Slippery Slope

I want to cycle until I leave this earth!

School is moving alone swiftly, and I absolutely love this time of year when we are on a roll: classes everyday without any breaks, establishing class norms, and a busyness that feels like real work is taking place.

With school starting, I am no longer in my controlled, food environment, and things that I should not eat are around daily. We have had pizza, donuts, pasta lunches etc. I've been doing ok, but not good. I ate the pizza, pasta, half of a doughnut, and one or two of the doughnut holes that I bought for the students... slippery slope.

I also must confess that I have been stopping by McDonald's in the morning to have a cup of coffee with one scoop of sugar and two creams. I have been meaning to stop, but...... slippery slope.

Well, I have been completely paranoid about this slippery slope that I have been on... yep, I got very angry with Berhane last week, because I thought that he was looking at my stomach in an accusatory way. He looked baffled and told me that it was all in my mind.... slippery slope.

My people, yesterday, I stopped by McDonald's, and they thought that I said eight sugars instead of a sugar, and the minute that I put it to my lips, I knew that this was far more sugar than I needed so, I threw the coffee away. I needed that wake up call.....No added sugar, and I won't touch sugar substitutes for no reason; I get enough sugar in peanut butter, fruits, and other foods. So, I am back to green tea unless I have time to have a latte with no sugar added.

Well, I gave myself a good talking to this weekend... There is no way that I will workout two times a day, and that's exactly what I have been doing at least three days a week, and sabotage those workout by being on that slippery slope.. doughtnuts means pizza and pizza means candy and candy means a drink and this means one pound a month then two pounds a month and ten pounds a year..then high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low energy, mood swings, medication.... slippery slope

I am not going down that road at all!

I love my health and being healthy more than I love food, drinks, sugar, my bed, rest, money...

I Get It From My Momma!!!!

Momma in her exercise class "gettin it!'

If you read this blog often, you know that I get my exercise on.

Guess where I get this ritual, habit, routine from? My momma of course!!!!

My 77 year old momma goes to exercise, come hell or high waters, EVERY Monday, Wednesday, and Friday!!

Sooooooo, I just can't help myself; I get it from my momma.

Hey, find something that you love to do and do it like your life depends upon it.

Ritual, Routine, Training..... All of that WORKS!

US!

It's My One Year Anniversary, and I'm just getting started!



Committed and Dedicated to my health
and happy about it. Look at that smile!

I've been a regular physical activity girl for quite awhile, but today, April 26, marks one year that I have been working out with the greatest trainer in the world, Berhane, and my life will never be the same. I must proudly say that I have NEVER missed an appointment since I started working out with Berhane. Once I commit to something, I see it to the end unless it just doesn't work.

About two months before my one year anniversary of working out with Berhane, the greatest trainer in the world, I started getting excited. I told him that on my anniversary I wanted him to take me to McDonald's, and I wanted him to buy me anything that I wanted. Of course this was a joke, because there is no way that I will eat anything that comes from McDonald's.

But on a serious note, I was really thinking that after a year of working out with Berhane and incorporating everything, and I mean everything that he has taught me into my life, I really thought that I should be able to  relax. I was going to workout and eat without giving it much thought. Just relish in my accomplishments. I thought that after a year, I could coast alone and maintain.

Berhane quickly told me that "I sounded like a loser." Very hard pill to swallow, but after he explained it to me more, and I REALLY thought about it, I got the point.

Who gets to the top of their game and relax? Do you think that Beyonce, Bill Gates, the founder of Facebook, President Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Drake or anyone else who is at the top of their game is relaxing? I must continue to focus on being stronger, riding my bike and running faster and for longer distances, always look for ways to improve my diet etc. I'm really just getting started.

I really thought about the idea that I thought that I could relax since I am at the top of my health game. How many of us have reached our goal weight, relaxed, and slowly, but surely, went back to old habits and gained back every one of the pounds that we lost and some? When it comes to our health and many other areas of our lives, we can never relax. We can't have our dream career and relax. We must work to keep that dream career a reality. We can't get married to the guy or girl of our dreams and have kids and then relax. We must work to keep the marriage strong and happy and work equally hard to raise our children to be happy, productive people. There is no time for relaxing!!!!

I must quote my favorite blogger Erika:

You must be vigilant. Not because one cookie is sooo bad for your diet (and, depending on how small you are, it actually could be), but because if you are breaking from a sugar habit, even the slightest act of submission can result in it coming back full force. If you’ve gone weeks without sweets, you’re training your mind to forget that sweets work as a means of making you “feel better.” When you give in – even the slightest bit – you remind your brain again, and you give the compulsion more power. You can’t do that… which is why I say it may take months or even years to fully defeat. I don’t get cravings for sweets at this point and can go to parties without eating the cake offered there. I can even bite into a cookie, and not eat the other half (especially if it’s a crap cookie, and you can usually tell.) It just requires a lot of thought, a lot of vulnerability – you’ll now be dealing with lots of emotions, especially during your cycle – and a lot… and I mean lot of honesty. If you’re only “a few weeks in,” you’re not ready to test yourself. Excerpted from Q&A Wednesday: Menstrual Cravings & Defeating The Sugar Demon | A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss

I love Erika's blog......

After working out with Berhane, the greatest  trainer in the world, for a year, here are a few things that I have learned and made apart of my life:

• I'm just getting started and will not stop until I leave this planet.
• The insides of my body are so much more important than the outside. I do want to be appealing to my eyes, but I think so much more about what I do to the insides that contribute either positively or negative to my outsides.
• It's been confirmed to always work hard and try to go to the next level, not to please others, but I do it for myself; it makes me feel great. Guess what? This idea has carried over to other areas of my life: career, relationships, biking, running etc.Working hard ain't easy, but it sure is fair.
• Alcohol is a poison, and I should limit my intake. It is impossible to go to my maximum health consuming alcohol on a regular basis. 
• Eat to live, not live to eat. Food can kill.....
• I can sneak and eat whatever I want too, but the body does not know how to keep a secret; it tells everything.
• Hips are not hereditary. That is where my family may store fat. Once I lowered my body fat, the hips dwindled down.
• Sugar is the enemy and should be limited and/or avoided.
• If I eat things that are good for my body, I will never have to count calories again. HALLELUJAH!!!!!
• Stay off of the scale and get my body fat checked often. Over Christmas, I lost two pounds, but my body fat went up 1%, and that's bad news.
• It's not how much I eat, it's what I eat that really matters.
• Being healthy has no goal, it's for a lifetime.
• Make NO excuses. Either I am going to do, or I'm not.
• Good or bad results are depended upon what I do consistently.
• I NEED other people on this journey; I can do it by myself, but I don't want too.
• TAKING CARE OF MY BODY FEELS SO GOOD!!!!!

This year of working out with Berhane has been an investment in myself that I definitely do not regret. I am looking forward to getting leaner, stronger, and finer.....(Ok Berhane, I know I shouldn't worry about being fine, but please let me have my moment.)

Here's what I have been doing over the past year:



Part 1: The waist!

Part 2: The Waist!



I hate doing pushups, but I love having a strong upper body!

Doing a push and rolling a ball from side to side. TOUGH!

Part 1: Squat with the sand bag!

Part 2: Squat with the sand bag!

Push up on the bench!

Part 1: The back!

Part 2: The Back!

Squats with the bar!

Part 1: The Kettle Bell!

Part 2: Kettle Bell!

Part 3: Kettle Bell!

Part 1: The Pull-Up

Part 2: The Pull Up!

Part 3: The Pull Up!

Lunge to the left!

Lunge to the right!

Had to show the squat with the sandbag again. This
exercise makes me feel invincible!!!!!

At the end of a workout!

Phyiscally and Emotionally I am in a GOOD place! Why don't you join me?

As stated before "Hard Work Ain't Easy, but it's fair!!!!!!

Results are based upon effort always!

Part 5 THE END "If There is No Struggle, There is No Progress!"

You know how rappers, such as Too Short and Jay Z, will release a CD and say that it is their last CD and then release many more CDs after they promise that the newly released one is the last one? Well, that's not what I'm going to do with this series on health. This is the LAST one, I hope! Just joking! It really is the last one. Eventually, a person has to take all of the lessons learned and live by them: plain and simple.

Too Short!

Jay Z

So, I have been on this journey to live healthy for quite awhile. I have always been an exercise girl. I hurt my knee in college in an aerobic class many moons ago. So, the journey started a long time ago for me. The eating healthy part took quite awhile, because years ago, we did not have all of the knowledge that we have now, and I am not sure if I was ready, years ago, to receive the knowledge anyway. There was no way I was going to give up fast food, and now, I won't touch it. I had to renew my mind.

But, with knowledge comes power. I really started to read everything that came my way about diet and exercise, and it finally dawned on me that the two things go hand in hand. They are really like ice cream and cake, Ashford and Simpson, Ben and Jerry and peanut butter and jelly: they are good alone, but really work better together.

Visiting some of my sho' nuff health conscious friends in Chicago three years ago, they showed me so many films and gave me books to read about beef, chicken, and pork. They made me a believer, and I have not really able to eat beef, chicken or pork since. 

Trying to stop eating meat and my doctor telling that my cholesterol was TWO points high, was enough for me to go a nutritionist and get this eating thing right.

I really know that the nutritionist was wondering, "What is going on with this lady?" I took the packaging from everything that I eat into her office along with my blood work from my doctor, and I said "Help me PLEASE," and she did. We read all of the labels, and she told me what to keep in my diet and what to throw out. She even gave me recipes ideas, and helped me to understand how to get enough protein in my diet without eating beef, chicken and pork. She is so caring that she responds to all of my frantic emails about my diet. The frantic emails have almost stopped: I'm learning to make the right decisions on my own. Cheryl Harris is on my team forever.

Next, one of my friends told me about the best trainer in the whole wide world, Berhane. And I am not exaggerating, he is the best trainer in the world. He is the jelly on my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and he is the glue that sealed my health deal. He helped me to take my workouts to a whole 'nother level, and I mean a whole 'nother level.

Berhane really wants me to be healthy until I die. He is not just my trainer, but I consider him my life coach, good friend, laughing buddy, confidant etc. He is a complete package.

The results that I have experienced with Berhane are unbelievable. The number one result is the renewing of my mind and the regular reminder from Berhane, "Take care of the inside of your body and the outside will take care of itself." He has made a believer out of me, and he is also on my team forever.

Biking with friends in Montreal!

Biking in Vermont!

So, I am on a roll with this health thing and will not be stopped anytime soon. In the world that we live in with processed foods everywhere, eating consciously will always be a struggle, but remember, I don't view struggle as a bad thing. I am determined to eat things that are good for my body and do some sho' nuff challenging exercises regularly.

There are no easy lasting fixes. A person must be willing to make changes for A LIFETIME, yes A LIFETIME, in order to see LASTING results.

Eventually, I had to stop talking about this health thing and just be healthy.

This is where I am, and I hope that you will join me.

Fit for Life!!!!

I had to add a little TOO SHORT, who is my favorite rapper, and this is also my THEME song. By the way, this song was on what was suppose to be his last CD......Go figure!

Read Part 1

Read Part 2

Read Part 3

Read Part 4

Part 1 "If there is no struggle, there is no progress!"



Frederick Douglass

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.” Frederick Douglass

The above lines are the beginning of a speech given by Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, in 1857, in New York. He was referring to the struggle for freedom, and the idea that if a man will not fight for his own freedom, he definitely is not going to fight for someone elses freedom, and there is really no reason for anyone to fight for his freedom.

Deep right? Now, I do not want to put my struggles in the same categories as Frederick Douglass'. That would be plain crazy. I have not had to fight for half of the things that Douglass had to fight for: to be considered a man, to own land, to freely travel etc. But, if a person is in the mist of any type of struggle, it may not be the type of struggle that Douglass had, but at that moment, it may feel like it.

So, here is my divergence from literature to talk about struggle and not just any struggle but my struggle. To struggle for something to me is not negative, it is actually positive. It does not mean that you have to fight somebody or struggle against forces for something to happen, but it does mean that you must put in some work and be patient in order to see progress, and a little work ain't never hurt nobody.

I have been working with this trainer, Berhane, whom I absolutely love. Working out with him is the best two hours that I spend each week. Every workout is a struggle, and just when I thought that I had mastered the burbies, he added more burbies and other exercise that are even more challenging than the burbies. If you have never done a burbie before, please try to do at least two and tell me what you think. lol

Each week I look forward to the sessions and spending time with Berhane, but while there, I talk a lot of trash: "You must be mad at me," "Why am I doing this exercise?" "You are ridiculous" etc. One day I was in the bathroom changing into my workout clothes, and I heard a grown man screaming "I AM NOT A MACHINE," so periodically I scream those exact same words.

Today, I rushed in to workout with Berhane, and I was so excited because I had downloaded My Fitness Pal to my phone, and I had started tracking every calorie, and to my surprise, I thought I was doing real good.

Berhane had this look on his face, and that look means that he is really thinking, and that's never good news for me. Like the time when I got on the scale and I was up a whole 6 pounds. He had that look, and he started saying that maybe he was working my legs to hard etc. He was trying to figure out what was he doing wrong to cause that drastic weight gain, and I had to confess that I  felt that if I was doing 8 million burbies a week and was running and biking on my own, I thought that on the weekends, I could go crazy with my drinks and food. And boy did I go crazy.  I got the long, difficult speech about this is about your health blah, blah, blah. In the beginning it was a real struggle not to have lots of drinks and food on the weekend, and guess what? This is a struggle where I have seen tremendous progress. WOOHOO

So, today, he had that same look when I showed him the calorie counter on my phone. He did not say anything, initially, but he had that look as he was trying to kill me. Eventually, he said, how many grams of sugar are you eating in a day. I thought "Oh damn, here he goes again." And I told him the number, but I let him know that the sugar was coming from fruit, and he stated "You should only have 15 grams of sugar a day." Damn, I was just thinking about how good and sweet summer fruits are: nectarines, plums, peaches etc. Oh my!! I was reminded that "you eat and exercise for your health, and tooooo much sugar is not good for the body, even if it comes from fruit." 

Damn, another struggle, now I got to cut back on my favorite summer fruits!!!!!! In my Florida Evan's voice: DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!

When Frederick Douglass stated that if a man will not fight for himself, he definitely will not fight for anyone else, and there is no reason for anyone else to fight for him, I have taken this saying and applied it to my health: I got to keep struggling for my health, so that I can help others struggle for their health, so that I can keep Berhane struggling with me.

Literally, when it comes to my health: "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." It is such a happy struggle, and I am not joking....



Berhane: The Man Who is Struggling With Me!



Read Part 2
Read Part 3
Read Part 4
Read Part 5