Self Portrait Saturday: 2 months!

it’s true
I do
have a cold
(already getting old)
I won’t complain much. Instead,
I’ll be grateful- so far it’s all in my head.

~*~

 

 

 

I’m up to an hour on the elliptical. On Tuesday I did 75 minutes and got up to 5.65 miles. Yay me! 🙂

 

Self portrait Saturday: one month done

So, I’ve been going to the gym every day that my son has school. That makes four weeks so far. 🙂

If we were relying on weight as an indicator, we’d be sorely disappointed. However, since we can feel and see ourselves deflating and getting stronger we are not disappointed at all.

(Don’t ask us why we started talking in third person plural. Perhaps we are royalty.)

I had to stop using the treadmill because I have wimpy feet and they really started hurting. So I decided to try the elliptical machine. The first time I tried it I could only do 5 minutes before my thighs started screaming, “Get off! Get off!”

The second time I tried it I managed ten minutes. Then each day I tick it up a tiny bit. This was the first time I did a mile. Wahoo!

And then I managed 2 miles on the evilliptical. It really is evil. But effective and so far doesn’t seem to bother my wussy feet too badly. So that’s good.

I’ll let you in on a secret:

Fat people are strong.

Our muscles are completely accustomed to carrying around a lot of weight. So, if we can maintain that strength as we lose weight, then we will be amazingly strong smaller sized people.  Like most people, and especially women, I have noodle arms. But I was excited to see that my legs are kinda badass. So is my back/core area because I can do the machine where you do a sit up pushing back against a weight behind you and I don’t really even feel it until I get up around 140 pounds. so, yay me!

I also want to say that this would not at all be possible without the support of my headphones. Since I generally don’t want to hear what is playing an the TV.

I’ll finish up here by posting a couple pictures that I took of myself when I was trying to take a close up picture of my eye. That’s harder than it sounds.

 

 

Oh and this….same old, same old. 🙂

Self Portrait Saturday: The Truth

I drop my son off at school and head over to the gym. Right now I walk a mile on the treadmill and then do some stuff on the weight machines if I’m not too conked. This being the first week of school and this exercising thing, I’m not too worried about the second part. The mile is required, though.

Finally remembered my headphones so that I can drown out the TV and other gym goers.

This is my pouffy hair. 🙂

These are my new shoes for this endeavor.

This is the starting place.

The thing we don’t talk about, right?

I’m not obsessed with this, but it is a factor. My goal is to get fit and strong.

Right now I am not so fit and strong. And inertia is a bitch.

Law I: Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed

But I will make her work for me not against me.

Inertia will be my bitch.

😀

Oh Pilates

Oh Pilates, you torment me so.

I am developing a love/hate relationship with Pilates.

On the one hand, it’s hard, hard, hard. Especially for a beginner fluffy gal like me. Worse than difficult- so far, it’s pretty boring. I like dancing and playing and music to be involved in my exercising. This crap is too much like work. The first couple weeks of class, I had to stop part way through some of the sequences because I was nauseous and couldn’t breathe. Now, I still have to stop sometimes, but it’s just to give my muscles a break and start again. Not because I think I might vomit. So, yay, progress is being made. It’s been slightly less boring the last week or so. We’ve learned the movements pretty well and now can do them in the flowing, one into the other manner that they are meant to be done in. But, still … I get bored at gyms if I try to just use the exercise machines. After a few minutes, I quit trying and give up because I can’t stand it. Bleh. So, I really want to not take Pilates any more after this term.

But, on the other hand…

The damn stuff is effective. I can do exercises now that I couldn’t even imagine doing five weeks ago. I can feel myself getting stronger and leaner. My posture is improving. It would be so much easier to decide, if it didn’t work.

This is my quandary:

Do I stop taking it because it’s evil and hard and I don’t enjoy it? or do I continue to take it in spite of all that because it works?

I’m not sure yet. But, currently I am leaning toward continuing with it to see results. Plus adding a cardio or something on the alternate days. At my school credits cost $60/term. Which means a 1 credit activity class works out to about $20 a month. Hard to find many gyms for that price. But more importantly, it holds me responsible. I am accountable to a teacher for attending since that’s primarily what your grade is based on. Unlike a regular gym, where if you don’t go work out, they just collect your money and don’t really care, here if I don’t show up it negatively affects my grade. As an added bonus, included with my fees for the class is a gym use fee. $16 for use of the facilities for the term. Including the regular gym with the exercise equipment and weights. I haven’t yet used that. Because of the boredom thing, but also because I get intimidated walking in there when there are all these jocks in there already working out and familiar with the place. I have a lot of hangups, I know.

Oh well, I am on my path back to healthy fitness. Wish me luck!

today I am grateful for: strength, knowledge, friends, sunny weather, and art.