Low Carbs

Are killing me. I am on a 40/40/20 nutrition plan right now. My only carb is oatmeal in the morning and popcorn at night. Not counting fruits and veggies. I am starving all the time. I just had lunch of chicken and salad and a small piece of dark chocolate. Yesterday was a big workout day. I did a new Alwyn Cosgrove workout and it went fast. I thought it wasn't very effective but today is creeping up and kicking my butt. I also did 50 minutes of elliptical. Today I will do yoga.

I quit my Ediets membership. I feel I have moved up a level or two and that listening people to talk about avoiding food at work is not useful for me. I haven't eaten at a work potluck for years and now that I have a reputation around here, I wouldn't get in a line and even pick at fruits and veggies with the coworkers carefully watching what I eat. I have long been a closet eater anyways. Food tastes better when I am alone. Kind of a eating/masturbatory thing I have going on. LOL

I might be teaching my third class in yoga next week if the teacher I am subbing for doesn't cancel her vacation. Hope not. I got some new yoga clothes from Victorias Secret. I probably won't wear them to practice in but have to look cute teaching. The sweat in Bikrams just ruins your clothing. I wear short shorts, sports bra, and long tanks. I can not let my midriff show now, if ever, and I can't stand long pants or capris sticking to my legs with sweat.

I am seeing some results but after five weeks am starting to feel like I am stuck with this extra flab and skin. My clothes are fitting better but my body has never really been in better shape than this. Plus the fact that I am 50 and have spent most of my life as a fat person makes me think this is it. My body does not want to budge off weight or get in better shape. I was looking at Rachel Hunter and think she has a fabulous body at her age, but she has never been obese so how can I even think of getting to that point. I will keep plugging away though. Would love to see some flab leave the abs, but it sure is hard.

HAVING A RARE SKINNY DAY

So I wore a dress and high heels. The locals are pretty restless over it. I work in a government office building and I live in Wisconsin. Read Translation: There are a lot of heavy women here and no one dresses very well. I like to dress well. For one thing it keeps me in check with eating. Especially since I normally buy clothes that are snug.

Having high heels on where I work, for one thing, is a major disruption for all. For one thing, men aren't used to it around here or probably at home. The women around here are Rockport women. Flat, comfortable, ugly shoes. So I get a lot of glares from the women. I don't care though. I am not dressing fug so the fugly women feel better about themselves. I have been there already.

I don't weigh in this week but my food has been fantastic. A couple of off things, but for the most part, pretty tight and will tighten up as the next weigh in approaches. I have two workouts planned for the next three days.

I don't slough off on the weekend. I am usually pretty active and now that the weather is getting warmer, more so. I can't wait to get my veggie garden in . I learned a lot from last year, my first year veggie gardening. The thing I learned was to thin out the garden. We had tons of cukes and squash and couldn't eat them all. Most people don't like a ton of squash so couldn't even give it away. I had a bounty of tomatos though and want to this year. The end of the summer was paradise. My dinner every night was whatever protein I wanted to burn on the grill and a fresh tomato and cuke salad with balsamic on it. Heavenly.

This weekend we are going out to eat. I think I will pick an Italian place that has my fav salmon and spinach dish. To die for and healthy.

Well can't wait to get out of here today. My fat loud work neighbors have not shut the hell up all day and I am pretty weary of them.

SMALL MEALS SUK!

I am on about five minimeals and just had 'lunch' which was chicken, part of a yam and a small piece of dark chocolate. Today I am hating this program. I did 30 minutes HIIT on the elliptical and that was all I had. Boo hoo for me.

I will probably end up eating my mid afternoon meal in about an hour, but that has to hold me over a yoga class. Dinner will be good tonight though so hopefully I make it that long.

After the next 13 weeks, I AM going on maintenance. No lie. No more dieting. I just have to figure what that is. Actually I have maintained for the past 8 months by binging and dieting. That plan has to go. No more fast and famine for me.

Update

I will not be a certified Bikram yoga teacher. I am just teaching hot yoga and am working on a 200 hour certification with Yoga Allicane. I would love to go to Bikram training but really can't take nine weeks off work. Maybe some day!

I had a 1.4 pound loss but then sort of had a food binge over the weekend. It wasn't a really bad one but I just ate some things I should not have. Now I am making up for it. Food is the hardest part of this for me. Although I am satisfied with what I eat now.

My goal right now is to lose a pound a week. I weigh in a week from Saturday so am sure I can do it.

WHO ARE THEY KIDDING

I was on the elliptical doing HIITs for about 55 minutes yesterday and noticed how little effort most people put in their workouts. (I am working it HARD right now and am sure my trainer buds will yell at me for the long session, but it just felt so good.)

Anyway most of these people are wasting space on the cardio equipment. I go to a gym that is on a big ten campus so most of the people there are kids 18-22. There are people who work here that go there, but mostly kids. It is funny watching the girls workout pre-Spring Break. They do this every year. They go in and do a ton of crunches and then take a magazine on the elliptical for a leisurely stroll. I am there working my butt off and sweating. A lot of these girls don’t need to work that hard though, but a lot of them look like they don’t know what they are doing and it makes me laugh. Plus you can tell there is too much body fat on them for the abs to show so I can tell they are doing nothing with nutrition. Probably drinking beer all weekend and eating salads all week.

My experts convinced me to stick with the Afterburn program so I did a weight workout last night. I will be full on to it next week. I have a weigh in Friday morning so don’t want to weigh in with my muscles holding on to a lot of water. Today is yoga, tomorrow cardio and yoga, and the same for Friday. Will start hard and heavy Saturday with weights. I think mentally I feel I am ‘different’ and this won’t work for me. So I have to battle mostly with myself.

I did change up my nutrition. I was advised to go to 1200 for a few weeks but have ended up at about 1300. I logged my Fitday and Weight Watcher logs and this is where I want to be. I noticed I have significantly cut back on the fat and have upped the protein. Am sure I will tweak this more next week.

THREE WEEKS IN

And I have had a freak out. My weight was up 2.2, 8 pounds now over my lowest weight in December so I had to consult with the experts and people I trust and even emailed Cosgrove and got some tips and after thinking about trashing the program the consensus I came up with was to stick with the program and cut back on calories which, ugh, hurts.

I just wonder if I am ever going to get to the point where I can eat normal and not constantly be dieting. Will I ever have a normal metabolism? The thing is my clothes all fit the same. I do not see where this weight is either that or I don't want to see it? I don't get it.

I did rejoin weight watchers online and am logging my food in point style. I am also cutting on carbs and upping the protein except for today which is kind of a higher carb day but the calories are in check and I am doing cardio so need the carbs. I looked back at the weeks before I got to my low weight and my calories are about in that range. Sucks. I am starving right now. I am also cutting back on fats a bit.

In other news, I taught two yoga classes and I did very well. I hope I can teach again soon, but for now might be able to sub some. It was an amazing experience. Much more fun than my normal 9-5 accounting job. Snooze and snore.

Yoga Teacher

Some months ago, I started participating in a yoga teacher apprentice program at my yoga studio and tomorrow I am teaching my first yoga class alone. I can’t wait. I did a practice on Monday and it went really well. I have been working on the dialogue a lot and feel comfortable and ready. I know a lot of the students and am not intimidated at all. I practice a lot and work at the front desk so people are familiar with me. It will be cool.

I think I am shrinking from my program but the scale will tell tomorrow if there is fat loss. A few weeks ago I noticed a bulge in the waist and that seems to be gone. It is hard work though because I am doing a strict Afterburn program with 4-5 hot sweaty 90 minute sessions of yoga a week. I don’t want to over train but do feel very tired physically. Today I am just doing my cardio session and then relaxing. I am doing a yoga class tomorrow and then teaching tomorrow. Sunday I will do yoga and weights.

The nutrition is the hardest part for me and the scale totally freaks me out. I talked myself out of going last week because I had been on a food binge the prior Saturday. I have been binge free for two weeks. That is one of my problems. Binge eating. Yup, I will admit it. Then I have to diet to take it off.There is a huge woman I work by who I can’t stand. Never talk to her. The woman eats all day long. At my heaviest I never ate that much. She is eating chips and cookies constantly. I feel like I am eating constantly too, fruit, raw nuts, protein shakes. She munches on chips all morning, goes out for pizza, then eats all afternoon. What are people thinking? I just eat a lot at once and then suffer for it all week. An eating disorder is an eating disorder though.

Perfect Nutrition

I had a perfect nutrition day yesterday. I sincerely believe nutrition is 90% of it. That being said, I also worked out hard and can feel it today. I just did a weight session. Today I am doing cardio and a yoga class. I also prepped food yesterday. That was fun. I grilled chicken, sauteed some spinach in garlic and pam, and grilled some salmon patties I got at Whole Foods.

I took measurements and my stomach seems to be down about an inch. My waist may be down about half an inch.

Yesterday I watched Oprah and Dianne Caroll, Norah Ephron, and Geena Davis were there talking about aging with their faces full of botox. Can women not see through this? Anyway they were talking about their bodies falling apart and that now they don't diet and blah blah blah. Kind of like the average woman only they have all the plastic surgery so at least their faces look great. I thought their bodies looked like crap. Geena is okay, but at least work out girl. She had such a great bod. I am not letting mine go, I am fighting aging without the botox. It kind of sucks though because there are just things you can't reverse in the aging process. Oh well at least my body is pretty much in one piece.

New Day

Yesterday was a rest day from exercise. I went to Milwaukee to visit my daughter and my eating was off. I was hungry when I got home and ate a pork chop, salad, and popcorn. Today I am back on plan.

Today I teach my very first yoga class. Just to us "apprentices" but will be 90 minutes of nonstop talking. Then I will take a hot flow class and come home to do my weight routine.

I know I am not getting enough rest. My days seem like they are about 13 hours long and I am doing a lot of exercise. The bonus is that I tried on a medium dress in Target and there were really no rolls of fat so I believe I am stripping some fat loss.

I did not have time to weigh in this weekend.

Today I am starting out strict on plan with Alym's nutrition.

New Program

I am two weeks into the Alwyn Cosgrove program and the jury is out. This is supposed to burn fat and of course, I lost no weight the first week. My clothes do feel better and I do feel less flabby but I am just sick of working out so much and logging food and seeing no difference in my body. It seems it doesn't want to budge out any flab. Plus the exhausting double workouts. I haven't foregone yoga. I can't give it up. But the workouts and constant food monitoring is fine, if I start seeing some results.

I have been thinking a lot about how exhausting, albeit worth it, this process is. I gained a few pounds and it is so hard to take it off, but at least it is not 10 to 20. That is the reason I keep at it. I almost feel like if I even gained back 10, or 5, I would give up. I put on like three pounds over vacation, which is weird since I had food poisoning and threw up and had diarrhea for about a week, but there it is. Nothing came off last week. So gaining 5 or 10 or 20 would be daunting for me to lose mentally. It goes on much easier than it comes off.

I work hard at this. I get so tired of people who ask me questions looking for easy answers. They just are not there. No one works as hard at this as I do.