Mental Fitness #2

Have you ever noticed the difference between driving to your house in your neighborhood and walking to your neighborhood to your house?

Last year I decided to learn how to skateboard. I started off with a 5 degree hill, then incrementally tackled more and more of the hill. Every time I would practice, I'd have to walk back up. After a while, I could skate down a few streets at a time, but then of course, I'd have to walk back up each street to do it all over again. It takes time.

When skateboarding and walking the same streets (or driving and walking),  a strange and noticeable phenomena occurs. The scenery doesn't look the same. While driving, the houses, the cars, the shrubs, and the people are all just there. Nothing special stands out. Nothing unusual, nothing interesting, the rather ordinary exists.

Skateboarding the streets is different than driving. With skateboarding, I notice the little rocks and fallen droppings from the trees, and people's mannerisms watering and mowing and doing different things in their garages.

Yet even more changes are noticed when walking. The colors in the trees are more noticeably yellow and green and orange. I see the veins in each leaf and I think about which gardens I like and don't like and why. Shiny and dusty, new and old cars in a variety of colors line the streets. Some times of the day there are few cars parked along the streets. I like skateboarding those times. Other days, there are too many cars parked that I forego skateboarding because of the danger. Sometimes there are more leaves on the ground after a windy night, some days more black dogs are being walked. 

Slowing down to notice what is really there and how those things feel on the inside is calming, quiet, and peaceful. It is a good, perhaps great feeling to be alive at those moments when all is slowed down. I am convinced that loving and appreciating deeper in life comes from slowing the pace.

Slowing down doesn't mean accomplishing less. As I have slowed down everything, and have rid life of the unnecessary things, duties, and obligations, I've made more room and time to enjoy the moment and accomplish so much more. 

To savour the moments of shopping, cooking, and containing foods or running on the treadmill becomes more enjoyable when I'm not wanting to move onto the next "thing." The time, wherever spent, is enjoyed more thoroughly and happily. 

I have found myself running on the treadmill for sometimes 15 minutes more when I'm not focused on what I'm going to do next. My happy meter inside my body clicks on sometimes during a run, something I wouldn't notice if I wasn't calm and peaceful. The same happens when I've eaten healthy foods. Being more present with what's going on right now brings more awareness to the feelings and thoughts, and perhaps gives more ammunition to becoming consistent in nutrition and exercise, because something is starting to feel good and I have more energy to put where it's needed. 

Here is my awareness question to you right now:

Who is the most important person to you?

Answer this question, remember this question, and remember the exact place and time. 

Next blog I will talk more about the question and getting into the place you don't want to go but need to go.

Mental Strength

If you want muscles, strength, and endurance you must workout. You must work the muscles frequently and for a set period of time if you want the body to take shape. You may not be able to see the muscle or fitness if it's overshadowed by too much fat, but the muscle will grow and will be seen once the fat is lost. Even if you cannot see your efforts, you can breath, climb, and move easier than when you don't workout at all. Depending on how hard you workout and how long you workout your body can achieve amazing results. Those results may be long lasting or short lived, and will be determined by your mental state of mind. 

Mental Strength is not developed in the same way as physical strength.

Running yourself ragged into the ground with a million errands, chores, and the endless shitload of responsibilities for family, friends, and colleagues makes the body fatigued. If the body is tired it will not have enough energy to endure consistency or focus. It will also be too exhausted to make good nutritional choices. 

At this pace, a person may last a short period of time being able to achieve all these tasks and still be able to eat well and workout regularly, but it will end in one way or another. 
Either the body will continue on this road and develop some obsessive compulsive traits, a short temper, or other mental deficiency, or the body will shut down and stop all this crazy making activity. You may end up feeling sabotaged by your efforts achieving only failure -perhaps once more. 

Many will think that the failure came from not knowing which exercises to do, how long to exercise, or what to eat or perhaps a complete loss on how to achieve any of this at all. Most will seek external confirmation by going to a weight loss clinic of some sort,  or seek advise from a friend who said the results came by way of what you already knew and did, but somehow everything got confused in your mind, and that confusion ended up in frustration or depression and failure. 

Realize that the body is not designed to take that much stress if you don't know how to manage it all. People who are able to take on a vast amount of work and be accomplished are not made overnight. They have been trained well over time from when they were a child or they eventually got the magic key later on in life of how to do it all, but have been well practiced, that it seemed to everybody else, that it came naturally. 

Mental strength is gathered from the calm, the quiet, and the peace purposely carved out of each day. If the day is full of running around and being bothered by one person or another, there has to be a purposeful attempt to shut it all down, so that you may gather the strength you need to endure the demands a sound nutrition and exercise program will require. 

...This topic is loaded with so much to say that I will continue on another day.


"When all else fails, do nothing"

RsmKettleGirl

It's a big waiting game, isn't it?

I should have titled it, "it's a big wait-weighing game." The reality is that eating well and working out are relatively easy in the sense that one can figure out what to eat at each meal without much trouble, and 30 minutes minimum of an intense workout can be accomplished daily. The truly grueling part is not seeing daily instant results that I can visually see, and say, "wow! I really made improvement today!" It would be great if I could look at myself naked in the mirror and feel that momentary satisfaction that could keep me going for the next 3-4 months.

Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. So what does one do? Well, like most people we know or are like, we can just find a weak moment in the day and just give in to a little snacky pie, or a dinner outing, or a shower without a workout that day.

If one chooses to dismiss the feeling of being bored and feels that having something to do or anything to do...because one can't stand the place they are in within at that particular moment, then the battle is lost.

The whole point of the matter is more than losing weight. It's really about how to do without the preoccupation of needing to do something to make one feel more ampt up, distracted, and in constant motion.

One shouldn't try to fill up the space again  with something that is not serving the end point. Being okay with the way things are when one has done everything possible that day is okay. TIME will take care of the rest. But TIME is the most important part of the process.

Tonight was one of those nights I had to look at myself and say "don't do anything!" Just doing what I needed to do today inspite of what I WANTED was probably the most challenging and most important.
I didn't want to work out. My body was tired. So, I went downstairs and put in almost 1 hour of kettlebell training, even though I was expecting 30 minutes from myself. Also, I really wanted more food tonight, so instead I ate 1 tsp of peanut butter and drank lots of water.

What I ate today:
830am: peanut butter, protein powder, ice, water, banana smoothie
11am: 1 pear & 1 hard boiled egg
1pm: taco salad from last night
3pm: Promax chocolate chip protein bar
5:45pm: 2 lean ground turkey, salsa, corn tortilla tacos
7pm: 1 tsp peanut butter

Workout Tonight:
833pm: Kettlebell workout:
4 sets of 25 two arm kettlebell swings.
4 sets of the following combinations with rests in between each set: 10, 10, 15, 15 -two kettlebell deadlifts, 10 alternating swings, 10 two arm swings, 10 alternating clean and presses, 5-10 swings, 40 lunges without the kettlebell (20 each side).
4 sets of the following combinations with rests in between each set: 10-16 total of two kettlebell alternating rows from a push-up position, followed by 20 fast squat-to-stand without the kettlebell.
4 sets of sit ups using the large yoga ball.

...then as fast as I could I went upstairs to shower, so I could have lots of time to just sit and relax!!!!

RsmKettleGirl@gmail.com