Full Disclosure

As of today, the first day of the new year, I weigh 210 pounds. The scale I used may not be in total agreement with reality but it's the one I've been using for years so I figure it's consistent if nothing else. I wear a size 16 in clothes, and that's been the case for at least the last decade, perhaps longer.

I like to take long walks and hikes, though much of those activities have been thwarted due to a serious ankle injury at the end of April 2011. I am still working with a personal trainer to rehabilitate it. I have a membership at Gold's Gym in Chantilly, Virginia. I like it there. I like my trainer, too.

My biggest food issue is breakfast. I absolutely love fast food breakfast. McDonald's sausage burritos and Burger King's croissanwiches are my favorites. I try to replace them with Jimmy Dean's turkey sausage breakfast sammiches. They're tasty but nowhere near as satisfying.

I love going out to eat. I don't even know why, really, since my husband cooks delicious and interesting meals, but there is pretty much never a time when I would rather eat in than out. I could easily do it for every meal of every day.

I think that's it for now. Happy new year.

Out with 2011, In with 2012

When I first started this blog a year ago, it was part of a project from Shrinking Jeans, an online fitness/weight-loss community I've since lost interest in. I was really active there at the beginning, and many of the early assignments involved goals.

At the very beginning of this blog, I posted a few goals. Let's see how I did.

1. Be able to do 3 sets of 10 pull-ups on the machine with the full counterweight (114 lbs).

You know, I seem to recall being about to do this by about February or March, but I haven't attempted a pull-up since April so I have no idea. So we'll count it as failed.

2. Get my weight under 200 lbs.

I achieved this, but then gained it all back again.

Bonus goal: get my weight below 180.

I don't think I ever managed this.

3. Fit into my suit.

Never even tried, come to think of it.

Bonus goal: go down a pant size.

Nope, but I did manage to avoid going up a pant size, so there's that.

4. Complete First Day to 5k on Podrunner Intervals.

Nope, but I'm working with my trainer on being able to run an actual 5k so we'll count it as in progress.

A couple weeks later, there were more goals, none of which I achieved, and I don't even feel like recapping them here.

I would have done better had I not completely screwed up my ankle at the end of April. I find new year's resolutions, as well as fictionalized (and idealized!) letters from the future, to be quite discouraging. But hey, they were things I hadn't tried before, so I tried them.

I don't have specific goals this year, except for the vague intention of being able to run a 5k. I haven't signed up for a race or anything; it's just a general desire of mine.

Okay, that's enough recapping. I think I'll separate the rest of my ramblings into individual posts.

Let's go ride bikes!

Today my friend introduced me to Capital Bike Share and we went for a ride. The last time I was on a bicycle was probably about a decade ago. It was so much fun. I'd forgotten! We spent most of our time on the Mount Vernon Trail but we also wandered around a bit in DC, passing by the Lincoln Memorial and the Kennedy Center, among other things. I had such a wonderful time. MapMyRide tells me we traveled 7.24 miles and burned 542 calories over the course of our two hour journey. Not bad for my first time in so many years. And I honestly had fun, not feeling tired (or even all that cold) until toward the end. I guess I'm in better shape than I thought I was. Or maybe it was just an easy ride. :)

Victories

I made it! Five straight days of getting up at 5am and going to the gym before work! Granted, today I had to talk myself into it and even then only struggled through twenty minutes on the ArcTrainer (260 calories), but hey, I did it!

This evening I bought some more workout clothes. Man, watching myself struggle into a sports bra was one of the more depressing sights of my life. So fat! But I needed more clothes to keep up with my increased schedule. I don't like to re-wear something without washing it, though occasionally with shorts that's what I'd had to do. But (hopefully) not more, provided my husband can keep up with the laundry.

I'm supposed to go cycling with a friend of mine tomorrow, but I haven't heard from her in a few days and so I'm not 100% positive that's still happening. Otherwise, the next four days will be a sort of vacation from the gym: Sunday will be resting, then Monday and Tuesday I'm traveling to upstate New York for work. It's just a single overnight, so I won't have time to do much other than work, sleep, and fly. But I'll try to at least keep my eating under control while I'm away. I've been horrible about that lately. (And by lately I mean my entire adult life.)

Oh hey, I never wrote about yesterday's training session. It was one of the more diabolical set of exercises, including one-armed plank positions while pumping a weight with my free hand. That took some serious figuring before I could pull off the position without falling over. I'm not sure if coordination or strength is the bigger problem, but man do I have trouble balancing with a lot of these moves.

Despite the discouraging shopping trip (shopping for clothes has always been one of my least favorite activities, just below going to the dentist), I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now. Let's see if I can keep that up.

Gym Recap

Day three of getting up at 5am and I seem to be doing more or less okay. I had my training this morning and hot damn was it hard. Like, far harder than I'd expected. I'm not sure if that's because it was so early and my muscles aren't used to actually doing anything that soon after getting up, or if things were genuinely more difficult. Either way, it was tough but I made it.

My coworker is trying to convince me that it's really worth it in the end. I don't believe him, but I did concede that I can lunge and squat far better than I could two months ago. So there's that.

Since we had to reschedule yesterday's session to today, I'm seeing Jeev again tomorrow morning. He said we'll be working more on strength training on my legs, which is nice - today was mostly upper body and cardio.

Gym Recap

So I figured it would be better to alter my sleep schedule entirely rather than resetting my alarm every day, so I am now getting up at 5am and hitting the gym before work. Today is day two and I feel better today than I did yesterday. Jeev had a final exam today so he missed our session, so I went into the cardio cinema and watched Roxeanne for a while. I'd forgotten what a funny film that is. I'll have to rent it sometime. I don't know how many calories I burned - I did four minutes on the ArcTrainer, about ten minutes on the treadmill at 2.5mph (both while waiting for Jeev before I learned he wouldn't be showing up) and thirty minutes on this weird elliptical-ish thing that I suppose was something akin to a NordicTrak. I didn't set anything (it was too dark in there to see what any of the buttons did anyway) but it wasn't very hard. Better than nothing, though, right? Jeev rescheduled for tomorrow morning, and that will be the real test: can I handle a full day of work after a full training session? We'll see!

Gym Recap

Lordy lordy. Jeev got a second job so we're moving my sessions from Monday and Wednesday at 4pm to Tuesday and Thursday at 6am. Today I went for a dry run to make sure I could even handle getting up another 45 minutes earlier. I did my usual cardio: 20 minutes on the ArcTrainer followed by 30 minutes on the inclined treadmill. Dunno how many calories I burned because I accidentally cleared out my stats on the treadmill before looking at them. That's easy to do - if you press the "stop" button twice they're gone for good, and since the touch pad's responsivity is pretty inconsistent, it's easy to think you hadn't pressed it when you actually did.

But anyway, I made it. I'm super tired and my tummy was kind of unhappy because I forgot to eat something before I started working out, but I still did my workout without any trouble. I'm hoping with this new schedule it'll be easier for me to hit the gym more days a week. My goal is five - every workday - but we'll see. All I know is that lately, when I get off work, the last thing I want to do is make another stop before going home. This way I'll have gotten the gym out of the way before I even show up at the office.