Let's Shape Up!

Today was a refreshing workout, and I mean that literally. About quarter way through my workout the heavens opened up and down came the rain. Now, I could either finish the routine, or turn back, which meant I would get soaked either way so I decided to finish my full 6 miles. I was soaked from head to toe, but the silver lining behind the dark cloud was that with such a downpour this meant it was cool as opposed to the high humidity that’s normally around at that time of my workout. The lack of heat meant I had more stamina so I was able to jog 5 miles straight! YES guys I did!! WHOOT!!! WHOOT!!!. It felt awesome. Five whole miles of straight jogging felt great. I am hoping I can do it again, when it’s not so cool out.

I am hoping to go to the gym tomorrow for weight day, but not sure, my workout buddy is still sick and seems to be getting worse. We will see. If gym doesn’t work out, then I will go jogging and see if I can do the 5 miles again.

I didn’t go to the gym yesterday to do my weight training. My gym buddy wasn’t well and since it’s her membership I couldn’t make undertake my regular routine. We were planning on going in the evening, but she wasn’t able to go until later in the night so I went and did cardio in the evening around 6pm. I didn’t do my usual 6 miles routine, I only did 4 miles. I power walked 2 and then jogged the other 2. Tomorrow is still going to be a cardio day; but the 6 mile routine and hopefully back to the gym again on Wednesday.

I couldn’t afford to not workout this morning because I ate a lot over the weekend. Yep. I sure did. Let me give you a breakdown, my husband decided he wanted to do some jerk chicken and festival (traditional Jamaican dish), and I ate a lot of that, because I love me some jerk chicken! And oh my goodness I love festival!! Anyhow, to top it off I had 3 Corona 2 glasses of Moscato and cake with ice cream on top and I tried the Twix ice cream bars for the first time along with some Chester’s hot fries, and that was all Saturday. Sunday I tried to balance it all out, I think I did pretty well. I had the last of the jerk chicken and wholegrain bread, sad to say no festival because they were all done for breakfast with a slice of avocado, fish and rice and peas for dinner and then one more Corona and some more Moscato and a wine from the Riesling region, which I did not like at all.

My scale finally went below 153, it only said 152.8, not much but enough to make me very happy this morning and even more pumped to work out today, and drink loads of water, to ensure that the 0.2 pounds doesn’t come back.

Losing weight is a struggle for a lot of people. Maintaining the lost weight is a struggle for all. The slower the weight lost, the longer it takes to gain the weight back. A lot of diets promote no carbs, fruits only or salads; while all these will give you weight loss, they give you quick weight loss and what you find is that once you are not dieting, you regain a lot of the weight you had previously lost.

My best advice is to take it slowly, one day at a time. Eat no less than 1200 calories per day, and this 1200 minimum isn’t for everyone, some people need to eat no less than 1400 and so on. Initially when I started on my weight loss journey, I stuck to a 1200 calories diet. After I lost the first few pounds, I hit a plateau. I knew then it was time to “shake up” my routine. I then increased my calories to 1400 per day.

I try to eat a minimum of 4 fruits per day. I drink my protein shake after every workout. I also eat every 2-3 hours. That is vital because eating often helps the metabolism work faster and prevents it from getting lazy which results in your body storing the food as fat. I also drink a lot of water. On Sundays, which is my rest day I drink 64 ounce of water. Monday thru Saturday, I drink a minimum of 96 ounces of water, maximum of 128 ounces.

I need to try and increase my vegetable intake. I mainly eat vegetables with dinner, but I need to add it to my lunch as well, to increase my vegetable requirements.

Let’s do this the healthy way.

My calves are so sore today, I couldn’t even jog. Today would have been mainly jogging, because my workout buddy hurt her back and was in so much pain she couldn’t work out today, hence, I would have jogged around four miles today…but I couldn’t. My calves were sore from doing the P90X method of working your calves. It’s weird though because I did the same workout last week and I wasn’t sore, so imagine my surprise last night when I felt the soreness coming on; because you can tell when the pain is starting to come. So it was no surprise when I woke up feeling sore this morning.

During my walk, I started thinking I am a “wuss”, I could have jogged but I didn’t even try and at that same time when I was having that thought, I was about to cross the street but a car was also approaching, so the car slowed and allowed me to cross, so I decided to jog across the street so as not to hold the person up too long……that two second jog across the street felt like 2 hours, the muscles in my calves all started hurting at once Describing what I did as jogging is even pushing it, it was more like a wobble! That feeling I had of being a “wuss”, went right through the window…no way I could have jogged this morning. I couldn’t even wobble across the street!

Nonetheless I had a very good walk this morning, finished in 93 minutes, but I had a good sweat and I felt awesome. During my walk though, I felt shin splints coming in my right shin, or I think that’s what it was, so I stopped and stretched and rotated my ankles, tightened my sneakers and stretched some more, I pressed my leg on a palm tree and did lunges; I read that on a website yesterday. It came in pretty handy. I have heard people say how painful it is, and the little tweaks in my shin were painful enough, I tried everything I could to not make it get worse, whatever I did helped because the pain stopped and I was able to finish my routine.

I love working out. Trying to lose weight has to be a life style change, we cannot think of it as dieting, or we restrict ourselves too much, and we go about losing the weight the unhealthy way.

I have only 13 pounds to go, and I have been that way for over four weeks. However, I refuse to let that get me down. I just continue pushing forward. I increased the weights on a couple of the leg machines today. I didn’t increase my reps though, because by 12 I was using all my strength to move forward and for anyone who has done P90X the last 3 reps should really burn and I was burning.

Let us all keep pushing forward and never quit