First things first: my poor bra is crying. Today was my first scheduled workout for the challenge. I dressed for a workout, but thought we were going to spend most of the time weighing in, getting our measurements taken, and having our body fat checked. So I didn't bother with a sports bra. Imagine my surprise when the first thing our trainer, Jeff, said after he took our weights was, "Jumping Jacks!" Excuse me, jumping jacks? Could there be anything worse for me to attempt without a sports bra? I did them of course (no black eyes, yay!), but avoided eye contact until me and the girls could regroup and collect ourselves. Ahem.
Aside from the bounceage, the jumping jacks were actually fun. I don't think I've done one in at least 10 years. You could say that was the theme of the workout today-tons of things I've never tried before or haven't done in ages. After the jumping jacks we did this exercise where you do a low squat and then jump up in the air with your arms over your head. I've heard football players do them. After some more calisthenics, we headed down to the gym where we did circuit training.
Two things made me burst out laughing: trying to do incline push ups and doing squats on a BOSU trainer*. Eventually, I switched to knee push ups, but they didn't workout much better. I was staring at my arms, but they just didn't want to move. As for the BOSU, good lord! I've never tried one before, but I always thought they'd be easy since I have good balance. I got a good leg workout just trying to stand up on the thing, let alone squat. My squats won the world record for slowness, but I think that works the muscles harder, so mission accomplished. [*A BOSU trainer looks like half an exercise ball coming up out of the floor.]
It's safe to say I got a good workout. I'm already sore, which usually doesn't happen until the day after a workout. Ibuprofen will be my friend tomorrow. Regardless, I'm really looking forward to the next workout on Wednesday. It usually takes me a week or two to get my cardiovascular performance and strength back up to normal after a long time of not working out. The more workouts I get under my belt, the easier they'll be-and the less beet-faced I'll be during the workouts.
Hmmmm, there's one other thing. We weighed in this morning to get our official starting weight. I don't know if I should take the scale to be more accurate than the one at home just because it looked expensive, but the one at home only cost $10 so I guess I should. Enough stalling-my official starting weight is 207.4 lbs. Yeesh. All the more motivation to stick with this plan, right?
"Oh my my, oh hell yes, you got to put on that party dress."
Monday, April 30, 2007
It Begins!
Friday, April 27, 2007
The First Meeting
This morning was the first informational meeting about the weight loss competition. Bottom line: this whole thing is one heck of a sweet deal. Set aside the fact that right now I'm munching on a gorgeous Mediterranean panini with goat cheese and gobs of olive oil and let me tell you how I'm going to lose weight. The competition doesn't start until Monday after all.
For the next 12 weeks, I get regular workouts with my own personal trainer who will kick my ass and monitor my weight, body fat, and measurements. They'll also be keeping tabs on my food journal. If at any time I have questions or need motivation, I can call or email my personal trainer or one of the other trainers running the program. When I'm feeling discouraged and want to give up because I'm not seeing results, I can talk to a pro and get my program tweaked instead of just complaining to my friends. There are also over a hundred other people in my company participating in this challenge, so there will be plenty of people who 'feel my pain' that I can turn to. And if the thought of winning $1,000 and losing weight isn't enough to keep me accountable, our results are being reported weekly to the company CFO.
We spent about an hour at today's meeting going over nutrition information and meal plans. One thing that I already love about this program is that they acknowledge what a huge role diet plays in all of this. According to them, nutrition makes up 70% of the weight loss equation, strength training and cardio make up the rest. In conversations I've had with trainers before, they were much more focused on the exercise portion and gave very vague instructions to "eat right" or "eat a lot of protein" without much further guidance. I'm very happy to have specific direction.
The main guidelines they gave us were pretty familiar: eat plenty of lean protein and veggies, moderate amount of complex carbs, and drink lots of water. They also want us to eat 6 times a day which will probably be challenging at first, but I'm going to lean on their sample meal suggestions for the first few weeks to make it easier. You hear that? They gave us 5 days of sample menus that include 6 meals a day. Thank you! I am going to be waking up 2 hours earlier than usual to go to the gym. I can't handle too much extra planning on top of that. As far as the food journal, I think it's going to be a lot easier than the online versions I've tried in the past. They gave us mini notebooks that are preprinted with blocks for each of the meals and little boxes to check off for how much water we've drank. The beauty thing is that they are not going to make us monitor calories unless our weight loss gets stuck, so all I have to do is write down the foods and not spend hours looking them up.
So. Whereto from here? This weekend I need to plan out next week's meals, clean out my cabinets, shop, and prep as much food as I can. Monday I face a treadmill, a scale, and a measuring tape. And a fun electrical doohickey that will measure my body fat. No calipers! Yay!
...It should also be noted that they gave us a whole page of information as to why we should take off one day a week from our plan. I like these people.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Competition
At just the right moment, my workplace announced they would be holding a weight loss competition for all of us fat desk monkeys. For the next 12 weeks, they'll be providing us with nutritionists, personal trainers, gym access, and a giant carrot. The carrot is $1,000 each to the male and female who lose the highest percentage of body weight. You can also win money for being on a winning team, but I'm not really a team person-especially when there is sweat involved. I am very excited. Very. I had already been gearing up to go back on the South Beach diet and itching to exercise so much I've been dreaming about it. Unfortunately, that doesn't burn many calories, so bring on the personal trainers!
The first informational meeting is tomorrow morning. We get to find out the details and have our physical assessments. It should be fun interesting.
Welcome to the Danger Zone
Uh oh. It's happening. I'm slowly succumbing to the the interwebs. It's a blog with my name on it. OMG. GTFO. ...sigh. At least I have still managed to resist signing up for theirspace.
As those in the know know, I am about to start a weight loss competition at work AND go back to school (*cough* finally). Both of these endeavors are huge changes for me and I thought they warranted some documentation other than my traditional 10,000 word emails. This is where y'all can keep tabs on my progress and keep me accountable. Shaka gow, shaka gow wow.
(Don't you love my blog title? Me so corny.)
Weight Loss Progress
