Day 41

Oh boy work could not have been more tedious. My director has given me an assignment to add to my other duties that it turns out he needs done by next Wednesday and it's one of those ridiculously boring tasks. I have to go back through spreadsheets that are created each day that keep track of all the Purchase Orders we send out to NC E-Procurement and see when they were sent to the vendor and how many days the turn around was. There's no way for me to pull this information up easily I just have to sit and plug each number into their system and look up the information. UGH! But hey, it keeps me busy enough that the days have gone by much quicker lately.

On the way home I had some errands to run and while I was doing that my boyfriend called because he'd just left the gym and had learned some interesting things he wanted to share with me. So sweet :-) ! Well, today he had a free trial run with a personal trainer for signing up with Gold's Gym for a year and apparently this personal trainer taught him some very interesting things. For example: when you're working out it takes between 3 and 8 months to actually see any physical changes in your body. WOW! It's no wonder people give up so quickly! We're a society of give it to me right now this second I don't wanna wait! Apparently the first few months are just our bodies getting used to a regular routine and only after that does your body get that you're trying to change it and then starts making the necessary adjustments. They also talked a lot about food, eating more than three meals a day keeps your body from devouring the muscle you're trying to build so even if all you do is eat your three big meals a day, you should throw in thee snacks to help keep your body from getting too hungry and more or less cannibalizing itself. The guy gave him a grocery list...well that's what Nathan is calling it.... it's pretty much just a list of different foods that he should be eating and a list of foods to stay away from. He said that if you look at your workout in the shape of a pyramid the top 10% should be cardio. If you do more than 30 minutes of cardio a day you're burning muscle instead of fat. Good thing to note there if you, like me, love some cardio. Your next section on your pyramid should be 40% diet. So 40 % of your workout is how you eat, I kinda already knew that part was high. And a good thing to remember is that after your workout you need to have protien...like within a 20 minute window. So I bought a 100% Whey Protien powder to help with that. According to the guy at GNC (not where I bought my protien because they're WAAAY over priced) if you don't get protien to your muscles in that 20 min window you're wasting your workout. Protien replenishes your muscles and helps them to rebuild after you workout. Neat huh? And the last 50% is workout on the gym floor. Well Okay so here's where it gets a little complicated because I'm pretty sure that those percentages were for Nathan because he wants to gain muscle definition instead of just slimming down and toning, so I'm thinking that last 50% just depends on what you're trying to do with your body. Maybe it is the same though...Maybe not gym floor but toning exercises on top of that tiny amount of cardio.

My workout lately has looked a lot like this:

Monday Wednesday Friday I'm doing a routine from my 50 ways to a flat tummy book. It says to boost your metabolism do this workout three times a week, so I've been doing it that way...it's mostly core exercises and a few toning arm and leg workouts. That part takes about 10 minutes to do and then I throw in my TurboJam Ab Jam DVD. I want to get flat abs I'm tired of having a spare tire around my waist so abs plus metabolism booster three days a week.

The other two days a week I'm doing my TurboJam Fat Blaster DVD. On that DVD she says that you should only do this workout when you're trying to burn some serious calories, well I'm trying my damndest to do that so I've been using that one by itself two days a week...and I'll probably keep that up until I reach my three month marker and then switch to one of the other cardio DVD's.

I've also more or less culled junk food out of my diet. I've been eating breakfast, lunch, AND dinner every single day (even on weekends) so that my body doesn't get too hungry. I've also been trying to remember to buy some small snack like foods when I go shopping too...that's harder because I don't always have the extra money for snacks. I have found though, when shopping at Aldi it's a bit easier and I can usually afford a few fruit cups (I drain the syrup to make them a bit healthier) and sometimes I get dried fruit or a bag of trail mix to snack on between meals. I've also started actually cooking simple meals for myself for dinner. Sometimes it's spaghetti but usually I've been buying a lot of Salmon and baking it in the oven with some marinade or spices on it and having mashed potatoes and a green vegetable. I have grown to LOVE Salmon, if it's cooked right it tastes amazing! And I can get a bag with four individually wrapped pieces of Salmon for like $3 at Aldi...pretty freaking great! YAY for being healthy! Hopefully in about two more months I'll see some of those changes I've been working so hard for!