Well, alright then!

I'm trying, I tells ya! Without going totally girlie & tmi on you, I'm having a very rough week. It involves debilitating cramps, faintness and cravings for red meat (iron) and chocolate (chocolate). Yet, I had in my last post promised to be good, good, good. Or at least strive for goodness. So I have been dragging myself to the gym for treadmill sessions. The me vs. me would have been hilarious if I were watching someone else battle her inner sloth. I basically bribed and negotiated my way through two 4-mile sessions. Passerby with mind-reading abilities might have caught these gems from my internal struggle:

• "You can run the whole thing at your slowest pace if you need to"
• "I'll try, but I'm already tired"
• "...although this is the shorter run this week, so you should try to go a bit faster maybe?"
• "3 minutes I've been on this thing???! I think it's broken"
• "You can drink water at a mile"
• "I might just do 2 miles"

And so on.  Eventually I got the sh!t over and done with and of course felt fantastic (and famished) afterwards. In a rush, I had the best little treat on the run from Starbucks. I love their yogurt parfaits once in a while. There's one with peaches and one with berries. All the nutrition info is on there and it's already in my online tracking database, so all signs point to Easy. (I actually prefer to make my own version of this at home and plan to make a batch of my homemade granola tomorrow, but the Starbucks option is nice to have when needed.) As I entered the cafe, I saw there was one yogurt left! It ended up being a dark cherry, which I wasn't sure about, but desperate times... It was delicious. Tasted like a cherry cobbler. And quite filling.

I'm a bit worried about this month's weigh-in next week. It's been a weird rocky month. Although I'm quite pumped about my running progress, my food (and drink) intake has been at times what can only be called a free-for-all. I'm trying to get that under control and make room for more planned indulgences. So far I've been sticking to my promise to myself to track all food (even the chocolate Entenman's donut, 300 calories for one, thank you very little!), do all slated runs (even with the cramp attack and the Fitness magazine article warning me about the risk of premenopausal women suffering exercise-induced strokes - how is that helping my FitQuest?!), and get in a yoga session (that hasn't happened yet, but I'm still committed to fitting it in on or before Sunday at sundown!)

Is it me? Is it Winter? I need a mojo overhaul. But I'm fighting on, so help me, I am... 

Tipping the Scales

Are fitness magazines our tormentors or saviors? Maybe none of the above, but as I was catching up on mine this morning, it occurred to me that they can be hazardous to one's self-esteem. 

I must confess I'm a transformation junkie. I go straight for the "Success Stories" complete with Before & After shots. Man, they make it look easy. "Janey cut out fast food and lost 10 pounds the first month. She began walking and quickly lost 20 more pounds. Inspired, she added strength training and lost 15 more pounds before the end of the year." Janey never lets 2 drinks turn into 5 at Happy Hour before finding herself facedown in a plate of nachos. (No, she sips a wine spritzer, which is just a sin against wine, but I digress.)

I was in for a treat with this month's haul of fit mags. This being the January issue, it was Transformation Central!  What got me started on this theme, was coming across the phrase, "tipping the scales" in two different stories. What does that even mean? One person "tipped" at 192. I can see if she weighed 410 and her scale only went to 400. And even if she weighed 410, she could always weigh more. "Tipped the scales" suggests some kind of end-of-the-road weight to me. Like she weighed as much as is humanly possible. Alright, I'm being overly-something. I guess I just don't care for the expression and it got me thinking about the fitness media in more general terms.

Shape, Women's Health, Fitness, Self, I subscribe to all of them. Sometimes it's hard to discern much difference among them. Sometimes  I wonder how a $995 handbag or this season's perfect shade of lipstick for every complexion is going to push me along on my quest for fitness. (I already know the publishers' answer to this complaint: fashion, makeup, celebrity profiles, and other tips and quasi-promotional placements, er, articles, facilitate a holistic approach to women's "wellness".)

Which is fine, I suppose. I'm free to peruse the sections I find motivating and pertinent and flip, flip, flip through the other nonsense. Most of the "fitness models" are the same 4% body fat figures found in glossy fashion spreads - demotivating. Sometimes they'll feature a recipe makeover or a new cardio routine I want to try - motivating. 

Lately though, I've found them piling up for a couple months before I get around to them. Maybe because I've found myself so much more inspired by real people on fitness blogs? They experience struggles, setbacks, and successes - often in the same day! - just like I do. They get fed up and go "awol" and find their way back to an approach they can live with - just like I do. They don't have pat answers or 8 steps to flat abs, they make it up as they go along - just like I do.