Hey There and New Fitness Goals

I haven't felt like blogging lately. How obvious is that? I'm sorry. I left you hanging high and dry near the end of Ultimate Reset.

So here's a quick rundown of how that turned out, where I've been, how I'm eating now, and what's next for me in terms of fitness.

Ultimate Reset
I think Ultimate Reset might be my favorite detox program ever. Just like when I finally found Shakeology and said that I'd kissed a lot of whey protein frogs to get to the love of my life -- Shakeology -- I feel like I went through a lot of detox hells to get to the point of Ultimate Reset. The food was yummy. Yes, there was prep work and I had to think and plan ahead (not always my strong suit), but I felt amazing after it was over, and I think I look pretty darn good. When I was in Ohio, I had a lot of people ask me what I was doing to lose weight. When other people can see it, that tells me something is working.

I have stayed mostly vegan after Ultimate Reset. Mostly, not totally. I have found that how I feel best for now. I did eat ice cream in Ohio. I did eat some meat. I find I mostly crave meat (or eggs) when I have PMS (sorry if that's TMI), but other than that, right now I can take it or leave it, and I mostly want to leave it. I have, of course, eaten popcorn. And always will.

As for grains, I am really only eating rice and some quinoa. I'll probably never give up rice.

So, when people ask me to describe my diet, I tell them I call it the Crave Diet. Really, I eat what I crave (in moderation because when my body craves chocolate, I don't make a meal of it!) and that's fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds and meat when I want it. I'm not bored with that. There's a huge variety of stuff you can eat in that realm. Huge.

I'm not kidding myself -- this an easy way to eat during summer. I figure things will change when cooler weather sets in, and my body craves different foods. It will be an experiment.

Overall, I lost 6 lbs. on Ultimate Reset, which at first, bummed me out because there were people out there losing 30+ pounds and talking about it on the support threads. But for me, that was a pretty good amount. It took me below 130 lbs. (I'm 5' 4 1/2"), which has been a goal for a long time, and I feel like I'm at a good, healthy, fit weight. I never did measure on the final day. We left for Ohio the day after Reset ended and I just flat out forgot to measure.

Fitness
Summer is always sort of a weird fitness time for me. The kids are home, of course, and we're sort of schedule-less, which never bodes well for me. I always do best when I have a strict schedule to follow.

During Ultimate Reset, you're not supposed to work out, but I couldn't stand that, and I didn't feel the greatest doing that. So I ended up alternating days of walking and doing TurboFire Stretch 40, which is 20 minutes of yoga and 20 minutes of deeper stretching. I felt really good with that plan.

In Ohio, I walked nearly every day. It makes me happy to walk around my old hometown and drink it all in. It was a nice break from structured routines and higher impact workouts.

So now, what do I do?

I did set up a month-long schedule in my WOWY calendar (Beachbody's online gym) for TurboJam. It's lower impact than TurboFire. I'm working my way back to working out harder at altitude -- I was amazed at how I could feel the difference from a cardio perspective after spending two weeks at sea level!

But I'm wanting to add stuff in to make my workouts more challenging.

So here's what I've decided to do. The TurboJam schedule will take me almost until the boys go back to school. I'll stick with it, but I'm adding some RUNNING. Yes, I said it. I'm adding RUNNING. Is hell freezing over?

I know, madness. But my long-term goal is -- get this -- to do a triathlon. And if I want to do a triathlon, I need to run. So I'm starting with a Couch to 5K program. Once I finish that, I plan to add in the triathlon training program (note: that's going to put me in the fall so I may be training and not have a race to run, but the point, to me, is the training part). For the remainder of the summer, I'm also going to do some Brazil Butt Lift and P90X Legs and Back. Might as well keep hammering away on that area. I feel like I had good results doing that in the spring.

I'm writing it out so it makes sense to me...

Remainder of summer:
-TurboJam + Couch to 5K + BBL and P90X Legs and Back

Late August (when school is starting):
-Contine with Couch to 5K (note, I originally wrote "Cough" to 5K. How appropriate.)
-TurboFire and ChaLEAN Extreme

Mid-October:
-Continue with TurboFire and ChaLEAN Extreme
-Begin triathlon training schedule although this could be a curious process because it would already be snowing in Colorado...

I'll see where that gets me!

Inching Along

I'm still here! I'm still working out! I'm...something.

This school year I've had to get up even earlier to get my workouts in! Ugh! I know for me it's important to get up and get my workouts out of the way first thing in the morning, but this is beyond the pale, people! The 5:15am wake up call is really kicking my ass.

But, it is what it is. With Declan up at 6:30am for school now, it's just necessary. I am a little bummed right now because I wanted to do two programs simultaneously, TurboFire and Brazil Butt Lift (makes me laugh every time), but BBL is probably on hold until I get through September's crunch time for work.

So I did start TurboFire again and am on Day 8. I think. I love those workouts. If you've never done a Chalene Johnson workout, search her on YouTube or something. I find her so inspiring and the workouts are great.

And that would be my tip of the day. Which I think I've used before. Do what inspires you. For me, it's leaping around (not that I leap very high) to Chalene. It may be something different for you. But do try and push your boundaries a little. Step outside that comfort zone. I will say that on all of the high intensity interval training days, I'm WAY outside my comfort zone for a little while. But I do notice changes--things like definition in my calves that I've never seen before, some signs of abdominal muscles, a bump in my biceps. It's what keep sme going!

TurboFire is History

And I have to say, I'm a little sad about it. It has been my favorite Beachbody workout, bar none. I love Chalene Johnson, she's my idol. I think I might be a groupie. I love the music on TurboFire and I love the moves.

When I finished TurboFire last week, I found myself with a little gap though and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Historically, in the summer, when I'm not officially doing a full-on scheduled BB routine, like not following anything, I don't do well. I need structure. I'm like a preschooler that way. Except without the nap. But I would like the nap if anyone could please make that happen.

Anyway, I knew I had missed a few workouts here and there when I was sick or when I didn't want to do one of the yoga workouts during the weight loss challenge because I wanted to crank on the cardio routine to burn more calories. Plus, I'd shuffled some things around when we traveled. I made those up, but there were "blue spots" in my WOWY schedule and I could see exactly what I had/hadn't done.

I admit I've become freakishly obsessive about the WOWY calendar. I love making the whole month green, which means completed workouts, except for the rest days. Obviously, I can't go back and fix those specific days, so I constructed a schedule of all of those "blue spots" and it was exactly 12 days--the amount of time before we left for Ohio.

Pefect. Except that I realized about three of the days were HIIT (high intensity interval training) days. Ick. I thought I was done with those. But I'm doing it.

And an interesting aside: Eamonn is doing Insanity. And get this: he can actually do it. Unlike me when I did Insanity and spent most of my time just standing there watching in horror.

It does create a bit of a logjam in the basement in the mornings, but since the weather has been so great, I do a walk while Eamonn is Insane and then when he's finished I do my TurboFire schtick.

So far, so good.

And in further news, on Friday, I hit my revised weight loss goal. Very exciting! Then, because Friday was my cheat day, I ate guacamole and chips in wretched excess and that number bounced back up. It will be back, I know it. It was fun to see it for a fleeting moment though.

Happy Fourth of July!