Start of week... 13?

I had a great weekend! One of the best I've had in a while. Partly due to the fact that it was a 3-day weekend and that I had a couple friends in town, but it just felt so good to be happy. Friday I got to go see my favorite artist of all time, Dar Williams. I went with my mom, as we're both huge fans. I've liked her since I was a little kid. We actually ran into her on the street before the show and chatted briefly. I've met her before, but i was still shaking afterwards. 

I also got to see the Hunger Games on Friday during the day when the theaters weren't crazy. (I'll admit it, I love those books. Well, the first one anyway.)  

Yesterday I got to hang out with some friends I haven't seen in a while, and today we went to Devil's Lake and had a picnic (my homemade rosemary chicken salad from Cooking Light, with baguette and carrots and greens and eggplant garlic spread, mmm)  and did a ton of hiking. We meant to go on a a short-ish hike that is fairly challenging but do-able. We ended up getting lost on the way down, however… which meant that our shortish hike turned into a 2.5 hour hike. We got SO lost! I have no idea how many miles we ended up going, but I burned over 1,100 calories according to my heart rate monitor. Crazy! 

Also in a good mood because I weighed in at my lowest weight today for a total of 17.4 total pounds lost. I'm glad those two bad days didn't catch up to me. 

I also got the news that a couple of my friends from Minneapolis are going to come visit me over Memorial Day, and I'm really excited for that even though it's two months away. One of them has visited me here in Madison before but the other hasn't, so I'm excited to see them. I might take them to Devil's Lake to go hiking, we'll see.

I am still having a little trouble with my achilles tendons and whatever is wrong with my left ankle, and I anticipate being fairly sore tomorrow after all that uphill hiking. Some of it was REALLY tough - like climbing up rocks tough. I think it's mostly high-impact stuff like jumping jacks and jump rope that are hurting me. We'll see.

I ended up going over my calories by a couple hundred today, but I'm totally okay with it because I was legitimately hungry - all that hiking made me starving and tired!

I'm pretty exhausted so I'm just going to post my menu/exercise plan. I'm switching back to doing Sundays as the start of the week rather than Saturdays, because that's the way SparkPeople does it and it's easier to keep track of my weekly minutes.  Plus it just makes more sense to start on Sundays.

Sunday

Blackened Tilapia Baja Tacos (Linked the recipe because it's delicious. I'm not a big fan of fish, except in sushi, but I love these tacos!)

Exercise: Hiking (150 minutes)

Monday

Barbecued tofu sandwiches with bell peppers and onions (I normally make these with tempeh but the store didn't have any)

Exercise: Cardio blast, 40 minutes (I may skip this since I already reached my minutes goal for the week, but if I'm not too sore, I'm going to do it)

Tuesday

Leftovers

Exercise: Rest day (if I skip Monday's workout due to soreness, I'll do it Tuesday - I'm eager to try out that new DVD)!

Wednesday

Baked potato with broccoli

Exercise: walk/jog, 40 minutes (the one day this week it's supposed to be nice out!)

Thursday

Pinto Bean Nachos - one of my old staples. I add bell peppers while cooking, and top with tomatoes and avocado.

Exercise: Carido kickbox, 25 mins (if my feet are feeling better by then… this is the workout I first started having major problems with)

Friday

Jimmy John's vegetarian sub

Exercise: rest day (I'll be with my dad)

Saturday

Orange-chipotle glazed tofu with brown rice and whatever veggies I have leftover

Exercise: Step aerobics, 63 minutes

All the recipes I'm making this week are quick and simple. Sometimes I get in moods where I just want to try new things, some complicated, but with the warm weather I just don't have the patience to mess around in the kitchen for too long, plus I don't really feel like eating anything super heavy. So some stuff (the fish tacos, the pinto bean nachos, baked potato) are just my staple meals I go to when I don't feel like doing a whole lot. 

Back to work tomorrow and I'm bummed. Mondays are a good day for me though, which is really nice. I get to sit in my office and not deal with clients (except for on the phone, but even then, not a whole lot) and catch up on all the work I didn't get to the prior week. It makes getting back into the swing of things a little easier.

Injured and irritated

How did I kill my 21-day challenge so early?!

I managed to injure myself and I'm really upset about it. I was having some pain in my achilles tendons after my hour-long step aerobics on Sunday, but I figured I was fine. Then I did cardio kickboxing on Monday, and I KNEW something was really wrong with my left foot, but I pushed through it and I shouldn't have. It was a really weird feeling I had in my ankle, on the left side, not just a basic ache but a really odd, stinging, very painful tingly sensation. It was really, really bad when I was doing jumping jacks (of which there are 150 in my cardio kickbox, so...) and jump rope (also about 150). After my workout I iced it, which seemed to help. I kept waking up in the night and it was really awful... I took 800mg of ibuprofen which helped a lot but when I got up in the morning it was so bad I could barely walk. I work next to a CVS so I got myself an ankle support, and that combined with ibuprofen has kept the pain mostly at bay - I can walk normally and everything, it's just that if I bend it in a certain way it hurts, and the support keeps me from doing that.

Tuesday was a planned rest day anyway, but I was super, unjustifiably upset that I'd hurt myself, and I'd had a rough day at work (Tuesdays are the hardest work day for us, won't go into all the boring reasons as to why). So what did I do? Went over my calories by a ton. I figured, what's the point, I can't even work out for the rest of the week, so I've already screwed up my challenge. Sound logic, right? I could've just eaten at the lower end of my calorie range and rested, but instead I just lost it. I don't know why it's so hard to connect the logical part of my brain with decision-making skills.

Wednesday I had planned to do a 40-minute workout but I was too tired and my ankle hurt too much so I missed it. Sigh. I didn't go crazy like I did on Tuesday but I was just feeling crappy (most likely due to eating too much the day before!) and I didn't track my food. Stupid.

Back to sane decisions today. I know two bad days won't ruin me. Tracking calories, eating on the lower side of my range to try to help balance out the two days I did terribly.  To make up for my missed workout, I did my hardest DVD, the hour-long step aerobics again. So I did end up cracking the 150-minute mark already this week. I am still considered about my ankles, though. I probably shouldn't have done that workout. I wore my ankle support on my left leg, but I am having a different issue with my right foot... past my achilles tendon... sigh. The summer after my senior year of college I got REALLY bad tendonitis in my right foot, which I think I acquired by walking 3 miles a day in flip-flops. Idiotic... I worked only a mile and a half away so I'd walk to and from there usually with my coworker, but I love wearing comfy skirts in summer and I can't wear that with tennis shoes and instead of just changing shoes I just walked in flip-flops. That put me out of commission for like 2 weeks, I was limping like crazy.

It surprises me how much it upset me that I didn't think I could work out. I just don't feel like I'm far enough into my progress to have a long rest like this. The ibuprofen got me through the workout today, and it feels okay now, but I do worry about tomorrow and how much it might hurt. I'm supposed to go to Devil's Lake on Saturday and hike, and I'm going to be BEYOND bummed out if I can't do that. It's supposed to rain on Saturday, but... I realllllly want to go.

 My endurance is really improving though... I keep burning fewer and fewer calories each time I do the step aerobics. My legs are stronger - they don't shake when I'm doing the harder jumping-on-one-leg moves. My heart rate only got up to 171 at its highest, and I burned 565 calories when just last Sunday I burned over 600 doing the same workout. I worked about half in zone 2 and half in zone 3, when normally this workout had me in zone 3 at least 75% of the time, if not completely OUT of zone. So although I'm annoyed that I'm burning fewer calories doing the same work, it does mean I'm getting better at it. Sign to change it up, I know.

I think I'd be okay just walking, but I never, ever feel like that is a "workout", I don't feel like it ever gets my heart rate into the range I want it. I don't think running would be a great idea on this foot, though. Trying to think of some upper-body cardio I could do like my Gold's Gym boxing, but the reason I burn so many calories during that workout is because of the footwork - your feet are constantly shuffling.

So I feel a bit defeated. I think hiking would be okay, the only time it's really painful is if I'm jumping around.

On the plus side, my friend is coming into town tonight for the weekend and should be here in about ten minutes, and I think I get to go see the Hunger Games tomorrow (yes, I'm a fan of a young adult novel), and I have the day off tomorrow, and hopefully I can make it to Devil's Lake.

Gah. I'm going to continue my 21-day challenge and... you know, I think I'll do it again in April, cuz I've been feeling really good up until this week. I am seriously so much happier when I'm doing well, even if I'm not losing weight.

Week 11, and my 21-day challenge

All right. Time to get my ass in gear. These last two weeks have been so ridiculous on my part! Screw up after screw up. So I'm trying something new, to re-invigorate myself, as I feel like I've hit a large rut. I haven't weighed myself in a while because I've been staying at my mom's, as mentioned. I've dealt with so much stress the past couple weeks, and it's time to face it head on instead of hiding.

Work is a big thing, as always. I am finally getting used to my new role, but it is leaving every single one of the people on my team completely, utterly exhausted. I have never seen us so zombie-like! I hadn't thought it was possible to work harder than we already were, but it feels like double-time now. I've never, ever had a workload that was possible to keep up with (luckily my bosses have always been understanding of this and know that I have always done the work that should be done by two full-time people rather than one, so I always get positive feedback) and it's been frustrating to just NEVER be caught up, ever. I'm not helping this by staying up super late, drinking alcohol which screws with my sleep, and drinking way too much caffeine to combat the exhaustion. I've been staying at my mom's, as mentioned, to cat-sit, and it's been really hard to not have my Wii or my aerobics step. This means that the workouts I planned to do are not the ones that I actually LIKE to do. I ended up skipping much of those. I still squeezed in 150 or so fitness minutes, but the food I ate defeated all of that, really.

On the positive side, I've been way more social the past couple weeks than I have been previously, which makes me happy, but it also means going out for food and drinks. I went out to eat FIVE times in one week -- out for sushi with one of my best friends and her fiance, then the same night went to Chile's and then a club (drinks) with my friend Jeff who I haven't seen in a long time, with my dad to Applebee's on Thursday night, with my coworkers to a bar on Friday night (drinks + mozzarella sticks + French fries), and to a Mexican restaurant with my friend (fajitas and margaritas) last night. WOW! I picked decent options for sushi and Applebees and Chile's (really no excuse as all the nutritional info was available) but again, pretty much defeated the purpose when paired with alcohol which I'm sure had more calories than the food itself!

I then, as mentioned, had computer troubles and it ended up costing me a grand total of $920 to fix it. UGH! Total ripoff. I have SparkPeople on my phone but it was really hard for me to track. It was such a pain to try to manually enter all these foods on my phone and I just got frustrated and basically gave up.

I moved most of my stuff back into my condo today as my mom comes back from Florida tomorrow. It will be SO nice to be back in my own place with all my stuff. I've been really anxious/depressed here, probably because I grew up in this place (always hard to go home, isn't it?) I've stopped there a couple times to pick stuff up but haven't spent any extended time there in a long time.

I think I let myself slack off a LOT after I'd seen that I'd lost 15 lbs. I also haven't been able to hold myself accountable because I haven't weighed in in forever since I don't have a scale here. March is also a really difficult month for me (won't go into detail since this is such a public blog, but I tend to be a lot more emotional/stressed out in March). Part of me was thinking about starting some new goals starting April 1st, but then I thought, why wait til then? I don't want to suffer through March. I want to be proactive and I want to fight it.

I have 21 days before April begins. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. So starting today, I am making myself my own little challenge. It isn't a whole lot different than my general goals, but I want to stick with these pretty strictly for at LEAST 21 days and I want to note the differences I feel.

My 21-Day Spring Challenge
1. Stick within my calorie range every single day for 21 days. Often I let myself slack 1 or 2 days a week and then I really am just taking two steps back because I go too overboard rather than just allowing myself to go a couple hundred calories over.
2. Work out at least 150 minutes per week for the next 3 weeks. My absolute minimum has been 90 minutes, which is pretty sad, so I'm upping it by an hour. I think this goal should be pretty easy for me, as I've been very consistent in doing my minimum of 90 minutes/week and I usually hit 150 minutes anyway.
3. Not a drop of alcohol. It's really derailing my efforts! I usually have a few drinks a week, typically at my dad's or with my friends. I'm just going to pass on this for a while. I think it will make me feel a lot better emotionally. Hangovers are NOT my friends! Even if I don't drink much and am not hungover, I still feel sluggish, and I know that alcohol is pretty much just poison.

That's it. Not hard, right? I just want to be CONSISTENT.

I do have positive things to look forward to, too. I get March 23rd off, and I have a friend coming in from out of town who will be staying with me for the weekend. I'm going to a Dar Williams concert the night of the 23rd, which will be amazing (she's my favorite artist, and it's been a couple years since I've seen her live.) I'm really looking forward to that already!

One thing that has made this sooo much easier is that the weather is perfect. Generally Wisconsin doesn't even start to get a glimpse of spring until late April, but we're having some BEAUTIFUL weather here. We had a mild winter to begin with but it really feels like spring. As I write this, I'm sitting in front of the open window, it's 66 degrees and sunny. I just got done with a walk/jog that lasted almost an hour and I burned 680 calories! This is the third time I've gone walking/jogging this week, but I went a lot further than usual this time (I think). The whole route is only 3.6 miles, but it is HILLY. I jog when going downhill and on some flat surfaces and then I walk all the uphills and most flat surfaces. I used to be able to do this in about 40 minutes but now I'm up to 52 minutes. Oh well. I blame the hills :)

My only problem with running is that even though I stretch a lot and cool down, I still end up so ridiculously sore and I end up having to take a couple days off of working out. I know I just have to get used to it again.

So here is my menu plan for this week as well as my workout plan. I'm eating more meat this week than I usually do because I had a couple recipes I really wanted to try!


Sunday
Dinner: Broccoli, bell pepper, and flank steak stir fry
Workout: Jog, 53 minutes total

Monday
Dinner: Blackened chicken with mixed greens, shredded cheese, sliced red onion, broccoli, bell pepper
Workout: Frontside (circuit training DVD), 45 minutes

Tuesday
Dinner: Wild Mushroom, Flank Steak, and Poblano Tacos
Workout: Cardio kickbox (25 minutes high-intensity cardio)

Wednesday
Dinner: Vegan samosa wraps
Workout: Rest day

Thursday
Dinner: Leftovers or something frozen
Workout: Wii boxing (Gold's Gym workout) for at least 40 minutes

Friday
Dinner: Jimmy John's vegetarian sub
Workout: Rest day

Saturday
Dinner: Slow Cooker Vegetable Curry
Workout: Backside (circuit training DVD), 50 minutes

Total workout minutes: 218 (3.6 hours)

I might not weigh myself for a while... I'm nervous about how much weight I gained while living here!
Hope everyone is doing well.