Hey all,
Not much to report still going strong did another 44 mins on the bike this morning before work.
All going well though the dog and the cat are a bit miffed that I’m out and about at 5.30am..

Goal to Weigh 60kgs/132lbs have a 65 cm/25.5in waist and feel fantastic!

target hr 145 - 165 Max 174

I’ve decided to keep my weekly stats here:
  4 Feb 08  Starting:      WEIGHT 70KGS ‎154LBS Waist ‎83cms 32.6In ‎21.5% ‎Body ‎Fat
  8 Feb 08  End week 1:WEIGHT 70KGS ‎154LBS Waist ‎83cms 32.6In ‎21.23% ‎Body ‎Fat
Total Excercise for week 3.5hrs avg HR 147
15 Feb 08  End week 2:WEIGHT 70KGS ‎154LBS Waist ‎83cms 32.6In 20.25% ‎Body ‎Fat
Total Excercise for week 3.7hrs avg HR 144
22 Feb 08  End week 3:WEIGHT 70KGS ‎154LBS Waist ‎82.5cms 32.2In ‎19.92% ‎Body ‎Fat
Total Excercise for week 3.8hrs avg HR 142
GOING TO START WEIGHING MYSELF MONTHLY ONLY
29 Feb 08  End week 4: Waist ‎82.4cms 31.88In 18.88% ‎Body ‎Fat
Total Excercise for week 3.5hrs avg HR 140
OMG on one week to go for next pic - dont even notice if there is any difference…
7 Mar 08  End week 5: Waist ‎82.4cms 31.88In 18.88% ‎Body ‎Fat didn’t move at all !
14 Mar 08  End week 6: Waist ‎80cms 31.5In 18.09% LOST 1.3kg /2.86lbs

Well there are the pics a tiny difference but not alot.
Not in order - sorry thats how they upload… roll over pic and you’ll see the number.
Pics 1 taken 26.3.08 day 50!  Pic 2 taken 7.3.08 day 31 Pic 3 taken 9.2.08 day 5 latest pic taken 20.4.08

I think it’s great getting the workout done before work!

Thanks, its the only way I can do it..... sneak up on myself whilst I’m still half asleep when my mind dosn’t come up with excuses.... tee hee… seriously though its a great way to start the day better than sitting round drinking copious cups of coffee watching morning tele.... instead I listen to MTM and throw in my bike-o-vision of the french alps and away I go…

ahhh bike o vision......and the alps...even better......hurry, catch up to Lance!

Yeah I know its pretty lame but it gives the eyes something to look at rather than a wall…
It stopped raining today so maybe I’ll actually get the bike off the windtrainer and venture outside - mind you the humidity is about 98% at present so not that pleasant.....  hence bike o vision…

Watching something helps me too. At the gym there are 4 tv screens in front of all the cardio equipment. I’ve watched more TV at the gym in the past year than I’ve watched at home.

Our gym has one big screen of which we are forced to watch and listed to MTV : ( Not inspiring at all, why they’d think that middle aged and elderly women (its a single sex gym) would want to be confronted with film clips designed to be watched by adolesent males is beyond me… so basically I hide out in the spin room or do weights..

Sometimes you can talk to the management, and get that changed!

(HEY< WHAT’S WRONG WITH ADOLESENT MALE’S FILM CLIPS!?)..... I still feel like one sometimes!! LOL

lol.... men - and see thats understandable but my gym is a female only gym.
Its the staff they are underpaid and undermovited yes I have tried by putting it in the suggestion box and no good.
The staff are young so they put on MTV the clientelle average 40 and it gets boring continually asking for them to turn the music down (cant here my ipod over the music) and could they change the channel. My PT said its been bought up at staff meeting and its ignored constantly : (

You’ve got me on my soap box now.
There are a couple of reasons women choose single sex gyms one is that their body image is such that they would feel very uncomfortable working out with males around.
Another reason is religious we have a few traditional muslim women who are members and its the only place they can get out of their berker to excercise.  Having scantilly clade anorexic women prance about infront of you is not motivating if you are a hetrosexual woman. (ah ruined another daydream of men across the world) - yes women run round all female gyms having pillow fights and giggling....
Anyways its like the real before and after pics as opposed to the fake ones - its just not motivating.
Being confronted with sexist images of women is demeaning and offensive to their clientelle and a gym should be were self esteem is built and not battered.  Here ends the rant. Shouldn’t have got me started… he he

oh and by the way just finished an hour on the bike avg hr 147 what a way to start a saturday : )

DaY 5: 1hr on bike avg hr 147 Distance 18.93klm/11.76miles avg spd 17.7klms/11miles
Bought some Caesin to put with my protien drink as it’s a slower absorbed protein than the Whey isolate so shall see if this will assist in my muscle building/weight loss goals. My goal for February is to crank the excercise up a notch ie longer cardio workoouts and make every effort to say in my target hr for the whole hour and changed PT to weights for both sessions per week and follow that with 40 mins cardio at target hr - bit unsure how i’ll go with the 40 mins after half hour of weights but I’ll put the intent out there and see how I go.

Congrats on day 5 and on continuing to do your homework.

I’m lucky in that the gym I go to caters to a variety of people and no one prances around. . .  The other day a guy was grunting and that’s the first time I’ve heard that there in two years. He’s not a regular so I’m not going to worry about him changing the atmosphere.

Hi,
Day 8 had Sunday as recovery day and Monday but got back into it this morning and feel like such a slacker only did 30mins on bike. Which is really funny cause two weeks ago I would have thought that 30mins was fine. Its incredible how quickly ones mindset changes.

Day 9 big day today -
started morning with a small interval training before work:
25mins 6.32klms 3.93miles avg kph15.4 avg mph9.57 av HR151
PT - Weights - new program ewww - I’m so unco-ordinated it take me ages to get the muscle memory for new stuff.... but history has proven I will get the hang of it… took the masters advise and went straight from PT to Treadmill for half hour incline 12 speed 5.5klms - are we really meant to do an hour on the treadmill? anyways followed this with a 40 min dry sauna.  Has anyone else found that if you sauna straight after hard work out you dont get sore the next day? Its fantastic - I missed the sauna the other week and my god I certainly felt it the next day. It must sweat the lactic acid out of your system or something but its great.  Jumped on the scales - still 70kgs not one gram different! Can electronic scales get stuck?? Its me isn’t it....

TomCarlsbad - 08 February 2008 03:41 PM

Sometimes you can talk to the management, and get that changed!

(HEY< WHAT’S WRONG WITH ADOLESENT MALE’S FILM CLIPS!?)..... I still feel like one sometimes!! LOL

Hey Tom, I cornered the owner of the gym tonight and shared my views on the wrongs of MTV in a womans gym and how truly offensive it must be to our muslim members. He was a little taken aback because like most people he’d just not looked at the bigger picture. So that was very cool he’s going to look at putting Music Max on instead which is a bit more middle of the road.  He’s also getting new cardio equipment with fm transmitters so we ipod users wont have to be bombarded with whatever the Gen Y’s at the front counter have selected for us.  So things are definitely looking up & I will be spending more time there one the changes are made.  So thanks Tom for giving me the nudge to talk to them again..

Day 11: only 89 days to go!! Lost 2.67 kilos of body fat n 20cms/7.8in overall since starting the 30 days challenge back on the 10th Jan but the scales haven’t moved one iota..  Had this weird experience last week where my left side was noticably weaker than the right by about 40%.... no pain just annoying weak left arm and left. So when to an osteopath today and he cleared me of any neurological probs which is great tho I was pretty sure it was due to my hips being out (sustained back injury from horse riding when I was 17 and they are always a bit dodgey). So hopefully by end next week I will be back to me new self again.  Its realllly hard trying to benchpress 25kg/55lbs when your left arm wont play…
Keep making ammendment to my dreaded excel spreadsheet and now tally how many hours per week I am excercising . Its amazing how cutting short excercise by say 10 mins each session cause your not feeling up to it can accumulate depending on how many days your excercising that can be 1hr per week! 
Still havn’t worked up to the long slow burn on the treadmill for 1 hr yet - osteo appointment got in the way this morning.
But this week did manage 20 mins treadmill after both PT sessions. So, hopefully one day soon I will see the scales move in a downward direction. By my composition traker program I am still carrying 14.2kg/31lbs of fat and some of that has just gotta go! 
So, my intent for next week is to go for the 40mins on bike min 3 days per week and 1hr LSB after weights pt twice per week. I will perservere and see my goals met!  I hate scales but unfortunately there is no other way to do the body fat calc.

DAY 12: Sat. Well just finished 87 mins on the bike - thats the longest sint of continuous excercise I have done so far.
So Wow, go me cause I really didn’t think I could do it.  I’m not totally exhausted yet but I’ve only just got off the bike so who knows. Todays stats: 87min 24.61klms 15.29miles 16.9kph 10.50mph Avg hr 148

I went to the oestopath yesterday and got my hips realigned and my arm feels much better i.e. the strength has come back. Still have anothr couple of visits probably but feel a lot more aligned and stable : ) physically at any rate… lol.

Holy crudmuffins!!! 87 minutes on the bike, that is incredible!!!  Just take one day at a time and those 31lbs will melt off with all that hard work you are doing.

Thanks, Yep Sunday is me day of rest and sometimes Thursday as well.  Come down off the high now and will be having a nanna nap very shortly…

I’m not weighing myself for a month! After my weekly measure and weigh in I’ve decided that its not a constructive process. As I havn’t lost or gained on gram/oz in since jan - though I know I have put on muscle mass I’ve observed myself getting dishartened by the process.  The illusion of not getting anywhere even tho I’m working out very hard.
So, this morning I’ve decided that I’ll do the tape measure thing every week but I’m staying away from those scales cause they are not productive in keeping me motivated.

Well here it is Day 20
This week I only managed 4hrs of excercise all up including weights. Is it enough to loose weight?
Think I’ve stalled a bit - did an hour on the bike yesterday morning but reallllly had to push myself to get to that 60th minute.
Had three cups of Chai tea yesterday whilst whisking round getting house work done and couldn’t get to sleep.
So coffee is a no no and now it appears that any caffiene is impacting on me.  Got heaps done yesterday but 3hrs sleep just isn’t going to cut it.
The good news is the Osteopath is working wonders and am back to lifting 10kg dumbells (had to knock it back to 7kgs from 13kgs becaus of shoulder) so another appointment next week and I should be feeling fine.

Well another week gone and done its day 27.
Only one week till next pic (I ve decided to take them monthly).
I wonder if there will be any decernible change in 4 wks? Dont know as the scales haven’t changed and the measurements have reduced slightly but don’t know if visually it will show…
Got the all clear from the Osteopath on Friday so am all balanced and ship shape and back to being able to lift 10kg dumbells again - evenly! 
My personal trainer is amazing at pushing me past my preconceived barriers. On Friday she had me doing pushups on the Smith Machine which I was pretty impressed I could do reasonably easily - so for the second set she threw a 10kg 22 lb weight on my back!! I survived he next little adventure for me in a couple of weeks is to do them with my feet on a swiss ball!!! Did I mention she was insane?
Am going on a bike riding date next weekend - pretty cool really. I got the click with the concept of friends making you fat and visa versa. So am now only consciously choosing to hang out with people who are doing outdoor healthy things and trying to build a new social network of friends that dont just sit around and drink coffee. 
Takes time and work though but one day at a time....

Well another week over and what a week!  The scales finally moved - Yay me! Dropped 1.3kgs / 2.86 lbs in one week!
Bench pressed 47 kgs/103.4 lbs to failure of a massive 2 reps but still even my son was impressed (he was my spotter - he would have thought I was making it up otherwise).  Managed to get in a total of 5hrs excercise this week which includes the 20klm/12.5 mile bike ride I’ve just returned from : ) Its been about 10mths since the bike has been off the trainer which was before I stopped smoking and started going to gym. I cant believe how much my fitness has improved in that time - the difference was amazing.
So my reward this week was to lash out on organic food for the week. I’ve never tasted apples so good. Most of the red apples we get in Queensland are all flourey tasting because they are kept in cold stores for a season. These tasted so good that I will have to keep working harder so I can keep rewarding myself with good tasting healthy food!
Has anyone out there read the Gabriel Method for weight loss? Cool stuff - describes how physically you have to provide a mental state that approximates being chased by a preditor to click on the fat burning brain chemistry. (This tells your body that to survive it must be lean and fit - so you dont get eaten) anyways I tried it this week whilst doing interval training and with my stagering weight loss this week I think it may have done the trick.
What I did was visualise a Saber Tooth Tiger chasing whilst doing intervals on the trainer - the first time I did it the Tiger caught me!  I was a bit offended as it was my visualisation but my son pointed out that if when lifting weights one should work to failure didn’t I just do the same thing - funny boy, my boy. I picked a Saber Tooth Tiger cause I figured that if its your primitive brain that has control of those particular chemicals then I’d give it a reference point it might recognise…
anyways I’m off to conquer the world. bye!