Mini Milestone week (a week early)

Week 4 is our mini milestone week in 12wbt but as we have a public holiday tomorrow a few of us thought 'hey let's do it a week early so we get a day recovery'

So we did the blue arrow nature walk. This is almost 2.5 hours of hills, stairs, ups, downs, long grass (eeeww shudder), turkeys, wallabies, spiders and snakes (which I didn't see so don't exist), thrills and a few spills. I fell on the way down, but my awesome friend caught me!

At the very top we are about 400m above sea level, the view is just stunning and so worth the walk.


Now even though not all of us made it right to the top, each one of us that climbed out of bed early on a Sunday, put on our shoes and made the drive there deserves a huge pat in the back.

We re-grouped as we came down while we waited for the very last member to catch up. Little did we know, she powered on while we were chatting and almost beat us back down to the bottom.

Excuse the blur in the photo, hard to find good photographers these days :-)


It was very sunny, but tried to get a shot to show how high we are. This here is the look out we walk to most weekends at the top of the red arrow.



We had a fantastic morning and everyone was in the highest spirits when we finished. I'm so glad I got to experience it with these awesome people!

Now I do have a few other wee milestones up my sleeve for the week, 1 being a run. I want to see how far I can run, 4klm would be nice. So I'll give it a go and report back soon.

Oh and fitness testing and measurements coming up this week! YAY

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Mixing it up

That was heaps of fun!

Because I couldn't get to the gym for my strength training today I decided to mix it up a bit at home.

I really wanted to do the gym exercises Mish had set, and as it turned out it was all free weights with a fitball instead if a bench! So I borrowed some weight and put air in the fit ball (workout in itself!).

So for my workout this minting I used the 5 min warm up from Mish's cardio kicker DVD, then did my weights program, and can I say chest press laying on a fitball....whoa! Then to finish I did the abdominal workout and cool down from cardio kicker.

I really enjoyed it! It's a strength session so not a huge calorie burn but 339 none the less!

Oh and weigh in Wednesday, lost 600g this week, so 600g closer to healthy weight range 4.3kgs to go!

Happy Wednesday :-)



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Trying very hard to get organised

It appears I'm getting sick, had to bail out half way through my second round of rolling intervals on the treadmill as I could not breath and my chest felt like it might cave in. I still did my full hour just at about 70%.

So I'm glad now that I'd taken the time over the last few days to try get in front a little. I've made Thai pumpkin soup (apparently a little spicier than normal according to tough concrete_man), minestrone soup, chicken stock and some lasagna. I've also made the kids sandwiches for the week and frozen them.

I've also planned ahead for my workouts as concrete_man will be leaving early in the mornings to go play in the concrete. I'm borrowing some free weights for tomorrow because there are no machines in tomorrows workout and I can do it at home. I'll use the cardio kicker warm up for my warm up. See I'm set!

I'll report back after my weight session tomorrow and see how I went. Added bonus of being at home, no travel time I can probably fit in 1.5 hours ah bliss...who'd have thought things like this would excite me.


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Torture in the Tropics

I'm testing out a new blogging app on my iPhone.

And thought I'd show off team FNQ's new Torture in the Tropics shirts






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My laptop is MIA

And so am I!!!

As soon as it returns from it's 'make over' - read rebuild - I will be back to blogging.

I can blog via my iPhone but I am yet to find an app that I like, so far it's just painful.

So I promise I will be back soon....

So much to update
- Fitness testing
- New 12wbt family members
- My official round 2 starting stats and photo
- A blogging challenge that I am now 2 weeks behind in
- My goals for round 2
- Probably a gazillion other things

Who lit the fire in my hamstrings

OH MY GOD!

I lost count of how many times I told my training I hated him yesterday, I stopped counting after 6!

I am loving that with all this new training I'm doing, all these new exercises and changing it up every couple weeks that I'm back to feeling that burn in my muscles after a work out.  Today it wasn't just a burn it was a bloody bonfire and it's still roaring.  I'm thinking it was the dead lifts, or was it the squat press, or was it the stupid in and bloody jumping things or no wait, was it my 400m runs between each circuit.  And don't even get me started on how my abs and shoulders feel after neg push ups and sit up.

I'm starting to think PT stands for Personal Torturer.

But hey on a positive in 30mins I burnt over 400 cals!  I did another small run on the treadmill some abs and some stretches, 40min in total and 550 calories!! Not a bad days work at all.

Ok I'm off to find my cooling peppermint spray for my legs, I wonder if it would work better if I drink!

Fitness testing tomorrow, meeting my new 12WBT family...super excited.

Excuses I use or have used in the past

One of our preseason tasks is to identify some of the excuses we have been using that have been holding us back.  It now amazes me how many times I hear people use the same excuses and I realise how lame some are.

Internal Excuses: The self talk that goes on between the Jekyll and Hyde in your head

I will lose my friends is I exercise, eat well and lose weight.

I don't have time I'm too busy
I'm comfy/happy at the weight I am now
I have no one to do it with me and I'm not motivated to do it on my own
I'll cheat on my partner if I lose weight, that is what skinny people do (there is a long story behind this one)
I have no energy and I'm just always tired
I'm not organised enough and I'm lazy

Some of my solutions

Tell my friends what I am doing and ask for their support, those that can't support me are not worth having around.

I am busy, but I have tried very hard to find an extra hour in my day and that hour is at 530am.
Remind myself if I feel good now, that I will feel awesome when i get to where I am, and keep looking at my before photo to realise I really am not yet happy with myself.
Just do it, doing it on your own is better, no one can cmplain or whinge or bail on you!
Know and trust in myself that I have never cheated and never will, I make my decisions with my head and heart not my weight!
Exercising and eat right will fix the energy levels
Keep things simple, choose meals that are simple, freeze meals and diarise everything.

External Excuses within your control: These are excuses prompted by external factors but which you still have some control over

I'm too busy with kids and business and life

It costs to much to eat healthy and to exercise and lose weight
My partner works away and often gets stuck at work and doesn't always get home in time for me to train for to help with kids while I prepare a healthy dinner
The gym doesn't have any classes I like at a time that suits

Some of my solutions

Keep training and meals simple, make lists and diarise everything and stick to it

Stick to shopping lists, subsitute for cheaper ingreadient, make a proper attempt at a herb or vegie garden, buy multiple of staple items when on special
I have purchased Crunchtime DVDs along with some weights, a step and a medicine ball, plus I have a skipping rope and some boxing gear and I will use the dvds or do an outdoor circuit at home when he is away. Plus I have shifted my regular training to 530am so that him finishing late does not interupt my training.
Group fitness are not the be all and end all, made a decision to give up on group classes and follow Michelle's work outs on my own and it's HEAPS OF FUN!!!

External excuses outside of your control: These are external factors that you have absolutely no control over

sick children

Work drama
Family crisis
Injury or illness

Some of my solutions

I have back up training etc for at home when I need to and fronzen healthy meals for days when things don't go to plan.

But learning to accept that these things happen and just move on and get started again asap is the best way to deal with these thing.

Reached and 'unplanned' mini milestone

Each weekend some friends and I meet early on a Sunday morning, about 6:15am and do the red arrow...

You can watch a video of it here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j314WMnuC6M

Or just google Red Arrow walk Cairns.

Anyway, the only goal I ever really had was to do 3 laps of the red arrow, which I managed during round 1 of 12wbt and never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would do 4 laps..and I never really wanted to.

But this weekend, I did exactly that 4 laps of the red arrow!  Who would have thought, and I did it a lot easier that I thought I would!  I felt pretty amazing afterwards and perhaps a little sore and shakey.

I also have to mention that 2 round2 12wbt members reached a bit of a milestone themselves.  Climbing out of bed before 6am in the morning and driving to meet me at the red arrow to complete the walk for the very very first time!!!  Both wonderful ladies made it all the way around and are keen for more next week..how awesome is that.

BIG shout out to all my Sunday red arrowers...love spending my Sundays with you ladies :-)

Round 1 wrap up YAY

Ok here are the stats

Weight then 89.6kg now 80.2kgs

Chest   then 94.5cm now 92cm BOOOOOO
Waist   then 96.5cm now 91cm
Hips    then 118.5    now 111.5cm YAY
Rthigh  then 68cm    now 62cm
Lthigh  then 68.5      now 63cm

Total weight loss 9.4kg 10.46%
Total CM loss 26.5cm

Fitness testing
1 klm time trial then 6min 20sec now 5min 18sec
Pushups in a minute then 37 now 45
Wall sit then 1min2sec now 1min25sec

Ab strength is still at level 3 stage, but it's a lot easier than it was, an my flex test I added an extra 1/2 cm.

Here are my before and after photos for the 12 weeks...meh, I don't have a very good photographer, and excuse the messy hair and what looks like a wedgy! HAHA.  For the next round we're going to measure and mark exactly where both of us are standing and not if the camera is on zoom or whatever to get the photos the same.






 

Last chance training and accelerator days

My final weigh in for Michelle Bridges 12 week body transformation is tomorrow EEKK!!  Considering I've only been losing 300g for the last few weeks, I'm really hoping for something a bit better for my last weigh in.  I would loved to be in the 70's but sadly no.  But I'm ok with that because I had only set out to lose 7kgs in 12 week and I've done that and more.  But I WILL be in the 70's when round 2 kicks off in 2 weeks time!

So had a session at the gym this morning, last chance training I guess you could call it.  Now I've trained with a trainer before and been pushed to the point I thought I was going to vomit, but I've never done it myself, never really pushed myself past that limit, always just trained hard but safe.  I'm not sure what was different this morning but within the first 12 minutes I thought I would spew!

My session started with 400m on the rower as fast as I could, then 400m on the treadmill (I am not going to call it a sprint because I CAN NOT SPRINT!!) but I was working between 9 & 10k an hour and up to 10.5 I think for some, and then I repeated it and did 3 rounds...it was the 3rd treadmill round that got me! Then some rolling intervals on the treadmill 1min at each speed 6,7,8,9 & 10kph then recover at 5.5kph for 1 min then back up to 8kph and increase incline by 2% each minute (1,3,5,7,9). I won't lie, when I get to the 7% I have to reduce the speed.  Then I did 5klm on the bike keeping my RPM's over 110.  Talk about sweat, lucky for the next person I was nice enough to wipe it down.  Then to finish, just a 2min tabata round of the cross trainer (20sec sprint level 8 10 sec recover level 4), pushups, tricep pushups, abs and a much needed stretch.  I left the gym feeling satisfied I'd completed a good training session.

Also, Tuesdays are accelerator days, it's the day before weigh in and we eat no simple carbs.

So today for breakfast was some grilled tomato and baked beans served on some baby spinach and lean ham, lunch was some left over roasted chicken and vegies from last nights dinner and dinner was a beef and vegie stirfry ( a yummy one) no rice.  For a mid afternoon snack I have 2 large lettuce leaves wrapped around some red onion, spinach and a small can of the lite chicken with mustard.  I'm not certain how 'good' this tins of chicken are (it's like tuna but chicken) but they are low in calories and very quick and easy for salads or on crackers for a snack.

So anyway I guess that's it...my next post will be the wrap up, 12wbt before and after photos, along with before and after weights, measurements and fitness test.

Exciting!!!

'Practice' after photo

I had to take a photo for a weekly competition for 12WBT...

and here it is (left = before right = today)...trying to practice a bit to make sure we get the photos almost the same distance etc.

Anyway I can't see a lot of difference, maybe my tummy and around my colar bone...this is after 8.6kgs loss in the last 11 weeks...either way I feel pretty good. Officialy after photos will be done next weekend.  Going to go hard this week, see what I can do in a week!

Sabotage

But firstly, no I don't know if I won the Bootcamp Challenge yet as they don't want to announce the winner until they have a finale dinner or lunch or whatever so I'll wait!

Lately, the last 3 or so week my weight loss has really slowed down.  Yes I had my birthday, Easter and a fantastic weekend away.  But really why are those things an excuse, no one forces me to eat or drink certain things purely because of these occasions.  These temptations are around me all the time and I can say no, so why should it be any different, it shouldn't.  It's not Easters fault that I ate chocolate...it's my fault!

The problem is it never stopped there.  I sat back and had a look at what I've been doing and I've been slipping back into old habits and the worst is binge eating.  I've been trying to work out why and I realised it's happened to me before, at about the same stage of my weight loss journey (before I had kids) where all of a sudden people are telling me how good I look and complimenting me (which I don't deal with well anyway, always felt uncomfortable taking a compliment) but at the same time other people are telling me that I'm losing too much weight, I'm getting obsessed, it's not healthy.  And that is where I start to get depressed and start to question what I'm doing and then I start to self sabotage....because of course food kills all pain!

You know what I've realised though, there is nothing wrong with what I am doing, I'm healthier, fitter and stronger than I've ever been..even before I had 2 kids!  These people that keep telling me all these negative things, I've realised, are the ones that need to be out there eating well, exercising and getting obsessed about being healthy, so by putting me down they are justifying their actions.  But me binge eating and sabotaging myself is not teaching them a lesson, it's only hurting me.  The only way to shut them up, is to ignore them and keep doing what I am doing...maybe one day my enthusiasm will rub off. 

Bootcamp wrap up

So today was the final weigh in for the bootcamp weight loss challenge that I have been doing (not the Michelle Bridges one).

I've been doing every round of this challenge since I started trying to lose weight...and well since I started this blog.

This though, is my last round, and I'm hoping I've done enough to take out first place...and $500 prize money!!! The reason this is my last one is that I just don't find it very helpful any more, I think I'm past it now, although I do like the outdoor workouts and may go along as a casual member just for them.  It was originally to keep me accountable and have someone weigh me in, but I think I've got my head around this now and I'm doing quite well on my own.

So anyway the final stats for the last 12 weeks are;

10.8 kgs or 11.6% loss
36.5cm total loss (this is measuring upper chest, bust, waist, hips, right thigh and right bicep)

Which I am extremely proud of!  There is a good amount of body fat loss there too but I forgot to write it down, oopps.

Oh and big big big news, this is exciting...my waist is almost under 90cm!!!  It's 91.5cm OMG that is huge, well not huge...haha. It wasn't that long ago my goal was to get it under 100, so this excites me a lot.  And my thigh and arm measurements are finally starting to move..I knew I'd felt a different in them of late.  It's all so exciting, I really am shrinking.

We will also be re doing our fitness test tomorrow and I'll report back with some results.

I won't find out if I've won until we have our break up dinner.  I think they total our % lost (and maybe % fat lost), plus we get a point for each exercise session we attend, but I really hope I win.  I've come 2nd and 3rd in a couple challenges, so it's only logical I'm aiming for first :-)

Just what I needed with 4 weeks left in the 12WBT

Today I received 2 emails that have put a smile on my face and given me a little extra boost after a pretty crappy few days eating wise...and for the remaining 4 weeks left of the 12 week body transformation.

This first email, I was aware that I would receive something soon regarding this, but for some reason it still gave me a little flutter and made me smile :-)

Hey

Congratulations on your results in 12WBT so far!  There are some amazing results happening this round, you should be proud!

From week 5’s challenge you will receive a hot new Polar Heart Rate Monitor to help track those calories your smashing out in your workouts! J

If you can please send your postal address (PO Boxes are okay) by reply email, your prize will be sent to you within 21 days.

Keep up the great work!

Thank you!

And then just now I received this email, it's signed by Michelle, but even though I'm certain it's a bulk mail out not directly from her...it is still very motivational and it has just lifted my spirits today.

Hi Natalie,

Congratulations on Your Weight Loss Percentage!

Based on your results, you've lost 7.7% of your body weight. This puts you in the top 10% of the program, well done!!! I have to commend you for coming so far, and for giving this program your all - it's clearly paying off. 

With over one month left, NOW is your chance to rise to the occasion. Now is your chance to let go of any lingering excuses or any self doubt you have. You have already proved to me to be a top contender, so now I want to see what else you've got in your tank. 

I'm excited for you, I hope I get to see you face to face at our group workout and party in Melbourne (14th May), but either way, I'm backing you 110% and want you to finish the program the BEST VERSION of yourself that you can be.

Go Get 'em!!!

Mish xx

What would your t-shirt say...

So this week for our weekly surprise on 12WBT we have been asked to come up with some motivational slogans for t-shirts this is what I entered so far...I want to know yours.

Front: 12wbt logo
Back: You are being passed by another 12WBT’er
      http://www.12wbt.com.au

Front: Put down the Turkish Delight
Back: Try a Turkish Get Up http://www.12wbt.com.au

Front: I do it outside…
Back: EXERCISE, most fun I’ve had clothed. 

Front: Running is the new black

Back: Try it, you might like it

Front: Running makes my heart race

Back:: Faster than any man ever could

Front: My other t-shirt is now 3 sizes too big

Front: It ain't over till the fat lady sings
Back: And I ain't her, anymore

Working on the new me

Ok so in the last post, with my progress shots, I said I would explain just why I was holding the TV week.

www.12wbt.com.au is why

I signed up with Michelle Bridges 12 week body transformation.  I had been following Michelle's work out guidelines and meal plans in her Crunchtime book for signing up and found that it was just what my body needed, after plateauing for what seem liked forever, all of a sudden the scales were moving down and with little fuss and effort and only small changes from what I was doing.  It was just what I needed.

So I signed up and really wasn't sure what I was getting myself into and wasn't even sure I would see it through, but here we are start of week 5 and so far so good.

My first officially weigh in was a little bit before the progress photo below and was 89.6kgs, so far I have lost 4.4kgs with weigh in to come tomorrow.  I have also lost another 4cm from my waist, 4.5cm from my hips and 1cm from each thigh and chest (thankfully the losses here are getting smaller!!)

It's been very easy to keep up with the program so far.  Though this weekend was the first blowout weekend I've had in a long time where I ate things I shouldn't have.  But in comparison to previous blow outs, it was pretty tame.  It was also enough to give me a kick in the pants and get back on track.

How the whole thing works is, each week I am given a menu plan for the week (very easy to follow and not too involved) along with my recipes (again simple) and my work out schedule (not so easy!!).  I follow as close as I can.  At the moment I'm doing most group fitness with a few of Michelle's outdoor works outs thrown in, which are tough!  But soon I'll be moving away from the group fitness and working on pushing myself by myself and doing Michelle's workouts in the gym at 530am each morning.  I'm hoping this gives me another little push to get under the 80kg mark!  And also give me a feeling of pride knowing that I did it...me and my heart rater monitor.

So that is it, that is what I'm doing.  It's no crash diet, it's nothing silly just eating better (not perfect) and exercising as much as I can and getting the most out of each work out.

I might try for another progress shot and post soon.

love Rat xo

What does 20kgs, 68cm and 14months of hard work look like???

This is what it looks like, I know the before photos are taken a little close but you get the idea.  And the reason I'm holding the TV in the after...I'll explain that later!

T= then N= now
Weight T 108kg     N 87kg
Chest   T 112cm    N 94.5cm
Waist   T 115.5cm N 96.5cm
Hips     T 136.5cm N 118.5cm
Thigh    T 77.5cm  N 68cm
Arm      T 38cm     N 34cm

(ps if you check out the last post...yes a long time ago..that was 10kgs ago 98kgs, see how long and how much hard work it took!)