Insanity - Week 3, Day 2

Hey Folks! Last night's workout was a killer! I accidentally did the Plyometric Cardio Circuit Workout again for the 2nd day in a row. I put the wrong disc in and by the time I realized it, I was too far into it to stop and do something else.

All in all it went well.Today is the 2nd day of the 3rd week of my journey through Insanity and I'm feeling pretty good. The sweat is still dripping during the workouts so my body is definitely not getting used to it yet. However, I am finding that I can do more and more without falling out on the floor in pain or stopping for water breaks. Nevertheless, I still stay hydrated when working out and follow all of the safety cues as not to cause injury. And I can't stress enough how important it is to stretch!

Speaking stretching, my calf muscles are killing me. I'm really kicking myself in the butt for not taking full body measurements now because I can tell I've lost inches off of my chest area, thighs and right arm. I'm still suffering from an injury to my left wrist but I'm determined to push past it because I don't want my left arm to stay flabby while the right one is toning up nicely. One of the things I like the most about Insanity is that you don't have to use any weights or outside equipment. You're using your own body weight and resistance to loose fat and build muscle and it doesn't require too much space either.


I have about 12 more weeks before my vow renewal in Jamaica and 20 lbs to go until I reach my first goal of hitting the 100's. If I keep at this pace, I can definitely pull it off. Even if I only loose 2 lbs per week, I should see more than I'm shooting for. The physical activity is not the problem for me. It's food. I have to get more discipline.
 
I've set a pretty aggressive goal for myself of 4 lbs by next Tuesday. In order to help accomplish this, I've decided to eat more fresh/frozen veggies and less carbs. I try to limit my carb intake to one meal per day. I've also decided not to allow myself my usual weekly "bad meal" this week. I'm staying away from pork and beef as well until I can't take it anymore. I'm like a walking, talking, weight-loss experiment. If it sounds reasonable and likely to work, I'm willing to try it (as long as its not too painful, LOL)

Target Area

So... today has been a pretty good day so far. I had my Special K for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and only one 5 calorie sugar-free jello for a snack. Tomorrow is my son's 6th birthday and my 5th wedding anniversary so I'm trying to "save" some calories for this weekend's celebrations. We're headed to 6 Flags Great Adventure and I'm hoping my fat butt can fit in more rides than I was able to at Sesame Place last month. (Yall should have seen me trying to squeeze in the flying swings, LOL).

Here's a pic of my two favorite guys that I'll be celebrating tomorrow. This pic is from last year but its always been my favorite. My guys really enjoy fishing.

I'm really going to have to do something special with my daughter soon before she feels left out of the 7/15 club. LOL since I'm in a picture posting kinda mood right now, I'll post a pic of her too. I still haven't managed to get her to agree to workout with me but I'm working on her. She doesn't need it but it would be nice to have company every now and again. Correction: we all need exercise but yall know what I mean.

Have you noticed that I haven't posted a full body pic of me yet? You wanna know why? Because I HATE how short and round I look in pictures - especially pictures with others. There is a pic of me on my sister's blog and I hate it. I look huge. My sister is tiny but that just makes it even worse. I guess. Here's that pic.

But the picture that really set me off is one I had a co-worker take today. I've been seeing a lot of blogs with pictures on the side showing progress and I wanted to do something similar or maybe a slideshow. I haven't decided yet but the first step was to just take a pic. Until I really looked at it, I thought my problem was my gutt and my butt. But now I know that my wasitline (or lack thereof) is an even bigger problem. 

See for yourself:








I've heard it time and time again that you can not "target" specific pockets of fat on your body and you just have to do lots of cardio to get the weight down. I SO hope thats another weight loss misconception and there really is something I can do to not make me appear so darn round. I hate it. I took a picture to show yall what I'm talking about.

See what I mean? Granted, the dress could probably stand to be a size smaller but I buy lots of clothes off the web and don't bother sending them back unless their too small. It makes me feel good when something is too big. It doesn't happen very often. LOL


The longer I look at this picture, the more I feel compelled to start singing "I love you. You love me we're a happy family..." That's it. I'm staying focused. I'm in this to win this. I don't want to look like "Barney" anymore. 


So contrary to everything I've read and watched regarding target areas and not being able to isolate and defeat them, I'm going to do every oblique exercise known to man to reduce my waist line and if some of the bootie gets lost in the process, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.


Have you guys ever tried to loose weight in one particular area? Did it work? What did you do?

Today's the Big Day!

Today is the big day. Today is the day I weigh in and see the fruits of my labor. I’m very excited. I initially weighed myself on my Wii so I kind of want to stick to the same scale. But working in a hospital, the temptation to go hop on the first scale I come across is very great- almost unbearable. I know I’ve at least lost some inches just above my obliques. I put on one of my favorite dresses today that was very tight in that area and I have space now. So that makes me happy.

I’ve been sticking to the Insanity workouts and trying to eat better but it gets hard with so many different things coming at you from so many different directions. I’m used to going to my favorite restaurant and ordering whatever I wanted regardless of how many calories or how much sodium it contained. All I cared was that I was feeling down and food made me feel better. The solution was obvious:  I was going to eat, drink and be merry. But I see where that’s gotten me.

Instead of resorting back to my old methods I decided instead to take all the aggression and aggravation I’m feeling at the moment and use that negative energy for a positive purpose – to burn off some of the fat instead of adding to it by emotionally eating. I’ve been doing pretty well with my food regimen lately but I know I have much more work to do. I hate the term “diet” because it sounds so restrictive but when I call it my food regimen I feel like I’m in control. I hope that makes sense to you… LOL

This week I’ve been eating Special K cereal for breakfast with 2% milk because anything lower tastes like breast milk (aprx. 150 calories), a sandwich for lunch (aprx. 350 calories) and mainly chicken and veggies for dinner (aprx. 500 clories) . Snacks are sugar-free jello (10 calories), pudding (60 calories) or applesauce (60 calories). I typically eat two jellos and (1) 60 calorie snack. I only drink water throughout the day. I like to save my calories for other “good-bad” things like adult drinks which I KNOW stunt the weight loss process but I’d much rather have 4 oz. of vodka with diet soda than a cheeseburger any day. It usually puts me to sleep and I’m too tired to get up and go “midnight munching”. LOL

So depending on the scale, I’ll continue to make sensible food choices and keep my caloric intake in the 1000-1300 range and keep my nightcaps. But if the number doesn’t represent all the hard work I’ve been doing – something has to go.

I am interested in dietary regimen to get a good jumpstart on my weight loss. Can anyone recommend any supplements or food plans beside Weight Watchers? They are great but I intend to do that program at a later phase to maintain. Right now, I have so much to loose (at least 50 lbs) and I want an overnight miracle as if I didn’t gain this weight over a period of time. What? Are you surprised that I know this isn’t as fast of a process as I wish it were? LOL

I’ll post my weigh in results later. There will not be an Insanity Review today because I’m repeating the Polymetric Cardio Circuit and I’ve already reviewed this workout. (I’m following the calendar only making modifications to cut the longer workouts in ½)

Talk to you guys soon and hopefully – no prayerfully there will be good news!

Insanity Pure Cardio (and a confession)

Insanity - Pure Cardio
Well, Shaun T. definitely gave this DVD the right name! This is the most intense cardio workout I've ever attempted to do but it wasn't as difficult as I feared it would be. I didn't do the 25 minute warm-up. I did that yesterday. Had I did the whole thing at once, I'd be making this post from the back of an ambulance. I'm not exaggerating.

Everything went really fast so I don't remember everything we did but from what I remember there was jogging, suicide drills, push-ups, plank-runs, high-knees, boxing, squat jumps and of course the "drills". The most difficult of the moves for me were the drills because it required a series of moves that reminded me of a "super" squat thrust. Now, I'm capable of doing them but not as fast as the people on the screen. "Keep your own pace" and "Know Your Limits" often flash across the screen and several of the athletes on the DVD had to sit down or were told to take a break so I don't feel too bad. Nevertheless, I hope to be able to keep perfect form and intensity someday. Until then, I'll continue to give it my best.

I've only been doing this workout for 5 days but I see an improvement in my fitness level already. I'm excited to see how much I'll change by the time I'm finished. If I don't loose the weight I want to loose, it won't be because the DVDs aren't effective. It'll be because I'm still eating more than I'm burning. :(


Confession:
Part of the reason I started this blog was to make myself "accountable". I set these goals, put them in writing and formed a good plan to reach them. I did well all week long. But then I relapsed Saturday night going into Sunday morning. I took a good nutritious healthy food and ate far too much of it. That food was turkey burgers. Once I realized how bad I messed up by eating 3 (home made) turkey burgers, I further gave into temptation and ate chips and pretzels.

What does my food slip up have to do with Insanity? EVERYTHING. All of the hard work and energy I have been putting forth all week may very well be compromised because of bad choices I made in one night. SMH....

But... I'm not going to continue on this downward spiral. I messed up. It's nobody's fault but my own. That's what I get for depriving myself of everything I love. I think from now on, I'll allow myself something "good-bad" everyday but not as much as I normally would. The calories for this treat will come from my snacks. So I'm sure it won't take long for me to realize 1 bad treat is not worth giving up my 3 snacks a day. We'll see...

Insanity Disc 3 - Part 1

Well... I got off to a late start tonight. I got a surprise (but much welcome) visit from my brother. He said he was going to try Insanity with me but he chickened out. I know he's probably going to read the first three sentences and claim that he wasn't scared but Blogger World, I'm telling you the truth: Baby Boy was shaking in his boots. Instead of working out. we laughed talked, ate dinner and even visited our Dear Ole' Dad. But I have a goal and a plan to reach that goal so I headed to the basement at 11:00pm to do my daily workout after all the fun was finished. I decided not to let my workout stop my life and not to let my life stop my workout. (But that's another post for another time).

I originally planned on doing the program twice a day with half in the morning and half in the evening but Disc 2 left me too sore to get out of bed without limping let alone work out early in the morning so I decided to just go at my own pace and workout twice a day when my body permits. I could have done the whole 40 minutes tonight but I wanted to quit while I was ahead and save some energy for tomorrow. I'm praying that my hips, glutes, calfs, and wrists have time to recuperate by then. I will begin stretching more throughout the day in hopes that this will alleviate some of the pain.

The first 2 minutes were what Shaun T. called a "warm up" but it was a workout for me. I didn't enjoy it as much as yesterday's routine but I stuck with it anyway. Yesterday's was more difficult but today's repeated Power Jacks. I don't like those but I did it anyway. There weren't any other noteworthy moves in this part of the disc but I can say it's tough on the knees so don't slack on the stretches. I actually stretch before the routine because the stretch takes place after you've already used the muscles. I'm not the most fit person in the world so I stretch first preferring to be safe early than sorry later.

The stretch was awesome!!! I know I complained about the Disc 1 stretch but it must be because I've grown accustomed to the Active 2 (Wii Game) stretches and the Jillian Michael's stretches. We did a lot of the same moves that I originally hated the other day but they felt good. I guess I didn't appreciate the stretch before because my muscles hadn't been used with such intensity until the past two days.

It's time for me to hit the shower and play a few hands of Live' Holdem'. I know this is only my second day (or technically my 1st and a half) but I'm enjoying this. Next time around, I hope not to need to break the routine in half. But even if I do, who cares? This isn't about Beach Body, Shaun T or anyone else. This is my journey so I'll make up the rules as I go along. But I will continue to press on. We all have to start somewhere and I'm starting from where I'm coming from and if you've been where I'm at, you understand. If not, you probably think I'm just rambling. I am but there is a method behind my madness. Thanks for reading!

I'm signing out on my quest to "Get fit or hurt trying" :)