Else what's a heaven for?

Back in May, I decided to start getting my life in order: every month, I would focus on building one good habit. In June, it was bedtime: my goal was to brush my teeth by 9:30pm every night, because once my teeth are brushed, I'm on my way to bed. It's been honored more in the breach, but just setting a goal has gotten me to bed more regularly. Three months later - and after the school year forced me to get up at 6:15 2-3 times a week - it seems to have gotten me into a very regular sleep cycle, as long as I read the right stuff at bedtime.

At the end of June, I started working on diet, which was to be July's goal. I was disgusted by my not-very-successful attempt to climb in mid-June; the baby had been out as long as he'd been in and I was still 20 lbs overweight. Moreover, my weight was starting to creep up, which was absurd. I read Jorge Cruise's The 100 and Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint Cookbook for ideas on how to cut carbs and eat more in line with how I know my body prefers.

I'd always thought Cruise was a gimmicky seller of snake oil, but I was really impressed by some of the stuff in the book. His "skinny muffins" are brilliant, if you're not worried about your blood being too thin (from large doses of cinnamon). It's an extreme low-carb diet: Cruise claims you can eat 25g of carbs a day, but reproducing some of his recipes in SparkPeople, I got different numbers. It works though. I didn't follow his diet plans really, but my takeaway was that I could eat all sorts of stuff wrapped in romaine leaves instead of wraps (which is apparently a Vietnamese thing anyway) or with rice. Which makes a humongous difference. What most impressed me was that I wasn't really hungry. Jon has been extremely supportive of my diet, even though he eats completely the opposite of how I do: he's bought all the weird things I've asked - I never get to the supermarket bc baby - and prepared meals and done everything he could to keep temptation away. I lost 5 lbs in the first week - based on prior experiments with low carb, I'm taking that to mean I carry 5 lbs of water when I'm not eating lower carb - and hit 10 lbs down within 2 months, although I hovered in that area all through September thanks to too much time with my parents (who don't support my diet and also have delicious mushu shrimp). The Sisson book was rather less helpful: I believe grassfed beef is better than cornfed, but I can't be arsed to make my own mayo or make the substitutions in the book. oh well.

August was getting my workouts back on track. I'd been working out at home for months at that point and I think those workouts were pretty good: swings, goblet squats, and rows with a 25lb kettlebell, lots of Romanian deadlifts, yoga workshops when I could get Jon to watch the baby. They would have been a lot better though if I'd read Dan John on fat loss or even Fat Loss Happens on Monday, his "collaboration" with Josh Hillis. I put collaboration in quotes because I'm a fan of both men, but the book is mostly Hillis, the same way that the Empire of Man series is mostly John Ringo. I bought Hillis' "System Six" workout program a few years ago and this book is an update to the program, with a lot of stuff about habit formation. As you can tell by the beginning of this post, I know all about habit formation. The most valuable part of the System Six program is one slide, in which Hillis says, "If you are a women looking to lose fat and you can rock 3 pullups and 3x135 deadlifts, the weights aren't the problem." Every time I start looking for a workout program to outlift my eating, I see that slide and remember what the problem is, which is why July was diet.

Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Body is a more scientific, less hand-holding book that covers a lot of the same material as Cruise and Hillis. He's got a lot of good stuff in there, but it's a hodgepodge of stuff he tried that worked when he did it instead of a plan. He quotes everyone from NFL combine consultants to Nina Hartley. My favorite statistician hates that book bc n=1, but I'm much more likely to re-read his book than Hillis'.

I ended up rejoining NYSC, bc the one in my neighborhood is $20/month, with a $10/month charge for unlimited babysitting (and $110 in sunk costs). The babysitting alone makes it worthwhile and makes me wish I'd signed up for it 6 months ago, because there were a lot of days when I would've paid $10 to hand my child to someone and take a shower with unlimited hot water, even if I had to bring my own towel.

I ended up following the Starting Strength program, although I basically alternated the workouts whenever I could fit them in between travel (mostly to Ct) and life. Within 5 workouts, I was back to lifting roughly what I've ever lifted: I've only ever lifted more on my squat or deadlift 3-4x in my whole life, and that was only when I was crossfitting (or had a spotter encouraging me to heights of dumbassery, er, bro'itude). This is the first time I've ever done the "B" workouts, which include overhead press and cleans. I'm still worried about my form on both, although during one of my workouts, a trainer complimented my cleans (even though I'd taken the bar from his bench to do them). I finished after 10 workouts (spread over, er, 8 weeks, which is NOT the plan) with a 135lb squat, 85lb bench, 185lb deadlift, and 75lb hang power clean.

September was just a mess, between Jon being gone on a father-son vaca for the first week (so I was in Ct), the start of a new school for Lucky, and the high holidays, so I didn't even try for a habit. I bought 2 more Dan John books, Easy Strength and Can You Go? and followed a plan from the first book of his I read. Unfortunately, I'm also injured: my right hip is just unhappy, with inflammation ranging from my groin to the outside to under the butt cheek, depending on the day. It sucks. I stopped lifting or running, then I stopped yoga, and now I just stopped doing anything but taking the baby places (although I briefly thought babywearing might be the problem), although this morning I did some PT-ish exercises.

I had a conversation with Bbro where he talked about the community aspect of his Crossfit and triathlon practices and I confess I wish I had community for my workouts. I mean, I'd like a coach too, but I disbelieve I could find a local coach I trusted.

Just before this injury became a showstopper, I signed up for ClassPass *facepalm* AISOFB, I love love love the spinning-but-with-treadmills class I took (right as the injury was manifesting) and I'm looking forward to taking parkour, bouldering lessons, aerial hoop, pole, and maybe pilates when I'm better. I'm calling it my own personal CrossFit, because I'm basically demanding that my body constantly be up for any modality of exercise. Did I mention that before the injury, I'd worked up to a 3mi run again and was considering wind sprints on one of the piers?

October's habit was supposed to be job-hunting, but a) that's not going very well at all and b) that's a whole nuther post.

Edit: Apparently I worked on this post for a month, which is good because it needed a proofread and because the first version was a lot more angsty and I've worked through some of the problems I had a month ago, although I wasn't injured then so. The original included a bit about how getting 3 things done used to be my floor for a reasonably productive day; now it's an aspiration and an LJ entry is A Thing.