No belay class, lifting instead

Tonight, dumbbell bench press, hack squats, back extensions and deadlifts- going back up to 135 for the first time since I tweaked my back, plan to do 1x3x135. Will add more afterward.

Waking up unusually early with an anxiety attack prompt me to take the first available Spin class at 8am which alleviated most of the shivery feelings. I came to the conclusion on the way home that I take Spin for mood and lift for fitness. Not sure if that will screw me up on deadlifts and I may wait to lift until tomorrow, we'll see how work goes today. Of course now, in the middle of the workday, I could very easily go to sleep peacefully.

Better then last night

Waking up with anxiety, my early alarm was going off. Since I had to get up anyway to turn it off, I decided to treat the anxiety as an energy surge and go to the 6am Spin class. Getting out of bed was relatively easy- back improvement! So the sorta workout last night turned out okay after all, and while showering after spinning I noticed some pec soreness, indicating the workout was not a total waste of time. Squatting should be fine tomorrow, staying at 80 for this session planning to go to 85 next week. Standing press 60 lbs. I wish my sister would get back to me about belaying class; maybe I can guilt the man into going with me due to the rough week but its kind of hard to imagine him scooting up a wall. We'll see.

Reason 1 not to ignore your cat

She was nuzzling her little heart out on me, and the lamp, early this morning and I ignored her long enough to sleep thru 6am Spin darn it! So, I took the 7:45 yoga class instead. When the instructor asked me if it was my first class I didn't want to explain that I typically take a yoga class once a year so I just said the first in a long time. Other then the seemingly endless round of Sun Salutations (bleh) it was pretty good and my muscles feel loosened up. Lifting sure makes me eat eat eat though sheesh although part of that may also be due to my weaning off birth control pills. I want to see what it is like not to have all that extra estrogen running through my body and know from experience that just stopping them completely is a bad idea. As in, a feeling of non-stop PMS.

Cutting the fat.

Well, one could say I've got the exercise part of this down. Spinning and interval running are my cardio and I have documented a ton about lifting. Three months ago I started using this blog to share my experiences with various popular and not so popular forms of training and I have found methods that work and built in physically demanding vacations to stave off boredom; including a soon to come week of hiking in the mountains and two weeks of skiing (SKIING!!) early next year. So, great, I'm 20% of the way there. Here comes the challenging part: diet. I want the best of both worlds, lots of lean body mass burning away calories and a lot less fluff which means I just want to lose fat. This complicates things. Being a good little reader and researcher I checked to see how to do this and approximately how long it will take.

Are you ready? A woman who is close to her optimal BMI can burn one to one-half pound of fat a week, as long as she consumes enough protein and continues lifting challenging weights. (Don't feel like looking for the citation at the moment) So, here we go, I plan to lose 20 pounds of fat in 20 weeks. If it turns out I don't need to lose that much I will reassess at the time. Good thing I don't have a beauty contest coming up in the next month or so!

First, I had to figure out how much I was eating, so Sunday I wrote down everything and put it in the Fitday chart. It was a basic day, fairly healthy foods with a couple of treats thrown in. The treats were 3/4 a cup of ice cream- yes I eat it out of the measuring cup, and half of a large-ish chocolate chip cookie. 2600 calories! Yikes, and that was a no wine, no crazy filet mignon type of day. Okee-dokee. So for the next two weeks I'm dropping that down to 2000 or less (keep in mind I work-out a lot and am 5'7") and at least 100 grams or protein a day. This worked out ok yesterday.

Speaking of yesterday, this was supposed to be the start of my deload or no lifting week but after lounging around all weekend and the shock of my eating habits, towards 5pm I started getting antsy. I decided to take a Spin class, easy, cardio and Pam teaches it, she is always entertaining. However, like I said, it was just after 5 and her class doesn't start until 7:15 and I was already climbing the walls bored. There is a 6pm class but it is ridiculous (the instructor does a lot of hopping up and down on the bike, weird tricep/ pushup thingys- yes while riding the bike, and some bizarre butt off the seat- thrust into the handlebars then move the butt back again while hovering over the seat move I wish I could videotape for this. No one on The Tour behaves that way!) Which meant I arrived at the gym with just enough time to train with barbells before taking Pam's class. I'm an addict.