Training with Sue-Ann is going great! I am getting stronger and it shows. I am doing more reps, more sets, and at higher weights. I am still really struggling with the cardio aspect of things though, and a lot of that is simply because of my travel/work schedule. I know they say you just have to make the time, but when I am on the road, my work-load is such that I am going non-stop from 5:30am until sometimes around 10-11pm. Which not only hinders exercise, but there are days I don’t even get a break to eat lunch. I am getting better about packing travel meals with me at least so I am no longer going ALL day without eating. I think for now I am just going to focus on the weekends for which I have no excuse other than I am so exhausted after the week it is easy for me to sit like a lump all weekend. And even then, I am not really sitting like a lump. I am vacuuming, dusting, doing laundry, playing with dogs and cats…you get the idea.

All that being said, I did make it into the gym on Wednesday morning this week because I was suffering serious jet lag on the left coast and was wide awake at 4am local time. Heh. Maybe that’s the trick? I need to travel cross-country more? Noooo what am I thinking?

Eating has been so so, though this week actually was pretty good. It is funny how different the menu options are in different regions of the country. The room service menu at the hotel had all kinds of healthy-ish meals available. But then again, I was in California. Heh. They don’t believe in fried food there. Definitely a different culture. It was a nice change – I had some great soups and salads this week. The worst being the cup of clam chowder I had last night. By worst, I mean nutrition wise…it was incredibly tasty! My goal is to continue the good trend since I seem to have fallen back into some bad habits the week before I left (pizza, beer, too much sugary stuff).

My mom and sister are coming to visit in May and I am still determined to get myself under 200lbs before then! I really need to take this weekend to regroup, refocus and get myself mentally back together. Work seems to finally be slowing down a tiny bit (of course I’ve just jinxed that, I am sure!) so hopefully the coming weeks will be a little easier to manage.

Oh yeah, and my birthday is next week. The getting older part doesn’t bother me…the still being fat part does. I have GOT to get this weight off.

212.4!!! 

Yeah! I am stoked with how things are going (minus this past week). This past week turned into work-chaos. It was a huge branch and at the last minute I was told there would be a person from another team in our company traveling with me. While is nice having company, it also means that the time I would use in the evenings to get work done was spent hanging out with this other person. My days ended up being non-stop work from about 5am until around midnight each night. And I still am not done with everything that goes with my job. Thankfully next week is my at-home admin week so I can catch up!

This morning I finally got back on track with my trainer and we really pushed things. It was awesome! I struggled mightily with a strength and balance move that she had me doing so I just kept at it until I did two “good” ones on each side. She started laughing and said she had never seen anyone so determined to master a move like that. Mostly, after the week I had, I wasn’t going to let a workout move beat me!

I feel like I am on a manic high today. I feel good (albeit really tired, I need more sleep), but I also feel like I am about to crash. No, to my knowledge, I am not manic, but I suspect that this is what it feels like. I think it is just due to the serious sleep deprivation that took place all week and I am sure this weekend I will be working on making some of that up.

At any rate, I am going to be feeling some sore muscles tomorrow. I already feel my neck a little. I think I was straining and compensating on some moves today. I need to pay more attention to that during my work-outs. This weekend I plan to walk the dogs through the neighborhood at a nice clip to get some cardio in and work my shins and ankles some more.

I also need to finally get the Christmas lights off the back side of the house. Thank goodness no one can see them! I am utterly ashamed they are still up, but it has been really rainy here and my yard is a clay-soil swamp which makes using the ladder almost impossible. Cest la vie.

The part that has me so stressed out is that working weekends seems to have become the new norm across the board. It isn’t because of some big special project that is due and then the extra hours will die back. It isn’t because I am a slow worker and am not living up to expectations. There is simply too much work on everyone’s plate. I have managed to avoid it for a while, but this past month has been chaos…and it doesn’t seem to be improving. There are still some good things that might be popping up on the horizon that would mean less travel, so I am trying to keep an eye on that light at the end of this tunnel.

The other huge work stress is my CRCM exam. The Compliance & Risk Manager Certification test is essentially the bar exam for financial regulation. The test is two months away and I am nowhere near ready. We are supposed to be studying for the exam on our own time – but seeing as how we don’t really have any of that these days, I don’t know when I am going to fit it in. In fact, I think this exam is what has me extra stressed out about having to work over my weekends. It all feeds into each other. Thankfully I am good at taking tests, but I am concerned about my knowledge with some…OK many….of the regulations. I am terrible at rote memory stuff which is what I am going to have to do for regs that don’t apply to my line of business. I guess the one thankful thing is that my line of business is a large part of most of the regs these days.

Travel: With all that said, I am doing OK with my traveling workouts. Still trying to figure out how to make them work, but I am getting some exercise in which is better than I was doing before, so I am happy with it. I think, though, that I am going to change my rest day from Tuesday to Thursday. Since I prefer working out in the evening and the hotel gyms seem to be less crowded then, I figure I can get on a bike or a treadmill for a while on Tuesdays. Thursdays I have run into the gym being packed in the morning and then I am working and traveling all day and evening and not getting home until very late. It seems like a better day to just bag it to me. We’ll see how things go this next week.

Resolutions: Later this evening I will do a one-month check-in or recap of my resolutions to see how they are all doing…I’d like to try to stick with them all this year. We’ll see how that goes.

Trainer: My trainer cancelled on me again today for family reasons. I am frustrated and having a hard time deciding what to do about it. We haven’t been able to have a consistent schedule since I started with her mid-December. And while I completely understand family stuff has to come first (major stuff – her mom passed away, her husband’s mom or maybe it is grandma is very very sick, her friend was beaten by her husband and hospitalized, etc.) I have also paid a sizable amount of money to have someone help me get my rear into shape . Two weeks straight of no training sessions doesn’t really fit that model. I would ask about being assigned to a different trainer, but I really like my trainer and when we do meet, we get along well and she is the perfect personality to get me moving without being angry or hating her. *sigh* I give it another few weeks and if we still can’t gain some traction then I will change it up I guess.

OK. I think I have vented my frustrations now…and I do feel a little better getting some of it out. With that, I will go finish my soup and get back to work (typing this constituted my “lunch break”).

215.2

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

As of this morning’s weigh-in I have officially lost my first five pounds!!! And because I might not have been completely accurate with my starting weight since it was over the holidays and I was bouncing all over from 220 to 227, really this is probably more like my first seven to ten. What is even better, I have lost a half to a full inch in size all over! (I need to confirm this with Sue-Ann on Friday since I have a little trouble measuring myself sometimes, but I am usually pretty close.) I will update my measurements page shortly.

So, after one full month of exercise and focusing on eating better (smaller portions, trying for three meals a day, etc.), it is starting to pay off – what a great way to start the new year! And what great motivation to keep at it since I leave shortly for yet another work trip…

216.2 – my current weight. I seem to have stagnated a bit, though I am down a tiny bit from my last weigh-in. I can deal with it, though, I haven’t gained!

With a realistic average of losing 1.5 to 2 pounds per week over 15 weeks, I should be able to lose between 22.5 and 30 pounds. Which then puts me between 193.7 and 186.2! I don’t even care about the end number - barring some unforeseen accident or problem, I will easily be able to get myself under the 200 mark and that is a huge deal for me mentally.

Around April 1 (April Fool’s Day – go figure), I will be looking to run my first ever 5k race! By then I will have finished the C25K program and should be in decent enough shape to not worry too much about injury. Then sometime after my mom and sister’s visit, I am planning to run a 10k race. Knowing myself, though I do  want to complete a 1/2 marathon someday, I really want to focus on 5k and 10k distances and time. I am a natural sprinter. I enjoy shorter competitions. And the result is still the same – I lose weight, get in shape, and am overall healthier for it.

My training weeks will run Monday through Sunday – Tuesday is my rest day (typically my travel day as discussed in a previous post). The C25K training will be somewhat modified due to travel. One day per week of it will be on cardio equipment of some kind (depending on hotel equipment available it could be either on a treadmill or a stationary bike). Saturday and Sunday will be through my neighborhood (hopefully with Moo in tow – she needs the exercise as well). The other three days are strength, with two of them being trainer directed and one on my own.

Which leads me into some sad news – my trainer’s mother passed away late last week, so we haven’t had a couple of our sessions. I feel terrible for her as it was very unexpected. We are trying for Friday morning, but I told her to let me know if she wasn’t feeling up to it. I hate these sorts of situations as I never know how to handle them.

In other semi-related  and more exciting news – the new sports bras that I ordered arrived and actually fit! This is a minor miracle as stores around here do not carry my “well endowed” size in stock, so I have to guess at sizing, place an order, and then it is trial and error with mostly errors (the bras I ordered last week all had to go back). I have had the best luck with Champion bras – there are other, higher priced brands that I hear good things about, but I am hoping to not be wearing these sizes long and thus don’t want to spend that kind of money. On sale I got four nice quality bras for under $100. I have to exchange one because I was unsure which band size was right for me, but that’s an easy thing with them. So WOOHOO!

I guess I am just going to have to make myself be a “morning” person when it comes to exercise. I do it Mondays and Fridays to meet my trainer, but on my own, I prefer mid-day to evening. Though I should have known better, I thought I would get home yesterday evening and then go out and do the C25K day. However, because of some craziness with work stuff, I ended up not getting lunch and was starving when I finally got home so we went out to dinner instead. No running for me. And then there are my departure days…which is why I made Tuesday my rest day. There’s no telling how early I have to be up and at the airport and after traveling and working all day, I have zero energy left for anything else. So, that’s all hunky dory for Tuesdays, but lately I’ve had to travel Monday which puts another kink in the scheduling.

I will go run today since I didn’t have a training session (another story for another time), but that is beside the point. I really need to get a better schedule down, at least while I am getting back into pounding the pavement. Once I am in better shape and will (hopefully) be less prone to injury, I will feel a lot more comfortable with a random running schedule. That and I am a little OCD and like to plan things. And once they are planned I like to stick to the plan. I guess I am just going to need to try to be more spur of the moment and flexible with things. *sigh*

At least eating is going OK. This week the hotel had a decent bistro in the lobby that had sandwiches, soups, and salads. And I have worked very hard on watching my portions which is even more important than what I’ve eaten since I typically eat pretty decent food.

Overall things are going well…I need to invest in some rain gear for running outdoors, but thankfully, the sun is back out for the next several days so I’ve got time to get around to that. Hope all is well with everyone out there.

Monday’s training session was the most intense yet. I was sore this week, but not so sore I couldn’t function. It was a perfect place to be. Yesterday was my rest day, but I did walk 1.5miles on the treadmill here at the hotel to help loosen things up. And I’ve been good about major stretching every day.

Today I worked on some shin and ankle strengthening and some yoga poses to help loosen up my right hip and my shoulders. Tomorrow evening after I get back home I am going to do C25K week 1, day 1 with Moo-dog.

Eating was average this week, but not terrible. I watched portion sizes which was good (I need to get better about that).

Its been a long week – I look forward to getting home to my boyfriend and critter kids!

However, even with drinking extra water, I still got really dehydrated flying today. I’ll have to plan better next time I travel on a PT day. Tomorrow is my rest day, though I will be doing a major stretching session if only to keep mobile. Muscles are going to hurt tomorrow!

Now the trick this week is to keep my eating healthful while eating out all week. I am glad to report that this hotel has brand new cardio equipment so Wed and Thurs should be acceptable workouts.

Not much else to blab about today. The airline industry still sucks. TSA is still a joke. Memphis is still on the river.

My sister’s wedding in 2007 -

That’s me on the far right with the extra pasty white skin. It’s too hot to be out in the sun here in the South…just sayin’. And as not to be rude, my sister is the gorgeous bride, my sister-in-law (or rather my sister’s SIL) is next, and then my sister’s friend (I know, I did that backwards). Also, I am not entirely sure my sister was wearing heels in this photo because in reality she is taller than I am by a couple of inches…

Any my adorable new niece just after she was born this past summer -

This is the most recent photo I’ve got (July 2011)…isn’t that baby adorable?! Sadly, I look like I am the one who just had her whereas my sister looked (looks) just like she does in her wedding photo. Yes, I am a little jealous of how our genetics worked out, but I still love her to death anyway.

Anyway, there you have it. Or me, rather. And as much as I hate publicly displaying these photos, I am now pretty excited to shed these pounds so I can post new ones sometime in the near-ish future!

I haven’t seen a number that low in ages! And while it is nowhere near where I need to be, it is finally some more progress in the right direction. And that is without any major exercise this week…I have finally caught The Annual Crud. Coughing, snot, and general malaise. It is bad enough I cancelled dinner with Neil for his birthday yesterday and also my training session this morning. I even sort of slept in a little (it’s hard to do with dogs and no one else around to manage them). It is times like these I am very grateful that I work from home (when I am not traveling)…I do have things I have to get done today, but I can do them all curled up on my couch with a blanket in my pjs.

Later I will make some homemade chicken soup…glad I finally got around to making stock!