These business trips are SOOO exhausting....
Thought I'd take a few moments before hitting the sack to say howdy and YES I'm Baaack!
While I wasn't 100% BFL perfect this week, I think I did fairly well considering I was under a lot of stress (typical) 12-14 hour days and all that meeting food around.
The first couple of nights in Niagara on the Lake, we stayed at a place that I picked out on the Web. It had a pretty decent gym which was the main criteria (White Oaks Resort) but turned out to be near the QEW (freeway) and quite aways from the nice part of NOTL. Checked in on Saturday night and stayed until Monday morning, so I had a great UBWO on Monday.
The hotel that our meeting was at, Queen's Landing Inn, was absolutely gorgeous (as is the historic old town). BUT the fitness facilities, while there, were extremely sparse. Thank goodness they had a treadmill so I could keep up my cardio - but for strength training, all they had was a few Cybex machines - by 'a few' I mean: 1) leg extension; 2) Leg curl; 3) Standing hip extender; 4) Tricep pulldown; 5) Bicep curl; 6) Pulldown; and 7) seated chest press. I usually prefer using free weights so it was a real bummer. Still I did the best I could...added a lot of pushups and ab crunches. Last night I took my group to the Falls to see the illumination (they illuminate the falls with rainbow lighting from 8 pm - midnight) and we didn't get back til midnight. I was still up at 5:30 a.m. though to work out. Thought I'd sleep on the plane today but we ran into some major turbulence - ferget about sleep...
Every morning our breakfast would be a carb-filled bonaza of fruit, bagels, pastries, yogurt, cereal - all your basic convention stuff. Luckily we had an excellent staff helping us and made sure that at 9:30 I would get either an egg-white mushroom omelet or some cottage cheese to go with the fruit - BTW the fruit in Niagara is simply WONDERFUL, esp. the peaches!
I brought my BFL binder along and would read the Hussman site and Pam B's paper at night when I had a spare moment. BTW, I noticed one of the gals - Sil or Michelle I think - on #16 asking about the proper technique on using calipers. Hussman has a very detailed instruction on how to get the proper "pinch" on his site, in the Q&A section. What the heck, let me find it here and quote it for ya... (
www.hussman.com/eas is the site for you newbies out there - full Q&A is at
http://www.hussman.com/eas/qanda.htm#fatmeasure )
Quote:
...As for getting an accurate read from your calipers using just the suprailiac, go through these directions step by step.
With your right hand, pinch the skin on the knucle of your left middle finger. Really. Look at it carefully - that's a skinfold. just 2 layers of skin over each other.
Alright, now turn your left hand over, and pinch the lower third of your middle finger (the fleshy part at the bottom). That's *not* a skinfold - there's too much tension in the skin to get a true layer-over-layer fold, so you're catching all sorts of tissue in-between.
Now go to your waist, in a straight line up from your right leg and above the tip of your hipbone, and grab as much as you can of that love-handle with your whole left hand. That's *not* a skinfold either - you're catching a lot of tissue in between, and you don't have a true layer-over-layer fold.
Finally, take left thumb, and either your forefinger or the first 2 fingers, and pinch that love handle again. Now pull it outward away from your body, and wiggle it between your fingers for a second. Still holding that fold firmly, take the jaws of your caliper and set them about a half-inch from your fingers, and close the calipers. Hold the calipers alongside your waist like you're reaching for your 6-gun, rather than at a 90 degree angle to your body. You now have a skin fold between the calipers, and even if you try that 3 or 4 times, you should still get roughly the same reading. You'll get a slightly different reading if you do the left side of your body rather than the right, but the difference should be pretty consistent.
Free Week - here's a quote from Pam B regarding eating during free week (I've quoted this before but it bears repeating!)
Quote:
IN BETWEEN CHALLENGES
I believe that you need a break every 12 weeks. Not only do your muscles need a break, but you need a mental break from all of the structured eating and planning. I would recommend that you eat everything you are craving, but try not to eat large quantities of it. It can really make you sick. You can set aside one "binge day" if you want, but you don't want your week off to be a "binge week" as it can wreak havoc on your system. I am cautioing from experience here (blushing).
During the week I had some time to think about my goals, and while watching TV and reading magazines I was struck by those Old Navy commercials for low rise hiphugger jeans. Here's a new goal for me - my 39th birthday is November 10th. By November 10th, I'm going to OWN a pair of lowrise jeans and WEAR them! Also planning on doing Wishlift in Sacramento on that day. This will probably be one of my most memorable birthdays! I KNOW I can do it! WOO!
OK gals, I wanna hit the gym early tomorrow so time to hit the old sack! Later all!!!
(not saying that you do!). By all means get out and do something when weather permits, but don't go all-out. Even racehorses in training get to take it easy once in awhile! 