| |
|
SEPPIESUSAN's Recent Blog Entries
|
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Just said no to banana bread in the teachers room.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Just wanted to write and say I'm pretty sure today was my fastest, most hardcore elliptical workout ever. In 65 minutes (60 minutes of fastness plus 5 minutes of cooldown) I did 7.21 miles and 1,019 calories. Yay. This was the first time I've gone faster than 9-min miles in a few weeks. And the funny thing is I was in this horrible mood before the workout...pushing myself hard was excellent therapy!! My mood was back to normal afterwards.
Also wanted to just provide a Body Pump status update - this is totally for my own future reference (like when I'm rereading this post a year from now) and not to be at all entertaining.
For each track I put the following weights on each end of my bar:
Warmup: 1 medium + 1 small (I've heard there's never any need to increase warmup weight)
Squats: 2 big + 1 medium + 1 small (often heaviest weight in the studio - proud of myself! the small is a recent addition, but I'm already wondering about advancing to 3 big which I think would be equivalent to 2 big + 2 medium)
Chest: 1 big + 1 small (the small is a recent addition)
Back: 1 big + 1 small (I dabbled a few months ago in 1 big + 1 medium but it was a lot...should probably go back to it though because I think back weight should be more than chest weight)
Triceps: 1 medium + 1 small (this weight has been stable lately and is fine for me...when we stand for overheads I use 1 big)
Biceps: 1 medium (I used to use 1 medium + 1 small but I think my form is better with the lighter weight, and I think it works me even harder when my form is better!)
Lunges: 1 large + 1 medium (I did this for the first time yesterday - it was heavy!)
Shoulders: 3lb or 5lb dumbbells (I can never seem to make much progress with my shoulder weights - I feel like I'm working quite hard at 3lbs sometimes)
Random comments:
*I am obsessed with peanut butter frozen yogurt these days
*instant motivation: new workout clothes
*discovered a reeeeally good lunch place near the gym - amaaaaazing Greek salad with grilled tilapia! Had it for lunch yesterday and today!
*We're watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on DVD...funny
Okay, this is getting to be a not-so-quick one, so I'll wrap it up here. Happy Memorial Day all!
EDIT: OK, by popular demand, here's the peanut butter frozen yogurt info: I usually get the fat-free soft serve kind at JP Licks, but yesterday I went to a local non-chain ice cream place where they make it themselves using fat-free frozen yogurt and real peanut butter. Yummmmmmm.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
I guess no matter how long I am at this healthy lifestyle/weight management thing, I really can never say that I have it all figured out. Whenever I start to think I can just naturally make good choices all the time, even dabbling in snacky foods that are practically like drugs to me, I get a little overconfident and mess up. The desire to make poor eating choices lies within me, and I can be stronger than that urge for months at a time, but it's always there waiting for a vulnerable moment. Like I mentioned in my last blog, PMS is a vulnerable time for me, and like the comments suggested, being aware of that is a good first step. A good second step is to take proactive steps during those times to avoid problems, though what exactly those steps would be, I'm not sure. Maybe blogging more often?
One thing that can get my motivation going is seeing someone else start fresh. The raw enthusiasm of the novelty of their adventure inspires me. I have a friend who has talked a good talk about losing weight now for years, but last night she seemed more serious about it than she has in a long time. She only had one glass of white wine (usually has at least five drinks when we go out - and not low-cal ones), and after dinner she whipped out her iPhone to track her calories on MyFitnessPal! Anyone have any knowledge about this program? I got an email from the program this morning telling me that my friend wants me to join to track her progress...and it says it's free...but I'm already all set with SP and don't want another website sending me a bunch of emails all the time although I would love to track my friend's progress. ?? She's already lost five pounds but has about 80 to go to reach her goal weight. One funny thing is that I can completely forsee some of the problems she's going to face - like for example, she's aiming for 1,200 calories per day and a loss of two pounds per week, and I KNOW from experience that she's goigng to get desperately hungry at 1,200 calories per day and someday she will eat more than that and feel like a failure even though she'll really just need the extra calories to function. And I know that she's not going to lose 2 pounds per week like clockwork, and that if she gains weight some weeks that does NOT make her a failure, and that there is no race to get to the finish line. However, she doesn't want to hear this stuff, and I know that and I'm not going to push it on her. She's gotta figure it all out for herself, or it won't matter.
Another thing that motivates me is looking good on the beach. All of a sudden it feels like the middle of summer here in Boston - yesterday at one point my car's thermometer said it was 96 degrees. I went to Wollaston Beach for a run - had to cut it short because it was too hot and sunny, but still managed to get in a good enough workout. A bunch of people were hanging out on the beach, and a lot of them seemed to have two goals in mind - expose as much skin as possible, and get a tan. The tan thing doesn't really work for me - I had an uncle who died of melanoma - but man, I don't want to be chunky on the beach this summer! So I'm inspired right now. PMS is thankfully over - was a few days longer than I'd been expecting so I'm so relieved it's gone and I do suddenly feel more able to stay on track, whether it's just psychological or not I don't know. Plus it's just too darn hot to overeat!
Our annual trip to Wellfleet (Cape Cod - spectacular beaches) isn't until the end of summer this year. So I'm going to keep the thought of bikinis in mind alllllll summer. And if that means picturing bikinis on the donuts in the teachers room, Carilouie, then I'll do it - whatever it takes!!
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
My name is Susan and I am a binge eater.
Last time I wrote I hinted that I'd had flickers of thoughts about binge eating. Well, I've since given in and binged. I guess it's just an area in which I'm vulnerable, and I'm going to always have to be on the lookout for it. A few days of binge eating puts on the five pounds it's taken months to lose.
I'm going to blame this episode on PMS, which is, thank goodness, a temporary phenomenon and I will be back to myself ASAP - in fact, so far today (though it's only 9:30 A.M.) I'm feeling much less bingey, and I already ate all the carby stuff in the teachers room yesterday so there's nothing left for me to binge on today anyway, haha.
Reasons I will go right back to my healthy habits:
*I look much better when I follow healthy habits.
*Summer's coming.
*I'd rather be excited about fitness than about junk food.
*I want to continue to fit into my pants.
*I want my husband to stay proud of me.
How much easier would this whole weight management thing be if we weren't dealing with our hormones?? Lucky men, they don't know how good they have it. :P
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The other day someone commented on a blog post I wrote three years ago. I'm an old Sparker....I joined in 2006 and have been using the site in full force for the better part of the past 4.5 years. I feel like at this point I have figured out what works for me for the most part. It's been an extremely bumpy ride to get to this point, but I think I have it now. So now it just feels like I'm plugging along. There won't be much exciting healthy lifestyle news to write about, because I have a good routine now and keeping that routine going week after week does not generate much news. I go to Trader Joe's each weekend and buy my fruits and vegetables, milk and yogurt, almonds and tea, and ingredients for my batch-cooking recipes, which I then bring home to cook, separate into single-serving containers, and enter into Spark recipes to get the nutrition facts for each serving. I track my calories each day, with a lot of copying a meal from one day to another. I go to the gym or run outside almost every day, and I go to Body Pump Tuesdays, Thursdays, and once per weekend (I think I like the Sunday class better than the Saturday class at my new gym). I'm still losing very slowly, but even that will stop soon if it hasn't already, because I'm basically at a realistic, maintainable weight.
There will be a few ups and downs. This past Saturday I was not particularly careful about my eating, and even though I was physically extremely active all day I gained some weight. However, I was not in the least bit anxious about it, and I wouldn't even consider it "off track" really, because the term "off track" to me implies that I did something wrong. In a lifelong healthy lifestyle, there are going to be days like that and it's perfectly OK. I've since returned to my usual eating habits and just as I knew would happen, the temporary extra pounds have been slipping back off. (In all honesty I was a bit worried that a day of less careful eating might drag me into a spiral of unhealthiness like what has happened to me before, but I made sure to stick to my routine and just allow myself moderate extra snacks when I really needed them. There will be no more downward spirals into the doom of unhealthiness for me!)
There will be times when my routine gets disrupted or altered - like if/when we finally buy a house and/or have a baby - and when those times come I'm sure I'll need to do a lot more blogging to figure it all out. But for now things are mostly same old! That's not to say things are easy - of course there are times it sounds nice to slack off on a workout or overeat junky foods. But I keep on making good choices, beause a healthy lifestyle, for me, really is about plugging away at it week after week, never expecting sudden miracles, but knowing that the long-term effects are profound.
First Page
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
Last Page
|
|
Get An Email Alert Each Time SEPPIESUSAN Posts
|
|
And I like your reasons to regroup!
Member Comments About This Blog Post:
