March 2017 – Page 2 – Sweat & Sparkle

Zzzzz….

…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

What happens when you are a light sleeper, your fiance tosses and turns like fidgeting is an Olympic sport, and the kids are home for Spring Break and don’t want to waste time sleeping? Well, you end up deliriously sleep-deprived, and I am beyond exhausted today.

I weighed in Saturday morning for a 4 pound loss! Yay! It felt great to finally see results on the scale. I don’t want to screw it up this week.

This week will be challenging not only because of the aforementioned sleep deprivation, but also because I have some work events this week, including a board dinner tomorrow evening. My boss believes it is conducive to have us staff members sit in a huge dining room at a fancy restaurant, hear our board members talk about their Alaskan cruises and other trips that we underpaid staff members could only dream about, be served frou-frou food with weird sauces that I don’t like, be expected to order dessert, and not be allowed to leave until about 9 PM, after hours of sitting, bored to tears, at this dinner table and wishing we were anywhere but there. Yeah, really looking forward to it.

I worked really hard to lose those 4 pounds last week. I don’t want to ruin it by just gaining it all back this week. There are at least 2 evenings I won’t be home until well past 9, and I really don’t think I’ll be pumped for a workout after working all day. Working out in the morning is a logical solution, but refer back to the sleep deprivation in paragraph one and three. I don’t predict much success with getting up even earlier to fit in a workout.

I am going to pack a gym bag this evening and take it to work tomorrow. I have about an hour and a half from the time I leave work until the board dinner starts, so I should have time to get to the gym, fit in a quick workout, and get cleaned up for the dinner. The next day, I just need to bite the bullet and work out in the morning, or find the energy to work out when I get home after a long day.

I hate when my routine is interrupted, especially for things I don’t want to do in the first place. In the past, I’ve let it throw me off course, and I end up slacking off and gaining weight. I really don’t want to do that this week. I need to find a way to stay on track this week, no matter what.

Viking Challenge

Back around October, I decided to motivate myself to get back into running by joining a virtual race. The basic concept is, you join the race online, run or walk the distance on your own time, enter your workouts to count toward your total, and when you are finished, you get a medal or a t-shirt. In my never-ending over-optimism, I joined a Viking Challenge. Total miles? Oh, a mere 65.3!

Yeah, I have no idea what I was thinking. Well, okay, I was thinking it would push me to start running again so that I could rack up those miles. Instead, I have mostly ignored the challenge, occasionally adding a mile here or there when I worked up the ambition to stroll reluctantly around the neighborhood.

Since I recently started working out again, I really want to finish my miles so I can get my Viking Challenge t-shirt. I have 44.3 miles to go.

Since I’ve had so many brilliant ideas lately, I decided to run with this one (no pun intended): my birthday is in April. I have 6 weeks until my birthday. That means if I walk or jog about 7 miles per week, I will finish the virtual race by my birthday.

When I told my fiance that last night, he said, “That’s only a mile a day!”

He’s right. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it that way. I had instantly ruled it out as impossible, I’m not in good enough shape to handle 7 miles a week, I can’t run or walk that far, blah blah blah. But one mile a day? That sounds really do-able, right?

So my goal for the next 45 days is to walk or jog one mile per day. That won’t be my entire workout, of course, but let’s say I want to weight train tomorrow. Great, weight training is wonderful! And when I’m done, I can do one mile, either outside or with one of my many indoor walking workout DVD’s.

My plan this evening is to hit the treadmill at the gym and try out some easy, slow jogging. I’m too overweight and out of shape to handle anything more than that right now, and that’s okay. I have to start somewhere. I will do the same thing Friday evening and add on a walk around the neighborhood on Sunday.

“One mile a day” is my new motto. Gotta earn my Viking horns!

Two-Tenths of a Pound

I weighed in on Saturday for a 0.2 pound loss. *eye roll* Yeah, not exactly on fire about my progress. It left me wondering why I am bothering. Suffering through workouts to lose two tenths of a pound? At this rate, I might reach my goal weight roughly two days before I retire, for pete’s sake.

Okay, deep breath. It was a disappointing weigh-in, to be sure. But it’s not like there are no areas where I can improve. I’m going to keep logging my food this week, make sure I’m not going over on calories. I’m also going to cut way back on soda. And I need to step up my workouts. A few days a week isn’t cutting it.

On Saturday I worked in the yard, pulling weeds and rearranging the rocks in our flower beds. I counted that as my workout for the day. On Sunday I went for a 2.5 mile walk, then came home and helped my fiance clean out and detail his truck, then I also swept and mopped the floors, vacuumed, and cleaned the wood floors. Definitely got plenty of activity on Sunday!

The disappointing weigh-in this past week has left me determined to have a good weigh-in this week. My goal is to drop two pounds. I joked with my fiance, “I worked out three days in a row and I’m not skinny yet.” He told me, “You will be.” I like knowing he is in my corner. I want to make both of us proud of me.

I Hate Working Out!

Working out when you are overweight and out of shape is not exactly an enjoyable experience. I am now at my highest weight ever, and that’s not going to change unless I get moving and start eating better. I set a goal of doing some sort of activity, anything, even if it’s just walking around our yard flapping my arms and squawking like a chicken, every day in March. (And no, I don’t really do that. Or at least I haven’t yet!)

Great plan, until I actually had to do it. I came home from work on March 1st wishing I had never set such an evil, masochistic goal. I didn’t want to work out. Have you ever just absolutely, positively not wanted to do something with such a passion and intensity that you could declare it from the rooftops? That’s how I felt. I’d rather have done almost anything else than work out.

I remembered I hadn’t done the other workout sections of my new Wedding Workout DVD, so reluctantly I popped in that DVD and tried the cardio section. Not bad. I like simple choreography, nothing complex, since my feet have their own mind and aren’t always on the same page as my brain or any other part of my body. The instructor gives clear cues and isn’t annoying, which is important when you already didn’t want to work out.

Last night I went for a walk, which is boring as hell when you are by yourself, but my fiance was still working. The neighborhood nearby has sidewalks on most streets, and a LOT of hills, so my legs got a good workout.

I’m thrilled that my fiance has decided to lose weight too. It’s going to be so much better doing this together instead of flailing around on my own. He has cut back on soda and is eating better, and he lost 4 pounds in the first week. Right now he is even more averse to working out than I am, but I’m looking forward to working out with him and losing weight and getting healthy together.

Hello, March!

Remember my February goals? Nah, me either. I’m just going to pretend they never existed. February was pretty much a huge bust, and I accomplished nothing.

Onto a new month, a new start! A new workout log is on the fridge, and I already logged my breakfast on my food diary today. Back to logging, back to workouts. No excuses.

My main goal for March is to lose 10 pounds. I need to kickstart this weight loss and get some progress under my belt.