I love the holidays. So busy, so fun, still so relaxing. Saturday we saw the Christmas lights at the zoo. Todd’s nephew Gus and his new friend Celeste rode around in a Radio Flyer. Gus sang the first line of Jingle Bells over and over until strangers started to join in.

Sunday I went shopping and had lunch at BJ’s on Pearl Street with Todd’s sister, mom, and aunt. Then last night we took my cousin Andrea to see Tron in 3D. Great special effects! Loved those lightcycles!

On the way home we pulled up to the gate of a house on Baseline Road about a mile from where I live. It belongs to the owner of a tree farm.

You would have to see it in person. It must have taken a huge team to get all those lights on all those huge trees and that’s just the quarter mile driveway. You can’t drive back to the house but you can catch glimpses of it from the road and it must be spectacular.

My husband and I decided a month or two ago to make every Thursday night a date night. We alternate who makes the plans. Todd was the genius behind racing those go karts. Last night was my turn. First we went to dinner at Tag in downtown Denver. We ordered something called Omakase which apparently means chef’s choice. It was like Iron Chef. Four different chefs made up a dish and then we judged which was the best based on presentation, taste, and creativity. They invited us into the kitchen to meet the head chef (and owner) and announce the winner. The food was AWESOME. Afterward I took Todd to see Blue Man Group. What a riot! My favorite part is when they stop what they are doing to harass the people who arrive late. Hahaha. I think maybe it brings back memories of a class I had in college in an auditorium called Math 100 which seats hundreds of students. If you weren’t in your seat when the professor was ready to go he would kick you out in front of everybody. It wasn’t so funny then but it is now. Hehehe.

The other day we had a workout that included 100 kipping pull ups, 100 push ups, and 200 air squats. It got me thinking. Let’s say over the holiday months I gain 2 pounds of unwanted fat. During 100 pull ups means I would lift an extra 200 pounds. In a regular push up you lift very roughly 65% of your body weight. So for 100 push ups at 2 pounds that is another 130 pounds. Air squats. I read that you can figure out how much you lift in an air squat by putting your scale on a chair and sitting on it with your feet on the ground. (Your full body weight would only be lifted if you jumped off the ground). For me that worked out to be about 85%. So 85% of 2 pounds lifted 200 times is 340 more pounds.

That means a gain of just 2 pounds of fat would be an extra 330# to lift with my arms and 340# to lift with my legs for a total of 670# extra in a 20 minute workout! That’s 75# more than my CrossFit Total! (1 rep max on squat, press, and deadlift). Imagine how an extra 5 or 10 or 20 would translate! In workouts, in sports, even just in daily life. Hours and hours of walking around, getting in and out of chairs, going up and down the stairs. Your feet and your back taking the extra beating day in and day out from carrying extra weight around that serves no purpose other than maybe to help you float.

Just something to think about when I am reaching for those cookies at Christmas.

Disclaimer: This is about gaining extra unnecessary fat above a healthy body fat percentage not about trying to cut down body fat. The amount “necessary” is a whole separate subject up for debate.

The other day a guy at CrossFit mentioned he had come across my website and wanted to make a suggestion. He said ‘you seem to make short term goals and conquer them and that is great but maybe you should set some long term goals too’. Of course, my immediate response was ‘I have set long term goals. They are in there  somewhere in there.’ But are they? To tell you the truth after a year of this thing I can’t even remember. I added some, removed some, and changed them so many times that I am not sure what they are anymore. Probably not a good thing. I am accomplishing a lot but to what end?  I am thinking it is the time of year where I need to go back and read my archives and re-evaluate what I am doing to make sure I am still on the right track. I am also thinking this site needs an update and maybe a little bit of reorganizing so both the long term and short term goals are easy to get back to. Any suggestions are welcome.

I heard a rumor that my gym might have a No Sugar challenge in January. I hope so. I would definitely get in on that. I can barely make it one week much less a month. Sometimes I can barely make it through one day. I wish I could blame it on the holidays but it is equally bad year round. My family had “cookie day” on Sunday. It was so much fun to make cookies and give them out to the neighbors. But I couldn’t bring myself to give them ALL to the neighbors. (One for me… one for them, two for me… one for them). Tastes so good. A few hours of being really hyper followed by a two day cookie hangover. I used to think it was totally worth it. Now I think it would make more sense to choose feeling good for the two days than the couple hours.

I just submitted an 8 month update to the Body-for-LIFE challenge so they don’t forget about me. Now it is out of my hands. A year after making the commitment to live healthier I am proud to report I didn’t do so bad. They announce the winners in January. One female winner in my age group and one female winner overall. I want to say something meaningful about the experience like ‘I feel like I already won’ but I will have to do that later. Right now I still kind of want to win something. I think sometimes I am afraid to admit what I really want out loud because I can’t stand the possibility of disappointment. But I think if you state your goals clearly and regularly you are more likely to give them your best efforts. Sometimes the hardest thing about achieving a goal is conquering your own fear of failure. So I think the more practice I get facing those fears head on the better off I will be.

After eating a half bag of tortilla chips for lunch my first CrossFit workout after vacation was as many rounds of 7 knee-to-elbows, 11 box jumps, and 21 double unders in 20 minutes. A harsh reminder of the importance of eating right. I think I am gonna go to bed now.

For 9 days the closest I got to a workout was walking to town to get dinner. Volleyball was a little rough last night. We only had 3 people in a 4s league so I even had extra work to do. CrossFit today should be… interesting.

Yesterday morning I put on boardshorts and a t-shirt and ate breakfast by the beach overlooking the ocean and the boat dock… Right now I am at home in a ratty sweatshirt and sweatpants with a blanket over me about to start work. Sigh…

Part of what motivates me to continue pushing myself and working on healthier living is that I am able to. What a luxury it is to worry about whether I will eat too much today when so many people in the world are wondering if they will get to eat at all. How fortunate to be deciding whether to go for a run this morning when so many people are too injured, sick, or malnourished to even get out of bed. I was only sick for 24 hours and I was already irritated that I could only lay around. So when I am healthy I feel like it is my responsibility to take advantage of it.

I used to go to a yoga class where the instructors would always say “if you can, you must”. During class thoughts would always pop into my head like ‘i can also sleep in and eat cake for breakfast’ but I got the message. If you have your health you have an amazing gift that others in this world would do anything for. If you have the ability and the means to take care of it and especially to enjoy it, don’t let the opportunity to do so pass you by. Happy Thanksgiving!