Motivation

Motivation is defined as “the internal condition that activates behavior and gives it direction; energizes and directs goal-oriented behavior.”  It is what keeps us moving in the direction of our goals. Motivation is, in essence, our ability to make things happen. I want to talk a little about what motivation means to me.

There are a variety of things that motivate me in my daily life, but I want to specifically talk about my health and fitness. First, I want to be a healthy role model for my kids. I want to be around for them for years to come. Losing weight and getting in shape will allow me to be able to run around and play with them like I want to. Soccer and basketball at the park, playing tag, jumping rope and all the other fun things they want to do tire me out so quickly. I want to be able to tire them out for  a change! Getting in shape, for me, is also about improving my self esteem and self confidence. I want to feel comfortable in my own skin and for the past 12 years, I haven’t. Shopping for cute clothes and having them fit is something I am looking forward to very much. But I think the biggest motivator I have is my health. Aside from being overweight, right now I am otherwise a healthy woman. However, there is heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure in my family health history. These are not conditions I want to deal with. And by taking control of my health now, hopefully I will be able to avoid them in the future.

So why haven’t I let these things keep me motivated in the past? The thing that has held me back the most has been not seeing immediate results. After dieting and working out so hard for weeks and weeks, if I didn’t see the results I wanted I would feel like a failure. I have been afraid to fail by not losing the weight so I would push too hard. And I was afraid that I would regain any weight I had lost. And I always did. I didn’t stay focused on my goals.  And I made far too many excuses.

What am I going to do with my motivation now so I can keep on track and stay focused? First of all, I am going to be realistic about the journey I am on. I will be honest with myself about my diet and my exercise. I am setting realistic, obtainable goals and working on them regularly to achieve them. I am allowing plenty of time to accomplish what I am setting out to do. This is not an all or nothing thing for me anymore. This is a life change. I am reducing stress and making this journey fun. And I am sharing my journey with others, hopefully encouraging and inspiring some along the way!

No More Excuses

Excuses. I have had so many of them through the years:

1. I didn’t feel good.
2. I didn’t have time to work out.
3. I was tired.
4. It’s too hard to work out with all the kids running around.
5. I couldn’t afford a gym membership.
6. I’ll do it tomorrow.

I could go on and on with this, but I am stopping all the excuses today. I am ready to take complete responsibility for where I am. No more excuses. This whole process for me is not so much a physical transformation, but an internal change. I have buried so much away over the years and I am finally letting it all go. Once that internal transformation is complete, I know the physical change will happen so much easier. The woman I have felt I wasn’t good enough to be is finally ready to make her debut!

Commitment

15 kilometers. 9.3 miles. I have committed to completing that distance in a race next summer. I have 48 weeks to train for it. I know I am capable of finishing the distance, it’s just a matter of pushing myself to do it. I have plenty of time to ready myself- to push my body.  Small daily goals will ease me closer to the big picture goal. At this point, I just want to finish the race, but I know as race day gets closer and my health and running ability improve, I will want to try and run the whole race. Right now, though, I need to focus on the daily challenges and the whole objective will come into focus sooner than I can imagine. I am still looking for a local 5k in the area this fall. And perhaps a 10k in the spring just to give myself a taste of what I’ll be doing next summer. Completing the 15k is a very big goal for me, and I am 100% committed to finishing the race in a respectable time. I’ll keep you posted on my progress!

Becoming Mom

Fall 1996

Although my pregnancy at 16 wasn’t planned, once I got over the initial shock I was really excited. Yes, I was aware of the many obstacles I would have to overcome as a teenage mother, but I knew in my heart that I would be a good mother to my child. Especially after my family rallied behind me.   Finally the day came and I delivered my daughter.  I pushed and pushed for two hours and when she finally came, I was startled by the reaction of the doctor nurses my parents and the baby’s father.  He began to pass out, which sort of made me laugh!  But, I stopped when I saw the faces of everyone else.  They wisked the baby away and began a thorough exam with a flurry.  I could sense that something wasn’t right.   They hadn’t even told me whether the baby was a boy or a girl!  So, I started to panic.  What was happening?  What could be wrong?  I could hear my baby crying from the other side of the room.  But they hadn’t even shown the baby to me yet.  My mom and dad were talking to me and saying everything was ok and it would all be fine.  What would be fine?!  What’s wrong?  Is my baby ok?  One of the nurses came over and gently explained that my daughter (it’s a girl!) was born with a birth defect called a cleft lip and palate.  She would need surgery…I couldn’t help but interrupt her – Is she ok?  Is it correctable?  That was all I needed to know.  It was a correctable defect.  As the hospital staff explained later in detail,  she would need a series of surgeries lasting into her teen years to correct the deformity.  After determining that the cleft was her only defect, my nurse Annie finally placed my beautiful daughter into my arms! What a precious gift I had been given. She was absolutely perfect, even with her lip and palate incomplete. It was a definite adjustment, becoming a mother. Certainly having a special needs child didn’t make it any easier. She choked a lot on her bottles the first few days, and she spit up at least half of everything she ate for a good 4 months. There were lots of visits with specialists and her first surgery was scheduled when she was only 3 months old. I was scared out of my mind the entire time, but she had a great doctor whom I had complete trust in. I waited so anxiously in the waiting area, trying to stay calm, but pacing a lot of the 2 1/2 hours the surgery took to repair her lip. I knew it was going to change her appearance, but I was not prepared for what I saw when the nurse took me back into the recovery room. My smiley bundle of energy was laying in the bed, her face all swollen, especially around her mouth where the doctor had repaired the defect in her lip. Every few seconds a tiny whimper would escape.  One of the nurses turned and picked her up to place her into my arms. When I looked up at her, I realized I knew her! What a relief to have someone I knew back there…but it wasn’t enough. Another nurse guided me to the rocking chair while I was quietly crying, holding my daughter so carefully. Susie, the nurse who was a family friend, asked if there was someone else in the waiting area I would like her to get for me, and then she went out and brought my mom in for me. I feel a little foolish about that now…I was a mom, crying for my mom. I guess it makes a little bit of sense though, I was just a kid who had a kid. My daughter has since had 5 more surgeries for her birth defect, and will need at least 1 or 2 more in the next few years. She is the greatest patient, always remaining optomisitc and never complaining about the inconvenience or about any pain. She does everything the doctors tell her to, so her recovery is as quick as possible. She is not embarrassed or ashamed of her condition, she embraces it. It makes her special, she says. Not that she wasn’t already special enough!

Competitor

After having my first two children, my weight has been an issue for me. I gained 70 lbs with my first, but lost most of it. Then I gained another 70 lbs with my second child, but never could seem to lose the weight I had gained. Over the past 11 years I have lost and gained, over and over. I had three more children during that time period and never gained more than 35 lbs with any of them. I actually lost 50 lbs in the first trimester of my last pregnancy, before I knew I was even pregnant. Gaining that weight back was devastating to say the least. The up and downs with my weight have taken their toll on me emotionally. I have gotten upset and cried more than once about it. And that would get me motivated to work hard to get back in shape. I would workout hard and diet for a month or two, see no results, get frustrated, give up and eat. And the cycle would repeat. I have tried so many “diets.”  Most of the diets you can quickly name, I’ve tried. Most never worked, while a few worked initially, but as soon as “banned” foods were added back in, I regained everything. No matter what I lose initially, I can’t ever seem to maintain it if I backed off on working out at all. The only time I managed to maintain any sort of weight loss, I was doing 40 minutes of strength training along with 60 minutes of cardio EVERY day of the week. Any less than that and I would regain. I have been to doctors to make sure its not a hormone or chemical imbalance in my body. Every time they tell me I am healthy, just carrying some extra weight and to "try diet and exercise for another year."  That’s what I have been doing for 7 years!!! And it’s getting very frustrating. I weigh nearly 40 lbs more  than I did 7 years ago. So obviously its ot working or I am doing something totally wrong. I’ve hired personal trainers and nutritionists. I took a class at my gym that is supposed to help you get into your best shape in 12 weeks. I took it twice and only lost 20 lbs. I gained 12 lbs of muscle also. I was working out 60-90 minutes 6 days a week. I even participated in an indoor triathlon the gym put on. And I didn’t finish last! The tri is what helped me to rediscover that inner athlete, the competitor inside of me that I thought I had lost. I loved the adrenaline rush I got, pushing myself to the limit. Swimming was a lot harder than it had been when I was competing on the swim team in my youth, but my team mates and I had practiced a bit before the race. I had never been in a cycle studio before the race, never been on a spin bike, but I rode hard and fast for 30 minutes! The running portion of the competition was the part I was concerned about. I knew it was only 20 minutes and I could walk what I needed to, but I really wanted to run as much as possible. I could run in 3-4 minutes bursts in class, but usually just walked briskly at at a steep incline ot get my heart rate up. But on race day, I pushed and pushed, running for 7 1/2 minutes straight and could’ve gone longer but time was up! I had run for a total of 13 minutes of the 20 minute run! I know that might not seem like much to moist people, but I was so proud of myself. I never thought I would ever be competing in a race again, and now I can’t wait for the next indoor tri to beat my times from the last one!