A Milestone Anniversary

Saturday marked the one year anniversary of my very first workout after joining the YMCA.  At the time I had a joint membership that allowed me to workout at work and at any of the Y locations.  On April 4, 2014 I entered the gym at work at 6am and I was ready to commit.  I made a promise to myself that I was going to make a permanent, lifelong commitment to living a more active life.  This was a continuation of a promise I made myself when I invested in my Fitbit, which was to just move more.  This was my next step.  In the 52 weeks that have passed since that first morning I’m proud to say that I have been able to keep that promise to myself.  In fact I have only missed a small handful of workouts in the last year.  My goal when I started was to get to the gym 5 or 6 times a week.  I haven’t always gone to the gym to get my activity in to achieve that goal but I have managed to find ways to workout even when I didn’t have access to the gym.  I have found ways to workout on holidays, when I was sick and a lot of the time when I was just plain tired.  Working out over the last year has also taught me a great deal about myself and my body.  This entry is a look back at where I was and how far I have come.  It is also a celebration of all that has changed in the last year.  I am incredibly proud of every moment of this journey (which shockingly looking at this blog is in its fifth year) but this last year has been extra special because I finally feel like I’m making progress and am on the right track.  The pieces are falling into place.

Then and Now:

One of the biggest factors for me in finally finding some success on this journey comes from the various forms of tracking I do now.  I have talked about how valuable tracking is before but for me it truly has meant the difference between just saying I’m going to lose weight and actually losing it.  I never realized how motivated I was by numbers and tracking things until I started doing it.  Being able to look back to a starting point has really helped me through a lot of hard days.  I track in various forms including a spreadsheet with my weight and measurements, a workout journal and of course pictures.  Each offers me the opportunity to appreciate different aspects of this journey by comparing then and now.  Here are a few of those comparisons.

My first gym selfie and the most recent.  My face has been where I have seen the most change.  I have a photo on my phone so that every time I unlock it to do anything I'm reminded how far I have come.

When it comes to my workout journal it has evolved over time as well.  The notes I have about my first workout are limited because I didn’t realize just how much I would actually want to track as I got better and stronger.  The most recent entries have much more detail around what I am actually doing day to day in the gym. 

My first work out was 30 minutes on the treadmill.  I did 5 minutes warming up and cooling down with 20 minutes on a speed of 2.0 miles per hour.  The comments were “Felt sluggish, tired and back feeling really tight.”  I know that I was really proud to be back at it and excited to have the goal of running a 5K but I was also disappointed because it was a realization of how much slower I was now than when I used to use a treadmill that I had at home.  It was an eye opening day.

Saturday’s workout was a lot different and I think a good highlight of the changes I have made.  Normally Saturday’s would be done with my trainer but she was off for the long weekend so it was a solo workout.  This turned out to be very cathartic for me because I started this journey on my own and doing my one year workout on my own really showed how much things have changed.  I felt empowered to know that I could push myself hard even without my trainer there and reminded me of the determination I had when I started a year ago.  I am still determined to change my life and I’m not afraid to do the work it’s going to take.  Saturday’s workout started with 5 minutes on the curve treadmill to warmup.  This was followed by circuits of modified burpees, squat & press with a 12 pound medicine ball, medicine ball smashes, reverse lunges and medicine ball side tosses.  I repeated these exercises 4 times.  When that was done it was time to hop on the treadmill for 30 minutes to help me get my step count up (this is totally a curse of my fitbit…I can’t not work to earn my steps each day).  Like my first work out I included a 5 minute warmup and cool down on the treadmill but this time the main 20 minutes were done on a speed of 2.8.  I ended my day at the gym with 15 minutes of cooling down and stretching.  With the two different parts of my workout (cardio session and treadmill) my comments were “tired and my legs are a little shakey but well worked.  Feeling strong and proud” about the training and “treadmill felt good although legs are definitely tired now.  All and in all a great day at the gym” about the treadmill and the whole workout.  I left the gym as I always do these days with a smile on my face and feeling like I can take on the world.

I think the biggest things these two workouts demonstrate to me are the fact that I am not only faster but stronger as well.  I also realize how much more I do during my workouts.  When I first started the only thing I would ever do was the treadmill and now I can’t imagine just sticking to it.  Adding strength training and stretching into my routine has made a huge difference in how my body feels.  If nothing else it has also helped keep me from getting bored at the gym.  I look forward to going each day to see what else I can learn and do.

The last comparison I want to share will probably not be that surprising when you consider the fact that my workouts have gotten longer and that is the difference I see on my daily step counts.  My average step total during this week in 2014 was 7,871 steps and last week it was 10,988.  My best day the same week in 2014 was 11,206 steps and my best day last week was 13,714.  I continue to work towards moving more every day and it is very rewarding to see that I am actually doing it and not just saying it.  The activity has sort of snuck up on me.  What was once a chore to get up and move more now just seems to happen without too much of a struggle.  It has very much become a habit in my life.

Changes in the Last Year:

I have said this to many people and think I have written it in my blog as well (although it may have been on entries that weren’t posted) but when I think back to the person I was before I joined the gym I feel like that version of me is a fundamentally different version then who I am now.  The way I view the world and interact with it is changing, as is my body.  It is hard to pinpoint all the things that have changed (because most of it has been a working progress for awhile) but these are a few of the ones that are easy for me to lock down as being distinctively different from a year ago.

The biggest changes have come in the terms of how I think about a lot of different aspects in my life.  I have learned just how much important it is to get your brain on board with the whole weight loss journey.  When I started last April at least once a week I was having to battle the negative voice inside my head that would say this journey is too hard, too long or it’s not possible to do the things I wanted.  It was much easier for me to feel discouraged and frustrated which often led to me not giving it my all in the gym.   I would love to say that now a year later I don’t battle that same voice but it does still sneak up but it is far less often, probably only about once a month now.  The biggest change though is that I am able to recognize that voice and the reactions that I have to it.  This has allowed me to find ways to control the impact it has.  Now when I have a bad day or workout I take some time to try and look at it objectively (usually through writing) to see if I can figure out what is going on, what I need to change or if I just need to tell the voice to shut up because it’s crazy.  This has helped me to stay more positive about everything and I feel like it has greatly helped with my overall contentment in life.  It is still very much a working progress but definitely I can see and feel the changes that this has brought to my life. I am a lot happier and smiling a lot more.

Another one of the changes that has happened that actually sort of snuck up on me was a growing desire to be healthy.  The more active I am the more active I want to be.  Also the more active I am the more I want to eat better.  Before joining the gym I would have said no to going to get a coffee or going for lunch because it was “too far” away.  The scary thing with that is that too far away was probably no more than a block or two but I just wasn’t motivated to walk it.  Now I look forward to getting out and try to go for walks during at least some of my lunch hours each week.  The other thing that is cool is that I don’t have to worry about saying no to friends because I think that I might not be able to keep up or worry about how tired my legs are going to feel.  I’m still not as fast as some of my friends but I can keep up and enjoy spending time being active with them.  I love moving now.  It’s funny because before I could spend hours at my desk not moving and now if I sit too long I actually get really antsy to move, I even have a calendar pop up set that reminds me to get up and move.

With becoming more active throughout my day the other thing I quickly began to realize was that I actually felt better if I ate properly.  Before if I felt tired or sluggish I never blamed it on the food I was eating but came up with lots of other reasons why I was feeling that way.  But in the last year as I have been training harder and harder I have quickly realized just how much a factor what I’m putting in my system matters.  There have been a couple workouts where I eaten fast food before and the tired and sluggish feeling would plague me on workouts making them much harder than they should be.  They were workouts that I knew I should be able to kick ass on.  Logically I have always known eating better would help but in the last year I have seen the actual results of it.  I don’t expect that I will ever give up all my “junk” food but knowing that if I eat it I’m going to struggle with my next workout helps to keep the cravings at bay for a lot longer.  It has also meant that I’m a lot more careful about what days I choose to indulge in treats.  It is not very often now that I just buy fast food or a treat on a whim.  It is almost always planned out ahead of time, which would have been totally foreign to the me of a year ago.

The last change is of course the changes in my body itself.  I am losing weight and inches.  I don’t have a total for the number of inches because I only recently started taking measurements but from April last year to this past Saturday’s weigh in I have lost a total of 24.1 pounds.  More than half of that number has been in the last 3 months so I expect a bigger number by the time my second anniversary rolls around.  One of the things I have been conscious of when it comes to the number on the scale is trying to find a way to make it more tangible so I can really appreciate how much I have lost.  There are times when I think I haven’t really lost that much weight, or that I don’t feel that different but then I go and pick up a weight at the gym or in the case of the24 pounds I have lost since last year a turkey at the grocery store, and it is kind of amazing to really feel how much weight that is.  I still have a long way to go but like everything else I am incredibly proud of the weight I have lost in the last year.  It has brought me to a grand total so far of 41.5 pounds lost which is very nearly the most I have ever lost.  (The first time I did Weight Watchers I lost 50 pounds before quitting.)

Accomplishments in the last year:

I can’t write a blog entry about the last year and not at least mention a few of the things that I managed to accomplish on this journey in the last year.  All the changes and work have helped me to do a lot of things that I never expected or thought that I could.  Three jump immediately to mind when I started to think about the last year.  The first of course is my first 5K run in September 2014.  The second was facing some personal fears about being judged and actually signing up to get a trainer in November 2014.  The last was when I went to visit my parents for my summer vacation in July and I made the conscious decision and goal to get out and do a walk for exercise each day of the trip.  There were other smaller moments and accomplishments and things that I’m proud of but these three marked not only a shift in my abilities but were also accompanied by a realization of just how much I have changed my thinking and behaviours.  They are moments that I will always look back to and smile about.  They make me feel proud for what I have done but also give me hope for what I will do in the future.  (I totally have box jumping on my goal list for future accomplishments!)

I truly do believe that my life is fundamentally different now than it was a year ago.  I am becoming a version of me that I have always pictured and yet I still find myself amazed that I’m actually achieving it.  Each morning I wake up happy and excited for what the world will have in store for me.  I am actively seeking out new challenges and am ready to prove to the world and to myself that I really can do anything I put my mind to.  I still have a long way to go on this journey but I know and trust more than ever that I will get there.  I will continue to work to transform my life one step at a time while looking to the future but always remembering to take the time to acknowledge and look back to where I came from. 

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” – Francis of Assisi