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Jan 26 2012
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30, Girl you be killin' em!, Health and Fitness, Resolution Challenge 2012, Useful Tips

My Fitness Steez.

Keep reminding yourself!

I’m probably not the best person to give fitness advice, but I do know how it feels to struggle with weight, body image and just overall fitness routine bordom, stardom and just overall gettingoffyourbuttanddoingitdom, but this year, I told myself I’m not going to get discouraged, and I’m just going to try to get some type of fitness activity no matter what.

Before I get started, a little bit about my body (haha, that sounds so weird!). I’m not thin, I don’t think I’ve ever been thin. If there was ever someone who was big boned and could fully admit it, it’s me! (seriously, my doctor told me this!). I’m muscular, but I have a gut and someone my height should probably be thirty pounds less than what I am, but regardless the shape that my body has taken, I’m probably in the second best “shape” of my life.

I hate to say, I’ve been on a diet all my adult life, but I think it wasn’t until college did I realize that it was time to nip this whole baby fat mantra in the bud and really start getting out there and going for it. I’ve always been bigger than my friends and I grew up in a predominantly Asian community, so I NEVER felt thin… ever. There’s a reason why one of my Almost Thirty Proverbs is Beauty isn’t defined by skinny. It’s because all my life I’ve heard, “You’d be so pretty if you lost some weight.”

I’m not at my weight goal, but I am in a happier place when it comes to my fitness and weight. I think I’ve come to a realization that when it comes to fitness it’s either you do or you don’t. I can tell stories and anecdotes of when my fitness life was good and my fitness life was not so good, but from 2006 (when I decided to do something about my weight) to now, I’ve realized that I can’t be discouraged and I can’t be negative. I have to stay upbeat and keep everything in perspective.

It’s so easy to be unhappy about weight, but the biggest struggle in the last couple years is to shake being unhappy about it and just be about it! I could name all the times when I was discouraged that I wasn’t at the weight or fitness level I wanted to be at. Even as recent as a couple days ago I received my holiday bloat drivers license picture and all I could think is, “Ugh, not there yet.” BUT before I could beat myself up about holiday eating, I just said, “OK, hit it… let’s start running more.” and I just started doing it.

I got carded this weekend and the doorman was like, “Is that you?” and all I could say is, “I know, it’s a bad picture.”

For all the starts and stops and false starts I’ve had to my fitness plan, I feel that the same rules have stayed tried and true. This time, even though I’m motivated by the Resolution Challenge, I’m also just over being discouraged about it. Let’s just do it… let’s just go! So with that all said, here are some of my favorite ways to get the fitness in without any excuses. Again, I don’t claim to be an expert at fitness, but I do know how it feels to be discouraged about getting started!

Nicola’s Fitness Steez Starter/Continue Tips

  • Leave the gym bag in the car. I leave everything in the car, and lately I’ve been taking my bag up to my classroom so there’s no excuse to not change. I figured if I took the time to get the bag up to my room, I might as well use it.
  • Find quick workouts that you can do without excuses, even if you’re tired. This year, my favorite is jumping jacks and Just Dance 3. Jumping Jacks are the bidness! It gets everything going, and it’s just not cardio. Your love handles and your arms will feel it if you do it right. I’ll do 500-1000 jumping jacks when I can’t go out for a run.
  • Track your workouts. I have an iPhone, so I use Nike + to login my workouts. It’s great motivation because not only does it track average pace and miles, it also tells you how many calories you’ve burned which I love seeing. Makes me feel really proud!
  • Find an activity  you enjoy doing. I think that’s why people hate the gym, no one really loves going to the gym because it’s so boring an repetitive. I like yoga, hiking and running. These are activities I like doing and don’t mind doing.
  • But… don’t ditch your gym membership… and make sure it’s on the way home from work/school. Having the gym membership means that there’s no excuses to doing something active (especially if the gym bag is with you). It’s also super important to be able to get to your gym without any excuses about it being far. There are three gyms in a 3-5 mile radius from my work, so I totally have no excuses. I also think it’s helpful who have friends who go to the same gym. A lot of friends who I could workout with have my gym, so it’s nice to know if I want to workout with someone, I could.
  • Tell friends and family you’re trying to lose weight. I think people are usually embarrassed that they have to tell their friends they’re watching what they eat, or they’re trying to workout. I think that’s the hard part about being in this age range is that food is so social. It’s so easy to say, “Let’s go out to eat!” and just catch up over drinks or eats. You just have to tell them you can’t, or just suggest things that are more active instead of eating. Even if your friends are not responding, be persistent about it. Tell them your health is important to you, and that this goal is important to you and ask them to help you out. If your friends don’t take your seriously, each time they say, “Let’s go out to eat!” politely decline, and after the third or fourth time, they’ll get the picture. Besides… I think hiking/walking/something active is a much better way to catch up with friends. This is probably the hardest thing to do out of everything I’ve suggested.
  • Stay positive! At one point, I was halfway to my weight loss goal, but I ended up gaining it all back. I was super mad at myself for doing that, and really beat myself up for failing. Each time I didn’t do what I was supposed to, I would be so hard on myself. The last year or so, I’ve realized that the negativity is not going to work when sticking to weight loss or a fitness plan. You have to stay positive, and you have to keep going. You don’t need other people to cheer you on (because I HATE THAT) but the best cheerleader to help you out is YOU! You’re the one in the driver seat.

And lastly,

  • Be patient. It’s not going to happen overnight, so stick with it like the image says.

Me circa 2006

 

me circa 2012 (current FB pic)

This is the year, I know, I’ve proclaimed this before, but this is the year that I get it right, and so far the month has been pretty good. I’m running an 11 minute mile again (give or take a minute) and I’m being more conscious of the food I’m eating. I never have a particular weight goal, but I’m going to really focus on my clothing this time around. My fat jeans have been a little looser the last couple weeks and I’m just taking it day by day. That’s all you really can do. Stay focused and go!

This isn’t my original idea. I actually got this from my bestie David, but as motivation, I always look at old pictures, and remind myself that that’s where I was and this is where I am now, and that I’ll never be where I was again as long as I keep at it! I guess that could be another suggestion as well. I’m not into those body before and afters ala P90X but I think it’s important to celebrate the success instead of dwelling in the failures. That’s a lesson in life that can be applied everywhere, not just this particular goal.

What are some of your fitness tips? Share below so we can all help each other out! ALSO, it’s not a serious suggestion, but my Fitness Steez Pinterest Board is my biggest source of motivation and workout tips. It’s my homepage when I start my web browser! It’s going to be a good year fitness wise! I can feel it!

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Jan 24 2012
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30, A better me., Resolution Challenge 2012

RC Challenge Check-In Week 1-2

Probably would have been a lot easier if I didn't do 1500 jumping jacks beforehand.

I’ve unofficially dubbed Mondays as my check-in with you guys about our resolution challenge. I haven’t asked Angela, if it’s ok to share her stuff, but maybe when she feels like it she’ll talk about her experiences with the challenge, but for now I’ll just do my own updates.

Week One my goals were to

Fitness Goal: Login 10 miles this week (run/walk/whatever)
Personal Goal: Leave work between 4pm-4:15pm two times this week.
Week one was pretty good. For my fitness goal, since I had been running the week before, I had already gotten back into a groove of going on runs again (each run I do about 3-4 miles) so I felt pretty good about finishing up my runs. To me, and for my fitness level (at one point in my fitness life, I was running 6 miles every other weekday) so getting back into the swing of running things has been easy and hard at the same time. I finished my goal by Friday (before my birthday party no less!).
For my personal goal, I did give myself some cushion with the 15 extra minutes after four. It was really hard to do this one!!! I know that a lot of you feel that teachers have the best schedule in the world, but in actuality, the good teachers don’t ever leave right when the bell rings (unless they absolutely have to). Leaving work before the sun goes down is such a hard thing to do. I don’t really get this place to myself until 3pm, and even then there’s always some straggler that wants to talk or ask me something. I really don’t mind talking, but the hard part about this is that because my mind knows I have all this time after 2pm to get things done, I don’t utilize my conference period (the time when I’m on “the clock” but not teaching).
By the time my conference period comes around, I just want to do things (like write an entry in my blog lol) but I’ve already taught four classes by the time my conference period comes around so I get pretty exhausted. I don’t claim to master balance right away, but I’m trying to work on using time more efficiently and not slack off at work.
All in all it was an easy first week to the challenge and I made $20 for our trip! Woot!
Week Two my goals were to
Fitness Goal: 10 Miles and 2000 jumping jacks (I don’t know how to be held accountable for jumping jacks haha).
Personal Goal: Get done with my top 10 work tasks by Friday (I’ll email you my to do list on monday, and I’ll mark off accordingly, unless you feel that there’s another way to hold me accountable for this).
Week two was horrendous. I think I was definitely over ambitious. I also had to take into consideration that it was my birthday week so a lot of things that normally don’t happen (birthday dinners, and just down time) happened because I gave myself the excuse that it was my birthday.
My fitness goals were TOUGH. I ran on Wednesday for four miles and ran out of time the rest of the week and ended up having to do my six miles on Saturday. What made this week tough was that I paired it with 2000 jumping jacks. Now, first off I have to say that jumping jacks are an incredible way to get in shape! I did 1000 jumping jacks the week before (on one day) and I totally felt the burn on my sides and in my arms and legs the next day. I was able to do 500 jumping jacks during the middle of the week, but I accidently lost track of everything because of my personal goal so my fitness goal ended up taking the back seat until Saturday night.
I did 1500 jumping jacks and 6 miles on Saturday! Man was I tired. I think I was ready to throw in the towel and just pay the $10 to Angela’s charity, but I was determined to finish since I was so close. I thought I’d be able to run a little bit on Saturday, but I was so tired from the jumping jacks, my legs felt like jelly trying to run around my house. I was so tired by the time I was finished, and it made me wonder how those fitness fanatics can cram in three hours of fitness each day. Eeessh!
All in all the determination to meet my goal was what made me tired on Saturday. I will say this though, my jeans are a bit looser today (and they’re just washed and dried which means their tighter than normal, right?) so maybe those jumping jacks are working more than I think they are.
My fitness goal was tough to do because my to-d0 list was crazy! I was overly ambitious and pushed myself way too hard. I put maybe two weeks worth of work into four days worth of time to accomplish them. It was not pretty at all, but for some reason a trudged through it all.
Moral of the story? Don’t push yourself too hard and be realistic about to-do list and other goals, and when planning for a weeks worth of events, try to look ahead to what is going on before actually planning a to-do list. It will make it all better.
The best thing about this whole “challenge” thing is that I’m too stubborn to give up, at least for now.

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Jan 06 2012
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29, Adjustments for Happiness, For Immediate Life Implementation, Resolution Challenge 2012, Useful Tips

Resolution Challenge 2012

Not too shabby, considering today I was just walking and talking with friends and yesterday was the first day running in maybe months! =D

This year, I told myself that I wouldn’t set New Years Resolutions. I’ve been setting them regularly for the last 10 years and usually I keep one out of the handful that I make. I know that in the last post, I just said that my only resolution was that I was going to be the best me ever, but I guess I should elaborate a little bit more on that a little bit more.

I was with my BFF Angela and her sister Donna this past weekend because Angela was in town for the holidays from D.C. and we were talking about why it was so important to set goals and resolutions at the beginning of the year. I told them that I was done setting resolutions and that I just wanted to be the best me ever, forever! Donna joked that if I became this person, would I not be the best ever after that? I know forever isn’t really possible, but what I meant by being the best me ever, forever was that I just wanted to get it right this year without any excuses and really reach all my goals.

Being the best me ever (forever) is my mantra for 2012.

It’s a promise to myself to be thirty, and not be silly and careless when it comes to taking care of myself and be focused and determined to accomplish everything that I need to work on. OF course, I need to center in on a few things, but I’m totally resolving to just slowly change all the behaviors that have been preventing me from being the best me that I can be.

I know, it sounds extremely cheesy, but sometimes I gets down like that. I think that one of the things that we forget about is that we have to be our own cheerleaders and we have to be the ones to gather up positive energy for ourselves. I’ll be the first one to tell you that I hate attention and props for the work that I do, but sometimes I do need to remind myself constantly to stop being my toughest critic and so hard on myself and start bigging myself up once in a while. Giving myself this cheesy slogan is kind of a way to say, “Hey, you’re older, you’re wiser, you know what to do, so just do it already!”

If you look up resolution in the dictionary, it says to look up resolve (lol) I seriously have Merriam Webster up right now. And the  4th definition of resolve says

to deal with successfully : clear up <resolve doubts> <resolve a dispute>

A few days ago I posted this link from Lifehacker about the difference between goals and resolutions on my Facebook. Your goal may be to lose weight, but you should resolve to eat better and make time for exercising to achieve your goal. Even though this is a big no duh I think the key to this whole idea of resolution making that the article mentions is that in order to achieve your goals, you have to make those little changes in your every day routine.

I had like a resolution epiphany. It’s the changes in your every day routine that are going to get you to your goals. I know that behaviors change in January, people frequent the gym more, people eat in more than going out and it’s pretty good for the first two weeks until MLK weekend and everyone is back to their old tricks again and it’s not until the end of the year are we reminded that we didn’t reach the goals we set at the beginning of the year.

Angela and I  try to hold each other accountable for things that we know we need to work on. It’s hard to do because she lives so far away, but I think the intent is there, but not followed through on as much as we could do. We try to be as supportive as possible, but knowing that in the past we we’re so successful in keeping tabs on each other, we were trying to think of a brand new way to help each other out and really kick those bad habits finally and just be awesome this year.

That’s when the Resolution Challenge 2012 was born.

Ladies and Gentlemen... your contestants!

Starting on Sunday the 8th, Angela and I will be challenging each other to change those little things in our everyday routine and really work to accomplish our goals. For the next seventeen weeks, we’ll be participating in this little challenge against each other to make sure we stay accountable for changing all those bad habits. Each week, we’ll be setting one personal goal and one fitness goal. To hold ourselves accountable for our goals, we’ve decided to put some money into play.

Personal goals are going to be in the areas of personal finance, time management, emotional health (this one is for me, a reminder to not stay at work forever and a day), maintaining personal relationships, eating better and other areas that are related to life. Fitness goals are just that, fitness goals. Do 20 minutes of Just Dance 3 or log in 10 miles for the week, those are the goals that we’ll be setting each week. Again, because we’re trying to reach goals, setting goals each week help us change those little habits on a daily basis that are preventing us from getting to our goals.

To hold ourselves accountable for the goals, there’s some money involved. Each set of goals is worth $20. So there’s $40 in play between the both of us each week. So if Angela and I complete our goals for the week, $40 goes into the general pot. Say, I don’t complete my goals for the week, but Angela does, Angela’s money goes into the general pot and my money goes into Angela’s Charity Pot. We’ll be doing this routine for the next seventeen weeks.

If everything goes well, and we don’t have any huge mishaps, at the end of the seventeen weeks our general pot will be close to $500! The general pot is a treat for us. I’m coming to visit during Spring Break and the weekend I’m there we’re going to take a quick trip to New York. If the money in the general pot is above $420, all that money saved up is going to be split between the both of us to use for our weekend in New York!

The Charity Pot is for where the money goes if the other person doesn’t make their goals. The money collected in each of these pots will go to a charity of each of our choice. We didn’t want it to be competitive and have the money go to ourselves because then the idea of a general pot and providing support for each other would be a little silly. If our Charity Pots get up to more than $120 that’s when each of us will have to have an intervention with each other and talk about why our goals aren’t being accomplished.

THE BIGGEST roadblock to all this is that we live so far away from each other. I guess even if Angela were here, I’d still have to make sure that she’s doing her stuff and vice versa. So we made a rule to send screen shots of calorie trackers. Call each other to make sure we did what we were going to do and other supportive things to help us get through the week. We want to get that money into the general pot and we want to make sure we make it each week with a check mark on what we wanted to accomplish that week!

I’m really excited for the challenge. I think that the challenge aspect is going to be very beneficial for the both of us. I really can’t tell you what’s going to happen because I don’t even know how it’s going to go. This could possibly be a complete fail at the end of two weeks, but I hope that a fantastic weekend in NYC can be a prize for the both of us to work hard for, but even if we have a couple unaccomplished weeks, I think that I’ll be happy donating to charity.

Periodically, I will be updating you guys on the progress, if she’s not being shy, Angela may guest post to update on her progress. You guys already know, I’m trying to get back into something I call #girllyoubekillinem mode for my fitness goals. And as for my personal goals? Really try to achieve that work/life balance and not go so hard at work to the point that I lose time for myself.

Wish us luck because we’re going to need it! AND good luck to you! Happy resolution making. To get you started on your own resolutions, I highly suggest you get your butt to Lifehacker and read up on on the articles they posted about making New Years Resolutions. Here are some helpful ones to get you started.

A Three-Step Approach to Ensuring Resolution Success

The Science Behind New Year’s Resolutions (and How to Use It to Achieve Yours)

Want more in-depth details about our Resolution Challenge? Want to tweak our challenge rules and set your own? Feel free to email me nicolaatthreetothirtydotcom or leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to answer your questions! =) Keep us posted on what you do!

***One of my goals for Three to Thirty is not just a place for me to document my success of conquering this new age decade, but open up this site for all of us to share and help each other out! It’ll be a Three to Thirty movement ya’ll! Let’s get it!

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