pretty average, ok but nothing ground breaking, but I have binged constantly.  I slipped back into old habits of eating what ever I wanted, whenever I wanted and often this was done in private.  I knew exactly what I was doing.  I knew that I was playing games with myself.  But sometimes that hole is just so deep that you have to do what you have to do to survive it emotionally.  I used food to distract and comfort myself until my mind was in a slightly better place.  I could feel myself bloating and getting bigger and I have been tired and lethargic.  Yep, two sure signs of over eating.  My first reality check came when I jumped on the scales and realised that I had gained four kilos! Yes four freaking kilos!  I knew I had gained weight, I could feel it sitting in my gut.  I was not impressed.  So I vowed this had to stop, I deserve better.  I knew how crappy I was feeling and I knew exactly what needed to be done.  I started straight away…operation detox!  By lunchtime that had failed, but I didn’t give up completely.  Ok…so I had a blow out, doesn’t matter, straight back into it Liz, no mucking around.  It took me another week of this, waking up and vowing to eat clean and train mean, then stumbling when faced with emotion.

So 1000 calories.  That was the challenge set by my PT mate Kayla.  We would burn that many calories in an epic stair session.  Well, that was set for Easter Monday.  Easter Sunday I had not eaten one nutritious meal.  Not a single one.  Boy did I pay the price for that on the Monday.  So feeling as crappy as I did, operation detox started again!  We ended up doing postponing the 1000 calories but did a reasonable session.  We then put together an epic workout for the next day when WE WOULD burn those 1000 calories. 

So Tuesday night it was.  After a full day at work and joined by Kathryn, we hit the gym and cranked out the following:

·      15 mins stepper – level 15, resistance 30-40

·      10 mins interval sprints

8 rounds of the following circuit:

·      20 side lunges - holding 2 x 4kg dumb bells

·      10 weighted burpees - 2 x 4kg dumb bells

·      5 jumping chin ups

·      10 push ups

·      20 mountain climbers

·      5 ring dips

·      10 barbell squats 13kgs

·      10 dead lifts – 13kgs

·      1 minute of skipping

2 rounds of the following circuit:

·      15 crunches

·      15 side crunches (left)

·      15 side crunches (right)

·      15 double crunches

·      10 lower body twists (L&R=1 rep)

STRETCH!!!

I started so optimistic and pumped, totally ready to smash out these 1000 calories.  However by the time we reached round two of the crazy circuit, I was stuffed!  My muscles were like jelly and I was ready to give in, I mean I’d already burnt around 400 calories, that was a decent effort…right?!  NO!  My mind clicked into gear and I kept pushing.  JFDI.  JFDI. JFDI. That is what was running through my mind.  Just freaking do it!!! So I pushed and something clicked.  It was suddenly becoming easy, I wasn’t so tired anymore, I was rather elated and determined to finish. My heart rate was climbing…beyond its max at 211bpm…(I’m not actually sure if I reached this or wether my hrm malfunctioned…but that is what it tells me my max was!)  I was getting it up to 170/180bpm regularly anyway!  With a resting heart rate of around 48bpm, 150bpm is normally what I get in an average training session.  Around this point too, Kathryn had to leave the room to throw up!  Brilliant!  But guess what?!  She did not let that stop her! She came back and was straight back into the task at hand!! How amazing is that?!  Very proud!!

So I pushed myself for two hours!  Then by the time we had packed up our equipment and stretched, GUESS WHAT!  I had burned 1100 calories!  100 more than what I had been aiming for!  This session was a major reality check for me.  I had eaten clean ALL DAY!  No little treats and extra snacks and definitely no chocolate binges!  Because of this I was able to train much more effectively.  It made me realise how fast the body responds to a healthy diet.  It made me realise how strong I am and how far I can push myself.  It was a major rock star moment for me in the gym.  I actually, legitimately felt invincible when I had finished!!  It was just the greatest feeling coming out of such a slump.  LIZ IS BACK! 

1100 calories burned!! =D

Needless to say, after that full body workout I suffered a major case of DOMS. That insane muscle stiffness, the tight pain when you bend over or try to lift a box is a sign that my training is working and that my body is changing.  It is a good pain.  I have learned to love this pain.  So, as for the remainder of the week, did I stay on track after my mental breakthrough?  Absolutely!  I have mostly eaten clean (I use the 80/20 rule) and within my calorie goal each day and trained like a crazy person!  Wednesday night I decided to go to my first boxing class run at my local gym, which I actually really enjoyed!! (Trying new things is good ;) Thursday I trained twice.  Yep twice!  Cardio at the gym in the morning and my regular boot camp in the evening.  Friday was legs…ouch! Saturday too was a solid session.  As for today…Sunday, well I am about to hit the gym for a mega burn!

So what can you take from this?  What have I learnt this week?  It is ok to not be ok.  It is ok to be in a slump, but ultimately you must survive it.  Eventually the time will come where you find yourself standing at a crossroad.  You can go backwards into old destructive habits, or go right into the healthy and happy lifestyle you can and will create.  This time I chose to go right.  I chose to be happy and healthy and to live the life I deserve.  This is a choice that I make daily…to be the best version of myself. 

Life is hard.  Being over weight and depressed is hard.  Clean eating and daily training is hard. You must choose one, choose your hard.

Liz Xox

Just incase you wanted to see me jumping around ;) LETS GET RIDICULOUS! =D

New things…like yoga…

We all at some point have tried new things.  We may not want to for what ever reason…”I’m not good enough”, “I’m too busy”, “I’m not into that”, “I won’t be any good at it”…same old mind games, blah, blah, blah.  So my mate talked me into trying yoga with her.  Yes.  Me.  Yoga.  I have spent years avoiding it because I couldn’t “see” myself doing it.  If you have met me, you’ll know all too well how clumsy and uncoordinated I am.  I’m patient with other people, but when it comes to myself, I’m not patient.  Far from it and I generally find it hard to slow down and relax.  I’m working on it.  My idea of a fantastic holiday is not lying around on a sandy beach on a tropical island, having a waiter bring me cocktails for hours.  Rather I tend to pack my days full of adventure and site seeing, walking and moving around as much as possible, I have to see and do as much as I possibly can.

So…yoga.  It happened.  I spent all day working myself up over it, telling people how bad I would be, worrying that I would face plant, break an ankle or concuss myself some how, because knowing me, that would happen.  At 6:30pm I went into the class pretty nervous and very self-conscious.  No shoes?  But I’m at the gym… do I have to take them off?  Ok…done, I am SOOOOO out of my comfort zone.  Next came the comparisons, for the first time in a very long time I was comparing myself to everyone else in the room.  “OMG, I’m HUGE!  Everyone is tiny compared to me…I’m so fat!”  No seriously, nearly everyone in that room was a size 4 or 6!  My head hasn’t really been in the game lately, but I recognised the mind game I was playing and was able to flip it.  Enough comparisons!  Recognising the games we play is half the issue sometimes.  So for recognising what I was saying to myself, I am proud. 

So we started sitting on the floor, in some pose…I couldn’t repeat the name if I tried to be perfectly honest, but I was fiddling with my hands, not really knowing how to ‘relax’ them.  Thankfully it was a very small class and nobody cared what I was doing.  So I sat, and stretched…after some pretty brutal weights sessions earlier in the week, it felt good to stretch. 

So like I said, I’m not good with the slowing down and relaxing thing.  The soft music, mood lighting and acrobatic contortionist positions had me fighting back a few laughs, was I really doing this?!  “Bite your tongue Liz, bite your tongue…oh wait we’re reaching”.  Slowly, eventually, I managed to relax a little, sitting, twisting and stretching, my butt firmly on the ground with no potential to fall.  Great I thought, I can do this. 

Next came the downward dog, ‘YES!  I know this one!!” Oh wait, legs are going in the air, arms started to flail aimlessly and all of a sudden I was extremely tense, on the verge of falling and ridiculously tense all over, IT WAS SO STRESSFUL!  The instructor was good, correcting positions and not drawing focus to any wobbling, well…until I managed to do the splits that is! 

I survived it though.  I tried it and I survived it.  Would I do it again?  Maybe.  Probably.  I don’t know.  I am trying to open myself up to new experiences and try new things, but maybe yoga just isn’t my type of exercise?  At least I can say I have tried it.  It is good to try new things.  We human beings thrive on routine.  How often do you go out to dinner, to the same restaurant, and order the same dish?  Yep, I admit, I don’t even need to look at the menu when I walk into my favourite restaurants.  Oh Argo’s?  “I’ll have the special salad and sweet potato fries thanks”.  Sushi train?  “Smoked salmon and avocado please!”  However routine supports discipline.  Day in day out, I train.  I don’t always want to, but I do, because it is just a part of my daily routine, without it my day is disturbed which can potentially send me down a self-destructive route.  We humans don’t like to put ourselves into situations where we feel unsafe.  We don’t like to look foolish, feel embarrassed or to fail, especially in front of others.   So after all of that, the pros to trying new things far out weight the cons. 

Trying new things often requires courage.  The more often you are brave and courageous, the better you feel about yourself, the more often you believe you can do anything.  Trying something new opens up the possibility of you enjoying something new.  Countless people have changed their lives, because they tried something new and they loved it.  Trying new things keeps you from becoming bored.  Yes, yes…we all love our routine, but you have to keep life interesting!  Finally, trying new things forces you to grow.  You will never change if you do what you have always done.  Growth and change requires the willingness to take a new action.  Constant self-challenge keeps you humble and open to new ideas.  You will never know everything, I will never know everything, I don’t think that any one person can ever know everything.  Therefore there will always be something new to learn.  So try it.  Open yourself up to new experiences, embrace them and immerse yourself in them.  Then, and only then will you know whether or not certain experiences are right for you.

Liz Xox

It's ok to not be ok.

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball that simply catches you off guard, I’m talking a true crisis here.  Something you have no control over.  How do you cope?  Some people become emotional wrecks and simply cry.  Some people believe they have to be the strong one and bottle up every emotion, and then others suppress their feelings by eating.  Most of my life I have fallen into the latter category.  Whenever I was upset, hurt or angry, I would eat.  If I was happy I would eat, if I was just ‘ok’, I would eat and soon enough you have yourself a habit which is extremely tough to break. 

My weight loss journey has been emotionally tough. Every emotion I ate away, I have had to feel.  It is like peeling back an onion.  The more weight you shed, the more emotional you become.  I have had to deal with emotions I suppressed for years; I had to get to the bottom of why I ate when I did.  In a way it has been liberating, simply letting go and starting new.  Letting the old Liz go in order to find the new Liz. 

This brings me back to the crisis.  I am dealing in the best way that I can, some days I stumble, other days I am ok.  Some days all I need is to smash a training session or just simply run…with no agenda of burning X amount of calories, get my heart rate right up and I know, I can feel that I am alive.  Knowing that my blood is pumping makes me realise all is still ok, it is not the end of my world.  Other days all I want to do is curl up in a ball with a tub of ice cream and cry.

This past week has been pretty harrowing, topped off with the premature death of a friend and colleague.  I have never felt emotion like I have this week, fine one minute, a complete wreck the next.  I slipped back into old habits, allowing myself to eat what ever I liked because “I don’t care anymore!” And “I deserve it!” I skipped 4 out of 7 training sessions this week…not a good tally, and spent an awful lot of time in bed, in a way allowing myself to be depressed.  But yesterday I dragged my sorry ass out to train and as my head cleared I realised exactly why I train.  It’s not for all the goals I set along the way, yes they’re important, but they’re not the essence of my training.  Essentially I train for me…because I always feel better after a workout.

The biggest lesson I have learned from all of this, is that it is ok, to not be ok.  Sometimes you do simply need to collapse in a heap, curl up in bed and eat a bag of chips.  The important thing is to pick yourself back up and remember why life is great.  It is ok to not be ok, but in the end you are responsible for your own actions.  I am responsible for my own actions and realised that three days of bed and food was not helping me one little bit.  Getting smashed last weekend didn’t help me to deal with this emotion, rather numbed it for a few hours and left me feeling sick the entire day after.  I realised that I was slipping back into my old habits and decided that needed to change.  It is tough, but as soon as I started to train, I immediately felt so much better.

I’ve been on this journey for over a year now and have had plenty of ups and downs.  This is just a very big down!  I am still learning that I don’t have to be strong all the time.  I realised this week that good family and friends will always come to your aid.  They will comfort and support you until you are back on your feet.  But the most important lesson I have learned this week?  It is ok to put yourself first, to put your hand up and say, actually ‘I’m not ok’. 

Liz Xox

Dear Man,

For those of you who do not know me, on the side of my studies, I work in retail, in the menswear department.  The other day I had quite a large man looking for pants in a size larger than we stock.  He was polite enough…an average customer.  My heart in my mouth, my heart hurting for him already, I told him as sensitively as I could “unfortunately the 7XL is the largest size we stock, but you can always give it a try”.  All of a sudden he turned and snapped at me, his face frowning, “What would you know about being big?  You’re a tiny thing standing there, telling me what to do”.  He then stormed off. 

Needless to say I was shocked and hurt.  He would have been extremely embarrassed and I was simply confused and upset.  First of all, I have NEVER been referred to as ‘tiny’ in my entire life!  That alone is something I need to get my own head around.  Secondly, I probably understand how he was feeling a lot better than he thought, and more than most other people would too.

I found myself feeling sorry for the guy, if he had stuck around, I probably would have told him that yes; I know exactly how it feels to not fit into the largest size in the store, to walk out in tears hating yourself.  I would have told him that I know all too well how not being able to simply go clothes shopping totally crushes any tiny amount of self-esteem you managed to conjure up that day, how you try to internalise the emotions so that no one else can see how unhappy you really are.  I understand that you put on a brave face for your family and friends so that they don’t worry.  You simply ‘don’t like’ most styles of clothing because you know you would never be able to wear it, but secretly, you LOVE the clothes…if only, maybe one day…yeah, one day I’ll lose the weight.  You’re doubtful that the largest size in the store will fit you, but you try it on anyway, it doesn’t do up…no way will it do up, like never in a million years, I mean there is a good three or four inches to make it close!  But you tell people it’s “not quite right” to avoid telling them it’s WAAAAAAAAY too small, it’s a wonder you didn’t rip it trying to pull it over your head! 

I understand this mans frustration and hurt.  Being overweight, fat, obese, morbidly obese, heavy or large is not something anyone can understand.  It is only if you have been there yourself that you can TRULY understand how it feels.  I do not blame this man for blurting out what he did, nor do I blame anyone else who doesn’t ‘GET’ what it feels like to be ‘fat’.  How could they/you know?  I am HAPPY that you don’t know what it is like; I wouldn’t wish it on my greatest enemy.  It is a pain beyond the physical, it lies deep within you slowly crushing you and eating away at your soul.  You feel fake, but pretend you’re not.  It’s tough.  What more can I say?  What do I want to say… what would I say to this man if I saw him again, if this ever happened to me again?  “I’ve been there, I truly do understand”. 

Liz Xox