2 Week Recap

Because it's been a while since my last post here's a quick recap of the last two weeks of my life.

• I recovered from being sick. I took an extra rest day as a result of being sick but that was the best choice for me and my body.
• I had a snow day in college! I also got stuck leaving my driveway that day which resulted in me running back up my driveway because my brother wasn't answering his phone since he was sleeping. I took another rest day as I didn't want to drive home in the dark, and I was able to follow my aunt (who has 4-wheel drive) home which made me much more comfortable driving my car home.
• I was one of 3 students in my online managerial economics class to score between 90 and 95 percent (highest of the class) on our first exam of the class. I'm not always the best student so to be one of 3 students to score that well felt pretty amazing. Ok, ok I won't take all the credit for it considering Chelsea and I worked on it together and we had another friend's answers to compare ours to. But still!
•  I lost 2 pounds since 2/16/12! I honestly was not expecting this. It renewed my motivation to keep pushing on through all of the struggles of trying to change my habits and lose weight. Also, I decided to come up with a rewards system for my weight loss journey. I will reward myself for every 5 pounds lost, and every 10 pounds will be a bigger reward while every 5 pounds is a small reward.
• I got back on track with my workouts. Sunday I walked almost 5 miles in 83 minutes up and down the "mountain". It isn't really a mountain, just a steep hill with skiing but it's name includes mountain in it. My legs are still feeling it today!

Since seeing Brantley Gilbert in concert, as the opener for Eric Church, in January I've been obsessed with listening to his music.  Here's one of his (great!) songs.

Tomorrow is filled with work and school followed by a weights workout.  Thankfully it's also Wednesday which means we're going to be halfway through the week!

Making A Come Back!

Well I finally did it!  I joined the YMCA this past Friday and I am so proud of myself for finally taking a step in the right direction with renewing my weight loss journey.

Sure I've thought and written about my plan to get back on track with losing weight before but I haven't actually followed through with the plan.  This time there wasn't a lot of thinking, writing, or planning involved - I just did it!

My good friend Chelsea was proposed to on Christmas Eve by her Marine boyfriend Dan who was home on leave.  I was informed soon after that I would be standing up in her wedding as a bridesmaid.  My initial thought was something along the lines of OK, you really need to lose weight now so you'll look good in a dress in front of her family and friends.

Then last week the plans were made to look at bridesmaid dresses and almost complete panic set in.

I was not looking forward to trying dresses on with the other two girls who are what I call skinny.  I expressed my concerns to Chelsea about needing to lose weight for her wedding and so we made plans to go to the YMCA (where Chelsea works) to give me a quick tour and to sign me up.

Thanks to my employer I only have to pay $24/month because they take care of the joiners fee and I get a $5 discount on top of my student rate.

Chelsea and I are now workout buddies which is great.

Tonight was our first workout.  Between chatting with Chelsea and reading Charlie St. Cloud (for the second time) 30 minutes flew by and I had put in 6.17 miles on the bike.

I was thinking of waiting to workout again with Chelsea on Thursday after work but since I've been home I've been tossing around the idea of working out tomorrow right after work on my own.  There is only one fear in my mind and that is that I'll burn myself out with working out by trying to do too much too soon.  But I'm also in this awesome mood where I'm motivated and want to workout.  I haven't felt like this in a while so I'm thinking I should just go with it?

What would you do if you were in my shoes?

I'll be watching for your comments and I'll keep you posted on what I decide.  I'm making a come back to both blogging and to my weight loss journey!

This Ain't No Thinkin' Thing

Can anyone name the artist that sings that song?  Read this post to find out if you were right!

Fitness for life is a two credit gym class I am taking this semester that requires me to hit the cardio for a minimum of 20 minutes on Wednesday and Friday every week.  This week I decided I wasn't feeling the treadmill so I jumped on the stationary bike.

Wednesday I had a dead iPod so I just pedaled away while trying really hard to not stare at the timer on the bike.  Let's just say that it was the longest and toughest 30 minutes of my life.  I was always varying the resistance and slowing down and speeding up.

If I had my iPod it would have helped some but I've noticed even with running on the treadmill music just doesn't cut it when it comes to getting me to forget about the timer.

Today I still had a dead iPod but I happened to see my Kindle as I was getting things packed up at work before heading to the gym.  I decided since I'm not taking as much time to read now that school has started why not use my gym time as reading time?

I had a scare when I got set up on the bike after turning my Kindle on - it said my battery is low plug me in!  No, it didn't really say that exactly but close enough.

I rolled with the punches though and just decided to use it until it died on me.

My Kindle returned all of the love I give it by surviving 31 minutes and only reminding me one more time that it wanted to be connected to some juice.

If you follow me on Daily Mile at all you already know that I was 20 minutes into my workout before I checked the time.  Even better is it felt like I had just gotten on the bike a minute ago.  Even better still is I "went" farther than I did on Wednesday and kept the resistance the same at 10 for the entire workout.

On my drive home I realized working out ain't no thinkin' thing!

When my head is involved in my workout I don't preform as well as I know I could.  Wednesday is a prime example - varying the resistance and speed because my legs were "tired/sore" or whatever and the time was going by super slow.  Same thing happens with running.  I stop running long before my body truly says it can't take me any farther at the pace I'm going.

Today proves the point that half - or more of - the battle is mental.  Because my mind was occupied with what I was reading I didn't have the ability to worry about the time and my legs being "tired/sore".  Sorry brain guess what?  My legs felt the exact same way as they did Wednesday and I didn't need to slow down or make it easier!

I am not sure that I could run while reading my Kindle so for now I am going to stick to the stationary bike but maybe sometime I'll give reading a shot while I'm running.  Stationary bike, you and I plus third wheel Kindle have a date next Wednesday at 11:45am - see you then!

Questions for you...

How do you overcome the mental battle in your workouts?

Do you read while running/biking on gym equipment?  (Please don't try reading while running/biking out in the "real" world!)

Currently listening to...

Ala-Freakin-Bama - Trace Adkins - album: Cowboy's Back in Town (see some pictures I took of Mr. Adkins at Country Fest in June here

If you guessed Trace Adkins as the artist who sings the song I used for my post title you were correct!

I just have to add another song to my "currently listening to" for the day!  Brown Chicken Brown Cow - Have you seen the music video for this??  If not watch it now!!

Mission Accomplished!

Wow it's about a week and a half since my last post!  Since that post I've started the fall semester at school so I am sure you fellow college students can understand how that could have gotten in the way of blogging.

This semester I am taking a total of 15 credits.  My schedule looks like this...

Mondays - Work 7:30-11:30, Fitness for Life 12-12:50

Tuesdays - No work and no class = homework day at home or day to make appointments

Wednesdays - Work 7:30-11:30, Fitness for Life 12-12:50, Personnel/Human Resource Management 5:30-8:00

Thursdays - Work 8-4:30, Principles of Finance 5:30-8:00

Fridays - Work 7:30-11:30, Fitness for Life 12-12:50

Then half way through the semester I will replace Principles of Finance with Ethics in Business.  Because they are only 8 week courses the material is covered very quickly and you have tests very quickly, sometimes back to back weeks.

Despite having a full course load and lots of work for each of those classes, except for Fitness for Life, I can make time to blog.  I will be working on that from now on because I find it useful to blog about what's going on my life because this wonderful blogging community always offers their advice and support.  I can't thank you enough for the past advice and support you've left in the comments of my previous posts.

Anyways, moving on to what the title of this post is all about.  Fitness for Life is a 2 credit gym class I am taking this semester and as an evaluation of where we are at currently we had to run a timed 1.3 miles (approximately) through the park.  The professor told everyone to shoot for less than 20 minutes.  I pulled it off in 19:07!  I was really happy with this time because honestly I really haven't worked out since last October.  You can read more about my run over at Daily Mile (see the widget to the left?).

Weather permitting we will be running that same route again at the end of the semester to see how we have progressed in our fitness level.  Since it will be December in Wisconsin I am not counting on having to run it again but we'll see.

The rest of the semester every Wednesday and Friday we are required to do at least 20 minutes of cardio in some form.  We can do more than 20 minutes if we want but if we only do 20 minutes we need to fill the rest of the class time with something else fitness related, like strength training.  I am going to take this opportunity to get on the strength training bandwagon because I know it's important and I've been slacking in this area for a while my entire life.

Now that I've written this I suppose I should hit the books.  Hopefully I don't get distracted by the internet!

Currently listening to: Hell On Heels - Pistol Annies

Questions for you...

Are you required to take any type of gym in order to graduate?

Do you strength train?  If so, how did you get started?

Should I continue to post what I am currently listening to?

 

Update

Well I have some pretty freaking awesome news for you bloggy friends...Duke has been improving since his visit to the vet on Tuesday!!!!  You have no idea how happy this makes me.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your prayers and thoughts this week!!  I feel so blessed to have such awesome readers, and dare I say friends, who are there when I need them for their support and prayers!

Tuesday he was re-checked by the vet and had full blood work done to check everything to make sure there was nothing else going on with his body.  The disease he has become a bit more serious though as we were informed that it's a lot like lymes disease was about 20 years ago when it was first discovered; information and treatment plans were always changing so they don't know how exactly to treat or how serious the disease is.  The vet informed us that they have lost dogs from this disease.  Scary stuff!

He was prescribed a steroid medication to start on that night and he's been improving ever since.  My mom called to give the vet the update (as we were told to do) and tomorrow we are lowering the dosage from 1 and 1/2 tablets to 1 tablet every 12 hours for two days and then to a 1/2 tablet.  If he would start going backwards in his progress we go back to the dosage that was helping.  We have to call again on Tuesday to update them on how things are going.  Fingers crossed that things keep improving and soon my family has our dog back!

Due to the crazy emotions throughout this week and caring for Duke I've been a bit distracted in the evenings so I haven't been writing as I would have liked to.  I thought summer would lead to consistent posting but so far not so much :(  I'm going to work on that!

On the weight loss front...

I've determined that losing weight on my own, away from Sparkpeople, just isn't working for me.  As of Wednesday I've logged in every day, been tracking my meals as much as I can (which really isn't very much), and while I haven't "officially" worked out yet I have been thinking about it a lot more than I had been.  I really want to make progress this summer and not look back.  It feels like forever since I've felt good about myself and where I'm at/headed.

Anyways, that's a brief update of what's going in my life.  I'll bore you ( ;) ) with more posts soon!