In the Beginning...

There was a girl. The girl tried "30 Day Shred" and failed. The girl had gained some weight and needed to drop it. Running wasn't doing the trick, but then again she hadn't been paying too close attention to what was going in her mouth. She was an emotional and bored eater. Then came along P90X. Her husband had tried it and liked it. She thought to herself, "Self, why not give it a whirl?". And so it began. 90 days of... hell? Good workouts? Who knows. She'll have to decide in a few weeks.

That girl is me. P90X has been staring me in the face for several weeks now after giving up on 30DS. The plan is to do the 90 days straight, but I know there will be some days off at the end of June. I'll make do. I'd love to get down around 143, but we'll see. The diet part is hard; I'm not strictly following it but I am trying to watch my Protein/Carb/Fat ratios. I lurve my carbs, so this is no easy task. By the way, I'm doing the lean version to start. If, no, when I make it through the 90 days, I might consider the regular version... but as of right now, I need the cardio.

Here are the (scary) starting stats:

Weight: 151.8
Waist: 31"
Hips: 42.25"
Left Leg: 25"
Right Leg: 25.25"
Chest: 38"
Right Arm: 12"
Left Arm: 12"

I did take "before" pictures, but I'll spare you. If you want to see them to note my progress, shoot me an email and I'll send them.

Workout Update

I'm down to 149. I also got a new scale which weighs me in at 1.5lbs lighter than the other one, so maybe I'm only down 2lbs. instead of 4. Oh well. I like the lower number.

I have been running 3-4 times a week, averaging between a 10:30 and 10:45 mile. Not great, but at least I'm back up to 3 miles pretty consistently.

Progress, slowly but surely!

Blah

So after a positive week with a second interview, I'm starting to feel really self conscious of my weight. I had foot surgery in November, which, coupled with the holidays, caused a slight weight gain. I got back into working out but had also gained some bad eating habits, so the weight never came off. Now I'm staring at an 8 pound gain and it is showing in the flub in my midsection and thighs. Not good, batman. It needs to go away. Ideally I'd lose 10lbs, but I'm not sure if that's physically possible due to my body's "happy weight". I've gone below 140 below (which, by the way, would involve a 13lb. loss), but I eat like a pig and am constantly hungry, inevitably leading to a weight gain of 2-5lbs. I think if I can get back to 145 I'll be happy, 142-3 would be great. Ok, so now we're seriously talking about 10lbs.

The first attempt to lose weight has been pretty unsuccessful. I got Jillian Michaels' "30 Day Shred" and am bored out of my mind with it. I guess I've learned that I'm not the type of person to do the same thing over and over again. It's split up into 3 phases, each to be done for 10 days. I got through Phase 1 fine and then Phase 2 has been killer. I actually skipped to Phase 3 after only 5 days on Phase 2 because I was that bored with it. It had a lot of plank poses, which I have never been good at.

Now I'm considering revisiting C25k. I did this back in May of 2007 and worked up to a 10k. I loved the program because it allowed me to repeat weeks if I needed it and it was constantly a change of workouts so I never got bored. I think if I can get back into this with Week 5, I can get back into those 3+ mile runs. I've been taking Jackson lately and he's a bit of a pain to run with since he feels the need to sniff-approve everything. If I can get him to do his business before our run, we might be better off. Also, since I'm not working until 8:30, I can do a run with a weight workout (video or otherwise). If I swim 2 days a week and run 4, that should get me into a good routine.

I was just looking back at my old blog and this time last year I was in the exact same spot. The weight had crept up and I was struggling with it; back at it again. I need to drop the Starbucks and the Diet Cokes and drink more water and homemade coffee. It'll be better for the waistline and the pocketbook, so that's good, right?

We'll see how this goes. I'm hoping that this weight goes away fast, we already know that the patience is limited!