Stripping the Fat

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