Rumspringa...My Tracy Anderson Transformation: Day 20: TGIF

Friday, September 16, 2011

Day 20: TGIF

Another great workout day! I really enjoyed my new playlist which included songs like "Forget You" sung by Gwyneth Paltrow (I feel like a total TAM nerd whenever I listen to that while doing Meta cuz Gwyneth is Tracy's business partner), "Mama Mia" sung by A*Teens, and a couple Lady Gaga songs. Music really energizes me and gets me through my cardio. In fact, I was so enthusiatic with my cardio, that my legs were quite worn out when it came time to do my mat work. However, since the weekend (my rest days) are upon me, I really continued to give it my all knowing that my body would have plenty of time to recover.

A cool bonus today was that I noticed my standing posture was perfectly straight. Before when I tried to stand up straight it felt very unnatural to me, but twice today I noticed that my natural inclination is to stand up straight now! I feel like I've developed some core muslces somewhere in my back and abs that helped. My sitting posture is still slouched, but I'm sure in time that will change too.

Another exciting milestone today: I finished all ten days of level 2 which means come Monday I will be onto level 3! When I realized this I actually felt nostaligice and slightly sad to move on in addition to being excited. It is again about finding balance between being happy to move onto better things, while appreciating what I've experienced so far. But anywho, such commitment and consistency is just so unheard of for me considering my self-diagnosed ADD, and my lifelong struggle with procrastination coupled with a fear of failure.

I really have made many subtle mental changes that have contributed to different results. One that stands out in my mind is that I made my goal not to do the DVD's but to just play them every day for 90 days (a solid baby step). I told myself I could do as little or none of the exercises but I was commited to playing the full hour everyday just so that my brain could feel what it felt like to experience that. Well, apparently it really did trigger something in my brain that suddenly my brain understood what it felt like to move beyond level one (which is as far as I've gotten the past 3 times I've attempted to do this program). I think it also took the pressure off a bit because I felt fairly confident that playing the DVD's was something I could do. Mind you I still wasn't 100% confident if you can believe it. My brain went into "what if?" mode...what if there's a major natural disaster and I'm relocated from my home; what if I suddently get a job that is so beyond full time that I don't have an hour to spare; what if I get really sick; what if I move;...clearly I have a lot of cobwebs in my brain, these automatic negative thoughts that just make it feel impossible to accomplish things. It's so odd because part of my brain will understand that over the course of my whole life I've only moved maybe 5 times, and that was all before the age of 5. Other than that, none of those things have happened to me yet these thoughts feels very legitimate and scary.

My BF tells me a lot of the time when I'm struggling that I just need to think more positively and less negatively, and I don't disagree with him. But there is a difference between understanding that intellectually and actually feeling it. Plus much of the time I feel like when I'm thinking positively I'm lying to myself and when I'm being naturally negative it's because I'm telling myself the truth.

I remember the first time I attempted to do Metamorphosis (back around FEB 2011) and I wasn't able to do all the reps for the leg exercises (on level 1 she has about 6 exercises you do on each leg for 40 reps per exercise). I would look at Tracy (who weighs at least 50 lbs less than me, and who btw also invented the method,) but I was nearly in tears feeling so defeated because I couldn't do all the moves. I thought, I am too out of shape to be able to do this. Later on, I heard Tracy say on her visit to QVC that you should just do whatever reps you were able to do at whatever level your body is at. I had been suspecting this, but when I heard her give me permission to do it, it gave me the confidence that what I was thinking had been correct. So I decided I would not count reps, I would not pause to catch my breath, I would do whatever I was able to do while she worked and then I just had faith that my body would grow on its own trajectory of where I was starting from. Turns out it was a good lesson in trusting my instincts because I now feel proud and empowered when I do whatever I can, rather than defeated and exhaused.

As it turns out, my negative thinking (this is too hard) was actually the lie, and my positive thinking (my best is good enough) was actually the truth in this case. It made me realize that I need to figure out truly positive truths that are stronger than my negative "truths" in order to feel good emotionally, and not feel like I'm lying to myself about being positive. This is a tool I will try to use in the future to overcome my negative thinking. It's gotten me this far, so we'll see where else it takes me :)

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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 16, 2011

Day 20: TGIF

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