Jedi Mind Tricks & Fitness

I wish I could say I'm a total health nut who loves the gym and that I think brownies are icky sugar toxins, but I'm not. It still takes willpower to stick to my mission. I'll never stop loving days where I can completely immerse myself in a video game for hours on end or enjoying a Hobbit themed feast with my friends. For my first month, I completely avoided those things so I could create new habits and in a way, detox/wake up my body. Seven months into this lifestyle change, I've definitely indulged in some treats and devoted hours on end to adventuring in Skyrim without derailing my progress one bit. The question became, how do I use delicious treats and non-active geeky indulgences as motivation to put in the effort at the gym and the table a majority of the time? My answer: A reward system. I unlock an achievement, I get a trophy. I bribe myself to do healthy things I'm not crazy about with things I love but should only do in moderation. 

Even though I don't love going to the gym, I like the elliptical machine. After the "shiny newness" of a new health regime wears off, working out on a machine can feel a bit like subjecting yourself to being on a "hamster wheel" 5 times a week. What makes the day in/day out tedium of watching statistics flash across the screen bearable is being able to watch my favorite TV shows. I don't have time to sit down and rewatch all the shows I love, but if I do it at the gym, then it's accomplishing something instead of just marathoning them nonstop while I sit on the couch and surf the web. The bonus to this system is that it provides another fun way to measure my progress. After all, you can't always expect the scale to go down, so why not measure you're level of awesomeness by how many cult TV shows you've watched while at the gym. For the record, I've watched every episode of Firefly, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and 2.5 Seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess whilst busting my ass at the gym. Next in the queue: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There are people who say it's detrimental to watch TV whilst exercising because you'll relax and not push yourself hard enough. To counteract this, I did research to find my optimal heart rate and I make sure that I stay in it while I'm working out. I also choose shows with a lot of kicking ass in them- usually with a female heroine I dig- so whilst Xena is bashing heads or sprinting through the wilds of Ancient Greece, I pick up my intensity. 

There are other smaller "Jedi Mind Tricks" I use to make sure I stay motivated and continue to push myself. For instance, if I try something new and truly despise it, I don't force myself to keep doing it as long as I still go to the gym and do something else. A personal example would be weight training. I tried it out when I started my gym membership, but I never felt engaged by it and I didn't really see any results despite my research and sticking with it for over a month. I just decided there were too many other active things I could be doing/trying with my time. I will note that I initially decided I hated Zumba and now I take two classes a week, so who knows? One day I might totally get back into it. In any case, I still wanted to do some conditioning and eventually I started going to yoga classes two or three times a week. I've built up my strength and balance exponentially. Plus I can measure the progress of my fitness by being able to reach new poses or stay in unmodified plank or chaturanga longer. The other evening I was able to do "upward facing dog" instead of "cobra" AND "unmodified side plank" for the FIRST TIME. I felt awesome afterwards. On days when I'm not feeling particularly "zen," I just tell myself I'm training to be the Avatar. I defy you to do "yoga warrior dance" and NOT imagine you're doing the dance of the dragons with Zuko and Aang. No kidding. That shit works every time. 

My willpower weakens significantly when it comes to video games. If I get sucked into a story or fixated on a goal in game, I will not stop until that best in slot item is mine. Seriously. I have problems.  I used to be like this:

You know, except with lady parts. Not pretty, right? A lot of people think video games are "the enemy" right now, and not just when it comes to fitness. People who know almost nothing about these games are asserting that they cause violent tendencies, rob you of real life experiences, or are senseless garbage that will rot your brain- I could talk about how I don't agree with those accusations all day. I won't because that could be its own post. One thing I can say is that they ARE addictive and that I have personally experienced gaming addiction to the extent that some of my friends had to stop the madness and screw my head on straight again. Did I to stop playing video games altogether? No. I just had to learn to enjoy them in a way that would not prevent me from persistently pursuing a marked improvement in my health. For my first month on Operation: Stop Treating Your Body Like Poop, I didn't play many video games- and certainly no MMOs (my personal crack). Once I had my fitness and nutrition routine under control, I started allowing myself to play games again, but ONLY after I'd been to the gym or done my chores. In my opinion if you're a productive member of society and you're looking after your health, who CARES if you spend 4-6 hours that evening raiding Icecrown Citadel with a bunch of pixelated buddies? I'm sure there are people who still think video games are the devil, but that's my take on the issue in relation to my own health at any rate. 

Are there things you do to bribe yourself into healthy eating and fitness habits? Leave your tips in the comments!

Motivational Thinking: I Have Many Skills

There are things I've started to tell myself to stay on track when things get hard or food gets tempting. In the past, being a stickler about having to do the same thing every day has caused me to lose large amounts of weight in the beginning, but resulted in a failure later on when I'm not able to continue measuring up to my own incredibly high standards. After all, no two days are the same, so if you limit yourself to certain behaviors performed in an exact order every day, there's only so long you can carry on before you start to feel trapped by the process. The key difference here is that I've been educating myself on how to be more active and how to supplement the Nutrisystem program so that if I do have to adjust, I have more options for strategies and solutions at my finger tips. This time around, I'm allowing myself to be more flexible and adopting a "slow and steady wins the race" mentality so that I can focus on lasting life-style changes rather than yo-yoing down so fast that I fail to maintain the weightloss and shoot up higher than I was in the first place. It's the difference between Jedi and Sith training.

So without further ado, here are some of my go-to motivational mantras:

• You can sleep in, but then you have to go to the gym after work and work twice as hard.
• You never regret going to the gym, but you do regret not going.
• If you want to eat off of your specific diet plan, then PLAN how you're going to do it so that you're not undoing the hard work you've done. On these "indulgence" days, you MUST go to the gym. 
• If you're dreading your typical boring workout, you don't have to do it. BUT! You do have to go to the gym and take a class.
• If you have a setback, let it go and move forward. You're not going to undo a mistake by harping on the past. The only thing that will undo a setback is what you DO in the present and plan to do in the future. 
• What do we say to the god of giving up?

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Those are just a few of the sentiments I've been using to push myself through rough spots. If you have more that you use to keep your motivation up, please feel free to post them in the comments!

HIIT Training? Is That What Hit-Girl Does?

So for those of you who have been following along with my blog entries, you'll know that there is this trainer named Heather at my gym who drives me crazy because she keeps coming up to me and trying to get me to do a free personal training session with her (presumably because she wants to interest me in buying a series of sessions with her that I cannot afford).

AS ANNOYING as her constant hounding is when I'm in the middle of my workouts, the other day she asked me if I had a few minutes and she took me through a short HIIT workout on the stationary bicycle. I had no idea what "interval training" was at the time, but now I'm fascinated by it. SO I wanted to share this with all of you and maybe you can try it out yourselves.

What is HIIT?

It's an enhanced form of interval training where you alternate between short intense exhausting periods of anaerobic exercise and less intense recovery periods. These cardio/conditioning workouts should last between 20-30 minutes and have a LOT of benefits including increased fat burning capacity, improved athletic capacity, and improved glucose metabolism.

Why should I try it?

HIIT is a perfect way to maximize the effectiveness of a short workout. In most workouts, fat burning happens after a period of about 30 minutes, but HIIT is different in that respect. This workout increases the amount of calories you burn DURING the session and AFTER because it increases the length of time it takes your body to recover. In layman's terms, it forces your metabolism to ramp up during the next 24 hours and you burn fat and calories more efficiently during that time. It's a workout that keeps working after you've completed it. LIKE MAGIC. :) The other benefit is that it mimics the kinds of things that happen in real life, i.e. there aren't many situations where you have to run 5 miles, but there are times when you have to sprint to catch your train or climb a flight of stairs to make it to an appointment on time. This sort of training should make that sort of thing easier.

What's the catch?

It might be a shorter workout, but you HAVE to push yourself way past your comfort zone. You have to go as fast and hard as you possibly can during the High Intensity periods. You can't be lazy about it or it won't work. You'll know you're doing it right if you're really feeling the burn in your muscles as they are deprived from oxygen and the sweat is pouring off of you.

How do I do it?

You can do this exercise on a stationary bike, an elliptical (my personal favorite), or on the treadmill or just running outside. You'll need to be able to read your heart-rate to make make you're doing it correctly and you'll also need a timer or the clock on the machine to help you transition between the phases. Check out this chart to see where your heart rate should fall in both the anaerobic and low intensity phases of the workout.

• Start with five minutes of warm-up.
• Phase 1. 30secs-1min of high intensity. On the elliptical I push the resistance up to 20 and do what feels like trudging through drying cement as fast as I can.
• Phase 2. 2-3 minutes of low intensity recovery. Don't stop, though. Keep moving.
• Phase 1. 30secs-1min of high intensity.
• Phase 2. 2-3 minutes of low intensity recovery. Don't stop!
• Keep alternating for 20-30 minutes.
• Cool down for 5 minutes.

DISCLAIMER: I'm NOT an expert but I really think more people who are interested in weight-loss need to learn about HIIT. This gives you a general idea of what to do, but make sure you do your own research online or ask a trainer at your gym to explain it to you. The benefits just seem too amazing to ignore. HIIT may not be for everyone and you should know what you're getting into before you start it. It is a very grueling workout, but it's a nice way to mix things up if things are getting stale and I burn way more calories doing this for 30 minutes than I do in 45 minutes of endurance cardio on the elliptical. I've started to alternate HIIT with endurance training to allow my body time to recover between sessions and it definitely keeps things interesting.

I haven't weighed myself since adding HIIT in my own workout routines over the last week, but I'm looking forward to my weigh in on Saturday to see if it's had a good affect.