NROL4W - Stage 1 - Tuesday - Biggest Loser Cardio

Today I did the high intensity cardio segment from the first Biggest Loser Workout dvd. It's just 20 minutes (plus warm up and cool down) of skaters, football drills, high knees (tires), punches, and kicks. I love workout out with Bob, though in real life, I would probably prefer to work with Jillian. Anyway, I didn't get a huge burn from this workout (174 calories, 1.5 activity points) but I am going to try not to go all out on my my non-lifting days. I'll be doing interval cardio and bodyweight matrices soon enough. I'm going to slack off while I can.

Meals for today:

apple & cottage cheese
omelet w/ onion, green pepper, avocado & salsa
chicken & avocado salad w/ salsa & light sour cream [1 pt]
crumb-coated chicken thighs [1 pt for coating] w/ roasted vegetables
banana
diet soda cake [8 pts] for my husband's birthday

100 ounces of water. 22 weekly and 1.5 activity points remaining. Reward percentage for today: 9 out of 17 - 53%. I guess I owe myself 30 push ups each day for the rest of the week.

Tomorrow's workout is Stage 1 Workout B1 and I'm looking forward to it!

Diet Soda Cake with Pudding Frosting - Recipe

Today is my husband's birthday and our son insisted that Daddy has cupcakes for his birthday. He wanted me to go to the store and buy pre-made cupcakes and I just was not having any of that! Then I remembered the diet soda cake that has been around forever. It's super simple.

1 box cake mix
12 oz diet soda
2 c skim milk
1 box (1 oz) sugar free fat free instant pudding

Decide what kind of cake you're doing (rectangular, rounds, cupcakes) and read the baking instructions on the box of cake mix. Don't worry about all the other ingredients and prep - you don't need them. All you do is empty your mix into a large bowl and fluff out the lumps. Slowly pour in your soda and mix well. Pour the mix into your pan(s) and bake according to the directions.

While the cake is in the oven, mix your pudding and milk and refrigerate. When the cake is done, let it cool. When it's completely cooled, spread the pudding over it. You'll need to refrigerate the cake.

I used a white cake mix with orange soda. I got 12 good sized cupcakes out of this, but if you're doing a larger cake, like a 9x13, you can probably get more servings. It's about 45 points for the whole thing. If you do 12 cupcakes with the pudding frosting, it's 3.8 points apiece.

NROL4W - Stage 1 - Monday - Workout A1

Today was my first NROL4W workout. It's a lot like the Break In workout from the original NROL. It's a fairly quick, designed to prepare the body for subsequent workouts. People who have been lifting for a while often ask if the break in period is really necessary, and I think most people will agree that it certainly doesn't hurt to go ahead and do it.

Stage 1 is fairly long. There are two workouts, A & B, and they are each done 8 times with certain reps & sets, then each is done one more time using your starting weights and max reps. Confused? Stick around for the next month and it will become clear.

squat 2x15x65 lbs

60 s rest

push up 2x15 - all on the toes

seated row (lying db row) 2x15x20 lbs

60 s rest 

step up 1x15x20 lbs, 1x15x15 lbs [per leg]

prone jackknife 1x15, 1x8

60 s rest

I am modifying some of the exercises in the book. I put my changes in parentheses. I don't have access to a cable system for seated rows, so I'm doing my dumbbell rows lying on my stomach on the weight bench. I could do bent over rows or one-arm dumbbell rows as an alternative, but I like chest supported rows. I didn't do them today, but sometimes I will do atomic push ups. I screwed up the prone jackknife and did 15 reps the first time through, when I was only supposed to do 8. For the step ups, holy crap, my arms were exhausted from holding the weight.

I have decided that I am not going to take activity points for the weight lifting workouts. It is impossible for me to determine how many points I'm really earning. I will, of course, wear my HRM for the intervals and my other cardio workouts, and take those activity points. This will help me limit the non-Filling Foods I eat, and hopefully keep me eating more cleanly. Since I can always eat off the Filling Foods list if I'm hungry, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to have the extras anyway. There's always something I can eat if I'm hungry! That is the good thing about the Simply Filling Technique. Of course, that can bite me in the ass, too, as it's very easy to overeat if I'm not paying attention.

Meals for today (Meatless Monday, by the way!):

cream of wheat pancakes w/ reduced-sugar jelly

quinoa bean salad w/ dijon mustard dressing
apple & yogurt, carrot sticks

salad w/ jicama, red peppers, avocado & vidalia onion dressing [1 pt for dressing]
grapes, a trigger food for me, so I measured out 2 ounces
vanilla berry protein shake [2 pts for protein powder]

I found the recipe for the shake in the Insanity nutrition guide: 1 c skim milk, 1 scoop protein powder (I used vanilla), 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 c fresh or frozen berries (I used 1/2 c strawberries), 1/2 banana, ice. Half of this is very filling. I did add about 1/8 teaspoon of xanthan gum to thicken it up, and I left out the ice. My son loved this, as well. 

100 ounces of water. 32 weekly points remaining. Reward percentage for today: 14 out of 17 - 82%

Tomorrow is a light to moderate cardio day. I'm not sure if I will Turbo or not. I do have to do something though! Tomorrow is not a rest day.

Reward Points for Motivation

I developed a point system to earn rewards as I go. I am not going to share exactly what they are because some are quite personal, but all are related to my health, both mental and physical. I can earn points for positive behaviors and lose points for negative ones. Every day, I will post the percentage of points earned (based on how many I could have earned). There are penalties and rewards based on those percentages.


Daily penalties:
below 50% - no computer except for posting my fitness blog update
below 60% - 30 extra push ups

Weekly penalties:
below 50% - yard work
below 60% - extra cardio on rest day

Weekly rewards:
above 70% - extra coffee on Sunday
above 80% - a few hours to myself to read a book & listen to music

I want to have a different reward for each month, if I reach 70% or better.

April - $20 gift card at Kitchen Collection
May - buy new dress for step-daughter's graduation
June - pair of 25 pound weight plates
July - something related to my trip to see  my friend Jenn
August - go see Eclipse
September - Richmond Science Museum
October - My Chemical Romance album

If I get 70% or better for the whole shebang, I can buy my Turbo Fire program.

New Rules of Lifting For Women (NROL4W)

I know I've been blogging a lot about doing Insanity, but the decision to hold off and do New Rules of Lifting For Women just feels right. As ready as I felt I was for Insanity, I wasn't ready to give up weight lifting. Even with one day a week of upper body work with Insanity, that wouldn't have felt like enough. There's just something about barbell squats that make me feel strong, like I'm really working hard. So I'm going to continue to focus on weight training, and do NROL4W as written, complete with the cardio included in the book. That doesn't start for a few weeks, though.

That does not mean I won't be doing cardio. Of course, I will Turbo, probably on Tuesdays. Saturdays, I will run tabata sprints and do yoga. I'm not sure what to do on Thursdays. Sundays will be rest days, as usual. Maybe I will just take Thursdays off and walk or play on the Wii.

Then there is the dreaded diet. I have had a rough year so far. I make the worst food decisions. I know I need to eat less and make better choices. I'm not going to commit to anything specific here, other than sticking with Weight Watchers Simply Filling Technique. For my sanity, I cannot go back to counting points or calories. I still measure my food, to keep my portions down. But shoot, I don't know how it will all turn out. I know I'm not losing weight because of my diet. I wish eating right were as easy as working out. Hell, I had an easier time quitting smoking cold turkey. I don't know what I have to do to get into the right place with my nutrition. I work too damn hard to keep sabotaging myself, and yet that is exactly what I do. I deserve better. I'm half wondering if I should take pictures of everything I eat. Not to post online, but just to give me a visual. And, like tracking calories (weighing food, entering it all in), when something is a pain in the butt, I tend to not eat things just so I don't have to do all the work related to it. But I probably won't do that. Probably the best thing to do is plan my meals head of time, so I already know how many calories and all that jazz I'm getting. I still have all the meal plan stuff that goes with Insanity. There's no reason not to follow it - it can all fit very easily into SFT.

As far as weight goes, I have decided not to use the scale any longer. I am going to use a tape measure and my Accu-Measure body fat calipers ONLY on my abdomen. That is the only area I care about. I will take measurements there every Monday morning, and enter my numbers on my NROL4W spreadsheet, on the schedule page. I'm tired of being a slave to the scale, even once a week. I don't care how much I weigh, as long as I get smaller.

Vacation Update

On Saturday, I did my workout on the suspension trainer.

Warm Up – squat, row, curl, raise

Metabolic Workout A – 4 circuits - 30 second segments, 40 seconds to transition between exercises, 90 second rests between circuits

single leg squat

atomic push up

low row

balance lunge

side plank

Not much to say about those. I enjoy them and they are perfect for travel. For cardio, I ran intervals outside. I really, really enjoyed it. Don't tell anyone I admitted to liking running. I did a 3 minute warm up, then ran 6 30 second run, 30 second walk cycles.

Sunday, I did Turbo Jam Cardio Party 3 (359 calories) and Monday I did Turbo Jam Fat Blaster (184 calories). The other days, I did a fair amount of walking but didn't wear my HRM.

As for food, the best thing I can say is that I managed to do Meatless Monday. I'm going to be very glad to get home.

The best part of vacation though, was my bargain find. I got a pair of 50 pound adjustable Weider dumbbells with a stand for $250+tax. They were on clearance at Sears, and the associate working and I have, uh, history, so I got the employee discount. I had called my husband when I saw them (before I even knew I'd get the additional discount) and he wanted them even at the clearance price. He was jumping all over that deal, and I knew he'd be disappointed if I didn't get them. He swears he will use them. He claims the reason he hated working out with our other dumbbells is because it always took too much time to change the weights and put them back to my preferred weight when he was done. I was kind of bummed that I wouldn't even be using the new weights for a few months because of Insanity, but in a last minute turn of events, I am postponing Insanity until fall. My friend talked me into starting New Rules of Lifting for Women when I get back from New York. So come Monday, that's what I will be doing. I told my husband he's doing it, too. However, I did not mention the "for women" part. He doesn't have to know!

Pork Stir Fry with Brown Rice - Recipe

I'm at my inlaws' for the week and it's my night to cook for them. I'm a bit nervous, as they've never had brown rice, but too bad. That's what I'm cooking with.

1 1/2 c uncooked brown rice
2 1/4 c chicken broth (or vegetable broth, or water)
1 oz onion, chopped fine
1 tbs sesame oil (or canola/olive oil)
1 lb lean pork, cut into small pieces (maybe a bit smaller than bite size)
1 onion, sliced
1 bell pepper, sliced (any color - I used yellow)
1 bag frozen stir fry vegetables (or you can make your own mix)

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix rice, broth and onion in a casserole dish. Cover and bake for 1 hour. When time is up, remove the cover, fluff rice with fork, and cover with a clean dish towel for 5 minutes.

2. In a large skillet, heat the oil and brown the pork pieces. Remove from pan and set aside. Stir the onion & pepper slices into the pan and cook until almost tender.

3. Cook your stir fry vegetables. If using frozen, follow the directions on the package. If using fresh, cook them with the peppers & onions in the skillet.

4. When the vegetables are cooked, stir the pork back into the pan. Heat for 5 minutes and serve over rice.

No numbers for this. I'm in a rush. This will make 6-8 servings.