Strong

I feel strong today.  Not the muscles in my arms but my body and will power.  Had a great exercise time this morning and tonight.  This morning I got some weight training in before getting the HIIT in.  I didn’t feel particularly strong during them but I made it through 8 reps.  Tonight I went roller-blading for 8 miles.  It was a little difficult going the one direction as I had a pretty good wind to go against.  I was hoping to go for 10 but my body was telling me it had had enough and I knew I should be getting home.  One interesting thing is that I happened to look down at my gut and it hit me how much it has shrunk.  I still have it but it’s getting smaller.  That thought makes me smile.

Today was an interesting day at work.  Training all morning with 8 venders and then there was pizza offered for lunch.  Pizza Hut pizza.  I walked away.  I had prepared a lunch for the day without knowing this was going to be offered and I just didn’t need the pizza anymore.  I’ve always loved Pizza Hut pizza but I know more now about the calories and fat that is in that stuff and I won’t do it.  Temptation came back again during the afternoon breaks as they were trying to get rid of the rest of the pizza.  I didn’t budge.  I like where I’m going and there is no looking back, not even at the fat I’m leaving behind.

Pushing through

Back is still acting up but I was able to get my HIIT in this morning on the exercise bike.  It’s not uncomfortable but the soreness is just there.  Tomorrow morning I’m going to go on the treadmill and get some incline walking in.  Might be the last exercise for the weekend as we are going away to my parent’s cabin for our anniversary.  A well deserved break from it all, especially with what happened today.

We had a couple of inspections done on the house today.  The first was a pressure test for the plumbing and that past with no problems.  The second was a house inspection and we had a couple of flags come up.  I heard about it from work and my stress level went up.  We’ve been trying to close on this house for 6 months and it is just crazy how many roadblocks come up.  I feel like I’m fighting for my life to get things done and then we wait and wait for others to do there part and then it comes back on us again.  After a few phone calls to get our carpenter here and to straighten out some people on why we can’t close on the house on the bills we owe them, I felt some relief.  They’ve been sympathetic and understand we’re doing all we can and facing a government system that is just broken.  If there was a bag of chips in the house, I don’t know what would have happened to them.  So grateful that we had a soccer game to go to and other things that helped get my mind off all the stress of life around this house.  I’ll just be glad when it’s over.

It got me thinking about something regarding my exercise.  I’ve probably found a lot of comfort with my exercise because it’s something I can control.  Something I can do to fix things.  Does it fix everything?  No.  But I see results, in the mirror and on the scale.  I’m stronger.  It might be why I’m getting more focused with work.  Not putting in more hours since there is a cap to the 40 hour week but concentrating on my work.  These are something I can control to some degree.   It also helps me take a step back and look at this whole house situation.   Even with the struggles, I see that we put a great effort into this great house and were able to concentrate on all the details of putting it together.  We’re not done yet but it is quite an accomplishment when looking at the big picture.

I’m done rambling.  Time to hit the hay.

First day with the new training

and I am so sore….   I felt strong after the weights and carried myself through 10 repetitions of HIIT before cooling down.  Everything felt pretty good until I got to work.  My walk into work was when I first noticed the soreness.  As I sat for longer periods of time it got worse.  It wasn’t noticable when I walked.  I pushed through it until everything loosened up but after a while I learned I had to get up every once in a while to walk around.  My stomach was acting strange today too.  I have no idea what it was but we’ll see if it happens again on Wednesday when I try this again.  I still was able to get in an hour walk tonight walking with weights.

Tomorrow morning will be back on the exercise bike.  One thing I’m going to work on tonight is getting to bed early.  Today just dragged and I was dragging.  I need to have rest to make tomorrow a better day.

Research, research, research

When I started doing my High Intensity Interval Training I’ve been bothered by something.  My HIIT lasts for about 20 minutes and I’ve always wondered do I keep working out to fill in the 40 minutes I usually do cardio?  It’s been 2 months and I keep doing that but now I’m willing to try something else.  Today I found 2 articles that are helping me reconsider and try something new:

http://www.consumerhealthdigest.com/smartcardio.htm

http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/smart-cardio-to-burn-fat-574698.html

My plan is warm up for 5 minutes on the treadmill, then do 20 minutes of weights, the 20 minutes of HIIT.  I was first thinking of going for 2 weeks to see what the results are but maybe I’ll push it to 3 just to be sure.

This is not a panic move (at least I don’t think so) to increase my weight loss that has slowed down of late.  I’m pleased that it is still coming off and very happy that my mindset has not changed.  This is the life I want and I won’t quit on this no matter how long it takes.  I just want to find what works and what doesn’t and you never know unless you try it.

While doing this research I stumbled across two other websites that I plan on following:

http://www.madefittv.com/

http://www.winningman.com/

Both are blogs with video and I love watching these quick, specialized video blogs on the internet.  I’ll post more as I come across them.