The Body is an Amazing Thing

I picked up an anatomy book at the library today to try to familiarize myself a little bit more with all the parts and how they go together. The body is one crazy amazing thing, I tell you!! As I was looking at the pages about the abdomen with all it's muscles and nerves and all I said to my husband "How the heck do doctors know and remember all these things?" He says its from the years of training, however, I have my own theory. 9 out of 10 times when I go to the doctor with some type of pain in my stomach/chest/arm etc. They tell me it is stress related. Hmm..perhaps they don't know all these different parts of the body to correctly diagnose it. Perhaps I had pulled the Serratus anterior muscle or the Latissimus dorsi muscle. HA! Next time I'm going to ask! LOL.

It is mind boggling to look at an anatomy book and how our bodies are made up of so many intricate and complex things. This is why I believe in God the Creator. I cannot be convinced that such a perfect system with so many different parts was just pure happenstance. I only wish he had made it so it couldn't expand so much. :)

Tomorrow I should be going to Body Pump. I've slacked off in the weights department, so I'm making an effort to pump 2x a week at least. Hopefully 3.

Spun Dry

510 calories burnt - 21.0 miles in 55 minutes. I love spin.

My skin is dry. Too many showers - need to moisturize.

Resisted chocolate treats today at Bible Study. Yay me.

Eating well.

Up Hills Both Ways in 2 Feet of Snow!

Ok, so the snow wasn't that bad today, but I had to shovel in order to go to the fitness center today. There's something just wrong with that. I have to exercise in order to go exercise more? But I did it. I took Body Pump this morning before the kids tennis lessons. I've made it a point to put more weight on the barbell lately and today I even put my the barbell on my shoulders for squats and lunges because I kept telling myself "I have to protect my pre-arthritic knees". There's truth to that, but I think I tend to wimp out a bit in workouts because of worry. I did it and my knees don't even hurt. I can do more than that I think.

And here's the biggest fitness news of the week. I did a plank push up. That's right. On my toes. So maybe it's not that huge of an accomplishment, but to me it is. I nearly cried. I always tear up a bit when I exceed my expectations. It's a beautiful thing.

Hunger

Yesterday I was hungry. I hadn't felt that feeling in a LONG time. I did have breakfast - (a bowl of raisin bran) but not my usual protein laden eggs. By 10:30 my stomach was growling. Really growling - in the middle of church no less! So I didn't have that great of an afternoon. I ate a sandwich, then I ate cookies...and then some chips. Then we were running late for evening church and I had to be there to work in the nursery so as a way to get my kids moving we offered McDonald's - where I got an Angus Burger. Let me just say that Angus Burgers are way tastier than the other burgers. I only at a few fries and gave the rest to hubby. So, I did not have a very "clean" food day. I thought about only eating half the Angus Burger, but I have a problem "wasting money" more than wasting food. I had just paid $5.00 for that burger - I couldn't just eat half. (Well I could have, but then I would have felt bad for wasting the $5)

Lesson learned -Make sure to eat enough at breakfast (and protein) so I am NOT hungry by mid morning. It sets off bad habits.

Cardio Princesses

The trainer at the fitness center (that lost 200 lbs) has a term for the women who go every day and do the elliptical or run for 1 hour. They are the cardio princesses. They would never step into the testosterone filled area of weights (unless they were hitting on the muscle men!). While these women may build endurance, they aren't really building muscle or transforming their bodies. I am not a cardio princess, but I DO enjoy spinning. It burns calories and can be a tough workout for my legs if I choose it to be. Today I did 22 minutes of Spin and burned over 200 calories. My little mermaid had swimming lessons so I couldn't do the entire class. Normally I take Body Flow on Fridays, but my arms/chest/shoulders were too sore from yesterday that I needed to do a legs only cardio today. I will say I don't like to go to the weight area for a few reasons

A) I don't like being one of the only women among a bunch of men. I feel embarrassed because I think. "These poor men..the only woman they have to look at in the area is me"

B) I don't really know what I'm doing. Sure I've seen it done and read about it, and I take Body Pump, but free weights are a whole different story. How many reps, how many sets,what weight? What is it supposed to feel like?

C) It's so SLOW. I don't like breaks. I know you are supposed to have rests in between sets, but that's so BORING. And I don't know if it's okay to do crunches while I'm supposed to be resting. Can I walk a lap, or is that too long of a rest. How long is too long?

I do plan soon on meeting with a trainer for a 1 hour session to learn these things. I know that strength training is vital to my efforts, and vital if I don't want to look like a blob of melted marshmallow when I lose the weight.

Weigh in 256.6!! YAY! This is the lowest I've been since 2004!

Here's a comparison from October to Now

OCTOBER 10, 2009 JANUARY 29, 2010

Admiration

I'm an admirer. I admire looks and personality and ability and character and determination. I'm an admirer or all things good. Sometimes I get into a thought pattern which may not be that good about it though. I often hope some day someone will admire me in the ways I admire other people. It's not a pedestal thing. It's a true, honest, I wish I could be more like that thing. It's not claiming that someone is all around better, but that someone is better in that one thing that I admire. I like to tell people that I admire them too. The only time I ever felt admired was when we adopted our children and to be honest, I was rather annoyed by this admiration. I think mostly because loving is not a hard thing for me. It was not hard to love my children, to do what was best for them. After all, I didn't have that growing up. Maybe there was a bitter part in me because of that that wouldn't allow for any admiration. I was always closer to other people than my own family so it wasn't hard to love a non biological child. I think it always bothered me because these were always people I felt didn't love me enough. I don't know..right now I'm therapy typing...I digress.

But I want to be admired. I want to be a person that gets called for advice about something/anything. I want to be someone that others talk about it a great way. Is this totally self centric? Perhaps - well, yes. But I know how it is to be the one admiring. I guess I'd like to be the one admired someday. I admire my readers too for different things. Some of you have been with me from the beginning (August) and through your stories I have come to admire you. I might embarrass some of you, but I'm going to anyway, because I believe in encouraging people and letting them know what you think of them.

Leslie - I admire your commitment to sobriety and your children. Your love for them truly shows and for 18 years you have chosen to live in the present with them. It's amazing.

Patsy - I admire your dedication to squats. Seriously. AND more importantly your cheery disposition. I don't think I've ready many "Woe is me" posts from you.

Chris - I admire your "kick aS$" attitude. I wish I were a little more hard core like you! WHen I think of you, I think "ROCK ON!"

Sarah - I admire your faithfulness to your family and to church even when you have your own sickness.

Steph - I admire your eternal optimism and ability to not be jaded by all of us "sinful" people. (and your ability to play Barbies)

Kev - I admire your ability to put up with the emotional mess that I am. I might not be able to do the same if our roles were reversed. I love you.

There is always something to admire about people. Sometimes you have to look close, but it's there.

I need a Plan

I don't mean a weight loss plan because I have one of those...but I need a DAILY plan. What I am going to do from 7 AM until 10 PM, because honestly, the hours just roll together these past few days and I accomplish nothing apart from eating, blogging, talking on the phone and keeping up my Farm on Farmville. Hey that's 4 things! And I guess I do feed my children, get them dressed and read to them. So that's 7. And I did go to Bible study today...8. Okay so I get some things done, but not enough. Not nearly enough because I'm kind of bored. And when I'm like this I watch repeats of Grey's Anatomy on my computer and forget about the fitness center. I'm still eating fine and having great food days and I probably wouldn't feel so darn bored and tired if I got off my tush and went to the fitness center. I love my fitness center, but part of the problem is that there are classes almost all day, so I can just wake up and say "Today I'll go to...whatever at whatever time." But not having a succinct plan of what I'm doing on which days is a bit detrimental because I let other things determine my day BEFORE I plan on exercising rather than letting my exercise plan determine my day. So today, it was COLD. Brutally. And I hadn't decided what time I was going to exercise yet. Well...it was COLD. So I didn't plan. If I had planned first BEFORE I went outside, and found out about the cold, I might have gone. My brain is whacked...yes!

At Bible Study today they talked about commitment. The speaker said "True commitment is demonstrated by death to self and fruitfulness." While this was meant to be speaking about Jesus' death I really thought about it from a personal perspective. Death to self, meaning giving up what I want (ie chocolate chip cookies) for fruitfullness (weight loss). If I'm honest, I don't always have true commitment. I'm not always willing to give up or "die" to my bad behaviors or self for weight loss. Apparently I haven't been dying to self these last few days, as I've just bummed around the house. So am I committed? Maybe not enough. I want to lose weight. I AM losing weight. But I want to be TRULY committed. I need to be willing to radically alter my normal "lifestyle" so that I can lose the weight. I need to PLAN. True commitment for me, means making a plan.

My Plan for tomorrow: 9:15 Body Pump and 10:30 Body Flow