Stripping the Fat

Today’s Quote: "Sometimes a small gradual approach does more good than a large gesture. ~ Craig Newman

Thanks for not laughing too hard at the photos. I sure hope my breast get smaller on ZC.

My one week weigh in is -10 lbs!!!

I didn’t take measurements so I’ll save that for next weekend. I do know that my waist is smaller because of how my jeans fit today.

I’m loving how great things are going.  I looked for my old trainer at the gym last week and was told that she placed 1st in her competition and 2nd overall for women.  I’ll have to get the details about which one she competed in…but I can’t wait to work with her again.

Today is the starting day for a 6 month focus on fat loss/ muscle building.  Although today is  the first day I’ll be tracking, I’m already down 6 pounds due to implementing the plan a few days ago.

Since my weight is up from what my last weigh in on this site was, I haven’t updated my stats.  Actually, I would prefer to erase them and start over but I don’t seem to know how to do that.  

Tomorrow is a big gym day so I plan to get a lot of rest this evening.  Thank God for the time change!!

Tonight I had a fairly HARD workout. I tried the Precor 100i again and once again it killed my shoulders, legs, calves and wore me out. Thankfully tomorrow is my day off from the gym. I go back Sunday morning and at that time I will begin to drink more protein shakes. Friday and Saturday I will simply power-walk around the 2.5 mile loop by my house.

While I was in the midst of working out tonight my "ex" personal trainer came up and started chatting with me. She is training for the Ironman and she is ripped. I may start working with her again in mid October after she recovers from competing. I do have every intention of dedicating quality time to ChaleanX, but a few sessions with the trainer couldn’t hurt.

Well, for now I will continue to do what I am doing, especially since I feel good.

ta ta for now

Today was a great day all around.  I made sure I reached my potassium level early in the day and got in a good stretching session before working out.  My gym has new cardio machines that have strength options built in them. I’ve been eye-balling one of them and gave it a try tonight.  I EXPERIENCED ZERO PAIN!  That damn machine worked my calves, triceps, hamstrings, quads, glutes, and back!  I put in 70 minutes and my body felt like jello afterwards but right now - I FEEL AWESOME!

Clearly, going to the gym late night is the best time.  I seem to be able to focus on the machines I want to work out on and I can THINK without listening to everyone else chatter on about nothing. (I’m not a headphone kind of girl)

My food intake was great, although I think next week I will make sure I get a lot more protein in each day.

I’m feeling so pumped right now I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to bed.

I can’t wait to work out tomorrow!

Carrie

I had a great day, ate clean, got some sleep and kept the stress at bay.  I could have drank a bit more water but I’m going to work on that tomorrow…and do better.

But here is the killer.  I got to the gym and stretched, then hopped on the cross-trainer and strength training, hoping to put in an hour on that little devil.  About 25 minutes in, it started to feel like my hamstring was tightening up and it wouldn’t allow me to bend my leg backwards.  The strength program on the cross-trainer has DEEP steps at 50-75 resistance and therefore it hurt to take each step.

Well I have been away from the gym too long to stop so I changed it to 40 and kept going.  But when I got off the back of my knee felt weak and I still could not bend my leg back to stretch out my quad…and now I have leg cramps.

I am going to have to find a food source of potassium that will help elevate my levels.  I don’t plan on eating 10 bananas a day so that is not an option.  It looks like me and google need to spend a little time together this evening.

In the meantime, I am still determined to hit my exercise minutes goal for the week.  I may need to switch to a different machine though. 

This year has been brutal but I am proof that you can bounce back from anything.  I started the year off with a trip to the emergency room via an ambulance.  Someone slipped me something in a cookie (containing reefer and E) and boy oh boy did I almost DIE.  That was on January 4th and it’s been an uphill battle every since.  Thankfully, one of my friends called  9-1-1 that day because most of the people around me did not believe anything was wrong.  I am not someone who uses street drugs so I was completely mortified that this even happened.

At the beginning of February I decided to have the follow up mammogram that I put off and this time they decided that the lump they were watching needed to get removed.  This started off with a biopsy  in early March, which proved to be inconclusive so they said I had to have a partial mastectomy.  I really wasn’t feeling getting my boob cut back a bit so I put if off until May. In the meantime, I let stress get the best of me and just stopped doing anything that even resembled exercise.  

When May finally arrived, I wasn’t feeling well and had a host of tests ran by my doctor (he’s so cool that I’m actually starting to like docs).  They could not figure out the cause of me feeling bad and since I had been drinking juiced veggies most of the month they didn’t think it was related to diet.  By June, I was having severe symptoms…my eyes, fingers, tongue and leg muscles were twitching really bad.  Each day they got worse.  This time when I went to the doc, they noticed that my labs were off…most notably, my potassium level.  So the breast surgery was postponed.  The sudden intake of prescribed potassium made me swell up like a balloon and in 3 days I gained 17 pounds!!!   That in itself was depressing!

I finally had the surgery the last week in June and was given the green light to workout again at the end of July. Thankfully I did not have cancer but I feel like I lost half a year regardless.  I seriously HATE taking medications of any kind because I feel like they all have adverse effects, none of which ever seem to amount to feeling better.  

Today I worked out for 75 minutes!  It felt really good to be back in the gym and today I decided to do a 30 day challenge to reach 1400 workout minutes and eat clean.  I think this is an attainable goal and its also a great way to jump start my pathway to health.

One thing I have to remember to do EVERY DAY is stretch. I caught the worse cramp ever while working out…but it could have been due to low potassium level.  (I’m still working on   keeping that in normal limits)

Later.

Carrie

…til it’s gone.

What happen to our beautiful city?  Where are the roads??  Where is the RAIN?

SNOW.

I hate snow with a passion.  Normally, the residents of Western Washington are lucky enough to get by most of the winter months without a drop of snow.  I guess this year Mother Nature decided to make up for lost time.

I have been stuck in my house for 5 days.  It sucks.  I hate hate hate being cold and I really don’t like being a prisoner of my home.  I did take a few treks in the snow to the store and back, but that really wasn’t all that much fun.  There should not be 10+ inches of snow in SEATTLE!!!  This city can’t function with 3 inches of snow.

Today I walked down to my sisters house and was looking through pictures taken August 16th.  I swear at that point I’d been working out with the trainer a couple of times a week and I was going to the gym EVERY day.  Well for some strange reason I seriously thought I was looking slim.  I remember being at her house and my pants were falling off, yet by the looks of the pics, I wasn’t really all that much smaller. I confused.  I look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy in the photos ( I had on all white). Now, I wasn’t really trippin out today other than thinking that by September 17th I was down to 183 and those same pants in the photo were now really falling off of me and I think the weight loss was pretty noticeable.

Fast forward to December and I feel as though I had a set back or something.  I have been in the house a lot due to it getting dark by 4:30 pm.  I have not been to the gym often although during November I did work out quite a bit.  This month - NIL!  The photos I viewed today reminded me of what my initial goals were and how I need to stay focused to my year end mark - July 8th 2009.

I’m not one to wallow in pitty or beat my self up, but I do have to keep on truckin… LOL!  I would weigh myself tomorrow but I’m afraid I may slip into shock.  With that said, I hope to have updated numbers by New Year’s Day.

I just hope the snow melts soon…I can’t drive in it and the buses in my neighborhood have all been cancelled.  Sadly the gym is located downtown Seattle…I need a solution.

I have to admit that I really like how my legs are coming along. Maybe it’s my imagination, or maybe not but they sure do seem to gain muscle pretty easily.  I do feel that I am a little partial to training my legs before I train any other body part although this weekend I noticed something that may make me change this habit. 
While at bowling this past weekend I noticed that a lot of women on my bowling league have nice legs but their upper bodies need a lot of work.  Well, actually that is being nice because it’s really from the booty on up that needs work!  LOL!  I think my butt actually looks a lot better than it did, which is a WONDERFUL thing, but I realize I better keep hitting the dip/pull up machine every other day as well and get at least 4 days of abs in per week.  The last thing I want is to look great from the waist down and have a flabby upper body.  Plus, I don’t like training arms much and notice that I only train them hard when working with my trainer.  I don’t feel as comfortable with free weights like I do with the machines, so I really need to work on changing that mindset.
Moving on…I am noticing some changes all over which seems a little strange because back in July it took a full month of working out to notice any differences.  I do need to hop on the scale tomorrow morning to make sure things are on track, I am usually a scale addict but lately I haven’t thought much of it. 
My best friend asked me to come visit her in February during the NBA All Star weekend down in Arizona, she and her boyfriend will be hitting all the parties and throwing a few at their pad as well.  I decided I will take her up on the invite but I know that means buckling down and hitting each month’s goals because by no means do I want to look like a “COUGAR” on the prowl when I go down there. LMAO!  My hope is to be close to my goal by February anyway, considering I’d like to wear that bikini by May for my trip to South Carolina.  Boy do I have a lot of work cut out for me…but I’m taking it one month at a time for now.
Well I off and heading to the gym for a few hours…it should be a good workout!
 

My trainer and I came up with a 90 day plan that I am really excited about.  It’s actually something I find challenging enough to "move" me, yet it still seems attainable. My only complaint is that I am focusing more on bodyfat loss than weight loss and she seems to zone in on weight loss alone.  Its sort of frustrating but I’m sick of trying to be heard…so I just keep in mind what my REAL goal is and let her talk. 

My next weigh in and measuring will occur on December 6th, and I have mapped out next week’s game plan so that I can clean up the diet a bit more.  I realized that I missed drinking my Dessert Protein shakes (for about a month) when I had one yesterday (with the instant coffee grounds in it) and couldn’t believe how tasty it was!  I guess I forgot!  I can’t wait to have a few today.  I’m also back to fish and veggies twice a day with eggs in the morning.

I have to admit that after yesterday’s leg workout, I didn’t feel as sore as I had the past few days, I simply worked out through the pain and today I feel great.  My abs and shoulders are a bit sore but I suppose that is pretty normal.  Tonight I will put in a long thorough workout before heading home.

I don’t ever want to take that long of a break from the routine again.  5 weeks of not really monitoring things or getting a daily workout in is just too much time.  Luckily I didn’t stray too far away from the overall eating plan or I’m sure I would have lost most of my "gains".

After work I went to the gym with the mindset that I would put in a long cardio session and talk with my trainer. Boy was I wrong.  I power-walked it over to the gym from work which took 35 minutes.  I put my things in the locker and proceeded to locate my trainer so we could “touch base”.  Once she spotted me it was HELL. LOL!  We immediately began a hard core workout which lasted 45 minutes, hitting a lot of the large muscle groups with very little rest in between sets.  I was exhausted by the time I finished but I still put in 45 minutes on the cross-trainer to make sure I got my “cardio” in for the day.