Back Again

I went for a run yesterday. A real run.

Embarrassingly, I have not gone for a real run in a long time. I have gone for runs, sure. Group runs at various paces for various distances. I have been content to jog and cut off miles, which is very uncharacteristic of me. I have even gone for solo runs. Yet I have been talking myself into keeping them short or slow.

I am not entirely sure what had been happening. I felt gun shy about running. In theory, I told myself I missed it and wanted to return to longer and harder running, yet I would permit myself the excuses for it not to happen. Again, not like myself.

I would say it was perhaps my perpetual hamstring injury, but that has not hindered me from running or exercising in the past 18 months, so why now?

I have definitely been distracted by other fitness pursuits. bodyboss was extremely time-consuming. Then there is barre. I have been practicing a lot of belly dance for an upcoming performance I’m traveling to next month. I also picked up a hip hop class (I am terrible, by the way). So maybe I have just been too distracted.

Whatever the bullshit reasons and excuses, I finally forced myself out for real yesterday. I didn’t permit myself the 2 mile or 3 mile I have been clinging too lately, even though they have come to feel like my comfort zone. I forced myself to do the 5 mile route, with the 2 horrible hills.

And it felt great. It felt just like it always did. It sucked; it hurt; I wanted to die. Then it was the amazing high. It was all so familiar, so comforting, so exactly how I left it. I even ran faster than I have been lately. I even managed to improve after such neglect.

That was comforting. Now, I remember why I need it. I recall it’s place in my life and my fitness routine. There may not always be time to satisfy it, but at least now I can keep in mind why I should try and prioritize it.

After reading The Obesity Code and recovering from mild surgery, I find my exercise addiction tempered. Finally, it is not the end of the world if I can’t fit in a workout every day. Finally, I am not doubling down on workouts multiple times a week. Finally, I am allowing myself rest days. It feels foreign and awkward but also like a relief. I have no intentions of falling off the fitness wagon entirely, so I am hoping this reduction is actually healthy.

In all my questing for the next time and the answer, I am hoping this is actually it. I might have just needed a good run for it to feel right.

Christina Bergling

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bodyboss: My Review

I made it. I completed the bodyboss program. I even completed it on an accelerated schedule to finish before I had minor surgery, which may or may not have hindered the results. Either way, DONE! Now, for my review.

I HATED bodyboss, every single damn workout. To be fair, I hate strength training, particularly high intensity interval training (HIIT). And most of all, I loathe jumping. That pretty much defines bodyboss as a workout program.

It touts being just 24 minutes a day, 3 days a week. Lies. With warm up and cool down, it was an hour per workout. Plus the program included additional workouts for all the non-bodyboss days. So, in truth, it is about an hour a day, 6 days a week like any other workout program. I ended up skimming it down to just the meat of the bodyboss workouts so I could fit it in with my running, dancing, and barre workout schedule.

The program is divided into 4 3-week cycles. The first 2 cycles were manageable and built on each other nicely. Aside from the very annoying limitations of my hamstring injury (which bodyboss aggravated perhaps even worse that barre), it was acceptable.

Then week 7 hit. The program escalated drastically. It started included box exercises. I do not have a box and had zero desire to find a reasonable facsimile.  The number of exercises also increases from 6 to 8 and the reps climb to obscene numbers like 50. I never got to the point of being able to do 50 reps of 8 exercises in 8 minutes. The pain in my hamstring was too great to push through so many reps of exercises that made it angry, so I had to modify the program. Again, I’m not sure if that hindered results.

The workouts continued to build. More reps. More stupid jumping. I just pressed on. I just did what I could do as hard as I could do it. Frustrating, yes. Disheartening, yes. I wanted to quit before every damn workout, but I did it anyway because I was more than halfway there and I said I was going to finish.

If you asked me if I thought bodyboss worked for me before the numbers, I would have said absolutely not. I would have said it was complete bullshit and a waste of time. However, the numbers present a different case.

Final results:
Pounds lost: 5
Body fat percentage lost: 1%
Inches lost
Bust: 2
Waist: 1.5
Hips: 2

Challenge time
Before: 6:47
After: 3:49

The pounds and fat lost are negligible, but the inches and time on the challenge are relatively significant.

So, how do I feel about it when comparing experience to results? The results definitely temper some of my negative feelings because they make the suffering somewhat worth it. I have zero issues suffering, if it does something. The entire program, it felt like it was doing absolutely nothing. That turned out to not be the case.

So would I do it again? Honestly, maybe. It all comes down to the hamstring. I absolutely would not attempt it if I had any continued hamstring pain. At all. However, if my pain was actually alleviated, if my injury actually recovered, I would actually like to retry it. Both to see if I could do better and to see how my hamstring was actually impacting my progress.

Alas, for now, the hamstring injury continues to be never ending. So for now, there will be no second round of bodyboss. Instead, I am recovering from my laparoscopic surgery then getting back to running, dancing, and barre. It will all be so much simpler without cramming bodyboss in there.

The journey continues.

Christina Bergling

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