Week 13 recap

I lost 3 more pounds this week, which puts me at a total of 34 pounds lost. I was actually a bit surprised because I kind of took it easier last week while letting my IT band recover from the strain and massage work from the previous week. I kept icing it and took some Ibuprofin to help with the pain. By today, it's feeling pretty good. I have to remember that I need to work in increments and not just increase all of my activity at once because I get excited about doing all kinds of things. Having done squash, running, and dancing all in one week was a little bit much in addition to my regular workouts with J. But, it's getting better now.

I hope to start up with the running again next week. I'm doing squash again today, so that should be fun. I'm sure my arm will hurt all weekend again. That squash ball sure needs a lot of arm power to get around. Also, I'm not the best with hand-eye coordination, so I spend a lot of time thinking that I'm going to make contact with the ball while it just slips right past me. That always looks awesome. I hope no one watches our games or they'd be laughing hysterically.

On the strength training front, the "scary" room isn't so scary anymore. Somehow, having a trainer there making you do the ridiculous-looking exercises makes me feel like less of a loser around all of the huge, serious strength trainers in there. It's that sort of mentality that's like, "he's the one who cooked this whole idea up...I'm just doing it." So, I feel like less of an ass in front of everyone.

I've been using a machine that assists you with doing dips and pull ups, since I'm not quite strong enough to do it all on my own yet. It's incredibly hard, but it feels really good to be getting stronger each time. I've also been doing push ups and pull ups with the help of a bar that you can move up and down to either make the movements a little harder or easier. I can't wait until the day that I'll actually be able to do sets of push ups on the ground and do dips and pull ups with my full weight.

J. has also been mixing things up by adding things like a medicine ball, the stability ball, and the bosu ball to throw off my coordination completely. There have been a couple of funny moments recently with the bosu ball as I just kind of slide off because I literally can't hold this one position the whole time that I'm doing the exercise.

Also, J. has been adding a lot of pyramid rep exercises to really kill me. In my last session, he had me stand on the ball of one foot on the edge of a platform and wrap the other foot behind my standing leg. Then I had to pump my foot up and down off of the platform seven times and then rest for seven seconds...then six reps and six second rest, then five, four, three, two, and one. My legs were on fire by the end of this particular exercise. I was semi-amazed that I didn't have horrible leg cramps that night, since I tend to get them easily, but J. did help me stretch out pretty well after that routine.

This week, on the diet front, I got back whole grain cereals and even some popcorn. You'd be amazed at how small a serving of cereal actually is. I found Grape Nuts, which I used to really enjoy, and the serving is a 1/2 a cup. Granted, Grape Nuts is a very dense cereal, so that goes a long way. But I actually need to do 1/4 of a cup if I want to be able to have another serving of whole grains sometime later in the day. So, I plan on mixing it in with my Greek Yogurt and berries. Yummmmm.

Today, I pulled out a pair of jeans that I have been holding onto for some time...and they fit. I was ecstatic. They slid right on and zipped right up without a problem. What an awesome feeling. Pretty soon, I'm going to really need to get some new clothes because what I have won't hold out too much longer.