Stress breeds inactivity

Or so it would seem.

When I get home from work, all I want to do is lay on the couch, play spider solitaire and lurk on my fav internet message board.

I don't want to think about the fact that I'll be phased out of my current job in 2 weeks when the new girl starts working alone. I don't want to think about the fact that of the 20jobs I've applied for only a call center has called me for an interview (is there a spelling mistake on my resume or something?!?!?!). I don't want to think about the fact that even though I feel I gave my employer 2 months notice, I was ambushed yesterday and told that as far as their records are concerned I didn't give them a specific end date, so I still owe them a full 2 weeks notice. I don't want to think about the fact that IF I'm offered a job at the call center, they're starting training this coming Monday. I don't want to think about the fact that I'll likely end up going from a 5min jaunt to work to a 45min commute. I don't want to think about the possibility that I may, somehow, get turned down for the call center job, even though it's a call center and they hire everyone! I don't want to think about how badly I'm going to want to shoot myself in the face everyday dealing with customer complaints.

So I go home from work, I lay on the couch and I play Spider solitaire and browse the Internet until I go to bed. I can't sleep, can't think about making supper, can't motivate myself to work out and am living in near panic attack mode.

Let me get through this.

Let's try this again...

P90X Lean - Day 1 - Core Synergistics

As I suspected, I wouldn't really get back into this until the New Year. Well, here I am again. I had a good holiday - a nice and relaxing 13 days off with my husband. We ate, we visited family, we partied...all in all, quite nice. He has committed to getting back into running and to start a weight lifting regime, he's even begun counting calories. It's inspiring. Also his new resolve helps me to eat well since I'm the cook and "have to" make meals that fit in with his (...our) diet.

Enough about life. All you really care about is what I thought of Core Synergistics right? Well, I'll keep you waiting no longer...

This was my first encounter with Core Synergistics as I always skipped it during the recovery weeks in the P90X Classic program. I was excited to switch on a new video to spice things up a bit but, quite frankly, it bored me.

The exercises seemed uninspired and either completely impossible without severe modification (a testament to my pathetic upper arm strength) or ridiculously simple. I only started getting a bit out of breath near the end when it came time for the Lunge Kickback Curl Press (which was excellent), the Superman Banana (ouch but woah) and the Steam Engine.

I will give it a 2nd chance though. I felt the same way after finishing Kenpo for the first time and, as I discovered a couple weeks ago, that snap judgement was perhaps too harsh. On the other hand, I gave Yoga a 2nd (and 3rd) chance and I still hated it, so really this could go either way.

Life keeps getting in the way

Motivation seems to have been the main antagonist in my fitness story. If I am not in the mood, or feel like my day is already busy, I just skip my workouts.

I must stop this. I must gain some self control. But how?

This week's preoccupation is knitting. I'm making these for my grandmother for Christmas. Hopefully I finish them soon or I'll have wasted last week's return to the P90X.

I think it best I start from Day 1 again in January. It would be a more honest countdown.

Glorious rest day

I'm so glad it's Sunday :)

Last night before bed I was starting to feel a foreboding stiffness in my back and shoulders - not surprised considering all the twisting, jabbing and insufficient warm-up/cool-down in Kenpo. As expected, this morning I am dealing with twinges in varying degrees of painfulness throughout my upper body.

On the bright side, my quads seem to have finished healing after Wednesdays' first plyo workout in some months.

So how shall I spend my rest day? Work from 8am-2pm, run quickly to town to find out if Super Mario Wii is still in stock anywhere, come home and lounge on the couch with my husband and kitties.

Sounds like a decent day to me.

Another week bites the dust

Well, I just got back from my mini-vacation in the city with my husband - one year anniversary was Sunday. It was a nice lazy time. I did get a good amount of walking in in order to visit some of my friends in that area - probably travelled a good 10K on foot over the course of the week, so it wasn't a complete wash.

But now I'm back, and better get on track - I have a bachelorette and a wedding to go to in the next 7 days, so I better earn the fun.

I have borrowed a complete set of the P90X, and am excited to get started - I skipped through a couple of the DVDs and can I say WOW, I'm going to die? I watched the Chest & Back video as well as the Ab Ripper X, and I don't know how I will survive all the push-ups, pull ups, and various sit-ups.

This is gonna be FUN

*truly, I am excited.

Long overdue I think

I have been quite busy lately - what with moving into our house, going out for Canada day, doing a surprising amount of hiking and spending most of my free time unpacking.

Consequently, I have taken a bit of a break from the Internet.

On Tuesday I hiked 16km with some friends. It was quite the time, and we were moving at breakneck speed - we finished in under 3 hours - just over a 5km/h march. Very exciting. It was quite apparent to me that I am far fitter this summer than I was last year, and that if it weren`t for all my hard work lately, my friends would have likely had to carry me home. Especially since I went to Cape Split under the belief that it was an 8k round trip, not 8k one way. My friend who brought us there exagerated the `shortness` of the hike. It was also 16K of mud, fallen trees, rocks, monster puddles and cliffs. It kept a person on their toes - lose concentration and BAM! - you are on your ass in the mud.

(this is not my photo, it is a random from Google searching)

Today I also got up early and went for my first run in awhile - my right knee has been bothering me since the move (I can feel the cartilage grinding)but after Tuesday`s hike, I seem to have worked out the kinks.I didn`t bother with the C25K podcast and just listened to my own music - managed a rather «easy» 20 consecutive min run. I think I`m getting the hang of this jogging thing. Very exciting.

I luuurve running

So I'm on Week 4 day 2, and I say with great pride that I, Couch-Potato-Ginny, can now run for 5 consecutive minutes. That's right. Five.Whole.Minutes.

I'm super impressed with myself. I am afraid of Week 5 though. It seems that I'll have my first 20min run probably next Friday. It's going to be quite the mental hurdle I think.

Oh, and the house is officially ours. All the conditions have been met as of today, and we just faxed in our Completion of Conditions of Purchase and Sale form. Yikes. We're stuck now :P

Falling off the wagon

I guess it's not such a bad thing that I plan to eat some icecream and I'm not going for my run. Saturday is my day to be bad afterall. I just need to make sure I keep active and get back to healthy as of tomorrow.

I am really enjoying running. As I've mentioned before, it's always been a whistfull pipedream of mine, that I never thought I would ever accomplish. Now I'm planning to run the Terry Fox 5K in the fall! What a change. It tells me that I really can do anything if I put my mind to it.

My knees aren't bothering me near as much lately. I think I discovered the culprit. My laptop. Yup. Apparently it is too stressful on my knees to set the laptop on my lap. It is equally stressfull to lean on my knees while the laptop sits on the coffee table. My ingenious solution? Now I blog lying on the floor...it only hurts my ribs a little (because my ribs are no longer softened by fat :D yay). So hopefully this will take care of my knee issues for the forseeable future.

Another reason why I haven't been working out much lately? My husband and I bought a house!!! It's an awesome house. Yay. Very busy meeting all the conditions of the sale but everything is going well - if things keep on track we get the house on June 22nd. Awesomeness.

Update on life

Sorry I have been bad. Very little updating....probably because I'm not working out everyday, whoops! But I have been running more than I have been posting, so this whole exercising thing is not totally unravelling. The problem I seem to be having is remembering that it is important to weight train on my non-C25K days.

Speaking of the C25K, I am happily progressing along week 3. Running for 3 uninteruppted minutes is death, but I am enjoying the fact that I am physically capable of accomplishing this. I dread week 4, eeek.

I'm going to finish this update later. I have to go buy ice cream while my husband bbqs. Sigh, I am totally cancelling out the workout that I plan to cop out of this evening.

Bad bad me. Oh well, ice cream :D

C25K W2D2

I seem to be a day behind in this updating business. But I have an excuse. We bought a house last night :) The last of the paperwork is getting signed today and then it'll be time for meeting the sales conditions. Excitement.

Anyhoo, I went for my run yesterday morning. It felt pretty good. I had a bit of trouble with my hip again, but nothing major, and no pain this morning. My knees are hurting a bit but I think that is from setting the laptop on my lap and/or leaning forward with my elbows on them when I type. Also from crossing my legs. Stupid weak knees. Oh well, I'm happy that exercising isn't making them worse.

I saw some amazing before/after pictures from a Nestie yesterday as well. She and her husband were doing the P90X, which is what I want to do next. Her starting pictures were pretty similar to mine - fairly slim girl anyway with a little layer of pudge all around. Now she's looking like the definition of bikini body. I definitely would love that for myself. I'll have to see if I can get my husband back into it as well. He seems to have stopped his fitness regime. Probably for the same reason that I've found it hard exercising inside - our neighbours, and our houseguest.

Level 2 (Day 11)

It's going to be getting interesting trying to work out at home for the next little while. We've got a friend living with us for a few months while he finishes a subbing job, so he's going to be around most of the time I'm home. This is an issue because I am very self conscious and don't like people to see me in shorts, let alone exercising.

I procrastinated doing my workout all day yesterday until finally, at 9pm, I got the brilliant idea to take the DVD player upstairs to my bedroom and plug it in to the smaller bedroom tv. Why it took me all day to figure this out I do not know. But it worked well. The guys were downstairs getting their kicks watching youtube videos, and I just worked out upstairs in privacy.

So, now you want to know how level 2 went.

It was honestly not that bad. I expected to be as dead by the end of it as I was that first fateful day when I started Level 1. Nowhere near that bad. I was winded for sure, but it was more like Day 5 winded - I got a good workout, got a sweat on, and was wishing it would just be over. Yet I recovered from it pretty quickly and was able to do all the cardio without getting dizzy. I admit I did the modified versions of most of the plank exercises (like the travelling push ups, the plank jumping jacks, and some other cardio movement I for which I can't remember the name). Still, I'm quite happy with my performance.

I'm really starting to notice some changes in my body now too. Before it was all just changes in how I felt - like better endurance, better recovery time, things became easier, I stopped being sore. Now I can actually see visual improvement: a little "2-pack" forming in my abs, I have a little bicep muscle growing out of my arm, my triceps are less floppy, my butt is firmer, my calves seem to be lifting and getting definition, I can see definition in my quadreceps as well.

I'm so glad I'm finally sticking with a fitness routine. These results are fantastic.

The Shred - Day 7

- I think I might actually flip-out next time I hear Jillian say "Don't phone it in." The constant repetition of this stupid expression is realllllly grating on my nerves.

- I'm quite sore after yesterday, so I still haven't managed more than 2 real push-ups.

- Cans of beans apparently are much more effective than cans of soup. I feel the burn.

- I've finally downloaded my official before pics. I've taken them from 4 angles: Front, Back, Side, other side.

- I'm concerned that I will soon be graduating to Level 2. NOT looking forward to working hard again. But, it is what it is. My body will not tone up if I don't stress it a bit.

- My heart rate recovery time has improved 900%. Now, immediately after finishing the stretching portion of the video, my heart rate is down to 96bpm. After the first day I it was still going at near work-out pace 10mins later (about 126bpm). Now 5 mins later, my hear rate is completely recovered compared with 45mins later. yikes.

- After speaking with my Dad about coming with us to view some houses, he agreed to lend me his set of weights. He has a dumbbell set with 2lb, 5lb, 10lb, and 15lb weights. Perfect.

- I've begun sorting out all my size 9 pants and medium shirts and will be taking them to the Salvation Army shortly. I haven't been a size 9 or medium for a number of years and the clothes are just taking up way to much space. Plus, I always just kept them around in case I ended up gaining weight again. But that was the old unmotivated me. The new energetic me wants to maintain her current size 7 and blast away the muffin top. It's kind of freeing to get rid of the clothes.

The Shred - Day 5

Apparently I should just bite my tongue when I get the idea that this thing isn't hard :P

I'm definitely winded. Also, I think I might graduate from tomato soup can weights to tomato sauce can weights. I'm not getting much of an arm workout and I think using a larger volume can might help. The one snag? I only have one can of tomato sauce.

Today I saw a significant improvement in my recovery time. My heart rate was down to just faster than normal by the end of the cool down, and 5 mins later I'm feeling just fine. This is way better than being utterly destroyed for the remainder of the evening.

One final crazy thought to add. My husband and I have been lusting over this 5 bedroom house located on 3 acres of land just outside town (read no municipal taxes but convenient for work). It's been on the market since at least January - we've been tracking it since then. It's only $7K out of our price range. We've got it in our heads that we'll have our own bedroom, 2 for kids, a shared home-office and a workout room in the basement bedroom. We've got a weight machine being used as a laundry rack in our bedroom now, and we could buy my Dad's elliptical machine since he's desperate to sell it. We could put my 15" tv in there, get a yoga mat. Ah, pipe dreams :)

Wishlist:
1. Another can of tomato sauce or
2. Real weights :)

Taking the day off...sorta

As much as I would "love" to put my broken muscles through the torture, I'm going to have to pass on doing the Shred today.
I've got work this morning, a meeting with mortgage specialist this afternoon and dinner plans so that doesn't leave me much time to do chores, homework and the Shred.

To compensate, I'll multi task cleaning and my Spark exercises:

Crunches 2X30
Crunches with Twist 2X15
Biceps Curls with Band 2X15
Triceps Dips with Bent Knees 2X15
Squats 2X15
Low Mount Leg Curls with Band 2X15
Low Mount Seated Rows with Band 2X12
Reverse Flys with Band 2X8

Stretch After Strength Training

I would like to add that I have been using this routine casually for about 2 weeks now. I started with 2 reps of 8 for most of the exercises (2X15 with the crunches) and have worked my way up to the current numbers. Once the 15's become easier, I'll be either adding weight and restarting 2X8 or starting 3 reps of 8-12.