Thursday, September 21, 2006

Day four or Day two?

Today is the fourth day of my being 'back' but I didn't 'officially' start back until yesterday... so that's why the title :)

I'm a little behind on updates so I'll try to catch you up.

Tuesday was Chest and Calves - we had fun doing barbell presses, incline dumbbell presses and dips for chest and seated and standing calf raises (I'll have to post the numbers on those later)

And then I ran for 20 minutes

I had an excellent day food wise and everything went as planned.

After two days back my body was hurting from head to toe so Wednesday we took a day off to recover.

Woke up Wednesday morning and had an 'offical' weigh in of 180.6 - I was a little bummed because I KNOW I'm still retaining water and was hoping for a better start then that, but hey - it just means that I'm going to end up with an 'easy' 2 lb loss real soon.

Today we were up at our 'usual' time primed and ready to go to the gym again. Ok so I ACTULLY hit snooze twice and then had to drag myself out of bed using all the will power I had - BUT we made it ;)

I suffered again with a case of under motivation. I know it's a case of the PMS blues that are always worse for me when my nutrition is 'off' - which is was because of vacation. BUT - knowing WHY you feel sad doesn't always make it easier to deal with. Anywho... I was just feeling BLAH this morning. Even seeing my 'dent' in the mirror when I was warming up wasn't helping... But I did it anyway. Arms today... not normally even my favorite day to workout. But I put everything I had into it and you know what? by the end of the workout I was feeling pretty good again! Pumped and as I knew I would be, glad I had done it.

That good feeling hasn't lasted all day, but for at least a few hours I got to feel good about my day.

PS - don't worry I'll get over this 'blue' funk in a bit. It's tempting to leave stuff that out of my journal. After all I don't want people to worry about me, BUT one day someone else is going to be reading this and I don't want anyone to ever thing, 'yeah, she did that, she lost 70-80 lbs but look it was EASY for her... No - it's not easy for me. It's a challenge every day - some days I enjoy the challenge and other days I don't... this week just happens to be a few of those 'don't' days - but this too will pass. And the best part is, the more I excercise and eat right the sooner 'this too will pass' will come.

Ok enough about that....

food had been ok today. I was craving chocolate so bad today. I did my 'normal' drink water, go for a walk, chew gum.. but it just kept getting worse, so I got a mini bag of peanut m&m's and ate them (about 6 in the bag). Now the craving is gone yay!

what else? Uh I'm sure there is something but I can't think of it right now...

I've started Uploading my Photos from the Trip here… I've only got four days up so far.

England Photos

The photos from our photographer of our wedding

Photographer Photos

Photos we took ourselves after the wedding

Our Photos

Monday, September 18, 2006

Day One...

After coming back from a three week layoff – I was having a little trouble getting my ‘mo-jo’ back. I was feeling rather under motivated. Part of it could be I’m at that ‘danger zone’ for myself. The 175 to 180lb range that’s been barrier I’ve been unable to break through for 18 years now. I’m ‘average’ again. Buying clothes from the normal stores… blending in with the rest of the crowd. Why the heck am I getting up at 4:00AM again?

But, even under motivated, I got up and went to the gym this morning. Amazingly enough it was all I needed. Once at the gym, in my ‘muscle’ shirt – one look in the mirror was all it took. Seeing the ‘cut’ in my arm separating my delt had me back in the right frame of mind as soon as I started warming up. Then seeing my lat bunch up while doing pull downs had me plotting the next five pounds I would be throwing on the machine.

You see, I’m not interesting in being ‘average’. I’m no longer interesting in ‘settling’ for size 12 pants and just buying off the ‘normal sized’ racks. I want to turn my body into a lean mean weight lifting machine. I want to see definition… I want to have arms that make guys go home and flex in the mirror to reassure themselves that their arms look better.

Most importantly, I don’t want to be ‘that girl who lost 30 lbs - hasn’t she a nice job?’ I want people to look at me and think ‘she works out’. And if you tell them that last July I weighed 214lbs that would look at you and tell you that you were crazy. I want people to look at me and never suspect that I ever had a weight problem. I want to be accused of having ‘good genetics’. Not because I’m thin but because I’m fit…

Today I got up at 4:00 am and hit the gym… even though I flew home from England less then 48 hours ago.. and it felt GREAT!

Today was back and trap day:

Lat Pull Down: 110 x 5 / 110 x 6 / 110 x 5
Close Grip Pull Down: 110 x 6 / 115 x 5 / 115 x 5
T-Bar Row: 70 x 5 / 70 x 5 / 70 x 4
Dead Lift: 70 x 6 / 75 x 6 / 80 x 6
Dumbbell Shrugs: 60 x 6 / 60 x 6 / 60 x 6

Then I road the bike for 35 minutes – average speed of 20 mpr :)

Food has been perfect today… This morning’s weigh in was less then stellar. I’m retaining water like crazy so I’m holding off just a bit before recording my ‘official’ starting weight for this next phase – I suspect I lost two lbs just today and don’t want to skew the numbers with a ‘water drop’ like that… I will get my starting stats up very soon though!

First Photos Are Up

Day One photos are up - I'll add more daily

of course this is about 1/4th (or less) of the actual photos I took.

My England Photos

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Quick Hello!

We're back! the trip was fantastic - the wedding was GREAT! I'll be posting tip photos and some commentary on our trip on my 'other blog' should you want to read more about it later.

As for this blog? Well it will continue to be about what it's always been about - me ;)

The biggest accomplishment of the past three weeks is that I went the entire vacation without going over 180 lbs! It was so exciting to take some time off and not have a big back slide. "the coach" and I had set a 'limit' of 185 and I did even better then that!

Now it's time to start a nice big 'action phase' That means - taking action ;)
And an action phase starts with some clear goals... And I'm going to make them clear and VERY Public right here and now. By November 22nd (the day before Thanksgiving) I'll be 160 lbs. That's 9 weeks and about 20 lbs - very doable. (offical starting date of 9/20)

I also start SERIOUSLY training for my first 'sprint' triathalon. Bye the end of this month I will have paid my entance fee and be all signed up - there's no backing down. That will comprimise most of my cardio training.

As for weight training. I think I'm going to spend the next 8 weeks doing Max-OT again. BUT I'm going to be really meticulous about it. EVERY rep is going to be perfectly executed. I'll go through two 4 week cycles - 4 to 6 reps per excercise. This keeps my weight workouts very focused and rather short so that I can get to my cardio. We'll see if between that and my tri-training if that's enough excercise minutes :)

Weight training will be heavy with focus on building strength. I still have some unfullfilled goals for this year such as benching 100lbs plus the bar (145 lbs) and doing pull-ups. Between the strength training and the weight loss I expect to be doing pull-ups by the end of the year... I can get to within 2 inches of the bar now and with a little work (and a few less lbs) I should be able to do more then 1 before Jan 1st.

As usual I'll let you know as things progress.