Week 3 Bits and Pieces

(Photos to come)

A 5am alarm on a Saturday so we could get to our SSS at 6am at Redland Bay was a new experience. I can't believe this new me si getting up that early on a weekend to exercise. There wer only 5 other people brave enough to turn up this early, but it made for a good session. James participated in most of the session, including showing off by blitzing the jumping chin ups.

 Mady sat on the sidelines and read a book - she's had a very full on week with her school musical performances the past few nights.

During sit-ups I was managing to get my fingers to my knees - a huge improvement on 6 weeks ago where my fingers would only reach half way up my leg, so Tina encouraged & pushed me. She stood on my toes to give me a little help and guess what? I actually got all the way up! I did that about 10 times with Tina standing lightly on my toes, but could not do it by myself...yet. On the next round (after 2 x200m runs, 30 push ups, 30 burpees, 30 jump ups (hanging from bar and jumping up to a chin up) and 30 squats, ) I actually managed to do a full sit up myself! I even managed to do 23 of them in a "row". It took me a long time, but I did it!

 In the final "intensity" push, we had to do 60 ball slams (10pd medicine ball for me),

50 up & downs (similar to burpees, but not all the way down and not all the way up), 40 kettle ball swings (I'm using a 16 pound KB) and 30 jump squats. Unfortunately I got quite light headed during the up & downs and had to stop so I didn't fall over. I moved onto the KB swings, but part way through those I had to spew. Bugger. Though, it does show that I was pushing myself to the absolute limit. And maybe my blood pressure has finally come back down causing me to get light headed with that fast vertical movement. This is the second time in two weeks that standing up quickly has sent me into a head spin, which used to be a regular occurrence when I had low blood pressure. After my spew, I got back on board and finished the KB swings and squats. I didn't get back to the up & downs, but that did not worry me. Afterwards, a few of the others said the up & downs were making them dizzy too - we had to push through them really fast!

Home time & some quick running around for us - breakfast (high protein) at a coffee shop (no time to go home) dentist for Mady, shopping quickly to get morning tea & birthday cake, home to quickly clean & tidy as the cleaner was unable to come yesterday, a quick shower and then everyone arrived to celebrate James & Mady's birthdays (which are next week). Phew! We managed to get a couple of hours relaxing and socialising in before everyone left us so that I could study for my big exam on Tuesday.

Unfortunately I looked up the results of the class component of my subject and found out I got 40% less than I expected. I was devastated! My first impulse was to cry (which I did) my second was to binge on chocolate. Luckily there wasn't any in the house. AND I hadn't had lunch yet so I made myself a healthy lunch. BUT I still wanted chocolate, so I compromised on a skinny, water based hot chocolate from our coffee machine. Still want chocolate, but I did exercise my willpower machine.YAY ME.

I spent most of the rest of the arvo studying, until I just go so tired that I could not keep my eyes open. Went for a snooze on the couch & then (with the kids away with the grandparents for a birthday treat) Stephen & I went out for a treat meal which ended up just being takeaway from Subway. But still, we didn't have to cook! Home by 5:30pm and straight into a hot Epsom salts bath for my sore muscles. Now, 7:30pm, I'm totally buggered and will be in bed shortly. Must get up early and keep studying.....

Little surprises:
We had breakfast at the same place we had breakfast 4 weeks ago. Then it was very uncomfortable for me to sit in the chairs as the arms of the chairs where they meet the seat at the front dug right into my thighs. this week, although my thighs were still touching, the arms were not painfully digging in. Yay
Then in my Epsom salts bath I noticed that no longer do my thighs wedge up against the sides of the bath but I could even fit one hand on each side! Yeehaa

Week 3 Weigh In & Some Recognition

Wednesday = wake up, wee, and weigh in.  Whoo Hoo, I've lost another 1.1kg. That's a total of 6.7 kg since I signed up on 5th August. Oh it's so exciting. Even though it's been hard, it's actually been a hell of a lot easier than many of my other weight loss attempts.

That little win helped me push through my workout this morning in which I struggled. I'm a bit tired and my legs are still hurting from all those stairs on Sunday, so I really struggled with completing the running intervals this morning. I did it though.

Then to keep me on my happy dance high, one of the girls at work asked me if I'd lost weight because it looks like I've lost a "heap" of weight! Yeee-haa! Someone at work noticed!!! I now can't wait until I come back from my two week holiday in a few weeks. A few more people might notice then when they haven't seen me for a couple of weeks. Exciting....

BUT, when am I going to feel energised? I'm just so tired all the time. Even more tired than I usually am with all my work and study. I'm falling asleep at night at 8pm before the kids. And I certainly don't have any energy for special cuddles....

Maybe after my exam on tuesday when I can get back the energy I'm devoting to that, I will get some energy. Stay tuned....

Our Own Private Bootcamp

With the Perth finale and Brisbane Stampede on this weekend, there weren't any SSS's on, but Tina decided to hold a Bootcamp on Sunday morning. We booked ourselves in and turned up at Redland Bay at 7am on Sunday morning, along with .... no one else! It was just us. Everyone else was recovering from Stampede yesterday and the FB Group celebratory dinner the night before. No worries, we ended up with our own private family bootcamp. Just the four of us :-)
We had to run (yay - NOT), jump, squat, do tricep dips, push ups and more.

The tyres came out again and we had to flip them (the big ones) and carry them (the smaller ones).

 We also had to carry this insanely heavey and thick rope.

Mady and James put in a really good effort and participated in the whole bootcamp with only a few whinges.
But we weren't finished yet ..... next came a jog to the stairs. Oh No! Stairs! And not only once, but again and again, up and down, up and down, one at a time, two at a time, and back up again. Phew! I was slow, so only made it up and down five times, but Tina pushed Stephen hard and made him to it ten times. Meanwhile, James counted the stairs - 64. Which meant that Stephen went up 640 stairs and down 640 stairs. OUCH. No wonder our (his) calves were hurting the next day, and the next day, and even still on Wednesday.

Finally it was time to stretch. OMG that felt good. I can't do the quadracepts stretch while standing, but can do it lying down, Tina thought that was hilarilous and captured this "lazy" posing shot of me.

Yeah, thanks! LOL

Week 2 Weekly Surprise Challenge

This week the challenge is to create an Inspiration Board. Yee-hah, this is right up my scrapbooking alley, EXCEPT for that little thing called an exam. I've done the right thing and not done the fun thing at the expense of my study which means I have missed the deadline for the competition. BUT I feel this is an important challenge and therefore I have completed it tonight. Here's my INSPIRATION... (click on the thumbnail to see a bigger version)

The first group of photos in the top left were taken at Christmas 2011, May 2012 and June 2012 when I was at my heaviest - around the 105 to 108kg (shocking!)

Over to the right are current photos of the "new me" in construction. They are all about me being more active and getting out there and JFDI.

On the left on the side are my ideal body parts - the two parts I am most not happy with and how i want to change them. I love those abs on the UK Olympian and I want a butt to be proud of, not ashamed of.

Finally, at the bottom, are some photos from our honeymoon. This short period was the only time I have ever been happy with the weight I was. I felt good, I looked good and I weighed only 61kg. I wasn't fit and I wasn't toned, but imagine how awesome I would have been had I been. That is where I want to get to - 61kg but also fit and toned. I'd better get onto those squats!!!

Weigh in Wednesday, Week 2

I can't believe I was looking forward to getting on the scales this morning! I didn't sleep very well with the excitement.

My alarm went off fo 5am so I Woke up, Weed, and Weighed-in. Yeehaa another 1.6kg gone forever! I am so loving this 12WBT program. Love the food, am coping with the exercise and I'm actually losing weight. OMG and it's not that hard. I love that I don't have to think about anything, i jsut have to DO it.

Smashed out another Wednesday workout and zoomed through getting ready anf off to work. When I got to work and checked my calendar... uh-oh, training today followed by the monthly birthday morning tea celebration. That means hot pastries and yummy Cheesecake Shop cakes for all. Alright, I can do this. I just have to make sure I psych myself up to it. I ate my brought-from-home morning tea just before the allotted time and took my bottle of water into the staff room with me.

I participated in the social chatter, but guess what -  I did it! Didn't eat a single thing. Not a sausage roll, nor party pie, nor samosa, nor jamacian chocolate cheesecake nor even caramel mud cake. And the hardest thing was that by the time I got to the room, the only seats were right beside the food. Yay me!!!

Gosh I feel good for doing that. Another notch in the belt for me. And speaking of notches in the belt - I need to get another hole punched in my belt for work as it's too loose now!

Sometimes it's the Little Things

It's strange how sometimes one small thing can really give you a boost. Today while driving home, I noticed that my watch band was loose. Wow! I realised that it wasn't too long ago that I was thinking I'd have to find the extra links that I have stashed away somewhere to be able to make the band bigger. Looks like I might still need to find the stash, not to get more links out, but to put some away (forever). This little realisation made my day :-)

Hungry today

Day 2, Week 2 but today I am oh so hungry! Is this because I smashed out my workout this morning? Or because my body is starting to get over its shock at this lifestyle change? Or the fact that the menu yesterday and so far today has not included any meat? Roll on beef stir fry tonight for dinner.

I've been trying to combat the hunger by chewing sugar free cheering gum and by having a herbal tea. I hope I can get through the rest of the afternoon without snacking on naughty food!

Exercise-wise, I'm improving. I managed the mountain climbers on the back of the bench without stopping this morning and I'm getting so much better with my push ups too. Yesterday I upped my learn to run program from 30sec running intervals to 60sec running intervals. It was very difficult, but I managed. My butt does hurt quite a bit today - I notice it everytime I sit down :-(

And finally for today, I can't believe I'm so excited to be getting on the scales tomorrow for weigh in Wednesday. I have never been happy about getting on the scales. Here's hoping for an awesome result.

SSS on Day 6, Week 1

Another double dose for us this Saturday. We dragged ourselves out of bed to attend Ange's workout at the Capalaba Regional Park at a windy and chilly 6am. Today she introduced us to the "Tabata" style of workout - ouch! This style has you repeating one exercise at high intensity for 20 seconds, then resting for 10 seconds, then back at high intesity for another 20 seconds, etc. You do 8 repetitions of the high intensity 20 second blocks. Each tabata set lasts 4 minutes, but oh how it hurts! First we did sprints, then sit ups, push ups, mountain climbers, lunges and finally sprints again. By the end of the hour we had certainly burnt some calories. My HRM told me I'd burnt 450 cals. Yippeee.

Later today (after a coffee (no cake) with a friend and some grocery shopping) we headed off to EliteHQ for our second SSS of the day. Were we crazy? Maybe.

The "warmup" today had me achieve a first - I jogged 400m without stopping or slowing to a walk! Wowee. Pity I still had to do another 200m run, then 400m run plus pushups, situps, and squats as part of the warmup. Phew! Again, if I'd been doing this at home, I would have given up after the warm up. This group PT training really does push you. The main workout had us split into two groups. My group did boxing first, and more running, and skipping, and pushups, and burpees. I partnered with Mady for the boxing - she's getting good! Plus I managed to skip 25 times in a row - had to do 100 all up. Two weeks ago I couldn't even do 5 skips in a row.

Then we swapped to the other group and we did knee raises while hanging from a bar, hang cleans with a 15kg bar, then we had to lift the bar above our heads (ouch) and then more burpees, and then repeated it.

When we FINALLY finished this (and most of us were totally buggered), we were lured outside for "suicide runs". We had to run back and forth for gradually shorter distances which ended up being a total of about 1km.

Once we'd done that we were finally allowed to stretch and finish up. I burnt 550 calories and worked many muscles I didn't know I had. Plus I jogged most of the 3km we had to do in the session.

By the time we got home, I was really starting to hurt so a nice warm epsom salts bath was in order, followed by crashing on the couch in front of the Paralympics on TV. Thank God we had leftovers for dinner and none of us had to cook. Even though it was a really tough SSS, I'm so proud of what I did today.
I'm even more proud that my family took part as well and my daughter is enjoying participating as an adult in our training sessions.