Have you ever felt like this guy?

Although I have worked out every day this week there hasn't been a day that's gone by that I have wanted to stop mid workout. I'd be on the elliptical for 20 minutes with 10 minutes to go and think "This is really sucky. I could be asleep right now or watching tv" and be seconds from stopping. What has kept me going this week is my first weigh in day which happens tomorrow and the thought of having worked so hard thus far and giving up. I have also been happy with the results I'm seeing. This past weekend I was trying to find something to wear to a memorial service and was shocked and ecstatic to find that all of my blazers fit! Before exercise started I was unable to button any of them comfortably and some of them I was unable to wear because they were too tight across the back. Sunday I was able to close all of them! Success! But even that couldn't stop me from wanting to give up.  Well I did get through today's exercise:  30 minutes on the elliptical, Jillian Michaels' Frontside and Jillian Michaels' Backside. It took a while but I kept thinking about pushing myself. Well, tommorrow is another day and I am motivated to weigh in in the morning. I find it really strange that I am having anxiety about getting on the scale. I am afraid that despite my efforts I have not lost but a couple of pounds. I'm by no means looking for Biggest Loser numbers but the 5 that I have planned on would be magnificent. Actually since I started at 202 I am hoping for a 7 pound loss. We'll see...

I did It!

Today I spent away from home and had to make some serious food decisions. I was pretty pissed when I didn't have a chance to eat breakfast and even more pissed when I found myself ready to gnaw my arm off at 1pm. My mom and I decided to get Quiznos but it didn't work out. The food was not good and if their is anything I have learned to do is to not eat food just because it's there so we didn't eat it. However, it was to be another 2-3 hours before we actually ate anything. Earlier in the day (around 12) I did have a 100 calorie cookie thinking it would tide me over for at least 30 minutes until we got food but...
Anyway, we ended up at a KFC. In the past week when eating out I have gotten KFC's 395 calorie meal even though it killed me to have the mashed potatoes and green beans with grilled chicken instead of original recipe with a double order of potato wedges or potato wedges and mashed potatoes (double starch I know but it was so damn good who cared? The only thing I cared about was the fact that I would run out...) but I have to figure that every decision I make counts towards or against my goal so I opt to choose wisely. But today I got a popcorn chicken kids meal with potato wedges and-a soda! The soda, though was a snack size (smaller than the small) and I filled it up with ice so I only got around 8 oz of Dr. Pepper (100 calories). I also had a fun size peanut M&Ms pack I got from a little boy taking donations for his church outside of one of the stores we went into which was only 90 calories. When I added up all of the calories in my meal and extras which included one of my mom's regular crispy wings (she waited 20 minutes for crispy instead of original recipe and they gave her an extra wing) and 2 honey mustard sauces (I put honey mustrad on everything) it came to 1400 calories exactly! I shoot for 1400-1500 calories a day. Before I sat down to write this post I did have another one of those 100 calorie cookies. I did, however, come home and workout instead of going baack out with my mom:  30 minutes on the elliptical, Less is more cardio with Cindy Whitmarsh-30 minutes, and Incredible abs also with Cindy Whitmarsh-20 minutes. As mentioned before we have exercise tv at home and my mom has an elliptical in the kitchen (she has the most random stuff in the most random places...and she doesn't ever seem to throw anything away. We have had that elliptical for a while but it needed batteries for the display to work and for the resistance levels to function so it has been sitting in the kitchen untouched for the past few years. That's not true. When I moved home we did use it to hang clothes when they needed to air dry. We still do but now I also use it almost daily to workout :-). I got new batteries for it when I started working out again so I am able to track my calories and stuff on it. Yay for small victories!

The Biggest Load of $#@!

WORKOUT TRIALS

In addition to my daily 30 minute trek on the elliptical I also do an actual workout so that I get in cardio and strength training. I would have done Kendall Hogan's Bootcamp Cardio Burn which I love but I have been doint that workout in lu of the elliptical on the same days I do NAC Body Parts. So in I took this free space on m y calendar as an opportunity to do something new. Because I conveniently have Exercise Tv today I tried to do The Biggest Loser Bootcamp exercise (it is on exercise tv) with Bob Harper. LAME! So I tried The Biggest Loser Power Sculpt with Jillian Michaels. DOUBLE LAME! I love to do Jillian Michaels Frontside, Backside, all of the Shreds and Boost Metabolism, No more Trouble Zones workouts because they are challenging and they are very structured. I have to say that these two Biggest Loser workouts are sloppy. The actual moves, what Bob or Jillian have you do is not the problem, but the actual structure of the workouts are ridiculous. Bob's wasn't so bad. Come to think of it not that bad at all. I simply found myself bored and didn't feel like I was getting the burn I needed. Jillian's workout however, was hard to follow because all of the participants (all Biggest Loser contestants and winners) were out of sync and you could tell that many of them were unsure of how to do the actual exercise (which is strange because they have lost weight doign these exact moves- or so we think). Some of them seemed to have good form and were ata steady pace but the rest of them were all over the place. Overall it was hard to find more than three people at a time who had the same form and were going at the same pace. Jillian would say okay we have five more and in that segment you would have some then do five while others did eight, and another did six. I almost couldn't take it!

After that fiasco I did do Cindy Whitmarsh's Incredible Abs 2. I have to say that it is hard but is without a doubt my new favorite thing. I usually abhor working on my abs and they often don't get individual attention like the rest of my trouble zones.

I love her and all of her workouts!

UPDATES: Food Guilt and Moving On

So the past week...full of guilt. I have bean eating well through the day but then at the end of the day I eat over my caloric limit. The problem with that is I am only going over 1-200 calories which could be a bad thing but it is certainly not the end of the world. So why the panic?

When I used to workout I would exercise for at least 2 hours a day. This time I am easing into all of the exercise so I won't crash and burn. BUT I worked out in such a manic state because I thought that I was grotesque (I would workout for 2 hours a day and if I missed an hour or a planned exercise I would attach it to the 2 hour workout the next day! If I went over a specific amount of calories I would deduct that number from the calories I would have eaten the following day! CRAZY I know.). When I say grotesque I not only meant fat and repulsive but ugly; how are people able to look at my face ugly. I had decided that I could not be fat and ugly. Because I couldn't really do anything about changing my face I knew that I had to become thin and thus be a little more acceptable (blending in rather than sticking out as the ugly girl). This disfunctional thinking caused a lot of problems and was incredibly RIDICULOUS! I know now that there are days that I don;t feel 100% and FEEL ugly but that I am not in fact an ugly person on the inside or out.

But over the past week or so I have been having flashbacks of the emotional state I used to be in. I look at women that are my size and I think wow they're big and beautiful. When I look at myself I think wow I'm pretty big and I look like a cow. Each time I have worked out I have felt incredibly strong only to catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror and see what I describe as disgusting. I know that weight loss is a process and it takes time; as I workout and change my bad habits I will become stronger and so on and so on...

I HATE working out and I don't want to waste my time going through it if I am not going to lose weight or lose weight and still look big. This issue had become my biggest fear. I have come close to talking myself out of workouts because I fear that I will be this size forever-so what's the point? I know weight loss is possible but sometimes...

...so all this week I have been freaking out with every morsel of food that has gone in my mouth...I hate this...

Stronger than Yesterday

Working out has been a success. I have not been focusing on the scale but have been focusing on how I feel each time I work out. I am getting stronger and I like it! I am trying to make it through the month and see if I have reached my goal to lose 5 pounds. 5 pounds is a reasonable goal in my mind because if I try to go for more than that I end up trying to push myself way to hard and burn out, then give up. Also, if I am able  to take this one day at a time I am able to acheive so much more. My fitness goal is to be an athlete. While watching the biggest loser and watching Jillian run out of the weight room makes me want to acheive more physically. Right now I am not able to run...anywhere. It feels ackward and weird and I get winded and start breathing like I'm having an asthma attack and I don't have asthma. Everyday Counts!

Yoga is NOT for the Weak

I tried power yoga for beginners and I have to say...Not for the faint. I did ballet for 13 years but this is nothing like that! I have never been the most flexible person alive but hitting those poses, holding them, and coming out of them was a complete struggle. I think I'll stick to the cardio and weight training for sure.