Rumspringa...My Tracy Anderson Transformation: Day 56: Now...Do it all on the Left Side

Monday, November 7, 2011

Day 56: Now...Do it all on the Left Side

"Now do it all on the left side"...those can be somewhat dreaded words, eh? For some reason, it is mentally harder to think of doing all the same moves on the left side than doing the left side but with different moves, you know? It can take so much mental energy to push through that first side, and now you want me to repeat it...so often I think to myself, "I just can't do it again, there's not enough left in me"...And yet somehow, somehow I have done it, 56 times.

I do wish that Tracy would cue us on the left side when we are to change moves (as half the time we're not looking at the screen), but my strategy is just to rewind to the beginning of the right side and do that again on the left so I can hear the cues. Tracy is truly a genius in what she has created, so how did she overlook something so seemingly apparent?

But I will say, I would rather take her lack of chit chat over a trainer who is constantly yelling at me as a source of motivation to push myself. That style just doesn't motivate me personally. In fact, I remember than when I first started Meta but wasn't able to get through level 1 (on earlier attempts at the program), I remember imagining trainer Jillian Michaels yelling at me that I'm not pushing hard enough. I would imagine Tracy too, but she wouldn't be yelling. She was just disappointed in me that I wasn't giving it my all, and was slacking off (because I couldn't do forty reps from the get-go). What is that?!? Well, I imagine it was my own inner critic disguised as these trainers.

So how did I turn it around? I've mentioned it before but it bears repeating. I started telling myself that my personal best was good enough, and that I would grow from wherever I was starting. That is the TRUTH after all. I had deceived myself into believing that if I couldn't do all the reps, I wouldn't progress. I had to do it perfectly or it wasn't going to work. Well, for the first time in my life it is working and it's not because I'm being perfect. Quite the opposite. It's because I'm allowing myself and accepting myself as imperfect, as normal. I came to learn that trying to be perfect (doing it like Tracy) exhausted me, while doing my personal best (being myself if you will) empowered me.

Tracy was right about level six btw. She starts of this level by encouraging us that the best is yet to come. For me this level has brought the most noticeable changes to my body. At this point, I do notice a difference in the way my pants fit around my waist. It is ever so slight, but it's changed for certain. I even weighed myself because I knew I had made progress and I'm officially out of the 160's and down to 159.75 lbs. My thighs have slimness and more firmness, my arms have more definition. I can hold my body up through a whole plank series, and I can do 1 full push-up (haha, it's small but it's progress). And I can do an hour of cardio! Wow. Literally 1 minute of cardio on day #1 was scary. How the heck can I do an hour now? That's pretty insane! Keep it coming Tracy, and may I be blessed enough to meet you one day so I can give you a hug and thank you for changing my life :)

6 comments:

AnonymousNovember 7, 2011 at 4:18 PM
Thanks for being an inspiration!
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Michelle StylesNovember 8, 2011 at 1:33 AM
Leah --
I count the reps and remember the sequences. If I am doing 40 reps on the right side, when I start doing the left side, I do 40 reps. That way it doesn't matter if I am not totally in sync with Tracy. If I am only doing 25 on the right(for example at the beginning of a level), then that is all I do on the left side as well. I do glance up every so often to make sure that I holding the right pose but I found counting was the only way to go.
This is where previewing and writing a cheat sheet can help. Then all you have to do is match the number of reps on each side.
Hooray on your lower number in the tens column! It is such a great feeling. And hooray on being able to do an hour of DC. YOu see your body is capable of more than you think, my friend
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ShanNovember 8, 2011 at 11:39 AM
OMG!! An hour of DC? You're my hero.
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LeahNovember 8, 2011 at 1:41 PM
Renee, thank you! Your first blog post was inspiring to me too, and I look forward to reading about your journey as it unfolds!

Michelle! You have been right about so many other things (did I tell you I decided to just go ahead with Continuity instead of starting Meta over?) I will certainly give counting reps a try :)

Shan! An hour of cardio does seem like a lot. When Michelle told me that's what she did I didn't know how it was possible until my some sort of "runner's high" kicked in for me and it actually felt GOOD to be bouncing around. I hope your apartment situation gets worked out with your neighbors so you can jump for joy during cardio too :)
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Tracy2011November 8, 2011 at 8:17 PM
Hi Ladies,

Another suggeestion would be changing your side each day. one day work on yur right the next day your left. I have found this technique the best, because I just follow Tracy on her reps and notice that one side she will do 40 and then the other side 32, so by changing sides you get an even workout. Congrats on yur weight loss, you must be very proud of yourself.
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LeahNovember 8, 2011 at 8:25 PM
Tracy2011, great the suggestion about changing up the sides. We all learn so many helpful tips along the process of this journey, don't we? I am happy about the weight loss :D it is incredibly rewarding to see not just hard work, but patience paying off too. Can't wait to see what other lovely things the future holds.
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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

90 Day Metamorphosis with Tracy Anderson

Monday, November 7, 2011

Day 56: Now...Do it all on the Left Side

6 comments: