Good Morning LWL
It's still dark here.Ugh, Ireally don't like getting up in the dark, especially with a sore throat! Hopefull the throat part will disappear soon. I'm fairly confident the dark part will.

Despite eating clean and exercising the scale is up a few pounds I don't even know why this time. It's really depressing th think that I may need to drop what I thought were my maintenance calories or up my cardio just to stay in the same place... I'll see if this goes on for about another week, then start tweaking...sigh. The battle just never ends.

LEGS today! and I guess some cardio. Oh joy

Mel

Oh Mel, you'll cope! You're tiny - like you said in the "trainer" post!

I'm "tapering" Well actually I'm just not doing much this week because of kickboxing grading on Saturday! No weights this week, upping the calories so I don't feel too hungry but keeping with lacrosse and kickboxing training (so just cardio for me this week! ) and LOTS and LOTS of sleep! Hopefully my rest from weights will rev me up ready to go for next week!

Had a pitiful weekend - nightmare buses on Saturday to get to a design show, show was a big let-down, then trogged ALL ROUND London to try and find a lovely coat in Gap. Got it in the end then got £10 off! Then walked half the way home because the buses were STILL lame and the traffic was a nightmare cos of all the anti-war protestors going home!

Ended up cooking myself a lovely dinner and relaxing with a DVD (that was disapointing) and eating lots of chocolate cake Spent Sunday asleep, food shopping and playing scrabble!

Looking forward to a nice relaxing week this week

Take it easy chickies

Hey girls

Pretty quiet weekend and last week was quiet too, this is why I didn't post much. I'm up a couple too Mel , can we blame it on the weather or the moon phase? And I was pretty darn good food and exercise wise last week too ...

Today it's chest, shoulders and tris... I find this one a very long workout : and I often cut is short by doing only 2 exercises of each with only 3 sets, but I always get a pretty good pump just the same from the workout...

It's an extremely dreary, rainy, gray day here, I have no idea how I will motivate myself to move today...

TTFN I'm going to try and get my butt in gear here...

Today is bi's, tri's and abs for me. I don't have a preacher curl set up. Does anyone see anything wrong with trying them over the back of a sofa or chair? as long as I can keep my back right? Or maybe they're not even necessary if I'm doing concentration curls and barbell curls ?????


Edited to say to Ilene ... I did shoulders yesterday. I have an Oxygen mag with an article about shoulders by Anja Langer. Whoa, awesome arms. She does a dumbell front raise. Oooo for burn! I tried them when I first got the mag and could hardly do 4 with 5 lbs. I'm doing much better now. Maybe everyone has already heard of these but they were new and exciting for me

Which month is that Oxygen, Susan? I have quite a few of those mags.

Dec '04 it has Amy Fadhli on the cover in a white top and midblue bottoms with a striped belt. The cover says "15 minutes a day to sexy, shapely shoulders".

I ordered a subscription yesterday

Legs today -- Upped my squats to 40 lbs. x 11 x 1. All my leg weights have suddenly increased. Maybe I've crossed a "hump".

Mel, Ilene -- despite eating clean, and exercising through the weekend, I gained a lovely 4.6 lbs! No, I am not PMS (although these days, it's hard to tell thanks to perimenopause). Mel, you and I live in the same general area (sorta), I'm wondering if this awful humidity has anything to do with the weight?

Ilene, humid, overcast where you are like it is here in the Mid-atlantic states?

Here's to a week of dropping the lbs. and increasing the weights!

Luanne

ma'am...

Hi,

Humid and overcast! Lighten up, girls, it is SUNNY here! It is chilly in the mornings - but no rain for the whole week - that's an accomplishment!

Anyways, I think I figured out what *does* make my body slimmer! Yoga! Like I noticed that I gained about 6 pounds since mountains biking/triathlon events, and those pounds were half muscle half fat I guess (my BF is 17.9% as it was before but I feel a layer of fat around my abodomen and my jeans are too tight!) So I started to do yoga while my kids are doing their activities (swimming and rhythmics) and I see the difference is my waist at least. This Sat I even did 1 hour rhythmics as my little DD who is 4 was way too distracted during her second hour and when I joined she was doing just fine. Well, did I feel it next day! My legs are still sore from all this jumping and skipping and tippi-toe jumps! Unbeleivable what our kids do and we just sit there and watch! After the class we did 6 km hike - my 4 y.o. was running, I was barely dragging my feet - and that is me with my exercises!

So today morning 30 min of Kathy Smith cardio challenge (legs part) and 5km run during lunch - have to do it since weather is nice!

Also, I am reading BFLFW and so far I am thru about half of the book - and it is really nice - read it if you need time to remind yourself why are you doing it!

Cheers,
Sandy.

Hi LWL, It is, as always, sunny in AZ, a little warm for this time of year, we should be hitting mid 90's and it is suppose to be 101 today but the humidity is gone so unless you are out in direct sun you don't really notice the heat.

I'm switching this week around and meeting with my PT T, W & Th so today is cardio and I plan on doing that when I get home. On days that it's under 90 at noon then I get out and walk during lunch but today isn't one of those days.

Food is doing pretty good, I've signed back up with my counselor and weigh in tonight and expect I will be down. I didn't have all that great a Sunday but that is the only day that I lost focus so I'm not unhappy. A big turn around from what I was doing a few weeks ago.

It is just to cool, I'm starting to get definition in my arms and I just love it.

SusanB, My PT showed me that I could use my stability ball for preacher curls, he also said I could raise the back of my bench and do the curls off that too.

TTFN,

Hey there LWL! I'm back from my trip, and trying to get my life back! Home wasn't too back (except the mail) as DH and the cats take good care of themselves. All I need to do there is my trip laundry and grocery shop. Work however, is another whole story... Yikes, things certainly pile up when you're gone. Plus I started the morning with a 90 minute dept head meeting.

I didn't do much with weights while I was gone (unless you count schlepping around a laptop that feels like it weighs 50# ) but I did get in a lot of walking at a pretty fair pace. Notice I'm not talking about the food , though I was up only 1-2 lbs this morning. I'll be back at the gym tomorrow and see how I do. A week off the weights shouldn't set me back any, but I'll likely need to drop back the cardio a little. I don't have any travel for a month, and that'll only be 3-4 days at the end of Oct, so I'm hoping to settle back into my routine quickly.

Missed talking to you gals. I was so busy that even though I had my laptop and an internet connection I only got to read a few times.

hi LWL,

It was nice out here but it's clouding up now.

Mel - maybe you have some swelling (water or otherwise) of your muscles because you lift heavvy with the big boys now???

As for me, no formal cardio so far, but the scales are creeping down. As informal cardio I have been busy in the attic - I want to clear & redecorate so I can use the spare room for "gym".

Then the car broke down, spend 30 mins to fetch my daughter from school by bike, the this morning biked 80 mins to & from work, and will bike 30 mins this afternoon to get the spare parts for the car.
Yesterday I also did 1 hour (??) "car -repair cardio". This is no formal excercise but nonetheless very challeging. I managed to get my stuck brake loose on the car, then discovered that the brakelining had separated from the brakeshoe- so I have to put in another car repair session this afternoon.

I can't wait for all this to go back to normal... functioning machinery etc.
My DH is on a hanggliding holiday in france so I'm much more out on my own this week.

Rabbit

Good work, rabbit! Remember to breathe when you're doing the repair work! I find it slows me down and makes me think each step through properly.

My new gymn is working out well although some of the big boys do F and Blind rather a lot. My initial impression is that, yes, they do have testosterone and, yes, they also have one or more screws loose. I like diversity. I'll keep you posted!

Footnote: I'm eating a lot. I'm putting it down to serious lifting after several months off, rehabbing.

It's a lovely day here after the heavy showers started to move east. They'll be with you by home-time, 2F, and with you by tea-time, rabbit!

Hullo to all of you! Be kind to yourselves today.

Nope, I've been lifting heavy for years and years, so if my muscles were full of water, they'd always be full of water. I've had a really hard time eating OP for the last 3-4 weeks. My gut is full of peanut m&m's . I eat clean 99% of the time, but that 1% kills me! I've got 4 totally clean days behing me now. Going for number 5!

Rabbit, you sure are handy! I can do just about anything fix-it wise around a house, but other than filling my gas tank and changing a tire, I don't touch cars Good for you!

Hi pat Nice to see you back

Evangeline way to go on seeing some definition!

Luanne- At this point, I don't know what makes the scale go up or down. I binged off and on for 3 week and the scale went up. I ate perfectly clean for 3 days and the scale continued to go up. This morning it was down 2.5 pounds. Maybe your humidity theory is right...we had thunderstorms overnight. The heavy lifting-muscles retaining water theory doesn't work because yesterday was LEGS and that should be my heaviest, hardest biggest muscles lifting day.

Ilene- did you find motivation? Whenever I'm mopey in the gym and stare at a weight mumbling "why am I doing this" my boss fires back "Because you can!" When I see other women our age who look like they can't pick up a 10 pound bag of kitty litter, I realize that's a good point. Besides, we look better Chest, shoulders and arms would be a very long workout!

Gotta go,
Mel

Hi LWL,

Yesterday was a good day for me - not only food was almost clean, but mood was clean, and I am not sure about you, but for me everything goes from the head. I guess the main break thru was after reading BFLFW - in one part she gave an example of woman which was diagnozed with cancer and got stuck in a traffic jam - like she said that she just put a relaxing CD on and started to enjoy music and be happy to have time for herself, instead of stressing out about beeing stuck in the traffic. I realized that I personally would be stressing rather than relaxing - it was so easy and so in front of my nose but I never paid attention. Somehow this discovery made me feel so content that I could do nice decisions about what to eat, where to go, and when I came to agility practice and waited for 20 min to find out it is cancelled - I realized that I was relaxed and content! I still have this feeling with me today - so if you are so stressed so much that you do not realize it (how does it sounds?) - pick up this book!

Today is UBW!

Ladies - your posts insipre me - a year ago in October I did not know anything about weightlifting, and now I even see muscles definition in my legs and sometimes when I suck my belly in - even in my belly! Thanks to you!

And another thing I did today - I tucked this shirt in!!! Automatically - obviously I relaxed enough to realize - I do not care what is in fashion, but as long as my shirt was tucked - I was fit, so here it goes! i am fit again!

Sandy.