Did you miss me?? I can’t believe how quiet these blogs have been lately.
My “Terri” subscription expired a few months ago and I wasn’t sure if I was should still blog or not. I monitored the other blogs, but it looks like everyone started fudging on the blogs.
Well, I can’t hold my peace any longer. I still enjoy reading the blogs and find them very motivating. With that said, I’ll keep blogging.
I decided not to renew my “Terri” subscription. Terri gave me the knowledge and foundation I needed to build on. Now it is time for me to take what I learned and use it.
I started searching the web for workout routines and stumbled upon global-fitness.com. Global-Fitness is a bigger (less personal) on-line training service. There is a lot of fluff at global-fitness. For example, they offer oodles of free e-books to subscribers. They also have a fitness software application you can download and run on your own computer. But, they also have an amazing training program that includes a different routine for every workout.
I’ve continued to workout 4 days a week.
Here is today’s workout:
- Incline Bench Press (3 sets)
- Bench Press - super-set (3 sets)
- Cable Flys - super-set (3 sets)
- Shoulder Press (4 sets)
- Lateral Raise w/Cable - breakdown training (3 sets)
- Upright Row w/Cable - super-set (3 sets)
- Shrugs - super-set (3 sets)
- Lying Tricep Extensions (3 sets)
- Dips (3 sets)
- Pullover Crunch with weight disc (3 set).
I worked out this morning after more than a week off. I was actually beginning to worry that I might decide to give it all up. But after a few days of deep thinking and psycho-analyzing myself, I pulled out enough answers to get past the slump.
I now understand why I have been so diligent the last several months. I don’t want to bore you (lol!), but I’ll explain it anyway.. at least the short version.
Last April, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. If you are not familiar with that particular type of cancer, I’ll give it to you in a nutshell… they can’t cure it and they rarely try. It’s terminal.. normally a person diagnosed with pancreatic cancer will be lucky to live past 6 months.
So.. my mom lives across Texas, 400 miles away from me. Throughout the summer I would drive down there weekly, spend a few days, then return home for a few days. My mom had her pancreas completely removed (among other organs), which meant a drastic diet change. She required insulin shots 4 times a day, and could not process fats. She had all sorts of problems keeping her blood sugar level and she never knew what to eat or what to do when it dropped to 40 or zoomed up to 500. She only had my dad to care for her. I was in constant contact with my parents when I wasn’t down there. Every few hours, I’d call and tell her what she could eat (she had to eat every two hours)…
Anyway.. in mid August she died. Two days after I returned home I began morning workouts. Never in my life have I ever worked out in the morning. I was consistent, focused and dedicated to my workouts. Yesterday, I realized I was actually trying to regain control over my life. I used my workout program to process my grief. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.. but it makes sense now.
So.. now that that motivational source is tapping out, I’ve got to look for something else. I suppose more than anything else I will simply rely on the good feeling I have when I start the day after a good workout. It really is a sense of control (albeit pseudo)
I woke up this morning and decided I’m taking the week off (from working out). I’m burned out and bored and just don’t want to do it.
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.
I’m going to mark today up as an officially missed workout day. My head never stopped pounding (no matter what drugs I took!). I did walk the dogs.. they weren’t going to cut me any slack for a little headache.
Now it’s time for dinner and I have no appetite and no idea what I’m going to eat <sigh>.
After I figure out what I’m going to eat, I’m going to wash my face, brush my teeth.. put on my jammy’s, take some more allergy medicine and watch the 2 hour biggest loser in bed… um.. the TV show. :)
After a slow start this week, I think I may be back on track. I didn’t workout this morning because I needed to fix that squeaky Treadclimber first. So, I took half a day off and did a little shopping (for the treadclimber lubricant and groceries).
After I fixed the squeak, I did my Tuesday workout. It was a really good workout. I figure I can add the Ab work I missed yesterday to my last workout of the week. That one is always a little shorter than the rest and doesn’t have any Ab in it.
I almost messed up on my eating today. I forgot all about breakfast until I got to work. Fortunately, someone reminded me we have a food court on our campus. I ran over there and picked up a breakfast sandwich. I actually felt a little proud of myself :).
Lunch was a little late. It was after 2pm and I was just leaving the grocery store. I started to grab a bag of cookies and start snacking on my way home.. but then I remembered.. that’s a no-no. If I ate the cookies, I wouldn’t be hungry when I got home and wouldn’t eat lunch. So I grabbed a bottle of water and left the cookies alone.
Dinner was easy (since I have a kitchen full of groceries now).
Well, I walked the dogs and washed one load of clothes (I probably have about 5 more to do, but I’ll wait till tomorrow for that).
I never got much motivation to do much today. But I’ll try again tomorrow. I just finished eating dinner and I’m totally stuffed.
For Breakfast today, I had 2 scrambled eggs and 2 biscuits (with butter).
Lunch was leftovers from last nights dinner. Roasted Chicken, beans and rice. But instead of the tortilla’s, I ate biscuits left over from breakfast.. um.. I actually ate *3*! :-/
Dinner - I had another sandwich like I had Thursday night, Turkey and cheese on a croissant, I also had 1/3 of a stuffed baked potato and some steamed cauliflower.
Gee.. I feel so full I could burst! Must be all that bread I ate today. Guess I should probably watch that a little closer.
Monday is going to be a tough day for me. I have an appointment at 7am, which is going to totally mess up my current workout routine. I’m not sure if it would be better for me to workout tomorrow (Sunday) or try to do Monday’s workout in the evening. I really really really hate working out in the evenings, but there is no way I can get up at 3:30am to workout and still make my 7am appt. Notice I didn’t give “not working out” as an option :)
5AM my alarm goes off. It’s Tuesday, the second workout day of the week. But this morning is different from other workout morning. This morning I don’t want to get up. I can think of all sorts of excuses. My head is stuffy from alergies. My legs just don’t want to be activated and it’s cold. After I successfully convince myself that I have justified a slack-morning, I roll over to sleep an extra 2 hours. Unfortunately, I’m guilt ridden and find I am unable to sleep. With my eyes wide open I finally decide a plan of action. I’ll go into work an hour early which will enable me to leave early. This way I’ll have plenty of time this evening to walk the dogs and put in a good workout. After all.. I’ll be more awake and put more effort into the workout.. right? Ok, you may not buy this idea.. but at 5:30am this morning *I* bought it!
It’s now 8:30am and I’ve been at work since 8. I stopped at the grocery store on my way in and bought a box of Special K w/Protein. I didn’t feel much like eating breakfast this morning, so I figure I’ll munch out of the box for a bit and call it breakfast. :-)
Now the question is… “will she or won’t she?” Will I really workout this evening or will I bail all together?