Okay, okay.

I've fallen off the boat.  Last month I thought I had achieved a certain life/health/body condition that might give me cause to slow down on the heavy lifting, but I didn't.  And it's been hard getting back on that wagon now that I'm struggling with insomnia.  I also found out I am gluten-intolerant, so I've been recovering from a decidedly gross-and-horrible month of suffering (August).  And now I'm about to move across the country, which is going to entail a non-stop, two-day drive across America with my husband and my cats.

Yip.

But I'm here, really.  And I haven't buried the book away to collect dust somewhere--it's out on my desk to remind me every time I sit down that I'm going to do this thing, at some point.

I've also been quite indecisive about my goals.  I don't know if I should work largely on reducing my overall weight with a side of body blubber first, and THEN do the book.....or do the book and THEN focus on shedding the jiggle jelly covering my frame.

LE FREAKING SIGH.

I wish I had someone to answer these questions for me.

I'm coming back, I promise!

Just give me a few more days to test something.  If things turn out as predicted, I'll be back next week.  For real!

Laziness

It's Wednesday and I still haven't done my A workout for the week.  Instead I have been making and eating homemade pudding.

Hey, it's protein!

Workout tonight.  I have been making good use of my time.

B workout and body fat!

Wow!  Yesterday's B workout totally kicked my tooshola.  My back and booty are so super sore today, but I am really glad--I was worrying that I wasn't working as hard on my B workouts as I have been on my A workouts.  Yesterday really helped knock that idea out the window.

WTF evaporated

Yesterday's freak out was either the result of reading the scale without my glasses, or my body just dropped six pounds overnight.  Today, I stepped on the scale and saw 213.8...exactly six pounds down from yesterday.  Three's and nine's look kind of similar, huh?  3....9...

Anyway.  I'm POSITIVE I saw 219 yesterday, which means maybe all the peeing I did yesterday was a side effect of dumping extra water weight.

Erik has gone to pick up a deliciously modified version of one of our favorite take-outs...a cafe rio salad with double portions of shredded roast beef, no rice, and double beans.  Extras on all the veggies, topped off with cilantro-lime vinaigrette.  These things are huge, like pie plate filled to overflowing huge, so we are going to go splitsies on it.  Curiosity also got the best of me, so I had half of one of the bison hot dogs I bought at the store.  They are yummy!  I like that they are uncured and nitrate free.

Going to do my B workout in a few hours.  Go hard or go home.

And an extra WTF?

So I weighed myself today against my better judgement, and since starting New Rules I have packed on 10 lbs in under three weeks.  Seriously?  What is this crap?  Is this just typical water-weight gain from intracellular water retention in my muskols?  Like, I'm freaking out.

Woops on the "more tomorrow" bit

So, I meant to post this yesterday but I didn't.

The level of my soreness isn't as bad as it was when I first started.  I wonder if this means I'm still not pushing hard enough (I felt totally whomped after my workout, in a good way) or is my body adjusting already?

Le sigh.

But I am so tired.
Okay, take a nap...but zen fire zee missile!

Finished my third A workout today.  More tomorrow...

/snore.

Stupid holiday.

So, I didn't realize that my apartment gym would be closed Friday and Saturday for some stupid state holiday.  They opened the pool, but they couldn't open the gym.  Dummbb.  I did my B workout anyway, as much of it as I could at least, and was rewarded with sore butt cheeks for the remainder of the weekend.

I'm a little pissed because I had gone and set all these great goals for myself.  I did sweat out two full sets of lunges though!  I did my crunches, I did my shoulder dumbbell presses...  I did NOT get to do my deadlifts or my wide grip lat pull downs.  Oh well.

This week my reps reduce from 15 to 12.  I stupidly didn't think about this at all when I was setting goals for my A workout last week, so I think I need to do a little modifying.

• Let's try starting squats at 75 lbs. 
• I still want to do 45° push up variation, and maybe next week I'll try 30°.
• Let's up seated row weight load to 50 lbs.
• I want to hold at least a 5 lbs dumbbell in each hand while doing my step ups.
• Prone jack knife increases to 10 reps, so I will just keep working on those.

So duh...

I can't go around making all these fab goals for my A workouts and leave my B workouts to random.  I want to feel as confident that I've worked hard when I finish my second workout of the week as I do on my first.

Eff you, prone jack knife!

I got ambitious and decided to go ahead and do my workout without Erik.  I pushed myself hard, but not so hard that I feel like I won't be able to push harder next time.  My arms, however, are so jello-y that typing is pretty difficult because they are shaking so much....

Rage, rage, calm...and other fun stuff

BLAARRRRRR.  I stepped on my scale this morning and I'm sitting (not-so) pretty at nearly 216 lbs.  The 190 lbs I was chilling at a few months ago seems so far away now....

Week two, bring it on!

Last week's B workout didn't leave me as sore as I thought it would, but I still spent the weekend resting with the guy and my cats, eating the same crockpot dish and soda bread, watching old Naruto episodes.  My back and legs were pretty tight, so I included some activities that got my muscles warm so I could stretch lightly.  I feel good, but the difference between this workout and my first makes me wonder if I didn't push hard enough.  Or maybe, the A workout just exploits the parts of my body that are weaker?  I guess I'll find out tomorrow--I'm doing my second A workout tonight.

Now that I can move again...

...it must be time to do my second workout.  Yippee!  How bad did my first workout beat me??

Well for starters, my butt and hams were SO sore.  HOW SORE?  So sore I half-sat, half-fell onto the toilet and then had to wince because the cold, hard seat hurt my tenders.  My arms, shoulders, and chest/armpits burned and ached the longest (thanks, push ups!), and my traps were sore from my neck all the way down between my shoulder blades.  My abs hurt.  EVERYTHING HURT.  For two days, I whimpered and slept and tried to drink water.

Really, the whole experience wouldn't have been so bad if my mattress wasn't on the FLOOR in the living room (because that is the only cool room in my apartment), meaning I had to climb up off the floor every time I got up...and then collapse onto the bed to lay down.

I guess yesterday I could have worked out, but I was tired and still a little sore (who am I kidding, my back and triceps are STILL sore).  Tonight I get to do a lovely little mixture of dead lifts, shoulder presses, lunges, more crunches, and lat pull downs.

So in other words...I'll be back as soon as I can type again.

Step one, taken!

So, while I'm still fresh in my sweat I thought I would go ahead and jot down my thoughts about my first workout.  Ever see those Jell-O commercials with the people wiggling out the brand?  Yeah...that's me right now.  I even had my post workout shake--a recipe from the book (they were kind enough to include blender-less options for people like me) that didn't taste too bad and fulled me right up.
Stage One workouts follow the pattern of one "whole body" exercise followed by two alternating sets of two exercises that target upper, lower, or mid body.  My upper arms and legs and butt are pretty wiggly, bu I also feel wobbly in parts of my body I wasn't directly using...  Basically, I feel like my muskols are all being tossed around in a shake'n'bake bag.
Overall, I am pretty pleased with myself.  I feel like I was testing out weight loads today.  My first sets were usually lighter, and on most exercises I increased my weight for the second set.  Next time, I will start with the weight I used in the second set if it was challenging enough, or add weight to that number.  There were a couple exercises I did (step ups and push ups) where I couldn't do 15 reps in the second set, but I pumped out 12.  That's not too bad, right?
The only thing I pretty much failed were the prone jackknifes on the swiss ball.  Maybe my ball is too big for me to do those, maybe my core just isn't strong enough to stabilize me on that thing, I'm not sure what my deal is.  I tried, kept falling off, and switched to swiss ball crunches instead.  I took those nice and slow and my gut is burning something awful..
But I WILL figure out how to finish the prone jackknifes before this stage is over!

Can't wait to see how I feel tomorrow...

This just in: Washing my hair was a pain in the A.  Holding my arms up and scrubbing my scalp was so tiring...

Lift like a man, look like a goddess.....

...the promise is printed on the front cover in bold, lavender letters.

Of course frumpy-dumpy me wants to look like a goddess, so I purchased the book after hearing lots of great feedback from women who tried Lou's The New Rules of Lifting (dude version).  For this chick guide, Lou Schuler teamed up again with Alwyn Cosgrove (the mind behind the actual program) and newcomer Cassandra Forsythe, M.S. (the mind behind the diet plan) to give ladies the attention they deserve in the heavy-lifting circle.
New Rules... takes women through seven stages (including an optional stage thrown in to increase strength to weight ratio and prepare chicks for unassisted pull ups...I excite!) of progressing intensity, all with the goal of increasing power and strength.  The diet plan is straightforward--eat healthy, real food to power your body for the beastly workouts--and cutting calories to speed up weight loss is discouraged.
I've read through the book a couple times and it's as entertaining as it is informative.  I found myself laughing and learning (and fretting the day I would actually start this butt-kick-fest) throughout the read.  I almost feel like I need to have a huge poster printed with the 20 New Rules and hang it everywhere I go, lest I fall back into the mindset fuzzy-pink-hand-weight pushers want to keep me in.
And well, now the time has come.  I've set many start dates that have come and passed since buying the book and every time I had an excuse.  This time, I can't think of any good excuse to reason myself out of starting (I was going to throw the "I'm too fat and weak" card but it just didn't make sense), so I'm digging in and trying to mentally prepare myself as much as possible.  I have everything ready for my meet-and-greet with the squat rack tonight...

..I hope it likes me.  Wish me luck.