Week 7 recap

Well, this was not a great week in my weight loss goal. I actually gained one pound, which was disappointing but not entirely surprising. My nutritionist, C., warned me about this last week when I rolled in at the beginning of my flu and she told me not to expect a lot while my body was fighting the virus. So, even though I worked out five days last week and kept up my healthy diet, my body stalled this last week. The good news is that I'm under the 200 pound mark, which I don't think I mentioned in last week's recap. That was a really exciting moment when I weighed in. I'm still fighting the tail end of this sickness, but I'm feeling much better now so I hope that it doesn't continue to throw off my progress. This week, I'll work on adding beans and legumes into my diet, so that should be an interesting change.

My arms were really sore today. My trainer, J., had me add pushups to my routine after we'd already gone through 15 minutes of elliptical, 15 minutes of stair climber, and the typical weight machines for both the upper and lower body. He recently increased the weight and now the reps for each set, so my arms were already pretty tired (and not because I just flew in, hahaha). Anyway, by the time he got out the stability ball and told me to get into the push up position with my hands on the ball, and then actually do push ups, I was pretty beat. I could do one, but the next one was always sloppy and I'd almost do a face-plant into the ball and roll over to one side. After a couple of tries, we moved the ball up against the wall and I did five push ups without looking like a completely uncoordinated person.

He has me doing a few other moves that are interesting. I call one of them the Captain Morgan, because I stand on one foot on a mushy disk thing and do curls with dumbbells. Recently he's had me do curls paired with some kind of overhead movement, which makes it even more difficult to keep my balance. I've found that my ankles are pretty wobbly, so I'll get a few good moves in and then kind of lean to one side until I eventally have to put the other foot down quickly to get my balance. I'm getting better at it over time, though.

Another move is called the worshiper, and it involves the stability ball. You basically kneel on the ground with the ball in front of you and place your hands on ball like you were going to pray. You then lean and roll the ball forward. This move makes your abs scream like they're going to pop right out of your body and your under arms ache wildly the next day.

And another couple of exercises that just kill but are really good for the glutes are what I call the penguin and the side stepper. J. has a resistance band that I place around both legs. I then either sway from side to side while keeping my feet completely straight (the penguin) or I take small steps to the side over and over (the side stepper). The thing about these is that the body tries to compensate by angling the feet inward to use larger muscle groups, so it's important to keep the feet really straight to isolate the smaller muscles and tone them. I usually have trouble walking up the stairs right after these exercises.

Well, onto another week and hopefully my body will be back in the swing of things soon. I'm definitely doing the right things, so once the flu/cold thing is fully gone, I'll be back on track!