Not feeling like a competitor this week!

I should title this post, "you make plans and God laughs", which is exactly what has happened to me this week. One of my daughters has been sick with the dreaded lurgy which has meant me taking the entire week off work and doing very limited training. This has left me, naturally feeling like "what the heck are you doing with only 6 weeks to go and not training?" Then I remember that most of it is nutrition side of things being the most important thing right now, with the training being an added bonus. My motivation is to see this thing through properly to the end, enough said. Right now, I am the biggest I have ever been at this stage of the game at this time out, so there is probably some major work to be done. My issue is not seeing myself as being too fat, mine is in seeing more leanness than there probably is - which means it must be time for a round of photos - camera never lies!

I'm looking forward to Saturday though - I get to dish out some RPM punishment to Lindy and Lia plus I get to catch up with Dori and Lisa and some other bloggers to name a few. We're going to head out and have Vietnamese afterwards. I can't wait - so if there's anyone else that would like to join in the party, please let me know.

Hmm , what else - heard a very interesting talk on Sunday about some themes that underpin Christianity and how they apply to the athlete. There were four key points that I found pretty interesting. They were a) dissatisfaction - everyone, no matter what their station in life suffers from varying degrees of dissatisfaction - whether you're rich, poor or somewhere in the middle. In the athletic sense you are always striving towards betterment and if your performance is not up to par, in creeps dissatisfication.
Then, b) discipline - this refers to the point that human beings love discipline in order to live a full life. I know I've mentioned this before - along the lines of why a society without rules doesn't work. Lack of discipline works against the athlete - "sucking it up" and getting on with the job, no matter what it entails seems to be important for success both in athletic endeavours and with life in general. Then there was c) "trust" - in the Christian sense, that is trust in God - and for the athlete, it is "trust" in the plan. I've experienced the benefits of both - call me superstitious, but my prayers do get answered, sometimes though the answer was not what I expected. Finally there was d) gratitude and connection with the poor - to help you to be grateful for what you have and what you can do. Gratitude about how your body works is important for it to work well. My physio said to me when I complained about my shoulder once - "but you're nearly 40 years old and you've never had anything go wrong before this!" It was a great reminder to be thankful for how well things do work.

We all have a tendency to focus on remembering the immediate past, so if injured you will focus on the injury, not how well the body has served you previously.

Wow, I don't know where all that came from! Therein lies my lesson - I just wrote about the week not being to plan - no it hasn't been but I've got other things out of it, so it isn't all for nothing.

What happens when you pull up a pew..

I'm not one to blog about religious beliefs, but I've had some very enlightening moments sitting in Mass over the years, due to belonging to a parish where the priest doesn't really discuss religion so much and what we should believe, rather he discusses human nature and the challenges we face and draws from philosophy, sociology, current politics and literature, which makes for very lively discussion. Over the years I have seen people take a pen and paper to Mass and jot down notes (yes, I am guilty of this too), it is that interesting to me. And no, I'm not writing this to encourage anyone to change their beliefs or become a Christian.

Last Sunday's sermon was about doing something you know is morally wrong (eg stealing), and the effects of it on your wellbeing in the long term. He spoke about shame and guilt being associated with the event and then he spoke about a term called "concupiscence".

Here is the definition:
The propensity of human nature to actual sin as a result of the original sin, which darkened our intellects and weakened our wills.
Specifically, concupiscence is the spontaneous movement of our sensual appetite toward what we imagine as pleasant and away from what we imagine as painful.
Concupiscence of the eyes is an unreasonable desire to see, hear, and know what is harmful to our virtue, inconsistent with our state in life, or detrimental to our higher duties. An example would be the desire to accumulate material possessions irrespective of the means employed, satisfy our ambitions, or nurture our pride.

In other words - once you go down a path of moral wrong, you are more likely to reoffend as patterns are laid down in your brain (eg through neurotransmitters etc) and this is where challenge lies.

He specifically spoke about eating well and exercising - and said that when you go down the path of overindulgence, you literally set up a pattern or a script in your head that makes it easier for the event to happen again, even though you feel intense shame and guilt at the time. You can FORGIVE yourself but the issue of concupiscence still remains.

Of course this issue pops up repeatedly with my clients - the "I've overdone it" email. You can feel the shame and guilt oozing out of the communication ... "I've let you down, ", "I can't be trusted", "I'm never doing this again" (except it happens exactly a month later - funny how that is with us ladies :) ) . However, to be successful at weight loss and maintenance and to have a healthy relationship with food we must learn to deal with the concupiscence issue - what can we do to short circuit the unhealthy patterns we develop.

The answer is that we need to change our thinking. Don't be fooled into thinking that it's a quick fix - it's the hardest thing you'll ever do. Analysis of my dance with overeating a bit on Saturday led me to work out that I'm anxious about a number of things. What then - you work out whether it's valid to be anxious about said issues and nut the problem out, rather than eat over the top of it. The other issue is that you don't just change your thinking and it's final - you should be always challenging the "stinking thinking" - remember "whatever you think, you're probably right". Make those thoughts work in your favour!

Whew that was deep!

Back to our training diary for today:
1) Taught Bodystep (fun)
2) Taught RPM HiPerformance this evening
3) Tucking into an omelette the size of a flying saucer? Priceless!