The Next Steps

I spoke too soon, folks. I said I would be starting my strength training and continue to wrap-up 30DS. I lied. I did it one day. It's too much. And it took me nearly an hour, which is time I don't always have. That was one reason I was able to stick with 30DS so regularly and consistently - 20-25 minutes. I have or can make time for 30 mins a day. No problem. An hour? Not so much. Not to mention I was bored with it and unimpressed with my results from the final two levels. That sort of makes it easier to just.. stop doing something. lol

So this is what I'm doing: New Rules of Lifting for Women (NROLFW) Stage 1, workouts A/B, followed by 10-15 minutes of HIIT intervals. Total time this takes me is roughly 30-35 minutes. I will be doing NROLFW 3 days a week - if I can't always fit in the HIIT, I'm not worried about it. I am definitely starting lunch-break walks when the weather starts to warm up, which should be SOON!!! March is almost here, folks!! With the yoga, my current goal is to do at least 2-3 repetitions (roughly 10-15 mins) of sun salutations on the weekday mornings that I get up with the baby (at 6:30am - ugh - Mike and I switch off on who gets up) - this will give me a little boost for the day and help relieve some of the muscle tightness happening from my lifting. On my rest days I'd like to get in a full yoga workout, probably 30-40 minutes. Since this is a rest day activity, if I can't fit it in I'm not worried about it. Not all rest days have to be "active" rest days, obviously. The program doesn't even require you have active rest days, so I should be good to go.

Okay, so I've officially done a full week of NROLFW. And I'm hurting. A lot. But I really love it! Saturday morning I did my second round of Workout A, which includes my favorite core exercise: Prone Jackknife. The videos make this look deceptively easy. It's not. It's about the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I'm supposed to complete 8 reps, I barely managed to squeeze out 4 the first time I did workout A and fell off the ball several times in the process. - this time I nailed the 8 on the first set, but when I came back around for the second I only hit 6.

One thing I'm doing with this program is tracking my reps/weight for each set of lifts. I've actually never done this before, but I'm excited about it because I'll really be able to see my progress and strength gains. Even though this is a "heavy lifting" program, you obviously don't start out pumping out 200lbs bench presses and squats, so most of the lifts I'm currently doing either at body weight in order to work on my form, or I'm using between 8-10lbs dumbbells for exercises I'm more familiar with like bent-over rows. I don't currently have a barbell set, but I'm hoping to be able to make this purchase within the next month or so, as well as get a bench that will give me ability to do incline presses, etc.

One thing that I'm noticing right off the bat with this program is that I am STARVING all. the. time. I cannot get enough to eat. It doesn't matter if I stuff myself with tons of nutrient dense foods with healthy fats and protein, or total junk food (potato skins anyone?)... within an hour of eating, I feel like I may die. This has caused me to far exceed my current calorie goal of 1800 nearly every day for almost two weeks. NROLFW suggests not cutting any calories when you first begin the program and gives you calculations to do in order to estimate what you should be eating on workout and non-workout days. My numbers are as follows: 2130 non-workout, and 2400 workout days . This is straight TDEE, so I would not record my exercise calories. For those of you that check out my MFP food diary, get ready to stop seeing exercise logs that reflect a calorie burn. This way I don't have to be tempted to "eat back" my exercise calories, when really I should just be focusing on my TDEE.

I've decided to switch my weigh-in days to Monday morning, instead of Fridays. This is because, ideally, I'll be lifting Mon/Wed/Fri (that obviously didn't happen this week) - this way I'll hopefully avoid that muscle water retention weight showing on the scale. I'll continue to do my measurements on the weekends simply because of the time that takes me. And speaking of measurements... here are my beginning numbers for NROLFW:

As of 2/23/2013:
Weight: 190.6 lbs
Estimated Body Fat: 33.6% (I had post on MFP the other day that I was down to 32.2%, but unfortunately I measured incorrectly the first time around. I'm not as good with the calipers as I think I am, apparently. So now I'm using an estimator that bases off of a BILLION different measurements... like neck, wrists, forearm, etc, etc. I'll continue using that same estimator from here on out.)
Chest (across bust in sports bra): 38"
Waist: 33.5"
Waist at naval: 36.5"
Hips: 44.5"
Bicep: 12"
Thigh: 26.5"

There are a few measurements that went up slightly from my last check-in - my waist, hips, and thighs. The waist.. I dunno what's going on there - possibly bloat from my poor food choices last week and/our the fact that I started my period this weekend. However, for the hips and thighs I definitely am gaining muscle mass in my glutes and quads as I can really see the difference in shape of both of those areas of my body - and it is a happy, happy difference! So I will take the slight uptake in inches for the time being! Build that muscle, body! GET IT!

The scale finally moved a bit, too. I took 3 days of rest leading up to my last weigh-in, and I think this made all the difference. Hence, changing my weigh-in day to Mondays. Interested to see how tomorrow morning works out.

I am feeling completely ADD tonight and am having a really hard time focusing on writing this, so I'm going to just end it here. I will let everybody know how the weigh-in goes tomorrow!