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!

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. 

Getting Healthy Part Two: Exercise

If you missed the last blog, I talked about losing weight in 2014 and how my diet changed and I learned how to eat healthier.  But that’s not all it took to lose 45lbs.  I also found a love of exercise.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a love-at-first-workout kind of love.  No, like many loves, it was slow and awkward and painful along the way.  And even now, I still have bad days.  But I stuck it out long enough to learn to love it.

People always used to tell me that exercise gets easier.  And I believed them, but I myself had never gotten to that place before.  I had issues early on with exercise.  My astigmatism and hand/foot-eye coordination made me bad at sports from the start.  In my hometown, everyone played soccer.  I mean everyone.  There were soccer started programs for preschoolers and on.  And if you didn’t play soccer, you were automatically a weird kid.  I played off and on through elementary school, but I sucked! And everyone knew it.  My best memories relating to soccer were the times the coach brought garlic breadstix for everyone and the time my soccer coach taught me how to make pasta while my dad took piano classes with the coach’s landlady in another room.  Even my early sports memories are about FOOD! As you can see, I was doomed from an early age.

When I got to middle school, I was done with sports.  I had tried basketball and tennis and swimming in the summer, and I had given up hope.  I turned to chorus and theatre and got my minimal exercise from the dance numbers throughout middle and high school.  Of course I had the mandatory P.E courses, but I went to an awesome liberal school where we could choose gym courses like badminton, yoga, and fencing.  And you can bet I chose as many low intensity classes as I could get away with.

It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I realized I needed to start exercising.  A few friends and I decided we might want to take advantage of the free gym before we graduate into the “real world” where you have to pay for everything.  And we were pretty good about it for a while.  We went to classes and swam laps and ran on the elliptical almost every night (but I was still eating like a… college kid).  That summer I dieted like crazy and I was on my parents elliptical all the time.  I lost about 20 lbs.  But it didn’t last long.  By my senior year of college I had gone back to my old habits of eating and exercise (or lack there of).  I tried running with my roommates a couple times but that didn’t work out.

The first thing I did when I decided to really get healthy was to research gyms.  I tried running but it hurt my shins too much and I always turned around after half an hour or so.  If you’re not in love with running right away, it’s really easy to give up or make excuses—the weather doesn’t help.  But with a gym, I knew I would be able to make myself go, even if it was just walking on the treadmill for 15 minutes, it was something.  I found an “Anytime Fitness” right across the street from my new job.  Not only was it the perfect location, the brightly lit sign beckoning me every night after work, but it also had classes—and a coworker who was already a member!  I got my 7-day free trial and started working out right away.  The dance class Mondays and Wednesdays were just my style: indulging my musical side with lighter intensity—and the instructor is a crazy free spirited hippie who reminded me of my mom.  Soon I learned that she taught the yoga classes on Friday nights, a great way to end the week.  For a while I went to just those classes and did the elliptical on the off days.

Of course, there were days that seemed like just too much.  Working at a bank, there were days I was on my feet for a full 7 or 8 hours and all I wanted to do was go home and put my feet up.  Some days, I got off work and sat in my car in the parking lot just trying to convince myself to go.  I would text Jim saying “To gym, or to Jim, that is the question”… because I’m a nerd.  But really that was the question: do I want to go to the gym, or do I want to go home to my Jim.  With this, he was very supportive.  He would always tell me to go to the gym, even though it meant I wouldn’t get to see him at all that night—he worked the graveyard shift back then (11pm to 7am) and most nights he would be asleep when I got home and would go to work when I went to sleep, then got home as I was leaving for work.  Eventually, I started forcing myself to drive from the bank parking lot to the gym parking lot, and then I would sit there for a few minutes convincing myself to go in.

I started talking to people in the dance class, and bonded with the instructor a little.  A few months in, I wrote her a thank you note, telling her I had lost weight and that I owe a lot of that to her and her classes and her positive energy.  To my surprise, she told the whole class that I had lost weight.  And even thought it was embarrassing, it was also encouraging.  The whole class turned around and looked at me, smiling, some clapping and congratulating me.  And as I continued to go, people continued to notice.  One of the best feelings in the world is having someone you barely know say that they’ve noticed you’ve lost weight.  It’s like they’re saying “I don’t know you, and I don’t know your name, but I see you once or twice a week and I have definitely noticed a change.”  It may seem strange, but it’s empowering.  Your friends and family and coworkers know that you’re trying and they see you all the time, so they’re kind of almost expected to say something.  But a total stranger doesn’t owe you anything, so for them to compliment me was an amazing motivation.

Having a friend and coworker at the gym also really helped the process.  I owe a lot to my friend Brenna for not only convincing me to go to the gym, but also getting me to try new things.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the manager held a boot-camp style intervals class.  The first time I went, I absolutely despised it.  We did 5-minute sets, 1 minute of cardio, then legs, arms, abs, then cardio again.  After one set it felt like my heart was punching both of my lungs in the face.  And Brenna wanted me to do that for a whole hour!  After the first class, I didn’t go back for more than a month.  Most of the time I wasn’t out of work on time or I had gotten out early and didn’t want to spend another hour there.  But I just really didn’t want to go back.  After a while I felt more physically fit and a little more confident.  I tried the class again and found that I could actually do it—without thinking I was gonna pass out.  Don’t get me wrong, it was—and to this day still is—a challenge, but it’s a challenge I am willing to accept.

I think that was a turning point for me.  I think that’s when I started to think of exercise in a different way.  For me, its not about being skinny—it’s about being healthy, being strong.  It’s about being able to go on a hike and actually enjoy the scenery instead of huffing and puffing.  It’s about realizing that your body can accomplish incredible things if you give it the time and patience that it gives you.

A few days ago, a woman at work asked me “do you have to go to the gym tonight?”  And, although I knew what she meant, her choice of words surprised me.

“I don’t have to,” I replied, chuckling a little.  I wanted to go to gym.  I have finally gotten to the point that exercise is not only easy (some days), but sometimes it’s even enjoyable.  I still go to the dance and yoga classes, and the manager’s class, along with another strength training class.