Waiting for bath time ~ Emily, 11 months

My final challenge/reward took place the first weekend of March.  We had signed up for an urban rogaine – basically orienteering around the suburbs finding waypoints.  It was all through the hills of Mosman, an area we know quite well, and we arrived on the day and plotted our course with alternatives depending on how I coped with it all.  I was more than a little disappointed in my performance, in the 3 hours I only managed to do 16km.  From the start I was puffing and struggling and my heart rate was fairly high for the effort I was putting in.  This was the first inkling I had that something more might be going on here!  It was still satisfying to have done this and get back within the three hour time limit, and I was definitely sore for a couple of days, but I had to wait a few more days to check out my hunch about what was going on.  Sure enough, by the end of the week the pregnancy test came back positive!  Amazing!  I truly believe that a huge part of this is due to my being healthier and fitter due to the 12wbt – there are a few things I had going against me, not least of which is my age at 39.

So where to from here?  I cut back on my exercise straight away as my body was obviously finding it a bit too much of a challenge to keep going with.  I increased how much I was eating, but still continued to slowly lose weight over the next couple of months.  Luckily now, at 5 months pregnant, I am back to what I was at the end of the 12wbt in February and have even started gaining a little more – my belly is certainly showing I am pregnant anyway!  Other than being more tired than normal, this pregnancy has been pretty much as straight forward an unproblematic as the last which has been wonderful.  Running around after an under one year old at the same time would have been a LOT harder if I had more to deal with on the health front as well!

I’ve continued walking most days and this has been a big help physically and mentally to get some “time out”.  We try and make it a bit of a family time and my husband joins me when he can and Emily gets pushed along in the pram.

Getting around ~ Emily, 9 months

So where does this blog go now?  I seem to be hitting a bit of a nesting / home improvement patch   So along with sharing my photos, I will be following my plans to “kid-friendly” our home, fix up the garden a bit and seeing what chaos having a second child can bring to our family!  I hope you join me for the adventure.

• 1km time trial – 5:32 (down from 8:01)
• push ups – 28 (up from 21) in a minute
• ab test – level 2 (up from 0)
• stretch – 13cm (up from 6cm)
• wall site – 2:36 (up from 1:08)

The only real changes from 4 weeks ago is the time trial and the wall sit.  And can I just say I’m pretty damn proud of myself for the time trial.  At the start, I think I managed 300 metres jogging before I slumped back to a walk and I was absolutely shattered at the end of it.  I didn’t have the best prep for it either, I had barely any lunch, no afternoon snack, not enough water during the day and I have always done my exercise in the morning, not the evening.  So to kick another 30 seconds off my time is so cool!  I think the improvement has come from the damn hill intervals I’ve been doing over the past 2-3 weeks.  Cranking the treadmill up to 10 incline has really pushed my quads and given them the extra strength needed to push harder and faster.

Oh, and yes, I DID lose a decent amount of weight.  Over 10% body weight in fact – I’ve gone from 82.2kg, down past my pre-pregnancy weight and this final week I dropped below my previous “holy crap I need to lose weight” weight.  I’m getting close to my previous stable weight, but if I keep exercising and watching what I eat, I’m aiming to get back to my old “kinda fit” weight.  I’m not aiming for my old “fit” weight – too time consuming but my next target is to get below 70kg.  I’m thinking this is entirely do-able, possibly within the next 4-6 weeks since I managed nearly a kilo this week.

So onwards and downwards… Not sure what’s going to happen with this blog, I still have a few more posts to make for this round and then we will see what happens.  It won’t stop, but it may change focus a litttle!

Japanese style prawn noodles

Well, not much to write about at this point.  Less than 2 of the 12 weeks in the program left to go and it seems a bit strange that it’s nearly all over.  I know once I finish I need to keep eating right and keep exercising – and luckily my husband is 100% behind me in this.  In a lot of ways it will be a relief to have some of the time back, but I also know that I still need to find time for most of the activities I have been doing anyway.

My struggle at the moment is to stay focussed.  I stuck to my plan to do some exercise each day over the long weekend which was good, but I slacked off in the eating department a little.  Not a huge amount, but I had a couple of glasses of wine that I wouldn’t usually have and probably snacked a bit on the wrong things.  Nothing major, but it lets me know that I am really going to have to watch things once I’m off the plan to make sure I don’t get back into old habits.  The hardest part is that my husband needs to eat more than what we have been at times, so he will have dessert or extra yummy things in dinner and I have to talk myself out of having them too.  It really doesn’t seem fair sometimes.  But then he doesn’t need to lose as much weight as I do!

I just need to keep reminding myself that I’m getting really close to my original goal weight and once I get there I can ease up a little on the strict calorie control to maintain rather than lose weight.  It’s not really taking that long to lose it – if I look at the past 10 weeks, I’ve lost well over half a kilo a week, almost a full kilo a week if I take out the 2 weeks over christmas when I didn’t stick to the plan, and I’m still losing the weight well.  I haven’t really had a slow down in weight loss, it fluctuates from week to week, but overall I’m still losing a decent amount each week – I haven’t hit the “I’m restricting calories, exercising, but my weight doesn’t change” plateau yet.

I also need to remind myself why I’m doing this – to feel better about myself, fitter and healthier, to be able to keep up with my daughter and play with her as she grows, to be a happier, healthier wife to my husband and to give myself a focus and a plan for getting there.

Fish and chips

Eek!  It’s been just a tad busy here with one thing and another.  Christmas at the in-laws on Saturday, then beach lunch catch up with friends on Sunday – all takes longer than I expect with a bub in tow.  Plus I did a little morning exercise each day and there went my entire day.

Saturday was the 4 week re-take of the fitness test and was supposed to be my mini-goal exercise.  I had time to do the fitness test, but we ran out of time for anything else, so my “bush run” had to wait for Sunday morning.  The fitness test was a bit of a mixed bag – I did amazingly better on some things and worse on others!  Can’t work out why some would be worse when I’ve put in the hard yards over the last 4 weeks, at least some things improved to keep me happy.  One of those as I mentioned before, were the ab test.  I can actually do some now!  The other, the big one, was the 1km walk/jog/run.  First time around it was a bit of jogging and a bit of walking and took me a smidge over 8 minutes to complete.  I was happy with that at the time as I hadn’t run for so long.  This time I kept going at a steady jog the entire way and pushed a little harder for the last 100m and managed to complete it in 6 minutes 10 seconds!!  Yep – nearly a 2 minute improvement.  That absolutely blew me away – I don’t run anywhere near that pace while training on the treadmill and certainly not continuously for that length of time yet.  This is the result that will keep me going.

My bush run Sunday morning, well, lets just say my legs were still feeling a bit worse for wear from the day before.  It really didn’t help that it was already temps in the high 20′s and ridiculously high humidity down in the river valley – very pretty, but no breeze gets in down amongst the trees and it traps any moisture, so it was a bit like going for a run in a sauna…  Not really my idea of fun yet.  I ended up walking for the most part and took around 40 minutes to do my 4km, but my heart rate monitor assures me I burned off close to 500 calories so I must have done something right.  Will have to do this one again in another 4 weeks and see if I’ve improved again.

What did you do for your 4 week mini-goal exercise?