Rumspringa...My Tracy Anderson Transformation: Day 24: Another Barrier Broken vs Major Back Cramps

Friday, September 23, 2011

Day 24: Another Barrier Broken vs Major Back Cramps

Whew! We did it! Today I complete day 24 which means I officially broke my previous record of working out for 23 consisten workouts, woo hoo! It wasn't easy though! It's like I trade off between knee pain and shin pain which really hinders my workouts. Sometimes I work through the pain, and sometimes I step touch. However, I don't think there should be any pain at all except a good muscle burn. So I must promise myself that every other day I will exclusively jump on the rebounder. I love doing the dance cardio, I really am at the point where for the most part I enjoy. But this is not the type of pain that's meant to be worked through. It's the type of pain where my body is saying, hey you've got to modify this. So...promise to myself...I will rebound every other day exclusively :( I really wanted to stick to the program. At least the good thing is that mentally I am not copping out. I have to remind myself of that. I've even tried ignoring it, so I know my problem isn't mental. It is purely physical and is something that I believe will work itself out in time. Imagine jumping around when I'm carrying 50 less pounds, and on the flip of that I actually have extra muscles to help lift myself. Yes...I am making the right decision :)

I must say too that rebounding is a mood lifter! I combine it with music that my body naturally moves to and makes me happy and voila, I suddenly feel better and have energy.

I started my workout today with ten minutes of Tracy's beginning cardio. The thing I like about it, is that it's choreographed moves so I feel like a dancer. But the lame part is you have to skip around a lot to find the actual segments on the DVD so there is stop and go rather than continuous flow (which Tracy herself has said it's important to not do stop and go). I continue to be confused by how smart she is at her method, yet how un-thorough she is at editing her products. Oh well, for what Tracy can deliver I'm willing to take the bad with the good. But anyway, the reason I only did ten minutes was that I suddenly a sever lower back cramp that encapsulated my entire lower back. I've gotten these maybe once a year since jr high. They used to no be as severe and they used to be unprovoked. However, this is the second time I've gotten it while doing her method in recent times and if I recall correctly I was going the same cardio video the last time too! I've figured out that I have to hop in a warm shower, and stretch and stretch my back until the pain goes away. It prolly took 15 minutes or so, but it is certainly among the most painful things I have personally experienced. Thankfully, it passed and in spite of being all wet from the shower, I persevered. I took a little break and then started on my L3 mat work followed by the dance cardio dvd. I was only gonna do 20 minutes since I had already done ten earlier, but I kept going (I think due to mostly using the rebounder and listening to fun music...it's powerful stuff I tell ya). Then I was enjoying my music and rebounding so much I did an additional 15 minutes on the rebounder. Woo Hoo! Hope the rebounder delivers on its promises like improving skin tone and firmness and helping aid in detoxification of the body.

So you know how I decided to postpone my Monday workout to Saturday? Well...I wish I hadn't. weekends are just more busy and my parents are home so I don't feel like I can have as much of a peaceful workout space as on weekdays. Anywho, I really did want to spend time with my bf on Monday since it was his day off, but now that it's the end of the week...well all I can say is next time I will remember that it is not worth it to have 3 days off in a row, and it is worth it to be done with working out by Friday. I don't know if I will ever get used to working out 6 days a week. I know that right now my body really needs the extra break that comes from having two days off in a row.

In the middle of my leg work today, I was getting really irritated because with certain moves (ones that are designed to make the butt burn) I just can't tell if the angle on my leg is right. It's frustrating. I feel the burn for sure though, and for now that's all that matters. I can definitely tell you these butt moves have an anti-gravtiy effect because when I saw my butt this morning it was definitely lifted, so at the end of the day at least I know that whatever I'm doing is having an effect and that's a good thing :)

I must admit, I would say I've been obsessed with all things TAM these last couple weeks. With my bf working full time now, I've had a lot more time to myself. So I spend a ton of time online reading other people's blogs, going on the various TAM forums, adding my two cents, reading what other people have to say, watching youtube videos, watching her on QVC and the infomercial. It's at least a healthy obsession. It's a lot better than just eating all day which is a coping mechanism I have. But at the same time, it's like I can only physically workout for a certain amount of time each day before it is too much for my body and mind to handle. So while I'm exerting all this extra energy into TAM time (non-workout activities) it doesn't actually produce extra results. Which would be fine except that I can tell I'm getting impatient for results to come. I'm tired of being in pain both in my knees and now my shins. And I'm even tired of feeling the burn while working out. I'm tired of being out of breath and I'm tired of rolling the rug out of the way and assembling my trampoline every day.

I don't want to take a break though, so that's good. I can tell that I would feel guilty if I deliberately got off my TAM schedule. Not like I'm a bad person, but just that I know my desire is to keep doing it, and my being doesn't want to quit, not in the least. I just don't want to be in pain. More than anything, I'm tired of my pants digging into my waist. Other than yoga pants, I have one pair of work pants and one pair of jeans. Both those pants seem to have shrunk over time (haha, the truth is my stomach widened). And it just feels like enough already. Right now I'm not asking to go down a size even. I just want all this hard work to result in my pants not being uncomfortably tight on me. Maybe I should just buy new pants :( I know I'm having a tantrum moment, but I don't want to! I want to feel like all my hard work has amounted into just this small little favor that my pants don't dig into my tummy. I did decide I would stop washing and drying my pants though(unless they really need it) cuz when they come out of the dryer that's the worst!

Sigh...maybe in another month, my pants will actually fit me. Grrr...I'm mad cuz I'm really proud of myself for working out and I don't want not fitting into my pants to bum me out. Boo :(

It's okay, I'm on the right path...patience is not some metaphorical concept, it is real. And patience will amount to something. Just give it some time. You know when you're climbing up the wall, sometimes it may not feel like you're getting anywhere. The wall looks the same from top to bottom. You look up it an down it, and while at some point you can tell you've made progress many days feel the same as the day before. The wall does have milestones along the way. But there are some stretches of the wall that look exactly the same. However, the truth is as long as I'm moving foward, I will keep moving up the wall. I will, it's true! I'll reach my mini-milestones (inches & pounds lost, straighter posture, more energy) along the way. In spite of my brain having anxiety moments, I can tell you the wall is on my side. The wall continues to extend a hand and cheer me on even though I cannot yet see a difference, a difference exists. While each day doesn't result in a tangible milestone, each day absolutely builds upon the next. There will be no drop in pant size on day "X" if days "A"-"W" don't take place. You don't leap over the wall. In order to get over it, you just do one step at a time. I suppose each day really is a milestone afterall :)

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What has Made This Time Different?

I have attempted to try to stick to an exercise routine so many times in my life, and yet I've rarely made it past a week or two at the most. This time has been a whole new experience, and this is a list of the reasons why (subject to change). Perhaps one or all of these will resonate with you too:

1) I have a simple, mental, visual analogy to help me focus on the bigger picture: In the past I've dieted and exercised and wondered why am I not losing weight? The key was that I wasn't consistent. The truth was that my efforts were sporadic rather than stacking one on top of the other. So it felt like I had exerted so much energy (which I had), but because it was not one foot in front of the other, my efforts did not stack up to any actual results. This made the most sense to me once I understood the the visual analogy of climbing a wall. My goal (lose weight/get fit) was to get over this wall. My attempts to get over the wall included climbing up (working out, dieting). However, I was constantly climbing back down the wall without realizing it (getting off the dieting, not exercising). Over time, I was exhausted from climbing up and didn't understand why I had not yet made it over, after all I had put in a lot of effort. It was then that I realized that every time I stop exercising, I am not picking up from where I left off the next time I start up again. Instead, I have to start from the very bottom of the wall. The steps up the wall do not help you climb over unless the are consistenly moving in a forward direction upward. While this may seem simple, and easy to understand intellectually, it was something I had to understand in the form of an epiphany. It was the first step to me being able to be consistent with my Tracy Anderson Method.

2) Make the goal about following through with the actions, rather than just focusing on the end results: Now that I understood that consistency was such an important factor in being successful with my goal, I had to figure out how to actually be consistent when I had never before been able to. It was so hard for me to imagine getting past level 1, because in my previous attempts I had learned how to do a few days of level 1, feel defeated, take a break, and then start over on level 1 again once I felt like I just couldn't take being overweight any more. My brain only understood how to stop and start over, so it just couldn't imagine what it felt like to move forward to L2-L9 and beyond. So, I made a commitment to myself that I did not even have to do the levels if I did not want to, but that I would play the videos every day as though I were doing them, just for the sake of my brain understanding what that would feel like. Amazingly enough, this triggered something in my brain so that it could at least entertain the possibility of experiencing the program beyond level 1.

3) Don't tell anyone I am learning to establish an exercise routine, until I'm on a roll. I understand using someone as an accountability buddy, and I do think that is helpful. But for me, I found that when I told people I was starting to exercise I diverted energy away from my goal (establish a regular exercise routine). So when I used to tell people, "oh I'm starting something new" people kindly wanted to know how it's going, how much I've lost, all these reasonable questions. For me, that added an extra pressure that I just didn't need. I didn't want to be accountable to anyone but myself, and I because I am someone who worries too much about what other people think, it just served me better to start the journey on my own and learn from my own experiences, learn to trust myself and my own instinct, and feel free to experiment without fearing judgements from others.

4) Don't make any changes to diet initially, but instead first focus on making exercise a regular part of my routine. Learning to exercise regularly and consistently & eating nutritiously are both lofty goals in and of themselves. To do both simultaneously has never ever worked for me. For my brain, my emotions, my inability to adapt to change, it was far too large an undertaking to attempt diet exercise simultaneously. For me, exercise is the easier place to start because it feels more in my control. There are only two choices (to exercise or not), and it is completely up to me, and not influenced by much else. On the other hand, food requires more preparation what with shopping, and storing and cooking, and taking food with me places. Exercise is just once a day whereas eating is something to work on multiple times throughout the day. Another thing is that if I attempted exercise and diet at the same time, if I did poorly in one area that day, it wiped out any good work I did in the other area (in my mind), and made me want to give up on BOTH. Exercise is the place to start for me.

5) Accept that my objectives are long-term and therefore no matter how hard I work, I will not be skinny in a month or two. But a year from now and for the rest of my life I will be.

6) Keep a blog or journal. For me, blogging has enabled me to see that some days are challenging, but there are also other days are easier. It is easy to forget the good days when I'm just focusing on the negative one at hand. Blogging allows me to go back and remember the positive things I've gained and learned along my journey.

7) Exercise with a buddy in the beginning to help make exercise a daily habit. While I didn't tell anyone about working out until about 2 weeks after I'd started, after that when I told my friend she was excited and wanted to try it out too. We exercised together for about two weeks, and that helped me establish a routine of exercising first thing in the morning consistenly.

8) Immerse myself in the success of others. I read others' blogs and success stories and facebook and the TA forum. www.masteringthemethod.com was such a great tool because it was the first visual I had to understand that this was going to be a journey and a process. It is so easy to see the "before" and "afters" and think that 1 week or a month of commiting will take me from before to after. Being able to see the "during" as well made such a difference to my brain because it was like the missing piece of the puzzle to understand this is not in any shape or form an overnight, overweek, or overmonth process. It showed me the bridge from "before" through "during" to "after".

9) Watch and re-watch and watch again Tracy's informercial and multiple visits to QVC. Especially the first month I watched them almost every day. Seeing the informercial is the pique of excitement in the beginning of a new exercise routine. Watching the infomercials help me remember the feelings I had in the beginnning and reminds me why I began this journey in the first place.

10) Trust Tracy, yourself, and those who have come before you, and have faith that while you can't imagine it today, each step you take will lead you to your after as it has for so many others.

11) Let go of being a perfectionist. Being a perfectionist prevented me from succeeding 100% of the other times I've attempted to exercise. It was vital to learn to only do whatever my personal abilites are and nothing more. Understanding and believing that I would build from wherever I was starting, as there is no need to exhaust myself physically and mentally by exercising beyond my capabilites was again instrumental. The very first time I tried metamorphosis, I was beyond defeated and in tears as there was no way I was gonna be able to do 40 reps of all the leg exercises as she did. I initially would pause the TV after every exercise attempting to complete 40 reps like Tracy was going. Helllllloooo, Tracy is in shape and she invented the method for goodness sake. I never exercised and was carrying around at least 50 pounds that didn't need to be there. Because I couldn't be "perfect" I thought I couldn't do the method. This was completely false. Finally, I figured out that I just had to do whatever reps I was able to do while she was doing the same exercise. Then when she moved on, I moved on to the next move. Suddenly my abilites were increasing, just by doing my personal best. It was the same thing with the cardio. It was important to me to play the whole tape, but that didn't mean I had to be jumping the whole time. Instead, I would step touch or march in place, drink some water. The point is that I got to experience what 30 minutes of cardio would feel like, and eventually be able to build up to it. I can now do an hour of cardio :)

...to be continued

Rumspringa...My Tracy Anderson Transformation

90 Day Metamorphosis with Tracy Anderson

Friday, September 23, 2011

Day 24: Another Barrier Broken vs Major Back Cramps

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