Thursday, September 8, 2011

Nap Time Would Be Nice

I wish nap time existed for adults.

How awesome would work be if there was a twenty minute time frame set aside for napping - whether in your office or a nap room? I'd like to think the nap room would be a dimly lit room, slightly on the cooler side, with large, leather recliners that were so soft that you just sank into them. Pillows and blankets would be available and maybe there would even be a TV - set to some movie that would just play in the background on low volume.

Maybe it would be the golf channel. I love watching golf on tv and I love napping to golf on tv.

I'm finding that when I get home from work I am utterly exhausted. Painfully would be a better word for it. Painfully exhausted. It's no mystery why - I'm not sleeping at night. Last night I clocked in a solid 2.5 hours. Yikes. Hopefully tonight will be better.

I know I haven't written since July but I'm just going to pretend like August didn't happen ;)

Lets just say that the beast overcame my best defenses and I had an entire month of unhealthiness. In all honesty, it probably was a good thing. I was a little too focused on what I was eating, and when, and how much, and what were the calories, and what were the macro-nutrients, and when was I exercising and all that jazz.

Lets just say I had a full "30 Days to gaining 5 pounds"

So, at the end of August, I allowed myself to have a clean slate - I took ownership of my weight gain and I buckled down and began again. Just a little more relaxed. I'm focusing on working out regularly (I'm not putting a number on it or minute requirement - just to do it regularly), eating the best food choices I can make, and eating a reasonable amount of food.

I also bought a new book. It's called "The New Rules of Lifting for Women: Lift like a Man, Look like a Goddess"

Long title huh? I was scouring bodybuilding boards looking for a couple new strength training exercises to alleviate boredom I'd been having when I noticed people kept mentioning "NROLFW". It took some googling to find out what the acronym meant and then I happened upon the book on amazon and quite a few positive reviews. So I checked out the free preview and then got it.

It was an easy read with a lot of good information. Nothing too new and drastic but rather a lot of good info just contained in one place. I particularly like the workouts. It has a whole 6 month plan and the moves are not "girlie" moves and I like that. You know, squats, deadlifts, push-ups, pull-ups etc. . . and the goal is to get into the heavy weights. I started on August 25th and I can already tell I'm gaining strength which is awesome. My legs needed to gain some muscle for my running and knee health. Also, I feel more capable when I feel stronger.

In any case, I'm following Stage 1 workouts right now - I'm beginning my third week and so far so good. The Stage 1 workouts actually look pretty simple - and mind you, it only takes about 20 - 25 minutes for me to complete them but they're a little rough. I'm definitely sweating when I finish. I also like to push myself so that helps.

On the food frontier I've taken a little break from cooking. The last two weeks I've let myself use Lean Cuisine like foods as my chef for my lunches at work. I think that also has something to do w/ my not sleeping well. I'm strapped for time in the morning because I'm so tired and I'm waking up later and don't have much time to fix my lunch for work.

For example, today's menu:

B: iced coffee w/ whey protein, egg white sandwich
S: cottage cheese and an apple
L: Smart Ones Thai Chicken
S: handful pistachios
D: don't know yet

Since my do-over I've lost about a pound but this time I measure myself and used my calipers so I feel certain that in a week or two I'll see a bigger difference there. In any case, the scale is kind of third on my measurement list and I'm trying to keep it that way.

And that's all that has been going on.

so for right now, I'm aiming for:

"30 days to not be so stressed about my weight"
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30 Days to ... by JH is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.