HobbitGirl

Right now I can get about halfway up. My goal is to be able to do a full-on pull-up by the end of April. Realistic?

Eating bacon again has got to be one of the most enjoyable things about my quest to get fit. The saturated fat does make me nervous, so I eat it no more than once a week. Well done, nice & crispy. I tried the low-sodium version but it has 0 taste---I mean NONE---so returned to the "real" stuff.

True. There's already deadlifts in this porgram, but I could just do twic as many, or add weight.

We did tire flips today as part of an oh-so-fun "New Year's Resolution" workout. It actually was fun, but brutal fun. I was getting frustrated because even after months of working out, I'm still the last person to finish, by a long shot. I asked my trainer why the heck I'm still so slow and he kind of laughed and said it's because the weights I'm using are big relative to my size. Which helps I guess. Anyway...I like tire flips but I can't yet get the tire off the ground by myself. What's a good exercise to sub for these when I work out on my own?

Good morning and Happy New Year, First, the woot: I can now deadlift 45 pounds, which is half my body weight. I did 8 reps with the 45# BB the other day; I probably could have done more but felt like I was about to drop the bar and did not really want to risk dropping it on my feet. Second, the Thank You: I wrote out my list of resolutions this morning, complete with specific goals and a grading system. I learned that here, and I thank Steve and Staci and all of you for that. May the Force be with us all.

My trainer and I do his own version of this (obviously this is greatly modified for my Level 1, hobbit self): 50 tire jumps 50 pushups 50 TRX bicep curls 50 tire dips 50 up-downs 50 sit-ups (I do these on the stability ball as I can't get all the way up while on the ground yet unless someone holds my feet down) 50 lunges 50 KB swings (my favorite---it's good that he saved these for last), 20# KB I did this workout for the second time yesterday morning. My time was about 40 minutes. Did the KB swings all the way through without stopping, and I felt somewhat less ill & shaky at the end than I did the first time, which I interpret as progress.

There's something comforting about seeing that even a person who is clearly in amazing shape gets a little winded after 12 Burpees.

So, I've seen "DOMS" a lot around this site. As far as I can tell from Google, it's just a fancy term for muscle soreness that does not start immediately after working out. Is this correct? Also, what does it mean when you get non-delayed muscle soreness? Is this bad, good, or neutral?

This probably works the other way around....the deeper your squat, the better legs you have, thus the shorter the short you are comfortable wearing in public.

So, you can't like the book because other people do? Just read the book and avoid the series.

LIFE QUEST ACCOMPLISHED!!!! I passed both classes...B- in both. Again, this is considerably down from the 3.9 I had prior to this semester, but considering that I was more or less convinced I was going to flunk for most of the past 3 months, this is AWESOME! I just needed to really prioritize studying. This past weekend, my sister asked me to babysit...I always say Yes when she asks, because I love spending time with my nephews and niece, and because I like helping my sis and brother-in-law out. But this time I knew I had to say no to give myself time to study for my final exam, and so I did say no. Gods be praised! Now, off to the gym!

Thanks, everyone, for the input. I'm pretty much at my ideal weight; I've actually lost a few more pounds than I initially intended when I started exercising and dieting this summer. I'm 4'9" and I'm at 90 lbs and somewhere around 26% body fat. I don't think I've weighed 90 pounds since I was 11 years old. At this point, I'm happy to gain a few pounds back, provided they're muscle. By the way, does red wine have a high sugar content or not? My trainer says yes, the Internet says the sugar content of dry red wine is lower than white wine, which is great, but "lower sugar content than white wine" doesn't necessarily translate into "low sugar."

I haven't posted in a week! Mostly due to Internet problems: my cat chewed through the power cable to my router, thankfully without electrocuting herself. BUT, I called to get a new cable and was told that the old router was "out of date" and it was time to get a new router. I just got the new one set up tonight. They claim it's 3 times faster than my previous one. So far I haven't noticed *that* much of a difference but it's only been 10 minutes or so. So I have been meeting my goal of working out 4 days a week. I've only worked out twice this week, so I'll need to work out tomorrow and Sunday, and then I'm working out with my trainer on Monday. That's OK, though---my trainer was telling me he works out for an hour and a half, every day that he's at the gym, which is 5 days a week. He works like 12-15 hours a day--that kid barely ever sees the sunlight during the week. Sleep: Still struggling. Some nights I get in my 8.5 hours between lights out and lights on, other nights it's more like 7.5. I don't usually go below 7.5, so I guess that's OK, but still not where I want to be. Eating: Fairly solid so far, despite the onslaught of the Christmas eating season. I had a chocolate chip cookie on Sunday. Tuesday I was ver proud of myself---we had a potluck at work with an entire friggin' table of desserts and I didn't have one. Yesterday was the annual luncheon my hospital gives us, and I did let myself have a cupcake. So, that's 2 sweets in the space of 5 days. I have another potluck coming up on Sunday and I'm going to try to hold out on the sweets...although I have been thinking about just doing the 80/20 thing. Thinking of sneaking up to Eldora for some snowshoeing around Christmastime...after some severely cold weather, the temps are back to being pretty decent and I want to get outside and see the trees and the beautiful Colorado winter sky. Life quest: I am sooooo close to the end of the semester, I can taste it. I have one more final exam due online this weekend and that's IT until after MLK Day in January. On Wednesday night I had to give a group presentation....I was up there talking for something like 20 minutes---I'm not sure I've ever had to give a presentation that long before. It went OK; the professor asked us some hard questions that we couldn't answer, but that happened t o all of the groups. I definitely could have done better on that project. My next challenge is going to be to re-commit to school the way I've committed to my workouts, while not slacking off on my workouts, and still eating clean. if only studying could give an endorphin rush like deadlifts, I'd be all over it.

I find them to be sweet enough without brown sugar. haven't tried cinnamon, will have to do that next time.

It's time to up the sleep ante. The past couple of nights I have been *technically* meeting my sleep goal of 8 hours: lights out shortly before 10, lights on at 6, but based on how tired I am during the day, especially the afternoons, that's not really going to cut it. So I think my goal should be at least 10.5 hours between lights out and lights on. Also need to work on actually closing my eyes and going to sleep once lights are out, instead of lying in bed and thinking about random crap for at least a half hour.

As women, we have these random weight fluctuations from day to day that don't really have anything to do with what we're eating (although I have heard that it's good to limit salt intake during that time of the month). So, less frequent weight checks are probably the way to go. Ah, womanhood.

I never could quite get the hang of Thursdays.

Well, damn. I went to do my body fat assessment with my trainer tonight and the little electrical reader we've been using said 26.5%---only 0.2% down from the last reading about 1 month ago. My trainer said that once your body fat gets down to around 25 or 26%, the reader becomes a lot less accurate, and that we should do my measurements. I didn't really want to do that tonight, because I didn't want to take the time away from my workout. Maybe on Thursday. Tonight's workout was something my trainer calls The 50...not the Filthy 50 (madness that way lies), but similar in that you do 50 reps of each exercise before going on to the next one: 50 tire jumps 50 pushups - I did the first 20 with knees off of the floor, that's the most I've ever done in a row! Then I went to my knees for the remaining 50 50 TRX bicep curls 50 up-downs (just like a Burpee without the pushup) 50 situps (I did these on the stability ball in 2 sets of 25) 50 lunges 50 KB swings - 20# KB Sleep last night was better than the previous night...lights out 9:35, lights on 6:00. Some odd dreams but nothing like the fucked up nightmares of the previous night, thank goodness. Of course I'm bummed about the body fat thing...but I'm eating the best I can and I know I'm getting stronger, since I can do more and more pushups and my weights are getting heavier. So, things are OK.

Trans Siberian Orchestra?

Holy cow, I've got to get to sleep earlier tonight. Last night was not bad in terms of bedtime - lights out was 9:50, lights on 6:00. But I had the craziest, most vivid nightmares I've had in a long time, for what felt like ALL NIGHT LONG. I kept telling myself, you're dreaming, it's just a nightmare, but it was like I couldn't get myself to wake up and I started freaking out, like, what if this isn't a nightmare and I'm actually losing my mind? I finally woke up from all of that but it was not a very restful night. I worked out today but I was yawning almost throughout...so hopefully lights out by 9:30 tonight.

I'm a little bit stunned to report that I have actually lost 3 pounds since the last time I weighed myself, which was before Thanksgiving. My atttude towards Turkey Day was essentially the same as Mark's; I didn't quite give myself a "free pass," but I had the sweet potato casserole and a slice of pie for dessert and most likely ate too much and didn't worry about it one bit. My goal is to get to 25% body fat. I have not measured that since starting my challenge---at that point I was at 26.7%. We're doing my assessment this week and I'm not sure how that's going to come out. I've noticed my arms are definitely looking skinnier, and I think my abs are more pronounced than they used to be, but it's hard to tell. My life quest is to pass both of the classes i'm taking this semester. This one has been the biggest struggle. I have the worst habit of messing around on the Internet when I'm supposed to be studying---my schoolwork is mostly online so this is a constant temptation. To combat this, I've set a limit on myself: while studying, I can only check unrelated stuff once an hour, at quarter of the hour. We'll see how that goes!

My gym is a Bally's. There is a clause in the rules that talks about not wearing clothes that would hurt the club's image or whatever but beyond "no cut-off shirts" it doesn't really specify what that means. Anyway, it was totally fine. As for the CrossFit gyms, I've been working with a trainer who has experience with CrossFit haven't been to a real CF box/gym yet. I'm a little scared of two things: 1) death/injury and 2) that I would like it so much that I'd end up rationalizing the $100+ monthly membership fee.

Thanksgiving went about as well as a day devoted to gluttony can go for someone on a quest to improve her fitness: Exercise: Completed the 4 mile run/walk as planned...almost. I believe in listening to my body and after running the first 0.5 mile I received a clear message from my right knee and that message was "No distance running for you, girl." So I power-walked about 98% of the remaining 3.5 miles, but I went as fast as I could go and completed the whole 4 miles in about 70 minutes. Not my best time, but not horrible either. Thanksgiving dinner: I lifted my eating plan from SammyShark and from Steve's suggestions: fill up on turkey and fresh veggies in order to not overeat the less healthy options. When making my plan, I forgot that we wouldn't be serving ourselves: the person sitting closest to the veggies, or sweet potatoes, or whatever, serves each person and passes their plate back to them. This is how I ended up with maybe 1/2 cup of sweet potato casserole, 1/2 cup of stuffing, and maybe 1/4 cup of regular white mashed potatoes with bacon on my plate, in addition to turkey, my garlic green beans, and steamed yellow squash. I did still stick to my plan and ate the turkey and veggies first....but I did eat more of the sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and stuffing than I would have otherwise. The turkey, BTW, had been smoked outside on the charcoal grill by my brother-in-law and was OUTSTANDING. My green beans came out pretty well, too. I drank 1/2 glass of Merlot and plenty of water. I don't know what is up with me only wanting 1/2 glass of wine lately...when I was younger Thanksgiving would have been a 2-glass night at the very least. Growing up, I guess. Dessert was 1 slice of apple pie plus about 1/2 slice of the blueberry-peach cobbler that our friend made...it was home made, unlike the apple pie, and when someone bakes you a homemade dessert, you at least try it. It was all tasty but I know packed with sugar and carbs. So yesterday I did 3 mile walk (power-walking all the way) to my gym where I did essentially the same workout as Monday night: New" man-makers: DB push-up, row, mtn climbers x 10, then up and bicep curl to press - 10# Static squat w/L-lifts (5#) x 20 V-crunch with 10# DB x 20 Stability ball plank x 30 seconds Plyometric pushup (medicine ball 4# - couldn't find the 6 pounder) Standing lunges - knee all the way to floor and back up - 20 total Sumo squat, high bar - 25# Core - hands & knees, alternate arm and leg off floor, 5# DB Push press - 25# I was planning on resting from exercise today, but once I had my breakfast (bowl of oatmeal with strawberries and almond milk, plus one egg scrambled with a baby portobello mushroom, cooked in olive oil)...I just felt like I wanted to exercise. So I did the ABWW, using 10 Burpees as a warm-up, subbing stair jumps x 20 for the step-ups, and subbing man-makers with 10# DBs and mountain climbers for the chin-ups. I'm starting t really like those mountain climbers....I feel like each time I do a set I'm able to lift myself up higher off of the ground, and that is quite fun! The only part of my challenge that I am struggling with is my life quest (grad school)...speaking of which, back to studying now for me. Happy December, y'all. Skull crushers on bench - 10# DB Anyway,

Woot, congrats on making it through Thanksgiving! Sounds like you had a good time, too. It was a pretty good night for me; once I got around my family, what with my sister's 3 kids running around, the sadness went away and I didn't think about Whathisname once all night. Onwards and upwards...

Awesome. You learn something new every day around this place. :-)