Death and Push Ups

So a little while back Shannon mentioned to me that she wants to work on getting healthier. "Great!" I said. "Skip the ice cream after supper today."

That didn't go over well. We all bandied suggestions around, and after some deliberation we decided as a family that we're all going to do 50 pushups a day, for a month. Today is day three.

I'd really rather not say how sore I am right now, and I haven't done my push ups yet today...in fact, I haven't done anything at all today except consume an inordinate amount of carbohydrates. I'm trying not to feel guilty about it but I must confess that the guilt is setting in. Which is a clear sign that it's time to open a bottle of wine.

Just kidding. Sort of.

See, in the dark hours of this morning, I got into the car to go to work like it was any old Tuesday. I pulled out of our driveway and onto the street, and I hadn't gone 50 feet before I drove past a cat on the road, lying dead in a pool of blood. It took about a second before I realized that it looked like our cat. My heart in my stomach, I did a crazy u-turn and parked the car amisdst irritated honks from the cars around me. I jumped out of the car to take a closer look at it, and sure enough it was our Sallah, who had been playfully head-butting me and tromping up and down my sleeping form only an hour before. The only coherent thought I've had all day is that a dead cat is oddly heavier than a live one...

Needless to say it's been a rough day. Every time I think about it I feel like I've been punched in the stomach. We were going to celebrate his birthday next week.

I gave myself permission to do some wallowing today, but tomorrow it's back to life as usual (except that no playful feline is going to come be a shithead at 5am just because he wants some company - sniff) which means that if I don't hit the deck and get some push ups done tonight I'm going to have a cool hundred to do tomorrow.  It also means that I'm going to have a hell of a food hangover and getting back on track will take some mental toughness, cause we all know what happens the day after we eat too much crap:

So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get my dratted push ups done, then I'm going to drink some wine while I get my meals prepared for tomorrow. Then I'm going to bed and tomorrow will be a better day. Gotta keep on truckin.

Fun things to do on a Friday night

It's 9:47pm on Friday night and you know what I'm doing? Scrubbing the feces of some unidentified large animal off the sides of my bathtub. But I'm getting ahead of myself here...

Today started with a lot of high school kids. I do a lot of work with our local high schools with health and phys ed programming for kids who otherwise wouldn't be caught dead getting exercise, so it seems like a lot of my days lately are spent with that demographic. I absolutely love those kids and would never complain about spending time with them. BUT: what is with their fashion sense? Anybody have any answers here? cause if I must continue to stand in line for coffee with a bunch of teenagers in high-waisted acid-washed Jordache mom-jeans that bunch up at the bottom and have to be cinched with a leopard-print belt around the wearer's navel, I swear something really weird is going to happen. Slouch socks are going to make a comeback and we'll have to start doing the 'fan bangs' thing again...

So I gave up on cafeteria coffee and wandered out to my car, mulling this over this strange phenomenon as I went. I tried to justify it: high-waisted jeans actually are more comfortable if you can get used to the moose-knuckley feeling. But as far as I can tell, the onus for wearing hideous 80's knock-off clothing comes from the same place that made me love poofy peasant blouses, tie-dye, and embroidered freakin' everything. So I can't hold it against them.

Speaking of high school, the other freaky thing that happened today was that I got added to a Facebook group dedicated to tracking down people I went to high school with, because our 20-year REUNION is NEXT SPRING. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Would I go? I was kind of a reclusive band geek in high school and I'm still in contact with the people I really want to be in contact with. But I confess I have a strange voyeuristic urge to see where life has taken all my old classmates. Tricky.

I drove home with high-school-y thoughts whirling around in my brain-cave, and decided that I'd make my decision while I went out to our local off-leash area and mapped out a good 5km loop with some stairs and some hills to use for training. I got home, snarfed some food down, grabbed my favorite hoodie (which just happens to say, in large letters across the back "SHOW THE WORLD WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE") and my dog and off we went. The off-leash ravine is maybe a seven minute drive from our house.

Now, under normal circumstances, Valley is a stellar workout buddy. In spite of having way more steam than I do, she kindly hangs back while I drag my butt up and down the hills and stairs on our favorite trail. She amuses herself by chasing squirrels, sniffing and peeing on whatever gross stuff is lying around, and she knows where she should and shouldn't jump into the river for a drink and a romp in the water. So when we came across a ginormous #2 in the middle of the trail, I hardly gave it a second thought when Valley, who happened to be maybe ten feet ahead of me, paused to sniff it.

I have to pause here and stress that this was the grandaddy of all piles of shit. No little lavender-scented poop baggie was going to touch this; it had to have come from an animal that was 150lbs PLUS that had chugged its coffee in record speed so as to not even make it a safe distance from the trail. This was a wookiee-with-the-cold-sweats ass-blasting baby mountain.

So you can imagine my horror when instead of peeing on it and moving on, Valley mushed her pretty face into the massive heap and gleefully rolled over in it. I shouted "Valley, NO!" and ran past it so that she'd run to keep up with me. Which she did...for a minute. But the temptation was too great and a moment later she bolted back to Shit Mountain and this time, despite my protests, made good and sure that she was thoroughly coated in it.

Gaaaah. Well, there wasn't much to do but finish our trek, and according to my phone we had a good 3k to go, which was good because I needed to formulate a game plan to NOT get wookiee shit all over my vehicle when we got there. So on we pressed. We arrived presently at the opposite end of the trail, where it exits out onto perhaps THE MOST affluent road in the city, a candyland of privelege, exclusivity, and luxury 4x4's. I turned in the direction that I imagined would lead us back to our car, and eventually found a path that went between the backyards of these multi-million dollar estates and the top of the river bank. Perfect!

Except suddenly the path ended, and now I was a crazy woman with leaves in her hair and a hoodie with a big ol' F-bomb on the back, accompanied by a shit-coated mutt, bushwhacking creepily along the back fences of these gorgeous estates. We walked and walked and walked and walked. My phone's battery died. Finally we came out of the woods...

...at the exact spot where we'd left the street. We'd gone in a circle. Dammit! We turned and went the other way. The road twisted and turned and we walked and walked and walked, not really sure which way we were going. Eventually we came to a road I recognized, but we were a long way from the car. Like, easier to walk straight home than to double back for the car - and this also eliminated the need for a strategy to keep wookiee crap off the car seats.

We arrived home nearly three hours after we left, and just in time to be home for the children to arrive home from school. Valley went straight into the bathtub where I spent the next half hour shampooing the poop out of her fur...which is why I am spending my Friday night washing mystery excrement off my bathroom walls.
And I still haven't decided on the high school reunion.

It's EYFOH Season!

 Is it terrible of me to say, on Thanksgiving Monday, that I can't really get behind holidays that seem to be about eating your face off? I mean, Thanksgiving is one, but Christmas and Easter are pretty much the same: at their epicentre is a ginormous meal where the tradition is to eat until you have to undo your pants. Now, I know lots of people would argue that these holidays are wonderful times where one should surround oneself with family and friends and enjoy the abundance of good company and good food. I wouldn't profess to knock that tradition if it's something you look forward to and thoroughly enjoy...

My family and I elected to stay home and have a quiet little Thanksgiving this year. One reason for that is because we are all reclusive trolls in our hearts, but that's for another post. What I want to take a closer look at today is the anxiety that surrounds the food aspect of the Eat Your Face Off Holidays. For anyone who has struggled with their weight, the EYFOH's are about success or failure, and as such there is a lot of anxiety: you're going to war with yourself and a lot of careful planning and preparation and strategizing has to happen in order to come out on the other side without needing therapy.

Ok, you think, how am I going to approach the EYFOH? What will I eat the day before? How will I prepare myself on the day? Maybe I should just starve myself beforehand. No, that won't work because I'll have no willpower and I'll eat a hole in the fabric of the universe when I see all the food. I'll just have a light breakfast. I won't go too hungry. I'll have a snack beforehand too. I won't obsess about it. I won't feel guilty. I'll skip the bread. I'll load up my plate with salad. I'll just have a little bit of the things I really love. And then I won't feel bad about myself later. I'll work out beforehand. I'll work out after. I'll do an extra hour of cardio for the next week. And how will I get around the (insert aging female relative) who will tell me to eat more? I won't feel guilty when I tell her no. I'll just take it and leave it on my plate. I won't pour more wine when (insert whatever offensive person) comments on my weight, lifestyle, parenting, etc. I will eat and I will enjoy it and I will not feel bad and I will not let all the other garbage affect me. I will not FAIL AND EAT TOO MUCH.

 Anyone else ever felt like that? I've been fighting with weight problems long enough that the anxiety over EYFOH's starts weeks or even months in advance. Talk to me in July about Christmas dinner and my blood pressure will go up and I'll start wondering how I'm going to get out of it. And I'll tell you one thing: it's a piss-poor way to celebrate the abundance and beauty and love in our lives! Because honestly: I am not a Gratitude Grinch, really I'm not. I try to cultivate gratitude on a daily basis. I love that we have a special long weekend for it just before the snow flies and it's all gorgeous and colourful outside. I'd just totally rather go for a hike or something than spend three days preparing the approach, the strategy, the fail-safes, and finally the battle.

So I'm not playing that game anymore. I prepared a delicious but simple and healthy meal for my immediate family, and we talked about the things we are grateful for over dinner...and it was wonderful. Best Thanksgiving ever.

Also, incidentally, my family is still speaking to me after I made the cheesecake crust out of cricket flour.

Okay team, I haven't done a crazy nutrition experiment in a while and I think it's time. Lately there has been a lot of research bubbling to the surface about artificial sweeteners and gut health. I have been a staunch defender of artificial sweeteners (in moderation of course! FFS) for a good long while now so believe me when I say it hurts a little bit to say this: it looks like they really aren't very good for us. Now, before you laugh at me and run to the store for some Coke, allow me to just stress for a moment that too much sugar isn't good either. When I first started hearing and reading this new information, my first thought was "well, I hardly get any of that stuff so it doesn't affect me much." I drink maybe one or two cans of coke zero a week and I've never had cause to feel too guilty about it...but then I started thinking: I have a Quest bar for breakfast every day. There is sucralose in greens powder and protein powder, pre-workout, intra-workout, and post-workout drinks (not that I use any of those on a regular basis but, you know, sometimes). Maybe my guts could stand to improve if I ditched that stuff! So I waited until my last box of Quest bars was empty (had my last Quest bar yesterday - and you know what I found in it? Like, actually IN the bar? A big-ass chunk of cardboard. Made it not so hard to say goodbye and good riddance to them!) and starting today I will be artificial sweetener-free for thirty days. Should be interesting.

If you'd like more info on the artificial sweetener/gut health correlation, here's some recommended
reading:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/artificial-sweeteners-linked-to-obesity-epidemic-scientists-say-1.2769196
http://www.prevention.com/health/diabetes/artificial-sweeteners-diet-soda-affect-gut-bacteria-and-weight-gain
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140917-sweeteners-artificial-blood-sugar-diabetes-health-ngfood/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140917131634.htm

Breaking up is hard to do...sometimes.

And sometimes breaking up is really easy. Remember the person you dated in, say, junior high or high school, before you really knew how to start a relationship, or how to end a relationship (or any of the stuff that comes in between that isn't driven by raging hormones)? So you putzed along without really liking that person but were too chicken to actually end it...until you HATED them?

 I've been reading a lot of break-up stories lately. Letters to old friends, stale romantic interests, etc., etc. where at the end of the letter or story the writer reveals to the audience that the dump-ee is actually a previous version of themselves that they no longer identify with, or a pair of skinny jeans, or whatever. Getting rid of stuff (trimming the fat, so to speak) has sort of been a theme in my corner lately so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and give it a try. Here goes:

Dear Bathroom Scale, 

Fuck you.

Most Sincerely,

Hannah

Whoa, that was a load off! Definitely very cathartic. Excuse me a moment while I actually go and throw the bathroom scale in the garbage.

 Yeah!! Alright buddies, I no longer have a bathroom scale in my house. It doesn't really matter all that much because I HATE weighing myself; it ALWAYS ruins my day. So I never do it. I keep reading articles though, that claim that people who weigh themselves daily are statistically happier and healthier and richer and have nicer teeth than people who don't (actually I made up some of those descriptors but not the healthier bit) and I end up thinking, "hmm, maybe instead of doing it LESS I should get on the scale every day and just grow a thicker skin" but you know what? For me that isn't going to work. So instead of trying to cram the square scale into my round life, I have elected to stick the square scale into the round garbage pail and that's that. If I need a metric with which to measure progress, I can use a measuring tape instead, which is a way better indicator and has the added bonus of not making me hate myself.

This is fun! I love getting rid of stuff. Where once upon another life I loved to shop and bring stuff home, now I get way more satisfaction from pitching stuff out the door. Sometimes I find it sad -I mean, ten years ago a good retail therapy session used to fix just about anything, and when the fire was cooling in that relationship (can I even call it a relationship if it was inside my head?) I'd go to the mall and wander around and wonder why it wasn't helping. And now? Now going to the mall just ticks me right off if I haven't actually spent time mentally preparing for the onslaught of bullshit that is the inevitable experience of shopping for anything except groceries. But I digress.

Sometimes though, in the pursuit of making life manageable, it's necessary to say goodbye to something that's not so easy to get rid of...and that happened this week too. It was a total bummer and I'm still wrestling with the aftermath of that decision, even though it really was the only logical choice under the circumstances. This week I officially put off testing for my taekwondo black belt and withdrew from classes. I have to keep telling myself that hey, there are only 24 hours in the day and with building a new clientele at a new workplace, finishing existing courses in time to go back to school in January, breathing some life into my music career, and the usual household management-type duties, there just isn't room for anything else. Which doesn't help it suck less, but unfortunately Oprah was right...

So for now my favorite sport has to go, but it'll make me appreciate it more when (not if) I go back.

TOO MUCH

Happy Monday morning my lovelies!

Got a pop quiz for y'all today, are you ready?

Q: How do you know when it's TOO MUCH?

The answer of course is, it depends on the situation, but generally speaking it's when the good feelings start to seep away and the bad feelings start to make their presence known - you know, not all at once or anything, but they just threaten at the sidelines. Ever gone too long without seeing your in-laws? And you know that you're going to have to do it pretty soon but you just can't make your hand grab the phone, even though you know that if you wait long enough for them to call YOU you'll never hear the end of it? And then the more you think about it the guiltier you feel? You've waited too long, 'cause at this point nothing's going to fix it now except squeezing your eyes shut and doing it.

That's too much time that has passed, my friends! And if that's never happened to you because you just can't get enough of your in-laws, well, good for you. But you know what I mean. (I should note here that really I love my in-law's too, but there has to be the right amount of space for the relationship to work.)

So that's kind of an extreme example. Let's bring it closer to home, shall we? Ever make a to-do list? I freakin' LOVE to-do lists, they calm me right down when I start feeling overwhelmed and panicky because I know there's stuff I'm supposed to be doing but I can't remember what it is.

And of course, there's an app for that: my favorite is called Clear and it is ALMOST as awesome as writing down your to-do list on the back of an old envelope...but there's a kind of beautiful tactility about violently scratching out tasks on your to-do lists with a stumpy old pencil. And then, when all you have left is an old envelope with a column of scratched-out stuff, taking that bitch and tearing it to bits and chucking it out feels GREAT. Ain't no app for that!

But today? Today that will not be happening. It didn't yesterday, either. Because, while Sunday is usually my peaceful day to get organized for the week, sometimes life puts a stick in your spokes and all you can do is roll on as best you can. Saturday evening while I was starting the preliminary stages of getting the kids to bed (which in my house invariably sounds like this: "Ok girlies, 5 minutes - finish up and turn the screens off!" "But Moooooooom, I'm in a battle!"), I started seeing squiggly lines around the periphery of my field of vision, which meant that an ocular migraine was coming and anything that I had planned to get done this weekend was going to damn well wait until my eyeballs were ready to work again.

So here we are, it's Monday morning (my absolute favorite time of the week), my head still hurts, and I have this to-do list that has TOO MUCH on it. I know it has TOO MUCH because I'm kind of afraid of it. I can't even start it. I can't even LOOK at it. If I'm not really careful I'll bumble around all day and get nothing done and then tomorrow will be even worse...but never fear - Tomorrow Girl can take care of anything!!

But instead of putting it all on Tomorrow Girl, even though she's pretty awesome, here are my strategies for getting at that TOO LONG to-do list...

1. Add some stuff to the list. I'm serious. First, add some stuff that you've ALREADY DONE. Next, add some stuff that you KNOW you can do, and do on a daily basis. Now go do some of that stuff.

2. Go back to your list and scratch that stuff out! Doesn't that feel great? Get out of bed? Check. Brush teeth? Check. Wake up kids? Feed'em breakfast? Boot their little tushies out the door to school? Check, check, check. Hell yes, you're a machine today! Work out? Check. Take the dog out for a run? Check. (See how the tasks are getting bigger? And you're a third of the way through the list already! Whoop whoop!)

3. Multi-task: my list always has phone calls to make on it...and I hate the phone. HATE IT. I will do just about anything to avoid calling people, because a) I'm actually super shy and b) I hate it when people call me because no matter what else I'm doing, I'm doing something else and don't care to be interrupted, and c) there's like a 1 in 3 chance that once I've dropped what I'm doing, found the ringing phone, and answered it, it'll actually be someone I care to talk to...which means that 2 out of three times it'll be some automated service informing me that I've won a free cruise and all I have to do is cut off my bottom lip and mail it to somewhere and thus claim my prize...anyway. Which is a long way of saying that usually, when the phone rings, I don't even bother searching for it. Where was I? Oh yeah, multitasking! So I make a deal with myself: I'll do something that involves a small time commitment and then I can leave, like a crock pot meal or laundry...THEN I'll tackle the phone calls and emails.

4. Now the big stuff. How many big projects are on your list? If there are more than two, pick two for today and put the rest on Tomorrow Girl's to-do list.

5. Take it easy. Is anyone going to die if you don't get the dishes done or your project doesn't get submitted today? If the answer is yes, better just get it done but if the answer is no, take a breather, pour a cup of coffee, and go outside and enjoy the sunshine for a little while.

Blog post: check.

Defeat and de Feet

Show your feet some love, dudes.

I'm serious. Because when your feet suddenly don't work life becomes a bitch in a lot of surprising ways.

Let me back up a little and tell you the story: just over a week ago my buddy Nancy and I headed down to Red Deer to do the Super Spartan race, a 15k obstacle race (that's 9ish miles to anyone south of the border). We didn't train for it - that would be silly - and since we did it last year we figured we knew what we were getting into. Which was true as far as the course itself was concerned...I knew I was going to be slow, you know, based on the fact that I spent the last year gaining 50lbs and fighting with my health instead of training for an endurance event. What I didn't really consider was that my feet would decide in the first half mile (800m for the Canajuns - see what I did there?) that this whole enterprise was a mistake and that my dogs would bark at me for the rest of the month for my tomfoolery.

So here's how the day went:

Mile 0.5 Realized that blisters were going to be a problem.
Mile 3 Aid Station: asked a medic for some band aids. They replied that they could give me band aids IF I was willing to fill out a form and drop out of the race. Not likely!
Mile 5 Don't think about feet don't think about feet don't think about feet don't think about feet.
Mile 5.5 Noticed blood coming through my shoes.
Mile 6 Blood has lubricated trouble spots nicely! This isn't so bad. What a beautiful day! WHEEEEE this is awesome!

Mile 8 Seeing stars. Starting to not feel very good.
Finish Line: Actually I don't remember much about the finish line except wanting to punch the volunteer who gleefully insisted that burpees don't count unless our chests touch the ground. I think those last 30 burpees took about 15 minutes.
Medical tent: walked in to ask for some band aids. Medic looked at my bleeding shoes and my ashen face and told me to sit down for an assessment. The shoes came off, and the medic actually gagged and called a couple more people over to help.

Fast forward 9 days and I still can't walk normally and I wish I could say I've learned my lesson. Well, maybe I have: gonna actually train for next year. But we got our finisher t-shirts! Fuck yeah!

So let's talk about defeat and perception thereof. I've been mulling this over lots lately given my current situation: started a business which didn't quite go as planned due to health problems and associated self-induced mental fuckwittage, accepted a job which will force me to bust through some boundaries but in the meantime is making me feel kind of...well...very conscious of my shortcomings to put it mildly (which is my issue and no one else's and I fully accept that), and it just generally feels like survival over the past six months has been like pushing an elephant up a ladder. It's getting kinda old.

 Still, (unlike the Spartan sitch) I actually did learn some really good lessons so do I chalk the whole shebang up as a fail? The pessimist in me wants to say yes but I kinda don't want to see it that way. For one thing, if I accept defeat then the door has to close and I will have to find something else to fight for. And while that part would be easy because there are a million things that are worth fighting for, there will always be this hanging what-if thing happening inside my melon. And like I said before, I don't want to - there's still work to do and things seem to be on the upswing. So on that count, lesson learned. Adversity has the potential to make us better if we let it! Gonna sign off now before I get tempted to insert trite quotes from Finding Nemo, even though it applies...

Not gonna say it!

Channelling Chris Pratt

So....it's been a while. I hardly know where to start!

 Oh wait, I know: remember how I had my little panic attack and applied for a job in a studio? And then didn't get hired? And then let the head of the company know what I thought about not getting hired?

Well, they hired me. Of course, it wasn't as easy as all that; in fact if anyone has had a bumpier start with a company I'd like to hear about it! 'Cause I tell ya, the last three weeks have been one hell of a roller coaster ride. Some days I've felt awesome and totally pumped about the future, thinking that maybe I can effect some positive change in the fitness game...and I've felt totally terrible some days, feeling like getting into the health and fitness industry with my history of yo-yo diets, weight struggles, body image and confidence issues and insecurities was a huge mistake. But I've learned something important about myself, which is this: given all those deep-rooted fears and baggage and shit, and the fact that appearance-based discrimination is a very real thing (and don't get me wrong, I know it's everywhere but it really is more pervasive in the fitness industry), I was not ready to start a business. I thought I was, but I wasn't.

So, because I still have to, you know, bring home some bacon (BACON!) I took the position and I can now tell you that Jocks Inc is actually called Body by Bennett and it really isn't a bad place at all - in fact, I am quite liking it there in spite of the lead-up to how I was hired.

But now, the pressure is on: gotta lose the weight and look the part, and I have to go back to school.

This is good and bad. It's GOOD because these are things that I've wanted to do for myself forever, but haven't because....because I haven't. B3 has been great (amazing, really) about offering every type of support to help me get to where I want to be in terms of personal and professional development, and I feel really fortunate that I landed there. It's BAD because I feel like I'm not good enough and now there are all these weird feels bouncing around that weren't there before. Like, why HAVEN'T I done this? Is my comfort zone so firmly entrenched in this "I'm not good enough" state that I fear climbing out of it? I don't know anyone at work well enough to talk about it and see how public a thing all this is, which makes me very self-conscious. I want to wear a Post-It on my forehead that says "I know I know!! I'm working on it!"

So here's how I'm choosing to look at this whole self-development project, which comes courtesy of my husband who knows exactly what to say in situations like this...sometimes. Ha! Sorry Joel, that was mean. Ha ha. In all seriousness he's a pretty wise and awesome person and great to have around when life seems overwhelming, and he said "well, it's time to channel Chris Pratt - and this is your Marvel movie."

Here's what that means: someone asked Chris Pratt what his secret was to getting all jacked and amazing for Guardians of the Galaxy, and he talked for a while about really awesome things to do like changing small things and be consistent with those changes...and then he said that because he had been cast in a Marvel movie it was either get it done or get fired.

Can't argue with that logic! So this is my Marvel movie. Bring it on, then!

Something that's weird about being in new digs with new people though, is that sometimes it feels strange to work out in front of them. Of course it's my issue and I'll get used to it, but some days....Some days you just gotta go do it at home, which is totally okay too. Here's what I did today (from www.chroniclesofstrength.com) - all you need is a medium-ish kettlebell.

 Fresh off the Yacht

• 5 x 1-arm swings 
• 5 x cleans
• 5 x snatches
• 5 x jerks
• 5 x reverse lunges 

Repeat on the other side, then rest for 1-3 minutes and repeat for five rounds. That's how you get your sweat on at home, AND you get some laundry done. BOOM.