Tuesday, November 19, 2013

prioritizing isn't always a simple thing

Wow.  I haven't been here since September 27.  That's just about 2 months!!  Where did the time go?  Hopefully you've found me over at the other blog, where I'm more consistent about writing!

Last time I was here, I was still really struggling to adjust to changes in the schedule.  My husband Gary's job starts either at 4 AM or 6 AM, depending on overtime, which means we need to be in bed and well on our way to sleep, not just chillin, come 8 PM on weeknights.  This meant shifting from running in the mornings to running after work.  I hated it for a long, long time.  But I kept showing up and kept asking God to change my attitude.  HE DID!  I'm actually enjoying running after work three days a week now.  

We've been working our way through the C25K (couch to 5K) program all this time, since that's a nicer, much less painful way to get Gary up to running 30 continuous minutes than just plunging into it.  With life cancelling some runs for other events, and my arthritic feet cancelling other runs, it's been a long, slow process, working our way through it.  We just finally advanced last night to this rotation:
  • 5 minutes of warmup walk
  • 20 minutes of run
  • 5 minutes of cooldown walk
Before last night, we still had little walk intervals in the middle.  Using C25K to get there was very effective for Gary, just as it had been for me.  No major soreness, no feeling like dying, no massive discouragement.  It's a good program.  

Along the way, I have been noticing myself getting fatter and fatter.  SOME of that has been a food thing - it's harder to be a veggie-consuming machine when our communal-type living arrangement means my meals consist of:
  • meals out
  • meals cooked by our friends with whom we live
  • meals in our room
Meals out are fun, but one loses a large degree of control over how stuff is prepared, even when one orders pretty healthy stuff.  Meals with our friends are amazing - their table is like another very nice restaurant - and they include meat most days and some really marvelous sweets and other carbish yummies sometimes (and I'm an eat what there is kinda girl, you know?)  Meals in our room need to be stuff that doesn't take refrigeration, as our mini fridge is very, very mini and is maxed out by breakfast stuff and stuff to pack for Gary's lunches.  So it ends up being canned soups, crackers, chips, etc.  

So SOME part of why I'm getting fatter is I can't be the veggie maniac I was in my very own apartment.  But MOSTLY why I'm getting fatter, I think, has been the reduced exercise.  C25K is great for getting someone up to running.  But I used to run about 50 minutes at a time, on my 3 run days per week, and then I'd bike maybe 50 miles most weekends.  The routines of married life have knocked out most of the biking miles.  And until yesterday, the C25K added up to about 15 minutes of running, with about 15 minutes of walking interspersed throughout it.  

Along the way, I was moaning to Gary about my body falling out of condition.  He swears it's not true, but I'm the one who buttons my jeans.  I'm intimately aware, even despite my refusal to step on a scale, when I am getting LESS fit.  In his well-intentioned efforts to give me a pep talk about this, he said things that my mind heard differently than his mouth meant to say, and HOO BOY did I get ticked off.  I sat quietly on the irritation, refusing to respond to it, knowing my husband is kind and doesn't set out to offend me.  After a couple of days, I got the truth out of what was said, which was:  I need to do what it takes, to help my body.  It's really that simple.

So for the last week what I've been doing is running the C25K part with Gary and then leaving him at home while I go out and run 20ish more minutes uninterrupted.  It gets me closer the the workout my body had become accustomed to doing daily.  It makes me late for supper and it takes 20 minutes of our very-little-time-together away, but I've returned to the place of being willing to do what it takes to love my body well, even when it costs such prices that I wish I didn't have to pay.  

It feels good to be back to running more.  My body is celebrating already.  I think it will help me with motivation to return to improving my food intake, even within the limitations of the lifestyle we have chosen for this portion of the journey.