Mixin' it up.

I'm a creature of habit. Big time. I don't get easily bored of eating the same foods or feel the dreaded stagnation of a routine in the gym for months after months. But this is of course all relative. I say this because, compared to most people I know, I can eat the same foods for longer and do the same workout routines more.

However, I do tend to make small adjustments every so often to spice things up a bit. I think, on some level, we all need this. I think I might just need it a bit less than most. A lot of this comes from my disordered eating days of having "safe foods" and only feeling comfortable if I was doing the same thing in the same way day after day. While I don't have such strict requirements anymore, I still find routine reassuring.

Recently, though, I've found that I haven't been quite as excited to go to the gym. This is due to several things in my opinion. One is that I've been traveling more than I typically do, which tends to be tough on my body (I'm pretty bad at working out when I travel). It's also become a bit frustrating to continue my run-to-the-gym, do the elliptical, lift, walk back to work when it's gotten much colder out. The short run to the gym starts to hurt my lungs (I'm a terrible winter runner...I hate it). The elliptical, even though it's great for my joints, is starting to bore me, and on top of this, I don't feel like I'm actually working as hard as I could.

The body adapts. This is what it's good at. The problem with me loving routine so much is that my body pretty much gets optimized for doing that set routine. Sure, I lift, run, walk, do the elliptical and that's variety in and of itself, but I felt like it was time for a bit of a change -- nothing too drastic, just something to mix it up.

Enter spin class.

Now let me say, I'm not a big "fitness class" fanatic. I took several in college, and only really LOVED one. It was taught by probably the most in-shape, muscle-burn-loving teacher you could imagine who had a great taste in music and could have probably been both a cheerleader and a drill sergeant. Her class eventually became so crowded that she had to teach another to accommodate all the students.

Every other fitness class I've taken (at any gym), I haven't been a fan of. I've taken yoga, step, aerobic dance, kickboxing, kickboxing bag, and weight training/resistance band classes. They were always ok. I didn't hate them, but I also always just preferred working out by myself.

Not my thing.

So I was hesitant to try the spin class offered at Duke. Also, I'm not a big fan of stationary bikes, which before I took the spin class, assumed meant that I would also dislike spinning (there is a big difference thank goodness!).


After the first class I tried I was dripping in sweat and had trouble doing squats several days later. Clearly this was something that was challenging for my body. The bikes were also much different than either the regular bike I occasionally ride or the stationary bikes at the gym. I liked the loud music, the fact that it was taught in a dark room (lit only with a string of Christmas lights around the top) and the fact that it was a really good workout.

My new thing.

I've been hooked ever since. I take express classes every Wednesday and sometimes Friday now. They are taught during lunch and are 30 minutes of quad-tearing, glute-screaming pain. Which I enjoy.

It's also given me a welcome change of pace from my normal routine. I now don't stress so much if I don't get an amazing workout on the elliptical, or if I just want to stay bundled up and walk to the gym instead of run.

One caveat I've found though is that the quality of the class (not necessarily the workout though!) is really at the mercy of the instructor. I've experienced 3-4 different ones at Duke who have ranged from everything from ok to awesome. Thankfully I haven't had any bad ones. Some are easier than others. Some prefer hills to speed work. Some focus on more drills with fancy names and less riding. But overall it's a pretty good mix.

Trip to Orlando

Last week I attended a conference in Orlando. The optics was definitely good, but let me say -- I don't think I've been in many situations where I was trapped into eating specific food (except for at relatives' gatherings and holidays) as much as I was here.

I thought there would be plenty of choices. When I've went to conferences before, if I don't find food I like at the venue where the conference is, I just go walking in the city/town until I find a place that seems like they would have something healthier and load up on that, and return to the conference. I don't mind wandering for food. That's what our ancestors did, after all, and walking usually gives me a nice break to clear my head and be outside. Since I was in Orlando, I figured there would be plenty of places to walk to near the hotel, as well as maybe a cafe or gift shop in the hotel.

The beautiful hotel!

Now let me start off by saying, this wasn't any hotel. It was probably the most expensive hotel I've ever stayed in (thankfully my travel grants pay for it). Now here's the thing about expensive hotels...nothing is cheap or free in them. I took a look at the restaurants in the hotel (there are about 4-5..one is just a lounge/sushi bar) and was shocked. The appetizers were between 12-18$ and the meals, anywhere from 20-60$ depending on lunch/dinner and what you ordered. Being that it was also fancy, there weren't many options (most only had one chicken dish on the whole thing!). Doing this research before hand I came up with several plans to avoid having to eat at the restaurants.

Plan 1: Hotels always serve continental breakfast. Usually they include healthy(ish) cereals, fruit, maybe a whole wheat bagel or muffin. My plan was to get my breakfast and take a few extra things for snacks or a meal if need be during the day.

Issue with Plan 1: Remember I said really expensive hotels don't give anything for cheap/free? Yea. No continental breakfast.

None of this :-(

Plan 2: Find a close grocery store/convenience store and go load up on lower calorie things that I could eat for the few days. My room had a fridge in it, so I could get some things to take back that were perishable too!

Issue with Plan 2: The closest store was (as the crow flies) a little over a mile away (win!)...BUT the fastest way there was over 3 miles on fast roads with NO sidewalks! It amazed me, but as soon as you left the hotel complex, the sidewalks just stopped. No one walked here! I didn't see one person out walking on the road leading up to the hotel...it was just simply not meant for walking. Also, the hotel was surrounded by a moat and thus swamp land and thus alligators. This meant, with no sidewalk my choice was walk on the busy road or next to the swamp. I would have chosen the road...but neither was really a good choice.

Plan 3: See how long my protein bars and half a box of crackers I brought in my backpack would last.

Issue with Plan 3: Not long!

I was basically stuck with the hotel food. For the first day I really tried to eat the slimmest meals I could. I had a protein bar for breakfast (free-ish). I got a turkey sandwich from the cafe (only 8.52$ it was the cheapest thing on the menu). And I can't remember what I had for dinner, but it wasn't bad.

I met a few people who had rented a car and they had been going out for lunches and dinners because it was too expensive (even for professors!) at the hotel. I went to a tapas style place where I had chicken quesadillas and tried alligator!  On the last day I went to a Thai place and had chicken pad thai (which is one of my favourites).

Gator "bites"...Didn't really love them. The best part was the honey mustard :-/

The thing was, with every passing day, I just gave up a little more on trying to eat healthily. The fact that there were almost 10-12 straight hours of talks, combined with "networking opportunities" combined with me being so nervous about giving my talk, just made hunting for healthy/cheaper food options that much harder, and that much more tiring. Four days of unheathly eating and probably almost 3-4x the calories my body was used to wouldn't kill me. But it definitely did not make me feel good. Sure, the cinnamon bun for breakfast because they only had baked goods and no normal breakfast was one of the most delicious things I've had in a while....but I was SUPER hungry again 2 hours later. I always felt hungry there. And I never felt "good" after eating...just full, in the unpleasant way.

So goood, but so bad....

Coming back here was hard too. Everything seemed a bit blander after my sugary, buttery, cheesy, greasy food from there. But boy does my body feel better. I didn't even work out this weekend but I can feel the difference. Of course, it's probably due to not being too stressed out anymore too. I am very thankful that I don't have to go to these types of events very often.

What I've learned:

1). It's ok to go a couple days eating this way, but if you do, be prepared not to feel great in the long run and have food you used to think was super delicious be only ok when you come back. The taste buds will bounce back, but it'll take a few days.

2). Bring more protein bars next time. And maybe more crackers and something healthy to snack on.

3). Alligator is wayyy too chewy and a mix between chicken and fish, but not really as good as either. Don't eat it.

4). Be so thankful for a boyfriend who cooks DELICIOUS food for you all the time. And tell him you're thankful!

Do things ever really "get easier"?

Yes and no.

I've been thinking a lot about this question recently. Is eating any easier? Is letting go of a stringent exercise routine easier? Is eating different food easier? Not counting calories all the time?

For the most part, I would say that yes, yes it's getting easier. That is to say, I stress less when I don't hit the number I want for a given day. If I'm too sore to do a full workout, that's starting to be more ok. And I've survived several weekends away eating food I'm completely unfamiliar with and having to eat more than I normally would.

But what do I mean by survive? Is that the same thing as success? My answer: some days it has to be.

I've gained ~ 1.6-2.2 lbs. In the past two months or so. I know I have gained this because I now weigh 113.2. Since Christmas I have fluctuated between 110-112 with exactly TWO instances where I have gone outside of this (one I hit 109.8, which violated Ryan and my agreement so I ate more and once where I hit 112.2). I was upset about this, of course, but not devastated. I didn't immediately start planning out 100 calories meals and schedule in an extra 2 hours at the gym. I know better than that now.

But there's still a part of me that says I'm getting lazy. I'm slacking. I'm not going to succeed (whatever that means) if I keep cutting corners, if I have an extra handful of Chex Mix without counting it.

So is it really easier?

That's why it's both yes and no. Yes, a lot of things are easier, but at the same time the uncharted territory of being less strict, more relaxed makes me upset and nervous still. Things are easier on a schedule. They are easier when they are planned out. They are easier when you don't eat as much and you don't have to stock the fridge as often. But that's just on the surface. They aren't really easier because all the time you save not making food or shopping for it, you spend thinking about it. And all the extra time in the gym that you convince yourself makes you "feel better", really just drains you to the point where you can't play with your dogs or focus on a good conversation.

I'm not sure this post is either hopeful or pessimistic. It's just the truth for me as I've come to realize it. That sometimes things are easier and not easier at the same time. The physics term for this is a quantum superposition. Just in case you wanted to know :-)

Traveling....

....is hard. It's hard for several reasons. It's hard on my body, physically. I don't travel well. It's hard on my stomach. And finally, it's hard on my mind. But it's been getting better.

Let me explain a little bit more.

1). Traveling is hard on my body.

My body is stable within pretty narrow conditions. Changing climate, altitude, pressure, temperature, food type or daily activity typically causes any combination of the following: nausea, headaches, sinus pressure, exhaustion, allergies, grouchiness (this counts, right?) aka. mood swings, and decreased appetite.

I am Figure 2.

Often times, when I would return home from college for a break I would get sick almost immediately at home, or if it were a weekend visit, upon my return to school. Even though it was a mere 4-5 hours between college and home, it was still a bit too much for my immune system.

Car trips seem especially hard, although long flights are also difficult. Emmy, my pup, feels the same way. While our other two dogs tend to fall asleep on long car trips, Emmy gets wary/anxious and will stay awake. Although I don't always stay awake, I share her wariness and anxiety.

Freya, unlike me, is particularly happy in cars.

Food on long car trips:

Because of my inability to stabilize my body during long trips, I tend to try not to eat too much before or during the trip. My stomach doesn't do well anyways in the car (unless I'm sleeping), so I try not to make it worse when I'm driving.

Sometimes I will bring crackers or a Quest bar if it's a particularly long trip, but often times Ryan and I will just wait to eat until we arrive at our destination.


2). Traveling is hard on my stomach

I stated this in the last section where by "traveling" I meant the act of traveling (the actual driving/flying etc), but traveling in the generic sense of "staying somewhere else" is also very hard on my stomach. As you know by now, I'm a creature of habit. I like eating similar food, although I have a good repertoire, but traveling often puts a wrench in that.

When you go to someone's house as a guest, you are socially expected to eat whatever they prepare. There is the assumption that they, being the gracious host/hostess, have prepared a meal for you, in a polite gesture back to them, you eat what they serve. This is typical of most cultures -- not just ours.

I have the good fortune of visiting family that makes sure that they have at least some things prepared that I will eat. Because I don't eat any red meat or fish this often means they make some sort of chicken.

Some of the delicious, yet different, food I had this weekend.

Regardless, however, of their consideration, often the food is very different from the food I normally eat. As you may suspect, this tends to leave me feeling quite sick, even though what I consume at the time is delicious.

This is nobody's fault of course, except maybe mine for not trying tons of different food. I like what I like and stick to foods that don't affect my body in negative ways -- but when offered food that I know someone has gone out of their way to prepare for me, it's quite hard to explain that even though it may be in the same food group as food I tend to eat, it will still leave me feeling sick, simply because of how differently it is prepared.

3). Traveling is hard on my mind.

This has to do with the ED side of my mind more than anything else. I don't know how many calories I'm eating. I do know that it's a lot more and that I'm not exercising enough. I don't have the safety of my routine. So my head likes to worry. How many days can I do this before I start gaining weight? How much is polite to eat but not so much that I have to spend the next week making up for it?

These questions are a lot easier now than they used to be. I used to never want to travel for fear I couldn't know exactly what was in my food and how many calories I consumed. It's getting better...slowly. But that doesn't mean its not still a battle. It may always be one. But at least I feel like I'm winning now :-).

Summer foods make me happy.

Ahh. It's been a while since I posted. I will slowly try to catch up on some of the stuff that's been going on. Let's just start with the main things:

1). My back is "healing" (I think/hope) nicely. 

Basically I have been staying away from A LOT of exercises. I mentioned in a previous post that I basically stopped Back Day. I mostly work my shoulders & lats on back day instead. I have stopped a lot of leg day. However in the past two weeks I have started incorporating squats back into my routine. Today I hit 135x4 which was hard and humbling. Working my way back up.

I have been doing one Chest & Arm workout, one Arm Only workout, and then one combined Shoulders/Lats/Legs Workout a week. So 3 lift/total workouts a week instead of 4. I walk the dogs 1-2 miles every non-workout day instead and sometimes try to run if I'm not going to lift.

All in all, it has been helping a lot. The other thing that helps is that I've been traveling for the past two weekend (not including this one). Even though the car makes my back pretty sore, the lack of workouts or long time at the shelter has probably factored into the recovery some.

2). Eating hasn't been as healthy.

I attribute this to several reasons. Amoung them is that every day I have to fight that feeling of "Well I'm not working out a lot so I don't need as much protein. May as well have ice cream instead." I have eaten a lot of ice cream in the past month or two.

Traveling makes it a lot harder to control portion sizes (except by eye) and makes food choices less available. It's not that I absolutely couldn't eat the same way, but its a lot easier to eat what everyone else is eating and just try to eat a bit less. This is what I've been trying to do. But it still makes for several meals that aren't quite as healthy.

We've also recently added a third baby (puppy) to our pack. She's grown into a very loved family member, but the past month and a half have taken a lot of work getting all of us there. I haven't been at work as long because I've had to come home earlier for her. This cuts down on workout time some and definitely takes away some energy.

The above excuses are all things I'm working on now. I'm trying to eat more healthily regardless of how much working out or traveling I do. But it's tough for sure. I think it has just gotten the best of me recently.

3). But my love of summer foods will help fix number 2!

Summer is actually one of my favourite seasons in which to eat. A few of my favourite things recently are:

a). Strawberries. I pretty much have these in the fridge every week. They make the perfect snack to eat when I get home and I want to last another hour until dinnertime. They are so perfect now, and not to mention almost always on sale!

Delicious!!!

b). Salads. I love them. They are pretty and filling and delicious! Back when I had more serious issues with counting calories, I would use salads as a way to fill up without having a lot of calories. Basically I wouldn't use a lot of cheese, no dressing at all, ever(!), and definitely no nuts or seeds or anything that would add more calories. Basically I just had lettuce, peppers, cucumbers and chicken. Nowadays I'm loving lite honey mustard. Tonight's salad had Romaine hearts, a variety of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries (they're perfect in salads too!), crumbled feta, grilled chicken and lite honey mustard dressing. And it was delicious. I usually make enough to get 2-3 salads out as well :-)

Dinner tonight & Lunch tomorrow :-)

c). Grilled chicken & grilled veggies. I love food on the grill! Ryan is such a good griller. Although it's been raining the past couple weeks, we usually grill out at least one a week. I typically have marinated chicken or turkey burgers. He usually goes for the red meat and has burgers or steak or kabobs of some sort. I love grilled zucchini and squash as well.

Healthy shopping cart!

What do you love about summer foods?

Recovery

Since badly injuring my back and developing Sciatica from my inflamed muscles pushing on the nerve I have had to learn a few valuable lessons.

1). Listen listen listen to your body!

This is a hard one for me because I tend to be of the mindset of "Pain is good when you're working out. More pain = harder work" etc... But there are different kinds of pain. Not only have I been learning the difference between them, but I've also learned that some pains will lead you to incapacity instead of great capacity.

2). When there is the bad kind of pain, patience is the first thing you need.

The whole Rest Ice Compress Elevate (RICE) thing is good too. Add some heat, some stretching, some PT approved exercises for "core strength" and a loving boyfriend who will massage at a moment's notice and you've got a recipe for recovery. These are all active things though. Things that you do. Patience is something you must have in order to recover. This is probably the hardest part of recovery for me.

3). You don't need to workout as hard as you did in the past.

In fact, if you try, you'll just stay injured. Instead of doing what I used to do, I've had to cut back a lot of specific exercises, switch some exercises. Here are a few examples:

I now lift 3 days/week. I have cut out most exercises on "Back Day" and "Leg Day". I can still do the following:

Back:

Face-pulls (works muscles of upper back/shoulders)
Lat Pulldowns (works upper back and lats)
Back Extensions on a machine (Lower back but way easier on the muscles than Hypers)

...yeah thats about all I do for back now other than my PT exercises.

I combine this workout with my "Legs" workout sometimes.

Legs:

Hip Abductors (I am severely lacking mobility in my hips which may have been a cause for getting injured in the first place)
Leg Curls (machine)
Leg Extensions (sitting machine...the standing one puts more torque on the back)

Today I actually squatted for the first time though...after several months of doing very little leg-wise. I did the bar and the bar plus 25s. So little compared to what I'm used to...but remember...patience.

I've used this recovery (and am still using it) to learn the lessons above. I'm trying to really focus on the movement and the muscles, even at light weights while also getting back into running more. Hopefully, once I fully recover I will be able to do more, but I think the important thing is that, even if I never get back to deadlifting or squatting as high as I used to, I'm still happy that I can workout as much as I do and humbled by the lessons I'm learning.

MFP

I have counted calories since I was about 14 years old. It's been both a good and a bad thing, and although I haven't done it every day since I was 14, I would say I did it a large portion of those days. Going back through old boxes I always find a food journal with calorie counts in it.

I'm at the point where I can read through these journal now and feel a bit sad at how little I used to eat and how miserable I was doing it. Regardless of how it was, I knew I had to do it. It started out as education -- a way to understand how much I was actually eating when I was overweight. This is one of the first things that nutritionists (like my sister!) tell their patients to do to lose weight: start keeping track of everything you eat.

In the beginning, it was good. I realized I ate a lot more than I needed and started cutting back. I was 14. Dieting was something everyone did, right? Well, like the typical type-A perfectionist I was, I didn't half-ass the calorie counting. I made sure I did it "perfectly".

Some examples of the obsessive perfection were weighing/measuring all food, looking up nutritional info on multiple sites and averaging them to get the most accurate outcome, and making sure not to eat anything I didn't know nutritional information for.

Eventually, as the eating disorder started taking over, counting became more and more important and obsessive. However, sometimes I believe that not counting would have been worse. When I didn't count, I drastically overestimated how much I was eating so that I wouldn't gain weight. At least with calorie counting I could eat as much as I would allow myself without low-balling it. Now, I'm not suggesting this is a good thing, but for a brief time when I tried not counting calories, it was much worse.

As I've recovered, one might think that I would have stopped counting as much. The truth is, I haven't -- I'm just less obsessive about it. I still need a certain amount of control and knowledge of what I'm eating. So I still "count" which is defined much more loosely now then it used to be. I weigh and measure foods as well, but I can eat out at a restaurant without worrying now.

The reason I wanted to talk about calorie counting today is that I believe it's actually helpful for me. Now its not just calories that I like looking at, but how much protein I get, how many carbs and how much fat. I can spot trends now based on calories and macros. I can correlate it to cravings, mood swings, energy levels and so on. I like the knowledge. I think knowledge is usually good as long as its not misused.

My calorie/macro counter/food journal of choice has now switched to an online one: MyFitnessPal. I no longer fill up journal after journal of paper -- but an online one instead. It has cool apps to make charts of things like protein or net calories over periods of time which I also like (cause I'm a nerd!).

It has a feature that tells you how many days you've logged onto it in a row. Today marks my 500th day, which was why I wanted to write about this. It's a lot of days, but something I do so naturally, and hopefully healthily now, that I think of it as an accomplishment.