It's what I do

Just a quick little post of a bit of my boxing work out from the gym this morning. Getting out there and hitting things is the BEST way to start my day!

Wednesday check in

Plugging along this week. Doing pretty good... hit the gym yesterday (my day off from personal training) and did eliptical, stir climbing and then a quick swim. Food intake was great yesterday too.

Today, I did an upper arm workout, which was awesome. I think I did about 130 modified push ups and 260 sit ups in between my weight cycles. Sheesh, I can really feel the fatigue in my abs and thighs right now.

Before my actual training session, I did 20 minutes on the eliptical and 30 floors on the stair claimber. The stair climber is still an actual torture chamber in my book. At around floor number 20, a pool of sweat starts to form from the sweat dripping off my face.... Today I notice a flow of sweat down the side of the machine which kind of startled me for a moment until I realize it if from sweat dripping off of my forearm - my forearm for *G* sake!

Anyway, food intake was good today, but I ate a bit too much basmati rice with my dinner and feel a bit bloated now. Will flush it out with water!

What a difference a few days makes

Friday I was full of hope, and feeling great and then the weekend hit! I was craving carbs all weekend and made some not so great choices. The scale showed it by yesterday afternoon - I was up another 5 lbs. I began thinking about what is causing my to continue to sabatoge myself and started seriously thinking about whether or not I have gotten comfortable with where I am right now. Maybe, I am happy at this weight.

I was telling my trainer this this morning and he got visible upset with me (just for a moment) Then he told me what I needed to hear- that I'm not giving it my all. He said I need to really push it with the exercise and be really strict with my diet and it is possible for me to get smaller. I know this is all just common sense but I needed someone to call me on my bullshit.

We have a new plan in place. I have promised to come in EVERY morning- Monday to Saturday and work out hard. He is going to give me a weight cycle which I will do on Tuesday and Thursday when i work out by myself and we will box Wednesday and Friday. In 1 hour of boxing I burn about 1000 calories and I love every second of it.

So, I am trying again, and will keep on trying until I get it right. I won't give up!

Progress pictures

Just a few pictures I took this morning..... I also posted a before pic taken in 2008. There is not a huge difference in my opinion, and I have a long way to go but I am happy with the way my body is looking.... In the first picture I weigh 280 and was wearing a size 24 or 2x clothes. In the second pic, I weigh about 245-250 and am currently wearing a size 16 clothes. The clothes I am wearing are XL. the "flexing" photo was taken just for fun, but I do like the way my traps are looking in this picture- haha

Before:




Current:

And the crowd went wild.....

Today, was a hard day at the gym. My warm up was 20 minutes on the eliptical doing short sprints followed by high level slow intervals.... next up 30 floors on the stair climber and then some stretching. 5 minutes to catch my breath, and get my hands wrapped and my trainer was there to start a boxing workout. I should have known when he started the session with a big smile and then tells me "I'm gonna kill you today" that it wasn't gonna be pretty - and it sure wasn't.

lots of punching the bag, followed by punching sequences on the pads. He was really pushing my to be faster and punch harder. He kept pushing and pushing and I really felt myself get into a zone. I was moving, and hitting, and ducking and slipping. I did a total of 5 x 3 minute rounds and although it was hard, I kept finding ways to dig deep - in the past I would have been telling myself that I couldn't do it.... now I tell myself positive things - you are strong-you are capable- show them what you're made of - show them what you got! My trainer pushed me right to the last punch - In fact my last punch - right at the buzzer was not the greatest- so instead of finishing on that note- he pushed me to to a perfect combo - and I did, full of power.

Oh, where did the title of this post come from? When I box it's basically in the general population of the gym. I find it funny that people just stop what they're doing and watch us- Like really for a long time - To me that is the greatest thing, and not in any type of conceited way. I've hid myself away from the world my entire life, trying to make myself invisible so that I could avoid judgment for my size. When I box, I am so comfortable being out there- actually it's not just comfortable dare I say it's confidence.Phew, there I said it - CON-FID-ENCE baby! It's so nice to see these people watching me and I don't see any judgment in their face, I see admiration and awe.

At the moment I am trying to concentrate on the how great I felt this morning instead of focusing on how freaking sore my shoulders are- haha.

Going for a hat trick!

Today marks the 3rd day in a row where I have been on track - and by that I don't just mean within my daily calories, but also feeling positive, working out, making good choices food wise, and not binging.

My alarm went off at 5a.m and I felt like I'd been hit by a mac truck so I thought I'd snooze for 5 minutes, which turned into 30 minutes and I ended up at the gym only 10 minutes before my workout, so I didn't get in in 45 - 60 minute cardio boost. My workout this morning was all upper arm and shoulder. My arms were killed at the end of it. The last few things that I needed to do was to start in plank position, but my feet were elevated (like on top of a weight lifting bench so pretty high) and I was supposed to move from plank position to a jackknife position and then do pushups. Crap.... I could barely hold the position for 10 seconds. Pushup s were just not going to happen.

Anyway, a friend from work and I hit the gym again tonight and did another hour. This included a 45 minute circuit. My trainer is awesome, he had all the equiptment set up for us to do our circuit... and showed me and my friend what he wanted us to do.

So I left home at about 5:45 this morning and I am home now at 8:00 p.m. tired, hungry and grateful for a wonderful day.

Believe

Surprisingly I was able to stay away from the kitchen last night..... I think I even sulked a little bit at the fact that I wanted a coffee last night but refused to have one. I know it's small thing, but it's not really about the coffee is it...

So while I wasn't perfect yesterday (and really don't expect to ever be perfect) I think I was at least aware of what I was eating and that's a start. Stayed within my caloric intake and worked out for 2 hours....

Today I will try again to reduce my coffee intake and drink more water, and will try and get to the gym tonight. Of course I will continue with the say no experiment.

Hit the gym this morning for 1 hour and I did:
-20 minutes on the octane machine
-15 floors on the stair climber
-10 minutes on the treadmill- walking at 3.5 mph
- 100 situps
-various stretches, plank position etc (only for about 5 minutes)

That's it......

Monday - Just the facts (boring but necessary)

Hit the gym at 6:00 a.m Here's what I did:
25 minutes on the octane machine (sort of like an eliptical)
30 floors on the stair climber
1000m sprint on the rowing machine
100 sit ups

Then I joined my trainer and did:
lifting cycle for my legs (4 machines lots of reps and increasing weights)
suicide set 5 x then 3 times then a final sprint
sit up set (100 in total)

Put together my lunch (wrap with chicken and tzaziki) and made a big protein shake to have for breakfast and to keep around today in case I get hungry. Dinner is yet to be decided (ended up having 2 oz tilapia with a black bean and corn salad, tzasziki sauce, on a wrap).

Goal for today;

No more coffee. I had one this morning but I will only drink water of decaf tea today. (I ended up having a tims coffee with milk on the drive home - so I failed at this goal, but it wasn't a binge so I am ok to just try again tomorrow with this one)

Get back to the gym tonight for at least 30 minutes. Even if its a 30 minute walk on the treadmill(fail - decided against going to the gym, but will go for 2 hours tomorrow morning)

Say no to anything not on plan. Fight the urge to eat something that is not going to help me reach my goals.(so far so good - although I am craving a coffee with cream and sugar- going to practice fighting the urge- I will NOT have a coffee tonight- I'll drink water instead)


I will be back tonight to document how I did:

Destiny

Lately I have been thinking about Destiny, and more specifically what is my destiny. On most days, I am feeling great about my progress. I know that I am not the same person as I was when I started this blog a few years ago. Mentally, and emotionally I have healed. My health is good, I feel strong, and I actually consider myself to be an athlete now. My weight, however, does not seem to be moving.

Now the thing is if I was eating healthy, doing everything right as far as food is concerned then I would be frustrated, but I know I have not. I start a different diet every week and give up by about day 2 or 3....

I have begun kicking around the notion that maybe I am destined to be heavy. When I was a kid, I was obese and very active... I excelled in baseball and could be found doing something "sporty" all the time, yet I was always obese. Now in my 40's I find myself in the same position.

The question I have been throwing around is whether my obesity is my destiny, or whether there is still something inside of me that is holding me back, keeping me obese to keep some kind of control over my life.... I have made so many changes to who I am over the last 3 years and maybe this is the one last piece of the puzzle somwhere deep within my being, I refuse to let go of? The opposite way of thinking about it is that I have lived a lifetime of making bad food choices, eating what I want, whenever I craved something I ate it. Perhaps it is just taking me longer now to break this HABIT and it really has nothing to do with destiny.

I am going to experiment for the next week.. I have no dinners with friends planned this week. It's just me looking after me. I am going to experiment with eating properly and more importantly going toe to toe (like the boxer I have become- lol) with that voice in my head that says "go on, just have it". I'm going to fight like I have fought against the urge to give up at the gym. I beat that battle, it's time to take on the issue of food. Yes, instead of succumbing to what I believe my destiny is.... I'm going to fight to make my own destiny.