Week 3-ish

Last weekend was a 3 day weekend (thank you Dr. King), and was a great chance to get away from Georgia for a little bit after being snowed in the previous weekend. I went home for the first time since Thanksgiving, which was great! I was concerned about being able to stick to my diet, but luckily mom is on one of her own. Hers is a diet higher in fiber, but it comes with its benefits. I felt full the whole weekend without eating very much. She had a recipe for a beef and barley stew that was low in calories and fat. She was also stocked up on veggies which was FANTASTIC. I bought some goat cheese at COSCO to put on salads or crackers. I have researched and it seems that it is slightly less in fat (not by much) and higher in protein. Plus the taste is great. It's really good inside black olives.

I bought some small tangerines to eat as a snack before my workouts. Didn't work out so well. I have a hard time with fruits that have seeds in them. One crunch and my gag reflex kicks in. Unfortunately I started smelling them ferment this morning and have had to send those on their merry way.

I have had a little aggravation with the gym I am now a member of. Part of the new member package is getting a session with one of the trainers to familiarize you with the equipment (I could be wrong, but that is what I understood it to be). Either way, I'm thinking I should have gotten more than what I did. I made an appointment for 6:00 with the lady I talked to when I joined. After spending 5 minutes hunting her down, I found her working with someone and she told me to go upstairs and warm up on the elliptical for 15 minutes. Ok, no problem. I warm up and then come back downstairs and begin hunting her down again. She was sitting at her desk with someone and waved at me and said "1 minute." Well, that turned into 20 minutes which was fairly inconvenient because I planned to go to the Kickboxing class at 7:00 and here we are sitting at 6:40. I told her maybe we should reschedule because I want to be able to go to this class, and she said we can go ahead and do a few things. She had me do tons of reps on 3 different machines (out of at least 30) all focusing on my abs up until time for the class. Then I asked about scheduling a time to look at the rest and she said that was it. Not to mention she was on her damn cell phone texting the whole time I was doing reps. So yeah, if anyone ever goes to LA Fitness in Douglasville, GA, and you want a personal trainer, Bernice is probably not your best bet.

The Kickboxing class went well, though. I had a different teacher and she was a lot of fun and very encouraging. She looked like she jumped right out of a MC Hammer video the way she was bouncing all over the place. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of hard work as well. Her technique wasn't quite as rigid as the other lady's. I guess I got "krunk" but I'm still not really sure if she was talking to me or what that word even means.

The next morning I was really sore and skipped the swimming and cycling I was going to do on Wednesday. Thursday I planned to get on it and run or cycle as well. Unfortunately, I was still sore tired I slept in a little bit which put me leaving work later and too late to go cycling. I started to get ready to go run, but got caught up in getting chores done and packing for Birmingham this weekend and didn't go. However, after two disappointing days of laziness, Friday morning I'll be up and swimming the crap out of myself to burn off what I may have gained the past couple of days. The good news is that this weekend Scott and I have planned on going for a good hike on Saturday (with my awesome new hiking shoes that my brother got me for my birthday!) and a good hardcore workout at Montevallo's Student Activity Center on Sunday...maybe even some racquetball!

I just learned today (Thursday) about a new method for preparing for the Half-Marathon. My sister introduced me to the Galloway method of running where it looks like you combine running and walking for training as well as the marathon itself. Anyone who is into marathons and is looking for a way that might improve your time, take a minute and check out this website: http://www.jeffgalloway.com/. If anyone has any input or inside information about this, let me know. I'm still trying to decide how I feel about it. I'm torn because I want to be skeptical, but this method gives GREAT excuses for walking more.

My friend Anna also told me about a workout called the P90x. She said it really worked well for her. She did the Yoga variation. I have checked and these P90x videos are NOT on Netflix. Since I've already paying for a gym membership, I'm not going to follow through on this, but if anyone is looking to actually SAVE money on a workout situation, check it out. It's $120, but if you look at the scheme of things, I'm going to be paying that much to my gym the next 3 months and that's not including the sign up fee. Definitely check it out. Anna is a good source. ;-)

I've also come across a couple of other things this week. First is the cabbage diet. After researching this, I've deemed it as irresponsible and unhealthy. This diet promises that it will have you lose 10-12 lbs in one week. I have found that most people believe this to be water weight and that they become nauseous at the smell of cabbage for years afterwards. Wikipedia that mess and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Second is that angel food cake is surprsingly low in fat (if you avoid the cool whip). Who knew!

I have also just recently caught wind of a new diet called the P90X diet. I haven't had much time to do some research on it, but will be looking into it for the next couple of days.

Next week I have a couple of exciting tricks to try. One of which is listening to Sarah Palin's book while exercising. Not sure how that's going to go, but I'm looking forward to finding out!