Unemployment is good for working out

I love games. I pretty frequently lose them (unless I'm on team "Winning!" for Taboo . . . hee hee!), but I enjoy how games mentally challenge me.

I also love, love, love my brother even though we are often competitive with each other. Who's mom's favorite? Which one of us is smarter, funnier, or most beloved? We are mostly kidding about these things (but not entirely). So, when he and I came up with a makeshift and ridiculously funny game, we both went all in.

I'm not sure how this came about, but when he got his iPhone he and I were showing each other tricks, tips, and apps. I showed him how to set up folders and move apps on the screens, he showed me how to set up my navigator. I told him to get Words with Friends, and he told me to get Dictionary.com. "Why?!" I said. He said, "Well, this might sound stupid, but I like getting the word of the day. Then, even though I'm a jock and a bartender, I try to use it in a sentence three times. I don't care if people think it's weird. I do what I want."

I was pretty impressed with that so I downloaded it immediately. And somehow over the next week, what evolved was a game of our own making. We started texting each other with sentences using the word of the day. And somehow this turned into, a sentence using the word of the day making fun of something or someone in our family. This, in turn, evolved into whichever one of us got the best sentence FIRST using the word of the day gets the "point." Now, we don't (to my knowledge) ever count points across weeks or months. But whoever gets the point gets the pride of that . . . until the next day :)

The effect of this is that I get to text my brother nearly every day. a couple of weeks ago the word was "excogitate." I managed to use it in a sentence referencing another running inside joke we have going right now. So, we were both laughing at my text. Then he asked how I was. And we started talking about working out - a common theme in our conversations. He said, "Unemployment is good for working out."

He should know. He played this game for nearly two years. And I saw how hard unemployment was on him. It was a similar situation in that his job was eliminated through no fault of his. He combated the difficult emotions of joblessness through humor. He would quote the movie "Knocked up" and say, "Yeaaaahhhh. I'm uh . . . no work today!" He laughed at the lifestyle of wearing sweats every day. But I know he was also anxious, antsy, and upset about the situation. So, he made jokes. He became sarcastic, and he poured even more of himself into working out. And that's saying a lot since he had been running, lifting, and practicing Jiu-Jitsu before he was let go. He had not one, but two low-cost gym memberships during that time. And he used them both.

So, when he said, "Unemployment is good for working out." I thought about it for a minute and then knew, that of all people, he would best understand when I said," And vice versa. It helps me not get crazy or depressed."

It will not be a shocker to any of you that while I don't exactly look forward to my dates with the treadmill, I have come to appreciate my time being active. Where it used to be a chore and necessity, I now really, really need that time. It is time out of the house. It is time away from screen. It is time away from my fears that I will end up living under someone else's roof.

So, it turns out, that I am not a sloth, regardless of what my physique might suggest.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to another friend who was checking on me and I said to him, about not responding right away, "Sorry, you caught me at the end of my run." He asked if it was a good one. As it happened it wasn't, but what I said was, "There are no good runs. Only running assignments I accomplish and those I don't." This is still true almost every day. I don't enjoy how my body feels when I'm running. Pardon me while I sound like an old lady - my feet hurt, my back hurts, my knee hurts, and it takes a lot more focus than someone like me with some ADD tendency often has to get my breathing in rhythm. I often have to close my eyes and try to go inward to somewhere that has nothing to do with the people on the treadmills next to me, the TV screen above me, the (not really so awful) pain, and the voice inside my head saying, "Stop!"

But the other thing that is true is that I'm grateful for it. Where I used to be assigned 90 - 120 minutes of cardio a week and 3 hours of high interval resistance, I'm now still doing the resistance but adding to the cardio . . . on purpose. Yesterday I swam two miles and ran two miles. The day before I lifted and then swam two miles. On a treadmill I'm not second guessing a cover letter. On a treadmill I'm not wondering about an interview. On a treadmill I'm far too busy to add and re-add a budget. I can fight for something tangible on a treadmill.

I wish I had understood this before I lost my job. The truth is, this is, in very real ways, the cure for many of my very real health issues. Working out can only positively impact PCOSor anyone working against insulin by stabilizing their health through regular exercise, and particularly a good blend of cardio and resistance, interval and/or anaerobic training.  Asthmatics who exercise stand to reduce stress (which can trigger respiratory issues), increase lung function, and sleep better. Whatever issues with focus I have are measurably improved by burning some energy off, and even my migraine issues are improved by exercising. While running may not be the very best thing to do for my knees (swimming IS but is not the very best thing I could do for my hair. Yes, that's right, I am a real girl somewhere underneath all of my facade and I have this one vanity) I figure this: my knees are wrecked enough that they're not going to last the rest of my lifetime. But they're working now so I should take advantage of it (because I can still remember palpably how frustrated I was when confined to an arm bike for weeks and weeks while my knees couldn't bear weight).

"But Christie, you were getting 5 hours of exercise a week before." Yes. Yes I was. But it wasn't enough. I've written about this before. Everyone else in the world gets weight control results from 3-5 hours of exercise a week. I don't. That's just the way it goes. So, if my weight goals weren't responsive to 5 hours a week, it stands to reason that my other health goals weren't being completely serviced by 5 hours a week. Also, let's be honest - 5 hours a week was the goal but between being on the road or on a plane or in a hotel it was often closer to 3 or 4 hours a week. And as I said recently to my trainer, "The thing is, before, if my exercise was on, my food wasn't. Or vice-versa. It was never both being right at the same time." I take responsibility for that. I also think, in analyzing it, I wasn't ever going to be able to fully take on changing that if half my life was spent in transit, without any schedule that resembles normal human life, and unable on many occasions to plan or cook my meals.

So, I'm aimed at 5-6 hours of cardio each week now, in addition to my other "assignments." as much as possible, I try to keep it low impact cardio, and I'm really not thinking of it being "extra" cardio right now. To me it seems more like having missed school and needing to make up for it. As a child, I  was hospitalized for asthma related complications and illnesses at least 2 times a year. My shortest hospitalization was 4 days. My longest was 4 weeks. There was always some homework I could do once I had gotten a little better and wasn't fighting for my life (literal, not exaggeration. I know how to handle it, but fighting for a breath and having your oxygen levels drop despite medication is scary) but I also often had a busy schedule of blood tests, chest X-rays, respiratory therapy, and treatments. So, then, I'd go back to school and have a lot of homework to make up. I feel like that now - I'm making up homework from when I was sick. The difference is I wasn't consumed with chest x-rays or IVs, but with work before now. I did miss hours, and hours of agreed upon "homework" though.

So, when someone said to my 2 miles of running and 2 miles of swimming last night, "Gawwwd. that sounds awful," I was able to say, "I know. But it helps me not freak out right now so it's a good thing. It's hard to get too crazy when I'm this tired."

As I peer through the window of hopeful employment this month I find myself often thinking about the logistics of different positions and quickly on the heels of that thinking, "would I still be able to count on myself to get my workouts in?" I may not, when I go back to work, keep my gym time as high as 9-10 hours a week, but I'd like for it to be higher than the minimum required 5 hours. I sleep better, I like myself better, and the treadmill and I, if no yet friends, are now showing grudging respect for one another. That would have to be considered important even if I was spending 40 hours a week working instead of 30 hours a week job hunting and interviewing.

Epiphany in 4th grade

I had a flashback the other day. I was remembering 4th grade. My teacher in 4th grade was Mrs. Travena. She was lovely, and in charge of the school newspaper so she was very into making reading and writing cool. What heaven for me. If only I hadn't been 10 years old, I could have appreciated it more. Because, you see, at 10 years old, I had already endured being at an "awkward" age for a year, and I was damn tired of it, and pretty cranky about it too (if only I had known it would last for another 9 years. Siiigh). I'd had my share of boys making fun of my bra by snapping it, my teeth were too big for my face, and let's face it, with my hours of reading and insufferable-know-it-all-ness I was not going to be one of the cool girls. I know this now, but at the time, it was hard that the girls I had grown up with were suddenly a seemingly different species than me.

I felt myself floundering a little, socially, and so I started trying out different friend groups. It turns out that finding my "group" in a school of less than 200 kids probably wasn't going to give me the sample size I needed (I never really did find my "group" until college, and then again in grad school, and then again, here. All three of those groups were well worth waiting for). I never really did find a group that I fit well with. For a lot of that year, I latched onto just one friend: Kelly. Kelly was cute, spunky, and had a life completely different from mine. She was funny, and had interesting stories, and her mom was soooooooo cool. I remember I was in the hallway, collating the school newspaper (by hand) the day that parents were coming in for conferences. Kelly's mom came in, said hi to me, and then went and found Kelly afterwords. She talked with Kelly for a minute, give her a big hug and high-five, and then left our the back door. Kelly saw me and came bounding down the hall, jumping up and down saying, "Oh my gosh! Guess what?! I got all C's! Alllll Ceeeeee's!"

I had a momentary pause and then jumped up and down with her and said, "Yeah!"

Internally, it took me until after she walked away to process this. As I continued to walk slowly around the table, collating by hand, I realized, for Kelly, C's were worth celebrating. That for her, this was good news. At my house, and in my family, my parents said, "As long as you do your best, we're proud," but nobody had ever had to test that beyond a B+.

I'm not knocking my former-friend Kelly. As I came to realize, she worked really hard for those C's. 4th grade wasn't easy for her, and her life at home seemed really cool to me (all that TV and independence!) but also meant she didn't have the support to do cool homework projects like I did. She probably worked a lot harder for her C's than I did for the steady stream of A-'s I got that year. You know, I knocked out some reports and science projects and diaramas, but 4th grade was really pretty easy for me. I didn't have to dig down deep for much - it's not that I didn't care, because I did, but looking back, I wasn't ever really mentally taxed at school until High School.

The epiphany fr me was realizing that I not everyone aims for the same thing, and that my standards are reeeeee-heeeaaally high. This isn't really surprising. Since I grew up as the only girl sibling in my family, and the oldest (all of that to shift and re-settle once I met my sister) I definitely have the standard - take-charge, high-achiever, structured personality of the first-born. I also had parents with high standards, and some means to support them. In my family, winning is important, competition was real, and good grades were expected. Also, despite all of us having a certain degree of special needs, we also had a lot of raw goods to bring to the task wen it came to success at school. It was fair for my parents to expect A's and B's.

It was eye-opening for me to realize that not everyone has the same expectations. This issue has returned to me again and again in my life. I've been told I have very high standards. I've been told I'm my own worst critic. I've been told I have to be kinder to myself. I've been told I'm pushy. I've been told I'm unforgiving. I've been given this message in as many disappointing and hurtful ways as nice ones in my life.

I think about this a lot when setting goals for myself, for my exercise, for my weight loss, for my to-do list at work, for whatever. I think about it when I don't hit the mark I was aiming for. Because everything I've been told about myself, whether or not it was said nicely, is true. I don't just get disappointed, I punish myself. If I eat a piece of pizza I'm a bad person, if I don't get things done on my to-do list I'm an absolute failure. If the scale goes up, I should just resign myself to being depressed for the day. If I don't get what my trainer is showing me on the first try I'm royally pissed at myself for hours. (I hate to admit it, but there was one day where I was supposed to clean-press and we had raised the weight, and I was just not getting it. I had to be more precise with my movements, and fearless, and I was not succeeding at either. By the fourth set of failures, I totally fell apart, throwing a mini-tantrum because I was so mad at myself I couldn't put it into words past "aaaauuuuuugggguuurrrrrrhhhh!")  

I put on a good front when I say to people (generally people who approach me with jobs that don't work for me), "I don't have to be good at everything. There are things I know I am truly exceptional at. I make amazing soup, and can do full splits!" But, the truth is, not being awesome at things is generally not ok with me. I can live with not being fab at the following: Scrabble, poker, rock climbing, drinking Bourbon, making pie crusts, and parallel parking. But everything else, come on, I need to rock at it. Dental exams are to be aced, shopping trips should not only be efficient, but hit the budget mark within a penny, and it's important to me to get good reviews at work. My brother and I have a running joke with my mom that we're her "favorite." It comes up over and over. She'll tell me thank you for something and I'll say, "Mm-hmm, that's because I'm your favorite."

I made a lot of fun of Charlie Sheen, and "winning!" continues to be my ring-tone, but come on, winning is cool. As much as I love winning, I hate losing. Unless winning is losing. And right now, all I'm doing is losing at being a loser.

That's right readers. I lost nothing this week.

Pardon me for a moment, . . . "aaaauuuuuugggguuurrrrrrhhhh!"


In the crazy two weeks that I've had at work, I've managed to fight to find the time and wherewithal to weigh and measure eehhh-hhhheeeeee-verriiii-thing, to bring healthy lunches and dinners with me, and on two occasions breakfast too, to tote around my gym bag and fit my cardio and lifting workouts in SOMEHOW . . . for THIS?! Seriously?!! I hit all of my goals for serving sizes and all of the right number of servings for each thing. I even skipped several carb servings, subbing in extra servings of RAW VEGETABLES. I had several days where I skipped my discretionary calories altogether, and I left alcohol out of the equation altogether.

I stood on that scale and looked at her and said, "I'm sorry, but I cannot put this much time into measuring everything I put into my mouth, and fighting to get my workouts in and still have things be this slow. Everyone else I know can go to the gym a couple times a week and stop eating chips and lose more weight in a week than I do in a month. I'm probably going to eat pizza today. For reals." and then I cried, but just a little

I want to win at this. I have to win at this, even if winning means having lower goals than EVERYONE else. And it's heartbreaking that I'm digging my heels in this hard to deal with my food issues, to be accountable, to peel back as many layers and be truly honest here, to fight myself kicking and screaming into the gym, to give the popcorn the finger when it's what i really want, and to generally know that my endocrine system is a little like that old adage that no matter how far you lower the bar, there are some who will insist on slithering beneath it. No matter how reasonable I think my goals are, or how much harder I am working than everyone else I know, my endocrine system can still frak it all up. And the truth is, my standards ARE high. I expect a lot of myself, and this makes me very much want to pull the covers up over my head. And eat pizza.

I came home, and stood at my counter, and fought off the urge to order pizza. I did not cry. I thought about Kelly, and her C report card and wondered if I could be happier finding my way into that mind-set. What if I was ok with winning less? What if getting a C was ok for me in this case? The problem is, Kelly worked really hard for those C's, and (here's the key) was happy with those grades. I'm working really hard, really, really crazy hard, and trying to talk my way into accepting that C's are the right thing to expect, and getting D's. Deeeeeeeeeeees.

So, I didn't order pizza, and I didn't cry (until shedding a few more tears now) but I did eat two slices of pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and I did skip my run today. then, I felt like a failure and decided to eat vegetables for the rest of the day. I can't phone it in every day, I know, but just for today, I needed to want less and to not try.

Run your own race

I heard this phrase  in a workshop this week. The workshop was rife with platitudes, but also opportunities to get different perspective or consider new strategies, so to this particular phrase, I worked really hard not to roll my eyes.

I found myself today, with real reason to think of it. After being on the road non stop for work, then away and in this workshop for two long days, and then vacationing with friends, we decided today was the day to head out for a run. I told them about some of the outdoor running I had done, and nearby parks, but we also noticed that there was a very handy grid of roads around my condo that make a near perfect 2.5 mile square starting and ending at my door.

It's not like I hadn't thought of road running before. After all, this is Boulder. I see more people on bikes and running in my neighborhood than I see prairie dogs, and given the prairie dog preserve I live across from, there are a lot of prairie dogs!  But, I've been intimidated to road-run before. It seemed much easier to hide my inadequacies in a nice private part of a park, or even better, on the lone treadmill in the much neglected work-out room in my development. Also, in the past distances were an issue for me, But now I am regularly completing 2-3 mile running "assignments." One excuse down.

The other thing is, I don't run continuously. My trainer and I are on a strict program of me running intervals. We work hard to make my running intervals longer and my rest intervals shorter, but I don't bust out 2 miles non-stop. I definitely feel like this excludes me from the club of real "runners" that I am surrounded by in this part of the country.

Finally, I'm not all that fast or super-fit looking, so running where people can see me does make me a little insecure. what this has resulted in is me often running in a very isolated and boring way, aka the treadmill. I don't get wind on my face, good scenery, or the feeling of forward motion, but I do get to carefully calculate my times, and run in a way where few people see or scrutinize what I'm doing.

Today, my friends and I had decided, was a day for being more healthy, so we headed out with lots of "I've been researching non-stop for a month, so I won't keep up," and "I only do 10 minute miles at my best and with the altitude . . ." type comments as disclaimers about nobody needing to keep up with or hold back for any one else. Still, I knew that I would be arriving back at my own house, after my very own sea-level guests. No matter how long it had been since they ran, or the adjustment to the altitude, I knew. Because, fundamentally, although I am someone who runs, I am not a runner. And there is a difference.

It was hard when within 5 minutes both of them were more than a quarter mile ahead of me, but I had to tell myself, "This is your first road run in, ummmmm, ever."

Then they were both a half mile ahead. It's hard to not be "in the pack" but I can only do what I can do. I reminded myself that I have short legs and what I can churn out is just different. Forget the knees, my bad feet, the asthma. Even if all of that was magically erased, as someone who stands "5'2 on a good day!" having my pace match that of someone a foot taller is unlikely.

Finally, after about 10 minutes, I just settled into my running assignment, which is actually a discovery assignment. (I love these because I get to be  scientist studying myself and seeing what happens) No intervals set for me, just a run this amount, break it up how you need to, and see how long you can run for, how many intervals, and how long it takes you assignment. I had to run my own race, and make the run about me getting done what I needed to get done.

What came of that is that in the same amount of time i took to run 2 miles last week (at 10 at night) I ran 2.5 miles today. Outside. On the road. and I ran my longest distance without stopping yet! My competitive nature made me feel a little . . . disappointed when I returned home to find my two best friends already lounging and recovering, but if I can be competitive with myself, well that gets the job done much better. 2.5 miles! 28 minutes!

I also realized a few things on this run:

• running outside during nice weather is infinitely more enjoyable than running on a treadmill. I never thought about quitting, was not aware of muttering to myself like a crazy person, nor did I have to use the zombie-trick to stay motivated
• Running into the wind is hard
• Timing my breathing is harder on the road
• My feet, hands, and shoulders like running outside more
• My back likes treadmill running better
• Not having a clock keeping track actually made me push myself harder
  

So, while it may get me better results to run on a treadmill right now, it may also be keeping me from having better experiences running. Hmmmm. I probably need to plan some more outdoor runs before the weather turns bad. Which, in Colorado probably means I have about 6 day. Ha! See you out on the road!