New Years Ridiculousness

So it's January, and everyone is feeling sluggish and run down from the excess eating and drinking that they have done over the Christmas and New Year.

And so, it's January, and talk is full of how everyone is feeling so fat and how they want to get their weight down as fast as they possibly can.

The first day with everyone back at work, everyone stood around, clutching their stomachs, all talking about how repulsive they all are. They described how they felt their weight and how it was affecting them on a daily basis. They would discuss at length how terrible they felt, how disgusting they all looked, and how they badly wanted to lose weight.

At our work, we have a routine called 'Biscuit Monday' (American Readers - biscuits here are what you call cookies), so everyone takes a turn at bringing in their favourite biscuits to share with everyone in the office. The reason for introducing this is because everyone is in a sour mood on a Monday morning at having to come in and go to work after the weekend ending.

The first Biscuit Monday of 2012 was my opportunity to bring in biscuits for the office people.

This, was my offering.

To everyone who had professed dieting glory, this was a nightmare.

'OH NO!', they exclaimed. 'WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO US?!'

But wait! All is not lost.

One of them said, 'I know! I'll have a Tim Tam now, and NOT EAT ANYTHING FOR DINNER.'

One of them said, 'Oh it's okay because I haven't eaten anything for breakfast.'

One of them said, 'Arrrrgggggh, I can't eat these! I'll just smell them. *picks them up* Ohhhh they smell so good. BUT NO! I will smell them.'

I'm sitting there, absolutely slackjawed, looking at them all. Most of these people were my seniors, and most of them had children of their own. I thought about whether they behaved this way in front of their kids, and if their kids thought that they had to skip a meal was the only way they could ever justify being able to eat a Tim Tam.

Several of them are also on cleanses, eating almost nothing, and all of them either bragging about how much running they are doing before work, after work, or proudly strutting off in the middle of the day.

Then we take it out of the office and into every other place I go to on a daily basis.

In the gyms, people are making ridiculous promises to themselves. "I'm going to come into the gym 5 times per week." My class numbers are higher, and I should appreciate that, though I can't help but think 'You are doing activities you hate for too long, too frequently, with too much resistance, on not enough fuel, and you are not giving yourself enough time to recover. You are going to burn yourself out, feel exhausted, and resent yourself in a manner of weeks.'

Then there's the flourish of Nothing But Updates About My Weight Loss on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. There is one girl on my feed (who is now removed because it did drive me nuts) who every day was whining and crying about how no matter how much work she did in the gym, she wasn't losing any weight and how the scales were her enemy. She would post pictures of celebrities with rippling abdominals and cry as to why she didn't look that way and how it was Oh So Unfair that she didn't look the same way.

I know that I'm not going to achieve anything by pushing my view or preaching to anyone. When my colleagues brag about their lack of eating and put themselves through ridiculous training regimes which they clearly do not enjoy - there's nothing I can tell them to sway them from that train of thought. When my participants excitedly tell me about how many training sessions they've done and how they haven't eaten xyz for however many days, I know there's nothing that I can say to them to tell them that they will burn out and focusing on developing a balanced routine that is sustainable is better off.

There's enough diet talk in the world at the best of times - though this period after Christmas combined with the bombardment of weight loss advertising brings out even more ridiculousness than normal.

I will be so incredibly relieved when excessive ridiculousness calms down to just regular ridiculousness.

Bless You.

After my grand old declaration of running last week, the following day I was saddled with a cold. As much as I want to run, it's not wise until I'm 100% better. I'm already exhausted enough as it is if I take everything out of my training and just leave the classes that I'm teaching.

So once I'm better, I'll start C25K again. No biggie. After all, I've got the whole year to achieve this.

How are my other goals doing?

Eat Something - Need to really get some routine with this. I'm starting to eat a banana before my morning classes, but still am not doing well after classes. Can do better here.

Pump It Up - This went well on the first week of training, but after getting sick, hasn't managed to become routine. Like with the running, this is going to be put on hold until I get better.

Stretch It Out - ... Let's move along ...

Teaching Focused Goals - This hit a setback early on with me losing one of my classes, though thankfully the timing was right and I picked up another class. I'm now up to 4 x RPM classes per week across two different gyms. That's pretty good so far.

I've got a few things I'll blog about in due course - with it being January I am surrounded by so much diet talk and odd behaviour that I wonder how I haven't gone bald with all of the hair pulling.

Until then, I'm catching some Zzz's.

[image credit: Milk Group]

(There may or may not be flamingos involved in said Zzz-catching.)

That'd be why the petrol was so cheap...

I had this brief encounter at a service station before I was heading off to teach my RPM class for the evening.

* Marshmallow walks into service station to pay for petrol
Service Station Guy	Hi there.
Marshmallow	Hi there, the petrol on pump 3 thanks.
Service Station Guy	How was your day?
Marshmallow	Yeah it was pretty good thanks. How about yourself?
Service Station Guy	Good, yes. Would you like a carwash?
Marshmallow	No, just the petrol thanks
Service Station Guy	Okay. How was your day?
Marshmallow	... uh... it was good.
Service Station Guy	You going home from work now?
Marshmallow	No, I'm going to the gym first.
Service Station Guy	I see, you want to reduce your weight?
Marshmallow	No, I'm just going to improve my fitness.
* Service Station guy starts to laugh
Service Station Guy	You don't want to reduce your weight? You should!!!
Marshmallow	...
* Service Station guy stops laughing
Service Station Guy	So did you have a good day?

2012: Run For It - C25K W1R1

Well well well.

I've just come out of the end of my very first run on the C25K program.

I was kinda dreading it, not so much that I would find it hard in its own right, but moreso that I would find it hard on the back of teaching two RPM classes for the day.

I got up at 4:45am to teach my 6am class (it's a 30min drive to that gym), and was pretty smashed from just that class on its own. I always say to myself "Hooooooooow on earth am I going to get through ANOTHER class tonight?!" Then at 5:30pm, I drive 30mins away from where I work to another gym and teach there.

From even one class, my legs are wobbly, and I have a temporary State Of Uselessness as I am absolutely spent. Today was no different, and I picked a particularly challenging final track of the class to make things even more ridiculous for myself.

So, I published a status on Facebook from my phone.

*Immediately* someone replied, and that was enough to get my A into G. Haters be damned, I love the internet.

But I'm a blogger, you already knew that.

In the smartphone era, the common catchphrase for all things is "There's an App for that." And of course, there's an App for the Couch to 5K program. In fact, there are plethora of apps around.

The one I am using is this one; while it is not free, from what I researched, it looked really good. I downloaded a few other free ones, but once I trialled this one I thought, "I don't think it really can get much better than that for me."

Get Running is the only Couch to 5K App that: Coaches like a human – with hundreds of studio-recorded progress and encouragement prompts. Supports and encourages you – talk with fellow running rookies on the Get Running forum. Lets you share (NEW!) – share Get Running with up to three other runners: you all get your own log and settings! Helps you plan – rest days help you recover, and Get Running knows the best day for your next run. Displays your next move – the unique Run Clock, customised for each workout, gives complete visibility and understanding. In addition, Get Running: Publishes your success – send updates to Twitter or Facebook, and have your friends remind you when the next run is due! Works with or without music – To adjust your music during a run, double press the Home button. Fits your schedule – just three workouts a week of 20 to 30 minutes. Logs your achievements – with an illuminating visual record of your progress. Thousands of people have changed their lives with Get Running and you will too! Whether you’re running for your health, training for a 5K, or building to conquer a marathon — Get Running!

I was running it off my iPod touch, so while I normally would thrive off the publishing features to Facebook, I didn't do that today. The reason is simple. The armband I have fits my iPod Touch perfectly, but not my iPhone. I can't be bothered buying another armband, so hey, I have an iPod Touch, so I might as well use it.

I have to say I was really impressed with the app. I developed a music playlist, started it, and then started the app over the top. It dimmed the music whenever it had an instruction for me. It gave me loads of timing cues, and even had some motivation incorporated in. Plus, the motivation that was in there was only subtle, it wasn't overbearing or too much to handle for someone who didn't require it.

But the most important thing... how did I feel?

First thing, my ankle felt fine!

Second thing... my new running shoes are pretty!

BUT. I need to tie them up a bit tighter next time. I felt my feet sliding around in them a little bit... although... that could be because they were still sweaty from RPM, hehe.

Third difference, and this was massive. I found while my heartrate still lifted like it used to, my *breathing* was so much different to when I used to run. I felt like I was in control, and like I could actually look around and pay attention to what was going on around me while I was running. In the past I was like "OMG I RUN I RUN I RUN I RUN *INHALE* I RUN I RUN I RUN I RUN *INHALE* I RUN I RUN I RUN" so I wasn't really getting to take in anything that was going on around me because I was so consumed by the act of running. I guess kind of like when you're focusing so much on learning how to drive a car that you forget to appreciate the journey of the drive itself. I was just way more relaxed and more calm inside my own head.

What was interesting was that the 1 minute runs felt way too short, and the 1 minute 30 second walks in between felt far too long. I guess that's a good sign, but I need to be careful not to do too much too quickly. That's what's been my downfall in the past.

Oh, and because blogdom seems to like these sorts of things, my playlist for today.

Good times.

It would actually be interesting to see how I would handle the run if I did it without being prefatigued, but that's not particularly practical at the moment - I'm always going to be fatigued in some way or another (and my classes come first, always).

Looking forward to Run 2, though I have a few classes to get through first!

The Magical Burger

Happy weekend, people...

2012: Eat Something

One of my goals for 2012 was 'Eat Something', which I felt I had to delve into a little deeper as it's something that has changed dramatically over the last couple of years.

It was shortly after I threw in the towel with dieting that I began to pursue group fitness instructing. I'm so glad that I did it that way, and not before, as trying to follow a diet, or trying to calorie count while learning how to instruct would have been seriously detrimental.

Firstly, it would have been far too much for me to take on mentally. When I was dieting, consumption and/or non-consumption of food was constantly on my mind. When I first began instructing, choreography and all of the other components that make up the Les Mills assessment criteria was constantly on my mind. There just would simply have not been enough room in my head for both.

Secondly, you might recall in my dieting days, my training schedule would look something like this.

Monday	BODYPUMP Lunchtime Run/Swim RPM
Tuesday	RPM x 1 RPM x 2 RPM x 3 BODYJAM
Wednesday	BODYPUMP Lunchtime Run/Swim RPM Enduro
Thursday	PT Session Evening Run Weights program
Friday	BODYPUMP RPM BODYBALANCE
Saturday	RPM BODYJAM Long Swim
Sunday	BODYCOMBAT BODYPUMP Long Swim RPM Enduro

It would leave me feeling a bit tired, especially as I considered Friday to be my 'rest' day simply because it had BODYBALANCE in there.

However! Even that amount of training would not have me prepared for how much teaching exhausted me.

The first time I taught one track.... ONE track, I was truly smashed. I staggered home to bed and did not wake up till the next morning. I didn't ever think that 4 minutes of training would cause that much exhaustion. I can't begin to explain how much teaching takes out of me - there is a period of time where I am pretty much useless after teaching because I've given so much in my class.

Now, my week typically looks like this:

Monday	Teaching RPM x 1 Teaching RPM x 2
Tuesday	BODYJAM or Teaching BODYJAM
Wednesday	RPM Teaching RPM
Thursday	BODYATTACK BODYJAM
Friday	RPM
Saturday	Teaching RPM Teaching BODYJAM
Sunday	Teaching BODYJAM

So on the face of it, it looks way less than what I was doing previously. I cannot begin to tell you how much more tired, and hungry, and useless I get with the latest training. My weekends in particular, rolling through to Monday, are particularly draining. There are sometimes when I'm also teaching RPM on Sunday morning and on Tuesday morning.

Before I was instructing, I would do all of my training on 1,200 calories or less per day.

Now I have a confession to make. When I first signed up for SparkPeople, I entered in the amount of activity I did every day - so the schedule you see above. The recommended calorie count was well over 2,000 - I think it might have been the 2,500-2,800 range. However, I tried to eat that many calories and struggled with it and subsequently, I manually set my calorie limit to 1,200. Coming off Herbalife and Weight Watchers and Whatever The Hell Diet I Was On, consuming 2,500 - 2,800 calories simply sounded like a recipe for weight gain. It was twice, maybe even thrice the amount of calories I had just been consuming.

To think, if I'd started instructing whilst I was still eating that little, I probably would be fainting and passing out on a regular basis.

As it is, I'm eating more because I'm hungrier. But, I'm still not eating enough. I'm unproductive at work for a good half hour to an hour because my I'm taking too long to feed myself.

I went through a period of time where I was teaching on Monday mornings, Monday nights, Tuesday mornings, Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights, Thursday mornings, Saturday mornings, Saturday mid-morning, Sunday morning, and Sunday afternoon. Some of these classes were RPM, some of them were BODYJAM. I need more practice for the Jam classes than I do the RPM ones, so add a few hours on top of that for the Jam practice.

Most of the time, I ate enough to ensure that I got through the classes. I struggled through the times in between classes, but I got through the classes.

During 2011, something happened. I've always hung around with people I know in the gym, and a lot of them are instructors themselves. I didn't feel they judged me or looked down on me for being a participant. Yet, now that I'm instructing, I *do* feel that judgement and I *do* feel them looking down on me. There has been heated discussion in the community in general about how someone who looks like me shouldn't be teaching at all as there's no way I could possibly inspire anyone in a results based program.

95% of the time, it doesn't bother me. However, there is about 5% of the time when it does bother me. All in all, I don't think that's a big deal. How *often* it affects me is not the problem. How *much* it affects me is.

When I found out that people I am quite good friends with were analysing what I was eating behind my back and discussing my eating habits and making assumptions about my daily nutrition based on the infrequent moments I spent with them, it was a shock to me. Getting judged by strangers? No big deal. Getting judged by your friends? A deal.

I reacted the wrong way. The wrong was was trying to train more, and trying to eat less. The results were disastrous as after about a week of this, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and collapsed. I had a class to teach and had to call the gym manager in the middle of the night to tell him about what had happened. I was incredibly embarrassed, and also angry with myself for listening to these so called friends of mine.

I thought about cutting them out of my life. But you know what? I'm now working in an incredibly superficial industry. The majority of people that come to my classes are trying to lose weight moreso for how they look than how they feel. I was talking to someone who is paying for a gym membership but hasn't been once and I tried to convince her to come and try a workout with me. Another person in the conversation interrupts me and says, "She doesn't need to workout, just look at her!" My response was "Everyone has a heart, and it craps out if you don't look after it, what about your cardiovascular health?" They said, "Who the hell cares about cardiovascular whatever?!"

The reality is that the industry is vain, and I'm going to be surrounded by vain people. I simply can't hate them all. But I *can* choose not to follow their same vain tendencies.

So for the sake of NOT being vain, I need to eat. I do not want to be fainting again, and I do not want to be in the position of calling the manager again to cancel a class. I also want to be more productive in my job, and minimise the time in between classes where I am in a state of 'uselessness'.

That my friends, is why I am going to be making an effort to eat something. If someone wants to analyse my eating habits? This is my response to them.

Bon apetit.

2012: The Year Of The Marshmallow

I know I made my big blogging declaration last month with the promise of more blogging, and well, there has been blogging but not on this blog! Never mind. The general busy-ness of December descended upon me.

But that's behind me now.

Now I'm looking forward. I haven't been one for making resolutions, but I will admit, the calendar year is great for tracking progress.

2012 EXERCISE FOCUSED GOALS

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Run For It

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What I'm excited about 2012 is that it's been 2 years since I last did any real running of any way shape or form. For those of you that don't know, I have had problems with my left ankle and a reoccurring sprain. I basically continued to exercise on it (and we're talking 5 hours per day) despite it being in pain and very CLEARLY being injured. It took a physio to say to me "Are you *trying* to lose your left ankle altogether?!" to make me realise I needed to pull back.

For the last 2 years I have stopped running altogether, and began to integrate the impact exercise back.

Of course that doesn't mean I've been sitting around doing nothing for the past 2 years, oh hell no. I've been teaching between 4 and 9 classes a week, and that has been so demanding.

It will actually be really interesting to see how my first run back goes. I've ordered a new pair of running shoes, but my current pair have enough in them to last me until they arrive.

I know that I will seriously have to resist the temptation to go OMMA GAAAAAAAAAWED!!!

For that reason, I'm going to be following the Couch to 5K program. In the past I haven't followed it because I've been too impatient with the slowness of getting the running in there (which... probably explains why I kept getting injured), but this time, I think I could really use that form of control and restraint.

I've got a few apps on my iPhone which I'm going to try out and help me track everything - I've become a bit dependent on my iPhone since I'm always using it for my classes (to track when I'm teaching, where I'm teaching, and what I'm teaching), so it makes sense to find a way to use it for my running.

The other thing I'm going to try and do is avoid running during my lunch break. The reason being is this is the sure fire way to overtrain (and I know I'm probably overtraining as it is). So I need to *cut* some of my current training to make it work.

Because I've got to cope with both reduced gym hours and a more abundant teaching schedule than normal, my first week of Couch to 5k will be the week beginning Monday 16th January 2012.

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Pump It Up

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I do a large amount of cardio, so fitting weights in is a problem for me. I need to find a way to make this work. This may happen after or during the Couch to 5k, and can include BODYPUMP.

I'm aiming for once per week. At the moment I can go for weeks, even a couple of months without strength training, though at the same time I'm doing 10+ hours of cardio per week. In theory, I should be able to trade at least 1 of those hours to work strength.

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Stretch it Out

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Not only do I do a lot of cardio, but the amount of cardio that I do do tends to completely overload my quads to the point where it compromises my range of movement. This means I need to do more stretching, not less, yet that's exactly what I'm doing.

I tell the members in my class "If you have a moment, take the time to stretch out your legs", though have I ever done that myself? Nope. So much for practising what I preach, huh?

2012 NUTRITION FOCUSED GOALS

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Eat Something

Yep, I'm deadly serious. This is probably one of the most important goals.

I have been so guilty of not eating properly in 2011, especially towards the end of the year when I started picking up classes.

Quite often when I teach a morning class I'll be getting up before 5am, driving 30-40minutes to the gym, teaching the class, then driving 30-40 minutes to work, then getting in the shower, which means that it's about 8:30am that I sit down to have breakfast. That's too long without food. By that time, I'm barely functioning. I need to at least remind myself to have a banana or a protein shake in the car to have both before and after class.

2012 TEACHING FOCUSED GOALS

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Most of these goals I'll be writing about on my other blog as the year goes on, though let it be said I continue to want to be the best instructor I can be and try to reach as many people as I can through group fitness.

Currently I face a few challenges in that one of the gyms I teach at is one where group fitness is quite a low priority, and in the past they have hired instructors that have been... well... awful. That leaves a bad taste in the members mouths, and leaves them walking away with a bad impression of group fitness in general.

I'm not claiming to be the best instructor in the world. But at that particular gym, hearing from the members, I *know* I can deliver a better experience than the past instructors did. Now it's just encouraging members who have 1) not tried group fitness to give it a go (difficult), and 2) members who have tried it and had a bad experience (incredibly challenging) to come in and give my classes a go.

IN SUMMARY

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• Run
• Lift Weights
• Stretch
• Eat
• Teach

Yeah. I think I can do that.