Back to Some Normalcy

What an insane week, guys! I had totally planned to update this on gym days, but that obviously fell to the wayside. But I survived! Got through 8 nights straight and I may have just a teeny bit of sanity left.

In all reality, it could have been worse. I stayed pretty strong for the first 5 nights and then it was all downhill from there, but I got a lot further than I thought I was going to. It helped that things have gotten pretty busy in the hospital this week so we were basically steady all night for most of the nights. Sunday night came though and I hit the wall and I hit it hard. My patience was wearing thin, I was starting to run low on sleep and my food intake was basically consisting of one real meal a day with whatever snacks I had on the overnight. Luckily the one thing that hung on until almost the end was my energy levels. Maybe it's because we were busy, but I was making it through the night without issues and there were a couple days where I would come home and get other stuff done before sleeping. So that part was great!

I wasn't a perfect angel with my eating, but I'd say I was a solid 95%. There were a couple nights I hit up the breakfast potato bar in the cafeteria. Plus Matt and I did a mini date night at Moe's last Friday. I actually found towards the end of the week that I was not eating nearly enough. By the time I was actually getting home in the morning and getting to bed, I was waking up at a time where I basically ate dinner and then hung out until I went to work. So my daily food consumption consisted of whatever snacks I had on the overnight, and dinner. I was eating pretty hearty snacks like yogurt, granola, deli chicken and cheese so I didn't feel like I was starving. But I think that was part of the problem too because my hunger signals get so messed up on nights that I just never really felt hungry and never really felt that drive to eat. The one good thing that came out of it was that I was chugging water like a bandit. I was one well-hydrated machine, let me tell you.

Sleep. Yeah that sucked. The first two nights I just came home and got right into bed. The blackout curtains helped...but only so much. I would get like a solid 4-5 hours straight and then be off an on for another 2. So I was getting by with like 6 hours of sleep. Certainly could have been worse. As the week dragged on though it was harder and harder to wake up and get out of bed and I could feel myself getting a little more worn out towards the end of the night. But I still had the energy to get through most of my shift without having to excessively caffeinate so I'll take what I can get. These past few days I've been focusing more on staying off the phone and just reading a book instead which has helped a lot with letting me chill out before it's time to sleep. The reintegration back to a not nocturnal schedule has been tough. Wednesday night I slept for about 3 hours annnnnnd then was wide awake at 230. Last night was a little bit better but I was still off and on a lot after about 2AM.

The gym is the place where I can officially say I pulled off some stuff that I can look back on and be really proud of. So I knew I would need to find a day last week after work to get there so I could get my 3 days in. I picked Friday. The original plan was to do the 330PM class after I woke up but the more I thought about it, the more I knew that's not what was going to happen. So Thursday night I packed all my stuff up and decided I was biting the bullet and going to the 730AM class right after work. It was dicey because if anything catastrophic happened last minute I wouldn't have been able to make it, but I knew I'd be super relieved to just be done for the day and could just go home and go to sleep. So I did it, and honestly it didn't take as much convincing as I thought it would. I felt really energized and ready to go as I was walking out of work so I just got in the car and went.

The workout was:
3x10 Romanian Deadlift at 55-60% of 1RM deadlift
3x15 supine tricep extension
then
4 rounds for time
6 push jerk
12 reverse lunges
1 mile bike
2 min rest

The romanian deadlifts felt pretty good. They're basically straight leg deadlifts, which up until about 3 months ago I was always doing these anyway because I had horrible deadlift form. I took it easy and did 65 pounds. My back wasn't thrilled about these, but once I learned how to brace myself properly it started to feel better. The tricep extensions I did with one of the training bars which are 15 pounds. It doesn't sound heavy but once you're done with a set after using that slow tempo, you feel it. The conditioning felt really good. I did 65 pounds for the push jerks. I probably could have gone heavier. The reverse lunges went a lot better than I expected. Maybe those split squats are starting to do me some good! The bike it was taking me about 3 minutes to do a mile after finding a pace that I could keep up with the whole time.

Saturday morning we hit up the market for some food. We didn't buy any meat this time, but we got some good veggies. Our planned meals for this week were turkey taco "salads" which are basically ground turkey with taco seasoning, rice and tomatoes. We usually put a can of Rotel in there, but we had so many leftover tomatoes that I just used those and mixed some fresh cilantro in there. The other meal was grilled burgers with corn and a side salad. So we got all the veggies for those. We already had burgers in our freezer from one of Matt's coworkers and that just left needing to get ground turkey at Wegmans.

Sunday was really frustrating. Usually Sundays (or sometimes Saturdays) are our "get ready for the week" days, but with me sleeping during the day and Matt being at work all day both days, we missed out and I felt all kinds of out of sorts. I think that's about the time that I just hit a wall. I was sick of working and done with my normal schedule being royally messed up. Up until that day, I was doing fine and getting through it, but that's when it really hit me that I was at least temporarily still stuck in my alternative nocturnal universe. No meal prep got done and we barely finished the laundry. And it just felt really overwhelming that our week was not going to get off to a good start. We fortunately still had food left over from the week before so we didn't need to go find alternatives, which never ends up being anything good.

Monday I got out of work at 4AM so I drove home, picked Matt up and we went to the gym. I felt strangely pretty good about working out this day too. It helped that I was just full of rage from the night before so it helped to have the outlet.

The workout was:
3x12+12 split squats
4x12 banded barbell curls
then
"Diane"
21-15-9 Deadlifts and handstand pushups

I swear to god those split squats will never get easier. I'm still using an empty bar and it's just about impossible. My quads overall are feeling stronger....except I'm feeling the benefits in movements that aren't split squats. They're just ridiculous. The barbell curls felt pretty good. They just have us using the same weight everytime for now. Diane I felt really good. I finished in 6:09, which was about the same as everyone else. The prescribed weight for the deadlifts was 135, which would be very heavy for me, so I went with 95 pounds. Again, my back felt a little jacked up at first but once I got the form and the bracing down, it felt totally fine. Then instead of handstand push ups I did kneeling dumbbell presses. I felt so weak with those because I used the 20 pound dumbbells and it still was pretty hard.

Tuesday I got out at 4AM, but the gym just wasn't going to happen. I was exhausted and just felt awful. So I went home, took some zyrtec and coma'd for awhile. Got some decent sleep out of it too, which I think I was needing more than anything else. I was disappointed about missing gym time, but I was just done. So I did as much sleeping as I could instead.

Wednesday I got off work and was finally done! Yayyy!!! I was initially planning to find some people that could hang out with me and keep me awake so I could get off the nocturnal schedule as soon as possible, but as some of you likely saw on FB, I deemed Wednesday to be Antisocial Day. I ended up with no desire to be around people. I usually end up doing this every once in awhile after long stretches at my job because by the time I'm done with them, I just want a day where I can lay on the couch and not have to worry about solving problems, using my brain, or really doing anything productive at all. And once I saw it was forecasted to rain all day Wednesday, well, my mind was made up so I went for it. And it was the best decision I could have made. I took a couple hour nap when I got home and once I woke up, I fed myself then laid on the couch and caught up on some TV shows. I don't like doing these days as often as I used to because I end up feeling guilty for it if I start doing it too much, but every once in awhile, I just need the day to recharge. I also end up needing the day to take stock of the tasks I set aside while I was working and figure out when I'm going to get those done. So by nighttime on Wednesday I had a pretty hefty to do list.

Thursday morning we went to the gym. I literally felt like asshole. Not AN asshole, but just asshole. I'd been up since 230 and I now had a splitting headache to boot. So I took some Aleve and we went. It ended up being a really good workout though!

Workout was:
4-5 rounds for time
10 goblet squats
10 box jumps
400m run
Rest 3 min.

Part 2
50'x50' side shuffle
16 alternating walking lunges without weight
5+5 lateral lunge
100' + 100' one arm KB carry

I initially went into this workout just telling myself to move and not worry about my time or how exactly I did. I did the prescribed weight for the goblet squats, which was 35 pounds. The box jumps I initially grabbed a 16" box and just did step ups, but after the first round I realized that I felt pretty good and instead grabbed a shorter box and did the jumps instead. Then instead of the run I just biked for 2 minutes. For Part 2 I didn't do the full 12 minutes because we ran out of time but I got through 1.5 rounds. It ended up being a good cooldown but man my quads were not appreciative.

I likely won't be making it any other days this week. I might motivate myself to go to open gym tomorrow but we'll see. I'm taking the next 2 days to get my house in order because it looks like it exploded on the inside, plus it hasn't really been cleaned since my wedding, so it's time. Cleaning can be considered active recovery right?

Overall, I think this week went much better than I expected. It was tough. That part was expected and really there was nothing I could do about it. But we survived. We're still going to be playing catch up until at least Sunday, but at least we have that day this week to get things done so I don't have to go into another week feeling not ready.

Sorry for the super long catch-up post! Had a few other things to chat about, but I don't want this getting to be a novel, so we'll do it later. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up a little better this next week.

Have a fun weekend and don't melt!

Surviving Nights, A Crash Course

Happy Tuesday! The sun is shining, the temp has dropped like 20 degrees so I'm sitting outside to write this. I needed the excuse to test out the new lounge chair I got. My recent time on the West Coast has taught me that I definitely needed the Vitamin D so I told myself I would make an effort this summer to get outside more often. I also left the West Coast with horrendous tan lines and I need to make those go away before I go to Jamaica at the end of August. So here I am!

Today was another gym day. Workout was:
7x1 overhead squats, slow on the way down
then...
3 rounds for time
10 stone to shoulder
100' + 100' farmer carry each arm with a kettlebell
100 jump rope
2:00 rest

Wasn't feeling too bad today! My quads were a little tired from yesterday but they held up pretty well. I ended up using 95# for the overhead squats. Kind of makes sense since my snatch 1 rep is 95 pounds so I'm pretty on par with that.

The conditioning part was fun. It's been a hot minute since I did stones in a workout so it was cool to pick those up again. We were told to use a moderate weight, which I tried the stone that I would have thought would be "moderate" and determined there was no way I'd be picking that up 30 times so I went down in weight. Overall I felt good. Finished in 14:26. Really my biggest goal right now is not to be a speed demon or anything like that. I just want to be moving, finish the workouts and maybe keep up with a couple people in my class. I'm not too picky right now since it's a step above me sleeping in. Pickiness can come later since it's still a struggle just to get myself up at an ungodly hour.

After the workout, I came home and kind of forced myself to go back to sleep. I start a string of 8 nights in a row tonight (yes, 8) so I wanted to start off on the right foot. I bought myself some blackout curtains so I turned my room into a bat cave and got another couple hours of sleep in.

Working nights has me nervous honestly. Because 1) I finally feel like I'm coming up with a routine that works and here it is already getting screwed up, 2) I really struggle to sleep during the day so usually by 3-4 nights in my body is done because I'm just exhausted, 3) I have to figure out a gym schedule around it because I get out too late to hit up the 5AM and 4) the off shift is a huge trigger for me. I basically end up eating to stay awake, the crunchier the better, because what else is there to do during that 4AM lull. 

I'm hoping the blackout curtains make a difference with #2 so maybe I've already inadvertently solved that one. I'll let you know my findings with that experiment. It's either that or I take some Zyrtec, which will put me in a coma for a few hours. With #3 I luckily have a couple advantageous days off. Yesterday and today I didn't work so I hit up the gym to get 2 days done. That just leaves me having to suck it up and get my ass to an afternoon class either Thursday or Friday. Then next Monday and Tuesday I get out at 4AM so I'll just get myself home and hop in the car with Matt. It's gonna suck to work out after being up all night, but I think it's for the best. Then the hell streak ends so by the end of the week I should be back on a normal schedule. You know you've changed when you're horrified at the thought of going to any class other than 5AM simply because you know the people. They know me, I know them, we all get along, they know I'm riding the struggle bus. Not that the other classes don't have amazing people - I just don't know them. It's ridiculous, I know. But this is what happens when you work out in a group setting.

#1 and #4 are going to be where the real struggle comes in. It feels a little early in my journey to be throwing a huge wrench like this into the mix, but there's not really anything I can do about it. So I have to just deal and hope I can stay strong. I bought some healthy snacks already. I got myself some deli chicken slices and mozzarella along with yogurt that I can mix with some granola and PB2. I think we also have some cucumbers I can bring for a crunchy snack. I haven't put all this stuff into MyFitnessPal yet so I don't even know if it'll fit into the plan, so that might be a big wrench. Maybe I should just play it super safe and leave my credit cards at home....

The thing is, I'm actually excited for these snacks so I think they'll keep me on the straight and narrow. I have this granola that I discovered in Hawaii called Anahola Granola and oh my God it is amazing. All natural, no additives or things I've never heard about. It has all the usual oats and stuff along with dried pineapple, guava and mango. Ugh, so good. I mix it with plain yogurt and a little bit of honey as sweetener. I kind of want some right now but I have to be careful today since I'm not sleeping half the day away so I'm kind of holding myself back so I don't get stuck without any macros while I'm at work. Tomorrow hopefully it won't be so bad since I'll sleep through basically breakfast and lunch and then be on a night eating schedule officially.

Either way, my previous record for a night shift streak is 4, so I'm hoping I never have to do this again. Part of it is my fault, but at the same time it doesn't feel that way. I was scheduled for 4 in a row, 1 off, then 3 in a row. I saw there was an open shift on the night I had off so I decided to take it because at the end of the day, I'm still working nights until next Tuesday and why would I stay home for one night in the middle of it and get all kinds of even more screwed up. Just didn't make sense to me.

With me luck friends, this is about to be a massive suckfest. I'll probably check in on my next gym day :)

Meal Prep Sunday

So first off, I'd just like to correct my previous post. I can't do math....it's actually been 5 years since 2013. There, got that off my chest, my OCD was killing me.

On to more fun things.

Yesterday we were both off work so it ended up being our meal prep/laundry/catch up day. We had already gotten our food shopping done the day before at the Rochester Public Market so that was a relief. Meal prep for us is sometimes hard. We both work jobs where at least one of us is working a weekend day, sometimes if we're really unlucky we both are. So we've looked for ways to make life as easy as possible and I think we've got a pretty good system now.

For breakfasts, we both do boiled eggs and Kodiak Cakes single serve flapjacks. We both really enjoy the flapjacks. They're flavorful and made with protein. All you have to do is add water (or milk) to the cup and microwave it for a minute. And eggs are easy enough to boil up and peel so we just make one big batch every week.

Lunches we currently use a premade meal delivery service called Balanced Body, which we both love. I was getting so tired of trying to come up with healthy lunches AND dinners with juggling an ever-changing work schedule and it's made life so much easier for both of us. Not to mention the food is really good. It's simply prepared and the menu changes every 2 weeks so we don't get bored. Everything comes prepackaged with the macros written on the labels so it's easy to track too. They do have the option to buy breakfasts too, but I've found that breakfast isn't their strong point so we stick with lunches.

Dinners this week we're on Week 2 of just keeping it simple. I've used MyFitnessPal so many times in the past, but as I told Melissa, it actually drives me to packaged foods after awhile because I get sick of having to measure every little thing so I gravitate towards the things that have a scannable bar code and that's when I start to fall off the wagon. One of the suggestions she gave us was to take a break from structured recipes and just work on make a meat and a veggie. So we've done that and honestly it's been such a relief 1) because we can now actually get most of our ingredients from the market with only a small side trip to Wegmans and 2) it's 10X easier to track.

So our first meal is Seven Bridges pork chops marinated in Chiavetta's. We cooked it in the sous vide and finished it on the grill. Then we grilled up some zucchini and I made a caprese salad for the sides. I had completely forgotten how good Chiavetta's is, but now I plan to use it a lot more. It's basically vinegar and spices so not a ton of nutritional content but packs some really great flavor.

Second meal is Wegmans marinated chicken cutlets that we also threw in the sous vide and finished on the grill. They made a new marinade, Rosemary Balsamic, which is delicious. Highly recommend. Sides are roasted potatoes and green beans.

Before we could get down to creating these delicious meals we had to do this fun activity called staining our fence. We got up pretty early to try and tackle it before it hit 90 degrees outside but lemme tell you, even at 8 in the morning it got unbearable out there fast. So by 1030 we were back inside to get cracking on the cooking and then settled in to build some Legos for a couple hours before going to see Incredibles 2 (awesome movie, btw, you need to go see it). We did cheat a little bit at the movie and got popcorn for dessert <_<

Today we hit the gym. The workout was:
Part 1: 3x10+10 front foot elevated split squat
Part 2: 3x15 banded barbell curl
Part 3 (partner workout):
8 rounds (each partner does 4) 
3 full cleans
200m sprint
1 rope climb

Lately we've been doing a lot of tempo work to try and work hard during the eccentric phase of movements so all the strength stuff has a slow tempo, which makes it so much harder. I ended up using an empty bar for the squats because I find them very difficult. The barbell curls aren't so bad but you start to feel it around the 10th rep.

For part 3, I ended up modifying a bunch of stuff. I used 95# for the cleans, which was decently difficult, I don't think I would have pushed the weight much more than that. Instead of running I rowed 250m. I can't even think about running right now. Between my back and my plantar fasciitis I just would not be able to do it without losing the ability to walk afterwards so I've been consistently modifying any running that gets prescribed. Then the rope climbs I did the half rope where you start sitting on the floor and just pull yourself to standing. Those were hard enough.

All in all I felt pretty good today, which was a relief over last week. It'll be a very long time before I use anything other than an empty barbell with the split squats, but overall I felt a little stronger than I have lately. I took a little more time this weekend to just relax instead of running around the whole time and I think that ended up making a huge difference. The past couple weeks have been kind of crazy where if I wasn't working, I was doing errands or working around the house or what have you so there hasn't been enough time to just chill. My to do list is a mile long, but the things of things I'd like to do if given the time is also decently long too so at some point I need to figure out a balance.

That's basically been the gist of the past 48 hours. Tomorrow is another gym day and I go back to work, but maybe I'll squeeze in just a little more R&R if possible. Thankfully it's supposed to not be 90 so maybe I see some outside time in my future?

Hope everyone had a good Monday!

Back in the Saddle.....Yet Again

Dear Internet,

I'm officially back after like a 4 year hiatus. Seriously I think it's been a full 4 years if my review of previous posts is correct. A lot has changed in that time! I started dating my best friend, went off to PA school for two years, graduated with a Master's degree, got engaged, moved back here, started a new job, got married..........and in the meantime got unmotivated, addicted to food and really chubby.

So, here I am, deciding on a Saturday night to get the blog going again. Why, you might ask? Well, because I think I'm finally getting to the point where I'm sick of my bullshit, and I realized that at this point 4 years ago I was in the best shape of my life and using a blog to help me stay somewhat on track. I guess in that time vlogging has become more of a thing but I don't feel like talking to myself on a computer screen. So I'm giving this a go again. Not sure if I'm going to be able to make this a daily thing with my life being much crazier than it used to be, but I'm going to try and stay as up to date as possible.

To start things off, a little recap of how we got back here.....

Honestly, I'm not sure why I stopped blogging in the first place. It was a lot of fun and reading back through some of my previous posts tonight reminded me of all the great times I had. What probably happened is that I likely fell of the wagon again and was embarrassed to talk about it. I'm pretty sure that's what went down there.

Looks like I left off in June 2013. Pretty much don't remember much of that summer other than working a bunch and just getting to the gym as often as possible. I started dating Matt in August of that year and I remember doing another Paleo challenge that ran until my birthday. Did really great with that one, I remember losing even more weight and feeling awesome. I'm not sure if that's the one where I had to do Helen as a baseline workout or not...but I do remember shaving like 3 minutes off my time of whatever workout I did (crazy the things we remember). After that is when things started to go to shit. I remember being in the throes of PA school applications and so here comes the stress eating. And it was bad. I really don't know how I don't have heart disease or diabetes yet because I was doing some pretty shameful things with bags of chips and jars of nutella. I was also just reckless. I'd just come off a paleo challenge, thought I was some sort of badass, and went balls to the wall with all the crap food I'd been holding myself back from. I was going out to eat a lot. I was stress eating on the daily. Working out took a backseat. I thought that whenever my boyfriend and I would meal prep it would be a good idea to eat as much as he could. I lost sight of my priorities and just let myself go. And then had the nerve to be shocked when I put like 20 pounds back on within a matter of months.

But it didn't stop at 20 pounds....nope. By the time 2014 hit I was in deep. But it was ok because I got an interview to one of my top pick PA schools. And then got waitlisted......for 3 months. And then got rejected from all the rest of the schools I applied to. And it was around that point that things got really bad at my volunteer job. So, I said fuck it and rode out the rest of the winter wearing baggy hoodies and being thankful I'd had the forethought to keep one of my larger duty shirts while putting on more weight. I still worked out, but not nearly as often and not nearly as hard as I was before, so I was still putting on weight.

Fast forward a few months and I get into PA school. Thank God, right? I'm supposed to be happy, right? Sure, but was I? Nope! Now I signed myself up for a long distance relationship. But it's ok, I've got a few more months to enjoy life so let's start working out a little more and caring a little more. Which, thankfully kept me from putting on more weight during this time, but it was only a temporizing measure until PA school hit.

PA school was probably the hardest thing I've ever done and also probably the lowest point in my life. My health hit rock bottom and I'm just now starting to feel ready to fight back. I basically sat on my ass all day long, whether it was in class, studying, what have you. Physical activity was scarce. My one priority became just to survive and that's all I cared about. So how did I choose to survive? Eating. My first semester alone I packed on like 25 pounds. My metabolism is slow to begin with, and then I added inactivity and a lot of Chinese food to it and it just slowed to a crawl.

I won't bore you much more with all the details of how I wrecked my body during those 2 years, but I will tell you that in that time I lost a ton of muscle mass, packed on a lot of pounds, I was constantly in pain from my back (which granted, has always been bad but I'd compensated with working out and keeping my core strong) and I had also developed sciatica. All at 25 years old. Go me!

So I get back from PA school. Now with a wedding to plan. Nbd, that'll be great motivation to get my ass back to the gym! So I got myself back to BoomTown just a little over a year ago. And let me tell you, it's been a struggle. I still had a bad back. I was terrified of hurting myself because half of the movements I was doing hurt my back in some way and I was sore as hell, all the time. So I didn't really re-dedicate myself the way I was hoping to. In this time, Matt had also joined and I had also figured out that with my job, the only way I was guaranteed some gym time was 5AM. A time of day I make a habit of not seeing very often. And I've struggled with it ever since. Sure I was going to the gym like once or twice a week, just often enough that people didn't forget what I looked like, but not enough for my body to change. And even though my back felt a little better after working out and moving, that decrease in pain was STILL not enough to get me off my ass. So I just plugged along like that pretty much up until my wedding.

Now, in the meantime, that's not to say I didn't try to change things up at least a little. I started seeing a chiropractor who put some major work into me. I put her through her paces every time she saw me. She found my SI joints are very unstable, my lower back, pelvic muscles and hamstrings are constantly tight and things overall were just not moving the way they should. I had like 1/4 of the range of motion I used to have. But within a few sessions my sciatica had gone away and I was already feeling better. And then a few months down the road, I started seeing Amanda, a coach at BoomTown and a massage therapist who helped even more with the muscular issues I was having. Then there's another chiropractor at the office that's been making sure I'm relearning how to do movements like deadlifts and olympic lifts safely again because my form was downright scary. So, from that front, I can honestly say I'm so thankful to be done with all that pain. My back still hurts and it gets tweaked every once in a while, but it doesn't even come close to comparing to where I was a year ago. I literally never want to be in that kind of pain again.

Here we are now, in the present. My wedding is done, we went on an incredible honeymoon and I can tentatively say that life may actually be able to settle out now. If you were looking for like this horrible life-changing event that would scare me straight, I'm unfortunately about to disappoint you because that's not how this went down.

One of the owners at BoomTown has started really focusing on the nutrition aspect of the gym. So she now runs a nutrition program that people can sign up for. There's not really a focus on Paleo anymore, it's just how can you get to be a healthier you and have better relationships with food. We'd talked about me doing it, but I had told her it needed to wait until after the wedding because I knew I wouldn't dedicate myself the way I needed to. And now that I'm post-wedding, it's time to hit that up. So last weekend both Matt and I met with her and officially started with Be Well Blueprint. And while I have to check in with her on a weekly basis and log my food on MyFitnessPal, it got me thinking of other ways that I could work on staying accountable.

While this past week has been nuts, I've been doing a lot of thinking. I guess the thing that bugs me the most is that I have no idea when I lost my ability to cope, and my ability to just keep getting back up again. I had 2013 by the horns. I had my routine figured out, I knew what I wanted in life, I was competing at CrossFit and doing well, I had just let my best friend out of the friend zone, I had my dog. For the most part, that year was really awesome. But it just seems like one day I mentally became very weak and I just stopped getting back up. I became unable to cope with stressors that came my way. Granted, these weren't your every day first world problems, but I keep wondering why I wasn't able to handle them. Either way, the past is the past, I went through hell and came out the other side, but I wonder sometimes what it's going to take for me to get my mojo back. I look back at my previous facebook statuses about the PRs I was hitting and how active I was and I'm like "what's it gonna take Ally? You did it once, you should be able to do it again." And then I read through some of the posts I made here before starting this one and it's sad to see the things that I used to be doing - working out 4-5 times a week, running on the side, working nights and making it all seem so easy.

A lot has changed in my life since then so in some ways I know I'm not 100% getting back to 2013, and that's not what I want. I just want the motivation and the drive back. It's taken a lot of trying to pinpoint what's been holding me back in the past year and it is 100% mental. I want to blame my body for it, but I can't anymore because that's fixed. It's all in my head and I don't know how to tell it to stop. I want to see the improvements I'm making and feel even more motivated by them. I want to be mentally tough again. Because the girl I am right now is not the girl that used to do 60-70 burpees in one workout and say "wow that sucked....be back tomorrow." I'm a lot more fearful now - maybe I fear the pain, maybe I fear failure, maybe I fear I will never get back to doing the things I used to do. Maybe it's just easier to be fat and not sore all the time. Who the fuck knows anymore. But I'm just praying that I'm at a point now where I'm actually ready to tackle this and at least try to be better, both physically and mentally. Because I have things that I want to do. I want to travel and be able to do active stuff without worrying about my ability to do it. Hell, I'll start small - it'd be nice to be able to sit comfortably on a plane again. I want to hit PRs again, and go Rx in workouts and actually look forward to working out. And maybe, deep down, very deep, I want to be able to run again.....that's at the bottom of the list though because running will always suck. But most of all, I want to be mentally strong again. I need to be. Because this emotional wreck I've turned into is just not fun. I get easily overwhelmed and I just shut down. I thankfully don't give up or I wouldn't be where I am today, but there have been some serious close calls. And I don't want to be that person for the rest of my life.

I don't really have a great way to round this out. I've always sucked at conclusion paragraphs. But at the end of the day, maybe getting my thoughts down will actually help me sift through them a little easier. Or at the very least will give me some interesting reading material in a few years. Or maybe I'll realize that I'm royally screwed up and should go see a real therapist. Who knows. Anything is possible I guess.

If you made it this far, you're crazy...just kidding! You're awesome for sticking it out because I tend to ramble. A lot. I don't expect to reach a huge audience with this, it's more for me than anything else. But either way, hope everyone is having a good weekend!