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So far, so good 2010!

03 January 2010 by Elizabeth in Food, Running

WB and I went for a mega-walk yesterday: 5.5 miles! It included a stop at Starbucks, where I tried my first-ever green tea latte. Not bad! It was really bright-green…my phone was dead, so no photo

Our walk took us past one of my favorite stores, where I saw that this silk dressing gown I’d been wanting for a whole year was on sale. I was too gross to go buy it on our walk, but I sped over after a shower and now it’s all mine!

gown

Dinner was a new year’s day rerun with some canned organic cranberry sauce FROM 2008 (use it up!):

jan2dinner

(Don’t worry, it was still in date. We’re thrifty, not crazy.)

Today’s workout started with a 55 second plank. Yep, it beat me – I gave out just 5 seconds before the timer went off. The biggest surprise was that WB joined me – and held out for the full 60 seconds! Humbled, I did a few sets of the abs that we do in my yoga class, then headed down to the gym for a “hill run” on the treadmill. I’ve never tried to run hills on the treadmill before, and I think my plans were…ambitious. I ended up doing 2 miles that included:

2 short hills (5 min each)
1 long hill (very steep…I ended up walking most of it)
2 x 400 at 10:30 pace
a few miscellaneous minutes of running at 11:00 pace
one scary moment when the treadmill said my heart rate was only 99

I suppose I’ll just call it a fartlek day.

The rest of today holds:

Breakfast – it’s almost noon!
Cleaning
Cooking for the week (using up loooots of things for lunches!)
More quality time with the wii?
Coffee!!!!

An additional goal

02 January 2010 by Elizabeth in Food, Running

There’s another goal hovering over us that doesn’t quite rate “resolution” status: clean out the goshdarn pantry.

We’re not packrats in the slightest (I’m very anti-”stuff”), but we accumulate bits and pieces and odds and ends in our pantry and in the fridge (especially in the door), usually things that were purchased for a specific dish or gifts we’ve received that didn’t find their way into our regular rotation. I hate the space that it takes up, but I also hate that it keeps new, fun things from coming into the house. So, in January (and however long it takes after that), we will be putting some strict limits on what we can buy at the grocery store and farmer’s market, and incorporating at least one “get this out of here” item into every meal.

Some of the highlights of the ingredients to be used:

8 (?) jars of jam/preserves
Several kinds of seaweed
Goji berries (nothing against them, but they’ve been sitting here for too long because I can’t see them in the pantry when it’s so full)
Three kinds of hot chocolate mix
More than 100 tea bags
6 kinds of cereal/granola

Nothing too gross or unusual, but lots of things that have gone onto the “do not eat” list for various reasons. That’s the real challenge ahead of me – incorporating these things into healthy meals and snacks that we’ll actually enjoy!

To start off, we made eggs and homemade refried beans on tortilla chips for breakfast (the chips were the “use it up” food):

tortilla-eggs

Mine felt a little bit naked without salsa or hot sauce, but we can’t buy any because there’s no room in the fridge door.

I also put some orange marmalade (use it up!) in my coffee…no photo, because you really couldn’t see anything special about it She couldn’t see anything special about any of it:

cat-special

After all that settled, it was off to the gym for strength (legs day) and 2.8 miles on the treadmill:

Warm up (.05)
11:45 page (1)
2 x 400m at 10:00 pace with 1.5 min rest breaks in-between (.8)
2 x 400m at 11:00 pace with 1.5 min rest breaks in-between (.8)
Cool down (.15)

I’m trying to use my “off season” running to increase my slowest pace to 11 min/mile..doesn’t seem too far-fetched, but I only have about 6 weeks left if I’m doing the race in May that’s caught my eye. I also read an article recently that recommended resting (or cooling down) until your heart rate was about 120, so I’m using that a guide to my rest breaks and cool down.

New Year’s Day

TOAST-nye

We mostly lounged around and played Wii games. We ate the obligatory lucky black-eyed peas and cabbage:

nyd-dinner

(Maple-seasoned peas, cabbage braised in tomato juice, curried pumpkin soup…surprisingly, all vegan)

We also went for a “short walk”, which ended up being 5 miles. We found one of these guys wandering in our neighborhood without a collar:

westie

He definitely didn’t seem like the outdoorsy type, so we followed him around, instructing him to go home, until it was dark and getting cold. He was worn out, so I had to take the lace out of my shoe and make a leash for him. Luckily, one of his neighbors saw us walking him and showed us where he lives…at least, it was his best guess The doggie went right up to the door to sniff the food dish and lie down, so we figured if he was that comfortable it was a familiar house. (We even waited another 15 minutes for his owners to get home, but no luck.) I know I would want someone else to do the same if my cat-baby ever got loose, so I didn’t mind the extra 1.5 miles it took us to follow the dog and make our way home from his house.

Lunchtime…anyone have any healthy recipes that use a jar or two of jelly?

Uuuugh

19 November 2009 by Elizabeth in Fitness, Food

Not feeling so hot! At first I thought I was gluten-ed somehow on Saturday, but if that’s the case I was sicker than I’ve been from that in a long, long time. In fact, I was sick so long (and so very, very sick) that I am wondering if there was something amiss with the tasty raw treats from the farmers’ market. The gluten-ed symptoms (likely caused by the cheater cheater salsa that had malted barley in the flavoring) wore off after a day or so, and I was left with…well, it wasn’t good. I didn’t eat at all yesterday, and I missed three runs and a yoga class. In fact, I had to leave work at lunch and come home to sleep.

On the bright(er) side:

toasts

This is what I will be eating today. Udi’s whole grain bread, toasted, with a little bit of earth balance.

Without getting into gross details, I have to say that I don’t know how I used to live with gluten! Before I knew I was allergic, I had zero energy. When I was 25, I had to take a nap at lunch in order to make it through a day at my full-time office job, and I would still sleep 10-11 hours every night. I’ve always needed to own pants in a wide range of sizes, because when I get “hit” my stomach balloons up 3 or 4 sizes in a matter of hours. I’ve really been enjoying not feeling like this!

I did get in a three mile walk last night, though part of it was a trip to the grocery store for some stomach meds. I never take things like that, but desperate times call for desperate measures, right? (Or shallow times…my dress for next weekend’s events arrives today and I can’t wait to try it on…but my stomach needs to cooperate!) And I did some weights this morning – more on that later.

I am off to the office, toast in hand.

Blogfast in bed

16 November 2009 by Elizabeth in Food, Running

These long recap posts are stifling! Especially since life continues to go on around them. So, I am back for a regular Monday, and on schedule to be back in the saddle.

Breakfast:

(Don’t act like you don’t know what that is.)

almond-milk

(Except you don’t know the cool part – I made my own almond milk! Well, almond “mylk” from an Ani Phyo recipe. More on that when I’m not trying to make it to work on time for freakin’ once.)

gm-dha

The green monster comes with a sidekick now – vegetarian DHA! I have so much to say about that that I’ll save it for another post.

Lunch:

Raw veggie burgers! Adapted from another Ani Phyo recipe. Easy as pie, but much tastier.

burger-raw

Served on a romaine “bun” with avocado, radish sprouts, and a little bit of ketchup.

sprout-lid

Accompanied by raisins, almonds, and an apple (not pictured). It’s like I’m five years old, but healthier.

POTM! POTM!

It is a month of acronyms for me. NaNoWriMo, POTM, a never-ever-ending list of SharePoint code words (not really, but they sound more fun when I act like someone intentionally made the software difficult to get along with), and emails from my high school regarding my upcoming reunion (eek), full of acronyms because the school’s name is so embarrassingly long that everything we do must be abbreviated (MBA for short). (No, that’s not code for ‘I’m going back to grad school,’ because I’m not. Yet.)

So I’ve been trying to POTM (Pile On The Miles), but my pile is a bit smaller than I had anticipated – I’ve only been averaging about 10 miles per week. Matters weren’t helped by the fact that on my first run after my half marathon I FELL ON MY FACE at about, oh, mile 0.3 of a four mile run. I finished that run, knees and lip bleeding all the while, mostly because I was meeting WB at the farmer’s market at the end of my run and had no way to get in touch with him.

I’ve been cramming in most of my miles on my lunch break, but it is still in the 80′s here much of the time (seriously now, it is NOVEMBER), so I’ve been looking forward to mornings like this one where I actually make it out of bed without an hour or so of snoozing. I spent some quality time with the treadmill – just 1.2 miles, but it was my fastest 1.2 treadmill miles all year (and worth “missing” an extra 20 minutes of sleep to crawl into workout gear and stumble downstairs to the gym).

Off to work! It’s pouring rain right now (and I don’t really want to leave my bed and my smoothie to go out and wait for the bus), but I’m hoping that will clear up so I can pile on some more lunchtime miles. Happy Monday!!

Short and Spooky

29 October 2009 by Elizabeth in Running

choco-monster

That spooky creation is today’s breakfast: a chocolate green monster (the plain jane banana-kale green monster with some cocoa powder and two extra kale leaves for a boost).

This “settling into a new routine” thing hasn’t happened so much yet, but I’ll take last weekend’s party (courtesy of moi) and the previous weekend’s wedding (no, not mine) over a routine any day Lots to recap (and lots of raw recipes!), but right now I’m only looking forward to this weekend…

lanterns

Nope, not because of halloween. It’s my first half marathon!

I’ll be honest – training hasn’t been a priority for the past 5-6 weeks. I might not have run a single step in two weeks. But I’m not worried – I think I can make my easy goal, finish the race, and have fun.

I’ve got my playlist cooking:

playlist

Er, why, yes, I do listen to the same song every mile to get my rear in gear. I’m changing that for this race since I realized that 13 repeats is a bit much…I’ll be switching between three songs.

One final bit of spookiness (our little piggy bank – yes, the cat is in a halloween costume, and she won a prize thankyouverymuch):

peeg5

(We also won a costume contest last night. $100 for clothes we already had in our closet! This is rapidly becoming my new favorite holiday )

The Flu.

21 September 2009 by Elizabeth in Running

I have (had?) it. Hence the weeks of exhaustion and low spirits, I assume. I’m doing my best to be on the mend, but this was not what I’d had in mind for Labor Day weekend and the weeks that followed This set the gigantic blog lag in motion, because I’ve been too zombie-like to blog (or do much else, really).

The lag snowballed, of cours, because I can’t seem to finish this long recap post from the past while. But, the fact is, those brunch recaps can wait. I ran a 5k yesterday!

The only other race I’ve run in a long time was on July 4, and I hit my goal right on the nose. I had hoped to take a whole 10 minutes off my time in yesterday’s race, (sounds like a lot, but that first time was just superslow!) between that race and this one, but it ended up being only 2 minutes.

I’m mostly happy with my time, even though it’s still so slow that most health bloggers wouldn’t even admit they ran it. This race was all in grass and mud, and nearly all up hill. (Seriously. And the last .75 was straight uphill. Up. Hill. In the mud.) I only walked for 30 seconds, which was way better than the last race I ran, and my average pace was a minute faster than last time.

hill

(The hill, from the top. I made WB walk back with me so I could show him and try to get a photo which, of course, does it no justice.)

But did I set my goal too high? Am I stuck comparing myself to runners who are a few years younger than I and who work from home (if they work at all)? I can’t schedule my runs on a whim, I can’t guarantee I’ll be home at any certain time, my legs are tired after a long day in heels, and I can hardly guess what my mood will be like (though that is at least evening out now that I’ve been in my new job for a month). I can’t even rely on healthy convenience foods to get me through the tougher weeks because they’re either gluten-filled or $12 for each TV dinner.

I think I could have met my goal if I had been able to train harder, but there’s only so much of me to go around. Commuting, working 8-5, working at my “side hustles”*, and having a life (you know, things like Wonderful Boyfriend and family obligations) all have to be factored into my plan…when I’m really sticking to my training schedule, I’m lucky to have 20 minutes at the end of the night with WB before my eyes snap shut.

It’s a lot to think about. Balance isn’t easy to find, but looking for it is an important learning process. I’ve been here before, and each time I find a better solution. For now, my answer is sleep

A note to dream on:

gf-swag

The race swag Delicious.

*I tutor and do some sporadic web design-type work on the side, nothing big anymore but it all takes time.

New job changes and Brunch-stravaganza

04 September 2009 by Elizabeth in Fitness, Food

It’s always the quiet ones, right? I thought this job change would be a piece of cake, but now I find many things about my world topsy-turvy.

My schedule that was supposed to be simpler and allow me so much more free time because I’m so relaxed? The seeds have been planted for it, but it has not yet sprouted. I am a lot more relaxed when I get home from work, but so far that has translated into wanting to do fun things, not catch up on all my home to-dos. Plus, there are a handful of personal online tasks that I don’t yet feel comfortable doing since I’m still so new…these tasks eat up a nice chunk of time at home.

And I’m tired! Not like last week, but much more than normal. I know I will adjust once I don’t have to be prim and perfect (or I will at least get used to hours of it).

When I haven’t been sleeping, it seems that I’ve been cooking or shopping. This weekend was brunch-stravaganza.

Saturday

We were ready to get cooking after the farmer’s market.

Ze beverage: watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumber, blended into a refreshing smoothie

watermelon-coolers

Ze side deesh: Okra, fresh from the farmer’s market. One half is seasoned with Trocomare, the other with a mix of chili powder, garlic, and salt.

okra

Ze final product: Scrambled eggs with microgreens, toast (Udi’s gluten-free bread), roasted okra, sweet potato fries, sauteed vegetables (mostly eggplant and peppers from the farmer’s market), and a smear of the arugula pesto I made a few weeks back (it has been frozen in the meantime, don’t worry).

saturday-breakfast

Eet ees perfection, non? In the corner of this photo you can see the bonus container of sprouts that was given to us by the sprout “farmer” at the market – she wanted us to try it because we are good customers

saturday-breakfast-3

And Macarons!! Farmer’s market day is the best! Pictured below are rose, violet, yogurt and pistachio; we only ate rose and yogurt today.

macarons-1

macarons-3

macarons-4

A reprise of the morning meal for a light dinner (with Amy’s Bistro burger hidden under those sprouts):

saturday-dinner

Sunday

I had a bitter melon leftover from the market and I had never prepared one before…we opted to skip the boiling step, taking the bitterness full-on, and stir-fried it up in sesame oil and soy sauce with some tofu:

bitter-melon

It was so bitter that we kept it quarantined in its own container to avoid cross-contamination (It’s really tasty, though!)

sunday-breakfast

The full spread: broccoli topped with broccoli sprouts, canatloupe, scrambled eggs with microgreens in toast, leftover scrambled egg mixture that didn’t fit in the toast (that’s what those yellow wedges are), and chocolate-cherry smoothies.

sunday-breakfast-2

My plate! The Udi’s toast looks and works like real toast. It’s the best! The spread on my toast circles is a local version of nutella (much less sugar, many more nuts, and a thicker, crunchier texture).

The smoothie contained cherries, strawberries, ice, chocolate almond milk, chocolate shavings, and nutritional yeast…all topped with a squirt of whipped soy cream.

sunday-smoothie

Fitness…?

I’ve had to re-prioritize my fitness goals for now. I’m keeping my race schedule, but relaxing my expectations a bit – I don’t have the energy for speedwork after a day at my new job, and my weekends barely have room for my long run because they’ve been picking up the slack for my tired weeknights.

Also, shallow as it may seem, my primary fitness goal right now is to look how I want to look at a big event I have at the end of November. This runs a bit contrary to some of the changes from training – my legs were bulking up a lot, and my body wanted to bulk up a bit all over because I just wasn’t getting enough rest and recovery time between workouts.

Also, I was tending to skip my workout altogether if I couldn’t do a perfect run. Somehow just getting out the door wasn’t good enough – I had to be properly fueled, hydrated, rested, and ready with a map for each short run. My life just doesn’t work that way right now! I ended up missing several runs because I wasn’t “fully prepared”, even though it would have made more sense to go for just a mile or two than for no run at all.

Once I’m settled into this job (whenever that is), I’ll reevaluate. Maybe it will turn out that I’m able to handle a busier, higher-profile job, train for my first half marathon, take 5 min off my 5k time, stay healthy, look great for my big event, and still have time for WB and everyone else in my life. I’m pretty sure it will be ok either way.

Blogging…?!?

Well, that’s obvious, no? I’ll do better next week – I have re-strategized

Catching Up

27 August 2009 by Elizabeth in Food, Running

I don’t really believe in catching up. I think that, for the most part, time lost is time lost. By the time you report on things gone by, the information has changed into the nostalgic, fluffy stuff of memory.

But I am here, catching up.

This weekend was fabulous. Not to sleight my family, but WB’s family puts a lot of effort into making it feel like we’re coming home somehow when we get off the plane – it’s a cozy, relaxing way to start the trip.

k-window

We successfully reunionized (re-uned?) on Saturday. I won’t lie – I had low, low expectations…I was ready to mingle with a group of bragging and nervous strangers from an unfamiliar small-ish town in a dingy bar and find something likable about the situation. We managed to paint WB as successful without being snobby or braggy (and didn’t embarrass ourselves once – a real accomplishment!).

Before the reunion we went to one of my favorite Mexican restaurants (pretty Americanized, but in my case that can be for the best). They have a very funny sign:

mexican-1

Sign says “Sorry wi du not espick inglich but wi promis not tu laf at yur spanich.”

And this cool mint dispenser (we didn’t partake, I just love it):

mint-dispenser

I had an 8 mile run scheduled for Sunday morning – it turned into a *great* 5.25 mile run in WB’s hometown. They have a long (20+ mile) trail that connects his town to a few of the adjacent towns. The trail is beautifully maintained and takes you by shopping centers, neighborhoods, gardens, and open expanses of prairie (full of flowers and butterflies at this time of year). I even passed a few cherry trees! I wish I had brought my camera, but my dSLR is pretty big to bring on a long run

More amazing things about the run:

It was 70 degrees *in the sun*! I can’t remember the last time it was that “cold” here! Bring it on, fall.
WB came with me for the whole thing! He never comes on my long runs. I jog/shuffled while he walked for the first mile or two, and then I took off on my own while he walked behind me…and even ran a bit on his own!
Everyone on the trail was so nice! A few of the “hardcore” runners that saw me looking at the trail map stopped to see if I was lost – that would never happen here! (Little did they know I was just waiting for my wonderful boyfriend to catch up.) We worked out a pretty good system for the run: I took off at about a 10 min/mile pace while he stayed at his 17 min/mile pace, and when I reached a certain landmark I turned back and caught up with him. It was so nice to run in better weather
I didn’t get tired at all.

duck-pool

We had a pool party (I’m not kidding – WB’s parents are like Ward and June when they want to be) Sunday afternoon with lots of aunts and cousins and associated rugrats. WB’s dad grilled us some portobellos to go with the brats and other assorted meats that the “real” grown-ups were eating.

picnic-lunch-party

I had a deviled egg, a portobello cap with relish and mustard, some fruit, a few corn chips, and some gluten-free brownies that his mom baked just for me. (Thank you!!!)

squirt

I also had a can of Squirt. I don’t usually drink soda, but we can’t get this here without a special order so I decided to blow my sugar intake for the day in favor of sweet citrusy refreshment.

And then it was already time to fly home, just 30 hours after we landed, back into the wall of humid, smoggy haze that surrounds our city.

Ever since we got back I’ve been exhausted. I went to bed at 7 on Monday, and I’ve been taking naps, sleeping in, and drinking way too much coffee to make it through the day. I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but it’s kept me from doing any more training – I haven’t run a single step since Sunday except to catch the bus. I suspect dehydration or low iron/b vitamins, so I’m trying to fix those things.

I did go to yoga on Tuesday, which was excellent as always. Lots of twisting in this class.

One last tidbit: crackers and almond butter, packed to go.

I love little containers – they make it so easy to pack lunch without having to rely on prepackaged foods that can be less healthy and worse for the environment.

crackersnack

And my job is still great. More about that as I resume our regularly scheduled posts

Goals, goals, goals

20 August 2009 by Elizabeth in Food, Ideas, Running

My run tonight was straight out of the twilight zone – my head was in it, but my legs couldn’t keep it together. I’m nursing some shin pain even as a type, two hours after my run! (Ice will be involved as soon as I’m done posting, never fear).

A quick detour into dinner-ville before I talk about goals:
quinoa-cakes-sprouts

Red quinoa cakes (made the same way I made these quinoa cakes, but with the addition of lentil sprouts)

stew-and-sprouts

…topped with chickpea stew (yep, much like this chickpea stew), and accompanied by a tasty avocado yogurt sauce.

The sauce couldn’t be much easier, but it added a rich, refreshing note to the otherwise all-too-familiar meal.

Avocado Yogurt “Secret” Sauce

Ingredients:

1 part avocado (or guacamole; I used the leftover bits of pre-made guacamole, and in fact mixed this right in the Whole Foods container)
2 parts yogurt (I used Nancy’s plain nonfat yogurt)
Salt to taste (or be like me and use truffle salt!!)

Procedure:

Combine ingredients.
Serve.

And, believe it or not, I made the stew this morning before work! I sautéed the peppers and eggplant, added the leftover cooked chickpeas and tomatoes, seasoned, heated, and left the flavors to blend while I toiled with my new BFF: SharePoint. I definitely could not eat like this after work if I didn’t get a head start by pre-cooking time-consuming staples like beans and grains on the weekends.

Goals

I like goals. I’d love to tell you how to set goals, but there are plenty of sites out there that can describe different methods of setting goals. (Maybe I will write my own guide sometime, but that is another post.)

What I like most about goals is not meeting them.

Seriously.

I have a lot of goals:

rolling 5 and 10 year plans
a set of about 10 goals for the year (like resolutions, just not called that)
monthly and weekly goals for my life at home
fitness goals
work goals (project-based, review-based, career-based)
an overall “epitaph” goal
financial goals

…and the list could go on. But, instead, I’m focusing on what to do with goals once you’ve set them – and once you’ve met them (or not).

“Magic” (long-term) Goals

Some goals are like magic – you write them down, forget them, and come back to them in a few years to discover that you’ve accomplished even more than you thought you would. I’ve found this is mostly true of goals with at least a one-year horizon; anything shorter and you don’t “forget” your goal sufficiently to allow yourself to make it happen. I was really proud of myself when I saved my first $3000…until I looked at my 5-year plan and saw that I had written that in two years prior, though I was broke and struggling at the time since my job had just run out of funding.

Short-Term Goals

Other goals – shorter goals, more concrete goals – need a bit more help. (These are my specialty – and what I have specialized in at work for a long while – so the long-term goals will be getting the short end of the stick in this post.) These are the goals that you write down and keep posted where you can see them, or that you repeat to yourself every day when you wake up (or sit down at your desk, or lace up your sneakers). I use a daily and weekly tracking system for my fitness goals, recording workouts every day and fitness progress (key measurements, for example) each week. I know that I would still make progress if I didn’t keep close track, but I would not know how best to adjust my workouts to get the results I want in the shortest amount of time.

These shorter goals are also the ones you’re more likely to blow. I might set a goal to take 2 minutes of my slow training pace in a week, which would be fine to do at my fitness level. But if I try all week and can’t do it, I’ve created a great opportunity for myself: I get to learn why I didn’t meet my goal, which will help me find a weakness in my fitness plan.

Failure is Still Success

Failing to meet a goal is a win-win situation, really. If I meet my goal – great, I’ve accomplished something I want to do. If I don’t meet my goal, I’ve caught a bug in my system and I can take care of it before it affects my progress more or becomes a larger problem. (I think it’s vital to think like this if you’re going to set goals; if you can’t practice this kind of self-compassion and positive thinking, goals will likely do you more harm than good – they’ll become signposts of failure, rather than stepping stones into the future that you want.)

There are all kinds of reasons I might not meet a goal, but a few minutes of thinking and looking back at any training logs or other “data” usually clears things right up. My analysis goes something like this:

How close did I come to meeting my goal? If I came very close, what kept me from hitting my target? Should I call it “good enough”?
Were there any unusual circumstances that kept me from meeting my goal (friends in town, new project at work, sick, finances, etc.)?
Was my goal something I really cared about and prioritized? If not, is it a goal worth keeping?
Was my goal reasonable, or did I try to do too much too soon?

Depending on how that line of questioning goes, I will either scrap the goal altogether, try the same thing again, or change the goal to make it better suited to me. I get to learn what I’m capable of, see what I really care about, and tailor my life and plans more precisely to what I want to be, do, see, and have.

Does it get any better than that? All of this from failing! (But I warn you: this is real failure, not the kind of failure that never gets off the couch.)

Caution: Goals Ahead

Just like their close cousin the To-Do list, goals can be overwhelming. Even though my list of goal categories is long, I don’t set more than 3 short-term goals at a time in any category. After all, short term goals should be met sooner rather than later, right? Here’s how I keep my short-term lists short and sweet:

Set a firm limit on the number of goals that you’ll consider at any point in time.
- Write down all of your goals, hopes, dreams, etc., then sift out the three that seem most intriguing, easiest, most important, etc.
- If that doesn’t work, try the rule of 1/3 +1: Take away 2/3 of your goals, then add one back in. Repeat until you’ve got no more than 5 goals left.
- Sleep on it – come back to your long list a day or three after you’ve written it and see what still sounds good.
- Worst case scenario: put the goals in a hat and draw three. You can always come back to the rest.
Be honest and realistic!
- Don’t set a goal to run a 2:30 marathon in three months if you haven’t run in years. If a 2:30 marathon is your goal, recognized it as a long-term goal – then break it into smaller steps (start by building up to a 3 mile run, find a training program, choose a race, join a training group, get fitted for shoes, etc.)
- Don’t set a goal to drink wheatgrass every day if you hate it! Your goals should bring out your best and motivate you to improve – don’t get seduced by fads or things you feel like you “should do”. (However, those “should do” things can be great starting points – for instance, if the daily wheatgrass shots you’d hate would be your answer to having more energy or eating more vegetables, make a goal about eating more vegetables, getting more sleep, or trying another energy-booster.)
- Don’t set a short-term goal to do yoga for 3 hours a day if you work full-time and have a long commute. If you’re only home and awake for 3 hours after work each night, chances are you won’t be able to spend them all doing yoga. If 3 hours of daily yoga practice is really important to you, you can likely find a way to make it happen – just not immediately. In the meantime, you could set a short-term goal to practice for a more sustainable amount of time each day.
Keep Simple Records
- There are a ton of great goal-tracking websites and methodologies, but you don’t need to go overboard with your tracking system. A simple “X” on the calendar each day that you meet your goal works pretty darn well.
- Update your progress no matter what – don’t fall behind in your tracking, even if you’re not progressing toward your goal. (You will not come back and fill it in later. I promise.)
Don’t stress if you aren’t on track!
- Go back and read the part about failure = success again! Unmet goals are great opportunities to learn about yourself, even if all you learn is that you made an unrealistic goal. (I’ve made plenty.)
- If you can’t even get started on your goal, move on to analysis. Why aren’t you starting – is it too hard? Are you trying to start at the end when you should be starting at the beginning? Do you need help or more information to get started? Did you think you wanted to build that awesome model dinosaur you saw online, order the kit, and realize you’d rather look at the cool thing on that blog than make it yourself? All of these are good things to learn, and good prompts for new, better goals.

The path to success is paved with these small failures, at least my short-ish path to the moderate successes I’ve had so far. Failing means you tried, right?

My strategies for long-term goals are different, but I will have to get back to those another day…if I write much longer, I’ll fail to meet my “get at least 7 hours of sleep so I’m not a zombie” goal

Quality time

19 August 2009 by Elizabeth in Fitness, Work

tea-and-pear

(my afternoon snack – isn’t that the cutest pear?)

It was a looong day again, but the good news is that I ran my easiest 3 mile run to date! (Well, in the past year, anyhow). I owe Wonderful Boyfriend some serious quality time – I’ve hardly seen him this week because of all the work changes – so this has to be short again. I’ll make it worth your while, I hope:

Ways to sneak exercise into your workday

It seems like every week a new study comes out that suggests that the more time you spend sitting (you know, like at that fab desk you have at work?), the greater your health risks. I try to get up or do a lot of moving around at least every 90 minutes, but it can be tough since suits are not exactly made for fitness and no one wants to get caught mid-lunge in their cubicle. Without further ado, my tips:

Set a timer (I use the free version of Timeleft, but you could even set a recurring task in Outlook) to remind you when it’s time to get up
Go to the far water cooler. Explore the break room on another floor if you need to – you might even make a new friend.
Take the stairs, even if you go nowhere. (DO NOT get locked in the stairwell. Not that I’ve, you know, done that.)
If your cubicle/office is private enough, do a set or two of squats, calf raises and/or lunges once a day. If you don’t have the privacy, try the bathroom (especially if you have a large, accessible stall – it’s great for working out.)
In the same setting, do some wall pushups and arm circles. The pilates arm series also works – no equipment needed!
You can even do a standing ab workout – Exercise TV has one I like, taught by Jennifer Galardi.
Stretch your arms and upper back, and do a few neck circles (you can even do this while sitting)
Stretch your calves and hamstrings (standing required), and stretch your hip/glutes while sitting in your chair – cross one ankle over your knee and lean forward!
Go for a walk at lunch (around the floor, around the block, or farther if time and weather allow)
Park farther away than you need to, or take public transportation (almost guarantees at least a few blocks of walking)
Hang a mirror in your cube/office so you can see – and correct – your posture when you’re slouching

I do all of those in any given week – it keeps me focused, keeps the computer-stress-fatigue headaches away, and maybe even gives my fitness level a small boost.

I’ve read so many tips that would never work at my office (keep resistance bands at your desk, ask questions face to face rather than using email, start a group to go for walks on your coffee breaks, or do yoga in your cubicle at lunch) that I wanted to compile a list of things that do work. If I can do them in my (conservative, busy, low-privacy) office without ever earning a questioning glance, I’m sure most of these tips will work for you

Born For This