From MS Patient to Fitness Junky

August 03, 2011 | No Comments

A healthy lifestyle is never easy

Sometimes I just feel like rolling into a ball and not do anything. Forget about the world and just hibernate..
If you wanted to start working out but find it too hard, know this: Everyone struggles. You have no idea how many obstacles there are, even for someone who seems very motivated and active.

Let’s start with myself: Recently real life has been a bit rough. That means after moving it’s tough to get into a good rhythm again. There are a lot of influences which make it hard for me to get into a comfort zone both eating and workout wise. Following a structured workout requires a lot of planning to start with and if you have a lot of additional outer influences it makes it ever so much harder.

Some of those influences can be:

Time
Not finding the right food or food you are used to
Stress
My illness issues I have to struggle with every now and then

All of these can influence your motivation negatively. It’s hard enough to stay focused as is, even with an ideal environment but it makes it certainly easier if everything goes according to YOUR plan.
Today for instance I really didn’t feel like working out due to personal issues and the past few days I certainly didn’t belong to the motivational folks who push through no matter what. Despite feeling totally “bleh” I pushed through today and decided to start Asylum completely over despite having done two whole weeks already. While it did take a lot of effort on my part to get started I felt absolutely amazing afterwards. It even helps get some of the frustration and stress out while fighting against yourself to keep up with the workouts. Besides the personal struggles if something in your life doesn’t go according to plan and not feeling like “punishing” yourself further with workouts, there are many more external influences that can make it ever so hard to follow a healthy lifestyle.

Another little example is the Gym we signed up to: I learned that they don’t allow you to workout in sleeveless shirts which is hard for me since I have to make sure I don’t over-heat. It’s tiiiny obstacles that don’t seem important to anyone but you, which add up to an even harder fight

Another example, some friends and acquaintances of mine decided to start P90X as a group. Yet those guys have different challenges all together which come from an ethnical background. Influences such as Fasts (Ramadan Periods), dietary restrictions (IBS, Allergies) or ethnical food restrictions in general can all be a really hard hurdle to jump over.

Last but not least, I have met a friend of mine I haven’t seen in a few years. She lost a lot of weight and generally really looked smashing with nicely toned upper arms (the rest of her slender/sporty body was hidden ). However, after talking to her I learned that she had a really hard time AFTER she lost her weight. It’s not uncommon for people who went down in weight quite a bit to get addicted to the workouts and pressured to not gain that weight back any way possible. This can be so extreme that you not only get addicted to working out (yes there is such as thing and it’s actually more common then you think) but also see food as your enemy and not as fuel for a healthy body. It’s a hard to find and difficult to keep balance between pushing your body to stay in shape and giving it enough and the right fuel to support what you are doing and not going over the top. Not eating enough because you think you still have to lose weight, pushing through your workouts despite being sick or if you get horribly cranky if you can’t workout. All those are little signs that you might have an unhealthy relationship with exercising.

On the other hand you have the guys that lose weight and then think: “oh goodie, here I am, I did it. Now where are those chocolate bars at again?” It doesn’t help that quite a few of those “Lose X amount of kg/lbs in Y amount of days” which only lead to a nice yo-yo effect. Fact is, yes, you can lose weight fast initially, but it’s most of the time retained water and the proper hard, real work starts after this. Once again, not really helping with the “keep motivated” issue.

It’s a daily struggle for everyone. People have to fight themselves, have to fight restrictions, be it physical, mentally or ethnical. People who snicker behind your backs about you only going for the salad and sticking to it or sticking to drinking water have hardly ever any clue how hard it is to do so. Or how hard it is to not feel like a freak while everyone think you are a nuts (or worse, a psycho)

So, next time you think about giving up on your workouts: Know that there are millions of people out there fighting the good fight with you and some of them have a much harder time then you probably have. On the other hand, it’s also ok to give yourself a break every now and then. Just don’t make it a habit.

Whenever I feel like pitying myself and thinking “I can’t do it, it’s too hard and I really don’t feel up for it” there are a few things I like doing:

Look at old videos I took of myself doing the workouts. Proving I CAN do it.
Remember the guy in the P90X Plyo X Video with an artificial leg

But most of all I watch this again:

July 18, 2011 | 4 Comments

Insanity: Asylum and me

So, my first week of Asylum is done and I would like to share a few thoughts about it:

The slight downside
First of all, you need space, a lot of space. You are jumping a lot, you are doing moving planks a lot and you are moving/running back and forth a lot. So before thinking of buying Asylum, make sure you have a big space to work out in.
Shaun changes from exercise to exercise really fast. Specially Vertical Plyo consists of exercises in which you need to change from ladder to floor to ladder to bands quite fast (including adding bands and removing them fast as well). You definitely should check out the different routines before you do them, to know when you need to change between exercises (I wish I did). It’s also a good idea to look at all the programs which include Agility Ladder exercises to get the routines down. The Small Agility Ladder intro is ok but by far not enough to explain all the different routines you will be doing with the ladder. They are not supper complicated and checking them out once should be enough. However, due to the fact mentioned, that you change really fast and the exercises themselves don’t necessarily last long, you are better off knowing what’s to come, switch fast and get the accessories needed to not have more downtime then needed.

Another issue I run into is the choice of dumbbell weight. I currently only have up to 5kg dumbbells and they don’t seem to be heavy enough for some of the exercises (for others I needed to go down to 4kg however). It’s a good idea (again) to check through the exercises and know beforehand which weights you are going to use since Shaun doesn’t give any kind of indication or hint what to look for.

Differences to P90X and Insanity
Now that I have a feeling for Asylum with one week down I can see the differences between those three programs. I think I intuitively made the right choice to do the programs in the right order. Anything else would have led to me getting injured. I am absolutely certain about that.
I would definitely start with P90X again. It gives you a great base in every aspect of fitness and makes sure you are prepared for any additional workouts. I say this because you can easily modify P90X to your own level (with either weights, repetitions, breaks) and you will still get a lot of benefits and improvements out of the program no matter what your fitness starting point is. Specially the Yoga workout and Plyo helped me get ready for Insanity. Without those, my knees would have been a candidate for serious injury during Insanity. While P90X is a great overall program which REALLY works on every aspect of your health and fitness, Insanity is definitely working on your cardio. The Issue with doing Insanity first would have been that I would not have been strong enough, specially for the upper body workouts to get enough benefit from the program.Without Insanity, I would not have had the Cardio/Stamina to even get through the warm-ups in Asylum (even though I still struggle as is ).

I was a bit afraid that Asylum would be “too sporty” for me. Even though I love sports (tennis, skiing, softball, running) I never really was very good (or had the patience) at/for say swimming or running or athletics other then throwing. I am not a soccer player or basketballt player and I am not a swimmer. I am not really looking to increase any special sports performance per se and thus I wasn’t really sure if Asylum was a good pick for me.
Well it was and is: While you are doing quite a few exercises you might be familiar with from Insanity, you are doing them a) in a way that challenges your coordination and b) it really forces you to keep control over your body. I never realized how “sloppy” and uncontrolled I have been doing a lot of exercises, specially jumps. Even though you THINK you are doing them as controlled as you can, you get sloppy without noticing, specially in Insanity (or Plyo X in P90X). The agility ladder REALLY forces you and helps you to focus and it leads to a much more controlled way of exercising. There is even a huge difference of doing the workouts/warm-ups with or without the speed rope. Using the rope automatically forces you to jump higher and more controlled while you can cheat if you are doing the exercises without the speed rope (which is an option and is also demonstrated by several members of the cast).

In a very rough summary, to me, Asylum feels like a condensed version of P90X (strength parts) mixed with Insanity (jumps, cardio and plank work) while (as mentioned) the program forces you to have control over every movement. The last part makes it probably the best workout I have done so far. While Asylum does remind me of P90X and Insanity, there are a lot of new or advanced moves (such as X jumps with resistance bands on both your ankles and in your hands or one legged power jumps) which will keep you motivated. It’s very challenging to do jumps and plank work such as Plyo-Push ups with the ladder. As mentioned before, I would basically flare around without much control while going through the exercises. Asylum really helps you to keep your body under control, which is also one of the main reasons this workout is being advertised as the hardest of the Beachbody workouts so far.

Here are a few impressions of Strength and Back to Core of the first week. Both days are very focused on controlled and slow exercises unlike Speed and Agility and Vertical Plyo (which I didn’t take any footage of yet). Speed and Agility seemed to me the easiest of the exercises so far while Vertical Plyo was very challenging due to the fact that I didn’t know how fast I would have to change between resistance bands and the ladder and without knowing the routines properly beforehand. Strength and Back to Core are both great with some exercises that are seriously hard for me (Reverse Plank Series probably being the hardest of all). You will easily see that my posture is not the best yet as I am struggling to keep good form and control over the movement. Sorry for the somewhat crappy quality. We are still settling in and the light is not the best

July 12, 2011 | 1 Comment

Thank you beachbody, seriously

I know, I know..I am getting annoyed by constantly hearing or reading the same preaching over and over as well. While some social media pros think it’s helpful to spam the same message until it comes out of your ears, I personally find it very annoying and it pretty much leads me doing exactly the opposite.

With that out of the way I can’t help but mention how much I love the beachbody programs. The past few days I had several incidents happening which made me realize just how much the programs helped me.
Well yes, other programs work as well but what I really love is the variety that keeps me motivated. I have a tendency to get bored as soon as things become easy or repetitive and beachbody programs are neither of those two things.

But! I am rambling and I am not a coach nor do I want to sell anything so let me stop before anyone gets the impression I am trying some dodgy advertising spin here. What I want to talk about are the past few days of me and Henning settling slowly in in our new home and what happened. This also included that both of us signed up for a local Gym here were we live and in my case it also included a in depth Physiotherapy Check-up. Here is where the first surprise happened:

I went into that test without any clue how it would end up. It consisted of a proper body composure test, a VO2Max test, Heart Rate and Oxygen consumption test with a mask while running and several strength tests.
After I was done the PT asked me how I thought it went and I answered that I had no clue but that I was in much better shape last year due to moving just recently and several hiccups in my schedule this year. Well, she was quite startled at my results specially since I told her before the test that I have been diagnosed with MS. She laid out the paper in front of me and started to explain all the numbers in details. In short: every single aspect from strength to VO2Max are in the area of a professional athlete. Picture this! *flex* She also mentioned that she was really impressed with my strong will to push out as many repetitions I could for the strength test (one was holding plank on my elbows which I did for almost 3 Minutes in perfect form! (sorry for bragging)).

The only thing I have to be careful about is that I am not getting thinner. I am already on the skinny side and I am now currently working on adding more muscles (well definition that is, not size). My Body Fat is at 19 and some % and while I could go a bit deeper I definitely don’t want to get it too low. It’s all about distributing it nicer, however.

So today Henning and me went back to the Gym for our session with the instructor and to talk to him about what our goals are and to get general exercise routines down. Now here comes the second fun part: While he was looking at my results from the PT test he was already really impressed and kept repeating how great those results are. We then went to the workout area so he could show me some of the exercises he had in mind for me after our talk. I am specifically trying to work on my legs, specially thighs and glut area since I have big troubles really engaging them at home due to squat issues. We started with weighted squats (I felt like a professional fitness girl with the big iron thing on my shoulders and squatting while checking my form in the mirror. Quite frankly it felt kick-ass!). It’s a great thing that Thomas (the instructor at the Gym) is really helping me with my form too and gave me all kind of tips. Anyway, the fun part was that one of the exercises he had in mind for me was side to side push-ups on a stepper. You basically start at the top go to one side and to a push up with one arm on the floor and the other still on the stepper then move to the other side and do the same as fast as you can and as deep as you can. He showed it to me and then explained that I should just try and that it might be too hard at the start.

Well it wasn’t. While the exercise IS hard he was so startled by how well I executed those and how many I did that he actually called another instructor to check out what I was doing. The whole “This is REALLY hard but try” happened a few more times and he kept repeating how impressed he was. Well given the fact that he is maybe just a really good salesman/motivator, the fact remains that I felt great about myself. There are some really fun and challenging new exercises I have never done before and I am really looking forward to substitute my normal beachbody routines with some Gym running and leg work.

With all that said, last year I couldn’t even do a normal push-up nor a pull-up. Now I went on to impress sports professionals and doctors alike. My Neurologist was startled that my lesions are already starting to heal and showed improvements and my blood tests since last year all came back more then in the ideal range. Not only do I contribute all of this to the beachbody programs when it comes to my fitness level (P90X and Insanity mostly, I still haven’t tried out Turbo Fire even though I have it as well), I also learned what it means to eat healthy and clean/lean.

My all time favourite recipes are probably the Turkey-Pinneapple sweet and sour meat balls (see picture) as well as any kind of frittata with fresh vegetables. Now that I finally got all my gear together I am ready to tackle Asylum. We shall see where that leads me

July 03, 2011 | 1 Comment

Moving and such

I am still without computer and we are still without a TV (posting this from our notebook).
Moving to another country is hard in itself. The language, the change and all the paperwork that comes with it is not easy. Taking care I have enough medicine until I am properly in the Norwegian system had to be made sure as well as other things. Once again I wouldn’t know what I would have done without Henning.

I felt a bit down after the move, not so much because I do not like it here (I do!) but because I wasn’t able to work out in almost over a month now. It also seems more complicated to make it work and I won’t have the same nice space in front of the TV like I used to. All this made me a bit cranky. It’s not because I think I have to for looks but it’s that fear that with my illness if I do not take every opportunity that I might not get back to how strong I was before. It’s what pushes me and what makes me want to keep being healthy and strong as much as i can. I hate to feel weak because I felt weak before and I fear, once I grow too weak, I won’t make it out again.

I already noticed the loss from the break and it always makes getting back even harder. The nice muscle definitions I had am month ago are almost gone and not only because I haven’t really been able to eat properly. At least all the moving, carrying, unpacking and what else comes with a cross continental move has kept me on my toes a bit. I also got some short runs in when the weather permitted.

Thanks to a friend we finally found some proper workout gear for me. Our new little mail box we got as a present will be put to the test this week. Norway is, however, a typical outdoor sport country. You will find tons and tons of running, hiking and specially cycling gear but at-home strength training is not really very common it seems.

I am also excited to check out a local little gym here in Holmestrand tomorrow. Henning might join up with me which seems like a nice addition to my normal beachbody routines and running. It’s going to be fun to do something together

Oh and I will most likely have my own blog for Unite MS where I will be writing about my experience with MS. Probably slightly more focused on the illness then my blog but most likely very similar.

Additionally, I started to write on a book about my life and experience with MS called “Syringes and Cross trainers”. It’s going to be a slightly funny but honest look at my life with MS. Very much in the spirit of how I write on my blog. When I was diagnosed I was searching and shopping around for books but the ones I got were all way too technical for my taste and I want something lighthearted, personal that people who get newly diagnosed can pick up and read to get to know the future a bit without scaring them and without overwhelming medical facts and terms. A little personal project which might or might not get through..we will see

I gotta get of the couch, Henning is painting the wall in front of me and I feel like slacking!
Here is me hoping my ordered workout gear is coming soon.

June 01, 2011 | No Comments

Yummie Banana Bread recipe and that vanity thing

Am I working out because of vanity?
Yes and no. Mostly no, even though people might not believe that.

Yes, it’s awesome to feel great and to see your abs for the first time in your life (hence the vanity picture to go with that post, bare with me (Henning took the pic so I blame him!)

..but for me it’s mostly to feel great all the thousands of little improvements I see every day if I keep pushing.

It’s those little improvements that keep me motivated and not a glimpse in the mirror.
Frankly though, I work hard and I think a bit of vanity is seriously earned for every single one of us who does something to feel good about. No matter what it is. So yeah, here is to my picture in my workout gear thinking I need that mascara applied because I thought my mom would like to see a picture of me after a few month of no visits! Now, do you think with fake boobs I would eventually make it onto some health fitness mag cover?

On other news, me, being European, I made Banana bread for the first time in my life. It’s not really a dish that is well known over here. I also thought that bread meant bread, as in the thing you smear butter and jam on..but that comes from someone who grew up with the knowledge that cheesecake is salty and with actual smelly cheese on top..

Either way, I found this great recipe on one of my Iphone application and couldn’t help but try it out which led to a big success in the huge household of the two of us with 100% satisfactory effect!

I did adjust a few things to make it more fitting with my clean way of eating however. I will add both versions so you can chose which one you’d like to follow:

Ingredients:

3 to 4 ripe Bananas (I used 3, the more you use the more flavour you will get.)
1/4 cup melted butter (not sure how to substitute the butter yet, I keep experimenting)
1 cup sugar (I used suger substitute stevia)
1 1/2 cups flour (I used whole wheat flour)
1/4 teaspoon salt (I used the low sodium version)
1 egg beaten (I only used the egg white)
1 teaspoon baking powder or soda (I used Powder and instead a bit more since the original recipe asks for 1 tsp of soda)
Chocolate chips, as many as you like (I used dark ones with 70% Cacao and quite a bit of them too)

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degree Fahrenheit (or 180 degree Celsius in my case)
Mash the bananas with a fork in a big bowl then add in all the other ingredients and mix everything.
Pour the mixture into a buttered and floured cake or bred form.
Bake for 50 to 60 Minutes (do wooden stick test).
Once done, get it out of the form and let it cool before slicing and serving.

Voilà! Easy peasy! Enjoy!
And now I have to go clean up the kitchen (damnit..)