I recently discovered strawberry banana smoothies. Now I’m worried about becoming a smoothie addict. I’m pretty sure they are healthy. They are made with lo-fat yogurt and I add a protein booster. But one smoothie is about 410 calories. Since I’m not trying to lose weight and don’t normally count calories, do I need to care? I mean… 1 small smoothie 2 or 3 times a week.. that sounds acceptable… right???
Click here for Smoothie Nutritional Information (I get the Jamaican Jammer)
I totally messed up today. In my earlier post I said I was going to go eat breakfast. Well, instead I played around on the computer for an hour or two. I completely forgot about eating. Around noon we went out for chinese food. That wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d stayed away from the deep fried foods and deserts.. which I didn’t.
After a little shopping, we stopped for a smoothie at TCBY. I added 2 protein boosters, totalling 20g of protein.
My husband tried to talk me into bike riding this afternoon, but I was in lockout mode. I had my mind locked up came up with all sorts of excuses not to go. Needless to say, he went by himself. I’m not sure why I wouldn’t go, I just felt all warm and lazy watching a movie on TV. I know if I’d just gotten up and done it I would have enjoyed myself.. but I didn’t. <sigh>
I’m not much of a holiday fan, so I must say I’m glad Thanksgiving is over. We went out of town for a few days, which made it difficult to follow the program.
My slip-ups were not as much of what I ate but when I ate. I didn’t eat any breakfast. I was pretty good about eating lunch and dinner. I didn’t get much exercise in, unless we can count the new Nintendo WII. I gotta tell you, playing tennis on that thing can be a great cardio workout. You don’t push buttons like most gaming devices. With the WII, you swing the remote just like it was a tennis racket. If you’re standing up when you play, you’ll find yourself jumping all over the place.
I did walk with my dad… and he walks FAST. We walked 30 minutes at what must have been 4+ mph. Honest! I’m not exagerating. The man has been walking and/or using his treadmill everyday for the last 30 years. He’s in great (cardio) shape. He really wants to start working out with weights now. I’ve bought him a couple of books and some dumbells, but I’d really like him to join a gym to get personal instructions. He is 74 years old and never done weights before.
Back to me.. I worked out Monday and Tues this week (before leaving town). I was thinking about working out today.. but it’s beginning to look like I’m going to put it off. My husband told be to be ready to go biking this afternoon. It should be a beautiful day.
I had a couple of people comment on my arms while I was Thanksgiving-ing. They both (at separate times) mentioned the multiple definitions in my arms. :)
I wasn’t able to get any pictures of myself. I’m too embarassed to ask anyone to take them. Unfortunately, when you ask people that are out of shape to take a “before” picture of you when you are already doing pretty good, they seem to get all huffy and act like they are going to start heeving or something. So I just left it alone.
Well, it’s now 9am and I’m at home. There is no excuse to miss breakfast, so I’ll sign off here and head to the kitchen.
One down side to exercising alone is I have no one to push me past my comfort zone. When I started working out (on-line) with Terri six weeks ago, she gave instructions to move from 2 to 3 sets when my workout was completed in one hour. This never happened. So, I’m still only doing 2 sets.
I wanted to figure out if it were mathematically possible to complete the workout within an hour. And if so, how much time I would be allowed for each set.
Mathematically speaking.. I am doing 10 minutes warm-up cardio and 3 minutes between sets. On Mondays, I have 5 different exercises to do (not counting Abs). That adds 30 more minutes of cardio doing only 2 sets of each, totaling 40 minutes. If I do 2 sets of two Ab exercises with 30 second rest periods, I add another 1.5 minute. Leaving me with 18.5 minutes to complete 14 sets (one is actually a double set of obliques). If I allowed myself one minute for each set (including the time it takes to jump on and off the treadmill)…hmmm.. I guess it really *IS* do-able. I would actually have 4.5 minutes to spare.
This morning I decided to bite the bullet and do three sets of everything. It took 1 hour and 28 minutes. Broken down that would be 57.5 minutes ofCardio and 21 sets at one minute each totalling 1 hr and 18.5 minutes. Based on my (non-scientific) calculations, I have 9.5 minutes I should be able to cut.
Wow. It’s already been six weeks since I started this program. I feel great and I see results. I’m having more trouble eating right than I do sticking to the workout program. I missed lunch yesterday. But I had eaten a big ol’ breakfast burrito at 10am. I should have eaten breakfast earlier, but I never seem to wake up in time on my non-workout days. So I grabbed the burrito on my way to work and ate it at my desk. I was actually proud that I had managed to do breakfast. Dinner was a big turkey sandwich on a croissant with steamed veggies. I also had about 8 vanilla waffers. I guess that’s not too bad, I had alot worse I could have gone for.. like Ice Cream and chocolate syrup with whipped cream!!
Next week is Thanksgiving. My mom died a few months ago, so there won’t be nearly the food temptation of holiday’s past. I may have to juggle my workout schedule to get them all in, but I should be able to do it.
Not much else to blog about today.
I was up again at 5am. Ate two scrambled eggs with one slice of toast (I put a tiny bit of grape jelly on the toast).
I had the kitchen clean and started my workout by 6am. I worked out my lower body today. I added some wrist/ankle weights for some of the exercises, but they are so light weight they don’t really count (1.5 lb each). The entire workout lasted 1 hour and 10 minutes (minus the cool down). I haven’t been very good about cool downs. But this week I’m using the tread-climber in treadmill mode and it is amazing the difference. I’m doing a more normal jogging action and I can feel my calves tightening. In normal tread-climber mode, the action is more like walking up a hill.
Another cool observation.. when I was stretching Monday after my workout.. I saw a new muscle!! It’s in the inner thigh. I think it’s the adductors. It’s really funny.. it looks like I’m wearing a pair of twisted panty hose. Of course, it only looks like that when I’m stretching, but I’ve never seen muscles in my inner thighs before.
Breakfast: One egg, wheat toast w/butter, one slice turkey ham (lunch meat type).
Lunch: Grilled chicken salad (from Chick-fil-a), Banana strawberri lo-fat yogurt smoothie.
Dinner: Chopped chicken BBQ sandwich (small with very little meat, it wasn’t that great.), fritos (about 7) and bean dip.
Last week was pretty much wasted. My headache lasted almost 3 days and by the time it cleared, I was in “defeated” mode. I was annoyed that I’d missed some workouts and frustrated that I was lacking the motivation I needed to jump back in. But today is a new Monday!
Terri is right.. my body is beginning to show a little progress and it’s doing exactly what I want! I’m not complaining about the extra weight or added inches. It’s just a new way of thinking. For years I have used weight as my “slacker” guide. Last December I noticed I weighed 10 lbs more than the previous year. I immediately jumped into emergency action and the weight was gone by Feb 15th. But now… I know I’m going to be gaining weight, and I know it’s good.. but it’s still scary. I’m just about to cross the 120# line. I’m in better shape now than I’ve ever been in my life. But I feel like I’m jumping into a cold swimming pool. I just don’t know what the norm is. How do I know what a normal weight would be for me if I were all muscles? Perhaps I should stop weighing myself and start using my waist measurement as the slacker guide instead.
I’m also sure Terri’s right about the added inch to my butt. My husband even made a comment earlier in the week about how nice my butt looked when I was wearing a pair of warm up pants. I laughed it off at the time, but by golly.. I see a beginner bubble! :-)
This morning I woke up fresh and started with a clean slate. I ate a good breakfast and had a great workout! I feel energized, motivated and excited about my progress. Life is good!!