Trading Chocolate for Free Weights

On Sunday morning, Andy caught me putting a piece of a Cadbury Caramello bar in my mouth.

"Wait a minute," he said. "You can't eat that."

 "Oh yes I can," I replied. "It's Easter. Lent's oooooover."

"Oh." Andy paused for a second. "Did you win?"

While Lent isn't really meant to be "conquered," I suppose I did win in a way. After vowing to give up chocolate for the Lenten season, I did not eat a bite of cocoa or processed chocolate for 45 days.

Lent's always marketed as 40 days - because Sundays are technically "free days" - but I only took advantage of one Sunday this year - the first one, when I drank a cup of hot cocoa while reading in the evening. I should admit that this past Saturday I thoughtlessly put a bit of melted chocolate and butter in my mouth while making the flourless chocolate cake for Easter dinner, which I spat out as soon as I'd realized what I'd done. As I see it, if you're going to give something up, you might as well go all out.

I learned a few things from my 45 days without chocolate:

1) I like citrus flavored sweets well enough that giving up chocolate really wasn't much of a sacrifice. Now if you told me I had to give up sugar all together for 40 days . . . .

2) I felt better when I wasn't eating chocolate. Even though I was still eating sugar, my sugar consumption must have dropped considerably over the last month because I've felt pretty off since resuming chocolate consumption on Sunday. Of course, I'm sure quantity is not a factor at all here. #sarcasm.

3) It is much easier to resist something when it is expressly "forbidden" then when it's a matter of free will. I noticed on Sunday that when the dialogue in my head about chocolate shifted from, "You can't eat that," to "Should you eat that?" I almost always, without fail, decide that yes, yes I should eat that delicious piece of chocolate cake/bar/candy, etc. etc.

4) Giving up chocolate need not be a part of your diet plan. I'm pretty sure I gave up chocolate for Lent and did not lose a single ounce.

Coincidentally, this Lent saw me return to spending a little more time working on my physical fitness. In lieu of eating chocolate, I lifted free weights and did my sit-ups.  So I emerge from this Lent with stronger willpower and muscles. I don't really approach Lent from a religious place. Instead I prefer to use Lent as a time of reassessment: to really look at what you truly can and can't do. Now that Lent's done, I'm glad not only that I'm back to my old chocolate eating self again, but also that I took the opportunity to use the season to kickstart some better habits.

Did you give anything up for Lent? How you'd you do?

 

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Enter Michelle Obama arms

Some people find the end of winter depressing. I am not one of them.

My heart sings at the sight of mucky roads, crystalline snow, and water dripping from rain gutters. I welcome the lengthening days with open arms, knowing they hold the promise of green sprouts, moving water, and a chance to shed my many layers of wool, down, and fleece for more form fitting outfits. 

Wait . . . . What? Form fitting outfits? HORROR!

It's a well known fact that I put on about five pounds in butter weight each winter. I don't worry about it too much. As butter is apt to do, those pounds melt in the heat of summer. Since reaching adulthood, my weight's always yo-yoed a bit - never enough to make my BMI a concern, or even to change my dress size. So each spring, there's a little pudge that needs to be redistributed, or rather, evaporated. It's fine.

But over the last couple years, I've grown lackadaisical in my workouts. Time once spent doing crunches and lifting dumbbells has been reallocated to other pursuits. Since apparently my word of the year is "willpower," I knew getting back in better shape needed to be a goal for 2013.

There were a myriad of factors that lead to me dusting off the dumbbells last week:

At my annual physical earlier this month, the clinic scale displayed a number five pounds heavier than I was expecting, even for a mid-February weigh in;

The shimmy into freshly laundered jeans had become more a "suck in gut and yank";

My knee pain (which comes from having muscles that are too weak to keep my knee where it's supposed to be) flared up slightly last month;

and I'd seen maybe one too many inspirational fitness pins:

Source: Uploaded by user via Ada on Pinterest

So last week I finally stopped pretending that my daily walk to the mailbox and hauling in firewood totally had me covered for cardio and strength training (although both activities certainly weren't hurting with my fitness) and got down and did the gut-busting ab workout I picked up in an issue of Sports Illustrated for Women way back when. (I loved that magazine . . .so much better than today's Prevention and Health, which seem to discuss self-tanner application tips more than they discuss actual female athletes. *sigh*) Then the next day I put myself through a series of upper and lower body exercises. 

I'm not going to lie. It hurt like a dickens. Today's the first day that I haven't felt achy and sore and that's just because I took yesterday off and haven't gotten around to today's exercises yet. (As soon as I finish this post, I swear. . .) 

While displeasure with my body's appearance is usually what prompts me to pick up the weights again, there are so many reasons for women to strength train, besides a better looking body. Lifting weights 2-3 times a week results in a higher metabolism, lessened risk of osteoporosis, lower blood pressure, and better heart health, just to name a few benefits. That's reason enough for me to keep at the old dumbbells even after this pudge is gone. Yet we women tend to gravitate towards power walking and the elliptical machine when we think about getting fit. Cardio's all well and good, but we miss out on a lot if we neglect our weight lifting.

As a member of the girl power generation, I take pride in being strong. It's empowering to be able to open your own salsa jars or pull yourself out of the lake onto a dock with using the ladder. To me, it's worth a bit of sweat equity to stay proud of this body that's my home for my entire life.

So here I go again. Lifting the weights, doing the lunges, crunching the tummy. I'm not stopping until my arms look like this:

Come on springtime. I'll be ready for you!
 

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