Dumping The Fat

That’s right - sugar is now my enemy.  I don’t really know where the idea came from.  Maybe years and years of reading has finally sunk in that sugar = bad when it comes to the type of results I am wanting.  Now, I’m not talking about fructose, which is the sugar in fruit.  Fruit = very good.  I’m talking about the sugar found in cookies, soda, candy, etc.  What I didn’t realize until grocery shopping this weekend is just how many food items contain added sugar, like salad dressing.  I love Ranch dressing, but it has sugar. 

So I have had no foods containing added sugar in 5 days, except for a tablespoon of Ranch dressing on my wraps, which I’m thinking I’ll give up the Ranch later on.  And I have to say that I have never felt better!  I have so much energy that I actually walk with a bounce in my step, which that hasn’t happened in years!  I feel like, dare I say, that I’m in my 20s!  Yay Me!

It’s amazing what can happen when you get rid of the junk in the diet.

Now, I haven’t checked my body fat percentage yet.  I’m thinking I will Friday.  I do know that I can see a difference in my arms, that’s for sure.  I’m starting to see some definition again in both my arms and my thighs.  That’s always a good sign.  I weigh about the same, though, so I am going to have to do some measuring as well. 

When I saw my chiropractor a couple weeks ago, we talked about the weight training/sick issue and here is what he suggested:

• Build up my cardio first
• Take at least 1 Echinacea per week to keep it in my system
• Be sure to take my Omega-3s
• Ease into weight training instead of jumping in full throttle

While I wasn’t happy that I had to “ease” into it, I have followed his advice and so far so good!  I’m thrilled!

For the first week, I walked on the treadmill 1 mile per day at a minimum for 6 days.  Most days, I threw some intervals in there by walking at a brisk pace for 5 minutes, jog for 1 minute, walk 5, jog 1, etc.

Week 2 - walked on the treadmill 4 days and weight trained 2 days.  I only did 1 set of 15 reps for each exercise I performed.

Week 3 - this week.  I did a 30 minute cardio session and 15 minute stretch session yesterday.  Monday I weight trained for 30 minutes by picking a few exercises and did 2 sets of 15 reps.  I think I did a total of 6 different exercises and worked my abs.  Today is weight training day and so I’ll probably do the same thing - 2 sets of 15 reps.

I have taken my Echinacea every week so far, and have been *trying* to remember my Omega-3s.  They’re in the freezer (to prevent fish burps) and so it’s easy for me to forget them.  I am getting in flax seed every other day, though, so that helps.

I’m getting stronger, I can feel that, and that makes me happy.  I haven’t checked my body fat percentage lately.  I thought I would hold off for another week or two.  I haven’t been sick the past 3 weeks as far as colds/flu/sinus/ears (knock on wood), so I’m hopeful my chiro’s advice is working.

Okay, I am really neglecting my blogs.  I haven’t updated my weight loss blog with any weight loss news since November!  I just have too much on my plate, I think.  Plus, with spring coming and my daughters getting back into sports activities, something has got to give.  I am thinking it’s one of my websites.  I was mulling it over last night, and I am just going to have to give one of them up.  It won’t be this one because this is my personal one.  It’s not here to make me any money, so I feel no pressure to keep it up to date.

Anyway, so I decided in the midst of all this fat loss madness to stop smoking.  What was I thinking?  Fat loss and not smoking, I’m thinking, aren’t going to mix.  Before I started my Chantix prescription last week, my BF % was down another .2%.  Yeah, not a lot, but for someone who isn’t working out intensely, I thought that was good.  Well, I started my prescription, and even though I am still smoking a bit, my weight has increased 2 lbs. already!  It was actually three, but I’m down a pound today, so it’s only 2 for now.  I am walking on the treadmill every day for at least 17 minutes (1 mile for now), but evidently my metabolism is starting to slow down because I’m not smoking anywhere near as much as I was.  I imagine I will be completely done smoking by the end of this week since the smokes are bringing me NO pleasure whatsoever.

This whole experience brings me to the question - why did I ever start smoking?  I don’t know.  I was very young.  I have smoked for over half of my short life.  Stupid I know.  I guess I started smoking because I just wanted to try it because both of my parents smoked.  However, why did I continue?  I don’t know.  There are lots of psychological reasons I have been reading about lately.  They would make no sense to a non-smoker, so I won’t go into them here, but they make perfect sense to me.  A lot of it has to do with the way I grew up, and today just isn’t the day to bare my soul, I don’t think.  I’ll save that for another day.

There is some good news - I am officially a paid writer!  I took on 2 new gigs in the past few weeks, and one of them happens to be as a writer at Suite 101.  I’ve been writing for years, but to actually be paid - wow!  Anyway, that’s where I’ve been - busy, busy, busy.

I did talk to my chiropractor about my sick/weight training issue, and will post the tips he gave me in another post, so be on the lookout for those.  I have been following his advice and so far so good!

I know, I know, it’s been a while.  So many things happening lately and I’ve just been busy, too busy to do much of anything.  Anyway, I have a few minutes this morning, so I thought I would post a quick update for those of you reading this blog and keep up with my drama-filled life.

If you remember my last post at the beginning of this month, I was sick AGAIN.  Well, about a week after I *thought* I was better, I started having this pain under my right breast and in the right part of my sternum next to my right breast.  I thought at first I pulled a muscle, which really, if I had given it thought at the time, how could I have pulled a muscle when I hadn’t began working out?  Yeah, doesn’t make sense.  So anyway, I suffer in silence for a couple days, but eventually my husband noticed that I was holding my chest a lot and asked what was up.  Of course he forces me to call by gynecologist to get a breast exam.  His grandmother was a breast cancer survivor, so he worries about such things. 

I go last Friday to the gyn and she does a breast exam.  Didn’t find any lumps or bumps, but schedules me for a mammogram.  Ugh!  I’ve never had one, but I have heard the horror stories.  Not something I’m really looking forward to.

Fast forward to two days ago.  The pain is still there, after having taken muscle relaxers for 5 nights, so it’s obviously not a pulled muscle.  I mean when does a pulled muscle last almost two weeks, especially when you take muscle relaxers?  None that I’ve ever had.  Plus, the pain was getting worse and starting to radiate into the upper part of my breast.  So Mr. Doom and Gloom (aka, my husband) was giving me this sad look yesterday, like, “I’ll miss you when you’re gone.”  So it was my turn to ask, “What’s up?”  What does he say???  Not, “Oh, I’m just thinking about how much I love you.”  Not, “Oh, I’m just admiring your beauty.”  No, my husband who is always Mr. Cool, laid back, no worries be happy, an optimistic kind of guy tells me straight up, “I think you’ve got cancer.”  WHAT?  After I cried, I understood his reasoning.  My family history is full of loved ones who died of lung cancer, including my father and my maternal grandparents.  So, yeah, I could see why he *might* think something so horrible.

He forces me to my primary doctor so she can take a look at me.  Of course, she pops into the room and says, “How can I help you today, Jen?”  Well, that was enough to send me into sobs, saying, “He thinks I’ve got cancer,” as I point an accusatory finger at my husband who’s sitting in the corner looking as if he’s losing his best friend.  Thankfully my doctor has a good head on her shoulders and says, “Don’t ever even think that.”  But she was my dad’s doctor, too, so she knows.  Anyway, she does an exam, gives me a couple of reasons why she thinks it’s happening.

#1 - the pain started a week after I was sick.  Maybe I really wasn’t over being sick and I had pleurisy (inflammation of the lungs).  Made total sense to me as soon as she said it.  I’ve had pleurisy before, twice in fact, but the pain was always in my back, not my chest, so I didn’t even think of it.

#2 - stress.  Well, now, there we go!  It could be that as well, for sure, because I’ve been under a lot of stress for a few months now.  The doc asked if I had ever had panic attacks.  Oh, are you kidding?  Um, yeah.  I used to have them on an hourly basis when my dad was dying.  They were so bad that I would wake up out of a dead sleep in a full panic attack.  I was actually on sedatives because of them.  So, yeah, could be stress, and the doc said she would not be surprised if I start having them again and the chest pain is because of that.  Nice.

So she gave me some prescriptions.  One is for an antibiotic (just what I need again this month!) to get rid of the inflammation, if that’s what’s causing it.  Another prescription for a pain reliever (Ibuprofen), and another one for some medicine that helps with anxiety and a whole host of other problems (and of course has a side effects list a mile long).  I also had to go for a chest x-ray yesterday, but I won’t have the results of that for a couple of days.

So there it is. 

So, no, I haven’t been working out.  My eating hasn’t been perfect, but also hasn’t been too bad either.  Well, it must be okay because I checked my body fat this morning for the first time since the beginning of the month and I fully expected to see an increase.  Imagine my surprise when I found I’m actually down another 0.7%.  Now that may not seem like a big drop in 3 weeks time, but I haven’t worked out at all this month, so I’m actually pretty happy with it.  It must be from the semi-clean eating?  I’ve actually gained a pound (which could be water retention since it’s time for that), but my body fat is down and that’s ALL that matters!

Here are my stats from this morning.

Body Fat% = 29.4%
Weight = 166
Lean Body Mass = 117.20
Fat = 48.80

Stats on 02/05:

Body Fat % = 30.1%
Weight = 165
Lean Body Mass = 115.34
Fat: 49.67 lbs.

So I’ve had a gain of 1.86 lbs. of lean body mass and a loss of 0.87 lbs. of fat! WAHOO!

This is just unbelievable to me…really, it is, even though my family says I shouldn’t be surprised because, well, I’m sick ALL THE TIME.  So how is this surprising?  I don’t know, but it is.

So this past weekend, my daughters get sick.  The youngest ended up having to go to the doctor Saturday morning and she has an ear infection.  Okay, well, that shouldn’t affect me, right?  I mean I shouldn’t worry about catching it, right?  Wrong.  I caught some kind of funk.  Saturday evening my throat starts feeling scratchy, Sunday I am so tired and achy, and then yesterday, totally congested, coughing, sore throat, the works.  And today I’ve sneezed no less than 50 times!  Ugh!

So the only update I have, which should have been posted yesterday, is that I trained only 2 days last week and did cardio 1 day.  Yeah, I’m a slacker.  Not really, I just had a lot to get done and not enough time to do it, and like most women, *I* got put on the back burner.  I was hoping to make up for it this week, but I guess not :-(  Oh, yeah, and I did check my body fat %, which is down to 30.1, which is -0.3% less than what it was a week ago.  My weight is the same, so that now makes my lbs. of body fat less than 50.  *Woot*  Here are my calcs for this week:

Body Fat % = 30.1% 
Weight = 165
Lean Body Mass = 115.34
Fat: 49.67 lbs.

So that’s a 0.47 lb. increase in lean body mass and a 0.49 lb. decrease in fat lbs. in one week.  YAY! Not too shabby considering I only worked out 3 times total and my eating wasn’t 100%.

Hopefully I can work out later this week.  Right now, I’m doubling my garlic and fish oil supplements, taking my multi, and drinking lots of orange juice.  In the meantime, I’m going to get some rest and use the laptop while I’m resting to look for something to boost my immune system.  This chronic sickness thing is just out of control and I’ve got to find a way to stop the insanity ’cause I’m sick of being sick. 

I happened to be watching TV with my kids last night (Kenny the Shark, to be exact - Kenny is just so cool that you can’t help but love him).  I don’t normally watch a lot of television because I find that the only shows that even half interest me are totally mind numbing.  I mean who likes to feel like a vegetable?  Anyway, a commerical came on.  The commercial was for this gadget, for lack of a better term, that I fell completely in love with and haven’t even tried it yet!  From the moment I saw what it was all about, I was hooked.  This is very unsual for me because I always like to try things out before saying I’m in love.

The gadget?  An AeroGarden!  What exactly is it and why am I totally in love with a product that I haven’t even tried?   First of all, I would love to have a garden.  I have asked my husband for one every year since I have been married, sometimes twice a year.  So that makes, at a minimum, 11 times that I have asked (even sweetly once or twice) for a garden.  However, #1, my husband grew up on a farm, so he had to help with several gardens, acres and acres of produce, that had to be weeded, watered, picked, canned.  I need my husband to till the ground here at our house and because of, what I think, is his deep-seated hatred of all things gardening (he has even mowed over flowers that I have planted!), he refuses to even till the land.  Well, it could be that reason or the fact that he knows, in the end since he is the expert between the two of us on gardening, he would be the one taking care of it.  #2, his dad still plants acres and acres of land with a garden, so we get free fruits and veggies from him, so why should my husband do all of that work, I am sure he thinks to himself but has never voiced that complaint.

So, anyway, no garden for me.  Now, one of the problems I have is I run out of the canned veggies that my mother-in-law (and sometimes my mother) provides to me during the winter months.  Where we live, it’s cold and snows (a lot!) during the winter.  Also, I get so frustrated because I WANT fresh fruits and veggies during the winter, and all I get from the grocery store is pithy celery, oranges that go bad within two days, apples that have no taste, bananas that are green, tomatoes that are hard as a rock and white on the inside (yuck!), and the list goes on.  So I need some sort of garden during the winter (or make a lot of trips to my in-laws, which isn’t going to happen).

So that’s where the AeroGarden comes in.  This gadget allows you to grow a garden in your home!  You can grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs!  You can even grow houseplants and flowers if you want!  I mean, seriously, how cool is that?  Growing a garden in the winter, in the mountains, in my home where I can go pluck a fresh tomato or a fresh strawberry just boggles my mind!

I’m getting one.  I’m definitely getting one and I will use it all the time and I will be totally in love with it, I just know it!  My husband and I looked at the AeroGarden website last night, and of course, he gives it his stamp of approval.

I will update after I get it and try it out.

I finally got my new training routine created and just finished up my first day a while ago.  I am training full body (maybe) Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with cardio on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  Sunday is rest and/or stretch/yoga day.

I wanted to finish up my workout in an hour, so I am circuit training, but still ran over the “allotted” time I gave myself, so I may have to do split workouts and work my upper body one day and my lower the next day.  I will see how things go and adjust from there. I am using no machines right now, just a bench and free weights. I like free weights better, but at some point, I know I will have to start using the machine.

Here is what I am doing for weeks 1 and 2:

2 sets of 15 reps for each
Chest press
Pec Fly
One arm dumbbell row
Dumbbell pullover
Dumbbell front raise
Lateral raise
Chair dip
Tricep kickback
Stationary lunge
Single leg bench squat
Reverse lunge
Ball crunch
Cross body crunch

Now, I have way more written down to do, but I ran out of time. This is definitely a good start, though.

My stats are pretty much the same as they were here; however, my weight is up 2 lbs., my BF% is down by 0.5%, and my hips are actually down by 0.25 inches. Don’t ask me how that happened because I haven’t a clue. So here they are again:

Day #1 stats:
Left arm: 11.5″
Right arm: 11.5″
Chest: 38″
Waist: 29.75″
Hips: 40″ (OUCH!!!)
Left thigh: 24.75″
Right thigh: 24.5″
Left calf: 14.25″
Right calf: 14″
Body Fat %: 30.4% (Yikes!)
Height (in case it matters): 5′8″
Weight: 165 lbs.
Lean Body Mass: 114.87 lbs.
Fat: 50.16 lbs.

So in the past three weeks, I have increased my lean body mass by 2.24 lbs. and decreased my body fat by 0.21 lbs. My body is so weird!

It’s becoming more and more clear that P90X is just too much for my body at this point.  One would think I would have realized that sooner, right?   I mean I started the program 4 times and 4 times I became sick with one illness or another.  How much clearer could it have been?  I did find a really interesting article on overtraining and I think that is exactly what happened to me.  So, much to my disappointment, I am giving up on P90X…for now. 

I am not giving up on weight training.  I love, love, love weight training.  It is one of my most favorite things to do and so I have a new plan for myself.  I am going to design my own program and go from there.  I’ve been weight training since 1998, so I know what to do.  I will post my exact routine and schedule some time later today or tomorrow morning.

My clean eating is going pretty well.  When I first started it a couple weeks ago, the first three days were…well, I’ll just be honest - they were hell!  I had sugar withdrawal from not having any soda.  Needless to say, I was miserable and I made sure that everyone around me knew exactly how miserable I was.  But after those first three days, I can’t explain how much better I felt both mentally and physically.  It’s like some type of mental fog lifted and I could think clearly.  I could stay focused on whatever I was doing.  It was just amazing what eating nothing but good-for-you food can do for a body.  The sad part is - I went through something extremely stressful two weeks ago and I drank some soda and wasn’t eating at all.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t eating well (aside from drinking soda), I just wasn’t eating period.  That isn’t a good thing.

Anyway, I’m moving forward.  I refuse to beat myself up over it.  My next project is coming up with a plan for what I can do during stressful times so that I don’t stop eating and/or reach for a soda.  If anyone has any advice on how to handle stress without self-destructing, please feel free to let me know.

Well, it looks like, even though
I just restarted P90X for the fourth time this past Monday, that I will again be starting over.  Starting this program over frustrates me to no end!
I started P90X over on Monday, the 7th.  On Thursday morning, just a mere 4 days later, I started feeling just….blah, like I was starting to get a cold.  I started taking Echinacea, thinking I would head off this funk, whatever it was.  Nope, by Thursday afternoon, I could barely move, and by Friday morning, I was in really bad shape.  My husband got home from work Friday morning, took one look at me and said, “You’re going to the doctor.”  Needless to say, I have pneumonia (or so the doctor thought because he heard wheezing in my lungs, but didn’t send me for an x-ray) and an ear infection and had to be put on a “strong” (doc’s word) antibiotic.  Blech!  So I’ve spent much of the last few days on the couch (i.e., no working out).

Since I had only gotten in 3 workouts, I have decided just to start over again - for the fourth time since last summer.  Last summer and early fall, every time I started P90X, I got sick about 5 weeks in and would have to stop for a couple weeks and then restart.  When I had my sinus surgery this past November, I thought these issues were over.  Well, I guess the sinus issues are over, just not the getting sick part.  *sigh*  This really, really frustrates me.  I am now researching to see if there is some connection between weight training (stress on the body) weakening the immune system and what I can do about.  In just doing a cursory search, I have found that “over training” does, in fact, weaken the immune system.  I need to find some way to get around that issue.

Other than that, my eating is going well.  I’m really proud of myself.  I stopped eating all junk/processed foods last Monday and also quit drinking soda on the same day.  The first three days I was pretty miserable, and definitely horrible to be around, but it got easier.  I didn’t miss the junk food at all, but I sure did miss having a Pepsi every day….at first.  Now I don’t even think about it, so I guess that’s something to be grateful about.

If anyone knows of a good way to keep myself from getting sick every time I start an intense weight training program such as P90X, please let me know.

I’ve been sitting here sipping my morning coffee, debating whether I was even going to post my stats this morning.  As you can guess, after measuring earlier this morning, I am not happy.  Not happy at all.  Even though the scale shows I have lost 6 of those pesky holiday pounds I put on, my inches are nowhere near what they were before I gained 9 lbs.  I don’t get it; 3 lbs. cannot make that big of a difference in inches on my hips!  Plus, I havn’t been using my calipers to measure my body fat, but going by my scale which also measures body fat percentage in addition to pounds.  Obviously it is totally wrong.  See what I hate my scale?!

My husband does my measuring because I found before that if I measure myself, the numbers are slightly lower than when he does it and mine are not right because I’m bent over trying to measure my thighs and I can’t exactly measure my arms correctly one-handed.  He really, really dislikes measuring me because if the numbers aren’t what I expect or *want* them to be, he gets the blame.  And, of course, this morning was no different.  He was still bent down in front of me when he told me my hip measurements - big mistake!  I started breathing fire and his eyebrows got singed.  Poor guy, I hope he’s okay with the way his eyebrows look now.

While I was did my first P90X workout this morning, I really couldn’t stay focused, but I gave it my all and that’s all I can do.  So I do feel good about my workout and I think I got rid of some of that negative energy I was carrying around about my measurements.  That’s always a good thing.

To be honest, I wasn’t going to post my measurements this morning, but I have decided to go ahead and do it.  There’s no way I can be held accountable by my friends and readers of this blog if I withhold information, right?  Plus, how can I help anyone else by journaling about my fat loss if I’m not upfront about where I began?  So here goes:

Day #1 stats:
Left arm: 11.5″
Right arm: 11.5″
Chest: 38″
Waist: 29.75″
Hips: 40.25″ (OUCH!!!)
Left thigh: 24.75″
Right thigh: 24.5″
Left calf: 14.25″
Right calf: 14″
Body Fat %: 30.9% (Yikes!)
Height (in case it matters): 5′8″
Weight: 163 lbs.
Lean Body Mass: 112.63 lbs.
Fat: 50.37 lbs.

So that’s it with the measurements. Today is technically day #1 of eating clean, but I really kind of started over the weekend because I wanted to get a head start on getting off the junk, which I did successfully.

Want to get an estimate of your body fat percentage? Here is an online calculator that will give you a good idea: Body Fat Calculator.  It’s only .123% off from my calipers and it’s one of the most accurate I have found online.