ArmdandFabulous’s BodyBlog

.. I am not sure if I pulled my left hamstring or what but the muscle has been getting "bunched up" on me for a while now in both legs…kinda feels like there are balls on the back of my legs at times after working out…but it hasn’t been so bad that it made me cut back on any lifting or cardio..until a couple days ago…I was trying to increase my running speed on the treadmill and it was going well until I felt a pinch from the back of my left leg to the side of my knee that jolted me while running…it startled me but I could keep running so I did, and after that I felt a little teeny bit of discomfort right behind my knee but when I slowed down a little it seemed to be fine…until the next day, I was able to walk on the treadmill for 45 mins at level 9 with no discomfort (AM), and later on I ran (PM)and that’s when the pinching incident happened again, only this time it was a little more painful…but I could still run, so I did…

..I went to lift weights and was planning on running some more after, but my left hamstring had stiffened up on me, so I decided it wasn’t a good idea…I went home and iced the hamstring and noticed my knee was a little swollen too :0…I’ve never pulled a hamstring and I hear that once you do it, the chances of injuring it down the road increase…well, I guess I had it coming…I’ve been warned that I should stretch my legs after workouts…but rarely do…to me that’s like flossing my teeth…eh, I brush ‘em good enough….lol

…As for now I am taking it easy for a few days, icing it and no leg workouts and no cardio…I am hoping it doesn’t take 2 to 6 weeks to heal like what I have read…pray for me please

like food goes bad??  This is the mystery I am trying to figure out today…since I am such a fan of SUPERPUMP250, I have told friends about it..well, one friend went and bought some and when I asked him how he liked it, he said it did nothing for him, and he could go right to sleep after taking it…I was surprised to hear that..and then he said he didn’t want it and he would give it to me, since he had only used about 2 scoops out of the container..I thought AWESOME!…since it is expensive stuff…

Now I have gone thru about 3 containers of SUPERPUMP over the past few months, and still get great results from it as far as energy, strength and workout results go…I still had some left of my own container when my friend gave me his, so I didn’t use it until today…the flavor he gave me is even the same as my last one: Lemon Burst, which I absolutely love the taste of…it’s like candy…mmmm…oh, I’m getting off subject…

ANyways, he was right!!…HIS container did NOTHING for me either!!!! And it had a funny taste, not at all like the other 2 containers of Lemon Burst I have had…I checked the "best by" dates on both and it looks like mine was a little newer than his, but both said they didn’t expire until 2012…so I’m wondering now if some of it goes bad before the date printed or something…I hear some people say that SUPERPUMP did nothing for them, now I know why…I guess all containers of it are not created equal?..at least not in this case!!!  I wonder if the Gaspari guys have ever heard of anything like this…

Has anything similar happened to you with regards to supplements?

…I have been looking for exercises that will really target my glutes and I think I finally found something..since I started lifting, I have been doing squats, leg presses, lunges, walking lunges with 25 lb plates in hands, and a few others…but those things haven’t seemed to really get my glutes as targeted as I would like…yesterday I decided to try what working with a "step" would do for me after reading about it in Oxygen mag…oh my…I didn’t even need weights and my glutes were screaming for me to stop…I felt them like I have never before…just by doing a simple exercise using two steps stacked on top of each other, so it made about a 10-12 inch incline…I did it by putting my hands on my waist and stepping up with my weight on my quad while lifting the alternate leg up, about to waist height, then back down but angled out as far as I felt comfortable, so you keep your body at an angle instead of standing straight up while doing them…WOW!…my glutes were sore all day yesterday, and still are today…I’m a little worried about tomorrow (DOMS)…but I can tell they really did a great job waking up the gluteys…I will definitely be doing more of those in my leg workouts from now on!..I recommend this exercise to anyone who is looking to get those glutes where it hurts!!! (no pain no gain!)…good luck and happy lifting

…After my clean eating gone bad with the finale happening last weekend, I got up the courage to step on the scale to see how much damage I had done…first let me say, before that, I was down to 149lbs…my lowest since…I was 10 or something..lol not that long ago, but it feels like it..I was leaning out and seeing more definition in my arms which I was really really happy about…so happy I called a friend to tell her about it after catching an image in a store mirror and having to look at myself TWICE to believe those were MY arms, because I hadn’t noticed that definition in my mirror at home…so I was making progress, doing well, then BAM! I brought some Hershey kisses into the house and a few of them in the evenings here and there lead to a landslide of more carbs and calorie overload over the course of about 10 days…

…And the damage?  My weight went up to 157!!!..DId I mention this whole time I was still doing my training and cardio as usual, and drinking my gallon of water a day? I guess that is what helped it only go to 157 instead of 167…but along with the weight gain came awareness and observation of my body that I hope will help to keep the importance of discipline at the front of my mind…that new definition I had just been seeing in my arms vanished…and in a matter of only a few days… I looked like had lost muscle in my shoulders, arms, back, everywhere it seemed there was a HUGE loss of muscle tone…I was soooooo MAD at myself for letting this happen…

…So I threw out the candy, threw out the hershey’s syrup, anything I thought I would be tempted to snack on in the evenings I threw out…and upped my protein intake to help curb any carb cravings…this week I have been back to eating clean and the definition I thought I had lost has been uncovered…it was buried under the extra weight I had put on…I guess you could say I learned the hard way how fast you can go from looking lean to looking fluffy…it just takes a matter of days if you overdo the carbs apparently, at least in my case!

…The good news is as of today I am back down to 150…I have my diet under control…and I’m almost to where I WAS before the good eating gone bad happened…I don’t know when I will feel ok to eat pizza or candy again after this, the thought of those things strikes fear in my heart right now…but it has only taken me about 5 days to reverse the damage, and I gotta love how fast THAT happened too :)

This was my attitude…downfall…disappointment…detriment…or..NEED…this weekend…who can tell….

Well I am still not sure which, but I have been letting the diet slip slowly backwards for about 2 weeks now, and this weekend I think (really hope) I got it all out of my system with Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza (veeery good by the way, and cheap, it is the Wal-Mart brand pizza..I was SHocked!…Shocked! that it would be so good) I ate the entire thing between Friday and Saturday…cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting, lots of frosting..mmm…(I ate 4 total between Friday and Saturday!)..hershey kisses…wine…cap’n  crunch cereal, a bag of potato chips, the extra crunchy (read:extra fattening) ones…that’s all I can remember as of now…but the good thing is I did my cardio Friday, Saturday and Sunday…I drank all my water…and as you can see by the picture, today, I worked off a lot of those calories, so many that my “chest” area got it’s own sweat session going…lol…yaaaah…pretty embarrassing walking into the locker room when I was done, looking in the mirror and saw that to my horror/amusement there were two very wet circles right in the middle of my shirt for all to see…I did laugh when I saw myself in the mirror though…I had never seen anything like this before, it is the result of 45 mins on the stairmaster followed by a 2 mile run…you can’t see the back, but I got my shirt back there completely soaked with sweat too…I think this is the most I have ever sweatted at one time…but it felt good, the stairmaster kicked my a**,  and I redeemed myself a little bit I’d say…now I am ready to get back on the clean eating wagon and get back to progress in the right direction

Happy Mother’s Day to any mom’s who read this…and single mom’s–you are the strongest people on the PLANET!!!