The Hill

In the ongoing effort of stepping it up (or going slowly insane, whichever definition you prefer) today we tackled my trainer Jeff's hill workout.   It looked pretty simple:  do some squats, run down the hill; do some jumping jacks, run up the hill (5 reps of this); then do some high knees, run down the hill; do some pushup rotations and run up the hill (5 reps of this) and then simply to finish up with two times up and down the hill.   No problem right?  We'll be done in no time right?

Ha ha.  The hill I thought Jeff meant was a nice, shady slope next to the gym and a rather short length.  Oh no. He was quick to correct me; the hill I thought we were heading for was a baby compared to the mother of a hill we were headed to one block down from work.  It was so steep that running down was a challenge in not tripping head over heels.

Here's us before the "Hill"; look how happy we look.  No pic of after but I am happy to report that we all survived.

 I love my workout girls because we're all different shapes, fitness levels, and ages, but everyone roots everyone else on and has fun sweating it out together.  There were a lot of high fives given through the ordeal that was that hill.

Not to sound braggish, but remarkably pretty much any exercise I set out to do these days I can do.  My strength and my stamina have really surprised me lately.   Well the Hill broke me today.   I don't know if it was the incline or the heat, but I didn't have it in me to go the last round.  No worries though.  I sat down in the shade, chugged my water and cheered my girls on.  Then we all walked back to the gym, relishing the breeze, and collapsed inside together.  And psychos that we are, we made plans to do it again.

3,000 Reps In 50 Minutes

The gym has a reputation as a place where the body takes over and the mind goes to rest.  While there are times when you go to the gym to just zone out and get your sweat-on, if you're really challenging yourself, the mind gets just as much of a workout as your body does.   The first part of it is just psyching yourself up for a challenge or, on the flip side, conquering the inner doubter.  The second part of the mental challenge comes with all the little tricks you use in order to concentrate on something else than how many reps or seconds you have left in whatever it is that you're doing. 

Today my friend Stephanie and I put both our bodies and our minds to the test with the 1,000 rep workout that we ran through three times.  Each round has 10 exercises that you have to do 100 times each and let me tell you...doing anything 100 times in a row is brutal.  When we'd done this particular workout last week we managed to get through it twice in an hour.  Today we got through it three times, for a total of 3,000 reps, in fifty minutes. 

Each exercise was challenging...100 seems like a long long way away, especially when you're doing something trifling like squats or running on the treadmill with no power, trying to get to 100 steps. Your body screams,  your muscles lock up, and you seem to get tired just counting to 100 over and over again, much less doing the movements.  But one thing I've found that works is to count to twenty-five four times as opposed to counting straight through from one to one hundred.   Twenty-five is a much more attainable number.

If we had set out thinking, "we've got to get through 3,000 reps" we would have most likely been defeated right at the start, but by mentally breaking it down into easy chunks, we got it done and surprised ourselves.  And an added bonus for me...realizing at the end of the workout how great of shape Stephanie is in and the fact that I had just hung with her every rep of the 3,000.

Milestone Buddy

I have to give a shout-out to my friend Katie who reached a big milestone this week with her weight loss: 50 pounds!!!  Katie and I have been on parallel paths in our weight loss journeys, at times with almost spooky similarities.   We lose weight at the same intervals, hit the same plateaus together, and then this week both hit major milestones, me 100 and her 50. 

Katie and I

My hat is off to Katie who has lost weight successfully even in the face of terrible back problems.  She really is a testament for the statement, "where there's a will, there's a way."  So she can't lift weights right now, no worries. She got on her bike and burned some major calories...all the way to a 50 pound victory.  You go Katie!  So happy to share this week of milestones with you!

Total Immersion

I'm one of those people that if I'm into something, I'm into it all the way or not at all.  Sometimes that's a good thing (i.e., working out) and sometimes that's a bad thing (i.e., Doritos and the couch).  When I started this journey, I jumped into it with both feet.  I put my story out there on the web, I told everyone I knew and some I didn't (i.e., people in line at Subway) my goals, and I attended triathalons and marathons either as a volunteer at a water station or cheering from the sidelines.  Just putting myself in situations where I was around athletic people put me in the mindset of the road ahead of me if I stuck to my guns.  The other thing I did was do my research: I scoured exercise magazines, checked out several gyms and different classes, quizzed my trainers, and cruised the internet to find out everything from what to eat, how to move, or what was going on with my stomach after a workout.   What all of that added up to was a state of total immersion that kept me engaged and always wanting more, whether that was trying something new in the gym or gaining more victories on the scale.

100 pounds and many months later, I'm still pleasantly surprised every day from the blessings that arise every day.   Today that surprise was the ten of my friends who wanted to do the workout I'd cooked up for my two regular workout buddies and myself.  There were so many of us that we had to book the group exercise room in our gym so that we'd have enough space. Then they made me get up in the front of the room to lead them. Now I am a back-row-in-class kinda girl (where else can I trip all over my feet and go the wrong direction undetected) so I was nervous about: one,  being front and center and two, making sure I gave them a good workout.  Soon though everyone was sweating and laughing and my nerves eased off. 

This journey is hard and it takes a lot of mental and physical energy to get where you want to go, but if you give yourself over to it, get into it, and work on getting over the things that make you uncomfortable, you will find some amazing things along the way...take it from me, a former Dorito-munching-couch-potato: anything is possible. Immerse yourself and see what happens.

100!

Today was an important milestone for me and the fulfillment of a goal that I've been working towards for a long time: losing 100 pounds.   I have been hovering over that number for months and although I didn't give up moving towards it, sometimes it just plain seemed like it wasn't going to happen.  I had a good feeling though when I stepped on the scale this afternoon that today was going to be the day. Two hours earlier,  when I was registering at 99 pounds, I looked down the digital readout, thought about all those lunches of veggies and brown rice and afternoons in the gym where I could wring out my shirt, and said, "REALLY?!!"   Luckily around that time my trainer Jeff was walking by and promised to write me up a workout that would burn that pound off.  Along with five other awesome girlfriends who have been with me literally through thick and thin, I sweated my way through Jeff's psycho 1,000 rep workout and although my legs and arms literally could take no more, as I stepped onto the scale it was worth it.

I am so excited to clear this first hurdle and move on to the next one but I can't leave this post without giving thanks for the many ways that I have been blessed:

• First and foremost: with God anything is possible.  I can't explain the reason why the motivation stuck this time out of the many times I've attempted this other than that God's hand was at work.  There is no other way that I could have gone from the state I was in to where I am now.   Many times during this journey I have felt His hand at work, lifting me up and keeping me going.  He is as much present in the gym as anywhere else, and believe me, there have  been many times I have called on Him in the middle of a workout!
• My husband has been my cheerleader and wonderful support along the way. He has eaten all my low cal cooking without complaint, cheered me on at my 5K, waited for 2 hours outside a zumba class I was attending, made sure I got up early on Saturdays for workouts, and cheerfully provided "opportunities" for me to burn calories helping him with yard work. 
• My awesome family and friends have had my back since the beginning.  No matter how many times they've seen me start and stop this process, they have always believed in me and the fact that this time it was going to work.  They have cheered every little milestone along the way. 
•  My trainers Jeff and Marisa believed in me before I could believe in myself and have given so much of their time and support in a way I could never repay.  I hope that I can encourage others the way they encouraged me.  
• My friends and coworkers and friends/coworkers have lifted me up, cheered me on, worked out by my side and shown me such overwhelming support that it blows my mind.   Having that daily reassurance helps more than they can ever imagine.   I cannot imagine a better working environment in which to get healthy and make this change.
• And to everyone who reads this blog: thank you.   I started it as a way to keep myself on the straight and narrow and to stay engaged.  I appreciate every time you've taken a minute to read it and hope that in some way it has helped you.  If you ever need encouragement, send me an email and I'll be glad to be there for you. Take it from me: you can start anytime on the path to success.

The journey to a triple digit loss has been at times frustrating and at overwhelming with joy to the point that it takes my breathe away.  I can't wait to travel farther...now on to the next fifty pounds!

Seagull Obstacle Course

I am scared of birds, in particular seagulls.  I admit that. I'm not ashamed of it...but in my defense I've been tormented by these brazen, honking, sharp-beaked monsters in the past and am not interested at all in repeating the experience. Being that I live on the coast, one can find oneself in a close encounter with these nasty birds, not only by the water but in any random parking lot that contains a McDonalds.  They seem to have a particular affinity for McDonald's fries, although I can't blame them there.

Monday, when faced with a grueling 45 minutes on the elliptical with the same old Itunes and the same old magazines we've read a hundred times, I looked over at Millie and said, "You want to take a walk?"  She couldn't hop off of that machine fast enough and soon we were booking it out of the gym and down the river walk.

I was distracted by the sunshine, warm climes, and girl talk and almost walked headfirst into a flock of those feathered terrors, currently gathered around a group of fishermen who were taunting them with a pack of Saltines.  The men would alternately flip a cracker in the air towards the birds or tease them by shaking the cracker sleeve at them, stirring the flock into a swooping, honking frenzy.

And there I went, yacking along to Millie about this thing or that, swinging my arms, and keeping a good pace, almost directly walking into this dangerous scene.   Suddenly finding myself surrounded in a flurry of white, winged monsters I screamed and jumped back.  Millie (brave because she's from the Bronx and has seen much worse on the street) looked at me calmly and said, "They're not worried about you!  They have crackers!" (You have to imagine all of this with exaggerated New York hand gesturing) Then she guided me (cowering on the perimeter of the boardwalk) around the whole scene and we continued our walk.

Thinking back on the encounter, some things I observed:

• When I did the strict carb diet, I would have been whipped as easily into a frenzy over an offer of crackers, so I can't blame the birds all that much.
• I've developed some great back-pedaling skills.  Maybe from all of the squats?
• Now I've got the ability to run away, be it from a seagull on a carb-seeking mission or an attacker.  I probably couldn't out run a rabid dog yet, but give me time.
• New workout/fear facing exercise: dodge the ferocious seagull obstacle course.
• It's a dangerous world outside of the gym, keep your wits about you!

Blessings In The Bleak

After our workouts today, my friend Rick and I were walking back from the gym upstairs to our desks.  He's part of the second Transformation group, the program that basically saved my life.  When Rick was chosen for the program, I was overjoyed because he's been such a supporter of mine.  Today I was congratulating him on how great the new group was doing and pointing out the fact that they were already doing exercises that we didn't start doing until a few months in. 

"Yeah, but you guys were the trailblazers," he said.  "You were the reason we wanted to do this." Instantly I was humbled.

I thought back to the many times during the initial phase of this journey that Rick had encouraged me and how many times he told me of his desire to do the same. Now to see how hard he's working in the gym and the newly found pep in his step is an amazing thing.

I also thought about the beginning of my own transformation and reveled in how amazing God is!  How He can take the very thing that you feel is the worst quality you have and turn it into something that can not only benefit yourself, but also be a benefit to other people. He took me from being a person that was finding it increasingly hard to breathe and move at the same time, to being a person who can do a two hour Zumba class; a person whose husband went from being terrified at how I would stop breathing in my sleep on a regular basis to a person whose husband ran with her across the finish line of a 5K in December; a person who had no athletic skill and was always picked last in gym class as a kid to an enthusiastic gym rat who finds daily new and amazing things that her body can do.

I feel awesomely blessed, thankful to God, and assured that no matter how bleak the situation may seem, how hard and long the journey stretches forward ahead of you, with faith and a lot of hard work, miracles are truly and entirely possible.