Feliz Cinco de Mayo!
So, the good thing about having a blog is that you have a place to blather on about nonsense. The bad thing about having a blog is that you have a place to blather on about nonsense AND people read it!
Apparantly, I can only write here once every two weeks. In my head, I'm a daily blogger, but I just don't have time to log on, write and blah, blah, so two weeks it is. And, you will LIKE it. :)
Ok, updates.
First, I joined Weight Watchers (WW) on April 21st They had a plan where you buy ten weeks for $120, which I did. Regular price is $14, so I get $2 off for signing up, plus the benefit of having the "sunk cost" in WW, so I might as well attend. I weighed in at 201.8, which is so evil of the WW scale!
The first week was a really bad week for me, eating-wise. I was really really busy (see the schedule below), and I pulled more than one all-nighter and I just ate whatever I wanted and snacked whenever I wanted. I think one of my BEST days that week was a 43 point day (I get 24 points per day). But, I was faithful to my marathon training program and exercise in general. Actually, the thing I was most proud of that week was that while I was in NYC on business, I woke up EARLY (6:30am) and ran 2.5 miles in Central Park before going to my business meetings for the day--that is dedication, people!! When I weighed in the next week, I'd lost 2.4 lbs!! Which seems crazy, but I think the combo of increased metabolism from all the working out + heavy day 1 weigh-in + malabsorption (even if I count all 43 points, my body isn't able to digest all the calories from those meals, so I'm "eating" less calorically then I say I'm eating) contributed to the loss.
Obviously, losing 2.4 was a big boost, so I really stepped up my game in week two. I still had some issues with snacking, but was overall much more in control of eating (it's easier than you'd think to combine the protein!protein!protein! mantra of WLS with the points-system of WW), and kept up again with the training. My mom was in town for much of this week, and she was in constant awe of how much more active I am. She couldn't believe it when I got up early TWICE during the weekend to run before starting our day, including a Sunday morning run of 5.5 miles!! In my weigh-in this week, I'd lost 2.8 pounds, for a total loss of 5.2 pounds in two weeks!! I'm excited that my plan of using WW to bust my plateau has actually come to fruition. In fact, this week, I saw 189 for the first time EVER on my home scale, which was capital-A Awesome!
It was also interesting to me to see how much my weight had effected our visits in the past and how her weight still contributed to the "shape" of our visits. In the past, my mom would always have been more active than me--I was such a slug, especially when I had "down time." Even she commented that I used to always ask people to get things for me and now I'm go, go, go. And that was weird because I had to slow down my pace a lot to accomodate my mom in terms of walking and just doing stuff all day long. This isn't really a cut on my mom, it was just a realization to me of how much I'd changed because normally she would be setting the pace and I'd be trying to keep up with her, not the other way around.
Attitude:
I've been doing a lof of thinking (or reflecting, as the therapists like to call it) about the impact of attitude on my environment. I recently reread a chapter in Scott Adam's The Dilbert Future on affirmations. That chapter really had an impact on me the first time I read it and had an equal impact the second time. Basically, Scott Adams writes about discovering affirmations (short, present-tense, positive, declarative sentences repeated daily to oneself, e.g., I, Jem Welsh, am a millionaire). Scott has used affirmations to help him achieve his desired score on the GMAT (business school entrance exam), overcome a medical scare, become a successful cartoonist, and I'm sure more.
What really impacted me about this chapter is a) you don't have to believe the affirmation, you just have to repeat it and b) it produces results that cannot be explained by conscious behavior alone. While I haven't taken the time to write any affirmations down, I've been conscious (however you spell that freaking word) recently of having very positive self talk, even when I don't believe it AND trying to find the positive aspect to every situation. I cannot tell you how much this has helped me the last few weeks! (Well, I can, see the 5.2 pound weight loss above!). But not just weight loss--it's like life is a little easier to deal with when you don't waste energy focusing on the bad or lamenting the impossible.
Case in point: Last week, I had a huge grant due to the local government by 4pm on Thursday (huge in terms of 25-30 pages of writing and worth upwords of $1 million if we get approved). I also had a huge proposal due at midnight on Wednesday (about 15 pages and worth at least $150,000). I finished the Wednesday proposal at 12:30am and turned it in and then had nothing left to give the Thursday grant (and I KNOW I shouldn've waited until the last minute, but hindsight, ok?). So, I crashed on a couch in my office for a couple of hours to recharge to do another marathon writing session. The whole rest of the day Thursday was a blur--I was shouting orders across the office for so and so to research this issue and so and so to write this criteria, meanwhile, I'm trying to get the budget from my boss, who was in Turkey at the time, and my version of word keeps crashing. All of a sudden, it's 3pm and we're not finished. It's 3:30pm, and we are frantically plugging in the last pieces of the puzzle when my computer crashes again and I lose 40 minutes of data. It's 3:45pm and we are copying papers like mad. The proposal must be delivered to a location that is technically 4 minutes away by car, but seriously, it's maybe 10 minutes away by cop car with lights, given the traffic. At 3:55pm, I literally run out of the office and hop into a cab practically screaming at the guy to break every traffic law to get to this address and I'll make it worth his while. For a minute in the office around 3:46pm, my heart sunk because I KNEW we weren't going to get the proposal in on time and I'd have to tell my boss that I lost us a million bucks. Then, I pushed the thought aside (visiously) and concentrated on HOW we were going to make it happen. The contractor who collects proposals has a hard and fast rule that there are NO late proposals. I call her on her cell phone at 3:58pm when I am ten blocks away. She tells me that it is already 4pm and she's leaving the office. I respond, "Honestly! It isn't yet 4pm. Seriously!" She asks me how far away I am. I tell her ten blocks. She says curtly, "You have 5 minutes," and hangs up the phone. I shout at the driver some more--cut off that van, run this light, pass him in the oncoming traffic lane, GO, GO, GO! About a block and a half away, we are stuck at a light at a busy intersection. I throw a $20 at the cabbie, leap out of the car and dodge traffic, running the last block and a half to my destination. I buzz in and the woman is all packed and on her way out the door (for the second time). She accepts our proposal and walks me out the door. I collapse back into the cab and phone the office to let them know we made it.
Honestly, though, I don't believe that we DID make it. This woman is a STICKLER on time and we were definitely late. I have to believe that me spending the last 14 minutes before 4pm working out how I could make it happen instead of lamenting on how it wouldn't happen made all the difference.
I'm in the education business, so I am frequently in a position to give advice to students (and teachers). A few weeks ago, I spoke with a small group of 8th graders about attending college. Actually, I was kind of pissed that I was speaking to these kids (although they would never have known it) because the group that I was donating my services had told me I'd be speaking to 300-400 high schoolers in four groups and instead I spoke to about 15 high schoolers and 13 8th graders over the course of EIGHT hours. (That is non-profit planning for you.) Anyway, so I don't have any "real" material for these kids--I'm supposed to be talking to 10th and 11th graders about SAT's and ACT's, college applications and financial aid and it is just cruel to get 13 and 14 year olds all worked up about a standardized test they won't be taking for THREE more years. So instead, I'm just speaking off the cuff on why it is important to do well in school starting in 9th grade and how decisions they make now really do impact their future (in terms of colleges/financial aid, which then determines career paths, etc).
A couple of the students began complaining about how so and so was a bad teacher and they were getting bad grades in his or her class but it wasn't their fault because (blah, blah, blah). I instantly took a stand on this issue. I said if they didn't understand the material b/c the teacher wasn't explaining it well, talk to the teacher after class to get more help, or go to another teacher of the same subject who you do have a repore (sp?) with, or go to the tutoring center--basically, FIND HELP and don't stop until you get it. And, if they were getting a poor grade because the teacher is *ist (fill in the *), then advocate on your behalf--talk to a counselor, or a parent, or a mentor, or your principal, or another teacher, but don't stop talking until the situation is resolved to your satisfaction. I ended my mini-rant (but rant in a good, high energy way) by saying that the student's future was up to THEM and THEM alone. It is great when everything works out well and you love all your teachers and your parents are super supportive and, and, and. But if it isn't all roses and sunshine, then what? Do you just give up on your dream? Just tell people that you aren't a doctor because your chemistry teacher was mean? You can't let ANYONE or ANYTHING get in the way of achieving your goals. YOU are the master of your destiny. YOU decide what you want and stop at nothing to get it.
While that powered up the 8th graders for a minute there, I can't believe what an impact those words had on ME. Really. I'm a lawyer (at least by education). I'm trained to advocate on behalf of others. And ask any of my friends or family members--I'm a absolute pitbull when someone is being treated unfairly (or just read the post about my dad being in the hospital--that should give you some idea of how I can get). For anyone I love, I would go to ANY LENGTHS to make their situation better. And, I know I can do the same for myself.
Today, for example. I'm tired. I got up at 3:30am to drive to West Virginia to pick up D, one of my students who finished up his freshman year of college and needed a ride home (with an entire dorm room full of stuff). It's 8pm and I have to be back up at 7am to drive six hours down to North Carolina so another student of mine can visit her top choice school, NC State. It'll probably be midnight before I get back home tomorrow. I DESERVE to rest, right? But, I want to run this marathon in October. And my training says I need to run 3 miles twice a week and 1 long run on the weekend. If I don't run tonight, I'll have missed one of my 3 mile runs for the week and have to run the 6 mile run on Sunday on just 1 day of run-training. So, I do deserve to rest, but I also deserve to push myself to meet the goals I set for myself. With NO excuses. I could have run on Tuesday, but I was tired then too. I could have left work earlier to run today. Since I've already made those choices, I just have to deal with the choice I have left--to honor my commitment to myself or to succumb to the "reasons why I can't/won't/don't/didn't .....".
Have a great weekend--I've got to run. :)
Jem
Apparantly, I can only write here once every two weeks. In my head, I'm a daily blogger, but I just don't have time to log on, write and blah, blah, so two weeks it is. And, you will LIKE it. :)
Ok, updates.
First, I joined Weight Watchers (WW) on April 21st They had a plan where you buy ten weeks for $120, which I did. Regular price is $14, so I get $2 off for signing up, plus the benefit of having the "sunk cost" in WW, so I might as well attend. I weighed in at 201.8, which is so evil of the WW scale!
The first week was a really bad week for me, eating-wise. I was really really busy (see the schedule below), and I pulled more than one all-nighter and I just ate whatever I wanted and snacked whenever I wanted. I think one of my BEST days that week was a 43 point day (I get 24 points per day). But, I was faithful to my marathon training program and exercise in general. Actually, the thing I was most proud of that week was that while I was in NYC on business, I woke up EARLY (6:30am) and ran 2.5 miles in Central Park before going to my business meetings for the day--that is dedication, people!! When I weighed in the next week, I'd lost 2.4 lbs!! Which seems crazy, but I think the combo of increased metabolism from all the working out + heavy day 1 weigh-in + malabsorption (even if I count all 43 points, my body isn't able to digest all the calories from those meals, so I'm "eating" less calorically then I say I'm eating) contributed to the loss.
Obviously, losing 2.4 was a big boost, so I really stepped up my game in week two. I still had some issues with snacking, but was overall much more in control of eating (it's easier than you'd think to combine the protein!protein!protein! mantra of WLS with the points-system of WW), and kept up again with the training. My mom was in town for much of this week, and she was in constant awe of how much more active I am. She couldn't believe it when I got up early TWICE during the weekend to run before starting our day, including a Sunday morning run of 5.5 miles!! In my weigh-in this week, I'd lost 2.8 pounds, for a total loss of 5.2 pounds in two weeks!! I'm excited that my plan of using WW to bust my plateau has actually come to fruition. In fact, this week, I saw 189 for the first time EVER on my home scale, which was capital-A Awesome!
It was also interesting to me to see how much my weight had effected our visits in the past and how her weight still contributed to the "shape" of our visits. In the past, my mom would always have been more active than me--I was such a slug, especially when I had "down time." Even she commented that I used to always ask people to get things for me and now I'm go, go, go. And that was weird because I had to slow down my pace a lot to accomodate my mom in terms of walking and just doing stuff all day long. This isn't really a cut on my mom, it was just a realization to me of how much I'd changed because normally she would be setting the pace and I'd be trying to keep up with her, not the other way around.
Attitude:
I've been doing a lof of thinking (or reflecting, as the therapists like to call it) about the impact of attitude on my environment. I recently reread a chapter in Scott Adam's The Dilbert Future on affirmations. That chapter really had an impact on me the first time I read it and had an equal impact the second time. Basically, Scott Adams writes about discovering affirmations (short, present-tense, positive, declarative sentences repeated daily to oneself, e.g., I, Jem Welsh, am a millionaire). Scott has used affirmations to help him achieve his desired score on the GMAT (business school entrance exam), overcome a medical scare, become a successful cartoonist, and I'm sure more.
What really impacted me about this chapter is a) you don't have to believe the affirmation, you just have to repeat it and b) it produces results that cannot be explained by conscious behavior alone. While I haven't taken the time to write any affirmations down, I've been conscious (however you spell that freaking word) recently of having very positive self talk, even when I don't believe it AND trying to find the positive aspect to every situation. I cannot tell you how much this has helped me the last few weeks! (Well, I can, see the 5.2 pound weight loss above!). But not just weight loss--it's like life is a little easier to deal with when you don't waste energy focusing on the bad or lamenting the impossible.
Case in point: Last week, I had a huge grant due to the local government by 4pm on Thursday (huge in terms of 25-30 pages of writing and worth upwords of $1 million if we get approved). I also had a huge proposal due at midnight on Wednesday (about 15 pages and worth at least $150,000). I finished the Wednesday proposal at 12:30am and turned it in and then had nothing left to give the Thursday grant (and I KNOW I shouldn've waited until the last minute, but hindsight, ok?). So, I crashed on a couch in my office for a couple of hours to recharge to do another marathon writing session. The whole rest of the day Thursday was a blur--I was shouting orders across the office for so and so to research this issue and so and so to write this criteria, meanwhile, I'm trying to get the budget from my boss, who was in Turkey at the time, and my version of word keeps crashing. All of a sudden, it's 3pm and we're not finished. It's 3:30pm, and we are frantically plugging in the last pieces of the puzzle when my computer crashes again and I lose 40 minutes of data. It's 3:45pm and we are copying papers like mad. The proposal must be delivered to a location that is technically 4 minutes away by car, but seriously, it's maybe 10 minutes away by cop car with lights, given the traffic. At 3:55pm, I literally run out of the office and hop into a cab practically screaming at the guy to break every traffic law to get to this address and I'll make it worth his while. For a minute in the office around 3:46pm, my heart sunk because I KNEW we weren't going to get the proposal in on time and I'd have to tell my boss that I lost us a million bucks. Then, I pushed the thought aside (visiously) and concentrated on HOW we were going to make it happen. The contractor who collects proposals has a hard and fast rule that there are NO late proposals. I call her on her cell phone at 3:58pm when I am ten blocks away. She tells me that it is already 4pm and she's leaving the office. I respond, "Honestly! It isn't yet 4pm. Seriously!" She asks me how far away I am. I tell her ten blocks. She says curtly, "You have 5 minutes," and hangs up the phone. I shout at the driver some more--cut off that van, run this light, pass him in the oncoming traffic lane, GO, GO, GO! About a block and a half away, we are stuck at a light at a busy intersection. I throw a $20 at the cabbie, leap out of the car and dodge traffic, running the last block and a half to my destination. I buzz in and the woman is all packed and on her way out the door (for the second time). She accepts our proposal and walks me out the door. I collapse back into the cab and phone the office to let them know we made it.
Honestly, though, I don't believe that we DID make it. This woman is a STICKLER on time and we were definitely late. I have to believe that me spending the last 14 minutes before 4pm working out how I could make it happen instead of lamenting on how it wouldn't happen made all the difference.
I'm in the education business, so I am frequently in a position to give advice to students (and teachers). A few weeks ago, I spoke with a small group of 8th graders about attending college. Actually, I was kind of pissed that I was speaking to these kids (although they would never have known it) because the group that I was donating my services had told me I'd be speaking to 300-400 high schoolers in four groups and instead I spoke to about 15 high schoolers and 13 8th graders over the course of EIGHT hours. (That is non-profit planning for you.) Anyway, so I don't have any "real" material for these kids--I'm supposed to be talking to 10th and 11th graders about SAT's and ACT's, college applications and financial aid and it is just cruel to get 13 and 14 year olds all worked up about a standardized test they won't be taking for THREE more years. So instead, I'm just speaking off the cuff on why it is important to do well in school starting in 9th grade and how decisions they make now really do impact their future (in terms of colleges/financial aid, which then determines career paths, etc).
A couple of the students began complaining about how so and so was a bad teacher and they were getting bad grades in his or her class but it wasn't their fault because (blah, blah, blah). I instantly took a stand on this issue. I said if they didn't understand the material b/c the teacher wasn't explaining it well, talk to the teacher after class to get more help, or go to another teacher of the same subject who you do have a repore (sp?) with, or go to the tutoring center--basically, FIND HELP and don't stop until you get it. And, if they were getting a poor grade because the teacher is *ist (fill in the *), then advocate on your behalf--talk to a counselor, or a parent, or a mentor, or your principal, or another teacher, but don't stop talking until the situation is resolved to your satisfaction. I ended my mini-rant (but rant in a good, high energy way) by saying that the student's future was up to THEM and THEM alone. It is great when everything works out well and you love all your teachers and your parents are super supportive and, and, and. But if it isn't all roses and sunshine, then what? Do you just give up on your dream? Just tell people that you aren't a doctor because your chemistry teacher was mean? You can't let ANYONE or ANYTHING get in the way of achieving your goals. YOU are the master of your destiny. YOU decide what you want and stop at nothing to get it.
While that powered up the 8th graders for a minute there, I can't believe what an impact those words had on ME. Really. I'm a lawyer (at least by education). I'm trained to advocate on behalf of others. And ask any of my friends or family members--I'm a absolute pitbull when someone is being treated unfairly (or just read the post about my dad being in the hospital--that should give you some idea of how I can get). For anyone I love, I would go to ANY LENGTHS to make their situation better. And, I know I can do the same for myself.
Today, for example. I'm tired. I got up at 3:30am to drive to West Virginia to pick up D, one of my students who finished up his freshman year of college and needed a ride home (with an entire dorm room full of stuff). It's 8pm and I have to be back up at 7am to drive six hours down to North Carolina so another student of mine can visit her top choice school, NC State. It'll probably be midnight before I get back home tomorrow. I DESERVE to rest, right? But, I want to run this marathon in October. And my training says I need to run 3 miles twice a week and 1 long run on the weekend. If I don't run tonight, I'll have missed one of my 3 mile runs for the week and have to run the 6 mile run on Sunday on just 1 day of run-training. So, I do deserve to rest, but I also deserve to push myself to meet the goals I set for myself. With NO excuses. I could have run on Tuesday, but I was tired then too. I could have left work earlier to run today. Since I've already made those choices, I just have to deal with the choice I have left--to honor my commitment to myself or to succumb to the "reasons why I can't/won't/don't/didn't .....".
Have a great weekend--I've got to run. :)
Jem
posted by Jaime at
3:45 PM
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