Monthly Archives: November 2012

Exhausted

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Salmon stir fry

Salmon stir fry

No post yesterday because I was absolutely exhausted.  3 days straight waking up at 4:30am to a baby that needed attention but didn’t want to feed yet, by the time she decided to feed it was time to get up anyway.  So not enough sleep, way too early a morning, daily exercise and smaller meals than I’m used to all built up to me starting the day absolutely exhausted…

I thought I would give myself a day off from exercise to let my body catch up with itself.  Then I talked myself into just putting on my exercise gear in case I felt like it.  Then I talked myself into starting to exercise, but saying I could stop after doing half of it.  Of course, once I started I just kept going and managed to complete the lot and I’m glad I did.  The rest of the day was a bit of a write off, but I stuck to the food although I didn’t get to have my snacks.  My meals were slightly bigger than usual, so still hit my calories.  All followed up with an early night and a baby that let me sleep until 6am this morning leading to feeling much, much better today.

Chaos reigns (but I still won!)

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So today was the day I expected to have sooner or later, at least it waited until after the first week to happen.  My little girl, Emily, decided that today she did not want to have much of a sleep.  She went down for her morning nap and I started the workout, got about half way through it before she woke up.  Brought her downstairs and sat her in the pram and kept going, that lasted about 15 minutes.  Moved her to the playmat and managed to finish exercising before she got too impatient and needed another feed.  Nearly 2 hours later she went down for another nap, I managed to hop online and order a heart rate monitor, have a shower and start getting lunch ready.  I didn’t get to make the rice paper rolls yesterday so had to make them from scratch today, including cooking the chicken.  Got everything weighed out and started prepping when she woke up again.  Managed to cook the chicken and prep all the veg before the screamathon started again so I fed her again, played with her, etc and she went down again around 2:30.  So I finally put all the rice paper rolls together (including for tomorrows lunch) and got to eat a little before 3pm…  No snacks eaten either… Should have one of those now since she has finally been down for over an hour.

I love her to bits, but gees she makes things busy some times for such a little person!  No photo today – they’re still on the camera…

Week 2 begins!

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Cheese and baby spinach omelette

Cheese and baby spinach omelette

Well, I made it through the first week and am all ready for the start of Week 2!  Surprisingly, I am not feeling all that sore from last week.  I was pretty sore Monday through Friday, and the Saturday morning session definitely stirred it all up again, but by Saturday afternoon I was feeling pretty good.  I claimed my massage reward on Sunday from my husband and overall am feeling pretty damn good about how the first week has gone.

It looks like the exercise program this week is identical to last week, so I know I can do it and I can get stuck into things even harder.  I’m really looking forward to trying some of the recipes too – salmon stir fry tonight, yum!  The on frustrating part was doing my online shop on Saturday and I missed all the delivery windows for Sunday so I can’t get all my food in until Monday afternoon.  Luckily I have some substitutes available for Monday breakfast and lunch to make sure I don’t fall off the wagon, because the fridge is looking pretty damn empty right now.

After finally being game enough to take a look at my “before” photos (eek, the front and side views were pretty much what I expected, but the back view was horrible), I am even more determined to get back to my old weight.  I can’t blame pregnancy for ALL of the change in shape either!

What I’ve learnt so far…

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Beef and vegetable kebabs

Beef and vegetable kebabs

Only 1 week into the program and I can already see it starting to have an impact.  I’ve also become aware of a few things about myself, which is always a good thing especially when most of them are positive.  So this is what I’ve learnt so far:

  • Doing exercise puts me in a good mood.  Duh!  I know, seems obvious, but I’ve never been so aware of it before.  Even my husband noticed!  I asked him if he had and he had to think about it, and then realised that I must be, because “I haven’t gotten in trouble as much this week”.  Oops, guess my post-pregnancy moods have been a bit off.
  • I like red capsicum.  This is HUGE!  I have hated capsicum for as long as I can remember.  Green is still bad.  Red has been in a few of the meals this week and in some it wasn’t great, but in others it was actually quite nice. (My mum will get a laugh out of this one!)
  • I prefer cardio to weights.  This surprised me as previously if I ever went to a gym, I always preferred the weights/machines over doing a class or treadmill.  This week I’m really enjoying running and walking on the treadmill.  There’s something satisfying about it.  I’m really looking forward to being able to jog/run for 20+ minutes straight which I had just worked up to last year before I was pregnant.
  • I can survive on a smaller breakfast.  I used to have a healthy but BIG breakfast – natural muesli/oats, yoghurt and fruit, but adding it up now it would be around 500 calories.  Kept me going pretty much all day if I didn’t get a chance to have lunch until 2pm or later.  The smaller breakfast is plenty to keep me going as long as I make sure I have a snack mid-morning as well.
  • Cutting out sugar was easy.  Really.  I’ve done it before and suffered from headaches for a few days as my body adjusted, this time because there is still some sweetness to few things and a piece of fruit every now and then I’m going great.  No cravings, no headaches and I haven’t even been tempted to have any chocolate.
  • Pregnancy was hard on my body other than the obvious visible differences.  Really hard.  My legs have some strength back in them, probably from lifting the bub down onto and off the floor several times a day – like doing squats with a slowly increasing weight – although at first just going up the stairs was hard enough.  My core and my arms are really bad though and am finding all the exercise involving them a lot harder than I thought I would.

So that’s just a few things that I’ve noticed already.  Will be interesting to see what other things I stumble across over the 12 weeks.

One week of exercise completed!

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Bacon and egg wrap

Bacon and egg wrap

Can’t believe I made it!  It’s been one hell of a week – fitting in exercise, meal preparation, keeping up with some other mums on the program, looking after my 3 month old daughter, taking the photos and writing the posts for this blog, doing a 4 week photography course (silly timing on my part!).  I’m tired just thinking about it!  But, I know it will all be worth it and I’m loving the feeling of having some goals to work towards while being a stay at home mum.

The exercise was HARD!  Having done almost no exercise while pregnant, and certainly none since our baby arrived, this has been a huge shock to my whole body.  It doesn’t help that I’m heavier than I’ve ever been before, which also makes it a lot more effort than it has been before.  But on the other hand, I feel fantastic!  I feel like I’ve already achieved something and if I can get through this first week then I can definitely do the rest of them.  I know the exercises will get more intense, harder and faster, but just getting the body moving and knowing that I can do it is the hardest part I reckon.

Yes, that photo at the top was breakfast this morning – how good is that!  I love my eggs all mixed up with the yolk broken and messy.

Rewards

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vegetarian pizza

Vegetarian pizza

The fun stuff!  Although I haven’t actually planned any final goal rewards or even mini-goal rewards yet, really need to get on to that.  I do, however, have a great reward lined up for this weekend.  The requirement is to do all my exercises every day – not allowed to miss a day or do a half-arsed effort.  And my reward is a lovely massage from my husband – yay!

This sort of short term reward works really well for me.  It makes me accountable to someone who can check up on me each day (and he will know if I fib!) and all I have to do is get to the end of the week.  That is SO achievable!

I really need to think up some good longer term goals and will put them up as I decide what they should be.

And can I just add, I was so pleased yesterday that I managed to do all the squats and lunges.  I really thought my legs would give out on me as they were so sore, but they must be adjusting and strengthening because they were fine.  Push ups however were another matter entirely…

The pain of exercise

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I know it’s meant to be a good thing, but DAMN!  My legs are in a world of pain after 3 days of exercise.  I have no idea how I’m going to do any sort of leg exercises today, it’s challenge enough walking up the stairs at the moment.  I’m stretching regularly, keep moving so they don’t seize up, took some magnesium… Here’s hoping that it’s like skiing, the 3rd day is always the worst and after that your body seems to get in the swing of things again.

I realise that exercise is supposed to hurt a bit, that means my muscles are actually doing something.  Providing of course that it’s just that “good” pain of muscle burn, not that “bad” pain of joints being asked to do things they don’t want to yet.  I’ve had a few clicks and things from knees, but it always seems to be when I get sloppy on the exercises and am not doing them properly, back to proper form and the clicking goes away – phew!  But really, knowing that it’s going to hurt, that it’s supposed to hurt, doesn’t really help when it IS hurting – like now.  Especially when I know that todays exercise includes squats in the first set…

So while the exercise is painful, I know it will get easier and I know I will like the results.  In the meantime though, there is NOTHING painful about eating meals like this:

thai fishcakes and salad

Thai fishcakes and salad

First weigh-in

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Berry Bruschetta

Berry Bruschetta Breakfast

Seriously?  We have a weigh in on the morning of the 3rd day – that’s only 2 days of calorie controled diet and exercise.  But you know what, I reckon I’ve lost a bit.  Wow!  My start weight for this program was 81.7kg, and 3 months ago, just before my little girl showed up I was somewhere around 93kg.  And now here I am at 80.6!  I’m very pleased with that, talk about quick results.

Oh, and the berry bruschetta above for breakfast – looks fabulous but unfortunately I wasn’t a fan, the ricotta is a bit too bitter for me.  Maybe I can mix in a smidge of honey or something to sweeten it up because otherwise this is one delicious looking and filling way to start the day.

Pre-Season

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ham and salad wrap

Monday lunch

So apparently you can sign up to the challenge weeks and weeks before it starts.  Then each week in the lead up to the event, a new task is released to get you in the right frame of mind and all sorted out so that you give yourself the best opportunity to succeed.

Unfortunately I’m a bit of a spur of the moment, last minute kinda gal, so I only signed up last week!  There’s a group of new mums I’m friends with online and several of them had signed up to get themselves into gear post-baby and in the end I decided, what the hell, this is the motivation and support I need to get my eating and exercise back on track.  I had just started to get the exercise together a year ago, but once I was pregnant that all went out the window as I found myself too exhausted to do anything other than lay on the lounge and eat, just going to work was a major struggle.  So needless to say, there are a few extra kilos there that I can’t just blame on baby weight!

So, I got myself all signed up and plowed through the pre-season tasks.  I thought the videos would be a bit hokey, but this program is nothing of the sort.  I’m impressed right from the start, which is definitely making it easier to get motivated.  I have to admit I did skip through some of the pre-season activities I was supposed to do - I’m not emptying the cupboard of all its goodies, but I’m also very, very rarely tempted to help myself to things I shouldn’t have.  If it becomes a problem, then I will deal with it then.

The interesting part for me was the fitness test – oh boy!  I was definitely scared here – 12 months since I’d done pretty much anything…  I’m happy to say though, that I was pleasantly surprised with my results.  Technically, I should probably put myself in Intermediate (what the?), however I’m starting off firmly in the beginner camp.  My abs are shot - pregnancy and a c-section will do that to you.  And with ligaments still a bit lax from pregnancy, I want to really ease into the jogging/running side of things.  My results put me as 100% beginner for the abs – no surprises there.  I was 1 second off being intermediate on the walk/jog and would have made it if I had any idea of what my time was.  My husband was timing me and since I thought I had no chance of making it I didn’t push quite as hard as I could have in the final stretch.  Was still knackered at the end of it though!  All my other results put me in Intermediate, but, as I said, I’m happy starting in beginner and easing into things a little more than I am guessing the higher level would let me.  I can always swap up in a few weeks if everything starts getting stronger.

The other side of things – food!  Once the meal plan was released to us, I did a HUGE shop on the weekend – I’ve never bought so many veges.  There are a lot of salads in this plan, which I’m generally not a fan of, but you know what, I’m going to give it a go.  If I really don’t like something, then I won’t have it again, but these meals look really, really tasty and if I want to make a change, this is a damn good place to start.

Oh, and my quads nearly died on the fitness test.  They’re still giving me grief 3 days later…