Sleep like the DEAD (lift)

Once upon a time I would toss and turn in bed. I would lay down and think of all the things I had to do the following day... or the things I didn't get done that day. My mind would race and anxiety would create a knot in my stomach. Then through the night I would wake to use the restroom and it was a crap-shoot whether I could go back to sleep again.

Completely normal right? I even found articles on how that is the correct sleep pattern for humans, going back thousands of years ("Myth of the Eight-Hour sleep"). But I still felt tired, like I was missing out on something... maybe I was reminiscing on the sleep I used to have in high school, and mourning my loss. Yet even after I justified my light, frustrating sleep... I still felt tired and cranky.

Two full weeks ago I started weight training. For two full weeks I have had the deepest, most thorough sleep of my life! This might be a passing phase, as my body adjusts to the new demands I am making... or it may just be, as I finally utilize my body and muscles, I am starting to get the sleep I am supposed to have.

I advocate utilizing the qualities humans have adopted through natural selection. Trying to fully embrace the way our body was designed to work. We are at our most basic level, animals. Our lives have deviated greatly in the last 200,000 years ("Timeline of Human Evolution" ) and as a result we as a species have under-utilized our natural abilities. The work of hundreds of thousands of years of selective breeding and adaptation to create a body that works in tandem with an advanced mind. We are at our best when we are pushing ourselves to pick up heavy things and emulate our ancestors.

Clean eating, walking and utilizing our muscular structure and potential; these staples of our ancestors lives can also be stapes of modern mans life as well. And by adopting these practices we can be at our best mentally. I have cut out soda and most processed foods over the last 6 weeks. After the initial shock wore off, it was surprisingly easy to do. Then when I paired it with weight training the real changes began. I started thinking again. Don't get me wrong, I have always been a thinker (insert "the thinker" pose) but I was often plagued by periods of short attention span, mood changes and insomnia. Since changing my lifestyle, these problems have all but disappeared leaving me amazingly well rested, alert and stable.

My husband is feeling the same benefits. He told me the other day how he used to have periods of excess energy, and periods of fatigue throughout the day... but since weight training his body is in a constant state of alertness and energy. It is amazing what TRUE energy feels like. Not the manic caffeinated insanity coursing through your body after a shot of caffeine... the the complete mind sharpening clarity of a great nights rest, a body physically capable to do anything at any time and the constant "I can keep going" attitude. It is amazing.

Now at the end of the day I go to bed and can't even remember laying down. I am out immediately, mind off and sleep on... and it is amazing! I awake from a inky, velvet sleep and AM IMMEDIATELY awake! I am ready to start the day and that is ridiculously convenient since I have two young children who don't care if I am tired, have a hangover or need a cup o' joe to wake up. I am never going back to the way it was. And I can't wait to see what other changes I am going to start seeing within my life. 
"Weight Training for Better Sleep"
"Can Weight Lifting Workouts Actually Help you Sleep Better?"- Talks about a Stanford Medical School study with insomniac patients, I couldn't find the actual study, but I will keep looking...

Weight Training is for Girls!

So here's the deal... I am fat. I was a little chubby growing up, and in high school I slimmed a little doing JV basketball for a year (regardless of how much cookie dough I ate at the end of each practice). But the real transformation came in college. The Freshman 15 was good to me and through diet, quasi starvation and intense cardio classes several days a week I slimmed down to my hottest body ever! Then I met my hubby, got comfortable and became a foodie. Still I didn't plump up too much, and I felt I could loose 10 lbs, but at the end of the day I was still happy with myself and my future. I slimmed back down 6 weeks before my wedding doing South Beach Diet and more cardio, lost the extra weight and had to take my wedding dress in. Super cool I know, and reinforcing the idea that diet restriction and cardio does a woman good. So here I sit, 7 years later with a crazy preschooler wrestling a toddler at my feet, so chunky I haven't recognized myself in the mirror since I became pregnant almost 5 years ago.

Well that is almost true, I started recognizing myself earlier this year and that was my breaking point. When you start believing that the big girl is actually who you ARE life get a whole lot more depressing! But climbed out of that hole and started making changes. Following what worked in the past I cut out the carbs and tried upping the cardio. But for some reason the exhaustion, migraines and irritability kept derailing me! I wonder why... That was what women do, cut calories/carbs/food whatever and do endless cardio. Every magazine I saw toted that and all my friends and family reinforced that belief. But, wimp that I am, I couldn't handle starvation and hours of work on no sleep (baby with reflux and milk allergy) and VERY active preschooler. II did this time and time again. And every time I "fell off the waggon" I took it harder, ate binged out on candy, cr@p and soda even more. Until I weighted MORE Than I did after giving birth!

WTH!?! I was obviously doing the wrong thing. So I tried Weight Watchers- no bueno... Paleo- lasted 1 1/2 days... South Beach (again)- 10 days of HELL until I got to phase 2 and porked out on whole grain bread, and stopped completely. Nothing I tried worked, calorie counting was my last hope and that was even too hard. SO here I am fat and NOT happy, confused why I couldn't starve myself and go cardio-crazy to loose the 75 pounds of "baby weight" I put on (2 pregnancies involving bed rest and the misbegotten notion that breastfeeding melts the fat off, found out I was immune to that and GAINED weight while breastfeeding!)

So where does that leave me? Depressed and alone? No I had my loving husband to get by butt in gear!

He too had put on some baby weight was was trying to loose it and get back into shape. His method was triathlon training. But training soon took a backseat to family time and injury lead to a complete reversal of progress. Then he stumbled onto weight training.

He purchased the book "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe, and got to business. Losing weight and trimming his stomach within 6 weeks my curiosity was peaked, and my own weight training has started. So I am starting this blog to document my transformation (in progress) and help any other women... or men for that matter... struggling with the same insecurities and fear of the iron. Wish me luck, and let me know what you think about the program. I will post my trials and successes, and hopefully my process will someday help someone else. I know I continuously troll the interwebs for success stories and their process... I anxiously await the point when I am included in that category (and when I get to the point that I can post before and after pictures with pride).