Day 1

And we're off! The first week of my fitness plan has started! As far as the diet, this week I am eating 1200 calories a day for just the first seven days. It is a "jump-start" to get everything going. Coincidentally, the workouts aren't too bad yet. I burned 300 calories in my 30 minutes, which isn't horrible. I think it may coincide with the low-cal diet. The workouts are basic right now, but it's good to get the basics in before I move on to the hard stuff. I'm excited to get week 2 started as I'll be able to eat a bit more, but also have much challenging workouts. First, I must get through this week.

This morning I took before pictures and measured my stats. I'm debating when exactly to post the before pictures.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were very tasty today, and the snacks weren't bad either!

Scrambled egg whites, feta cheese, chopped up tomatos all in a pita. And fresh melon!

Chicken Wrap with tomato and lettuce, celery, and red bell peppers 

Cod, steamed spinach, small baked potato, and Asparagus

STATS:

Weight: 215

Body Fat %: 19.4%

I also measured my chest, arms, waist, hips, and thighs. We'll see how this all goes!

Full Exposure

I am starting a whole new workout plan and diet. I've gotten to a point where I've hit a plateau, and actually gained some weight (fat and muscle). I've been working out and dieting consistently for over a year now and though I've changed some things throughout to keep things fresh, I've gotta start something new. Something completely different. And something that minimizes my mistakes and helps my discipline.

That's where the Les Mills Pump workout comes in. I made an investment into my health and fitness and am going all out. The workout has become famous in many gyms all over the world. They made it into a home DVD workout series, and I'm excited to get it started. They've provided me a workout calendar for 90+ days, and a whole diet plan for that time period. No joke, they have given me everything I need to eat and do for the next 90 days. And the food recipes look good!

So, by all out, I mean all out. I need to motivate myself like I never have before, so I'm thinking of posting before, during, and after pictures. AND maybe posting some video blogs along the way. What do y'all think?

To be honest, I am embarrassed of how I've let myself, my weight, and my health get to be the way it is. I know I can do this, I just gotta fight through it all. Because of that, I really want to put myself out there to motivate myself to a healthier me.

For those of you who would like to join me on this journey, feel free to stay tuned and follow my blog. This is a friendly and encouraging place for us all. I hope that opening up and exposing some of my weaknesses (both physically and mentally) will encourage others to do so wherever they see fit.

I plan on starting my 90-day plan on Sunday, as I spend the next day or two getting my grocery list together to start off my first week.

I AM EXCITED!

Friendly Encouragement

As I sit here on a plane flying back home from a physical therapy school interview, I ran out of things to do and decided that hey, I could write an entry for this blog that I created. Probably would be a good idea. I know so many people create blogs and then fade off writing them. I hope to not be one of those people…

Anyways, I want to keep this one brief, as it’s been a while. I want to encourage you all to keep up with, or start again, your workouts and healthy eating habits.  This past semester I’ve learned so much about the human body from some of my classes. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but we have to treat our bodies like we care about them. Take care of your body by feeding it the right fuel and by exercising often. There are so many benefits that you will start to see.

P.S. I will do my best to write more now!

Push It

In honor of my workout today (which was NOT easy), I want to encourage you all to push yourself your next workout.  When you don't think you can go any further, just add another half mile on your run.  Add one more set of lifting.  Change up your workout to make it longer than it normally is.  Keep your body guessing.  It will suck, but at the end of your workout, you'll be glad you did.

Today, and for the rest of my workout plan I'm doing for the remaining 2.5 weeks, I had to increase my weight training from doing a circuit of 3 exercises of 10 reps each, 3 times with 60 seconds rest in between sets, to 3 exercises of 12 reps each, 4 times with 60 seconds rest.  Of course I started struggling after set two!  As soon as that moment hit, I was already trying to think of excuses to cut it down to 10 reps instead of 12 and how I wasn't going to make anywhere near 12 reps by the 4th set.

But after struggling through the 3rd set, I said "screw it".  Screw my mind trying to convince me otherwise.  No pain, no gain.  I wasn't going to let my lack of discipline take over this time.  I was going to finish it.  Yes, I was drenched in sweat and completely out of breath but I was determined.  And you know what?  I did do it.  Why?  Because I didn't let myself tell myself no.  No matter how much it hurt, I was going to do it all.  I did almost died, but I felt proud of myself and actually felt good once my body calmed down.

The best (maybe worst) part of it all?  Once you do it once, there's no retreating.  No going back.  I can't not do it from here on out. :)

Keeping It Fresh

I know, I know.  It's been FOREVER since I last wrote.  I blame busy school schedules (GRE and exams and finals for two classes in summer school is killer) and then I enjoyed a nice vacation in Libertyville last week :)

To keep you all updated, I have not been slacking off in my efforts to getting fit and healthy.  Since my last entry, I have actually started a new diet and a new workout to try and keep things fresh for not only my mind, but my body as well.

I like to read a lot of articles from Men's Health Magazine/online website to look for new ideas about things.  A few weeks ago, I was reading about the top 25 best beach bodies for males.  I know, it sounds pathetic, but there was actually some good information to read about guys who share what they do and clearly see results.  One of the guys was Ryan Reynolds, and there was a link to his diet.  I liked the simplicity of it and decided to pick up one that is similar.  According to the article he lost a third of his body fat and gained 20 pounds of muscle.  While I'm not looking to gain a lot of weight, I have recently found out it is very beneficial to build muscle in your weight loss efforts.  The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn AFTER your workout.

As far as my workout goes, I have picked up on this one.  Again, I like it for it's simplicity and it's short length of 6 weeks.  I understand that where my body is at right now, I'm not going to end the 6 weeks with visible rock hard abs.  What I do know is that it's a good workout and I can see results already.  I'm currently in the middle of the 4th week and I'm feeling great.  I've read that circuit training and sprint interval training is highly recommended for weight loss.

The biggest thing I've learned in the past few weeks that really sparked me taking on this diet and workout is the fact that in order to see visual evidence quicker, you have to build muscle while you lose fat, otherwise you just look soft and mushy.  Trust me, I've been there.  In the past I've strictly done cardio and cut calories and I did lose weight.  But I got down to 175 pounds twice (from starting at 205 and 210 two different times) and though my clothes fit better, I didn't look a whole lot different to myself.

So, one of the tools I recently purchased was a body fat percentage/BMI reader.  The best part was that it was about $30 on Amazon.  I am VERY excited about this tool, as I can now gage the progress on my FAT loss, not just weight loss.

Eating is Living

Or is it Living is Eating?


How do you view your diet?  Yes, diet.  Everyone has a diet.  A diet is defined as "food and drink considered in terms of its qualities, composition, and its effects on health."


Do you view it as "I eat to live" or as "I live to eat"?


I am not writing this to make people feel bad, but we really need to consider what we're putting into our bodies and what our bodies are giving back to us.  I have been on the dark side of these phrases.  The "I live to eat" side, and I often fall back to it.  I like food.  A LOT.  I'm not going to hide it.  But, I have also learned things about my body that are clearly better for it than others.  Everyone's body's are different and different in how they react to what you put into yours.


Those people with great metabolisms (God bless you, you lucky lucky people) can eat a lot of different things and not have it effect their body composition (whether or not that effects your health in other ways, that's for a different post in the future).  Those of us with not so great metabolisms, well, for me anyways, I've had to learn what I can and can't eat so that my body goes in the direction I'd like it to (lately it's been either trying to lose weight or just maintain).  But that also depends on what type of exercise I am doing as well.


Typically if I'm wanting to maintain or lose weight, I have to remind myself "Eat to Live" and not "Live to Eat".  It may seem very simple, but it helps so much.  It keeps me accountable, and not only that, but it also makes me really appreciate what I'm putting into my body (and to be honest, I am actually enjoying eating fruits and veggies).


Another thing that kind of ties into this discussion is "Do you love yourself?"  This isn't to be confused with being conceited or egotistical and all into yourself.  There is this show "Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition" (which is on Monday nights on ABC 9 ET, you should watch) where a guy who is specialized in transformation works with someone for a year to try and help them tackle their problem with obesity.  They take the hour of the episode to show the whole year as the client progresses towards their goal.  It really is moving.  I bring this up because Chris, the transformation specialist, told one of his clients when his weight came up on the loading dock scale, "That's a weight of someone who doesn't love themselves.  At some point, you stopped caring."  Think about it.


Shouldn't we love ourselves enough that we make the right choices of what we put into our bodies so that we can live easier and longer?  The older we get the harder it is for us to accomplish certain things.  Daily tasks become more difficult.  Exercise is limited based on your health conditions (not just weight, but things like bad knees, hips, backs, etc).  We should take advantage of the time we have now to make our lives easier as it is supposed to get harder in the future.


I'm not sure where each of you are at with your body composition, whether or not you are in the underweight, normal, overweight, or obese categories.  But I do know something: what we put into our bodies now will inevitably effect us down the road.  I'm not saying you shouldn't ever eat bad foods again (I still plan on enjoying certain foods throughout my life), but I am saying we should make a majority of our diet include healthy foods so that we can enjoy life as long as possible.

Who Says Working Out Has to be Boring?

So today I'm having trouble thinking of something to write about.  Of course I had millions of ideas to write about just yesterday, but I keep forgetting to write them down.. I need to work on that.

I think this will be good for discussion though:

Lately I've really been getting into jump roping.  I've wanted to jump into it (yes I just did that) for a while now, and I finally made the purchase of this rope.

When I work out, I like to keep my mind off of what I'm doing if it is something prolonged and boring (I can only deal with this in front of a TV lately).  However, jumping rope is just enough of a challenge to keep my attention span at ease, and it is something that you don't have to do for hours to burn calories.

Since investing in a rope, I've challenged myself to being able to jump rope like the cool boxers do, nice and REALLY fast.  The new challenge has provided me the motivation to keep at this exercise because it is something I can see myself progressing at everyday.  Not only that, but I know it is really good for me! (unfortunately I know this doesn't go over well with people with bad joints)

What is your favorite type of exercise right now?  What are you really getting into and enjoying?  What have you enjoyed in the past and how long do you stay with it?