Day One

The day is almost over, and I very nearly forgot to write. I reminded myself earlier to make sure to blog, and I guess I almost convinced myself I had done it. Gotta love the mommy brain...it's so easy to short circuit!

Day one is over...and was a success. Seriously. No, it wasn't perfect, and yes, there were some parts where I felt a bit uncertain or felt old attitudes or emotions or hungers rearing their heads, but I am here, with the very first day under my belt, and I am proud of myself.

I woke up at 5:45am (dude.) and Steve was just getting to bed. He said to me, "Are you really getting up right now?" Maybe that was meant to be, because it galvanized me into putting my feet on the floor and stumbling down the stairs to work out.

The workout went ok. I got a idea of my baseline fitness (or lack thereof) for my upper body. I am not as weak as I thought I was in a few areas, and in others, well, I went with a gusto and now know I will need to scale back for next time. For example, Side Raises, that exercise where you hold a dumbbell in each hand and stand up and raise your arms straight out to the sides...well, let me tell you, I didn't make it all the way up. For any of them. I forgot how much I used to grit my teeth during deltoid muscles exercises. But I rocked my triceps, pushing for the intensity of 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, with Dumbell Extensions and finishing with a rather brutal Bench Dip finish. I could feel it this evening when I was putting my hair up...tomorrow my arms should feel pretty interesting. The timing was rather hard this morning. Since I have the adjustable weight dumbbells, it takes more time to change the weights, so my workout ran for 56 minutes instead of the suggested 46. Oh well, I was also uncertain and it was my first day. It will all work out as I get better.

Food wise. I tried something today I haven't had ever, or at least not in a very very long time (if ever). I ate kale. I had cooked it yesterday, and I had a bit for dinner. Not bad if you cook the hell out of it and put red wine vinegar on it. It was nice to know that I was going to eat six meals today, that they would all be healthy, and that I didn't have to sweat figuring out what to cook for dinner (one of my least favorite puzzlers) because I had planned in advance. So that's what they were talking about when they said planning for success. No, I really did know that already, but sarcasm doesn't always travel so well in (my) writing. I tried to practice a moment of mindfulness before I sat down to eat each time. I have such a habit of reading or watching TV when I eat, or just spacing out during the meal. I never take the time to pause and look at my plate and see the whole picture and appreciate what I have before I launch right in. A lot of times, it was just my hand going into a bag of chips or chocolate repeatedly, while I anesthetized myself with TV or reading. It was so interesting to do it differently today. I asked for God to help me be mindful with eating today, with each meal I ate. I had a couple of moments at the beginning of lunch and at the snack this afternoon, fear at the beginning of eating that this food wouldn't possibly fill me up, that I would starve (my brain can be a bit melodramatic) and I just asked God to help me, to release me from that fear, and it worked.

Maybe some of you don't truck so much with God, or Higher Powers, but, to make a long, looong story short, I will sum up by telling you that I didn't used to believe either. Then I thought I wasn't good enough for a God of any kind to take an interest in me, let alone love me. Then I created my own conception of a loving, caring God (and He has one hell of a sense of humor, let me tell you). I have a relationship with God, and I will be relying upon Him to help me learn this new way of life. He will be coming up, most likely here and there, and I ask that you all out there (if anyone ever reads this, ever) just bear an open mind. This is my journey. I am not asking you to believe what I believe, nor am I asking you to make me believe what you believe. I respect where you are coming from, and I would be lying to you if I didn't tell you when I had to rely upon a power greater than myself. Ok? Everything copacetic? Sweet.

So I worked out, and while waiting the requisite hour after working out before eating, I practiced five minutes of meditation (gotta start somehow), did some enriching reading, watched the news (interested to see if North Carolina is going to get visited by Hurricane Bill--part of me wants it to happen...morbid, huh?), and prepared breakfast for myself. Then Andrew woke up and we had a pretty good morning. Actually we didn't do hardly any TV viewing this morning. Usually we get sucked into watching a bit of TV, but today I left it off and we played with blocks and used our imaginations and stuff. Wild. We are a fairly active playtime family, but lately the boob tube has been getting out of hand. I took Andrew swimming, we all came back home for lunch and a wee nap (I was flagging at this point). Then I went to work and earned extra credit by walking the short distance to and from work. So I got in an extra 20 minutes of walking today. I hope to be able to walk to work tomorrow morning too.

Day One is done. I shook off some inertia. I did it today. I am going to do it tomorrow. See you then.