Day 3: Root Canals and Trampolines

"I am doing the best I can given what I have today."
- Jillian Michaels (Winning by Losing)


Mid-Week Weigh-In:  2.6 pounds down!
Woah! I was not expecting to see the scale go down so fast! What a great surprise.

Today's Fitness Plan : Cardio 1
I went to bed yesterday thinking my root canal might affect my Meal Plan for today. I never thought it'd have an impact on my Fitness Plan to boot!  But it did.  Oh boy, it did!  Every bounce, jump, and kick triggered a shot of pain right in my tooth and would then radiate to most of my upper left jaw.  Greeeeeat. Turns out the post-procedure pain is worse than the root canal itself.  Who would've thought?

Nevertheless, I was determined to do my morning workout. I was so excited to do cardio.  A few minutes into it, though, I realised I'm going to hate my cardio workouts.  Not because of the difficulty, but because of my apartment.  Let me explain: we live on the second floor of a two-story condo unit.  The couple living below us have already told us that they can hear us walk in the apartment and that, at times, it can be loud.  Now just imagine me, at 5:00 AM, doing Jillian's cardio workout : jumping and running and hot feet and suicides....  *sigh* I won't be able to do so without waking up and seriously angering my neighbours on a daily basis.

I borrowed a mini trampoline from my boyfriend's mom for this very reason, but I was disheartened to see that it won't be much help.  While I can do half of the moves on the trampoline (jogging, military march, etc), the other half just doesn't transfer well.  The trampoline isn't wide enough for me to do "hot feet" properly.  Or "running man". And just forget about suicides! (which are probably be the best cardio-building exercise of the entire workout).  I'm not quite sure what to do.  Obviously, I won't get the best results if I can't do any of the cardio workouts properly...

Until I come up with a better solution, I will just do double workouts on cardio days.  I'll do the video as best I can on my trampoline in the morning and add a second workout in the afternoon / evening.  Hopefully it'll balance out.  Tonight's second workout (tooth allowing) is going to be Dance Central 2.  I love dancing games (I used to be the biggest DDR fan) and I can work out quite a sweat in half an hour. 


Today's Meal Plan

Very green smoothie.

Breakfast: Pumpkin Spinach Smoothie (again).  Still not good, but better than nothing. At least it didn't hurt my tooth.

Lunch: TBD

Supper: TBD

Snack: Plain Greek Yogourt

Day 2: The "Why"

"If you have a good WHY, you can withstand any HOW."
- Jillian Michaels (Body Revolution)

Today's Fitness Plan : Workout 2
I could definitely feel yesterday's workout this morning: my quads complained when I got out of bed and my pecs chimed in with a complaint of their own when I put on my workout clothes.  Suck it up, muscles! We have 90 days of this ahead of us!

I really enjoyed Workout 2.  Some of my favourite moves are in there : skaters, supermans, donkey kicks...  The lunge + trunk twist combo was possibly the best part.  I really felt it in my glutes and sides.  I can already tell it'll hurt tomorrow. :-)

As always, Jillian shared a few golden words of inspiration during the workout.  Today's quote is at the top of this entry.  It really made me think about WHY I'm doing this. Why I'm committing to not only 90 days of Body Revolution, but to losing 75 pounds.  There are so many answers to that question.... However, I have to admit the main reason is rather vain: I have two boxes of "skinny" clothes that I am dying to wear again.  I bought them two years ago when I got down to my lowest weight ever.  I only got to wear them for a month or two, and then I started gaining weight again.  *sigh*  It's pretty sad, actually. I had lost 60 pounds by going to kickboxing class every day - sometimes twice a day!  I was in such great shape (I had biceps! I had a collar bone!)  But I couldn't stay on my student schedule forever.  At some point, real life caught up with me and I couldn't go to my evening workouts anymore as I was teaching evening classes.  Then I cut back my morning kickboxing lessons... Pretty soon, I wasn't doing any "regular" exercise at all!

Add to that the fact that I met my incredible boyfriend around the same time...  Don't get me wrong, I don't blame him for my weight gain in the least.  It's just that we were both so comfortable around each other that we didn't notice / care that we both gained a fair amount of weight since we started dating. All we wanted was lie around all day, talking and laughing, playing videogames all night, going for pancakes at 2:00 AM... The first few months of our relationship were a happy, ridiculous haze...  and the pounds started creeping on again.  It's been almost two years, and they haven't stopped.  I'm blessed with a boyfriend who finds me beautiful and sexy regardless of my weight and that is probably why I didn't really care about my weight gain all that much at the beginning.

Now, however, I've realised it has gone completely out of hand.  Not only did I regain the 60 pounds I had worked so hard to lose, I have packed on an extra 15! How the heck did that happen?!?!  (Oh yeah, those pancakes at 2:00 AM..)  That means I have 75 pounds to lose to get back to my goal weight.  75 pounds to fit back into those cute "skinny" outfits that are waiting for me in boxes at the back of my closet.  And fit in them again I will!  By the end of the year, I'll fit into my cigarette jeans again!



Today's Meal Plan

Breakfast: Pumpkin Spinach Smoothie  (Plain protein powder, pumpkin puree, spinach, pumpkin spice). Not as gross as yesterday's smoothie, but still nowhere near "good".  Smoothies are made to have fruit in them! Half a banana would've made this smoothie a wonderful breakfast!

Lunch: Egg with Turkey Bacon, Avocado and Tomato.  Mmmm, that was absolutely delicious!  I am loving turkey bacon lately.  It's half the fat of regular bacon and it seems you get more meat out of them.  Win - win, if you ask me.

Dinner: Hummus and soft whole wheat pita.  I know I wasn't supposed to have any wheat this week, but I didn't know what else to do for supper.  I had a root canal this afternoon and therefore couldn't eat anything hot, cold or chewy.  That pretty much eliminated everything I had in my fridge.  I ended up choosing hummus because it is soft and is still really delicious at room temperature.  Hopefully my tooth stops hurting by tomorrow, or else I'll have trouble figuring out my meal plan for the day.

Day 1 - Here We Go!

Today's Fitness Plan : Workout 1

The alarm woke me up at 5:00 AM this morning and, for the first time in my life, I didn't hit the snooze button.  Instead, I jumped hopped out of bed with a grin, thinking:  This is  it! This is the day that I start the Jillian Michaels Body Revolution! This is the day that the numbers on the scale will start going DOWN!

I had been waiting for weeks to get my copy of the DVDs.  Being a Canadian, the "expected delivery times" were anything but what was expected.  (Stupid Canada Post, urgh!)  Anyway, I finally got the package this weekend, which gave me just enough time to read the Fitness Plan and the Meal Plan before officially starting Jillian's ass-kicking workouts this morning.

I popped in the Workout 1 DVD in the player with a little trepidation.  I had attempted Jillian's 30 Day Shred in the past, only to get my butt thoroughly kicked.  While I am committed to doing the Body Revolution system for the entire 90 days (and beyond), I was afraid I wouldn't be able to finish the first workout (I haven't done regular exercise in over a year...).  I was a little surprised, and quite proud, to see that I could do Workout 1 in its entirety without feeling like it was too hard for me!

Don't get me wrong, the workout is still challenging and Jillian has a bunch of modifications for those who need that extra "umph". She has one of the guys in the video (Omar, I think) do all the harder versions of the move.  Poor guy, his muscles must've been burning by the end of the 30 minutes!  I wanted to tell Jillian to let up on him, but of course, she never did! LOL.

Even doing the easiest version of the moves, I still worked out a sweat.  There was nothing too complicated - no compound moves (yet).  However, I've come to realise that I am severely lacking in the balance / stability department.  During a very simple move (raising one leg up and doing slow front kicks while keeping the other leg on the ground), I almost fell on my butt several times.  I guess having a good 75 pounds extra around my midsection screwed up my center of balance! (The joys of being an apple-shaped gal, hehehe.) My goal for next time: stay balanced!  Oh, and increase the weight of my dumbbells.  I went for 3 lbs and 5 lbs today, which I found a little too easy.  I'll try to increase it to 5 lbs and 8 lbs and see how it feels.

Overall, Workout 1 was rather fun!  The circuits go by so fast that, before you know it, half an hour has gone by and you're done for the day! I can't wait for tomorrow morning to see what Workout 2 has in store.


Today's Meal Plan

I really, really wanted to follow Jillian's 7-Day Kickstart Your Metabolism Plan but, as I'm on the go and at work by 7:30 AM, I don't have the luxury of cooking up what appear to be wonderful egg breakfasts every morning. 

Instead, I'm doing a modified Kickstart Plan.  I'll still cut out fruits, flour, grains and sugar for the week.  I'll stick to her recipes for lunch and supper. However, I'll be having my usual Green Monster Smoothie for breakfast - except I'll make them without fruit this week.

What is a Green Monster Smoothie, you ask?  It's an energy-boosting breakfast smoothie - made with spinach! (Hence the "green" monster colour.)  You can find more info at http://greenmonstermovement.com/

So what's today's Meal Plan?

Breakfast: Fruit-less Cocoa Green Monster Smoothie (Spinach, Cocoa-flavoured protein powder, water, ice cubes).   I gotta admit, it was pretty gross.  LOL.  As I was drinking it, I couldn't help but imagine how delicious it would've been with half a banana and a handful of blueberries...  I'll need a better fruit-less recipe for tomorrow...

Mmmm.  Awesome lunch!

Lunch: Chef salad and skinny deviled eggs.  Ok, I took some liberties with Jillian's chef salad recipe.  I'm not overly fond of ranch, so I substited it for non-fat dijon dressing.  And instead of regular hard-boiled eggs, I scooped out the yolks and mixed in some grainy dijon, green onions and a tiny little bit of low-fat mayo.  Absolutely delicious!  Made all my coworkers jealous!

Supper: Perppercorn Steak with Wilted Spinach.  (Can you tell I love spinach?)  I can't wait to make this tonight.  I'll pop by Costco after work to get a truly great cut of filet mignon. (Is it weird that I always go to Costco for my meat?) 

Snack:  Hummus and veggies.