Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution, Kick-start Day 1 and 2

I didn’t pop out of bed like I would have liked to on Monday, in anticipation of a new workout, buuuut I have been talking myself into this so much that I knew I couldn’t back down.  So that’s positive right? Tuesday, this morning, it was even a little harder but again, I have made a commitment to myself, and so far, I’m honoring that.

My take on the workouts so far…I know, day 2 and not much of a take yet, but I’m familiar with Jillian’s workout style and I’ve read about every book she’s written.  So, I like it in that it’s familiar.  The days for working out is very similar to Making the Cut.  The circuits are akin to her videos, and more specifically, her 30 Day Shred one as it’s the only one I have.  Both workouts moved right along and before I knew it, my 30 minutes was up, even the cardio workout! So the next two weeks I’ll be alternating between two high intensity workouts that include strength training, and one cardio workout for the month and then that will all change.  There won’t be a lot of boredom, I’m predicting. The cardio workout for Phase 1 is just 30 minutes long.  In the kick start week, it appears that you do it every day?  Then you only do it twice a week.

I survived Monday morning without my normal morning snack.  I inhaled my breakfast right around 8am, prior to that I had my allowed two cups of coffee (Black, and that’s the way I like it so no troubles there.) I’ll need to allow myself more time in the morning to prepare my breakie but it shouldn’t be too time consuming.  Two scrambled eggs, a plum tomato, two pieces of ham, all natural, no nitrites/nitrates etc, and a 1/4 of an avocado.  Nom!  (I was supposed to use an all natural, low sodium Canadian bacon, but I don’t think Canada sells their bacon to the grocery store I shopped at on Sunday.

For lunch, I batch cooked up a double serving of the veggie soup and poached chicken.  I followed the recipe in the kick start plan and it’s pretty much the same except I had to use canned, diced tomatoes.  Eeps, don’t kick my butt Jillian!  The soup, it tastes good, but a little on the bland side…I need to add more spices for next time.  Oh and the broth….I can’t even begin to tell you what it looks like because it causes me to focus on what it looks like and then my tummy flip flops.  I think I might have done something wrong?  Only 5 more days of eating it!  Honestly, it tastes just fine and dandy.

Monday evening was a little tricky at bed time as I was definitely hungry.  My calories for the day were right around 1200 and I had a nice exercise boost of 688 calories.  I knew I was going to wake up hungry and, I did.  A little on the sluggish side but I keep reminding myself that my body is going through a detox of all things cupcake related, so a little sluggish is going to be normal.

I’m super looking forward to my afternoon snack of hummus and veggies!

Do you adore hummus?  You should!

Oh and I even managed to bypass the cupcake run and the cookies and rolls back in our break room.  Must keep pressing on towards my goal.

Tuesday was tough, especially towards the evening.  I survived though and took a peak at the scale this morning.  Pretty exciting so far.  Now to stay off the scale until Monday morning!

I had some questions from my friend Jen, that I thought I’d answer:

did ya survive??? YES!  Go me!

is it similar to her old stuff or something new? Similar, yes, but unlike 30 Day Shred, she’s got a whole bunch of people in the video all at once.  I like that…lots more faces and bods to “people watch”

was she wearing really low on her hip capris tights ? No tights so far but sweaty pant types of capris.

why does she need to wear her tights so low? I don’t know.  In one spot you catch a glimpse of crack.  Unnecessary! I think if I had abs like her though, I’d be sporting some low, hip riding capris…with no crack though!

Walking Dead, puppies, and a random piercing

Yeesh! What a weekend!  Let’s do a funsie blog post in bullet points because:

A. To keep this short (Ha! Like that ever happens.) and

B. So much Random. Yes with a capital R.

You ready?

• My computer had smoke and sparks coming out the side.  It sounded like a large herd of cockroaches was running around inside.
• I have a new laptop!  My honey found a smokin’ good deal for me that doesn’t involve fireworks.
• I had to transfer everything over on a new external hard drive.
• I have a personal IT specialist and she only charges me triple on the weekend.
• I seriously have a personal IT specialist.  She only jokes about charging me. I think the joke is on me.
• We’ll see when the bill gets here.
• Windows 8 is very different than what I’m used to.

• I finished the first season of Walking Dead.
• The hubs and the boy are current with season 3.
• He found season 2 on Netflix (Season 1 is there too, but we didn’t know it until we heard the rumor from a friend of mine, and we had already wasted $20 bucks.)
• I predict I will be caught up and current, most definitely by the end of the week.  JK.  The end of next week.

• I am starting Jillian Michael’s Body Revolution tomorrow morning.
• I’ve done a lot of “this is the last time I’ll get to eat/drink this” eating over the last two weeks-ish.
• I batched cooked my lunches for the week.
• The soup I made has every single veggie in the produce section.  Pretty sure of it.

Now some two random pictures?  Sure!

My youngest got her cartilage pierced.  I almost passed out.

Puppies! We were gifted with puppies at work.  And they said we could keep them there.  Forever.  Just kidding.

Christmas Teaser

 

I love me some Christmas decorations!  (And I’m addicted to PicMonkey) As you view my collage, I hope you pretended that you were smelling the Scentsy pots that are causing our electricity bill to skyrocket.  We have seven throughout the house and I don’t believe in overkill!  Not when it comes to good smells. Just rest at ease and know that the scents are a coordinated effort of cinnamon, pine tree, and mulled cider/berry/plum/elf bells and something else.  It works, trust me.

There will be more collages.  I apologize in advance.

Oh and I love grumpy cat too much not to share this with you.  This made me chuckle all weekend long when I posted it on Facebook in regards to one of my coworkers protesting to my Christmas music. 

Saying Good Bye to Cookie Butter

My Jillian Michael’s Body Revolution, which should arrive on this Wednesday, includes a 7 day kickstart program….which I AM going to do!  I need the kickstart and I really super really want the satisfaction that I will get from completing it.  (Isn’t it cool how positive I am being?)  One thing I’ve learned from a lot of self help books that I’ve started and haven’t finished, is that your brain doesn’t know when you are joking about yourself.  So while self deprecating humor is all the rage these days, your brain doesn’t know that you pulled a fast one on yourself = I’m in big trouble  I’m awesome!

Anywho….(Side bar here, when people say “anywho” I’m punching them in the face in my head. Not super hard, and I’m really just joking so don’t get all offended.) The kickstart program, I was fortunate to catch a glimpse online of, is very strict and looks like there’s absolutely no sugar or grain-y type carbs.  Sweet!!  To add a few more kicks to the ribs, it’s going to be shark week.  Almost certain of that.  I’m going to be so happy and awesome and pleasant to be around!

Not sure who bob shea is, but pretty sure this is an awesome book, just from the cover.

In an effort to be a little more prepared versus diving head first into my own death, I’ve set a little challenge for myself this week.  The program requires you to count your calories, so I’m promising to myself that I WILL track all of my calories.  I’ve used Sparkpeople before and still visit the site as that’s where I’ve made oodles of imaginary friends.  This go around, I’ll be using My Fitness Pal because the app works really well on my phone and the desktop version is pretty sweet too.  They both are free, and I’ve heard great things about Fit Day too.  MFP has a lot of my Spark friends that have migrated over there as well and they like to harass me everyday when they don’t see me log in or post workouts.

BTW, I just came up with an awesome app idea for dieters!  A lock on your electronics that won’t allow you to surf the web or navigate until you have logged your calories in.  That idea could earn me about 10 cents for sure, right?

Lastly, I’ve been saying goodbye to foods in my life that will not be a part of my adventure…for now.  Because I’m not always an idiot, I know that dieting isn’t forever.  If you’re going to make a “lifestyle” change, it needs to be in a way that is sustainable.  If you didn’t know that,  remember there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.

Another great picture from me…I know I can barely stand it!  On your left, the side with the classy paper plate, you’ll see one egg, one white, with half an avocado, sprinkled with some sriracha sauce, and on the right the three ingredient, oatmeal pancake that is layered with cookie butter and sugar free syrup.  Back on the left is what will be allowed, on the right, not so much.

Wish me luck!

PS Have you tried cookie butter yet?  Do you realize just what I’ll be giving up?!

The wheels on the bus…

I gave you a break from my blog posts.  You are welcome!
I don’t know where to start.  I fell off the blogging and social media wagon.  I fell off the everything wagon.

I didn’t meet my last set of goals that I wrote about in my last blog.  The sugar thing?  I caved.  Sugar is the devil.  A delicious devil.

Once upon a time Last week, I gave up messing around. I ordered this:

And it arrives next week!
Then I did this:

Now I will start cleaning things up in the eating department so my new diet doesn’t completely blow me out of the water on December 10th when I start this program. You have been fully and completely warned.  This is your very last chance to unsubscribe or unfriend me and stop reading my blog.  If you don’t turn around quietly and walk away now, you will be subjected to many many blogs that will probably definitely contain whining and I know I’m not kidding anyone, definitely pictures of kittens.
Comment below and you will be held accountable to cheer me on.  If no one comments, then I know you’re just going to be jealous fishes of my results.
I’ve scared you now, huh?
Good!
PS Only 342 days=48 weeks until I turn 40.  Eeeeps!

Only 359 days left!

For the last two weeks I have been mulling around in my little bird brain the idea of a countdown to when I turn 40.  A little over five years ago, I reached my goal weight and a total of 100 pounds lost.  In the last five years, I’ve fluctuated up and down and managed to gain 25 lbs back.  At the top of that weight, I go up and down 5 pounds from there.  The biggest change that I can think of is that I let up on the weight training and I added back to my diet fast food and a lot more sugar.  Talk about a flip flop.  Weights are key in changing your body composition.  However, I DO NOT WANT TO GIVE UP DISTANCE RUNNING!  Nope!  Running is my jam.  Oh and then there’s that whole….Abs are made in the kitchen, dealio.

And….I’m getting off topic. (shocking!) And…I need to keep this short. (Probably not happening.)

I now have 51 weeks left and there’s not a spread sheet in sight.  This type A person needs her spread sheets.  But, in an effort to curb my perfectionist ways….let’s just keep moving forward.

Source

My goals for week 51 are:

• Run 25 miles (Also part of the Pile on the Miles challenge.)
• Strength Train x 3 (Using ChaLean Extreme…heavy weights, low/slow reps)
• Take my vitamins
• Cut out the sugar (No extra sugary treats until Thanksgiving)

I’m planning on adding on to my goals, a little at a time, each week, in an effort to make each one a solid habit over the next year.

Forty is the new Twenty says everyone me.

The actual half marathon Vegas race recap..a “sort of” recap

 

This artistic pose was meant to capture the irony in that I was dressed in clothes to go running, complete with a race bib at 5am while others stumbled around drunk or hung over trying to figure out if they should throw up or keep drinking.  I think I nailed it, don’t you?

The directions to the start of the Really Big Free Marathon were not posted very well.  We did have a scenic warm-up walk to the start though.

This artistic pose was meant to capture the irony, just kidding….S and J are being awesome goofballs.  These girls are adorable and I hope they know that we are besties from here on out.  Bestie S and Bestie J.  It’s official!

S, J, and the hunchback of Lake Mead

I need to stop hunching over.  I must thing that the person taking the picture will chop my head off?  I do it all the time.  The guy over my shoulder is tired.  The lady with the visor is staring at the hill we are going to climb right after crossing the start line, and the lady in the blue hat is happy her pony tail isn’t too tight.  Or something like that.

 

Pretend you don’t see the vehicle in the picture.  And then pretend you’ve seen the movie “The Hills have Eyes.”  Then pretend you know what scenes went through my head a couple of times during this run.  I guess there were coyotes out earlier that some runners were able to capture and keep as pets on film.

 

Despite the hilly course, I had an absolute blast.  It was so much fun running with friends (knowing they were on the course and seeing them at turnarounds…we all had different paces). I was also really please with myself as I had ran the Portland Marathon on October 7th and a week and a half later, I succumbed to the flu.  Between getting sick and then the half marathon, I had run a total of 11 miles.  Eight of those were done right before I got sick.  So I was off  over 2 weeks from running and still made out with a decent time even including the hills.  Makes me excited for what I can do when I’m properly trained!

My goals for this race were:

A. Finish it

B. Come in close to 2:30 hours (finished in 2:46…not bad for having not trained on hills.)

C. Have fun (which I DID!)

I might have spent the rest of the day coughing up a lung or two but hey, I was in Vegas and who cares!

I think this is the next to last blog about my Vegas trip.  You are very welcome. Exciting Stuff to come!