I saw this piece on CBS Sunday morning this week. It’s about one man’s life with cerebral palsy and how dancing and training changed what his body could do. Fascinating.

1 oz serving of raw almonds: 164 calories

One Twinkie: 150 calories

Everything in moderation: Priceless

How often in the next couple months are you going to hear yourself say something like the following: “Ack! My fat pants are now my skinny jeans and I am so sick of myself. I’ve tried everything to lose weight and nothing works. I’m just going to give up until January 1st!”

Believe me, I hear you. I’m pretty sure my dryer has turned against me and has shrunk not just the waist band of all my jeans but also the length of all my shirts leaving me with a muffin top I am forced to show it off. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Even though we would like a quick fix, or to just let ourselves go for the next few weeks, when it comes to weight loss, consistent, slow and steady is much better than sporadic, drastic and temporary. Sure, you could go on the grapefruit and cayenne pepper diet but you can’t sustain it for long (blech!) and any weight that you do lose won’t stay off.

So what’s a girl with a too tight wardrobe and a month full of holiday parties to do?

‘Tis the season of overindulgence but weight gain is not necessarily a given. Stress however generally is. And stress leads to overeating. If you are concerned about weight gain, you are going to create a vicious cycle – worry about overindulgence will lead to deprivation will lead to depression/stress will lead to overindulgence. What if instead of freaking out that there is going to be eggnog and you have to have eggnog because you can only get eggnog at this time of year and you simply can’t live on spritzers when everyone else is having eggnog!!!, you decide to actually have the eggnog? Not only might you get off the guilt-mobile and take some of the stress off your shoulders, but you might actually enjoy yourself at the party. (I can’t do anything about your annoying co-workers. Sorry.)

Here’s my suggestion for at least maintaining your sanity if not your current weight over the next 3 weeks: Keep a food journal. Instead of worrying about all the calories heading your way, simply start writing down what you eat.  You can add as much or as little details as you want. Over time I have found that the days I stressed myself out the most about eating too much were actually the days I did ok foodwise. An added bonus is that knowing you have to write down the forty-five things you want to try on the buffet may be enough to regulate you enough to stop you from doing just that.

…that 80% of people who start a fitness program (i.e. join a gym) drop it in 2 to 3 months?

If you’re one of the 20% who have made it past the 2-3 month mark, congratulations! I’d love to hear what made you keep going. Friends? Goals? Results? Bribery? Perhaps, dare I say it, you started to actually enjoy working out?

If you’ve been one of the 80% who didn’t quite go the distance, what do you think would keep you motivated? For me it started with my health insurance. In order to get money back I had to go to the gym 3 times week for 11 of 14 weeks. I didn’t make it the first time I tried. But by the time I managed to do it I had a fitness habit. I endured until I enjoyed.

If you’re willing to give it another try here are a few tips to keep you motivated:

• Write down your goal(s) and make them SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic (or Rewardable), and Time specific).
• Have a goal that is event or activity oriented. You could go so far as to sign up for a race or to simply take 15 classes between now and Thanksgiving.
• Break your goals up into bite size pieces. If you want to lose 50 pounds, start with losing 5.
• Find a support system – a friend to go to the gym with or join a class. Introduce yourself to someone you’ve seen at the gym. It’s pretty motivating when you know someone will ask where you’ve been.
• Get back on track after you’ve been derailed. Instead of getting down on yourself, get back up. No one, and I mean no one, has done everything right the first time. What would be the point?
• Develop strategies for success. Look back over your past behaviors to see what you might do differently this time. Did you stop working out because you had no time? Were you better able to go to the gym when you’d put it in your calendar? Did you stick to your healthy eating when you wrote it down?

What if you stopped thinking about working out as a way to lose weight and instead thought about it as an emotional and psychological, as well as physical, process? If you thought of the experience not in calories burned but endorphins earned would that make it more palatable?

My nephew looking forward to a bike ride.

If you knew that you’d have a net gain in happiness as a result, would it change your motivation? Would you be more likely to say I want to go to the gym than I have to go to the gym?

Just wondering.

So I gained a few pounds over vacation. Plus a few more recuperating from vacation. And they seem to be pretty committed to sticking around unless I actively do something about it.

Because I am not above self-bribery as motivation, I have decided that if I manage to do 12 workouts of my own (i.e. not classes I get paid to teach) in the month of October I will allow myself to get the custom Sigg water bottle pictured below.

A picture taken on the vacation where I gained the weight requiring me to bribe myself to get a Sigg bottle

You can get your own at cafepress.com

Update: Unfortunately, I was unable to meet my goal. I came down with a cold and lost all motivation. However, I’ll try again in November. If at first you don’t succeed…

What is it that they say? That the definition of insanity is doing something over and over and expecting different results?

I decided to take a step away from crazy, and bust through some vacation pounds in the process, by upping the weights I use in the BodyPump class I teach. I now have shaky arms and aching legs but I feel like I’ve taken the steps necessary to keep moving forward.

Have you reached a plateau? What is it that you’re doing over and over? Whatever it is, figure out a way to change it.

I had a version of this breakfast when I was in Vegas a few years ago. They used crepes. I’m not that industrious on a daily basis.

• 
• 2 Kashi Go Lean 7 grain waffles
• A few scoops of plain greek yogurt (sandwiched in between the waffles)
• a cup or so of fresh berries (blueberries, sliced strawberries)
• a tablespoon of real maple syrup

It feels decadent, yummy, and wholesome all at the same time.

If you’ve been to the River Valley Club lately you’ve probably seen people rolling around on the floor with a big blue, white, or black foam roller. You’ve also probably seen their faces contorted in pain. All visual evidence to the contrary, this is a good thing. The official term for what they are doing is “self-myofacial release”. The unofficial term is foam rolling or the poor man’s massage. (I personally like to call it ‘exercise induced Tourettes’ for the uncontrolled gasps and swearing that occur when it’s working.)

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go to Youtube and search for “foam rolling.”

If you’ve ever had a deep tissue massage you’re already ahead of the game in knowing what I’m talking about. You know that the massage therapist is going to find some knots and then work the heck out of them. Deep tissue massage is myofascial release. Since the foam roll lets you do this torture…er…technique to yourself, it’s called SELF-myofascial release (SMR). Got that? Good.

Fascia “is a seamless web of connective tissue that covers and connects the muscles, organs, and skeletal structures, located between the skin and the underlying structure of muscle and bone. Muscle and fascia form the myofascia system. The fascial system is [a single] structure that is present from your head to foot without any interruption. Injuries, stress, inflammation, trauma, and poor posture can cause restriction to fascia. Since fascia is an interconnected web, [with time, the restriction or tightness to fascia at any given point in the body] can spread to other places in the body like a pull in a sweater. The goal of myofascial release is to release fascia restriction and restore its tissue health.” (Thanks Wikipedia!)

I happen to have some postural and tightness issues in my legs and hips, specifically my Ilio-Tibial (IT) band (The IT runs from your upper rear hip area down the side of your leg and into the knee. See picture.) The more I exercise,  the tighter my muscles become, the more they pull on my tendons, the more the tendons torque the bones, the worse my posture becomes and the more problems I have. For instance, when I go hiking or running for any length of time my knees start to hurt. It’s not actually my knee that is the problem but my IT band where it connects to the knee. It’s called IT band syndrome. The same is true for a pain I often have in my hip/low back. I’ve found that many of my clients have aches and pains, many chronic, that if dealt with myofascially, can be alleviated.

The point of foam rolling is to loosen the knots, realign the fascia, and put you back into proper alignment. To do this yourself,  roll a section of muscle (again, see Youtube for  some techniques), find a spot that is knotted – believe me, you’ll know when you do (see Tourette’s reference above) – and hold yourself on that spot until you feel the tightness and pain dissipating. It will take a minute or so. The different color rolls indicate firmness – at RVC, white is softest, black is hardest. You may want to start with white.

In a perfect world we would all be doing this before and after we work out. In the real world, I do it when I feel tightness and am probably already in some sort of pain. Next time you’re at the gym, give it a try.

I’d like to thank my health insurance company for making me a personal trainer.

When I was an office prisoner administrator with a desk job, I had a health insurance policy that included a $250 reimbursement for a gym membership. Since my health club isn’t cheap (but I am) this was quite an incentive. 250 bucks is 250 bucks after all.

The caveat was that I had to prove I went to the gym 3 times a week for 11 out of 13 weeks. This, I learned, is surprisingly difficult to do. However, if you manage to do it, it pretty much guarantees you will have a gym habit at the end of those 13 weeks. 

What I had to do was really schedule my workouts. There were a few classes I liked and those went right onto my calendar. I always had a gym bag packed and since I’d already picked my gym because it was on my way home I had no excuses not to go. When something else came up that interfered with my scheduled workout I forced myself to find another time – even if I had to go in on the weekend. (I didn’t, and still don’t, like doing that for some reason.)

I’ll admit that there were a few false starts where I botched it and had to start over. But I did start over. I don’t know if I would have been so diligent and consistent in my workouts if I hadn’t had the financial incentive and internal competition to keep me going.

I know the health insurance companies offer this as an incentive because I save them much more than $250 a year by being in shape and healthy. If they need to bribe me (or you) into getting fit so be it. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It certainly worked out in my favor.

I now have clients who have the same health insurance I used to have. I was sad to discover that the requirements have been lessened to going to the gym only twice a week for 10 out of 15 weeks. It’s definitely more doable but I don’t know if it’s as effective in forming a habit. It certainly can’t hurt though.

If you’re looking for one more incentive to get fit and healthy, double check your health insurance and see if they offer some sort of fitness related kickback or bonus. Who knows where it might take you?