Day 50: All I Want in Life is a Cheesburger

Seriously, what I would give for a freaking cheeseburger right now. Joey and I just did Yoga then stopped  by the mall and there were Red Robin signs EVERYWHERE. I was about to trade my entire life for a 1500 calorie cheeseburger. Thank God for Joey, I was like "Seriously, lets go to Red Robin". He says "Okay, we are going to go right by it."... we literally drove right by it and I did not get my amazing cheeseburger.

This whole eating the same thing every day SUCKS ASS today. I mean, I am getting creative as all hell, but you can only season Cod and Salmon so many ways before it all starts to taste the same. It has only been 5 days, but it feels like 50. Only 25 more days of this to go. My God, Why?!

The other day, I actually had a dream about bread. One of my favorite local chains, Great American Restaurants, has this little roll that is like heaven in your mouth. It is this round, donut like, little piece of magic in your mouth. They also give you this honey spread to make it that much more delicious. Needless to say, I actually had a dream about this roll. All the dream was, was me looking at my hands that contained a roll, I cut it in 2 and spread the honey butter on it and just stared at it. I never actually ate it, not even in my dream. Bastard. I cant even enjoy it in my dream!

I mean, I am clearly doing this for a reason. I wore a shirt today that I haven't worn in a while and I had Q Take a picture. I am pretty happy, the back fat is starting to go away and I am starting to get a butt. All these squats are paying off. Love it!

 

The rest of the workout we did Tabata training. 5 rounds, 1 minute intervals, 2 minutes rest period between rounds. I did air squats, box step-ups, 300 meter row, crossfit style sit-ups, walkout push-ups, and wall balls. It was a good session.

 

 

I am back to two-a-days when possible. Now that it has gotten to be the busy season with Staging and Design, I am going to be less likely to get back in the evenings, but I am definitely going to make myself go when I can. Tonight, we went back for Yoga and it was fabulous.

 

On that note, I am going to take my fabulous self to the couch and watch my DVR'd Once Upon a Time. I am so happy it's back! I'll talk to you tomorrow.



 

Day 29: Stretch All the Things

Well, I'm still sick, I'm just not going to let it keep me in bed anymore. My muscles are starting to atrophy. 

This morning I had my PT appointment with Q where we only did upper body. I was glad to get back to weight training, but I'll tell you what I wasn't glad about was the embarrassing amount of weight I was struggling with. I was doing the lat press machine and I was struggling, hard. The first round I did no weight, 20 reps; second set, 10 pounds per arm, 20 reps; third set 7.5 pounds per arm and I was for real hurting. Q looked at me and was like "Really Nicole? 10 pounds and your struggling?!" I mean, I didn't give up or anything... but I had to take a break. I was all sorts of winded and my arms were killing me. It was RIDICULOUS!

I guess it's because I'm still sick, I don't know, but it sucked. I don't even remember what all we did. I know there was some plank holding, more weight machines, crunches and lots of breaks.  But I did manage to do everything she through at me, so Nicole 1, Sickness 0.

As I was leaving, Q told me to take it easy the rest of the night and do some stretching. I took this as the perfect opportunity to go back to the gym tonight for Yoga Chill. I love yoga so much. I don't know why I tend to forget this. The last time I did a traditional organized Yoga class was at the ETC grand opening (like 3 or 4 months ago). Surprisingly, I did awesome. The Pilates I have been doing on Fridays has done amazing things for my flexibility, so I was able to get in and out of the poses with ease. I felt amazingly strong during the class as well. Yoga used to wear me out, but this time I wasn't tired. I was invigorated. At the end, Heidi, our instructor, put essential oils on a cloth and placed it on our heads during final pose. It was magical and just what the doctor ordered.

I think I am going to have to make this a weekly thing. One day of Pilates just isn't enough. I need to keep stretching all the things! Now that I am nice and relaxed, I am off to sleep. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

 

Day 5: The Struggle is Real

Have you ever thought you might be legitimately crazy? Have you ever had so many thoughts swirling around in your head you become nauseous? If not, you’re lucky. If so, welcome to the party. We should start a support group. As I type this I feel manic. My heart is pounding, my eye is twitching, and it is taking every ounce of self-control I can muster not to walk downstairs and grab a bottle of bourbon.

This morning my will power was strong, I was still high off last night’s accomplishments.  I woke up early, made a delicious breakfast and headed to a class I was actually looking forward to. I was taking a Pilates Rehabilitation where we actually got to use Pilates machines. I have seen the machines before, but never paid much attention to them. Let me tell you, when I first really looked at them, the first thing out of my mouth was “are we about to be water boarded?!” It didn’t help that when I walked over to my machine this notice was on it:

 

This is the actual machine:

I always knew the gym would try and kill you if you gave it the chance. This just confirmed my suspicion. Thankfully, Vicki was instructing and she didn’t let the machines come to life and exterminate their prey like I'm sure they wanted to. I think they trust her as one of their own.

I have taken several classes with Vicki, she is the Director of Group Fitness at ETC and responsible for the group signature classes that I absolutely love. With her I have been lucky enough to take Pound Fit, Body Pump, Pilates, Pole Fit and my absolute favorite, Air Fit (this is the silk scarves that are hanging from the ceiling that you do Yoga with). Vicki has a beautiful way of empowering your femininity that is good for your soul. I will never forget the first time I had a lengthy conversation with her. We had just started S Factor Pole Fitness as one of the group classes at ETC. I had no intention of taking it because I didn’t think I could get my big ass up that pole. Then she started telling me about the philosophy behind S Factor and I was so moved, I was teary eyed. Sure enough, I signed up and was in class the next day. Ladies, I will tell you one thing, if you want to get in touch with your inner goddess, go take an S Factor class. I felt so empowered. It is a beautiful class in a completely judgment free zone. There are ladies of all shapes and sizes and all fitness levels. It really is a lot of fun. It’s good for your soul.

That is one thing I am learning on this journey. You can’t just go hard and train, train, train. You have to do things you enjoy or you will collapse. I needed this Pilates class today for so many reasons. 1. Because I needed to deeply stretch my muscles after these last few days 2. Pilates is an incredible full body workout. 3. It corrects your posture and encourages spine elongation, which I desperately need. 4. It helps you learn how to breath during exercise which I need serious work on. 5 (and most importantly to me) I wanted to be there. I was looking forward to it. The mind/body connection that I feel during Pilates (and yoga) is healing.  I felt awesome when I left the gym!

I spent the next few hours doing things I love. I went and dropped off all the furniture for my client in Arlington, then I decided to treat myself to a stroll around some of my favorite home furnishing stores to see if they had anything new. I came home, grabbed a salad and sat down with my laptop. That is when the crazy came.

I started a battle with Bloggers comment software (the site that hosts this blog) that turned into an all-out war. When it comes to computers, I can figure out a lot of things and ease my way around pretty swiftly; but I kept getting errors and I was doing everything I was supposed to. On queue, I started to panic and go into a tail spin. Thank God Ryan got home, jumped on his computer and fixed the problem. Now, thanks to the Obi-Wan Canole, I have a working comment section. You would think that would have stopped my tailspin… but it didn’t.

When I get into my head like that, I spin and end up going down a rabbit hole of failures. I failed to fix this insignificant problem and all of a sudden I’m failing at everything, being a wife, being a small business owner, being a friend, and succeeding in the challenge. It is all very exhausting and very much bullshit. This is just my demons raising their head trying to keep me down. Well fuck that. I am stronger than that and I refuse to accept failure. There are too many people in my corner and I owe it to myself to be mentally and physically healthy. 

On that note, cheers to you friend, here is to staying awesome and living to see another day. I’ll chat with you tomorrow.