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SEPPIESUSAN's Recent Blog Entries
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Sunday, February 26, 2012
What a disaster Body Pump was this morning - or, at least, the first 10 minutes of it. (The rest was OK.)
First, I left a little too late and seemed to be behind slow drivers and hitting red lights the whole way.
Second, when I arrived, there was no gym staff available at the front desk and I could see in the studio that the class had ALREADY STARTED - usually the instructors give at least a couple minutes at the beginning to give people time to set up but not this time - so I ran over and got into the studio.
Third, I immediately realized there was almost no available space for me to set up. But I started to weave through the crowds to get my equipment.
Fourth, the guy teaching was that jerk I mentioned a few weeks ago...he is apparently going to be doing the Sunday teaching for the near future, and that's typically the only day I can go. :( As I was hussling to get set up, he started harrassing me about my ticket. I belong to Work Out World and they require tickets for classes because only Platinum members can take classes, so the tickets ensure that the lower-class citizen members aren't illegally sneaking into classes. However, most instructors forget to collect the tickets, and most of them recognize their regulars and don't have to worry about whether we're Platinum members or not. Well, this guy showed no recognition of me. He wouldn't let me stay in the studio until I came back with a ticket! So I went and grabbed one (the guy at the desk handed me one without any words exchanged - this scenario must have happened before), and then went in and got my stuff. It takes a few minutes to set up for a Body Pump class and by the time I was set up the warmup track was over. While I was getting my weights I thought I heard a woman whisper something about pulling up my pants but that concept didn't register in my head until I was already starting in on my squats and suddenly realized that my "whale tail" was sticking out and showing to the entire room behind me! (and I was in the front of the room - the only place there was space). With two heavy plates, one medium, and one light on each side I stopped and tried to adjust my top, pants, and underwear, but the embarrassment damage had been done. UGH.
Anyway, after that things kind of settled in, except the jerk instructor spent the entire class making negative comments about how people weren't using enough weight, people weren't using good form, people should vary their workouts and try other things, blah blah. A few weeks ago I commented that he says this stuff because he's just trying to help, but at this point I just think he likes to be negative. And he's the fitness director of the gym, so it's not even like I can complain to the fitness director because that's him! And nobody else who works there on a daily basis seems to have much of a clue about anything. OK, now I'm being negative, but I've often asked questions at the front desk and not been able to get answers. Oh well, you get what you pay for, and WOW is cheap.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Just a quick one while I finish breakfast. In a few minutes I'm off to Body Pump, and then I'm meeting my mom for lunch at a little bakery in Brookline Village. I can't believe it's the last day of February vacation already!
Yesterday I just couldn't wait to try that darn coconut milk, so I made up another pot of coffee. I don't know if it was the extra coffee (though I makeonly two cups per pot and it's not that uncommon for me to make two pots on the weekends), the coconut milk, or PMS, but I was NOT feeling very good yesterday and spent most of the day in bed. I popped two Tylenol to get rid of the cramps. I assumed it was the very end of PMS, but..well..now I know it wasn't if you know what I mean, so I don't know. I'm giving the coconut milk a second try this morning, and if I cramp up again I will assume that's the culprit (I hope not). I have read that the saturated fat in coconut milk isn't bad for you, but still seeing that each serving has 5 grams of fat and that all of this fat is saturated freaks me out a little. Plus it tastes different from the soy milk I am used to, and change is hard. :)
Didn't go to the gym yesterday and appetite was minimal...I only had 1,860 calories which sounds like a ton to most normal people but that's super low for me.
Oh, here's a stupid little vent I've been meaning to write about for a while... does anyone here ever make "Chef Meg" recipes from Spark recipes? I do often, because I figure the chef recipes might be better than the ones that random Sparkers post. Well, a few weeks ago I made Chef Meg's Slow Cooker Spanish Chicken and thought it was OK. So, I went back to the recipe and rated it as "OK," which is actually one of the rating choices, and posted my comments about why I thought so (didn't particularly like the peas in it, the flavor was meh, etc.). At the time my rating was the only one, so the average rating was a 2 of 5 (2=OK). And then I somehow realized that they deleted my comment! Since then other people have rated it as a 5 of 5 and those comments were saved, but mine was not. And even comments that really say almost nothing were saved, when my comment had specific feedback. Is someone too insecure to allow a Spark employee's recipe to have an OK rating? OK isn't BAD, it's just OK! And like I said, this is a stupid gripe, but I wanted to share.
Have a great Sunday everyone!
Saturday, February 25, 2012
On February 18, 2012 I decided to start a plan/diet/challenge to myself/whatever with one rule: stick with 2,400 calories or less per day. I decided it would be a six-week challenge so that the last day would coincide with my husband's 30th birthday, when we're having a party to show off all the work on our new house, and also when we're going to start TTC!
How have I done so far? Here are the stats!
Start weight (2/18/12): 170.0
End of Week 1 weight (2/25/12): 166.8
Loss: 3.2 lbs
Notes about weight loss:
*For a couple of weeks before I started this plan, my weight was more often than not hovering ABOVE the 170 mark, up to as much as 172.something, so even my Day 1 weight was a bit of a drop.
*Abbreviation fun! TMI, but TOM is due to start just about any second now, so I'm not sure how PMS affected Week 1.
*Even over the course of just one week, my weight loss was inconsistent: I'd see my weight stay the same or rise a little for a few days, then drop some.
Calorie report:
My self-selected calorie range is 2,050-2,400. (In order to get SP to give me that calorie range I had to play around with my weight loss goal and amount of exercise info.)
During Week 1 my daily calorie intake ranged from 2,015-2,394. The only day I was out of range was the 2,015 day. I'd give my average daily calorie intake but the SP report automatically selects the days to do the average and they don't match up with the days I've been doing this, and I don't feel like calculating it myself. Eyeballing it, I'd say my average was about 2,150.
Notes about calories:
*I was probably underestimating my calories most days. I admit I wasn't measuring and weighing everything.
*However, seeing weight loss while eating around 2,150 calories per day is consistent with my previous weight loss attempts.
*The only time of day I was really hungry tended to be at night after dinner. I was rarely close to the top of my range and could have added an extra tiny snack at the end of the day (a piece of fruit for example), but usually I just watched a DVD or read a book in bed and dealt with it. :)
Other:
I exercised every day except Thursday, and on Thursday I was working on the house and doing yardwork (it was warm enough for yardwork in February!!) so that was kind of like exercise. I did one muscle conditioning class, one Body Pump class, and one session of strength training on my own. I used the stair climber machine, took a Kick class, and did a tiny bit of running outside and on the treadmill which bothered my left knee. :( I will be thrilled if after six weeks I'm light enough to run without bothering my knee!!!
Final thought - after watching Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead yesterday I decided to add some vegetables to my breakfast smoothie this morning. I threw in a bit of a frozen broccoli/cauliflower/carrot combo and prayed that I wouldn't be able to taste it. Well...fail basically...I can taste it. I also didn't use a banana which I usually do, so maybe a banana would have helped to mask the vegetable taste. My smoothies are usually so yummy and this one is tolerable but NOT yummy. I should probably use a bit of spinach in the future because I've had luck not tasting spinach in smoothies, but my issue is that the green of the spinach adn the red of the berries makes the smoothie an unappealing brown!
Also, I always use unsweetened soy milk in my coffee, but I've heard conflicting info about whether soy is good for you, so yesterday on our monthly trek to Trader Joe's (we don't live that close anymore) I decided to try unsweetened coconut milk. It's half the calories! I haven't tried it yet (I had an open container of soy milk this morning so wanted to use that up), but I'm looking forward to trying the coconut milk and blogging my review of it. :)
Friday, February 24, 2012
Hubs and I just watched the documentary Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. It was well done and inspiring! My only complaint is that it sometimes came off as a big infomercial for juicing machines. Oh, and that it doesn't really seem like a juice "fast" is a balanced diet. Even if you add in beans and nuts, are you really going to get enough calcium? I don't know...maybe...plenty of people go dairy free, just not me. Anyway, I'm not going to go on a juice fast, but I am inspired to stick with mostly just fruits and vegetables, and maybe I'll even add vegetables to my breakfast smoothies.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
4 Fitness Tests You Can Do at Home:
www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness
_articles.asp?id=1112
1. Pushup Test: 32 pushups in one minute ("good" range for women aged 30-39), however, my form sucked. It was hard work!
www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness
_articles.asp?id=1113
2. Crunch Test: 58 crunches in one minute (above "excellent" for age of less than 35 years), however, you were supposed to measure out six inches for your fingertips to reach and I didn't do that, so I guess that's major cheating. Oh well.
www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness
_articles.asp?id=1114
(If I do the other tests I'll add to this blog, but I probably won't because I don't have a metronome or a 12-inch step.)
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