Misugrrl

Challenge is over, here's my update (copy and pasted from the top reporting-in thread:) Misugrrl, reporting in. These were my 3 main goals for my quest: Drop roughly 10 lbs in this window of time. 10 lbs is totes doable in 6 weeks I think. Eat more proteins and healthy fats; trim carbs out of my diet even further. I have PCOS, so this is something I’ve been working on, albeit slowly, for the last few years. I’d like to see a measurable change in this particular aspect of my journey. Increase the weight levels of my current pathetic strength training. All heroes need muscles - even short adorable nerdgirls such as myself. How I did: I dropped 7 pounds. But more importantly, the range of poundage in my fluctuations has decreased. I used to have a range of roughly 5 to 8 pounds. Now, the range is much smaller - between half a pound, and 2 lbs. I'll give myself a B here. I'll be honest with food - I started out wonderfully, but as soon as life's stressors kicked into high gear, I did cave and had more carbs than I should have. I have been doing intermittent fasting, which has helped me tremendously and I feel is the main reason why I have been able to successfully drop 7 lbs, but I did not do as well as I had hoped. Though my food choices are better, and I have reduced the processed foods and have focused more on proteins, I could have done better. I'll give myself a C+ for this. Weight levels on my strength training - I am kicking butt here. Seriously, I am so very proud of myself. With the exception of last week (due to a death in the family), I've been strength training at least 3 times a week, and doing cardio 2 to 3 days a week, with 1 to 2 days of rest. I've increased the weights as well as the machines I use (thanks to my boyfriend who's done an amazing job being my personal trainer), and I am stronger. I feel so much stronger, and I plan on continuing this aspect of my journey. Not to toot my own horn, but here, I'm grading myself an A. Most importantly, life has thrown a ton of stuff at me. And I haven't fallen off the wagon. I have remained focused (tho I did wibble-wobble with the food, sorry) and haven't given up. I've learned that working out is cathartic, and strength training has been a huge stress reliever for me. It's been wonderful. I am seeing myself differently, and I think I have this challenge to thank. It's been wonderful. I cannot wait to start the next challenge, I have a couple of goals in mind already. I'm going to now go update my 6 week challenge thread.

Misugrrl, reporting in. These were my 3 main goals for my quest: Drop roughly 10 lbs in this window of time. 10 lbs is totes doable in 6 weeks I think. Eat more proteins and healthy fats; trim carbs out of my diet even further. I have PCOS, so this is something I’ve been working on, albeit slowly, for the last few years. I’d like to see a measurable change in this particular aspect of my journey. Increase the weight levels of my current pathetic strength training. All heroes need muscles - even short adorable nerdgirls such as myself. How I did: I dropped 7 pounds. But more importantly, the range of poundage in my fluctuations has decreased. I used to have a range of roughly 5 to 8 pounds. Now, the range is much smaller - between half a pound, and 2 lbs. I'll give myself a B here. I'll be honest with food - I started out wonderfully, but as soon as life's stressors kicked into high gear, I did cave and had more carbs than I should have. I have been doing intermittent fasting, which has helped me tremendously and I feel is the main reason why I have been able to successfully drop 7 lbs, but I did not do as well as I had hoped. Though my food choices are better, and I have reduced the processed foods and have focused more on proteins, I could have done better. I'll give myself a C+ for this. Weight levels on my strength training - I am kicking butt here. Seriously, I am so very proud of myself. With the exception of last week (due to a death in the family), I've been strength training at least 3 times a week, and doing cardio 2 to 3 days a week, with 1 to 2 days of rest. I've increased the weights as well as the machines I use (thanks to my boyfriend who's done an amazing job being my personal trainer), and I am stronger. I feel so much stronger, and I plan on continuing this aspect of my journey. Not to toot my own horn, but here, I'm grading myself an A. Most importantly, life has thrown a ton of stuff at me. And I haven't fallen off the wagon. I have remained focused (tho I did wibble-wobble with the food, sorry) and haven't given up. I've learned that working out is cathartic, and strength training has been a huge stress reliever for me. It's been wonderful. I am seeing myself differently, and I think I have this challenge to thank. It's been wonderful. I cannot wait to start the next challenge, I have a couple of goals in mind already. I'm going to now go update my 6 week challenge thread.

August 30th, and no clue what day of the challenge we're on. But it's the start of Labor Day weekend, so we're definitely nearing the end of my first challenge! The days continue to be hectic for me. Yesterday was so insane, with driving roughly 400 miles round trip and handling things at home, that by the time I got home and everyone was settled in, and I made dinner, I literally conked out. All I know is, it was around 7:30-ish, I was watching Big Bang Theory, it went on commercial break, I changed the channel to see what else was on, saw Iron Man 2 was just starting, so I hit RECORD on my DVR, put the remote down, and woke up at 4 am.... I don't know how the tv shut off, because it was off at 4am (maybe a built in sleep timer I had no idea existed? or gnomes....). Needless to say, yesterday was a no-gym-I'm-taking-a-rest-day. I've been progressing nicely, however. Yesterday was actually the first day of the week I skipped the gym for some much-needed rest. I've shifted my workouts from mostly-cardio to now mostly-strength training. When I do cardio, I keep it to HIIT at first, and then freeform for the duration of whatever energy I have that day. On Wednesday, I was able to arm-curl 40 lbs for the first time, and it felt relatively good. The highest I'd been able to go was 35, and it was a struggle. I've also pushed myself up to 60 lbs on the chest press machine, and I'm at 110 on the lateral pulldown. My legs continue to get stronger, and I'm able to leg press 170 lbs, leg ext 90, and calf ext up to 140 lbs. My back and abdominals are also getting stronger - on the ab machine, I'm up to 110 lbs and the back extension machine I believe I hit 110 lbs. My goal for the weekend workout with my boyfriend is to bump up those numbers, even if just by 5, but bump them up. The weekend workouts usually set the tone for my daily goals the rest of the week when I workout alone. I'm also thinking of bumping up the reps on my heaviest sets from 5 reps to 8. Most of the exercises I'm barely hanging on by the 5th one, but others I feel I can do more but hold back because I'm trying to keep all my sets the same number of reps (OCD like that). But perhaps its time to bump them up to 8 all around. Weight-wise, I'm 1 lbs away from hitting 90 lbs gone, in total, over the course of 3 years. For this particular challenge, I'm 3 lbs away from the goal I had set out for of 10 lbs. I think we've got 1 week left for this challenge, the official end day being September 7th I think? I think in the 8 or 9 days I've got left, I might be able to eliminate these last 3 lbs, to reach my goal. Every other goal I set out for myself, I feel I've done amazing progression towards. I am stronger, my body is getting more toned. I've dropped 7 of the 10 lbs I had set out to lose. Food is still a bit iffy for me, but the intermittent fasting has helped tremendously with that. On the days I am just hungry and feel I need the energy, I eat some breakfast and a light lunch, and its no big deal. Dinner is usually pretty moderate, but when I have my days where I could eat a baby cow, I'll eat more at dinner time and it's no big deal. I've been finding that lately, the days I feel I can eat the world are the days after a particularly hard strength training session, so I think I'm on the right track. I'm getting results People are noticing the differences since I started weight training. I'm liking myself more (but not because of how I look, because I'm still having trouble seeing the changes others are seeing). Heck, I'm even reading 2 books simultaneously ! Sure its taking a while to read them, but hey, I'm reading I've got my workout notes and I've got them uploaded to link from here, but I think I'll just make one post with all of them linked, just for reporting purposes. And I'll do that some other time. I had breakfast today, which was a small bowl of some corn flakes and a bit of milk, while I sipped my coffee. Lunch is yet to be determined, but I'm thinking some oatmeal. Dinner, I haven't yet decided. I'll see how I feel, because I saw this amazing bean quesadilla recipe yesterday that looked so damned easy, that I'm thinking it might be mexican night hehe Ok that's it for now. I don't think I'll post again, so to whomever is reading this - have a wonderful and safe Labor Day weekend!

DAY (insert whatever day of the challenge today is, I seriously have lost track), or I'll just call it August 27th! What a week. Seriously. WHAT A WEEK. Things have been stressful at home, but going really well in others. So things are all still in shift, but I've been sticking to my guns on this challenge, which is getting easier and easier. Why? Because I'm seeing results. Yes yes, I'm seeing results. I've got my workout logs written down, but I'll have to upload them later. I'm progressing nicely on my strength training, and am proud of how much I can do. I am still relatively weak with my upper body, but my legs are hella strong. Seriously I could probably kick down a door and tear the frame off the walls, I think. I've been able to increase the weights on my lower body by 5 and 10 lbs, and I'm seeing lots of progress. My thighs are looking more toned, though the inner thighs are still the stuff of nightmares. But my calves are looking fan-freaking-tastic, and I'm proud to say I'm beating some guys on that calf extension machine Yesterday's max weight? 4 sets of 10 at 140 lbs. Yeah buddy. It wasn't easy, but I did them, and that's all that counts. I've also been doing super good on the whole not-weighing-myself-daily, and I am proud to say my anxiety on the weight loss has lessened. Result? I'm losing weight again! lol Funny how that works? I hopped on the scale this morning to a brand new all-time-low! I won't say what the weight is, but I'm now to 89 lbs lost! 1 more lb to 90, and I'm hoping to see that next time I weigh in, which will be next week. I'm going to continue doing intermittent fasting, which has been great, and I'm really enjoying foods and my 1 cheat meal of the week. Very low anxiety with that. I feel I've made a lot of progress there. Now, this week, because of the craziness of my schedule and my own stress, I didn't work out every day, but when I did work out, I concentrated on strength training. Now I'm starting to wonder if going to the gym 6 days a week is something I should reconsider? Last week, I think I took 2 days off. I'll have to go back through my notes, but I'm pretty sure it was 2 days off. I've not been doing as much cardio, either. I'm wondering if 3 days of cardio is too much? I do miss it though. I think for this week, I'll continue doing the cardio, at a HIIT pace for about 25 minutes and then free form for the rest of the time (whatever I feel like), and see how that goes. My goals aren't any 1 specific thing - I want to lose weight, of course, but I also want to get stronger, get lean, get toned and see toned muscles, and I also want to increase my endurance. I want to start participating in 5k walks and hopefully someday be able to slow jog or even RUN them. To be able to do that, I need to increase my endurance. HIIT on the elliptical has been great for that, I feel the difference, and I can see the difference with the heart rate monitor. Maybe for Christmas, I'll treat myself to a Polar heartrate monitor watch thingie. Maybe. I haven't decided yet, because its a toss up between that and a kindle fire HD Ok, that's it for now. I'll update with pics of my notes at some point.

I have no idea what day of the challenge today is. This week has been *insane*. IN-FREAKING-SANE. So, I'm going to keep it short and sweet. No workout the 19th. Yes workout the 20th. No workout the 21st. Yes workout the 22nd (yesterday). Not sure about today. Food has been not-totally-on-point, but not terribly bad either. It's been a really rough week. Here are my notes from the 20th and 22nd. I think I'm going to focus more on strength training, and I'll throw in cardio randomly when I have energy. Things are in flux for me again. Lots of big changes occurring, some not so good, others awesome. I'm doing the best I can to stay positive and remain cheerful as life does what it does, and not let it affect my workouts or eating. I will retrain myself to not take it out on my health when stuff goes wibbly-wobbly.

*big hug* Its ok, handsome. Next week, you'll kick ass.

I understand where you are coming from, as I suffer from lower back pain because of an injury and subsequent surgery, and to this day have nerve damage. I do have days that are better than others, but when the pain is bad, and the nerve pain wraps around both hips and shoots down my right leg (which as a result, is significantly weaker than my left leg, due to the injury and subsequent nerve damage), it is hard to work through it. I will modify my workouts on days where the pain is bad. For example, I'll do my cardio on the recumbent versus the elliptical or treadmill, so that I can remain seated and give my lower back the break. On strength training days, I won't do any exercises that require me to bend forward and lift anything heavy. I find ways of modifying what I'm doing in order to continue my workouts, because I believe that as long as I'm moving and doing something, I *am* progressing. Maybe not at the pace I'd like, but I am progressing nevertheless. For your knees, have you thought about gardening knee pads? I know it sounds crazy, but they sell knee pads that are nicely padded for gardening. And they're super cheap: http://www.amazon.com/Fiskars-9430-Contoured-Fit-Knee-Pads/dp/B003NMZQYW/ref=zg_bs_3480679011_5 I don't think I fully understand the issue with your palms, but would these gloves help? http://www.amazon.com/ProFlex-910-Impact-Glove-Support/dp/B000H8713O/ref=sr_1_65?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1376868124&sr=1-65&keywords=palm+pads Sometimes issues with our palms are because of our wrists - the nerves will make us feel pain in one area, when the issue really is another, and often, it is the wrists (the joint). These gloves have good wrist support, and the palms seem nicely padded. Don't be discouraged. You're moving. You're trying. And you are progressing. Just find a way to work around your own personal challenges.

And "Breakfast Club" ... And yes, the meal was delicious, if I do say so myself, teehee

Days 19 and 20 ended up being rest days as well. Day 19 (Friday), I had planned a special date with a picnic at the movies in the park event where we live. However, the rain decided to spoil that. No matter, had an awesome picnic in the living room! Food was good, but no workout. Day 20 (Saturday), was a very rough day for me. Started the day out around 430 in the morning, awakened by a raging migraine. I finally quit trying to sleep and couldn't lay down, as laying down only made the pain worse. It was a very slow morning, with some coffee which helped some, and 2 exedrine for migraine tablets (which always leave me with a slight speech impediment). I had an event later on in the morning, from 11 to 3, and stopped at a McD's to eat a steak and egg sandwich. WHY this sounded like a good idea at the time, I do not know, because immediately after, it became crystal that it most certainly was NOT a good idea, at all. At the event, I ate half a veggie wrap, which settled my tummy a bit. I managed to get back to my guy's apartment afterwards, stripped off my dress, put on my pj's, and took a good 2 hour nap. Woke up feeling semi-ok, enough to try to eat. Ate some cheese and crackers and grapes, and a half my gorgonzola/peaches tartlet I had made the evening before (part of our picnic in the living room), and felt much better. Drank some water, snuggled, and by 9:30pm was back in bed, passed out asleep. No gym. Last week was rough. Too many off days from the gym. Food was all over the place. I am dreading weighing in tomorrow. I'm thinking I may just not weigh in. Not really ready to face that. If I had to give the week a grade, I'd give it a D. Today is Sunday, day 21 of the challenge, and the beginning of the 3rd week. Officially halfway through the challenge. Up until last week, I was feeling pretty good. This challenge can still be salvaged, I think, and I plan on doing just that. Today is my sister's birthday, so the family and I had lunch at a local buffet. I kept to protein-rich foods. Avoided the pastas and only had a few bites of mashed potato. The bulk of my food was chicken breast and small piece of steak cooked medium. Desert, I have to admit, I cheated a little. Had a cupcake with no frosting (it was gross) and 2 strawberries covered in dark chocolate. DIVINE. That was divine. I also took a few bites from my sister's cotton candy thing that always reminds me of Marge Simpson's beehive whenever I see it. It was tasty as well, but I couldn't really eat much because the sugar was just intense. Now I'm home, letting myself digest a bit before heading out to the gym. I'd like to get a good hour of elliptical HIIT training if I can. I'll see how I do, I've been out of the gym since Thursday. I'm a bit worried I'll be super out of training just for missing 2 days. I've read it doesn't take much off time to slip back into bad habits, and I don't want that crap to happen to me. I need to drink more water, I feel very thirsty. I think its still residual from the migraine from yesterday. While at lunch, I popped 2 more exedrine for migraine pills, as I can feel the migraine threatening its return. In a few minutes, I'll be heading out to work out. I'd like to get my workout in before the pain hits. This week will be better. I plan on making up for the poor week I had last week. No plans for dinner tonight, lunch was huge. I'll have a protein shake after my workout, and perhaps make some tea later tonight before bed. I will definitely focus on more water today. That's it for now. I'll edit this later to reflect whatever workout I decide to do when I get to the gym. Edit: Worked out 55 minutes today. 30 minutes of HIIT on the elliptical, on levels 4 and 5. Did roughly 15 minutes of various speeds (anywhere from 3.5 to 4.5) on level 8, just kinda freeforming it, and then the last 10 minutes I did a steady moderate pace (about 3.5 spd) on levels 4, then 3 to cooldown. Burned about 550 calories in 55 minutes. Was a little bit hard, but nothing out of the ordinary. I was relieved to find I hadn't lost any progress from missing 3 days

Day 18 wrapped up with lots of food. I just had to eat, and ended up eating a hearty salad, chock full of red beans, chick peas, ham and other goodies. Lots of fuel. I needed it because today I did strength training. Here are my notes: Not sure about dinner. When I got home from the gym, I had a small banana and not-a-quite-full-protein shake. I'm pretty tired. I feel I worked out kinda hard. I'm a bit sore already. Good end to the day.

I am really low on energy today. I think its because of IF and how I may not be implementing it correctly. I had a naughty breakfast in the hopes it would help boost my energy (it has yay) but I feel I'll need more. I plan to strength train today, and I know I don't have enough energy to get in a good workout. I was wondering of anyone had any suggestions for an energy-packing lunch? I was thinking cottage cheese mixed with a bit of my protein powder, and a whole peach, sliced up. To me, that sounds like a wonderful idea, but I need to make sure it gives me the energy I need because I fail at intermittent fasting, hehe. Editted to add that I decided to go ahead and have a big salad, loaded up with red beans and chick peas and other stuffz. I feel awesome. I'll have a great workout

Don't beat yourself up. The first step to change is being mindful of your habits. Lasting change requires baby steps. You might find skipping just 1 meal a day works out for you. I started fasting (which I didn't even know this was a 'thing' - it is something I just started doing on my own a few years back) by simply not eating lunch, and having small things instead, like a yogurt, or a milk and piece of fruit. I'm not really one to eat breakfast usually, so a typical day for me (since I was a child) doesn't normally include breakfast, unless I wake up super freaking hungry (as I did today). You're doing awesome. Baby steps is the ticket, and it will become easier

Day 17 = rest day. Food was about the same, engaged in intermittent fasting. I was an angel. I was being really good, until this morning.... DAY 18 !!!! So. Confession. I just inhaled a sausage egg and cheese mcmuffin from McDonald's. AND I am snarfing down the hashbrown as I type this. BUT LET ME EXPLAIN!!! I woke up this morning, kinda sorta hungry. But feeling super weak. I even told my guy, I don't feel I have the energy to strength train later. On the drive to work, I started getting really hungry. As I was pulling off the highway onto the road my office is on, I made the decision to get breakfast. Of all the things I WANTED to order, I feel I was ....ok.... with the choice I made. Lunch, I plan on being much better. I just had to get something in me. I am feeling much better now, like my battery is charging. I'm not sure yet what I will have for lunch - I'm thinking I might hit the supermarket and pick up a small tub of cottage cheese and slice up my peach into it. That will somewhat make up for breakfast, and the cottage cheese should help boost my energy. Before I hit the gym, I'll also make a small protein shake with almond milk (gross) and my protein mix. I'm so glad I take pics of my strength training notes, because I left my little notebook at home. I'll have to find some notepad here at the office and make my notes of what I plan to do, and then do it. I'll post the photo once the workout is complete. All in all, I think I'm doing pretty well. Today's minor slip up with breakfast is just that - minor. Not a big deal. And I'll be strength training later, hopefully with lots of energy, so it will all work out. I think I'm on track with the physical portions of my challenge, a bit iffy with the food parts, and I do acknowledge the mental/emotional parts are a serious work in progress. Having my coffee right now and trying to get my day started here at the office, so that's it for now.