No Pain, No Gain. What a Cliche!
I’m losing track of what week I’m in! Oh yea – week 6. It’s all a blur, seriously! I skipped my weekly Monday weigh in and measuring this week because I’ve my period. Try as I may to avoid that water retention during this time, I inevitably show a weight gain during this time – so forget it! I don’t need the discouragement at this point! 
6 weeks into this – here’s a few things I’ve learned along the way –
- I can eat LOTS – my body will burn it. Prior to the challenege, my eating habits were really really bad. I definitley did not eat three meals a day, at all. I would snack throughout the day at my computer while I worked — drink lots of coffee, and then when it came time for dinner, most often we’d do take out. I wasn’t consuming the calories I needed, by a long shot – - and the calories I was consuming was made up of mostly sugars and saturated fats.
- Another thing about food – the thought of my coveted double bacon cheeseburger from Wendy’s just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I think about it and all I envision is a lump of dripping fat and lard between a sugar loaded bun. Seriously, it makes me ill to even think about taking one bite. My palette has changed!
- Cooking good food is fun. And it gives me a warm fuzzy to know that my family is also getting the benefits of all that good food. Now, my teenagers sometimes turn their noses up at some of the things I prepare (they don’t like brussell sprouts and are SICK to death of turkey) – but for the most part, they eat what I eat and they don’t even notice I’m using Splenda instead of sugar, or Olive oil instead of vegetable oil, etc, etc. Even my 15 year old daughter lost 10 lbs because she started emmulating my habit of drinking tons of water in a day. Plus – her acne cleared up almost immediately! Yay her!
- My endurance has increased with my cardio. When I first started this – I could stand about 20 minutes on the treadmill at about 2.5 mph with no incline. Today I’m doing about 40 minutes at 3.0 mph on a 7-10% incline. W00t!
- My strength has increased. With my weight training, I’ve noticed that the amount of weights I started with just don’t ‘do it’ for me anymore and I had to increase them. Then I increased the number of reps I’m doing just so I could get that good ‘burrrrrrrrrrrrrrn’ feeling, know what I mean? Just yesterday, I upped the weights on my Ab workout on the Bowflex by 5 more lbs, and increased the reps of that exercise by another 10. I’m feeling it this morning, let me tell ya – but it’s a good pain.
- This challenge has made me take a look at foods I never would have looked at before, and I’ve found some really yummy stuff! Instead of regular french fries fried up in the deep fryer, I tried sweet potatoe french fries baked in the oven. Sweet goodness, they are! And combinations of foods – - like Jennio’s italian seasoned turkey burgers grilled on my George Foreman grill.. then crumbled into my Egg beaters omlets tastes just like sausage with my eggs and is actually really quite good!
- I’ve traded pounds for inches. Last week I found out that I could not lose anythng but maybe a 1/2 a pound at the most – - but I still lost 3.5 inches, even though I barely lost a pound! To me, it’s the inches that matter. Heck – I put on my favorite pair of CK jeans yesterday that I haven’t been able to wear in well over a year! THAT alone motivated me to push myself just a little bit more everyday
- Aside from the weight loss and the inch loss – - I feel good. I haven’t felt this good in a very very long time. I used to struggle with many different things – most noteably insomnia. Prior to this challenge I was going through one of the WORST cases of insomnia that I ever had in my adult life. At one point, I was a full 72 hours without sleep. It’s just not healthy. I had my days and nights mixed up, the whole bit. I don’t know if it’s my new eating and exercise habits that have changed that – but these days, I’m sleeping like a baby. I get tired around 11pm or so and am usually asleep by midnight – - then I’m up at 6am. This has been pretty consistent for the last few weeks. If it’s my new habits that have changed this for me – it’s a frickin miracle!
- Lastly – people are noticing! That is most awesome when that happens. I had to spent quite a bit of time with my folks this past weekend, due to some health problems my mother was having. I walked into the house and took off my jacket and my Dad says “Lisa! Have you been working out or something?” So, of course I have to gloat, right? Right! He says “It shows! Wow – you look really great!” If that’s not enough to re-affirm that my efforts are worth it and are working, I don’t know what is!
So, this wraps up my 6th week – well almost. I am doing my official weigh-in on Friday of this week, and it will probably then be Fridays thereafter. Chris made a deal with me. He’s out of town on business this week and I’m picking him up at the airport on Friday. There is a restaurant close to the airport that we both love called “Fourth Base”. If I’ve lost 4lbs OR 4 inches since my last weigh in/measurements of two weeks ago – - he’ll treat me to my favorite meal there on Friday night. I snuck on the scale today and noted that I was only 3lbs down from what I was two weeks ago – - so I’m hoping the last of this water retention drops off before Friday, or that my measurements will be nice to me this week!
