femmeFITale Kicks It To High Gear

The Fall school semester just started so I’m pretty excited about my classes BUT I still can’t find a part-time job to save my life. There’s just no hiring these days with the way the economy is going and all the job freezes around here. I’ve been wanting to pursue my personal training certification from NASM but can’t afford a penny of it right now. So my vision of getting certified and working as a trainer asap is shot. No gym will even hire me to help train me until I have my cert. I feel like I’m going around in circles and am really frustrated.

 I’m going to finish watching the Charger game. . . hopefully that’ll cheer me up.

I just finished my final exam in my last summer school class today. . . yesssssss! I feel completely relieved and accomplished. I took 4 summer school classes during the last 2.5 months and was worried at first about the intensity and impaction but I DID IT! Now if only I had $ to treat myself to a massage! Silly thing is that my Fall semester starts on Monday so that’s, hmmmmmm, 4 days of summer vacation for me this year, haha. I’m really digging the strong mind & strong body correlation. . . I’m finally coming full circle.

I feel really strange today. . . While I was dreaming this morning, I was telling myself (in my dream) that I needed to wake up. I tried and tried to wake myself up and *nothing*! I was tossing and turning and was somewhere between sleep and awake, but couldn’t open my eyes for the life of me. I eventually woke up on my own but was super groggy - and have been all day! I know I must’ve been in a pretty deep sleep but the whole day I’ve felt like I’m half-awake. Really odd.

Ummmmmm. . . slight frustration here. After taking my second set of measurements, I’ve noticed an increaase in my muscle size by about 0.5-1.0 inches throughout. That’s great and all, but how do I figure out if I’m leaning out as well? My weight has even gone up by 2lbs. My jeans are fitting much tighter around my quads (which is slightly uncomfortable) and I’m worried I won’t be leaning in addition to building. When does it all start to make sense??

I’m now in my 3rd week of my new exercise program (even though I’ve only recently started this page and added my workouts) and have been going balls-out since Day 1. There have been a few times that I’ve experienced some nausea after a workout, but nothing I couldn’t handle. But the last few days I’ve been excessively tired and have low motivation & energy. Yesterday was leg day for me and I couldn’t even push myself to the max because about halfway through my workout, my legs were shaking uncontrollably. I was walking on Jell-O as I left the gym and was so frustrated.

Could I really be getting burnt out if I’m only on Week 3?!?!? I feel like such a tard!

After years of aimless workouts, I finally want to take my fitness to a higher level. Instead of just working out twice a week because it’s healthy, I want to challenge my body and watch it transform into a lean, mean, tight-body machine. I really want to see what my body is capable of looking like at its optimal performance level. I’m always tearing out workouts and clean eating recipes from magazines & I keep them all together in a workout binder for motivation. So now that I’ve kicked my a** into high gear and decided this is what I want to commit to, I just need to focus on staying motivated and not getting discouraged when I don’t see quick results.

 For me, the challenge I’m running into right now is the clean eating. I’ve always been a healthy eater and love the stereotypical "hippie/granola" food so it’s easy for me to eat more blandly than most people. But the problem I’m encountering is the occassional cheat food. . . even though I’ve been a healthy eater, I’ve never restricted treats when I’ve wanted some. I’m not a huge sugar fanatic and never drink soda, but I’m finding it hard to go from 0 to cold turkey overnight. I find myself scrutinizing everything I’m about to eat. I crave egg salad because of the protein but never eat it because of the mayo. I freak out about rice because of the carbs. I even felt guilty about eating a hot link at a BBQ yesterday because it wasn’t lean chicken or fish. I just want to be able to find a happy medium with my diet and not stress about whether or not I’m doing it right.