Get Hawt – Week 3

This week, I decided to do sort of a live blog each day. People seemed to like it when I did this during my training for The 3 Day.

Sunday: I ate decent. Drank lots of water. Went to the gym where I walked for about 45 minutes, doing intervals of 1 -18.5% incline. I upped my speed to 3.3. Then, I did some bicep and tricep work, chest press, and lat pull downs both in front and behind my back. I came home and had a fruit/yogurt smoothie. Recipe? Ice, OJ, banana, strawberries, and 1/4 cup or so of yogurt. It didn’t quite tide me over, even though I had 2 huge glasses. I made 2 pieces of cinnamon/raisin toast. I think I may have forgotten to eat dinner tonight, which would explain why I was so hungry. Tonight, I made my lunch and dinner for tomorrow – left over fried rice, and left over ravioli from Saturday night’s dinner at the Olive Garden. I also put snap peas in a baggie, threw in a yogurt, and a container of raspberries.

Monday: I worked from 8:30 am to 8 pm. Didn’t do any walking or anything. I ate ok, though probably more fat/grease was included than should have been – fried rice left-overs for lunch, also snap peas, and raspberries. For dinner, left over ravioli, more raspberries, a breadstick, and the rest of the snap peas. My water consumption was not awesome, but I did have some. I also drank one can of pop over my self-imposed limit. The last one was cracked open much later at night than it should have been… I’m a bit concerned about how quality my sleep will be. Tomorrow, to the gym! I also did 60 standard form crunches for the initial test for the 200 Situps Program my accountability partner Jen McCown (@MidnightDBA) suggested.

Tuesday: Today was an up and down sort of day with my #gethawt challenge. I woke up to discover a 2 lb weight gain again. That put me right back at square one. As the day went on, I decided to try not to get my panties in a bundle over the daily ups and downs. I’m trying to just focus on the lower weight days, and ignore the gains (as long as they aren’t all gains). In the afternoon, I shoveled for an hour. 1 1/2-2 inches of snow for an hour takes some muscle, my upper body was achy by the end. I ate so-so. After dropping Grace off at dance, I went to the gym, where I walked on a different style treadmill (that didn’t have a magnetic key at belly height that I could knock down). I walked at random intervals (Level 1) at 3.3 MPH. The first half hour seemed really easy, so I upped the level to level 5, then 6, to get the incline at a challenging place. Next time, I think I’ll try same speed, level 10. Also ready to move up a notch in speed, but don’t want to change too much at the same time.

Wednesday: Woke up to a new low weight since we started this blog party. I worked from 8:30 – 8 pm again. It wasn’t a horrible day outside, but there was some fresh snow, and my stomach didn’t agree with something I ate. I think it was the mandarin oranges for snack, and then yogurt for lunch. I’m thinking those two don’t mix well in the stomach, when eaten too close together. No walking, no situps, but we’re all allowed a free day once in a while! 😉

Thursday: I went to bed early, and actually slept somewhat decent last night. I was up 1 lb from yesterday, but still down overall. I can handle that! I did Week 1, Day 1 of the 200 Situps challenge. That meant I did a set of 15, then 18, then 10, then 10 crunches. Last, I was supposed to do as many as I could to wrap up the day. I did 30 (for a total of 83). Not bad for today. I took Duke out for a 2.5 mile walk. It started out feeling a bit chilly out, but a mile in, I was glad I opted for the fleece jacket and light gloves. A lot of snow is melting today, so my feet got pretty wet. I’m wondering if other people who live in climates like MN have a certain pair of shoes they were for snowy/wet conditions, and one for dry? Or maybe one pair for indoor, one for outside?

Friday: Weighed myself today, and was at the same weight as yesterday. That’s 3 days in a row of being under 150. There I said it, the weight that had me disgusted to look at. I had a sick daughter home today, and it was crappy weather outside. I did manage to get my crunches in today. I did 15, then 18, then 15, then 15, then 25, for a total of 88.

Challenge: This week, we were asked to blog about tools we use. I have downloaded the Noom app for my android phone. I searched for pedometers in the android market, then read the reviews on several. This one, and the family of apps it is a part of, had great reviews. This one is free, but does have a “pro” service you can pay for. I only have the free service, but it does exactly what I want it to:

*I can start a workout, and it will map my walk. While I’m walking, it plays the music loaded on my phone. I didn’t have any before, but now I’ve loaded Lady Gaga, and it keeps me trucking along at a pretty good pace. About every 2 minutes, it will tell me how far I’ve gone, and the amount of time I’ve been walking. Alternating with that, it tells me my speed.
*You can enter about 25 different types of exercises from yard work to yoga to treadmill walking under the “Log previous” button in the logbook. The only thing I don’t like, is that there isn’t really a way to account for things like incline changes on a treadmill walk, and that you can’t just enter the speed you walked at. You only can enter the intensity level, amount of time, and distance walked on the treadmill. I just ignore the whole calorie counter part because of that. I don’t really count that calories in what I eat anyway, so that doesn’t bother me.
*You can track your weight, and it will graph your progress.
*There are daily challenges you can earn points for completing. I’m not sure what the points are for, but you can earn them. Often, they tend to include weighing in, tracking something you ate, reading an article, or completing a challenge (such as replacing a pop with something without sugar – like water).
*For people who like to track their food and calories, it has options for that.
*At a glance, (in the status bar on your phone), you can see how many calories you’ve burned in the last 7 days. It also shows what days you have logged some sort of exercise, and what type of exercise it was.
*Features I have not played with at all (thus, don’t know much about) include “Coach” and “Forums.”
*You can also create your own profile, which I haven’t bothered to do either.

I have begun following the 200 Situps Program. Even though it is called 200 situps, it actually refers to crunches. I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal, since I tend to do close to 100 crunches fairly often. What I do though, is move my legs into different positions to work all different ab groups. By working on this program, I realized that it is much more difficult to do that many when you are using all the same muscle groups. Ouch! I have not purchased the phone app, as I find the website frustrating to use. When I first tried to set up my profile, it kept freezing up. A couple days later, it worked, and I was able to enter my initial test, and the Week 1, Day 1 total. Week 1, Day 2, I was not able to enter my totals. I think here on out, I will just follow the recommended numbers without worrying about tracking it.

Other tools I sometimes use is the Your Shape Personal Fitness game on the XBox. Admittedly, I haven’t spent much time with this yet, but I plan to.

I also have hand weights, exercise bands, and a few videos that I have used in the past, and may pull out again. I have used the exercise bands to work my arms a bit, but don’t have much experience, so I don’t really know what to do with it. My mom gave me some suggestions, but I haven’t checked them out yet either.

For now, I’m feeling good about seeing that I’m doing at least something pretty much every day. Having a partner helps push me when I need it!