Week One, Day 2

This week has been the start of my renewed fitness journey.  After slacking off of my work-outs and gaining between 10-15 pounds in the process, I have decided to do my best to get myself in decent shape again.  Since joining a health club isn't an option for me right now, I have resorted to using the large bonus room in our new home as my gym.  Got the boxing heavy bag installed, gathered up my dumbells and other gym stuff, and I'm ready to go.

I'm making up my routine as i go.  Every other day, I come up here and do either a workout video, or box a few rounds, or both.  Today was both.

To keep myself motivated, I open my Pandora app on my Chromebook, synced to my bluetooth speaker so i can crank the music as needed.  Water bottle, hand wraps, let's go!

                                                       

oh, one more thing:  I also use a boxing app, Precision Boxing, on my phone to call out my punches.  It's on a timer, and it times my 3-minute rounds and 1-minute rest breaks.  There's a lot of helpful apps out there, but this one's good for keeping me focused.  It's pretty basic, so I usually end up getting creative and mixing up the moves and adding some kicks for variety, just keeping it fresh and fun.

                                                                              
                                         So far, so good.  REady to fight?

Pow!!!

(or like my ol' Body Combat instruct would yell, "Boom, Boom, Pow!  How d'ya like me now?!!!"

After the boxing sequences, I unwind my sweaty handwraps, take it down to a yoga mat, and do some core conditioning with a short video.  Again, an app is here to save the day!  The app on my Chromebook is called "hoolio".   It basically manages a whole slew of workout videos, and it gives you points, or "moves", for how many videos you complete.  

Today's video was all about abs.  All kinds of crunches and planks.  Other days, I might focus on other body parts or use dumbells or ankle weights, all of which are kept nearby.

                                      

So that's it for today!  The thing is, I'm not in this to lose "x" amount of pounds or anything numerical or precise as that.  I don't consider myself morbidly obese (yet), and I'm not a professional, competitive athlete that needs to get down to a certain lean mean weight for an event.
 I just want to:
 1. lose the belly fat.  2. firm up all over.  3.  fit in my clothes comfortably again.  4.  feel good about the way i look.
Hopefully that will result in losing a bunch of pounds, but I'm not focusing on that.  It's all about being healthy, having more energy and mental alertness, and feeling better emotionally as well.  Establishing a fitness routine that is do-able over the long run.  Making lifestyle changes in both activity and diet that I can maintain for life.

Let's keep this going, shall we?  See you next time!!

Fitness Journey

It is with great sorrow and dragging feet that I bring to you the following announcement: I am FAT and DESPERATELY in need of a successful diet and fitness regime to get rid of all my pudge.

Yes, it is true.  I have gained a considerable amount of weight over the past many months, and I even documented it with some extremely embarrassing, horribly humiliating and degrading, "BEFORE" shots:

Roll the cam.  Photo #1:  Numbers don't lie.

This is absolutely unacceptable.  

ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY POUNDS!!!!

I haven't weighed this much since I was a beer-guzzling, pizza and ice cream-gorging college sophomore!!

yuck yuck yuck!!!

Altogether now:
"Fatty, Fatty, Two by Four,

Can't get through the kitchen door!!!"

I have gained, get this, TWENTY POUNDS since the days of breastfeeding my last child!!!

(sure, i may have been a bit scrawny then, due to my boy literally sucking all the calories out of me, but still!!!)

And it's not just the numbers that disgust me.

It's this scary thing in Photo #2:

my GUT!!

oh please oh please move quickly past this horrendous image, it's so embarrassing!!

Yet I feel I must be truthful, and reveal this shameful part of me,

so that I will be all the more motivated to get RID of it FAST 

so I can hurry up and post a beautiful "AFTER" shot of the new improved me!

Now I have to insert a small disclaimer here...

See, it's not TOTALLY all my fault for having this freak of nature inflated abdomen that i do so heartily possess..NAW...you gotta believe me, I can honestly, truthfully attribute much of the damage to my second pregnancy, when my ab muscles did this awful thing, the dreaded "split" that often happens when the baby gets bigger and forces the mom's ab muscles to split apart.  I had a prenatal aerobics teacher during my first pregnancy, and she not only gave us specific exercises to prevent this split, but she even had us lie down on our backs so she could come around and "lay hands on us" (ha) to determine if our ab muscles were still intact. Thankfully, mine did stay together the first time around, but with the second kid...I didn't even try.   Ate all the junk food i wanted, laid around like a big fat whale.

Resulting in, of course, the saggy middle.

oh well. i love my son. it was worth it.

But moving on... (though I'd love to delay revealing any more horrors..)

I will now present my feeble attempt 

(and grand failure) 

to try to suck in that gross gut:

here i go, one two three HOLD YOUR BREATH!!!!!

                               And sadly, I admit my defeat.  oh the agony of it.  It simply cannot be done.

And so, I am beginning to change my ways.  Not all at once, nothing extreme, but I'm trying.  First, my excuses:

1. I can no longer attend my old gym and its Body Combat classes I loved so much, since moving out here in Nowhere Land.  WAAAAHHH!!!!  The gyms around here don't offer what I want, and if they do, they're too far away.  Plus, I have no money.  Need to earn some money, since I'm the one responsible  for my phone and my gym fees.  I have no job.  Need to figure something out.

2.  I REFUSE to diet!!!! Yes, I know that it will take longer to drop the pounds, but I just cannot do it.  I HATE to deprive myself.  I HATE counting calories and fat grams and all that junk.  Instead, I will make a more conscious effort to avoid the "bad" foods, and to break some habits of mindless snacking or drinking sweet tea when my body just needs water.  That kind of stuff.

3.  Meds.  yup. The meds i switched to awhile back make me lethargic, slow me down. While I do hope to change things up with that, when I get my doctor visit rescheduled (last one got cancelled), I still have to work a bit harder at getting myself in motion.  I'm like a rock gathering moss.  But once in motion, this rock will more easily stay in motion.

Enough excuses.  I CAN do this.  

I've already got the punching bag hanging from the ceiling in the bonus room, ready to take some hits and kicks.  I'm looking forward to getting in there, cranking up some ANGRY music and killing some fat while demolishing some pent-up angst and frustration.    I've got some ideas of routines I want to create for myself,  fun ways of combining kickboxing with dance in combinations that will raise my heart rate, burn fat, tighten muscles, reinforce technique, and most of all, be something FUN that I'll want to do as often as possible! 

That's it for embarrassing myself, for now.

I really hope and pray this works.  

Signing off,

the Fat Mother Whale.