Cheerleaders

I was reading an article on "How to Deal with the Ups and Downs of Weight Loss" earlier this morning. Okay, really I was skimming it since Abbey was on my lap nudging the laptop out of her way. She had most of the love seat to spread out on and she HAD to be draped on me. She finally settled for having her head on my shoulder so she could give that occasional kiss just so I wouldn't forget my first (and most important job) is to pet her.

The conclusion of the article listed six steps to resiliency:
1. Accept and face difficult situations head on.
2. Believe in your own inner strengths.
3. Reframe your thinking.
4. Talk back to your inner critic.
5. Try to learn from your setbacks.
6. Find a cheerleader.

I feel like I have step one under control. Things are going to happen and I can accept it and move on or I can whine, fuss and be a giant pain in the ass to be around. The first option sounds more appealing to me. I'm working on steps 2 through 5. Some days I succeed, some days it's a really good thing I'm single and my dog and cats can't talk.

Step six wasn't that hard. From the moment I began my journey I have had many cheerleaders. Even people I would never in a million years have imagined would support me or even care about this journey to wellness have been supportive. True, some of the comments I've heard were a bit of a stretch to frame as "supportive", but it's up to me to decide how to take comments that could be deemed hurtful. I'm choosing to believe people are basically good and don't intend to cause pain. Maybe I'm doing better with step 3 than I thought I was.

Back to cheerleaders. What have my cheerleaders done to support me? The obvious, of course, they have cheered me on, encouraged me, believed in me, showed me how to believe in myself. Most importantly they have pushed me.

I'm not the bravest person in the world. If I come across as brave or courageous it is merely that I am stubborn and at heart I am a people pleaser: I don't ever want to let anyone down. If you believe I can do something I will do everything in my power to prove you are right. It works in reverse too: if you tell me I can't do something my stubborn streak comes out.

So to all my cheerleaders: please know you mean the world to me and your support, encouragement and kicks in the butt keep me on track.

On to this week in workouts. Monday was the start of a new phase: an endurance phase. May I just say: DAMN! I so need to work on my endurance. When 50 seconds starts to feel like 50 years you know you're in trouble. Then in Monday's finisher we were introduced to "Sally" If you're curious you can go to You tube and watch this video to see what we did:  http://youtu.be/fc2mZkyb2so . We used kettle bells instead of barbells, but we did the squats. The worst were the pauses when we didn't get to come right back up. I can only speak for myself, but by the end when I went down and couldn't come right back up I wasn't sure I would be standing again. Tyler T. deserves a special thanks for finding that particular form of torture. Apparently "Sally" also has a push up version and some of my badass friends have developed a plank version. I'll have to try those soon.

Thursday night was personal training: aka therapy. If I walk in angry or stressed I know I'll walk out with an entirely different mindset. Ben really doesn't charge enough for the service he delivers in my opinion.

Back to Thursday. It was my last night dead lifting for awhile. I have one more session and then I will be getting a new sheet to work on. I did 3 sets and my last set Ben asked if I wanted to try to beat my dead lift record. Until Thursday night my personal record was 305 pounds. Nothing to be ashamed of, but I knew I could do more. Well, really I HOPED I could do more. Turns out I could. I broke my PR with a dead lift of 315 pounds. Then Ben asked me if I wanted to try to beat the women's record for Fortitude Fitness Systems: YES YES YES!

I tried 3 times to lift it, not sure exactly how much it was, I believe the record for a woman is 325 pounds, so it was more than that. That bar and all the weight weren't coming up Thursday night. I almost had it, but in the end I didn't have quite enough to nail it. I will nail it, I won't rest until I beat the record. No, not because I think I'm better or stronger than anyone else. I just enjoy lifting and seeing how heavy I can go is fun for me.

Stay tuned...you can be sure when I lift again you'll read about it right here.

In the meantime, back to your evening.

Thanks for reading.