Week Three
Start weight: 170.5 — Current weight: 169 — Goal weight: 150 (for now)
This Week’s Work Out Time: 4 hours, 45 minutes
Total Time (since 4/23): 13 hours, 45 minutes
I’m already done with three whole weeks of having a regular fitness routine? Really? At the beginning of this, I would have thought three weeks would be an eternity of working out, but now it’s become routine and something I’m working on accepting that I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.
This article was a recommendation from someone in the Weight Watchers fitness forum and it has changed the way I’m working out. It’s a great article that has let me see the light in that resistance training needs to be just as important or even more important that cardio. Building muscle will be less of an afterthought from now on!
Sunday: I totally forgot to keep track of what I did. I did my usual mix of cardio and weight machines. I was there for about an hour and 15 minutes.
Monday: 20 minutes total on elliptical/arctrainer (high intensity), 10 minutes on Treadmill jogging/walking, 20 minutes on weights
I did less cardio today, but at intervals at a higher intensity. I pretty much felt like I was going to die — it was great! Ok, it was great after I was done. I also upped the weight on all the machines I use and am doing less reps of higher weight. I have a feeling I’ll be pretty sore tomorrow. At least I hope so. Also I found myself doing part of this work out on the kitchen floor while making pancakes this morning. Go ahead, judge me!
Tuesday: 20 minutes total on elliptical/arctrainer (high intensity), 5 minutes walking on Treadmill and 30 minutes total on weights
My left knee was bugging me a little today so I went light on the cardio. I did some machines and worked out my abs, back and shoulders. I can already feel weakness in my shoulders so hopefully I didn’t overdo it! It’s funny, if I’m not out of breath and sweating like crazy I feel like I’m not getting a good workout and I kind of walk out feeling guilty like I didn’t work hard enough. It’s going to take some getting used to. I sweat a bit while doing weights, but not as much as when I’m doing cardio.
Wednesday: 15 minutes on elliptical/arctrainer (high intensity), 40 minutes total on weights
Thursday: 30 minutes on elliptical (moderate intensity), 20 minutes on weights
My knee has started to feel better so I got on the Elliptical for a little longer than I have been, but I took it easy and didn’t push too hard. Plus? They hooked the ellipticals up so now the TV’s work! I know, that sounds pathetic. They had the treadmills hooked up from the beginning, but I’m excited that if I don’t feel like listening to the same songs over and over I can watch TV. I got to watch Ellen while I worked out, awesome! I think I’ll time it so that I get to watch it again tomorrow. I’m such a nerd.
Friday: 35 minutes on elliptical, 30 minutes on weights
This week, for most of the week, I’ve had sore shoulder and chest muscles. I worked them out hard at the beginning of the week, apparently. If I know I worked out a certain body part and it’s not sore the next day, I get kind of sad that I could’ve pushed it harder. I’m still trying to accept not leaving the gym 100% exhausted from 45+ minutes of cardio like I was doing for the past 2 weeks. I know that working on strength is just as important, but it’s just hard to feel successful at the end of my workout if I’m not dripping in sweat (ew, I know). I try to remind myself that I go to the gym almost everyday and that is a huge accomplishment all by itself.
Honestly, I was hoping to have noticed more significant results by the end of three weeks like maybe losing more than a pound, but I know this is a long road. I definitely can feel more muscle mass all over my body, my arms and legs are starting to firm up which is nice. Now if I could only get the extra pounds off.
You can’t out exercise a crappy diet. I know this. And this week, though I did have a couple of cupcakes, I did muuuch better than the previous weeks. Weight watchers works like this: You get a daily point allowance, healthy foods are less points than unhealthy foods. Then you get a weekly allowance of optional points to use. Then when you work out, you earn activity points that are also optional to use. In previous weeks I would use all my daily points then by the end of the week I had used up all my weekly and earned activity points too. This meant I was eating a lot or just not healthy enough. But now I think my body has straightened out a little bit and is used to daily activity. I’m not starving and don’t feel the need to eat all day like I did, especially in my first week. I can’t wait to see what the future brings. I’m excited that my hunger has sort of leveled out to normal and that I can work out for an hour and not immediately run to the kitchen because my stomach is growling.
Have a great weekend!
I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now. I really liked that you were a fashion blogger with content. I felt that your posts outside of fashion were interesting. However, this new obsession with weight loss is a problem. You do not need to lose weight. You look beautiful and healthy. It is not interesting to me to see yet another American girl go on and on about weight loss. If you were writing about eating healthier and exercising more to have a stronger, more capable body, I would be interested. Reading you going on and on about weight loss and how you’re doing it disgusts me. I’m not interested in women whose main concerns are losing weight. American has an unhealthy obsession with being thin at all costs. This is a problem that pervades even our highest levels of government. It saddens me to see yet another misguided girl concerning herself with losing weight and talking more about weight loss than about health and fitness.
Weight loss IS NOT health and fitness.
I won’t be reading your blog any more.
Fenn — I’m sorry you feel that way and one post a week that focuses on fitness, health and weight loss bothers you enough to stop reading all together.
While I appreciate the compliment that I look beautiful and healthy the reality is I AM about 10 pounds overweight. My healthy weight range is 118-159 at my height of 5’6″ and my goal is 150, near the top of that range. I will not be “thin” nor am I obsessed with being thin or else my “goal weight” would be much, much lower. Even an extra 10 pounds, according to my doctor, is a lot of weight extra to carry around and wear down my body, especially with my foot and joint problems.
Weight loss might not BE health and fitness, but it is part of it. If I’m overweight, it’s not healthy, and I should lose weight in order to help myself become healthy. I do not think I am completely unhealthy, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
People within a healthy weight range may not all be healthy, but people who are healthy are within their healthy weight range. There is no such thing as an overweight healthy person, that doesn’t make any sense. I talk a lot about eating right and working out. I don’t obsess over calories, whether it’s consuming them or burning them. I work out hard, keep track so I can see the improvement in myself and walk out of the gym feeling amazing.
Anyway — again, I’m sorry you think I’m just another Americal girl obsessed with weight loss. But I definitely don’t see it that way.
This is Natalie, I don’t know if my name will show up or not. Anyways, if you’re working out with weights and cardio, you may not lose any weight but instead just tone and gain muscle mass. Muscle weighs more than fat in the sense that it takes less muscle to make up a pound than it takes fat. If you end up just toning, you’ll see a huge difference in your body even if you don’t notice it on the scale. The scale means nothing when weight training. And you def don’t want to skip the weights cause then you’ll just have excess fat even if you’re doing cardio. The excess skin from losing weight turns into fat (think of an obese person who lost a ton of weight and has all that loose skin. Average people get it too just not so dramatically since they arent going to lose as much weight). Good luck and have fun!!
Thanks Natalie! I definitely understand that I won’t lose as much while weight training because I’m gaining muscle. And I’m sooo fine with that! I’m already seeing small changes in my body and I’m loving it. My clothes are still a little tighter than I like, but I know with time things will fit better.
Is this Fenn person for real? The whole time I’ve been reading your blog, not just with the Fitness Fridays but with some of your food-related content, I was under the impression that you ARE working out so that you have a healthier, stronger, more capable body. Weight loss is just a perk, and for some people, a first and more visible step. Maybe you are focusing more on the weight loss aspect of it now, but that will change as you discover more about health/fitness, like you mentioned here about weight/resistance training and how you can’t out-exercise a bad diet (so true). So don’t let haters get you down…. Keep up the good work!!!
Thank you! <3 It's definitely are more visible step, it's easy to gauge how I'm doing based on that. But I'm definitely building muscle which is why I've been mostly fine with not losing much over the past few weeks. You should hear me telling Blaine about how excited I am to start getting buffer than him. My goal is arm wrestle him and beat him.
Yeah! I think the most exciting moment for me when I really started doing weight training before was noticing my tshirt sleeves getting tighter due to more muscle…. Even if you couldn’t really tell just looking at me (ie, no ripped bodybuilder arms 😛 oh, the woes of being a woman!), it is such an awesome feeling to be strong. (physically or emotionally). Let me know when you and Blaine have your arm wrestling match! 😀