As some of you may know, I've been struggling with a lot of health issues basically since high school. Start with a sucky immune system, add gaining 100lbs, overeating while missing important nutrients, and a string of injuries causing me to get further and further out of shape, and you have one big mess of an Anja. I've tinkered with trying to get back into shape many times, between promising myself more exercise time, or diet changes, or more sleep, or whatever. However, I have inevitably failed to make any changes stick. So, I'm going a few steps further this time around in order to keep up my motivation and to give myself more accountability.
I want to point out that I'm not solely looking to lose weight... losing weight and getting thinner will be a bonus of getting back into physical fitness, strengthening my body and immune system, eating better, and feeling better. Sure, I'd love to fit back into my little red dress from the early Ireland days (my feeling pretty again goal), but it's not the point of this journey. I want to be able to get through a vigorous dance class again feeling well worked out, not exhausted. I want to use up enough energy during the day that my insomnia will improve. I want to not feel hungry all the time because I fill up on mindless snacks that I regret a couple hours later when I'm hungry again. I want to be able to jump and leap without pain again (though I never was great at it to begin with, pretty much anything is better than where I am now). I want to not feel so heavy on my bones, so that my feet and knees might finally heal all the way. I want to not get every damn cold that goes around, even though I was like that before I gained the weight, getting in back in shape should still improve it somewhat.
When I was a skinny-mini, I ate pretty terribly and was dancing several hours every day. I hated vegetables, didn't get hardly any protein, and constantly had muscle cramps from lack of certain nutrients. In high school, I lived off of 3-5 hours of sleep during the week, and then would sleep 10-12 hours straight on weekends to make up for it. Even though I was thin and fairly athletic, I was not healthy by any stretch of the imagination.
Now, for my general goals:
- to improve cardiovascular health to improve asthma and stamina
- improve flexibility, especially in hips/groin
- lose weight to take excess pressure off of joints
- improve core strength to support my back and everything I do in dance
More focused goals:
- aim to get 30+ mins of walking in every day
- do some strength exercise, whether body weight, free weights, machine, or elastic bands, every day
- do some core exercise every day
- get down to my pre-Ireland weight of 175lbs.
As part of my get-back-in-shape plan, I've tried out a couple of different diet/exercise logs, both electronic and in print, for the most part with little success because I get bored, I forget to log, or it's just too much of hassle to remember everything I eat or every exercise I do. However, I'm hoping that's changing. I'm currently on a 1-month trial of the MyNetDiary site and Blackberry app, and so far I'm loving it a heck of a lot more than previous programs/sites. It's comprehensive in its food and exercise catalog, its interface both on the site and on the app are intuitive and clean cut, and it's relatively cheap, starting at $7/month and going down depending on how many months you pay for at a time. The community forums could use a little work, but I rarely use those more than just boredom-busting reading.
So, what does all this have to do with all you, my readers, family, and friends?
I'm looking for people interested in getting back into shape with me. People to go on walks with, go to the gym with, etc. People who may be interested in being my buddy on the MyNetDiary site (I get bonuses for referrals, so please let me know if you're interested in joining!). People who can just help keep me motivated and accountable. If I'm being lazy, they'd pester me to go for a walk. If I'm about to scarf down on something I really shouldn't, they'd point it out to me. For the most part I'm trying to be self-reliant and self-motivated, but it's tough when there's been so many failed attempts and it feels like there is so far to go. Bad habits die hard.
Anywho, any and all help with this journey is much appreciated. If you are interested in signing up for the site, please let me know and I'll send you an email invite.
And thank you to those of you who have supported me through all the frustration and the illnesses and injuries. It really has made this whole ordeal easier, and I'm sure the continued support will greatly help me in this new journey!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Just a thought
Although I know my blog doesn't get very many readers, I would encourage anyone who does read it to contact me if they have any issues with something I have said.
Sometimes I use this blog to rant out frustrations that seem to be relieved more through writing than just talking about it. As such, my last post most certainly came from a place of frustration, and while I tried to be careful to remain as tactful as possible, I understand that some people may have been offended by it.
So, as I have said, please don't hesitate to comment, email, or otherwise contact me to discuss any ideas you may have about my postings.
Sometimes I use this blog to rant out frustrations that seem to be relieved more through writing than just talking about it. As such, my last post most certainly came from a place of frustration, and while I tried to be careful to remain as tactful as possible, I understand that some people may have been offended by it.
So, as I have said, please don't hesitate to comment, email, or otherwise contact me to discuss any ideas you may have about my postings.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Ok, rant time...
Consider this situation:
A week before your midterm exam, you are told in class what format the exam will take: it will be an in-class essay covering everything we have discussed in class up to this point, specifically focusing on the issues of social justice. Two days before the exam, you are given the actual assignment as well as the grading scale, so that you can prepare an outline to bring to class for the midterm to aid you in writing your essay. After the midterms are graded, you are shocked to find out how low your grade is. In class, the teacher discusses how a good deal of the class failed to fully answer the questions in their essays.
This actually happened in a class I'm in, and my fellow students' reactions disgusted me for the most part, and I barely kept my comments civil as I mentioned how much time and preparation we were allowed to have versus what we would get in, say, an English class. I am willing to bet that 90% of my classmates did poorly because of one of the following reasons:
1) They do not take the class seriously at all because it's one of the few academic classes we must take through the dance department and therefore is low priority against academic classes from other divisions. Thus, they do not do the reading assignments, half-ass the few assignments we are given, and did not prepare at all for the exam because they expected it to be easy.
2) They do not take the class seriously because the teacher is a little scatterbrained and they have a hard time following her lines of thought. Rather than ask the teacher for clarification if they did not understand the midterm assignment questions, they decided to interpret it their own way and figure she won't care because she is an "easy" teacher.
3) They did not fully read or understand the directions for the essay and did not bother to listen when the teacher explained the assignment in class on several occasions.
Instead, this is what one of them claimed: "I'm not good at in-class essays because I can't organize my thoughts in the small amount of time given." So, I commented that we were given a week to contemplate the topic, and 2 full days to compose an outline to bring to class to allow us to base our essay off of.
Another claimed: "Well, maybe that works for you, but I can't write a good outline so it didn't help me, and what you said sounds confrontational because not all of us are like you." Hello, girls... this is COLLEGE, not elementary school. We're all adults, and expected to take responsibility of our own actions as responsible adults. This means, if we do not know how to do something that may help us succeed, we can blame no one but ourselves if we don't figure out a way to learn that thing. Frankly, I can't write a "proper" outline to save my life... my outline was broken down into 3 sections, one for each person I covered, and had bullet notes beneath it in no particular order just to keep my facts available and to make sure I covered everything the assignment asked for. No one says you have to do your notes/outline in a certain way, just do it in a way that helps you. If your outline doesn't help you, then it is your own fault for making it that way.
Also, if what I said can be construed in any way to be confrontational, then it is because you are so insecure in yourself that you take everything to be a confrontation. I know I am one of the least confrontational people I know... I do just about everything I can, go very out of my way to avoid any sort of confrontation. 99.9% of the time I'd rather keep my mouth shut and work around the issue on my own than to speak up and bring the issue to light if I believe it will cause an argument.
So basically, if you're in college and do not take the steps to learn things from your classes, then maybe you should reconsider why you're really in college in the first place. If you cannot ask questions or get help when you need it, you need to learn to speak up. If you have to blame everyone but yourself for getting a poor grade when given preparation time and allowed notes, then you need to learn to take personal responsibility seriously. And if you just cannot fathom doing any of the above steps, you need to go back to middle school, because really, even most high schoolers are more mature than you have been.
I have grown so completely annoyed and disgusted by the lack of common sense, closed mindedness, and immaturity displayed by such a large group of students at this school that I seriously have to wonder at how far the promise of youth has fallen in the past century. Frankly, the levels of maturity and forethought shown by students at this school is below that of even the podunk community colleges I've attended. If this is what I have to look forward to in the professional world, then I'll go it alone, thank you very much.
A week before your midterm exam, you are told in class what format the exam will take: it will be an in-class essay covering everything we have discussed in class up to this point, specifically focusing on the issues of social justice. Two days before the exam, you are given the actual assignment as well as the grading scale, so that you can prepare an outline to bring to class for the midterm to aid you in writing your essay. After the midterms are graded, you are shocked to find out how low your grade is. In class, the teacher discusses how a good deal of the class failed to fully answer the questions in their essays.
This actually happened in a class I'm in, and my fellow students' reactions disgusted me for the most part, and I barely kept my comments civil as I mentioned how much time and preparation we were allowed to have versus what we would get in, say, an English class. I am willing to bet that 90% of my classmates did poorly because of one of the following reasons:
1) They do not take the class seriously at all because it's one of the few academic classes we must take through the dance department and therefore is low priority against academic classes from other divisions. Thus, they do not do the reading assignments, half-ass the few assignments we are given, and did not prepare at all for the exam because they expected it to be easy.
2) They do not take the class seriously because the teacher is a little scatterbrained and they have a hard time following her lines of thought. Rather than ask the teacher for clarification if they did not understand the midterm assignment questions, they decided to interpret it their own way and figure she won't care because she is an "easy" teacher.
3) They did not fully read or understand the directions for the essay and did not bother to listen when the teacher explained the assignment in class on several occasions.
Instead, this is what one of them claimed: "I'm not good at in-class essays because I can't organize my thoughts in the small amount of time given." So, I commented that we were given a week to contemplate the topic, and 2 full days to compose an outline to bring to class to allow us to base our essay off of.
Another claimed: "Well, maybe that works for you, but I can't write a good outline so it didn't help me, and what you said sounds confrontational because not all of us are like you." Hello, girls... this is COLLEGE, not elementary school. We're all adults, and expected to take responsibility of our own actions as responsible adults. This means, if we do not know how to do something that may help us succeed, we can blame no one but ourselves if we don't figure out a way to learn that thing. Frankly, I can't write a "proper" outline to save my life... my outline was broken down into 3 sections, one for each person I covered, and had bullet notes beneath it in no particular order just to keep my facts available and to make sure I covered everything the assignment asked for. No one says you have to do your notes/outline in a certain way, just do it in a way that helps you. If your outline doesn't help you, then it is your own fault for making it that way.
Also, if what I said can be construed in any way to be confrontational, then it is because you are so insecure in yourself that you take everything to be a confrontation. I know I am one of the least confrontational people I know... I do just about everything I can, go very out of my way to avoid any sort of confrontation. 99.9% of the time I'd rather keep my mouth shut and work around the issue on my own than to speak up and bring the issue to light if I believe it will cause an argument.
So basically, if you're in college and do not take the steps to learn things from your classes, then maybe you should reconsider why you're really in college in the first place. If you cannot ask questions or get help when you need it, you need to learn to speak up. If you have to blame everyone but yourself for getting a poor grade when given preparation time and allowed notes, then you need to learn to take personal responsibility seriously. And if you just cannot fathom doing any of the above steps, you need to go back to middle school, because really, even most high schoolers are more mature than you have been.
I have grown so completely annoyed and disgusted by the lack of common sense, closed mindedness, and immaturity displayed by such a large group of students at this school that I seriously have to wonder at how far the promise of youth has fallen in the past century. Frankly, the levels of maturity and forethought shown by students at this school is below that of even the podunk community colleges I've attended. If this is what I have to look forward to in the professional world, then I'll go it alone, thank you very much.
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