It’s been said that women don’t sweat, they glisten.

I just got prematurely done with Ramp It Up, and I have quite a glisten going on. I woke up with a sore throat, but I’ve decided it’s allergies, because I don”t want to get sick (because I have such a say in the matter, right?).  So I decided to do Ramp it Up, but promised myself I’d only do 25 minutes of it today, and ease my self into it.

Fast Forward to 28:27 minutes left on the SI6 timer, almost done with my 25 minutes of a workout, and I think “Gee, my left hamstring feels kinda tight. (Probably because Debbie did 5 more hamstring on that leg than the other) I should stretch.” And so, being the ex-ballet dancer I am, I port-de-bras with a flat back straight forward and down toward my toes and “HOLY SH!T” My left hamstring tightened up and screamed at me. So I limped to the couch and am trying to ease my left leg out straight, because it’s locked in a bent knee position. Oops.

I realize now that the reason this happened was probably because I didn’t try to march it out before attempting to stretch. Back in ballet class, a million years ago, we did plie, plie, grand plie, relive, down, port de bras over (to stretch over your legs and touch your toes, basically)… So it was bend, bend, bend, straighten, stretch. Debbie is all leg work, then marching, and no stretching ’til the end. And with no stretching in between my legs get very tight. So I guess… Frequently or not at all? fortunately I don’t think I’ve sprained or tore anything.

Tomorrow I’ll aim for doing the whole video.  Ramp it Up is a lot harder than Start it Up, I can’t believe how much just 20 minutes made me “glisten.” I hope after I start doing this every day I will start to lose some weight. I haven’t lost any doing Start it Up, but I have noticed my thighs getting stronger again, which is nice. My legs were always in great shape from dancing, so it’s nice to have them feeling strong again. I did have to make a modification on the forward lunges, my weak ankles (from years of dancing on sprained ankles) get wobbly when I try to push my front leg up and back. Instead I’m staying with a forward movement, pushing the back leg up to meet the front, moving forward. So I basically lunge forward, alternating legs, in a big circle from my living room, to the kitchen, through the kitchen, and back to the living room. And yes, she does so many lunges I can make that whole loop with lunges to spare by the time I’m back in front of the tv. I’ll be shocked if I don’t lose weight after switching to Ramp it Up, this shit is hard work!

So far I’ve done 1 week SI6, got sick ad took a week off, did another week of S16, now I have food poisoning so I didn’t push it today & skipped the ab work… Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow, so I can move on to Ramp It Up and start losing some weight. I don’t want to take it easy or take time off! Why do I have to keep getting sick when I’m trying to start exercising again?! Talk about obstacles!

So… After a week of not doing any exercize and having a throat so swollen it hurt to speak (although I still managed to eat, lol) I decided to try working out to day. Because my lymph nodes have shrunk back to near normal size and I had gained back the 3 pounds I lost doing the first week of SI6. This time around I took it easy, because last monday I felt myself getting sick but decided to move up to ramp it anyway. I don’t think I’d have gotten so sick if  hadn’t decided to try to push myself despite having a cold coming on.
So today I did about half of Start it Up, after having started with Slim and Limber (because years of ballet has taught me to stretch both before and after exercize ). I only got 14 minutes into Start it Up before my muscles started to get shaky, so, learning from my mistake, I skipped forward to the end to do the ab work and cool down.  A wimpy workout, but better than nothing. Easing back into it.

I do realize I should change my diet, I eat way too many processed carbs these days, but I don’t really want to take on too much at once. I do know that my daily chai habit causes me to weigh an avg. of 10lbs more, but I love my morning chai. Apparently tazo doesn’t make an unsweetened chai, so I switched to unsweetened soy milk (only 1 gram sugar!) and am mixing Tazo chai with “less sweet” Oregon chai. I’ve tried to cut soymilk out of my diet because soy interferes with my thyroid meds, but I can’t stand the way other “milks” taste in my chai. (Weird, because I love to drink almond milk, but it just tastes funny mixed with chai). Next time I buy milk I’m going to see if there’s any brands that make unsweetened rice milk. Mostly I use my milks in stuff, rather than drinking it straight, so switching to unsweetened wont bother me.

I remember some of my habits from before I had my son (besides the occasional anorexia) were healthier– I only used whole wheat flour, always cut out or cut way down on the ammount of vegetable oils I used, and always baked with molasses or maple syrup instead of sugar, and only sweetened things half as much as recipes called for. I want to get back to that, but I’ve become spoiled with white flour and evaporated cane juice. Part of the reason I switched to unbleached white flour and cane juice and more oil is because my mother always criticized my baked goods as tasting to dry (not enough oil) and not beeing sweet enough (lack of sugar), and I didn’t want to make people think vegan food was gross, or that I was a bad cook. And now I’m unhappy with my body because I cared about others opinions of what I put in it. :/

Resolutions– whole wheat flour only, less oil, stop using cane sugar, and start asking for “small” when I get a treat or eat out. And not eating the complimentary bread or rolls that come with my soup. Easy changes I know I can live with, because it’s how I used to live.

I have resolved to start working out on a regular basis. Actually, I made this resolve over a work ago, and worked out six days last week, then two days this week, and then I got sick. I tried to exercise anyway, which turned out to be a bad idea as all of the lymph nodes in my head responded by swelling 100x their normal size. Did you know you have lymph nodes in (over?) the roof of your mouth? Neither did I, until they swelled up so much breathing became painful. But I digress.

My workout plan was to start using Slim in 6 six days a week. Week 1, check! Week 2, yeah, not so much. So now I am trying to decide if I should count last week as one of the “6″ weeks of SI6, or if I should just start all over again. I’ll probably start over again, because I like to do things “right” (and probably have OCD, because I think everything has a “right” way). What’s my hurry to get the 6 weeks over with? I plan to move from Slim in 6 to Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. I had planned to actually alternate between the two, but then realized that 30DS level way feels waaay more intense than S16 level 1, and even though I could probably start level 1 of 30DS with level 2 of slim in 6 and call it good, trying to remember to move up another level in one and not the other sounds like more brain work than I want to do. And a small part of me wants to do them separately as a kind of science experiment, with myself as the lab rat.* I want to be able to judge which is more effective, how much weight I lose on each, and possibly see if Beach Body would want my before/after shots for their SI6 promo (they wouldn’t but a girl can dream). The logical part of my brain is telling me to figure out a way to alternate the programs, to varry my workout so I don’t stress the same muscles six days a week, yadda yadda yadda… But that was the part of my brain that was telling me not to try to increase my workout when I obviously was sick, and you can see how much i listen to that part of my brain.

Anyway, when the swelling in my throat and head go down, I’m returning to S16. I’m gonna lose these 30lbs I gained in the past two years, when my thyroid function decided to go kerplunk, and I’m going to lose it soon. ish. Soon-ish. Watch out, Debbie Seibers, I’ll be back.

*cherry bomb is morally opposed to animal testing, unless it is human testing of awesome things like make-up, the newest flavor of diet coke, and exercise dvds.