Monthly Archives: July 2011
Getting Healthy is complicated… …and it takes sleep, if you can get it.
Continuing with the theme that “loosing weight is complicated because life is complicated” let’s look at another of those wildly interconnected facets of life that affects everything, including efforts to get fit and healthy: SLEEP
Sleep… OMG! I would *love* to get a good night’s sleep. It has been years since I slept well on a regular basis; I routinely wake up tired, exhausted, and feeling as if someone has worked me over with a 2×4. I can not seem to get a good night’s sleep.
Yet, everything I read, drives home the importance of getting consistent, restful sleep, especially when you’re trying to improve your health and fitness. Yeh, right. No pun intended, but dream on! Fair warning, this post is about to take you through the backroads of my brain and my life so you’d better brace yourself… …it is likely to be a long, strange and bumpy ride.
After reading a lot about getting a good night’s sleep, being me. I made a list and got to work figuring out what I could do:
- First thing I learned is that being overweight is a contributing cause of poor sleep!
So, let me get this straight… To sleep well I need to loose weight. To loose weight I need to sleep well. Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!!!! Can we say “downward spiral”? Can we say “Catch-22?” Hmmm??? Makes ya want to snuggle up to a big bowl of oreo cookes, a gallon of milk and say “to hell with it all”. Ok, ok, moving on….
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2011-07-28, Week 2, Weekly Stats
At my Jenny Craig weigh-in yesterday, I lost 2.2 lbs from the week before. However, my weight at home was pretty much flat. A tiny increase in weight and body fat. That is strange. Usually the loss ration is about the same with my weight at home being a steady 3-4 lbs less than at Jenny Craig, because at Jenny, I wear clothes and at home I don’t when I weigh-in.
This coming week will tell the tale. I go full force onto the Jenny Craig menu, following it exactly, weighing and measuring everything.
Here are this weeks’ charts:
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2011-07-28, Week 2, Weekly Progress Photos
Progress Photos 2011-07-28, Week 2
Week 2 — basically the numbers stayed flat. 😦
Link to my Flickr Set: 52 Weeks-52 Photos: A Photo Log of My Fitness Journey
See ya on the dance floor!
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Getting Healthy is complicated and it takes time… …lots of time!
Ever wish that you could just have three months off from your life to get your life organized?
Yep, I thought that might resonate. 🙂 Loosing weight is complicated because life is complicated. Life throws curve balls. And when you are trying to do something as fundamental as “get healthy” it means that every part of your life is either affected by the effort or affects the effort. In other words your whole life changes, not just a tiny bit of it.
Using myself as a case study of one in time management…
Stay with me here, you’re about to follow a chain of thought and interconnections and since this basically is inviting you inside “Tony’s Head” the experience could be frightening. 😉
Step one..the starting point. THE GOAL <drumroll please> is to be fit and healthy. For me, that means loosing weight, becoming more flexible, increasing my cardiovascular capacity, increasing muscle mass.
However, this immediately connects with and to some degree conflicts with other top level goals. I dance. I love to dance. I enjoy competing in dance. To dance requires that I have some disposable income for lessons, practice fees, travel expenses to attend competitions, more cash to pay for my pro’s travel expenses to attend the competitions to dance with me, costumes, and dance shoes.
Which means I need a job. Or a sugar daddy. (The sugar daddy position currently is vacant…applications now being accepted. I think I could easily get used to being a kept man.
Ok, so I need a job not only to pay for my dance habit but to pay other things like food, Read the rest of this entry
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My first week back on Jenny Craig
This past week was a mix of goals met and goals missed.
On the “positive” side:
I did not eat out at any fast food place or restaurant all week. Yay! Woo Hoo. Go Team Tony!
I weighed myself morning and night so now I have full week of good data rather than estimates. Uh-huh! Uh-huh! Who da man?
I increased the amount of exercise that I’ve been doing, adding extra practices with my dance partner. Yay! Yippee! Yee Haw!
I followed the Jenny Craig menu for lunches and for breakfast. Yay Me. Woo Hoo! Happy Dancing!
I ate the foods I bought at Whole Foods. I try to buy organic, locally grown, foods. Bravo! Yay Me!
I took my bicycle to Bicycles Inc and had it serviced so it is now ready to ride. Tires aired up! Chain lubed. Brakes checked. Woo Hoo!
On the “not so positive” side:
I did not actually weigh and measure all the foods that I ate. I tried, and think I succeeded, in keeping the portions about right but I didn’t actually do the measurements. Goal for this week: actually do the measuring.
I did not ride my bike on the weekend as I had planned. Which is a shame. The Katy Trail runs right by my house. Goal for this week: ride my bike at least one time.
I did not eat the dinners that were on the Jenny Craig menu. This was by design though. I had food in the pantry and freezer that I did not want to go to waste, so I watched the portions and tried to make the calories come out right. Nonetheless, I didn’t follow the JC menu. Goal for this week: stick strictly to the Jenny Menu.
I did not do my “Program before the Program #1”. There is this really good book called “Getting in Shape” by Bob Anderson, Bill Pearl, Ed Burke, and Jean Anderson (ISBN: 0936070161). They have a new edition of the book called “Getting Back Into Shape” which includes an additional chapter on running. Visit their website for more info. The book has 32 programs designed to get you back into shape or into shape as the case may be. The programs start off very easy; the idea is that folks who are out of shape should start off easy because well, they are out of shape. Research as shown that often people try to do too much too quickly, get discouraged and quit. Hence the “Program before the Program 1, 2 and 3″ which feature light easy stretching, light easy lifting and movement”. Well, I didn’t do the stretching and lifting parts. the movement part, I do during my dance lessons and practice. So… Goal for this week: do the lifting and stretching parts.
So my goals for this week are:
- Keep doing the good stuff! Yay me!
- Stretch & Lift (Program before the Program #1)
- Ride my bike at least 1 time.
- Stick strictly to the Jenny Craig menu, weighing and measuring everything. (except for my Birthday dinner which actually took place yesterday — a friend took me out for my birthday.)
See ya on the dance floor!
5-6-7-8 Dancing My Way to a Healthy Me! 