Renovating Kaeti

Welcome to my UltraBlog. Are you having an UltraDay? I know I am. This UltraMorning, I got up and to take a shot of extra-virgin olive oil and lemon juice, followed by an UltraShake — all the while smelling vaguely of baking soda and Epsom salts from my UltraBath last night.

We’re two days into UltraDetox (if you don’t know why I’m using “Ultra” incessantly, check out the previous post), and I’m feeling great alive. Further bulletins as events warrant.

In the meantime, check out the guest post over on Cranky Fitness today. It reminded me that I really need to get back into yoga. Without it, my body falls apart. Or, more accurately, constricts into impenetrable knots. It’s always good to hear that you don’t have to be a Certain Way to be an athlete. And while accepting yourself as you are right now is often one of the most difficult challenges we face, once that hurdle is conquered there’s nothing to hold you back.

Now I’m off to drink some UltraBroth.

Over the past few months, I’ve learned a lot — about myself, about fitness, and about the idiosyncrasies of putting those two together. So in honor of Runner’s Lounge “If I Knew Then What I Know Now” Take It and Run Thursday (a day late), here are some of the lessons I’ve learned:

1. Dark running tights are my friend. Aforementioned Mizuno running capris? They’re comfortable, don’t ride up anywhere they shouldn’t, keep me cool. Unfortunately, the light-gray color shows off just how much I’m sweating. Needless to say, when I finished my miles last night it might have looked like I’d peed in my pants.

2. The first mile is always hard. I read this “Natural Law of Running” at Runner’s Lounge and wholeheartedly agree. I might modify it a bit, though, to say, “Beginning is always hard.” Eating healthy? It’s tricky when you’re first starting out, but it gets easier and eventually it becomes downright fun. Just starting to exercise? Those first few weeks (and months) are tough. I think everybody can attest to this, whether you’re just starting out or getting back into peak shape after a long hiatus. But after getting past that initial hump, you start to feel the positive changes, momentum builds and it gets easier.

3. Make sure your workout clothes fit before you take them for a run/workout. I had this one pair of pants, and they fit just fine when I was walking around the house. When I ran in them, however, I was pulling them up from my ankles every five seconds (OK, I may be exaggerating a bit, but it was pretty bad). Now I test run all my clothes inside and carry a safety pin with me just in case.

4. Change your workout music/route/routine regularly. If I run the same loop over and over again, my body will start to automatically get tired at the same place I’ve gotten tired during previous runs. The same goes for music — hearing certain songs will trigger physical responses. To get around these mental blocks I need variety to keep my mind and body guessing.

5. Don’t go it alone. During the first months of my life overhaul, I felt pretty isolated. Honestly, it seemed like I was sooo far behind everyone else that I would just embarrass myself it I reached out for support or advice. I didn’t want to join a running club because I was convinced that I would be too slow/fat/inexperienced. I didn’t want to talk about the changes I was making because that would mean owning up to the, in my mind shameful, fact that I was incredibly unhealthy. Thank God I’ve gotten over that. Now, I love having the support of my running club (and friends and family and coworkers), and I talk about my successes, challenges and setbacks a lot. Incessantly, even.

6. Shin splints aren’t inevitable. Neither is pain. For a long time I thought that pain is just part of running. Turns out that the right shoes make a huge difference. So does building up your mileage and speed slowly. Now when I feel pain, I pay attention, make the necessary adjustments and take time off if I need too. I’ve also started to recognize the difference between the DOMS (delayed-onset muscle soreness) and pain related to my running biomechanics.

7. Dieting is for chumps. Maybe it works for some people, but I definitely couldn’t maintain a restricted eating regimen for the long haul. Why diet when, instead, you can eat an abundant amount of delicious, satisfying food? When my focus was on eliminating foods from my diet, I was miserable. These days, I focus on how much I’ve added to my cooking repertoire and don’t waste time counting calories. Like I said here, your body does a perfectly good job of adjusting to your caloric intake if you’re fueling it with fresh, whole foods.

These are just a few of the things I can think of off the top of my head, and I’m sure there are many more lessons to be learned down the road. When you look back at where you’ve been, what have you learned? What would you do differently?

If you’re new to my blog, welcome! You can read more about me here or in my first post “Does This Blog Make Me Look Fat?“

It’s amazing how running inside spoils your legs. I ran outside on Saturday and Sunday this weekend, and I am definitely feeling it today.

Despite my minor soreness, though, it was great to get back to the lake. Running outside is so much more rewarding than putting in 40 minutes on the treadmill. In Minnesota, the runners who stay outside for the winter are part of a special, secret club (well, not really secret, because we’re the ones that always garner a lot of scornful comments like “Are those people crazy or something??”). We’re the proud few who trudge around the lake in ice, snow, sleet and 40-below wind chills (my eyes actually froze shut the other week). There are a lot of understanding smiles and knowing nods exchanged when crossing paths with other winter runners. It’s all very . . . heartwarming.

At least, it usually is. During my running clinic on Saturday, we were making our way around the lake and came up to a man running so slow that he was barely picking his feet off the ground. I’m no speed-demon myself, and we were clocking somewhere around a 12-minute-mile pace, so you can imagine just how slow he was going. Now all of this is fine and good, and I’m the first one to proselytize about the importance of doing everything at your individual level. So we passed him, gave him a friendly nod (which was not returned) and kept trudging along.

Then, with no warning, he comes barreling between my running partner and I, sending us scattering. And despite almost knocking us to the ground, he offers no acknowledgement whatsoever. Once he is about 10 meters ahead of us on the path, he resumes his snail’s pace forcing us to pass him again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Eventually, my friend looked over to me and said, “You know, he just doesn’t want to get passed by a couple of girls!” She was dead on. It’s like we were offending his prescribed world order: one where the girls finish last, and certainly don’t pass him — no matter how painfully slow he may be running. I believe this is what Vanilla at Half-Fast refers to as “getting chicked.” All in all, it made for an amusing (though somewhat awkward) run.

Anyway, this display of ego got me to thinking about how preconceived notions can hinder us in our many life pursuits. I talked about this idea a bit in this post — how definitions we carry around about ourselves can be awfully outdated and inaccurate (for example, thinking “I could never be an athlete,” when, in fact, you most definitely can be one). (A quick aside: There’s a great story coming up in our May issue about this exact topic.)

I think it was my preconceived notions about the fitness world and Those Who Are Fit that made me so reticent to the idea of exercise. I mean, how could there possibly be a place for my birthin’ hips in a sea of hard bodies rocking the spandex lifestyle? (Yes, apparently I based my preconceived notions on Bally commericals and my perennial favorite, Jane Fonda’s Complete Workout video.)

Right now the current preconceived notion I am fighting against is: There is no way on God’s green earth that I could ever — EVER — do a triathlon. But encouragement to sign up for my first sprint-distance tri is coming from all arenas of my life (and I mean all — even my financial planner is a triathlete). It’s got me thinking and weighing my options. And then dismissing the idea outright because it’s completely ridiculous, only to find it nagging at me again a few days later. But then I think that maybe I should focus on running this year. On the other hand, I’ve always been a multitasker, and this would give my training some much-needed variety. And round and round the indecision goes.

Any opinions or advice would be ever so appreciated!

I’ve never thought of myself as an athlete. I mean, you take one look at me and it’s obvious that I’m the “bookish” type. In addition to being a four-eyes, I spend my time doing ridiculously nerdy things: reading, the arts, (easy) crossword puzzles, attending Star Trek theme parties (just kidding about that last one).

The sports that I love (i.e., baseball, baseball and baseball) are much better when I’m observing them rather than actually playing them. While I certainly could do serious damage if someone handed me a bat, it most likely would be a result of it slipping out of my hands during a swing and knocking someone unconscious. Hypothetical situation, of course.

My point is that I’ve never identified with the jocks. They were the elite, the untouchables. Somehow I’d missed the memo (or the genes) allowing some to effortlessly join teams, squads and scrums. Even when I played basketball in junior high, I didn’t identify myself as an athlete. And I carried this outdated definition of myself around with me all the way through college.

Then, last summer, something shifted. I stumbled (literally) into running. It started with 15 seconds here and there, usually followed by about 15 minutes of recovery — trust me, it was not a pretty sight. But I reminded myself over and over again that I was already doing more than some 60 percent of Americans, and that something was better than nothing. So I kept going.

Day after day, I put on my running shoes, read everything I could get my hands on, customized a training program, and started to learn the lingo (fartlek? Seriously?).

After about three months of wheezing through intervals around Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis, I started to fall in love with running. If I didn’t run, it felt like something was missing from my day. I was able to run further, with a lower heart rate, than I’d ever gone before.

And I started to get annoyed when people (usually my mother) asked how “jogging” was going. Could you be more patronizing? I’d usually bite my tongue and respond “Running is great.” (John Bingham wrote a great column about the distinction in Runner’s World a few months back.) This minor (you might argue silly) irritation clued me into something, though: Somehow, mystery of all mysteries, I had become an athlete.

Now, I’m training for my first 5K, and rest assured I’ll bore you with the details as that progresses. Through this all, I’ve found that taking ownership of my sport keeps me moving toward my goals. What a huge difference it makes to declare that I am, in fact, a runner — no matter what my mom may call it (love you Mom!).

I recently started taking yoga at a studio in my neighborhood. During a class the other day, my teacher warned us about staking happiness on specific accomplishments. During one particularly difficult pose, he looked around at all of our constipated faces, and said, “You know, you can try your whole life to try to touch your foreheads to your toes … or, you could relax, smile and be happy where you are right now.”

There was a sort of communal sigh of relief (and you could hear it, what with our Ujjayi breath and all). It was such a liberating concept, especially as my heels have yet to touch the ground in downward dog, and my forward bends look more like bows compared with the limber types around me.

My teacher went on, saying that many times when we base our happiness and worth on reaching a certain goal (or pose or weight, for that matter), we achieve the goal only to realize that it doesn’t make us happy and we’re exactly where we started — dissatisfied, feeling “never good enough” and usually pretty crabby.

This isn’t to say that having goals or celebrating achievements isn’t important. It is. But I find that to truly revel in reaching my goals, I need to be coming from a place of acceptance and completeness — before I reach them. If I can’t love who I am at this weight, weighing 20 pounds less isn’t going to change that. In fact, when I start basing my progress on the numbers, it’s a struggle not to get addicted to them. Instead of focusing on feeling right in my body and being healthy, I just want that number on the scale to creep down (OK, if I’m being honest, plummet down). And when it does, I’m like a junkie: never satisfied, always looking for my next fix.

Getting trapped in this cycle exhausts me, and leaves me feeling terrible about myself. That’s exactly why, when I began to lose weight as a natural byproduct of the changes I was making (you can read about them here), I decided not to weigh myself regularly. I chose not to count calories. For some people, these measures may be important or useful, but for me they were a trap. When I started playing the numbers game — measuring every crumb I ate and viciously observing every tenth of a pound I lost — I didn’t have the energy or time to eat consciously or actually enjoy my workouts.

It’s hard not to get caught up in the “skinny is best” fervor that dominates so much of the health and fitness world. Thankfully, mainstream culture is finally starting to wrap its mind around the idea that fit does not equal thin. In fact, recent research suggests that overweight, physically active people age slower and reap more health benefits than their slimmer, couch-potato friends. So maybe by revising goals and expectations to focus on health measures rather than arbitrary numbers like weight and calories, we can find a much more sustainable and satisfying way to move forward.

This could mean anything from lowering your resting heart rate, to eating fresh, whole foods — rather than aiming for an idealistic pre-college weight or eating flavorless, low-calorie foods (Kristin Ohlson wrote a great article on why this doesn’t work, anyway). Measures like body-fat to lean-tissue ratios, VO2 max, heart rate and strength are all beneficial ways to gauge progress, but even these can become a distraction and end up sabotaging your momentum if you get too wrapped up in the numbers.

For me, a big part of this ongoing venture into health and fitness has required that I let go of my unrealistic expectations (seriously, who are these girls that run the treadmill at a six-minute mile pace??). Maybe, instead, I can take a deep breath and smile, look at how far I’ve come, and embrace who I am right now. And when I feel at ease in my life, I can find the energy I need to keep moving forward.

What do you think? Do the numbers help or hinder you? Have you ever been tempted to aim for unrealistic ideals?