Safety Net.

As I've mentioned before - the time constraints on my workout schedule are pretty strict. So guess what happens when I start working 12 hour days?....

I essentially took a week off. Not by choice. But I honestly couldn't keep up with cooking and gym schedule. By the time I got home, the gym was only open for another 15 minutes. Which also meant if I was going to cook my meals for the next day I was going to start cooking at 10:45pm.

Thank you iPhone.

So now that everyone is pretty much sold out of the damn thing I can get a grip. I was so intensely motivated on this program that taking a break has been hard. It's going to be even harder to get back to that level of intensity.

Thankfully, I have the best support ever. Just when I thought I couldn't possibly finish it. Just when I thought I had messed it all up. He gave me a push. He cleaned the kitchen so I could cook. He cleaned my desk so I could get some work done for the next three busy days. He fed me with a healthy meal. And most importantly, he knew just how to motivate me.

So here's to my wonderful husband. I'm so overwhelmed with gratitude I literally want to shout it to the world. I guess this is as close as it gets.


P.S. I bought that swimming suit for myself for when I complete the program. It was still in the shipping box until he opened it and placed it in plain sight to remind me of my goals.

Pause.

I took a break in the program. I felt like I was so exhausted I was going to either injure myself or someone else by sheer clumsiness. I only took two days off so I'm not falling off the path...I just needed to pause and re-evaluate. Why was I so tired?

Cause 1: So I'm pretty sure everyone knows the iPhone is launching soon. Working at a wireless carrier means that I'm breathing this fact 24/7. It also means that I want to work harder, faster, and longer than normal to take advantage of the traffic coming into the store.

Cause 2: The workouts are getting longer and harder. As I mentioned before, working 9 hours a day and then another 2 hours in the gym is pretty tiring. I love working out and I love feeling strong but I also love to sleep and sit around my apartment. Matt and I calculated that I spend more time in my week at the gym then I do sitting down...yikes. I started to feel some pain in my right knee (it has occasionally emerged over the years) so I decided to go easy on the legs this week.

Cause 3: I am not eating enough calories. I am not drinking enough water. I am not eating frequently enough. The solution to this problem was to give myself some more time for to plan for these things. Yeah. Right. When?

Cause 4: I am sick of chicken.

I also started to realize other things were eating into my time like coordinating with my consulting jobs, planning trips, and planning big life changes like possibly moving... I kept having this thought that doing all this work to get fit is just taking time away from solving my real problems. So when I'm done with this huge goal that's sucking up all my time...I'll look really good... but I won't have a better job, I won't have more money, I won't know any more about what I want to do with my life, and I still won't be able to go home for Christmas.

I needed a break.

I didn't eat chicken for three days! I didn't do two of the workouts. And I bought a new pair of dress pants. They make me feel....in charge.

And so now I'm back in it to win it.

If I'm nurturing myself I should have MORE energy not less. When I look good I feel GREAT. I'm so far into this program that I can't quit now. With a little bit more effort on the diet side I will see a huge payoff in mood and energy. With only 5 weeks left, I'm over half-way there! Let's start that second wind.

Putting in the time.

So I've been going to the gym 6 times a week for 1- 1.5 hours. On top of 9.5 hour work/travel time that leaves me about two extra hours a day to....shower, cook, grocery shop and clean? Good luck being productive in any other area on those days.

But this week there is hope! I have Sunday off. YES it's true. No gym. No work. I finally get a breather. So I can stop and look around at what's happening and make some decisions. And hopefully spend some time with Matt. It will be our first day off together in over a month.

This Sunday will also be my half-way mark in this workout program. Have I lost any weight? Maybe 2 pounds? But I got my first "Have you lost weight?" questions yesterday which is always a good sign. It wears on me to work so hard and not have any measurable results. I just keep telling myself to stick to it and I will benefit. I decided I need to work harder on drinking enough water and eating enough calories. Strange sounding I know - but working in retail makes it really difficult to manage eating 4 times in one shift. I just have to be more diligent about it and not feel guilty about sneaking to the back for some meatloaf...

So the theme for the rest of Phase 2 is TIME MANAGEMENT. Let's get to it!

Phase 2.

Here I am! I made it all the way to the second phase of this 12 week program. This phase has harder weight lifting exercises and an added 30 minutes of cardio afterward. I did it for the first time last night and it wasn't so bad. Luckily I don't have to do the cardio on leg days...But since you have to do cardio 4 times week - there's only one rest day per week. It's just 4 weeks so I can definitely do this. It's going to take a lot of diligence and persistence mentally to make these hour and a half or more visits to the gym 6 times a week....

The gym is an interesting place. In between sets people are just sitting around doing nothing. Well, nothing is when you try to pretend you aren't looking at the other people in the gym. What else is there to do? When I got to the cardio portion of last night's workout one of the guys in the gym came up to me and said "You're a machine - you know that?" I didn't respond but I looked over at the man on the elliptical next to me and he was also confused by that statement. I'm glad someone else heard it too. I didn't think I was doing anything spectacular...what an interesting place. Since I've been going for over a month pretty consistently, I'm learning the traffic and some of the people. The gym is like a little community. I've even been given a few tips when my form was off - which I don't mind at all. I'm doing all this by myself so it helps to know when you need to adjust. I don't want to do all this work and do it wrong. I want results!

The diet is pretty similar to phase one. I just have to flip the "dinner meal" of 6 oz meat plus one starch and veggies to a mid-afternoon snack and then eat the meatloaf muffins around dinner time instead. We're "phasing out" carbs earlier in the day. I don't really mind that much. I realized I was accidentally eating a gluten free diet for a month since I was eating brown rice or sweet potatoes with all my meals. Oops. 

I'm off to the gym for my second day of the double workout... Chest, Abs and Cardio...Let's do this!

Bumpy Roads usually take you to new places.

My third week has been the most difficult. I prepped and saved and worked out....but towards the end of the week things got a little weird. All the food I had stored in the freezer got freezer burn. The new batch of crock pot chicken tasted terrible. I got stomach aches at random hours of the day. I was kept at work hours past when I was supposed to leave. And then I learned that the gym closes early on Saturdays. So for this week, I get a C. I call the road bumpy because even though I missed 2 of 5 work outs and some of my meals I'm still on the road. I'm just trying to pick myself back up and get some of my steam back.

I get to take out one marble every time I lose a pound. I still have not taken out any marbles.


Like I said before, I knew this was going to be challenging because I'm not losing any weight. How could I really expect to at this point? Since I don't have that much to lose I know it's going to take a lot of work. But it's still hard to put in an hour at the gym almost every day, change your entire eating habit and see no results...

So as I go into Week 4 today I just have to keep doing my best at sticking to this plan while working the strangest retail hours.

Motivation!

I don't know what day it is.

I had a pretty terrible day at work yesterday. I was late due to MTA's detour. I have to go into Manhattan and then back out to Forest Hills Queens. It takes a half hour longer than my normal route. Yesterday apparently even longer than that...I was humiliated by customer after customer, didn't get all my meals in and of course got out from work too late to get to the gym (it closes at 11pm if that's any indication of how pissed I was I couldn't get there in time). It's the kind of day that makes you want to give up. I didn't even finish my work and have to go in on one of my days off. 

But then I got home. Lit a candle. Got to talk to Matt on the phone. Drank some tea and felt a little better.   Today I'm determined to not let another yesterday happen. Life's too short to expect days like that. 

Day 7.

I expected phase 1 to be the hardest phase. Mostly because it's just building muscle which takes time and a lot of eating. I'm hungry all the time. I'm eating all the time. I'm not working out all the time which is why I thought this was going to be the hardest phase. I just have to trust the workout plan and relax. I'm so worried I'm going to gain weight because I'm not doing cardio. It's only been one week so I don't know for sure....The science of it makes sense but when I don't see results it's hard to know if I'm doing it right. I need feedback! But I just have to keep telling myself:

Stick. To. The. Plan.

Stick to the plan!

I only cheated twice and with good reason: my last meal with Olivia indefinitely and my last date with Matt for over a week. And by "cheat" I mean I ordered an omelette and forgot to say "egg whites only please," and I ordered a bubble tea and forgot to say "green tea only please."  But I'm not gonna harp on it.  Life's too short. And I stuck to the plan for all the other 40 meals over the last week. So I'm pretty darn proud of myself. That's a 95% success rate on the diet and a 100% on the workouts. I'll give myself an A for this week.

The Beginning.

So I bit the bullet on getting into shape. And by "shape" I literally mean I am shaping my body. This entails eating copious amounts of protein and vegetables. I decided to stick to a plan that was easy to understand, inexpensive, and not too time consuming.  

My Goal: To be in the best shape of my life. Healthy, powerful, and unstoppable. 

Here's a link to the Live Fit plan to which I have committed the next 3 months of my life. I've been through trials of P90X, Jillian Michael's various programs, and even personal training sessions. This Live Fit plan seems more manageable and gives me the tools to learn how to do it all myself. Basically I'm a control freak when I have to make plans and this gave me the control!

Preparation

I've spent almost two weeks getting ready to start this transformation. I've been exercising for a few years but I've never felt that I've been at my personal best when it comes to being fit. Why? Convenience. So before I started I fake started. I wanted to see all the barriers I would run into before I spent a bunch of time and money setting this up.  I wanted this to be done right so that I had no excuses and didn't waste anymore time getting to my goal. I found out that I needed to be more realistic about my time constraints. My job is terrible for planning. Retail hours basically claim your entire life - or that was my mind set. So my biggest barrier was making an eating/shopping/workout plan that conveniently worked around my work schedule. So that's what I did. 

Mental: 

I made a calendar with all my workouts, goals, and "before" pictures. I bought two little glasses so I can move over some marbles from my weight "to lose" glass into the "weight lost" glass. I also made a schedule for working out so that I have no excuses for not hitting the gym on the right days. I also designated planning days so that I knew the next time I would be able to plan again. 

Diet:

Since I have to eat about 6 small meals a day, I made a daily eating schedule. I bought more tupperware to store the massive amounts of chicken and salad I will have to bring to work. I made shopping schedules, daily eating lists and a "safe food" chart to follow. Special Purchases:  Crock pot, food scale, tupperware

Day 1: Holy crap so much food. I couldn't even try to eat it all. My workout was at night so eating so much during the day was difficult. I was so exhausted from planning everything the day before that I went to work, came home around 7:30pm, ate dinner, worked out, and went to bed at 9:30pm. 

Day 2: I was so hungry this morning...thank God. I woke up, made my egg whites with taco seasoning (I have a feeling that is going to save me....) and then hit the gym. Sleep makes me so much happier. Working out makes me so much hungrier. This is going to be a good day.