2015 Health and Fitness Challenge!

[INTJMom]

I have NOT done well for the last 2 weeks!
But I did my full body workout this morning after fighting with my computer for a half hour to play the DVD.

 

[kyuuei]

I feel you [MENTION=1125]INTJMom[/MENTION] I have, halfway through the month, only completed 6 work outs out of 16 days. not really the way to get it done. I'm still struggling with having an environment where no one around works out but me. It's a little embarrassing to complete work outs while my boyfriend just hangs out on the couch. Not so embarrassing that I won't do it.. but it's got that "I don't feel like driving to the gym" vibe.

So one way I'm going to fix that is I'm going to start running on the road more. It's a bit dangerous to run out here, but I'm going to do it after work.. I'll bring some clothes, change after I get off of shift, and run downtown since I'm already there and my car is there. I'll go home, do some strength training for 15-20 minutes and stretch out real good while dinner cooks in the oven. I think running is what I need right now.

I've also thought about joining the fitness facility here at the hospital and going after work to it 1-2 times a week because apparently they have physical therapists there and I might could use them for my rehab on my legs. I could also use the facility to do my youtube work outs since they'll have free wifi and more access to weight machines than I have here at the house. I could use the treadmills to run whenever it is too cold or raining too. Unfortunately they don't have a pool which would be ideal. Still on the chopping block. One thing at a time. Let's see if I keep up with working out after work in the first place.

 

[INTJMom]

Speaking of a pool, I did a little exercise in my daughter's pool on Monday and I've been sore for 3 days!!

 

[Kas]

I thought that if I post in here it may motivate me

I didn't exercise during one month so my plan isn't going very well, but... Now I run again. For now 2,5 miles in about 21 minutes, but I hope that my time will be better next week (19-20minutes). Then I'm going to try running 3 miles.

 

[INTJMom]

I thought that if I post in here it may motivate me

I didn't exercise during one month so my plan isn't going very well, but... Now I run again. For now 2,5 miles in about 21 minutes, but I hope that my time will be better next week (19-20minutes). Then I'm going to try running 3 miles.

Let us know how you do!

 

[INTJMom]

Forgot to post yesterday.
I did my full body workouts on Wed and Sun
but I didn't do any of the 150 minutes per week that I need to start doing.
Well, I got on the exercise bike for one minute.

 

[kyuuei]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/2...k-8-glasses-of-water-a-day.html?referrer&_r=0

A pretty good article pertaining to water consumption and necessities. I've been particularly interested in this lately, as I noticed I seem to function best with about 4-5 cups of water plus 2-3 cups of something non sugary like milk or tea.

 

[Ivy]

Kids started school this morning, so it's back to routine for me. Summer started strong but of course I lost all focus about halfway through, and then this past week on vacation I just threw moderation out the window. It was fun but I'm actually craving the structure of the school year now. Re-starting tracking today. Back to the gym on Wednesday.

 

[kyuuei]

I have a slow uphill in front of my house calling my name. I almost got to the farm last time. Today I think I'll try aiming for the farm road itself. It's 1.3 miles one way to get to the fire station. I'm working on running as much as I can, and walking/running the rest of the uphill, then walking back... at least until I can run the whole length, then I'll work on the way back. 2.6 miles will put me near my 3 mile resolution goal, so if I can make some real progress towards that I'll be pretty happy.

I cooked some jambalaya the other day to eat throughout the work week.. and I'm going to slow cook some apple-cinnamon-zucchini-carrot oatmeal to eat through the rest of the week for breakfast. Tonight I am going to be frying up some chicken nuggets because we haven't had that in quite some time served with a salad and some carrots.

 

[INTJMom]

I did my 2 full body work-outs this week...except Wednesday I left out the abs because I was starving and it was late.
I have to remember not to make appointments on Wednesday after work, so I can go straight home and exercise.
I have been eating too many calories.

 

[kyuuei]

I tried on my old scrubs from school and it turns out, surprise surprise, they don't fit in the legs at all. They were loose and comfy once, now they're definitely tight and uncomfortable to wear. I gave them to my boyfriend. :/ I used to walk SO much more in Houston than I do here. My work was a 30 minute walk away, and school was the same.. so either day I had a minimum of 30 minutes of walking one way from where I parked. Here? I park at the place I work and go right in. I was thinking maybe I could get a small bike that fits in my car and ride it into work from the shuttle, but it's going to be worse and worse weather coming up soon... Besides making the time for walking for the sake of it, I dunno what I'm going to do.

August totals: 24 NOPE meals (bad for me, over ate, under ate or didn't eat, etc.), 30 MEH meals (they were healthy but I might have over ate anyways, or they were a mix of healthy ingredients prepared in unhealthier ways, etc.), and 89 YUP meals (healthy! and in sufficient quantities!) with 14 unrecorded meals (although two of those are MEH and NOPE.. I couldn't remember what I ate at the time of recording, but I remembered categorizing them in my head while eating them) soooo out of 155 meals/hydration recordings 57% were healthy, and 76% of them were not totally unhealthy, meaning I eat unhealthy about 15% of the time. Ish. Not bad, and a big gap improvement over July.

Exercising? HAH!! What exercising?! I didn't do it! 10 exercise days in 31, that's less than 1 out of 3 days.

I did notice myself not necessarily gaining anymore weight from last month's woes, so that's good, but I haven't lost it because I'm not exercising enough to lose it.

I went ahead and took the plunge and spent $10 (OMG!) on a Fitness Blender 8 week program. So far I'm pretty happy I did that, even yesterday was a video I've done before for free on youtube. I did day 2 yesterday (I don't care about the fitness test, that isn't my motivation for this) so I've been running and I've been doing this as of yesterday. I think if I carry a snack with me to eat immediately after work I can use that to tie me over until after my workouts. Run, rest a bit, exercise, and then eat a nice dinner and shower.. and that's about all I'll have time to do on my work days. But luckily I only have three work days a week, so the rest of the time will be cake. Running is going well! Made it to the stop sign, and I'm trying to map out a 2 mile trail so that I can walk the whole way back instead of running the whole distance and then being home right away.

I cooked some pretty healthy Jambalaya-style soup packed with veggies and different types of protein, and I made a tiramisu-style oatmeal that'll last me the next 4 days with some beautiful mascarpone cheese and decaf coffee, and I added bananas and carrots to it to bulk it up. I had some leftover meat stuffs to use to make some sloppy joes.. the whole thing probably costed me about $20 and it's 3 meals over the course of the next 5 days. Pretty awesome! Almost a whole week for $20.

I really do want to get back into green smoothies, I do believe in those things.. but the blender we have isn't the best, and more importantly it is LOUD.. I just don't feel like hearing it first thing in the morning. I saw a kickstarter for some shaker-jar-style smoothies, and I thought "You know, that might be easy to make in batches someday.." so if I get a deep freezer I'm going to experiment with that.

Going to be making a lot more soups and stuffed-vegetables and pasta-with-veggie-sauce-over-them dishes as that seems to be the easiest thing I can do for myself food-wise right now that saves me the time I need. I have cereal to back me up for breakfast if I get too lazy for oatmeal, but I'm determined to eat all of those oats down. I just need a couple trail mix blends for snacks that'll keep me from being hungry between breakfast and lunch and after work. I was thinking making a big bag of wasabi-flavored snacks... Wasabi-coated almonds and wasabi peas + some walnuts and pistachios and dried fruit. A small handful of those might do it.

Highly recommend free fitnessblender videos on youtube. That's all for now folks!

 

[INTJMom]

Thanks for posting.

I don't have one, but someone highly recommended a "Bullet" blender to my son last week. Maybe that would be more quiet for you?
He has a smoothie every day.

I did my Wednesday and Sunday exercises. I've got my tv functioning again so I can exercise in my living room again.
I have not been doing the 150 minutes per week of moderate aerobic exercise I know I'm supposed to do.
Every time I think of getting on the exercise bike, I think of the pain in my groin area and it stops me, but I need to try anyway.
Maybe if I stretch beforehand it won't hurt.

 

[chubber]

I have the nutri bullet, highly recommended. It makes it so smooth, the texture like a milkshake when you expect chunkies or granular content. The new model of the ninja brand apparently caught up and is on par with the nutri bullet, perhaps even maybe slightly better now? Hard to tell. I'm going with the nutri bullet and they already worked out all the kinks when it comes to durability.

 

[Gizmo]

I hate people, and roid monkeys even more so. That being said you'll never see me set foot in a gym, and yet I've remained around 10% body fat for the past three years thanks to Parkour, dancing, and martial arts. I find these things intriguing, and that creates room for motivation and progression.

 

[kyuuei]

[MENTION=20044]chubber[/MENTION] Omg my parents have a nutribullet and I LOVED it. It also made amazing mousse instantly. I probably used it on a daily basis. We have a crappy little blender that gets the job done for soups and stuff but it isn't near nutribullet quality.

Week 2 of my 8 week challenge starts today and I've been doing pretty strong in it. I love fitnessblender and they posted a video today that they'd be posting more videos this month which made me super excited!

 

[INTJMom]

I hate people, and roid monkeys even more so. That being said you'll never see me set foot in a gym, and yet I've remained around 10% body fat for the past three years thanks to Parkour, dancing, and martial arts. I find these things intriguing, and that creates room for motivation and progression.

Good for you!

My 21 year old son has been doing parkour for over 5 years. He loves it!

 

[INTJMom]

I have the nutri bullet, highly recommended. It makes it so smooth, the texture like a milkshake when you expect chunkies or granular content. The new model of the ninja brand apparently caught up and is on par with the nutri bullet, perhaps even maybe slightly better now? Hard to tell. I'm going with the nutri bullet and they already worked out all the kinks when it comes to durability.

I just saw the ninja on sale $20 off at Target for $79.99.

 

[chubber]

I just saw the ninja on sale $20 off at Target for $79.99.

At the time, when I did my research and bought my Nutri Bullet. I did it based on a video like this one:

I waited a bit to collect a bit more information and later this one came out.

Now, when I say the Ninja might be better, it's because of this specific model Nutri Ninja mentioned in the last video. The devil is in the details. You can see that Ninja Professional/Nutri copied the Nutri Bullet. So one can see that the concept of the Nutri Bullet is what is good here.

However, Ninja is full of marketing hype. So I would look at (critical) customer feedback and returns. The main reason for me as to why I couldn't buy Nutri Ninja, was because I couldn't find it in my country. Nutri Bullet has great support here. So if something happens I know where to take it.

 

[INTJMom]

I did my exercises this past Sunday and Wednesday I only did half.
I have been eating too much and too much fat.

 

[kyuuei]

Today marks 2 weeks of my 8 week fitness blender challenge, and I have to say I feel pretty good moving around daily. I still haven't mustered up the courage of going out running again. (Oh yeah, btw, I went running and had a horrible allergic reaction that sent me to the ER.. Nothing serious happened, I took antinflammatories + antihistamines and it all went away soon after, but it was really really miserable with angry redness head-to-toe, intense itching, and a lot of coughing and sneezing of which I'm still a little junky in my lungs because of that incident. The result? A pollen up here in NC that I'm apparently hating.. along with most of the people who live here. Solution is zyrtec everyday.) But I think I'll get to running again sometime in the next couple weeks. Maybe when I'm on night shift and a little more adjusted to it.

Night shift change over is definitely going to test my limits, and I'm anticipating for it via prepping dinners and lunches and breakfasts ahead of time so that literally all I have to do is work out, heat and eat, shower, and hit the books before I hit the hay.

I'm not cooking as much since I started working, which I really don't like lately.. Grocery shopping is such a pain here, and I have such a pitiful amount of storage space in my freezer it's impossible to stock up on the ingredients I am used to buying in bulk. It doesn't help frozen vegetables, my namesake at home, are more expensive up here for some reason and with fewer selections. Krogers and HEB were such bad ass grocery stores, not having them feels so naked still.