A Brand New Day: February 2015

Sunday, February 15, 2015

No looking back....forward motion

Well....I did promise that I would post some progress pictures. I must admit, it was not easy posting these pictures not because I think they are horrible pics, but simply because I have a forum reputation to uphold....hehehe. But, let's get truthful...and real, right? I enjoyed eating a little too much the past year and it shows, but.......the fat is coming off again. Pretty soon we will see that muscle peeking through after I get rid of a few more layers of fat.

BTW...I could not post my side view because of indecent exposure and I did not feel like retaking more pics.

This morning I took these pics after splurging at our (hubby and I) fav Mexican restaurant where I ate what I wanted. I had a jumbo Margarita and a seafood quesadilla that was huge....and let's not forget the tortilla chips prior to the meal. It was soooooo good! I thought I would wake up this morning feeling like crap...but I did not. I am a little bloated but nothing major and the scale was not unfriendly to me.

I had a great week training wise. I did 3 full body workouts and 3 moderate 30 minute cardio workouts. I have not done cardio like that for years and I hated the first day...but the other 2 sessions were fine. It is amazing how my body said....I remember when you used to do this cardio thing to me. Let me adjust and make your next sessions a bit easier like it used to be. So...I successfully completed my weekly goal of 3 full body training sessions (more gym time) and 3 cardio sessions (to get the fat loss moving a bit faster).

I did not have a 3 Muskateer bar daily like I said I would allow myself as a reward for the added cardio. I only had 1 bar the entire week. I am in my chocolate craving mode because I am about to start my period, but instead of the candy bar option, I bought a double chocolate ON protein powder, some cocoa powder, a bag of semi sweet chocolates and added 2 TBSP of cocoa powder and 1 scoop of double chocolate protein powder to my high protein oatmeal packet....and sometimes I add a few sprinkles of pecans if I did not get a chance to eat breakfast. So that concoction costs me 572 calories , 22g Fat, 61g carbs, and 37g protein. I stay full longer, I satisfied my sweet tooth in a semi healthier way. It's a lot of calories, but I only do it if I missed breakfast and I am approaching lunch time and craving chocolate. The rest of my day is pretty clean.

I bought another gym membership mainly for my son Nick. The owner gave us a family rate for a single rate price...He was my first personal trainer and I used to always have a membership at his gym. Since I travel so much on a daily basis, I just keep a YMCA membership at this time, but my son wanted to train at Brett's gym since it is 24/7 hours and has the old school feel which we love. I am going to the gym to get Nick on a program. He is excited about that. I also bought him a good protein powder for hard gainers since he is 6'1 and all of about 140 pounds due to his issue that I shared in a previous post. He is 17 days clean!!! I will keep you all posted on his progress.

So my strength workouts for Mon and Fri were (not lifting heavy due to calorie restriction)

Squats 60 x 10/ 95 x 10/ 115 x 10

Lying Leg curls 25 x 10/ 27.5 x 10/ 30 x 10

Standing calf raises 160 x 10/ 160 x 10/ 160 x 10

Walking Lunges w/ 10 pound weights 3 sets of 10 (killers for me)

T Bar rows 45 x 10/ 55 x 10/ 65 x 10

DB Military Press 20 x 10/ 20 x 10/ 25 x 10

Machine Flys 55 x 10/ 65 x 10/ 70 x 10

Side Lateral Raises ( ISO raises) 10 x 10 for 3 sets

Wednesday Workout

ISO Leg Press 100 x 10/ 110 x 10/ 110 x 10 each leg

SLDL 90 x 10/ 115 x 10/ 115 x 10

Standing Calf Raises 160 x 10/ 160 x 10/ 160 x 10

High Bench Step ups BW x 10 alternating each leg for 3 sets

Lat Pulldown 85 x 10/ 90 x 10/ 100 x 10

Bench Press ISO Machine 45 x 10/ 65 x 10/ 65 x 10 (killer)

Cable Face Pulls with external rotation 40 x 10 for 3 sets

Shrugs BB 115 x 10 for 3 sets

DB Curl 20 x 10/ 25 x 10/ 25 x 10

Tricep Extension 40 x 10 for 3 sets

Tuesday Stair Master 30 minutes / Thursday EFX 30 minutes/ Saturday Lateral EFX Machine 30 min

That's my typical split....and I may substitute exercises for body parts here and there :)

Next photos will be in March sometime.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

DietBet Challenge

So it's been over a month and I have been watching my calories more or less. I have lost about 16 pounds and I am glad about that. I look better this week than last week. Now I am to the point that IN THE MORNING PRIOR TO EATING, I can look acceptable in a 2 piece bathing suit without sucking it in. Ha.... I will take that.

So I won my online dietbet challenge. I don't remember if I mentioned the dietbet in my last blog...and I am too lazy to look, so forgive me if this is repetitive info...but, what dietbet is is an online challenge where you put money in and with this dietbet challenge if you lose 4% of your body weight in 28 days you win. They don't care what type of weight you lose...it's based on the scale. They have this process where they send you a code word that you have to place next to scale as you weigh in and out. It has to be a digital scale and you must weigh in on same scale at end of the game. You also have to include a full body shot standing on the scale with that code name. I jumped into that game 2 weeks late cuz I know how to lose 7 pounds of weight in a week let alone 2 weeks. Now...3 pounds of that weight was just pure water weight, but I did managed to lose 4 pounds of bodyfat in 2 weeks. So, the pot was $37,500 bucks and I put in $25 dollars. There were over 1500 players. By the end of the game, I nearly doubled my money...$49.00. So score! So this is how I reward myself at the end of the month. I ended up spending the money on some makeup that I wanted.

I am going to enter another game tonite and do the same thing again. I will keep doing this until I get to the weight that I want to be. So...I think I will need 2 more games to reach my goal weight of between 140-145 pounds. I will have noticeable abs at 145 pounds. At 140 I will be LEAN!!!! So, we will see. Depends on what I look like. I don't want to be too lean where I lose all my curves. And at age 50, I need to watch the leanness in my face. I get super lean in my face....naturally, and I frankly don't know how my skin will look at the super lean state. I don't want any saggy skin!!!! So I will keep an eye on that. I know for a fact that I look younger with a fuller face. I refuse to have a smokin' body and a jacked up face...lol. So, we will see what weight I look the best at. Unfortunately, I am no spring chicken anymore.

Hey....exciting news!!!! Toledo has an Apple Store in our main mall. I am in heaven. Now I have another place other than Sephora to hang out at :) I admit, I am one of the apple junkies...yup, for sure.

I also want to share pics of 2 new additions to my family. My mom got 2 Shih Tzu's. The brown one is Snoop and the black one is Romeo. They are the cutest....and a handful. They are around 14 weeks....born November 1st last year.

I had some awesomeness happen. I received a refund on some work I had done on my car...that cost me a pretty penny. Found out they recalled a piece in the power steering. Mine went down a while ago. Well, they refunded my money, so I had extra money that I was not counting on, so I went shopping and got all the things that I had on my Wishlist for my makeup and skin care. See, I am on a "low" buy because I don't need all the stuff that I buy. But I get such a high and INTENSE enjoyment buying things that I love...like makeup, skin care, and techie gadgets. Of course the stuff I want is high end and costs way too much money. So...yesterday I went shopping and it was AWESOME!!! I think I have everything I want for a while. I am good til spring time.

So for my training, I am mixing things up a bit. Instead of 4 sessions of strength training a week where I end up having to upper body days and 2 lower body days, I am going to have 3 full body session a week M,W,F and the days between I will do some moderate cardio...stair master or something like that for 30 minutes. That's the only thing I will change.

My eating, I will eat relatively clean and continue to have 1 cheat meal a week.

Since I am adding the cardio...I am allotting myself one 3 Muskateer bar a day....hehehe. We will see if I continue to lose doing that. If not, I will cut them out. I am going to try it this week haha.

Monday, February 2, 2015

I'm just sayin'.....

I had a bit of a challenge remembering how to get to my blog it's been so long. Well I thought I would quickly do a blog to share with all the people who take the time to read my little blog to know what's been up with me.

I have been super busy with work....learning the ropes of a new position. I have been in Clinical IT for 3 years and supporting electronic medical records as a Clinical Lead for 3 of our System's 11 hospitals. Then in May, I got reassigned to another clinical application...The application that support our Cancer Center's in our System and my role kept evolving to the point that now I am the Application Owner the application. New job, new responsibilities, and the only experience I had was all my years of leadership in Nursing positions...and the clinical IT lead role. But this job was altogether DIFFERENT. I went from dealing with clinicians (something that I am very familiar with and comfortable doing) to the technical aspects of IT. I had no clue about the infrastructure that made our clinical applications work. So, I had a humongous learning curve and had to network with a bunch of tech guys and vendors to keep my application running smoothly. There's the citrix guys, server guys, interface guys, network engineers, database guys, storage guys...and it goes on. And my application requires all of them to function optimally. So I had to learn really quick how to problem solve when my application requires support. Is it a citrix issue, server problem, SQL issue....on and on. I QUICKLY made friends with some key people in each role and Google and YouTube became my best friend.

After several months I have learned a ton...lol. I have an admiration for all the tech geeks (I say that affectionately) out there...and I am a geek wannabe now :). I love my job and I have made some great geek tech friends. It took some time to earn the trust of some of them...especially after I made a few bad calls. I used to blame all evil on our citrix environment....poor guys, but now I see things better. The citrix guys rock....my favs.

Well, while I was filling my head with all this tech knowledge, I was also filling my mouth with all the free catered food that came in as I was learning the application through leading a new physician office start up with the application. Long hours, mental fatigue, long drive, and all kinds of sweets caused me to add 15 pounds of fat on my body. I continued to train, but despite that, calories in far exceeded calories out and I just kept getting more curvy as time passed. Ha...I like the term curvy versus fat lol. Whenever I have boobies....I am way overweight. After all of that hard work I went to New Orleans and on a cruise....and gained 7 more pounds. When it was all said and done the scale said it all. 174 pounds!!!!! Yikes.

169 pounds here with my mom and sis

New Orleans with my bro, mom, sis-in-law and hubby

So on January 2nd, I started eating right and acting like I have some sense and I have lost over 15 pounds and am down in my 150's. I am still heavy as my ideal weight is around 145....but I look presentable. Believe it or not I did not have to buy new clothes, but I looked like shit in my clothes....muffin top and some back fat and some of my sweaters...well I could not button them all they way up. But, I refused to buy new clothes. I fit them much better now, but still have a ways to go. I am finally to the point that if I suck it in I can wear a 2 piece bathing suit without gagging when I look in the mirror. But I still have to suck it in to look somewhat presentable.

I will post pictures this month sometime....promise. Markus has been so awesome. As I continued to get more curvy, he never made me feel bad about it. Always encouraging and helpful, he continues to be my dude. (That means my coach......in Annette speak). I don't want his wife hunting me down...lol.

I am training in the morning and my diet is simple....very simple. Protein oatmeal, a couple pieces of fruit, a protein shake here or there if I don't eat enough protein in chicken, fish, or occasional beef. I eat a ton of green veggies and only do 1 cheat MEAL a week. I can't wait til I can go back to my cheat DAY.

For the girls in my audience...my skin is looking great. I have been taking great care of it...a goal I had made for myself last year. I am using Paula Choice products and what has made the biggest change in my complexion is adding a 20% Vitamin C + E Ferulic Acid serum from a brand called Timeless Skin Care. This product has brightened my complexion and has given me an overall more youthful appearance. I don't think I look 50 years old. This stuff has taken at least 10 years off of my appearance. I have been blessed with good genetics in regards to minimal wrinkles, but I did suffer from hyperpigmentation which can make me look older.

And I am still in love with makeup. I love it, buy too much of it and it just makes me giddy. Little makes me more excited then seeing the UPS or Fedex guy dropping off a package of makeup goodies that I have ordered.....hahaha!!!!