{"id":10660,"date":"2015-04-08T09:30:36","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T14:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=10660"},"modified":"2015-04-08T09:30:36","modified_gmt":"2015-04-08T14:30:36","slug":"in-which-she-revisits-her-fitness-goals-alternate-title-sisyphus-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2015\/04\/08\/in-which-she-revisits-her-fitness-goals-alternate-title-sisyphus-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"In which she revisits her fitness goals (alternate title: Sisyphus redux)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span>lright, I give up. I charged my FitBit and I started tracking calories again. I guess I’m back on the wagon.<\/p>\n

It was just shy of a year ago that I capitulated to counting calories with My Fitness Pal, and it did work for me. From a high of 183 lbs, I worked my way up and down to a late summer low around 175 lbs, but I never really made it below that. (I was aiming for 170, which is ironically the weight I was in 2005 when I joined weight watchers for the last time. My 15 year low is 163, where I ended up after six months on Dr Bishop’s weight loss plan, after topping out after Lucas was born at a way-too-heavy for me 192. I’m saying the numbers out loud so I stop feeling shamed by them. I hope it works.) After a sedentary winter with too many chips and Beloved learning to bake, I’ve been trying to get back on track with increased exercise alone, but my weight isn’t really budging. So. Calorie counting it is. It sucks, but it works.<\/p>\n

I don’t really hate it as much as I thought I did. I like to have projects, and it’s the quiet season for photography, so I will obsess about my own health and fitness for a while. I am my current project. And like almost all of my projects, in two or three quick skips I’ve gone from mildly interested to engaged to obsessive.<\/p>\n

The first significant phase of my project was yoga. My friend Yvonne mentioned hot power yoga at Mountaingoat Yoga in passing one day, and my interest was piqued. I’d been thinking I’d like a pilates class for strength, and though I am terribly intimidated by fitness classes (I’ve had a GoodLife membership for 10 years and never once attended a class), I started in late February and haven’t missed a weekly class yet. Hell, I even bought a yoga top, 75% off on the clearance rack at Gap. <\/p>\n

Despite my best intentions and what felt like an increased attention to making good choices, the scale refused to reward my good behaviour. Not only that, but one day I happened to position myself in yoga class in full view of the mirror, and comparing what I thought I looked like to what I actually looked like (especially compared to everyone else) was a harsh reality check. I am not on the large side of healthy, I am overweight.<\/p>\n

So. This week I have attended two yoga classes and gone to the gym twice for cardio workouts on the elliptical machine and the rower. I took an hour walk with the boys on Sunday, started tracking my steps and calories, and walked a kilometer to the boys’ school to pick them up and walk the kilometer back home. I’ve resisted Easter chocolates and made good food choices. I practically skipped to the gym this morning, so keen was I to reap the rewards of my sustained and extended efforts. You know what I got?<\/p>\n

Nothing.<\/p>\n

Sigh.<\/p>\n

That’s where the reference to Sisyphus comes in. I feel like this is how it is, all the time:<\/p>\n

\"65:365<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh I know, you don’t have to say it. The scale only shows my relationship to gravity, right? And I’m probably building muscle tone and losing fat. And it takes time to make progress. Blah blah blah. I know, I know. I’m just so frustrated that I feel like Sisyphus up there, always ALWAYS pushing against that rock. I know that if I keep tracking steps and calories that I’ll make progress, just like I did last year. And I know that eventually I’ll get tired of it or something shiny will come along and distract me, and I’ll lose focus and the weight will creep back up again.<\/p>\n

Bah. I’m just tired of struggling against being tired, yanno? I sleep 8 – 9 hours a day and I’m still tired – and sitting on the couch feels sooooooo good. I really think that it’s not food I’m battling here – my food choices are really not bad even when I’m not tracking calories. Not great, but not excessive. It’s my sedentary life that’s the rock I have to keep pushing up that hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alright, I give up. I charged my FitBit and I started tracking calories again. I guess I’m back on the wagon. It was just shy of a year ago that I capitulated to counting calories with My Fitness Pal, and it did work for me. From a high of 183 lbs, I worked my way … Continue reading “In which she revisits her fitness goals (alternate title: Sisyphus redux)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me-only-better"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10660"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10665,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10660\/revisions\/10665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}