Monday 28 December 2009

Oh and...

...hah! 0.2kg lighter when I got back from being away :)

Gym on Boxing Day

I still can't believe I went to the gym on Boxing Day (and I'm still aching in the arms, butt and chest now!) but I'm soooo glad I did. We went to a fabulous hotel for Christmas, which has an amazing spa attached to it with what looks like a very pretty but "form over function" type gym in it. But oh no it wasn't... it was a very very serious gym. No barbells less than 20kg and when I couldn't find anything with which to do assisted pull ups, the gym manager popped out to help (who just happens to be Chris Young - biiig power lifter!) with some resistance bands and some advice. It was great! He was so motivational and helpful I felt absolutely fabulous afterwards and did the biggest weights workout I've ever done - getting my heart rate right up to 98% of max! I even ended up doing double crunches and medicine ball throws on a Swiss Ball alongside one of the Team GB Ladies rowing team doing a long old erg session. Very serious gym!

Of course, I got absolutely trashed at the big dinner in the evening and spent the day after with both a ridiculously bad hangover -and- some pretty bad DOMS.

Thursday 24 December 2009

Not ideal, but ready to re-set.

I've over-indulged just a tiny bit (really, not being sacrastic for once!) in the last 2 days. Under maintenace kcals 2 days ago but had lots of wine and then over maintenance yesterday with a potato wedges and pizza dinner. This has resulted in 1.2kg gain in 2 days! I know it's not real weight and my weight on the day before that was unrealistically low (I think, though I was very hydrated, so perhaps it was real). I know with sensible eating choices and keeping hydrated that that 1.2kg will fall away again.

BUT

3 days of all-inclusive, gorgeous, gourmet food and wine and champagne starts today. There -is- a gym and I -have- packed gym kit and swimming togs and HRM. I -fully- intend to do weight training once and swimming at least once.

But I feel afraid that I will put back on fat that I keep working very steadily to lose (at a rate of roughly 0.5-1kg per month). 1kg can take me 1-2 months to lose at the moment because training hard makes me hungry so I need to eat 5-7 times a day (not equal meals, but 3 meals and 2-4 snacks of fruit, nuts, carrots, celery, houmous etc.).

I don'd do New Year's resolutions because I feel they're just so false. You can resolve to change something at any time, why pick New Year why not just do something when you've decided you want to do it? This year, however, I feel the need to just relax a bit for a couple of weeks - keep up the exercise of course, but lay off beating myself up about not being at least 250kcals under maintenance every day. Until the New Year.

4th January I start a new plan to fine-tune the strenght and body fat. I'm looking at some of the Rachel Cosgrove stuff and some of the Maxitone stuff and will ponder over the next few days the exact plan. Until then, I'll try very hard not to panic about getting fat from a few days of rich food and drink. Honest. I'll try.

Friday 18 December 2009

I may have over-done it on Wednesday

I did my new routine in full for the first time on Wednesday and had to guess some of the weights as the markings are different on the machines in my new gym compared with the old one. Two days later and my shoulders are still really quite sore, even to the touch. I did get a sports massage yesterday but it didn't get to the sore bits on the tops and fronts of my shoulders. However, the knots around my shoulder blades are a lot better than last time.

Anyhoo... too sore to swim yesterday and too ill to do anything today (which is good as my shoulders are definitely too sore and weights training would have been a bad idea). My throat is sore and partially closed, making me feel queasy a lot of the time, but eating seems to quell the vileness so I've been eating all blimmin' day. If my throat improves tomorrow, I'll go to the gym, if not, I might go for a gentle swim, but the showers at the local gym aren't all that warm so it's not an enticing prospect.

I think I need to go back to posting my food and nutrition stuff here as it's been slipping and I've been convincing myself that I've been eating non-trivially less than maintenance calories (including exercise calories) and it's simply not the case. I'm hoping being more public about it will make me see that better and maybe get some hints from people on alternative foods to help even out the hunger throughout the day. I've got very used to my breakfast, morning snack, exercise, chocolate milk after exercise, lunch, early afternoon snack, late afternoon carrot and houmous, dinner and sometimes supper. I've got very used to eating pretty much every 3 hours throughout the day and on plain maintenance kcals with no exercise, that's pretty hard to do.

I -have- been losing fat, slowly, but I'm keen to get to my target, dammit! 1.3% to go and no access any more to the fat monitor that I've been being measured with for the last 5 months. I have tried to compare it with the one I bought - a "proper" full body analyser, 4 point bio-impedance jobbie - but I can't tell whether it is simply offset at 1.8% higher than the one at my old gym, or whether it's more complicated than that. I suspect the latter, mostly seeing as bio-electrical impedance is very sensitive to hydration levels and electrode positioning, but what can I do? As long as I'm consistent going forward, that's what matters. So, I will assume a 1.8% offset and work from there.

Thursday 17 December 2009

Wah!

UK Fitness Challenge mini-challenge results won't be out until earlyish January as there's another 3 days of it happening at the start of the New Year.

Wah!

No idea whether I'm still in the lead or not!

Tuesday 15 December 2009

Virgin Active anyone...?

Anyone else seen the 10 minute challenge at the Virgin Active gyms this week?

I noticed it while I was doing intervals on the cross-trainer (having done 10 minutes on the wave machine - oh my god that hurts my thighs!) and cut them short to have a look. And I'm -so- glad I did!

Choose 2 out of 4 fitness challenges; bike, row, run and cross-train (different intensities and distances for each, e.g. 1.5km scramble on the bike or 100m climb on the cross-trainer); and either an easy (takes 15% off your total time if you get it right) or hard (takes 30% off your total time if you get it right) mental challenge. A trainer sets up the machine and times you, you answer the mental challenge whilst slogging away. Total time minus any bonus from the mental challenge enters you into a competition for Amazon vouchers and a bicycle.

So I did it. And picked bike, cross-trainer and hard mental challenge. In 05:05! And I got the mental challenge wrong (oh the shame of it!); it was weird, my brain just refused to work while my body was being punished so hard. No idea if that was a good time or not until the trainer looked up "the next fastest woman"! (who did it in 07:25 so I was over the moon!) Plenty of week left for someone to beat me, but still WOOOOOO! It was FUN! (and I had to slow right down at the end of the cross-trainer challenge 'cause I was going so hard I was about to barf!)

So, if you're a Virgin Active member, check out your local gym to see if they're doing the challenge and HAVE A GO! Its brilliant! (and you get a free t-shirt for having a go anyway)

Monday 14 December 2009

New routine (and numbers rollup)

Warm up - 1km rower

Prone leg curls - 20kg 3x10
Assisted pull ups - 35kg 3x10
Cable lunges - 20kg 3x10
Seated row -21kg 3x10
Overhead throw on Swiss Ball - 10kg 3x10
Cable bicep curls - 20kg 3x10
Twisting woodchop - 15kg - 3x10
Double crunch on Swiss Ball - 3x15
Bosu leg lowers - 3x15

Cool down - 10 minutes cross trainer

Numbers...

This week:-
Exercise Count: 5
Exercise Time: 02:52
Exercise kcals: 1,644

Since 15th June 2009:-
Exercise Count: 161
Exercise Time: 88:36
Exercise kcals: 48,604 (minus a few times I forgot my strap and/or transmitter)

*beam*

Body fat down another 0.8% to 26.3% I wasn't sure it'd be more than tiny drop this time because I'd let go a bit on the food front, so I'm really really pleased with this drop. *happy dance*

I also have the full data from when I started with my trainer; all the measurements, weights and fat % for the last 5 months... graphs to follow.

Wednesday 9 December 2009

Pleased for all of 5 minutes

I dragged myself to the gym today, unexpectedly as I hadn't planned on it. Did the nasty current routine that I'm not keen on (but have modified - changed the dumb bell flyes for pec flyes on a machine 'cause my arm doesn't work right/I can't get my form right) and added in some assisted pull-ups 'cause I like those. I started doing assisted pull-ups about 2 months ago, with a couple of weeks break in there somewhere, at an assisst of 45kg. Today I did 3 sets of 8 reps at 30kg assist. :)

Woooo! :D

And then I looked it up in the Internets. Apparently beginners are supposed to start at 50% assist (which would be 33.5kg for me) and work up from there. Meh. I only managed 44.8% assist today. So that's not as cool as I'd thought. Way to bust my bubble.

Still, I did do 3x5 full press ups, upped my lunge dumb bells to 9kg each and managed to burn 465kcals (normally I get 445kcals for this routine), so I must've been working it harder. Small victories.

Thursday 3 December 2009

Yeah, well, it's just not working right now

OK, so there's stuff in transit so yet another increase in weight this morning is not unexpected. However, it is still demoralising. Apart from last night, I've stayed under maintenance on average for pretty much 3 weeks now so it's getting me down.

Also, I'm crashingly tired; though getting to sleep is easy, staying asleep is hard and last night's cute kitten event at 03:38 meant just over 3 hours sleep last night then light dozing with purring and stalking and pouncing and snuffling. So I'm way too dead to exercise today; I just desperately want to go home and back to bed.