Exercise | Triumph Wellness

Purple Toed Vacation

April 5, 2013 by Emily Segal 5 Comments

I’m fairly certain that Marketing 101 says “Keep pictures of your gnarly, ruined feet OFF the internet!” But I’m a rebel, ya?

I PROMISE you that will be the last one! Just wanted to show you where I’m at, because frankly my family isn’t exactly oozing sympathy anymore.

OK, I’m done with the pity party. But did I mention how much it hurts?? OK, OK, but are you feeling bad for me yet, because that is definitely what I am fishing for here…

Anyway, it seems like every time I get in a groove of writing, blogging, seeing clients, a Jewish holiday happens and throws me off track completely. This time it was Passover and I was the designated seder host:

Twas a lovely evening!

We decided on a Stay-cation this year and pledged to spend every day that was not a holy day, out and about, climbing the land. We hiked every day! Yes, with that toe. Yes, I whined so much that everyone left me behind.

We hiked the South:

Nachal Pratt

The giant on the right, simultaneously rooting for the Indiana Hoosiers and the Vancouver Canuks, is MY BABY, by the way.

We hiked the North:

Park Utopia

This is the breathtaking memorial for the 44 people who lost their lives in Israel’s deadliest forest fire on Mount Carmel in 2010.

At the end of all the exhausted climbing, we felt like we had walked all the way back to prehistoric times!

The Carmel Caves where some amazing prehistoric remains have been found.

I have to say that as the first time we have ever taken a hiking holiday when I am NOT training for some future race, how crazily liberated I felt! I didn’t have to worry about my knees, or about twisting an ankle and having months of training ruined. I feel like I have my life back! Well, in 6 months when I have normal toenails again, I imagine I will feel like I have my life back, but this was pretty close.

Clearly, it was time for me to move on from that hobby and so far I am really glad I did!

Alas, the holiday ended and the back-up of waiting clients began. Now somehow it is Shabbat again?! Next week starts off with a very exciting Sugar Blues workshop I’ll be leading for a private group in Efrat on Sunday! After that is done, I pledge to be back to a regular schedule of writing. I have so much amazing information to share! Stay tuned…

And no more toes. Scouts honor.

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Filed Under: Holidays, Rants, Running, Tel Aviv Half Marathon, Travel Tagged With: Exercise, Holidays, Running

On Not Settling for just OK

March 17, 2013 by Emily Segal 2 Comments

As those of you who follow me on Facebook already know, I finished my last Half Marathon on Friday, in a race where sadly, one young man lost his life, and many others were hospitalized for heat related injuries. A few posts ago, I predicted people were going to get hurt if the forecast was correct and I described how we runners were being encouraged by local coaches to change our pre-race prep and our plans for the race to just run a relaxed pace, watching ourselves and those around us all the time, for signs of heat stroke. The race organizers postponed the full marathon to next week on a changed course off the main streets. They were unable to postpone all the races scheduled because of Obama’s visit to Israel next week. But moving the full marathon assured that no one would be out in the heat too long and enabled them to move all the other races up an hour. The first half marathon heat began at 5:45am. I was in the 6:00am group.

I ran the course from 6am – 8:40am and although the heat was rising quickly in the last hour or so, it was really not THAT hot. And I am someone who is totally sensitive to the heat! There were a couple of problems from my perspective: First of all, they ran out of electrolyte drink very early on. I’d actually love to know how many of the sickened were suffering from hyponatremia rather than dehydration. I had electrolytes in my pocket so I felt comfortable guzzling back large amounts of water. I also didn’t feel like there were enough water stations. Yes, they were every 2 kms, but they were manned by kids – hot and suffering volunteer kids – and there were times I had to actually stop running and ask to be poured a cup or two of water! Finally, we were promised sprayers with hoses and by my count there were only TWO. I could have used 50!! At every water stop, I took 4 cups: drank 3 and poured the 4th over my head. Oh yeah, and there was no food, or at least none by the time I rolled through. Again, I had my own supplies, but if I had been depending on what had been promised, I would have been in big trouble!

Despite these rather minor criticisms - and I know plenty of other runners who do not share my opinion or experience – I don’t think you can lay blame on anyone for the tragedies. I don’t know what happened to those people so how can I say? The man who died was apparently the epitome of fitness and health and nearly 20 years younger than me. How can you explain such a thing? I was running with 50-70 year olds and we were plodding along just fine. I did not see a single person weave, trip, or show any signs of distress where I was at the back of the pack. I was also, for the first time in my life, completely willing to take a DNF (did not finish) if I started to feel unwell.

As you can see from above, my finish time was 2:40 – a far cry from that 2:15 I had been training for!! But I must tell you that this is by far my proudest finish of all the races I have run! I am proud mainly because I got SO many emails and texts from people who said they ran on Friday because they had been inspired by me. I mean, does it get any better than that?! But I’m also proud because despite the string of very valid reasons to drop out of this race over the last few months, not only did I stick with it, but for the VERY FIRST TIME, spent the entire race thinking “I’m OK ! I can totally do this!” I wasn’t worried or wondering. I wasn’t gasping for air or feeling at all hopeless. Other than blisters and toenail trouble, I felt absolutely no pain! I was tired when I crossed the finish line, but I actually forgot to stop running for a minute until someone said “You can stop now.”

Lastly, I am proud because my husband went from non-runner to successful half marathoner who finished a few minutes before me. When I flew into his sweaty dazed arms in the finish corral, he said “I did it! YOU inspired me and I did this!”

shucks ya’ll

You know what I am going to miss the most by not competing in long-distance races anymore? Being an inspiration for people, yes, but I will endeavor to do that in different ways now. Yes, the high of accomplishment and the bragging rights too. But more than that, is the energy of a group of committed people who are out there pushing their physical limits because they want something MORE than the ordinary in life.

There were 35,000 people out there running on Friday. That is 35,000 people willing to put in the training, say no to months of desserts, get out of warm beds on cold days when everyone else is snoozing cozily on, run in rain, get splattered with mud, skip the late night drinks with friends, lose our toenails, (sacrifice our Achilles in the case of my training partner!), stay committed, stay on track. We all have our own reasons for being out there, but I believe we all share the desire for something more. Something greater.

I gave myself one day off. One. Then last night, I sat down with my calendar and my journal and mapped out my next goal. I hope I always have this desire to grow, to better myself, and to make the most of what G-d gave me. I hope I never settle for just OK.

I hope you won’t either. It doesn’t have to be running – it can be any area in which you choose to push the envelope and to stop accepting “good enough”. You will get a calendar, make a plan, check off your day by day goals, and before you know it, be standing at the pinnacle of your achievement, knowing that every single drop of blood, sweat and tears was worth it. Amen.

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Filed Under: Exercise, Goals, Growth, health coach, Inspiration, Positive Thinking, Running, Tel Aviv Half Marathon, Tel Aviv Marathon Tagged With: Achievement, Exercise, Goals, Nutrition for Athletic Performance, Running, Self-Improvement, Tel Aviv Marathon, Vegan Athlete

Mind Monkey Warning: T-minus 5 weeks

February 12, 2013 by Emily Segal 1 Comment

Sorry for the unintended blog break there! When you are in the health or fitness industry, January is a busy, busy month. In a major “be careful what you wish for” kinda way, I decided to up-level my business and was literally slammed with new inquiries! Hey, I’m not complaining!

Now I am settled in with a new crop of wonderful clients who, with my support and guidance, are well on the way to fulfilling their dreams and desires, yay! And I can get back to a more regular writing schedule.

So I am 5 weeks out from the Tel Aviv Half Marathon of 2013. What I want to write about today, is my struggle to increase my speed, set a personal record finish time, and the monkeys that are getting in my way. If you remember, I had decided that since I have already run this distance several times, I would work on my speed to keep things interesting. Turns out it’s much harder than I thought it would be!

This is a re-cap of my racing “career” for perspective:

2005: Westchester County Half Marathon ~ This was my first attempt at a long distance race and my goal was just to finish it no matter what. Finish time: 2:23:56

2006: Yonkers Half Marathon ~ I came into this race under-prepared and over-confident. The race itself was a nightmare of pain for me. Finish time: 2:35:39

2011: Tel Aviv Half Marathon ~A return to long distance running after several years off as I adjusted to life in a new country. My goal was just to finish. Finish time: 2:36:11

2012: Tel Aviv Full Marathon ~ Decided to double my distance and go for 42.2 kms in honor of my 45th birthday. My goal was to finish before the 6 hour cut off. Finish time: 5:44

2013: Tel Aviv Half Marathon Goal Finish Time 2:15.

The difference between my last two finish times in 2011 and 2006 and my goal for this year is about 21 minutes. Spread that 21 minutes out over 21 kms of running and it’s basically running one minute faster per kilometer.

THAT SOUNDS SO EASY!!!

What’s one minute faster? When I was in the planning stages I felt that was totally doable. Here in the trenches, I can tell you it feels like the fight of a lifetime for me!! When I am out there running and trying to maintain my desired race pace, I feel like I am pushing against a 40lb sled! And really, this is still a pretty slow pace for most people. The average half marathon pace for women is 2:12. That is a demoralizing thought.

There are very real issues that impact speed such as age and weight (both have increased over the years!) but truly I think I am up against a mental block. The bottom line is that it plain hurts to run faster! And it is scary. I feel like I could trip and sprawl more easily. I feel like my heart might explode or that I won’t be able to go the distance. And the biggie, behind almost every fear: What if I fail?

So that brings me back to the beginning of the post and the January influx of new people excited to start on a new path to health and fitness. At first, it’s exciting! It seems doable. We are pumped up to get started!

Then a few days pass, or weeks or months, and we get tired of watching our calories, planning and journaling our food. Surely we can skip the workout, just today. We look over a month of “work” and see that we have lost a tiny fraction of the weight we need to lose. It starts to feel impossible. And hard. And scary. Besides, our friends are giving us flack for not being able to eat out with them, and drink, and stay up late. They’re right, who wants to live such a strictly disciplined life anyway?

WARNING:

The fact is, we DO want to achieve something here! If we listen to all the monkey chatter about “I can’t”, “It’s too hard”, “It’s not that important anyway” we will never get what we want.

NEVER

The reason working with a health coach is so valuable, is because you have someone reminding you of this and calling you back when you start to party with the monkeys.

In lieu of personal health coaching, I give you Bruno Mars and some muppets to say what I would say to you. And what I say to myself every. single. day:

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Filed Under: coaching exercises, Exercise, Goals, Growth, health coach, Inspiration, Running, Tel Aviv Half Marathon Tagged With: Achievement, Anti-Ick Techniques, Exercise, February slump, Goals, goals forgotten by February, Running, Self-Improvement, Tel Aviv Marathon, weight loss

Redefine Hard

January 24, 2013 by Emily Segal Leave a Comment

On a typical morning, I wake up, walk the dog, feed everyone breakfast, pack lunches, and get the kids off to school. Then I put on my running clothes…

…and spend the next 30 – 60 minutes whining to my husband about why I do not want to go running!

My husband, observing this phenomenon in me for years, and now experiencing it for himself while training for his first Half Marathon, has sagely noted:

The training is not the hard part. Getting out the door to DO the training is what is really hard!

Often when a client first comes to see me for weight loss or diet change, he or she holds the belief that “Weight Loss is Hard”. This belief has probably formed during past attempts where it either felt hard to diet or to maintain the weight lost.

Now imagine for a minute how much motivation and excitement to get started you feel when you think “Weight Loss is Hard.”

Ugh, not very much, right?

So we re-frame the belief that “weight loss is hard” by listing all the things about being overweight and food addicted that are hard:

Finding clothes to wear that you feel good in each day
Clothes shopping (nothing you want looks good on you)
Being without food for several hours (start to get crave-y and hypoglyecmic)
Having heartburn
Having a stomach ache
Taking medications for diet-caused illnesses
Being out of breath
Feeling insecure or even ashamed
Walking in to a room and assessing if you are the biggest person there
Being tired
Feeling depressed
Worrying about your own health
Worrying about passing these food problems on to your kids

I know that not every overweight person feels these things. These are things my clients say or things I experienced myself when I was overweight.

When we re-frame the question “What is Hard?” we can now see that being overweight and food addicted is really pretty hard! Look at that list! Is it just possible that, in comparison, sticking to a healthy food plan might not be so hard after all?

As for we exercisers, what is the re-frame we do to get us out that door? Personally, I think about the things that would be hard in my life if I did NOT workout:

feeling depressed
achy muscles
low energy
muddy thinking
flabby legs
being out of breath
setting a poor example for my kids
and the one that gets me most right now, 8 weeks from my race day: failing and/or suffering in front of thousands of people.

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It’s all in the re-frame!

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Filed Under: coaching exercises, Exercise, Goals, Growth, health coach, Inspiration, Positive Thinking, Running, weight loss Tagged With: Achievement, Dieting vs Lifestyle, Exercise, Goals, Obesity, Overweight, Running, Self-Improvement, Sugar Addiction, weight loss

T-minus 10: How to Run a Different Race

January 6, 2013 by Emily Segal 4 Comments

Remember how last year while training for my first marathon, I latched on to Kelli Clarkson’s song, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger?

Well, this year there’s a new sheriff in town and she says:

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So, I am in my 12th week of training with 10 weeks to go until race day. As you know, I also made the conscious decision to have a different experience with running and racing this year. To accomplish that, I changed my training plan and I changed my training fuel. I don’t even feel like the same person right now, so I think it is working!

This year I am training with a personalized version of Hal Higdon’s Intermediate runner program. The biggest change in this plan has been the kind of speed-work the plan entails. Instead of just running intervals on speed days (short sprints or “fartleks”), this plan uses Tempo Runs. Tempo Training is a gradual process of training your body to be able to sustain a faster speed for longer periods of time, rather than explosive sprints which never helped me get any faster. You can read more about Tempo Training HERE.

(Incidentally, for those who didn’t see when I posted it on Facebook, the link above led me to this fascinating video on how to blow the perfect Snot Rocket while running. For that bit of edification, click HERE. Good stuff.)

Since incorporating Tempo Training I have actually seen my pace slowly improve. It took awhile for me to see any differences but I was persistent and this week I really turned a corner and cut off some serious time at the 5K distance.

Not only has my performance improved, but the shape of my body is changing as well. In the past, I tended to grow some pretty big quadriceps muscles when training for these distances events. This year has literally been a pain in the @ss with most of my new muscle growth in my hamstrings and butt. Why the difference? I have been ATTACKING hills this year. I used to kind of avoid them and we all say how Tel Aviv is a flat course. But it’s not really flat – ask anyone who has run it! There are some looooooong slow inclines that are killer and what about those two crazy hills on HaYarkon at the end?! (If you are thinking “what hills” imagine turning south on HaYarkon from Nordau. Oh yeah, that hill. Oh and what is this on the other side of the tunnel coming up to the Sheraton? It’s a nasty friggin hill at the very end of the race, baby).

Another thing I have changed this year is my nutrition. Back in November I committed to an Eat to Live challenge over on Dr Furhman’s website. I had a kind of wobbly start with being totally compliant, but once I got going, weight started coming down and energy started coming up. Becoming a Nutritarian is changing not only my physical shape, but my mental approach to how and why I feed myself, and undoubtedly it will change the way I coach others as well. I’m sure I will be writing much more about this.

It is crystal clear to me that on the days I eat to meet my nutritional needs and no more, I have great workouts, and days when I eat (or drink) for entertainment, distraction, or mere habit, my body gives me sub-par performance. I didn’t even realize I was getting sub-par performance before upgrading my nutrition! I thought I was doing pretty well. But yo-ho, there is a whole other level up here!!! And I don’t want sub-par anymore and not just in terms of running and working out.

So that expression about doing what you’ve always done and getting what you’ve always got? Completely true.

Luckily, the opposite is true as well.

Training song of the week, Vertigo by U2. This song is like a brick on my gas pedal!

Filed Under: Exercise, Goals, Growth, Inspiration, Running, vegan, vegan challenge, weight loss Tagged With: Achievement, Exercise, Goals, Nutrition for Athletic Performance, Running, Self-Improvement, Vegan Athlete, vegan diet benefits, weight loss

Winner of the 30-Day Vegan Challenge

December 16, 2012 by Emily Segal 2 Comments

Thank you all for participating in the give-away. I wish I had a free membership to give out to everyone of you! However, the winner of the 30-Day Vegan Challenge Membership is:

Hannah Lee!

Hannah Lee, please send your email address to me at Emily@TriumphWellness.com in the next 7 days so Colleen’s crew can get you all set-up with your membership. And take notes because we’d love to read a guest post from you on how the program changed your life, hint, hint.

For those of you who had such great reasons for wanting to take part in Colleen’s program, consider purchasing a membership. It’s only $20 and well worth the price. You can sign up HERE.

Next up: Running Announcement!

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Yeah, so did I…

I made a decision about the Tel Aviv Marathon and signed up for the Half Marathon (21.1km). If you’ll recall, when I ran the Full Marathon last year I said there were a few things that would have to be different for me to run it again. I would need to: a.) run with a group, which would require me to, b.) run faster, and in order to do that, I would need to, c.) drop some serious weight.

I did lose weight, but not enough to make a difference yet. I did try my best to put a group together but they are not ready to commit to the Full Marathon this year (I aint getting any younger people!). Lastly, despite several weeks of training, so far I have not increased my speed by a second. Why? Because I keep increasing my distance. Heck, I’m up to 17kms already, so basically, I could run the Half today! But if I can stop working to increase my distance to 42kms, then I believe I can work more on speed.

I do not want to run another nearly 6 hour marathon all by myself. It would be the exact same race as last year, blech.

Therefore, the plan is to work my butt off for the next 14 weeks until the race and try to get as close as I can to a 2 hour Half Marathon. Then, next year I can think of training for a 4 hour Full.

Fourteen weeks people in Israel. Even if you are a couch potato, you can be ready to run a 5k or 10k in 14 weeks. If you are a casual runner, 14 weeks is more than enough to get ready for a Half Marathon. Hal Higdon’s free plans are HERE. Come run with me!!!!

Training Song of the Week: Linkin Park, Burn it Down. This song comes on and my legs are suddenly pistons.

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Filed Under: Product Reviews, Running, Tel Aviv Half Marathon, Tel Aviv Marathon, weight loss Tagged With: Achievement, Exercise, Running, Self-Improvement, Tel Aviv Marathon, Vegan Athlete

The View from Here

November 19, 2012 by Emily Segal

(Tel Aviv, Israel)

You are all waiting for me to write something.

I can feel it.

It would be far easier and undoubtedly better for business if I mentioned nothing of our current conflict. But I know who my readers are and that I am the only Israeli and in many cases the only Jew that many of you know. I recognize that I have an opportunity here to share a viewpoint you might not hear elsewhere. I understand that most of you listen to standard media outlets who I can tell you are not even making the simplest of efforts to get their facts straight. Yesterday the BBC showed footage of people running from missiles and identified it as Gaza City when in fact it was Tel Aviv – and in front of one of Tel Aviv’s most iconic and easily recognizable hotels, the world-famous rainbow facade of the Dan Hotel! If they are messing up simple shit like that, trust me, they are not even getting close to the facts on the ground, nor do they even try. There is so much you don’t know that it makes my head hurt.

My country is doing what it has to do to take care of it’s citizens and protect our free, democratic society. There is not another country in the world who would put up with the kind of terror and hate we have had directed at us for the past 6 decades of our existence. It is enough to me that I know we are a just people; that we try harder than any other nation has ever tried to fight a war while limiting civilian casualties even while Hamas is trying to maximize them! I know that my tax dollars go to providing Gazans with electricity, aid, medicine and food at all times, not just during the current conflict. I know that injured Gazans are sent to Israeli hospitals where they receive top of the line care and compassion. I know that in other parts of the country, like my town for instance, Arabs and Jews live side by side with no strife. My kids play with Arab kids in the park. My doctor is Arab but it was two years before I even knew that because guess what, Arabs and Jews look exactly the same. When I go running in the morning, Arab women in hijab often speed-walk right past me (which tells you how fast I run). There were 3 Arab women in my last Hebrew class who had come to Israel from other Arab countries because here they can study and have careers that are prohibited to them in their home countries. These Arabs are citizens of my country enjoying the same rights as me and suffering the same terror.

We are fighting Terrorists, not Palestinians. I would be quite happy to have Palestinian neighbors in a country under their own control IF and only if, they would agree to stop trying to blow me up. I don’t think that is too much to ask.

How this war effects me personally? Where I live is about 13 miles from the farthest missile strike in Tel Aviv. We have not had any air raid sirens in my city and we have not had to run to our safe rooms, although we were instructed to ready them. The fact that we go about our day normally while 13 miles away people are running for cover is beyond weird. We hosted some of our family who live in the South over Shabbat and when a car alarm across the street went off, they rose robotically to head to the shelter like some sort of twisted Pavlovian PTSD.

In a country as small as ours, pretty much every person I know has a husband or child serving in the IDF. We literally dodged the bullet on that one, but in 4 years it will be my son’s turn. Of course by then, all wars will have stopped and my son’s job will be to plant daisies and sweep the porch, said every Israeli mother for the past 64 years.

OK, enough of that. I am happy to answer individual questions you may have if they are respectful and something that I, as an Israeli citizen, would be able to answer. I have been having email exchanges with a few of you who wanted to understand some things better and that was really wonderful. I am closing comments to this post though, so you will need to email me if you want to ask anything. However, if you just want to share your opinion, don’t bother writing as I will delete it without reading. I have had opinions up to my eyeballs!

If after reading this you wish to stop following this blog, go right ahead and click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of your email. This is who I am. You don’t have to like me.

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Next: People keep asking me if I am training for the Tel Aviv Marathon. The official answer is yes, but don’t tell myself as I am trying to keep it a surprise. From myself. Otherwise I won’t do it. I’m in my 6th official week of training with 17 weeks left to go. My long run is up to 13 kms so far. My husband is actually training with me, although that doesn’t really mean anything as he takes his first few steps with me and then bolts off way ahead. But when I hear him tell people how he never liked running before he watched me finish 42.2 kms and was inspired him to try it himself, I feel pretty darn proud! I am still undecided if I will run a Full or Half Marathon at this point and have given myself the early registration deadline of December 15th to decide.

In order for me to register for the full marathon, I have determined that I need to drop another 5kgs between now and December 15th. I am down 4kgs from the steroid gain, but it’s not enough to run 42kms with. To that end, my last tidbit of news today: Starting today, Dr. Fuhrman is running a 6-week Eat to Live Challenge, based on his book by the same name. It is free to register and for the 6 weeks you get free access to his member forums at the Gold Level. I had a Silver membership which was upgraded for the challenge, in which I will be participating.

Eat to Live is a program of eating called Nutritarian. The main tenet of Nutritarianism is to eat the greatest amount of nutrients for your calorie buck: tons of veggies, fruit, limited fats, measured nuts and seeds, limited starchy veggies and grains. Most Nutritarians are vegan, but some include 10% of daily calories from animal protein. I have been an Eat to Live dabbler for years, but I am committing to a 6 week challenge to see if I can’t get down to fighting weight. Running weight. Whatever, smaller, you get it. If you’d like to join me, the link to the challenge is HERE.

And now, to confound those of you who read this and concluded I am “right-wing”, here is a little song I like. Hm… am I left-wing? Darlings, I have two wings right there on my back. They do not define me in one direction or the other!

Filed Under: Rants, Recommendations, Running, Tel Aviv Half Marathon, Tel Aviv Marathon, vegan Tagged With: Exercise, Running, Tel Aviv Marathon, weight loss

The Frightening New Normal

November 11, 2012 by Emily Segal 1 Comment

We live in a world where the following things are considered “normal”:

Eating everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING … but in “moderation”, of course

Allowing our kids to eat sugar and junk food every day because they are doing so “in moderation” and because not doing so is not “normal”

Spending day after day completely sedentary, moving from house to car to office then back to house

Hiring people to do all manual labor around our homes from cooking to cleaning to gardening to childcare

“Relaxing” at the end of our long day by watching mindless television or chatting with our equally exhausted and equally “normal” mindset cyber-friends

Believing that despite our hired help, our cars to take us everywhere, households full of time saving equipment like dish washers and washing machines, and the hours spent on passive screen-based entertainment, that we don’t have time to cook healthy meals or get any exercise

Taking all kinds of pills to alleviate illnesses and symptoms brought on entirely from doing all of the above

Having to take more pills to alleviate the side effects caused by the first pills

Undergoing surgeries where a doctor cuts our bodies open with knives and saws (um hello, SAWS, yes they do!) to fix the problem the pills didn’t fix

Feeling this physical and mental decline is all an inevitable part of the aging process

Feeling hopeless to change anything

The other day on Facebook, someone posted one of those quote boxes that said “Adulthood: If you’re not tired, you’re not doing it right.” and a whole string of people said “Amen to that!” People, I would like to add, who are at least 20 years younger than my remarkably UN-tired self.

WHA????

I feel so bad for these people. I feel so sad that people just stumble through life exhausted and drained, not ever imagining the kind of energy and health they could have if they just chose it. I sometimes feel like I am living in a world that is the exact enactment of the films Wall-E and Idiocracy! The future has arrived indeed.

Folks, please, please, PLEASE wake up! Please make the connection between HOW you live your life and the way you FEEL living your life! Stop waving your white flag of defeat before even stepping onto the battlefield!

My thoughts:

I don’t think that most of us can live in this modern food obsessed, food-abundant world and NOT worry about what we eat and how much. Very few people have the ability to stop when they are full and only eat when truly hungry. Some can, but judging by the “obesity crisis” most can’t. I can’t. I have tried it and it got me obese, sick and miserable. I pledge everyday to not ever go back to that dark place. Read the fascinating Myth of Moderation HERE.

Kill yourself in the gym? Give me a break! I don’t “kill” myself in the gym. I kill myself when I am NOT in the gym. Our bodies need to move, lift heavy things, stretch, jump and climb. If those actions are not part of your natural life (ie you sit at a computer all day) then you need to work them in somehow. Working out is what keeps us alive, strong, supple, and mentally well-balanced. Being sedentary is what is a death sentence. How have we gotten that so backwards?

F*&k Normal! “Normal” these days is synonymous with diseases like cancer, being overweight and or under-strong, and complaining of how tiring life is. People hobble along like sheep following the crowd, accepting that cancer is normal, stiff bodies are normal, being tired and overwhelmed by life is normal. They believe that making time to cook healthy food is some weirdo fringe behavior and that rolling up to the drive-through window is “normal eating”.

People say to me “I let my kids eat junk food because I want them to “feel normal about food.” When did junk food become normal food? When did cooking healthy food become bizarre and extreme??

Every day I wake up and say “I can be better. I can do better. I can feel better. I can be happier.” Eating healthy, exercising, having a purpose, a dream, and the energy to pursue it – those are the rungs on the ladder I will keep climbing.

”Normal” is going to kill you – escape while you can!

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Filed Under: coaching exercises, Exercise, Goals, Growth, health coach, Inspiration, Positive Thinking, Rants, weight loss Tagged With: Dieting vs Lifestyle, Exercise, Getting Kids to Eat Healthy, Goals, Self-Improvement, weight loss

Training Time!

September 9, 2012 by Emily Segal Leave a Comment

The other day a friend asked me “So, have you started training for the next race yet?” And I was like “No man! That’s like WAY off in the future!”

And then I realized it’s not and crapped in my pants.

But seriously, rather than panic, we need to PLAN. I am not going to be offering Team Triumph this year. It was a great program last year and got a lot of people running who weren’t already running. But now I feel like we need to move forward from that.

I am going to list here the major races I know about in Israel. Obviously there are more – every city runs a race of some sort – but these are the biggies. I urge you to pick one and join in! Remember, that every single race can be walked if running isn’t your thing. You still get a medal for walking!!

The Tel Aviv Night Run 10K October 30, 2012. People say this one is all about fun. It is very crowded and lots of people walk. Not for me personally, but go for it if you like the scene. Website HERE. It looks like they are offering free coaching in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa. Cool beans.

The Tiberias Marathon is January 10, 2013. A great way to start off the new year! This is a very pretty course along the southern end of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and back. The weather is cool and often rainy. It looks like this is just the full marathon distance. Website HERE.

The Jerusalem Marathon is March 1st, 2013. They offer Full, Half, 10K and 4.2km races. Jerusalem is a hilly town. I imagine the course reflects that. It is also a stunningly beautiful and historic place to run through! Weather cool and possibly rainy. Website is HERE.

My Mac Daddy, the Tel Aviv Marathon, will be held on March 15, 2013. This is 2 weeks earlier than last year and 26 weeks from today!!! They offer Full, Half, 10K, 4.2km, Hand Cycle, Inline Skating and a Kids Mini Marathon. Something for everyone. Tel Aviv is relatively flat, beautiful, balmy, the courses go along the Mediterranean… it’s wonderful, run it. Website is HERE.

The Herzliya Women’s Triathalon is on June 1, 2013 and offers several different distances and relay options as well. Website is HERE.

All other races and sporting events in Israel can be found at Shvoong.co.il.

Race calendar for the US can be found HERE. Pick something!!!

As for me, I will be running in Tel Aviv on March 15th, but I can’t say at the moment if I will be doing a Half Marathon or a Full. I will be training for the Full (following Hal Higdon’s free online plans again – worked last year!) but will make my final decision before December 15th when the early registration prices go up.

Why am I not sure I want to run the Full when I said here that I would? Well, you remember that plan to drop some weight and heal my adrenals before I started training again? Best laid plans and all that. Around the time of the apartment move I had a medical issue arise and went on a very large and protracted course of steroids. Prior to starting the meds I had been doing well and had lost about 5 lbs. But on the meds I gained almost 10! Ouch! Let me just say once again, that if I did not have my own health coach, I cannot imagine how I would handle something like that? My coach helped me turn things around before it became a real disaster and over the past 6 weeks – even while on the tail end of the steroid tapering – I have dropped back down 6 lbs. Basically, back where I started!

I don’t want to run another 42km race at this weight. I don’t see the point of dragging my body through that again. So the revised plan is to keep working on my weight while in the early months of training. And for those of you who are thinking “But surely training for a marathon makes you lose weight!” Not really. Not in my experience anyway. You have to refuel when you are doing that much exercise so you build muscles and heal injuries. I think being in caloric deficit while training for an endurance event is a very bad idea. Not only that, it’s just super duper difficult!

But the good part is that I continued to work out through all of that, so I’m in good starting shape, my muscles are strong, and despite steroids which should have affected my adrenals, I actually feel much BETTER than I did before. I’ve been doing some of my short runs in my Vibrams which just makes it that much funner. I’ve been swimming, Spinning and weight training too. The Hal Higdon plan is an 18 week plan but I remember after the last race feeling that 18 weeks hadn’t been long enough. If I start now I have an additional 7 weeks minus what I will miss during the upcoming Jewish holidays.

Battle Cry Time!

WHO THE HELL IS WITH ME???!!!

Do Something! Do Anything! Just set a goal for something a little crazy and make it happen!! Here’s an oldie but goodie to get your blood pumping. Don’t you want to be a part of something like this?? In 6 months or so, this could be YOU:

Filed Under: coaching exercises, Goals, health coach, Inspiration, Running, Tel Aviv Half Marathon, Tel Aviv Marathon, Vibrams, weight loss Tagged With: Achievement, Exercise, Goals, Running, Self-Improvement, Tel Aviv Marathon, Vegan Athlete, weight loss

The Things We Think And Do Not Say

August 15, 2012 by Emily Segal 5 Comments

Today is my 46th birthday. Forty-six is a lot of dang-nabbity years!

I started this first day of my 47th year with my favorite Spinning class. You know, Spinning is the magical wormhole into the endorphin dimension. You can keep your “E”, your 50 Shades of Grey and your 70% fair trade chcolate. Just throw me a spin bike, some awesome music, an Israeli to yell at me, and I’m deep into the happy zone.

Then, on my walk home from Spinning, I was thinking about Jerry Maguire.

It all started yesterday when, fueled by temperatures that topped 180 Kelvin, and some free radicalized estrogen/progesterone circulating in my boiling blood, I wrote a really long and very passionate blog post on parental culpability and responsibility for overweight children. Luckily, before I hit the “publish” button, I decided to send the post to a friend endowed with good taste and common sense. The subject line of my email to her read “Is this too bitchy and negative?” To which she basically answered “Um, yes.”

I decided to shelve the post for the time being and as I logged it into my Drafts folder, I saw a looooong string of posts I have written and not published. And I thought to myself, “Ah, these are the things we think and do not say.”

Which led me back to the movie, in which Jerry, fueled by some bad pizza, sits down and pours his heart out into a rambling and scathing Manifesto on his company’s policies. He has, he tells us “Lost the ability to bullshit”.

OK, so I am SO far past that point, I am not even in the dang bull pasture anymore! There is not a bone of bullshit left in my being. The trick though, is how to SAY things in a way that people can HEAR and not just run screaming from me with their hands over their ears. Which is of course what happens to Jerry. No one wants to hear his manifesto because it makes them feel guilty. He shines a big ole flashlight on everyone’s lack of integrity and they don’t like it one bit.

Well, it’s MY birthday and MY blog and the “things I think and do not say” are freeking CHOKING ME. So here goes… duck and cover dears:

Stop waiting for “the right time”. There is no right time. There is only Now and The-Hell-of-Putting-it-Off-For-One-More-Day time. Do you have any idea how many emails I get from people who write “I just love your philosophy Emily. One day I am going to work with you when I am ready.” ? Yeah, yeah, one day aint nevah gonna get here honey. One, five, ten years are going to pass and you are going to be fatter, more out of shape, sicker, and turning things around is going to be even harder. Now. Today. Just Begin. GO.

Ouch! Ooo, hurts so good. You still with me?

Stop waiting for the time when you will “FEEL” like making changes. You are never going to feel like doing it, trust me. If I did what I felt like every day I would pretty much live on a regime of cookies and couch-sitting. Been there, done that, fun while it lasted, nearly killed me. I don’t ever feel like going to the gym. I generally don’t feel like running until I am several kms into it. I certainly never woke up and said “I feel like running 42 kms today!” I do NOT prefer lettuce to chocolate. I do what I have to do to get what I want to get. Boom.

If you haven’t already listened to this @ss-kicking motivational talk by Mel Robbins, do so now and wake up fresh and tingly: Mel Robbins in the WISH Summit HERE.

Know your addictions. Don’t even try to negotiate with things you cannot control. You will lose over and over again. Eliminate, don’t Moderate. Life is so much more peaceful when you are not constantly trying to battle those cravings and will-power struggles.

Stop wondering if it’s worth it. Did you ever notice that those people who say “I would rather eat what I want even if it means living a shorter life, than moderating myself and exercising” pretty much never say that anymore once they are really sick? That’s because most of us don’t go straight from main-lining cheeseburgers and milkshakes to peacefully dead in one day. First we get sick. And being sick is really, really awful. Being sick and feeling regret is even worse.

On the other hand, being in shape and having tons of energy? Not too shabby! It’s worth it. Like, totally.

Last one, hang in there…

Stop blaming. Your life = your responsibility. Your family isn’t derailing you. Society isn’t making it hard for you. Your husband isn’t sabotaging your efforts. Your busy schedule isn’t dooming you to failure. YOU are letting those things happen! You. You. You. The people who succeed at healthy behavior change are the ones who figure out a way to do it despite their challenges. They go to bed earlier so that they can get up earlier and pack their healthy meals. Instead of sacking out in front of the tv, they chop their veggies in advance so that healthy options will be ready when hunger hits. They plan in advance. They keep track. They LIVE ON PURPOSE, not just at the whim of the day-to-day.

All those other people and things that you believe are obstacles in your path? They are not the ones who will have to live in your body when you feel like crap, are burning with heartburn, bloated with gas, struggling to breath at the top of the stairs, recovering from bypass surgery, suffering through dialysis or chemotherapy. You will be alone. You already are.

Please read this illuminating article from Tom Venuto, The Weight Maintenance Predictors: 13 Behaviors and Attitudes that Keep Fat Off Forever HERE and let me just say in advance, I told you so.

OK I’m done. You survived.

I am not going to send this post by rational, calm editor friend today. This is going out into the world to become the things I THOUGHT and SAID.

C’mon, you know I had you at hello… (email subscribers click the post title to enjoy the musical accompaniment)