Weigh in Wednesday

-1.5 for the week.  I’ll take it.

I know, I have been promising a cool “100th post” post…but I just haven’t had time to blog recently.  You’ll have to settle for my weigh in post 2 days late for now 😉

Weigh in Wednesday

-3 for the week!

I’m happy with this week’s result.  It reflects all the hard work I’ve put in over the last two weeks (remember, last week I didn’t show a loss because of my workouts, anytime I work out enough to be sore I am up due to water retention to heal my muscles) so over the last 3 weeks I have lost 6 lbs, or a nice steady 2 lbs a week.  That’s pretty much what I want to see.

I suspect that if I time my workouts right and keep the fork out of my mouth, I could see another 3 lbs loss next Wednesday which will take me pretty much back to my previous low from February and beyond that is new territory.  The next “decade” is exciting for me because at the bottom of it is my next 10% off goal.  Yup, in only 18 more lbs *eyeroll* I will have reached my second 10% off goal!  My total weight loss then will be 18%.  After that comes the 250’s which I have not seen since…maybe 2006?  Exciting stuff!

(this is also my 100th post!  Happy 100 to me! More tomorrow on that)

Wowsers

Last night’s trip to the gym was great.  After my lackluster performance earlier in the day, I wasn’t sure if I would have a good workout in the evening either.  Would I have the energy to work it?  Or would I phone it in.

I worked it 🙂

Intervals for 30 minutes in which had me pouring sweat.  My little white towel was wet, and the droplets rolled down my face and bounced off my shirt and splattered onto the ground below me.  I never wear cotton shirts to the gym, I prefer those “stay dry” type shirts because they are lighter and they don’t stick to my skin when they get wet.  Cotton shirts just get wet, sticky, and heavy.  Ick.  It’s also fun to watch the sweat bounce off my gym shirts…I may be easily amused…

Anyway, I did my intervals and followed it up with a short jog on the treadmill.  No weights this close to weigh in…but I will do those tomorrow and Friday.

Here’s hopin for love on the scale tomorrow.

TGIM!

Monday again!

This morning I got out of bed, spent a few minutes on my computer, waking up and becoming human, then we all got dressed and went to the gym.  My favorite machine was takenm which was kind of a bummer.  It’s one of the gym’s older ellipticals, and I like it much better than the new ones they got in about 6 months ago.  The new ones have built in fans and their own TV’s and everything, but their stride is kinda mushy and I have trouble making them go as fast as I want to.  They also don’t have an interval program.  I just like the old ones better.

In my gym, there are 2 old machines in the first row of ellipticals and the rest are in the very back row – far away from their wifi router.  If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time at all, you know I like to watch netflix while I work out…and the wifi signal isn’t great in the back of the room.  It’s about as far away from the front desk where the router is as you can get, and there are some walls in the way.  The old machine in the first row is optimal for my workouts.  Both of them were taken.  I had to mush along on the new ones, but I didn’t like it so I wasn’t inspired to work hard at all.  It was just kinda…blah.  I’m planning on going back tonight though, so hopefully I can make up for it.

I’m feeling snacky today, trying to keep the snack monster at arms length.  Remember the snack monster?

I feel like he’s after me today.  Nom nom nom!  Trying to figure out what to have for dinner.  I feel actual, physical hunger today so I figure it better be something with a lot of nutrition in it to keep me going with my two aday workout I have planned for tonight!

twoadays rock. Just sayin.

Yesterday, I decided to go for another twoaday.  Cardio in the morning, and then weights in the evening.  My eating was spot on, and I felt great, so I went for it.

The first thing I did was try to get a little jog in.  I have not tried jogging in quite a while because my left knee can be a bit of a stick in the mud, but since I am doing the warrior dash in only a few weeks now, I figured I better see how it goes.  I hopped on the treadmill and walked for a few minutes, then stepped off and tried to limber my knees up as best as I could before hopping back on and going for it.

Since all I really wanted to do was warm up before weight lifting and I had already done cardio for the day, I chose to run for 10 minutes at a pretty slow pace.  It went really well.  No complaints from the knee department.  I’m hoping if I warm them up right, I will avoid injury as much as possible.

For my ‘regular’ morning cardio, I usually hop on the elliptical.  I know I should cross train and try something else like the bikes or something, but I just really like the elliptical.  I like that the body motions are similar to running without the stress on my knees and feet, and I hope that somehow it is helping me prepare for the day when I can run for real (in about 80 lbs?).  Up until very recently, I had been doing steady-state cardio on it.  I set the incline on 10 and the resistance on 7 and just stay at that level the whole time.  It has been fun watching my average strides per minute go up :). 

Lately I have taken to doing intervals on the elliptical.  Mine are 4 minutes per “set” of low and high intensity.  For 2 minutes the ramp sits on a fairly low level and I go somewhat easy.  Then when it goes up to the higher incline (the resistance stays the same), I push HARD.  For 2 minutes I go as fast and hard as I can without tipping the machine over!  Then when the 2 minutes is up, the incline goes back down and I go easy and let my heart rate recover.

The time goes by much faster when I do this, and it really gets me sweating! 

Anyway, back to yesterday.  I did a little bit of running and then did weights for 35 minutes or so, I wasn’t really timing it.  I worked every muscle group, and that took a long time.  I know some people like to do arms one day and legs another day, but I kinda like to mix it up and do some arm stuff, then some leg stuff while my arms rest a little, then back to arms, then finish the legs.  It would probably help if I was more organized…right now you would just see me wandering around the weights looking lost ;).

Yesterday I took in about 1200 calories and burned off about 600.  I know there is no way to REALLY know how many calories one burns, but that is my best estimate.  I arrived at that by taking the estimate the cardio machines give me and knocking about 1/3 off because I think they overestimate my calorie burnage.  So for example if the machine tells me I burned 425 calories, I call it 300.  Then I consulted livestrong to find out how many calories I might have burned while lifting weights, and took some off that as well.  I don’t want to overestimate how many calories I burn and use it as free license to eat stuff so I am pretty careful about that.  So I netted about 600 calories in yesterday and my RMR is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000, so it was a pretty good day. 

Buuuuut all this super fun working out has a caveat.  The scale.  Building muscle and retaining extra fluids to aid in muscle repair shows when I step on the scale and it stubbornly stays at the same number it was on 2 weeks ago.  I suppose I could just stop working out and just starve myself and I would see that number dropping…but you know, it’s not really worth it to me to see lower numbers and have it really be as much lost muscle as anything else.  I will take my strong body over a lower scale number any day.   It’s times like this when I wish I did measurements though.

 

Weigh in Wednesday

 

-0, a not altogether unexpected result.  I worked out HARD last week, including some very heavy weight training, and that tends to lead to stale scale results in my experience.  That’s okay.  As much as I would like to see the scale numbers going down, what really matters is how I feel, and how I am doing.  I KNOW I am doing a great job.  I am staying on plan food-wise and working out every day (except sunday, if I remember right).  To me, that can translate into NOTHING but a healthier, smaller me – in spite of the lack of short term results on the scale this week.

As surprising as it is to me, I am actually sitting here fighting off the urge to run to the gym this morning.  I need to maintain balance between rest and working out, and today seems like as good as any for a rest day.  Not that I’ll be resting, I have lots to do around the house!

Argh

I am in pain!

Yesterday, I did my first twoaday, meaning I went to the gym twice in one day.  I did cardio in the morning and weights in the evening.  I worked every muscle that wasn’t already screaming from my previous workout.  I am working hard to get ready for my warrior dash! 

The problem is my triceps.  They are really aching, and his is the third day!  When I originally worked them, I had no sense that I was overdoing it.  I knew I was lifting heavy, but I honestly didn’t think I did too much.  Considering how much they still hurt today, it’s going to be at least 2 more days, maybe more, before they feel better.

All this is going to kill my weigh in.  I have noticed that when I have sore muscles, my weight goes up.  Extra water around them, helping them heal and stuff.  Whatever.  I don’t much care except that it’s nice after you’ve had a full week on plan to…you know…see results on the scale.  I’m starting to not care much about that.  I have gone through times where I have been pretty scale obsessed, but right now I am feeling more results oriented.  I don’t care if I stay this same weight forever as long as my clothing size keeps getting smaller ;). 

So, I will weigh in for record keeping purposes, but I don’t expect a loss.  If I have one…that’s great.  If not, I’ll live.  I KNOW I am doing the right things.  I feel amazing!  I have never in my life had the energy to go to the gym twice a day.  My body doesn’t quite match the way I feel, and I am not down to my previous low  from february, but I’m getting there.  I am only 6 lbs away, so that could happen in as little as 2 weeks.  By the end of this month I’ll be at a new low, and that feels pretty good, too :).

It’s monday again?

This week has flown by!

I have been to the gym every single day this week, and it feels really good.  Instead of being tired in the evening after a long day, I actually feel like going again!  I know, it’s nuts!

Sadly, the summer program my older two kids have been attending is over, so now if I want to go right away in the morning, I have to pay for extra child care.  Today is Kid#1’s birthday, and he is turning 8, so I am off the hook for paying for childcare for him.  8 year olds are allowed to play in the game room and stuff without an adult.  If that wasn’t the case, I would have to stop going in the mornings because I can’t afford to pay for childcare for 3 kids every single day…that would be more than my membership costs.  2 I can deal with.

My eating has been under control.  There have been higher calorie days, but not outright, full on, out of control days where I just said “screw it” and did what I wanted.

Today is one of those days.  As I said, it’s my son’s birthday.  This means it’s a different day foodwise.  For breakfast, I made biscuits and gravy.  I only had about half of what I would have eaten before.  It is tradition that the birthday person gets to pick a meal on their birthday.  Often this translates to going out to eat…unless it’s hubster’s birthday.  He prefers to eat in and save money ;).  Kid#1 wanted to go to the chinese buffet for lunch.  Knowing that hamburgers are on the menu for dinner (homemade ones, that is, including homemade buns), I didn’t really want to, but I settled for eating only a small amount of my favorite things and keeping the rice to a minimum.  I spent all the time I wasn’t eating after I finished my smallish portion guiding my kids in how to behave at a restaurant.  I don’t know how many times I repeated “Sit on your bottom facing the table with your legs hanging down and USE YOUR NAPKIN.”  The 4 year old was the least wiggly.

As I made the buns for tonight’s hamburgers, I made one less than we have burgers.  My plan is to eat mine without the bun.  I am not into any extreme diets or anything, but when I need to cut corners, the carbs are the first to go.  It’s more important for my body to get protein, I think, so i’m eating the burger, not the bun.

As for the cake….I’ll have a sliver of cake, no ice cream.  I’m not even sure if we’ll have ice cream because all the kids had some at lunch, and we don’t have any in the house so I would have to have Hubster pick it up on the way home from work…maybe we’ll just skip it. 

And that’s it.  Yes, it’s a higher than average calorie day for me, but not out of control.  I have had several <1200 calorie days this week, so there is room in my budget for a couple of bites of cake on my son’s birthday.  Don’t worry, no leftover cake for me.  It’s not even tasty on the second day anyway.

So…why all the gym time lately?  Because I’m going this!

http://warriordash.com/

I’m not going to win, but I would like to not be too embarrassed 😉

 

Weigh in Wednesday

 

I have been working hard, folks.  In the absence of any sort of love from the scale for weeks, I have been keeping it up, and not losing hope.  I have been sweating it out at the gym, tracking my food at TDP, and focusing on not eating out of boredom or stress.

Finally, my reward!

281.  – 3 for the week.  There it is!  That’s what I’ve been looking for! 

I’m now looking forward to next week and hoping to get more good news next Wednesday.  I am about 6 lbs away from my previous 4 year low, which I achieved in February of this year, and then it’s on to new territory!  Exciting times.

Nose to the Grindstone

Every morning last week I got up, saw my kids off to school (our district has a wonderful summer program where they go and do fun classes for 3 weeks) and then packed up my little guy and headed to the gym.  At the gym, I did cardio for 30 minutes.  I didn’t do weights or longer cardio because I hate paying for childcare at the gym.  Every time, I turn my ipod on and watch something interesting on netflix, so the time flies by pretty fast. 

At home, I carefully monitor my food intake.  I eat no more than 1400 calories per day and usually it’s right around 1200.  I avoid sweets, and I keep my carbs down.  Not “low” just…mindful.  If I can skip the toast with my egg in the morning, I do it. 

I am feeling awesome.  Since getting over my illness, I have felt great.  My body feels good.  I feel like I am making progress.

Yet…the scale has not budged a bit!  For 3 weeks now, I have been at the same weight.  It doesn’t even vary from day to day.  Every morning it says exactly the same thing.  Every night it is 2 lbs higher, but the same number every night.  In spite of my efforts.  In spite of my time at the gym.  In spite of my water drinking.

Weird.

I’m okay.  The number on the scale is not as important as how I feel, and I am feeling pretty darn good right now.  The scale will show it some day.