Training and Accountability

Hello all! Today's Tuesday, which is usually pretty busy for me, but has cleared out a little this week. So I have plenty of time to go to the gym today - which I plan to do in about an hour! I'm going to put in a little cardio before my Body Flow class. Just wanted to make a quick post beforehand.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I worked with a trainer on some arm and leg strength training exercises. They gave me 3 quick and easy exercises that get all major muscle groups in both my arms and legs. It takes about 10 minutes. Strength training isn't my forte - I'm great at getting cardio in, but I hate taking time to do 15 exercises on 15 different machines. I want to be toned, but it's not what I enjoy working on. I had someone set up a program like that for me once, and I just couldn't stick to it. It took too much time and it's SO boring to me. So this time I asked for a simple, quick program that I could add to later if I felt like I could handle it. My gym was very accomodating. (By the way, both the fit test and the setting up of this program are included in the membership costs. Ask the people who work at your gym if something like this is included for you! Great way to get around having to pay for a personal trainer!) For legs, they have me doing leg presses (like squats but pushing weight away from you with your legs instead of pushing your body up), 2 sets of 12 with 90 lbs. of weight. For arms I have 2 exercises - one is a downward row (pulling weight down and towards me in a rowing motion instead of just straight back towards me), and the other is like a chest press where my arms are straight out and I pull them in, palms together. Both exercises I do 2 sets of 12 with 8 pounds each arm on the rowing, and 4 pounds each arm on the chest press. Between the 2 of these, they get my triceps (back of arm), biceps, chest and back/shoulder muscles. I didn't need any ab exercises since I'm doing abs in my Body Flow class and crunches on my own. So everything's covered!

My mom asked me the other day why I think the diet is working this time when it didn't work so many times before. I told her it's probably a couple of reasons, one being that I moved away from college and am living a generally more healthy lifestyle now. I'm much less stressed out now that I'm not in school and working at the same time. But mostly, I'm really being honest with myself about what I'm eating. I used to say "I don't feel like counting my points today I PROBABLY stayed in my daily points," or "Oh, I'm eating a salad, so it's PROBABLY okay that I have 4 dinner rolls with butter," or "Man, that french onion dip looks good, it's PROBABLY low fat, right?" This all continued until my size 18 pants starting getting tight, or my jeans would wear out in 3 months because I wore a hole through the material between my thighs so quickly. So now, I may still let myself have that french onion dip, but I make sure to enter it into my points tracker (WW online program that counts all your points for you if you enter in the right food). I make sure to enter my points in every day, even if I really don't feel like it. And I hold myself to one roll instead of 4. I'm not restricting myself from foods I like completely - I've just adjusted how often I eat them and how much of them I eat. The other day I had a fun size 3 Musketeers bar. (And by the way, I think the name "fun size" for candy bars is complete crap. Because true fun size would be about 5 times the size of what "fun size" is. They should call it "smart size" instead. Just a thought.) So, morale of the day - find a workout that works for you, and learn to hold yourself accountable!! No one else is going to do it for you! People are always around to support you and help you - but when it comes down to it, YOU are the only person that can pry the chocolate chip cookie dough out of your hands at 1:30am!!!

Thanks to you all for being my support and help!

Still Chugging Along

Hello again! Sorry for being crappy at blogging this week. I have 2 excuses - #1 it's been a crazy week with snow and going out of town for a gig, #2 I've been lazy. :) First - at my weigh-in last week I only lost 0.3 pounds. Or pound. I'd been working out really hard and felt like I was making good food decisions, so it was kind of a slap in the face. I think it might have been influenced by 2 factors - I overestimated my daily activity level (how many calories you burn from day to day), or I'm overestimating my portion sizes on things like . . . chips. I can burn through a bag of chips no problem. So, to counteract, this week I changed my daily points back to 28, when a couple weeks ago I upped it to 30 because I thought I'd be burning a few more calories at the restaurant. And I've tried to keep a better eye on how many chips I've been eating. Although my hope is that by lowering my daily points value, it will even itself out and allow me to lose more weight this week. We'll see tomorrow!

But I'm still dieting away! The snow this weekend left me homebound and threw off my workout schedule. I had a fit test scheduled for Saturday, but being that the roads were a bit icy I had to miss it. And since then I've just been lazy and unmotivated. Even though I've stuck to my points this week, I've been feeling kind of down about the whole diet situation. Maybe it's because I haven't had the high endorphins (I just had to spell check that, just so everyone knows) of working out, or maybe it's because I basically sat around all day Friday and Saturday since the city of Knoxville completely shut down. Either way I've just been feeling sort of bummed out. Even though I've made good choices, I've felt guilty. It's very bizarre.

Last night we went out for my stepdad's birthday to this fantastic pizza place (Big Ed's, for you Knoxvillians). ALL they serve is pizza. Well, and beer. Great combination for people on a diet. But I limited myself to 2 1/2 small pieces of plain cheese pizza, and 2 glasses of Michelob Ultra, which is almost the lightest beer you can get. And when we got home, I didn't have a piece of cake. But I was just sitting there watching all my family eating and drinking as much as they wanted, and it really frustrated me. My sister's always been naturally thinner than me (though not to discount her work ethic - she is better at going to the gym than I am, too), and my mom works out like a fiend so she's always been slim for her frame. Now, the rest of the table was full of boys, who can basically eat 3000 calories a day, and then lose 10 pounds in a week if they want to. So I'm not even going to go into how unfair THAT is. But just watching the women in my family, I started to feel guilty that I let myself get to this point. That I, somehow, was dealt the unfair gene which causes me to adore delicious but horrible-for-you foods and not really enjoy working out. That I got the short end of the stick, and didn't handle it well. And ended up the fat one. And this isn't limited to family members. I sang at a concert Sunday night and couldn't help thinking the same thing about all the other girls my age. I couldn't let a song go by without taking a second to think, "God, I wish I looked like her. What's wrong with me?" And usually music can carry me away to a place where things like weight or social status don't exist. But the diet and weight thing has been such a huge part of my life lately, that it seems to be on my mind constantly. Which can be frustrating. Some days I just want to have french fries without having to weigh out the pros and cons of eating them. Do I have time to go to the gym today? How many of my weekly points am I willing to spend? Goodness, that cupcake looks delicious. I wonder how many points it is . . . and so it continues, every hour of the day.

I've been on a diet enough times in my life to know that it has significant ups and downs. Some weeks I feel great, and only lose .5 pound(s), and some weeks I feel like I didn't do well and lose 2. But it sure would be nice if I could continue to feel great and motivated, even if I'm not losing as much weight as I'd like per week. There's a big difference between dieting while being happy about it and dieting while you dread the approach of every meal because you know that you're not going to eat what you'd really like to eat. Writing this helps - it's one of the reasons that I started blogging. I can say that I'm proud of myself this week for sticking to the diet even though I've felt icky and haven't been able to work out much. I am going to the gym tonight - it's Body Flow class day! That class always makes me feel better. Even though almost all the people in there are thinner than me, I'm totally keeping up with them. See? My competitive nature is good for something!!!

Thanks for stopping by and always holding me accountable! And a special thank you to people who ask me how the diet's going when I haven't posted in awhile!