bearing blog

An affirmation for especially hectic times.

A friend who has a lot on her plate right now -- multiple diagnoses in her family -- told me a story the other day. It was an anxious story in which she had to get her four children, ages 4 through 15, to their four simultaneous occupational-therapy appointments (thankfully, all in the same location) at 8:30 in the morning, and in which she must not be late lest she be levied an expensive fine.

This story is re-enacted every week, and, she said, she has never quite managed to Do All The Things: feed all four of them breakfast, make sure all four have clean clothes and neat hair, supervise toothbrushing, get herself fed and dressed and neatly groomed, and ensure that everyone has taken his or her meds. "I just can't do all of it. It is hard enough getting just one of my children out the door. And then I feel terrible because I can't do all these things that I have to do and still get them in to the appointments on time.

"And then of course, the therapists and teachers give me work to do with each of the children at home -- and that is another thing I can't do all of. I have four kids with challenges. I just can't do what they all need."

She finished her tale, complete with detailed descriptions of real, difficult struggles, and asked me: "How do you figure out what to do and what to skip, when you just can't do everything that you have to do? How do you -- filter the things that have to be done? And how do you not feel bad afterwards that you had to skip things?"

I couldn't answer, so our other friend who was there answered for me. "I know one of the ways you do it. You look outside yourself for some kind of role model, another example of a person who seems to be doing all right. Or, I notice sometimes, you might ask Mark what he thinks is the most important, and if he gives you his opinion, you'll go with that. And you'll carry that out and you don't generally second-guess that decision once it's made."

"You're right -- I do that," I mused. As I reflect on the conversation, I think perhaps I am often concerned that the perceptions inside my own head of what accomplishments are important -- and what deficiencies other people will notice and judge me for -- are theoretical, not connected with reality. I sort of double-check them, by comparing them to what another admirable or at least "normal" person would do, or else by running the question by my husband (since he has to live with more consequences of my decisions than most other people do). And once I am satisfied that I have arrived at a possible, not-crazy solution, I enact it, and move on.

Reflecting more, though, I think this power is available to me in some contexts but not in others. I remember feeling very at-sea back when I was in graduate school and still trying to cobble together All The Things so I could finish my thesis and acquire the experiences that would help me get a good postdoctoral job. It was clear that doing All The Things was not possible, particularly after I had my first child, and I never did feel confident that I chose them correctly.

So even though I don't have nearly the kind of challenges on my plate that my friend does with her children -- I do remember a time when I felt I could not do all the things that I was "supposed" to do, and I remember the feelings of impotence that went along with it.

+ + +

One of the things I noticed while my friend was talking to me was the frequent occurrence of the phrase "I can't." It bugged me (and I know, this isn't about me, and it isn't about my comfort with the words she chooses; still, I couldn't stop noticing it). I wondered if maybe some different words to call on would help. I thought about the situation overnight and the next day dashed off an email suggesting this:

Instead of speaking or thinking the words

"I can't do everything I have to do/ought to do",

try these or similar words:

"I have a lot of responsibilities, so I have to prioritize."

This strikes me as useful, I wrote to her, because it is

• (A) true
• (B) honors the huge amount of work she accomplishes every day
• (C) is a good personal mantra that anyone can repeat to herself especially in overwhelming situations
• (D) is a useful "script" that would be helpful if it were the first thing that comes out of her mouth when someone tries to pile on some additional work or yet another expectation.

So, to take an example my friend described, if the therapist were to say,

"I'd like you to go home and take a photograph of every chore and activity that your kindergartener has to do every day at home, so that we could make a visual aid for him to use in the therapy room."

instead of saying immediately "I guess I could do that" (and thereby committing to following through), or else protecting herself by saying "I can't do that" (which might not even be true), the first reply could be

"Well, I do have a lot of responsibilities, so I have to prioritize."

Which should be a cue for the therapist either to give her more information to judge exactly how important and helpful the visual aid is, or to suggest a less involved project. And it gives her time to think: How much time would I have to commit? When would that block of time come along? Maybe saying no to this is the best choice. On the other hand, if it turns out that it would be worth my time, maybe I can do at least some of it.

+ + +

Another example could be about expectations. This example is something that my friend told herself:

"You ought to make sure that all four children have had a good breakfast before they come to therapy in the morning."

But there is a reply to that:

"Maybe. I have a lot of responsibilities going on at once while we are getting ready to leave, so I have to prioritize."

And indeed, it may not be worth the effort to make sure that they all eat breakfast and that the breakfast they eat is a "good" one before therapy. After all, there will be other chances to eat throughout the morning, so perhaps forcing food into the ones who aren't hungry enough to spontaneously eat would be counterproductive, and the time could be better spent helping them find clean clothes and managing outbursts.

+ + +

I added two notes.

(1) Take care that the statement "I have to prioritize" doesn't represent an additional burden (another thing you "have to do") but instead represents a simply true statement that follows from the normal limitations of human beings. Perhaps you might prefer language similar to

"I have a lot of responsibilities, so at all times I am going to prioritize among them."

...just because it lacks the possible emotional trigger words "I have to."

(2) Prioritizing happens in the time that is available.

Sometimes you have sufficient time to sit down and analyze the competing responsibilities carefully according to the goals that make the most sense.

Sometimes the available time is short, and the prioritization happens with only brief thought. This still counts as prioritizing.

The minimum deliberate prioritization is to stop for a moment to ask yourself "wait -- what is the reason that I have all these tasks to choose from in this moment? Which ones, if not done, will really keep me from accomplishing that goal?"

(So, for example, on those hectic pre-appointment mornings, the entire reason my friend is rushed is so the kids can get to their therapy sessions. Therefore it's reasonable to assume that having a fruitful therapy session is the main goal of the morning. So one prioritization strategy would be to skip, abbreviate, or postpone all tasks that don't actually affect the quality of the therapy session.)

But on the rare occasions that we don't have time even to ask ourselves that one question and answer it briefly, we do prioritize without deliberation (maybe instinctively, or maybe using some other habitual, unconscious rule). Because we find ourselves choosing tasks until we run out of time or strength to choose any more. And then when it's all over, no matter how much time you had and no matter how conscious we were about our choices, we can say about our actions in that overwhelming moment,

"I had a lot of responsibilities, so I prioritized them."

It's also true, also a mantra, and also a perfectly acceptable answer to anyone who questions the judgment that went into the prioritization.

Indeed, there is no sensible retort to this statement. If challenged, the best response is probably just to keep repeating it until the challenger backs down. This is a way to set a boundary: you get to claim the right to use your own judgment in a difficult situation, and there are very few people who have the right to criticize that judgment without your permission -- only the ones who are very close to you, directly affected by your choices and so in possession of potentially useful feedback information, or who have demonstrably walked in your shoes.

If it feels emotionally safe, I think you can revisit how you prioritized in retrospect. Faced with responsibilities to do A, B, and C, you chose to complete A, to do a half-job of B, and to discard C; why was that? Maybe exploring whether there is a habitual or unconscious rule that you follow will help you construct conscious, examined rules of thumb that you can quickly call upon. Maybe that will give you confidence that you can prioritize wisely.

But unless it helps you look forward and move forward, looking back might not even be worth doing -- depending on your priorities.

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Self-nightweaning.

This month it seems that the 32-month-old is night-weaning himself, on his own initiative.

This is the first time that we've been through this. Each of my three older children was still co-sleeping and night-nursing right up until I became pregnant with the next younger sibling. Pregnancy made me want to crave the soundest sleep I could manage, so I asked Mark to get up with the toddler (each was age two at the time) and offer milkshakes or snacks or WHATEVER IT TAKES AS LONG AS YOU DON'T WAKE ME UP, and within a few weeks they weren't nursing (or waking) at night anymore.

My current two-year-old has no in-utero competition, and I am really quite happy to continue nursing him at night for the time being. But a few months ago, he unexpectedly begin asking me to nurse him to sleep "in the little bed" -- the twin bed that's pushed up next to the queen-size bed in our bedroom, to give us a little more room for children who sneak back in the middle of the night. I would nurse him to sleep there, and then I would move back to my spot on the other side of Mark in the queen-size bed.

In the wee hours of the morning he would sit up, call "Mommy!" and I would say, "Over here," and he would clamber over his sleeping daddy and nestle in between us, and I would nurse him down again, both of us falling back to sleep together. Very sweet.

A couple of weeks ago, though, he didn't wake until it was nearly time for the alarm to go off. This happened again a few times -- then, days ago, he slept right through in the "little bed" until Mark had gone off to work and I was downstairs drinking coffee.

So it does, eventually, happen on its own.

+ + +

One of the things that pleases me about this is that it doesn't look very different from the nightweaning that I purposely put my older children through. Whenever I decide, deliberately, to mess with a comfortable life process, I like to try to mimic -- if I can -- the state of nature, so to speak.

So, I prefer a longer, later, and closer-to-child-led process of full weaning, for example; I had quite a lot of input into the day-to-day process of course, but my first child stopped nursing (all the time, not just at night) more or less on his own schedule, around age 4. When I weaned #2 deliberately starting at age not-quite-3, I looked around for various pieces of advice on how to do it peacefully, but in the end I decided to mimic my first child's more hands-off weaning.

I had observed that, that first time, the time between nursings got longer and longer. Eventually he would forget to nurse for a whole day here and there, and then two days, and after a while we would go more than a week between nursings. Finally the day had come when we nursed for the last time, although I didn't realize it had been the last until many weeks later when the next request never arrived.

So when I set out to wean #2, I decided to copy that process -- deliberately distracting him from nursing for just an hour or so at first until the gaps between nursing stretched to a few hours, then half a day, then a day. I would tell him when he finished, "Now the next time we'll nurse will be three o'clock," or, later, "The next day you'll get milk is on Thursday." And I stuck to it. I don't remember it being all that difficult. I was free to stay at one frequency for long enough to let him get used to it before pushing for a longer gap. Also, once the process got going and he was nursing less, it alleviated a lot of the pressures I had been under that had made me decide to wean him in the first place, so after a while the was no need to hurry him.

All in all, I recommend it to anyone who has decided to wean (as long as it doesn't have to be over quickly, because it isn't a quick way to wean -- just a fairly peaceful one). It seemed like a good compromise between what I needed and what he needed. If you are going to try some different ways to wean, I suppose my method is as worthy of a trial as any other.

+ + +

My three previous children, however, got night-weaned without the benefit of any maternal experience with hands-off nightweaning. But I am pleased to report that my youngest is cutting back his night nursing not too differently from how his older siblings were made to do it.

First of all, he is around the same age that they were at nightweaning. My first was probably about 30 months old, my second was 28 months, and my third was 34 months. Number 4 is now 32 months.

Second, I always started by putting them to bed on the other side of Mark, then moving back to my spot. (I think one of the times it was me who moved into the "little bed" to sleep by myself, but it is still basically the same arrangement). And here is my youngest voluntarily asking to sleep in his own little bed.

Third, he is wanting to be nursed to sleep in the little bed -- which I did two of the other three times. (One of them tended not to fall asleep until after latching off, so I would nurse him and then we'd be done and turn out the light.)

Fourth, I usually did nurse the others once in the morning before we'd get up and start our day.

+ + +

So this hands-off nightweaning looks a lot like my deliberate night weanings. If I wanted to cement it -- and I might yet -- I guess I could add the part where, when he wakes up and asks to nurse, Mark takes him downstairs and offers him ice cream instead. That is the main missing piece so far...

The invisible hand.

Some time ago I quit the treadmill and started running around the indoor track that circles the upper half of the basketball court at the Y.

I'm not sure why I suddenly got so tired of the treadmill. Maybe because it is impossible to escape the television completely. Maybe it was the demoralizing effect of the digits slowly ticking away the miles or time elapsed; I found myself always wishing I'd brought a sticky-note to cover up my progress. Maybe it was all the people around that I couldn't quite tune out. Or maybe it was the view through the window -- not a bad view, of a residential cross-street -- but a view that rarely changed, except for the snow cover giving way to foliage and later taking over again. Or perhaps, after having a taste of running outside, around the lakes, I just couldn't stand running in place anymore, and running around a bare room seemed like an improvement.

At first I took my iPod with me, and had five different running playlists cued up all ready to go. But after a while I stopped taking that, too. I don't want to hear music; I want to hear my footfalls, so I can work on correcting them. I want to hear my own breathing and feel the goosebumps from the air-conditioned chill give way to warmth, flushing, sweat. I think I am tired of trying to distract myself from the running. I am trying to be fully present in it instead, to feel the aching muscles, to force my mind to deal with the urge to stop instead of just wishing it away and pretending it isn't there.

Sometimes i have no choice but to think about running. But occasionally I get a surprising pay off.

This evening I was running laps and using my swimming lap counter -- it's a one-button, finger-ring style -- to check my speed on each lap. In the previous two weeks I had swum 5 times, but not gone for a run at all, and I was feeling rusty -- and the times showed it. Each lap around the gym is 1/18 of a mile, and my training pace on a treadmill is around 9:50, so I like to see times between 30 and 33 seconds. I was seeing 35--37-second laps. Not so good.

As I chugged along, endlessly circling, I thought back to the running clinic I attended in December 2010, the one where I learned forefoot running. I tried to remember what I learned from watching the before-and-after videos of myself. One of the form corrections that comes along with the switch from a heel strike to a forefoot or midfoot strike is in lean -- runners with a heel strike tend to lean back as they run, while runs with a forefoot strike tend to be straight-backed or lean forward. The more you lean forward when you have a forefoot strike, the faster you tend to go. It doesn't work that way with a heel strike.

If you have never learned forefoot running (sometimes called the pose method), here is something you can try to give you an idea of how the leaning thing works. Stand up, either barefoot or in running shoes. If you are indoors face a direction that gives you enough room to take several steps without tripping over something or walking into a wall. Now start jogging gently in place. If you are a fairly normal person, you will find that you naturally choose a forefoot-strike to do this: the first part of your foot to touch the ground is somewhere in the front half of your foot. Your heel might come down and "kiss" the ground at the end of its descent, or it might not. But you are certainly not hitting the ground with your heel and using your heel to absorb the impact of your weight coming down on the floor, the way you do when you walk, or the way many people do when they run in cushiony running shoes.

Still jogging? Okay, here is the second part of the demonstration. While you're jogging in place, lean your body slightly forward. What happened?

What happened to me, when the instructor in my running clinic taught me to do this, is that I rocketed forward -- running a few steps (before hitting the wall) with a natural forefoot strike. You don't have to work to bring your legs far forward of your body and to push against the ground; you just have to let gravity pull you down and allow your legs to prevent you from tipping all the way over. It is a very natural and instinctive motion.

Although It does take reprogramming and practice to adopt forefoot striking as a training stride, that short demonstration gets across how leaning forward is related to speed. The more you lean, the faster you go. I you lean so far that your legs can't keep up, you fall, of course, so it isn't a magic formula or anything. You still need to be strong and move your legs fast. But it is kind of a form check.

As I remembered this, I noticed that as I ran around the gym, I tended to focus my eyes on the wall across from me. The track is a rounded-off rectangle, so I'd be staring at the telephone pole through the window... then turn and stare at the water fountain... then turn and stare at the church steeple through the oth window... then the banner with donors' names... then the telephone pole again.

I tried keeping my neck and back aligned and tipping my body ever so slightly forward. Now I was focusing on the floor a few yards ahead of my toes. I concentrated on that moving point, dancing away from me along the seam in the flooring, and ran one lap, and checked my lap counter: 30 seconds.

Really? I checked it again: 30. I ran another lap: 31. And another: 29. I almost couldn't believe it. Before this, it had taken real effort to push myself to go faster, if I wanted to see lap times consistently under 34 seconds. This didn't feel more tiring at all. I just had to remember to tip ever so slightly forward.

As I circled around and around, though, it did start to wear on me mentally. I found that if I stopped concentrating on the slight forward lean, it went away. I really had to keep it front and center in my attention, carefully hold it, so it would not slip. After a while I started to feel as if there was an invisible hand between my shoulder blades, pressing slightly but firmly, and always just at the threshold of knocking me off balance. I found that if I vividly imagined that there really was a hand pressing me, it was easier to maintain my pace.

It wasn't that I actually had the sensation of a physical pressure on my back in that spot. It was more that I started to feel irritated by it. After awhile I wanted to turn around and snap, "WILL you STOP pushing me?!" to the owner of the invisible hand invading my personal space.

But of course there was no one but me, running all by myself in the upper half of the gym, my peripheral vision only occasionally interrupted by a lone basketball rebounding off the backboards just below the track.

I discovered something today. It is possible to make a gain in training that cannot be taken away even by weeks of inactivity. This is something I learned with my brain, you know, from information I picked up back in my running clinic. I think I will remember it: tip a little forward, gain a little efficient speed. It can be hard to keep all the different form tweaks active in mind at the same time, of course; practice can move that kind of skill out of the brain and into the muscles. But still, the understanding remains, and can't be lost -- if I take pains to write about it, that is.

____________

(disclaimer: do not switch abruptly from heel striking to forefoot running without doing some research to avoid injury, and consider working with a personal trainer. I do not think the lean-forward tip will work for runners who use a heel-striking stride instead of a forefoot-striking stride.)

 

 

Well, this is a timely article: How to stick to your resolutions.

I was talking to Mark this evening about trying to nail down the general principles of behavioral change -- not the list of "handy weight loss tips," but the general principles that I've followed to choose my new, permanent habits and to make them stick.  

All right, I'm fessing up:  I've been tossing around the idea of putting these disconnected eating-and-exercise blog posts into a longer and more organized form.  What I'm not yet sure about is focus:  gluttony?  personal change in general?  willpower defeating?  straight-up weight loss?

Anyway, I was amused tonight to encounter this article from the NYT's John Tierney, "Be It Resolved," which is very much like the sort of thing I was envisioning writing.

IT’S still early in 2012, so let’s be optimistic. Let’s assume you have made a New Year’s resolution and have not yet broken it. Based on studies of past resolutions, here are some uplifting predictions:

1) Whatever you hope for this year — to lose weight, to exercise more, to spend less money — you’re much more likely to make improvements than someone who hasn’t made a formal resolution.

2) If you can make it through the rest of January, you have a good chance of lasting a lot longer.

3) With a few relatively painless strategies and new digital tools, you can significantly boost your odds of success.

Now for a not-so-uplifting prediction: Most people are not going to keep their resolutions all year long. They’ll start out with the best of intentions but the worst of strategies, expecting that they’ll somehow find the willpower to resist temptation after temptation. By the end of January, a third will have broken their resolutions, and by July more than half will have lapsed.

They’ll fail because they’ll eventually run out of willpower, which social scientists no longer regard as simply a metaphor. They’ve recently reported that willpower is a real form of mental energy, powered by glucose in the bloodstream, which is used up as you exert self-control.

Well, that explains a lot.  Dieting is hard because low blood sugar depletes your willpower!  

But this is the paragraph in the article that really resonated with me (emphasis mine):

One of their newest studies, published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, tracked people’s reactions to temptations throughout the day. The study, led by Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago, showed that the people with the best self-control, paradoxically, are the ones who use their willpower less often. Instead of fending off one urge after another, these people set up their lives to minimize temptations. They play offense, not defense, using their willpower in advance so that they avoid crises, conserve their energy and outsource as much self-control as they can.

This.  This.  A thousand times this.  Using willpower sucks, so you have to exert it in advance.  So much of what worked for me is about this very principle.

The article goes on to give a somewhat outlandish anecdote and then from it derives some strategies that ring very true to me:

• Set one clear goal at a time
• Precommit (like Odysseus lashing himself  to the mast, remove your options to break your resolution)
• Be accountable to someone else, and plan to pay a real penalty if you don't reach your goal
• Keep track of how you are doing
• Don't overreact to a lapse by saying "what the hell" and figuring the day's already ruined
• Tell yourself you can have some later (rather than swearing off pleasures for good)
• Reward yourself, or find reward in your actions, often.

I will have to spend some time thinking about this -- but maybe the first step is to read the book about willpower that is referenced in the article.

The third post in what seems to be a series about "acceptance."

In the first post, I explained why it's nonsense to ask whether one should or shouldn't "accept one's body."  (And I offered examples of some better questions to ask in the second post.)

To "accept" a thing is, essentially, to receive it willingly.  One's body is not a thing that can be accepted or rejected, because one has always had it; one cannot receive it.

There are, however, things that it is possible to accept.  For instance,  I wrote, it's possible to "accept" a discomfort (meaning to endure it willingly), or to "accept" a proposition (meaning to believe and assent to it willingly). 

So here are some propositions I urge my readers to accept, instead of wondering whether they should "accept" their own selves:

    (1) Permanent personal change would require you to accept discomfort.

    (2)  Today, there is a limit to how much discomfort you can accept and for how long.

    (3)  With practice, you can increase that limit.

    (4)   That is:  Accepting discomfort really can change you.   For the better.  Immediately.

Readers:  Do you accept these propositions?

Clean eating and a short pre-review of the new Taubes book.

I'm feeling a little less despondent this morning than I was when I wrote the last post, probably because two full days of clean eating has eliminated my weight spike.   And thank you to commenter LeeAnn for reassuring me that I probably can continue watching portions for my health, and even if that tends to exacerbate my vanity problem, I probably don't have to stop, and can look for other ways to alleviate the vanity thing.

 From 116.6 the other day, I'm now back below 112.  Yes, I am aware that a lot of that weight is probably water.  Still, I think it was worthwhile reacting quickly.

For one thing, I had lost track of portion size.  During the first nine months or so of the baby's ex utero life, I needed to eat a lot more than I do now, and so I had pretty much been eating freely -- seconds and thirds, whole sandwiches instead of halves, et cetera.   I have gotten out of the habit of starting with a small amount and then waiting to see if I needed more. 

Are you curious what "two days of clean eating" looks like for me?   I planned on avoiding white flour as much as I could and keeping the calorie load under 1400 calories (reasonable for me -- I'm quite small framed, and the baby has not been nursing heavily).  I am currently staying as a houseguest, so I have limited control over what's available, but with self-control I can keep from getting derailed.  Here's what I did for two days:

First day:

• Breakfast:  1 hardboiled egg.  15 fresh blueberries.  Lots of coffee.
• Lunch:  100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around half a cup of chili with beans, two tablespoons shredded cheddar cheese, and a generous handful of fresh spinach, plus some chopped tomato and onion.  10 fresh cherries.
• Snack:  5 pecan halves, an ounce of cheddar cheese, and ten more blueberries.
• Dinner (from the local pizza chain):  A big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese and one tablespoon Italian dressing.  One-eighth of a large thin-crust pizza (bacon and veg).
• Unplanned eating:  About a half ounce of hard pretzel near bedtime.

I felt hungry between meals right away, which I took as a good sign.  Second day:

• Breakfast:  One hardboiled egg.  Fifteen fresh blueberries.  Lots of coffee.
• Lunch:  100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around 100 calories' worth of Italian sausage, 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce, 2 tablespoons of mozzarella cheese, and a handful of fresh spinach.  Another big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese (left over from the night before) and one tablespoon Italian dressing.
• Snack:  Five pecan halves and one small apple.  Coffee.
• Dinner:  About two cups cooked canned green beans.  One half cup canned baked beans in a sugary sauce.  One quarter-pound hamburger patty with a teaspoon of ketchup.
• Unplanned eating:  About a quarter-ounce of hard pretzels.  One bite of sugar cookie.

Being a houseguest here, I'm free to make my own breakfasts and lunches from whatever's around, and dinner is whatever's being served.  The tortillas happen to be the most whole-grain bread in the house, so I stuck with them for lunch; on burger night, I quietly skipped the bun, and that didn't seem to cause a problem.    I enjoyed small portions of the sweet baked beans and the carryout pizza.  I measured the salad dressing and found the mixed-salad calories by looking them up on the restaurant website.

Some travel is coming up in which I'll have even less control over the types of food available, but I always have control over how much I eat of it.  So I'm feeling a lot better.

On a related note, I recently picked up Gary Taubes' new book, Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It.  You may remember that Taubes wrote the huge tome Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I reviewed in some detail here.  I will post a full review of the new Taubes book later, but the short review is this: 

 It's a shorter, more accessible version of Good Calories, Bad Calories.  So if you have been intimidated by that huge book, by all means, read the newer, sleeker version, and if you wish your doctor or spouse would read GCBC, consider lending them the new, less-frightening book instead.  It also contains dietary recommendations, basically for a paleo diet.  I have some comments about these recommendations, but I will save it for my full review.

Sore.

Monday night I dropped the kids off at the YMCA play area and headed up to the indoor track with a page of scrawled workout notes from my running clinic last Saturday.  The instructor had provided us with four weeks' worth of drills.  "It'll probably drive you crazy to take this time off getting almost no mileage while you're focusing on those drills," she had told the class.  "I know I hated writing a big fat ZERO in my mileage notebook while I was working on my form.  But winter's really the best time for this kind of work, and you're going to come back even faster."

All the superwomen had nodded their heads.  Me, I was thinking:  Cool, four whole weeks with an excuse to skip "running!"  Actually probably more than four because I'm such a slow learner!

So, anyway, there I was at the indoor track around the top of the basketball gym -- 18 laps to the mile -- with the little alcove for stretching right next to the entrance.  Fortunately there weren't too many people around, because I expected to either (a) look like a weirdo or (b) annoy other runners.

I started out by warming up with a gentle run around the track, but instead of my usual heel-striking lope I tried to run the way I'd learned in class.  It feels pretty weird -- an exaggerated high-stepping feeling at the knee, and I couldn't get over the sensation that I was running down a steep hill and might fall.  Also, I couldn't go very fast.  

The drills were similar to the ones we had learned in the class, and involved very little actual running.  They are meant to make three corrections to running form:

1. most importantly, to stop you landing on your heels and rolling forward onto the toe for push-off, and instead to get your foot striking the ground "mid-foot," which sounds like it ought to mean flat-footed (the middle of your foot is somewhere on the arch, right?) but really means more like on the ball of the foot.
2. to get you straight-backed and leaning slightly forward instead of backward, vertical, or bent at the hips.
3. to raise the running cadence -- the number of times your right foot hits the ground per minute -- above 90 or even higher.

About landing on your mid-foot -- this is why I felt so weird during my warm-up jog.   I think I can give you a quick demonstration of what this feels like, if you don't know.  Stand up (shoes are not necessary here), face a direction with a few feet of space in front of you, and jog gently in place for a moment or two.  You'll find that your foot naturally strikes the ground midfoot-first, not heel-first, though it's good if your heel comes down and sort of "kisses" the ground before you pick it up again.  OK, once you've got that, gently lean your body forward ever-so-slightly -- and what happens is that you move -- when your body corrects to keep you from tipping over, your running in place turns into running forward -- but on your midfoot, not with a heel strike.  That's the kind of running I'm trying to do, only continuous.  And I'm not used to it.  I'm used to hitting the floor with a heel that's heavily cushioned by my running shoes.

So there were hopping-on-your-toes drills, and standing leg raises, and lean-against-the-wall leg raises. (This video gives you a pretty good idea of the kinds of stuff I was doing.)

Near the end there were just a couple of cadence drills.  The instructor had recommended buying a runner's metronome for these so you could try to put your foot on the floor in time to the "dink...dink...dink...dink..." sound.   I judged that the other patrons at the Y would not be pleased to have me bring such a thing into the building.  What I had found instead was a set of free .mp3 files of metronomes set at various tempos.  So with these loaded on my iPod I was able to run around the track keeping fairly close to the tempos suggested by the instructor.

I was seriously winded by the end of all this, despite going very, very slowly.  Also, my left foot seemed to be able to "do it" better than my right, though I am not sure -- that could have been from the banked corners of the running track.  I don't remember ever feeling that the arch of my foot got tired before!

The drills only took about 25 minutes total (and that was with a lot of hemming and hawing and checking my notes and also counting the warmups), and the instructor had basically ordered us not to try to do any additional running beyond the drills.  So I went back to the locker room, quickly changed into my suit, and had a ten-minute swim.  What a relief to be doing something I knew how to do already.  

So, two days later, my calves are still sore.  It is not an injury-type soreness, just a "my muscles aren't used to this" soreness -- I can tell it was a good workout.  

But you know what is really best about this?  I usually find running very, very boring.  Every time I run, I wish I was swimming instead.   I try to watch the treadmill-mounted TVs and forget about what I'm doing until my 40 minutes are up.  The only thing that changes from run to run is maybe how fast I go or how high I set the incline.  But with these drills to work on, something interesting is going on, and suddenly I am looking forward to my next time at the gym.  

Learning something new will do that.  Cool.

Comfort zone, smashed.

 A while ago I subscribed to a local women's running list, but I never got around to going to any of the weekly workouts held at a high school outdoor track.  So the week before Thanksgiving when an announcement went out for a four-hour running clinic to work on form and prevent injury, I thought, "That sounds kind of fun."  I decided it would be a good Christmas present to myself.  So I dropped a check in the mail.

Today Mark took all the kids to swimming lessons and I headed out in the other car to a gym on the west side of town.  I was wearing some of Mark's clothes as well as my own -- it had snowed last night, we were supposed to run outdoors for taking video, and I didn't have much stuff to run in the snow.   

Seven other women and one man arrived for the clinic. They looked suspiciously ... buff.   "Let's all introduce ourselves and say what our goals for today are."

Well.

Three marathoners hoping to improve their endurance.  Three longtime triathletes hoping to use their bodies more efficiently in the running segment.   One woman still sore from an Ironman a couple of weeks ago.  And one kickboxer, wearing a well-used Israeli Defense Forces tee shirt, who said she hated running but was going to try a marathon this year just for the heck of it and didn't want to hurt herself more than necessary.

We got about halfway through the introductions when I suddenly felt an urge to hyperventilate and my mind was filled with one thought:  OMG I paid $65 to take a gym class with these people.

I'm Erin.   I'm a beginner.  I just want to learn to run the right way so I don't become one of those people who just 'goes out and runs' and gets hurt."

(Mark scoffed at me later for the "beginner."  "You've run three 5Ks!" he pointed out.  "Yes, but I don't know what I'm doing.  And you should have seen these women." )

(I just cannot wear a ponytail like that.)

Calm down, I told myself.  You are here to learn.

We went outside and ran for the camera, then came back in to review the footage.   "We're looking for a slight lean forward in the body, foot striking the pavement midfoot and not at the heel, a short time in contact with the ground, and no long legs out front or in back," the instructor told us.  I felt a little better when she started pointing out everything that the other people were doing wrong.  And then it was my turn and ....

....whoooooah.    Take everybody's mistakes and put them together and you have me.  I was like five inches shorter than the next person in the class, and I STILL had a longer leg out in front and in back than any of them. 

Then she had us do a bunch of drills, most of them designed to correct the errors in heel strike and body lean.  Some of them were not too hard:  hop around the room landing properly on the midfoot, for example, or snap one leg up (stamping and pawing like a horse, I thought) so the knee came forward but the heel kicked up at the butt.   

But then there was one where we were supposed to jog back and forth across the gym, only every fourth time we picked up a foot we were supposed to kick it high back -- kick ourselves in the butt -- and I was sunk.  You may think I am pretty good with numbers, but I tell you I cannot count and do anything physical at the same time.  I tripped and skipped around a few times until the instructor finally told me that the point wasn't to get the rhythm right, it was to kick the foot up once in a while.  Randomly would be fine.  I was better after that.

Until the jump ropes came out.  Oh man.  I had to remind myself that the other students didn't pay their fees for the purpose of watching me screw up.  They were too busy paying attention to their own feet.  Actually, I wasn't the only person who had trouble with the jumping rope.  It takes a surprising amount of coordination to run and skip rope at the same time.  At least, I think so; hard to tell, since I can't even properly jump rope in place.  To run and skip rope at the same time, you have to turn the rope once per step; no matter how hard I try, even in place, I jump twice and turn once. 

"The point of the jump rope is to shorten your strides," the instructor told us.  "If your stride is too long, you'll trip over the rope."  Well, I didn't have any trouble tripping over the rope with a stride of zero, so clearly I have a ways to go.

Then we did some fun (but socially exhausting) drills in pairs.    One person stood in front of the other and leaned forward, her hips pressing into a giant rubber band held by the person behind her.  Then the front person started running in place, against the resistance band, while the person in back braced herself and held her back.  Then with a "Three--two--one--go!" the rear partner let go of the rubber band, launching the runner forward into a full run across the room.  That was very fun.  I found myself wanting to try this with Mark sometime.  A similar drill had a partner standing in front, bracing the in-place runner with hands on her shoulders, then stepping aside to let her take off.  You would think you'd get tripped on, but actually there is enough time to get out of the way.  I still was worried I would not do it right, but I guess it went okay.  (Except for that one time I went "Three--two--go!"  I told you I couldn't count and do anything at the same time.)

At the end we all went out in the street again to take more video and then compare to see our improvement.  Everyone had shortened their stride at least a little bit -- even me.  And I had corrected my backward lean and was even leaning forward ever so slightly.  I left with four weeks of "homework" drills (it'll actually take me eight weeks, as I can only run twice a week) and a feeling of real accomplishment, plus a lot to tell Mark back at home.

I'm still utterly exhausted -- some of it undoubtedly from moving around in ways I am not used to moving, but I think most of it is from the strain of going back to "gym class."  Watching myself run on video is uniquely horrifying.  Being around these "real runners" -- well, it has been a long time since I had this feeling at the Y, but I had such a palpable sensation of I do not belong here.  I know better now though.  I do belong here.  It was not an "advanced" running class, it was an ordinary running class, and I am someone who needs to learn.  And I was there to learn.  And I did learn.  So there.

Perfectionist.

Marybeth has some thoughts about perfectionism.

I was talking with a friend yesterday about how when a moving company moves you, they send 2 or 3 guys and they pack up everything you own in a day...  ONE DAY!.....  That's because they see it, they grab it, they pack it....   There is no sense of "I have 16 books from this 18 book set.  I should go look for the other 2 books so they can all be packed together."

I think that I have done the same thing with eating....  There have been times that I get so focused on what would be the perfect thing to eat, that I might nibble enough calories to qualify as a meal while I am searching for/preparing that 'perfect' thing....   All of a sudden, that doesn't seem so perfect, does it?  I am fortunate enough to say that I have not done that in some time, but that was a big thing with me....  

 

Exercise has been like that for me, too.  I waited the longest time to do ANYTHING because the time wasn't perfect and the routine is most definitely not perfect - I mean really - 10 minutes is hardly what I consider a great workout.....  Maybe it's 'Just Right' for my current physical condition, but it certainly does not FEEL perfect.....  

 

So, I think I have rambled enough here, but the main thing I want to say is do NOT be a perfectionist....  If you wait for perfection, you'll NEVER get it/do it/have it.....  You can certainly work towards perfection, but as we are all inherently flawed and imperfect, waiting for yourself to be perfect is setting yourself up for a failure....

 

Today I wanted to get the kids to a birthday party, twenty minutes away, at 1 pm.  I also wanted to swim, to pick up new books at the library, and to feed everyone lunch at home.

 

I keep forgetting to allow that extra 15 minutes in my schedule for the baby to nurse one last time.  So when I pulled out of my garage it was 11:06.

 

I told myself:  I will swim for exactly 30 minutes, not the 47 minutes it takes me to swim 1600 yards.  That worked okay.  I think I managed -- let's see -- 1050 yards.

 

I told myself:  I will take a really fast shower and not waste any time in the locker room.  That didn't work exactly, because I saw a bemused-looking older lady in the locker room, asked if she needed help finding anything, and wound up having a nice conversation about starting up an exercise program.  I'm glad I did.  I learned that her name was Rose, that she was 60 pounds into a hoped-for 100-pound weight loss, and that she recently joined the Y because she was tired of being home alone after having lost her fiance a few months ago.  I hope I helped her feel welcome.

 

I told myself:  I will tell the kids they can each pick out a movie, but they only have as much time as it takes me to return my books and pick up my holds.  That worked great.  Except I forgot to check if the movies were good choices or not.  We shall see when I get home and open up the bag.

 

I told myself:  I will just run through the drive through at Taco Bell.  Except the line was long, so we went inside.  That worked okay, though. Everyone had one thing.  Mine was a salad.  I could have made it something smaller.  I will probably have a mainly-vegetable dinner, and that will feel better inside.

 

I told myself:  I will only be 15 minutes late.

 

And I was.

 

Not perfect, but (since it was that same 15 minutes I forgot to schedule to nurse the baby), at least I closed all the balances.  And my engineering brain can be happy with that.

Looking them in the eye.

So a couple of days ago I posted that I am going to work on a single new habit: looking my children in the eye when I talk to them or when they talk to me.

 Which is a sort of embarrassing resolution to announce. It's one thing to say "I'm going to quit eating between meals" because, hey, we all know everyone does that. Or to say "I'm going to start doing a load of laundry every day instead of letting it pile up till the weekend." Because there's nothing wrong with having a laundry day on Saturday, you know?

 But I realized after I hit "post" that I had basically just announced to the world, "I don't look my own children in the eye when I talk to them." 

Yup, I habitually give orders, receive kisses, explain schoolwork, and distribute discipline with my eyes fixed on some other thing, namely whatever I'm busy with at the moment. I just can't keep my attention fixed on my little people. The whole time they are talking to me I am thinking about stuff I have to do, or maybe what I was doing before they interrupted me.

I'm like diners in one of those restaurants with a TV up on the wall in every corner. They try to keep up their end of the conversation, but they can't help letting their eyes drift up to the screen they can see over their date's shoulder. I'm like that, but my eyes keep drifting back, not to a TV, but to a cutting board, a notebook, a list, a pile of sweepings, a computer screen, a diaper.

The first day wasn't hard at all. In fact I was a little bit giddy with the new freedom of only having ONE very specific improvement to focus on. And for once it wasn't "I mustn't spend so much time on the computer." So I actually enjoyed spending, well, a LOT of time on the computer that day.

 All I was trying to do was this: When a child came up and spoke to me, I turned all the way away from the computer or whatever else I happened to be doing, looked the child in the eye, gave her my full attention, listened and spoke to her like she was a human being. Then I waited until she was done and went away again before I turned back to my work.

 No, it wasn't too bad, although I found that a couple of times I had to only pretend that I was listening to the children, because my whole brain was consumed with "don't turn and look at the screen, don't turn and look at the screen, don't turn and look at the screen."

The second day, today, was a little tougher because when late afternoon rolled around, I had been out of the house all day, I was tired and overstimulated, and I desperately wanted to "veg." Which at least for me is code for "ignore every other human being around me, unless by chance they are bringing me cups of hot caffeinated beverages."

So I let the kids play computer games and hid with the nursling in my room for a while, hoping the others would not come looking for me. I figured that if I could make it unlikely that they would interrupt me, then I wouldn't have to worry about paying attention to them, and I would still be keeping my resolution. That worked pretty well.

Eventually, however, I had to feed them dinner, and that was pretty rough, habit-wise. When we eat and my husband isn't around, like at lunchtime, or this particular evening for dinner, I tend to dish up dinner in the kitchen and then carry my bowl over to the computer to read blogs while I eat. I am a big believer in the family dinner hour, but for some reason I don't walk the walk when my husband isn't around. (mental note: later, strengthen habit of family dinner hour to include business-trip evenings; it is not called "husband dinner hour" after all.)

 I ate my salad in front of the computer, but then I went back for a bowl of chili and when I got to the kitchen the children started telling me all about the latest nature movie they had watched. We hit the zoo this morning with Minnesota Mom and her kids, hence my overstimulation, and I guess while I was hiding in my room they had been inspired to go watch some of the BBC nature programs.

So I found myself standing in the kitchen holding a bowl of chili and trying hard to appear that I was paying full attention to my 9yo's explanation of why some bird eggs are white with brown speckles and other bird eggs are black with white speckles. And then I had to pretend to pay attention to my 6yo's monologue on the habits of bower birds. And all the time I was painfully, ashamedly aware of how much I wanted to eat my chili in front of the computer screen instead of marveling at bower birds, or egg speckles, or even nine-year-old and six-year-old bird enthusiasts.

About halfway through it occurred to me that I might be able to fake my attention more convincingly if, instead of pretending to the boys that I was paying attention to them, I pretended to myself that I was listening to a narration for schoolwork. That I had assigned the boys to go watch the nature movie and then come back and tell me everything they knew about egg speckles and bower birds. That actually worked pretty well. My teacher brain turned on and started looking for questions I could ask them to test their comprehension, and that made me have to pay actual attention to what they were saying.

 I learned that the surface of the eggs get speckled after the shell forms in the body of the bird. I learned that the bower bird does not actually live in the bower.

All in all, I am glad I am trying this. It is surprisingly challenging, and I am more firmly convinced now that the problem with ignoring my kids is not the computer, or any other one thing that I happen to be doing, so much as it is a problem with my attention to whatever it is I happen to be doing. I get really focused. I have to un-focus myself unless I have created a special time and place where I can be focused. And I think this exercise in permitting interruptions is going to help me learn how.

It's like trying to unlearn everything I absorbed from countless productivity tips over the years, though!