Last week was another pretty good week for me.

Workouts:

I continued on the treadmill. When I was doing 10-12 minutes I found myself not needing to listen to music or anything because the time duration was too short to lead to boredom. I enjoyed those moments of repetitive motion and just looking out my window.

A lot of the time, I have something playing—music, a video, a podcast, an audiobook, etc, etc. It felt good to take a mental break and just focus on the workout.

When I bumped it up to 14 minutes, I noticed I was starting to get bored about half way through.

The mental part of this is going to be an interesting exercise within itself. I want to be able to connect with my body while I exercise without distraction. I wonder how challenging it will be to get my mind to a state of not craving stimulation while I increase my workout time.

Because I’m starting to feel my upper arms turn to mush, I realized, I have to start doing strength training. I tried doing some upper body moves with 3lb dumbbells while on the treadmill. That didn’t work out so well. I kept losing my balance. It was really had to focus on making a mental connection with my muscles (something I picked up on a workout DVD years ago that stuck with me) while walking.

So, I’m going to go back, once again, to my favorite strength training workout—Power 90 Sculpt—and do that three times a week.

Food:

I had the strangest experience last week.

Ever since I’ve been drinking the herbal tonic I’ve mentioned in past posts, I find that I don’t have much of an appetite. I’ve also found that I can really taste the different between bland food and flavorful food and that bland food really, kind of, bothers me whereas previously I didn’t care.

So, last Thursday, I hadn’t eaten all day and I thought of ordering takeout. (Something I hadn’t done so all week…another victory.) I went to the site where I usually order from and looked through the various menus. Just reading about the food made me uncomfortable. It’s like mind my was saying, “This will be good!” but my body was screaming, “NO!”.

It was the first time I had ever felt dread (over knowing most of those food choices was going to make me feel like crap afterward) rather than excitement or pleasure.

Speaking of the tonics, I’ve added a few more herbs. I’m up to six now.

I had been making them with plain store-bought almond milk. When I bought groceries I saw a carton of chocolate almond milk. OMG. I knew it was going to taste so good.

Of course, I didn’t look at the nutritional info until later when I discovered a cup of chocolate almond milk contains 22g of sugar. Ugh.

So, for this week, it’ll be a treat. I know I can easily make my own almond milk. I’ve watched a million videos on how to do it. It’s just that, I did it once, years ago, and hated the taste. I will give it another shot though.

This week’s challenge is to make a decent batch of vegetable soup.

A couple of days ago, I put in a ton of veggies, some quinoa, and some chicken broth in a big pot. And then I left in on the stove to cook for hours. Who knew you could overcook soup? It was a big blob of mush when I ate some.

I also determined I don’t like quinoa.

Today, I’m making a new batch and am going to follow the recipe in this video:

Starting Weight: 372

Current Weight: 366

This has been a really good week.

I continued with my exercise habit experiment from last week. I admit though, I’ve bumped up the time from five minutes to twelve.

The crazy thing is, I don’t feel any anxiety about doing 12 minutes because it doesn’t feel intimidating. I know it won’t hurt. I know I won’t fail.

On the treadmill, I started walking at a speed of 1.3. It only took a few days to bump it up to 1.5. Now, I’m doing a bit of HIIT, and doing a couple of minutes at 1.9. (As in, I’ll do a minute at 1.9, slow back down and then bump it up again when I feel ready.)

This is a whole new approach to things for me. It’s not about forcing myself to work out. It also feels good to have this mental battle (“You should exercise!” “I’ll get to it!” And then by the end of the day… “Why couldn’t you find time to exercise?” When are you ever going to get this right?”) going on in my head.

I’m actually enjoying the ease. And since I’m enjoying the ease, I’m looking forward to challenge of adding two more minutes next week and adding another minute at 1.9.

In keeping with the “ease” theme, I’ve started to learn Tai Chi. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. This is the video I’m starting out with:

Food-wise, I did well.

I only ordered takeout twice.

My days were spent eating pita bread pizza and drinking green smoothies.

Speaking of green smoothies, I made a batch of raw green soup. Ugh. I hated it. In the soup, I added:

-tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, romaine lettuce, parsley, olive oil, garlic salt, and the juice from one lemon

To me, the lemon juice and tomato juice didn’t mix well. I actually gagged while trying to swallow. Maybe I need to not add lemon juice next time.

Or, maybe I need to stick with fruit-based smoothies.

I am making traditional soup though. It feels like an odd thing to be doing as the weather warms up, but I have a feeling I’ll be making a lot of it this summer so that I have something hearty and convenient to eat while I’m working on various projects.

The two herbs on my mind these days are Rhodiola and Reishi mushroom.

I’m adding Rhodiola to my daily tonic (almond milk, vanilla, honey, and Ashwagandha). Rhodiola, like all herbs, has so many benefits. I’m hoping it’ll help with my thyroid, weight loss, and adrenals.

Everyone raves about Reishi mushroom. I’m going to try it as a tea.

I’ve learned a lot about herbs and making tonics from watching Dara Dubinet. In this video, she explains the benefits of Reishi:

Starting Weight: 372

Current Weight: 367

A few days ago, I signed up for the Sea Change membership site on ZenHabits.net. During the month of April, Leo, the ZenHabits guy, gave advice on how to make exercise a daily habit.

In a nutshell, his advice is to attach a trigger to the habit to make the habit a consistent one. He says, if you just write “workout” on a to-do list without having a trigger attached to it, chances are, it won’t get done.

At first, it’s not about working out for a long period of time or worrying about intensity. It’s just about doing it consistently.

He suggested, once you choose a trigger, to work out for just five minutes a day for the first week or until the five minutes becomes your “new normal”. (Increase time and intensity once you know five minutes becomes, pretty much, effortless.)

While his advice resonated with me, I still fought it. I was thinking:

-What good is five minutes going to do when I have tons of weight to lose?

-I know I can go longer than five minutes.

-What about if I do five minutes of cardio and then do 30 minutes of strength training?

It’s the weirdest thing. I go out searching for someone to give me a solution to my problem, but when I’m given that solution, I never follow it, I try to tweak it, and, honestly, never trust it.

This time though, I felt like I had to surrender, follow Leo’s instructions, and trust in the process.

While some people work out in the morning right after they awake up, (“morning after awaking” being their trigger), for me every day is different. At first I couldn’t think of what to use for my trigger. I eventually settled on 6PM. I’m usually awake at that time, work stuff has settled down, and my energy is flowing.

So, for the past few days, I’ve been hitting the treadmill at 6PM–for five minutes. I have to admit, pulling myself away from the computer and putting my shoes on (I hate wearing shoes) is more difficult than the actual bit of physical excretion.

I’ve been doing low carb for the past couple of weeks. It’s not going well.

I’ve been eating chicken. While eating meat leaves me feeling full and sustains me for hours, I hate the idea of eating meat. I don’t want to be a meat eater.

I also desperately miss drinking large quantities of green smoothies.

Speaking of green smoothies, throughout all the years I’ve read about them, from time to time I’d come across recipes for green soups but, for some reason, never thought to try green soups. Recently, I was inspired to try to make a batch. I loved it.

I was also inspired to buy a fruit infuser. I love water and drink a great deal of it every day. I don’t need to drink flavored water to help increase my water intake, but I’m really, really curious to know what fruit infused water will taste like.

I’m also wondering what I can do with the fruit once it has infused the water. Could I put it in a green smoothie?

I’m back to experimenting with herbs. This week it’s been Red clover infusions and drinking a teaspoon of Ashwagandha in almond milk.

Red clover has many benefits. I’m taking it to help with hormonal issues.

Ashwagandha also has a ton of benefits. I’m hoping it’ll help with my slow thyroid.

Susun Weed is a highly respected herbalist I came across for the first time a few months ago. Here’s a video of her making a red clover infusion:

I got the idea for the Ashwagandha and almond milk from this video:

Starting Weight: 372

Current Weight: 369

Continuing to hear about the deaths of people is adding to my resolve to lose weight.

Over the weekend, my weight loss coach, Ruth, told me about a woman she knew from her Zumba class who died suddenly of a heart attack. The Zumba classes they both went to helped Ruth lose 150 pounds. The other woman stopped going.

Then, this morning, I got an e-mail from a friend who told me a woman we both knew had died. Her name was Joan. She had been battling breast cancer for the past five years. Joan and I had a complex relationship. There’s so much I could write about it and how I feel about her passing. I guess I’m just left with this sense of…Joan is gone and I’m here. And when I’m gone, what legacy do I want to leave behind?

Food-wise, I’m starting to get a handle on things…to an extent. My biggest issue right now is that I buy tons of produce and with good intentions and end up throwing so much away. Throwing food away really, really bothers me.

These days, my food intake is narrowed down to:
-eggs, chicken, turkey
-greens and various veggies
-berries and apples
-bean and rice and salsa
-Greek yogurt
-goat cheese

Actually, while throwing food away is at the forefront of my mind, it’s one in three of my biggest food issues. The other two are:
-ordering takeout often-when I buy groceries I get some sort of a “treat” (either salty or sugary) that send me into the throes of the salt/sugar/fat craving cycle that is so hard to come out of.

I really don’t want to be thinking about food so much. I want to shift my focus to workouts. I’m compromising with myself and keeping a food journal, but I’m not going to count calories.

I’ve rearranged my living room furniture to make a huge space for my workouts.

I used to be resistant to working out because I hated the idea of starting off slow, hated the idea of feeling discomfort, and hated that I can’t do now what I used to do, effortlessly, before. Now, none of that matters. I just want to move my body and wake it up with ease.

A few other random things:

-Back in December, I seriously got into researching herbalism and bought a ton of different herbs. In the last month or so, I’ve slacked off making infusions every day. I’m getting back to it and will document my practices and results within these weekly updates.

-With so much space in my living room, I feel inspired to FINALLY learn Tai Chi. I’ve been wanting to do Tai Chi for years. Now is the time.

-A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed a woman who lost 135lbs. Last week, I lost the audio file of the interview. I was having issues with the recording software, so I uninstalled it and then re-installed it. When I did the uninstall, the recording files were also deleted. I feel so deflated. It was a good interview.

I’m posting this and then popping in a Leslie Sansone DVD…

Starting Weight: 372
Current Weight: 370

I’ve decided to start posting weekly updates.

I feel like I’ve reached a new level of awareness when it comes to my weight loss. I’m not sure how well I can describe it. This is how it came about:

About two weeks ago, I read about a woman who lost 135lbs. She started out by using the 17-Day Diet plan. I had seen the book on Amazon, but never checked it out. Reading about this woman’s success with the eating plan got me curious.

Turns out the 17-Day Diet is low-carb. I hadn’t thought about doing low-carb eating in years. I was always focused on trying to eat mostly raw. Raw foodists tend to eat lots of fruit. I couldn’t imagine eating low-carb after all the juicing and green smoothies I’ve consumed. However, the more I thought about it, the more I considered giving it a try.

The one thing I knew I would have a hard time giving up is green smoothies. I started wondering if I could do green smoothies with just low-sugar fruits. That means no bananas. I couldn’t remember the last time I made a green smoothie without using a banana.

And then I remembered the Smoothie a Day mailing list I was on. I found out about it via Raw Food Rehab. The guy who created the daily message that contained a smoothie recipe, Allen Stern, had lost over 100+ pounds and had a passion for smoothies. I remembered reading in one of his e-mails that Allen was going to devote April to smoothie recipes that did not contain bananas.

Perfect, I thought. Then I realized I hadn’t received a Smoothie A Day e-mail in days. I checked my Spam box. Nothing.

So, I went to Allen’s Web site. He hadn’t updated his blog for days. Then I went to his Facebook page and read the messages posted there.

Allen had passed away.

I don’t know how to explain it, but even though I didn’t know him personally, I was deeply impacted by his death. Here was a guy who had lost a ton of weight, who was devoted to getting healthy, and a guy who wanted to help other people get healthy. And in the midst of it all, he died.

Since the moment I read about his passing, I haven’t felt the same. I marvel at the fact that I’m still alive. When I wake up from a nap, I am overcome by a feeling of overwhelm that carrying all this weight hasn’t caused me to unexpectedly die.

I’m grateful to still be alive, but I’m also extremely scared at the same time.

There’s another part to this…

When I first came across Allen, I thought of reaching out to him to ask if I could interview him for my podcast. I put it off for weeks and kind of forgot about it. A few weeks ago, I thought of it again, but still never took action.

Now, the opportunity is forever lost. And I wonder what Allen might have said in an interview that could have lived on to inspire us all.

All the usual sentiments are running through my mind…don’t take things for granted, live in the moment, health is the most important thing we have, leave a legacy of good…

I feel like, rather than attack my weight loss, I’ve come to a point of surrender. It’s no longer a battle, but more like a gentle release.

I’ve been changing up my eating. I’ll write more about that in upcoming updates. Truth be told, I haven’t started exercising consistently.

I feel overwhelmed. It’s such a crazy thing. I think about my weight all the time. Yet I’ve neglected myself and tuned out for so long that coming back to the reality of the current state of my body is proving to be difficult.

I always use the example of spending years mindlessly tossing things into a closet and then, one day, having to clean that closet. With so much stuff, where do you even begin?

Starting weight: 372lbs

Check out Allen’s smoothie collection Pinterest.

Also, check out the tribute to Allen at Raw Food Rehab.