Day 8

3 lb weightloss for week one. I expected more, but am happy with my results. It seems that my body is finally adjusting to the food and exercise. I feel like I am doing all the right things in my life. It feels great to be able to get up early and exercise and then get on with my day. I really like starting my day off like this. I woke up at 5am. Left for the gym at 5:30 and ate half of my breakfast on the way to the gym. I had a fruit salad with blueberries, strawberries, pineapple, oranges, watermelon & blueberry ricotta cheese. You SO need to try ricotta cheese with fruit in it. DELICIOUS!!!

Team Weightloss

For team weightloss today we did 35 minutes on the elliptical and he had us do interval training of 4 minutes zone 3, 1 minute zone 4. It was good. Then he put us on the cybex machine. I had never been on that before, it REALLY works your butt out. We did 15 minutes on the cybex. Once we were done Mike asked for everyones burn (we all wear POLAR watches). So everyone was over 700 burn and I was at 323. It didn't make sense. So Mike looked at my watch and the VO2 number was set WAY TOO LOW. So he adjusted it and it's working better now. I am going in on Sunday to get my EMR & RMR. You need to fast for 12 hours before this test and you cannot workout for 24 hours prior to the test. So Saturday will be my recovery day this week and then I will go in on Sunday, take the test, and workout. So this whole last week I have burned more calories than I thought. I'm anxious for my results so I can more accurately track my calorie burn each day.

Training with JOE

My session with Joe today was brutal. Honestly, we are in week two and I KNOW each training session will be harder and harder. It seems like it's easy stuff that we are doing, but for a 297lb woman, it's not easy. :):):) Here's what we did.

• Freemotion Cable Flys - 3 sets of 20 - 15 lbs alternating each set with 20 squats.
• Freemotion Cable squat & row - 3 sets of 20 - 60lbs. alternating with
• Freemotion Cable High Pulls - 3 sets of 20 - 20 lbs. (these burned my shoulders)
• Yellow Band Y pulls 3 sets of 15 alternating with
• Wall Shoulder Press - 3 sets of 15
• Cable Rotations - 3 sets of 25 - holding the smaller ball in front of me - 12.5lbs
• Drawing In - abs. - 3 sets of 25 (very embarrasing doing these)
• Roll Out

I had a talk with Joe about Abs and why I LOVE doing ab workouts. For me, when I feel my abs contract and they start firming up and going into spasms it makes me feel skinnier. When you are this big there is not much that can make you feel skinnier, but working on my abs does just that. It's a total mental thing. I feel my abs tight, I feel skinnier. I know, weird, but true. I feel like my body is figuring things out for itself. I'm not as sore as I was last Monday. Last Monday I couldn't even walk. Today, I feel sore, but still able to walk. It's all good. After my WO I spent 7 minutes in my "sanctuary" (steam room). I can't begin to tell you how good it is for me to go into that steam room. I LOVE IT. I had my 1st snack at 11:00 and it was a peach cheesecake.

I came home picked up the kids since they have off today for Pulaski Day. I took them back to the gym for swimming. We all ate lunch at 1:00 there by the pool. I had a California Style Wrap with Avocado, Baby Lettuce, Roasted Turkey, Monterey-Jack Cheese & fresh chunky salsa. The tortilla was a sun-dried tomato tortilla. It was such a good BIG lunch. I love feeding my kids at the gym because it's HEALTHY and cheap. Seriously, a kids lunch is only $3. LOVE IT!!! My 2nd snack for today was pork stuffed mushrooms. I ate that at 3:30. So good! Today has been a great day so far. I'm tired now, but that's ok. I'm going to post my dinner picture now in case I fall asleep before I blog again. For dinner I'm having beef fillet with BBQ bourbon sauce with red bell pepper orzo and steamed broccoli rapini. I plan on eating around 6:30. Goodnight!