Stop the crunches!!

Yep, you heard me. You can stop them....forever.  That's what I was told last night.  Which would have been great news if they didn't then introduce me to an evil thing called "the plank".

Hi all.  You remember that last night was supposed to be the group meeting "for patients only"? And I was secretly (well, you know, just between you and me) hoping that there was gonna be some deep dark hidden stuff revealed??

I think that was a luring technique.   When I got there....it was a trainer.  Yep.  Not even considered one of my two trainer visits. How's that for sneaking some extra health in on ya??  ;)

So, Tony (the trainer) was the one to tell us that the muscles we help with crunches are only there to keep us from falling over backwards and breaking our spines in half and that there are much better uses of our time. (Yes, Kenny, I know you already told me that)  Crunches were comforting. I knew how to do them. I had really good form.  I knew how much time they took. They were a habit.  Enough whining?  Yeah, I guess so. Anytime something gets comfortable it's time to shake stuff up anyway. Sigh.

Tony tell us there are two major position to all that we do.  The first one, we all guessed, is walking.  Well, actually it was breathing but since that is such a huge subject and involves a lot more than we had time to discuss we skipped that one last night. So yeah walking.  We got pedometers.  So far today I've walked 5115 steps.  Pretty good, huh?? I thought so. Until I googled that anything less than 5000 is considered sedentary. I've barely got that and I did my walk tonight for 20 minutes!!!   And THEN the dietitian said the goal for an ACTIVE person is 10,000!!!  WTF??

Ok, lets move on from walking.  Ahem... so the other most important position? The squat.  He had us practicing them.  No, I did not say air squat.  This was a room full of  fat plump people, remember?? Some of us were lucky to do it with a chair!  Get yourselves under control for God's sake.  Anyway, they say that as long as  you can do a squat the you have the physical capability of living independently.   Don't believe it's that a big a deal?  Try going to the bathroom unassisted at 80 if you can't squat.  Yeah. I thought so.

One of the big benefits is that those of us with "sedentary" office jobs (about all of us there) can do squats in the office.  Don't forget to squeeze your butt! ;)

It was actually a pretty good group.  There was a lady there who had just passed her year anniversary.  She had her bypass on June 3rd last year. She looked FANTASTIC!! Talk about motivation.  She has lost 127 lbs.  We knew she must have been post surgery because she was most definitely not  fat plump!

Today...I had my second visit with Elizabeth.  She went over my food logs. She saw the doughnut.  Did I tell you about the doughnut??  Well, for those of you that don't know, Frosty's bakery just opened in the next town over.  They have the MOST delicious doughnuts ever.  My husband bought me one.  I asked him to so don't judge him.  I am a woman down to two cups a coffee a week.  He usually gives me what I ask for. ;)
I ate chili before the doughnut so I got my protein in.  I won't tell you how many calories were in that doughnut.  I will tell you...it was worth EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! ;)
So, Elizabeth saw the doughnut because I was honest and logged it. Because really, who am I hurting if I am not honest? Only myself.  You know what she said?  My logs looked great! I've been hitting my protein goal for weeks.  I've cut out almost all starches and she could not fault me for an occasional splurge if I was gonna do the work that well.  YAY!  She pointed out that this is life and sometimes you just really want a doughnut.  The work is to figure out if the splurge is worth it.  Some things just aren't.

We talked about how I'm feeling this isn't a diet.  I don't know why but it really makes a difference for me that I'm working toward a goal of preparing for surgery.  Then I'll be getting through surgery.  Then I'll be taking care of the body that went through surgery.  SEE?? NO MORE DIETS!! Is it really that easy? No, probably not.  But most of this battle is mental and this is just my way of using this tool as a weapon.  She was happy with my exercise log too.  She went over all the phases with me and we talked about vitamins.  I was dreading that because they've always made me sick.  We're gonna sample a couple different types but she said there are options and the biggest thing is to be aware of having my blood work done to make sure I'm not getting deficient in anything. We can work out what's best.

Next big step?  The psych test.  Not til July 14th.  She said if the report came back from that before she saw me again they could send right in for approval from insurance.  I could really have a date possibly by the end of August or September!! By next summer I could be half the person I am today!! :)

Quite the ride, huh??  Thanks for coming along with me!

~Mikki