Day 51: But If You're Smart You'll Learn Your Lessons Well

Today I was very off-kilter and out-of-sorts, and yet there was a lesson (or two) to be learned.

The day began with me weighing myself. I don't know why, but I always do that on Sunday. Over the past few weeks I had been pleased seeing three pounds dropping off almost consistently. That was until this morning. Only one pound. I got off the scale and got back on. Still only one pound. Just because the first two times didn't get me the result I wanted, I tried for a third. Still only one pound.

That set the tone for the day. I was not a happy camper. Mentally I knew that there could be many reasons why it was only one pound, like gaining muscle mass or hitting a plateau. Plus I have experienced the moments where my clothes are looser and I'm actually seeing that my chest is not wobbling anymore. But nothing could sway the funk that I had put my mind in.

I immediately did my jump ropes right after that revelation. It was as much of a blast today as it was yesterday—maybe even better. I was able to hop on each foot separately for at least ten jumps, managed to do more front crosses, and even did a whole routine (5x jumps, 5x right, 5x jumps, 5x left, 5x jumps, 1 front cross, 5x jumps) with nary a trip!

Then my day went wonky. I had breakfast, read the paper, then immediately went into housekeeping mode. Did I have energy? Oh hells yeah! Talk about multi-tasking! I went through this whole house, from doing laundry in the basement, to cleaning the kitchen, living room and dining room on the first floor, to making the beds on the second floor, to putting things away in the attic on the third floor. I was a cleaning fool.

Unfortunately for me, when I get in the zone like that, I lose all track of time. It was almost 2pm before I had realized I missed both my 10am snack and my 1pm lunch. A quick pause for the snack, then clean some more. Lunch didn't occur until around 4pm. Afternoon snack happened around 6pm.

By that time I had to walk to the store to pick up more food. When I got back, I immediately turned my attention to washing the dishes, which pushed my strength exercises even later (8:30pm), then dinner (9:15pm), packing my lunch for tomorrow, and evening snack (10pm).

The lessons I learned:

(1) Only you can choose your mental state. Even though I remembered all the things Patrick had said about the project, specifically the part about not paying attention to the numbers on the scale, I allowed myself to be disappointed by the one thing I was not suppose to focus on, which in turn made for a crummy morning.

(2) Don't mess up your damn meal schedule. One of the reasons for jumping rope in the morning is so that your body can be very efficient at using the fuel that it's given, especially from morning to lunch. If you push your meal schedule off to where everything is in the afternoon, then you've just lost all that excellent burning power and eventually will be cramming the food in when the body is starting to slow down for the night in preparation for sleep.

(3) Get lots of sleep, optimally eight hours. Which breaks down to the fact that I really need to stop writing and crawl into bed so I can be ready for more jump rope fun in the morning.

So, I'm going to now heed lesson number three and sign off.