Today was pretty great: 4 mile walk to the pier and back (not just 3 miles, as I noted last week, so I feel like less of a loser for taking 75 minutes to walk it); 30 minutes of ab work; 90 minutes of swimming (fast becoming my favorite activity here); a one-on-one training session (only 30 minutes, for reasons I'll explain in a minute); and a killer 90 minute evening boot camp where I ran more than I walked and did some of the most painful ab and butt work imaginable (that's not all we did, just what hurt the most). I feel like I easily lost at least a pound today. And I feel great.
So, today we had a "group nutrition class" with the founder of the boot camp. It was my first time meeting him, and I assumed it was going to be . . . a nutrition class. Instead, he handed out a set of questions. Question 1: What is motivation? Question 2: What does motivation mean? (Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these the same question?) Question 3: what is your positive motivation? ... Question 10: Who do you most admire? (I wrote Gandhi; I think I was supposed to put an athlete or something. But hey, Gandhi was thin, not that that's why I listed him.) Then, he handed out a series of "motivational quotes," all by men (Ronald Reagan, a race car driver, some guys I'd never heard of). Finally, he spent over an hour talking about visualization, internal versus external motivation and how important it is to talk to yourself out loud (this apparently has something to do with motivation, and doing it in your head is no good). I'm hoping he doesn't show again soon, because the group nutrition classes with the nutritionist are actually about -- wait for it -- nutrition. And if I wanted to hear a motivational speaker, I'd download something on iTunes. He also went half an hour over, taking a huge chunk out of my training session (biceps and back, very good).
One more thing: I love how much time I'm spending outside. I'm getting an incredible tan (which goes really well with the new short hair) and thanks to the swimming, I've finally gotten rid of the farmer's tan I got in Costa Rica 2 1/2 years ago from the one day I went out in a t-shirt with no sunscreen. I wouldn't want to live in LA again, but the weather is really amazing.
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3 comments:
I guess that speaker was motivating himself by talking out loud to himself with other people in the room. How odd. He's probably one of the trainer's relatives or something.
Keep up the good work! Here are some quotes for you:
In honor of Prop 8:
"Gay people got a right to be as miserable as everybody else."
Chris Rock
“I look at an ant and l see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.”
Miriam Makeba
I have always found the fitness industry's use of the term "motivation" extremely confusing! The year I worked out with a trainer a lot & lost a large amount of weight, he was always praising my "motivation" - I was surprised, because I thought "motivation" meant something like "how much I want it," and honestly I wanted to lose weight a lot LESS than I have wanted a lot of other things in life - it is just that I have a good work ethic and follow-through, so that once I get started on a course of action it has always been very easy for me to follow through on it over the long term. So "motivation" in this context seems to mean something more like willpower or self-discipline and less like heart's desire...
Unfortunately, the motivational speaker is the owner of the boot camp, so he's kind of a permanent fixture. Saw him again today and ignored him.
As for motivation, Jenny, I think you're right. I envy you your discipline, though. Or maybe your work ethic. I think for so long I felt like if I lost the weight, I'd be more successful in my romantic endeavors. While I think that's probably still true, it's no longer the focus. As much as I want to look better, for the first time in my life, I'm primarily motivated by a desire to be healthier. Let's hope that holds up.
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