TurboKick!

Last weekend I did something I had been wanting to do for quite a long time.  You’ll recall, if you read my blogs or know me, that a few years ago I lost a good chunk of weight—about 50 pounds. I wrote some blogs about my diet and exercise routine and how my FitBit helped me learn how to count calories. 

During this time I really fell in love with exercise (mainly because I did not love dieting).  I was taking a variety of classes at my Anytime Fitness gym in Virginia, including a cardio dance class, yoga, boot camp, and I tried a body pump style class a few times. As I continued to be a student in these classes, I started wondering if I had what it took to be an instructor.  After talking a bit with some of the gym staff, I decided to try it out and signed up for some classes at the local community college.

Alas, things changed and Jim and I decided to move back to Massachusetts. I dropped my classes and put my group exercise trainer dreams on hold for a bit.  When we got back to Mass, I was gym-less.  I started running occasionally and did some boot camp style workouts in my living room, but I wasn’t getting the same kind of workouts I had fallen in love with.

Christmas rolled around and my mom got me the gift of 3 Kickboxing classes at a place nearby. I loved the workout, but I knew that when my trial classes were up I would have to get out my wallet, or just get out. The prices weren’t horrible, but the weren’t in my price range.  The cheapest option required a two-year commitment, and even that took up my whole monthly exercise budget—without leaving room for the variety of classes I so enjoy.

But I loved the style of workout! Kicks, punches, and HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training).  So I took to the internet to find more affordable classes in my area. I found TurboKick Live, a choreographed dance class infused with kickboxing moves and HIIT.  And right there on their website it asked if I wanted to be an instructor. I clicked on the link and found an instructor training a few towns away, but it was $250 dollars! I can’t afford that! 

I told my mom about it and she was so excited. “Do it! I’ll put it on my credit card and you can pay me back in free workouts!”  I rolled my eyes and secretly thought about taking her offer, but wanted to think about it more before I made the leap—I had never even been to a class!

The next day at work I was reminded that we are required to get 20 hours of trainings each year, and that there is some money set aside for those trainings. For some reason I was under the impression that these trainings had to be teaching/child related, seeing as I work at an after-school program, but I ran the TurboKick thing by my boss, and gave me the go!  As long as I use what I learn with the kids, they will help pay for it. So all I have to do is teach a class or two with them—sweet!

I signed up for the training and was reimbursed by work the next day. I found an existing class a couple towns away and figured I should try it out before I become a trainer.  The class was perfect! It reminded me of the cardio dance class I loved in Virginia, but also had the punches and kicks that I learned in the Kickboxing class. I went to two classes with two different instructors and then it was my time to learn.

Last Saturday was the instructor-training course. From 9am-5pm I, along with six other girls and one guy, spent the day in a dance studio learning the moves, the music, the counts, the cues, and being reminded to smile while you’re working out. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and already sore. But I did it! I even taught a small section of the workout to the rest of the class. And I didn’t totally suck! I messed up a couple of times, but the other people with me were in the same boat, and totally supportive.

We got DVDs of the workout and CDs of the music and were told to go home and practice.  Just the other day I got my “digital diploma.”

And the best part? I work right next door to my town’s recreation department, and have worked with them before, so I know all the people there. I went in and told them I was officially a TurboKick instructor and that I wanted to start teaching.  I am all set to start an 8-week class in April!  Until then, practice, practice, practice.  And maybe I’ll try it out on the kids at the after-school program!

Molly Adams: An Amazing Woman

These past few weeks have been rough for me. While the world was mourning David Bowie and Alan Rickman, I was making plans to put my kitten down.  At the same time, I learned that one of the most amazing people I have ever known past away. Molly Adams, 91 of Wayland Massachusetts passed away on January 14th.  This woman was as close as a grandparent to me, and I was lucky enough to interview her for a class a few years back.  Here is a piece I wrote about her and her life, that I hope will serve as my memorial to her.

Mrs. Mary Adams—“Please, call me Molly”—welcomes me into her small cozy home in Wayland Massachusetts on the Saturday after thanksgiving.  I step up into the house and follow her to the living room, the walls scattered with pictures of her family and friends.

“So, what do you want to know?” she asks me as we sit down on her living room couch. 

“Everything,” I reply.

“Why do you want to interview me anyway?” She asks with a smile and the snarky attitude of any teenager, “I’m boring.  I haven’t done anything interesting.”  She might not know it, but she’s lying through her teeth.

I explain to her my assignment to write a profile on someone I find interesting.  “I never really got a chance to learn about my grandparents.  And, well, you’re really the closest thing to a grandparent I have,” I explain.  I leave out all of the wonderful stories I’ve heard about her life— “She was a star lacrosse and field hockey player as a teen,” “she lived in Australia for a while,” “She survived breast cancer,” that’s the real reason I’m here. I want to know everything about her. 

Molly Louise Keay was born and raised in the small town of Clifton Heights, outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  There, her great grandfather had built a Woolen Mill that made uniforms for soldiers of World War I and II.  The town grew around that mill and her family stayed there.  Molly was the youngest of six children, three boys and three girls who grew up in a three-story Victorian house with their parents, a grandmother and an aunt.  Outside was a barn, where Molly discovered her love of animals.

“The only thing I wanted for my twelfth birthday was a lamb,” she says, then leans in towards me and whispers with excitement, “my mother got me two.”  Along with her lambs, she cared for pet goats, chickens, and ducks.  “And we always had cats and dogs.”  Her living room is decorated with paintings and pictures, wooden carvings and stuffed animals of every species.        “I always wanted to be a vet,” She says, pouting a bit as she recalls her unfulfilled dream. “Nowadays, if you told your parents you wanted to be a vet and they said no—well nowadays they wouldn’t say no,” she cuts herself off as she realizes the differences.  “But if they said no, you would ignore them and become a vet anyways, right?” I nod in agreement and she continues.  “Well back then that didn’t happen.  If your parents told you ‘it’s not proper for a young lady to be a vet,’ that was the end of it.”

She never became the vet she always wanted to be, but she did a whole lot more.  It was no coincidence that Molly met Dwight Adams, the love of her life, on a tour of the United Nations building.  After they were married, they travelled the world together, starting with long road trips across regions of America, then moving on to Europe, Africa, and settling for six months in Australia.  Even with three children, Molly continued to travel, climbing Mount Kenya and Ayer’s rock (before it was banned) with her two daughters, and touring the wildlife of Australia with her daughter Sarah.

“At night we’d sit and sing around this huge bonfire,” she tells me about a five-day wildlife trip in Australia.  Other than Molly and Sarah, everyone was Australian, and two of the men brought their instruments along.  “And the last night, we were next to a river and the moon was out, and they were playing and we were singing and the Kangaroos were walking around.”  She points me to a painting in the corner of the room.  I walk over to see the inside of tree bark, art by the aborigines of Australia.  The white paint against the deep brown bark depicts birds and animals in the rainforest.

But Molly’s life wasn’t always one of luxurious world travel.  She settled for a college closer to home when her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and stayed home to care for her. She survived college during World War II, worrying about two of her brothers in the Marines and the Navy and learning to live with food stamps and blacken the windows at night.  Soon after, her sister was diagnosed with polio and taught Molly the importance of caring for other people.

“She was one of those people that you never felt sorry for and she never complained and everybody loved her,” Molly says.  “I asked her one time, I said ‘how can you always be so…up?’  And she said ‘I have to always be up! Because if I’m nasty and disagreeable, nobody’s gonna take care of me.  You can’t be nasty, you’ve got to be nice.” 

“You get out of what you give and because I volunteered in this town, up to my eyeballs, I’ve gotten to know so many people here and I have so many good friends.  I always say that you get more out of it than you give.”

At a young age, Molly took what she learned from her life’s troubles into the world, volunteering at the school, the historical society, the Depot, the polls, and much more. She also volunteered for a family in Wayland, trying a new wave of medicine called “patterning,” where she met my grandmother.  A woman in town had a child who was born with a brain aneurism.  “He couldn’t do anything,” she says, “he couldn’t walk or talk or move.”  After talking to numerous doctors, the mother found a group of doctors willing to help her with a new theory of medicine.  “Three times a day, for three days a week, a team of 5 people would come and help him move in different ways.”  Molly places her feet up on the bench in front of her, showing how the teams would help the boy move his legs to teach him how to walk.

            “The first day that he got up and walked was our day on duty,” she tells me as the joyful memories come to her eyes, “and it was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen.”

            After that, she stayed in contact with my grandmother, Janet Owen.  “We became friends as couples,” she said, “playing tennis and bridge and going cross country skiing together.”  Years passed and they stayed friends.  They came to thanksgiving and Christmas dinner when their own family was out of town, touring the world or with the other side of the family.  Dwight passed before I had the chance to know him but Molly continued to visit my grandmother, playing card games and word games like scrabble and boggle. After Gran died, Molly still came to visit, bringing her dogs to play with Granddad’s dogs and my sister and I. When Granddad died in 2009, we begged Molly to sit in the front pew with the family.  After all, she is family, and she knew him better than us grandchildren ever would. 

Before I leave, Molly takes me on a tour of the first floor, showing and explaining the pictures of her childhood home and the various photos of her children. I hug her goodbye and thank her for everything. “I would walk you to the door, but I think I need a break” she says and I nod.  “I’d like to read this, whatever it is you’re writing.”

“Of course,” I say as I stand up from the couch again.  “I’ll see you soon Molly,” and I make my way out the way I came, happy in all the things I learned and excited to write about this amazing woman. 

The Thing About Writing Is…

Last year around this time, I made it my mission—nay, my resolution to publish a blog once a week.  If you keep up with me or my blog in any way, you know that didn’t happen.  I published a bunch in January, then one in February, a couple in march, then I dropped off the grid for good after I chopped my hair off in April. Part of the reason was that I didn’t feel I had the time, but I think a big part of it was that I have been too harsh and rigid with my writing…

For one, I gave myself a very structured timeline: once a week. This timeline is virtually impossible to keep, as there are going to be times when I can’t reach a computer or don’t have the time, or just forget. Sometimes there just wasn’t anything worth writing about happening in my life, and I couldn’t muster the creative energy to pull something out of thin air… plus, I don’t really think that my blog is an appropriate place to publish my fiction pieces… I might have to make a new tab for that.

Another reason I failed at my blogging goals was because I was too worried about my writing.  If you have never taken a writing class, you might not know that most writers go through numerous drafts and reworks before they even think about trying to get their work published. I took this method to my blog writing, and had some of my writerly friends “workshop” my pieces. This would be a great idea if I’m thinking about submitting my work to magazines and writing journals. But my blog is not that formal—nor should it be.  This is a place for friends and family to see what’s going on in my life, for me to keep up my writing skills, and for the occasional potential employer to see my raw skills.

There were actually numerous times I wrote something and sent it to my writer friends (and my mom, duh) and patiently wait for their response. The majority of the time, they said “post it” or “this is great, go for it!” or give me a quick change and a few spelling errors. Like this wonderful nugget:

"Yes, post it BUT you spelt losing wrong in the first sentence. You did loosing. Grammar police. Weee oooo. Weeee ooooo. That's the sound of the grammar police."

But occasionally they would take a long time (I don’t blame them, they have real lives and jobs and other friends). Or they would give me too many changes and want me to rework the whole thing, like these comments:

"I would hold off on posting this until more happens. Right now, this is more something you would tell your friends about in a 5 minute phone call."

And

"Right now it just feels as thought you're jotting down the bullet points."

Admittedly, that “story” was a desperate attempt to reach my one a week goal. My friends are great and I adore them and count on them to help them with my writing, but sometimes it got to the point where I got there comments back and didn’t care enough about my writing to go back and edit and publish it. I had already finished it in my mind and had moved on to another place.

In closing, my writing goal for 2016 will more loose (spelled correctly, I looked it up). I want to write more often, and publish stories and such when they deserve to be published. I want to let the blog be for my raw writing, for my friends and family to see, and for me to continue practicing and improving.

PS: If any occasional potential employer is reading this entry, I promise I will revise and edit my work for you.

Fail

I have failed my new year’s resolution already.  And it’s only March!

For some reason, I haven’t felt up to writing the past couple weeks—partly because there’s not much to write about, and partly because I’ve just been completely unmotivated to do anything.  I have felt so unproductive these past few weeks and it seems like things just keep getting worse.  Being an adult is not what I had hoped it would be.

I take you back to one night in college when I was deep in the boring studies of Literary Criticism (I’m sorry, but it was boring).  I remember thinking to myself how much I wish I had a boring desk job (even if I hated it) where I could at least be making money for spending my life tediously passing the time away with useless meaningless tasks.

I look back on that moment frequently now, as I make transfers and withdrawals for customers at the bank—things that could easily be done online or at an Automated Teller Machine (that’s an ATM, in case you—like it seems of our customers—don’t understand what it stands for).  But I’ve learned a one important lesson since becoming “an adult”—even though most days I don’t feel worthy or wanting of that title.  All of that “extra cash” I earn while repeating the same menial movements day after day just disappears—rent, groceries, insurance, electric, internet, etc, etc, etcetera…

And then tax time rolls around and oh, how excited I was to treat myself to some new mugs and maybe go out on a date.  But sure enough, life caught up with me. Apparently, past-Jamie (pre-adult-Jamie) made a mistake when filling out my W4 paperwork for work.  And now, instead of my new mugs and a date night, I owe a chunk of money to the good old U S of A.

But if that wasn’t enough to get me annoyed with adult life, my brand new (to me—certified used) car decides it doesn’t like to start in the cold weather. Personally, I think that’s a load of horsey doo-doo. I grew up in Mass and have been through my share of bitter cold winters and never heard anything like that. Then I move down south to the slightly less bitter Virginia, and people talk about it like it happens all the time… seems a little fishy to me.  With my car not working I’ve been late to work a couple times and Jim had to skip a few hours of work one day when I took his car (he also used it as an excuse to get out of class early, so at least someone is benefiting).

When I finally got my car to the shop, after it had been working on and off (and jumped when not) for a week and a half, the mechanic told me there was nothing wrong with it.  Frustrated, I explained to her that it had not started multiple times now and had needed to be jumped.  So there must be something wrong with it.  She told me it was probably because of the cold.  I got audibly upset with her, but she insisted they had tested the battery and everything and they couldn’t find a problem.  I left the shop and parked across the street to call my mother and leave her a half-screaming/half-crying voicemail.

And now, almost a month since my last blog post, I am failing at the one thing that might actually bring me happiness someday.  Other than a semi-monthly technical editing gig, this blog is the only way that I keep myself writing.  I say that I want to be a writer and that I love writing, yet I can’t even force myself to write a weekly post about the nothingness that is my life.  If being an adult involves following your passions and trying to make a living doing something you love, I am most definitely failing at that.

But I haven’t stopped trying.  This post is proof of that… and I have already emailed HR to fix my tax withholdings.  So, as long as my car starts on Monday, hopefully I can work myself up to a C- on the adult report card.

Getting Healthy Part Three: fitbit

Introduction of the fitbit

In March of 2014, my mom and sister came down to Virginia to visit me. I was already on the road to getting healthy and my mom and my sister were trying to exercise and eat right too.  My sister showed us a little gadget that she had gotten through her company for a competition.  This small green thing that she clipped to her belt was called a fitbit. 

She had only been using it a few weeks, but she could not stop talking about it.  She logged her daily calories on her ipad, showing us about how the website works and how the little gadget syncs to her phone and laptop.  After a hike, she told us how many steps we had walked and how many calories we had burned in the past hour.  It was basically a high tech pedometer, but it counted calories burned and doubled as a time keeping device.  It also made silly faces at you: a sleepy face if you hadn’t moved in a while, and various levels of smiles depending on how active you were being at the moment.

After they went back home, I found myself looking at the website and into getting myself one.  It seemed like such a cool concept and what a great way to keep myself on track. That July, I went up for Sara’s birthday and we agreed that I would buy her a new fitbit as a birthday present and she would give me her old one.

Best deal I ever made.  The fitbit flipped my routine upside down.  I started counting calories and realized that even though I was eating “healthier,” I was still eating a lot of calories.

 I started learning more about calories and the math that goes into it.  In order to maintain your weight, you want to take in as many calories as you’ve burned throughout the day.  If you want to lose weight, you need to take in fewer calories than you are burning.  3500 calories equals one pound so, in order to lose one pound a week, you need to have a deficit of 500 (500calX7days=3500).  How many calories you burn depends on your weight and height and gender, so I had to enter all that into the system and then continuously update as I lost weight.  One thing that was really frustrating was that my allotted calories went down as my weight went down.  I wanted to be rewarded for losing weight, but I was burning less calories, so on the same plan I had to eat less.

Obviously, the fitbit is not exact.  There is nothing out there yet (that I know of/ affordable) that can measure your heart rate while calculating muscle mass, metabolism, and all the other factors that determine how many calories you burn.  I took on the philosophy to log more than I ate, and less than I burned.  If I had about half a 10oz bag of chips, I would log 6 or 7 oz, and when I ate the other half I would log 6 or 7 oz again.  And I was religious about counting calories.  If I had a piece of chocolate at work, I would log it.  If I had a couple of chips, I would log them.

Doing this really helped me train my body into knowing how much I actually needed to eat to feel full--not bloated with a food baby full--but that satisfied feeling when you have enough energy to go back and do whatever you need to do.  It made me realize that I don’t need very many calories to get through a day. There are plenty of filling meals that you can eat that are low calorie.  I fell in love with oatmeal, greek yogurt with granola, and breakfast sandwhiches: everything bagel thins with one egg and an ounce of cheese is only 300 calories.  Lunch or dinner was frozen burritos, fish filets with a side of broccoli, veggies and hummus, apple with peanut butter, baked potatoes, and soup! Soup is the best! Pretty much any can of soup is less than 300 calories for the whole can.

Another feature I really liked about the fitbit was that I could earn more calories throughout the day.  I was on the sedentary plan, which starts you out at a really low-calorie meal plan, then lets you earn calories as you walk around and exercise.  So I knew if I wanted Pizza or Chinese, I could eat a low calorie breakfast and lunch, then spend a good hour at the gym, and I would get home and sync my fitbit, and find out i have another 900 calories to eat for the day.  It was a great reward and a great way to motivate myself, while still keeping my diet on track.

I have reached my goal weight, and even though I am just focussed on maintaining now, I still use my fitbit to count my steps and calories. It gives me the structure I need to stay on track while also allowing and motivation to get my exercise in and still eat the foods I love.