Day 9

On Tuesdays & Thursdays I am scheduling my workouts with Joe to be a little later in the morning so I can get the kids off to school. Jeremy does that job on M,W,F since I leave the house at 5:30 on those days for team weightloss. I had the alarm set for 6:30am which is perfect timing to get Emily & Tyler up, fed and out to the bus by 7:20. This is the day I can sleep in. But did I, NO!!! My lovely body woke me up at 5:30 this morning. UGH!!! Why oh why! So I got up, did laundry as usual. Got all my water bottles filled for my workout. Took our dog out. Got my food, took pictures, got ready for the day and then woke up the kids, actually Gracie came downstairs at 6:15, which is shocking since I typically have to wake her up at 7:30. I think going to bed at 6:45 last night helped. :):):)Swimming wore her out yesterday.

These next two weeks are HUGE for them. They take their ISAT tests and I want to make sure they all eat a healthy breakfast daily before these tests. Which for Emily is really no big deal, but for Tyler it will determine if he gets into Northwestern next year for summer school. He just made it this year with his ISAT scores. I'm SO PROUD of him. We still don't know if Emily made it or not. She qualifies with her SAT scores. Which she took on Feb. 20, so we don't have those results back yet. Yes, I did say SAT and yes she is only in 6th grade. We were blessed with a VERY intelligent daughter.

For breakfast today I had Coconut cream and walnut oatmeal. It was delicious but I started eating it around 6:00 and it took me over an hour to eat it. SO MUCH FOOD! It's still freaking me out that I get filled up so fast. I really had no energy this morning. I was VERY TIRED. I moved around slowly. I was HAPPY, but very tired. NO ENERGY. I had NO DESIRE to get in my car and go and workout. NONE! But I still went. About 10 minutes after I left I put on my Black Eyed Peas CD and got some energy from that. By the time I was done working out I had SO MUCH energy. It's weird how that happens.

Workout with Joe

This workout was even more intense than yesterday. At least for me it was. It ended up being a HUGE visual breakthrough day for me. I don't know if I ever talked about mirrors before, but I HATE mirrors. I can't stand looking at myself ever! I just get so disgusted. I have never told this to Joe before and guess what he makes me do today, yep, workout in front of a mirror and watch myself. I was screaming inside, "NO, DON'T MAKE ME LOOK AT MYSELF". I HATE how I look. "PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME DO THIS". I never verbalized this to Joe, but it's what was going through my head. So he's making me stand in front of this wall of mirrors and watch myself do these exercises and watch my form and at first I would look at myself and just want to throw up by my reflection. I see my fat, flabby arms, my huge belly, my fat face. It was horrendous. I had so many self loathing thoughts go through my head. How on earth did I let myself get to the point I did. How did I gain so much weight. How did I just not care. So as I stood there thinking all these just horrendous negative thoughts I got to my 4th set of doing these squats and lifting these damn weights above my head. And I looked at myself. Really looked at myself for the first time in a long time. What did I see you ask? Of course I saw this 297 lb woman, but I also saw that I am a good person. That I am loving and kind, that I truly have unconditional love for people, that I am worthy of losing weight, that I have spent my whole life taking care of everyone else and that I am so proud of myself for taking care of me. I saw the skinny me, through all that fat and all those negative thoughts, I saw me and I am beautiful. I am loved. I am worthy of every good thing this life has to offer. I am blessed. This was such an emotional moment for me. I'm so proud of myself. So here are the stats on my workout today.

• Elliptical 20 mins before workout with Joe
• Squat & Press Up - 4 sets of 20 - 5 lbs in each hand. To explain this exercise better I stood in front of a bench, in front of the mirrored wall, had weights in each hand with the weights at chest level. Then I would sit down on the bench and stand up immediately and push the weights up in the air until my arms were fully extended straight up. It doesn't sound hard, but it was.
• Romanian Dead Lift - 4 sets of 20 - 40 lb barbell
• Down & Out - 4 sets of 15 - 2.5 lbs. In this exercise you put your arms up at a 90 degree angle and you are holding the weights in your hand, then you just move them straight down until they are parrallel with your shoulder. I've had total shoulder reconstruction on both shoulders and so we are really working on building up the muscle around the shoulder. This exercise just burned them. It's all good. I need them to be as strong as I can get them.
• Nautilus Abdominal machine 2 sets of 20 - 65 lbs. So this time Joe had me do a count of 3 to get to the crunch and then I had to hold for 3 and then go back for 3. LET ME TELL YOU, INVOLUNTARY SPASMS galore. I LOVED IT!!!!
• So then Joe wanted me to get back on the elliptical for the last few minutes but I said no, lets go on the stair climber. I am determined to conquer that machine. So I did 4 sets of 5 floors. I was able to do 26 steps a floor in 3:05. Which is 18 seconds better than last week and my heart rate never go above 162. Which last week my HR was getting up to 182 every time. So I would say that is an improvement. Hooray!

Then I went into my sanctuary (steam room) for 6 minutes and then showered and got ready for my day. I had energy and felt so good about my workout.

Shopping

When I left the club I went and bought myself a package of socks and two new t-shirts. Now if you know me, you know this is HUGE. I never buy myself anything. I can buy for anyone but myself. Although if I'm at a craft show I can spend a plethora of money. But even that is for my house, not really for me. I have been wearing Jeremy's white socks forever, he only wears black socks and occasionally purple ones. :) Well, I am down to my last pair and they have holes in them so it was time. I need to overcome my feelings about spending money on myself. On the rare occasion when I do, I feel good about it. But again, it is rare. In fact I've had a $200 gift certificate to Mario Tricoci's for a while now and I haven't even used that. Why, because it's hard for me to treat myself. Don't ask me, I don't know. It's something I have to overcome. But I went in to buy socks and I ended up buying two t-shirts to workout in, so that was an accomplishment. I love it!

I brought my snack with me to the gym but I didn't eat it until 12:00, (it was coconut chocolate pudding), when I first started writing my blog. It's now 1:11, man it takes time to get my thoughts down. I'm about to go and eat my lunch which is a grilled steak with a salad made up of romaine lettuce, tomato, red onion & horseradish dressing. I might have to eat it plain because I really don't like horseradish. For my afternoon snack it's going to be whole wheat chicken tortellini with fresh basil pesto and for dinner I'm having roasted pork meatballs with sun dried tomato pesto with steamed sugar snaps and grilled portabella mushrooms. Sound nummy! I will try and blog again later. Have a great day!