I can’t believe it’s been one year since The Great Fitness Blogging Experiment. A lot of you have asked about Linden and how she’s doing. Here is her own update from her blog Linden’s Pensieve.
It’s a year and one debilitating* knee injury later, and while I’ve gained most of that weight back, I feel like I’ve made some significant changes in my life, changes that will eventually lead to a healthy Linden, which was my main goal in the Great Fitness Blogging Experiment and still is now.
Exercising
Because of that lingering effin injury, I don’t have too much to report in this category, but I did do a 60-second plank nearly every day during the Summer of Bliss, and I continued for three more weeks after, but I think it might be aggravating my knee, so I’ve stopped for now.
I have a great arsenal of body weight exercises in my bag of tricks, thanks to Pamela, and I need to work on making working out a part of my daily life. That will be one of my goals for the next year ahead, as I baby step my way to fitness.
Eating
I’ve made 3 1/2 significant changes in this area compared to before the Great Fitness Blogging Experiment: I have a healthy breakfast habit, healthy snacking habits, and My Dr. Pepper drinking is under control (not eliminated, but under control). The half is lunch: I’ve got a strategy for eliminating poor choices (fast food, processed food) for lunch, and I’ve three weeks in to building that habit.
Breakfast is two hard boiled eggs if I have the time to make them in the morning (I’ve tried making them all ahead on Sunday, but I really like them fresh and warm). If I don’t have the time for hard boiled eggs, I have oatmeal with peanut butter or PB2. My goal is to have lots of fiber or protein because then I don’t get hungry until lunch time, which means little to no chance for poor snacking habits. The eggs are awesome! They keep me full for 3 hours. Love it.
Snacks are mainly nuts–plain roasted almonds, trail mix, Thai chili lime cashews (Trader Joe’s FTW!), Blue Diamond Wasabi Soy Almonds–Greek yogurt, protein shakes, and veggies–edamame, carrots, steamed or fresh broccoli, salad. I’ve got my desk stocked at work and the snack cabinet and fridge stocked at home. I have to have some willpower to choose my healthy snacks over Rob’s cookies and German chocolates and ice cream, but more time than not I make a good choice. 🙂
I’m substituting coffee or tea and limiting my Dr. Pepper intake. Right now, I’m trying to have more Dr. Pepper-free days a week than Dr. Pepper days. Limiting myself gets easier every week, although I do have weak days.
I’m trying to have a regular lunch meal, planned and prepared ahead, so that I won’t consider skipping the meal or running for fast food. And that prepared meal is going to be a homemade black bean patty with various dressings—sometimes as a sandwich, sometimes by itself with side veggies or over rice.
Once I’ve got this habit solidified, I’ll add some other meals, but if I’ve learned one thing from working with Pamela, it’s that unless I have someone keeping very close tabs on me and pushing me to do better, I cannot make lots of changes on my own and expect to stick with them long-term. And I’m okay with that because my baby steps in this journey will eventually become permanent, healthy habits.
Summary
There is no physical improvement from when I finished working with Pamela, which I am fully responsible for and which I fully regret. However, I’m not focusing on failures. I am focusing on making positive, healthy changes that I can stick with, and I know that that will mean success, even it if isn’t the quick success promised by diet pills or surgery or any other weight-loss “miracle solutions.”
Notes
* I don’t want to exaggerate, so let me say that I can walk just fine, but running, and even planking once a day, irritates my knees. The not-being-able-to-run part is what I consider to be debilitating and which makes me angry if I think about it too long or too often. I love running, and I am still upset that I still can’t.
