After a month of this adventure, Ive found that motivating myself to go the gym for 35 minutes is a lot easier than promising myself that I will crank out the full hour of cardio my trainer wants me to do several times a week. So after talking it over briefly with her, I decided that my new plan of attack would be to increase the frequency and intensity of my workouts and decrease the time.
It totally worked! I can make it to the gym six days a week now that I know itll be a quick fix. The bonus is that its so much more fun, and by completing the session in intervals, I get a way better workout (according to both the folks at Health and about a dozen online health forums Ive been browsing since I started this program).
More importantly, I think this workout method is a much better fit for my personality. It feels much more comfortable/natural to do something intensely for a shorter period of time than to drag something out slowly.
This was a total shock to me. As someone whos never had an exercise routine before, I never imagined that it could ever feel comfortable and natural. Or that it would feel good and be something I actually look forward to—almost crave. Its all new to me, but I really hope I wont get bored and lose this momentum. In any case, Ive decided that Ill use my New York Road Runner weekend races as my endurance training; that will help to balance these shorter, more intense spurts of effort.
Food continues to be my challenge and sometimes find that I just am not in the mood to eat. After my cookie slip-up two weeks ago, I decided to go without any this week, especially since I had a wedding this weekend at which I had grand plans to cash in with a sinful slice of cake.
The wedding was on Sunday, though, and it turns out that was too long to go without some form of indulgence…because I cracked at the rehearsal dinner the night before and had some French fries! Im not so much upset that had the fries (in the scheme of things, its not that big of a deal), but Im mad because I didnt really want them but ate them anyway. It was more that I had been too good for too long and couldnt wait another second to break the rules.
I realize that last sentence is a goldmine for a shrink, but its the sad truth. Thats why I picked my cookie day for Wednesday, because its such a relief to be able to be bad halfway through the week to celebrate. Yikes. One of my goals for this experiment is to break this unfortunate torture cycle. The food journal is definitely helping me to zero in on these patterns, so thats a plus.
All in all, this last week was challenging schedule-wise, but I managed to pull through! I worked out like a champ and was rewarded with some good numbers on the scale. I am feeling positive and upbeat, and am really looking forward to the next five months! Yahoo!