Go into the bedroom, shut the door, tell everyone you'll be back in half an hour. If that doesn't shift 'em, well you can carry on as you were previous to the ab work. It's not negotiable. Just go do it.

No Soda 12 Days

Abs 7 Days

I finally got my workouts in today, now I'm wiped out and must go to bed. Tomorrow we go Christmas tree hunting up in the hills in the snow.

Hiya all,
Saturday afternoon here and I am getting ready to go to a friends place for their Christmas dinner with friends. I understand we are barbequing. But what we are barbequing I have no idea. I need to get some wine and some flowers for the hostess. No the wine is for me and since I am driving a bunch of small bottles will do the trick. What I don't drink I bring home.

It's been a warm day, busy mostly as well. House is cleaned (again) - really don't know where all the washing and cleaning comes from. I blame the cat!! Couldn't possibly be me creating all the mess.

Food has been sparse owing to the upcoming, aforementioned barbecue. I can afford to eat a good plateful tonight.
Water has been a bit sparse, but I am getting through it. I will be taking some with me tonight as well and alternating with the wine.
Exercise - well I went to Body Balance and have done the abs/ crunches.
All in all I'm calling it a wrap.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Good Morning! How is everyone this fine Saturday? It's still early here 6:30am. We are heading out to trek up in the mountains for our christmas tree at 8. I suppose I should get into the shower, but I'm sitting here enjoying my coffe instead.



No Soda 12 Days

Abs 7 Days

Hello all.

Sushi, you were correct in using the ' and " for minutes and seconds. It's just that I always used to calculate my runs in distance, not time. Although I did use a watch with a timer to alternate run/walk. The Running Room (a Canadian running chain) has now come out with a watch that's programmed to do 10 and 1 for long runs. Even for fast walking. (Gotta get me one of them!) All this to say I apologize for mixing you up.

Today is Day 16 (I think) of DETOX. I have one pause day left, and tonight is a party. But next Tues night I'm having dinner with an old friend... What to do, what to do! It's just as well I abandoned the exercise challenge, as I've done next to nothing. Oh well.

I'm on my third day of the new diet, and wishing I could have a few more carbs, but I have to admit I'm not hungry. No clear movement on the scale, so I think I'll quit in a huff. Just joking. Glass half empty and all that.

Shad, it sounds like you're going to enjoy the bbq tonight. But a Christmas dinner already? And, of course, the wine... Raise a glass for on-the-wagon-me while you're at it. I know what you mean about the mystery of laundry and housework accumulation. Since I have two cats instead of your one, you can imagine the mess around here! Every time I think of your user name, I want to ask where Enfreude is...

Stage, isn't it a little early for a Christmas tree? You and Shad are so far ahead of the game, it makes me feel like maybe I fell asleep and did a Rip van Winkle or something.

It's snowing again here, actually looking rather nice, and I read this morning that the cross-country ski trails are groomed and ready already! Time to put my skis where my mouth is, I guess. Maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday. The sooner I start the better chance I'll actually do it.

Bye-bye.

i dont have a clue in **** what day i am on .. ROFLMAo, but ive done my exercise every day ... ehhh i gues this evening i should look back and try to figure out what day this is.. geez i could look now but i am being stared down by the chai monster... who is telling me telepathicaly that he wants to go for a walk..

so i will figure out what day i am on and be back later!

It's quiet on the threads this morning. Not many people on at all. I guess that the Americans are enjoying their long weekend. And good on them for that.

Sushi, you are going well with the running. Don't be tempted into doing too much at once because nothing works that way. When I started I couldn't even do a minute. I've since progressed to 50 minutes - I could probably do more but never have the time to find out.

Stage - going well too. Finally got those abs done I see.

Carla - hiya. Two cats!!! My word, the washing round your place must be awful. Who looks after them while you are away??
If you are having dinner with an old friend, can't you just carry on eating lightly and sensibly for the day and then a bit more at night?
Enfreude? Shad?? must be a Canadian thing. I'm just not with that one?? Please explain.

I went to my bbq last night. Went well in the food department apart from my downfall of dips and biks. The actual dinner I managed a small steak, satay chicken skewer, a big salad, and assorted veg and turned down the dessert. That isn't hard to do, but the Belgian Chocolate at the end was a close run thing. I had a piccolo bottle of a very dry champagne which is not really on my list of favourites so that was easy to stick to one glass. The gym this morning should fix the extra calories from last night.

Christmas sneaks upon us. Last's nights do was really not so much a Christmas party as a get together of friends who won't see each other closer to the silly season's finale. I don't know if I would be out getting a tree yet, however where Stage is the tree may last until the big day. Nothing like a real tree and a real smell (and real pine needles all over the floor) However if I was going to get one here, then I wouldn't get it until a couple of weeks from the day since it would be brown and dead from heat before too long.
I need to do my Christmas letter this week, email it enmasse in the first week of December and plan my family get together for the week before Christmas since I will be in Adelaide for the big day.

Oh dear, down comes the rain again. Working outside today, may be a little uncomfortable. Maybe something inside instead!!!! Bah humbug.

Onto day 17.

Wonder how our fearless leader is progressing.

Christmas tree found! Yes it is early, though we certainly had plenty of company up on the mountain today! I'm in rainy western Washington, so really the tree won't be to bad until after Christmas. We usually take it down on the 26th anyway. This was really the only weekend we had time to go and get the tree, that's why it was today. Plus here, you really don't know when you are going to get nice weather, and today has been sunny and beautiful.

Shad- Good job on the bbq, I would have had trouble with the chocolate! How did your workout at the gym go?

Curly- Did you figure out what day you are on?

Carla- Have fun at your party tonight!

No ab work yet today so I'm still at-

No Soda 12 Days

Abs 7 Days

I'm on Day 11 today, and I'm thinking of starting a second challenge... is there anything in the rules about doing 2 challenges at the same time, but counting the days separately?
If that's against the rules, then I'm just going to do my own independent 28-day challenge - crunches. Yes, 28 days of crunches, starting at 5 and adding one more each day or every second day.
Either way, I completed Day 2 this morning. I did 5 yesterday, and it was a good number to pick, as the last one nearly killed me! Today I did 6.

I don't have any way to measure the distance I'm running, other than "two times from the hole in the road to the big tree overthere and back." And I don't have a real stopwatch either, so I'm running with my cell phone! How pathetic is that?! But it lets me take snapshots, so I know exactly when I take breaks and how long they are

Stats
Days 1 to 5: no stats kept, but it went from 5-6 minutes to close to 10
Day 6 - 11 mins 30 sec with 2 breaks; 8 mins 14 seconds running, first break at 3 min 41 sec
free day (migraine)
Day 7 - 15 mins 4 seconds with 2 breaks; 11 min 20 sec running, first break at 4 min 30 sec
Day 8 - run 0 to 4 mins 32 sec, walk 4'32" to 6'27" and run 6'27" to 7'30" - so total time ran 5 min 35 sec
Day 9 - run to 3'47", walk to 6'40", run to 9'56", walk to 12'22", run to 13'52" so total time ran is 8 minutes 33 seconds
Day 10 - run 0-3'46", walk to 6'42", run to 9'46" (3"4'), walk to 12'53' and run to 15'57" (3'4" - yay!), total time ran is 9 min 54 sec

I did my ab workout tonight, DH lay on the couch and watched me the whole time.

No Soda 13 Days

Abs 8 Days

Day 11 completed.


Stats
Days 1 to 5: no stats kept, but it went from 5-6 minutes to close to 10
Day 6 - 11 mins 30 sec with 2 breaks; 8 mins 14 seconds running, first break at 3 min 41 sec
free day (migraine)
Day 7 - 15 mins 4 seconds with 2 breaks; 11 min 20 sec running, first break at 4 min 30 sec
Day 8 - run 0 to 4 mins 32 sec, walk 4'32" to 6'27" and run 6'27" to 7'30" - so total time ran 5 min 35 sec
Day 9 - run to 3'47", walk to 6'40", run to 9'56", walk to 12'22", run to 13'52" so total time ran is 8 minutes 33 seconds
Day 10 - run 0-3'46", walk to 6'42", run to 9'46" (3"4'), walk to 12'53' and run to 15'57" (3'4" - yay!), total time ran is 9 min 54 sec
Day 11 - run 4'24", walk 3'0", run 1'42" (got a very bad stitch), walk 7'05", run 2'26" (and got another stitch!); so total time ran is 8 min 32 sec


I hate stitches... I've been getting them all my life, grr!

ok after back tracking teh posts.. i discovered that i am on day 16, we walked 30min this morning and again this after noon

Didn't get back to post in the evening as we had a massive long term storm. The cat hid under the bed and wouldn't come out. Humidity rose to the nth and was most unpleasant.

I came home from my Bbq around 11pm on Saturday night and watched the footy from Scotland which finished at 3.00am. Woke up yesterday feeling extremely blah and sore in the gut - obviously too much food and too little sleep. Went to the gym and woke myself up, didn't feel like eating until around 3.oopm then ate everything in sight. Luckily I hadn't shopped and keep a boring refrigerator so there wasn't a lot of damage I could do. I worked in the yard until the storm sent me inside and the cat ran under the bed and wouldn't come out. It was a real doosey this one. Lots of rain, thunder, lightning etc. Some damage done north of the city, but none down our way. I gave up trying to do anything thing and went to bed for siesta.

I'm trying to sort out the Christmas dinner for this year. I think it is going to have to be the week before Christmas because of my going to Adelaide for Christmas itself. Therefore I will have to start organising the brothers by this week. The bossy sister effect comes back into being.

Day 17 was fine - even though I did eat everything in sight for an hour or two. Water was good owing to the fact that I was thirsty for most of the day and any exertion in the yard led to copious sweating so more water was required. Exercises got done, ab/ crunches got done.

On to day 18 - I've been to the gym and done 30 minutes on bike, treadmill and elliptical and I've done the abs/ crunches so don't have to go home and do them tonight.

Sushi - you can have as many challenges going as you like. Don't have to stop at one. Besides if you break them up into sections such as food for one, exercise for another then you stand a chance of completing at least one of them. My problem would be working out where I was at if I took a pause day on one but not on the other. Anyway go for it. You can do this.

Better go do something. Hard to believe it is nearly the end of November and weigh and measure is just around the corner AGAIN.

Yesterday was a semi-pause day. What is a semi-pause day, you may ask? Well, since our fearless leader is still missing in action, I've given myself permission to invent a new concept: for people like me who have a two-part challenge (chocolate and wine), a semi-pause will apply when we go to a birthday party and remain TOTALLY sober in spite of gallons of wine on offer, but succumb to the incredibly decadent chocolate cake. (This way if I have a glass of wine with my old friend on Tuesday night, I won't have to go back to Day 1, it'll be the second half of my pause day!) So anyway, today is Day 16.5, successfully completed in spite of a nagging headache.

The party was a bit of a pain: since it was in the party room of my condo building (not my idea), I ended up staying to the bitter end, trying to control the chocolate cake dropped on the carpet, keep the noise level down, start the clean-up... The very close friend and neighbour who offered the use of the room had not mentioned to the users they had to clean up for themselves. So they didn't. He and I (mostly I) did. Even the glorious chocolate cake wasn't enough to keep me from getting snippy. And of course they made off with their roll of paper towels, leaving me to wash chocolate off the floor and rug with napkins. Grrrr...

No exercise at all, unless you count vacuuming and cleaning the party room. And another four and a half days to the end of the challenge. Can't wait!

Shad, the "Enfreude" joke was because of the German word "schadenfreude", pleasure in the pain or misfortune of others, which I indulge in all too often. So when I read "Shad", I expect to hear the rest of the word. I'm a bit of a word/pun freak, you see.

Stage, maybe watching you do crunches turns DH on?

Sushi, I used to get stitches sometimes too. Some possible solutions: deep breaths; exhaling sharply every second left foot strike (I think); sipping water... I would run with my fingers dug into the fat covering the painful spot.

Curly, good going with the daily hour of power!

Aaaaah now I understand

No, not me, not guilty, never me, schadenfreude - oooh no. But pun away if it amuses you.

Shad (or schad depending on your origins) comes from Shad the dog featured in the avatar and now sadly deceased. His name was Mr Shad O C..... It was quite funny picking up a prescription from the vet for him. The cat is known to the vet as Miss Sunday C.....