Week 5 Check in

This week flew by before I knew it, and I'm late getting my update in! Oh noes! Not the end of the world actually, though I would like to get better about posting on time. I've been spending about three hours per post getting everything together, including the pics. It doesn't seem like it should take that long, but I'm picky about my writing. I like to entertain people, whether that's singing, crracking jokes, or writing this little blog. Hopefully, I'm doing my job reasonably well, and you keep coming back. I'll keep writing either way, but it's always nice to get a little feedback to know that somebody out there is following my posts. =)



I lost one more pound, (slow AGAIN, but progress) and I feel like I'm starting to get back into my routine. I did not do well at all on my sleep goal, however. Seems like I just couldn't get myself to bed at a reasonable hour, and when I did, the sleep I did manage to get was poor quality. Weird upsetting dreams and waking with headaches. Not so fun. I'm going to try to do better this week. 

I got to the gym  four days this week, and Friday night I got my best workout stats yet. It may not seem like much, but I'm pretty proud of it. When I first went back to the gym in December, this is what my stats looked like:



That's a 30 minute mile, and a low incline.



After two months, and a hard push Friday night to see what I could do, I did this:

That's almost a 20 minute mile, and I climed 4x as many feet.

I may not exactly be a star athlete, but that's better than I've done in a long time. It feels good to be making progress, and I've been increasing my intensity gradually. I learned my lesson about what happens when you push too hard too fast on more than one occasion, and I'm not looking for a repeat. Unfortunately, I've still got a fair amount of foot pain after my workouts, which isn't a problem I've had in the past, and it doesn't seem to matter which pair of sneakers I wear. I'm keeping an eye on it, and stretching throughout the day.

I think now that I've gotten my cardiovascular fitness up a few notches I'll start incorporating the eliptical crosstrainer. I've read that if you do the same workout all the time, your weight loss progress can slow because your muscles get too used to the activity. So, this week I've made a point to up my intensity on both the speed and the incline. I'm going to shoot for at least one day a week on the eliptical, even if it's not the full hour I do on the treadmill. I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet!

Eventually I'll need to start adding some weights, but to be honest... I hate weight training. I know it's good for me, helps create more lean muscle mass, helps boost your metabolism, blah blah blah... but I hate it. No two ways about it. Part of that is that I'm a little bit intimidated by the weight machines, but more than that, I just hate the activity. When I'm doing cardio, I can get in my zone, hit a stride and just GO. You can't do that with weights. Or at least I can't. It feels difficult and unnatural. So for now, I'm pretending that I don't know I should also be weight training. It can be our little secret... right? 






Weeks down: 5

Weeks to go: 47

Starting weight: 271.5 lbs

Current weight: 266 lbs

This week's loss: 1 lbs

2012 weight loss: 5.5 lb

2012 goal: 219.5 lbs

Starting BMI 40.00

Current BMI 39.3

Started WW on 11/28, @ 281.5 lbs 

Total loss: 15.5 lbs