Back in the Saddle Again

Hey everyone, I’m back!  Whew!  What a month it has been!  I spent the month curled up in my office at school and at work.  But all that hard work has paid off because finals are done and I’m staring thesis work dead in the face (I’m actually looking forward to thesis work for those of you who were wondering).    The time has come to get back into my wellness routine, and I couldn’t be more excited.

I’m not exactly proud of many of the choices that I’ve made this past month in the realm of my physical well-being.  I think I formally worked out maybe two or three times.  I fell out of the habit of pre-planning my meals for the week because the weekends (when I usually have some free time to do this) were spent in my office at school or at work.  Because of this, and the last-push-of-the-semester stressed out emotional eating, I made more than a few poor food choices, and was sure that I would have gained at least a few pounds after this month off.

However, I did make a few good choices too, that I am absolutely intent on keeping up because they were so easy to keep in my life (even for a stressed out grad student at finals time!  That says something!).  I started parking in the back of the parking lot at school.  I already park in what’s called the B lot (which is for commuter students who don’t live on campus) which is the cheap commuter’s lot.  That means, the lots are usually on the outskirts of campus to begin with.  By doing this on a regular basis (except for the day last week when it snowed.  Yup, snow in Iowa in May.  I love this state with my whole heart, but sometimes… well, sometimes I just… don’t) I added an extra thousand steps to my normal amount of walking each day (and avoided the parking battles that occur near the front of the lot).  I also stopped taking the elevator as often.  Climbing three flights of stairs to get to my office really isn’t as hard as I thought that it would be, and I’m glad they aren’t intimidating me anymore.  And finally, I drank water like I was getting paid for it.  I have a Brita Bottle that all but eliminated my excuses for drinking anything but water.  It was easy to slip into my backpack side pocket, filtered out the nasty metal taste from the fountain and sink water in my office and work, and allowed me to refuse to buy any soda or overpriced bottled water.  In fact, with a few exceptions that I can count on one hand, I drank either water or black coffee exclusively this whole month (I’m convinced it is a physical impossibility to survive the last month of the semester without coffee).

So, expecting the worst this morning, I hopped on the scale and waited patiently until the numbers 208.2 flashed up at me.  For those of you who aren’t keeping track at home, that’s a 2ish pound loss for the month!  Just to double check, I stepped off the scale, went and started my coffee and came back and it read the same thing!  Hooray!

So the plan for this month is to start working on toning my arms.  You may recall that was my plan for last month.  However, two half-assed workouts don’t really cut it for me, so I’m going to start up again.  I want my arms looking in tip top form for my wedding photos this coming September.  I’m also going to implement a few things that I learned on my month hiatus to try to simplify my life:

1: Water is my friend.  Water is my body’s friend, water is my mind’s friend, and water is most definitely my wallet’s friend. Drink and be merry.

2: Those extra steps make a difference.  I’m planning on cleaning my house this next week (all those little things that were put off because I was too busy have finally added up to the point I can’t stand it any more).  I’ll be taking one armed loads up and down stairs (which means more trips, and less chance of dropping things).   I’m also going to be watching a two year old boy for some friends of mine this month on the days that I don’t work my other job.  I’m lucky to live near a park and a recreation trail.  Every day that it’s not raining, he and I will be at the park or on the trail.  I spent too much time cooped up inside last summer (body image stuff and it was SOOOOO hot and dry!) so I intend on soaking up every single day that I can this summer.

3: It’s summer, it’s OK to eat ice cream.  “Slip-ups” aren’t.  No one is perfect all the time, myself included.  And the thing is, treats keep you mentally healthy, and if kept in check, won’t ruin your weekly weigh-in.

4: Workouts are my friends too.  Break time is over.  I’m going to get back into the routine of strength training, especially my arms.  Workouts make me feel good, mentally and physically, and are obviously good for me.  I need to work that routine back into my life, especially since I would like to be in my 180’s by September (which means that I’ve got to do more than causally try to lose weight).  I was lucky to not have gained weight this month and I would like to honor that luck by moving forward with my weight loss.

Can’t wait to fill you in on how this is going on Monday!  Only 68.2 lbs to go! 🙂

Week 30

I lost 2.4lbs this week!  Hooray!

This is one of those weeks that was a little puzzling to me as to why the big loss.  Not that I’m complaining, mind you.  It just seems like I goofed up (a lot) on my eating habits this week, and I didn’t push myself as hard as I could have in my workouts.  I spent this past week trying to kick the lingering cold out of my system (felt fine, just couldn’t breathe to save my soul).  That whole not breathing thing really cuts into one’s ability to kick it at the gym.  And as is par for most who are trying to lose weight, one bad thing leads to another.  When I don’t work out as hard as I could, I also don’t eat as well as I could.  BUT (always look for the silver lining) I have noticed that I am not overeating portion-wise.  Taking smaller initial portions has become a habit for me and I do it without thinking any more.  I never rarely tell myself that I can’t go back for another portion, but getting another portion means that I have to get up, walk all the way to the kitchen and serve myself some more (laziness in action!).  While I’m debating the cost-benefits of this decision, I usually figure out that I’m not hungry any more, which means that I usually don’t overeat (even when the food choices are horrible).  I am so happy that this is falling in to place for me!  If there was one thing (not counting anything exercise related) that I wanted out of this journey it was to still be able to eat what I want without overdoing it.  I love food, a lot.  I love healthy food and junk food; fast food and home cooked meals; local cuisine and exotic fare.  I love it all and I want to eat it all.  I am a firm believer in moderation being key.  If you deprive yourself of something (say sugar for example as I’m snacking on some dark chocolate at the moment) you will probably see amazing results for a while.  But if you can’t truly give it up for the rest of your life, the results will disappear as soon as the deprivation makes its way back.  So I will set four dark chocolate kisses out on the table and close the rest of the bag back up into the freezer instead of leaving the whole bag out and chowing down without even thinking it over (such an “old Sara” thing to do).  This was one of the tricks I learned after reading Mindless Eating.  I plan on writing a separate post about this book and how I’ve applied it to my life.  I was lucky enough to see the author give a talk at a psychology conference that I attended a few years ago, and would highly recommend anyone who is interested in the science behind eating (and why we do so much of it) to purchase a copy of his book.  It’s fairly cheap on Amazon, and I’m sure you can find it in a local book store as well.  At least give it a look-over.  It’s science based, but it reads like a story and makes the research very approachable to people who are not familiar with the scientific field.

As for how the rest of my day went, well, you’ve probably noticed that this post is getting out a little later than usual.  It’s the week before spring break.  That means that I have a presentation, two tests, and a few short papers that are due this week.  It all kind of caught up with me this morning and I went into panic mode for a while.  I haven’t completely pulled my fat out of the fire just yet, but things have slowed down enough for me to squeeze in a post.  I also woke up this morning and noticed that my knee was hurting.  It wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t walk on it, but it definitely hurt enough that I didn’t want to run on it.  Fortunately for me, I already had an appointment with my chiropractor for a back alignment, so  while I was there, I asked him to take a look at it.  Basically, the doctor told me that I should take it easy on the running for a while.  Because the pain was not sharp, and almost completely went away after putting a wrap on it he thinks that it is an overuse injury that should go away with time.  While this is pretty good news for my long term running career, it pretty much puts the last nail in the coffin of running the whole 5k in four weeks.  Even if I was on healthy legs, I wouldn’t have been ready to run the whole race (stupid cold knocking me out for so long).  Tomorrow I’m going to hit the gym and see how my knee takes to (my version of) speed walking with the wrap on it.  If all goes well I’ll focus in on that until my knee recovers.  I’m hoping that when I go back for my next adjustment in a month I’ll get the green light on my knee to start pushing myself on the track again.  In the mean time, I guess I’ll just focus in on losing more weight (which I’m sure has contributed to the injury even though my doctor daintily danced around that subject) and finding non-impactful ways to fit cardio back into my life.  I bet my recumbent bike in my basement has missed me. 🙂

My biggest goal for this week is to listen to my body.  I need to pay special attention to my knee, of course, but I also want to pay attention to how the rest of my body reacts (or doesn’t) to my exercise routines.  My abs training on off days last week has been a great start.  I can tell that my lower abs are being worked well, but I can also tell that my obliques need more attention.  I feel like my body has learned how to streamline some of my strength routines, so it’s probably time to either push them a little harder or switch the routines up all together.

Another goal for this week is to keep up with my abs training.  I’m headed in to week 2 and I’m off to a good start.  I’d really like to keep this habit up and add some variety and intensity to my exercise routine.

A third goal for this week is to keep drinking water.  I slipped last week and fell off the water wagon.  No use in pouting about it, but it’s time to pick myself up and try again.  Here’s to a healthy 64 oz each day!

And my last goal for this week is to focus in on the silver linings.  This week is going to be crazy busy, and I’m probably going to cry at least once, regardless of how well things go.  That’s my reaction to stress, unhealthy as it is.  If I can find some way to see something positive in whatever situation I find myself in, I’m sure things will go along much easier for me.

Only 70lbs to go!

Plan Hard and Organize Realistically

So I’ve been pretty preoccupied with my fitness and weight loss with this blog as of late.  And while I certainly don’t mind sharing my ups and downs with that particular journey, I realized that I would like to get back to my original intent of this blog, which is to navigate between the slow and fast lanes of life.  As my last semester of grad school starts this week, I thought that I would share some tips for studying and organization that I have picked up over the last year and a half of school.

Prep work is half the battle

I usually spend a few hours each day the week before any semester starts up preparing for the months of school to follow.  This means making sure all of the books that I ordered before Christmas have arrived (or at least have been shipped), making sure that I have enough supplies (correct notebooks, pens, pencils, planner, highlighters, more highlighters, sticky notes, tea, coffee, snack bars, etc.), cleaning and organizing my work spaces (both at home and at my grad school supplied office) and planning out my schedule.  The latter two tend to take up the majority of this time as by the end of the semester my desk tends to morph into a drop zone for papers and other things that I will get to “later” or things that I just don’t have a designated home for yet.

Scheduling

This is where the “realistically” bit comes in.  My first semester of grad school I was under the impression that I would totally be able to devote 8 hours of studying/homework time outside of actual class each day, and I would be able to do this in relatively large blocks of time so that I could have my evenings free.  HA!  Not only did I stop following this schedule around Tuesday of the first week, but because my schedule was so unrealistic, I found myself drifting off into the world of “floating through school by the seat of my pants” which is a dangerous place for grad students to be.  I have a short attention span.  I’ve learned that I can sit and read a dry article for about 45 minutes before my vision begins to go fuzzy and I start re-reading paragraphs. I have learned that it isn’t necessarily the quantity of time that I spend at my desk, but rather the quality of time that I spend there.  That being said here’s the way that I set up my schedule.

1. Put in all the times that I know right off the bat I am obligated to be somewhere.  This means blocking off times when I have class, and when I have to be at work.  Those are the only set in stone times that cannot be shifted around.

2. Schedule exercise time.  I’m trying to lose weight.  Therefore, I have to make sure that I schedule time in to do this, otherwise it won’t get done.  Because I have been exercising for a while now, I know that I need to set aside about an hour each day for my total workout routine (warm up, stretch, work out, cool down, stretch, little bit of recovery time leftover).  Know how much time that you need to do your routine comfortably.  If you know that you will need extra recovery time after a workout, schedule that in.  There’s no shame in admitting to yourself that you need to spend 20 minutes just sitting after a particularly hard workout.  If you schedule that in, you won’t be constantly running behind the rest of the day.

3. Schedule travel time.  I missed this one entirely my first semester.  My school is 2o minutes away from where I live and 25 minutes away from where I work (one way).  That’s at least 1 hour of driving time (and searching for a parking space, then walking another 1o minutes from the outer rims of campus) each day.  It adds up quickly.

4. Schedule meetings times.  This one usually doesn’t happen for me until about week 3 into the semester.  I have to figure out a time that will work for me and my thesis advisor to meet once a week, I have to schedule in my lab meetings, and sometimes, professors of classes like to have weekly one-on-one meetings with their students to make sure that everything is going well and so on and so forth.  The control freak in me hates that it takes so long to get these scheduled, but that is the way of academia and I’ve pretty much gotten used to it.

5. Schedule blocks of study time.  I have learned that I cannot successfully stick to anything longer than about 3 hours at a time.  And when I say 3 hours I mean 3 forty-five minute sessions with a 15 minute break in between.  Usually I can find time for two study sessions each day, but this isn’t always guaranteed.  And that’s OK, so long as you hit the books at least a little each day.  Usually the days that I can’t fit two sessions in are days that I work at my job.  Fortunately for me, I work at a place where I frequently have down time which I can spend reading or studying.  I call that bonus time.  It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s a chance to get ahead (or as things usually go, catch up).

6. Schedule eating/meal times in.  Some people are lucky enough to be able to multi-task where they can eat and concentrate on something else while they do that.  I am not one of those people.  I usually eat my meals while I catch up on my favorite shows or read the news, or blog, or something that does not require direct and sincere concentration.  While it’s not optimal for me, it is something that I’ve learned to schedule around and live with.

7. Schedule your hygiene routine.  Again, this seems a little excessive, but if you schedule it in, you won’t be running behind.  For example, on a normal day it takes me about an hour to shower, dry my hair, dress and primp (makeup, style my hair, etc.).  Some people take more time, some take less.  It’s about knowing what you usually do and scheduling around that.  You want to make sure that you’re realistic.

8. Schedule at least 2 hours of free time each day.  This is time where you are not working out, eating, studying, working, traveling, or doing anything else that you are otherwise obligated to do. For me, I like to spend at least an hour a day knitting or crocheting.  It is my thing and I do it because I can, not because some outside source is dictating it.  Whether you’re a grad student, busy parent, or otherwise hassled individual, it is important to set a small portion of time aside each day for something that you enjoy and can control.  Trust me, your mental health and happiness will thank you.

9. Be flexible.  There will be times when a meeting is moved around, or something unexpected comes up and you have to move your schedule around, or you oversleep, or you just cannot bring yourself to concentrate during a study session.  These things will happen, more often than we would all care to admit.  The ability to just roll with it has pulled me out of the fire many times and will help you maintain your sanity as life happens.

Map out the weeks ahead

This kind of falls under prep work, but I feel that it needs special attention.  After I get all of my syllabi, I like to write in all the due dates of projects, big or small, on to my planner (making sure to do this in pencil!  Due dates will usually change, especially ones near the end of the semester.) so that I can plan ahead for particularly busy weeks.  I then usually use one whole study session to make daily to do lists to ensure that the projects get finished in a timely manner.  Again, because I’ve been at this a while, I’ve become pretty good at understanding how long a project will take me to complete, so I can usually accurately determine how much time each day I need to devote to a project.  I like to make daily to do lists one project at a time, starting with the bigger and more “expensive” (dominate the highest percentage of my total grade) projects.  I tend to overestimate the time it will take me to complete these projects so that I will ensure that I have enough time to finish them comfortably (I haven’t pulled an all-nighter yet!). I then move on to smaller projects like weekly reading assignments and reflection papers.  By making these daily to do lists I can break up the daunting and overwhelming semester into “Ok, all I have to do today is write out a page for this paper and read these two articles.”  This is immensely helpful because a grad student’s semester is usually very anxiety provoking if you constantly look at the bigger picture.

Know thyself

The most important tip that I have to maintaining a schedule and successfully studying is to know what you are capable of doing.  If you schedule around your life in a way that is similar to how you are already living, you are so much more likely to stick to that schedule.  If you can pull off the eight hour study marathon, by all means do it!  If you know that it takes an hour after the alarm goes off to be mentally functional, schedule that in.  Everyone is different, and the key is knowing how to live with these differences.  If you’ve scheduled out your week and you don’t like what you are seeing, then make slight schedule changes and see how they work.  If you can stick to them after a few weeks, keep going.  If you can’t stick to them, try another adjustment out instead.  You can’t flip a switch and be instantly organized and on the perfect schedule.  Things take time, and you have to gradually move into changes.