Target Practice Tuesday

Yall. My B. For some reason, every time I've thought about blogging lately I have had like zero, I mean crashing in bed at 9:30 while bf does dishes/fall asleep with the lights on zero, energy! I blame cooking incredibly low carb for the bf the past couple of weeks, which in turn is lowering my carb intake more than I realize.

Plus, its also fun to blame the bf for something (else). :-)

Seriously though, I'm going to try to focus on making baby steps. I'm doing *pretty well* holding myself accountable to our plans and have so far been seeing some positive results, although the lack of energy is not one I would categorize as positive.

Baby Step #1: Target Practice Tuesday

The ladies over at Fit.Fun.Femme put up their Target Practice every Tuesday, choosing goals for life, fitness, and health for the week. I think this is a great idea, especially for Type As- like a New Years resolution without so much pressure and a way to pick/drag yourself out of a slump every week should the need arise. Particularly for me, I notice when I'm trying to control one area of my life (weight/fitness) I either go into hyper-anxiety mode about the other projects I'm not focusing on (house set up) or completely let myself go (shopping--come on I deserve this!). This seems to be a good way to bite off little pieces at a time and still be productive.

So without further ado, my first official "Target Practice Tuesday!"

Fitness: The bf and I have committed to making weight lifting a part of our workout routine this month. Wait...that makes it sound like we had an actual conversation about it. Let's try that again. BF and I have been going to our neighborhood Snap Fitness probably 4-5 times a week, solely lifting weights. I really like weightlifting because I like feeling strong! Sometimes a bad cardio day can make me feel the exact opposite. This week, I've decided to try the Bob Harper, 3 on 1 off routine, for my workouts. I've pegged my day off as Thursday. My goal is to get these six workouts in, because next week I hope to get back to adding in cardio so I can start back training for a 5K. I've been doing Jamie Eason Body Building Phase 1, and should finish that this month, which also calls for no cardio. I'm skeptical of the no cardio, but hey its something new to try!

Friend me and follow me- User name DancinBabe923

Health: Keep logging my calorie counts for the day. It makes it difficult when I try to experiment with new Atkins friendly recipes for the bf, but I never feel good eating and not knowing how much of what I am eating. I'm always glad that I've done it, even if I am not super enjoying the process! 

I need a name for Chair. This is her in the showroom before she came home. Not a great picture- she is much happier here.

Life: Because we will be in town for the first weekend in a while, I am going to focus on getting a house project done- unpacking the home office. Bf got me a beautiful chair for my bday and my dad got me a beautiful desk when I started law school a while back, and both are sitting in that room lonely and neglected. While there are lots of fun things going on in Raleigh this weekend (Scary Carey, State Fair, UNC v. BC, Gravity IMAX, new golf clubs to try) I want to do the things I'm REALLY interested in and still allow for plenty of time to notice an improvement on the house. We are usually on the go on the weekends, which explains why since we moved in in August the house is getting set up at a snail's pace. We need to take advantage of the downtime this weekend and not fill our social calendar with things that impede making our house a home.

Do you have goals for this week? Any tips for goal making?

Sunday Setup, Shoutouts, and ADHD workout planning

Happy Sunday yall!

One of the many great lessons I've learned from Katrina and Karena @ToneitUp is to dedicate Sundays to prepping for the week. Now sometimes (read most!) this is a bit of a PIA when the bf is watching football in various states of catnapping, but it *always* pays off and I'm so glad I've done it throughout the week. My Sunday setup involves meal planning for the week (taking into account when we will be dining out for lunch and dinner to make sure we make good choices on the other evenings when we have more control over our menu) meal prepping. The bf has just started Atkins again, which I reserve the right to write a venting blog post about later, but that means A LOT of chopping vegetables for snacks during the work day and prepping meat and cheese roll ups. This last Sunday I also prepped a chopped mix of onions and green peppers and grilled up turkey sausage so that our scrambles in the AM would be ready to go and that worked out great!

But dag nabbit. Sunday showed up again! And so here I sit, trying to enjoy the process. Though it does make it easier when you have a little snuggle bug by your side.

Of course now she acts camera shy!

Like many Type A's out there, I find myself completely over analyzing/over planning/over thinking how to *best* work out and eat right this week. If I spent a fraction of the time actually doing the things instead of reading about them, I probably would see success much more quickly. But that being said, I enjoy the research and creativity from my friends and friends I have yet to meet on the web, so I thought I'd share a few along (and work them into my Sunday Routine as well!)

Teri at A Foodie Stays Fit is a friend of a bunch of girls I went to law school with, but I have yet to meet in person unfortunately. She has such a positive attitude and an infectious smile. While there are a million things I love about her blog, one of my favorite things is the Weekender she posts, which includes fun links to articles and a recap of her workouts that week. Being someone who feels like I'm constantly worrying about how/when to work out, I enjoy seeing how other people stack their weeks and use it for motivation. So, forgive me for starting my SlimDown Challenge on Wednesday/I was in Syracuse with family Sunday and Monday/I hurt my back trapeezing and can't do much/Excuse excuse excuse, but here is mine for the past week (would love suggestions for a icon/pic for this portion of the blog!):

S: Walk with my sister 

M: None

T: Strength- Chest and Tri (Doc has not cleared me for runs at this point, but suggested working in upper body strength)

W: Walk in the AM with bf and pup

R: Strength- Back and Biceps

F: Short walk in AM with bf and pup

Sa: Legs (really feeling them this morning!) and 2.5 mi walk with bf and pup

Thanks to one of the Monday Motivations from @TIU I'm following the Jamie Eason Body Building for the time being to focus on strength training this month. I had been doing the Couch to 5K to train for my color run a few weeks ago, but wasn't really seeing the results I wanted from moderate cardio (no HITT and no strength) so I figured I'd try this for a month and see how it goes. She also says no cardio the first month while you are working on building muscle, which I'm skeptical about. 

Does the ADHD workout planning portion of the title make sense now? :-)

Check back in later today where I'll post my plan for the week, Sunday Setup tips, and another Shoutout to one of my favorite blogs. Here's a teaser:

As always, I love and live for the support and motivation of this community. Post your workout recap or Sunday Setup in the comments below!

NYE Challenge with a V Day Reward

Hi all! 

So I don't have much time to blog prior to my AM BC, so forgive me for skipping over the formal introductions. I'll come back and bore you with the "how I got here" later. All we need to focus on now is that I'm here, and I've made a decision not to be any more.

Basically, my live in boyfriend and I both struggle with our weight, despite thinking about it constantly and me planning out meals and calorie counting etc. BF has had a lot of success with Atkins, which drives me bonkers. After many starts and restarts, fastforward to today.

Today BF starts Atkins, but I convinced him to do a bigger challenge with me. 

Enter #NYEDrop20.

Ok 21.6 to be exact, but it doesn't have quite the same ring.

If I make my weight goal, and BF makes his, we are going to go to Savannah for Valentines day!

I also need to set smaller goals and rewards along the way. Our first goal mark is two weeks from today and the reward will be buying season 2 of Homeland. We kept arguing about whether the goal should be input based (10 workouts in 14 days) or output based (lose 5 pounds) so I think we are going to do both. I think that it should be based on what you can control (input) because you want to reward your efforts- also I'm nervous because I'm not at all confident that in two weeks even if I did everything right would happen! I rarely see any significant rewards from my efforts, so its hard to believe it can actually happen. Any thoughts? 

My two week mark will be 10 workouts in 14 days and 4 pounds. If we both get both of our goals = Homeland. If I get both of mine = new gym duffel. Any suggestions on if I just get one, or on the input vs. output?

A previous journal I kept had me at about the same weight in December as I am now. Hopefully that should serve as some motivation right?

Talk soon, and will make a workout schedule for the rest of the week later on today.

Love, B