Body Pump

The gym closed a week for maintenance, and boy did I miss it! I also realized I was getting in a bit of a slump. I took that week to convince myself to take a class when it reopened. I need to get more into strength training as cardio alone isn't really shaping me in fantastic and buff ways.

So I signed myself and my husband up for a Body Pump class. I really didn't know what to expect on that. I guerrilla signed up my husband, let's call him Reggie from now on, due to his own silliness in telling me he really wished he could have someone show him proper weight lifting. I took the initiative, mwa hahaha! Lucky for me he was available for the time.

It was just a quickie half hour class. Good way to get introduced to it, right? Yes but that doesn't mean it didn't kick our collective booties. I really enjoyed the fact that because of the weight bearing everyone works just as hard at it as I have to. I don't feel like an uncoordinated boob because the person next to me is flying through the routines from doing it a million times already. Even better, because the gym had reopened, it was just me, Reggie and one other person in the class.

The entire drive there, Reg was trying to convince me not to go. I was strong and told him we have to go. It's not legally binding, he said. What? Was I trying to be good now? Maybe a little. I had signed up one other time and didn't go, so there was a little guilt. I really had to work myself up to going. My experience with exercise classes isn't the greatest. I have a tendency to get caught up in the pace of much fitter people in a class and that doesn't work well for my body.

Due to the feet dragging, we were a few minutes early which translates into a little late. Not knowing what to expect as it's our first ever class, we had to quickly set up our equipment, a step, a long bar with weights and a yoga mat to cover the step. The other participant was an old hat at it. She happily informed us she couldn't get off the pot the after the first time she took the class. Lovely, thanks for the tmi. I was nervous.

I worried the music choices would make Reggie roll his eyes and give me snide looks throughout. He's picky, that one.  It would be hard to concentrate on myself if he was trying to make jokes about the tunes throughout.

She started off with a heavy metal tune that I know Reg loves. Whoo hoo! I can't remember the entire routine because, hey, I was busy doing it, not taking notes. ;P It involved squats, some chest work on our backs, overhead lifts and a wide grip move that got that certain spot right in my back that doesn't work well. I had to unwide grip for that. We also did some bicep and triceps work. That was toward the end and I got shaky. I found out I have a completely wrong form for doing chest work. I had to put the bar further down, more by my ribs than my sternum.

Later that day I could get off the pot, but I groaned about it a lot. We giggled at each other afterwards all day because there was a lot of groaning and slow movements going on. Today, the thighs and upper arms are very cranky. Despite getting guerrilla signed up for it, Reg liked what it did and wants me to sign us up for Saturday morning. That one's an hour long. I'm nervous again.

On to Other Things

I went through an eight week nutrition program that helped me immensely. I lost eleven pounds through it! YEAH ME!

Helpful new things I learned:
If a nutrition label says 20% of something, it is considered to be high in that thing. I found I eat a lot of high sodium things. It's a bugger. If the food industry takes out one thing, like sugar, they make up for it in another thing, like fat or sodium.

If a nutrition label says 5% or lower, it's considered low in that thing.

I don't eat often enough. If I don't eat every three to four hours, I gain weight.

When figuring out why I'm gaining, food logs are a blessing. Easier to see when I ate, how much and if I exercised.

When I don't get enough sleep, I gain a couple of pounds.

I must exercise at least five times a week. Day before yesterday I did not exercise and I should have. So yesterday I made that up by doing 30 minutes in the morning and an hour at night. Didn't mean to do an hour, just kind of happened, but it helped anyway. :)

I floundered for about a week after the class was over. I need to have a goal, a reason for losing. I got my reason today. I have to renew my drivers license on my birthday. I would really like to not have a double chin in that picture. A goals a goal. No matter what the reason, it gives me a target. Fifteen pounds by then. I can do it.

I exercise at least once a day, sometimes twice. I aslo floundered really badly on wanting to exercise.  I was convincing myself that I had to exercise in the morning. Then I slid into if not then, then you've missed your chance and too bad for that day. I pulled myself back from this thinking. It's an easy road to think myself out of something that is so obviously good for my body. Get in, whenever. As long as it's done, it's better than nothing.

I also have to keep it interesting. As much as I would love to say "Biking did it!" or "It's all to running!" or "Swimming saved my life;" I can't. Limiting myself to one exercise is bad for me. I have to keep it varied to keep it interesting. For example: My husband and I have been going on walks. Those were getting boring, even when we tried to vary the route. Yesterday I said "Let's go to the park and play tag!" Well, we're too out of shape for tag we found out in the beginning of the walk. We walked to the park and played on some of the equipment instead. It was silly but it gave us a reason for walking there and walking home. Most importantly, it added a small element of fun.

I'm going to continue to explore keeping some sort of element of fun in the exercising.

Playing Dress Up

I'm not exactly constant on this thing, sorry.

Today I was feeling kind of blue and dorky. I have a cold. The realization that my oldest is going to graduate next year is hitting me, making me feel old. We have financial messes to clean up and we're still pushing the brooms. Summer looms ahead of me like a hot mess of what am I going to do with my time before I go back to school to get some experience I sorely need.

Feeling unmotivated, my unused work out clothes got taken off and I took a shower.  I dried off, opened my closet door and sighed.

My clothes stretched out before me like a dry desert to a man looking to get to the oasis on the other side.

My shirts haven't been fitting the same.  I'm used to the frustration of clothes not fitting right, being too big in one spot and not big enough in another. I wonder "What is the manufacturer thinking?" when things don't fit right. I've always known the real reason wasn't because of the clothes, it was my odd body. I was just too fat in the bust or the arms or the thighs or too short. I didn't want to go up another size. That larger size might fit one area but be wildly out of proportion for another.  Sleeves would hang down over my hands as my chest stretched the buttons. Or pants would constantly drag under my hells as the seams dug a groove in my skin at my hips or around my waist. Once or twice my upper arms said "Aw, hell no. Never!" on a cute shirt. There were times when I just gave up on shopping because I was tired of tugging things on and off. I was tired of looking for that just right style that would be at least passable on all bits of my body. Clothes shopping was rarely fun.

Now I've lost enough inches in all those difficult areas that my shirts hang different. I had noticed some shirts I wore to accommodate my chest or stomach are surprisingly too big all over.  You'd think I'd be overjoyed by that. I wasn't. That changing room dread always lurks in the dark corners of my mind. What if nothing will ever fit right again? I wasn't looking forward to trying to figure out what to wear.

I had to talk some sense into myself. It's summer. I haven't tried these clothes on since I've been building muscle and losing fat, things are going to fit different. I decided I had just enough time before I had to go to weed out the clothes. Time to prove to myself that my body is no longer hard to fit.

I threw sizes on the bed that I immediately knew were too big and made another pile one size smaller. That was my questionable, maybe it would fit, maybe it wouldn't pile.

As I tried on my questionable pile, the blues melted away. This one is still cute. OH, wow, that one is so too big, how did I not notice that? Erm, this one isn't so bad. OMG! This looks incredible! That was a long sleeved red shirt I bought a year ago. I stopped wearing it because it was tight and I looked very pregnant. Now it fits like it should. And it's super cute. :)

I was a little late in leaving. I tried shirts on for a half hour. It was fun to discover my wardrobe all over again. Even more fun to weed out the way too big or never fit well in the first place.  I highly recommend playing dress up when feeling down.

The Hormone Diet

I bought the book The Hormone Diet. (No worries, no one pays me to say anything. Don't think anyone really reads this but me. And that's OK too.) I'm not following the book in depth. I barely read it in depth. One of the reasons why is over the years I read a lot of nutrition books, diet books and had one semester of a nutrition class. I skipped over the information that was repeated time and time before. I soaked up things that seemed like new or different information. Because something sure as hell wasn't working!

Lost five pounds. Whoop! Back to where I was before the holidays.

What I'm doing different that I think is helping from the book:

1. Eat breakfast within an hour after waking.
2. Eat protein first to ready the brain and stomach and blood sugar.
3. Don't eat three hours before bed. If you must have something, make it higher in protein and very few carbs.
4. Fish oil. (I actually started taking a fish oil, flaxseed oil and borage oil combo. I still have to look that last one up. I have no idea what it is) Provides  Omega 3, 6, and 9.
5. Within 45 minutes after exercising, not much fat, higher in carbs snack. To feed the muscles that are trying to repair.
6. GET YOUR 8 HOURS OF SLEEP! There are hormones that try to revive themselves while we sleep. We interrupt that production when we don't get enough sleep. So I've been trying to get to bed earlier since I can't sleep in later. That one is still a tough one to do. Working on it though.

Things I'm still doing that I did before:
1. Keep carbs to 45 - 50 grams during meals.
2. Snacks not over 160 calories.
3. Protein source every time I eat.
4. Avoid high fructose corn syrup.
5. Eat lean meats.
6. No caffeine.
7. No artificial sweeteners. I have experienced muscle fatigue and rashes from these so I just avoid them anyway.

There is a section in the book that suggests a detox to see if you have food sensitivities. I'm not big on dairy anyway, so I don't pork out on it. Not a concern for me.  I did find that corn gives me a headache, like corn chips, so I avoid those now. Who knew, right?  I like peanut butter. I have cut my consumption of it down because too much seems to make me uncomfortable. There are certainly a lot more fruits and vegetables in my fridge. I have been feeling better and lord knows my skin looks a heck of a lot better.

I haven't dedicated my time towards regular exercising yet. Nothing new there, right? This book recommends strength training. I've seen this advice before and, let me tell 'ya, I really am caught in a "must be high cardio to make a difference" mind set. I hesitate at weight lifting because I hurt myself when I was 15. Just felt something give weird during a butterfly move. Wonder if something tore and didn't know it. I'm cautious about it now. Let you know how that goes next week.

Goal Weight Reward!

I used to be that girl who first showed up at the dances and was one of the last to leave. I could dance all night. I'd be sore in the morning but I really loved the dancing.

Then I turned 21 and the dancing was turned dark. Bitchy drunk women on the dance floor and men who misinterpreted a good dance move for a free grope ruined the fun. It became a serious business to others that I wasn't feeling. My dancing became less recent until it completely slipped away.

I married a non dancer. We've only danced once. At a cousins wedding. It was a change partners dance. He really hated it. He ended up desperately grasping for me in a crowd. I ended up stepping on the bride's dress. Didn't tear it, but left a mark. It was a disaster.

So when I tell you this is no small thing, you'll know I'm not kidding. When I hit my goal weight, I told him I get to go dancing. With him. I will drag him to a floor and we will dance and have fun. It's special enough that he can't talk his way out of it.