I want to take a survey!!! Leave a comment telling me what you ate for breakfast today?
I had three scrambled eggs, cooked with a little bit of onion and cheese, and one slice of wheat toast w/butter and grape jelly. I also had a glass of orange juice.
Soooooo… what did you eat for breakfast???
Over the Thanksgiving holidays my husband was looking through a book on dumbbell exercises. He found interested in the “wall squat” or “wall sit”. To do this exercise, you position back against a flat wall and slide down until you look like you are sitting in a straight back chair. The object is stay there for a couple of minutes.
My husband decided we would have a little contest to see who would last the longest. While the book mentioned holding dumbells during the exercise, we decided to keep it simple and stick with body weight. We were outside in the drive way to our house where there is a nice brick wall, perfect for this. My husband went first. He is in pretty good shape (runs, bicycles 20+ miles, weights, etc.).He was feeling pretty confident he could out sit me. After sitting 10 seconds, he started laughing.. the kind of laugh you make when you realize you misjudged something. 15 seconds and his legs were quivering.. 20 seconds he was breaking a sweat and at 25 seconds he was finished.
So now it was my turn to sit. I got in position and we started the timer. I was a bit surprised that I didn’t feel the immediate discomfort my husband had experienced. 15 seconds and I’m still comfortable.. 20 seconds no problems. Then at 25 seconds, my little Westie looked at me and decided to seize the opportunity before him.. “LAP!!” By the time I reached 30 seconds my little doggie was sitting comfortably in my lap enjoying the night! I didn’t let this stop me. It was almost 2 minutes and my legs were beginning to shake. I wanted to let my husband think that I could last a lot longer, so I casually said “This is boring, I don’t want to do it anymore.” And I started to stand up.. but now my Westie isn’t ready to de-lap! My legs are quivering and I’m trying to gracefully stand-up.. but he won’t budge!! It was hillarious. I was about to fall flat on the ground when my doggie decided it may not be safe to stay where he was. He hopped down and I was able to save face… and I lasted 2 minutes with the added 18 pounds!!
This morning was the first time since I’ve been working out that I actually overslept. Honest! As a matter of fact, when I woke up one hour late (too late to fix breakfast and workout), instead of rolling over and going back to sleep I decided to go to the office an hour early. This way I could try to come home an hour early and workout this evening. Unfortunately, I’m willing to bet that doesn’t happen. If there is one thing I hate more than waking up in the mornings it is working out in the evenings. I workout at home and in the evenings there are too many interuptions.. plus I’m exhausted after work. I just don’t have the energy to do my best.
The good thing of course is that all is not lost. I normally workout 4 days a week, Monday through Thursday. This gives me three days off. Thie schedule works well when I have to miss a day because I can move everything down one day. I can still get all the workouts in and take two rest days before my next week. I’ll most likely do that.
I’ve been eating pretty good the last few days. Yesterday I had a really big breakfast with pancakes, turkey bacon and scrambled eggs. Um.. I skipped breakfast this morning, but ate 2 chicken tacos for lunch. I’ve come to realize I have a much more difficult time eating breakfast on days I don’t workout.
I have a link on my blog to a page at bodybuilders.com. They select a weekly body builder award for people over the age of 40. I was just looking at them and there is one man I really need to point out. His name is Ed Cook and he only started working out 4 years ago. Also, he has a bodyspace (blogging type site) page with his before pictures.
The reason I find this so motivating is because I have discovered the majority of “in-shape” people over 40 have been working out most of their life. For people like me (who started 4 years ago at age 44) this doesn’t help my motivation factor.
It’s been two months since I started working out online with Terri. Some people think the idea is a bit off the wall, but I gotta tell you.. it works for me. I’ve been faithful with my workouts and the last week I even kicked it up a notch. I moved from 2 to 3 sets.
It looks like the blogs have been a bit quiet lately. Probably due to the Christmas/holiday season. Even I seem to keep putting off writing. I know there will be lots of people looking for new fitness ideas soon. December and January are normally fitness-wakeup months. Anyone that is reading this that needs to wakeup their fitness routine should consider an online trainer. I know the first thought sounds a bit funny, and everyone I mention it to laughs before I explain how it works. But it really does work.
For many years I would put together my own workout programs, mostly of the exercises I enjoyed doing. Rarely did I do squats or lunges. There are so many muscles in the body and so many books that will tell you how to weight train. I began to wonder if I was really working my muscles equally.. my back, shoulders, thighs, etc. I know we (I mean me) like to think we are experienced enough to create our own workout program, but we (me) are not. I’ve seen some drastic changes in my body over the past two months. I’ve also modified my eating (um.. somewhat), and disciplined myself. I cannot praise the program enough.
I didn’t mean to ramble on. If you’re reading this and even considering the idea of using an online trainer, feel free to leave me a comment. I’m more than eager to talk about it.