Wow! I just realized...

You know what they say about the subconscious working towards your goals even while you aren't thinking about them?

I just realized that without realizing it, I have reached a goal I set for myself several years ago!

In 2006, when I was learning about the power of goal-setting, I wrote this physical fitness improvement goal:

"I CAN RUN FOR TWO HOURS, UP AND DOWN HILLS, WITHOUT STOPPING."

That's the way you're supposed to state your goal, in the present tense, phrasing it in a positive way, and making it clearly measurable.

At the time, it seemed almost unattainable. I could run a 5 K by then, and I was doing daily runs of about 2.5 miles, but I had never been able to run farther than that. I had tried longer runs a few times, but always had to stop and walk.

Nevertheless, I repeated that goal, along with some other major goals for different areas of my life, out loud, several times a day, every day, for months!

The year came and went. I gave up on chanting my goals out loud to myself every day. They seemed ridiculous and I became discouraged.

Now, suddenly, as I was writing another blog entry, I realized that when I do my weekly 8.5 mile runs--and as I say, my times are slow-- I AM ACTUALLY RUNNING FOR TWO HOURS, UP AND DOWN HILLS, WITHOUT STOPPING, and doing it every week. My goal, which I chanted over and over to myself, has become reality, without me even realizing it!

How did this happen? Well, here's what I think.

That subconscious goal must have influenced my decision to join the running club when I was invited. And it must have helped me push this old body of mine from a 6 mile walk to a 6 mile run. It could be what inspired me to go ahead and try the longer, 8.5 mile route, and kept me putting one foot in front of the other, no matter what. Even on days that my running partners slept in and left me to run alone. Even when I was very, very tired. Even when my running partners stopped to walk, or wanted to take a shorter route. Something kept pushing me on. I thought I was just running to improve my fitness, but it is too amazing to be a coincidence, for me to come so quickly up to exactly what that goal--which I reinforced over and over a few years back--had prepared me for: running for two hours, up and down hills, without stopping!!!!

Simply amazing. Think I'll pull out those old goals--still valid--and begin to chant them to myself again! And I'll begin saying to myself: "I can run a marathon in under five hours."

Yours for a happier, healthier life,

The Jogging Grandma

The Exercise Program

During my previous program, I was doing strength building exercises three days a week and 20 minutes of aerobic intervals on the eliptical machine the other two days a week. I joined a running club and began running on Saturdays, starting with a 6 mile "walk" and ending up doing an 8.5 mile weekly "jog". Slow times, true, but just being able to jog that far in itself was a great deal of progress.

So now we're upping the ante. I'm going to keep the strength training program, because it is good, thorough and balanced. Upper body one day, lower body and abs the next, MWF, very methodical and intense, following the program outlined by Bill Phillips in his classic masterpiece, "Body for Life." I'm feeling very strong, and can see progress, increasing my weights every few weeks and improving my form from session to session.

Now, for my new program, on these strength-training days I've added an aerobic component: a 20 minute interval stint on the elliptical and a 30-lap swim (aiming for 20 minutes).

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, while my weight-lifting muscles are recuperating, I'm going to be doing a 60 minute run (aiming for five miles) and a 60 lap swim (aiming for 40 minutes).

This new program more than doubles the total exercise that I was doing previously. SOMETHING different (and good) should happen, right?

Yours for a happier, healthier life,

The Jogging Grandma

Taking Stock

I tried to take stock of what might have gone wrong.

1) The detox program. Maybe it was all bunk. Maybe all those terrible toxins we take in (and coffee and diet coke are full of them!) actually have little to do with our waistlines. I mean, it all sounds reasonable, but who knows? What science says today it changes tomorrow--that we have all experienced! But the detox program probably wasn't hurting any, either.

2) The nutrition program. We were supposed to be eating 6 small meals a day--high protein, low carbs. Well, I had tried the 6-meals-a-day before, and gained weight on it! But I thought I would try again. It makes sense to keep the blood sugar levels on a more even keel. And smaller meals would make for a smaller stomach, over time, which should make it easier to eat less, right? But I found the nutrition part the hardest to follow. First of all, because I was exercising a lot, and the more I exercise, the hungrier I feel.

In the past, the only way I have ever been able to lose weight has been by starving myself. I mean, really drastically reducing caloric intake. Now, all my reading indicated that this is not the best way of doing things; the body goes into starvation mode and lowers its metabolism, and muscle is torn down. So I tried to eat a moderate, well-balanced, evenly distributed diet. But it was hard. Often I would follow it all day, only to go on a ravenous eating binge in the evening. Hmmm. No, I had not found peace with this part of the program.

3) The exercise program. I was faithfully following a well-balanced exercise program. Strength training three days a week, aerobic two days a week. I joined a running club to get extra work in on the weekend. I think what I was doing was good; it was just not enough.

In the end, losing weight has to be about stimulating the metabolism and expending more calories than you take in, right? But somehow, I could see that I needed to make some adjustments to my program if I was going to see any results.

Yours for a happier, healthier life,

The Jogging Grandma

Exercise, who me?

Fast forward twenty-some-odd years. The empty nest struck. And I mean REALLY empty.

Our house had always been a rather hectic place. We were both teachers at a small private school in the Spanish countryside. It seemed our home was always filled with students, friends, family, or visitors of some other kind. We sometimes slept on an air mattress out on the balcony for months at a time, because every bedroom and every sofa was filled with guests. It was a happy, bustling place.

In 1997, our older daughter married, and flew off to another country with her beloved the following day. Later that same year, our younger daughter started hanging out with her first serious boyfriend, and in full throws of adolescence, basically stopped sharing her life with us as she had done until then. In 2000, our marriage of 26 years gave signs of disintegrating and my then-husband moved to his own apartment. In 2001, the younger daughter decided to follow her sister to that far-away place (which happened to be California), and I was left alone with a very, very empty nest.

I explain all this only as a basis to say that at that point I found myself in the grips of a deep depression. It was all I could do to move forward each day, go to my job, attend to my students, and return home in the evening to my big, silent house, with everything and everyone I had ever lived for gone forever.

At Christmas time, I took some time off to go visit my daughters in California. I stayed with my eldest and her husband. They were pained to see my pain. Every morning my daughter would say to me softly, "Why don't you trying getting out and exercising, Mom? It would make you feel better."

After about of week of her urging, I decided to give it a try. I borrowed some sports clothes from her and went out walking. The truth is that the sunny blue California sky and the fresh air DID cheer me up some. The next day, I decided to jog around the block. Ha! Did I say jog? I got as far as the corner, and then had to go back to a walk.

I did this every day for the rest of my visit, and by the time I left, I could actually make it around the (rather small-sized) block at a slow jog.

When I returned home, I signed up for some aerobic and step classes at a local gym. For an hour a day, I huffed and puffed and jumped and stepped and skipped with a whole lot of younger--and fitter--girls and guys. But it really did help. I would get a very pleasant high by the end of each session.

In 2002, I signed divorce papers, resigned my position at the school where I had worked for exactly 30 years, packed my favorite clothes in two suitcases, and returned to California, where I had lived as a child, and where my two daughters were now living. I was 51.

With best wishes for a long and healthy life,

The Jogging Grandma

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