Splenda is Evil: A day in the life of an Anxietist

First things first: I did not ever get around to my second workout last week. I just.. didn't. I don't know what happened. For some reason, I just couldn't motivate. Part of it is that I try to squeeze too much stuff into one afternoon sometimes, and my workout took last priority instead of first on Thurs, Fri, AND Saturday. It's super lame. But I'm trying really hard not to beat the mental crap out of myself over it, because it's a new week. I can't change last week, but I can decide what to do with this week. Now I just have to find the motivation...

I have done really well with my food. I won't go through nearly a week's with of food updates, but let's just say that I did well and stayed within my calories limits with the exception of Friday and Saturday night adult beverages - but this was expected and anticipated.

On to other things...

Here is something some of you may not know about me: I am an Anxietist. This is not really a real word.. I don't think, anyway. Basically, I suffer from some pretty bad anxiety on almost a daily basis. Most of this stems from thinking my body is somehow conspiring against me so that I may just up and die from something weird and unexpected at any moment. It's fun. -.-   So when things like, oh say, my hands, feet, and face start randomly tingling and going numb on and off for no reason on a perfectly pleasant Sunday evening, I have a pretty major panic attack.

I'm forever terrified that I'm going to die of a stroke at a young age. Two things contribute to this fear: 1) I'm a smoker who takes birth control, and 2) I get migraine headaches with an aura, which means I'm over 20% more likely to suffer from a stroke or other neurological weirdness in my lifetime... and not just when I'm old. These things have been shown to happen in people in the late teens and early twenties. W. T. F.

Needless to say, when my body parts start tingling and going numb I'm pretty much deciding that it's got to be some sort of stroke happening.. even though I'm, in general, feeling okay. I can still move all my facial muscles like I normally would... I can still speak normally, walk normally, etc. I tell myself everything is okay. Nothing bad is happening. I'm probably just overly tired, etc.

The next day (yesterday), I do a little research and find that this Tingly Weirdness can be a sign of migraine. I get all kinds of nasty migraine symptoms - Tingly Weirdness not being one of them. But that's fine. It's entirely probable that Tingly Weirdness is now going to be a normal symptom of migraine for me. I haven't had a migraine in a long time, though. Months. And I never did get the headache part. Only the Tingly Weirdness. Hmm.

My migraines are usually triggered by something. Not eating often enough, severe sleep deprivation, dehydration, eating too many sweets, consuming artificial sweeteners - to name a few. These are the main culprits. As long as I can avoid these top 5, I'm good to go. Did a little more thinking and internet poking around... and realized that my Tingly Weirdness started around 8:15... I drank a Coke Zero (which contains Splenda/sucralose) around 7:30.

A little background: my husband, Mike, shortly after the first of the year switched from regular soda to diet soda in an effort to lose some weight. I used to drink coke zero all the time a few years back, but gave up artifical sweeteners during 2008 after reading a bunch about how, y'know, they are CHEMICALS THAT CAN CAUSE CANCER  AND DESTROY YOUR BODY.

Okay, so Mike starts drinking coke zero like it's going out of style.. it's in our house all the time... so I start drinking one every couple of days with dinner or as a snack.. and then I start realizing that I feel all headachy and gross all the time. I'm like, "Wtf? What is happening to me? Why do I feel like this all the time?" and so I'm trying to think if there's anything different with my normal day-to-day habits and I link it to the coke zero. Alright, fine, I quit drinking it. Until Sunday night, for some reason, when I decided that I HAD to have soda with my homemade cheeseburger... and then the Tingle Weirdness.

Today it just seems to be lingering in my face.. and I've had sort of a dull headache, so I'm thinking this is the very-common migraine "aftershock". Hopefully by tomorrow I'll feel normal. This definitely prevented me from working out tonight. Call me crazy, but something about neurological weirdness going on doesn't make me want to boost my heart rate up to 188 and jump around a whole bunch. Maybe that's just a bad excuse and if I'd done it anyway I'd be feeling closer to normal right now. Who knows?

My depression is definitely creeping in on me this week. I felt it being sneaky over the weekend, but I managed to drown that out with lots of beer (super healthy, right?). Now that the workweek has begun, drinking lots of beer is not really a viable option. Just another reason why I should have worked out tonight - exercise = natural depression ass-kicker. But it's a vicious cycle.

Woe is me.

Oh! Here is something fun and exciting: I am in my friend Andrea's wedding in October and my bridesmaid dress recently came in. It is gorgeous! But even more exciting: I ordered it in a 14 and it fits! Barely. But it's fits!

...my only thing about that is that I hope and pray my subconscious doesn't take that as a cue to go ahead and sabotage my whole Jessica Hotness Plan. We'll see.

By the way, I weighed-in Friday:

Official weight @ 3/23/2012: 211.4lbs


Now, remember last week I weighed in on Friday and was up, but then Saturday morning was back to 209.. well I didn't reweigh this weekend because I hadn't done a workout Thursday night so I didn't have a valid water retention excuse... except that I did start my period on Sunday. So that factors in. Logically, I know this is totally okay. I'm not really gaining. I'm maintaining. Unfortunately I'm just maintaining at about 30-40lbs higher than where I'd LIKE to be maintaining. It's a process. I have to remember that. Plus, I was warned the scale would be my MORTAL ENEMY during this Body Breakthrough program. But I think I'm really letting it get me down... and as much as I want to quit weighing myself, I don't wanna. Maybe I need to scale it back to like, twice a month or something. I don't know. We'll see. I don't want to really tweak what I'm doing too much though, because then I start to feel like I'm just trying to make myself appear like I'm doing better than I actually am. I promised myself and my readers this time around that I would be 100% honest. That means not manipulating my freaking data all over the place to make me seem more successful than I am.

So, I think it's pretty obvious at this point that I won't be meeting my 5 pound goal for March. Unless I miraculously drop 7lbs in the next 5 days. Wouldn't THAT be nice? I think that's another thing that's getting me down.. I was so confident I could reach that goal. Sad panda.

Today's food:

3/27/2012

• breakfast: cranberry and flaxseed oatmeal w/ 1/8cup of milk, almonds
• am snack: apples w/ natural peanut butter
• lunch: 6" turkey on wheat from subway, organic peach yogurt, more almonds, a serving of bbq baked lays
• dinner: Biggest Loser baked ziti
• pm snack: tortilla chips w/ salsa

Total calories: 1,529

2 Days of Food

I know. I said I was going to start posting food logs again. I forgot. So here's 2 days of food for you!!

3/20/12

·         Breakfast:  regular oatmeal w/ stevia and a little milk, a donut (yes, again), some almonds

·         am snacks: organic peach yogurt, apples w/ peanut butter

·         Lunch: Cici’s pizza – 2 slizes (think frozen pizza sized slices, so, small) of each veggie, cheese, pepperoni… and then of course I had a couple super skinny slices of dessert pizza. Oh, dessert pizza, why must you be so delicious?!

·         Dinner: cottage cheese with fresh strawberries

·         Pm snack: fruit smoothie with whey protein

·         Exercise: Base Phase Workout B

Total Calories: 1814

Estimated Calories Burned: 600

Net Calories: 1214

3/21/12

·         Breakfast: regular oatmeal w/ stevia and milk, banana

·         Am snacks: almonds and strawberry yogurt

·         Lunch: Qdoba veggie bowl, half rice extra black beans and a 16oz coke

·         Dinner: turkey and swiss sandwich

·         Pm snacks: iced sweetened passion tea from Starbucks, two beers

Total Calories: 2282

Obviously no exercise last night. And I honestly forgot about those beers until just now. This seems to be my pattern lately. On exercise days I end up eating relatively little, and then on non-exercise days I hit or exceed the 2,000 mark. It’s okay I guess, since it all evens out. And there’s nothing wrong with giving my metabolism that boost on those off days as long as I’m not regularly reaching that 2,500-3,000 range every other day.

I’m actually feeling really good about my eating this week. There have obviously been some fast-food type things thrown in the mix, but overall I feel like I’m eating mostly intuitively. If I’m hungry, I have something. If I’m not, I don’t. None of this wanting to eat just because I'm bored stuff that I usually struggle with.

My general goal is 2,000 or less for the day, but I’m not stressing on that. It feels good to just eat without a constant, nagging inner-monologue going on in the back of my head. Even with those donuts earlier this week. I ate one, it was whatever. I moved through the rest of my day without feeling guilty about it until having to post it to this blog lol. But even then, as soon as I wrote it out, it was forgotten. For someone who has been on-and-off obsessing over every bite that goes into her mouth for almost 3 years, that’s a huge accomplishment. HUGE. Now the trick is to keep it up!

The Big Difference

So, I cheated a little bit… I re-weighed myself Saturday morning and was back at 209 lbs.. and that was after eating breakfast. This is just proof to me that my theory of water retention post-workout was correct. Go me, being all scientific and stuff!

This week if I do my workout Tues/Thurs, I will probably delay my weigh-in until Saturday morning. If I decide to go ahead to do my workout tonight (Monday) and Wednesday, then I’ll stick with my usual Friday weigh-in. This way I give my body a full 24 hours and-then-some of recovery before weigh-in and that should result in less water retention than, say, 10 or 12 hours post-workout. We’ll see.

I think I talked a little bit earlier this week about this phase of the program really only requiring 2 workouts a week and how I’d like to try to get 3 in, etc, etc.. I definitely got 3 workouts in. It wasn’t even a question.

Saturday morning, even after drinking a little Friday night, I got up and banged out another round of Workout A, which took me about an hour. It felt AMAZING! Even though I was tired and a little hung over, I pushed through and pushed hard and afterward I felt 100 times better than I had when I first woke up. Who knew? Hangover cure = strength training. Sunday morning, after enjoying St. Patrick’s Day and celebrating a friend’s birthday a little too much, I found myself wanting to workout again.. even after only about 4 hours of sleep. What is this?! What is this WANTING to workout thing?!

That’s the big difference. So far, on this program, I find myself loving my workouts. I look forward to exercising. I find myself wanting to eat healthier to fuel my body to be able to push as hard as I can during these workouts. It’s an amazing feeling. I’ve never felt this way about exercising. I’ve never enjoyed it. I’ve never seen results so quickly. My arms are already losing their jiggle, my back-fat is fast disappearing - I’m getting CALVES, people!!! I’ve never had calf muscles in my life. Oh, and I have a butt. It’s small, but it’s getting there.   !!! <- those are my excited exclamation points.

Maybe that’s what makes the difference – the being able to see results so quickly. The knowing that this is actually doing something to my body, and in a good way.

On another note, I feel like I'm finally getting back on track with my eating. It's going to be a process, though, I can tell. I'm going to go back to posting my meals like I used to. May as well start with today:

• breakfast: plain oatmeal w/ stevia and a splash of milk, chocolate cake donut (at work - damn my husband and his donut bringing!)
• am snack: cottage cheese with fresh cut strawberries
• lunch: small garden salad w/ black bean salsa, a little cheese, 1 tbsp of spicy ranch dressing, and a lean cuisine baja chicken quesadilla thing
• dinner: 3 tacos using 90/10 ground beef, 40% less sodium taco seasoning, whole wheat tortillas and a little cheese

Total calories: 1,380

I may have another salad and some fruit in a little while, but that should only add about 150 calories to my count for the day. Still not bad at all. Aside from that donut, I think I did pretty well. 

A quick note on life: a couple weeks ago my baby decided he would no longer like to sleep through the night. The 3am feedings recommenced. We started him on some cereal and a little fruit - that makes his belly hurt. Last Thursday he finally decided to start sleeping until about 5am... getting closer to being back through the night... but now tonight and last night he's decided he hates GOING to bed. Enter in the crying-it-out phase. I hate this. I hate listening to him scream his little lungs out. 1) it makes me a little sad, and 2) it makes me want to claw my eyes out and/or maybe sell him to the gypsies. Ah, the life of a mother. Next time around I'm having puppies instead. Or just all kinds of animals. Sounds like a good deal to me. 

Weigh-in hiccups, and feelings on Workout B

Last night was my second workout for Phase 1, Week 1. I’m thinking I may have benefitted from giving my body an extra day of rest. It was really hard for me to push myself last night. I was still sweating profusely, I know my heart rate was through the roof – I did not wear my heart rate monitor this time, though. Sometimes when I see what my heart rate actually is, it freaks me out pretty bad and I’ve definitely sent myself into a panic attack a couple times. I decided to just go by my “perceived rate of exertion” – ie: listen to your body and if you can’t breathe so well, take a break!  I did my rests like I was supposed to this time, and that definitely helped with the “omg, I’m going to die” feeling both during and after the workout.

There were supposed to be two cable exercises during last night’s routine, but I did not go to the gym so I kind of had to fudge through those with dumbbell alternates. I didn’t research well enough before starting my circuit, though, and the alternative for the cable lat pull-down I used was pretty worthless. Now I know better. That, or maybe next week I’ll feel comfortable enough to go do at least Workout B at the gym where I have access to the cable pulls.

I’ll tell you the toughest part of last night’s workout, though: the inch-worms during warm-up. My traps were killing me, and it made them so hard! (In case you’re interested in some inchworms for your own workout: go here) I didn’t do the full 10, I think I got through about 6. That extra day of rest may have made all the difference, but this way I can hopefully get a third workout in on Saturday.

I can’t wait for my strength to build up, because some of these things kill me right now! Even just the warm-up exercises. This has really brought my current fitness/strength into perspective. I’m a squishy weakling!

A note on soreness: Ms. Cosgrove makes a super big deal about stretching and this thing called “foam rolling” – some of you may be familiar with this technique. Basically you take a cylindrical piece of foam and roll your body over it in different ways. I did not have a foam roller, I had never even heard of a foam roller. I bought one – they are fairly inexpensive. Oh man. It is pretty great, not gonna lie. I have significantly less soreness today and I am pretty sure I can thank my foam roller for that. It felt so amazing to basically massage all my muscles after my workout. And that is the basic idea: this thing massages your body and assists in the recovery process. I’m supposed to do it twice a week outside of my normal workouts. I’m totally down with that because it feels awesome!

Alright… so… my weigh-in. I am kind of dreading this, but at the same time feel oddly okay with it.

Official weight @ 3/16/2012: 211.2 lbs.

I know, I know.. you’re probably thinking: what is THAT all about?! At first, I wanted to blame my terrible eating from the past two weeks. But even though I was eating a lot of crap, I wasn’t really going crazy in calorie intake – yes, it was higher than it should be for weight LOSS, but not so high that I shouldn’t have maintained weight.

Here’s my theory on my weight gain: lifting weights and general strength/resistance training, can cause water retention in your muscles during the recovery period – anywhere from 3 to 7 days, depending on how much you’re pushing your body. Considering how difficult these workouts have been for me (the warm-up alone, geez!), I’m thinking my muscles are retaining some serious water and are actually considering turning in their resignation in order to go search for a new body to occupy. I’m really not concerned with the gain. I feel great, I can already see my tone returning in places (arms! Yay!), and the book gave me fair warning that the scale could be my enemy during this process. This weekend I need to remember to whip out those temperature jeans!

The other thing is, I’m not following the nutritional plan at all right now. I felt like with the amount of stress I’m under both at home and at work, this could be a terrible time to start feeling like I’m denying myself the simple pleasures in life. And beer. With this, I also understand that my results on this program may not come as quickly as they would if I were 100% on board with the nutritional plan. Right now I’m okay with that. A month from now? I may change my mind. But a month from now things at work will have at least calmed down a bit. I am working on making better choices when it comes to eating, but I’m nowhere near being 90% clean with my eating. I’m counting calories again, and that helps keep me in check with a lot. I haven’t decided whether or not to start posting my calorie goals yet. Stay tuned.

Positive Thought of the Day

I have an awesome waist-to-hip ratio. True. Fact.

Starting point, post-workout feelings, and lots of other stuff!

So last night I wrote a little bit about how the workout made me feel like I was dying.. just a little.. and that my heart might explode. Well, I feel pretty freaking fantastic today. I’m sore, but it’s a good sore – and the muscles that are sore are already forcing me to stand and sit straighter because it just plain hurts to hunch. My only complaint is: I wish I felt it in my abs more. I know the only reason I’m NOT feeling it more in my belly is because I was not doing one of the core exercises correctly. I was going to quickly and not focusing on my form. Now I know for next time.

You know where I’m feeling it the MOST? My butt. Rachel Cosgrove talks a bit in the book about how your average person pretty much doesn’t use their gluteal muscles at all anymore – since we spend most of our days sitting at a desk or on a couch. Basically we, especially women, have these atrophied booties. Also known as “white girl butt”. Well, that’s what I call it anyway… and I have a bad case. But I’m thinking after 16 weeks of this stuff, that won’t be the case anymore! And I’m pretty freaking excited about that, because I would LOVE to have a nice butt! Perhaps we shall now refer to this program as “Project Build-a-Butt”. I’m just hoping having a butt at the end of my fitness experiment doesn’t make it that much harder to find jeans that fit well. Being tall and heavy-hipped makes that hard enough as it is!

My only con about this so far: I’m so out of shape I definitely do NOT feel comfortable going through this routine at the gym – yet. Now, that’s my own hang-up. Someone else might not see any issue with it. Also: I’m a terrible jumper. I am NO GOOD at plyometrics. I don’t think I could jump to save my life. Sadness. But, as with everything in this program, that will improve with practice! And practice it I will, since it is 80% of the warm-up that you MUST perform at the beginning of every workout.

The next phase (in 4 weeks) will require access to more varying weights, which will force me into the gym, but for right now I’m totally okay with building my base strength at home and I’m thankful that I have some free weights at home to have that option.. otherwise I’m afraid that my embarrassment would keep me from doing the workouts at all. Unless I had a gym buddy. Then we could look ridiculous together! Any takers? J

Pro: Doing this – at least this first workout – makes me want to not smoke. There’s this huge “disclaimer” type thing in the 2^nd chapter (I think?) about how “fit females DO NOT SMOKE. You can’t smoke and be fit. It’s counter-productive” etc, etc, etc… yes yes. Well. We’ll see how it goes. I haven’t talked much about my smoking habit on here since my return to the blogging world, but most of you know that I picked it back up over the holidays. I know I need to quit, I just don’t particularly want to. I really do enjoy smoking. Yes, yes – I’m sure I won’t “enjoy” the cancer is may give me. Shut your faces. …ANYWAYS… getting back to it: the workout made me not want to smoke. Hopefully that will continue. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Okay, so onto the eating! The book advises clean eating 90% of the time. Well, I’m not going to focus so much on that right now. One thing at a time, as I’m already completely overwhelmed in almost every other aspect of my life. I’m hoping as I exercise and get in better shape this will lead me to craving more good-for-me foods. I’ve experienced this in the past. And it’s definitely in the back of my head after finishing a workout that I need to feed my body well in order to get the results I expect. Yesterday and today were definite WINS on the eating front. Oatmeal, yogurt, almonds, fruits, healthier lunch choices (Subway and Qdoba), and homemade dinners. Definitely a better option than fast food, fast food, and maybe some bar food and beer on top of that fast food. Some of you may be thinking Qdoba = not the healthiest option out there. Well, I do pretty well. I always get the vegetarian bowl and today I asked for only about a quarter of the amount of rice they usually give you, plus extra black beans and the rest is just veggies and salsa, salsa, salsa plus some guac. I do get the cheese and sour cream, but unlike Chipotle, they don’t drown your food in it. It’s probably right at or a little above what an actual serving of cheese and sour cream should be. All told, we’re looking at about 650 calories. I’m okay with that for lunch since I don’t eat large dinners usually. I do need to be better about not eating OUT for lunch so often, but that’s more from a financial standpoint than anything else.

Also, I wanted to go ahead and post some starting measurements for this Body Breakthrough program… which, now that I’m thinking about it, is actually called the Fit Female Program… so yeah.. that.. whatever..

Starting Measurements @ 3/12/2012

• Estimated Body Fat % (YMCA formula): 36%  (I want to say this may actually be closer to 40%, but we’ll just go ahead and stick with what the YMCA formula says)
• Weight: 209 lbs
• Waist: 36” / 41” at navel
• Chest: 41”
• Hips: 47”
• Thighs: 28”
• Arms (flexed): 13”
• Jean/Pant Size: 18
• Shirt Size: L or XL, depending on the brand

Let me explain my reason for listing my clothing sizes: part of this program is breaking the bond with the scale. For my own purposes, I will continue to do my weekly weigh-in. Mainly because, I’m pretty sure I’m carrying enough actual fat on my frame right now that I’m going to see the number drop significantly before it even thinks about creeping back up due to the gain of lean muscle mass. One thing Rachel is really adamant about is using a pair of “Temperature Jeans” to measure your progress in place of the scale. These “temperature jeans” should be a pair of jeans (or just regular pants, I guess, if you want) that maybe you used to fit into back-in-the-day, or maybe even a new pair of pants in your goal size. Each phase, she suggests putting on the temperature jeans to gauge progress. When you’ve reached HOT (get it? Hot? TEMPERATURE JEANS? Funny stuff, I tell ya.), your jeans should fit. Now, obviously, your goal size has to be REALISTIC. I’m 5’10 with a natural pear shape. My goal size cannot be a size 4. I wore a size 8 when I was 11 and had like no fat anywhere on my body. Let’s just be honest here. I would like to, eventually, be a size 12. I don’t think I currently have any size 12s living anywhere in my boxes of old “skinny” clothes… but I’m pretty sure I have a 14 in there somewhere, and if I can get down to a 14 in the next 16 weeks – or, shoot, even 32 weeks -  I would be pretty freakin’ happy.

So, yes. There’s my reason for giving my current clothing size. Perhaps I will even take a picture of myself trying to squeeze into my temperature jeans. We will see about that, depending on how sad it is.

Oh! And, of course, you see I’ve listed my current estimated body fat % - which, by the way, is catergorized as “obese”. Thank you, thank you. *bows*  The main point of this program is not WEIGHT loss, but FAT loss. And the only way to really accurately gauge that is by estimated body fat percentage and measurements. My ULTIMATE goal body fat percentage is 26. I need to lose roughly 28% of my current body fat percentage to get there. That’s a lot to ask for over 16 weeks. Short term goal is 10% loss. That would be pretty awesome. That would bring me back into the “overweight” range. Lol.

So there it is, folks! On with the experiment!

Like Whoa.

So I did my first Body Breakthrough workout tonight... Oh Jesus. My heart rate got up to 188 at one point (yes, I wear a heart rate monitor). I thought it might explode. Two of the exercises I couldn't do - not because they were difficult - because I am that out of shape and my lower core is destroyed from having a baby 3 months ago. I'm okay with using alternate exercises for those muscle groups for now. It will be interesting to see how quickly I'll progress to being able to do everything. I'm pretty excited about it! (I feel like I say that a lot... That's a good thing, right?)

The amount of sweat coming out of me... Geez Louise. I don't think my tank top and yoga pants have ever been so soaked. It was pretty gross, not gonna lie. I'm already feeling the ache coming on too and that's WITH the required stretching afterwards. It's a good hurt though, for sure.

I definitely think I need to time my rests between exercises next go around. I'm terrible at this because I somehow think I'm not getting all the bang for my buck but the truth of the matter is that I am much more likely to damage my progress by NOT taking the prescribed 30-60 second rest in between sets. So Thursday, definitely timing my rests. Maybe I won't feel so "I'm gonna stroke out" afterwards that way. Lol.

I did awesome on my eating today and I didn't even really have to think about it. It was awesome. Plus we took a walk on our lunch break to enjoy the beautiful weather, so I got that extra calorie burn in. Now I need to go to fricken bed, so my muscle can repair themselves and so I can maybe feel like a normal person tomorrow.

More insights on the new workout routine soon... Goodnight!

An Experiment in Fitness (and my Friday weigh-in update)

Well, I remembered to get on the scale Friday morning. I lost 0.2lbs! Bringing me to an even 209. Hey, at least I lost. I thought for sure I would step on that scale and see that I'd packed on 3 or 4 lbs after my terrible health habits - last week was especially bad.

I've also been terrible about counting my Weight Watchers points. I think maybe WW and I just aren't meant to be. This happened to me in 2010, as well. I was great about it for about a month and then totally fell of the bandwagon. I think maybe just straight calorie counting may be the best route for me. If I can stick with my strength training 3 times a week there's no reason I shouldn't be able to pretty much eat whatever I want whole-food-wise and splurge on the weekends (within reason, of course).

My main focus this week is to start this new exercise routine. I'm pretty excited about it! This is the book I've been reading:



My goal for this week is to start implementing these workouts. I only have to do 2-3, depending on what my schedule allows for - perfect for being a working mom! It's a 16 week program. The first 4 weeks are called the "Base Phase", where you build base strength using mostly your own body weight for resistance training. I played around with just some of the warm-up moves (one thing that I'm little annoyed about - you HAVE to do the warm-up before every workout - I'm terrible about warming up!)... this warm-up is no joke. It's full of all kinds of plyometrics (a fancy word for jumping) and squats galore! I will have some damn sexy legs after all of this, that's for sure!

One thing this book talks about that never occurred to me before is: do your core training FIRST. If you work on the rest of your body (which, of course, utilizes your core but doesn't necessarily FOCUS on it) then by the time you reach the end of your workout and settle down for those ab exercises, you won't be able to push yourself because you and your core will be too worn out! Interesting concept. I don't know about you folks, but I always save my core for last. It'll be interesting to see how this core-first idea goes.

I may go back to just plain old calorie counting this week, also. We'll see. I need to get on-board with clean eating, too. I was pretty good about that before I got pregnant.. and I've had good days/weeks in the last couple months, but right now I'm totally addicted to junk food again. I'm not sure how to motivate my eating again. I think I'm just going to have to buck up and do it. One good thing: I cooked dinner tonight. It was just spaghetti. But at least I COOKED. I was going to make a salad to go with it... but my lettuce was gross, because my veggie drawer in my fridge has decided that it likes to freeze things now. Lettuce doesn't freeze and thaw very well, in case you were wondering. Lol.


Edit:
So, I had planned to start this Body Breakthrough thing tonight, but real life got in the way. James had a terrible day at school and the baby is teething so we both were super busy with the kiddos until about 8pm. It's hard for me to motivate to workout if it gets much later than 7:30. Maybe I need to think about getting up earlier in the morning to exercise... it makes me so tired just thinking about it.

I know part of the problem with the kids is the time change over the weekend. It's hitting me pretty hard, too. But I told Mike that tomorrow I HAVE to workout. I can't keep putting it off. It's really effecting my mood and my stress control. I had a bit of a breakdown yesterday because I just got overwhelmed and had no outlet - ie: beating the crap out of my body. Plus my hormones are still all over the place... from that whole having a baby 3 months ago thing. Working out definitely helps with that. It's amazing how the human body works.

Another goal I want to set for myself for this month is blogging more often! I used to blog almost daily, and now I'm lucky if I get two in a week. Blogging is an excellent "drain" for my stress, too. I'm realizing it's all about making time for myself. I need to start making myself a priority.

Stay tuned for my thoughts after my first workout in my fitness experiment!

Disgusting habits

No, not smoking. But that one isn't exactly sexy either, I must admit.

I'm talking about junk food binges. And I don't necessarily mean "binge" in the eating disordered form. I mean just a string of days of eating lots of processed crap for regular meals in place of the healthy, happy whole foods we all know and try to love.

Ladies and Gents, I have eaten more crap food in the last 10 days than I have in probably the last 3 months. Or longer. I didn't count calories as a preggo, but I certainly didn't eat this poorly either. It's almost like I'm trying to sabotage my awesome weight-loss progress. But really I think it may have more to do with stress.

I pretty much gave up on counting points over this past weekend... and when I started up again, I'm already down to 12 flex points for the week... which basically means I've gone over my flex points by probably double. It's bad news bears, folks.

Positive note: I've still been keeping up with my workouts. I've got two in for this week so far.

Back to some real world psuedo-negativity: Beer is becoming one of my best friends recently. It's not good! That is the real tell-tale for me that I am stressing hardcore. I don't drink like that on a regular basis. Have 3 or 4 on a Friday or a Saturday night? Sure. Drink 2 or 3 almost every night in a week? No bueno.

My anxiety has come back over the last couple weeks as well. It's been keeping me up at night. Last night I thought I might die a little bit. I was so tired, but I couldn't seem to stop this panic attack my body was trying to have. I didn't do a workout last night because my muscles screamed at me pretty good Monday night after my Saturday workout - and I was afraid I might injure myself if I pushed it to go ahead and do my strength routine again Wednesday night. So extra "rest" day it was. I think the lack of exercise for the night definitely contributed. My post-baby hormones also probably aren't helping. Honesty: eating shitty junk food every day for nearly two weeks doesn't help either. I already posted recently about how junk food makes me depressed - well now it's bringing my anxiety back up, and that's a little harder to manage that my depression.

Yesterday was a step in the right direction. I had oatmeal for breakfast, lots of fruit, some almonds and then a turkey breast sub for lunch. I didn't end up eating dinner because I was still pretty full from my lunch, but I did have a venti chai from starbucks. SUGAR.

My stress is definitely contributing to my poor eating habits. I never thought of myself as an emotional eater, but I'm realizing I may be one. Tonight I fully intended on getting a workout in, but then it started getting late... and the bud light in my fridge started calling my name. I partook in some of my old rage-ahol this afternoon, and that got my stress level all high and mighty. My willpower isn't very good. I could have forced myself to exercise, but I didn't. These are some of the things I will need to talk about in counseling next week. I'm having a hard time prioritizing time for myself - whether that be to read a book, do some exercise, or prepare a healthy, well-balanced meal. Some of my "I'm just a big fatty anyway, so why try?" old ways are coming into play again. I might need to do some of my positive affirmations in the morning. Oh man... the morning. Weigh-in. That just occurred to me. FML! Hopefully it won't so bad. Hopefully I will not have gained. If I maintained, I need to be happy with that. Tomorrow after work I need to get a good workout in and I'll feel better. I need to start scheduling that me-time. I need to make it a priority.

Next week I need to commit to clean eating. I'm currently reading a book about fitness and weight lifting as a female, and the book really focuses on nutrition. Not calorie counting, not "dieting". NUTRITION. Making sure you're feeding your body the right things so that it's easier to build that lean muscle and boost metabolism to burn fat and get in shape - and, more importantly, STAY in shape once you get there. It's a 90/10 concept. Clean eating 90% of the times. 10% given to guilty-free splurges, whatever those may be. It's a great concept, and it's one that could definitely work for me if I can just get on the bandwagon and put my stress factors behind me a little bit. Once I finish this book I'll definitely be talking about it more at length. It's pretty awesome. And one thing I really love about this chick, is that her husband is one of the premiere strength trainers in the fitness world, and once she decided to get in shape and do what's right for her body, she committed to educating herself as much as possible. She event went so far as to get her bachelor's in physiology. To be honest, it's something I've considered. Since beginning my weight-loss journey I've made it a priority to educate myself as much as possible and I feel that that has really helped me. I'm genuinely interested  in fitness and how the human body operates in response to exercise and healthy eating. I've also been considering trying to get my personal training certification. At this time in my life, with my children being so young still, it's not an immediate goal by any means. But maybe a 5 year goal? Sure. The prospect is incredibly exciting for me.

So that's what's going on with me. I'm sure you'll hear from me again this weekend to talk about my weigh-in. Hope you all are having a fabulous week!

On Succeeding

I actually remembered to weigh-in on my actual weigh-in day this week (friday)... and I was VERY pleasantly surprised to see the scale register at 209.2lbs. And that was AFTER eating breakfast!!

Needless to say, I have officially met and exceeded my weight-loss goal for February. I'm incredibly proud of myself. I was really afraid that with my total diet derailment earlier in the week would effect my goal for the week, but turns out getting to the gym really is all the difference for me and my body. My weight lifting routine is already starting to change my shape, and I'm incredibly excited about that! The one bad thing about lifting weights is: all that fat you have, when your muscles start to tone up that fat just hangs off of you... but soon it will all be burned off by that awesome lean muscle mass I'm building!

Measurements @ 3/02/12:

• Weight: 209.2 lbs
• Chest: 41"
• Waist: 36" - 40" at bellybutton
• Hips: 47"
• Biceps: 13"
• Thighs: 28"

I've lost an inch off my chest and my waist at the bellybutton. However, I've gained an inch in my thighs, but I will attribute this to building those quads back up with all those weighted squats and deadlifts I've been doing. Also: my butt is coming back!! It's a very exciting thing. When I get pregnant, any shape to my butt seems to go straight to big ole pregger belly and then it takes month for that shape to come back. 

Okay, so now for apologies for not being more consistent with my updating. This week was pretty rough between slipping into a bit of a depression over Bugsy passing away and then Nolan coming down with croup. Mike and I spent Wednesday night in the Emergency Room with the baby not being able to breathe very well. It was pretty terrifying. Then I took him to the pediatrician yesterday for a follow-up and he had some pretty bad wheezing in his left lung, so we came home with a nebulizer and a 'script for albuterol. Breathing treatments 4 times a day for the next  4 days. The upside of this is that he was able to sleep through the night last night without getting all choked up from his congestion, and he loooooves doing the nebulizer! He thinks it's so funny, and that albuterol makes him all excited! I may have to take a video of it to share with you all... it's pretty hilarious. 

Work is stressing me out pretty hardcore lately, and I'm trying to use the gym as a release as much as possible. I wish I could lift weights everyday! I've also tried to be really consistent in actually GOING to the gym. I went 3 times last week, and after today I will have gone 3 times this week and I'm pretty happy about that. 

I took pictures at the gym Weds night to show my progress. I've created a new page here on the blog called "Progress in Photos". You'll notice it toward the top of the page. Be sure to check it out every couple weeks for new posts - and today for the most recent pictures! :)