Monday, January 30, 2006

dance like no one is watching & lose weight

If a 165 pound woman (that's me) dances wildly for 1 hour daily she can burn 445 calories. That's enough to lose one pound every 8 days. Six Tips to make this work:
  1. wear heart rate monitor
  2. find music in the 125 - 130+ beats per minute range
  3. do it every day
  4. do it in 15 minute increments to get around your I-don't-have-an-hour-to-exercise critic
  5. keep a glass of water near by
  6. keep the dancing our little secret

Who’s that woman with the unstoppable body?

Confession: I’d love to have the body of a video vixen. There I admitted it, sort of out loud. I don’t want to wear the show-all-your-goodies outfits but I’d like to have the option.

Will watching exercise videos help you lose weight?
At the library I picked up Unstoppable Women: achieve any breakthrough goal in 30 days by Cynthia Kersey. I love books with definite timeframes in the title.

I get these books and usually just passively read them. It’s like the way I once watched exercise videos; I’d watch them and hope that some miracle would happen so taht my body would, through exposure, be encouraged to start and keep moving. In the middle of the video I’d remember that “hope is not a method” and either start exercising or turn it off.

At any rate, I read parts of Unstoppable women propped up in bed. It made me tired so I went to sleep. It didn’t bore me it was just overwhelming.

I have so many areas of my life in which I’d love to “achieve any breakthrough goal” that it has taken me a week to sort out that losing 25 pounds is the one I’d most like to achieve. It’s the one that keeps nagging me. It’s the one that could positively influence all the others. Weighed in this morning at 165 ½ pounds. I’m 5’3" so I’m officially obese.

The Unstoppable System
Last night I picked Unstoppable Women back up and decided to actually consider taking the challenge. It’s fairly simple two part program: a- preparation, b- 30 day challenge. So we’re actually talking at least 31 days. Is this the lazy part of me start trying to talk my motivated self out of committing?

The prep is emotionally intense, especially if you chose a goal that you’ve been having trouble achieving in the past. It might take a week to do the planning. Getting out of the house might help me get started. It would just be me, the book, a blank notebook, and my favorite pen. It’s a good excuse to visit the coffee shop and have a piece of carrot cake with a large decaf. I could even take a walk since the coffee shop is in my favorite part of town. Yes, yes – focus – focus.

The 30-day program is just that. 30 days of inspirational and hopefully helpful to-dos. Each day consists of …

  • absorbing an “unstoppable insight” gleaned from the author’s experience counseling many other wanna-be-better people
  • reading an “unstoppable woman story” (more about my issues with this below)
  • completing a predefined “unstoppable action” (when do you do the actions from your planning session?)
  • creating your “day planner” for the following day (this reminds me a lot of Barbara Sher’s Wishcraft)

On Saturdays you also have “intimate conversations with Cynthia”. I hate that girlfriend talk fluff! And on Sundays there’s a weekly review.

Is my emotional intelligence to low for this book?

Hello. It’s me again trying to not commit. You’d think I was a 25 year old guy instead of a 42 year old woman. Here’s another confession: I can’t read the book cover to cover because a large part of it consists of people’s stories; Verneta Wallace’s story, Margot Fraser’s Story, J.K. Rowling’s Story, etc., etc. There’s something about reading “inspirational” vignettes that makes me tired.

But?! But change is my mantra for this year so my is to read ¼ of the stories. There are 26 listed. On day 30 I’m supposed to write my own unstoppable story. I don’t know that I’ll take this heighten-my-emotional-intelligence sub-project that far but I will read 6 ½ - okay 7 - of the stories.

Having my own copy of Unstoppable Women would be best but I’m going to have to settle for rechecking this copy out from the library.

Do I really want to join the Unstoppable Women movement?

We’ve already established that I’m not good at committing. Yet, I feel compelled to try (“there is no try only do” – where did I read that?) I will take the challenge. Will I follow the system exactly? Maybe not at first. There are so many parts of my personality that make following a rigid system near impossible. Why do Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable – keep coming to my mind? Maybe it's because Kim represents .

Can you join me in the Change Challenge?

If I’m going to follow through, all the self-help books I’ve ever read, say I need emotional support. In my emontionally-narrow opinion, writing to strangers counts – especially if strangers right back so buy Unstoppable Women or get it from the library and challenge yourself to do something or at least post comments so I’ll know there’s intelligent life out in the world.

Will I keep my commitment?
Okay, I’m going to ...
  1. do the planning part of the unstoppable women challenge this week

  2. consult my calendar, once I have a plan in hand, and see when I have 30-days that are structured enough for me to follow the program as designed by Ms. Kersey. I need to do an elimination diet and I’ve been trying to schedule it for weeks.

I promised to read 7 stories about unstoppable women but I’m not sure if I should read the book’s daily steps (including the stories) before and during the challenge or just during – I hate duplication and repetition so I’ll do it during – well I’ll see what she suggests. That sounds sensible.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Bad weight loss advice for mature women

I’m starting to detect a conspiracy theory. The government and food manufacturers have joined with the health care industry to aid the entertainment field in producing and maintaining an audience of fat, sick, depressed women. I’m only half joking.

My fibroid problems started when I decided to listen to the government and the weight loss industry. I wanted to lose weight. I wanted to be healthy. The mantra was repeated on the news, in sitcoms, on billboards, in commercials. It was blatant and also subliminal – I’m sure of it. It was/is full of half-truths and circular double-speak.

Anyway, their advice was;

  • eat more whole grains (wheat is the easiest to obtain)

  • drink 24 ounces of milk in a 24 hour period (as if diary is the only calcium source)

  • any exercise is better than none (... who will you blame when your weight loss stagnates? self)

  • there's more seemingly useful but simple urgings (test them before believing them)


Unfortunately, wheat and diary are not good for my body. I’m sure it’s not just my body but the bodies of millions of other women. I’d been eating these things for years but when I started focusing on eating healthy I ate more of them. They built up in my body and mucus held all sorts of bad things in. I sometimes ignored the fact that I didn’t feel well after eating.

just remember that I moved posts about "food as poison" to www.MultiPurposeWoman.com - eating should be simple. I wanted to focus this blog on other body issues. The fibroids have taken up so much of my energy and other resources.

This is where I started this blog back in October 2004! How to move forward?

Monday, January 16, 2006

weight loss quagmire

Why would a rational person need prompting to do something they've self-identified as a goal and that could increase the quality of their life - maybe even save it?

Monday, January 09, 2006

Recommitment Deja Vu'

Since November my mind has cleared considerably. I'm sure it's the food or rather the lack of certain foods.

I've been able recently to categorize and sort and purge things that have forever just been big amorphous piles of good intentions, hopes, and want-to-dos. Those piles contained a lot of useful and interesting ideas, projects, and opportunities. I found my life's work scattered throughout my house.

I'm almost done with the sorting, purging, assigning of homes, and containerizing. Then I'll be able to move into equalizing mode. Thanks to Julie Morgenstern's Organizing From The Inside Out, I have a concept and vocabulary to organize the physical things. Thanks to David Allen's Getting Things Done my personal productivity has escalated to the point that I'm writing daily.

Finally! I actually have a novel underway and a set of tools to help me finish it. That's also in a large part due to my November participation in National Novel Writing Month.

So what am I recommiting to? developing this blog. Into what? I haven't encapsulated the focus into a phrase pill yet but I'm working on it. I am sure that I'll return to the basics; body and blogging. Body as in asking and seeking answers to how is the body like an anchor? How is the body like a filter? and Blogging as in spontaneous, chatting, long-winded, soliloquies punctuated by something that is useful or insightful or otherwise worthy of using time. Anyway, I'll post every Monday.