Thursday, July 31, 2014

21 Day Fix Day 5: Mad body, happy mind

When we started this program, my husband made me agree to get up with him first thing in the morning (6:15am) to eat breakfast together. Before this, I would wake briefly to give him a hug and kiss, then snuggle back into bed and sleep for about 1.5 more hours. I told him it shouldn't be a problem as long as we made it to bed at a decent time.

Well, we've been trying to go to bed earlier, but it's been a little rough since we are used to me getting caught up in a book while he gets distracted by either a video game or logic puzzles. I'd say we've been averaging about 11pm. And then with all the water we've been drinking... let's just say that last night I got up to visit the bathroom SIX times! That means a lot of lost sleep due to the interruptions. I've also been feeling more wired when I go to bed - can't decide if it's because of my body changing how I react to my evening medicine (it's a nerve medicine that my father also takes, and he says it makes him wired even though previously it's made me sleepy, hence why I take it at bedtime) or if it's the afternoon workouts, or something else altogether.

Anyway, this morning Chris got a little frustrated with me when I could barely drag myself out of bed - and then refused to eat and stated as soon as I made his breakfast I was going back to bed. I think we guessed that I have been averaging 6-7 hours of sleep per night, instead of the 8-9 that I am used to - and I believe it is throwing my body out of whack!! When you add that in to the "detoxing" of my body (trust me, I am craving sugar and carbs like there is no tomorrow right now), I think my body might be a tiny bit mad at me. The extra sleep helped a little, but we might have to figure out a way for me to get more sleep.

But one thing that has helped me is to focus on the positives. It's something I learned in my Train Your Brain class at Square One, and has truly helped me to find ways to view being healthy in a more positive way. True, my initial motivation was negative (let's face it, I was feeling fat and hated my body, and really hated that I was moving up in clothing sizes rather than down AGAIN), but yesterday night I found myself celebrating something so off-the-wall from my usual self that I realized there are things I'm actually ENJOYING about all of this!

Here's my brag (and I realize that my trainer Kim is reading my blogs so I know I'm gonna get "punished" for this by moving to a harder difficulty next training lol): One thing Kim has me do as a warm-up and cardio component, to help me reach a goal of better endurance (going on Familiarization trips as a travel agent involves a lot of stamina, so one of my goals is to be able to keep up without feeling so breathless), is to get on the treadmill and do a pyramid: I start at a 0 incline, and every minute (or 2 on some of the more intense days) I go up 2 inclines, until I reach 10, then I go back down. Kind of like climbing a perfect hill! When I first started out, I was at 3mph and could barely make it to an incline of 4 before I was having difficultly breathing and my talking was more like grunts and gasps when she would ask me questions. Yesterday, I did one minute intervals at 3.4mph - and we talked the ENTIRE time with me using actual words and phrases! That's a BIG accomplishment for me, and I found myself almost giddy about it - I even came home and had to brag to my husband (who was probably not very impressed but at least he pretended to be lol)!

I've noticed that even though I haven't weighed or measured myself (to be honest, I get really obsessive about the numbers and it ends up hurting me, so I don't allow myself to check my weight more than once per month), I like the feeling of accomplishment I get just from sticking this out so far and finding ways to adapt to it. Do I think I will follow something this strict long term? No. Do I think that I will eat healthier after this? Yes! I never realized how few veggies and fruits I would eat daily, and how large I was making my portions of other foods. Honestly, I pretty much used to eat roughly 1 vegetable serving per day (yes, that is dismal). Now even though I'm not usually hitting my 5 servings, I'm at least getting 3 which is TRIPLE what I used to do! Chris has mentioned that he has noticed that he is feeling stronger and is also proud of the changes he has made - today he was able to stick to his plan despite the fact that there was a quarterly meeting today (which means free lunch, generally not super healthy)!

The food choices today were decent (ok actually the Tostadas were my fave recipe yet), with a few substitutions for things we were out of - here's the menu:

However, I don't really feel like writing about them today - I think today I just wanted to get that happy mind mentality out there for all of you so that you knew that even though this is a rough food plan with a difficult workout schedule, it's still something that allows for positivity! :)

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