I just got back from the gym and ate my last meal after an incredibly invigorating conversation with Amy. By the way, she's not taking new clients until some things settle down. I am so lucky to have her! She gave me the missing pieces I needed to build my bridge to my goal! Now I just have to walk across it!
Anyway, I've been doing some things (that I've blogged about) that I wasn't sure if I was supposed to do or not, but it seemed silly to not use my own judgment to try and do the appropriate thing.
So, from now on, I will MAKE IT HAPPEN. I will get up on time. I will eat on time. I will eat subsequent meals on time. I will go to bed on time. AND I WILL LOVE IT.
DO NOT CUT THINGS FROM YOUR DIET. I learned that when you're eating "clean" (re: clean protein, no simple carbs, very low to no sugar, ABSOLUTELY NO SWEAT OF SATAN (high fructose corn syrup), filling your diet with fruits, vegetables), you lose weight. Now that doesn't mean that you go hog wild, but it does mean that I can stop worrying that eating/not eating my yam at lunch is going to make a big difference. It's not.
I had a hard time believing this. I tend to focus on the minute details, and while they are important, I was getting a little too crazy about what I deemed "extra" calories. I had to ask Amy point-blank: "So, let me see if I've got this straight: If I eat 1586 calories a day, as long as it's a clean eating plan, I will lose weight." She said absolutely. She also kept repeating that the way I'm working out, extra calories aren't hurting me one bit. At one point, she said, "I mean, it's blueberries, it's not a Big Mac!" I really got that if I'm going to err on the side of caution, it's actually EATING the blueberries...not cutting them out of my diet. She also stressed, you have to EAT to lose weight! You just do!
Napping is not helping me accomplish this goal. So. While I must deal with what life throws at me, I am going to do my very best to get to bed on time so that naps aren't so unavoidable.
I also learned that it is best to go to bed no sooner than 3 hours after you eat because your body takes three hours to go through its digestion cycle. Tonight, I'm not going to be able to do that, but in the future, I will do my best to accomplish that! The idea is that you sleep and fast at the same time. So when you wake up, you're ready to fire that metabolism back up.
At some point, I told Amy that my absolute goal in all of this is to see my belly muscles. That I've tried and failed for so many years, I just want to make it happen. With easy confidence she said, "You will." A couple of times. So now, I just have to have that same easy confidence. I still do have that mental barrier of "Well, it's never happened before and I've failed so many times...why should I believe that this time will be different?"
And in our conversation, Amy said that that's exactly what screws people up. They make some progress and then lose focus and it all goes downhill. I now know, with absolute certainty, that if I follow this plan, I WILL see my ab muscles. I WILL have a bikini-ready body, for the first time in my life, at THIRTY-ONE! BEFORE HAVING KIDS (not that I have a plan to have kids, I'm just thrilled that I don't have the additional barriers that having my belly all stretched out would bring). It's not iffy. It will simply happen. Because...SCIENCE!
I talked to Amy about my weight staying the same for almost two weeks now, and she basically said not to let it fool me. She said that my body is changing, and that is evident. She has said on more than one occasion to not let the scales discourage me, to really gauge how I'm doing by how my clothes fit and what my measurements are, and that lean muscle mass is like gold on my body. And...I am building it. Basically, DO NOT FRET! It's all doing what it's supposed to be doing. I won't stop weighing myself because when this is all said and done, I want to have a chart of what it looked like to actually lose weight. I just won't attach any value to the number. That's freeing!
So, I basically got re-centered and re-energized to take this thing on by the horns again! I can absolutely do this! What an idea! It no longer seems like a long shot or like an impossible dream (that it's made out to be for some reason). It's going to happen. This. Is. So. Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Amy also told me that the only reason she decided to take me on was because she saw my drive. THIS was news to me! Here I was, in all the Kerry and Amy (and Jess, for that matter!)classes thinking, "People must be looking at me like I'm some big wimp/quitter." No. Not at all. It appears that the only person who was looking at me that way was MYSELF. So I will stop doing that, immediately. Amy said it's really rewarding to work with me! What a compliment!!!
Today wasn't terrible. I didn't get up on time because I dicked around. I woke up at 5:30am because I had to pee and decided to check my email. WHY DO I DO THAT??? Anyway, then I couldn't go back to sleep, and missed my run (which turns out it was fine that I missed it), but it made me tired for the REST OF THE DAY. GAH.
I did my best to eat all my meals except #5 before class, and I did, but now I'm thinking I ate them too close together. No worries. Today is over, tomorrow is a fresh start with more information. Whee!
It's so exciting to know that I can be doing better! It's so exciting that I will see EVEN BETTER RESULTS by sticking to the every three hours rule and going to bed at a decent time! And now I know the consequences for failing to "follow the rules". It just slows down the progress. There's nothing I can do to effectively neutralize the effects of a mid-day nap. I just have to work to avoid it, and when I can't, I can't. This is life.
Lastly, I absolutely gave it all I could give it tonight in class. It was a High Intensity Interval Training class. I don't know that the website accurately describes exactly what we did tonight, but this is what you look like when you do HIIT (pronounced 'hit'):
Sweat just POURS off of you.
Anyway, I've been doing some things (that I've blogged about) that I wasn't sure if I was supposed to do or not, but it seemed silly to not use my own judgment to try and do the appropriate thing.
- Eating between meals
- Cutting things out of my diet
- Going to bed late
- Taking naps in the middle of the day
- Eating late
So, from now on, I will MAKE IT HAPPEN. I will get up on time. I will eat on time. I will eat subsequent meals on time. I will go to bed on time. AND I WILL LOVE IT.
DO NOT CUT THINGS FROM YOUR DIET. I learned that when you're eating "clean" (re: clean protein, no simple carbs, very low to no sugar, ABSOLUTELY NO SWEAT OF SATAN (high fructose corn syrup), filling your diet with fruits, vegetables), you lose weight. Now that doesn't mean that you go hog wild, but it does mean that I can stop worrying that eating/not eating my yam at lunch is going to make a big difference. It's not.
I had a hard time believing this. I tend to focus on the minute details, and while they are important, I was getting a little too crazy about what I deemed "extra" calories. I had to ask Amy point-blank: "So, let me see if I've got this straight: If I eat 1586 calories a day, as long as it's a clean eating plan, I will lose weight." She said absolutely. She also kept repeating that the way I'm working out, extra calories aren't hurting me one bit. At one point, she said, "I mean, it's blueberries, it's not a Big Mac!" I really got that if I'm going to err on the side of caution, it's actually EATING the blueberries...not cutting them out of my diet. She also stressed, you have to EAT to lose weight! You just do!
Napping is not helping me accomplish this goal. So. While I must deal with what life throws at me, I am going to do my very best to get to bed on time so that naps aren't so unavoidable.
I also learned that it is best to go to bed no sooner than 3 hours after you eat because your body takes three hours to go through its digestion cycle. Tonight, I'm not going to be able to do that, but in the future, I will do my best to accomplish that! The idea is that you sleep and fast at the same time. So when you wake up, you're ready to fire that metabolism back up.
At some point, I told Amy that my absolute goal in all of this is to see my belly muscles. That I've tried and failed for so many years, I just want to make it happen. With easy confidence she said, "You will." A couple of times. So now, I just have to have that same easy confidence. I still do have that mental barrier of "Well, it's never happened before and I've failed so many times...why should I believe that this time will be different?"
And in our conversation, Amy said that that's exactly what screws people up. They make some progress and then lose focus and it all goes downhill. I now know, with absolute certainty, that if I follow this plan, I WILL see my ab muscles. I WILL have a bikini-ready body, for the first time in my life, at THIRTY-ONE! BEFORE HAVING KIDS (not that I have a plan to have kids, I'm just thrilled that I don't have the additional barriers that having my belly all stretched out would bring). It's not iffy. It will simply happen. Because...SCIENCE!
I talked to Amy about my weight staying the same for almost two weeks now, and she basically said not to let it fool me. She said that my body is changing, and that is evident. She has said on more than one occasion to not let the scales discourage me, to really gauge how I'm doing by how my clothes fit and what my measurements are, and that lean muscle mass is like gold on my body. And...I am building it. Basically, DO NOT FRET! It's all doing what it's supposed to be doing. I won't stop weighing myself because when this is all said and done, I want to have a chart of what it looked like to actually lose weight. I just won't attach any value to the number. That's freeing!
So, I basically got re-centered and re-energized to take this thing on by the horns again! I can absolutely do this! What an idea! It no longer seems like a long shot or like an impossible dream (that it's made out to be for some reason). It's going to happen. This. Is. So. Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Amy also told me that the only reason she decided to take me on was because she saw my drive. THIS was news to me! Here I was, in all the Kerry and Amy (and Jess, for that matter!)classes thinking, "People must be looking at me like I'm some big wimp/quitter." No. Not at all. It appears that the only person who was looking at me that way was MYSELF. So I will stop doing that, immediately. Amy said it's really rewarding to work with me! What a compliment!!!
Today wasn't terrible. I didn't get up on time because I dicked around. I woke up at 5:30am because I had to pee and decided to check my email. WHY DO I DO THAT??? Anyway, then I couldn't go back to sleep, and missed my run (which turns out it was fine that I missed it), but it made me tired for the REST OF THE DAY. GAH.
I did my best to eat all my meals except #5 before class, and I did, but now I'm thinking I ate them too close together. No worries. Today is over, tomorrow is a fresh start with more information. Whee!
It's so exciting to know that I can be doing better! It's so exciting that I will see EVEN BETTER RESULTS by sticking to the every three hours rule and going to bed at a decent time! And now I know the consequences for failing to "follow the rules". It just slows down the progress. There's nothing I can do to effectively neutralize the effects of a mid-day nap. I just have to work to avoid it, and when I can't, I can't. This is life.
Lastly, I absolutely gave it all I could give it tonight in class. It was a High Intensity Interval Training class. I don't know that the website accurately describes exactly what we did tonight, but this is what you look like when you do HIIT (pronounced 'hit'):
If I can remember what we did tonight...I believe we started off with a march...wow, it's really fading from my memory. But I do believe we marched for maybe 30 seconds. Then we did some plies and stretches at the same time to warm up our legs. We didn't go into the the first "dynamic" set right away, but I'm not entirely sure of what we did first. I know that the really killer stuff is the "dynamic" routine. You do vertical jumps for 10 seconds. And I'm not talking jump up and down quickly. I'm talking, use your arms, squat down and jump up into the air as high as you possibly can, then when you land, use your knees as shock absorbers, and squat down and do it again. Then we may/may not have moved into rocket launchers:
 |
| Rocket Launchers |
And then we did bunny hops...you stand in a wide stance, take a BIG jump forward, and then two jumps back...for some odd amount of seconds. Then we do the dreaded BURPEE Exercise-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named....really I try not to dread them because they are SUCH a powerful exercise. Here's a fun video that makes them look easy/fun/not deadly.
Then we get in a crabwalk position, and the goal is to alternately kick your legs up...so that at some point, both of your feet are off the ground for a nanosecond. It's called Plyometrics for the abs. Then, I think we do burpees until we die. At least, that's what I remember. :)
Someday, I'm going to have to truly memorize the workout so that I can try to do it at home. I'm getting so much stronger with pushups, though! Gotta thank the burpees for that.
There's more to this class. I think we repeat the dynamic several times, but I don't actually know the rhyme or reason for the way it goes, so I can't remember. One sculpting exercise that we do, which I really enjoy because it's pretty, is this:
 |
| Except we use a body bar and look like we dancing ninjas when we do it :) |
We also do some arm work that I have yet to find on the internet. But it's basically repeating a series of weightless repetitions that you do at shoulder-height that absolutely exhausts the muscle. Then we did some rows.
The last thing I'd like to say tonight is that I think another major reason I am finally going to achieve this goal is that I have had so many people encourage me on my path. I can't believe how many people care about my blog and my story, I never expected so many people to give me so much feedback! Even when I run into people, they are excited for me! What a difference. In the past, I would self-sabotage or let other people get in the way of my plan. That's SO not happening right now. So, because I know all of you are behind me, it helps me hold myself accountable. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! It really keeps me going. :) :) :)
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