fitclubmom’s BodyBlog

On Monday I had an appointment with the dermatologist to get a glycolic/lactic acid peel.  I’ve never had one, so I was a bit nervous, but really it’s not bad at all; a little peeling still happening today, but no worse than recovering from a slight sunburn.  All would have been good, except that the doctor told me that I couldn’t exercise for at least 24 - 36 hours after having it done (and she neglected to tell me this until AFTER the peel)!  Grrrrrrrr!    So I wasn’t able to work out Monday night (I had planned on going to workout after my appointment),  and I wasn’t able to work out Tuesday either.

Today I did Chest/Back and was able to increase the weight in several exercises… yay .  Tonight I will do my Insanity workout for cardio.

My middle daughter (she’s 12) has been asking for a long time to have a dog of her own.  My youngest daughter has a cat that she loves and the cat is really, really attached to her (in an almost psychic way).  And my middle daughter wants a pet to have that kind of bond with.  She finally won the hubby and I over and I sent her tons of pictures of puppies.  She picked the one that she thought would be perfect for her (I didn’t tell her that she happened to choose the one that I instantly thought would be perfect for her too… see, mom’s do know best lol).  We get to go pick her up on Sunday.  She is a mixed breed dog; half Australian Shepherd and half poodle.  I have a picture of Maggie below… isn’t she too cute?!

Stayed on track with my workouts this weekend.  Drank too much Saturday night (damn it’s hard getting old… I do not handle alcohol well anymore!) . Thank goodness that Sunday was my rest day! 

This weekend I read a short story about facing adversity.  I liked it so much I thought I would share it here.

  A young woman was complaining to her father about how difficult her life had become.  He said nothing, but took her to the kitchen and set three pans of water to boiling.  To the first pan, he added carrots; to the second, eggs; and to the third, ground coffee.  After all three had cooked, he put their contents into separate bowls and asked his daughter to cut into the eggs and carrots and smell the coffee.  "What does this all mean?" she asked impatiently.

  "Each food," he said, "teaches us something about facing adversity, as represented by the boiling water."  The carrot went in hard but came out soft and weak.  The eggs went in fragile but came out hardened.  The coffee, however, changed the water to something better.

  "Which will you be like as you face life?" he asked.  Will you give up, become hard, — or transform adversity into triumph? 

As the "chef" in your own life, what will you bring to the table?  How will you confront adversity?  For myself, I’m going with the coffee.   Have a great day!

Last night I did the Insanity Pure Cardio dvd.  I thought that the other videos were insane…. mmmmmhhhhhhmmmmm… NOT!  Okay, they are insane, but the Pure Cardio video is beyond insane.  In the other videos you do high intensity power moves for a couple of minutes and then get a 30 second recovery period before the next series starts.  30 seconds is really a SHORT amount of time when you’re dying (or feel like you are) .  In the Pure Cardio dvd there are zero breaks… yep, that’s right… ZERO! 

On the bright side, I don’t think one person on that dvd made it all the way through without having to stop and recover for a bit… even Shaun.  And every single one of them was pouring sweat.  I got maybe 1/4 of the way through before having to stop and take breaks.  About 1/2 way through my breaks become longer .  There are some new power moves that I really liked on this program.  And he repeats other moves that are on the other two dvd’s that I have done. 

I was able to get almost all the way through the warm up without stopping, so I am definitely improving a bit.  I think the HIIT sprints are helping with that.

My legs were still so shot that I didn’t do my leg workout this morning.  They are feeling better now so I will go to the gym after work today.

I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend!

I forgot how much of a workout yoga can be.  I was wiped out when I got home last night.  So I convinced my oldest daughter to go with me to do HIIT sprints outside, instead of going to the gym.  We only have a limited number of nice weather days left before we start getting snow, so I thought it would be a great activity to do with her.  And since I have been doing the HIIT sprints on the treadmill I thought I was prepared for doing them outside. 

Uhhhhh, no.  Not only ‘no’, but hell no!  Oh. My. Gawd.  It is sooooo much harder doing sprints outside.  Who woulda thunk it?!  I’m really glad that I had my daughter with me, ’cause it pushed me to kind of show off. :-)  I am the "old" mom to her.  And it was nice to be able to run her into the ground.  Aren’t I a sweet mom?!  Actually, during the last sprint (UPHILL…. uggghh), I was getting a little full of myself because I had been running faster than her.  But she showed me up by running past me half way up the hill. DAMN!   Then to add insult to injury she turned around and said "c’mon old lady… show me what you got!"  At that point I was just running up the hill to strangle her! Just kidding (sort of).

I will say that outdoor sprints are one heck of a workout and they put my treadmill sprints to shame.  I’m going to try to get more of them in outside before the cold weather hits and I become a wussy girl and hibernate for the winter.  Don’t worry y’all… I won’t hibernate from exercising!  I just hate being out in the cold, snow, and ice. 

Today is another Insanity dvd day.  I will do that when I get home tonight. 

First, a big thank you to everyone who responded to my earlier blog post!  I probably should have waited to calm down a bit before writing my blog, but sometimes I am impulsive .  I try very hard to live my life in a productive and enlightened way.  But I’m human and sometimes my emotions get carried away.  It seems very apropos that when I went downstairs to get my workout in they were giving a free yoga class.  I decided to take the yoga class and re-center myself, and it worked very well.

People who read my blogs or go on my bodyspace page know that I really like motivational quotes.  They work!  Sometimes I have to remind myself to re-read some of my favorites that apply to certain situations.  Here are three of the ones that I love to refer to in situations like I had this morning…

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. 

-Mark Twain

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Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up. 

-Jesse Jackson

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People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. 

-Elizabeth Kubler Ross

I am really glad that the yoga class presented itself right when it was badly needed.  I think that is true of many situations… we are presented with opportunities all the time when we need them… the trick is to recognize the opportunity and seize it.    I will go after work today to get my weight-lifting done. 

Again, thank you for all of your support today!  It is one of the many reasons I like this site so much.  The awesome and wonderful people far, far outweigh the mean and petty people. 

Sorry people… rant session coming.  If you’re going to send me a PM insulting me, then please get your facts straight before you do so.  I don’t mind people asking questions, or not knowing the answer to something.  That is very different from insulting me about something that you know nothing about.  I will try to make this short and sweet (but knowing me, it won’t be).  Yesterday I responded to a bodyspace friend who was asking if anyone had ever had abdominoplasty (tummy tuck), and I responded that I had one seven years ago and gave her some information about it.  I have given several women and even one gentleman on this site advice on what to expect.  I’ve never made it a secret that I have had the procedure done.  And my scars are visible in my progress pictures if you look closely enough.  I gained 72 pounds in my first pregnancy and had an emergency c-section.  I lost all 72 pounds in less than six weeks after having my daughter.  Needless to say, I had a lot of excess skin on my abdomen afterwards that no amount of time, exercise, vitamins, etc., fixed.  I went on to have two more daughters (and gained substantially less weight with them).  When I had to have kidney surgery 7 years ago I asked my kidney surgeon if I could have the loose skin removed and my abs tighened (they had completely separated from each other by about 9 inches).  The surgeon didn’t have a problem with it as long as I found a cosmetic surgeon who was willling to perform the surgery at the same time.  I was able to find someone who would, and I had the procedures done at the same time. 

This was the information I gave to the person who asked about it and gave some general advice as to what to expect.  Then I get a PM from someone calling me a fraud.  Telling me that my "transformation" was a fake and that I was fooling people into thinking I had transformed myself in the gym, when I had actually gone under the knife to get my transformation.  I don’t like typing in all caps, but let me tell you, this next part is with an ALL CAP attitude.  Whoever the hell you are, you have no idea what you’re talking about.  Don’t you dare insult me by telling me I am a "fake" who hasn’t put in the work to achieve what I have.  Abdominoplasty does NOT give you a flat tummy, it does NOT give you abs, it does NOT make you lose any weight whatsoever.  All it does is remove excess skin… that’s it!  Pulling your abdominal muscles back together simply means that you can do sit ups.  When your abs are separated (diastasis) you can’t do sit ups because the muscles aren’t there, they’ve separated.  Dumb ass!  As a matter of fact, doctors will refuse to perform an abdominoplasty unless you have lost all of the weight and enough time has passed that you can show the skin won’t "bounce back" on its own.  My scars are there in my "before" pictures too.  My surgery was 7 years ago, and my "before" pictures are 7 months ago.  I still gain weight and have to lose weight just like everyone else.  By eating right and working my ass off!  So get your facts straight before hurling insults you dumb ass!

[deep breath in…. let it out slowly…. count to 10…. okay, count to 20…. breathe in… breathe out].  Okay, rant’s over.  I really hate being insulted by someone who is ignorant.

On to bodybuilding stuff… yesterday was a cardio day.  I did the Insanity plyo/cardio dvd.  That is one tough dvd!  I managed to get further along this time than last time, but I still have a LOT of improvement needed in order to get through the entire thing.  Yep, my endurance still sucks!

Today I will be working chest and back and something tells me I am going to have an awesome workout!   I will finish off the workout with 20 minutes of HIIT on the elliptical machine.

And one last thing… my "transformation" is by no way complete yet.  I’m just getting started!  This is a lifetime commitment, not a short term thing. 

Not a lot to report from the weekend.  Went out with a friend and ate too much "bad" food.  My problem is that I love to try new desserts.  Especially if it is a new restaurant.  So I ordered three desserts because I couldn’t make up my mind about which one I wated to eat.  I took one in a ‘to go’ box (the hubby and I shared that one when I got home), and the other two I shared with my friend.  But even with sharing I ended up eating 1 1/2 desserts.  But DAYUM were they good!

I also didn’t get too much of a workout in on Sunday.  I did sprint up and down the two levels of stairs in my house.  That was kind of fun.  I ran up each step as fast as I could, and then the next time I ran up every other step as fast as I could, and the third time I jumped up each step (like box jumps), the last set was jumping up every other step.  Not a great workout, but I was tired at the end.

This morning I did have a great workout.  Today was supposed to be chest/back, but my co-worker asked if we could do shoulders/arms instead.  I was able to increase the weights in almost every exercise, except for the straight arm shoulder raises (those always kill me).  I finished off the workout with 20 minutes of HIIT.  With the HIIT I actually did 30 seconds of HARD running followed by 90 seconds of recovery.  The first few rounds were okay, but after that it got really hard. 

Tonight will be my Insanity Plyo/Cardio dvd. 

Playing kickball yesterday was a lot of fun.  I wish more people from work had been able to attend, but enough people showed up that we were able to have our teams compete.  Not to brag… ah, who am I kiddin’… let the bragging commence!   My team won!  This makes three years in a row that the team I have been on has been the champion.  I wish I could say it was because of my natural athletic ability, my superhuman strength, my competitiveness… all right, my competitiveness is there .  But, truly I have been lucky to have people on my team each year who are very athletic and great players.  I’m not a great player, but I have a lot of enthusiasm.  And I always play my hardest and best. 

I really enjoy the camaraderie that is involved with teambuilding activities that my work does.  It gives me a chance to talk with people that I just don’t have time to during the week.  It let’s me put a face to a name of someone that I have never seen, but talk to a lot throughout the year.  And it also let’s me see a few people that I met the previous year and enjoyed talking to, but don’t see on a daily basis.  Plus I got my cardio for the day in! lol

This morning I worked legs.  And I really pushed myself this morning.  My legs are very, very wobbly now…. ah, what a great feeling!   I did manage to get the box jump-ups done correctly this time.  WOW, that is some intense cardio work all by itself!  Especially after doing walking lunges immediately before.  I also think that my quads are finally getting a little stronger.  I was able to get through the reps on the leg extension machine easier this time.  I am definitely hamstring dominate in my legs.  I have no problems doing moves that isolate the hammies.  Quad isolation moves kill me though. 

I hope everyone has an awesome weekend!

I know there will be those of you who won’t understand the depth of my unhappiness at this, but I’m thinking a lot of people will know exactly what I am feeling.

I got a call yesterday from the place where I get my hair done.  My stylist is no longer there!!!!!  They wouldn’t tell me where she went or what happened to make her leave, and I understand that in a way.  I know that I would travel anywhere within a 50 mile radius of wherever she went to.  And I’m sure that they don’t want to lose customers…. but I don’t care.  I go to that salon because I love my stylist!  We bond, we have girl talk, we gossip!  She knows my personality and how I like my hair.  She knows how much I like to change my look.  We have trained each other!  She has talked me out of a few looks that she knew wouldn’t match me, and I have given her fitness advice.  I was so upset last night I was almost in tears!  I know that may sound extreme, but it took me a looooooong time to find a stylist that I "clicked" with.  And now I have to start over.  

Even though I was upset and a tad depressed, I still managed to get my Insanity workout in.  And the hubby actually did this workout with me .  It was a brutal workout and my arms were sore from that mornings weight lifting session,  so all I can say is WOW!  I was completely wiped out in the end. 

I do, have a complaint about this particular dvd though.  Maybe it was because I was already cranky, but I don’t think so.  There is one girl on the dvd who just pissed me off.  She gets through the warm up and goes over to the side of the room to get a drink of water, but she SPITS ON THE FLOOR (before even drinking any water)!!  I was like, WTF?!  The workout is done on a gym/basketball floor with nice hardwood floors.  And she couldn’t even take the time to go spit in a trash can!  I am still dumbfounded over her rudeness. 

Then she proceeds to piss me off even more.  Shaun goes over to her at one point and asks her how she’s doing (like most instructors will do) and she says… "I feel like ****".  They bleep out the swearword, but you can tell what she says.  Everyone else responds with something positive.  Not her!  So now, I’m thinking this biyatch is not only rude, but crude too.  THEN, everytime they pan the camera on her and she has to stop to take a slight recovery you will see her pound the floor with her fist or slap it with an open palm like a two year old throwing a tantrum.  Ugggghh!  Can you tell I don’t like her attitude very much?!  

None of the other participants acts that way at all.  They are all very focused, positive, and take breaks when needed and get back to it.  Anyway, that is my gripe with that dvd.  But the actual workout is really hard and it pushes you to the extreme.

This morning I worked shoulders and arms (ouch), and tonight will be the Insanity Cardio Recovery disc.  Today after work I will be playing kickball (it’s a workplace teambuilding thing we do once a year), so I will get more cardio in for that. 

I like to think of myself as fairly intelligent.  I can speak about a variety of subjects with knowledge, I love to read a wide variety of books.  I love learning new things.  I like to think that I am both street and book smart.  And all of this is true until I sit down to help my kids with homework! 

They have completely changed the way they teach things (most notably math), yet they don’t tell the parents the "new" method.  So I’m sitting there trying to teach my youngest daughter (who’s in 5th grade) the way I was taught and she’s getting mad because that’s not how she has learned it, but she doesn’t know how to show me her way.  Very frustrating!  I’m lucky that the hubby almost always (99.9% of the time) helps with the math portion of homework, because I REALLY hate math!  It’s by far my weakest subject.  My daughter is working on fractions and square roots… YUCK!

But I’m usually extremely good with helping them on writing, english, reading, social studies, etc.  Except for last night apparently.  My daughter had to find the ‘Simple Subject’ and ‘Simple Predicate’ in two sheets of sentences.  I am drawing a complete blank as to what a ‘predicate’ is.  Sad to say, I actually had to go look it up on the computer.  After looking it up, I was yelling out "why didn’t you just say it was a verb!!!!".  I also looked up ’simple subject’ to make sure I had that one right.  Which, I did, but seriously, why not just say that it is a noun or pronoun?!  Talk about feeling stoopid .

Before starting on the homework with the kiddo’s, I played the Insanity dvd for today’s workout to see what to expect.  It didn’t take me long to realize that I shouldn’t do that workout before lifting weights.  There were lots of push-ups and dips and shoulder work in the dvd.  And today was a chest/back day (and my shoulders are still sore from yesterday’s Insanity dvd).  If I had a few hours between the workouts it wouldn’t be a big deal because I would have time to recover.  But I usually work out within 30 minutes of getting to work which would only give me an hour to recover.  So I decided to wait and do the Insanity dvd tonight.  Today’s workout was great.  I was stronger and had better endurance than last week.  Gotta love that improvement!