Congratulations on the 50 pounds gone, JG! :balloons: And have fun on your "training the trainer" day! :carrot: Those are hugely popular at my gym, always a blast, and a guaranteed client pleaser. Clients just love getting their revenge on trainers and it's a great change of pace for everyone involved. It's also a way to check out what the client has learned about program design and technique, so be alert to form, tempo, pacing, hitting all the components of a good workout -- all the things your trainer does for you. Be sure to come back and tell us all about it. :D

Thanks for the support! Mom & I were chatting last night & when I said I just have a hard time not going all out she laughed & said I come by that naturally! BTW - she is waiting for surgery on both knees, one of which is a redo 'cause she pushed too hard, too soon after the last surgery!

I would be SOOOO nervous to train the trainer!

Waiting for dh to get home right now & then we're going to the gym. I've decided the big change I'm going to make to my routine is to drop the supersets, do a few less exercises per workout (3-4 instead of 5) & tack on a little more steady state cardio at the end to give me more of a cool down. Ok - truth be told I haven't really been doing much of a cool down but after some reading I'm convinced it is more important right now.

Delurking to say good morning.

I'm getting the hang of the equipment at the gym and seem to have the confidence of both our PT and the gym owner soooo ... I feel confident enough to be tweaking my routine.

I'm just so glad you all are here. Don't know what I'd do without you.

Morning :sunny:

Susan- Great to hear that you are in the gym and enjoying the workouts :strong: Have you met with the trainer again?

LG- lol, it does sound like you come by it naturally. I don't envy your mom, but I do understand her!

I did a 4 mile treadmill run this morning and will lift a lunchtime. A leg-shoulder combo :rofl: Yesterday I felt to sick to lift, but today my problem just seems to be a completely stuffed up ear hopefully due to allergies (which I didn't know I had :?:). I raced home yesterday and mowed the lawn after work because everyone else in the household has such bad allergies and the grass was nearly a foot high after being away and all the rain. Not being able to hear out of one ear and feeling like one side of my head may explode is really annoying :dizzy: It didn't bother me when I ran, so maybe I should put my running shoes back on and just do the whole day at 7 mph :lol3:

Food back on track....

Have a good one,

Mel

Oh Mel, I hope it isn't (new) allergies. Allergies are no fun at all! I worry about my Mom but I also worry about my own knees. I've never had a problem but she sure has & her Mom had to have both knees replaced. Ugh! One more reason to keep working hard in the gym!

Hi Mel ... our PT had her gall bladder out last week, so I've been talking more with the gym owner. I learn something (mostly about form) almost every time I go.

I've worked my way up to weights that challenge me but are doable. I understand the machines and their relationship to me. I can 'put my mind in the muscle' ... think about what my body is doing.

Now I'm working some free weights in at home, I've talked to PT and Gym Owner about alternate exercises, I will work my way into a three or four day split (and hopefully they will encourage me)
I think their big concern is safety. I'm sure lots of folks walk in and say they know what they're doing. I thought I did too ;)

Hi everyone!

I've been slack about posting recently, but I'm still hanging around. :)

I started stage 7 of NROLW yesterday. :eek: For those of you who haven't memorized the book, that meant a couple of sets of bb squats followed by a quadruple superset of 4x15-20 lunges, push-ups, romanian DLs and DB rows with only 30 seconds between sets. Yikes. I'm achey all over today, which is nice. It's been a while. :)

Happy lifting, ladies!

Baffled, you are so far! I just started over. I did 1B this morning...

I may be killing my workout, who knows but I'm basically doing the exercise in the book, then I pick a random kettlebell workout, then exercise in book, kettlebell, etc. It is fun and actually keeps my heart going.

I'm still struggling with the food thing, as always but I do think I have a pretty good handle on it for now.

Baff - I'm so impressed at how far you've gotten with the NROLW! Like Nelie, I've slacked a bit and wonder if I should go back to the beginning. I love the workouts but can never seem to fit it all in.

On a more positive note, I'm having a much better week than the last couple. Being sick and very busy put a damper in my workouts but this week I ran 5k on Monday (and somehow managed my best time yet at under 27 minutes!), had an amazing yoga class yesterday and did a power class today.

AND I finally changed my current weight in my profile! I've really tried to focus on my food for the last couple of months or so and it's really helped. For so long my weight fluctuated between 130 and 135 and then it finally dipped below 130. For the last couple of weeks it's gone between 126 and 128 so I put in 127 as a compromise and to keep me on track! ;) And all of this is with a few splurge meals sprinkled here and there. I will do my best to keep it up!

What has really helped me has been logging my food in fit day. I don't do it every day and I don't even try to log in the splurge meals but I don't let one "bad" meal get in the way. I just stay away from the scale for a couple of days and get right back to it.

Hi to everyone.

:D

Baffled: You are doing great with the NRules. I'm with Nelie and Elisa as far as following it straight through. I've kind of picked through and used new exercises to enhance my current workouts. I am glad to have it though to give me more options.

Elisa: Congratulations on your lose and a new personal record for the 5k. :high: You must be feeling great with these two occurring during the same time.

Nelie: You are doing so well. I struggle with the food too. It's hard to be in constant loss mode and sometimes I just have to slide into maintenance mode before I can go at it again. For me to keep from completely falling on my face I have to be consistent with my workouts. Without the workouts I forget why maintaining my weightloss is so important to me.

SusanB: It sounds like you are having a great experience with your new gym membership. Great job in focusing as well. It's hard sometimes to keep the "mind in the muscle" but it really does make a difference as you are experiencing. I find that it just allows me to work into the muscle just a little deeper. Do you notice this too or am I just :crazy: :lol:

LG: Needless to say I'm all about the knees now too. My 4 year old is always zipping around the floors and then drops and slides into the room on his knees. His quick come back without any prompting now is "I'm Okay," and off he goes. I ache just to watch him.

I also totally understand your post about having a different view of yourself now that you have maintained your loss for a while. I really went through this too. That first summer I was at least ten if not fifteen pounds heavier than I am right now but i thought I looked awesome. :lol3: The reality was that it had been so long since I've seen my own face that I didn't notice anything else below the waist. The honeymoon phase began to die about the second year when I began to see things that I didn't notice before. I noticed just how dreadful my thighs were during a downward dog yoga pose. I've been humbled ever since. At my current weight I am very realistic about my less than perfect parts. I am imperfect but I had to work darn hard just to get this far. I'll enjoy that part of the success and keep working just to see what else I can accomplish. In the meantime, just don't ask me to wear shorts during my workouts.

Mel: So did you annoy all the Type B personalities around you as you raced about your day at 7mph? I hope your ear is feeling better now.

JG: Wow! A great big congratulations to you too! This was just been a wonderful year for you. (sob) And I remember when you first started posting with us. :hug: Have you had your revenge day for the trainer? What a wonderful thing for you to present her with a bottle of champagne as well. I can't send one to you so this will have to do. :cheers: I have my own bottle tucked away on the top shelf of my pantry waiting for me to reach goal. Some of you may recall it's been up there almost three years now. Boy I hope I get to uncork that thing this summer. :yes:

Meg: So the train the trainer thing is a trick to pick the clients brain. Love it. All the more reason to set up a particularly well thought out but grueling workout. :devil:

So I had a decent workout today. I did a little bit of barbell work something like a deadlift, pushpress, squat combo and feeling a little insecure as I worked my way through the first set. Then up walks a friend. :goodvibes: She came just to say Hi and that I was looking really good with this movement. I then felt so much better. Silly I know but sometimes I still can feel a little weird doing things that are new/challenging, working out the kinks with so many other people within eyeshot. It's getting better but I doubt that it will ever completely go away for me. :rolleyes: I also added the t-pushups to my set of horizontal pullups. That was great fun but I felt a couple of times that my momentum was going to cause me to roll all the way over onto my back just like a turtle. It will happen. Just a matter of time.

Here is a picture from the workout with Mel last Thursday. Mel's the one with gloves! There are shots with our faces. I just had a little technical difficulty which will be sorted out soon then I will upload them as well.

http://www.frameworkpress.com/images..._Mel_small.jpg

Awesome photo!!! Two gorgeous arms. :love:

Morning all!

Lydia ... nice pic. I love nice woman arms!
If I let my mind wander, so do my counts and so does my form. Even between ball extensions yesterday, I had to think about relaxing over the ball or else I was still partly tense. Not good for an old nurses back.

Mornin', all. I'm online because I slept in instead of going to the gym for cardio. I'm sooo tired. These 4ams catch up with ya.

Foodwise, I'm still doing Atkins and eating to BMR. Weight is fluctuating between 270 and 272. Trying not to be consumed by the # because of the training. Think supersets might just cause a muscle gain and the scale will notice, LOL.

Training is most excellent (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure reference). My trainer has said I should teach her classes. I'm really toying with getting certified, but wonder if I should--can I be an instructor/trainer part time? I know I make more than the average trainer, so I wouldn't want to switch careers totally, but I also seem to have folks gravitate toward me to learn from me, so I'm not sure what to do.

Cardio is going eh. I've just felt like I am hard to move, hard to get the most out of lately. Figure that's just exhaustion. Hard to fit in the ti me, too.

I hate cardio. Boring as ****.

Hi, Lydia!

Yes, now I can acknowledge that I've found a rhythm and what my body needed. What a journey to get to that. Was so hard before, not losing and working hard.

Revenge day--thought of one with ex trainer, but then the relationship got strained. Oy, he can't even acknowledge me anymore. Very hurtful.

K, my new trainer, actually ASKED me for one. She wants me to train her for a day. Honestly? I think she's really trying to test me out, see how I'd relate as a trainer. She's asked a lot of questions to get a picture of me as an exerciser that make me think she has something else in mind.

She's surprised I've only been training for <1 year. I guess my body reacted very quickly cuz even when weight loss is slow, I've advanced in terms of level of program. I already do many advanced ab exercises. WEights have doubled in 6 weeks. Things like that....

Meg, thanks for the tip on how to construct a good session for her. What I'm not sure is how to know what weights to suggest for her, how to know "her level". She's already told me I lift more than she does on most things.

Oh, I forgot to share something about the bottle of champagne.

I put the bottle in the trainer's room on the table near where she sits, knowing between clients she'd pop in and see it, likely just before our session. I saw two trainers notice it and move on. Another, not so much. Saw this person lift the note open to read it, though it was clearly labeled with her name and the contents were folded in. Nosy SOB. Told K and she was apalled.

Who do you think that was, hmmm?