FertilehealthyAiming for success, not perfection…

It’s been a busy week for me!  But in a good way…

As you know, I’ve been doing aqua aerobics classes five times a week for the last few months.  And it’s changed my body is some truly amazing ways.  Aqua (our class anyway) provides a good all round workout, with lots of cardio, flexibility work and amazing strength training.  I enjoy it and I benefit greatly from it.

But, I need more…

I tried to incorporate some treadmill interval workouts, but I didn’t enjoy them and the scheduling was kind of tricky.  I tried walking a kilometer in the pool after aqua, but I felt rather silly with all the stationary cyclists staring at me.

Then, last weekend I remembered that I’d signed up for a 5K walk on August 9.  I had two weeks to prepare!  Not that I can’t walk 5K, but I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it if I wasn’t prepared.

We mapped out a 1K and a 2K loop near my house.  Both of them are about 50% uphill.

Fortunately the weather co-operated and I started walking on Monday.

Monday I walked 1K.

Tuesday I walked 2K.

Wednesday I walked 3K.

Thursday I walked 4K.

Today is a scheduled rest day (from walking – I did aqua and swam).  Just as well, because it’s pouring with rain.

Tomorrow I will do 5K (weather forecast says cold and sunny).

Next week I will do four 5K walks – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. If I have to miss any of these due to bad weather, I’ll make up for it with interval training on the treadmill (I don’t like to spend a lot of time on the treadmill, but I can do a 20 minute interval session.)

That should prepare me properly for my walk on Sunday.

It’s amazing how much I’ve progressed in terms of fitness from Monday to Thursday.  Obviously a lot of it has to do with the fact that I was walking regularly before the winter and my body remembers, but still, I’m very pleased.

After the race I intend to continue walking outside 5 days a week, adding an extra kilometer ever week (weather permitting).  At this stage I’m walking before lunch (allows me to get my daily dose of winter sun), but hopefully from September onwards it will get light early enough so that I can walk in the morning before gym.

I’ve been very inspired by South Beach Steve, a great blogging friend, who walks up to 8 miles a day.   And of course Lynn, who is preparing for a 3-day event and tweets about her epic walks.

And then someone – I think it was Sagan – tweeted a link to an article about swimming and I thought to myself, “Hanlie, you know, you’re already in the pool five times a week.  Why not start swimming?“  Myself reminded me that I suck at swimming and I don’t like having my face underwater (I can’t breathe), but I shut her up by saying, “There’s always back stroke“.

So, for the last three days I’ve been swimming 250 meters (10 lengths) of back stroke.  It takes me about 15 minutes, but I love it!  By today (the third day) my rests at each end were much shorter than on Wednesday and my stroke much more even.  I plan to add 50 meters every Monday.

In one week I have really stepped up the exercise!  And I’m definitely feeling it all over my body.  I don’t think there’s a muscle that’s not being worked by this regime.

I love it!

This morning I had Craig draw the winner of the “Lose the Diet” giveaway.

Congratulations to Debby!  I  hope that this book will help you tremendously on your path.

(Please e-mail me at hanlie at fertilehealthy dot com with your address details, so that I can have the book dispatched to you.)

Thank you to everyone who entered.  There are some more great reviews of the book on Amazon.com,  and on Losethediet.com, so please visit.  It may be just what you need to be successful on your journey to a slimmer and healthier you.

This is NOT a post about nudity!

One of my favorite blogging friends is Earthmother, who blogs at In the Raw.  I asked her to tell us about her journey so far and how eating raw has changed her life. I just love success stories!

I was rollerblading in the park and noticed a woman jogging toward me on the same path.

“What a beautiful figure,” I thought to myself. I used to have that same body – perfectly proportioned, 36-24-36; shapely, well-defined calves and thighs; flat tummy; muscular arms – and yet, when I did, I felt like a cow. Thought I was the size of a house.  How’d I get such a distorted view of myself?

Certainly, the media had something to do with it. Much of what I grew up seeing in the magazines and on the television influenced my perception. Born 20 years too late. If only I had grown up in the 1940s and 50s, when Ava Gardner, Jane Russell and Sophia Loren graced the covers and silver screen. Instead, I looked to Twiggy, Susan Dey and Karen Carpenter. And sadly, they all suffered from disordered eating and body dysmorphic issues.

Of course Mother, the perpetual dieter, played a role too. When I was 12, she decided it was time I be inducted into her tribe and enrolled me in Weight Watchers. Yes, twelve years old, when my body was rapidly changing with a new onslaught of hormones as I began menstruating. I was very physically active, a competitive swimmer, and absolutely believe my body would have come into balance and found its natural weight had it been allowed to do so. But, Mother knows best, and Weight Watchers it was.

And so began my own foray into the world of dieting. Pick a diet, any diet, and betcha I’ve been on it: Slim Fast, Atkins, Protein Power Plan, Diet Center, Weight Watchers, Blood Type, Fat Flush, Herbalife, Zone, Richard Simmons, Apple Cider Vinegar, Scarsdale, Metabolism Booster, Somersizing, 6-week Body Make Over. That’s just the short list.

With every diet, my eating became more disordered and my body’s physiology became even more imbalanced. Until one day, I had dieted my way up to 312 pounds. Morbidly obese, I suffered from fire-breathing dragon heartburn, chronic fatigue, migraine headaches, lymphedema, adult acne, joint pain and a host of other debilitating symptoms. Feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, I decided to end my dieting career and instead focus on changing my relationship with food and regaining my health and vitality.

I traded in my scale for a juicer and entered the world of raw, living foods. I replaced prepared and processed foods with fresh fruits, vegetables, sprouts, nuts and seeds. A funny thing happened: by infusing my body with live enzymes, I began to feel more alive.

I’m not here to tout the raw food diet or convert anyone to this lifestyle. I say lifestyle because it’s a reflection of my beliefs and values, and how I choose to live. What I put in my mouth is only the half of it. Look, I was an overweight vegetarian for years and I know plenty of unhealthy vegans with sallow complexions and dark, under-eye circles. This journey has had nothing to do with dieting or losing weight. In truth, the only weight I really needed to lose was located right between my ears.

My journey of the last 12 months has been about unlearning all I had been taught, told, fed. It’s been about detoxifying my body, mind and emotions. It’s been about balance — seeking balance, and allowing my body to come into balance. That’s what healing is all about, really.

Okay, so all those symptoms I mentioned? Gone. My energy level is through the roof. I sleep like a baby at night. My skin is smooth, clear and radiant. I have a mental clarity today that I have never experienced in my life. I don’t quite know how to describe it, but it feels like I have broken a long-term drug addiction. It almost feels like I was walking around before under the constant influence of alcohol, and then suddenly becoming alcohol-free. The thing is, I had already been sober for 18 years.

Oh yeah, I’ve also shed 115 pounds without counting a point, calorie, carb or fat gram. But more importantly, I’ve succeeded at changing my relationship with food, and in doing so, have found my freedom.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Earthmother.  I learn a lot from you!

You should visit her blog for some really healthy recipes and amazing food porn – all raw!  And you can follow Earthmother on twitter @rawliving.

And if you’re wondering why I’ve been slacking off a bit this week with regards to posting, I’ll tell you tomorrow!

If you haven’t heard by now, allow me to fill you in.  I am now officially, finally, once and for all and thank heavens, out of the 300′s.  My latest recorded weight (Monday) was 299 pounds.

Cue the confetti, do the happy dance and burn an effigy of the 300′s.  I’m so over that!

It’s amazing how that mini-victory has energized and galvanized me.  My eating has been spectacular this week and I have added a (hilly) daily walk to my workouts.

I am even feeling more productive in other areas of my life.

Life is good right now… and I am taking notes so that I can recapture the magic in case I lose my mojo in the future.

So what is my next mini-goal?  It’s actually quite close – 50 pounds lost.  I’ll keep you updated.

In other news, I may have lost my mind.  There’s this test where you stand on one leg with your eyes closed to determine your brain strength.  Fifteen seconds is considered very good if you’re 45 or older.  I made Craig go first (he’s 42) and he managed for 25 seconds.  Then it was my turn.  I closed my eyes, lifted my left foot off the ground and promptly fell over.  I am never going to hear the end of this, no matter how many times I protest that I just wasn’t ready!

I really wanted to insert a clever quip about mindless eating here, but I just couldn’t think of one.  I’m too far gone.

PS.  Remember, you can still enter to win a copy of Lose the Diet.

PPS.  Happy 40th birthday to my blogging friend, Sally!

I have long believed, and often said, that excess weight is a symptom of a life out of balance.  In fact, I believe that is true for most of the diseases and conditions we suffer from these days.

It is precisely for this reason that I’ve never been a fan of dieting.  I’ve done a few diets in my life, but never felt comfortable treating the symptoms and not the cause of my weight problems.

Craig and I eat for health now and we want to eat this way for the rest of our lives.  We enjoy eating and living this way and love that it makes us feel healthy and energetic.  My husband is 200% on board.

Yet I’ve been trying to make these lifestyle changes stick for over three years and I’ve failed many times.

I’m the one that keeps on veering off course.  I have issues and they keep tripping me up.

Sure, I’ve come a long way over the last three years in dealing with my self-sabotaging, self-limiting, self-loathing, my deep-seated rage, my feelings of shame and my disapproval my past choices, but the magnitude of the task can be so overwhelming sometimes that I just have to dive face-first into the nearest loaf of bread.

They say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

Enter Kathy Balland.  I was asked to review her book, Lose the Diet:  Transform your body by connecting with your soul and I’m so glad that I agreed.  (I love that I have a signed copy!)

Kathy is a wellness coach and expert in the mind-body-soul connection in the areas of weight and stress management.  She is clinically certified in hypnotherapy and works with clients to provide insight into the real causes and their remedies to release them from their weight struggles once and for all.

I started this book over a month ago, but read no more than a few pages every day, since there was just so much to absorb and apply.  A lot of the information is stuff that we’ve all heard, but hearing is one thing; we have to recognize, internalize, understand and then apply the wisdom.

Kathy helps us to bring balance to all areas of our lives.  She deals with food, stress, relaxation and meditation, exercise, visualization, releasing of outdated ideas and emotions, our connection to our inner selves, our connection to others and very importantly, our spiritual lives.  I love how she effortlessly leads the reader from one aspect to the next.

In Kathy’s own words:

Many of the tools that are mentioned in this book come down to one basic concept:  Loving and respecting ourselves enough so that we can focus on our own need to find balance in our lives.  It’s about raising our self-esteem so that we can find the strength to reach whatever goal we wish to achieve, whether the goal is a healthy weight or something else.  And above all, to feel connected, so that we do not try to fill the emptiness of feeling disconnected with excessive amounts of food.

Kathy contends that you can’t permanently change your weight unless you make meaningful connections and renew your mind.  The beauty of this book is that it takes you on a journey which will not leave you unchanged, unless you heart is closed and your spirit unwilling.

Lose the Diet has been really helpful to me these last few weeks.  I’m definitely more even, as opposed to scattered, in my approach to life.  Of course, the hard work starts after you read the book, but I’m willing and ready!  This book has a permanent home on my bedside table.

I am so enthusiastic about Kathy’s work that I begged her for another copy.  So, leave a comment on this post by midnight (your time, wherever you are) Thursday and you could win a signed copy of Lose the Diet for yourself.  And kindly spread the word – many people in our immediate circle of bloggers can benefit from this book.

PS.  Be sure to read Kathy’s excellent guest post from yesterday.