day 176 (day 1 / week 26)

Today I did a 2 parter--one of which I couldn't do before, and sat collecting dust for a good 1.5 years or so. The other an old regular.

I don't know if I ever mentioned it but when we lived in Sparks (Reno), NV, when we first moved there (beginning of 2008), we fell in love with this Longs (drugstore) that was within walking distance to our apartment. We found all sorts of stuff 75%-90% off. I found "The Firm, Body Sculpting System, 3-in-1 workout with the 3-in-1 platform for $40 --it was like 75% off and a last chance item, which meant they didn't want it at all and weren't going to be restocking it. I brought it home, tried it and about died. I was super fat and it was hard to follow, so I kept the platforms out (now my kitchen stools lol) and packed everything away. Today I did "Cardio Sculpt" which is 55 minutes of 1/2 cardio 1/2 body sculpting. I was only able to get in 36 minutes, because The Monkey Boy decided to sit on the platform every time I stepped off of it (very frustrating). He thought it was a game. I did not. (lol). I ended it and went and played with him for a while.

It's almost 3pm as I am typing this, and he still hasn't gone down for his nap. I anticipated this, so I decided to throw in the good'ol 30 Day Shred, Level 3 (day 25--woo hoo! almost done!), and see if I could get through the entire thing w/out him bothering me too much. By this time, I had figured out my HRM, so I used it to see how many calories I burned for the session. 330 calories for 30 minutes. On Sparkpeople, when I enter this (circuit training/30 minutes) it tells me I burn 370 calories, so not much of a difference, but I bet it adds up. I'm glad I figured this thing out. The best part was that my son didn't bug me so much. His favorite show Caillou came on as he was starting to bother me, so he found something else to occupy his mind with (he LOVES Caillou).

Ok, now not to confuse anyone, but I am going to rewind back to the beginning of my day, before any of this...

Rewind....

Today was a better day. A light bulb came over my head this morning, and I realized that I need to distract my brain from thinking of exercise, while I am exercising or about to. This was a problem I had from the get go, and is one of the reasons why I created this blog--I knew I wouldn't exercise, to exercise, but to post something on my blog (so silly, but true). So realizing this, I decided to break out an old/new toy and learn how to use it properly, so that I can distract myself while I am exercising. It worked. It worked great!

There are a couple reliable ways to distract myself from exercise--a new workout and an ulterior motive. I did both. One will last a lot longer than the other :).

I don't remember when, but at some point this year, I bought a new HRM. This one has more bells and whistles than my previous heart rate monitor, and I bought this one because it calculates calories burned. I have been thinking the past few days, "what if SP is overestimating my calories burned?" I would probably gain weight. Today I dusted off the 100+ page manual and learned how to use it, so that I could see if Sparkpeople was overestimating my calories burned.

Maybe this will explain the above 3rd paragraph.

My thoughts are very unorganized today, as you can see. So I did a total of 66 minutes today and used functions in my heart rate monitor that I had never used before :). I also did a new workout that I had never done because I wasn't strong enough to do it before! Yaay! I hope the HRM helps me with the remaining last 5 days of the 30DS. Focusing on my HR being elevated, distracts from being annoyed/bored/tired with the workout :). Yaay :).

Today was a much better day :). I am excited to do The Firm again tomorrow, with my HRM to see how many calories I burn during that. I hope I can do the entire thing this time. Gotta start earlier though! (doh!).

I hope you all have a good one. I can't believe it's almost Friday again! Gees! Time flies by fast!

Make it count!

I can do this. I am a star.