Light Bulb Moment

So today on the Weight Watchers site I saw a post where someone said they had lost 25 pounds.  And I thought WOW that must be absolutely fantastic.  Then I realized that I am actually right on the doorstep of 25 pounds myself and so I guess by (what is it the transitive property where if a=b and b=c then a=c - yes I recognize my inner geek is shining through right now because I just went to look it up and I am right it is the transitive property!) the transitive property that means I must be doing practically fantastic (although I know it isn't quite the transitive property LOL).

Well tonight is Essentrics class.  I am not usually an evening workout person so hopefully it goes well despite being in the evening.  I am looking forward to getting to try the Essentrics again since I know it kicked my butt last time.

Physio fits and starts

I can't figure out what it is about Physio exercises that makes me so easily forget to do them.  A break of a couple days generally seems to turn into a break of a week or so.  But I am going to get back on pace with it especially since this week I am taking it easy on myself workout wise (my back was bugging me and I didn't want to push things).  So since most days this week are just going to be walking days I will start my morning with my physio exercises instead of a full workout.

Probably will really help my water intake and energy to make sure I am continuing to do something first thing in the morning anyway!

Skipped Workout

My first time skipping a workout since I really started working on this.  Not a day where I planned a day off and took it easy, but actually skipped my pilates today.  My back is achy and so I figured I would take one day to see how it feels tomorrow.  I have class tomorrow so hopefully it will be feeling better by then.

Almost Done Phase 1

Well I am almost done Phase 1 of the EA Sports 9 week program - so if I had been doing the 3 week one it would be finished in 2 more workouts ;-).  But I am curious to see how it will change once it is into phase 2 - will the length of the workouts increase or the intensity of them?  I admit I am quite curious about what will go on with it once it flips to phase 2.

Tomorrow I have the EA Sports workout plus a make up pilates class.  Looking forward to seeing how that works out - my plan is to do my EA Sports workout before I head over to pilates - hopefully it doesn't kill my pilates!

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
		27

Still Rocking the Workouts

Well things are still going really well with my workouts.  I had Pilates today and yesterday I did my EA Sports workout.  My roll up really feels great in my Pilates class I just can't wait until my roll over gets to the same stage.  I am still using way too much momentum for the roll over and I really, really want to get better at it - so I need to figure out what I need to do to get myself there.  Might ask for 2 minutes after class next time just to see if I can get some ideas for how to improve it.  Even with the momentum sometimes I can feel the work I think I am supposed to be getting but sometimes I just am not getting it.  Well it will get there when it gets there I guess.

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
walking (40) walking (15 yesterday)		27 (yesterday)		50

Tabata

You know although my workout today was not actual Tabata I feel like I can actually feel my body still burning off calories at an accelerated rate.  I don't truly know if that is what is going on but there is definitely a different feeling in my body right now - so hard to describe it.  But if this is what the anaerobic thing feels like I am definitely going to start figuring out a tabata routine.

I Feel Fabulous

Maybe it is the result of the pants shopping yesterday combined with a super hard workout this morning where I pushed myself extra hard on at least one of the sprints.  But I feel really incredible.  Just an awesome natural high.  Add on an absolutely delicious breakfast of steel cut oats cooked with a banana and topped with greek yogurt and I am in a little tiny spot of heaven right now.

Was just reading up about Tabatas.  The idea is basically a 4 minute series of 20 seconds of super high intensity activity followed by 10 seconds of low intensity or moderate intensity - repeat 8 times for a total of 4 minutes.  There was a study that showed that this type of a workout creates anaerobic results in the body (basically it causes the body to continue burning calories at an increased rate for an extended period of time after the workout).  I know I am not fit enough to do a full routine of this yet.  But I am going to target this as something new to add into my fitness regimen.   I do feel like the easports active workouts I am doing have a small element of this type of interval work to them.  So that is great as a stepping stone for me to get to the tabatas (would start with less than 8 intervals of it).  But I want to find a routine that I feel good about doing and that I know I can push myself with. So I am going to do some youtube searches for ones that are body weight only (I don't want to do this with weights since I watched a few videos of people doing them with weights and I could clearly see how their form was all over the place and how much work they were shifting to their lower backs).  Will update here as I find ones that I think would be good to use.

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
		30

Resistance to change

I like to think of myself as being pretty good with change - most of the time.  But today I had one of those moments were I wasn't that good with it - but it is nice that it gave me a good opportunity to reflect and look at my reaction.

Today's pilates class there was a different instructor - one I haven't had before.  I almost felt like I was doing a completely different thing - just the different modifications to the exercises and different queues for them etc.  So it is interesting how used we get to certain things without even realizing it.  I know that it is actually really good for my body to have the changes to the routine and after I thought about it for a few minutes as I left class I was okay with it.  But I admit that there were a couple minutes after the class where I just felt like I hadn't liked the class that much.  It is times like this that I am very glad that I have grown up to be a pretty reflective person, that I am not scared to look inward and examine my feelings and reasons for those feelings.  Because now I am sitting here thinking it was a good class - that I can feel the work in different ways than I normally do.

My abs are sitting here feeling like they have worked and I love that!  Plus after class today I wanted to go try on a size 16 pant (since when I started out I was generally in an 18 or 20 with an occasional 22).  My current batch of pants are fitting pretty loose and need to be belted - but I thought 16 might still be a little bit ambitious.  Well colour me completely surprised when I got myself a size 15 that fits great right now and a size 13 that are pretty tight right now but do go on (they are stretchy ones).  So I got myself another pair of 13s as well that aren't stretchy - they don't quite do up right now but they were on at a real cheap sale price so I decided to get them as a nice little target pant.  It feels absolutely fantastic to have changed in size so much in this first little while.  Here is to finding these pants too big for me in the not too distant future!

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
				50

Cognitive Dissonance Baby

Cognitive dissonance - without realizing it I have been trying to use this very powerful tool on myself - kind of.  Basically if you ever read any of my other posts about how I feel about the scale you will know I don't love the scale.  So why do I feel so happy about seeing a good drop in the number on the scale - why does it matter to me so much??

Each time I write about the scale being a bonus and that it isn't that important I am trying to shape my belief system to be in line with those statements - and deep down I feel like it is.  But there are still moments when it feels important to me.  Maybe this week it is because it finally left the hundreds (in Kgs) so that is a bit of a milestone for me.

Well I guess I will forgive myself for caring about the scale and get my butt headed for work.

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates

MIA

Well I was a bit missing in action for a couple days - but I wasn't missing in action on my action ;-).  I did my work every day including this morning.  I want to talk a bit about my pilates class the other day.  We did many of the same things but I found a couple interesting things in the routine.  First off normally when I do thread the needle I find I must inhale too quickly and then I am kinda almost holding my breath on the stretch up before exhaling my way down.  But last class my breath was flowing really smoothly through it and I sure noticed a difference.

Next we did roll overs with a ball under our butt.  I really liked that I could actually kind of do the roll over that way and definitely can feel myself gaining capability in that move even if I know it is a little way away yet.  We also did the bridge series on the triad ball and I just love that.  It isolates the work so incredibly well in my mind. So it is all good.

This morning the ea sports workout was lots of cardio and again today with the reverse crunches.  I definitely am working the abs on those reverse crunches but I can also feel myself loading work into my back and that worries me.  Might talk to Jenny about a modification of it when I go to pilates on Sunday.

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates

Workout and World Views

Today I can't help but talk a little bit about what is going on in Japan.  I sincerely hope that the worst is over there but the chance of those reactors completely melting down is terrifying.  And just reinforces my belief that any government even considering nuclear as an energy source on the grounds that it is "safe" really MUST reconsider.  How many people must be killed, how many must suffer through radiation caused cancer or other slow deaths before we realize we need to curb our demands for energy to provide a safer world for us all.

Well enough of that discussion for today - since I am about to be kind of hypocritical as I talk about the electricity sucking workout that I just had.  Perhaps I need to set myself a goal of weaning myself off the electronic workout nanny and find less resource intensive ways to get in my activity.

The EA Sports Active workout today was a tough one.  Definitely pushed me in the cardio area.  The one thing that remains frustrating is the kickups runs (where you are supposed to kick back with your feet on each stride) just doesn't seem to register properly.  Although I did discover that I need to make a very exaggerated arm movement and it helps to recognize the movement.

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
		26

Footsore walk home

A long day standing on concrete in work boots today.  Then had to walk home carrying two fairly heavy bags.  So despite not doing a workout this morning I suspect I actually did not too bad on the calorie burning thing.

Weigh in day was today and I was down.  It was a good one too, 1.1 kg.  But it could have stayed the same and I still would have been happy with my week in general - although I admit I didn't get in as many minutes of exercise as I have been getting it was different exercise and so that does some good to keep my body guessing about what kind of work it is going to have.

Will do my physio stuff tomorrow morning before I head out to pilates.  Should be another great ab workout I suspect.  And tomorrow I am going to push through it and not wimp out part way through.

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
10 walking

Still Going Strong

Today was day 3 on the 9 week program and it went pretty good.  There are these stride jumps that are a big challenge and I can see that is mostly because of the right leg strength issues.  Can't wait for the physio appointment today.  Will add onto this table a section for the exercises they assign to me and I will be checking them off as complete as many days a week as they expect me to do them!

Also in the workout today was a bent arm side plank and a straight arm regular plank.  The side planks went really well and I was impressed with myself for doing the work in my obliques or whatever they are called.  But the front plank I think I need to figure out what is going on there since I could feel myself loading that work into my mid and lower back.  Not sure what to do to avoid that so will do a bit of research to see if I can figure it out.

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
walking 10		24

Leg Strength

Tomorrow morning I have a physiotherapy appointment to learn what I can do to improve the strength in my knee (which was repaired many years ago but which I never effectively restrenghtened).  Today during my pilates class it was so obvious to me just how weak that leg really is.  Today during the side leg series we did a new move and I did it with my left side first and did relatively well with it I thought (you bring your leg forward, then grab the foot and come back into a quad stretch, then swing the foot back and your arm forward).  But when I did it on my right side it was incredible how much less able I was to do the move with that leg.  The range I could cover in the movement was a very small fraction of what I could do with the other side - because I simply don't have the strength in that leg to support the work.

So needless to say I am extremely happy to be going to physio in the hopes that I can find an effective way to get back some of the strength in that leg.

Also I started up the 9 week program on the EA Sports Active so for right now I will classify that at My Routine in the table below.  The first two workouts of the program were good and my knees are feeling okay with the work so far.  It was good work though as a few of my muscles were definitely feeling it today - the glutes were sore for sure!

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
10 walking		24 yesterday 20 day before		50

Nephew energy

My darling nephew's birthday get together was yesterday.  Every time I see him and his little brother I am reminded of the boundless energy of youth.  The again, again, again of having fun.  Aunty as the engine for the rocket ship, or plane, or the wind under the wings of the pterodactyl gets her exercise in as well.  The little guys would have me flying them around the room and down the hallways all day and night long if I didn't poop out from it.

But it gets me to thinking about a couple of things. The first is the acting class I took a few years ago.  It was a first year first term acting class at my university and not in any way related to my major.  But as electives go I would say it was one of the most life altering things.  It reminded me about the ability for us to play as adults.  We had to run around acting like loons and doing things we would probably individually never have considered doing on our own.  The beauty of it for me was that it was a turning point in my attitude towards worrying about what others think.  Now when I am in a situation where I feel like I would like to put my all into participating in something - or if I want to race around after my nephew playing in the store or wherever I do it (at least 95% of the time - the other 5% I still find the odd bit of the old mindset sneaking back in).  

Like everything I am doing with this change of lifestyle I now really recognize that change is an choice.  I choose to choose joy and fun and to embrace it rather than some imaginary boundary about how to behave properly.  It isn't that I run around screaming at the top of my lungs and causing a massive disturbance for others - but I do choose to embrace fun and joy.  I am glad my nephews give me even more opportunity to do so!

I also just have to talk about my pilates class today for a minute.  Jenny definitely makes my abs work and I did slack off a little bit at the end of the abs section - could have pushed myself a bit harder.  Next week I won't let myself slack!  But I do have to give myself a bit of a pat on the back because I am getting better and better at my roll ups and roll overs.  The roll overs have a way to go yet but certainly better than they were even last week.  Just looking forward to continuing to improve on all of my pilates repertoire moves.  Think I am going to get the next video that has the full repertoire in it.

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
playing 20 - yesterday				50

Variety Does a Soul Good

While I have been nowhere near bored with my workout routines - I am still enjoying all of them alot.  The other day I had posted to someone that the Wii Fit wasn't as good a workout for me anymore (by that I meant it isn't quite as challenging) - but that I thought if I mixed things up a bit it would probably be challenging again.  So today I thought I would do something based on that.

I did a routine on the Wii today (not the my routine but the one where you combine based on exercise groups).  And it was great.  Got me doing a bunch of different things today that I haven't done in a while, worked my body in different ways than I have been doing lately.  So all in all it was great.  The hula hoop ones continue to be the thing that really works me the hardest of all the aerobic things - it is the one that gets the breathing going, the heart rate up and the sweat flowing.  And the routine included both of the hula hoop ones, the regular and the super.

Am thinking a bit of variety with the sports active will also be a good idea.  Someone told me the 9 week program doesn't have as many squats and lunges in it -so probably won't strain my knee as much.  Think I might give it a shot for the next 9 weeks.  

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
		61 (different version)

Getting going

It is strange how some days it seems very challenging to get myself up and going while others it just seems like I can find virtually any excuse not to get started.  Well I suppose it really isn't strange at all, probably everyone experiences the same thing (but we always want something about ourselves to be unique don't we ;-).

Well today I was doing my step aerobics and was thinking that I am going to start using the wrist weights I have. The arms when they are extended are starting to look kinda wing like ;-).  Which is great because the fat is reducing in them but I do want to get a bit more toned muscle taking the place - especially in my arms.  So my plan is the next time I do the step routine I am going to use 1 pound in the wrist weights (1 pound each arm) and see how it goes for 10 minutes of the routine and then go from there.  I will have nice well toned arms at some point - it might take a while but it will get there!

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
14 warm up and cool down 20 walking			33

A little embarrassing

Well perhaps I will be a little embarrassed since anyone could see this.  But I am going to post a picture showing my progress so far.  Now recognize that I purposely put my shirt on the start picture the way I did - I had planned to have my belly show in each of the photos but I decided I didn't want to when the time came to do the Feb picture.

I definitely credit my work with http://leadpilates.com/ with a good deal of the change in the side view of my abdomen.  Without the pilates I suspect I would be losing the same amount of weight but I doubt I would be seeing such a rapid change in my abs.

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
				50

Cold Weather

Sometimes it seems like the cold weather (especially after a few weird warm spells in Feb) makes it extra hard to get motivated.  This morning I was pretty slow getting going compared to most days - but the really important thing is that I did get going.  The great thing is that this morning once I decided "okay time to workout" the hardest part was deciding what I was going to do - was drawn to both my pilates dvd and my wii fit.  Went with the pilates dvd and am feeling the work in my abs as I sit here now.  I also did a couple sets of each of my 8 minutes in the morning workout exercises - probably should have done more sets but my elbow is a little cranky right now so I didn't want to overdo it and I figure some of it is far far better than none of it.

Got to finish getting ready for work and brave that nasty cold for the walk to work :-)

Other	Strength	My Routine	Step	Pilates
walking 10	5			25