Weekly Recap

I’m posting this a day early as I’m working overtime tonight on the night shift, then I have a bunch of stuff to do in the morning so I won’t be going to bed until about noon tomorrow.  Eeek!  So, I’m weighing in and posting my recap today.  After my meltdown on Saturday, I got it together and devised a new plan of attack in hopes of seeing some DOWNWARD movement on the scale this time. 

• Saturday: I was super upset, so I hit the gym as hard as I could.  I started breaking my gym sessions into upper body/core and lower body/core.  I didn’t have time to do all the exercises I had written down for myself to do as I spent too much time having a meltdown.  But I did get about 2/3 of them done and I had a pretty good sweat going and I did get a decent calorie burn, so we’ll call it a win.

• Sunday: cycling day!  I had originally planned on 24 miles.  Then I couldn’t sleep Saturday night and when I woke up changed it to 18-20 miles, depending on time.  I had plans to hang out with Amanda at noon to watch the Minions movie (highly recommend, by the way…super duper cute!), so I needed to be done by 11am.  I get all ready and I’m wheeling my bike toward the front door and I’m all like, why is my back wet?  So I take my hydration pack off and the whole bottom is wet.  I go into the kitchen and take the bladder out and wipe it off with paper towels and discover that the drinking tube was cracked and that was what was leaking.  Great.  There went my 20 mile bike ride.  I drove to Walmart and bought a new hydration pack and then hit the road.  I had about an hour and 15 minutes to do my ride.  I figured I’d just ride out until the timer on my heart rate monitor said about 38 minutes, then turn around and go back home.  I got 12.4 miles in and was done and walking in my front door at 10:56.  Boom.  It was a good ride, but, as I’m sure you know, it was way shorter than I wanted.  But, I’ll make up for it this Sunday when I [hopefully] ride 24 miles.

• Monday: I still had 1 virtual race medal hanging out on my desk, waiting for me to earn it.  This one was for a 10K and I had to do it as a 10K because it says “10K” on the medal.  Anyway, Sunday night I set my alarms for 6:05 and 6:08.  I was out of bed by 6:15 and getting ready.  Like before last Monday’s run, I was really excited about running and didn’t sleep all that well.  I had laid out my running outfit Sunday night, so all I had to do was brush my teeth, put my clothes on, braid a ponytail and out the door I went.  This was my first run with my new hydration pack.  I like it way better than the one I had.  It just sits better and doesn’t rub.  Also, the strap that clicks together across my chest has better placement.  My other one, in order to keep it from bouncing around and annoying the crap out of me, I had to tighten the shoulder straps way down and then the chest strap buckled under my boobs and I just plain didn’t like that.  this one buckles across my chest and is super comfortable.  The only issue I had with it was that it didn’t have a little tension hook thingie to click the tube mouth piece into, so the tube was just hanging straight down and flopping around (this was Sunday when I was cycling, but when I got home from cycling…), I dug the old one out of the trash and looked at the hook thingie on that one and sure enough, it could come off, so I took it off and put it on the new one and voila I’m now 100% happy with my new hydration pack!

Anyway, I went for my 10K run and it went fantastic!  I didn’t have to stop even once!  Not even for 10 seconds!  I the one traffic light I had to go through changed in my favor and stayed green long enough for me to cross the road and all my other road crossings were traffic free and at all the stop signs I went through, everyone was nice and waited for me and didn’t try to run me over!  I was so very happy that I did the whole 10K without stopping to rest!  This was also my second run in my new Hokas.  I’m still in love.  In fact, while running this day, I was thinking how was I ever going to be motivated to rotate with my Mizunos that are nowhere near top mileage and still have loads of life left in them?  Haha.  I’ll deal with it, that’s how! 

My Polar M400 activity tracker kinda crapped out on me.  It actually started on Saturday.  I went to charge it so it would be fully charged for my bike ride Sunday morning, but I plugged it in, it said “charging” for like a second then bleeped at me and said it was at 100% battery.  I forgot to charge it Sunday, so I plugged it in Monday after my run.  Nothing.  Like it made no acknowledgement that I had plugged it in…to the charger or to my computer.  Great.  I had a couple options.  1) call Polar and mail it to them for warranty repair, but be completely without a daily activity tracker for about 3 weeks, maybe more.  2) go to the store, buy a new Polar, put mine in the box and then return it and say it wouldn’t charge or sync when I plugged it in.  And then there’s option 3) go buy a FitBit Surge.  I don’t remember if I ever posted this previously, but when my original Polar did this exact same thing and then like a month later I discovered the Surge’s existence, I decided that if the replacement ended up crapping out on me, I was going to buy the Surge.  So, I went and bought the Surge.  And it was fully charged in time for me to actually wear it to work this day!  YAY!  So, watch for a product review (unsponsored, of course) on the FitBit Surge after I’ve been using it for a couple weeks.  FYI: I named my Surge Sergio.  So if I talk about Sergio in my workout recaps, that’s who/what I’m talking about.

• Tuesday: I took this as a REST DAY!!!  I had my appointment with my therapist this day, so there was walking around town done post-appointment.  Speaking of walking pre- and post-appointment, I did a little extra today.  I parked in the parking garage at work and still had about 30 minutes until my appointment.  I didn’t feel like just sitting in my car, so I started walking.  I ended up walking about 1.15 miles and got to my appointment with 5 minutes to spare.  After my appointment, I did my usual walk to Einstein Bros for a fountain drink (just got tea this time…and omg their tea is delicious).  While I turned the GPS on, I forgot to start it recording, so I missed out recording about ¼ of a mile of my post-appointment walk.  Booo!  But, when I left Einstein’s I did turn it on.  After that, I logged 1.11 miles of walking.  I think I will be doing this EVERY Tuesday before and after my appointments!  So, a nice active rest day this day!  Sergio logged exactly 6300 steps by the time I returned to my car post-appointment.  Nice!

Monday night was the first time I’ve slept with the FitBit Surge on (obviously), so I checked my sleep stats when I got up Tuesday morning.  I really like the way it tracks sleep.  It’s way more in depth than the Polar was.  The Polar would just show that I was laying down or that I was up (like when I woke up to go to the bathroom, which I do at least once a night).  Sergio tells me at what points during the night I was having restless sleep!  I toss and turn a lot during the night, apparently.  No wonder I sometimes wake up still tired.

Also, I hit 10,000 steps this day around 8:30pm and my wrist was all vibrating and stuff and I was like why is Sergio vibrating?  I looked and he was all lit up and said “10,000!!”  Haha, nice.

• Wednesday: my first workout with Sergio!!!  I was really excited to see how it tracked my workout.  I went to the gym and did my lower body and core session.  It went really well!  Sergio calculated my calories differently than the Polar did and said I burned less.  But you know what?  I’m perfectly okay with that because 1) it’s probably more accurate anyway and 2) I have decided I won’t be eating my exercise calories anymore, so it’s basically a moot point what my calorie burn is.  When I went to get on the stair climber, I was a little disappointed to not see a “stair climber” selection on Sergio’s exercise options.  I could have sworn that when my friend Neetu showed me her Surge earlier this year that hers had that option.  So I just used the generic “workout” option.  Because my arm was bent while using the stair climber, it would read my pulse lower than I know it was or it would either lose signal on my heartrate or otherwise couldn’t read it.  When I got home, I logged into my FitBit profile and figured out how to add different exercises to Sergio’s exercise options, so I now have “stair climber,” “bike” and “walk” in the list of exercise options I can choose!  YAY!  Also, on my 20 minute break at work, I walked up and down, around and around the parking garage.  Got in 2000 more steps toward my goal of 10,000!

• Thursday: two of the tabata DVDs I ordered last week arrived earlier this week, so OF COURSE I had to give one of them a test run!  I chose the 3^rd installment of the one I already had, so that’s called Breathless Body 3.  #2 should arrive sometime later next week, so I’m excited about that one.  I really, really liked this tabata workout.  Also, I think I’m just plain in love with tabata training!  This one structured the intervals differently.  Instead of 20 seconds of working out at full blast and a 10 second recovery for 8 “reps” of the exercise, this one did 4 reps of 40 seconds of the exercise and a 20 second recovery.  There was still 8 exercises and then an ab routine at the end for the cooldown, which I skipped because I seriously need to clean my floor and didn’t want to be laying on it right now.  Next time, though, for sure.  I walked on my lunch break at work again and hit 10,000 steps shortly after going back to work from my break!  Woohoo!

• Friday (today): my second REST DAY of the week, but it seems I’m all about working out now because I did NOT rest.  I did this kettlebell workout I found on the Runner’s World website the other day.  The only problem is that I ONLY have a 12 lb kettlebell so it was basically go big or go home…hahaha!  All I did otherwise today was pay bills (hooray payday) and sleep in a little in anticipation of staying up until NOON tomorrow, but not too much because I’m also apparently all about waking up “early.” (early = before 9am)  Ugh.  I see at least one 5 hour energy in my future…haha. 

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Here is this week’s scale and Omron stats:

How do I feel about this?  I feel effing AMAZING!!!  4.8 lbs gone in less than a week!  I know it was what I was eating because my exercise has been on point.  I want to send a million thanks out to my friend Stacy for helping me reevaluate my eating and then helping me restructure it.  I have so much more energy than before.  What I was eating was literally weighing me down in more ways than just on the scale.  I was so lethargic and cranky and now I'm bouncy and happy!

This week I tried a new-to-me eating plan.  It’s still one I came up with practically/mostly on my own.  I did have some help from my friend Stacy with ideas of what would be good to do as far as structuring my meals and how to deal with my calorie intake.  I will post tomorrow or Sunday about all that, though, in a post all its own…because, believe me, it needs its own post!