Doing Better – Not perfect but better

The photo to the right is one that I took on a trip to Seattle Washington, where I attended the Emerald City Hoedown, which was this year’s IAGLCWDC Annual Convention and where I taught a workshop at the event.

We stayed an extra day so we could go on a bus tour of Mount Rainer National Park which I really enjoyed.   On the tour, we stopped at several points, got out of the bus and was able to enjoy a bit of the scenery.  One of those stops took the tour group down into a ravine created by a glacial melt river full of rounded rocks washed down the mountainside by the water.

The park service had used some of these rocks to create “stairs” on the path down into the ravine for visitors to the park to use to get closer to the water and to a log “bridge” which allowed you to cross the river.  I was toward the back of the group and was doing pretty good, until I saw the steps in the photo.

That’s where I bailed and said “There’s no way!”

Two years ago, I would have happily gone on down with the rest of the group but when I saw these rocks, my self-preservation instincts kicked into high gear and did some fast calculations involving the lack of a hand rail, the roundness of the rocks, the wetness of the rocks, my physical condition, and memories of a fall on stairs during a vacation last year and the result was visions of my dance career flashing before my eyes.

I went back up and watched from the ledge.

It was just one more realization of just how out of shape I am.  And how badly I need to get back into shape.  And just how much my physical condition (or lack of it) is affecting just about everything in my life.

Today is Wed, Day 3 on the path to a new healthier me…

Things I did good yesterday:

“good” = “better, not perfect”

• No diet coke (I drank Green Tea instead)  — I did get some headaches late in the day as the dwindling supply of caffeine worked its way out of my system.  Got one coming on right now too.  *sigh*
  ..
• Three meals with snacks in between:
  Breakfast — two eggs, orange juice, toast, coffee, banana.
  Lunch — ham & cheese sandwich, potato salad, glass of V8 juice
  Dinner — veggies, lean cuisine chicken entree for the meat part, tea
  Snacks were nibbles of carrots, grapes and bananas and almonds when my tummy grumbled at me.
  ..
• I weighed in both AM & PM  — My weight yesterday was 301.75 lbs which is down from my highest about two weeks ago of 306.5 lbs.
  ..
• I went to bed at my “target” bedtime of midnight.  Unfortunately I woke up around 3ish and couldn’t get back to sleep for about an hour.  Ugh.
  ..
• Finally, I did a “little bit of everything”  —  What I mean is that I’ve long realized that to meet my goal of being “self employed and healthy and fit” I have to change a lot of things about the way I live, not just “exercise” and “eat right”.  So yesterday I did some house cleaning, some work online on my writing, and on Zazzle (my online print on demand store), did some networking to increase my visibility on the “line dance world” front.  Did a little bit of “relaxing” by watching two episodes of Warehouse 13 and reading for about half an hour before bed.  All of which are bits which if done every day will help me meet my goals.

And…  I slept.  Quite a bit.

I don’t know if I should include this in the “good” or the “bad” category.  *sigh*  I guess it should be in a category by itself called “necessary”  On Monday, I overdid the physical exertion.  I had planned on Tuesday to go to the studio to work on the new Smooth dance (which did not happen) because I slept.  A lot.  My body just demanded that I rest and recover from the effort of Monday.

This is good because I know that cycles of exertion and recovery are the way the body improves over time.

This is bad because the “RECOVERY” time at this point takes just about as long as the “EXERTION.”  I slept about 5 hours yesterday during the day.  My legs ached and twinged during most of the day up until around 6 ish.  When finally they started to feel “normal” again.   So, my planned activities on the “dance” front just didn’t happen.

Today I have practice from 3-5 with my dance partner.  Practice as a friend’s “dance dummy” from 6-7 to help her run her routines, and a West Coast class taught by Beata Howe from 7-8, line dance practice from 8-9 (which should have been yesterday).  Add in almost an hour commute each way before and after (I drive a standard so that counts as exertion).   The upshot here is that this all counts as WORK at my current fitness level.  And when I get home tonight, I fully expect to be as wiped out as I was on Monday night.  *sigh*

Which sucks because on Thursday I have planned lifting and stretching as part of the “Program Before the Program #1 from Getting Back in Shape: 32 Workout Programs for Lifelong Fitness.

The reason it sucks so much is that in spite of the fact that the “lifting” and “stretching” is seemingly just a tiny bit of work, in actuality because I’ll be so damned tired from today that doing that seemingly insignificant amount of “extra” “new” “routine” is a FRIGGIN’ HUGE DEAL!

*sigh*

So, dear friends, I need you now to applaud and urge me on.

I *have* to push through this initial “everything is a huge effort” stage until my body realizes that I’m serious about this and it had better start getting into shape because I’m not going to stop demanding that it do the stuff I want to do!

See ya on the dance floor!

Related articles

• Day Two… Small Steps and Overdoing it on Day 1… (txcowboydancer.com)
• Starting Over… (txcowboydancer.com)