fitclubmom’s BodyBlog

Isn’t it funny how life just seems to take over every moment of every day?!   This last week has been extremely hectic, with a LOT going on.  We are getting ready for our vacation to start tomorrow.  This will be my childrens first time flying on an airplane (my oldest has been on flights with me a couple of times when she was a baby, but she doesn’t remember), and they are all very nervous.  Truthfully, I am always nervous too.  I think it’s a control thing.  If I could fly the plane, I would be okay… it’s just putting it into someone else’s hands and not being able to see and hear what they’re doing is a bit nervewracking for me.

On the work front, my job is offically safe from being bumped!!  I just found out Friday, so it was a good way to start my vacation.  On the downside, I have so much back-work to do that I will end up working while on vacation .  But, I’m not complaining since I still have a job and I know a lot of people don’t right now.

I have been keeping up with my exercising and lifting weights 6 days a week.  I also made a challenge to myself to do 20-30 minutes of cardio at least 5 days a week, and I have been meeting/exceeding that challenge.  So I haven’t been letting the hectic-ness that is my life interfere with my fitness, which I have done in the past.

I may not be on much over the next week since we will be traveling, but will be off the following week while my mom visits and will have more time to be online.

Talk about your frustrating moments… I have a polar F-6 heart rate monitor that I use to time my workouts, keep track of my heartrate,  and record the number of calories I have burned.  I love using it because it syncs with whatever machine I am using and I don’t have to hold on to the electrodes on the machine to see my heartrate.  When I got the watch I set my age, gender, height, and weight into it so that I could have accurate calorie burning and heart rate zone rates.  I use this as a tool to accomplish a certain amount of calories burned per workout or per week. 

Well, this morning I decided to plug all of my information into the elliptical machine that I was using for my cardio.  So I input my age, gender, height, and weight and set the machine to the ‘random’ setting which mimics HIIT.  At the end of 20 minutes the machine said I had burned 286 calories, yet when I checked my watch (which has the same stats in it as what I put into the elliptical) it said I had only burned 182 calories!  That is a difference of over 100 calories for the 20 minutes.  So which one am I supposed to use?  Is my watch wrong or is the elliptical machine wrong?  Quite frankly I like the elliptical machines ‘calorie burned’ count MUCH better than what my watch says!  But if I’m trying to burn 500 calories each day, which is my goal, then which one is accurate?  Let me also say that the HRM (heart rate monitor) I was wearing showed exactly the same heart rate on both the elliptical machine and my watch, so there was no variance or discrepancy there.  Just on the calories burned. 

Part of what has been frustrating me in my cardio is that I can run my ass off on the elliptical for 35 - 40 minutes and according to my watch I am only burning 300 calories, and other people who weigh about the same as me are telling me they are burning 500 or more calories.  And I keep wondering how the heck that can be when I know that I am really pushing it hard in my workout and I am not burning nearly as many calories in the same time frame.  Now, I’m thinking it is because of the variance between what my watch says and what the elliptical says.  So which one do I use?  Which one is more accurate?  I don’t want to use the elliptical readings if it isn’t accurate.  But, on the flip side, I was thinking I was going to have to do two 40 minute elliptical sessions a day in order to achieve my 500 calories burned per day goal.  If the elliptical is the correct number then I would only need to do one.  And any extra workout would be a bonus.

It’s so confusing!!  Any ideas or suggestions out there?  Anyone know the accuracy of the HRM’s watch versus the elliptical machine on calories burned, and why there is such a discrepancy between the two?  Especially since I am inputting the exact same information into both devices (height, weight, age, and gender).

I don’t know what is going on with our weather lately, but I swear it is like Mother Nature is going through menopause!  Any time we get some nice hot weather, She must think She’s having a hot flash and turns on the "A/C".  I swear, everyday is like a roll of the dice.  She is moody lately, and at the drop of a hat will burst into tears causing horrendous downpours.  And then She throws a temper tantrum because She hates crying, so she thunders and throws lightening around.  And then two seconds later, it’s as if nothing happened and She smiles benignly on us and warms us with the suns rays.  Only to think She is having another hot flash and turns on the friggen A/C again!!  Yep, it’s either Menopause or Dementia!

Yesterday I took the kiddo’s to an amusement/water park and it was so damn cold (in the middle of JULY) that we were wearing sweatshirts!  It was in the low 60’s most of the day yesterday… in the middle of JULY!!  We did have a good time though, and they have an indoor waterpark on the grounds which was nice because my kids were able to go swimming and go down the slides; along with 10,000 other people who crammed into the building because no one could use the 50 acres of outdoor water slides.  I did get a LOT of exercise in though.  The park is over 200 acres so there is a lot of walking to do!  And the entrance (and exit) to the park is a really steep hill (they actually have benches on the sides so people can rest if they need to), so I walked up and down that hill 7 times which was a great leg workout.

The really bad thing about the park is that you are not allowed to bring your own food or drinks in, and they check all bags and confiscate anything they find on your way into the park.  And they have ZERO healthy food there.  I was pretty mad that I couldn’t even get a grilled chicken breast… only deep fried chicken or breaded chicken fingers.  I ended up getting the chicken fingers and scraping all the breading off.  But YUCK!  A small bottle of water is $2.50 and diet coke is $3.00 for a can…. a can, not a 20 oz bottle.. a 12 oz CAN!  I figure this is good preparation for our trip to Disney World next week.  I’m sure that I am going to run into the same situation.  I just wish they would understand that some of us are willing to pay a lot more for healthy food versus the cheap processed food they sell.
This morning I have gotten in 20 minutes of HIIT and will do another 20 minutes this evening.

This morning I felt like I had stepped into an alternate reality at the gym.  It was so odd that the theme music from the Twilight Zone kept running through my head!

Normally when I go to the gym it is like walking into a sitcom about everything you shouldn’t do while at the gym.  Here is a short list of things that seem to be daily occurences at my gym…  People talking WAY too loud to get attention, people slamming weights down and yelling with every… single… rep; with each guttural yell being louder than the one before, people putting their sweaty bodies on the benches and NOT wiping up when they are through, guys thinking their sets are somehow more important than yours because you’re just a girl therefore you should be happy to stop doing your sets and let the schmuck do his sets first, people NOT taking the damn weights off of the bars when they are through with them, people preening and flexing in the mirrors instead of lifting weights (that one always stumps me), people talking on their cell phones, and people who come up and grab a set of dumbbells that I am using and that are right next to me. 

But somehow aliens invaded all of the bodies at my gym this morning!!  I walked in and no one was yelling, grunting, or talking loudly over their i-pods (because they won’t take their ear buds out).  I watched in amazement as a group of guys finished using the machines and actually took the weight plates off and put them back!!  My jaw dropped open when a guy came up and asked me, actually asked me if it was okay for him to use a set of dumbbells (that I wasn’t even using), then another guy asked me politely how many sets I had left on the tricep machine and then calmly waited until I was done!  And the kicker was when I saw at least four guys wipe the machines down after they were done using them!  I want to know who those aliens are and make them invade my gym every time I know I’m going to be there.

On another positive note, I got my weight workout done AND my cardio done!  YAY! 

I will freely admit it… I hate cardio.  I hate it so much that I think there should be a support group for all of the psychological trauma I go through trying to make myself do it.  And what pisses me off even more about cardio is that it makes me whine.  I HATE whining, yet I do it every damn time I get on a cardio machine, which just pisses me off more.  I wonder if there is someone who can brainwash or hypnotize me into loving cardio?!  Could you imagine how much money that person would make??  On the flip side, I love lifting weights… I could lift weights every single day and be happy.  And I would much rather put my time and energy into lifting weights.  But dammit, my weight isn’t and won’t budge without doing that damn cardio… grrrrrr!

For the last week I have found excuse after excuse not to get my cardio in.  And I can tell.  I don’t have as much energy, my stamina, or lack thereof, is showing in my weight-lifting, and I am having a harder time than normal sleeping (I’m an insomniac, so I don’t get a lot of sleep anyway, so I really need every extra bit I can get!).  As much as I hate cardio, I can see that it is beneficial in a lot of ways.  I just have to figure out a way to get motivated to do it.  Seriously, wouldn’t you think the reasons I just listed above would be motivation enough?  Apparently not!  Damn cardio!

So, I’ve decided this morning to turn cardio into a challenge.    Anyone who knows me, knows how much I like a challenge.  So my challenge is to do a month of cardio 5 days per week of at least 20 minutes (HIIT style).  I just have to figure out a reward for winning the challenge. 

Cardio, here I come!

Sorry, this is not a BodyBuilding blog… 

I am constantly being admonished by my children over my deplorable language while driving.  I can be the poster child of decorum when not behind the wheel (oh all right… not the poster child… geesh!), but while driving I come up with some pretty unique swear combinations.  Somehow (I still think my children brainwashed me) I agreed to stop swearing while driving… do you have ANY idea how hard that is?!?!?!  And each time I forget and swear (which is all the time) my kids shake their heads in disappointment and tell me I did it again.  Damn!  So since I am older and wiser than my munchkins I have started saying swear words in "code" when something/someone pisses me off while driving.  My latest one was "SSDF" when the moron in front of me decided to slam on his brakes for no apparent reason this morning which resulted in my Sobe Life Water spilling all over my car (yes, I forgot to put the cap back on).    It’s very sad when you start swearing in code even when your kids aren’t in the car!!  For those who are curious here are some of my code words/ininitals that I use frequently now…

SSDF = Sh*t, Sh*t, Damn, F*ck!

DH = D*ckHead

AW = A$$Wipe

CS = C*ckSucker (hey, I told you I wasn’t nice when I was swearing!!)

PD = PencilD*ck

SFMD = Stupid F*cking Moron Driver

There are more… and I have to admit that it’s been kind of fun coming up with words that aren’t actual swear words, but that I know what they mean!   And, since it’s fun for me, my actual swearing has slowed down slightly.  I’m still working on it! lol

This came in an e-mail to me and I liked it so much I thought I would share it.. 

An elderly woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.
 

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water..Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.
But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream.“I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.”
The old woman smiled, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?”“That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.”
 

“For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table.. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding..

You’ve just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

Whew… ‘Hell Week’ is over and we survived it!   Although, my glutes are still recovering from the walking lunges!

I decided to give myself free rein on eating and drinking over the 4th of July weekend, and boy did I go overboard!!  The thing about me is that I put my all in everything I do, and I put my all into overeating and did a spectacular job of it!   I ended up gaining 4 pounds over the weekend from the combination of desserts and beer/wine.  The meals outside of dessert were actually very good… grilled chicken with salad and veggies… grilled turkey with broccoli… etc.  But the desserts and alcohol were my undoing.  But this morning I am back on track and the weekend was a planned food-fest so I don’t feel badly about it.  However, I was surprised at how much I gained in just a couple of days!

The hubby and I decided to take a break from P90X for the summer and fall and maybe go back to it in the winter (when I hate going to the gym because of the snow/ice).  "JAnthony" graciously came up with a routine for each of us to do that focuses on each of our goals and we started that routine today.  I must say that I am loving the new program.  It challenges me, and I love to be challenged with my workouts.  If it’s too easy I get bored and stop doing it.   This routine also has me doing moves that are new to me.  I have never done decline dumbbell presses (I’m not sure why, I just have never done them), and I almost substituted that exercise with something else, but I’m glad I didn’t because I really enjoyed that variation. 

One of my goals for myself is to try to start logging my workouts using the Workout Tracker in bb.com.  I think it will be a good tool for me to utilize to see how I am progressing over the short and long term.  Another goal is to drop body fat.  I will be down to 19% or lower by the end of this month.  My last goal is to increase my lean protein and fruits/vegetables intake. 

Whew!  We just finished up the last challenge in ShanBL’s "Hell Week".  We did 1/2 mile of walking lunges and completed them in 33 minutes.  We chose to do them outside in our neighborhood so the hubby used the odometer on the motorcycle to map out a 1/2 mile.  We actually went to the gym to do them, but there were a lot of people playing basketball and I didn’t feel like doing them in front of that big of an audience so we went with plan B.

On the plus side, we had a nice breeze and a view while doing them (even though people driving by gave us odd looks), on the downside we had to do certain parts of the lunges uphill.  That made it a little harder in areas.  BUT, we also got to walk back to the house which gave us a chance to recover and cool down.

And the other big plus is that I realized how much I have been babying my left leg.  I had a hamstring/glute injury a few months ago and without knowing it I must have been overcompensating with my right leg when I started lifting weights again.  My left leg started bugging me in the same area I had the injury about 1/2 way into the lunges.  So now I know that I have to really pay attention when I do squats not to overcompensate with the right leg.

I have to say that I actually enjoyed doing hell week with Shannon (ShanBL).  She totally kicked ASS on this challenge and showed just what a SuperWoman she really is!!  The hubby and I enjoyed it so much, challenging ourselves to go beyond (way beyond) what we thought we could do, that we will definitely do Hell Week with her again the next time.  And we will work towards beating our times from this round.

Have a wonderful 4th of July!!