Two For One

As you may have noticed from my sidebar, after only 2 days I am 3/4 done my goal for the week!

I kinda set it up that way on purpose. I carefully worded my goal to say “4 classes in 7 days”. Sneaky!! And yes, I did two classes at the gym yesterday, back to back.

I admit, I used to do this all the time (used to as in over a year ago), so I was a little nervous attempting it. And the result: it was hard!!! I started with a one hour Body Pump class, which went very well. Directly after was a one hour Body Combat class… boy was I wiped. I could not get my energy levels high in the first half. Thankfully in the second half I found my second wind and actually had some energy.

According to my HRM i burned 870 calories in the 2 hours. Not bad, but it’s a low number considering I normally break 600 in a Combat class. I think this accurately illustrates how much energy I didn‘t have in the second class yesterday!

I want to do this again next Tuesday.  I really felt like I was pushing my body, in a good way.

And the good news: not only do I have 4 days to get in one more class, but I have a chance at actually getting 2 in and surpassing my goal!

Today is rest day, and Thursday I have a big staff meeting after work so I won’t be working out then either. The plan is to go to Body Attack after work on Friday and/or Combat on Saturday morning.

I’m really hoping I can maintain this momentum and STOP taking whole weeks off (like last week !!).

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Some Good Stuff

Today I’m going to focus on some good stuff.

Good Stuff #1: I went to the gym last night! 1 down and 3 to go to reach this week’s goal.

I plan to go to the gym after work again tonight! Last night’s workout could have been better. I wasn’t terribly energetic, but I finished the class and that’s what counts. My calorie count was about 100 less than usual for a Body Attack class, but to once again look at the bright side – 450 calories burned is better than 0!

Good Stuff #2: I wore my new shoes to the gym last night and my feet did NOT cramp! Woo hoo.

Usually during a Body Attack class my feet cramp at least once. Thanks to these new shoes that have a lot less support there was no cramping. I can’t imagine how much worse last night’s class would have felt if I’d added in foot cramping!

Good Stuff #3: We are exactly 1 month from Christmas Eve!

I love Christmas. SOOOOOOOOO much.  But I try not to get excited too early. I do not even decorate until it’s actually December. Which means I will decorate next weekend! Woohoo!  Also in the sprit of Christmas, I’ve made some decisions about certain people’s Christmas presents. Which is progress in the right direction!  As usual, I’m clueless about what to get BF, but I seem to get by with mild sucess every year, so I’m sure this year will be no different.

Still here

Yes! I am still here, still kicking.

But, last week really sucked. Aside from work issues draining all of my will to live, it also drained all of my will to go to the gym. I did not go ONCE last week. My goal of going to 4 classes last week was a complete and utter failure as you can see in the sidebar.

This is not the end of the world though! Today is Monday and it’s a whole new week. I am going to attempt the same goal as last week -4 classes in 7 days. Today after work will be class #1.

And to give myself a little extra motivation, I bought these!

My new gym shoes!

I really did need new shoes. My current ones aren’t totally dead yet, but they also don’t really suit my current needs. My current shoes are ultra stable running shoes, which are SO stable that actually doing any kind of back and forth movement causes my feet to cramp! (back and forth movement is a pretty big focus in Combat and Attack classes!)

So I bit the bullet and went and got some new shoes. I will give you my review tomorrow!

Improvement

Friday! Glorious Friday!!

First: I have hot water. Hot showers are highly underrated.

And it’s Friday. Is there any other reason for joy?

Now, the plan for completing my goal. I need to get 2 trips to the gym in by end of day Sunday. Trip #1 will happen after work today. They have reinstated Friday afternoon classes (cancelled all summer), so I’ll be going to Body Attack after work.

Then I will be heading home to start cleaning, I’m having a few people over on Saturday night so  it’s a must do.

Tomorrow morning I plan to hit up the 11 am Body Combat class – LOVE that class! I’m really excited for that one.

This is barring any emergencies…. it’s Friday the 13th, I’m not ruling out anything at work…. Friday afternoons are already notorious for things going wrong around this place!!

Happy Friday!

It’s NOT Friday?!

What is the recipe for a horrible morning? I think I got it just right today:

1 pilot light out in water heater, resulting in no hot water and having to call for rental repair person

+ 1 cold shower due to lack of hot water

+ 1 manipulative email from evil coworker

+ 1 coffee screwup at coffee shop, beyond all repair

+ NO time to get new coffee  before noon

= AWFUL MORNING and a really unpleasant mood.

Thank god tomorrow is Friday.

Halfway Done!

2 down! 2 to go! And 5 days to get it done… not bad

Yesterday, I did make it to Body Pump after my doctor’s appointment. Go me!! Sadly, I am way out of shape.

I went back in time to check out what I was pumping in the summer when I was a crazy-dedicated-gym-goer in order to figure out exactly how much strength a person can lose in 4 months.

Last pump attended in the summer:

• warm-up: 7kg
• squats: 12kg
• chest: 7 kg
• back: 10kg
• triceps: 5kg
• biceps: 7kg
• lunges: 10kg
• shoulders: 5kg
• Abs: 2.5kg chest plate

Yesterday’s pump.

• warm-up: 5kg (decrease!)
• squats: 10kg (decrease!)
• chest: 5 kg (decrease!)
• back: 10kg (same)
• triceps: 2kg (BIG decrease!)
• biceps: 5kg (decrease!)
  
• lunges: 10kg (same)
• shoulders: 5kg (same)
• Abs: 2.5kg chest plate (same)

And it was hard. I will be repeating all of these weights!

I’m looking at this as a serious lesson learned:

3 months can and will make a significant difference in your fitness if you take an extended break! Starting from scratch AGAIN (#1000343982) is no fun. So stop taking breaks! If I need A rest week, fine. But no more than one week off. This is ridiculous!

1 Down!

1 down 3 to go!

Yesterday I went directly to the gym after work and did the Body Attack class!

The workout wasn’t fantastic, but they can’t all be. For starters, I forgot my wristband/watch for my HRM, so I’m really not sure how many calories I burned. This was just annoying more than anything, I’m obsessed with watching those numbers tick, and I like having my heart rate to gauge how hard I’m working . Do I need to slow down? Am I being lazy? My HRM is a quick way to answer these questions, so I feel a little bit naked when I workout without it.

Also, I did not have the go-go I would have like to have had. I was fighing myself the whole time to keep moving at a hard working pace.Then about two thirds into the class I got a cramp and had to slow down to make it go away – which it did, so that’s a bonus. I wondered if having my HRM to avoid working too hard would have made this cramp a non-issue? I suspect so

The moral of the story is I did it. And the upside is that if my first workout of the week wasn’t great, the rest of the week can only be better, right?

I’m actually planning on gym trip 2 out of 4 for this week to be today after work. I’ve got a doctor’s appoinment to have my neck looked at, and I plan to go to Body Pump afterwards. My cardio addiction must stop! Lifting weights also counts as working out. (duh!!)

Oh, and I wanted to share a delicous processed (mmmm… processed…) snack I’ve tried lately!

These

and these

were on sale this week.

Go get them right now. They are delicious. Seriously. Maybe I’ve “brainwashed” my tastebuds after depriving them of “real” cake for so long, but these tasted pretty authentic to me!! A little high in calories for a “diet” snack, but I only have one when I have an extra light dinner.

Wow. I was really loving the “quotes” in that last paragraph huh?

A Modest Goal, and Time To Do It

Yesterday I was a crazy-cooking-lady. But I did it all for my own good. Thanks to my hard work, we get to eat healthy, yummy homecooked meals all week (and in the future sometime!) with only the microwave! I made beef stew in the slow cooker, crab corn chowder & mexican lasagna.

I probably won’t be having any of the beef stew (just not a fan…), but the crab corn chowder & mexican lasagna are both healthy recipes, so I won’t feel any guilt having them!

Why did I need to do this? If I want a lazy week, why don’t I just not cook? Because here’s the thing. BF doesn’t cook. Also, BF needs to eat a lot. If I don’t cook, he will live off of pizza pops & kraft dinner. This is ok sometimes, but not all the time.

I love cooking and I love eating good food. Yes, I like my lean cuisines, but I also like eating home-cooked meals. And I like variety. So although BF has told me I don’t need to cook for him, I still do. Because:

1. I will do it for myself anyways.
2. Guilt. I feel awful watching him eat processed junk all the time knowing that he could be eating healthy food that I am good at making.

So, this week I decided I would have the best of both worlds: Lazy meals &  homecooked food! Hurray for having nothing much to do except cook on a Sunday!

This means something else too: I have no excuse to not workout a lot this week. None. I have created time for myself, now I just have to use it appropriately.

So, I have a goal.

That goal is to go to the gym 3 times this work week, and then also go to the gym on Saturday morning. That is 4 trips in 7 days. It’s not crazy in some people’s books, but for me, someone who is struggling to get back into a solid gym routine, it’s pretty ambitious.

What I have to remember is this summer – when I went to the gym every morning before work for weeks! Compared to that, my goal is nothing! So easy. That is what I have to keep telling myself

This is doable, right? I’ll be keeping myself accountable here. Trip #1 is after work today. Body Attack.

A Successful Day!

Today has been awesome.

Last night could have been better.

I woke up once thinking someone was banging on the door (creepy!).

Next was kitty woke me up playing with my face (I wonder what weird things my face was doing in my sleep!?).

Then I had forgotten to turn my alarm off – 5:45 it went off. It’s right beside my bed so I was able to just reach over and shut it up.

Then BF got up early, which didn’t wake me, but… you know the spring style doorstops? Well we have one in the bathroom – which shares a wall with our bedroom. BF was in there with the cat (the cat feels he must share bathroom time with you – weird? Yes. You get accustomed to it.) The cat was in there playing with the doorstop…

 BOING!!! BOING!!! BOING!!!

He probably did it ten times until I finally got up and gave them both a half-asleep piece of my mind!

AND THEN, BF’s alarm clock went off! He had woken up before it and forgotten to turn it off. 7 am. On a Saturday. This is the point where I gave up and got up to drink some coffee. We went to bed really early last night, so it wasn’t so bad – I had gotten enough sleep at this point.

On to the good stuff!

BF left almost immediately after I got up – he went hunting all day and is staying the night at a friend’s camp. I had a lazy morning drinking coffee. I cleaned up a bit, threw a load of laundry in, and had a yummy breakfast of a toasted ww english muffin with honey, PB & banana. Probably one of my favourite breakfasts.

And then the REALLY good part. I went to the gym! I went to another combat class and get this – I burned 643 calories in it!! Crazy!

Came home, showered, had lunch and went out to run some errands.

I didn’t get home until about 5pm, and now I’m having a delicious Bud Light Lime (a summer time bevvy I know – it’s leftover from summer time). Yumm.

My plan for the evening is to make myself an awesome dinner of Asparagus & Bacon Gnocchi (but mixing things up and using cheese tortellini instead of gnocchi) and watch some chick flicks! I’ve got a couple on hand, not sure which one I’ll watch!

I repeat. Great Saturday!

A Neck Update

So it took the genius of my sister to put together what I believe my subconcious already had.

On Saturday, I bought a new pillow from Costco. A new and very expensive pillow ($30 – that’s an expensive pillow to me anyways!). I was showing it off that evening to my sister, which is why she knew about it. It’s a fancy memory foam pillow, and supposed to have all kinds of great features. “Cripples you” was not mentioned as one of the features.

So. Saturday night I slept with the pillow. Sunday morning the crippling neck pain begins….. coincidence? Yesterday my sister pointed out the obvious to me.

The funny part is, I’ve been sleeping with my old pillow since, but it wasn’t really a concious decision…

The pillow is back in its box (yes it came in a box!!) waiting to be returned to Costco on Saturday. It is an evil pillow which I will not even subject my guests to in the spare room!

Seriously though, I never would have thought a pillow could cause this much pain… crazy.

It’s slowly recovering, but the pain is still there.

And NO, I didn’t go to the gym yet. I took everyone’s good advice and stayed away. I plan to go this weekend at the very latest though!!

Today I planned to walk to the grocery store after work to get a few things we needed. It’s about 3.5 km round trip, so it would have been something. Sadly, the weather ruined my plans and it’s rainy and cold! I didn’t want to tempt the flu gods, so I just stopped in my car on the way home.

Here’s me hoping for a pain free weekend full of gym trips and healthy food!

Aside: I’m seriously considering setting up some kind of pre-Christmas challenge for going to the gym. Stay tuned as I figure out what I will do!