Working out is working out

My current schedule, for what it’s worth and for those of you looking for a new routine. Click to embiggen.

Weights routine lifted from the Body Sculpting Bible for Women.

Wake up!

As I sat here finding myself sliding down in my chair (again), my eyelids gaining weight faster than the rest of me (oh, har!), I thought for some reason about one of my favorite movies, “Over the Hedge.”  I’m on a ‘fun’ kick recently, so I’m not all that surprised that this one popped up from the memory banks.

A few clicks later and then repeated clicks to keep going, I was chair dancing – of a variety that absolutely qualifies for aerobic activity; I will be sore later, lol.  Those in cubicle-ville probably can’t do what I just did, but if not, maybe it would be a fun one for some of you (*cough* ladies) to add to your playlists or just to dance around the house to when you feel the need.

In my case, let’s hear it for working at home, and finally, my vastly uneven basement floor finds some usefulness!

Happy Tuesday to You!

(Not for nothing here, but do y’all realize that I just added “Fun” as a category here?  Hmm.  Maybe we need a collective mental adjustment…?)

You Gotta Have Goals

So, what are your workout goals?

1. Not being embarrassed to work out in my actual workout clothes.
2. Not being out of breath by the time I get in place/set up/ready to work out.
3. To actually work out?
4. Not requiring 12 days of rest in between workouts.
5. Not requiring a doctor’s visit, ice, heat, bandage, splint, ultrasound, or physical therapy after a workout.
6. To whine a collective total of not more than 1 hour per workout.
7. To actually work out more than once?
8. To stop swearing at the television screen.
9. To really consider the value of a swear jar before I truly commit to #8.
10. To make this list sound at least slightly more funny than true.

I know:  It’s scary how high I’m aiming here.  I know they all warn against being unrealistic, but I wasn’t sure how to go lower and still have them count as goals!

 

Stuck Like Chuck

What? Oh, hi! *Steps off scale*

Don’t mind me; I’m just a little obsessed distracted lately, as I come up on the three-month mark of my little journey here.

The first two months were really cool – well, cool is a relative term, as I spent most of that time trying to burn off calories in the sweltering Carolina sun. But I’d call it a successful period of time, as I learned to love walking in my neighborhood, was consistent with keeping track of everything I ate and managed to lose about thirteen pounds. I cleaned out my closet and was giddy every time I fit into something I hadn’t been able to wear over the past three years. Things were going well.

And then…screeeeeach – everything came to a grinding halt.

For the past month, I’ve remained steady at some number between 147 and 149 pounds. I have a digital scale, so I’m able to obsess note every day in my weight journal what number I am that day, down to the eighth of a pound. Or tenth? I don’t know – math is not my strong suit. For the first two weeks I was alarmed, then moved onto being amused and now I’m just confused. I know logically there’s been some fat replaced by muscle action going on. Something is shifting around in there, obviously, or I wouldn’t have been able to wear a pair of size 6’s the other day (whoo, that was fun).

I’m frustrated, but I haven’t given up. No, actually quite the opposite. If anything, I’m more determined than ever to somehow find a way past this and keep moving toward my goal. I’m more confident now with food choices and exercising is so much a part of my routine I feel weird if I miss two days in a row. I know the number on the scale isn’t the total picture. But still it’s…a little upsetting to see the same numbers day after day.

I’m going to try to kick it up a notch as far as switching up my work-outs, but if anyone has any advice, any tips, any thoughts AT ALL on this plateau subject, I’d be really appreciative if you could share.

*Tiptoes down the hall in a wide circle to avoid stepping on the scale again*

So, Zumba.

I used to think I was a reasonably coordinated person. I took dance lessons from the age of five to the age of fourteen, forcryingoutloud. Plus, Bill hasn’t run screaming from me in embarrassment (believe me, he would) when we be clubbin’. So, I thought I was okay, dance-wise.

Apparently, though, it has been a VERY long time since I’ve been required to follow a beat with anything other than my bobbing head, or my tapping toe.

Enter Zumba.

Note, all of the things I’m about to say apply to the specific Zumba class that I took, and my specific opinion of said class. YMMV. It probably won’t, but it may.

For instance, it seems to be a professional requirement that Zumba instructors be dead sexy, wicked dancers, and ohmyholyfuck PERKY. With long flowing hair and loose fitting, low-cut peekaboo belly button I see you cargo pants with lots and lots of pockets. Also, hips that are triple-jointed. That do not lie.

They’re also unforgiving BITCHES. Because they don’t let you slow down, EVER. Or stop, EVER. Even if you’re going to cry, and you’re VERY UNATTRACTIVE when you cry. With the snot and the red nose and the hic-eeh. Hic-eeh.

I’m assuming there are guy Zumba instructors out there, but my particular studio only has girls.

The beat starts out in hyper-drive and continues in hyper-drive, with brief pauses for jesusfreakingCHRIST and pleaseohpleaseslowthefuckDOWN, followed by a brief interlude of IhopeIfalldownbecauseatleastI’llbeprone. I can’t jackknife my knees up and down on the upbeat, while simultaneously pumping my fists on the downbeat. I can’t do a one-two-three step with my legs, while doing a five count with my arms.

It’s like, rubbing my belly while patting my head and hopping on one foot while yelling “RUBBER BABY BUGGY BUMPERS!” at the top of my lungs. With my eyes closed.

In short, Zumba is TOUGH. And requires a Latin-esque connection to the hips that I, apparently, lack.

Did I mention the belly dancing? No? One would think, seeing as I posses QUITE the belly (goddammit), that the dancing of said belly would come naturally to me. One would be wrong. Because dancing and jiggling are two very different things. Altogether.

I would be the world champion of belly jiggling. I could teach a FRIKKIN CLASS on belly jiggling. Perkily, even. I’m qualified for that.

So, yeah. It was an entire hour of the samba, or maybe it was the rumba? The cha-cha? With grapevines and step-ball-changes and jazz boxes, plus some random spins thrown in there. The class went left, I went right. The class dipped down, I threw my hands in the air. The class trucked on in unison, I stopped eleventy-seven times to ponder, “Now, what the fuck are they doing?”. Step ball change. One two three.

And TURN! Glance at the sweating newbie standing still in the corner. Whose ponytail is soaked as if she stood under a shower head for a full five minutes. Randomly jerking her limbs in a grotesque pantomime of a seizure.

One two three. Jerk twitch fling.

I kept it together. I gamely hung in there for the full hour. I never stopped moving… I just sometimes didn’t move quite as vigorously as everyone else. Or as coordinated. Ly. And when it was over, I patted my face with my towel, swigged womanfully from my water bottle, strode out into the parking lot and to my car…

… where I collapsed in the air conditioned comfort and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. Reacquainting my lungs with their full capacity.

———-

I’ll go again. I will. Next time I’ll wear lighter shoes – my Sketchers (these) instead of my Reebok Easytones. Something that allows for movement and turns on the floor, instead of planting and sticking and doing knee damage.

I’m still going to stick to the back of the class, though. Except that they turn around and change directions so often that sometimes I end up at the FRONT of the class.

The humanity.

Penance

Since my good-feeling 5k race in mid-July, I’ve run precisely four times.  Including last night.  I have been a suckish bastard.

Now, I’ve done more exercise than that – heavy pack-mule labor at work – several 10+ mile bike rides, both with Boy (somewhat leisurely) and by myself (I pushed myself fairly hard) – climbing the 5-story stairs to the water slides last weekend over and over and over – etc.  But running?  No.  Considering that I’m trying hard to work up to a running goal, that’s not good.

But I have plenty of time.  The half-marathon that is the “end goal” isn’t until April.  I have time to be a fuckup on occasion.  But it’s not helped if I’m doing vacation-eating at the same time – which is precisely what I’ve been doing.

School has started, so I have to get myself re-focused into a different routine again.  I can’t get up and go running in the mornings anymore – the park doesn’t open until 6, and Boy needs to be up and about by 6:30.  I suppose I could get up at 5 or earlier and run around my neighborhood, but there is that slightly increased chance of getting run over or, possibly, shot as a Peeping Tom or something crazy like that.  And if the hills in the park are bad, the hills in my neighborhood are even more nutso.  I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that level of challenge quite yet.

So I’m trying to re-acclimate myself to running after work, or possibly later in the evening.  It’s too bad – early morning workouts are best for me, because I tend to be a morning person.  By afternoon, I’m already feeling kinda run down and looking for reasons to avoid working out (and with a family at home, those reasons usually aren’t hard to find).  If I stop on my way home from work, I’m prolonging my workday.  Once I get home, though, getting me to leave again and go work out or run or whatever is crazy hard.  Even if it is cooler at 8 than at 6.

Yesterday’s run was in a bad time of day for me, and yes it was probably 10 degrees hotter than I’ve been used to with my morning runs.  But that’s still no excuse for me turning in my first over-40-minute time for a 3.5 mile run since June.  The reason is that I’ve been a suckass slacker.  And that part has got to change.

I will now do penance by forcing myself not to suck.  And wow, sometimes that’s hard!

I Love You But GTFO

I’ve been enjoying working out at home with Jillian and all, but as we know variety is the spice of life (especially when you’re not eating very many spices – nevermind, that was just bad). I was looking around yesterday afternoon on the Exercise On Demand channel to see what all was there and was surprised to find a lot of cool stuff. Pretty much anything you’d want from a home work-out is right there on TV, which hello – probably should’ve paid attention to that awhile ago, but I’m here now so okay.

Brian had come home but then gone back out to go check on someone’s yard or whatever; something work-related. I was sitting there flipping through different things when it hit me: he’s not home right now. You are alone, with no eye witnesses but the dog and he doesn’t usually say anything. I didn’t know how long he was going to be gone so I quickly threw on some exercise clothes and sneakers and cranked up “Cardio Boot Camp.” I did a few other things as well, just playing around to try to get a feel for what’s there and also to try to get in an actual workout.

For about forty-five minutes I jumped around and followed whatever they were doing, trying to picture how it would be if Brian was sitting there on the couch like he normally is when I’m doing Jillian (that came out wrong but whatever). I concluded I would’ve felt super dumb. If you’ve ever seen me try to dance, you know a little where I’m coming from. Remember Elaine from Seinfeld? Yeah I wish I was that good. But the thing is, it’s FUN to incorporate a little dancing in with your cardio and I damn sure had fun doing it no matter how stupid it probably looked.

Is it silly for me to be this way? Yes. Does that make it any less real? No.

It’s okay though. From now on my sneakers will be nearby and ready to bust an impromptu move whenever the opportunity presents itself.

For the record…

I was about to clear out my iPod’s timer log this morning when I decided to hold off.  I use my iPod as my stopwatch for my runs, and I hadn’t cleared it for several weeks.  I suddenly thought, “Hmm, maybe I should keep a record of this…

3.5 mile runs

June 23	0:44:14
June 24	0:42:20
June 30	0:41:11
July 2	0:39:49
July 7	0:40:49
July 8	0:40:57
July 12	0:39:27

6 mile runs

June 26	1:08:19
July 3	1:11:24
July 5	1:07:27
July 10	1:07:23

The 3.5 mile times are slow, definitely, but it’s also a seriously hilly 3.5 miles, so I’m comfortable with relative suckitude there.

The six-milers are somewhat deceptive, since I have to cross a highway and there may or may not be a wait involved there.  The six-mile runs essentially start with the hardest part of the 3.5 mile run, and end with a relatively long flat section, a long steady hill, and then another mostly flat (slightly uphill) segment.

Know what else makes a big difference?  The temperature.  It’s a hell of a lot easier to keep going when it’s 70 degrees versus 80…

But there ya go.  My times are now out there for the world to see whether I’m getting any better or just spinning my shoes.

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.

Five

Not a bad weekend around ye olde abode.  I started it off by getting up before dawn again on Saturday morning to go for a run.  At the last second, the talk I had with my ex-runner officemate re-entered my brain and I took a right instead of a left.  I parked my car on the other side of the park and instead of running 3.5 miles, I ran five.  My goal was anything under 1:15 – fifteen-minute miles – and I made it in 1:08 and change, having forgotten to start my stopwatch on time to begin with and having to wait for traffic lights to change twice, which I figure evens out in the end.  Close enough, at least.

I was definitely whipped but not completely out of commission, which was nice.  And a good thing, too, since when I got back to my car I realized that my extra door key that I carry while I run had fallen out someplace, so my keys were locked in my car.  I’d left my phone at home, so I had to walk the mile back home from the park and pound on the door until the dog barking at me got Dys  up to let me in.

Oh well.

Afterward, I showered and changed clothes and Dys and I went on a Wal-Mart/grocery run.  While at WM, I picked up a couple of sleeveless Under-Armour type shirts to run in.

In size Large.  Do you know how long it’s been since I bought anything without an X in front of it?  And while I’m still a little more bulgy in a few places than I’d like, they definitely fit.

I also bought a pack of white and black tank-top undershirts in size Large, and those suckers are definitely a little tighter than I’d imagined they’d be.  But still not grotesquely so, and I can still work on that a bit.  Dys asked if I was going for the Eric Northman look, and honestly it hadn’t even crossed my mind, but if it’s even bringing up the concept, then WIN.

Even in the ballpark of this guy is a compliment.

Having survived the five-mile run without serious complications, I think I’m going to succumb to my coworker’s suggestion and plan to enter the local Triple Crown.   A 5k (3.1 miles) on the last Saturday of next February, a 10k (6.2 mi) on the second Saturday in March, and a 10 miler on the last Saturday in March.  I think only the 10-miler is a real concern, and I have nine months to prepare for it.

Time to kick it up a notch, eh?