Made It Through the Weekend

by Michael on 29/06/09 at 3:24 pm

Weekends are traditionally hard for me. I start off great on Monday, but by Wednesday I’m losing momentum, by Friday things are pretty slippery, and by Sunday it’s a total wash. So in my Wednesday coaching session, Susan and I laid some plans to get me through the weekend. I agreed to go for morning walks on both Saturday and Sunday. And this is a significant improvement since I usually don’t work out at all on weekends.

My morning walks were great. First, I love walking at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. because the rest of the world is still in bed, or just waking up. I’ve pretty much got the streets to myself. But this week I bought an iTouch iPod, so I added music to my walking. Several years ago, when I was a circuit party animal, Ted and I made a series of dance music CDs. We bought a mixing program and mixed songs together like the DJs do. It was great hearing some of this stuff again; and 120 to 140 beats per minute really gets your legs and heart moving. By the time I’m hitting home an hour later, I’m pretty spent and my shirt is soaked. It seems to be paying off since I’m down another pound. Yeah!

But I also stepped up the walking in other ways. I stop a couple of times along to way and do some push-ups on benches or concrete planters. And for the past couple of walks I’ve been carrying two-pound weights in my hands. Throughtout my walk I’ll do side raises or shoulder presses just to add a little extra something.

My food was pretty good on Saturday. I made a conscious decision to have a hamburger, fries and a Pepsi; but rather than choosing a fast-food restaurant, we went to a proper sit-down restaurant. Sunday was a little messier than I wanted. I have a Sunday morning tradition where I take myself off to the corner greasy spoon and I read a magazine while eating my bacon, eggs, sausage, and toast. It’s a totally bad breakfast and comes in somewhere over 1,000 calories. But, it’s the one thing in the week that I really look forward to, so I’m giving myself permission to do that.

However, later in the day, I also had a couple more cans of Pepsi along with some Cantonese chow mein (which doesn’t really taste as good without MSG). And then, I polished off a couple of bowls of granola and some watermelon. So I ate more than I wanted to, and those two cans of Pepsi took me above my one can a week limit; but I didn’t eat a bag of chips and a couple of chocolate bars like I normally would. Also, I had allowed myself one trip to McDonald’s and one chocolate bar this week, and I didn’t indulge in either of those. So, I made progress this weekend and I didn’t blow the whole weekend. My goal for this week will to be even more diligent on the weekend.

One of my assignments this week was to take myself on a date. On Friday morning after my walk I decided to take myself off for a pedicure. I’ve never done it. My feet were also in pretty rough shape, so I decided it was the perfect thing to do. My feet felt wonderful afterwards and I’m really glad I did it. I’m not sure I’m thrilled with the environment: a row of four barber-shop-style chairs and a gaggle of Asian women talking to one another. First of all, Asian languages aren’t easy on the ear, so it’s a little hard to relax; and second, you have to wonder if these women are talking about the date they had last night, the fight they had with their husband this morning, or is my manicurist yelling out: “Oh man, you should see this fat guy’s gnarly feet! They’re gross.” I loved the experience, I’ll just have to look around for a less distracting and more relaxing envoironment.

One thing that I really got out of the past week is that I’m really looking forward to my morning walks. I look at them as an opportunity to spend some time alone, but also, I know that I’m doing something good for my body. I used to look at these things as something I had to do, but I’m looking at them as something I want to do. That’s a nice bit of progress.

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