The Change Is In the Mind, Not Just the Body

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New Level, New Approach!

Okay so the trainer that works at the gym gave me a new approach that he wanted me to try to my workout. It’s just a way to switch things up a bit and give my body a surprise jolt and give it something else to get used to. So far so good. It seems to be working out pretty good and I feel like I am pushing myself to another new level in my working out.

I’m pushing myself to do things that I wasn’t really sure I could do but have been pleasantly surprised in finding out that I can really do anything I set my mind to. I really am feeling the change in my body and people are also starting to take notice in the changes as well. I feel muscles developing where they once were but had gone away.

I feel stronger and more resilient lately and while I can’t say that I don’t have my repeated share of injuries still, I can say that I never let it stop me. I suppose I even feel my stomach shrinking in terms of my eating because, while I have never been a person that can eat a lot in one sitting (I literally can get full in about 7 or 8 bites of food), I find myself getting full in even less bites, and I am having to really learn how to scale down my portion sizes because I just can’t eat much at all. I am snacking better, making sure to snack on fruits and nuts or even drinking coffee late because that will actually make me feel full and not hungry.

I have even managed to have willpower and stay away from most sweets. That’s not to say that I won’t ever have anything sweet again but I know that I have to refrain from it for a while so that I can give in to my sweet tooth so easily. I am very proud in my progress and I am looking forward even more to seeing where this journey is going to lead me to.

Jimmetta Carpenter

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Why Is Exercising Making Me Feel So Exhausted?

So I love when I am active and healthy and I am making sure that I workout every single morning, no excuses. It has brought back my confidence in myself, it has made me feel, overall, healthier. At times I can feel that it is increasing my energy again because my energy levels were almost non-existent.

But I will admit that lately, while my energy level seems to be increased directly after my workout, once the day sets in and I’ve showered and dressed and I am ready to start my writing for the day then the tiredness settles in. I get sleepy and exhausted after I’ve done an hour, sometimes an hour and a half of cardio and another half hour to an hour of strength training, and all I want to do is sleep and recharge.

I have to find some type of vitamin or something that is going to help me balance this out because I hate feeling so good from my workout one minute and then turn around and feel so exhausted and unable to do my work for most of the rest of the day. I didn’t think that exercise was supposed to make you inactive for the rest of the day, which is how I feel it is making me in some ways.

Don’t get me wrong, I love exercising and feeling like I’m in shape, or at least like I am getting in shape, and I love that I feel better in general health wise. I love my morning workouts and without them the rest of my day wouldn’t go right. But I don’t love that this extra energy that is present directly after my workout is finished doesn’t carry over into the rest of my day and it is very frustrating. But like everything else I will get through it and I will find a balance or a solution and perhaps the right vitamin. So that’s my rant for today. Hope your journey is going well!

Jimmetta Carpenter

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I Admit I Am a People Watcher In the Gym

Okay I don’t mean that in the creepy way of course where you can just feel people looking at you and you want to yell at them “what are you looking at” (lol). I mean that in the flattering, I wonder what their routine consists of and how do I move to that phase in my journey, kind of way.

I will glance at the person one the treadmill next to me, or two treadmills away, and see them running and think “I can’t wait to get back to the point where I can run” and wondering when that day is going to come. Or I will see these women who on the outside don’t look like they can lift what I see them lifting in the gym but I look and just say to myself “wow”.

I wouldn’t say that it is envy because I know that everyone has different goals they are working toward and their goals may not be what mine are. Also I know that it is foolish to wish you were in anyone else’s shoes because you don’t know what walking in their shoes is really like. However, I look not only in awe but also in frustration because my mind keeps telling me that I should have reached that level by now but body keeps telling me “no not yet, be patient” and I don’t know if I’ve told you all this before but patience has never been my strong suit and I am hard-headed.

My hard-headedness usually ends with me in more physical pain then I would’ve been if I had listen to my body instead of my mind. Those people I watch, I watch them in admiration because they inspire me and make me believe that I can get to that level, but only when my body and my mind are both in agreement. But I can’t lie and say that I wish my body would hurry up already, I’m ready to go to the next phase of this journey, at least in my mind anyway!

Jimmetta Carpenter

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If Only My Body Could Do What My Mind Says It Can

I can’t wait to shed at least half of the weight that I want to shed. I know that it’s not really about the number but rather about being healthier but there are some things I want to be able to do in the gym without having physical ailments get in my way and I know that getting more of this weight off will help with that.

Right now I just have to push through the pain without overdoing it and hurting myself to the point where I can’t workout at all. I want to be able to run on the treadmill like I had once before but I can’t even walk for a thirty minute interval without getting sharp pains in my leg and the pain in my knee kicking in halfway through it.

I look around at the other people on the treadmills running and I want to be able to run as well and ordinarily I would just ignore the pain and run anyway but in the past when I would run before my body was really ready I would end up suffering the consequences sooner rather than later so I’m trying my best to be good this time. But it’s hard to have my mind tell me that I can do something and have my body be in such disagreement with that.

In my mind I’m already able to run marathons but my body knows better. See it’s not so much about the number for me as it is about the relief on my body so that I won’t be in so much physical pain. I can only imagine how much more effective my workouts will be once the pain lessens. I’m waiting for that day to come but until it does I will just have to stay steadily on the course I am on and persevere. That just means I will have to increase the time of my workouts since I can’t increase the intensity just yet. But I do love working out!

Jimmetta Carpenter

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CEO/Writer/Editor

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It Feels Good To Know That It’s Working

So when I started this weight loss journey again I said that I wasn’t going to get obsessive and weigh myself every single week like I did before, but that I was just going to do one weigh in at the beginning of each month. So today was that day that I weighed in and guess what. I have already lost 9lbs!

I can’t even begin to say how proud I feel of myself and how happy I am because I was really worried that I wasn’t going to see too much of a loss if any. But it’s working, it really is working. Not only that but I am feeling so much more confident and energized since starting back at this and it is even helping in the area of my creativity and my writing. I feel like everything is improving and I feel like it all started with me working out again.

Now make no mistake the physical aspect of working out and losing the weight I want to lose is definitely an important factor, but it’s not even just that. It is the mental changes that it’s making in me and the emotional changes that working out has made in me. When I look in the mirror lately, yeah I see that I still have a long way to go to get to my goal, but I see the woman that I want to be slowly coming into focus.

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

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Foolishly Pushing the Limits Of My Body

I pushed it slightly a little too hard today in the gym and couldn’t push as hard as I wanted to because my leg began to feel like I might have pulled something. That’s another one of my downfalls that I have to work on correcting, listening to my body. I think about 20 minutes into the first machine that I was on I could feel this pain in my leg and like something was pulling but even though my body was trying to tell me that I should’ve stopped, my mind said “don’t you dare” and psychologically I was thinking I can’t be a quitter so I kept going until my first 45 minutes was up. It was clear when I got off the machine that I had overdone it.

The bad thing is I was still trying to figure out if I could go ahead and do my mile on the treadmill. I did some weights and things (by the way it was legs and abs day so that probably didn’t help it) and was still limping a little. The trainer that I consult with on occasion told me that it was most certainly not a good idea to do the treadmill and although it pained me to leave the gym feeling as if I had not completed my entire workout, I listened to the word of someone who clearly knows more about this weight loss thing than I do.

Talking to the trainer also helped in another area because we got to talking about the proper things to eat and the nutritional value of some things as opposed to others. She clued me into a lot of different things as far as the right nutritionally rich meals and options for healthy snacks to eat. There is so much more to this whole healthy lifestyle thing then just the exercise and even choosing what we think is healthy to eat.

It’s clearly a lot about nutrition that I need to read up on and a lot of meal choices that I have to sort through. I said in a previous post that I really needed to focus in on my eating habits and make sure that they are not doing more harm than good. Talking to her today was very enlightening and showed me that I have so much more to learn about this weight loss and healthy eating thing. But I’m ready!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

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Will the Number Reflect the Work I’ve Put In

It’s been almost a month now since I’ve started back at my workout regimen which of course since I said I was going to weigh myself at the beginning of each month means it’s almost weigh in time (Sunday). I have to say I’m a bit nervous because even though I am starting to feel the change in my body I don’t know if it will show up just yet on the scale. Not to mention I am not sure that I have gotten enough of a handle on my bad eating habits for it to start showing up on the scale either.

I am hopeful because I have definitely been putting in some hard work at the gym and I have made sure to be consistent and I won’t lie and say that it wouldn’t be frustrating if the scale didn’t show the progress that I feel. I also know that the progress I feel will not be negated by whatever number shows up on that scale. I know that I can’t beat myself up if the number doesn’t show the hard work that I have put in because that still doesn’t change that I feel the change.

My legs are feeling stronger, while I am still having knee issues I have been having less struggles with my knee than before, and I also am starting to feel a change in my energy levels. I also feel like my confidence is coming back and that feeling is priceless, regardless of what that number is going to say on the scale.

Weight loss is about so much more than just the number that you see when you get on a scale and it took me a long time to really get that and for it to sink in. I could lose another 100 pounds but if I still don’t feel good about myself and don’t feel healthy and strong then what does it really mean? I am discovering things about myself on this journey also that still amaze me everyday and one of them is that I have so much willpower that carries me though on this weight loss goal.

I get up when I don’t want to, I keep going when I don’t want to, and on a slightly less celebratory scale, when I know I shouldn’t go any further (due to physical strain) I continue until I have completed the goal I set in the beginning. The last one could be a really bad thing in the long run but it does say something about me. It says that if I set a goal I am going to get there no matter what. I am feeling good today and I love this feeling!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

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I’m Trying To Get A Handle On My Eating Habits, and I think It’s Working…

I think that I am finally starting to curb my really bad habit of snacking at night. Okay maybe I still have some work to do in that area but I am certainly better at it then I was three weeks ago. I do admit that I go to bed quite late (about 1 to 2 am) so in fairness when I eat dinner before 7 in the evening it’s hard not to get a little hungry before I go to bed.

It is a struggle to maintain a healthy eating regimen because the cost of food has only gotten higher and I have a specific grocery budget that I have to stick to if I want to be able to pay my other bills as well. It’s hard to not go for the “not so good for you” foods when you go to the grocery store and all of the inexpensive and sale items happen to be some of the not so healthy things they have to eat. I try my best to do what I can with what I have and that leaves me with some options that aren’t always the best in terms of being healthy.

Now another thing concerning my eating that I have to absolutely get under control is my emotional eating and my bored eating. For the most part I will say that I don’t so much eat when I am bored but I have in the past been known to occasionally snack just because there wasn’t anything else to do. My main issue (in which I have recently managed to reign in a bit) is eating when I am feeling upset or depressed. That is something that I know I need to stop doing but it is hard to just expect myself to stop doing that cold turkey.

They say that losing weight is 20% workout and exercise but 80% what you eat and if that is in fact true then I have to really start focusing on my diet. I have to learn how to cook some of my favorite things (or close to them) but in a healthy way and how to eat the proper foods at the proper times. Living a healthy lifestyle is not something you can do with ease. It takes some serious work and effort but I am definitely willing to put everything I have into this effort.

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

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Settling Into My Journey, Even Though My Goal Seems So Far Away

Okay so I am well on my way in week three and I’m starting to feel even stronger in my workout regimen and I am very happy with my level of consistency (particularly since my consistency has been complimented on) with my working out. I know that the next thing I have to work on tackling is my eating habits and it’s not just my eating habits that I need to work on fixing but also my daughter’s because I am not fighting this struggle for myself but also for her sake.

In many ways I think that I am at fault for my daughter’s being overweight and after taking her to the doctor’s office last week for a sick visit and seeing her weight and what it has ballooned up to I am very ashamed that I have seemingly transferred my weight issues onto her. I won’t give her weight on here because even though she is a child she is entitled to some privacy in her numbers but I wanted to cry when I saw the number because I realized I had not only got relaxed in my health plan for myself but also the one that I was on for her as well.

So this weight loss journey that I am on is not just for me but for my daughter as well. I want her to have the healthiest life possible and I need to do better. There are no excuses that I can make, I simply need to do better. I know that it may seem backwards to get the workout program back on track before addressing the eating habits and the food that is consumed but I feel like getting the habit of exercise going again first, both in me and my child.

I think now that I have gotten back in the swing of things as far as my workouts and I am getting my daughter back use to exercising again (just starting), I can begin to try and focus on what foods to keep on our monthly grocery list and what foods not remove. Also figuring out the appropriate times of day and proper amount of meals to have is a huge part of it as well.

So this journey of mine as turned from a journey of one to now being a journey of two. Now to find some sneaky ways to sneak vegetables into the meals for a picky eater (my daughter) who does not like any vegetable besides green beans! Hope your journey’s are going well and please share your journey’s with me. Let’s strengthen each other!

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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