I Ate Four Dozen Eggs...

When you're on a pretty strict diet, food gets a little weird. Things that people on a normal, healthy diet might consider bland and icky, I get totally excited about. I am a little obsessed with my morning oatmeal, and I'm really starting to enjoy cucumbers with vinegar. On leg day I was so excited to have zucchini bread. It contains no flour and actually doesn't taste much like real zucchini bread - it's basically baked shredded zucchini, eggs, and protein powder - but oh my goodness - it is like a little piece of fake carby heaven to me. I take my sweet time with every bite. I made extra for my hubby, who was not nearly as enthused about it as I am. But he gets to eat burgers and burritos and pizzas so fake bread probably doesn't cut it.


I started counting how many egg whites I had last week and stopped once I realized I was over four dozen. I think I've already had five dozen this week. And I won't even go into the actual chicken... My friend Jen said I'm going to start clucking soon. 


I was making more egg whites tonight (scrambling them up with chopped spinach and green peppers) and got that Gaston song from Beauty and the Beast stuck in my head. The part that goes: 

When I was a lad
I ate four dozen eggs
Ev'ry morning to help me get large
And now that I'm grown
I eat five dozen eggs
So I'm roughly the size of a barge!

I've been singing it over and over. Fortunately I'm not the size of the barge. Muscles are hard to build. They need heavy weights and lots of food and lots of sleep and lots of time. 


I do think I'm as good as Gaston when it comes to tromping around wearing boots. But if I start to use antlers in all of my decorating, please get me some chocolate, stat.

Scuba Dooba Doo

So the hubby, who is Rescue Diver-certified, has been after me for years to get certified to dive. I'm not a big fan of actually swimming in a pool or putting my face underwater. Let me lounge around in a hot tub or float on a little inflatable raft with cupholders and I'm good. Plus it's not exactly a cheap sport. So I've managed to put off doing scuba certification for quite some time. 

I have been scuba diving twice now, but both times were "Discover Scuba" where you dive with an instructor who worries for you about your air and depth and whether your lungs will explode if you ascend too fast. So they were relatively stress-free dives and they were in Hawaii and Costa Rica, respectively, which had amazing sea life to compensate for the terror of taking myself 40 feet below the surface. So I survived and actually enjoyed them.

Then along came a Groupon. We've gotten to do some pretty cool things via Groupon, and lo and behold a certification class came up for over 50% off, checkout dives included. That deal, plus the much appreciated used equipment donation from the hubby's parents (both of whom are expert divers), kind of took away my excuses not to get certified. 

So tonight I found myself in my first Open Water certification class. The whole course is basically 15 hours classroom learning plus 5 checkout pool dives, followed by 4 checkout open water (lake or ocean) dives. Provided I can survive this week I'll do the lake dives when it warms up in the spring. In addition to 2 hours of classroom time tonight, there was a 200m swim and 10 minutes of treading water. 

I'm really terrible at treading water. I don't think I've done it since I took swimming lessons in elementary school. No one treads water for fun. Plus, in a pool, I do not float. I sink straight to the bottom. However with a variety of leans, floats, and kicks I managed to stay afloat for those ten minutes, which is all I needed to get to the next class. 

If I didn't know how much I liked seeing the reef life and how relaxing it is once you're in a dive, I honestly would say I would be totally freaked out. But the instructor is really good and I was promised there is no more treading water involved for the rest of the course. So I'll hang in there and let you know how it goes. 

Here's to a Strong 2012!

Happy New Year! 

So I decided to do another competition. It's not really a New Year's resolution since I actually started competition prep a couple of weeks ago. I kind of wish it was a NY resolution, because dieting through the holidays with family sucks. Not only is there a lot of delicious homemade food but everyone wants to go out to eat. Overall, though, I survived.

The holidays were also pretty darn crazy so I didn't get much time to post. I'm still working on sending out Christmas cards. It's cool, we're only on the 9th day of Christmas and Ukrainian Christmas is Jan. 7th so I figure I've got a few more days. :P But, I'm back to posting because it keeps me accountable! 

I'm really excited for this competition. The first one I did for the experience; this time I want to see just how far I can go. I have a fantastic trainer and I already have been making strength gains and getting smaller. It really helps to have a deadline for fitness goals - I see results faster when I am committed to a deadline - I do believe it has something to do with how committed you are to self-control. 

The tricky part this time is my husband is home (yay!). The only upside of a deployment is I only had to worry about cooking for me and stocking the house with only the food I could eat. This go-around I have to also worry about a hungry man who is interested in eating more than chicken and oatmeal all the time. I spent two hours in the grocery store trying to find him food that he would want and I wouldn't. This resulted in a lot of beef jerky, sandwich meat, bread, milk, and spaghetti-o's.  Sweet stuff wreaks is kryptonite for my willpower so it's best not to have it in the house. I really appreciate how supportive he is. He even helped me grill my chicken breasts and zucchini.

Best wishes to you and yours in the new year! Big goals, big dreams! 

When You Need to Hit Something

...hit the gym.

It's the most productive sort of hitting. And it generally doesn't result in broken knuckles or holes in walls; unless you're throwing your weights around in which case you shouldn't be in the gym at all. I always feel better after a good weight session and wearing cute workout clothes.

Since today was kind of a rough day, I decided to do back and biceps, which is my favorite workout. I think it's because I can go pretty heavy with my weights on my back and afterwards I feel stronger and I stand straighter. It was also an awesome night to be at the gym because people apparently do not workout on chilly December nights.

Anyways, I was working out and doing my thing and a guy in pretty decent shape asked to work in between my sets on the seated cable rows. He wasn't dripping with sweat and was polite about it so I said no problem. It was the best non-verbal compliment when he went to adjust the weights and then realized it was already as heavy as he wanted.

That's right, my weight gloves have pink rhinestone hearts (courtesy of F4L bootcamp) and I lift heavy. Girls with guns rock.

I feel much better now. And there was no hitting involved.

In Search of New Awesome Pants

I don't mind getting in better shape, and that muscles actually make you smaller...but I am down to one pair of jeans that will stay up on their own free will. It makes it very hard to put on your awesome pants when you don't have any.

So I went on a mission to find a new pair of awesome pants.

The challenge: dark denim, no saggy bottom, no pancake butts, no unfortunate wrinkles, not overly tight but tight enough to work with my (17 pairs of (I might have a problem)) boots, no holes (work appropriate), waist height appropriate, survive the sit/squat/bend-over test, loose enough on my thighs but tight enough at my waist, and good quality.

I failed miserably.

I am completely bamboozled by womens' pants sizing. Some size 6s were too big and some 8s to small. I tried juniors and misses, stretch and non-stretch, bootcut and skinny. You'd think being a smaller size would mean shopping for clothes is more fun... but it was an exhausting and frustrating experience.  

There was also an unfortunate incident in one dressing room where the "skinny" part of the skinny jeans got stuck on my calf muscle. It's a good thing I do yoga because that took some serious effort to get off. I was worried I'd have to hobble out with a pair of jeans around my calves and ask for help...or scissors. Yet ironically that pair looked good on the upper half of my legs. So apparently you can have quads but not calves.

I have tried on 35 pairs of jeans in the last week. I bought one pair. It was #25 of the Great Jeans Try-On of 2011. I wore that pair today, and I'm irked because by the end of the day they had stretched out and I had to walk around the store holding them up with my thumbs in the belt loops!!! The whole point of getting new jeans was to get a pair that wouldn't fall off. Erg.

If I had more pumpkin pie I would eat it to curb my frustration. And make my old awesome pants fit. But I don't and I won't. And I won't give up just yet...after all, there are 17 pairs of boots in my closet that need wearing...

My Nutrition Experiment

I've enjoyed eating "normally" again...but I've noticed something. My tummy hurts. All the time. 

As a result, I'm conducting two experiments on myself.

The first one is tracking my body's reaction to foods as I try them again. This is how the doctor figured out I'm allergic to Splenda (nasty chemical stuff anyway) but since I've eaten pretty darn clean for the last few months I'm noticing a lot of reactions upon reintroducing those old foods. Wheat seems to be the worst for me - a combination of stomach pain and bloating. And what woman likes that? 

So far on my bad list: 

• Wheat bran and flour - I baked muffins this week. It was not good.
• Pizza - same as the muffins
• Mike & Ike's - I broke out in a rash
• Bread (I'm sad that the delicious pumpkin bread did not like me as much as I liked it)

Maybe I reacted this way before I started dieting for the competition - I just ate it so regularly that I thought it was normal to feel that way. Actually now that I think about it, I know I had the same reactions before. They're just markedly stronger now. 

 

On the plus side peanut M&Ms seem to be ok. As do rice cakes and peanut butter and my morning oatmeal. Phew.

The second experiment is carb cycling. This article kind of gives you an overview: Bodybuilding.com Carb Cycling. Basically you have high, low, and no carb days each week. As the article says, we are always "battling homeostasis" and cycling carbs keeps your body guessing. I'm kind of at a sticking point so I know I need to do something different. 

My diet is going to look something like this: 

• Monday/Thursday = No carb (green veggies only)
• Tuesday/Friday/Sunday = Low carb 
• Wednesday/Saturday = High carb 
• Every day must have 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight

Of course this week I'm going to make Thanksgiving a high carb day. What I like about this cycling idea is it doesn't cut out any main food groups for a long period of time. I think variety is important in your diet. In addition, while I know my body responds better to low carb diets but that can get mentally exhausting after a long period, so knowing that I'll have a high carb day soon (instead of 3 months from now) should make it easier to stick with the plan! 

So those are my experiments in a nutshell (good thing nuts are ok in small amounts!). Applied science is fun! 

How to Win a Plank Off

I've woken up every day since Monday thinking it's Friday...I needed a break. So tonight was yoga time! I broke out my P90X Yoga dvd, which is one of my all-time favorite workouts and rolled my mat out in the living room.

Now, don't think yoga is just sitting with your legs cross-legged and meditating. There are different types of yoga. Hatha is the gentle kind that most people think of as yoga. Then there's Bikram, which is done in 90 degree rooms. I tried a Hatha class in college once but it wasn't for me. I spent the entire hour thinking about how I wasn't getting a decent workout and about everything else I had to do. But that's my fault. I have a hard time sitting still. My favorite kind is "power yoga" which is a series of poses that require a great deal of strength and balance. It's fast enough to keep me from getting bored, and yet still relaxing. You will notice your results pretty quickly if you're doing it regularly - and I love to do it after a kickboxing class - get those muscles warm and then stretch them out.

Dogs...demonstrating Downward Dog and Upward Dog

It is NOT girly at all - if you're doing it right, you'll break a sweat. Even my husband will do it with me. I also believe it contributed to my win in last week's bootcamp plank-off over Jose. If you can do a series of power yoga poses for an hour, you can do a 5 minute plank.

Sorry, had to pop that picture in there for Jose. I've been giving him a hard time all week. LOL.

Try to hold the plank for 5 minutes. It's hard. My arms were shaking so hard for an hour afterward I think I scared the checkout girl at the grocery store. Think of your body as a board (or a plank really, hence the name), nice and straight. Squeeze your glutes and make sure your bum's not sticking up in the air (that's dolphin pose, not plank). If you can't do it on your toes, use your knees, but again, you should be super straight from your shoulders to your knees. It's an amazing total body exercise- arms, back, abs, butt, quads, calves...and a lot of it is mental strength to hold it! Do it during one commercial break a day.

Namaste and plank away. :)