I'm winning.

I'm currently winning around four battles.

One is with my heal pain (slowly but surely it is going away after lots of money spent on painful deep tissue massage on my left leg).

Secondly, I'm winning in the battle to get my body to loose weight again. I lost 2 pounds this week and am down to 162.5!

Third, I'm winning in a contest at my YMCA for working out the most in September and logging in my activity on a computer at the gym. Actually I am in fourth place is the YMCA contest. I was quite surprised to see my name listed "#4. Sarah Woodward" on the contest poster next to the computer earlier this week. I've already one a T-shirt, yippee! And now my name is on a poster!!! How is that for motivation. Not sure what I win if anything if I stay in the top 5 or actually win the whole thing. But it doesn't matter. I know I feel great working out each morning. This morning I swam 15 laps and I just feel so relaxed now. Tomorrow I will attend the 1 1/2 hour yoga class that kicks my butt into shape. I'd love to keep this up and if I kept losing weight at this pace I would be down to at least 145 by Christmas.

Fourthly, I'm eating healthier to. This morning I had my Grape Nuts, blueberries and soy milk. For lunch a sauteed eggplant, squash, apple and red pepper in some salsa. It was super yummy and I only ate about a cup of it. I might skip dinner or have a smoothly. It is the combination of eating way less and exercising every day without fail that is finally leading to the weight loss. That and taking my thyroid medicine faithfully.

All this exercise has really helped me keep my cool at work too. It has been stressful the last few weeks but since I workout before coming in in the morning I feel relatively relaxed no matter what comes my way.

Feels good to be a winner! I know my real motivation too. It will be good to always be active for this little guy.

The Health Account

"I weighed in at the gym yesterday, Aug. 13th at 166 pounds. I'll weigh in again in one month, around Sept. 15th. If I keep swimming everyday until then, and eat smaller portions, I should shed some pounds."

Okay. So I went back to the exact same scale today, on 9/15 and I weight 164.5! Now that is only a loss of 1.5 pounds but I am starting to feel some success in other areas as well. The past two weeks I've gotten up and to the gym by 6:30am where I have either swam or circuit trained or run on the elliptical for 30 minutes. So the 1.5 pounds I lost was definitely just in the last two weeks. Another big up is that I found a massage therapist who can make my heel feel better by rubbing my calf muscles really hard, like so hard I cry. He did this on Thursday and the next morning I got up and ran 2 miles and felt great. I guess all along my heel was really related to my calf muscles being all bound up. Now it will take some regular massage and I should be healed!

So I feel hopeful, energized and jazzed about my fitness right now. And I really think I can make it back into the 150s by Christmas. Which would be wonderful. After that I'll have the 140s in sight.

I'm also reading a really good book I got at the library about health called: "50 Simple Ways to Life a Longer Life." I like reading stuff like this about how to really make my life a healthy one. Some tips I've picked up are: eat a low-calorie diet, eat fish, drink tea (black, green, and white hot tea specifically), exercise and eat fruits and veggies, volunteer, and let go of stress.

One paragraph really go me jazzed as it listed all the benefits of regular exercise:
1) it strengthens the heart
2) reduces risk of heart attacks and strokes
3) lowers blood pressure
4) prevents arterial plaque buildup
5) strengthens bones
6) lessens your changes for osteoporosis
7) lessens chance for Type 2 diabetes
8) reduces your changes of getting breast, prostate, and colon cancer
9) fights stress and anxiety
10) lessens depression
11) gives you superior memory and thinking skills
12) lowers your risk for Alzheimer's disease
13) improves self-esteem
14) helps you get a good night's sleep
15) helps you maintain an ideal body weight

All these benefits and the "American College of Sports Medicine reports that" only "3 to 5 workouts weekly, of 30 to 60 minutes each, deliver the vast majority of health benefits." Even just walking that amount delivers some of the benefits above. And the more you put into it the more of the benefits you get.

One fitness nut for 90 years has been Jack La Lanne and he puts it this way, "Your health account is like your bank account. The more you put in, the more you can take out. The only way you can hurt the body is don't use it." listen to some of his inspiration videos...http://www.jacklalanne.com/multimed.html

Thanks Jack! I think I will invest in that account. It pays good dividends.

Heal Injury

Not sure if I'm moaned and groaned about my endless heal injury which has left me just swimming this summer. I miss running. I miss how easy it is to just get out the door and run, without having to plan a drive to the gym. All the doctors and friends who have given me ideas on how to fix this, haven't fixed it yet. I'm so tired of it aching whenever I push myself. So today I went and bought brand new running shoes just in case I get better and perhaps to help it get better. I ran one mile on the treadmill before my heal started to hurt. i'm pouting.