The gym I joined does "personal training". They set you up with a trainer and they assess where you're at now, and what your goals, etc. are. There's three initial consultations, and then you meet with them, usually once a month to weight/measure and re-evaluate your routine to see what needs to be changed to get the most out of your workouts. Today was my first appointment, and there were good things and bad things.
The worst is that I've regained most of my previous back over the course of the past couple of moths. I'm only three pounds under my heaviest recorded weight. The good part of that is at least I'm not ALL the way back up!
This session focused on the appropriate cardio routine for me. I told Brittany that at some point in my life I'd like to become a runner. And she shared her story about how she went from barely being able to do a mile to running marathons. (I think she's always been skinny, but it just goes to show I guess that skinny doesn't always mean fit!) She definitely isn't pushing endless hours on the treadmill just because I said that I wanted to learn to run in the future. She recommended a treadmill, elliptical, and ARC trainer, and the thing she stressed the most, was not that one machine was better than the other, but the type of exercise I did on them.
The quick start and manual buttons are now off limits in my life. My new friends are hill, interval or random. Whichever the particular machine I'm on labels it.
We talked about what heart rate zone I should be working out at, as well. Right now I'm supposed to be focusing on the "fat burning zone". Which for me is between 140-160. So I got my happy tail on the treadmill after our consult, and did the random setting on level two, at 2.5, at first but my heart rate was only just kissing 140, so I bumped the speed up to 2.8 and that got me into the low 150's. Even when the harder hills popped up, I certainly wasn't dying the way I'm used to when I go work out. I'm used to dripping, huffing, puffing and walking out wobbly-kneed. So I suppose what I've learned is that I possibly have worked out too hard in the past. I can see the logic behind this. Work on getting some of this weight off and build up to the harder, cardio building zones. I do know that the past couple of weeks when I've checked my heart rate on the elliptical it usually hovers just around 180 when I'm really banging it out on that thing. It's definitely something I want to read up on and learn more about, but it was totally weird to walk out of the gym and not be drenched.
I think for now I'm going to just relax and trust the process. The next weigh in will tell the tale.
So in light of getting all set up at the gym today, I reset all my little SparkStreaks on SparkPeople, and gone in and readjusted my current weight loss goal to reflect my new commitment to myself. My first short term goal is 10%. Once I get there, I'll see where I want to go next. I could always just keep trying to go down by 10%, but we'll see when we get to the first.one.
I'm just trying not to psych myself out for now. A day, an hour, a decision at a time. Wish me luck!
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Chapter One
Once upon a time there was a fed-up fat girl who decided to once and for all to fix it. My name is Diane, and I am that fed-up fat girl. And this is going to be my story.
I have been struggling with trying to lose weight, well, most of my life at this point, but more frequently and seriously over the past two weeks. I've been broken-hearted over watching others succeed while I failed over and over. I've been angry at myself for not being to "get it in gear", and frustrated over my seeming lack of control.
A couple of months ago I started in with public, weekly weigh-ins on my Facebook page. Not quite so public that I was posting my actual weight, but I would post that week's weight loss and the overall total. I hit the 22 pound mark, and, as I am wont to do every time I get to that point, I just sort of checked out. I gained 15 of that 22 back. So a couple of weeks ago I started buckling down on what I was taking with me to work for food, and I discovered after a few weeks of avoiding the scale that I was actually down nine pounds. That was this past Monday, Saturday morning I jumped on the scale to see where I was at, having just signed back up at the gym, I wanted to see my starting point pre-exercising, and every single one of those nine pounds was back. Seriously, WHO THE HELL GAINS NINE POUNDS IN FIVE DAYS??
I think that since I knew that I was going to be going back to regular exercise I must have just given myself a mental free pass to have a week of unadulterated pigging out. I know I ate a bunch of crap last week. But that, I think, has probably been my biggest wake up call of all. Just seeing how scary fast it all comes back.
I genuinely do want to be a healthy person. It's time to pull on my big girl panties and just practice everyday at being healthy. If you practice anything enough times, you eventually become great at it. So its back to one day at a time for me. Who knows, maybe I should post my actual weight every week. I think I'll wait till I'm a little further still from my start weight, but I'm going to go back to weekly results posting. I certainly don't have all the answers, especially those involving how to stick to this thing, so I'm just going to keep practicing.
Because you know what? This is my story. And I refuse for it to become a victim's tale, or a tragedy. There will be tears, for sure, but I'm going to do what I can to make sure that at least the last tears, are tears of victory. Welcome to the beginning of my happily ever after.
I have been struggling with trying to lose weight, well, most of my life at this point, but more frequently and seriously over the past two weeks. I've been broken-hearted over watching others succeed while I failed over and over. I've been angry at myself for not being to "get it in gear", and frustrated over my seeming lack of control.
A couple of months ago I started in with public, weekly weigh-ins on my Facebook page. Not quite so public that I was posting my actual weight, but I would post that week's weight loss and the overall total. I hit the 22 pound mark, and, as I am wont to do every time I get to that point, I just sort of checked out. I gained 15 of that 22 back. So a couple of weeks ago I started buckling down on what I was taking with me to work for food, and I discovered after a few weeks of avoiding the scale that I was actually down nine pounds. That was this past Monday, Saturday morning I jumped on the scale to see where I was at, having just signed back up at the gym, I wanted to see my starting point pre-exercising, and every single one of those nine pounds was back. Seriously, WHO THE HELL GAINS NINE POUNDS IN FIVE DAYS??
I think that since I knew that I was going to be going back to regular exercise I must have just given myself a mental free pass to have a week of unadulterated pigging out. I know I ate a bunch of crap last week. But that, I think, has probably been my biggest wake up call of all. Just seeing how scary fast it all comes back.
I genuinely do want to be a healthy person. It's time to pull on my big girl panties and just practice everyday at being healthy. If you practice anything enough times, you eventually become great at it. So its back to one day at a time for me. Who knows, maybe I should post my actual weight every week. I think I'll wait till I'm a little further still from my start weight, but I'm going to go back to weekly results posting. I certainly don't have all the answers, especially those involving how to stick to this thing, so I'm just going to keep practicing.
Because you know what? This is my story. And I refuse for it to become a victim's tale, or a tragedy. There will be tears, for sure, but I'm going to do what I can to make sure that at least the last tears, are tears of victory. Welcome to the beginning of my happily ever after.
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