Tag: Twitter

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General Weight Loss Tips

Insanity Workout Day 10: Minus 50 to 29

Today marks the 10th day of the Insanity Workout for me. Last week I was so sore, there were days when I was moving like an old lady. Today the soreness is more specific, like the back of my right thigh, but my body is getting used to the activity. I like being in a place where my body feels more conditioned and everything is more fluid.

It’s helpful for me to have a plan of action as far as exercise goes. I wake up do a little work, and when Josh wakes up we exercise. The calendar tells me which workout to do, and I do it. When I have a plan, the excuses are smaller. I can get to a place mentally where I do it anyway. It’s staying there that is the challenge. The more times that I do this, get up and exercise, or start again with a routine, the easier it becomes. The alternative is becoming less and less appealing each day that I take the time to make what I want happen.

***

I hope you all had a delicious Thanksgiving last week. I wasn’t in the mood to post, but want to let you know that I often post my exercise on twitter and facebook, if you care to see what I’m doing there. I’m also tracking my food on myfitnesspal.com. I’m weighing in once a week and so far I’m close to 3 pounds loss from Friday when I weighed in. I’m looking forward to another loss on Friday.

This is so random, but do you go through outfit phases? I do. I will wear the hell out of an outfit that I love.  This is my new favorite outfit. I don’t know why, it’s just comfortable and comforting to me. The jacket was purchased at Maurices, late fall last year at a deep discount. The jeans are from walmart of all places and sandals are from Avenue. It happened to be really warm Saturday. I know that look on my face says “something smells”, but it was one of the better ones. I also want to use this outfit to track my progress, by taking a picture wearing it every month.

More randomness: here’s me and Josh on Sunday after a dinner/lunch thing and I wanted to post because I was wearing a new wrap dress that I’m pretty sure was not flattering at this stage of my life, but I wore it anyway and because Josh looks so darn cute.

And finally, the last random photo for this post. My favorite salad at the moment. Leafy greens (preferably arugula or spinach) with cranberries, goat cheese, almonds and ginger dressing.

 

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General Weight Loss Tips

Thoughts on Twitter

This week flew by! I kept up with taking food photos, but had a hard time coming here to make an actual post. This week successful in a few ways: I tracked all of my food, I lost seven pounds, I exercised, I got a lot of work done. And then not so successful because I just felt bad about myself all week. I know it is most likely hormone related depression, but it’s awful to feel bad emotionally.

I go in and out of clarity and that feel good feeling that suddenly, without warning goes away. All I can do is just ride it out. I have very mellow dramatic thoughts in days like this so I know it’s better for me to just stay away from most forms of social communication where all I want to do is whine and be passive aggressive. Social media can be lonely especially when you feel ignored or that your life is summed up in  140 characters.

I really want to get out of social media as my main means of keeping up with people. On the other hand I enjoy sharing projects,  blog and stuff I’m working on. I just sometimes feel like when I’m away from twitter, I lose touch. And it shouldn’t be that way, I didn’t even know what twitter was until recently- and now it’s my main source of communication with far too many people. There isn’t a lot that feels good about twitter and I haven’t read much that contributes positively to my life.

I have a friend who doesn’t use social media in any way. She has two businesses that run on word of mouth and when we want to catch up? We meet for lunch, email or call. We do this about once a week, and it’s refreshing not to have our relationship hanging in the balance of tweets. Call it old fashioned, but it’s a way less complicated friendship. We aren’t annoyed by the tweets of each other, or judging what the other has said, or reading into every menial thought or complaint the other has shared. I’m never worried that I didn’t congratulate her or acknowledge her in her latest tweets because I missed it. And I’m never sore with her because she never tweets me back, or interacts with me. We just have real communication, and it feels healthier.

I’m not saying twitter/facebook isn’t helpful, but I often feel left out of the swing of things. I don’t have a boring job and I’m not wishing the days away until the weekend (omg! TGIF!!!)  with my thoughts on twitter. Most days I have nothing witty, funny or smart to say. I don’t want my interaction on twitter to be my only interaction with friends. When I tweet it’s usually about an interesting article I’ve read, or that I’ve updated my blog, or that I have jewelry to sell, or that I exercised. Everything else is just noise to me.

Because I don’t share every detail of my life online (I know that’s hard to believe) I get that feeling that people are suspicious of me. That they feel they don’t know the real me. And it’s true. This isn’t the whole of me, I don’t share every single project I’m working on, every single thing my husband or cats do, every time I leave the house, every thing I’m involved in- because really…who cares? I would bore myself with it all and I suspect others would be too. And when I do share something I’m excited about…no one does care. And that’s okay. Because there comes a point when we all start thinking things about each other that we normally wouldn’t think in a real relationship: okay,  we get it, you’re awesome. everything you touch turns to gold. you’re a goddess and totally rocking life. we all want to be like you.

Celebration on twitter often feels like bragging. And then I realize that sometimes my self-worth, my likability hangs in 140 character. And that is  not acceptable.

I feel like twitter has become a place tell anyone all of the random thoughts we have throughout the day. You’re sick again, your knee hurts, you hate your job/co-workers/boss, there is a spider on your desk, you hated some movie or tv show, you are having a shitty day, but wait, it’s awesome again(!). It just feels like uncontrolled mind noise, not moving forward, but backwards. I say all of this to say, that I am backing away from using social media as a way to keep up with people. I like email, I sometimes don’t mind a call or even a text, and planning for the next time we see each other.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Fast Weight Lifting Workout


Read a great review of the Fat Loss for Idiots program. See if you can lose 9 pounds in 11 days and what Cycled Eating is

Fast Weight Lifting Workout

Fast Weight Lifting Workout

I know I only do this occasionally but thought that it would be nice just to post my fast weight lifting workout for the day today. This whole workout had my body worked out hard within30 minutes

As I have commented before on Twitter and on Facebook, I have switched to a much shorter, fast weight lifting workout based on lots of science but also trying to find convenience for myself. I was on the verge of splitting my workout to a 2 day split a few months ago and over the summer started trying to find ways to do heavier quicker workouts. The example I will show you today of my current fast weight lifting workout is quite good but there is still room to improve.

Start of Fast Weight Lifting Workout

So I started my workout today with a simple circuit. To me lately the key to all of my workouts are doing compound exercises, this way I am leveraging different muscles on each set and getting all of my minor muscles groups done. I hate remembering weight amounts but I will give as much detail as I can.

Please note that I did this warmup set back to back to back in about 5-10 minutes or so.

  • Bench press – machine – 12 reps I pushed these out ok and this was mostly warming up the shoulders triceps and chestFast Weight Lifting Workout
  • Military press – machine – 12 reps I find that I have a bit of soreness in my left shoulder but this exercise is a good warmup for triceps and shoulders
  • Wide Grip Pulldowns – machine – 10 reps I do wide grip pulldowns to get a good stretch and warmup my lats and biceps
  • Close Grip Rows – machine – 10 reps – Here I am working my lats differently and also stretching out my lower back. I get the weight up higher for this than a traditional warmup because I love the lat burn.
  • Tricep Pushdowns with rope – 12 reps – This is just an addon to a regular pushdown where the rope allows you to get a better peak contraction. I had a higher weight on this as well.
  • Alternating Bicep Curls – dumbells – 10 reps per arm I was just getting a good contraction for my biceps as the back exercises warm up the biceps but they could still use some work.
  • Seated Hamstring Curls – machine – 12 reps I skipped squats today to isolate a bit (maybe I was lazy?) this exercise really hits the hamstrings good and was a good warmup
  • Leg Press – machine – 12 reps I always love leg press as I can really feel the burn in the quads and the flex in my knees

Now that I was warmed up I did one superset for each of my main muscle groups. These supersets woulde make sure that I was able to get a fast weight lifting workout in and still really pound my muscles. All of the exercises were to exhaustion meaning that I could not get one more rep out even if I had to. Also there were no breaks in between the superset sets but about 2 minutes before I did the next muscle group.

Chest Superset
Cable Crossovers x 10 then machine bench press x10 Here is where I found that I am a lot stronger. I had moved up the weight I regularly use for crossovers and it was still not quite hard enough so my reps were to high. I really pushed the bench press though

Back Superset
Wide Grip Pulldowns x 8 Seated Rows x10 I did the same as my warmup sets for back but I really increased the weight. I did not get the weight high enough for the seated rows so I need to remember this for next time.

Shoulder Superset
Front Laterals x10 Side Laterals x 10 Pullups x 10 I know that the laterals are really an isolated exercise and should maybe do military press but I get a great contraction and burn with laterals vs militarys. My shoulders were really burning by the time I did the pullups and I kept my knees loose and really focussed on my form so I did not swing the weight around.

At this point I was really wiped and breathing a bit harder than I expected, I moved to legs before arms

For legs I did the same as the warmup (again I am a wimp for not doing squats) and I turned up the weight for hamstring curls and leg press.

For biceps I did 7-2-1 exercise which is done with a bar. 7 reps from bottom to half way up, 7 reps from half way up to peak contraction, and then 7 full reps. All this in one set.

For Triceps I did kickbacks to really get a great burn. I have fairly strong triceps so I get cocky about tricep exercises.

And that was the workout. Does not seem like much but this is kinda what I am doing twice a week for weights and I have to say I am getting stronger fast and think I am making better muscle gains because of the fewer sets.

Improvements needed for my fast weight lifting workout

Fast Weight Lifting Workout I am still not having perfect sets or workouts. I feel great but I have not got perfect conectration on each set and my intensity could always get better. One more thing that I need to dial in better is the weight that I use in each set. I want to get my reps to about 7 reps per set but I am not quite there yet, going a little too light compared to my strength.

And finally, I still struggle a bit with ego issues. If I do compound exercises properly then I should be able to get away with Squats, chest, back, and shoulders with no bicep or tricep exercises, I feel though still that I have to work those guns.

Why should we do a fast weight lifting workout?

There are a few things that are helping me these days and I will psot them as seperate post to make sure that they get the attention they should get but I have been moving up my strength in a large part due to the fact that I am doing less sets but each set has far more intensity. Also I am taking my sets to the very end, making sure that I am getting the most from each and every set. Finally I am concentrating on good form and a peak contraction on every rep.

I know that my exercise routine changes over time and I am sure that just as I am reducing sets now that a year from now I am sure that I will have spun it up to more sets per muscle group. Remember the most important thing to do in any workout, especially a fast weight lifting workout, is to create confusion in your muscles, making sure that you workouts, sets and reps are always changing.

Doing a fast weight lifting workout is a great way to do all of the above and save time getting stronger.