Progress

I'm about six weeks into the 30 day shred. I will admit that I have not been doing it every day because my knee and I do not agree about doing it every day. But I've still managed to make progress. I'm down 3 pounds. Which I'm happy with, it puts me back into a healthy BMI range. Still two more pounds to go there. And, I've lost 14.5 inches. And a good chunk of that has come off of my waist which apparently is a good thing according to Dr. Oz. (I DVR Oprah.) Apparently the measurement around your belly button should be less than half your height. I have about three inches to go there. But I'm much closer than the original 7.5 inches that I was trying to lose there. I'm also starting to get to the point where I'm between sizes. It doesn't make a ton of sense to me - but I bought a pair of jeans yesterday and they're almost too big. So I'm probably going to need to get them altered. Or try to shrink them in the dryer. I think I'd rather get them altered as option B doesn't always end well.

And I tried sushi for the first time last night. I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. It was there. It's one of those things that if people say, "We're going for sushi, do you want to come?" I'll go, but I'm probably not going to get it to go on my own. Our waiter was hilarious and the mai-tai martinis were great.

Lent 2010

So Lent starts tomorrow.  I have never claimed to be a "good Catholic," nor will I be winning any awards for my churchgoing habits anytime soon. But every year I give something up for Lent. Last year I gave up chocolate. If you know me well, you'd know that chocolate used to be a food group for me. I survived the entire Lent without chocolate, even during Barstool Open when everyone returned rom the bar to Eric's house and was chomping down on Girl Scout cookies - I ate a few Lemonade cookies. These are kind of gross, by the way. And I like lemon flavored things - well I like lemons. But nowadays, I don't keep a constant stash of chocolate candy in my house, which is good.

Which brings me to Lent 2010. What am I giving up this year? Coffee, lattes and all associated drinks. Yup. I know the first few days will be hell. The caffiene headaches are never fun, but I figure I'll do what I did when I gave up drinking pop four and a half years ago, replace it with water. Luckily, when I was drinking pop it was some insane amount like 50 ounces a day. I drink 16 ounces of coffee related beverages a day. Much easier to replace with water. Thank goodness since I live in my car.

One Week...

So it's been one week since I started the 30 Day. Thanks to Velo's fantastic tip - I modified my push ups, and am now using the steps. This is helping my knee immensly. As far as weight loss, I'm only down half a pound which I'm okay with. And you might be thinking, why am I not disappointed but only losing half a pound? Two reasons. A) I lost 45 pounds 4 years ago. I'm still down 40 pounds, so it's not like when I've started a new habit in the past and the first week, I lose a ton of water weight, there's no water weight to dump. And B) I've lost a combined 3.5 inches across the different areas of my body. Not too shabby. I'm eating better, have more energy and feeling better. This is definitely helping out with my stress a bit too. I've been pretty stressed lately.

30 Day Shred - Day 3 check in

I've completed three days of the 30 day shred and I'm finally starting to feel like I might actually be able to survive. The hardest part for me now is the push ups. I don't do the "real" push ups. I do what you would consider to be the "girl" push ups, which are hard on my knees. Minus the part where I'm sore as all get out - especially my thighs, I feel that I have more energy. I'm not sure that makes any sense. I wake up in the more in pain, but once I get moving I'm fine, I'm just attributing this to age. :) We'll see how I'm doing after a week of this stuff.

30 Day Shred - Day 1

I had a pretty productive weekend - worked on reorganizing my home office, which is my work space. Tossed a lot of stuff. A LOT. Also got rid of my table and chairs, which was pure profit, since they were given to me by my friend Kristin, a little over six years ago.

Now, I didn't state this as a New Year's Resolution, but I'm trying to lose 10 pounds and also basically get in better shape. I'd like to lose more inches than anything. If I lose 3 pounds, I'm actually in a "healthy" BMI for my weight, but a lot of it is not muscle. As much as I'd love to join a gym and get coached/yelled at by a personal trainer, that's just not feasible right now. Plus my schedule isn't condusive to a trainer since I travel a lot. What to do, what to do? I'd heard from various people about Jillian Michael 30 Day Shred. So I headed to Amazon, and read some additional reviews, which were mostly favorable.

First of all, the last time I worked out was, um....this summer I walked a couple miles one Saturday. I do a lot of stairs, but I think my body has adapted to my previous third floor apartment and the fact that I now have a three story townhouse. Needless to say, I'm an out of shape person, who isn't that overweight. The only problem that I foresee is that my medication has decreased my sweating. You might think that's awesome, it makes you overheated.

So I sat down to watch the DVD first. There are three levels, and it's recommended that you start with level 1, which is 20 minutes. After a warm up, Jillian and her two pals, go back and forth between strength training, cardio, abs and repeat twice. It looked easy enough when I was watching it. Those of you that work out would probably zip right through level one with no problems. The strength part was no problem. I looked forward to those segments. It's almost like a break, since there are no breaks. Cardio started off easy, but again, I'm out of shape. I wanted to die. But I did it, I did the whole 20 minutes. I'm hoping that by this time next week, I won't want to die by the time the 20 minutes is up.

Reality Check

So over the weekend, one of my friends that I've known since 1st grade posted a photo trip down memory lane. There's some superswell pictures of me at age eight if you're interested on FB. She also posted some photos from our junior prom. And as I looked at the pictures, I realized just how out of shape and lazy I'd gotten with my workout regime since high school. I only weigh about 10 - 15 pounds more than I did in the photo and I'm only one dress size larger. The difference maker: in high school I was playing sports or working out five to six days a week, probably almost fifty weeks out of the year. Including camps and sports like track that I did just to keep in shape in the off (basketball and volleyball) season.

I make the lame-o excuse that right now, I just don't have time to work out, because I work too much. I put in around 50 plus hours a week of work, but seriously, it's not like I was sitting at home knitting in my free time in high school. I was pretty active in high school activities and since we lived 17 miles from the school it took an eternity to get there and back. My parents would occassionally ask me who I was when I walked in the door. So now I'm hoping that I can just convince my mom to come over every week and make all my meals for me because while I enjoy cooking, that's my other major timesuck. Chances that she's going to make the cross Iowa trek for me - not good. Maybe when she retires in the January.

One of my birthday gifts to me, was a sweet pair of running shoes. I just need start USING them. In the nice neighborhoods by my house. I'm not going to join a gym until after I buy a house, since I don't want to be driving across town to a gym.

I did realize that I hope I never have an awesome updo like I did in 1996 ever again. It was huge. (I'm wondering if there were any animals hiding in there.) And lots of curly trendil thingys. My hair for my senior prom was much better. I looked kinda like the "Pantene girl." Which probably makes no sense and I don't own a scanner.