Fitness challenge day 2....don't eat like a sumo wrestler!

My struggle this morning was the scary realization that I put this out there and have friends telling me that they are following my blog now, watching and waiting. What happens if I can't follow through? What if I cheat? How embarrassing would that be? Did I really say I would do this for 100 days? That nagging self-doubt was creeping in and I wondered if I put myself out there just a little too soon and before I was really ready. The truth of the matter is, that is more than likely going to be my fear each morning as I wake up. But, this is a fear that I will have to overcome and put to rest as I start to make this new routine a daily habit.

So, after getting up and doing my 30 minute morning cardio intervals that I talked about yesterday, I started to see how much better I was feeling about myself. Its going on three weeks that I've been doing cardio in the morning. At first I had to give myself a pep talk to get in there and do it. Now it's almost become a habit....I said ALMOST.  Its a lot easier now and I can see where this can become second nature to just get up and do it without even thinking about it. The problem comes in when you take a few days or a couple weeks off for vacation or illness and when you finally get back into your normal routine, it's extremely difficult to get motivated. This is where most people, including myself, quit. Fitness quitters, all of us, lol. Here's where the excuses come in. "I did it for (insert number of weeks here) and that's really good for me, I should be proud". " I'm looking pretty good right now because I've been faithfully working out for the past (insert) weeks, maybe I can take a break for a little while and get back to it later when I start to feel my pants getting tight again". And my all time favorite, "it's getting colder now and with winter clothes nobody is gonna see it anyhow". Uh huh, we've all used some sort of excuse to stop right when we were starting to see results. But I bet every time you do that, you regretted it later and thought, "what if I had just kept going, where would I be now?" uh huh.....

Ok, off the the soapbox on quitting. And just so you know, that's as much for me as it is for you. If I say it and I quit, I look like a punk ass. Lol

So I said yesterday that I would talk about eating. Here is my problem with eating and what I've found works for me. I am one of those people that will not eat until I'm hungry. And when I'm hungry, I'm HUNGRY. So, I will go all day on a cup of coffee and then for dinner devour a pizza. So as many times as Jason has said, "would you please eat throughout the day?" I would say, "um no, I'm not hungry and I'm not going to force myself to eat and then get fat!". So he would say, "alright go ahead and do the sumo wrestler diet and see how that worked for you". Sumo wrested diet? What the French is that? It's eating once a day but it's a large meal. This slows down their metabolism and that one meal is turned into fat. I always thought that by eating less I was doing the right thing. I have never been an over-eater, more of an under-eater if anything. So it made absolutely no sense to me how I was doing the wrong thing. He always says to clients, "move more, eat less". Well! That's what I'm doing right? Uh, no. It doesn't mean don't eat at all, it means what it mean, eat less. If your issue is eating too much, eat less. My issue, like many other women, is eating too little. When you do this, your body goes into starvation mode and stores the fat and burns the sugars. Even that little bit you eat turns against you when your metabolism is out of whack. So, what do we do? We eat. Well, I'm not going to force myself now am I? Nope...so I schedule it. Here is what I've done and what has happened. I have set an alarm on my iPhone to go off every two hours after 9am telling me "eat something". I go to Walmart every week and buy several packs of the little applesauce cups, peach cups, and pear cups. They also have green bean, corn, and carrot cups....sweet huh?! I also get a big bag of cashews, my favorite nut. So, I pack a cup or little baggie of nuts for every time my alarm goes off. When it does, it takes me no more than two minutes to finish the cup and move on with my day. See what happens now is that my body is being fed and not feeling starved anymore. It's not too much to make me feel full and uncomfortable at all. AND, the biggest thing I've noticed, which I didn't even think would happen, is that I actually get hungry, so I eat one of the snacks and sure enough, a few minutes later the alarm goes off. Sweet baby Jesus! My body is adjusting to the alarm. I'm getting hungry every two hours now. What does that mean? It means that my body is burning fat properly.....finally. My metabolism is up and it's telling me it needs fuel. This is why we see people like, oh I don't know.....JASON, who can eat all day long and portions that are out of this world and they stay in amazing shape. They're bodies are fat burning machines! "gotta feed the machine", he always says, lol. Now I understand what that means.

If you have no time to eat or eat all the wrong things during the day, try the alarm idea. Get a little thermal lunchbox from Walmart and fill it up with these types of snacks. Don't rely on yourself to tell you when to eat at first. Let the alarm remind you. And then you will start to see that your body will tell you. It has been working for me and for the first time I have no more excuses to not eat right. Of course, we have the main meals to deal with and we can get into that, but we all know what that should be and how to eat healthy there. It's the little ones that were always a struggle for me. Eating five times a day doesn't seem so crazy anymore!

So, there you have it, day two.

FYI, I'm writing this as I am getting more ink on my back. I think we are at 8 sessions now and Brandon, the artist, thinks I'm nuts to be able to blog and have a phone conference during my session, lol. It's all about multitasking I say!


See you tomorrow!

fitness challenge day 1

My first day journaling my fitness journey falls on a Monday. Today was a typical day in my life. I didn't get up with my husband at the butt crack of dawn because, well I'm lazy and don't want to get up before the sun does. So, as he got up to get ready to head over to Lifetime Fitness where he is a manager for the personal trainers, I rolled over and set my alarm to wake me up again at 8.  Dragging myself out of bed at 8 (or a little past that if the truth be told) I got myself ready to hit the gym for my morning cardio. I try to do at least 30 minutes on the treadmill doing interval training. I've used other machines for this but I've just found that the treadmill allows me to set my desired pace better. After doing a cardio point assessment (a type of VO2 metabolic assessment) at Lifetime and seeing at what heart rate I burn fat and what rate I just burn sugar, I now know how to set my workout to be most effective. You can get a cardio point assessment at Lifetime to see this for yourself. It's extremely handy so that you can work to burn fat without killing yourself with ridiculous cardio sessions. Most, like me, think that the best workout is when you have your heart rate way up for at least 30 minutes to an hour and you walk away with "a good sweat" going and your legs are about to give out as your walk to your car. I would have never imagined that I was simply burning sugar at that rate and the fat wasn't going anywhere. No flipping way!! I now see I can work more effectively by staying in certain heart rate zones  where I can burn fat and sugar. There is a whole system with this thing that is quite interesting and if you'd like I can do another post explaining it better and how you can get yours too. I'll have Jason write it so I don't look like a tard trying to explain something that is just not my forte. So that being said, the different zones I am supposed to stay in so I burn the most fat are: a walking pace that get me to between 113-122bpm (beats per minute) and a jogging pace that gets me between 143-162bpm. To make my workout interval training, I walk 2 minutes at about 120bpm and jog 1 minute at around 160bpm  and repeat that over and over again for 30 minutes. This will literally be more effective than if I were to just do a high intensity workout for an hour. What I am learning from Jason is that doing it right is more effective that doing it like everyone else. I have been doing it this way for about a month now and I feel so much better after doing it right for 30 minutes than I did pushing through a cardio class. I will admit that I argued with Jason about this. I felt like he was giving me a workout that was too easy to do and I wanted something that challenged me. He kept saying "you don't need work so hard just because you think it's how you're supposed to do it and everyone else is doing it. Try doing it right for a bit of time first, then if you aren't getting the results feel free to argue with me". Admittedly again, I cheated and upped the speed and time for running. He caught me as he walked by one day and said, "how long have you been running?" I couldn't lie, he'd been watching. As I sat there and took my lecture (which I deserved) I decided to just let him have his way and do it like he said. What could it hurt? Either I would see the difference or I wouldn't. At least be respectful of a professional and do it like he said. He always says to me, "you know people pay me a lot of money to teach them these things and here you are ignoring me because I'm your husband". He's right, it is easier to ignore his instructions because I don't like it. If I were paying him, I would not have that luxury.

So anyhow, jumpin off that little rabbit trail,  I did my 30 minutes of cardio intervals (2 minutes and 1 minute). Felt great and went on with my day. Now, eating today was a bit harder than normal because I didn't work today. My work routine was off so I failed on my eating routine. My "excuse"..... is no excuse because I have created a simple way for me to keep track of my food and I let it slide. I know, this is no way to start my blogging, but I told you I'm not perfect and not every day will be. I will be honest though, lol. Tomorrow I will share with you how I make eating simple. It works for me and this is the first time in my life where I can't say, "I can't do it."

Now, I didn't add in my evening workout, so I'll cover that in my third blog.

Yep, thats right, I didn't do it today....I admit. It's always a learning process and struggle to keep the excuses at bay. We are only human and slip up. It's ok as long as we know why we do and and strive to make changes to correct that in the future.

As you go along with me, feel free to share your struggles and "excuses". Put them out there so they can be said openly and we can work to make changes together.

See you tomorrow!