Moving forward, Looking back

So! That happened. Holidays and gift-giving and traveling, and hosting and eating too much, and drinking too much, and oh, the drinking! Oh, the eating! It seemed like 2009 just evaporated, and in reviewing, I feel like I spent so much of it waiting impatiently for it to be over. Sorry, 2009!! As it turns out, while you may have been a historically shitty year for some people, you didn't treat me half badly.  The first half of the year was spent preparing for and having a wedding:

Awwwwww! I CAN HAZ WEDDING RING NOW?

Then, once we got back from our honeymoon it was already June and, GAWD! can't I just have some time to not be planning a wedding and get back to normal?  The summer was a haze of returning to work, telling people about how being married is the exact same as not being married, baseball games and enjoying the sweet kiss of all the delicious gluten I'd deprived myself of so I wouldn't look like a heifer at the wedding and on the beach. Well, as it turns out, the sweet kiss turned out to be a total date-rape that left me all bloated and pudgy and gross-feeling by mid-September. Why, gluten, why? Anyway, the rest of the year was filled with the standards- work, travel for work, beginning to work out, neglecting my diet (WHAT? I'm working out now!), Mad Men Season 3, complaining about how fast the year was flying by while simultaneously waiting to be over the holidays and on to a New! Year! (pictured in my mind with jazz hands behind at all times), whic you know, would make my life different? Or something?.

So, here we are! January. In the manner of "The Secret" (which, they're making a movie? Jesus), I will now share with you all the things I envision for myself froma  workout standpoint and will make happen this year:

• I will continue with boot camp until I notice more positive changes
  Sure, there have been changes since I started working out regularly, but the sucky part about changing your entire body is that it takes time for your fat cells to get motivated to get gone. In their defense, they've had a nice long run of it and seem pretty comfortable. Where I had envisioned working out for three months as a Mucinex-level evacuation of any squishy bits, they're instead stubbornly hanging on, and possibly migrating to other areas in the hopes I won't notice.Let me reiterate, I've seen a lot of positive changes since I started working out, but, because it wouldn't be real unless I could complain about it, let me get that out of the way right now.
  Silver lining: thighs have definitely slimmed down a lot and saddlebags be-gone! Yay!
  Way to never miss the grey cloud: my thighs were never my biggest concern
  Light at the end of the tunnel: those squats have most certainly helped a LOT with my butt becoming its own separate entity, and not just a mass that seeped onto my thighs (hmmmm. Could've maybe chosen a better word than "seeped", but sorry, you're stuck with that image now)
  Oncoming train moment: fat from my ass may be stubbornly climbing to settle on heretofore not problematic "love handles"
  Exciting developments: Arms are certainly firming up and my back is showing signs of improvement also.
  Way to complain anyway: Um, the other flabby bits are still there. But getting less flabby.
  
• I will continue to work on my push-ups
  Kelly showed me how what I thought was a kick-ass (if assisted by my knees resting comfortably on the floor) push-up was in fact all wrong, so now I'm doing this variation where my hips are low to the ground and my poor little elbows flail wildly while I manage to depress myself about an inch towards the ground and scream in pain. This is the year I make push-ups my bitch.
  
• I will be less likely to give in when things are hard or boring or not fun
  Without getting all "Eye of the Tiger" on you, this is one thing working out has really helped me with. The H/BF and I have a running joke that if something is hard you should just quit, but I've mentioned before how I've been amazed by what pushing myself can do. Mental game and blah, blah, blah, feelings of pride, accomplishment etc. Which is a good thing to apply to everything really. Work is boring and not interesting? You know what? That's ok. Do it anyway. Just delve in and keep going and then your day is over and before you know it you've made a dent in your workload and you feel good that you didn't spend 6 of your 8 hours ensuring the Internet is still there. (It is by the way)
  
• I will start supplementing boot camp with other exercise
  Sneaky, sneaky exercise! I started off thrilled by making it to class three times a week. And I still am, but gradually all those damn endorphins and the changes you start to see really do start to become something to look forward to. Then, before you know it you're thinking "maybe I should take a yoga class on Tuesday/go for a short run/go for  hike/ride a bicycle" or something similar and that's why exercise is a gateway drug. When will I indulge all of my bad habits if good habits are trying to force their way in? Crap!
  
• I will start eating healthier more consistently
  See above re. gateway drug. I'm currently doing a detox (no booze, caffeine, gluten, dairy, sugar) and really want to keep a few of those habits going well past my 21-day finish line. Now, let me also add that if my metabolism gets crazy fast because I'm doing all this good stuff, I will probably enjoy shoveling Milk Duds in my face at an alarming rate again. But that's OK, because if I ever get to that level I DESERVE IT. Let me be.

And just because I can, here's what I hope to get done on a non-workout personal level for 2010:

• Try to be maybe sorta more tolerant and less easily annoyed and bitingly sarcastic about other people just trying to live thier lives. Even if that life-living includes any of the following: stupidity, mouth-breathing, flip-flops, visors, Ed Hardy, loudness, obnoxiousness or just generally being a douche. (Wow. In rereading that I realize I've just vowed to be nicer to the cast of Jersey Shore.)
• Be a better friend and correspondent. I'm lucky enough to have a lot of friends, some living far away. My letter/email-writing is woefully infrequent although I think about them all often. I plan to do more of letting them know that. For local friends that means more time, more involvement, more letting them know they're aces also. (That sound you hear is all my nearby friends heaving a collected sigh of "Eeeehhhhmm, what's this more involvement thing?")
• Hopefully get knocked up. There. I said it. GULP. Boy, it feels weird to think about getting pregnant on purpose when all your life you've been steadfastly devoted to the opposite. But, H/BF is awesome, would be a great Dad, we're all official and stuff, and somewhere between 30 and now my biological clock went from non-existent to powered by Timex and it just WILL NOT STOP. So there. Scary.

More on that later. I've still got those push-ups to conquer, that fat to blast, that eating healthy to start and also this blog to update more regularly.

By the way, this Workout Week in Review consisted of the following:
Boot camp x 3. I win!
Sweat x 1,000,000
Muscle soreness x 3 days of being crippled.

Not a bad start to 2010! Hope the same is true for you!