Posts Tagged ‘sleep’

Overcoming fear of fitties

Posted: November 3, 2012 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Inspiration, Motivation, Obesity
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Crystal Mayhue, a 35-year-old massage therapist and SAHM (Stay-at-Home-Mom), balancing her part-time business with raising two young sons and  hanging out with her husband as well as CrossFitting, contacted me about her CrossFit experience. I loved what she had to say, and want to pass it along to you.  Crystal, you now have the floor (or screen…whatever):

From Crystal’s Pinterest board

I started CrossFit recently and I am so addicted. I refer to myself as “Chunky Girl Works Out.”

I started referring to myself as “chunky” after my first pregnancy. I’d developed a serious B12 deficiency which triggered a case of RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome) of epic proportions. The baby came and the RLS never went away. Baby number two was also a fan of B12. Lets just say RLS is here to stay.

As a result, I am constantly sleep-deprived which has resulted in weight gain. I would never have called myself an athelete, but I spent years weight training and doing cardio. As long as I kept an eye on what I ate and made sure I was physically active, my curvaceous body was kept in check. The minute the RLS hit and sleep was something I could not accomplish, the curves turned to “CHUNK”! I even have a Pinterest board (http://pinterest.com/massagemomma/chunky-girl-works-out) named for it.

I waited two years to get into CrossFit for many reasons. I found out about CrossFit by way of Facebook, of course. I had reconnected to an old high school friend and she was always talking about going to “CrossFit.” I asked her about it.

I have what I lovingly refer to as “Exercise A.D.D”. I get bored so easily. I find running boring so I started doing mud runs like the Warrior Dash and the Merrell Down & Dirty. I got bored weight training on my own so I started taking BodyPump.

So, when my friend tried her best to explain the beast that is CrossFit, I was very intrigued. I turned to Google to find out more. Thirty minutes into my research I knew that sooner or later I was going to start CrossFit! The idea that it was mix of cardio and weight training and could happen indoor or outdoor and then you throw in kettle bells and a garage type atmosphere … I was in Exercise A.D.D heaven!!

One of the reasons for delaying my first CrossFit experience was “Super Fit Girls + Super Ripped Guys= WTF stares at Chunky Girl Works Out.” I had the itch to try it so bad I even had thoughts of setting up a backyard CrossFit.

I turned to my dear friend Google and his girlfriend Pinterest to see what it would take to create a “box” in my own backyard. I found I could do it on the cheap. But, honestly, I still didn’t totally grasp the whole of what CrossFit was and felt like I needed more instruction. And, quite frankly, I run a house and family and I am constantly in charge and making decisions. Sometimes I just want someone to tell me what to do and how to do it so I don’t have to think about it. I know, sounds lazy. But I’m a Mom, a wife, and I have a part-time Massage Therapy business. I don’t want to have to come up with my own workouts. I want someone to tell me what to do for once.

I have two boys. Very. Busy. Boys! My oldest will be seven in November and is in the first grade. My youngest is four and now attends all day PreK at the same elementary school as my oldest. I was overwhelmed at what the heck I was going to do all day. The idea that my baby was going to start school totally knocked me down. I knew that I was going to have to find something to do that would excite me or I was going down for the count.

We are a “traditional” family, I guess you could say. My husband works and I, for the most part, stay at home with my kiddos. The idea that I was no longer going to have my little buddy to take care of all day still brings me to tears. So, I set my sights on CrossFit. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to see if it was as awesome as I had made it out in my mind to be.

So, I found a CrossFit box and signed up.

Finding a CrossFit box in my area wasn’t easy. When I first looked into CrossFit, there was nothing close to me. One day, I happened to be talking to a nurse in my doctors office  and she mentioned she did CrossFit. She raved about her box. She said the coaches were awesome and the members were like family and that she was in the best shape of her life. So, I went to the official CrossFit website and looked it up. Two CF boxes had opened in a somewhat close proximity to my home.  I only visited one of them. My nurse was so passionate in talking about her CF box, CrossFit of Locust Grove (Georgia), that I never doubted that it was the one for me. When I met the owner, Todd Springer, I was impressed with how he continually talked about CFLG being a family.

I started on a Monday morning. There were about twelve people in the class. There were men and women ranging in age from early twenties to late forties in a spectrum of fitness levels.

The first day I almost puked because I knew these people were going to die when they saw Chunky Butt walk in. But, you know. I have never met people more eager to help and guide and cheer a person on. I have belonged to many gyms…Gold’s, local athletic clubs, YMCA…. never have I ever had people so willing to help me catch on and want me to succeed.

The first person to speak to me, other than Todd the owner/coach, was a very fit, thirty-something woman. During each part of the WOD she made sure I knew where the equipment was, showed me what to do, and gave me encouragement. I was shocked. I tell you, I spent hours at my local Y before anyone ever even spoke a word to me. But, during a WOD that consisted of way too many push ups and box jumps, I had people that I had only laid eyes on that day telling me not to stop, to push through and that I could indeed finish the last round.

Since that first day I have attended morning, afternoon and evening classes. Each person I come in contact has been as helpful as the first. We have a Facebook group for members. People are always posting about getting together to go to events, or telling another member how great they did during the day’s WOD or just posting life stuff. They are family. We are family.

I have been apart of CrossFit of Locust Grove for two months. And, when my Dad was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, the outpouring of understanding and compassion from my CrossFit family rivaled that of my church family. Sometimes when you are mad at the world and feel like you have no control over anything—you just need to drag a tire across pavement, do a hundred burpees and seventy-five squat jumps and then hear someone tell you just how beastly you are because you finished.

CrossFitters, for the most part, really seem to have a passion for athleticism and really want for others to feel the same euphoria they do when finished with a WOD.  But, believe me, I know the fear of walking into a crowd of super fits….YIKES!!…..but I strongly urge everyone that is curious about CrossFit to visit their local box. The outpouring of support and  camaraderie that you get being apart of a CrossFit family far out weighs the nervousness you feel when walking into your first CrossFit class.

You can contact Crystal Mayhue by email at massage_momma (at) att (dot) net.

Top ten current faves from Greatist

Posted: September 17, 2012 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health, Inspiration, Motivation, Obesity, Weight Loss
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Peanut Butter Cookie Batch

Peanut Butter Cookie Batch (Photo credit: Greatist): I can’t stand peanut butter, but maybe some of you crave it.

I love Greatist. I encourage anyone interested in health, fitness and weight loss to subscribe to them. No, I have no financial or personal interest in them, so feel free to take it or leave it with my blessing and no effect on my pocketbook:

  1. How to foam roll like a pro
  2. Can you be too sore to work out?
  3. 10 interval training mobile apps to download right now
  4. News: Talk to yourself to stay motivated
  5. Schedule your day to reduce stress
  6. Give in to cravings to avoid binges
  7. Ultimate guide to good posture at work
  8. Develop a routine to improve sleep
  9. Why do I eat when I’m not hungry?
  10. How to handle criticism like a pro

There seems to be a “routines” theme in my list. Maybe I’m trying to tell myself something. I’m not even touching the word “pro,” given that I’m a woman old enough to remember that as a euphemism.

Just a poser this month?

Posted: July 8, 2011 in CrossFit, Health
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So, it’s been a tough month so far. It actually started the last week of June. I alluded to the problems I’ve been having in “Why 20:42 is my best time ever, ” but now I’m going to come out and deal with it head on.

What prompted this? I was lying in my self-made sensory deprivation chamber (okay, it’s just me in bed with my CPAP mask; a stellar sleep mask my wonderful daughter-in-law, Laura, gave me; ear plugs; my head sandwiched between two huge pillows and the covers pulled up over the whole shebang), and I realized I was alternating clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth.

This was not good, because the reason I’m lying in there is that I have a migraine, and the tense muscles in my jaw and neck don’t help. I’ve taken all my rescue medicine, and the light hurts us, precious. And the sound. And pretty much everything. And the reason I have a migraine today is because I’ve been sleep-deprived because of problems with my CPAP (which were finally solved last night, but the cumulative effect caught up with me at the same time).

But I realized that I was allowing all the things that I’ve set as goals for myself become  masters rather than servants. The fact I’ve been blogging more irregularly bothers me; I’d set a goal to do it every day. I’m behind where I think I should be in the part time job I started three weeks ago, even though the hours are flexible and I telecommute. I’ve missed some work on a volunteer gig, and I feel like I’m letting them down. There were dishes piled in the sink and laundry I hadn’t dealt with.

And CrossFit? Well, I’ve been doing more like one day on and two days off lately, all because of the multiple health issues. And so I feel guilty and stressed about that. And, because I’m not feeling great, I’ve slacked off being as careful about logging what I eat and when I’ve exercised and all the other stuff I’m supposed to log.

So here I am, trying to do a little to get all those worries off my back. Took care of most of the dishes and laundry, checked email from work and vol stuff, and am blogging, well, now.

And my head is now worse, and I’m doubtful CrossFit will happen today.

What am I trying to say here? I’m trying to convince myself that I really can do the things I’m trying to do and that the fact that I’m struggling right now only means that: I’m struggling right now. That it isn’t some sort of premonition of failure.

So I just remembered something I’d read about a while back: The Imposter Syndrome. Caltech (yes, the home of  really smart people, including physicists and engineers like those on The Big Bang Theory) Counseling Center puts it like this:

Impostor syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is experienced internally as chronic self-doubt, and feelings of intellectual fraudulence.

It is basically feeling that you are not really a successful, competent, and smart student [of course, you can substitute "student" with whatever role you want~jgm], that you are only [pretending to be one.] … The impostor syndrome is associated with highly achieving, highly successful people.   This makes impostor feelings somewhat different from the concept of “low self-esteem” because there is a discrepancy between the actual achievement and the person’s feelings about the achievement that may not be present in low self-esteem. People in different professions such as teachers, people in the social sciences, people in academia, actresses and actors, may all have impostor feelings. It was originally associated with women but recent research indicated that men suffer in similar numbers.

One such highly successful person who appears to suffer from this syndrome is Jodie Foster. Since we share the same first name (even if she spells it wrong) and are close to contemporaries, she’s someone I’ve always compared myself to, so it was kind of a relief to see that she, too, is plagued with the need to do in order not to be caught out as an impostor, as reported by the blog “Women and Talent“:

Years ago, [Jodie Foster] was also experiencing these feelings, saying in a tv interview [CBS, 1995] that before her Oscar-winning performance in “The Accused” she felt “like an impostor, faking it, that someday they’d find out I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t. I still don’t.”

Wow. And here I am, feeling like a CrossFit imposter. But I am doing it, even if not as often as I’d like of late, and even if not today.

Mary Ellen Bates, blogging at “Librarian of Fortune,” has some good suggestions in her post on “Fighting the Imposter Syndrome“:

• Imagine talking with someone who has your qualifications, skills and abilities. Would you really call her incompetent?

• Learn to appreciate your own accomplishments and successes. The ability to reward yourself rather than waiting for external feedback is a critical skill for any info-entrepreneur.

• Let go of the need to know everything about everything. Our clients hire us because we know how to apply our skills to their need.

Go, girl.  I’d add “Let go of the need to be everything you can be right now. Take it one day at a time, and appreciate what you’re doing in the now. If it’s not your best, remember that one day is not your whole life.”

And now I’m going back to my sensory deprivation chamber. Maybe now I can relax and let go of the headache, too.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Posted: June 14, 2011 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health
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Sleeping. Ah, the best of painkillers, the escape from your worries, the balm that restores you.

When you can get it.

Nothing replaces a restful night’s sleep. A rest day will not restore you if you don’t get good sleep. Unfortunately, some of us have issues with sleep. Actually, according to a recent study, more and more of us (up to a third of American adults) don’t get enough sleep. I have been a chronic insomniac, unable to shut my brain up when I lie down at night. And recently I have found that the best predictor of whether I’ll have a migraine is the quality of my sleep.

If you are exercising regularly, whether CrossFit or something else, chronic sleep deprivation can effect your body’s ability to continue making gains with the exercise — and that’s the best case scenario. If you’re working out and not getting good quality sleep, you can end up ill or injured (yes, I know, I’m obsessed with not getting injured. If you’ve had as many MRIs, physical therapy sessions and drugs for injuries as I have, you know what I mean. Vicodin doesn’t do much more than aspirin for me anymore, I’ve had it so many times.)

An article called “Sleep Deprivation Can Hinder Sports Performance” at About.com’s Sports Medicine explains what experts believe is the problem when athletes don’t sleep:

Glucose and glycogen (stored glucose) are the main sources of energy for athletes. Being able to store glucose in muscle and the liver is particularly important for endurance athletes. Those who are sleep deprived may experience slower storage of glycogen, which prevents storage of the fuel an athlete needs for endurance events beyond 90 minutes.

Elevated levels of cortisol may interfere with tissue repair and growth. Over time, this could prevent an athlete from responding to heavy training and lead to overtraining and injury.

What about those who do shift work, staying up all night and trying to catch Zs when the rest of us are (at least theoretically) awake? Brent Behringer at “BrentsCrossFitPaleoLife” addresses how he deals with getting sleep while keeping nontraditional hours in his post, “What About Sleep“:

I chose to look inward, identify unhealthy sleep habits, determine how they got that way, and chart a course for improvement. Here are some things I have learned …

1. Prioritize at all costs … When I know it is time to sleep, there is no negotiation.

2. Combat fatigue with….sleep … Go figure. I have spent most of my night-shift life combating my fatigue with snacks, sugar, carbs, and caffeine. Now, when I’m thick and stupid with fatigue, I take a little nap …

3. Watch the caffeine …  I have found that using caffeine as a wake up is the most useful. That’s it. Right when I wake up. If I use it to try to STAY awake, it just doesn’t take. I end up being fatigued …

4. Listen!! … You can’t bank sleep. It either is or isn’t. You are either tired or not. Listen to your body …

5. Relax …  I force myself to relax every muscle from the top of my head and work all the way down to my toes. It sounds like BS, I know. But it really works.

If you are waking up during the night because you snore or twitch, you  may need a sleep study and, if you find you have sleep apnea (like me, whoo-hoo), you’ll find yourself with a little friend called a CPAP. We dubbed mine “Snuffleuppagus” because I look like an elephant with the mask and hose. Once you get used to it, you sleep better. At least until the plastic that makes contact with your face starts deteriorating; then you get face farts when the seal breaks, which, oddly enough, wake you up repeatedly through the night.

But sleep apnea is just one of the things that may be interfering with your sleep, hence the point of the sleep study, although I’ve had yet to have one where I even slept as much as my usual lousy night’s sleep. Being told “Go to sleep now” is like giving me an infusion of caffeine.

If you’re lucky, you can get sleep without medication (I wish. I think most rhinos would be incapacitated by the amount of drugs I take that have sleep as a side effect). Some of you will have to get some prescriptions to get there, although maybe not on a regular or permanent basis. Even with drugs, good “sleep hygiene” (that’s really what they call it; sounds like you should be cleaning up while you snooze) is still important. I resisted the “always go to sleep and get up at the same time” advice for years, but I pretty have much resisted anything that tries to make me keep a routine. I always thought “routine” equaled either “boring” or “something is controlling me.”

Anyway, here’s the classic set of sleep hygiene instructions from the National Sleep Foundation:

  • Avoid napping during the day; it can disturb the normal pattern of sleep and wakefulness.
  • Avoid stimulants such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol too close to bedtime. While alcohol is well known to speed the onset of sleep, it disrupts sleep in the second half as the body begins to metabolize the alcohol, causing arousal.
  • Exercise can promote good sleep. Vigorous exercise should be taken in the morning or late afternoon. A relaxing exercise, like yoga, can be done before bed to help initiate a restful night’s sleep.
  • Food can be disruptive right before sleep; stay away from large meals close to bedtime. Also dietary changes can cause sleep problems, if someone is struggling with a sleep problem, it’s not a good time to start experimenting with spicy dishes. And, remember, chocolate has caffeine.
  • Ensure adequate exposure to natural light. This is particularly important for older people who may not venture outside as frequently as children and adults. Light exposure helps maintain a healthy sleep-wake cycle.
  • Establish a regular relaxing bedtime routine. Try to avoid emotionally upsetting conversations and activities before trying to go to sleep. Don’t dwell on, or bring your problems to bed.
  • Associate your bed with sleep. It’s not a good idea to use your bed to watch TV, listen to the radio, or read.
  • Make sure that the sleep environment is pleasant and relaxing. The bed should be comfortable, the room should not be too hot or cold, or too bright.

Sweet dreams, y’all!

The day of rest

Posted: May 19, 2011 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health, Uncategorized
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Rest day. It should be the best day of CrossFit, but, oddly enough, it isn’t.

Why? Because I seem to be stiffer and sorer and I usually have a rough first day back.

And now, because of my knee problem and falling off the wagon (temporarily), I’m getting more of them.

And it’s my own fault, because I asked what I thought was a simple question. You may recall that I am obsessed with earning foot rubs for consistency in my CrossFit workouts. The deal was that after two sets of 5 days of working out (with a rest day in between), I earned a foot rub from my wonderful husband/coach. So when I missed the day after my first in a 5-day set, I asked whether I should start a new 5-day period running, or just workout for 3 days and then begin the next 5-day set to count toward a foot rub.

Turns out it wasn’t a simple question. Five days on, one day off is a common practice, but in CrossFit’s training materials is an article by CrossFit founder Greg Glassman that says “Generally, we have found that three days on and one day off allows for a maximum sustainability at maximum intensities.” [If you read the article and are a language fanatic like me, try to overlook the punctuation errors and the use of the word "fetes" instead of "feats"; as far as I know, the typical CrossFit workout doesn't include parties.]  Maximum depends on the person working out; my maximum sustainability is way lower than the average CrossFitter, but the principle still applies.

However, as Glassman points out in another article, “A Theoretical Template for CrossFit’s Programming,” three days on and one day off doesn’t synch well with the typical five days on, two days off work week. Hence the popularity of five days on and either one or two days off within the CrossFit community.

After these observations, Glassman’s explanation starts to get really complicated, as the importance of the rest interval depends on the mix of exercises in the particular workout. The bottom line, though, is that in order to continue improving, you must build rest days into any fitness regime. Elizabeth Quinn at About.com puts it well:

Rest is physically necessary so that the muscles can repair, rebuild and strengthen. For recreational athletes, building in rest days can help maintain a better balance between home, work and fitness goals.

She goes on to explain the difference between short-term recovery (the hours immediately after exercise) and long-term recovery (rest days … and even rest weeks) in her article, emphasizing that the body needs time to repair and build muscles, recover from strain and adapt to new demands placed on it. Without rest days, you are more prone to injury.

And it’s not only rest days that matter. You need to makes sure you get sufficient sleep. If sleeping is a problem for you, then you may want to look at ways to improve your sleep, up to and including getting a sleep study done, particularly if you hear from everyone that you snore. For me, the wake-up call was when we visited friends out of town and my snoring wasn’t immediately identified by our hostess, who went up and down the hall trying to figure out the weird noise. When I asked her just how loud it was, she said, “Oh, I think the neighbors probably heard it.” (Not only do I have smartass children, I have smartass friends.)

So, after discussing it with Coach Ken Tollett of Hill Country CrossFit, my husband/coach has put me on a rest schedule every three days. After he realized my big sticking point was centered on my foot rub points, he gave me a deal I couldn’t refuse: I get one for every three 3-day stint.

So take your day off, really off (e.g., not getting too caught up in non-workout activities, as blogger Kelly found out), even if the day back seems harder. Your body will thank you for it.

On consistency

Posted: May 9, 2011 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health, Obesity, Uncategorized, Weight Loss
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Consistency is defined by Webster’s New World College Dictionary as “conformity with previous practice.”  The dictionary also provides some synonyms: “steadiness, persistence, sameness.”  For an exercise (or weight loss, for that matter) program to work, you must be consistent. Not my forte.

Consistency meant a lot of things to me that the dictionary doesn’t cover. I’d have subconsciously defined it more as “boring” or “inflexible” for most of my life, which tells you more about me than about the word. I would not have said, if asked, that  consistency had negative connotations, but I have treated its existence in my life as largely a bad thing.

I can come up with lots of reasons for why I have felt that way, but they do not excuse the lack of consistency in many areas of my life. One is that I was a military brat; the reality of that life, even more in my childhood than now, was constant change. No one stays; everyone moves. The parent serving in the military is often gone. It was just the way it was, and shaped my view of reality. Even now, some 37 years after the last time I moved (with the exception of two academic years at Baylor University), I still get an itch to change locations about every three years.

I also hate, with a purple passion, the merest shadow of something external controlling me. My mother often tells the story that the first time I went to school, when she tried to walk me in, I refused her assistance, saying “I can do it by myself.” So it’s a deeply entrenched, possibly genetic, tendency. I was almost always late to everything in my life until about 10 years ago, when my shrink explained to me that tardiness was a metamessage to others that their time wasn’t important. That was an eye-opener; it may seem obvious to anyone else, but I just never looked at it that way before. My feeling was “I won’t get worked up if they don’t show up on the dot, why do they?”

But, in a way, I suppose that was not far from the underlying message I was trying to give: “You can’t control me.” Or “The clock can’t control me.” Don’t tie me down, damn it.

I’m also a bit (okay, a lot) ADD (I know, ADHD is the more commonly used term, but I’m not particularly hyperactive, and I prefer the in-between version which is more inclusive), and, therefore, easily distractable unless it’s something I am engrossed in, and then I get into hyperfocus mode. At that point, a tornado could sweep within 10 feet of me and I’d probably not notice.

But if it’s something I’m not particularly interested in,  I tend to be in the middle of some task and then notice “Oooh, shiny,”  and leave the task unfinished to pursue the new and attractive. And then abandon it for the next cool thing that crosses my path.

Or there’s simply the “bored now” response, as in vampire Willow.

So I resisted routine. Over and over again. “How’s that working for you?” “Not so hot, actually.”

Now I’ve finally figured out that routines, the key to consistency, are the key to getting better. First, it was just taking meds regularly. I’d forget and miss dosages (probably how my son came into being) of pretty much anything ever prescribed until a little over 10 years ago, when the consequences of missing a dose of whatever became immediately apparent and painful. And then I added taking Metamucil to the repertoire of daily routine — easy enough, just take drugs with the orange goo.

But that wasn’t enough for me to consider consistency in my overall day: my sleep patterns changed from day to day, eating at odd times, and exercise? Puh-leeze.

Now I find that, gee whiz, the experts might have a point. Sleep problems are associated with various health issues, notably fibromyalgia and migraines, and they all recommend a consistent sleep/wake pattern. What? Naw, they can’t mean me. Studies on weight loss have suggested that people who regularly track what they eat will begin to cut back on their eating simply because they’re paying attention.

And, of course, exercise. One of the posts on CrossFit’s website posed the question to coaches: What do you tell your overweight clients? The best tip, and something my husband emphasized as well, was “encourage them to be consistent.” That’s an overall concept CrossFit has preached, but it is particularly important with someone like me, whose obesity puts them at an increased risk of injury. Gary, the hubby, has also emphasized keeping a log of my exercise to track my progress — another thing requiring the dreaded consistency.

I’m not going to even begin to talk about my housekeeping, or, rather, the lack thereof.

So I’m finally seeing consistency not as boring, but as a foundation for variations. Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert cannot be charged with being uncreative, yet they each wrote variations on their own or other’s work. I think I can live with aspiring to be like them.