Tool for Accountability

For the next twelve weeks (starting this coming Sunday) I’m using Fitbook to hold myself accountable to my fitness and nutrition goals. Writing it down, and having visual indicators for my success, have worked for me in the past. I’m moving away from tracking on the computer (though I remain a fan of SparkPeople) since it has gotten to be too much of a hassle to be so very dead-on specific with every little thing.

So instead of tracking at a 100-foot level, I’m going to use Fitbook to track at a 1,000 foot level. Food items, but not precise calorie counts. Workouts, but not exact calories burned. Overall goals broken down into weekly progress checks. It’s big enough to have room for all the tracking items that are important to me, but small enough to be portable and fit into my purse. At first impression, it seems to be a handy little book.

We shall see if it effects my motivation and discipline in any way. If it does, it’s worth its weight in gold. If it doesn’t, well, I’ll keep on keepin’ on. Hopefully I’ll kick myself in the ass hard enough to see some sort of improvement by Christmas.

Kill Jill

Come on Baby Make it Hurt So Good

Oh hell, here she goes again with the Jillian crap. Please bear with me; I promise I’ll keep it brief.

I have what I consider a fairly significant amount of weight I’d like to lose, as in when all is said and done, hopefully thirty-fiveish pounds. So for now I’m concentrating mostly on cardio in order to shrink a little before I worry about tightening and toning. I love weights, I’ve seen what weights can do for me (and my butt), and I’ll be reuniting with them eventually. For the past month all I’ve pretty much done is walk, with a little jogging thrown in. I call it Bikram Walking, because of how our weather has been for the past month. I’d love to be Bikram Biking but I still don’t yet own a bicycle. I make myself laugh. I can feel Crisitunity’s eye-roll from all the way down here.

Oy, what happened to keeping this brief?

ANYWAY, we all know how much I love the 30DS, but since it uses light weights I’m not interested right now. I went to Amazon.com and started researching other Jillian dvd choices and decided to purchase the one you see above. I figured what a treat it would be to only worry about cardio. I figured after a month of fairly strenuous, hot, hilly, 45 – 60 minute walking sessions I could take this dvd and make it my bitch. I have one thing to say to that: Ha. HAHAHAHA.

Seriously, has it been so long that I forgot what a slave-driving, sadistic psycho she was? Apparently so. This work-out is almost fifty minutes long if you count the warm-up and cool down. You need no equipment (although I’ll probably be purchasing a mat here soon) and not too much space. Please clear your exercise area of all breakables (because of the kicking) and pets (Because of the jumping around. If your pet is like mine he has to be all up in your grill every minute of the day and gets irritated when I’m doing something abnormal).

Did I send her telepathic death threats at various times? Yes. Did I curse myself for not doing something like this sooner? Yes. Did I cry? A little. But, and here’s the big but (pun!) – I felt FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC afterwards. That high-pro glow all those healthy people talk about? I had it. Of course I looked like a bright red, sweaty swamp monster, but still.

I would recommend this to anyone who is interesting in a good old-fashioned self ass-kicking.

By Popular Demand

I put the camera in her hand this time.

MTAE, look away!  Look away!

Insert James Brown Song Here.

I feel good today. My hair worked, my make-up worked, I feel like I look cute, and my muscles have that nice feeling like they’ve been used extensively, but not so painfully that it’s impossible to walk. Even the Avon products I’ve been using for the past couple of weeks seem to be delivering the advertised results.

The messed up part about even writing the statement, “I feel good,” is that it’s a novel enough feeling to warrant notice. It’s interesting to have a goal that specifically includes taking feeling good for granted.

Oh, speaking of advertised results, I’ve been taking Align for, well, the specific conditions that it’s supposed to help. I noticed several folks ’round these here parts suffer from IBS or other various digestive problems (well, I didn’t notice it FIRST HAND, they mentioned it). Now, I don’t tout a product unless it actually works for me, and I’ve gotta say, this stuff has actually made me feel a lot better. It took about three weeks of taking it daily to really start seeing a difference, but now it seems that “things” are really on their way toward functioning, erm, correctly.

GEEZ, TMI is hard to avoid when you’re talking about poo.

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Here’s a question for you all. Is it better to work out for 20 minutes on the elliptical machine at Level 3, or 30 minutes at Level 2? A faster workout that pushes me more, or a longer workout that isn’t as strenuous? I alternate between the two, depending on a) how much time I have; and b) what I feel up to doing that day. Sometimes I even do 30 minutes at Level 3, but then I collapse in an incoherent heap and beg for a Klondike Bar. On my particular elliptical machine, there isn’t much difference at all, that I can tell, between Level 1 and Level 2. Level 3, though, HOO BOY. FEEL THE BURN.

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I’m having a love affair with roasted vegetables. Asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts (and WHY is there an “s” on the end of “brussel”?), zucchini, and summer squash have all found themselves tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, and crushed garlic and stuck in my oven (425 degrees) over the past few weeks. Even CALVIN has been enjoying them (except for the brussel(s) sprouts, which I think I undercooked).

I’m dying to try pattypan squash next, anybody have a good recipe?