Catching Up

So I was bad and didn't post for a few days. There isn't much to update you on, although I am guilty of some crimes against my healthy diet.

On Sunday, I did my scheduled workout AND hiked for a few hours with my family. Since we didn't really plan well for lunch, all I ended up eating for my healthy meal was an apple. Although I made up for it in calories later with a snack :/

Monday, I ended up cheating a little on my healthy meal by eating some of my leftover chicken parmesan along with my green smoothie. Chicken parmesan is obviously not very healthy.

Today was probably my biggest failure. I haven't been getting good sleep lately because my cat has the habit of waking me up in the middle of the night. It literally makes me want to scream and Iam coming up with ways to get around the issue. Anyways, I woke up feeling extremely sluggish and actually went back to sleep after breakfast, which was a leftover cinnamon roll and two sausage patties. When I woke up from my nap, I was going to workout first, but ended up cooking myself up a really crappy meal, consisting of a steak and cheese microwavable chimichanga and about 15 fried pickles that I baked in the oven. I hated that I did it. I kind of made up for it with dinner by baking chicken in the oven and baking some broccoli in the oven. However, I did have a good heap of stuffing on the side, which sort of took away from the rest of the healthy.

My other crime I committed yesterday was that I drank a whole cup of soda at Jimmy John's. I just really wanted a flavored beverage and I was afraid getting tea would keep me up at night (although my cat covered that area anyway). It was a really poor excuse. Fortunately, it seems I have only cheated on the "no soda rule" once each week, which isn't the worst thing in the world.

As for my workouts, I'm still getting them done everyday, but my lack of sleep has made it harder to give good energy to each workout. I have a plan tonight to try to trip my cat up from scratching on my door by putting a sheet over it that sort of billows off of the door. I'm hoping it will confuse her enough to keep her away. I think I'll also keep the door to the back porch open since she loves to go out there. As you can tell, I'm getting a bit desperate in my attempts to keep my cat from waking me up at night. Because honestly, your sleep effects your health so much. Not just with the theories on how it affects your metabolism, but also in your energy for the rest of the day. And energy is not only needed for workouts, but also to make healthier meals. I don't know why, but even if I can make a healthy meal fairly easily, if I'm tired, I crave carbs and bad food all the way.

So you see why it is so crucial for me to get a good night's sleep. I'll update you tomorrow on whether my plan for tonight worked out.

TTFN

End of Week 1!

Today is officially the last day of my first week to a healthier, happier life! I feel great. Even though I technically have a "rest day" today on my workout calendar, I snuck in one video from Blogilates because I just really wanted to try her new Love Handle Hysteria video. Love handles have always been one of my biggest problems. Even with having a flat stomach in high school, I still had a good chunk of meat on each side of it. I think it partly comes from having a big booty; it just kind of spreads to everywhere near its core.

Another reason I really wanted to do at least one video today was because I'm kind of afraid that if I even stop for a day, it may encourage me to take another day off and then my whole calendar is ruined. It's happened before when I've gotten on workout frenzies. I know I should give myself a break, but I'm not really that sore and I only limited it to one workout. As long as I stay safe about it and don't try to injure myself with pushing too hard, I think I should be just fine.

So along with today being my break day, Fridays are the one day a week I'm allowed to weigh myself. Last week I started at 172.4 pounds and today I weigh 171.2. Is it what I had hoped to see? Not exactly, but I still lost a little over a pound! And any progress is solid progress. Who knows? Maybe that was a solid pound of fat I lost! Being a little more strict with my diet definitely would have helped that number, but maybe instead of amping up to two healthy meals this next week, I can spend more time focusing on all of the rules established for my healthy meal of the day.

For example, yesterday I ate this:

It was good in the sense that I ate tuna with raw carrots and broccoli. The down side is that I added a little over a tablespoon of mayo to the tuna. The dip I dunked my carrots and broccoli in, I'm not exactly going to knock. Yes, it is processed, but it's greek yogurt! I can't really feel too awful about that. But the mayo was definitely bad. So next week, I hope to entirely eliminate those "baby cheats" in my healthy meals. So that's my food plan for next week.

Next week's workout looks like it's going to be pretty interesting, combining workouts I've already did with a few new videos thrown in. I'm thinking I'll wait til the third week to start adding in extra videos that aren't scheduled.

Getting back to my progress for this week, I want to say that my tummy looks phenomenal! I was really starting to develop a gut in the past couple of months and now any skin barely hangs! No more tucking my fat into my jeans! And part of it goes to eating a little better and doing lots of ab workouts, but the other part goes to something Cassey taught me. In all of her videos thus far, she's talked about "pulling your navel into your spine" for proper form. She says it also engages your abs further and kind of trains your stomach to appear that way all the time. Now I've heard a lot of this before from her and other philosophies, but something clicked about actually doing it myself during the workouts. I found it really did make it harder to do the workouts while trying to maintain this part of your form. And I really kind of do think it is "training" my abs and tummy to stay in that fashion. In the last couple of days my jeans felt loose around my waist again! And it felt awesome! I didn't feel like a stuffed sausage!

So even though I've ranted about girls sucking in their stomachs before just to try to "appear" thinner, there really is more to it, I've found. Cassey's amazingness strikes again. I don't know what it is about her, but she is truly becoming one of my heroes!

Soon I will be figuring out my healthy lunch of the day. Hope it goes well!

TTFN