Week 12 recap

I'm down another 2 pounds this week, for a total of 31 pounds lost. Last weekend, I went through my wardrobe and made a pile of about 70% of my clothing to donate or sell because it's too big for me. I gave the majority of my clothes to my step sister, because she has a cousin who is about that size and who could probably use a lot of the pieces if not all of them. So, I was happy about that. It's nice to give them to someone you know can use the stuff. Unfortunately, I'm not crazy about the styles this season, so my trip to the mall last weekend was uncharacteristically empty for me. I did manage to find a few button-up shirts at Target that will get me by, but I'm going to have to make do with my few pairs of jeans until I find a new pair of black pants or something similar that I like. One thing that I did manage to find this week was my wedding gown. I went in with my sister and cousin on Saturday and tried on a bunch of gowns, and then found "the one." It was amazing to see how differently everything fit this time around. I ordered my gown in one size smaller than I currently am, and then I'll have it altered from there as needed.

I decided to extend my 20/20 Lifestyles program to the 20-week program. So, I contacted the program coordinator at the beginning of the week, and she drew up a new contract for me to extend it from 16 weeks to 20 weeks. The price was slightly less than I was expecting. I hadn't remembered the cost correctly, so I was pleasantly surprised when I got the additional total that I owed to extend the program. My trainer and nutritionist were both happy with my decision. My trainer asked a lot of questions to make sure that I was making the right choice, and I explained that I still have about 30 pounds that I want to lose to become a normal, maintainable weight, and that I didn't want to use all of my maintenance phase to try and lose a lot of weight. He said that made sense. But he wanted to make sure that I wasn't unhappy with my progress thus far, and I assured him that I wasn't.

I really increased my activity level this last week, because I'm worried about losing more weight as time goes on. As you have less and less to lose, it becomes harder and harder. And I'm now at the weight where I was for a long time, so it's kind of an old set point. Although, my nutritionist said that there isn't exactly a set point for weight, but rather a place where you were comfortable and the circumstances around that, such as lack of exercise and eating habits, reinforced that weight range. So, that makes me happy. As long as I keep up with the exercise and nutrition, I should move past this point.

I've been working on getting more activity in, because I think that the more activity I can get into my daily life, the better off I'll be. So, this week my pedometer has been tracking the highest number of steps since I started the program. Most days I'm getting over 8,000 steps, and one day I was at over 15,000. I also started to do walking and jogging intervals on the Burke Gilman trail. I'll walk for awhile to warm up, then set a point in the distance to where I'll run, and then walk again for awhile. I do that over and over again. At first it was really hard. But over the course of the week, I've been increasing the distance by small amounts and it's starting to feel better.

On Friday, after my workout with J., L. and I went for a dance class and learned the basics of Cha Cha, Rhumba, and Tango. So, that was a good workout, too, and a lot of fun despite some muscle pain. I made the mistake of both running and playing Squash on Wednesday, so I got really sore. It was the most sore I've been since starting the program. Doing both together in one day was a little bit much for my body. So, my glutes, hamstrings, calves, and quads were screaming on Thursday and Friday. By Friday afternoon, I called Sanctuary Spa to schedule a deep tissue massage on Saturday, and it was wonderful. The massage therapist worked out a knot in my arm, and she really got a lot of the tension out of my legs where the pain was the worst. She also focused on my iliotibial (IT) band for awhile, which would make my trainer, J., very happy. He does this foam-rolling thing to work out my IT band, which apparently can get tight and unhappy and cause a lot of knee pain and other problems. This is why J. does a lot of exercises with me to strengthen my glutes. This was by far the most painful part of my massage, so she eased up a little on me when I thought I was going to jump out of my skin. But it's something I'll have to continue to work on, which is unfortunate because it doesn't feel good like most other parts of massage or stretching. In any case, after an hour and a half, I hopped off of the table and felt a ton better. I'm a little sore from the massage, but the tension is gone and I can move again without pain. I took it a little easy the rest of the day to kind of let my muscles recouperate from all of the stress. But on Sunday, it's back to the club or the trail for some more cardio to build up my endurance.