Quick lil recap

I know that I haven't posted in far too long.  Suffice to say, it has been an up and down few months....pretty standard for life I think.  I did relapse for a bit I think but I was able to find support again and all is well.  Satan tried to get into my head and make me feel helpless, but I knew that wasn't true.  I know I'm not broken.  I know I'm not beyond help.  I know he just wants me to think that way.  My coach basically stopped coaching and my challenge group had ended and I felt like I was trying to coach some others while I was in desperate need of saving myself.  You can't help others and save others until you've helped yourself.

All is well now.

In fact, I'm pretty darn excited for 2014.

I'm starting up P90X3 and I'm beyond stoked to do this (30 minute) program and to complete it.  I have missed the structure of a program laid out for me.  I could have done better and stuck to another actual schedule after finishing ChaLean, but I used my triathlon training as an excuse.  (Oh yah.... I need to post about THAT.... I finished IronGirl!!!!!!!!!!).  In any case, it's going to be awesome and I'm ready to bring it.


I did the following post on FB tonight and felt it would be nice to just have the little recap here as well:
I wrote this in Feb: "Maybe these lousy results will help me be more focused and motivated with the prospect of being in a swimsuit at the end of this next month. It's either that or I feel it's pointless and doing no good and I should accept this really is the 'new me' from now on (these are the mind battles I have with myself). It occurs to me that this is how an addict feels- that their efforts are pointless, that they are defective human beings, that they can have a little bit of leeway and it won't make a big difference but they get upset when it adds up and does."

Then this at the end of April: "Today was the first day of the new challenge group I committed to participating in. It will be really great to have the accountability of a group to report to each and every day. I can't tell you how positive I feel about this...about it being 'right' for me...about having all the tools I need to have this be 'it' and the last time. "

I posted this in May: http://just4thehealthofit.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-whys-and-hows.html

Wrote this in June: "There is a mental power to feeling physically strong... especially when you feel like people look at you and see someone who is weak. Do you do that when you see someone who is overweight? You don't know what's really in there. "

I wrote this to myself in August: "These things do not define you, and yet they are you. Being a new and better person doesn't mean that you were a bad person before. It doesn't invalidate or lessen the worth of your self at any given stage in your life. You are simply at a different point in your life now. You are here because of what you've been through but you might have been here even without them. You might not be here without them. You could be in a different place, a much worse place, because of all this. You needn't feel bad. You are strong. You are a survivor. You have hurt and you have tried to take care of yourself and you have tried to protect yourself...all the best you could and the best you knew how with what you had at the time. You really did try your best with what you had and what you understood and where you were in your life."

and this: "I feel so empowered when I think of this. I think how just such a short time ago I was acting upon just a glimpse of a desire. I wasn't sure that this Beachbody thing would work but I had a small enough desire to give it a change. I was afraid of admitting to and facing an eating disorder, but I had just a glimmer of a hope that the change I saw in my husband could happen with me.

I haven't lost a ton of weight and yet I am finally able to envision that other me. The fit and healthy and unstoppable me. I see her again. I couldn't find her for a long time. I don't feel that it's like I'm some suddenly different person. I see it more as having been in a place of light for so long that my eyes had adjusted and I didn't see just how much brighter it could be.....I didn't realize not all the lights were on, until they were on. It's tasting that delicious fruit of the tree of life and wanting to share it with others because you didn't realize how much you were missing out on."

and I haven't really written on my blog since.... BUT I feel EXACTLY THAT WAY there at the end still. THAT's how I know this works and is going to keep on working. THAT'S why I am doing what I am doing.

You know what's funny? At a friend's suggestion, I started trying to come up with a single word to be my focus for the year. This year the word I chose was NOURISH. Man, I had no idea where that would take me. So awesome!

Houston, I have a problem.

Something is wrong with me. I'm sitting at a dr office (for the 3rd time in a week) because my lungs are still rebelling from the cold water at IronGirl...and yet I find myself looking up triathlons for next year. 
Anyone done Kokopelli? It says the water is warm for that.

sweet swag

This stuff showed up on my doorstep today and totally made my day.  Thanks IronGirl!

dangit

Well it turns out that asthma attack in the water was no joke.  The dr says I am pretty much not moving any air. Looks like it's a steroid injection, steroid pills, antibiotics, and rest for the next few days. I didn't know before that wheezing is actually a good thing when you have asthma because it means you are moving air. I almost didn't go in because I wasn't wheezy.  
This was my lunch.... Because washing dishes to have a clean cup for my Shakeology sounded like way more work than I can muster...because eating is a lot of work....because I was out picking up my steroid meds anyway....because apparently lack of oxygen will do all that to you. Everything is a chore right now, even thinking. I'm grateful I have a book to curl up with, a husband who I know will be happy to take care of me, and that the dr was able to squeeze me in so hopefully my lungs can recover a little faster.

I did it!!!

I did it!!! Completing IronGirl has been a huge dream accomplishment for me for many years.  I'm so excited to be able to say I did it.  Was it perfect?  No.  I had an asthma attack in the (very cold) water that I never fully recovered from and then I later crashed on my bike at the dismount.  Was it awesome to finish?  Yes.  I loved having my friend and neighbor there to do it with me also.  It's so much more fun having someone to beat yourself up with. ;)

Here are some of my thoughts on the race:
I do not like open water swimming so much- I felt like I was going nowhere & swallowed a lot of nasty water. It is one extremely hilly course- which makes me feel a bit better about my not-so-great time. Triathamom feels like a baby course compared to this. You should really slow down a lot more than I did before jumping off your bike. I don't have to have music to work hard. That felt like an accomplishment in itself. You should not accidentally drop a safety pin in your sock. Good thing that didn't pop open! Even if you think your bike is fine, you should get it checked out when there is free tuning available, otherwise your gears that work best on the uphills might have gotten knocked out of whack on your drive. It is a pretty amazing thing to see the variety of women who will do this. Don't put limitations on yourself! The stories, the body types, the ages... They will inspire you. A .3 mile uphill to transition from swim is not very nice. For that matter, starting out uphill for bike and run isn't very pleasant either. My husband insists there are equal downhills for uphills but it certainly didn't feel that way. Sunrise glare makes it hard to see buoys. I should really stop not doing much of any training the month prior to the month of a major race. My time would probably be much better then. It also would have been helpful to do some bricks before....and to run more than 1.5 miles. Inhalers are good. Asthma attacks are not. Thank goodness for gels. Shakeology makes a pretty good pre-race breakfast. The Henderson PD were awesome for the support and it was great to feel safe on the bike & not have to stop. It is good to do hard things, things that scare you, and to check off your bucket list items. I pretty much rock. That's how finishing made me feel. You should do IronGirl, or some other triathlon for that reason alone. I did it. I felt good most of the time. I felt great finishing. Until next year!

I still don't like open water.

it's time

This lake and I have a date at sunrise.  IronGirl is in the morning.  My stomach is flipping out.  I'm supposed to go past that bridge there?!

I'm wearing this for inspiration:

summa-summa-summa-summatime

Dang, I feel like it's been forever since I blogged.  Having the kids home from school just plain throws all schedules crazy.  Prior to that, I had a cah-ray-zay week preparing for my great-grandma's 100th birthday party.  I had some stuff thrown on me last minute that required a whole lot more time than I think anyone even still realizes and I still needed to attempt to keep my house in order for company coming.  That was a sort of up and down week as I did catch myself falling into old behaviors of hyperfocusing and not eating.  However, I am proud to report that I caught on to that and forced myself to eat regularly and to devote time to self-care and exercise before it got too out of hand.  I was a bit disappointed in how far it went but I reminded myself that this is a journey and I am still progressing toward perfection, toward making my stumbling blocks my strengths.  Having my accountability group most definitely kept me from falling down into that spiral of starving/binging or stress eating because I had somewhere I needed to report to each night and real people to whom I was committed to being accountable to.

So that was a couple of weeks ago.  I took a day at the beginning of last week to recover from it all and then I set to having summer with my children.  I found myself actively engaging in their lives and being present in the moments.  In summers past we would have an outing once a week and that would generally be my limit for all the effort it took or because I just didn't want to be in public.  I don't know if it is that they are older or if it is the change in me, or if it was just a fluke week.... But we literally went somewhere every single day and it was my idea. We had a grand time visiting the park, the library, a warehouse sale, going out to lunch, spending the afternoon at the waterpark, going to the farmer's market, shopping and more.  Every night was one of those nights where I felt 'done' but in a glorious way.  I had decided I was going to really give my efforts an extra push in my workouts and my eating.  I did it and it felt good to stick to that.  I'm sure eating all that healthy food helped my energy and moods also.  Still, I felt like I was different.

I do need to report something big.  Remember when I said I would make it up that hill on my bike by the end of the summer?  I did it!  On Saturday.  DH had said a few weeks earlier "I don't see why you can't get up it now. I bet you could if you really tried."  It was enough to get me thinking.  I didn't make it up the hills on the triathlon in one fell swoop.  Most of the ladies' took a breather here and there.  So who was to say I couldn't get to the top if I just took some time along the way to catch my breath?  So that's precisely what I did.  I'll have to blog about that separately just because it was it's own accomplishment and boy did I have Satan putting those thoughts in my head.  Nevertheless, I made it!

So, guess what that means?  It means I took the plunge and I registered for IronGirl. Oh man, I got such crazy jitters and nerves for it that I had to distract myself right away.  I'm scared and nervous and excited all at once.  The best part though was when I told DH what I had done.  His face lit up just the way that it did watching our children take their first steps.  I wish I'd had a camera ready to capture that look because I'm convinced it will get me through any difficulty in training or in completing the race come race day.  I can do hard things....but it is the support of others, including my Heavenly Father, that gives me that ability.  There was another reason to me signing up for IronGirl on Monday.  It was the day after Father's Day.  For me, that means it was the anniversary of D-Day (discovery of my husband's addiction & when I asked him to leave) in our household.  I've had a lot of projects lately that have required going back through old photos or our 'history' and I've realized how much of my personal spiral of weight and whatnot really was tied to that D-Day and the time since.  It has been 3 years since that day.  So much has happened in that time.  I felt like I wanted to mark the day differently and mark it as my own rebirth somehow now, because it was what I needed.  I thought about how I feel jealous of the commitment of new moms to immediately get their pre-baby bodies back.  How 'if only' I'd done this sooner I wouldn't have been like this for so long.  How I've had it in me all along.  And yet, I know that I needed that time to get to this point.  Some people have big a-ha moments that solidify their testimonies.  For me, I have always received revelation and had my testimony built up line upon line and through small confirming signs that just sort of all add up for me.  I've always been that way.  When I prayed about whether marrying DH was the right thing for me to do, I didn't get some 'yes' answer.... I got several smaller answers that added up to a confirmed 'yes'.  It must be how I learn.  That is why I have to be easy on myself for allowing myself to be fat so long, for allowing myself to listen to others' voices instead of my own, for letting the negativity in, for feeling defeatist.  I can see now that I needed to take that journey deep into the dark abyss to get to the heart of it all, to be broken to the core, to feel myself being rebuilt to be stronger, only to then have the imperfect parts chipped away.  I know that it is a slow process and how quickly the last 3 years have passed when it seemed they never would helps me be more patient with myself.  It feels merciful.  I started multiple times in the last 3 years to lose the weight or to change my habits or to make myself better.  I am better in many ways.  However, the major change in my addictive behaviors requires a lot more effort and attention than I would have had the energy for in that time. I needed the life experiences to teach me things and show me my own strength and character along the way.  

Of course after making a major commitment and feeling like I'd reached a new and positive step in my journey, I would have to face a setback.  That's the way it goes right?  No sooner had I taken the photos below than I suddenly found myself stuck on my living room floor.  Turns out I pulled a muscle in my back, maybe two.  So this week has been far different from last.  My sweet children have been wonderful and largely cared for themselves.  My older children have been taking care of giving the youngest his breathing treatments since he has been sick.  They've brought me food in bed, get well cards, and not destroyed the house while I slept away the days.  Even just half a muscle relaxer completely knocks me out.  I finally got to do a little workout again today.  I wasn't sure if it would be okay or not but I could feel that pull.... that 'ease' of lying around....that little wagging finger of the dark side saying 'it's ok...just come hang out here for a while'.  So far, I'm still mobile (wasn't there for awhile).  It can be so depressing to have your body take such a far step backward but I'm confident that as the injury heals I will be able to give it my all again and the strength will quickly return.  That's how life is isn't it?

I'm pretty sure I was going to write more or I was going to go back and reread this to make sure it all flowed correctly.  At this point I'm just going to post it and be done with it.  I keep getting interrupted and I have children calling my name to make dinner.  So I suppose if it sounds a little strange I can just blame it on that, or on the pain pills that may still be in my system.  ;)  Hope you are all doing fabulously!  

good day.

It was a good day.  Which I needed after last night.  I survived my workout even though I wasn't sure I would a couple of times.  I took my measurements because I forgot to yesterday.  I'm basically back to where I was when I stopped P90X at the end of February.  I'm very happy about that, especially since that's just after a week.  Also, lost a full inch off just my waist.  In a week.  I'll take it!

I noticed after my shower today that my hair didn't 'shed' when I brushed it out.  I'm sure it's just a girl problem but brushing my hair out after the shower, or after having it in a ponytail, usually means at least a clump or two of broken hair strands following suit.  For me it's often also an indicator of my thyroid medication needing to be adjusted.  Well, it was so different today that I noticed.  That and the fact that my face always looks like I just put moisturizer on lately.  Could these really be effects of the changes I've made (cleaner eating, Shakeology, daily serious exercise) in only a week's time?  That seems crazy to me.  I feel like I'm crazy noticing these things- or that I'm just wanting to see something even.  Then DH told me today that I looked healthier....that he couldn't tell why or what it was but that I did.  What a great compliment, to look healthy.

I found out today that the date for IronGirl was changed to October.  It is normally held in May so I had decided I would really shoot for doing it next year.  But October?  My heart was racing every bit as fast as it did the night before I did the Triathamom race.  I think that means I need to do it.  The idea of doing it terrifies me.  The idea of finally doing something I told myself years ago that I wanted to do excites me.  It also still terrifies me.  Then again...I have sort of tried to do at least one thing each year that really scares me.  It's part of my growing process.  I've just got to come up with the money and I'm going to register.  AAahhh!  It makes me panicky to put even that.  This is my year though and I know I will be so ready for it by then.  There is nothing quite like that race.  I bawled for women I didn't even know as I watched their triumph in crossing that finish line.  I couldn't contain it and I had no idea why.... Only that I needed to be a part of it.  I hope I can.

Oh...and I bought myself some new workout clothes tonight because I am sweating so much in what I've got and just can't keep up with the laundry.  And I needed to get a size smaller than what I'd grabbed.

9 years.

Today is our 9-year anniversary.  I should be excited about it given that I didn't think we would make it here last summer- but I just can't seem to muster it.  I don't really care to celebrate it and I didn't get DH anything.

Last night I signed up for my first triathlon.  It's in Utah in September.  I'm planning on the fact that I've already paid and registered helping me stay more focused and on task with working out and eating well.  I already made better breakfast choices today.  Weighed myself today.  217.8 YUK! Ridiculous too!  I am going to make good choices and I am going to do a lot of documenting of my life this next year.

tri.

So it’s official. I’m doing a tri. Ladies, join me here: http://www.gotriathamom.com/ Seems like a good introductory one. I’ve been doing a lot of ‘self-work’ lately. It’s been hard. It’s been painful. It led to a bit of spiraling and regaining a ridiculous amount of weight…which then led to making some serious, honest assertions about myself….But whatev, it’s all good. It’ll be a slow change. As annoying as that is to me I know that is how it needs to be for me. Hopefully people don’t make too many judgments about me in the meantime. If they do…that’s their problem, not mine, right? You just never know what it is like for someone. That’s all I’m going to say. In any case, I’m doing this triathalon…and I’m gonna rock it just by completing it.