Fit Chick Wannabe

My arms are sooooo sore right now! I guess what I did yesterday worked.

Workout

This morning was lower body and 30 minutes cardio.

I got to the gym earlier so that I could get them both done.

I arrived at 5:30, and immediately headed over to the machines in the middle. I still have to work up the courage to go into the little free weight section. Free weights are my favorite – I absolutely prefer them to machines. But I am nervous to go use them a lot because the boys working out intimidate me. At Ballys the men in the weight room were douchebags (excuse my language). I never went down there by myself. If I went, I went with Victor. I still felt weird, but not as weird.

As I was on the treadmill today, I looked over at the weight area and there were hardly anyone using the free weights. And the boys that were using them were not intimidating at all! I think I’ll just man up and go for it on Thursday.

Sorry – got sidetracked. Back to the lower body workout!

There are a bunch of different machines in the middle of the gym. I went up to the extremely tall man at the desk (his height had nothing to do with anything – I’m just obsessed with tall people lol), and asked him if there was any sort of order or grouping to the machines. He started explaining how they were arranged, which he should have just skipped, because they aren’t. At the end of his explanation, he concluded with, “They’re kind of just all over”.

Thanks.

I did 3 sets of as many reps as I could do at the following machines:

• leg press
• leg extension
• hamstring curl
• calf extension
• abductor machine
• adductor machine

That took me around a half an hour.

I then hopped on a treadmill, plugged in my ear buds to Married With Children again, and ran:

• 3 minutes walking at 3.5 MPH
• 12 minutes running at 5 MPH
• 2 minutes walking at 3.5 MPH
• 3 minutes running at 5 MPH
• 1 minute running at 5.1 MPH
• 1 minute running at 5.2 MPH
• 1 minute running at 5.3 MPH
• 1 minute running at 5.4 MPH
• 40 seconds running at 5.5 MPH
• 20 seconds running at 6 MPH
• 5 minute cool down – 3.5, 3.2, 3.0, 2.8, 2.5 (1 min each)

I moved over to the stretching/abs area and stretched for a few minutes before heading home.

I’m going to have to wake up even earlier to make sure that I can run a little longer and make sure that I get home with enough time to get ready for work. I was rushing again.

At least my workout is done for the day! Makes me feel good that I can do other things when I get home later.

Food

I am a creature of habit and will pretty much eat the same things over and over. Therefore, tracking my food with you will not be very interesting! Beware!

So far today I’ve had:

• 1 Pria bar – pre-workout
• 1 Protein Shake – post-workout
• 1 Dannon Light ‘N Fit Yogurt – strawberry with 1/4 cup Bear Naked Granola – Peak Protein flavor mixed in – breakfast
• 1 cup blueberries– breakfast
• 4 oz of Cran-Pomegrenate Juice – breakfast
• 1.5 servings of Fresh Express Caesar Lite Salad Kit - lunch
• 1 Healthy Choice Steamer meal – Beef Merlot w. carrots, potatoes and string beans – lunch

I have two clementines with me again for a snack later. I’m not sure what is for dinner yet.

Well – back to work!

Are you too intimidated to do a certain thing at the gym?

Well howdy!  I am having a little trouble typing because I just finished my upper body workout, and boy are my arms tired!

It went a little differently than planned, though. As my day has gone so far, I’ve had little hiccups in my workout plans.  I have still completed all my workouts for the day, but they didn’t turn out exactly as I thought they would.  This morning I only got to complete 2.25 of the 3.1 miles planned and had to save my upper body strength training for after work.

I had every intention of changing at work and going straight to the gym.  However, although I remembered to grab my clothes on my break, I forgot to do one important thing.  Walk the dogs. Now this normally wouldn’t be a problem, but the fiance has been working crazy hours these past few days, so he wouldn’t be home to do it either.  And I have enough trouble trying to get my little Chihuahua Natalie to go to the bathroom outside.  I didn’t want to add to it.

So I came home and let the puppies out, and decided I really didn’t feel like going back out to the gym.  I would just work out at home!

No problem.  I have a bunch of free weights down in the basement. I’ll just go grab them and workout in my living room.

Yeah, ok.

That would have worked out just fine if my basement wasn’t the storage space from hell. When we moved, all of the stuff we had no room for or don’t need on a daily basis went in the basement until further notice.  I couldn’t even get into the room, let alone find the weights.

Plan B.  Work around it.

And that is exactly what I did.  By using the two items below:

That’s right.  That would be a 15.5 lb bag of dog food and two bottles of seltzer.

Here is the workout and how I modified it:

• Lat pulldown – these I actually just did without a weight.  I had nothing to pull down.  I just squeezed my muscles as hard as I could as if I actually was using weight.  It actually worked pretty well.
• DB chest press - I was walking around the house going, “What can I press?”  This is when I spotted the 15.5 lb bag of dog food.  Good as it was gonna get.
• Seated row – I modified this and did bent-over two-armed rows holding the bag of dog food again.
• Side lateral raise – I thought about picking up the puppies, but they were two squirmy.  So I grabbed two selzter bottles from the fridge and used them instead.
• Push ups – I didn’t need to change these.  Just did plain ole wall push ups (these are easier on my wrists, and I’m not strong enough yet to do regular push ups)

I was supposed to do 4 sets of 15 reps as per the workout.  However, each of these modified exercises was obviously easier than I would have liked because I didn’t not have enough weight. I just remedied that by adding more reps, holds, and pulses to make sure I was exhausting my muscles to the best of my ability.

My dogs were hopping around me while I was pressing the bag of dog food sniffing it.  Made me giggle.

Moral of the story, kiddies?  If you’re stuck, get creative! You can always find some way to work with what you’ve got.

The fiance and I are having Boston Market for dinner, because he is coming home very late from work today.  This used to be our dinner every night (we were OBSESSED), until he fixed the stove.  I miss it and I’m super excited to eat it.  :)  I’m planning on having 1/4 white chicken with string beans and mac n cheese.  As fast food goes, Boston is probably the healthiest thing I can think of.  And their chicken is so juicy and delicious!  MMMMMMMMMM.

Have a great night!

Have you ever had to modify a workout?  How did you do it?