Holiday Attitude Adjustment

It's a couple days before Christmas, and for those who celebrate it (or any other winter-time holiday), there's a lot of pressure right now to be feeling jolly. 'Tis the season, right?

Photo: Icanhascheezburger

I know for myself, there are lots of individual moments of peace and joy and happiness that occur on or around the holidays. I enjoy the traditional rituals and parties, the champagne and the cookies, and the good times with family and friends.

But somehow there's this expectation that for weeks and weeks we're supposed to be building up ever-increasing amounts of holiday cheer, until we reach an almost orgasmic burst of seasonal joy on a particular day, right around the time we exchange presents. To be followed, about a week later, by another burst of overwhelming ecstasy precisely calibrated to occur when the clock strikes midnight on Dec 31st.

The problem? I'm just not able to experience quite that much happiness on cue, all in a pre-determined time frame. Maybe I'd rather spread my happiness out all year 'round, and perhaps allow it to occur a little more spontaneously.

On the other hand, there is something about ritual gatherings that makes me want to at least try to be more upbeat than usual. Because who wants to be a Grinch, a Scrooge, or a Crab and put a damper on other people's festive season?

And so it occurred to me that to deal with the Forced Christmas Cheer issue, maybe I could use the same motivational system I just developed to deal with my new, involuntary cross-training regimen. Remember Cognitive Restructuring, Accentuating Positivity®?

I'm thinking maybe I should try to use the same C.R.A.P.® approach to better appreciate the holiday season!

So here's an attempt to forcibly replace each cranky holiday thought with more cheerful way of looking at things.

Holiday observation #1: I couldn't find the perfect gifts for everyone on my Christmas list. Some of them were already sold out, and unfortunately, some of them haven't even been invented yet. When are they ever gonna get around to making a cute little robot that makes coffee and brings it to you in the morning, anyway?

Oh wait, here it is. Didn't see it at Macy's though.

But on the bright side: If you're going to pick a year to come up short on gifts, this is a good one! With the sucky economy, everyone is trying to scale back on gifts. There's a lot more emphasis on the meaningful emotional stuff, like love and laughter and gratitude and togetherness, blah blah blah. So just pretend your inability to find and purchase appropriate gifts was on purpose, as a protest against the insidious commercialization of the holidays!

Holiday observation #2: I hate Christmas carols. Well, I do like a few of them--the really old, vaguely melancholy kind that sound grave and beautiful. Silly modern ones like Frosty the Snowman make me want to hurl. (And let's not even get started on "I'm Gettin' Nuttin' For Christmas," one of the most irritating holiday songs ever written).

But on the bright side: Harboring an intense and irrational dislike of Christmas carols is an effective way to stay out of malls and other retail spaces when they are the most crowded and unpleasant! There is no Christmas music online, you can shop there safely. Plus, unlike other annoying forms of noise pollution, Christmas carols have a time limit. Of course, it would be nice if the allowable period were more reasonable, like December 24th-25th. But at least sometime in January they usually stop. Jackhammers and car alarms, on the other hand, know no season.

Holiday observation #3: People who don't normally bake yummy cookies or fudge, or buy you See's candy, or otherwise tempt you with delicious concoctions made of butter and sugar, tend to do so during the holidays because they know you love these things and they want to be nice to you. This makes it hard to avoid consumption of said yummy things.

But on the bright side: You love treats! They make you extraordinarily happy. And there's nothing wrong with having a cookie or two, or a piece of candy, as long as you don't scarf them all up in a few days. Perhaps it's time to reacquaint yourself with the food-preserving properties of the refrigerator and freezer? These modern conveniences allow you to consume a little bit of your favorite treats over a long period of time.

Holiday observation #4: Many Christmas decorations are ugly and tacky. And, how come no one seems to care that red and green are clashing colors and look kinda lousy together?

But on the bright side: Some Christmas decorations are really quite lovely to look at.

Photo: Canadian Living, via Urban Debris Artlog

And anyway, who says tacky is a bad thing?

Peeing Santa photo: Huffington Post

So do any of you sometimes need to give yourself a pep-talk, or are the holidays pretty much all good?

(And if I don't pop in again before Christmas, have a wonderful holiday if you're celebrating it!)

Setting Fitness Goals: Tips for Slackers

Photo: PaDumBumPsh

If you spend much time reading health, fitness, or weight loss blogs, you may notice that lots of folks are setting impressive goals for themselves--and more often than not, they meet or exceed them!

For example, Sagan at Living Healthy in the Real World is doing her 200 Reps challenge and Merry is working on the Couch to 5K and Big Girl Bombshell is getting set to work up Pre-New Year's Goals.

And what about Crabby? What does she aspire to accomplish? How come she never posts any creative, challenging goals and then triumphantly reports how she kicked ass despite many daunting obstacles?

Well, as it happens, I do occasionally set goals, and sometimes I even achieve them. Most times not, but whatever. I just don't tend to announce them publicly in case they turn out to be too hard or I get bored and change my mind.

So I wouldn't dare to presume to advise all the Super Fitness Achievers out there on how to set meaningful and motivational fitness goals.

Hey Crabby, it's Dara Again.
Could You Give Me Some More Advice?

Instead, the following Goal Setting Tips are not for the Super Achievers, but are specially designed for other slackers like myself, who would like to get maybe slightly less slacky. (You know who you are).

Crabby's Top Five Fitness Goal Setting Tips:

1. Don't Be a Sheep

Photo: alexthompson

After discovering that someone you admire is trying to accomplish a difficult goal--say run a marathon, or climb a mountain, or swim from Key West to Nova Scotia towing a raft of rabid Siberian tigers--it may be very tempting to say: hey me too! I'm gonna shoot for that goal, that sounds awesome!

However, picking a goal is a very personal thing. You need to take into account your own interests, abilities, injuries, and general "screw it it's too hard" threshold.

Upon hearing someone announce a goal that sounds tempting, you might want to ask yourself, what part sounds tempting? Being able to say you did it? Or all the possibly tedious, miserable and brutal steps it would take to get there?

2. Go Ahead, Dream Big--But Break it Down.

I never attempt overly ambitious goals myself, but I know a lot of people have great success by pledging to do something that seems improbable. There are too many people who have dreamed of losing half their body weight or going from couch-potatohood to ultra-marathons who have actually succeeded for me to dismiss this approach entirely.

However, I think what the successful folks do is break it down into smaller goals that are short term enough not to be totally discouraging.

For example, as I've lately been dealing with a foot problem due to (I think) plantar fasciitis, I've been trying to apply my newly invented motivational cross-training system. It's called "Cognitive Restructuring, Accentuating Positivity®!

Anyway, I've been attempting to start biking more often, to replace my regular running routine which I much prefer, and I thought, "wouldn't it be cool to bike up the hill to Skyline Blvd without stopping or walking?" It's not very far, geographically, but for a beginning bicyclist like me it's kinda steep.

But in the meantime, I set a more obtainable goal: To bike up to Skyline with as many rest stops as necessary. (But no walking the bike because skipping the steep parts would be cheating).

See? It's not the most elegant sounding goal.

But let me just proudly announce that the other morning I did indeed bike up to Skyline Blvd! Stopping four times, but who's counting. (Well, I'm counting, obviously. My next goal is 3 stops.)

Last time, I got could only get as far as Uranus. It wasn't pretty.


(Yes, I am still 12 years old. As long as my route requires passing Uranus Ave, I'm gonna keep mentioning it.)

3. Don't Give Up On Your Goal The First Time it Gets Really Hard.

At least wait until the Second Time.

Seriously, we slackers have a tendency to give up easily. We're all enthusiastic when we're making progress, but sometimes you can be doing all the right things... and you get worse, not better! Sadly, in most fitness endeavors, there really isn't a straight line effort-to-accomplishment relationship. Sometimes it's all f#cking effort and no f#cking accomplishment.

The cool thing is though, if you can wait out the sucky unrewarding times, sometimes all of a sudden you make progress when you don't expect or deserve to! So even if you're beginning to suspect you picked a dumb-ass impossible goal, give it at least a little while before you chuck it out the window.

4. But Sometimes, You Just Gotta Stop Banging Your Head Against the Wall.

If you are a lifelong slacker, you may notice that motivation and enthusiasm are not just laying around in unlimited quantities, waiting for you to scoop them up and use them to achieve all your cherished goals. All those type-A, cheerful, dedicated, hard-working super-achievers somehow keep hogging it all.

So if you use up all your energy on something hard that isn't even fun anymore, just because you said some goal out loud and other people heard it, then you may be totally wasting precious motivation on something unworthy. Maybe it's time to say: screw it, I give up! Find a goal that's more fun and if anyone calls you on your earlier goal, just tell 'em that World Famous Motivational Coach Crabby McSlacker said your new goal is way better. I'll back you up.

5. Remember Your Ultimate Fitness Goal

Whether you want to set short-term easy goals, or long term impossible goals, you probably have a "bottom line" fitness goal. Something along the lines of: stay active for the rest of your life!

Don't let the failure to achieve an arbitrary fitness goal mess with your ultimate fitness goal.

Photo: WiredRyo

It's really easy to get discouraged if you set a a goal, sincerely try to achieve it, and just can't do it. It's tempting then, for many people, to slink off and give up on fitness entirely. It's the kind of all-or-nothing perfectionism that dooms many get-in-shape efforts.

Don't be like that!

Doing anything is better than doing nothing. Forget about "goals" if they're not helping you and you can't find one easy enough to meet. Just do something to be active. Motivation ebbs and flows, and you will get more of it, eventually. And give yourself massive credit for hanging in there. You'll be far better off in 10, 20, or 50 years if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, even if it's only to take seemingly lame little baby steps. Don't focus too hard on arbitrary short term goals if they're going to scare you away from a lifetime of physical fitness.

What about you guys? Do you set particular fitness goals or just generally try to stay active?

Taking the "Cross" out of Cross-Training

(Steph spotted this and you can find more here.)

So last week I was griping about heel pain from a self-diagnosed case of plantar fasciitis. You all gave me TONS of great suggestions in the comments, as well as lots of sympathy and encouragement, and this is of course why I love Cranky Fitness readers so much.

As you may recall, I said that until my foot got better, I was going to stop running entirely, and even curtail my long walks. Instead, I planned to stick to the elliptical machine and start bicycling up some hills for cardio.

Long-time readers may have been very suspicious about that breezy declaration.

Because y'all know that anyone who hates change as much as Crabby McSlacker is not going to leap cheerfully into a whole new exercise routine. You had to figure there would be some serious whining and protesting coming along soon.

However, instead of merely complaining, I thought I'd try to make the best of it! I've been busy slaving away in the heavily-guarded inner sanctum of the Cranky Fitness Laboratories, developing my own soon-to-be-trademarked motivational system.

It's a plan especially designed for injury-induced cross-training situations. Because surely I can't be the only one who's been forced to switch to a new activity because I overdid my favorite? I figured others out there could use some help too.

(And yeah, ok, so it's only been a week or so and I haven't actually motivated myself to do much of anything yet. But if Kirstie Alley could start marketing her personally-designed weight loss program before she actually lost any weight, it seems perfectly legitimate for me to start selling people on my new motivational system before I know if it's actually gonna work.)

So, in the spirit of my Somewhat High Intensity Interval Training program, I'd like to officially announce a brand new Cranky Fitness motivational tool. It's called Cognitive Restructuring, Amplifying Positivity®!

Would you like to know more about how this C.R.A.P.® system works?

It starts with a simple idea, borrowed from just about every self-help paradigm you'll ever encounter: when something sucky happens, you gotta hunker down and find the positive aspects rather than abandoning your goals. But unlike most cheerful self-help advice to "turn that frown upside down," the C.R.A.P.® program allows you to be as pissed off and resentful as you like! Here's how it works.

Step One: Gripe!

With the innovative C.R.A.P.® approach, you don't have to pretend to be happy about the situation. Because injuries hurt, and change blows! Go ahead and allow all those negative, grouchy, disgruntled thoughts and feelings rise to the surface. Seriously, if this new cross-training activity was really so wonderful, you'd have already been doing it, right?

Step Two: Layer on the C.R.A.P®.

Yep, once you've fully aired your frustrations, now is the time to smear positive thoughts all over each and every one of them.

Many of your grievances will be specific to your new activity, and I'll provide a sample hypothetical below, but there are some general all-purpose Positive Perspectives suitable to slather on most injury-induced cross-training complaints.

1. You should be cross-training anyway, doofus.

You know it's true. There are a million studies and articles out there that advise you to cross-train. Yet most of us don't bother because it's easier to just keep doing what we like. So the injury could actually be a good thing if it doesn't last too long, but gets you motivated to start doing something different!

2. Things that seem awkward or hard when you start do not stay that way forever.

This may seem obvious, intellectually. But it's really easy to get that "frozen in time" perspective. If you go out and try something and you suck and it's miserable, it can be really hard to trust that you'll get better and maybe even start to enjoy it. It may be helpful, at this point, to recall the many steps it took to get good at your favorite activity. You did not emerge from the womb with the ability to run 5 miles at a good clip or turbo-kick your way through a 60 minute class. It took time and practice!

3. Learning to accommodate unpleasant changes and obnoxious compromises with some degree of grace is a valuable life skill you're gonna need.

Unless you're planning on never getting old. Or if you can guarantee nothing bad is ever going to happen to you. Good luck with that!

Gigi recently had a great post about resilience--and she points out that the ability to bounce back from adverse events is something you can learn. So, hey, might as well start practicing!

4. Variety keeps you motivated to keep exercising for the long haul.

New routines, new equipment, new setting, new rules, new goals--these things can all seem like intimidating barriers to trying a different activity. But once you get more comfortable, the novelty can pump new motivation into your routine. Otherwise, one day you will wake up and think about doing your favorite old activity and suddenly realize: "screw it, I don't want to do that anymore, ever!" The trick to staying fit for a lifetime is to develop alternatives to burnout before you become totally demotivated. And an injury-induced change of scene can actually keep things fresh.

Step Three: Repeat steps One and Two--Over and Over and Over again.

Because more complaints will inevitably arise, and you'll need to layer some C.R.A.P.® on your negative thoughts repeatedly until you actually brainwash yourself that the injury was a good thing. Or maybe you'll get better first, whatever. But you'll feel SO much better doing even a Lame Substitute exercise than you would by making your injury worse, or by sitting on your ass and feeling sorry for yourself.


Practical Example of C.R.A.P.® in action!

Let's just say, purely hypothetically, that a cranky health blogger has injured her foot and has had to switch from running at a favorite pretty reservoir to riding a 20 year-old borrowed 10-speed bike that is not in mint condition. Said blogger is discovering that biking and running are different activities.

Initial Observation #1: How the f#ck are you supposed to do consistent cardio on a bike? My legs aren't strong enough to pump fast enough on flat ground; I need hills. Uphill is hard and gets my heart rate up, but I can't do that for very long. Then when I go down hill, I'm just sitting there not moving at all! It was so much easier to go running; for me it's always aerobic!

Now apply some C.R.A.P.®: The need for 20-30 minutes of uninterrupted cardio for it to "count" is old school! Cardio is still cardio even if you're putting together several 10 minute series of aerobic hills separated by down hill rides. Stop being such a crank and just enjoy the downhill parts. Whee!!!

Initial Observation #2: The uphill gets my heartrate going all right, but OWWWW! My legs aren't that strong and they hurt and this sucks.

Apply more C.R.A.P.®: Well, duh. This will be a great way to build up your leg strength! Maybe, as a bribe, you can even skip some of those icky leg press exercises at the gym for a while.

Initial Observation #3: I can't listen to music like I can when I'm running. I NEED music to motivate me!

C.R.A.P.® to the rescue! Remember how you tried a spinning class once and liked the music but nearly died of leg-misery and swore you'd never come back? Well, if you bike up hills for a few months, you probably wouldn't find a spinning class nearly as miserable and then you can have music AND a change of pace from your normal cardio even once your foot gets better.

Initial Observation #4: It's freezing-ass cold going downhill and too hot going uphill! When I'm running it's easier to layer for the weather.

Try some more C.R.A.P.®: Taking off layers of clothing is a great excuse to stop on a steep hill when your legs are about to give out. Pretend you're only stopping because you're hot, not because you're about to fall over.

Initial Observation #5 It's at least a 20 year old bike and it's not mine! The gear-shirt lever is in the wrong place way down where I can barely reach it, and the gears are all crunchy and there are only ten speeds!

Hang on, C.R.A.P.® can help: Just think how happy you'll be to get back on your own 12-year-old bike, which you also complain about--at least it has 21 speeds and you can find the gears to change them because they're right on the hand grips.

Initial Observation #6: Every week that goes by without running will make me slower and I'm getting out of shape for running and old ladies on walkers will be passing me on the trail!

Try a little more C.R.A.P.®: But meanwhile you have new biking goals that you can focus on. You know you want to make it from Chabot Road all the way up the hill to Skyline Blvd--even though the first time out you could barely reach Uranus!


(And yes, I am still 12 years old and laugh to myself every time I see references to Uranus. And Uranus Ave is exactly where I stopped my first time, I'm not making that up).

Initial Observation #7: On a bike, you have to share the road with cars! Cars are dangerous and they're always running over cyclists and killing them. It's much safer on the sidewalk where you can't ride if you're on a bike!

Yep, that sucks, no amount of C.R.A.P.® can help with that one.

Initial Observation #8: My ass hurts from the bike seat!

One last time and then shall we give this C.R.A.P.® a rest? Yeah, but your butt will get used to it over time. And on the bright side, at least you don't have to wear two running bras to keep your boobs from bouncing.

And there you have it--that's how to use the "Cognitive Restructuring, Amplifying Positivity" approach to motivate yourself to crosstrain!

Anyone else ever tried to talk themselves into a new cross-training activity? Any luck?