Author Carolyn S.

I Did That Push Up For Nothing!

Carolyn S.

Yeah, I’m getting back on the ol’ workout wagon.

While I’ve been running quite a bit since we got the treadmill last fall, I haven’t been doing much else despite having equipped our home gym with the following:

  • Dumbbells: 3lb to 50lb
  • Rower (well, we’ve had this for years)
  • Weight bench
  • TRX trainer (also had this pre-pandemic)
  • Kettlebells (4kg + 8kg)

I had my good friend J (who is a personal trainer) set me up with a workout program so I can start working my weak, ineffective T-Rex arms into something not so weak and ineffective.

Exactly!

Now I have four different workouts – one is a warm up for days I run – and three others that give a more full body workout with weights/bodyweight stuff. Annnnd I’ve only done the warm up one in the month I’ve had them.

Hear me out!

Pre-pandemic I was going to Orangetheory Fitness where half of the one hour class is on the treadmill and the other half doing weights/etc. It was super effective for me and how I always did it was run first – weights second. Therefore in my monkey brain, I’d do the same thing here! Do a run, then go do the weights.

Except that didn’t happen.

I’d run and wear myself out then not go do the weights. Oops.

J told me “do the weights first, then go run so you stop putting it off”. OMG FINE J.

FINE!

I did that and instead of the 38 minute class I was going to take (shout out to iFit!), I just ended up doing a manual run and ran a mile and walked a quarter mile to cool down because I was wiped out.

I guess if I want to do longer runs I’ll need to skip the weights on those days. I have two separate but related goals to my running: get my mile per minute pace below 11 minutes per mile and to run a 10k again.

My last 5k (a virtual Easter race through iFit) I had a 12:30 min/mi pace with no walk breaks. I can do a mile faster than that, but my goal is endurance and not walking, so baby steps I suppose. Blows my mind that I used to run 10ks at 10 min/mi pace, but then I was almost ten years younger and forty pounds lighter.

Can’t get any younger, but the weight can creep its way off. Well, once I stop eating like an asshole.

And this is why I live in leggings.

Why can’t salads be as tasty as pizza? Come on people.

Lost Friends

Carolyn S. 1 Comment

There are friends in your life who made a huge impact on you. Friends who changed who you were as a person. Friends who were your lifeline through hard times. Friends who were there to celebrate your victories. Friends who you shared once-in-a-lifetime experiences with. Friends who were there through the laughter and the tears. Friends who you thought would always be in your life.

But today – they’re not.

They’re not around for a number of reasons. You no longer work at the same company, so you don’t see them every day like you used to. You moved to a different city or a different state. Your interests changed and you didn’t have enough in common anymore. They had kids and you didn’t. You both grew up and life took priority. All valid life reasons why friendships ended or fizzled.

There are other times where there doesn’t seem to be a reason. One day you’re friends, the next they’ve ghosted you. Those are the ones that really sting. It would be one thing to have a huge fight and exchange hearty “fuck yous”, then that would make sense. But nothing like that happened. It’s like one day you were friends, the next you never existed. Which hurts because these friends helped you through some low points in your life and now that you’ve come out the other side, they’re not around to see that person that you’ve become.

Finally – the worst one and the reason I’m being so introspective today is when your friend passes away. One minute they’re there and the next they’re gone forever. I haven’t lost anyone to COVID-19 thank fucking gawd, but I have lost them to cancer.

My good friend Alex passed away after a long battle with leukemia two years ago tomorrow. I have the reminder in my calendar so I make sure to remember him and to celebrate that friendship even though it’s now lost. He’d probably tell me I was being stupid for being so mushy and making such a big fuss about it. Makes me smile just thinking about it. Miss you, friend.

Is This Thing On?

Carolyn S.

It’s been…checks calendar…two and a half years since I’ve made a blog post.

Whoops.

Photo by Bich Tran on Pexels.com

I’ve had a slight job change – I’m working for the same company, but in a different group, so everything feels fresh and new to me now! I’m also using this as an opportunity to start blogging more and getting back to the person 10 years ago who blogged on a near daily basis.

But what to talk about? In the past I used this space as a way to talk through diet, exercise, and the lack of success with weight loss, so I suppose I could start there.

Typically I would complain about my failures with weight loss, but you want to know the worst part? Starting January 2020, I found my groove with diet and exercise and I was starting to see results. Yes!

Then the pandemic hit.

My fitness outlet of choice (OrangeTheory) closed down and while we had a rower in the house, it wasn’t the same so I fell off the fitness wagon. Over the past year, we outfitted our home exercise equipment so I could do just about anything out of the house: dumbbells, TRX bands, weight bench, etc. The big purchase was getting a treadmill – which the one I wanted finally came back in stock in August so we jumped on it. This spurred on an office makeover where I updated furniture and rearranged the layout so I could fit the treadmill right next to my desk. I don’t use it while I work, but I’m more apt to use it here than in the basement where the rest of the equipment is.

Side note: my husband and I are talking about moving all the basement exercise equipment to our unused spare bedroom so it’s a nicer place to be and would make it more likely that we’d use it. Right now going into the “dungeon” next to the litter boxes doesn’t sound too exciting.

We’d lose the spare bed, but nobody visits us now anyway – if so, it’s a few days per year. So we’re seriously considering it.

My diet had been going SO well too – started WW on January 1, 2020 and had lost 10lbs over the first two months and noticed all the changes the combination of fitness and diet were making to my body.

Then, well, you know.

All the food shortages threw a wrench into things – the staples that allowed me to lose weight without stressing out were impossible to find. Nevermind what the overall stress levels did to my mental well being. Hellooo wine!

Ended up buying whatever was available in the store and I dove into comfort foods and just not caring in general. I mean, we all lived through that time – that shit sucked!

Now, I’m just as heavy as I was when I started my weight loss journey in January 2020. I am running more since I got the treadmill and on New Year’s Day this year I ran a 5k without stopping for the first time since 2015. I’ve also been hitting other running milestones since then, so I’ll take that little success. 🙂

It’s so hard to get the food thing back on track. I’m super tempted to sign up for one of those meal services so I don’t have to think about it because planning menus is THE WORST. I’ll happily eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch, but once dinner hits, all bets are off. I learned how to make really good pizza dough and hot wings over the pandemic, so that’s part of the problem. Like, if I stopped eating like an asshole, I’d probably have a better time of it, so this isn’t a problem with no solution. I’m just unmotivated and lazy and I don’t know how to get myself out of it.

I guess my biggest problem is that I’m still feeling the weight of stress about the pandemic and how everything in my life has been put on hold. I’m lucky that my job was already remote before all this happened, my husband’s job pivoted to being remote, and we both stayed healthy throughout the past year. But I’m missing travel and visiting family and it’s hard to get motivated again.

I guess that’s enough for an update. Maybe I’ll write more than once every few years going forward. 😀