Rumspringa...My Tracy Anderson Transformation: Day 31: Level 4 Rocks my Socks!

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Day 31: Level 4 Rocks my Socks!

So today I started a new level today, on a Sunday. For the past three levels I had been taking weekends off, but I wanted to see if I could kick things up a notch and go for the full 6 days a week. So far so good, and I must say that I was so relieved and happy to discover that I LOVED level 4! It is definitely my favorite so far. It felt challenging yet manageable, and all the moves just felt like they were working and connecting my whole body, moving as one graceful (even if only in my head) unit. Even though I could not do all the reps, I loved the burn that I was feeling. I was even sweating which I haven't been doing in a while during the muscular structure work.

After that I did a half hour on the trampoline, just free styling but constantly changing up the moves. And...I decided to try to watch TV rather than listen to music during my cardio and it helped! I had been getting bored doing a half hour on the trampoline, so I watched half of the QVC episode Tracy was on (equals 30 minutes) so I was motivated, and wonderfullly distracted and honest to goodness my workout went by so quick today. It was a day where I felt empowered rather than exhausted by my workout (similarly akin to day 19). It is particularly comparable to day 19 because day 18 was one of my most difficult workout days so far in the same way that level 3 was just awful compared to level 4. But, I hung in there, and lo and behold things got better :) Isn't that nice?

I was so happy about level 4, because in doing level 3 I was concerned that I was getting sick of the method but instead I discovered it was just that level that felt poo poo. Now, I feel quite reinvigorated to do the method and I'm excited to be doing it 6 days a week because that will just keep a perpetual motion on my results.

May I say that I am really proud of myself for and the little accomplishments I've had along the way. I am at the same time thankful that things have been working out as well as they have. After all, had Tracy not been on QVC I might not have gotten the boost of motivation I needed to commit to the program. Honestly, there are so many factors, (and someday soon I'll make a list) that have contributed to me having success this time around. I am both thankful for the blessings in this process, and I'm proud of myself for meeting those blessings half way and doing my part.

I had some coconut bliss ice cream today, and it was the first time in a while I've felt uncomfortable about what I'm eating. I had been trying to utilize Geneen Roth's techniques (of "Women, Food and God") to let go of the guilt associated with certain foods. Also, to not create a forbidden allure by thinking to myself I shouldn't be eating this and so psychologically I of course want more than if I didn't tell myself I couldn't eat it. I'm trying to learn that I can trust that I won't not stop eating just because I have one bite. It's a lot to learn, and it is certainly a process. But I think part of what triggered it is that for the most part I dont' have a sweet tooth. The ice cream was only in the freezer because someone else in the family bought it, and because it was there I was more compelled to eat it. But also, it had a fudge in it which had rice flour and I had commited to only eating whole grains. For me swapping out whole grains for white carbs is easy and enjoyable. But in this case, I couldn't choose to get the ice cream with whole grains.

Gosh, so many thoughts running through my head, but I am trying to be clear about what I was experiencing. Another aspect is that since I have been able to lose weight strictly through exercise, I had gotten to feel what it feels like to not associate the food I'm eating with weight issues. Instead, I was truly focusing on how the food reacted in my body, and how my body felt afterward. So let's see, afterward, I didn't really feel heavy or bloated or anything like that. I would say I was concerned about cavities. But it didn't make me feel as yucky as say eating an entire bag of chips makes me feel. Plus, now that I have lost weight, there is a fear of gaining it back :/ What if the program stops working? What if my body adapts and this is all the weight I lose. It comes back to another life lesson I got during this process which is faith. Not faith based on blindness. Instead I try to conjure up faith based simply on the possibility that something good could happen, rather than just focusing on the negative. I also try to have faith, that when things don't go exactly as planned that I will figure a way around it, to get through or around or over my road block and be able to keep moving forward.

As far as forbidden foods, it helps me alleviate my fears when I truthfully tell myself that if I need it I can eat as much of a food as I want. I try to picture endless amounnts of whatever the food is, and let myself know that if I want to, I really will allow myself to eat as much as I need and want. Honest to goodness, it doesn't make things perfect, but it does take the edge off of the worry that I've developed that I won't be able to get enough of what I want or need. Anway, lots of thoughts floating around. Hope it made sense. Can you see now why I waited six weeks before modifying my diet? Cuz, it's a whole boatload of other issues to deal with. It's okay though. I still feel comfortably confident about the direction I'm heading in. I can feel that I'm just trying to regain my balance again with these new dietary changes, and I will continue to have faith that good possibilites are there for me, not just for other people, but for me too.

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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

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Day 31: Level 4 Rocks my Socks!

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