never_quit’s BodyBlog

Woo Hoo!!! I feel frickin’ awesome! Why did I ever quit training??!! I stayed for the 3rd hour of karate tonight-the advanced class and it is SO awesome to be back! We did a weapons demo-traditional Okinawan and Japanese weapons, and I worked a bit before class and remembered my Sai kata, and demo’d with the black belts-that was frickin’ awesome! It’s all coming back to me, and Sensei Dan talked to me after class and said some really touching things to me-it about made me cry! He said that some people never finish anything, it’s as if something stops them just as they are about to finish a degree, or their black belt and he said to me, "you are not one of those people and it makes me so happy that you are here and I am so proud of you" WOW! I feel like I’m walking on clouds-I’ve got bruises again and I came home with my gi soaking wet-awesome! Once a week is NOT enough, so I’m going to go to Sam’s class on Friday-hey that’s tomorrow! He teaches at a local rec center on Tuesday and Friday at 7-unfortunately I have class on Tuesday at 7-so can’t do that -but I can do Friday. Hmm…2 days in a row, then 5 days with no karate-I’ll have to figure something out for those other days. My biggest goal right now is to get my conditioning back and be able to go full out without dying-and to lose weight because that will help my conditioning too.  Sensei also said that he would talk to Shihan Demura and let him know that I’m training again, so that by the time he shows up for testing at the end of class, he will know and then I will start training at the main dojo again! I’ll have to figure out a way to pay for it…ack! Now that I have the time, I don’t have the money-but when I had the money-I didn’t have the time! I’m sure there is a life lesson in there somewhere LOL Anyway-Sensei Dan told me to wear my brown belt to class - so I’m right back at the front of the line and I’m the highest rank colored belt-I’ve GOT to work my ass off-what a phenomenal trust and opportunity he is giving me! My god I love my life! Sensei also said, that I deserved to be happy now, after all the hardship that I endured with the divorce and all, and then having almost my whole family dying last year-he said now it is MY time-and that I’m making my own happiness and finishing school and he knows that I am going to get my black belt. I WILL!

I am realizing that I will never accomplish my larger goals in life if I don’t acknowledge all the little goals reached along the way! My inner critic dismisses all my little accomplishments with such phrases as, "it’s not good enough" or "I should have done more" and turns positives into negatives, which then become a no win situation. Why continue if no matter what I do it is not good enough? SO! Constant reinforcement of the positive! Some people may not relate to this at all, and I ENVY you! But for me, it is a constant battle.

Part of the battle is allowing myself to be human, and to not have completely unrealistic expectations. Unrealistic expectations just guarantee failure, which in turn reinforces the inner critic. That inner critic is like a maniacal nightmare zombie that keeps getting up, and that is what I have to do to beat it-kill it every day over and over! Because you see, it will eventually stop coming around every day, it will get tired of me killing it over and over. I will get better at stopping it, and do it easily-and when he stops coming around all the time then I’ll have time for visits from positive guests

I need tools to kill the negative zombies! The more tools the better! One tool that I remembered from a class I took once is a nice little positive daily ‘perspective check’ that consists of 4 simple questions. You see, when the negative zombies dismiss all my small daily accomplishments, they go in for the kill: they attack my self worth. Once they nullify the small hurdles of my daily successes, all that is left is defenseless me. I’ve done nothing good, what I did do was so small and pathetic that it was worse than doing nothing, I don’t even deserve to try or to even hope that I could ever do anything positive. All I deserve is pain and agony and being miserable and maybe that will make up for being such useless trash.

So-to change my perspective and fight to protect my self worth, I will ask myself 4 little questions every night:

1. Who loves me? As I start listing people that love me, I realize that the list is much bigger than I realized, and that I admire the people who love me and value their opinion…so maybe I’m lovable after all? And the zombies lose strength…

2. Who do I love? Again, the list starts growing-larger than I realized as I think of family members, family members who are in heaven, my animal companions, friends that I have in my music world and so many friends in my karate circle…and maybe I go back and add some of those people to the first list… I’m loved and I love… and the zombies lose strength!

3. What did I do WELL today?! This is what changes my focus and my skewed perspective and sucks the power away from the zombies and gives it back to me! This is where I DON’T GIVE THEM MY POWER! Last night I asked myself this and yesterday I taught my trumpet student and gave him a good lesson and he got better. Every time he told me what he COULDN’T do I asked him to tell me what he COULD do! A 10 year old kid! And he is already being attacked by the zombies?! And I learned from my student-I took what I was teaching him and used and applied it to myself What else did I do well today? I let down some emotional walls with my husband. I shared with some close friends how very much they mean to me. I remembered this daily exercise and actually did it and shared it with other people. 

4. What would I like to do better tomorrow?  And this question is great-it is phrased in such a positive manner and makes improving yourself a wonderful motivational circle. What’s my kneejerk way of doing this that guarantees failure? I list all the horrible things that I did-"I ONLY lost 1 pound last week, I didn’t work out yesterday-I’ll try and be less of a total waste of air tomorrow…etc." NO! I’m so tired of this going on in my head! So, I’ve listed all the things I did well, and tomorrow I would like to do these things better: I would like to work on my homework some more, I would like to do another 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, I would like to spend 10 minutes stretching again-that felt great…etc.

The nice thing about this site is that it is another tool to accentuate the positive. There are other people out there fighting the zombies-and it is much easier fighting them with help than alone!

 

One of the classes that I’m taking is called a Physical Assessment class and it is a requirement for both my AA and my transfer to a Cal State university. It’s actually a really fun class and I’m learning quite a bit. I learned that 20 minutes of aerobic exercise at least three times a week is necessary for cardio vascular health. I learned that aerobic exercise is something that you do nonstop for at least 20 minutes. I asked some questions about other good fat burning exercise and learned that we weren’t talking about burning fat-but rather exercising the heart muscle! Duh-I’ve been so focused on losing weight that I lost sight of the overall picture-the most important part, which is my health. This class is fun because we do labs where we take fitness tests and determine where we are, etc. yesterday we all did a step test-we stepped up and down on a 12-inch high box for three minutes straight. that was HARD! Then we took our pulse and looked it up in a chart to see where we were in terms of cardio vascular health. Basically the healthier we were the faster our heart beat would get back to normal. My resting heart rate was 60, although when I took it the night before it was 80-anyway, 12 inches is high! Two ladies weren’t able to finish the test, and when it was my turn I thought I wouldn’t finish either but somehow I did-legs all wobbly and I was totally out of breath. I took my pulse and it was beating so fast I could barely count it. I ended up with a heart rate of 180-which on the scale landed at the top of the "very poor" category   Then we did a flexibility test and I did "fair" on that test. Now, my question is-I went to karate last night and worked out for 2 hours and did really well, but the 3 minutes step test kicked my ass-why? I don’t get it-but I’m definitely going to add that 20 minutes of aerobic exercise because I don’t want to die from a heart attack! I talked to the teacher after class, and she said that my having asthma could have something to do with it-but regardless, I needed to work on it - she recommended just walking-10 minutes out and 10 minutes back-3x a week-and not worry so much about weight loss but more about conditioning-that the weight loss would come-and adding the karate and weight training 3x a week and I would be amazed at my results. Just goes to show one is never too old to learn, eh?!

meal 1 8:00 a.m.

• kashi bar 190/5f/27c/12p
• green apple

meal 2 12:00

• 2 veggie corn dogs 320

10:30 a.m.

• banananananana  100
• kashi bar 190/5
• hot green tea

12:30

• sandwich w/ tofurkey, soy cheese, mustard onions & lettuce on whole grain sourdough  355/3.5

 2:30

• orange & apple    120

6:30