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Where have I been and what have I been doing for the last two weeks? Well, I haven’t been posting here. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been productive, though. Despite what the casual observer may think, I have been busy digging. Digging!

Since May of last year I have managed to sink further and further into a fitness rut, and I swear this thing is made of quicksand. Every attempt to pull myself out of it has resulted in me sinking a little bit more into the depths. I haven’t quite been able to get enough momentum to keep going. It’s a slippery slope and it has been next to impossible to overcome.I think it started in May when I had a mechanical problem with my bike on an organized ride in Nashville. I became discouraged that day. The day my husband and I were riding bikes and he was actually bitten by a dog - not merely chased and scared to death, as we are accustomed to - only made matters worse for me. Mentally, I lost desire to climb on my bike. Fear was the emotion that ended up overriding all others. Hip and back pain that tied me down to weekly chiropractor appointments were the final straw. The simple act of doing my indoor cycling classes was enough to make me hurt for days. The thought of climbing on my actual bike eventually never even crossed my mind. I was beaten down and felt defeated. The rut grew deeper.

What happened next was a chain reaction that has gotten me into this big ass hole that started as a little pothole. Not riding my bike was an excuse not to exercise at all. Having hip and back and leg and knee pain that required regular chiropractic visits gave me the excuse not to do any other form of exercise. I stopped teaching my indoor cycling classes for a month, even. Thankfully, I decided to at least go back to that or I would be working on 10 months of absolutely ZERO activity.

The chain reaction was more than fitness related. It trickled down into my eating habits. The foods that once were off limits or limited to special occasions - such as white potatoes, cheese, sweets, sodas, etc. - soon made their way back into my everyday life. My portions were still reasonable, with the occasional exceptions of a second serving at dinner, but I totally lost my perspective when it came to eating. Couple that with lack of movement and energy expenditure and what do you have? A total mess, that’s what!

Truth is, I became depressed. There really is no better word for it. There is no way to package it nicely and make it look better than it really is. Coming to this conclusion has not been easy for me. Despite knowing better, the part of me that it programmed to live healthy, eat healthy, and be active has managed to stay somewhat in the forefront. While some may think this is a good thing, I beg to differ. It has been very detrimental to the whole process. It has blinded me to the reality of the situation and has prolonged the final diagnosis. But that isn’t the important thing. The important thing is that it finally happened and now I can do something about it.

Back to the first part of this entry -

I’ve been DIGGING! For the past couple of weeks, I’m gradually digging myself out of this rut that I’ve been stuck in for so long. I’ve already talked about getting back to eating breakfast every day and thinking more about the foods I eat. That was the first step. I’ve picked up the shovel, though, and started digging a bit harder. I’ve started a workout routine. I’ve even managed to take it slow so I avoid overdoing it and backsliding, which is what has happened in the past.

The process is a slow one. I’m basically starting all over from scratch. I have to remind myself that I can’t just jump into things and pick up where I left off. I can’t do my workout routines of running, cycling, burpees, heavy weight training, twice a week yoga classes. I’m not at that fitness level now. I have to start small and work my way back. I have to gradually dig away the deposits and slowly pull myself out. Doing much more than that will only hurt me, not help me. It’s a hard pill to swallow, admittedly. I want to just do what I was doing before. I want to feel like I felt before. But that person has gotten buried and I have to chip away slowly to reveal her again. It will happen. But I must have patience. It is going to take time.

If you are looking for me, I’ll be the one slowly digging the sand out from around her in the gym. I’m the one on the elliptical with the headphones on listening to some Xavier Rudd and smiling, happy to just be out from under the depression cloud for once - anxiously awaiting Spring because it’s time to climb back on that bicycle and ride.

Five years ago I weighed somewhere around 235 pounds, give or take a few pounds. To be quite honest, I avoided the scale at all costs back then. That’s why I’m uncertain as to exactly how high those numbers really got. All I know is that after a month of trying to “eat better”, I finally climbed on the scales to weigh because I knew that I had lost some inches due to my clothes fitting looser. Only then did the reality of the situation give me a damn hard slap across the cheek: 225 pounds. Within the month I was a card carrying member of the local gym.

I won’t go into all the details of my decision to join a gym. I had my “aha!” moment and that was that. It was no longer an issue of wanting to join a gym, it was a matter of needing to join the gym. It was a matter of me taking responsibility for how far I had let myself go. It was a matter of deciding, once and for all, what was more important: living life to its fullest and seeing my children grow up or not. I opted for the former.

Joining a gym wasn’t the entire answer, though. Little did I realize the extent of the journey that was before me.

I spent the next three years of my life educating myself in all things fitness, nutrition, and health related. I read everything I could put my hands on. I was a sponge. I had a hunger and thirst for knowledge, which was a huge change from having a hunger and thirst for things that put pounds of fat upon my ever expanding ass. It was finally my brain’s turn to benefit from the constant knowledge cravings I was feeding.I not only focused on learning through reading, but I experimented with my newfound knowledge as often as possible. If I read about fat loss through carbohydrate cycling, I would perform my own experiment with it and find out if it worked for me. I had some success and I had some failures. Through trial and error, I learned what worked for me and what didn’t. This, in turn, helped me weed out some of the “fads” and “myths” that exist about nutrition and fitness. We all know about those, right?

It is my hope that with this site I can share what I have spent the last five years learning for myself - with you. In the process, I hope to help further debunk all the “fads” and “myths” that exist out there about health, fitness, nutrition, and weight loss. I know from experience that it can be very intimidating to tackle such things without knowing and fulling understanding the basics. It’s hard to learn and understand the basics with all of the false information and fad tech gadgets that the weight loss industry wants to push on us that don’t work, will never work, and never meant to work. Do I know it all? Of course not. No one knows it all. The health/fitness/nutrition industry is a booming business and ever-changing. There are new studies released each day claiming something different. And, like all other businesses, has people in it to make a buck. It’s important to know how to sift through the study results and weed out the money makers and still gain a working and understandable knowledge of how to get and keep a healthy body, mind, and spirit.

With the invention of this site, I also hope to renew my own commitment to myself and my health. In the last five years I have gained a lot of knowledge, but what good is knowledge if you don’t put it to use every day? And how can one justify not learning more and putting it to use, as well? I managed to rid my body of 70 pounds of fat in three years. After those three intensive years of tracking every single move I made and every single thing I did, I took a much needed break. Seeing as how I’m human, it was easy to get off track. Consistency became a word that meant less and less to me, especially over the last year. As a result, I’ve gained weight and I’m wearing jeans a couple of sizes bigger. How much do I weigh? I honestly couldn’t tell you. Do I care? You know I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t, at least to some extent. Do I care enough to weigh? No, I don’t. Because it’s not about a number on the scale for me anymore. It’s about my health. It’s about my fitness level. It’s about my nutrition habits. It’s about how I feel. While the physical changes I have endured over the last five years have been remarkable to some, I am still amazed at the emotional and mental changes that took place. My mindset is in a different place now. And this renewal is something I need. It’s something I want. And I hope it’s something that you can benefit from, as well.

Welcome to Bicycle Blues. I hope you enjoy the ride.

With 2007 on the rapid burn to oblivion, I find myself doing the one thing I have sworn off for many years: setting up a New Year’s resolution. It’s ok, though, because I am not going to set myself up for failure by actually calling it a New Year’s resolution. No. Instead, I am calling it a New Year’s Renewal. And you know as well as I do that that will make all the difference in the world.

What exactly is this renewal and how does it all tie in with this website? The answer is coming in the next post. Stay tuned.

{photo credit: stock.xchng}