My World is Changing / I'm Rearranging :)

Well well well, my beloved blog! Do I have some joyous news!  This girl is back on the bandwagon!

My brief hiatus from back-breaking 2-a-days, diligent dieting and consistent blog writing has effectively ceased, and I'm back in the game!

I've learned a lot about myself in the past couple months, as alluded to in my last post.  I think the most important thing was two-fold.  First of all, taking an extended break (well, I don't think "break" is the right word; let's say "holding pattern") did my body wonders; it gave me sufficient time to give my muscles and metabolism a rest, and time for my mind to explore things I'd been wanting to but didn't have the time (yoga, anyone??).

But secondly, and most importantly, my 2 month holding pattern gave me sufficient time to do some soul searching to remind myself of my goals and re-confirm that they represented what I truly wanted.  Just like how I needed to go to Europe and fully remove myself from my regular routine to garner some clarity on which direction I really wanted to take my life, having a break from my intense training and dieting scheme provided me an opportunity to see the forest again, and not just the day to day trees I was focusing on.

Another cool thing I found about myself was that it was not a chore to get back on my routine.  What used to feel like being a slave to diet misery is no more; it's my way of life, it comes perfectly natural to me, and I feel my absolute BEST on a clean diet, lots of water and intense weight-lifting routines.

And on that note, I have been exploring some really amazing things that are causing me to evolve as a human being, and they have been a total joy to experience.  Things that I have done, am doing, or am partaking of now that, even just a couple months ago (let alone at the beginning of my journey) I never even would have dreamed of:

1.  YOGA

Yoga has changed my whole life.  But not in that spiritual, mind-clearing way.  I have too much of a math-oriented, manic mind to be able to have one of those OMMMM moments.  I spend Shavasana orchestrating a mental check list of some sort of thing or another, haha.  But I've been going to a place called Maha Yoga in Brentwood, CA and it is seriously the closest I have come to a feeling of total rebirth.  I have never worked and sweat so much in my life (and don't even get me started on the time I did 2 sessions in a row. EUPHORIC). Class is done to the tune of amazing hip hop tracks which is great for me; noise actually calms my mind, it's the quiet classes where I can't get my mind to focus.  I must have been dropped on my head as a baby :)  

Yoga is my new "thing".  It has rekindled an ancient dream of mine to be a ballerina.  And while that ship sailed the day I surpassed my 22nd birthday, a girl can still pretend, eh?  Working on my flexibility has been one of the most rewarding challenges for me, not to mention one more thing I can cross off of my list of Things I Thought I'd Just Never Be Able To Do.

2.  RUNNING

Speaking of the list of Things I Thought I'd Just Never Be Able To Do, I challenged myself to the biggest feat so far since I first commited to 30 days of clean eating and proper exercise back on January 30th of this year:  To run a half marathon.

Now, I just wish you all could realize how epic of an endeavor this was for me.  I have ALWAYS sucked at running.  It took me... well, I'd say the better part of 20 years... to realize that the reason for the body-crushing side aches that I would develop which always prevented me from even being able to run 1 mile regardless of my fitness level, was LACK OF HYDRATION.  If I consistently drink 80-100 fl. oz. of water a day, I can run for eons with NO side stitches.  Life changing.

But, that said, I still have the life-long ailment of a bad knee.  I have named my left knee Escobar after the notorious Ecuadorian soccer player who was shot and killed by his own fans after he accidentally got confused and scored a goal on his own team, effectively losing the game for them.  I ruined my knee in a soccer game in 2008 and it ended my post-collegiate career, and as a result of normal scarring (and some over-correction), the farthest I have been able to run without excruciating pain was 8 miles on pavement and 10 miles in sand.  So, when I decided to challenge myself to a milestone of running a half marathon (something I truly, in all my right mind, never EVER thought I'd ever actually even ATTEMPT to do), my determination and absolute refusal to fail kicked in.

Unfortunately, after making the decision to run the half marathon on Thanksgiving morning...in the SAND to protect my knee...I had only given myself 10 days to prepare! I'm sure I did everything wrong, such as running back-to-back-to-back 10ks all the way up to race day with just 1 day of rest, but my GOD was it exhilarating.  The funny thing was, I wasn't excited about running.  Running on the beach is as boring as it gets.  One straight line of identical scenery (when you've lived on the beach your whole life, the coast loses its majesty. Trust me).  By Mile 4 I started feeling the pain in my groins and hip flexors which, after a couple month hiatus of beach runs, were  unaccustomed to running in sand.  My route was SUPPOSED TO BE as such:

Essentially, from the Venice Pier to the Bel Air Bay Club and back (6.5 miles each way).  But after pain that felt very real and damaging, at Mile 5 I decided to turn around and run back.  My thoughts were that if I could just run 5 more miles, I would have at least made it 10 miles and then could double back and walk the remaining 3.1.  But sure enough, once I had returned to the Venice pier, I felt capable of pushing through it.  So I ran south from the Venice Pier to the edge of the Marina and back.  After I tallied up the mileage, I realized I had run a total of 13.8 miles!

And my finish time.  I had a goal of 02:30:00 which I missed by a little over 5 minutes, but then again I ran almost a full extra mile! A major win in my eyes :)

And to wrap this item up, I have decided to challenge myself to another half marathon on New Years Day Morning! This, to try to beat my time (and performance), but also to keep me out of ANY trouble on New Years Eve with my friends and get me to bed at a decent hour.  As that holiday approaches, remind me to tell you about my last two NYEs, including last year's which was absolutely beyond reproach and a pivotal moment in my decision one month later to start this fitness journey to begin with.

3.  FOOD :)  And Cooking

I have really gotten very much into cooking.  Ironically right now I haven't been doing any because I need a break, and eating boiled chicken and steamed broccoli for dinner every night is more appealing than making complicated dishes.  But I have found cooking to be the link between the left and right brain -- I get total control of the macro and micro nutrients (not to mention total control of all the ingredients!) but it's also an art and I've found it to be therapeutic.  There just really is nothing quite like the satisfaction of making something with your hands.

But on top of developing actually real, true skills in the kitchen (and creating a confidence that I've never EVER had about cooking), I have been branching out and trying new restaurants and discovering amazing cuisines.  Somewhere on the list of Things I Thought I'd Never Be Able To Do is "Enjoy going to a vegan restaurant".  But then my good friend Gabi introduced me to The Golden Mean Cafe in Santa Monica.  Their "'The Works' Burger" and their "Golden Mean Salad" have transformed me into a vegan addict.  I now need a support group, it is THAT good.  All of this healthy eating and consciousness of what we are putting in our bodies just fuels my interest in the subject and makes me that much more excited and devoted to not only a clean-eating diet, but a clean-living lifestyle.  It is a total renaissance I have experienced, and has ignited in me a fire for life, and openness of mind, a determination of body, and a spirit of enlightenment.  It has been a beautiful thing, and I love how all facets of my life seem to be working in harmony with one another, all yielding different outcomes but working toward the same big picture.  What started out as a simple tune -- tone up -- has turned into an entire concert that is bending me in ways (quite literally) I never knew I was capable of.

All of these, really, have sort of been like getting a second chance at life.  Letting these changes into my life, giving them a try, and truly embracing them has been the equivalent of being able to live somebody else's life to see what it's like.   I have become a new creature for these things, and yet I know I have only touched the tip of the iceberg.  And there are other things I've continued to explore - I have a whole list of artistic projects I plan to take a stab at once I tend to more pressing matters (such as finishing my garden and cleaning my closet), as well as races I look forward to attempting, including a difficult 15k trail run in January.

I can't wait to continue to log all of the things I do and changes I make on my quest for a toned body and sustainable lifestyle.  And I also can't wait to do another research blog post! I'm thinking of making the next one on the importance of fat in the diet.  In the meantime, it is a countdown to New Years, which is a great source of motivation for me both in terms of starting the new year on the best foot possible, and also working toward the best body ever so that I look like a hottie patottie in my NYE dress! AHHH! ;D

The Long Awaited Update: Finding Balance Amidst Performance-Obsession

Oh my dear, dear blog.  It has been over a month since I posted a new entry!

A lot has changed since my trip to Europe.  What started out as a vacation in Barcelona turned very rapidly into an exploratory backpacking adventure all along the Eastern coast of Spain, up into the South of France, and then all over London and southeast England.  It all happened after I read The Alchemist for the first time on my flight out.  I landed in Spain just as I finished the last page, and that pretty much kicked off the journey.  I only lasted 3 days in Barcelona before branching out to other cities and countries.

I struggled in the beginning of my travels.  I hadn't realized how rigid and inflexible my robotic diet and exercise routine had made me.  For someone who claimed to be an open minded free spirit, I couldn't believe how useless my current approach to diet and exercise had rendered me.  For the first three days in Spain I nearly starved to death because I couldn't find anything I could eat.  My lifestyle appeared to have rendered me completely lost in translation.

I was fortunate enough to have access to a kitchen at almost every location I stayed at throughout my travels, and I grew to rely on local farmer's markets for all sustenance.  I discovered one just in the nick of time, when my protein powder had run out and I feared I'd have to succumbed to heavy tapas and bread and paella which was all I could really find besides the occasional McDonald's (I'd rather starve!).  So out of strict necessity, I began to combine things I found at the farmers market into dishes that nourished me, regardless of the calorie content.  I had local marcona almonds and honey atop Mató cheese.  I ate salads of locally grown bibb lettuce, tomatoes, avocado and Mango slices.  I ate Iberian ham (a smoked, dried meat cut) with leafy greens on a rough dry earthy bread roll.  I ate bananas a lot, because they gave me the energy I needed.  I ate full egg scrambles and bacon with a locally grown garlic, onion and spinach saute.

I made sure that what I ate was farm-to-table, and finally disregarded any of the strict rules I had adopted at home (no dairy / no carbs / only 1 serving of fruit a day / yada yada).  They didn't have oatmeal and I couldn't find sweet potatoes or quinoa and so I succumbed to eating bread (the horror!) and dry cereal when I heard my body call for non-fruit carbohydrates.  I did everything I needed to do to nourish my body, and did so freely after I had let go of the rules that bound me.

What happened next was something of a miracle I didn't anticipate ever happening.  Over the course of the following weeks, I began to feel so alert and alive and full of energy, even in a way I hadn't when I first started clean-eating.  I wasn't working out because I was on my feet all day long exploring, hiking, running, backpacking around from place to place, and out of strict survival and necessity, I began to become highly attuned to not only when  my body was hungry, but for what.  I knew when produce wouldn't cut it, or when protein or fat wasn't what I needed.  And I fearlessly ate carbohydrates (and fruits) whenever my body asked for them.  When I was cold and craved chocolate, I ordered hot chocolate.  I even had wine on several occasions! I did whatever felt good and gave my body what it asked for.

It occurred three days into my trip, on a rainy Saturday morning in Barcelona after a wet urban 10k, that I realized that I had become results-obsessed without even knowing it.  I thought that everything I was doing at home was all for my health, and it was indeed a fun challenge to undertake, but it was in Spain that I realized I had robbed almost all of my life of joy in place of squeezing out that one last calorie, that one last rep, that 1/2-mile longer on each run.  Yes it was (and is!) fun to challenge yourself to that, but it's a dangerous thing to realize you may have transformed yourself into a mechanical object too weighed down by rules to actually be able to adapt to a changing environment and flourish and really enjoy life.  This realization did NOT jive well with me, at all.  I knew it was time to rethink things.  And wouldn't you know, by the time I had arrived home, I hadn't seen the inside of a gym in 3 weeks and hadn't stuck to any kind of diet (other than no fast food, etc) in just the same amount of time, and yet I hadn't gained a single pound while I was gone.  Imagine that! Now, I did lose a little muscle tone, but I felt so HEALTHY when I came home.  I think it was the psychological change of feeling more flexible and in tune with my body.  I realized that all that time I was spending in the gym and calculating my diet in excel was turning me into a robot, and I needed to find different ways of approaching this lifestyle that didn't turn me into an immovable soul incapable of enjoying the actual experience of being alive.

As such, I have spent the past month in a bit of a holding pattern / balancing act as I try out new things.  I didn't trust myself to dive right back into my strict routine out of fear that I would negate all the self-discovery I had made when I was forced to adapt in Europe.  So I've been experimenting a little with food and exercise to try to find the right mix to help me restart working toward my goals while still letting me feel like I am living.  After all, this is a lifestyle change, and the only way to make it sustainable is to achieve parity between discipline and enjoyment.

CHANGES I HAVE MADE

1.  The first change I have made is to limit the amount of time I spend in the gym.  Instead of one hour in the morning and one after work, I have condensed my weights and cardio into one AM session of 60-75 minutes, and then have been going to yoga for 90 minutes after work 3-4 days a week.  That in and of itself has been INCREDIBLE.  It has exposed me to new people, significantly improved my flexibility and strength, and has helped keep my mind and soul limber.  Unfortunately, I don't feel I am burning enough hard calories to lean down again and build on muscle definition, so I am going to increase the intensity of my AM workouts and see what that does.

2.  I have decreased the amount of time I play volleyball on the weekends to incorporate other activities.  I have gone hiking, camping, I've learned how to fish, I have built a garden with my bare hands (including removing almost 50 cubic feet of dead soil and replacing it with composted fresh soil), and in the next couple weeks I will be learning how to surf, gonna go kayaking, and I'm training to run a half marathon on thanksgiving!  These activities have become the new focus on my time now that I have survived the past couple weeks attending to other little projects and such that I have tabled for so long, but that my trip has inspired me to finally take a stab at.

3.  I have given myself a little freedom with my diet to explore cooking.  Cooking has become something of a spiritual activity for me.  It's an art and a science, all mixed into one tasty dish.  I find it therapeutic while also informative; I like experimenting with flavors and substitutes in order to make clean, all-organic dishes that actually have flavor.  Steamed zucchini and poached chicken breast had  it's place in my clean-eating diet in the beginning, but in order for this to be a sustainable feat, I needed a little room to breathe.  For instance, I allow myself to have one small banana and a scoop of nonfat 0% Fage Greek yogurt in my morning smoothies.  Sure that means it isn't dairy free and sure it may have some extra sugar in it, but it is healthy, clean, and I surely burn the calories off in my bike ride to yoga every evening, so I'm not going to sweat it! I'm a living, breathing human being, not a robot who must live in one extreme or the other.

But, play time is over, and I find it highly encouraging that even with this new found flexibility and perspective to diet and exercise, I am no more wanting to return to old habits now than I was when I first left to Europe.  I have fallen in love with this way of life, and now that I am not obsessing so much over results, I feel free to actually enjoy the journey and not feel like I  am forced to adhere to all the rules I laid out before.  I think it's all a balancing act and learning to be flexible.  I still stick to calorie limits, sugar limits, and of course eat lean, clean and organic, but if I want a banana here or there, I won't stop myself.  And if I don't feel like going to the gym, then I'll do something else - I'll go run a local mountain trail, or run on the beach, or throw on my roller blades and do a 14-mile cruise down the ocean boardwalk.  It's gotta be a balance between results-producing activities and happiness-producing activities.  I can't wait to learn how to surf and add that to my repertoire!

I feel so much freer and happier now than ever before.  And I am so excited to shed these 5 pounds or so that I've picked up over the past 2 months and start back up where I started, but with the new philosophy in mind that I won't let one thing overtake the other -- I won't let me diet and exercise routine become so rigid that I can't enjoy life's occasional simple pleasures, but I also won't let life influence my desire to achieve the best toned body I am capable of.  

It is certainly a balancing act, but I feel like the clarity I now have just may be the best tool I've yet to acquire in my fitness journey to date.