Ora: Turd Dangler

So a couple of months ago I had started yoga in hopes of regaining some of my flexibility that I had up in to my early 20’s, my ultimate goal, to be able to do the full splits. So last night after my yoga class, I tried again, like I often did to get a little bit lower to the ground. As I was in stance stretching out my legs I turned and looked in the mirror and I noticed, there was only about three inches left in between my crotch and the ground. So I did some adjustments that I learned how to do to get more of a stretch (I learned this off youtube of all places), and BAM!!, I got 1.5 more inches out of the stretch.

I am so excited and when I started my path to this goal trying to do the splits was pain staking and looked pitiful, but little by little each time I tried I gained a portion of an inch. My long hard work is slowly paying off, and with it I am becoming more and more like Gumby, which I totally was not expecting from yoga, although I had heard about it.

The turtle wins the race, the path that is the quickest is not always the best. <- This is definitely a motto to stick by when it comes to fitness and progress, you might not see it at first, but in due time, consistence will pay off.

This is the first time that I have ever used a fat-burner / energy supplement, but I want to step things up for the holidays and reach some goals. My goal, to remove some hard to get rid of, unhealthy fat, so let’s see how it goes.

Over the last 2 weeks I started doing 45 minute spin classes for my lunch cardio which is done Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I am planning on keeping my weight routine, evening cardio, and yoga the same as it has been. I am hoping that this will work.

I am going to keep an ongoing log of how the supplement is affecting me.

Day 1: So far no real change noticed, but I do not feel tired even though I am not taking any additional caffeine. I took my spin class and did not feel any additional energy with just the 1st pill. 1st day is one pill in the morning and then one in the afternoon. Hoping tomorrow there will be more energy.

Day 2: Still not seeing any notice in energy changes, but I sure am sweating my ass off. After my weight workout last night I can definitely tell that the thermogenic properties are working. I woke up early this morning and decided to do a 6am spin class to see how it was, and I enjoyed it. As the day progressed I was starving, more starving then I have been in a real long time, good thing I brought tons of healthy snacks. So I finally got pleasantly full and then I began to get tired, and at 1pm decided to take my second dose for the day thinking it would pick me up. It didn’t, so I started thinking of possible reasons why, thought I needed sugar at first and then realized, I probably need more water. Downed 16 OZs and woke up as it sent chills down my body, as everything started to work harder to process the cold water and rehydrate me and wake me up. Tomorrow is the day I go from two pills a day to three pills, glad no bad side effects so far.

So I think I have finally found my spinning groove. I use to run, do the stair machine, or the elliptical, but spin has made me break out in the worse in sweat, and I am LOVING it. I loved the stair machine as well, but could not motivate myself longer than 12 minutes on it at a time. Then I was traveling frequently and hotel stairs were the only form of “safe” cardio that I could do, which made me realize how much the stair machine did not cut it. Running up 11 flights of stairs and then racing down, only to repeat the process several times, my legs got tight. So once I was back at home I tired of my old worn out cardio routine.

I had tired spinning class before, but it just did not catch on. So one day I realized they had a 30 minute express class that I could retry during my lunch break, when I normally did cardio anyways. So I said, “**** it, it’s worth another shot.” Once I was done I realized it was what I needed to motivate myself to push harder during my cardio that I did during lunch. So that afternoon I printed out the gym’s class schedule and looked at all of my meetings and circled the ones that I could work my lunch around. I discovered that I could go three times a week, Monday, Wednesday for their 45 minute class, and then Friday for their 30 minute class. I was ready and psyched. 

Each day I went in and each day I thought I was pushing myself as hard as I could for the full period of time, but it ends up I was wrong. Over this past weekend there was an air show down at the beach around the corner from my house, so like always we hoped on our bicycles and headed down that way. As I hoped atop the bicycle I began to feel the way the pedals gave adequate resistance as I used my legs to power through the motions. That is when the light bulb went off in my head and I realized that there was no way I was using realistic or adequate resistance while I was in spinning class.

As the ride progressed I tried to feel the difference between in resistance from when the wind was blowing right against us, to when we were going up a slight hill (not really a hill, it’s Florida still), or when we were racing across the street between cars. I even took it to the next level to see the different resistance based on how I was seated/not seated on the bicycle and the way my legs were positioned.
Then Monday came, and I had a clear idea of what it felt like to push myself properly, and what it meant to add resistance and take away resistance. An hour before I carbed up with my mac-n-cheese with broccoli and mentally prepared. When I stepped into class I made sure that my rides was realistic to my normal rides, and boy did the work, during the ride my legs could feel it, they thrived and pressed to make it through, and then the next day, they thanked me.

I had never sweated so bad in my life, but it was good, now I know what it takes, and what I can take. Now I want more.

So conversations that I over hear quite often about people’s excuses of why they do not work out.
"These ____________ (fill in the blank: models, athletes, fit people, etc.) always talk about getting up at 5am and working out, running, and then eating a well balanced breakfast. It is obsession; it seems to overcome their life. I do not want working out to be my life. They have such harsh schedules.”
My initial thought is usually laughter, because in a strange way, not doing things inhibits your life, so in turn it is your life up for grabs. Not being fit stops you from doing things, going places, living longer.

My second thought is, most of us do not see fitness as taking over our lives, but more or less liberating us, to be able to do the things we enjoy, longer, without struggling or causing pain, we understand that it is our lives, and so we must take care of it the best way we can.

Hearing the fat lady say in astonishment, "I’m hungry" every 15 minutes, followed by her shuffling through her giant candy bag searching for the next thing to shove into her face, in no way surprises me, but it does get old.
This all while I eat my morning sweet, a baked sweet potato with skin, as I sip on some water to wash it all down with.

I use to work with this guy and he and his wife were huge, so huge that he at the age of 26 he had to have part of his intestines removed due to his obesity. His doctor advised him that he needed to lose weight, seriously. Not only did he not listen, but he was happy after the surgery that he lost the extra pounds of losing his intestine, and his doctor again said you need to lose weight, seriously. He did not listen, he proceeded to eat fast food morning, noon, and night, and not just one meal, several meals at a time. I am not quite sure if he thought it was all a joke, but he proceeded to gain weight, he would even boast about gaining 20lbs since the surgery and how he would have to try to starve himself a couple days before he went back to his doctor for a follow-up appointment after his surgery.

I just do not get people, or how things like that happen. Is it laziness, or just a shier lack of not caring?

I have never been overweight so for me the whole concept is abstract, I can understand if it is a genetic health issue that caused it such as a thyroid problem, but you cannot tell me that this many people in America have these types of issues.

without the love for your body, you will fail to improve your body.

You must know how it feels; how it lives and breaths; how it suffers and sacrifices; how it moves and flexes; how it pains.

Once you know this then you will understand what it needs to grow, strengthen, stretch, speed up and slow down.

Only then can you reach your goals and create new ones.

–> whelp time to bike to the beach and enjoy the sun, surf, and run around a bit.

You know what is really sad; I cannot even do a real pushup. Tried the other day and realized that after years of weight lifting that I could not even do one real pushup, now that is pitiful. So I decided that I needed to add some good ol’ fashion body weight moves to my routine. So my morning where suppose to be dedicated to doing “morning cardio” when I felt like getting up and doing some, which is rare, but now I have two new reasons to actually get up and change this routine.

First I want to start off the morning with my tries for the 7 minute mile. I will try 2-3 times based on how I feel. I will run at 8 to 8.5 on the treadmill for as long as I can and then move to a walk at about 3.8, then when I am no longer winded I will try again. This will not only help me with trying to achieve my 7 minute mile, but will help out with my cardio endurance for surfing and paddling in sprints.

Second, once I am done doing the cardio portion I want to move to doing/trying to do pushups. I will try to do 4 sets, first attempting to do them for real and then doing assisted pushups until I am unable to do those anymore. I figure eventually I will be able to do one and hopefully even more. This will also help out with my pop-ups in surfing. Then I will try to do pull-ups on the assisted pull-up machine, and hopefully I will eventually be able to do pull-ups as well. I will do 3 sets of those.

Third, I want to incorporate more ab workouts and will do these. No specific workout, but I will switch it up. I will do 3 sets of these.

Fourth, I will do an endurance shoulder workout in the motion of paddling in the water with elastic bands and do them till I cannot do them anymore then rest for 30 seconds and do it again. I will do this 3 times.

Fifth and final, I will do some balancing moves either yoga ones or some moves on the indo board to get better balance overall and strengthen my ankles.

So after the last couple of days and going out surfing I am amazed at how out of shape I feel.

I paddled out the other day and the outside break was pretty far out, so the paddle was long and the inside made so many consistent ripples (wave peaking, but not breaking), which only made the paddle even longer and harder, but by the time a couple of sets had gone by and I was almost on the outside I was breathing heavily and my back and shoulders burned.  Yeah I had not been out in a decent swell in some time, but you think that my weight training and cardio training would have kept me in shape, right? So this got me thinking, what exercises do I need to do to keep up with my paddling ability and endurance?

One thing I wish my gym had was a row machine, not the kind where you are lifting weights, but the one that is more like a cardio machine and seems like you are on a row boat. I use to do this back when I was in college and I think I helped out immensely.

I did research online yesterday about what possible exercises I could do to help out with my endurance in cardio and in shoulders/back, and I think I am going to have to add in that morning routine I was putting off, but I need to change it up a tad. I am thinking that it will either consist of going out and paddling around for a 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hours each morning, or if I am unable to do that, then I can do some shoulder/back exercises that consist of 100s and uses a paddling motion, that way I can get the muscle endurance for repeated motions, and then incorporate my training for the 7 minute mile to include multiple attempts in a single run. Since paddling out is basically different little burst of sprinting via paddling then I am hoping this will help.

So recently I discovered that what might have seemed like self-consciousness was really me worrying about making those that I like as friends self-conscious, or making other people in the gym self-conscious. Does anyone else ever feel this way??

Sometimes I try to hide that I am in shape or that I am fit from those I hangout with because I do not want them to have ill feelings towards me, such as jealously or envy, or to have ill feelings towards themselves and their own bodies, workouts, and/or determination. I am one of those types of people who would rather make people laugh, or to help them see the brighter side to things. It is easy for me to say this here, because none of those people are on bodyspace.

This somewhat stems from being a thin girl for my entire life even when other girls started to fill out, I was still just stick girl. I got discarded by a lot of girls in school, and they treated me different, it was either because I was skinny or that I was smart, or maybe the combination killed them, I do not know. I have heard of other girls having the same problem, getting excluded or harassed by other girls for no real reason. Jealously and envy are a bitch, so I do not want to repeat this in my adult life, there are people that I would like to have feel confident around me, and in turn I guess I would be able to do the same.

Recently though I have started to change my gym wardrobe, I was tired of wearing cut off sweat pants to the gym, so now I wear leggings. I doubt I will ever be a belly bearer again, just due to age, and I have grown not to want to show too much skin. What I have noticed from this change is that I appreciate my body more, I can see the size and shape of my legs and the contours of the curves I have built for my body, and I like it. I have worked hard, and at least for now, I am willing and able to show it off at the gym without feeling guilty. Maybe one day I can dress the way I want to around my female friends without feeling negative about it too, and then maybe I will actually be more social with them as well.

So my goal for this past week was to stick to a routine, or at least as much of it as I desired. I really do not consider the morning cardio a part of my routine yet, I still have yet to officially decide whether it should or should not be done, but I want to keep the option there.

Anyways, so this week I was able to stick to my full routine Monday thru Thursday, so the only day that I missed was Friday’s weightlifting and after workout cardio. I even made it Saturday for my morning yoga and after workout cardio. I have not officially stuck to solid routine in quite some time and am very proud of myself. My goal is be able to stick to my weekly routine as much as possible and to see the results, then decide if anything needs to change.

This week there had been several official changes that I adjusted to my routine, I added yoga sessions,  one on Tuesday nights and one on the weekend. I realized after doing one yoga session that attending these classes on a regular basis could greatly help out my flexibility, which has deteriorated over the years after I stopped martial arts, and would help me out with strengthening some of the stability muscles that help with balance.

The other change that I had to make to accommodate for being able to put yoga into my training routine was to put biceps and triceps into other days. I use to do this schedule

Monday: shoulders
Tuesday: back
Wednesday: legs
Thursday: chest
Friday: bis/tris

So I ended up having to change it to

Monday: shoulders
Tuesday: yoga
Wednesday: back/bis
Thursday: legs
Friday: chest/tris
Saturday/Sunday: yoga

I want to stick this out for at least a month and see how it progresses.