Day 47 and a half?

I guess I'm writing this now I've come to an understanding with myself. Let me explain...

Recently, the past couple of months, I've been having trouble getting to sleep, therefore not getting enough sleep on work nights and as a consequence finding my eyes closing whilst sat at my desk at work - not good! I've tried going to bed a little earlier, no change. I've tried a can of coke to keep me awake, it worked but isn't really a long term solution! I have found out though that my under-active thyroid is being given too many drugs to balance it out - the dose I've been taking for 9 months is now too much for me to cope with, hence the unusual symptoms. So I've now changed my dose but it can take from 6 weeks to 3 or 4 months for me to feel the benefits of the new dose, so I'm stuck a little in a groove that I can't immediately see a way out of.

So, in short, I've decided to modify my TAM programme, having Tuesday and Wednesday night off from exercise each week instead of just Wednesday, and also to try to have one day during the week when I sleep in and just get up when I wake. This will all take some adjustment but I have to give it a go for my own sanity!

I saw a good quote at the weekend, which I am trying to keep in mind now...

"It's not about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning how to dance in the rain".

I don't know who said it but they're a genius. I just have to get through this, I get it now. It's not permanent, it's just a nasty phase mother nature has inflicted on me. A test. I can do tests, surely.

So that's where I'm at. I'm on an enforced day off, hence day 47 and a half, it won't be officially day 48 until the day after tomorrow.

So, sleeps gods, come get me tonight please and make me fresh for Thursday, it's gonna be a big time hot workout!!!

Janice.

Day 32 - In for the long haul

Yesterday I took myself off to a Body Attack class, as recommended by a fellow TAM buddy and as talked by other friends who take the class. Before I went I expected it to be a really good workout, incorporating jumps, steps, runs and a few toning moves. What I actually got was all these things but the speed at which these jumps, steps and runs happened was quite unexpected. The jumping jacks were on speed, the steps were double time and the runs were back and forth so quick I sometimes couldn't even keep up! Why am I writing about a Body Attack class when I'm supposed to be documenting my journey with Tracy Anderson? Well, doing this class actually showed me that although the class was rough and ready, I did actually keep up with it throughout, and this showed me that not only has Tracy's cardio element increased my fitness level to something I never thought I was capable of, but I can actually go harder and for longer than the required 30 minutes of cardio, if pushed or if I put my mind to it.

After that revelation last night, I had another revelation this morning, my lowest weight for 10 or 11 years, 8 st 0.8. The clever scales also told me that in the last couple of months I've lost nearly 5 pounds but my muscle mass has only gone down by 1 pound, so this means I must've lost 4 pounds of fat, so that's good right?! I can tell this is the case just by how my skin around my middle feels, there's a little less to grab hold of!

So, today I'm realising that things are still slowly happening to my body, and after the earlier down period this week, thinking nothing was moving, things suddenly are again, so I just have to be patient, stick with it, take enough rest and enough food to keep me in good form, and just wait and see what lies in store! It's quite an exciting prospect, to see what happens next and how far I can take this, with a little help from my beautiful guru, Tracy Anderson of course!

Janice

Day 29 - Regrouping

Today, no in fact most of this week, I've been struggling to get into the method. I feel stuck. I feel like I'm on a straight running track, with the finish line so far in the distance it might as well be on another planet. This track is so straight that it signifies a constant in my life. But the constant is not something I wanted when I started this so-called 'Transformation'. Tracy Anderson told me that every 10 days when I measure myself I will be amazed, that if I followed her cardio and muscle structure routines to the letter then I would be miraculously transformed into a lovlier, more toned and slimmer version of myself. I'm currently a bit miffed because this has so far not happened to me. Yes when I measured myself after the first 10 days I seemed to have lost half an inch here and there, but since then? Nothing. No weight loss, no inch loss, and due to this lack of visual result (plus my 40th birthday celebrations involving eating lots more chocolate than is good for me) I have not budged an inch or a pound since then.

Speaking of my birthday, here is a nice picture of myself before I went out for a lovely curry with my friends from work. I was happy at the weekend but now not so much.

So for now I feel disappointed. I feel that I have either let myself down by not pushing myself as hard as I could, by not following Tracy's diet plan, by not believing in myself. So here I come in the hope of regrouping (with myself?!) and hopefully getting refocussed on the task in hand. So let me look for some positives...

Ok, so first of all I have lost 2-3 lbs since I started this journey a couple of months ago.

Second of all, I have been so busy lately that I guess I'm bound to feel tired and unmotivated, I just want to relax at the end of a hard day, not do an intense workout. This is out of my hands until I finish this busy period, by the end of next weekend hopefully.

Thirdly, what is third? I guess for a while there I was very motivated and did start to see changes in myself visually and also mentally, from the extra confidence that comes with feeling good about yourself.

Ok, so those are the good things I have learned. Now how to move forward in a positive manner and get back with the program...

So I guess my main downfall diet-wise has been chocolate the past week, I think I should forego all chocolate for 2 weeks and watch the difference. If I can do it for 2 weeks then who knows.

I need to not put pressure on myself to follow this program to the letter and not feel disappointed if I don't. So far I've only missed a small handful of workouts, nothing that's going to totally screw me up, so get over that and move on. I accept I am a busy girl and can't always do everything all the time.

I think I should also step up the cardio and twice a week aim for 45 minutes to an hour of cardio instead of the prescribed 30 minutes. I am going to do this by starting to go to Body Attack class, which is quite high energy from what I've been told, and also I could use my running machine to either run or do Tracy's treadmill workout. I've just read this paragraph and I'm not sure if this is putting too much pressure on me by placing impossible targets on myself again??? I'll have to see how this works out.

So all in all, the plan is to stress less, eat better, move more. Whoever would've thought it was that simple? People could make a fortune writing diet & fitness books on this. Oh yes that's right, they already do. I just took a while to discover these things for myself.

I think I need little reminders around the place to keep me in check. Might print out some Tracy pictures, some motivational words or other propaganda to leave in my bag, in my drawer, coat pocket etc. Little reminders.

Right, I'm even boring myself now so I shall go and put all the chocolate away, then I shall make a delicious salad for tomorrow's lunch and let's see how we go. Who is with me?

Janice.

Day 27... thinness is a state of mind

A strange title today. I often notice that if I'm 'thinking thin' then that becomes a reality, it's as if the thought Gods up there know what I'm projecting and they give me what I want. So, the other day I went for a Frappucino (and how lovely it was!) with a friend I met through this Tracy Anderson Method Facebook site, and she said 'Oh my god, I thought you were a size 6!' in reply to my musings about whether I'm properly a size 8 yet or just in some shops where they do generous cuts. She told me she'd just got into a size 4, that really is TEENY TINY! So I thought, well, I wonder what it would be like to get very comfortably into an 8 and then how it would feel to fit into a size 6 pair of jeans... I wondered for a couple of days then decided to go and try some on!

I only went to one shop, Next, and took 2 pairs of skinny jeans into the changing rooms - one size 8 petite and the other 6 petite. I put the 8 on and to my surprise I easily buttoned them up, thought, hmm, I wonder... So on went the 6 and after a little tug to get these oh-so-skinny- jeans all the way to the top of my leg, I actually fastened them up! And I even tried sitting down on the changing room bench and they didn't pop open or dig too uncomfortably into my still-wobbly bits! Wow! How had this happened? I'd never even thought I may get into anything size 6, I'd only just stopped buying 10's as a matter of course as these seemed to be hanging off me or falling down lately. So imagine this, Janice in a pair of size 6 jeans. There is definitely a transformation afoot! Thank you thought Gods.

I definitely won't be squeezing myself into those jeans tonight though, I will need lots of room for expansion as I'm going out for the last of my birthday splurges - a lovely curry with a dozen people from work. I've fake tanned my arms and legs so just need to do the hair and paint the nails and I'll be ready for the last marking-the-40-occasion outings. Can't wait!

Ciao for now...

Janice