JCC 2024 Fitness Goals

You know what I find super annoying? These questionnaires about my mental health. For several years I've had to answer one as part of getting a discount on my insurance. I lie and lie and lie. Questions like how often do you get 8 hours of sleep at night. How often are you depressed? Best of all how often do you find yourself stressed? LOL. We are living on a doomed planet, where all we have to do is open our front door to know how bad climate change is. Last year we had wild fire smoke that actually kept the heat out but made breathing suck and this year we got all the heat. So, yeah. I sleep great, no stress, not depressed. Government is great and taking care of everything.

So now I have my annual physical next week and they send me a similar BS questionnaire about my mental health. Seriously, is anyone okay right now? If you are I'd actually be more worried about you.

Good news, great news actually is that all my blood work came back clean as a whistle. I finally gave in and started taking a vitamin D (just the cheapo Target brand) so even that's good now. For some reason my cholesterol was high last year, which made no sense and now it's fine again. I think something was wrong with last year's blood work but the Dr's office wouldn't retest or believe me they just handed me a pamphlet about how to improve my diet and start exercising. Me. The girl who is at the gym 90 minutes every morning, eats vegetarian and walks 1-3 miles every night. Yeesh.

And I had a really lovely spin class this morning. The air conditioning has been working at my gym all week (the air conditioning has been broken everywhere here this summer my office, the gym, Panera) so it's been nice and cold in there and we were all dripping wet by the end. Great class.

 

We finally managed to swim across the lake yesterday. Most summers, we'd have done that several times before August, but weather and schedules kept getting in the way. I didn't even time myself, knowing I was going to be slow. Kept a steady pace and never broke my rhythm the whole way.

 

Played squash for the first time in about 8 years today.

I thought, I'm made some progress this year, I'm now putting in a reasonable amount of steps each day (more than the 2k daily average last year) and I was feeling pretty decent when my youngest suggested we give it a go this weekend as the weather was expected to be crap so the bike ride was being put on hold.


I'm now an aching quivering wreak on the sofa. My thighs are burning and my right forearm feels like its in a vice on a medium crush.

My eldest now wants to give it a go so I'll be doing it all again when I've recovered.

 

I have been messing around at my college alma mater's climbing gym recently, and on Saturday I did outdoor climbing for the first time in West Virginia. I was at ACE Adventure Resort for whitewater rafting* on Sunday, so I booked a beginner climbing experience on Saturday afternoon. Outdoor climbing is definitely a different challenge than indoor gyms, but I was able to top out all three routes we tried, including one that was one grade higher (5.8) than anything I had successfully done in the gym (5.6 and 5.7). There was a lot of coaching and belay assists along the way, but I still surprised myself. I am scheduled to go with my alma mater's outdoor rec center on an intro to climbing trip to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky in two weeks, so I'm even more excited for that.

*P.S. the rafting was a lot of fun -- I did a Double Upper Gauley trip (two laps of the Upper Gauley River in one day). We spiced it up with hard lines and such on the second lap, and I had two swims to show for it -- one where the raft completely flipped and another where it went vertical and dumped everyone but the guide out (the slang term for which is a "dump truck"). Nothing serious, both at the bottom of a rapid with a pool below, but still some wild and crazy fun.

 

It's cool, man. Chicks dig scars.

 

I have pretty much come to the end of my journey. To sum up:

1. I am 49 years old and have always been fat.
2. The low point in my life was around the end of 2008, where I topped off at around 372 lbs and was in bad health and clinically depressed and seeking zero medical help.
3. Started to turn things around, and in 2013 I had several diverticulitis attacks which resulted in surgery, and resulted in my losing a ton of weight.
4. Rejoined the gym and hired a personal trainer to get in shape. Things start to look up.
4. 2015 my dad dies and I gained some of the weight back, always being between 255 to 275 for the next few years.
5. In January of 2023 I decide to get an intragastric balloon and start losing weight consistently.
6. January of 2024 the intragastric balloon is removed, having resulted in losing 57 lbs in one year.
7. Im may of 2024 I go for a final push to lose a bit more weight and start treatment with Ozempic.

As of today, I am at 213 lbs. The last time I was at this weight it was 1993, my senior year of high school. I am also exactly one month away from plastic surgery to remove all the excess skin. Im sure in this last month I can lose at least 5 more lbs and go in to surgery below 210 lbs, which was always my goal.

It has been a very long and hard road, with many bumps, and I have fallen off the wagon countless time. Moral of the story, and the only advice I will give: always, always get back on the wagon. No matter how many times you fall, you never failed if you get back on that wagon and try one more time.

 

@Yoda's_Roomate , that's inspirational. I hope you'll keep checking in here from time to time to say what you're doing to keep your goal.

 

I've reached new PRs at the gym with my personal trainer: back squats at 125 pounds for three sets of 7 reps and deadlifts at 125 pounds for three sets of 10 reps (and the latter is a warmup weight because we're still working on getting my form absolutely right before going heavier). Before starting with the PT, my records at Planet Fitness were 90 and 110 pounds, respectively, for three sets of 10 each (also, PF only offers Smith machines, while my PT uses full free weight barbells). We've also been doing bench press, but we didn't do that one today (today was leg day). Soon, I may talk to her about spending a session on one-rep max tests for the bench press and squat -- I'm curious where I'm at in that regard.

I also unlocked negative pull-ups today (jump up from a bench, then slowly lower), so we'll start to incorporate that toward my goal of my first unassisted pull-up. Next week we will go with the lightest band for assisted pull-ups and see if I can do one with that to see how close I am to the unassisted version. We've also recently started incorporating farmer's carries to build hand and forearm strength for climbing.

 

Not the best start to my day. Drove over to meet a friend to run at a shopping center near a trail and she texted me to say her mom surprised her last night and she couldn't make it. I was so out of sorts the first time I read it I thought she said her mom died last night, so at least that wasn't it. Anyway I came back home, finally got my watch to synch with my headphones and ran 8 miles on the trail here by myself. It was a pretty good run, but goodness I am not happy about how much I have slowed down. I try so hard not to compare myself with others. I tell myself I'm 46 and today I ran 8 miles with an overall pace of 11 minutes per mile, not bad right? Well my 50 year old boss did some overnight run thing for 9-11 this week and came to work the next day and rest of the week. He was telling us all the crazy athletic stuff he does and continues to challenge himself with. What the hell is wrong with me? I'm dying to run another marathon, but every time I run more than 14 miles in a stretch I get injured. And I am not doing it wrong. I do abs, I do squats, I do lunges, I do upper body, I run slow, I do so much yoga. My body just sucks.

So I ran 8 miles and I feel good about that, and I don't feel good about that. I love my brain.

 

Getting old isn't for weaklings. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

 

Well for one this does not happen if I dont consistently hit the gym. Im lucky enough to have trainer friends in my life who, from time to time, design routines for me. Also, the intragastric balloon and Ozempic have led to eat a lot less. I have become used to eating less, even when the balloon was off.

I think longterm the benefits will show. We will see. I have spent a huge amount of money doing this and Im not letting it all go to waste.

 

I'm 37 and am thrilled if I can run 3 miles at a 12:00/mile pace. (I've also never ran 8 miles in my life.)

If you are the Facebook kind of person, look up the "Slow AF Running Club" group. Whole bunch of people who are just happy to be running or run/walking and don't care that they're slow (for whatever your personal definition of slow is, though posting any stats faster than about 10:00/mile tends to receive some negative comments). A common saying in the group is "finish lines, not finish times". Another common theme is saying that no matter your time, if you finished, you tied for first place on distance.


As for me, I went climbing again last night. There was one V0 bouldering route that I had done mostly a few times but never figured out how to get to the final hold to "top out" and properly complete it. I decided at the end to give it one final try, and in stretching to reach for that top hold, the one foot I had on a hold slipped and I fell about 10 feet. I landed on the crash pad that was there for that purpose (it's a cushioned mat about 6-8 inches thick) which absorbed most of the impact, but I landed at an awkward angle and was unable to properly absorb the rest of the blow by rolling onto my butt and back, which resulted in twisting my right ankle.

It's mostly feeling OK, but I stopped on the way home and bought a brace at the store, then dug out my old wooden crutches when I got home and have been using those crutches all day today as a precautionary measure. The ankle can bear weight fine (I can even stand on just that leg), but it mildly hurts (on a 10-point scale, I'd rate the pain at a 1 when resting, increasing to 1.5 with weight), so I'm hoping it's not sprained or broken. (I've sprained the other ankle before in 8th grade and that hurt far, far more than this does.) But it probably means having to pass on the kayaking opportunity I planned on for tomorrow (even if I get someone to carry my boat and gear, the downhill walk from the parking lot to the water will be a problem).

 

I'm not certain, but I believe the Facebook group I mentioned has no relation to him or that club.

 

I have a great running group. None of us do races anymore and we almost always do intervals. But the women who manage to stay in shape often meet in the same parking lot and take off and talk about their amazing feats, because we all used to be one group. It's just that life catches up to some of us faster than others. I try so hard not to let it bother me. Sometimes it doesn't but other times it does. Anyway the fast people got to run as a group today, but my dependable slower group was all busy. And I still ran, so it's all good but I will still feel frustrated sometimes.

I have not once regretted giving up the land of crazy uncles (otherwise known as Facebook).

I hope your ankle is okay @jcgoble3

 

I think it will be. Today it's more discomfort than actual pain -- I'm only feeling true pain if I rotate my ankle wrong and even then it's a 1/10. I'll wear the brace again today, but will probably skip the crutches.

 

Forgot to mention here -- at my personal training session on Thursday I got my first pull-up!



Also today I squatted 135 (i.e. the big plates) for the first time (and did 6 reps!).