Workout : Inspiration!

While we are still working out in our home gym, while the Olympics are on, we're finding inspiration watching people doing some of the same lifts we are doing.

Instead of only lifting the bar, these women can really lift! (And of course, the men are pretty good, too!)

Coach T recommends vegging out and watching - he thinks that by watching superior form and technique, we internalize better ways of lifting, and hopefully we can incorporate some of what we *see* into what we *do*.

Baby Octavia approves, as well!

paleo, now with workouts!

well, we haven't done anything dramatically different lately, except for the breaking of our paleo vows for Christmas. Even though we weren't too too crazy, we still feel rotten - i drove home from my sister's beautiful Christmas two day party with a stomach like a lead balloon, but we are getting back to paleo foods (lunch was leftover chicken in tomato sauce with mozza melted on top - yummy!) and back to exercise.

My two (younger) sisters are both very beautiful and every time around this year i vow to get a new hair cut, buy some clothes (done!) and in every respect, be a worthy sister in the trio :) - so today starts our "at least try a little, Stephanie" regime...

Hair cut booked (by sweet T) for tomorrow, new clothes bought, paleo foods consumed, and exercises will forthwith be blogged here (instead of my homeschooling mom blog, which i'm sure might be a relief for some of my friends there)...

I'm behind by quite a few workouts - the month of December didn't leave a ton of room for blogging - as Yoda would say "Blog or workout. There is no both" (or something like that, maybe a little less dorky)

Today's workout:

Tabatas

(consisting of 20 seconds of full out exercise, then 10 seconds of rest - for eight minutes. We use a premixed tabata mix that has heavy metal/prog interspersed with beautiful classical or acoustic guitar so we don't have to check our watches)

These were the exercises today:

rows (i use the chin/dip station)

pushups

situps

squats

at some point, babe Meow decided she needed some mama love, so partway through my form got sloppy and i did one round of rows with her clinging to my neck and balancing on my chest (and almost puked then)...

I'm working in lightshop with all of our Christmas pictures (well, most of them) and i would like to get out of the house and enjoy a little more winter wonderland this week before T goes back to work, but there's a game today (football? hockey?) and it's his vacation after all, so we will veg in front of flickering boxes, and let the children run wild and forage for food amid the chocolate/cookie detritus...

Metabolic typing?

Dr. Mercola offers metabolic typing and i'm interested to do it, just to prove that T and me are just two completely different species.

The whole times i've been doing paleo, i've been hungry, confused, angry, and dizzy. T, on the other hand, feels awesome, feels great in his tummy, strong, alert...

So i gave up and had a piece of pizza last night for a snack, a slice of whole wheat and flax bread for breakfast with all my protein ;0 and a cookie in the afternoon that Haven made...

I did eat paleo for lunch and dinner... but i'm hungry again an hour later.

So, not working so great for me. working awesome for T.

Not sure what the compromise will be - most likely i will be Zone during the day and we'll have a paleo dinner (which can be zone, too) and on weekends... i feel bad failing T, but this is just not a good option for me.

On the exercise frontier, tonight was tabatas... 16 minutes of sweat - hopefully it will help me overcome my "bad" carbs. Although i lost a few pounds at the beginning, i haven't budged one number since then, which makes it less a motivation to be a crabby half starved mother all day long...

Day Four...

It's Wednesday, and it's working...

First off, this picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what i'm writing - it's just a cute one of my two littlest boys and i had to share :)...

SO - T has me on the paleo diet and i've lost three pounds in 4 days but i was so irritable yesterday and today i just about passed out several times, and then my breath was so bad... i used the ketostix and i'm in ketosis - which wasn't a goal, but T seems to think it's a good thing...

and a good time for a workout!

Apparently my body is eating up my fat stores (T assures me i'm only eating my fat, nothing else - like bones or the minimal muscle i have holding my skeleton together)... so time to pour it on!

So - tonight's workout was

TABATAS!

I'm seriously really in love with the mix we use when we do tabatas - the songs always equal endorphins and relief (respectively) in their 10 and 20 second long snips...

And it felt so good to stop!

Oh =- and the self discipline thing? Here it is - this paleo diet means NO grains, no flour, no sugar, no peas, sweet potatoes, lentils, beans, rice, bread, cookies etc...

Today i took the littles out to KFC for lunch before starting on a long list of errands (after school!) - and i sat down and looked at my options - i could have diet pop - AND chicken - if i took the skin off. I love KFC chicken skin! LOVE IT! When Oprah confessed her love for chicken skin sandwiches i TOTALLY got it! And here's the truth - i skinned my chicken pieces and gave the skin to my skinny little children who can easily burn off the calories...

I have CHANGED.....

There are probably some deep spiritual truths here - i'd like to believe that self denial is finally becoming part of who i am... but it was probably just the fog from being on the weird diet in the first place. Anyway, i'm feeling no pain, no desires, no hunger, and that's got to be good news!

So - other meals today -

breakfast was two eggs (and i made perfect fluffy pancakes for the children and didn't eat even one, even without syrup... i am getting to be such a good girl!) - also tea with no milk or sweetener

lunch - KFC chicken - 2 pieces without the skin, and diet coke

dinner - chicken wings, raw carrots and celery sticks and a diet coke...

too much diet coke, probably... but a girl's gotta have a few vices...