November 6th.

Further developments!
1. Workout today: Hiit split this am, Strength training in between the spilt. Hiit today: sprints! Decided to try sprints instead of the longer sessions. Still 25 minutes, but seemed so hard. In spite of the challenge, I pushed myself hard and i did it.
Precor coreramp:
Sprint: 40 seconds, ramp 6, resistance 10
Rest: 20 seconds, ramp 6, resistance 8
Repeat 25 times! !!!!!!!
5 minutes warmup, (2nd warm up: 2 min)
5 minutes cool down

Breakfast:  3 eggs, 3/4 orange, 2 tbsp oatmeal cooked espresso with unsweetened almond milk and 1 tsp turbadino sugar.

Post workout: vega one protein shake, vanilla chai

Lunch: 3 eggs, 3/4 cup mushroom, 1/2 cup cranberries, 1/2 serving alfredo (serving size, 1/4 cup)

Snack: coffee, creamer packet, tsp turbadino sugar

Snack: trail mix, (trader Joe's, omega mix)

Dinner: turkey taco mix, colby Jack, greek yogurt, hot sauce, 3 petit fours.

The birthday hubby and the Branden each had a cupcake for dessert. Robert actually went to the gym today and began working out again.

Talked to the wellness coach at work. Work has an awesome wellness support. This program is awesome and free. The coach wants to do a physician-managed weight management program. Since I have done and am redoing this whole weight loss thing, I'm interested in long term fitness and health. Of the physician managed program is what it takes, then so be it. I never want to do this again.

Tara,  the coach, said that 25 minutes of hiit was great, it definitely takes some effort. It definitely takes mental fortitude to keep going, and keep going, even when my mind wants quit.

This time I'm claiming the mantra: you mind quits before your body ever does.

Celebrate your accomplishments!

November 5th.

Yesterday, I got a 25 minute circuit training in on the precor coreramp. 3 minutes hard, 2 minutes easy. 5 minute each, warm up and cool down.

Met with the dietician at work and got some ideas for some changes. Changes I'm going to implement:
1. Small meals every 3 hours while at work.
2. Add some triscuits to my afternoon eggs. (3~4 per dietician recommendation, not the full servings)
3. Precook my grains for the well and do small serving sizes (1/4 cup at a time). Grains to be cooked: oats and brown rice and quinoa. This week end, I'm going to do brown rice and parts.

Some things that came up: I get hungry every 3~4 hours, regardless of meal size.

In other news, we got an offer on the house! We countered and they accepted! Yahoo! Our finances will be so much better without that mortgage payment. We went to the Olive Garden to celebrate. It was so nice. We turned off our phones and focused on each other! I ate for pleasure, but stopped when I was full, and neither ate nor drank more when i got home.

Dinner: prosecco with a cherry, salad with 2 tbsp italian dressing, one breadstick, ravioli Portobello, one point blue moon.

So yummy. Eating for pleasure is something i won't give up, but there are still things that can be tweaked!

Hiit( high intensity interval training) 3rd time this week, hiit ours supposed to really burn fat. 3rd time this work today!

November 4tg

Had a rough day yesterday.
Did poorly on a Hebrew quiz.
Rainy and gray all day. Wet leaves on the ground always strike me as something gross. Only thing that could have been worse is wet socks, wet leaves and cold rain in the fall.
Didn't get up and workout, had planned on going to karate, but wanted to work on verb conjugation instead since the test went poorly. Robert then wanted me to wait for Branden after karate got done at 7. So i did, but i don't like being or that late as I am frequently tired that early since I'm up earlier than Robert.
On the plus side for yesterday, www got an offer on our house! Hope we get it sold, soon. Is like to pay off our credit card.

November challenge day 2

Got up at the butt crack of dawn today to take Branden to school. Got to the gym at 0715, got in 5 min warm-up, 25 min hiit, 15 min cool down (all on the piece ramp), 30 min stretching. Preview cross ramp level 15 x 3 min, level 1 for 2 min, then ask other repeats, 2 min at 13, 1 at 10, 2 at 1. Then the cool down. Goal is to record levels, so that i can see my progress. Levels should get harder over time. 25 min strength training with Stewart. Cranberries this an were so very tart! Mouth Puckering sour! Strange, cause they didn't bother me to badly yes terday.
Need to add in stretching. My rib muscles and sternal  muscles were sore today. As were my legs and inner groin. Did some yoga in between hiit and strength training.

Need to focus on the goal. I didn't do as well as i hoped tonight as wanted. I are 6 mini packs of pretzels with my grilled cheese and ketchup. :( binge. Ah well. I worked hard today. Tomorrow is another opportunity to work hard and make muscular and strength progress.

Grateful today for the hubby and the job. Robert is such an amazing, supportive, loyal person. The job is flexible enough to allow me to go all over and make time work for me.

Quiz tomorrow..... Wish more luck!

Xo Xo Trinity

A November challenge

7It's been a long while. What's happened in the past 2 years has been heartbreaking, debilitating at times, and had pushed me to the limit. At the end of July, we elected to end our fertility treatments. One book i read once talked about how the whole soul was drawn up into one tooth.... And then that tooth was pulled. (Forgive me Orual, if I mangled that wrote to badly). That's the emptiness I felt, and at the same time, the treatments needed to be complete so that I could return to life. For so long I'd been withdrawn into my own grief. Grief has taken a toll, mentally and physically. At first, after Trinity's death, the grief  was overwhelming. It still is, as i still long for my little girl. I yearn for you, little one, and it's likely grief will be a constant companion when I think off you, Trinity.
And yet, life continues. I work, I attend school, my husband care for our business and we care for our New home, while we work to sell the old one. One focus of mine had been to work on getting my fitness back. The weight gain had been large, And all the fitness I'd gained a few years ago has been lost, while i have gained 30 lbs of fat. Argh. It's all in the belly, or so out feels. I've been working out fairly consistently 4-5 days a week for a month or so. Now I'd like to r ramp up my efforts and really get some fat of and build some muscle. The end goal would be to be a ripped goddess! I'd like to be ripped! I can build muscle! I've still got good bicep definition from a pushups challenge last year.
The changes I'd like to make this month are:
1. Going from low intensity to high intensity 5 days a week for 25-35 minutes. Goal: 125 moon hiit per week.
2. Karate twice a week for 2 hours each. Goal:black belt next year
3. Food: high protein, moderate/low carb, high fiber, low salt. Mostly prepped at home. Some date nights.
Keep up with school and work in the meantime. Some of the food will be patterned after Suzana Griffin. She's doing great and I'd like to get some of her results! (Her preshow: lots of protein shakes, Some plain beans, dinner of Turkey, rice, veggie).

Life's never going to stop, i've got a great life with a great family and job. Time to sharpen up fitness, so even more of life works than it does now!

Breakfast: 3 eggs, half cup cranberries, coffee with unsweetened almond milk and a tsp of turbadino sugar.
Snack: maple chocolate cinnamon pumpkin seeds. Yum! I made them myself and they are awesome!
Workout: 30 minutes hiit with kettlebell.
Lunch: 2 hardboiled eggs, half cup cranberries
Snack: espresso with almond milk and a tsp puff turbadino sugar.
Dinner: goose island beer, one cup cooked rice, 4 oz chicken, 1 cup green beans and a third of a tbsp of olive oil/Greek spices.
For the relaxation: green tea.

Weeding around the house

Back home again tonight. I am so overcome with the opportunity this is to keep a record of all the healthy ways to change my thinking and in so doing, my life. I was off work today- and needed to do some major gardening around the very wild and weedy side of the house. Out came the gardening gloves, shovel, small hand saw, pick ax, and patience! The first thing is to take some stock and acknowledge the problem. Small things first - pulling up all the small weeds. Next up, the BIG things. And by big, I mean the thick, bush-like weeds that I have been ignoring for a few years now. These big, bad boys have been pruned back a few times. But the roots were allowed to remain, and in so doing, these weeds have come back and come back again. This time, they are going away for good! And that means, roots and all. Slowly, slowly, I loosened up all the roots, dug them all individually. When I thought I had them all exposed, the plant was still stuck. Carefully, I moved around again and found the hiding root keeping these weeds in place. When the first plant came out, there was a THRILL of excitement. How often my mind is like those weeds. I prune back the discouraging, negative thoughts, but the roots remain, and these thoughts come back like the bad habit they are. It's time to root out all trace of these thoughts - the not good enough ones, the not fast enough of a runner ones, the you can't do it ones, the it's too hard thoughts. I could go on, you probably have your own thoughts like this one that come back and come back and come back to you. For me, the white flower I clipped on for the Madison Mini Marathon was a promise to myself to control and nuture my thoughts so that I had a good race, and so that I could finish with a smile. So here's my promise to myself now. My mind is like my home and garden. It takes work, and I want to have that fun life, a creative life, a productive, enjoyable, relaxed life. Time to go to work on the weeds! In the meantime, per myfitnesspal.com, I burned 909 calories with my 3 hours of weeding today!

Will run for bottle opener

It all began a year ago. I found this post for the Madison Mini Marathon, located in beautiful Madison Wisconsin. Wisconsin - home of beer, brats and cheese! The best part -the medal is a bottle opener, which would make me a HUGE hit at parties! My husband and I signed up! I was sold. Had to have this medal! No matter that it was located 7 hours from our home and I don't even really like to run. I had to have it. My half marathoning career began almost two years ago. I signed up with my then boyfriend (now husband) and we trained together. July 2010 was a hugely hot summer, and for some reason, we trained mostly Saturdays at midday, with the sun beating down upon us. The first training run I came really close to vomiting over the edge of a bridge over the interstate. After that, I refused to run. I was only going to walk. Finishing the half marathon gave me a new hobby - collecting medals. Races all give out different medals. And they are all so neat looking, heavy, unique to the race that gives it out. After the first half marathon, I signed up for 2 more the next spring. The first I walked, and the second, Robert walked with me around the reservoir. This experience proved to be miserable, for us both (hello, NO official smiling race photos!) Somehow, he resisted the urge to push me into the water, and we finished anyhow. After this, I took a break. It lasted a little over a year. The siren call of the bottle-opener medal could NOT be ignored. Robert and I signed up. We trained over the summer - another scorcher, which resulted in mostly treadmill training in the cinema room at the local Gold's Gym. Movies we partook in included: Morning Glory, A Little Bit of Heaven, Date Night, and 17 Again. (Apparently the ladies got ahold of the suggestion box, as last year's selections included more masculine fair) Each run was a chance to be on my feet, enjoying a movie, and mixing up the intervals in which I ran/walked. I LOVE my walking breaks and will run to keep myself about a 15 minute mile. After each common long run, I took to asking Robert if "he came there often" to flirt with him. He played along with me and we got some strange looks as we exited together. At last, mid-August Madison Mini Marathon came up. We had the time off work, we packed up the car, we drove the 7 hours to Madison. The night before the race, The usual fears and doubts came up. Can I finish? I am undertrained again. I don't know if this is worth it. How am I going to make it? In a packed expo hall, I began to shut down. So many people, so much noise, all the doubts. Then I came across a vendor called Fellow Flowers. Fellow Flowers offered flowers to wear in your hair - and a card that showed you something positive to focus on. The committment is to wear the flower, cross the finish line with your hands up and with a smile, then post your photo to the webside. I bought a white one with a committment to myself that I would finish with grace and a smile on my face! Accountability like that is scary, but it gave me a goal, a focus, and an intention to honor myself by making this the most fun marathon I had yet run. Over dinner with my husband, we discussed fears and doubts. He shared that he usually thanks his doubts for showing up, and then went on with what he set himself out to do. The following morning came. Doubts and fears were in full force as I took my place in the last corral. The race then started. I chose to run some, made myself walk some so as to have the reserve energy to smile at the end. It's amazing how many thoughts come up when you are out there by yourself. Another contestant was there from the same city as Robert and myself, 7 hours away. I thought about nuturing my inner child, with its doubts and fears. We ran past the state capitol, past a few spectators saving their cheers for their contestant. I chose to become my own cheering squad instead. I kept on running and walking in the cool air, perfect running weather, in peaceful neighborhoods, past lakes, with the sun, and the green trees, through neighborhoods again and the occasional beautiful cheering spectators. God bless them. I was working hard, and a cheer makes a world of difference! On and on, past the newbies during their first race, having them pass me again. Just keep going! I wanted that medal. Around mile 5, breakfast was burned off. I began running for snacks too! Snacks AND a medal! Snacks, a medal AND to finish with a smile. At last, we came near the end. I had just enough left for a few short sprints. I kept on. Past the aid station playing " The Final Countdown" Quiet steps behind the dorms on University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Around a corner, back on the city streets, and around the corner for the final block to the finish line! Mustering up some final strength, Ignoring the pain of the blister, The finish line came. And I crossed it with a smile so big the announcer said " Here comes Sarah, with a smile on her face!" It was a personal best time (3hr: 13 min: 29 seconds) - I got my snack, some WONDERFUL chocolate milk. Robert and I rested, limped back to the car to get my purse, then off to a Asian fusion restaurant for lunch. About an hour in the hot tub that afternoon, the muscles were still stiff and sore. That was yesterday, they are still sore. But it's a god sore. Dinner included Beer, brats and onion rings. Life really is so good - and the power to choose is always in our hands. So choose something that empowers you. The best time is right now!