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 2nd 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!
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