28 in 08

[aeb]

28 yrs old is not ancient, but being out of shape is starting to make me feel that way. So this is my journal to keep me acountable.

A little about me, was very thin as a kid, lazy and chunky as a teenager, played some sports and started weight lifting/jogging in college so was fairly in shape again. About two years ago I started working shift work out of town, no close gym access, didn't have time to play sports anymore, and have a very easy job where there is tons of food around = gaining 50 lbs. Now I did realize this was happening (how could you not when you need to buy new clothes every few months), but only made a few half-hearted efforts before going back to being busy at work and eating whatever I wanted.

The Plan
Do the women's challange, follow NROL4W through the whole book after I get back from vacation, learn how to cook healthier meals (I love to cook, but it resembles more barefoot contessa then anything healthy).
I have collected a treadmill, exercise bike, natilus gym, and some free weights the last few years so now I just need to use them.


So next years goals are obviously to change my body composition, run a 5K, get my lifts back to where they were 110 lb chest press and whatever a 200lb smith squat would equal in a barbell squat now that I now about free weights, maybe 120 lbs.

Random New Year's Resolutions
-remeber to floss once a day
-go camping at least twice this summer, and hike into Monkman lake once
-continue taking guitar lessons
-get my firearms posession license
-finish my third class steam ticket
-finish renovating my basement
-Say no to people more often and try to have a less hectic schedule
-Sleep more regular amounts, less weeks of 4 hrs and then trying to make it up with 15 hrs for a few days

Pics and stats to follow

[ToniL]

I'm looking forward to the NROL4W challenge as well, love your new years resolutions (cept the firearms one . . don't think I'll be disagreeing with you on much :-)

Toni

[aeb]

Toni, glad to hear your in the challange too, the more the merrier.

So leftover Christmas clutter got the better of me today. My camera's batteries were dead and my measuring tape lost to an overflowing closet, but tommorrow I'm off work so I'll have time to clean my room and take some measurements.
Today slept 8hrs , and in my two hrs before going back to work I went down stairs to go on the treadmill and ended up getting coercied into helping install the new wood stove instead. So tonight at work I'm going to go for a walk for an hour around the plant instead. Made a tourtiere for my dh's New Year's supper, had half a slice for breakfast (ground pork loin instead of using the really fatty ground that you buy). Planning to make some spicy sushi rolls for myself tonight for supper with leftover crab and steak from last nights feast. Probably not the cleanest things I could cook, but better then normal.

[Mahler]

You have a good, solid plan to turn things around.
Welcome aboard and best of luck to you.

[aeb]

Toni, don't worry about me packing guns around, I'm just taking my license so I can legally go grouse hunting with my dogs, and scare some magpye's away.

So quitting smoking made ill as always for the first few days this year, but I recovered from being miserable and sickly yesterday and thought it was time to start working my lungs out now that they were smoke free.

I don't have my NROL4W yet so I thought I would try the NROL break in plan
Squats
15 - bar (25lb) wu
2/15 -20+bar not too heavy
10 - 20 + bar at this point my leg cramped up and decided it didn't like squatting

lunges
3/10 - bodyweight alternating legs, did less cause my leg was still cramped
rows
3/10/ 15lb - really to light, but need to check what the 2-point row looks like again

pushups
3/15 - girly (I was quite disgusted at myself, cause I used to be able to do tons of guy pushups.
crunches
3/15 - on the floor as my swiss ball was deflated

followed up with 30min walking on the treadmill, to try to restore some flexation to my leg. It eventually warmed up and I stretched, but boy is it stiff today.

Food has been problematic and I need to get a journal to start writting it down, cause otherwise I cave way too easily. The last two days my cottage cheese and oatmeal has sat in the fridge at work cause someone brought out breakfast for us instead, which wouldn't be too horrible if contractors didn't leave us pizza and donuts for lunch. My husband did make a stir fry last night that was fairly healthy, but then he was worrying about having white rice with it, cause at the same time he was cooking he had this show 'the last 10 lbs' on t.v. and they were deploring how horrible white rice is. I didn't think it was that bad, I mean I know its got no fiber or anything its just a carb, but if you want to have a cup of it with your stirfry, why not?

Today, I'm going to eat my heathy lunch and supper I brought to work and not eat a chocolate bar from the case someone left in the kitchen. When I go home tonight, I'm going to set up my new magnetic exercise bike and go for half an hour while I watch Jeopardy. After that I'll hopeful get a bit of time before bed to take some pics and measurements to put up for the challange.

[mel]

You have a very solid set of goals! That's a great place to start. And kudos on the stopping smoking. What's the point of working out and getting healthy if your are still poisoning your lungs?

On the food journaling, I have found FitDay - Free Weight Loss and Diet Journal to be an absolutley invaluable resource. After you get most of your everyday foods put in, it takes only a few minutes to do, and since it is web based, you can enter whereever there's a computer. I also use it to plan my food out for the day.

Good luck with those resolutions. Looks like it will be an awesome year for you!

mel

[aeb]

Yeah for me, I finally figured out how to host pics, although you may want to cover your eyes.


Stats
Height 5 ft 9"
Weight 224 lbs
Chest 45
Waist 38
Hips 47
Thigh 29.75
Calf 16
Upper arm 14





So I spent two hours putting together my new bike last night and then had to go to bed before I got to ride it,
not that I could have done much I'm still having trouble walking after doing squats two days ago!
Tonight I think I'll do some peddling while I watch biggest loser though.
First day of the challange tomorrow!
-track eating in fitday
-lift
-walk 1/2 hr

[aeb]

Jan 7th
Did the workout as posted here cause I haven't got to town to pick up my mail yet.
Squats 8, 15, 15 (did all of them BW as I was so stiff last time, need to set up mirrors as my forms probably horrible now too.)
pushups 3 full 12 knee *2
seated rows 15*30lb, 15*50lb
step ups 2*15/BW
crunches 2*15 (I need to buy a new ball this week as mine is way too small and I couldn't get it to pump fully up)

Finally off work on Wed and can go pick up my book which should make it a whole lot easier to understand the workout setup and what the exercises should look like.

Calories Eaten Jan 7th

grams cals%
Total: 1720
Fat:27 244 15%
Carbs:224 826 49% Fiber:17 0 0%
Protein:152 607 36%

[aeb]

Jan 8th
Calories Eaten Today

grams cals%totalTotal: 1749 Fat:55 495 30% Sat:6 56 3% Poly:5 47 3% Mono:7 65 4%Carbs:162 571 34% Fiber:20 0 0%Protein:148 592 36%Alcohol:0 0 0%
This is what my diet for the day should be if I have what I planned for supper. Not that I'm really planning anything, I'm just trying to make sure that I eat protein each meal and letting the carbs and fat fall where they may.
Each Tuesday at work we get deliveries from town and the shipping guy brings out three trays of pastries/sticky buns/cake/pies etc, and I sat down for coffee with everyone and started eating a slice of cheesecake without even thinkin, just habit so now I need to deal with the hardest part of eating treats, not going hog wild and continuing on. Expecially hard tonight, cause I'm going to be done my week of work tonight and all I want to do is go home relax and have a glass or two of red wine.

Instead I'm going to try to jog/walk for 1/2-1 hr on the treadmill and then if I still want a glass of wine maybe I'll go for it.

[fengshway]

aeb, nice job on the workouts and the nutrition. you will do well!

[GinnyLou]

Hello there! Welcome! You have a great plan in place. Keep up the great work and kudos for quitting that habit. I've been there and know how incredibly hard it is, but you CAN do it!

[aeb]

So being off work is not good for me. Besides the lack of high speed internet ( I'm down to 28.8 kbps), not having any structure turns all my plans to crap. So far I have spent a day shopping, and one day reading, and not tracked anything I ate, because fitday my painfully slow internet at home wouldn't load the page.

On the upside I finally had time to pick up my mail and have finally read my copy of NROL4W. Now I can mod up the workouts to what they were supposed to be. I picked all the modifications that were specifically mentioned as being no good, knee push-ups and crunches, the first round through. I'll have to start keeping a paper journal to track my food and enter it into fitday when I get back to work. Not that I've been too crazy, but I made the halibut recipe from the book last night for supper and none of the wine went to waste.

Now that I've read the book I can plan a little more what I'm going to be doing. Some of the later phases look killer for someone as out of shape as I am so I'm thinking this month will be a trial run and then when I come back from vacation at the start of March I will start at the beginning again. We don't have anywhere booked to stay for our trip and it will most likely be hostels or motels that don't have a gym, so it would be semi impossible to follow through with a real routine for the month. I should be able to practice push-ups and some other bw exercises though and New Zealand is known for their tramping, so that should give me enough to do.

[aeb]

So I just found out that my 10yr hs reunion is July 5, so that timing seems to work pretty well for me. Other then that this week was fairly low. I bought a paper log to track my eating in so I don't go crazy when I'm at home and don't have access to fitday to log it. I even have some nice gold stars to put in my daytimer for the days I exercise and log my eating. Today I slept in to get ready for night shift and then spent 5 hrs cleaning my husbands house and my house, so other then scrubbing floors for a few hours not much for exercise.

[aeb]

Yesterday's food
Total Cals 1793, Fat 49g, Carbs 195, Protein 142

Today's Expected food
Total Cals 1782, Fat 64g, Carbs 165, Protein 140

Okay so I need to read the book over again tonight and figure out what I'm actually supposed to be eating. Today and yesterday represent what I would normally associate with dieting, and probably is not as much as I should have, but it's also always going to be lower when I work night shift, cause I can't choke anything down at 3am (except junk food of course)

Started over on stage 1 today and other then grabbing an old log for NROL break-in, so I ended up doing static lunges before I noticed, it went fine.

squats wu bw/8, 2/15 bar.
static lunges 2/15 bw
pushups 5 /full 10/45angle, 5/full 7/45 angle
seated row 2/15 50lbs
step ups-didn't do since I accidently did lunges and my legs were tired
crunches 2/10

I'm going to search out some videos on proper squatting form to watch tonight, cause I'm definately feel like my upper body is too bent over and I can't keep more upright. Of course I had some 10lb plates under my heels so this could be causing it maybe. Seated rows I can up the weight next time, and I need to get my fancy new swiss ball blown up so I can try those jackknives.

[mel]

Good luck with getting the eating in line! I know for me, that's always more of a challenge than the lifting. You'll be so glad that you did htough! It makes all the difference.

mel

[aeb]

So I figured out my calories and I was a little low yesterday so I indulged in some pie, not the best choice, but it fit the macros so oh well. Today I ended up with to much fat, but I ate out after my guitar lesson.

Total: 1837 Fat:84 Carbs:137 Protein:139

Or at least that is what it should be, but we'll see if that's what it is at 5am or if the night time snacks call my name.

No workout today as I had my guitar lesson when I got up and the drive each way is an hour and then it's time for work again. Shift work sucks for not having any time on the days/nights you do work. I thought about getting up an hour early and doing interval/steady cardio, but as it was I only had 5 hrs sleep so I'll try for running on Friday instead.

[aeb]

B1

Deadlifts 85lb was almost to heavy, my grip was giving out. I might try a mixed grip next time.

shoulder press 12.5 lb
lat pulldown 15x 50lb 12x 80

lunges BW (I actually fell over my balance is so bad)
reverse crunches/ reg crunches

3pm 1.5 cups special k red berry and 1 c milk
pwo dymatize pina colada shake
5:30 small baked halibut steak/ pesto tortallini w/fresh parmasen
11pm 1.5c shrimp, zuccuni,mush,r&g pepper, in light coconut curry sauce w/ 1 c rice
2 am mishap with pastries left at work
5 am 1 c cottage cheese/blueberries 1 protien shake

Total Cal 2347 Fat 76g Carbs 254g Protein 166g

So I learned that I should put away all the snacks that are left behind, before I get tired and start reasoning with myself that I have more calories to eat today and it wouldn't hurt. Actually I probably shouldn't be holding discussions with myself at all, that can't be normal, I need to get out more often.

[Fitwit]

Hi there!

Looks like we share a few of the same goals! I need to floss more regularly, I just finished up 4 1/2 years of piano lessons (I'm 43) and would love to take up the guitar now! I have also been telling my hubby that I want us to aim for 2 camping trips this year as opposed to one! I am a fairly new camper but I love it!!

And of course let us not forget the getting fit goals! Good luck with yours!!

Btw, how long have you been taking guitar lessons?

Karen

[aeb]

So I made it on the treadmill yesterday, to make up for all the food carnage on my birthday.

2pm- asperegus soup w/ half whole wheat cajun chicken sandwich
protien shake
5- brownie
11pm bbq rib steak w/ 2 sm potatoes w/ butter & sour cream &steamed vegs
1-am buster bar
4am- popcorn and a brownie

I had entered it in fitday and had something like 2900 cal, but for some reason had put it a two days back instead of one on fitday (after midnight so the days already wrong) and didn't realize that fitday only keeps a record of the last two days.

Made some reservations for my trip to New Zealand so we have rooms booked in Auckland for two nights, which should give us a day to walk around rotangitoto and one to do the coast to coast walk, sky tower etc. Then off to Paihia and one day of a tour and some sandsurfing on 90 mile beach and one day of scuba diving. Only four more weeks to plan what to do and where to stay, I'll be so too worn out from planning my vacation to enjoy it.


Today I was sleepy and stayed in bed till 4pm so it is now my day off and I'll have to lift tomorrow.

So far I've had
5 pm- taco salad- 3/4 lb ground sirloin with taco spick on romaine with salsa, 1 oz grated chedder, 1/2 avacodo, and 1 serving of tostido taste of jalopeno corn chips.

8pm- 1C of cottage cheese with 1/2 cup of blueberries and splenda


I've got some protien powder for later, and I'm hoping there is nothing to greasy/sugary/high carb being made for supper as one of the guys is cooking.