Opting Out of the Numbers Game

Here are a few things I'm going to try to focus on in the near future as I try to improve my weight-loss results:

1. Stop weighing myself. I love statistics. I love to know the numbers. I thought this was because I liked to measure my progress, but I find more often I'm using it to berate myself for my lack of progress. When I remind myself daily, or several times a week at least, just how much weight I'm not losing, surprise! I get depressed. Depression doesn't help me stay out of the self-medication habit, and it doesn't help me stay motivated.

2. Stop making my workouts so mathematically regimented. I've been working out on a treadmill. I was writing down time, distance, and calories consumed so that I could compare workout to workout. Have I mentioned I love statistics? "I had a 3.8% better workout today than I did last Wednesday." Fascinating tidbit to exactly no one but me. Mrs. Rodius almost tried to sound enthusiastic when I'd report these little factoids. "Great!" But I could tell she wasn't. Not really.

I was also rigidly sticking to grade, speed, and time patterns: begin walking, 8.0 grade at 3.8 mph. At 5:00, increase speed to 5.2 mph for 1:30. Return to walking. Repeat at 15:00, 25:00, etc. Then I could again track progress. Next week, increase speed to 3.9. Next week increase jogging time to 2:00. Next week increase grade to 8.5. And so on.

But man, that was getting boring. And I found I'd hit a wall trying to jog at 5.5 mph on a 10.0 grade for 2:30. So on Monday, I started a new tack. I walk for a couple of minutes, I jog for a couple of minutes. I don't try to keep the numbers on a schedule that I can remember so I can compare it to my next workout. I just try to continually push myself. I jog at a grade and speed that I can handle. If it's too easy, I increase it. When I run out of breath, I walk again. When I can breathe, I jog again. I vary the grade, I vary the speed, and I just try to keep my body working.

I tried it again today, and I got a new record: 841 calories in 45 minutes! I hadn't broken the 800 mark the old way. See, I told you I love the statistics, and the comparing. Then I get anxiety thinking about always using the same treadmill. Because this one may not compare to that one exactly. And if the gym is closed and I workout outside, I don't even have a timer! And how do you measure the grade? And the treadmill I have at home, it doesn't even let me input weight! How am I supposed to believe its calorie computations when it doesn't even know how much I weigh? I can't, that's how! And if you can't trust your treadmill, who can you trust in this crazy world of ours?

3. I'm going to stop listening to my beloved iPod every workout. I will probably still listen to it most workouts. I like to listen to cheesy electronic club music that I'd never listen to in any other situations, because damn, does that beat keep you moving. But I discovered today, when I accidentally left my headphones at home, that it's a lot easier to keep up a good breathing rhythm when I can actually hear my breath. I've had breathing problems since I was pneumoniac two-year-old. And of course the smoking for 15 years didn't help. Now I haven't had a cigarette since July, but I'm still huffing and wheezing and mouth-breathing through my workouts because I just can't move enough air. And Holy Jesuses, I don't know if you live in Austin, but there has been a "Heavy" or "High" mold count in this town virtually every day since August. August was when I started paying attention to it, because all that time, I thought I couldn't breathe because of the cigarettes. It wasn't enough to get me quit, mind you. Then when I quit, and I still couldn't breathe, I started to pay attention to the allergy reports. I think a good way for me to test if I'm allergic to mold is if my symptoms go away when the mold count is down, but as I may already have mentioned: IT NEVER GOES DOWN HERE! Ever.

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, the iPod, and the turning it off now and then so maybe I can actually listen to my body occasionally. Crazy thought, right? I've always believed in the iPod's ability to take my mind away from focusing on every one of the two thousand seven hundred ticks of the clock during my workout. But I'm measuring every second of it anyway, so it's not like my mind every really wanders that far. In fact, I get annoyed when it does, because then I lose where I was in my minute-by-minute tracking of my walk-run-walk cycle. I even listened to audiobooks to take my mind off the long, dark monotony of regular exercise, but I kept losing my place because I couldn't listen to the narrator and do my counting and calculating all at the same time.

So, yeah. All of that to say I'm going to try to make my workouts more organic and pay more attention to what's going on with my body. Profound, right? I wonder why no one else has ever thought of this.