Are you honest with your trainer?

After I posted yesterday’s blog to my Facebook wall, I get this message:

“I hope you aren’t Facebook friends with your trainer, she will know you aren’t following her plan.”

My response:

“I don’t have to worry about her missing it in her newsfeed, I emailed her the link”

This got me to thinking – how many people are NOT honest with their trainers? To be, that is just pointless. Why are you paying someone to help you reach your goals if you are going to lie? How does that benefit you? I eat off plan, I tell her. I miss workouts, I tell her. There is no way for her to be able to help me if I am not completely honest with her. A good client/trainer relationship is based on open, honest communication without that, you have nothing.

So do YOU lie to your trainer?

Trying to figure things out...

I am a little fat now. Do not argue with me on this. At 5 feet 1 inch tall and 142 pounds I am fat, D cup and extra muscle do not count for that much so get over it. You can’t see any of that muscle anyway, all the definition is long gone. Toss in the fact my knees, ankles and other broken parts feel better when I am lighter and that alone should be motivation to drop 10 pounds. In some ways it is, I want to drop 10 pounds, I really do – easy enough to say but my follow through really sucks these days. (and let’s not even talk about next competition season, I got to deal with this 10 pounds first)

It seems the only area in my life that I am NOT anal and OCD about record keeping, tracking and structure is diet and exercise. I have spreadsheets, data bases, logs and indexes of pretty much everything. My house is insanely organized and if you look at my desk at work you would think it is a vacant seat. I am that orderly.
I also have a dozen notebooks and logs with anywhere from 4-12 workouts logged then nothing. I have always wandered into the gym, worked what I felt like working and left. I never really track anything. I have a cheap little calendar that has notes like “60 treadmill, shoulders” and that was enough. I can’t stick with logging workouts.

Yesterday my trainer asked me about the concept of diet rebellion and how I previously reacted to structured dieting (ie when I was getting ready for my shows last year). Looking back, I have always sucked at it. My prep plan was more of a guide than anything else and I wandered off it a good bit. Any time I joined Weight Watchers at a friend’s prodding I tracked about 3 days and was done with it. I’ve tracked in Sparkpeople here and there, same with paper journals and spreadsheets - for a few days at a time anyway.

Now don’t be confused with this being a dislike of my meal plan. My meal plan rocks. There is nothing nasty on it like fish. I have plenty of food to combine in the prescribed amounts. Not complicated at all. But I still revolt. Sometimes I make unhealthy choices, sometimes I eat bigger portions, I’m usually force feeding myself in the morning because we all know the only thing that should pass my lips before 1pm is coffee.

I fight structure in this area of my life – both diet and exercise. Maybe it is because it is the only area I have ever “winged it”. However doing what I always did doesn’t seem to be working for me right now (see paragraph 2), I no longer seem to follow the theory of "compensation" that was ingrained in me my whole life (see Why French Women Don't Get Fat for an explanation - some people need the book, I had my French Grandma). But a real plan isn't working for me either.

Now what??

It’s too hot to get out of bed……

Alternate title: Now I know what is meant by the lazy days of summer.

And really, it is TOO HOT to get out of bed. So I don’t. I’ve been oversleeping a lot these days. Like every day. There doesn’t seem to be much of a point in getting out of bed because I will just get annoyed within 5 minutes- as soon as I go downstairs, open the door to put Olie out and the feel the top 5 layers of skin get seared off my face from the heat but the real fun comes later when I actually have to go outside into the rainforest dropped in the middle of a swamp located in Hell So really, why bother?

Oh yea, that work thing. Messes up my plan of staying in bed all day every time. So out into the heat I go. And I get annoyed. And cranky. And by the time I leave work I just want to go home, sit on my couch under the AC vent and ceiling fan drinking gallons of ice water while doing nothing. I also do not care what the thermostat on the wall at the gym says – it is NOT 73 degrees in the gym. It is much closer to 103. This too is a problem because the last thing I want to do when hot and cranky is go to the gym and get hotter – before I even start working out! So I don’t. I go sit on the couch with the AC, some ice and my bullies. Then I don’t get back up. 24 hour gyms are only awesome when you use them – working out at midnight would be a lot cooler but that missing motivation? Yep, still missing!

My motivation is definitely located someplace where it is not 101 degrees outside…… at 7am!

Anyone seen my Motivation?

"Never trade what you want the most... for what you want at the moment" – John Defendis

That seems like a pretty simple concept doesn’t it? I’ve posted this as my Facebook status dozens of times. I’ve used it in my online journal almost that many. Yet I can’t seem to live it.

It has been 50.5 weeks since I last competed. During this time I got lazy and gained approximately 25 pounds from my pre-water drop stage weight. Sure, some of it is new muscle but a lot of it is due to rediscovering my love for junk food and high calorie beverages – Pringles and Blue Moon anyone? Sitting on my ass became far easier than going to the gym and morning cardio became a distant memory. Sure, when I go I kill it and my back and shoulders have definitely grown. But so has my gut and ass. Sadly they have grown more. A lot more.

So what really happened? It is like I said, I got lazy. With no set goal, what I could do today was put off until tomorrow and we all know tomorrow never comes. And really, who doesn’t love Pringles and Blue Moon? Cheeze Its? Caramel Macchiato? Mexican food? Mac n cheese? Wine? You see where this is going? Early mornings became a thing of the distant past. Lifting at night became sitting in front of the computer (with a snack of course).

And know what happens when you get lazy? It gets really hard to get unlazy. The mouth says I want my abs back, I want to get back in last winter’s clothing before what they call Fall here in hell (another topic for another post) and the blubber really needs to go. Now. Most of the brain agrees. Except for the part that stops the crap from passing my lips and removes my ass from the couch. The part called Motivation.

So what next? Keep plodding along until I get it all figured out. I have no excuse other than laziness. My current diet plan is awesome – no nasty fish, pick and chose what I want from a long list of foods – sure, somehow Pringles, Blue Moon and wine got left off the list but really, do I need them for the 6 weeks it would take to knock off 10 pounds? Nope, I really don’t. I can hit the gym right after work and still be in the house by 5:30 – long before I ever left the office for many years. My schedule is the last thing I need to worry about these days – I’ve never had this much free time in my life.

I’ve got a lot of theories about what happened to my motivation, but that too is another post. Right now I have to lay on the floor and get overrun by bullies.