Here’s a good article about how to “be enough.”
She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself. ~Anais Nin
I don’t really fight with being who I am anymore. It took me years to get there. To love me and my body for who we are–imperfect (but LOTS of fun). In the article I linked above they list 7 steps on how to Master Yourself. For me, it’s an ongoing process. I find myself doing all of these most of the time, but of course, I stumble and fall on occasion.
1. Let go
Let go of all the toxic thoughts and behaviours that are making you unhappy. Let go of the need to search for love outside yourself and start searching for love within yourself.
2. Purify your thoughts
Nurture good thoughts and you will reap good behaviours. Use your mind and don’t let it use you.
3. Contemplate
Contemplate on how you would like your Ideal Self to look like, feel like, love like and live like.
4. Spend time in silence
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility. ~Khalil Gibran
5. Have daily conversations with yourself
Carefully listen to what your Self has to say…
6. Practice self forgiveness
Forgive yourself for holding on to resentment for so long and depriving yourself of inner peace, tranquility and happiness.
Love yourself—accept yourself—forgive yourself—and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things. ~Leo F. Buscaglia
7. Love your Self
Learn to treasure yourself and your unique and authentic Self. Work on accepting yourself completely and make sure you are alway kind and gentle with your Self
All of this is connected to my health and fitness goals. I struggle with practicing self forgiveness. I beat myself up when I stumble. I regret choices I make and actions I take and it makes it very hard to do #1…Let Go. These things hold me back, sometimes.
So, let’s all practice mastering ourselves . (I do NOT recommend being the Master of Your Domain…that’s just cruel and unusual punishment) (also, if you didn’t get that reference, that makes me feel really old.)
If you fall off the fitness wagon. Get up! Brush yourself off and move on. Don’t dwell on it. When I beat myself up over the perceived failure, it takes days for me to get back at it. When I just shrug and say, “Oops. Oh well, that cheese dip and beer was good. But it’s time to get back to work.” I do myself a huge favor mentally and physically because it’s easier then to move forward.
Anyway, these are things I’ve been contemplating since my fall from grace last week with the ear infection and migraines. It happens. I’m human. And now, I’m back at it with a vengeance.
Tags: back on the wagon, falling off the diet wagon, Hogzilla, Purpose Fairy
I could have written this article myself. But I didn’t. You should read it anyway.
Wonderful.
I’ve been wanting to try Yoga again but have been terrified of the reactions I’ll get because even though I’m fit…I’m fat. And yes, you can be both. But I love yoga and I have to get over my fear of judgment because really…it’s their problem and not mine. I don’t care about anyone’s opinion of me any other time, so why on earth do I let the thought of Yogi judgment paralyze me?
I guess I am human after all. Dammit.
Tags: yoga
So it’s no secret I’m a Disney fan. Seven years ago one of the biggest motivators in my even considering a half marathon was a newspaper ad announcing the Inaugural Disneyland Half Marathon. The medal was so shiny:
I was way too scared/lazy/out of shape to even make an attempt at that first event. In fact it was five years before I crossed the finish line and earned a medal. I have a blog of my experience HERE.
But Disney races are like Doritos, you can never be happy with just one. And this year? Disney announced a new challenge:
DUMBO.
Dumbo consists of a 10K (6.2 miles) on Saturday followed by a half marathon (13.1 miles) on Sunday. So you get a medal for each race and a bonus medal for finishing both the same weekend. Three medals in two days. Woohoo!
Today Disney released the Jeff Galloway Dumbo training plan. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet but it’s linked HERE.
If you are interested in other Disney training plans click HERE.
I have a countdown on the top right of this blog. Dumbo is Labor Day. I always said I’d enjoy running right around the time elephants could fly. I never figured Disney into that equation. LOL!
I’m so excited I can barely stand it.
Tags: 2013 Dumbo Challenge, Dumbo Double Dare, Dumbo Training Plan, Jeff Galloway Rocks, Run Disney, Run Disney Training Plans
I have this habit of thinking about blog posts in such a way that I’m certain I must have typed them. Then I look at my post history and oops…no I didn’t. Like my post explaining how Dietbet works. Nope. Or the one explaining how I did and how a bet ends. Nope. Granted the events in Boston clearly shook me up a bit but talk about flaky! There were also a bunch of posts I’d intended to publish about upcoming races, a couple on previous races and advice for running newbies. Do you see any of those posts? Of course not.
I know, it’s just embarrassing at this point. So many more posts are coming. I’ll just apologize for the flood in advance.
Tags: Blog Catch-Up, CarbKiller, More coming soon I promise, slacker
I took about an 8 day break due to an ear infection. I decided I didn’t want to weigh because it might depress me, so I measured instead.
I’m -6.75 inches in 23 days! Not bad!! Especially since I didn’t do anything but eat, drink and sloth for 8 of those days…
Now, am I the only one waiting to hear about CarbKiller’s Diet Bet results? I know she made her goal, what I don’t know is how much of that $63,000 pot is she gonna bring home…
Tags: Diet challenges, Hogzilla, inches, weight
I actually hadn’t seen this until yesterday. Talk about food for thought.
Tags: Others see you as beautiful even when you don't, self image, true beauty
I’d originally titled this post Best.Monologue.Ever. and wanted to feature this Colbert Report Intro someone sent me this morning. It made my day.
But then I thought about things I’ve read and seen online so I’m including them too.
Running is a tight-knit community. And you don’t have to really be a “runner” as I am mostly a walker but they claim me anyway. As I said in yesterday’s blog, this incident felt like a personal attack. All my running friends felt the same so we started thinking about how we could show support. Other then the obvious eff you to the bomber(s?). We all plan to run races in the future and guard our loved ones on the sidelines to the best of our abilities so that goes without saying.
There had to be something else though.
One person suggested wearing a race shirt, any races shirt on Tuesday.
Another person suggested running 4.09 miles for the exact time the first bomb went off. Or run 2.62 miles for the marathon so many people couldn’t finish.
I did the 4.09 quietly and wore a race shirt from Surf City (my most recent)
Then a runner named Sam posted this on Facebook and the San Francisco Marathon page caught it.
It’s a screenshot from a smartphone app. Please note Sam is fast compared to me 6.78 miles in an hour and one minute is light speed for me but what a neat idea!
People continue to come up with ways to show support like donating blood
Ed “The Jester” Ettinghausen
Or money:
It’s amazing how people come together.
But if you live near Sam Shah give him/her a high five from me.
My plan this morning was to weigh-in and blog about the end of my first Dietbet. I’d planned to type while watching the end of the Boston Marathon via live feed. You see while Boston is geographically 3,000 miles from California, it felt a closer this morning.
Boston is an elite race, you either have to qualify by running an incredibly fast time (based on your age and gender) or you have to raise a significant amount of money for a charity partner. My family has roots in the city and my desire to run it one day is one of my life goals. I could certainly run it as a charity runner, it’s a lot of money but we’re talking once in a lifetime. As someone who knows first hand that Cancer SUCKS, I would happily bug/annoy/torment/harass all my friends and family out just once so I could hand Dana-Farber Cancer Institute a bunch of money. But deep inside me there is a flame of determination and a cold hard voice insists that I fight as hard as I can to qualify before I go charity. I need to lose weight and train my ass off for it. I haven’t done that yet. Boston is special because Boston is home but most importantly Boston is earned.
Coincidentally this morning was the end of my first Dietbet. I lost TEN pound in 28 days which was more then the bet required but I had an awesome month. I sat down to breakfast proud of myself for the first time in a long time knowing I am a step closer to Boston. I was so excited. And then I turned on my phone and the world changed.
I know runners can be hard to understand. It wasn’t very long ago when I was thinking why the hell would anyone do that for fun? But we do. And somehow in the middle of all the racing and training runs and questions gear and fuel and hydration I’ve joined a family. And that feeling? It goes beyond nationality, ethnicity, gender or religion. I can’t begin to list the number of total strangers I’ve accepted food, drinks, hugs and cheers from on a race course. And I’ve given just as much as I’ve gotten. So this tragedy? It was a horrible thing that happened 3,000 miles away but I’m taking it personally because some psycho messed with my racing family.
This is an image of the finish line before the start of the race. The flags are for each country represented in the race. It always makes me so proud when I see things like this. To me it means even in messed up world there are some things that unite people and running is one of them.
Boston Marathon Finish Line Flags before bombing- photo credit R. Couto
Here it is a couple hours later.
Photo credit: Getty Images via Yahoo
What better proof could there be of this global running village then this official breakdown of participants from the Boston Marathon page:
2013 Boston Marathon Geographic Breakdown
96 countries and 56 states and territories represented. But those are just numbers. And numbers are just a small part of the whole. Running isn’t just about numbers, it’s about people. These are my people:
Here are some other good reads:
The best explanation for my addiction is If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.
One woman ran Boston today as a way to overcome tragedy. She is shaken but she is still standing.
Here is a 78 year old man who felt the blast, was knocked down but still got up and finished. I wish I was half as awesome as that guy.
I also read some individual thoughts that echo my feelings exactly.
The BEST response, the most powerful statement I’ve read thus far has come from a comedian named Patton Oswalt:
Boston. Fucking horrible.
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”
But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”
A close second is A Bomb is Opposite of a Marathon.
Today I am 10 pounds lighter then I was a month ago and that much closer to Boston. If anything, today’s events have fueled me. One day I will run this race and in order to prepare for it I will run many others. I’ll show up to starting line and will proudly cross each finish line come hell or high water. As for today’s terrorist(s):
My favorite photo of the day. Origin unknown (unfortunately)
You can’t beat Boston. Check out: outpouring of help from city’s residents.
So at the end of the day I’m filing this under motivational because to me it is. Tragedy isn’t falling down, it’s staying down. I’m already up and running and so are all my peers.
I will blog about lighter topics tomorrow but for today hug your loved ones extra close and be safe.
Tags: Boston Bombing, Boston Marathon 2013, Boston Tragedy, NBC Sports Twitter, Patton Oswalt Boston Marathon, Runners Unite, We Will Run You Can't Hide
I have one week left in my 28 day Dietbet and I’ve reached the point where the novelty of eating clean has worn off a bit. I need to lose two more pounds in the next 7 days, which is reasonable but I’m sitting on a pretty big plateau I’ve been fighting off and on for awhile. It probably doesn’t help that I keep ending up in challenging situations.
I’ve been to two birthday parties in the last week. Eating out was challenging enough but I managed it. The worst part was saying no to dessert. I survived brunch at the Cheesecake Factory, barely. And what was I thinking going to the grocery store the day after Easter candy got marked down? I almost started fantasizing about Cadbury Mini Eggs. Damn hormones.
Don’t get me wrong I know this isn’t sustainable. I don’t even really need it to be, I am capable of making good food choices and not indulging too much but I’ve reached the Dietbet homestretch for my first bet and I’ve got at $25 buy-in into a $63,000 pot riding on this. I’m not losing this bet.
Apparently HZ and I share a brain though because I decided to surf healthy desserts on Pinterest too. Is this a great solution to my dessert problem or what. I LOVE fruit. I’m sure you can all guess what I’ll be bringing to potlucks this summer.
Tags: Dietbet, healthy food porn, how to survive birthday party hell, things that make me happy
I’ve ‘started over’ a lot in my adult fitness battle. I don’t apologize for it, because I’m human. Things happen. We go through trials and tribulations that are real…or at least, real to us, and we sometimes pick the wrong way to deal with those issues. Sometimes, I’ve just stopped working out or stopped eating right because I stopped seeing progress…so Fuck It! Sometimes I stopped because we had 4 days of bad weather and it was a good excuse in my head.
But this is my mantra for starting over:
Every time I begin again, I’m smarter about it. And every step forward is a step toward success. And beating myself up or listening to assholes who would rather try to break me down for being the fat girl who always fails, I smile and remember this:
and this:
and most importantly. This:
If you need to dwell on ‘haters’ and others opinions then you’re missing out on a real opportunity to feel better from the inside out. This has taken me a while to learn, but it is amazing how healthy I feel. And eating clean and exercising daily is just adding to that.
So carry on, bitches. And remember, everyone has an asshole, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to be one. Failure is just another step toward success. Don’t listen to the assholes. Don’t listen to that little niggle of doubt in your mind. Just get up…and try again. Rome wasn’t built in a day. And your Brick House won’t be either.
Tags: Hogzilla, Mel is awesome, motivation, success