Bethany Michaels's Blog, page 3

Small Steps Health: Week 4--Treadmill Fail

The goal for Week 4 was 15 minutes on the treadmill 5 times during the week. I was trying to build consistency in my exercise habits.

I failed. Miserably. I didn't get on the blasted treadmill even once. Not once. Ugh.

OK, so WHY did I fail. Was the goal too lofty? Was I too busy? Too lazy?

My knee was bothering my for two of the days, but that was no excuse to not do ANY walking. The kids had some appointments during the week and our new bed was delivered. But that was no excuse not to do ANY walking. Maybe I just wasn't committed to the goal. Maybe I just really loathe the treadmill.

Or maybe I just hit my usual 4th week wall--the point at which anything I am psyched about in the beginning starts to lose its happy glow and becomes difficult.  It's not fun anymore. I'm still doing OK on the limited caffeine and limited sugar front, though, so that's a plus.

Honestly, I'm not sure what went wrong, so I'm going to call Mulligan and do this goal over since I think developing a habit of exercise is a key component to losing the weight and easing in to a healthier lifestyle. Week 5's goal will be, again, to hit the blasted treadmill 5 times during the week for at least 15 minutes.

I think it's important to have a game plan this go-round, so I'm enlisted my nag-nificent children to help pester me into making goal. I'm also going to plan to do this around the dame time each day. My daughter has basketball camp this week at 9:00, so I'll plan on dropping her off then coming home to the tread-hell and to write before picking her up at 11:30.

Ready, set, go!

Small Steps Health: Week 3: The Dreaded Treadmill

When I was younger, I loved to play sports. I loved gymnastics when I was small. I took a few classes, but was mostly self-taught. I did flips and tricks on the bars at the school playground that no doubt would turn my hair gray(er) if I saw my kids doing the same things. I started playing little league baseball when I was in second grade and stuck with that until about 6th grade when I switched to softball and became my team's starting short stop. I played a little basketball, but by the time I was a freshman and I realized 5'4 was as good as it was going to get, and that I had a lot of stamina, but not much speed, I decided not to continue. I went canoeing, skiing, ice skating, hiking, camping and swimming for fun with friends and I loved pretty much any activity (except vollyball. For some reason, I always loathed that sport).

But now? The very thought of getting on the dang treadmill makes me want to do ANYTHING but strap on the walking shoes and get moving. I just don't wanna. I know the experts say to find something you like to do and do that for exercise, but realistically, the treadmill is right in my basement and doesn't require another person, equipment or travel. It's convenient.

But it still sucks.

I know it's something I need to do to meet my health goals. Exercise will burn calories, help my heart, help my stress level, and could even help me on the creative front.

But it still sucks.

Week #3's small step goal was 15 minutes on the treadmill three times during the week.  I decided to multi-task and use the handy-dandy tread desk Hubby built for me and get some pages in while I suffered. The goal wasn't to bun calories so much as to just get in the habit of using the dang thing.

I had mixed success. By saying I was going to do it three times, it was easy to push it off. By Thursday, I hadn't gotten in even one session. So I dragged my butt on board and ended up walking quite a bit while working on my WIP. Friday I walked, too, but Saturday I didn't. Feeling guilty, I got up Sunday morning before the rest of the house was awake and got some time in, deciding to count it as my third time for the week.

OK, so I worked out three times. But the goal was to get in the habit of doing it, not rushing it all right before the weekly deadline. Consistency is my problem in a lot of areas in my life and clearly this is just one more of those areas (sigh).

In order to try to increase consistency, I'm going to make Week #4's goal 15 minutes 5 days a week. That way I know it's something I need to do pretty much every day and it will be harder, theoretically, to procrastinate, since I really only have 1 or 2 opportunities to make up my skipped day and still make goal.

The experts say it takes 21 days of doing a task to make it a habit, so I'm hoping that after a few weeks, it won't be so bad. And once this dratted Tennessee summer is over, I might be able to walk outside or do some hiking. That wouldn't be bad, either.

I want to be active. I want to like to be active. Maybe once I shed a few pounds and it gets easier to be active I'll enjoy it more. But until then I guess I'll just have to grit my teeth and try to get through it.

Grammar Fail--Free Toads!

I'm most definitely not a stickler for grammar, but I do expect sign-makers to have people on their teams who are. When they don't, the results are hilarious.

I was at a festival here in Nashville a few years ago and came across this sign, posted EVERYWHERE by the Park Police. It's one of my all-time favorites:

[image error]

Small Steps Writing: Multiple Projects, Multiple Pages

[image error] Going to conferences and talking to other writers, I'd often heard some talk about working on more than one project at once. This seemed impossible to me. When I'm in the story, I'm in the story. I couldn't imagine switching from one set of characters to another because I always felt like I needed to be right there with my characters as the story unfolded.

Going through the Great Slump of 2010 really made me open to trying some new things since it was clear what I had been doing up to that point had stopped working. So I decided to give this multiple projects thing a go.

And it is working beautifully!

Since I'm trying to get 5 new pages a day, it's a great tool. I wrote 30 pages on WIP #1 the first week, then got to a point where I needed to backtrack and re-evaluate a few things that could be a problem later. But I wanted to press ahead with 5 new pages. So I started working on WIP #2 during the second week. I didn't get as far in that one, far various reasons, but  was insanely excited about how the story was flowing. AND while I was using my creative juices to create new pages of WIP #2, I figured out what I need to do to fix WIP #1. It's strange, but when I'm writing I get more great story ideas than when my mind is clear and I'm actively trying to think up new ideas. It's like once the creative gears start churning, more and more ideas pop out without that much concentrated effort. I just keep a notebook handy and jot them all down for later.

My main motivation for concentrating on one project is the fear of wasting time. With four elementary-aged kids, scouts, school, husband, house, and, oh yeah, a full-time job, I just don't have the time to waste. The hour or two I have carved out during the day for writing needs to be productive. I need to keep moving forward. I can do that with the multiple projects technique, even if it takes longer to complete one project.

For me, this multiple projects thing works on two fronts: 1) I keep moving forward, adding to my weekly page count and getting closer to "The End" 2) I'm more creative with both my projects, since creativity begets creativity.

Here's the other paradox. I don't know if I would have ever tried this if I hadn't fallen into a slump, but if I would have been doing this the whole time, the slump may never have happened. So what I'm saying, writers, is if your usual method isn't working, shake it up. Try something you never thought would work for you, something that sounds nuts and is totally contrary to how you work. It might just be the earthquake you need to shake free of your slump and get moving again.

Small Steps Health: Week 2--The Not so Sweet Sweets

Week 1 went great and I was all jazzed up for my next goal--no sweets. I don't have much of a sweet tooth anyway, but still I knew it would be a challenge because I'm a stress-eater. Stress and work = candy machine. Stress and family= Little Debbie, cookie, ice cream or whatever else is sweet and easy to get to.

My rules were that I wouldn't eat sweet junk food like cookies and cake and that I would avoid food that was obviously sugar-based or full of sugar, like Kool-Aid or pancake syrup. I knew my obstacles would be 1) having kids in the house and 2) stress eating.

Result: About 90% victory!

[image error] I did cheat one day when I had bought the kids some mini-donuts as a treat. I didn't eat too many and I did resist all the other temptations (even an unattended birthday cake at work). I also kept with my limited soda rule. We went out to eat twice and both times I had lemonade rather than soda. I know it had sugar in it and I probably should have had water. But it was raspberry lemonade, so the fruit should cancel out the sugar, right ??

All in all, it was a good week. Goal number two is in the books and I'd call it a success. A small one, but that's sort of the point, right?

Week 3 is at least 15 minutes on the treadmill three time during the week. Exercise is always hard for me to find time for, but I think just requiring 15 minutes is good because it doesn't seem like such a large block of time to dedicate to the task. Plus, once I'm on, I'm always on more than 15 minutes.

I'm hoping that by getting in the routine of getting on the treadmill regularly, it won't be so hard to build up to more time and more days on the sucker. Maybe some day I'll even like it.

Right.