oh, one thing to note...

My left knee has started to hurt. At first I thought it was the weather, as it hurts more in the cold (a well-deserved thank you goes out to two accidents that are to blame for permanently injuring my knee); but now I'm wondering if it's this exercise + stop & go traffic (this morning I spent 6:30-7:10AM driving about 3 miles. Apparently that's what happens when a big rig turns on its side and the driver is unconscious.) or if it really is just the cold. Hopefully it's not the exercise and it's just the cold, as I don't want to stop exercising...

Insanity, Day 27: Plyometrics

Hmm, yesterday was good. My eating was good. Well it was good in terms of when I ate; I brought food to work and ate it when I wanted to which was awesome.

Soy protein smoothie
Cantelope
Watermelon
Grapes
Asian Pear
Banh mi chay
Spinach salad with nuts (some were candied pecans...), dried cranberries, golden raisins
Some garlic, onion, something else crackers which I won't ever eat again
Yogurtland (that's a good post-workout food, right..? I had a LOT of candy in that though!! probably a ton of HFCS and definitely a ton of sugar)

I've been mostly keeping to my sleep schedule, falling asleep around 8:30 and waking up at 5; I haven't committed to making veggie juice in the morning yet.. ugh, and those veggies are getting really old. I'm still really tired though. I remembered that it's not just how much you sleep, but it's also when you sleep, which might explain why I'm tired all the time despite getting 8.5 hours of sleep.

Yesterday's Plyometrics was tough. Level 1 drills and all those push ups are really hard for me. I have no upper body strength. However, I have been noticing that my biceps are getting harder when I flex, and when I push my hips forward at a certain angle with the right light and flex hard I can kiiiind of notice some definition in my stomach. I still have this layer of fat covering my abs which is creating this almost 4-pack look, I think. Convenient how my fat arranges itself into packs, huh? My thighs are still big... and my love handles still bug me. Mmmm.. need more time, and to stop eating Yogurtland at night. (But I'm one check-in from being Mayor on Foursquare!!!!)

Insanity, Day 26: Pure Cardio & Cardio Abs, take II

YAY! I worked out yesterday! And it was a gooood workout. I feel silly for being so down about skipping a work out... I just remembered that I just won't take today's rest day and exercise instead so I'll still be on track.

Yesterday I pushed myself through the entire warm-up even though I wanted to quit, which was good. The switch kicks (kick one foot and then jump alternating feet/legs) are really hard. Btw, and I guess this is a criticism from watching the same videos over and over, I really wish they wouldn't show some awkward people, especially during the Heismans. Some people look funny when they do it, like it's unnatural and uncomfortable. I'm not saying I'm any model student, but as someone who is following a group of people, having the camera focus on someone doing it really awkwardly throws me off. I pushed myself too hard yesterday to the point of nausea but I recovered quickly.Otherwise, the get up/get down/do push ups/run it out/get up is still really hard for me, and I was so exhausted that I could barely do jumping jack push ups. Is that supposed to happen? Also, am I supposed to do Cardio Abs right after? Because I do, and I don't have too much energy left for the warm up part. I always have trouble with the leg lifts things.

Food:
Soy & hemp protein berry smoothie (46g protein, 4.5g carbs, 4.5g fat)
Cantelope
Asian pear
Leftover grilled veggies from Macaroni Grill (way too greasy and oily)
Tofu, spinach and pea masala with 1/2 plate of basmati rice
Hemp shake (42g protein)
Sesame seed ball with mung bean
Soy shake (25g protein)
So that's around 120g protein, 100g (????) carbs, very little fat. My food habits are picking up! I ran out of hemp powder when I was doing my smoothie and I didn't feel like going back to my room to get more so I used soy protein. It tastes better than the hemp one. I am so annoyed with these powders being so dang clumpy!!!!!! I thought the soy protein was disgusting at first (the one without carbs), so maybe this hemp takes getting used to.. I'd really like to like the hemp one more.

Insanity, Day 25: Pure Cardio & Cardio Abs

Ugh.. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I didn't work out yesterday. I started to, but I had a small headache, and when I was into the warm up, the headaches got worse as I landed my jumps. I won't lie and say that I had to force myself too hard to quit. I have been really tired in the past few days and my motivation is wearing off. I have put on a tiny but of chub -- hopefully it's bloat -- from all of what I ate last week.

Yesterday, I drank my hemp/strawberry/blueberry smoothie, asian pear, apple, some grapes, a couple of handfuls of nuts, odwalla bar (yuck, I hate eating bars but I was starving), bad banh mi from Lee's, Yogurtland. I would consider this my "normal" desired way of eating minus the Odwalla bar. Well the thing that's connected to that is I worked straight through lunch so I didn't really eat a lunch lunch.. the banh mi was lunch dinner. As you can see that is clearly not enough protein. It's lots of carbs and moderate fat. I remember when I was focused on what I was eating and making sure I was getting "enough" protein I did not feel bloated. This morning my stomach measured a bit over 26" whereas I would be a solid 26" before. Maybe I should indeed go back to the way I was eating before: high protein, low carb, low fat. I've been WAY slacking on the veggie juice. Like WAY slacking. My skin is not great right now as I've started to break out from eating too many of these processed foods and not drinking enough veggie juice. My main problems are:

1. Tired all the time
2. No veggie juice
3. Not enough protein
4. Too many carbs
5. Unmotivated
6. Battle between wanting to eat the way I want to eat and making Insanity worth it, eating plan and all

These are all related to each other, probably spurned on the most by #1 and #5. The problem for me right now is scheduling. Ideally if I had all the time in the world, my schedule would look like this:

1. Wake up
2. Shower
3. Make veggie juice
4. Make smoothie
5. Drink smoothie on car ride to work
6. Get to work, drink veggie juice, eat correctly
7. Go home, work out, drink protein shake
8. Get to bed 2-3 hours later

My main problems lie in these areas:

1. I need to leave the house by 6AM. 6:15 at the latest. Which isn't a problem in itself; #2 is the problem:
2. I would have to wake up at 4:30. Do you know how hard that is? I can't shower at night after my work out; I don't want to sleep on wet hair, and I don't want to spend an hour blow drying it. Not to mention I can't ever style my hair after having slept on it (wet or dry). So I must shower in the morning. I must also make veggie juice in the morning, because I don't want to drink it at night.
3. You should drink veggie juice fresh. I don't normally drink it until after I finish my smoothie, and I don't normally finish it until a couple of hours after I start. By then it's gross because it's warm and the juice starts to oxidize and turn brown and taste yucky, and a lot of the nutrients are gone by that time. It takes me about an hour or so to get to work, then some more time to get settled then start drinking.
4. I usually either wake up hungry or get hungry soon after I wake up. I also heard that you should eat soon after you wake up to jump start your metabolism. If I wake up at 4:30 and not eat until when I get on the fwy, I will be voracious.
5. Waking up at 4:30 means I would have to sleep at 8, since 8 hours of sleep is clearly  not cutting it for me. I think I would be comfortable with 9 hours of sleep, but I'll try 8.5 first. Not sure if I have the willpower to go to bed at 8, and my social life on the weekends will suffer.
6. I'm on an entirely different schedule from everyone else at work; I get in around 7-7:30, everyone else, 9-9:15. Ideally I get two lunches -- one at 11, one at 2. They normally eat around 12:30ish. That's fine, I guess; I just don't want to step out twice (I work in a small office, and office etiquette says don't eat things that smell!).
7. This doesn't leave room for me being late anywhere, including staying late at work (although if I stay late at work that means I face boat loads of traffic, which is another discouraging thing about leaving late).
8. I hardly ever have down time to read or do anything.

So it looks like my revised schedule will be:

1. Wake up at 4:30
2. Shower, eat something real fast, do my hair and make up, make smoothie first, then veggie juice
3. Drive to work at 6-6:15, drink smoothie in the car
4. Finish veggie juice before 8:30
5. Eat snack at 9
6. First lunch at 11
7. Second lunch at 2
8. Hemp shake at 4 when I leave work
9. Work out when I get home, finish protein shake by 6:30
10. Be in bed by 8:00

Hm, okay, looks like I'll have some wiggle room there after my work out. Hopefully I will be able to sleep at 8:00 after finishing a work out just 2 hours prior. This is hoping that I can actually get up at 4:30 and get ready in 1.5 hours.

Wish me luck...

Insanity, Day 23 and 24: Plyometrics and Snowboarding

Oigh, this weekend was crazy so I did not have time nor the energy to blog. I did plyometrics on Saturday and I was supposed to do Cardio Recovery on Sunday, but I was snowboarding for 3 hours so I neglected to do Cardio Recovery. Plus I was super tired from only having had 5-6 hours of sleep the night before. I'm a tiny bit sore today, mostly in my legs, from snowboarding so I'm pretty sure I got in a good workout.

My eating habits have not picked up. blargh. I keep saying I'll work on it, then I don't. I hate saying this, but watching both what and how much I eat is difficult when I have to change my normal diet, which I view typically as high carb with fruits and veggies and low protein with meat substitutes sometimes and low/moderate fat with some chocolate, nuts and avocado. I think making myself eat a low carb, low fat, high protein diet is discouraging me from eating right. I am not eating horribly, but just not what I should be eating. Not sure if I want to scrap the diet plan and just stick to my normal eating (which is still better than what happened last week and this past weekend). But I want that bod and I was eating closer to high protein, low carb, low fat diet for 3 weeks. Ponder ponder.

Insanity, Day 22: Pure Cardio & Cardio Abs

Woo! Ok, 3 days straight of not watching what I ate. I've been carbo-loading -- for some reason during times like this, all I want is carbs and sweets (mainly chocolate). Dunno why?! Maybe loading up on fat stores for the upcoming prime time to get preggers!? I wish my body would listen to my brain and say HEY! Not now! I need to stick to my diet and hormones are messing it up! I am really glad I made myself exercise yesterday. I normally wouldn't have, but being on a strict program helps me in that aspect.

Yesterday I did Pure Cardio and Cardio Abs. I lasted longer through the ab workout, but the parts that require lifting legs is so tough (but I hear so effective for abs). I noticed that in the video mostly everyone keeps their toes pointed up. I find it more comfortable if I place my feet flat on the ground. I thought it might be because they are wearing shoes and I'm barefoot, but I saw another girl have her feet flat while in shoes. If I point my toes up it uses my upper thigh/hip muscles which is why I was able to last longer yesterday when I didn't do that. But I know that sometimes we do things to make sure that we're focusing on the right muscles -- in this case, abs -- and I'm wondering if feet pointed up emphasize the work on the correct muscles (similar to how you have to be careful and make sure you're using your abs and NOT your hips when doing sit ups, or to make sure you tuck your hips forward when you're doing some glute exercises to focus on the glutes and not lower back). At Pop Physique we always put a ball between our thighs and squeeze that and supposedly that helped reassure our instructor (and us) that we were using our abs and not our hips to do the exercises.

Anyway, my body's starting to normalize again, so I am going to eat better. (Blargh, I feel like I proclaim that a lot...) Unfortunately I figured out that I'll have this again near the end of Insanity. I hope to be able to have more self-control when that time comes around.

Oh a piece of good news I forgot to share: I got a haircut! I chopped 1-2 inches off. Having shorter hair is better when I whip my hair back and forth quickly for these exercises. Better for not getting smacked in the FACE.

Insanity, Day 20: Plyometrics

You know that thing I said earlier about how it discourages me from exercising? Well, I forgot to mention it also destroys my diet. Just a few days after I vowed to eat healthier I had mad cravings for a slice of chocolate cake! I just had chocolate "cheese"cake on Friday at the raw restaurant so I know I wasn't craving it because I was lacking it. Let's go over what I ate yesterday, shall we:

20oz hemp berry shake (42 oz protein, 9g fat, 9g carbs)
banana
tofu soup
asian pear
apple
nuts
more tofu soup
- this is where my chocolate craving kicked in. Unfortunately Food+Lab on SL Blvd didn't have any choc cake so I substituted... -
ice cream sandwich (snickerdoodle with caramel and salt ice cream from Coolhaus, freakin delicious!!)
4 pieces of fudge
1/2 an almond croissant from Paris Baguette
slice of packaged tiramisu
- Plyometrics -
8oz protein shake (25g protein, 0 fat, 0 carbs)
3 pcs chocolate

As you can see, this is vastly different from Monday, when I was overly stuffed after 1300 calories. This was probably around 2000 calories. I was RAVENOUS, and it wasn't because I wasn't eating anything of value in the middle of they day. I was also really hungry in the morning even after eating what I normally eat which usually satiates me enough. Luckily, those cravings only last for about a day, then they're over. Today should be better. The hard part is getting back on track. Today I have banh mi, and even though I basically hollow out the bread, it's still a lot of carbs, and I had a banana this morning in my smoothie too, so I might need to make sure to tone down the carbs tomorrow. And surprise surprise, yesterday I felt bloated thanks to all this carbo-loading.

Interestingly enough, my performance during Plyometrics today was much better than Monday's work out. All those carbs did the work they're supposed to do, but I'm supposed to chill out on the carbs and up the protein so my body can burn fat and build muscle. This is where I have the question I've been wondering for a few years: Am I supposed to sacrifice a workout sesh where I last longer and I'm able to do more of the exercises for eating more strictly on my diet plan and not doing as many of the exercises for as long? My gut tells me the latter, as I know exercise is practically nothing if not completely nothing without eating right, and I can always improve my endurance.