to Reflect and Resolve

I'm something of an introspective person. I start thinking about my New Year's resolution around Thanksgiving. My resolutions are not mere goals to be met (i.e. lose weight or keep things organized). They are broader, more of an acknowledgement of what God has done and is doing in my life. 

2012 was a busy year of firsts (and thirds!). We went into it knowing there were many changes that would rock our world, and prepared ourselves with our resolution to be intentional.  I know that's something of a cliche phrase right now, but our goal was very simply to be purposeful with our time and resources and most importantly, our children. I could nitpick at the year and detail all the ways we we succeeded or failed, but I'll spare you my neurosis.  Suffice it to say that the year was not wasted.  

This year, I'm getting a little more specific. My resolution for 2013 is that the health part of our life (specifically eating and exercising) will look different by this time next year. Exactly what it will look like, I can't say, but I've been on this journey of research and discovery for the last several months and it is time to put some things into action. Things like training to walk a 5k, more of our calories from fruits, veggies, and gluten free grains than from animal products, and finally, FINALLY establishing a good system for planning a weekly menu, shopping economically & efficiently, and eating 90% of our meals at home (and from scratch!). 

I know there are a number of practical changes we'll have to make over the next twelve months. Ray and I are joining Weight Watchers Online for extra accountability and structure. I'm trying out different menu planning options and tools in an effort to discover what will work best for our family. 

But there is a spiritual side to all this too. It is not just about wiping out the bad, but about replacing it with the good. I'm a very emotional eater, and I know that even pursuing a healthy lifestyle can easily become an unhealthy obsession if it is allowed to fill the role that only God is qualified to fill. 

So it is with all this floating around in my mind that I prayerfully make this resolution, asking God to reign supreme in my kitchen, over my grocery list, and most importantly in my heart where my motivations, desires, and shortcomings are laid bare before Him. 

Happy New Year! 

Les Mis ... Some thoughts

As a person with a somewhat theatrical bend to my brain,I have always had a great respect for Les Mis. It's iconic, no question. It will never be my favorite, but after seeing it on film, it definitely has earned a new place in my heart.

I was familiar with the story, and I knew most of the songs, but I really felt it in a new way. Valjean's redemption...Fantine's despair...never has the title, Les Miserables, fit together with the story and characters so perfectly in my mind.

But what really surprised me was Javert.  He is so much more than the villain  to Valjean. He is the law...He loves it. He lives it. It is his whole world. And it inevitably leads to his death. At the end of the day, the law can do no more than show us our own weakness. In the law we see our utter destitution, but in love we are restored. "To love another person is to see the face of God."

Now that is EPIC.

C2K - KNEE'D I Say More?

I decided not to walk today. I have extremely weak knees (sometimes they give out when I'm just walking around), made worse by frequent injuries during my feeble attempts at physical activity as a teenager and a general lifestyle of poor nutrition and weight gain. So yesterday I realized that my left knee was hurting. Not in the "hey something's going on with the weather" kind of ache, but the "you pulled something" kind of way.

I did some research on knee strengthening exercises and decided to incorporate them into my 5k training. 

(On a side note, the kids and I found ourselves outside for a beautiful 10 minutes with nothing to do, so we walked around KSU. It wasn't an official training walk, but I did get to analyze which knee muscles had been affected and how during my previous walk, and my heart rate definitely went up. So yay for spontaneous physical activity!)

This morning, I woke up at my usual 6am, fed the baby, and went through my knee exercises. I do hope to get some good training walks in between now and New Year's, but because of the holidays and the cold weather, I'm going to focus my goals on knee strengthening. KNEED I say more? (I love cheesy play on words!)

Best 10 Knee Strengthening Exercises After Knee Surgery or Injury.

 

Isometric Quads

Lie on your back or sit with your leg straight.
Tighten the force in the front of your thigh as much as you can, pushing the back of your knee flat out the floor.
This will pull your kneecap up to your thigh, toward your hip.
You can place a rolled towel under the knee. Knee strengthening exercises that are similar to this one you can work on the first day-after surgery or injury.

 

Quad Strengthening Straight-Leg Lift

First, you should lie on your back. Pull one knee up while keeping it on the floor.
Tighten the muscle in front of your thigh as much as you can, pushing the back of your knee flat out the floor.
Lift your leg/heel 4 to 6 inches off the floor.
Lower your leg/heel back to the floor. Keep the muscle in front of your thigh as tight as possible as you lower your leg. Then relax.

Knee strengthening exercises should be started as soon as possible after surgery or injury, to prevent excessive muscle atrophy.

 

Heel Slide

This exercise strengthens your knee as well as increasing its range of motion.
Lying on your back, start with your leg resting flat on the bed. Slowly bend your knee, sliding your heel towards your bottom. Expect to feel a stretch over the front of your knee. Hold this position for a few seconds, and then gently slide your heel back down. Make sure that your knee returns to a fully straightened resting position on the bed after every repetition.
If this knee exercise too hard for you, you can work with both feet at once or you can help with your hands.

Knee strengthening exercises like this one greatly helps to achieve full knee flexion and extension.

 

Knee Flexion

Lie flat on your stomach bend your injured knee trying to bring your heel as close to your butt as possible. Hold your knee in this position 5 to 10 seconds and then lower leg and relax. Reducing swelling will help increase the range you can bring the foot.

Once your legs gains strength, do the knee strengthening exercises with weights on your ankles or use Thera Band bands.

 

Hip Adductors (Inner Thigh) Strengthening Inner Leg Lift

Lie on floor on your right side, shoulder and hips aligned. Use your right hand to prop up your head. Place your left hand on the floor in front of you to help balance yourself. Bend left leg and bring it to the floor in front or behind of you. Slowly raise your right leg about 10 inches off the floor then, hold for a second, then slowly lower leg to ground.

C2K - Check Out Day Four Man!

I'll stop posting daily updates as soon as it stops being a big deal that I actually got up and did it - promise!

MONDAY. The start of a new week. The week before Christmas in fact. Now that I'm a stay at home mom with three kids, I find that my weekends don't look too different from the rest of the week. Mostly I mean that I can't turn my brain off. There are still meals to plan, things to prepare for, and all the thousand and one little chores that help make life feel better. But that's really a topic for another blog. Back to today.

I woke up this morning by having a terrible dream that I'd left the sausage casserole I'd made for Grayson's class Christmas party uncovered, and that the cat had eaten it. So I went down to the kitchen to check. Fortunately, someone had covered it before they went to bed (thank you Ray? thank you Dad?) and it was fine. It was about 6:15 and I was wide awake so I got dressed, grabbed Achilles and headed out into the neighborhood. 

The road was very wet from the previous day's rain, and my tennis shoe squeaks, especially when it's wet. I think (because of the way I walk) that I've worn the tread out, which is why it squeaks. It's extremely annoying. I may need to spring for new tennis shoes before training is over. Maybe I'll make that my "30 minutes" reward or something.

Since my goal is still more about consistency, I walked 15 minutes. I took a new route which included a much steeper hill. I will not take Achilles with me anymore. It's much too difficult to focus on training when I have to stop with him every few feet. 

I feel strong. Not like Friday when I felt wiped after half the walk, so mornings really are a good time for me, if I can convince myself to get out of bed :0)

Goals this week are to walk three times and to start focusing on proper walking form. 

Now to tackle the day!

Couch to 5k - Day 3!

We'll call this one a moral victory. 

The kids and I were pretty busy gearing up for the last week of school before Christmas break, but because it's Friday and both my parents were home, we kept the day pretty low key. 

I got my walk in at 4:00 pm by taking the three kids to our neighborhood play ground. We walked the steady seven minutes up to the stop sign and then turned around and backed tracked the last minute and a half to the park. Then we stopped and played for about 30 minutes. It was beautiful weather, even if it was slightly chilly. We had the yard to ourselves and had a blast! When Grayson decided he'd had enough listening and wanted to do his own thing (as in the kind of thing that is dangerous...) we packed it up and walked the six minutes back home. 

So it wasn't a great training walk. It probably didn't do much to get me ready for the 5k, but in terms of the big picture-change habits-get out in the sunshine and be active-goals, we did it! 

Maybe it's because it's near the end of the day and the end of the week, but that solid seven minute walk really took it out of me! 

Couch to 5k - Day 2

Tuesday and Wednesday turned out to be downer days. Though I had built Tuesday in as a breather day on purpose, I was feeling pretty blue and unmotivated, so I dressed in my work out clothes just in case that exact right moment of perfect conditions hit. The one where weather, kid's schedules, my energy, and any other applicable factors come together in a burst of perfection, seemingly calling us to join the world of the active! 

Sadly (though not unexpectedly) the moment never came. I went to bed with the weakest of resolves to get up Wednesday morning. 

I did not get up Wednesday morning. I still thought a time might come when I could get it in - after all, it's only 15 minutes! I made one feeble attempt to get my mom/fellow trainee to walk the mall with me, but honestly I did not try very hard. It seems that exercise - very much like the elusive enjoyable cup of coffee - must be taken care of first thing in the morning if it is to be a part of my day. Or at the very least, planned for with all the exhausting preparation that goes in to doing anything while juggling a toddler, a baby, a dog, a puppy, and a six year old. Again, I went to bed with a feeble resolution to start my day with a cold, fifteen minute walk with Achilles around the neighborhood. I didn't even shower before bed, giving myself extra incentive (since I was planning to exercise in the morning I would need to shower in the morning anyway...why go through it twice?)

I'm not sure how, but in my dreams I managed to convince myself that it was too dark and cold and lonely and scary to walk the neighborhood by myself in the morning. So I skipped it. I did get up and shower (you're welcome!) and since Grayson and Madi woke up early I had Ray put the stroller in the car and after we dropped Jenna off at work, we went to the mall and walked for approximately 15 minutes - success!! I say approximately because I left my phone at home and so was not able to time it exactly. We made one full rotation of the bottom level of Town Center Mall, and based on what I remember seeing on the clock when we left the car and what it was when we got back in, we had very close to a fifteen minute walk. Perfect!

This is not really about training for a 5k. This is about lifestyle changes. My new year's resolution (spoiler alert!) is all about make permanent changes to the way we eat and live so that our lifestyle looks and feels different by the end of 2013. That means incorporating physical activity into our daily lives, and this is the start of that. I still need to walk one more time in the next two days to meet my goal. In the words of Grayson's current favorite book, "I think I can...I think I can...I think I can..."! 

Couch to 5k - Day 1

Well against my other judgement, I have been convinced to train to walk in a 5k. I have been promised that we will find something fun, something for charity (but that we don't have to raise money for, because I really hate asking for money) and something we can walk because right now, due to multiple knee injuries from my childhood and adult life, I am not a runner. I won't say "never", but I have no intention of ever pursuing a hobby of running as I do not find it appealing. But who knows? Maybe after nine weeks of training I'll feel differently. 

This morning, Madi woke me up at 5:30 to eat and chat about her night. I put her back to bed at 6 when my alarm went off, pulled on my running clothes, grabbed the dog and went out into the cool, dark morning. I'm so glad it wasn't raining or freezing - my resolve to get up was weak and it would not have taken much to send me back to bed! 

I walked eight minutes in one direction, then turned around and made it home in seven. A perfect 15 minute walk! My goal for today was very simply to get up (check), get out (check), and walk for 15 minutes (check!). I got my heart pumping and my legs moving - objective achieved! 

Achilles is not the greatest walking partner. He spent the first half of the walk running ahead and pulling on his leash so he could smell everything, and by the second half he was tired and kept lagging behind. We'll have to work on it! 

My goal for the rest of the week is to walk two more times and work in some yoga on my off days.