30 Days Bitches!

Tomorrow is 30 days at the gym. 30 days since attending my first Zumba class and 30 days since I sat in that sales guy's office and signed over some of mine and hubby's life.

Yay me!

You wonder what we're doing to celebrate? We're going to Bertucci's! Yep lots of carbs!

Who cares, I walked a mile in 17 minutes 31 seconds on Monday, and then on Tuesday I jogged a mile in 15 minutes 21 seconds. Yay! I actually jogged! My knees didn't collapse. My calves were on fire (forgot to stretch, doh!) but I survived.

Then I survived Zumba - the calves were more achy after that class, but its progress!

No more weight loss, but I'm getting thinner and more toned, and people are noticing my new skinny-ness!

HELL YEAH!

Getting Skinny

Well 4 weeks is here, and I've lost a total of 8 pounds.

I've gained back 2 pounds, but we're going to call that muscle.

However, I am looking skinnier, and while that makes me happy, I do wish that I've lost more weight.

I have noticed though that my stamina is improving along with some of my muscle tone.

Today I power walked 2.25 miles, which felt good, because a month ago I could barely do a quarter mile. Oh how far I've come, but still so far to go.

See you guys later!

Stagnant...

Well - I have not lost any more weight, but my jeans are getting looser! That's something.

I'm also noticing that I'm slimming down through the torso! Yay!

Today my obliques hurt, so during Muscle Up I did not do a lot of the exercises that involved them, but I focused on my abs.

My abs now hurt. Oh well. No pain, no gain right? :)

Bring on the Pilates!

Stamina Baby!

So I have not lost any weight, but I have increased my effort and weight in all the classes and I'm seeing improvement!

I have stamina now! At least a little bit of it.

Today was Zumba and it was such a fun class,even if my arms and calves feel like jelly.

I tried and I tried hard today!

Tomorrow is muscle up, so we'll see how that goes. :)

Adding the weight

So last week - I lost had lost 10 pounds, but then I somehow added 2 pounds, and then managed to lose 1 of those pounds.

So all told I'm 9 pounds down, which is not bad since tomorrow marks 3 weeks of going to the gym, but I'm kind thinking/wishing/wanting to be losing the weight a little faster.

I'm taking in anywhere from 1800 to 2000 calories a day, and with the hour at the gym plus all of the rest of the stuff I usually do around the house, I burn between 2400 and 2700 calories a day.

Why is the weight not coming off?!?!

Grrrr - but 1) its been only 3 weeks and 2) towards the end of the week I stopped pushing myself as hard.

Well I can alter the latter. So today at BodyPump - I upped the weights, and I'm so glad I did.

My arms, glutes, calves and shoulders were burning by the end of class, but I know that I  pushed it a little and that I did a good thing with it. :)

So I'm going to keep the weights where they are until they feel light, and keep with my plans and goals. :)

Just have to keep focused, and as my torture, I mean work out partner says - Its a marathon, not a sprint. :)

See ya!!!

Friday and Saturday.....

Friday was a good  day.

We did Pilates again and I was pretty happy with the my performance. I was able to transition from a modified plank to downward facing dog as smoothly as I've ever been able to.

All in all - I'm quite happy with how my balance and flexibility are coming along.

Friday night, for some god forsaken reason, I talked to my girlfriend and we agreed that we felt we could do with some more cardio. So we decided to meet up at the gym for an 8:30 class of BodyStep.

It might have the been the worse class ever. For some reason I wasn't feeling it. I wasn't graceful, and I'm certain that part  of it has to do with the fact that I woke up at  7:50 and had 10 minutes to get ready and out the door. I didn't have breakfast and I didn't end up eating until 1 pm, which has ended up with me having a headache because I didn't eat.

I also didn't like the instructor's approach today. I think that if I were to do a Saturday class, I'd like it to be Zumba with Dana.

Dana is intense, but the class we had with her on Wednesday was so much fun that the pain from it has been forgotten.

Off to celebrate a friend's birthday with bbq! Yay!

See you guys later.

Oh and I'll be doing my weigh-in tomorrow morning, since my ever faithful small alarm clock was absent this AM.

Transitions

So  today was BodyFlow. It was our first class.

It was pretty nice. The class was small and the teacher was really informative, except that she's like 5'2" and as limber as a wet noodle.

Me - not so much. I'm 6'2" and the only limber thing on me are my hips and I'm attributing that to child birth.

So during our tai chi, pilates and yoga conglomeration we're supposed to transition smoothly. Ha!

I do not transition well from anything to downward dog, and transitioning from downward dog to plank is laughable.

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My transition to said poses was more of a jerky hitch movement. Oh well. I tried. I sweated my butt off and there is no way I'm going to be able to do the crane pose.

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I hurt just thinking about trying to do it.

I have also decided that Saturday morning is when I'll do my weigh-in's, so hopefully I'll start to see even more improvement then. :)

Oh! But I can rock this pose!

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Yep - its the corpse pose! 

Zumba, Zumba, ZOOOMBA!!!!

I had such a great time at class today!

I mean - A REALLY FREAKING GOOD TIME!

We had a substitute instructor today - it was Dana.

This would be the same Dana that told me I was cheating myself last week.

I like her, sometimes - ok most of the time, but I really liked  her today in Zumba. :)

She pulled out those little wrap things with all the coins on them and handed them out to about half of the class (there were 45 in class today). We were going to jingle jangle our butts and hips into heaven today. :)

So I picked an orange one. Shocking, I know. I would never pick orange. :) Oh if you're wondering why I'm smiling over this, go check out my craft blog, Straight Stitches, to see why. :)

So I tied my orange jingle jangle thing around my hips and waited. Luckily, my girlfriend who goes with me also had a jangling butt so we sashayed a bit to see just how noisy we'd be. :)

We didn't have to wait long. We started out of the gate with a full gallop and it was fun. :)

We shuffled, hopped, mambo'd, salsa'd and shook our way throughout the hour.

Dana was was really easy to follow and she projects really well so you know when she's changing up the moves.

I did get a cramp today, first one in two weeks, but I worked through it and took a few more water breaks and I was good. I must've sweated out at least 2 pounds today, but it was worth it. I  have not had that much fun at the gym ever.

Of course, we left the gym just before noon, so the kids were asking for McD's. So I had McD's for lunch but it was a grilled chicken club, so at least I did ok there. :)

I'm excited about tomorrow's class because it's BodyFlow and we haven't taken that yet, but I'm excited.

Oh and it also doesn't hurt that the hubs noticed I was getting thinner. :) Love him.

Oh I have to give the hubs props too, because he dragged his butt to the gym at 6 this morning to meet with his personal trainer, and she tortured him. She also scolded him for not eating breakfast, which is what I do too, but apparently its ok for her to do that  because he's paying her to get him in shape and to yell at him.

I don't see what the problem is because  I'll yell for free. :)

Well, I'm off to peel off this gym clothes and get ready for the pool this afternoon!

See you guys later!

2 weeks

Well it's been 2 weeks, and I am super proud of Lauren and I. We've gone to the gym every week day for two weeks.

Wow.

Yay us! :)

I'm also down 10 pounds exactly today. :) Yay!

Not so happy that Muscle Up was completely full today and we couldn't get in, but we still worked out. Did 15 minutes on the elliptical, along with some weight stuff. It felt good to push myself a bit.

Tomorrow is Zumba!

One foot in front of the other

So for anyone who knows me - I am not a patient person when it comes to results.

I can wait and wait and wait for a deal on something I want to buy, but when it comes to changes (especially changes of the physical sort) I want them done - now.

I have to keep reminding myself that this journey is going to be accomplished one day at a time and not all at once.

Its frustrating, especially in some of the classes because I can't keep up with what everyone else is doing, but I am going to revel in my small victory today.

I increased the weight that I was lifting today in BodyPump. I used 2 sets of 1 kg weights and then added sometimes would substitute one of those weights with a 2.5 kg one.

So proud of myself, of course, by the time class ended my arms and glutes were on fire. :)

Tomorrow is muscle up, and I will increase my weights tomorrow too. :)

Every little step counts.

Pilates was not supposed to hurt...

So Friday was my first pilates class.

I've done pilates before. I enjoy it.

It was not supposed to hurt.

I felt like I was giving birth again. The instructor wanted to focus on the 'baby pooch'

Cool, I'm game. 2 kids (one being 10+ pounds at birth) and just being overweight in general leads to a baby pooch.

I did not anticipate being so sore from working 'it'. Seriously, birth may have been easier than that pilates class.

Oh well. Monday brings either step or bodypump. I forget. Either way....I'm probably going to hurt some more.

You're cheating yourself....?

These would be the words uttered to me today during Muscle Up by the instructor/leader.

Uh? I've been to the gym 8 times in the last 10 days, and to this class twice, and she told me today I needed to up my handheld weights.

Excuse me? We did 190 reps of all the exercises today. My arms felt like jelly even with 2.5 lbs and you want me to lift 10 pounds? In each hand.

You're insane.

I'll admit I probably could have gone a little heavier during some of the exercises, and definitely 10 pound weights would have made awesome braces for all of the 190 push ups we did today, but I seriously cannot imagine doing 190 shoulder presses with 10 pounds.

I might have injured myself.

My elbow might have failed, thus causing said 10 pound weight to fall upon my cranium and then give me concussion.

Then where would I be? I'll tell you where - pissed off and with a headache.

I will increase my weight....but to 5 pounds. There's no need in injuring myself because you think that just because I did the final 4 reps with 10 pounds that I would have been able to do all of them with them.

I do love the class though. I have just the right amount of soreness for doing all of the work we did today, and I can't wait for next week. :)

I'm trying not to....

I'm really trying not to focus too much on how much weight I've lost, but I'm not going to lie when I say that I'm a little more than pleased that today, exactly 1 week after joining the gym, I've lost 8 pounds!

I think I lost 2 pounds in sweat alone today, but still!

What I am more proud of, and I think this is far more important, is that last Wednesday I could only do a quarter mile in 15 minutes, and that took some doing. I really had to work for it.

Yesterday, I did .55 miles in 15 minutes and I still felt like I could have gone a little more, but I didn't want to push it. Plus, it was the very beginning of my work out and I still had all those machines to hit.

I am so proud of myself. I am also proud of the hubs. Who has started joining me at the gym! Yay!


Oh so yesterday, we ended up just kind of free styling it and taking it easy, but today was our step class.

I loved it, because it made me work really hard. I hated it because I could not keep up. I felt like I was keeping half time while everyone else was on 4/4 time. I'm still definitely going to do it though, even if just to catch up to everyone else!