Bonjour, Blog Fans! It's been a couple of weeks since the Holidays and all the joy and calories that they bring. Let's see how far we've come since starting this healthy journey way back on November 21, shall we?
To recap: I started out slowly - just 15 minutes on the treadmill, 5 days/week. A short time later, I bumped it up to 20 minutes/day.
I've left it at 20 minutes for now, but I've just this week started doing some strength training - crunches, rear leg lifts, modified push-ups, side push-ups to start. Again, I've started off slowly - just one set of ten reps to begin. I've been kicking around the idea of getting a home gym, but I have very limited space in my home, so I was thinking about one of the Nautilus BowFlex machines - maybe the Blaze. I like this machine because the bench folds up, so when not in use, it has a relatively small footprint. If anyone has any opinions on this (or the other folding BowFlex home gyms), I'd love to hear them.
On to the progress report: Since starting this workout routine 7 weeks ago, I have lost...
* 1" off my bust
* 1 1/2" off my ribcage
* 2" off my waist
* 2" off my tummy (I can't wait until my waist and my tummy are within a couple inches of one-another!!)
* 1" off my hips
* 1/2" off each thigh
...for a total of 6 inches overall.
Not too shabby, considering I'm not exactly taxing myself here, and my diet has remained relatively unchanged. With the exception of the 2 weeks during the Christmas/New Year Holidays, I've kept to the small (individual serving size) bags of chips, I'm taking in more water than soft drinks, and I've tried (with some small success) to include more fruit and veggies in my daily food intake.
As time goes on, I'll be adding some reps to the floor routine, and maybe eventually upping the time on the treadmill ... although I don't want to make this an all-day event, either. I gotta go to work at some point!
We enrolled my oldest (you'll know him from my earlier posts as MiniMe) in junior Taekwondo classes, and he has been having an absolute blast! So have I. I've been helping him practice his patterns and moves every night ... and I do mean EVERY night. We've been having a lot of fun with it, and even though it's only been a couple of weeks, he seems to really be enjoying it and I've noticed a difference in his attitude and self-confidence level. I know that there will come a time when he will lose interest. I'll deal with that obstacle when we get to it, which hopefully won't happen for a few years.
In the mean time, I'm going to enjoy his enthusiasm. Who knows? If the financial horizon gets a little brighter than it is right now (which is a dull shade of midnight blue at the moment), you just might be reading a post in the future about my quest for a black belt. ;)
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Back To The Ol' Grind
Happy New Year, folks! I hope everyone had a great holiday, filled with fun, food, family & friends.
Now that THAT's over with...
It's back to the ol' grind. Not only are we all (well, most of us) back to work, it's also time to assess the damage that the Holiday eating binge did to the relatively new fitness regime.
Surprisingly, I didn't fare as badly as I thought I would after what felt like a solid week of non-stop eating, and my trusty treadmill sitting idly by, approximately 600km away. Only a half-inch gained here and there. It could have been a lot worse.
Seriously.
Have you ever celebrated Christmas with an Italian family? We go "back home" each year for the Holidays, where my mother feels it's her maternal duty to make sure we all eat as much as (or slightly more than) is humanly possible. After all, she's not here with us for most of the year, so we must be starving, right? The fact that I could pass for Rita McNeil's stunt double has apparently escaped her notice.
If the lasagna, manicotti and canelloni aren't enough for you, you could also have some soup, meatballs, sausages and other various animal body parts that are thrown into the pot to make the sauce for the pasta. We managed to convince her for the first time this year that we absolutely DO NOT need a roast of some sort to go with our salad at the end of the meal.
But no amount of arguing could get Mom to limit herself to two cakes for the night. Cheesecake is a must, after all. It's tradition. And so is the sponge cake she makes every time we visit, insisting that it's my husband's favourite (to his immense surprise). But the one that really took the cake, so to speak, was the double-decker chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for the kids, even though the smell of chocolate makes her gag. They NEED chocolate cake, she will vehemently argue every time. Not want ... NEED. Mom refused to listen to our arguments that children do not NEED chocolate cake at 11:00 at night, which is when dinner is over, because it takes that long to eat Christmas dinner at Mom's house, after all.
So, yes, I'm quite surprised and pleased to find that I've only regained half an inch in a couple of spots over the past couple of weeks, all things considered. But, now the holidays are over, the leftovers have been dealt with, the New Year has begun, and my battle of the bulge has resumed. Hello treadmill, old friend. I've picked up a couple of Friends episodes on DVD to make our time together pass a little more quickly. Next week, we introduce my butt to the floor for some leg lifts, crunches and push-ups.
Happy New Year, back-side. I hope I'll be seeing a lot less of you from here on in. ;)
Now that THAT's over with...
It's back to the ol' grind. Not only are we all (well, most of us) back to work, it's also time to assess the damage that the Holiday eating binge did to the relatively new fitness regime.
Surprisingly, I didn't fare as badly as I thought I would after what felt like a solid week of non-stop eating, and my trusty treadmill sitting idly by, approximately 600km away. Only a half-inch gained here and there. It could have been a lot worse.
Seriously.
Have you ever celebrated Christmas with an Italian family? We go "back home" each year for the Holidays, where my mother feels it's her maternal duty to make sure we all eat as much as (or slightly more than) is humanly possible. After all, she's not here with us for most of the year, so we must be starving, right? The fact that I could pass for Rita McNeil's stunt double has apparently escaped her notice.
If the lasagna, manicotti and canelloni aren't enough for you, you could also have some soup, meatballs, sausages and other various animal body parts that are thrown into the pot to make the sauce for the pasta. We managed to convince her for the first time this year that we absolutely DO NOT need a roast of some sort to go with our salad at the end of the meal.
But no amount of arguing could get Mom to limit herself to two cakes for the night. Cheesecake is a must, after all. It's tradition. And so is the sponge cake she makes every time we visit, insisting that it's my husband's favourite (to his immense surprise). But the one that really took the cake, so to speak, was the double-decker chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for the kids, even though the smell of chocolate makes her gag. They NEED chocolate cake, she will vehemently argue every time. Not want ... NEED. Mom refused to listen to our arguments that children do not NEED chocolate cake at 11:00 at night, which is when dinner is over, because it takes that long to eat Christmas dinner at Mom's house, after all.
So, yes, I'm quite surprised and pleased to find that I've only regained half an inch in a couple of spots over the past couple of weeks, all things considered. But, now the holidays are over, the leftovers have been dealt with, the New Year has begun, and my battle of the bulge has resumed. Hello treadmill, old friend. I've picked up a couple of Friends episodes on DVD to make our time together pass a little more quickly. Next week, we introduce my butt to the floor for some leg lifts, crunches and push-ups.
Happy New Year, back-side. I hope I'll be seeing a lot less of you from here on in. ;)
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