RPM Thursday

After every time I get done working out with Eric I feel like a Badass! LOL.

Last night I got a late start to the gym because Aaron got stuck on the expressway for a while.

So I only got in 3 miles. I did surprise myself and was able to run at 7.0 for a quarter mile. Positive steps.

When I took it back down to 6.0 it felt like I was going at a snails pace. Surprisingly I was able to go for quite a while at 6.0.

I did bump it up again but then pretty quickly had to bump it back down to 5.5. Shortly after a mile I started to play with incline and bumped down the speed. I had to hang onto the treadmill for dear life because I set it at a 10 incline. LOL.

Finally I got in all 3 miles and it was time to work out with Eric. First he had me do chest presses on the bench. He took it easy on me with weight (at first) then bumped it up. The last set he had me do negative presses where the weight is REALLY heavy and you control it on the way down. Then he helped me (a smidge) lifting it back up. Whew! We also did single hand chest flys, dips, push ups using a bar (I cant do them on the ground...too much pressure on the shoulder) and one of my favorite new exercises. He had this HUGE rubberband that he tied around a machine and then put around my hips so I was inside of the band. Then I had to run, run, run to a medicine ball, touch the ball and control myself back. So much fun and what a challenge. We did circuits between that and the machines and on my final round of the rubberband I had to run to the ball, plant my feet, pick up the ball above my head and slam it down. It was MUCH harder than it sounds because I already had the band pulled taut. But I LOVED it.

I burned 694 calories in 1:17 last night. Not too bad.

When I got home I showered, had my left over tuna and a cheese stick. I also used my last belly wrap last night.

This morning I weighed in at 173.0. A half pound loss. Not as much as I expected but I think part of that has to do with the wrap. My belly usually bloats after I do them as it releases the toxins from the body. So I am hoping for a better loss tomorrow. Either way, my arms and chest are sore and I can see I am building muscle.

AND I tried on my favorite pair of jeans. You know, the ones with the sparkles on the butt. Last winter I posted a picture of me wearing a striped shirt with them and I was so happy that I had no more muffin top with them. WELL I am almost back to no muffin top with them! I could probably wear them out in public right now if I want.

I did try on my size 6 jeans and I could get them up and done up BUT I have major muffin spillage with them. LOL. My goal over the winter is to tighten up to be able to wear them again. It will happen.

Today is a busy day. Both the boys have school and then Landry has speech. While both are in school I need to get new brakes in my car. They are getting bad. Then I have to get Landry and take him to speech. While my brakes are getting done, K and I are going shopping. I will not be doing any buying though. After speech, is lunch, then nap. Tonight I have RPM with Eric. I am not going to go to Body Pump. I dont think my body needs it. My legs are still a bit sore from Monday and my upper body is sore from last night. SO my plan is to run for about 45 minutes or so. Then do RPM and then maybe some core sit ups using that ball thing again.

Here is what I am planning for the day to eat:

Breakfast- smoothie using just protein powder and no banana
Lunch- celery, scallions, roast beef, apple with peanut butter
Dinner- protein bar before RPM for the sugar. And a cheese stick when I get home. It will be about 9pm when I get home so I dont want to eat anything that late. Usually I am not hungry by then anyways.

Thats the news for now. Sorry this is sort of quick but I need to get everything around because I am off and running once I drop the boys off.

Tip of the Day:

Wednesday Weights

Yesterday was a good day.

Breakfast- smoothie
Lunch- roast beef, scallions, celery, peanut butter and apple
Snack- a few blueberry shredded wheat and a few chocolate chips
Dinner (at UFO night)- celery (lots), hummus (little), a few grapes, a slice of onion pizza (dough, olive oil, sauteed onions, pepper), and a glass of wine.

I stayed all within my calorie limit for the day.

I even did 20 minutes on the fat burn setting on the elliptical, some light upper body weights and then during Landry's naptime I did crunches. Lots of crunches.

UFO night was great. I got all 11 of my mugs done. I am just waiting for them to dry for the 24 hours so I can bake them in the oven. Once they are done, I will take a picture of them.

This morning I got up and my weight was 173.5 again. 1.5+ from yesterday. Not sure why entirely. Maybe the body was having an off day? Maybe because I havent had a BM in a couple days (sorry for the TMI but it could be a factor with as much clean stuff and roughage I am eating), maybe from muscle bloat because I am SORE today....

Regardless, I am not letting it get me down. I can see the changes happening in the mirror and I know I will get there eventually. I am counting the days til the 15th and I can take new pictures!!

AND tonight is training with Eric anyways. So for me, training tonight will be an hour on the treadmill doing intervals and incline changes, then 30 minutes upper body with Eric. I need to flush the legs out and get them feeling good and not sore again before we start working tonight.

Hopefully my weight will be back down to where it was yesterday and I can still have hope to be in the 160's by next week. I will just need to stay on top of my game during the weekend.

But as they say in Xaviers karate class..."I am motivated! I am dedicated! I am on a quest to be my best!"

So what I want to know today is, what keeps you going when you have a setback?

Tip of the Day:

UFO Night

Hmmmm....where shall I begin?

Well, I guess lets start with yesterday and move forward from there.

Yesterday was a great day.

Here is what I ate:

Breakfast- banana, protein shake smoothie
Lunch- 3 stalks celery, apple with peanut butter, roast beef
Dinner- 1 glass of red wine, tuna w/ onions & celery

I also went to the gym last night and did 3.5 miles on the treadmill. After the race on Saturday I decided to mix things up a bit and do a lot of intervals and different inclines. For the first mile I played with speed. Going from 5.5 all the way up to 8.5, down to 4.5, up to 6.5 and so on. That mile I finished just a few seconds over 10 minutes. From there I played with inclines. I took my speed down to 3.5 or there abouts but bumped the incline up to 12. Then I would play down and up from there also playing with speed. I had time before I worked with Eric and I didnt want to burn the legs out running fast because it was a leg night so this took about 45 minutes to get to 3.5 miles.

Then I worked out with Eric. He decided to do the heavy lifting first. Oh yeah! So we went over to the squat bar that has the built in guards in case you get in trouble. You just flick your wrist to put the bar back up on the rack. Well we started off with no weight so I could get used to the bar. And then Eric didnt mess around. We built up weight...then again...and then he asked me what I weighed. I told him 173. Then he put on 185 lbs on the bar. And I squated that 8 times. And then he said that he thought I was going to squat 200 lbs. And he loaded the bar. And I squatted 205 lb 5 times! And not only did I squat it once, but he had me do another round of squats at 205 lb 5 times. Then he took me back down to 145 lbs and had me squat that 20 times. That felt light as a feather compared to 205 lbs. From there we did other leg exercises. He had me do lunges thru the gym while holding kettlebells. He had me alternately step up onto a box holding kettlebells which almost killed me. The box was TALL!! And after squatting I was having a hard time doing it. Once he gave me some pity because my legs were about dead from the squats and took the kettlebells away, I was able to get up on the box with no problem. Then I did some inner leg work and some glute work on some machines. After that was homework time. He gave the half balance ball thing and I had to do crunches on it. He gave me 5 minutes to do 100 crunches pausing for two seconds at the top of each lift. And I did. I finished early with 20 seconds to spare. Woot!

This morning I got up and I weighed 172.0. -1.5 loss from yesterday. Very excited! The 160's are getting closer! I can envision my body becoming the picture that I posted above. Woo hoo!

Today is going to be sort of an odd day for me because Tuesday evenings I usually work out at home. Tonight is UFO night or UnFinished Object night at K's house. I am taking my mugs I am painting for Christmas gifts to her house to work on. Should be fun. I just need to make sure I stay on track with my eating and that I dont eat any bad food.

So here is my plan for the day.

I am going to drop the boys off at school and go downstairs on our elliptical for a while- 20 minutes or so. Then I will do some light upper body weights because I will be doing upper body tomorrow with Eric and dont want to kill myself today. Then I will have my breakfast smoothie.

After picking up Landry from school at 11, I will get him lunch then to bed for nap. I will then have my lunch of 3 stalks of celery, apple with peanut butter, and roast beef. For dinner before we take Xavier to karate, I will have some more of the tuna that I have left over from last night. Then karate class, kids to bed and then to Katherines for UFO. I am going to stick with water tonight too and see if I can bring a sucker or something that lasts a while for a snack so I dont munch.

I am getting so close to the 160's that I dont want to screw it up by going off track tonight. I would love to be in the 160's come this weekend. I might screw it up this weekend because of Aarons Christmas party but I know I will be back there next week. I am working on healthy choices for the party but I will talk about that in another post later in the week.

I think that is all the fantastic news I have for now. I am SURE my legs will be killing me come tomorrow but I am hoping some elliptical time will help with lactic acid build up and make them not as sore.

Have a GREAT day everyone!

Tip of the Day:

Good weekend

My other friend K posted this on her FB page the other day and I just LOVED the quote so I thought I would share.

Yesterday was a crazy day! I got up in the morning and started baking the rim cookies I had rolled up the previous day. You have to cut the cookies into slices from the log of dough that you rolled in sprinkles (hence the name "rim" when you cut them).

Then Aaron decided that he wanted to go to Cabela's for the kids to see the fish and stuffed animals. On the way there I drank the rest of my smoothie. The store is about 30 min or so from us so we ended up getting lunch there too.

I did really good. I had a small bit of one of Xavier's chicken tenders and I had a few sips of root beer. I know I should be staying away from the caffeine and artificial sweeteners so that is why I just had a few.

When we got home, the boys definitely needed to go to bed and then I started getting more cookies done. In between all that, I had an apple with some peanut butter in the middle.

Yesterday I did turtles (pretzel, rolo, pecans), peppermint bark, peanut butter kiss cookies and last night Aaron helped me get the cornflake wreaths done. So this weekend I banged out 7 types of cookies/sweets. And I can HONESTLY say that besides a few licks of the chocolate that was on my fingers, I didnt eat a single cookie or crumb. Pretty good willpower so far.

Then for dinner I sauteed some onions and roast beef and garlic. I made Aaron a sandwich. I broiled his bun for a few seconds, added the sauteed onions, garlic, roast beef, topped that with cheese and stuck it back under the broiler to toast. I ate the remaining onions and beef from a bowl.

The boys had major meltdowns at dinner because they really didnt end up taking a nap yesterday. It wasnt pretty and one for the books.

So once we got them to bed, I went downstairs to the basement and cleaned up all the toys they had out and locked them up. Sounds mean but I told them that if they didnt clean them up that they would go away. So we will see how they like that one. They are going to need to earn them back by listening and doing chores.

Then I decided not to do Zumba last night. Instead I did some upper body weights. Bicep curls, tricep work, shoulders and back work...it was good and a good way to work off the mad.

Afterwards, I came upstairs and that was when Aaron and I made the corn wreath cookies.

And then I called it a night on the cookie front and I read until Walking Dead started. I did have some pumpkin seeds last night as a treat too.

Today I weighed in at 173.5. So I lost a pound! This is the first time in a while that I have lost weight over a weekend. So a big wahoo for me!

Today I am working on more cookies. Chocolate chip and butterscotch oatmeal. Tonight I will be running and then working legs with Eric. Cant wait!

Meal today will be:

Breakfast- smoothie (banana, protein powder, ice, water)
Lunch- celery, apple, peanut butter, some roast beef (lunchmeat)
Dinner- tuna with onion, celery, and 1T of fat free mayo (post gym)

And I still have plenty of allowance left over incase I want a glass of wine tonight or a mini snack today. I have to watch the protein and sugars though because I am already over on those for the day (according to MyFitnessPal) but the sugars are natural sugars found in the fruit (banana and apple).

Thats the exciting news for now (well not really exciting). Have a great Monday everyone!

Tip of the Day:

Musings and Holiday Hustle

I had a great time yesterday at the Holiday Hustle.

It was GREAT weather for it being Dec 1st. My friend Ambreen came over about 3 (the picture in front of the fireplace is before we left for the race) and we walked down to where the race started. We planned on getting our picture taken with Santa. We were a little sad to see that Santa wasnt there. Last year Ambreen said they had a really nice set up for him under the pavilion with a couch and tree etc, so I am not sure what happened this year. He must have gotten held up at another location. We did have someone that "looked" like Santa drive past us as we were walking to the park that honked and waved at us. LOL. Lots of fun!

We ended up walking down to the library to use the bathroom prior to the race. They had porta potties but we had time and I thought maybe Santa might be at one of the stores instead.

Then we ended up asking someone to take a picture of us because the Santa thing didnt happen.

 

Then I think this picture (below) was taken right before the race was going to begin because I am with Ambreen. At some point after the turn around in the race, I looked back and lost her.

 

Not a very flattering picture of me but oh well. I am not sure what other photos there are of me. Ambreen found this one and when I went to the photographers site, they havent updated it since 2009 and the Holiday Hustle site just has the link for the 2011 photos. 

 

This photo (below) was taken by my friend Mark who lives on the route. He said it is a little blurry because I was moving too fast for him. LOL

This was taken after the turn around point and you can see that I managed to lose Ambreen somehow. LOL

One of the things that I thought was awesome about the race is that there were little groups of carolers out singing to us as we ran. Awesome! And I wish I could have gotten some pictures of all the different things people wore. Onsie pajamas, Santa outfits, one guy was dressed in his firefighter gear- oxygen tank and everything!, boxer shorts, fun socks, crazy hair, everything goes!

My official race time was 32:12 so that means I ran a 10:23 mile pace. I had to stop at one point to retie a shoe and then I stopped towards the end to see how far Ambreen is behind me. I couldnt see her after a few seconds so I turned to keep going. I was really hoping to finish around 30 minutes but I dont think this is too bad for my first race in a while.

The race was decently hilly. You dont realize how hilly Dexter is as you drive around in a car but man oh man. Get running and some of those long, gradual inclines almost kill you! And man the downhill spots were awesome. I should have really pushed it on those but I slowed myself down not wanting to twist anything. We got to run thru the downtown houses then into our sub and down our street. The boys waved to me from the front door (so of course I slowed down there a little bit too). 

I stayed on course for eating yesterday. Here is what I had. Breakfast- smoothie, Lunch- apple with peanut butter, 1T of guac with 3 pita chips, a 1/2 of my 1/2 of turkey burger Snack (post race)-nutragrain bar, Dinner- the other 1/4 of my turkey burger, 2 glasses of red wine and some pumpkin seeds

The hour before the race, when we walked to the race and walking downtown, I burned 247 calories. Then for the race, I burned 599 calories. That is a little high because I forgot to turn it off after the race so that total is for about an hour. And I didnt record what I burned when Ambreen and I walked back to our house. So not too bad.

Today I weighed in at 174.5. A 1/2 pound loss. I will definitely take it! My body is sore so I can tell that things are switching from fat to muscle. And I am starting to see some results in the mirror. Dont "they" say 4 weeks til YOU notice changes? 8 weeks til other people start to notice? Well it hasnt been 4 weeks yet since I started working with Eric so I am very happy with that. Heck I think I am only going into week 3 (I have had 5 sessions with him). Cant wait to take pictures come Dec 15th!

I must have been feeling sentimental with it being Dec 1st, but I decided to look thru my beginning blog posts just to see where I started out the year weight wise. It looks like I started the year at about 174. I cant be exact because I didnt start documenting my weight until about mid January. Part of this makes me happy- I maintained my weight for a year. Part of this makes me sad- I didnt come close to doing any of what I wanted to do for the year.

BUT I had a harder than average year. I was on a great course for 3 months until the tornado hit. I was down to 154 lbs for cripes sake! The tornado derailed me for quite a while and it has taken a while for me to get back in my groove, but I finally have.

So I guess that I just need to be happy with where I am right now. I am ending the year strong and I will be starting the year even stronger.

And one of my goals for next year is to finish a 5k race in under 30 minutes. I have only done that one other time.I am going to add this to my goals in 2013 list.

AND I have decided that if I can reach my goal weight (again) of 155, then I will reward myself by buying a new pair of Silver Jeans from the Buckle. My sister buys those jeans and gave me an old pair of hers and I love them. I have been able to wear them still since gaining weight back but had dunlops over the top. LOL. So they have since gone back into the closet. Silver's are pricey but they will last for a long time so I think it is a great reward after hard work.

I think that is it for today. Enjoy the photos. Tonight I will be doing some Zumba and then I will continue with my Christmas cookie baking. I got two types done yesterday (vanilla pizzelles and chocolate pizzelles) and 2 batchs of rim cookies stirred up and chilling in the fridge.

Have a great day everyone!

Tip of the Day: I know this is hard to read, but I think you get the idea from the pictures...

Status Quo

Good morning ya'll!

First a recap.

Last night I ran my first consistent mile at 6.0. Woot! After that I decided to do some legs and abs before Zumba class. So I did dead lifts, squats, quads, glutes, and a ton of abs. I used the ab machine that Eric about killed me on the other night, I did balance ball squats, I did declined sit ups using a weighted bar, I did inclined sit ups and I did double leg lifts for the lower stomach. Then came Zumba. I had requested 3 songs that I love and Tee played them all for me :) Talk about high cardio! She also made me a cd with a bunch of different Zumba songs on it to add to my collection. I just love her!

All in all at the gym I burned 1133 calories!

Then came time for girls night. Aubree's has lost my business for a while. Which I guess is a good thing to stay away from the Feta Bread. They wouldnt accommodate our group with a reservation even though I called earlier that day and she told me she would see what she could do because we were regulars and to call back later. See our group doesnt go out until 7:30-8pm. Aubree's had their back room booked (which I understand) and had 4 reservations already for 10+ people. And I get that too. You have to have room for people coming in. BUT the reservations were for 6, 6:30, 7, and 7:30. Some of those people should have been done by then. Seriously. And when I called that evening, the chick got really snotty. Fine. Play that way. We will take our business elsewhere.

So I called Red Brick and they accommodated us even though when we got there, their place was really packed.

SO... I ordered a guacamole appetizer. It came with their home made pita chips which I thought were going to be baked. Nope. They were fried. Dang. The guacamole was not spicy but really garlicky. Yummy.

And K ordered some Sweet Potato Fries. I had a couple of those.

I also had a ton of water and a couple glasses of wine.

And I ordered their italian turkey burger. It was fantastic. Here is the description: lean turkey ground with onion, garlic and fennel. topped with fresh basil, sliced tomato and garlic thyme aioli on a toasted pretzel roll

YUM! And I only ate half of it. For my side, I stayed away from fries and just had chips. After just a few of those I was satisfied.

Today I remain at 175.0. I am actually very happy with that.

And today I have my 5k holiday hustle run. I went and picked up my bling for the race yesterday. If you were one of the first 500 people registered, you got your choice of a light up santa hat or a light up bracelet. Ummm...duh. Santa hat all the way!

SO today my friend A is coming over at 3 and we are walking to the race which isnt too far away from here. We are considering it a warm up. Then we are having our picture taken with Santa who is going to be at the pavilion until 4.  The race then starts at 4:30. We are just going to do a nice, easy, fun pace. From the finish line, we will be walking home. The fun thing is that we actually run down our street so Aaron is going to have the boys watch for me out the window.

I am going to continue doing my same tracking of food today.

My plan is:

Breakfast:
Smoothie- banana, protein powder, ice, water

Lunch:
Apple w/ peanut butter, blueberry shredded wheat

Dinner:
Leftover turkey burger (1/2)

Doesnt seem like much but it keeps me within my range for the day. I am sure I will have a post race whatever as well. I am hoping for oranges. I love oranges after a race.
I will still continue drinking a ton of water and some hot tea today.

Thats the news for now!

Tip of the Day:

A little Facelift

First- In case you didnt notice, I gave my website a little facelift.

I added a tab that says 13 goals in 2013. Cant remember if I mentioned it before, but I belong to a group on FB called 2 miles a day in 2012. Basically it is a group that motivates to get you moving. I have met a TON of great people on that board. BUT because 2012 is ending, we will be opening up a new board called Get Lucky...13 goals in 2013. So I added my goals to my website to help keep me accountable. Also if you are on FB and want to join the group, let me know!!

I also took off my old "current photos". Because I gained weight back after the tornado, I chose to do a reset. So I posted photos from Nov 15th. They were taken right after my first work out with Eric. My weight that day was 183.0. I will take more pictures Dec 15th. My goal is to do new photos once a month.

I also added a tab called Weigh In's. I am hoping this will help keep me accountable especially during the weekends so I dont need to add higher numbers to that page. You can see where the holiday weekend was last week. I was down to 177.5 and then come Monday I was back into the 180's. That HAS to stop. I know it was because there was a lot of deep fried food and non clean food. General Tso's chicken, Buffalo Wild Wings, Spinach Dip, bread...LOL. I also marked on there when I started the Healthe Trim. I just think that is fun to see how well that it helps.

Onto a recap of last night and today. Last nights workout was awesome. I ran 4 miles and then did RPM. Eric warned me Wednesday night that Thursdays workout would be hard. And he wasnt kidding! This is the first time in RPM that my heart rate was consistently at the high end or OVER the range of where it should be.  I was going to do some ab work after RPM but I was completely gone and done. In less than two hours (running and RPM) I burned a whopping 1230 calories! AWESOME!

I also stayed on track and wrote down everything I ate yesterday. I ate just about the same thing I did the day before with the exception of no turkey and spinach dip at lunch because we are out. I made up for it a little bit when I got home from working out because I had the rest of my tuna, which I had made the day before, and I had a 1/3 of a piece of pizza. So the minus of calories at lunch and the addition of calories at dinner probably equaled out to what I had eaten the day before.

That coupled with the massive amount of calories I burned, you are probably thinking that I lost 10 lbs yesterday right? LOL

Nope. Only lost 1 lb. And I "think" I know the reason.

Aunt Flo is trying to come for a visit and usually I retain water for the first couple days. Then after that I go back to normal. So for me, a 1 lb loss is a good thing.

And of course my favorite auntie would come for an appearance when I have a race to run tomorrow. It only figures.

Moving on...

Tonight is Zumba class. Because I have been running all week, I am going to switch my warm-up up a little bit tonight. I am going to do a 1 mile run hard and fast and then lift weights before more cardio with zumba. It seems like my body responds to the weight loss better when I do some weights as well. So this is a little bit of an experiment.

Also after Zumba comes ladies night! We are back on!

We are going to Aubree's again tonight. And I have a game plan. Aubree's has a special turkey burger that I am going to try. The description is this: Wood-fire 5oz. grilled turkey burger with creamy hummus, lettuce, tomatoes & red onion

Sounds delicious right?

And as my side I am going to forget the fries. Instead I am going to have some cottage cheese.

Now dont think I am all awesome because I will be eating all healthy. I am not. I will be allowing myself 2 pieces of feta bread.

And I do plan on asking for a to-go box right away and splitting my burger into 1/3.  I also plan on asking for double the veggies on it.

I figured out the calories and loosely I should have about 15 calories to spare for the day not including the calories I have burned from exercising. Here is what my food diary looks like for the day:

Breakfast (smoothie made with ice and water and ingredients below)

• Banana 110 calories

• Protein Powder 79 calories

Lunch:

• Celery (2 stalks) 12 calories

• Gala Apple 80 calories

• Krema Peanut butter (2T) put into the cored apple 190 calories

Dinner: (here is where it gets a bit sticky with estimating calories. Aubree's doesnt have calorie counts on their website)

• Feta Bread (2 pieces) estimated at 280 calories This was figured from Domino's spinach and feta bread calories. The bread I eat has no spinach and sizes of the bread might be a bit different.

•  Turkey Burger (the whole thing is estimated at 324 calories including a whole wheat bun) I will only be eating a 1/3 of this but incase I dont, I figured the whole total calories. This also includes lettuce, tomato and a pickle. No pickle for me but onion)

• Hummus 60 calories

• Cottage Cheese 1% milk 100 calories for a half cup

Hopefully predetermining my calories will help me stay on track for the day. I know it seems that I am not eating much before dinner, but really that is all my body needs.

This gives me a total of 1235 calories eaten for the day IF I eat the entire burger. So a bit of leeway is good.

What are your plans for the weekend? How do you stay on track during the weekend?

Tip of the Day: