August 2015 – Page 2 – Sweat & Sparkle

Weight Training

After skipping a workout on Tuesday and indulging in a fried, high-calorie dinner, I wanted to make up for it a bit with a good workout last night. I headed to the gym, and I pushed myself to run 50 minutes on the treadmill, then tacked on 20 minutes on the elliptical. Sweaty and exhausted but strutting like a peacock, I made my way to the door pretty dang proud of myself.

Cutting back on soda has proven to be even harder than I thought it would be. By late afternoon, I am ready to climb the walls, and by evening, I am prepared to do bloodthirsty battle for just a sip. I know the cravings will ease up. Next week I’m going to start bringing juice to sip on during the mornings at my desk and cut back even more.

On tap for tonight is a weight-training workout. Now that I’ve built up a little strength, I’d like to hit my Jari Love weight-training DVD’s. If you have never heard of her, this is Jari Love:

I have several of her Get Ripped workout DVD’s, and they are not for the faint of heart. They use ridiculously high reps, to the point your muscles feel like they are going to fall off, but I know when I used to do them regularly (when I was in better shape), they shaped my muscles like nothing else.

Her style is to the point, serious, and some may say, flat and boring. And her workouts can be on the dull, monotonous side. When my younger stepdaughter watched me working out one day, she said, “That lady is probably afraid she’s going to get fired.” I asked why, and she said, “Because she’s boring.”

Critique from a 9-year-old aside, I admit the workouts can be a bit snooze-inducing, but I’d rather have a bit boring and get results than flashy, bouncy, loud, chatty workouts that don’t get me anywhere.

And…seriously…where on this wonderful Earth can I get shiny black workout pants like that? I love them!

Scratch the Itch

I struggled all day yesterday with feeling super-hungry and fighting a mad craving for one specific thing: chicken tenders from this local chicken place my boyfriend introduced me to. I just love how they cook the chicken, all crispy fried goodness, and they hook me up with extra honey mustard sauce too. I finally decided last night, for better or for worse, to scratch that damn itch and get it over with so I can move on.

My boyfriend and I went to that chicken place for dinner, and I got my chicken tenders basket and my luscious honey mustard sauce, and I enjoyed every bite. It was delicious! Exactly what I was dying for.

I know it was a high-calorie meal. I know it put me over my calories for the day, especially since I didn’t work out afterward (too full!) But it was 100% satisfying, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am going to meticulously log my food the rest of the week, and I signed up for an extra Spinning class on Friday morning, bright and early!

I am going to work hard to still have at least a small loss this week. It’s only Wednesday, so maybe I have enough week left to make that happen!

HUNGRY

I can already tell it’s going to take an act of God to make it through this week without gaining 50 pounds. I have been unbelievably, insatiably hungry all week. And it’s only Tuesday!

All I want to do is eat. And not delicate lettuce or cute little carrot sticks, either. Bring on the burgers, fries, cake, soda by the gallon, junk food galore!

So far I haven’t given in. Just a few months ago, feeling like this would have ended pretty quickly in going out to eat, or ordering a pizza, or a pit stop at the store to grab junk and soda.

I don’t want to ruin my great loss last week with a gain this week. I’m sick of doing that to myself. It is beyond old. I want to feel success and not destroy it for once.

I am logging my food on MyFitnessPal again (after experimenting with SparkPeople), partly because MFP has the option to notify my friends when I have completed my food diary. It’s available on SP, but it doesn’t prompt my friends in the friend feed that I just finished my food diary. It’s important right now that I feel like someone else is going to read my food diary, for accountability. I don’t want 20 Cokes and enough food for a small army on my food diary if someone else is going to see it!

This is NOT going to be me!

4 Pounds!

Cutting back on soda last week, and forcing myself through workouts, was a struggle, to say the least. It was a struggle that paid off: at my weigh-in on Saturday, I was down 4 pounds to 194.8!

I am thrilled with that weigh-in. I worked for it. Now, not to screw it up! I am fighting with cravings for soda and junk food, but I don’t want to mess up the progress I made. I am now down a total of 16 pounds. I want to be in the 180’s by the end of August.

Our weekend with the kids was great. Psycho felt the need to mess with the kids’ heads by having the youngest, my 9-year-old stepdaughter, call her father and tell us she wasn’t coming this weekend. We already know it was Psycho’s idea, not my stepdaughter’s, and we already know it was supposed to be punishment for some perceived crime against Psycho, like being at the kids’ school orientations and actually caring. Because somehow, that is twisted into a grave transgression by Psycho. We are supposed to be the uninvolved deadbeats she tells everyone in that hick town that we are, so if we show up at the schools, her little fairy tales get shot through with holes.

Whatever. We had a great weekend with the two middle children (the oldest stopped coming last year after Psycho forced him to lie to a judge, but that is a story for another time!) My older stepdaughter and I got our nails done, there was a Nerf gun battle, my younger stepson and I goofed off with his action figures, and we just enjoyed each other’s company.

No one was ready for the weekend to be over. They won’t be home with us for another two weeks, and I’d love to be 5 pounds lighter by then. I know that’s a lot for two weeks, but I’m going to aim high and see where I land.

Justified and Sleep Deprived

I love this show!

Tomorrow is my weigh-in, and I really hope it’s a good loss this week. I worked hard this week, and I even cut back on soda. I drink Coke like my body needs it to survive, so it’s a huge step for me to reduce that keg of soda per day down to one small bottle. I thought surely my poor body would go into shock at the introduction of foreign substances like water and unsweet tea, but so far, so good!

My boyfriend has been sick this week with a cough, and it’s been keeping him up at night. That means it’s also keeping me up. Add in my addiction to the show “Justified”, which I recently discovered on Amazon and have been staying up late to binge-watch episodes, and let’s just say I am a bit sleep deprived. It really hit me when I attempted to work out yesterday evening. I felt sluggish, weak, drained. I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the floor, let that DVD play itself out, and just go to blissful sleep.

Clearly I need to make some changes to make this whole weight loss effort easier for myself. I have a long way to go (about 70 pounds), and making myself leap hurdles I put in front of myself is pretty much guaranteeing failure. I’m going to set myself a bedtime, no matter what is happening on “Justified”! My poor body needs sleep and rest and recovery. It’s impossible to work out when I feel like a zombie.

This evening we will be picking up my stepkids for the weekend. They just started back to school this week, so I’m looking forward to hearing about their first week.

P.S. I still have one more season to go in “Justified”, so if you have already watched the entire show, please don’t let me know what happens!