Day Two of P90X/Plyometrics

Up at 5 am again. I am going to need to go to bed earlier, as it was not nearly as easy to roll out of bed this morning!

Took my supps, fried KC his eggwhites before he was out the door to work, set up my living room to look like “My Gym”, signed on to WOWY “Online Super Gym” and then pressed play. I don’t get to work out with music, as my kids are all asleep down the hall, and I have to keep the volume VERY low and do all my hopping, jumping, grunting, and straining as quietly as possible.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE PlyometriX!! It works your legs something fierce, but all in good fun, and I love having new moves to learn. One thing about ME: I am pretty competitive, so I really try to keep up not only with the girls, but with the boys. (NO ONE can keep up with Tony Horton – every good competitor knows when they are outmatched!) Some sound advice I got before this workout: “Don’t go at it like an animal or you won’t walk tomorrow”. So I started out with those intentions. That lasted about 30 seconds. I was having so much fun the time flew as I worked my body like crazy in this routine. But not beyond safety and keeping good form; just a good hard workout that ROCKS!!

The inside tip of the day:
“THINK CATWOMAN; NOT CRAZY WOMAN”.

Soft landing is the name of the game so our knees that have recovered from the SQUAT NAZI Debbie Sieber’s Slim in 6 will not be sore again!!

I am so excited to be going through this with all of you! It’s just a CRAZY program that will whip our bodies into tip top shape come day 90. And the fun of doing it alone in your house is that you really are competing with yourself. Yes, there are those on the tape who we compete with each time, but it’s a personal best against them. And no one standing next to you to make you feel less because you can’t keep up with them. In the flesh. It’s a beautiful thing, this home fitness idea. And then we pick back up our living room and no one is the wiser to our private fitness sessions, except that our sweatshirts are starting to bulge in the arms.

I’ve got someone coming for a haircut in a few minutes and I still have yet to take a quick shower. A good hot shower sounds good for my worked body right about now!! Check back in to see if I’m able to walk tomorrow!? I’m up a for a GREAT day today, after a BLAST of a start!!

Is it tomorrow yet?????

Bring it!

This is an inspirational story that any parent should read…

One of the best benefits of learning how to eat to fuel my body, as a mom, was learning what a healthy plate looks like. At Tony Horton Fitness Camps in the days of old, Tony used to talk about the important fuels for your body: lean protein, healthy fats, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

When we first started on this health and fitness journey, I cleaned out all my cupboards and fridge of the bad stuff that I’d allowed to creep in, and replaced it with the healthy stuff listed in my new food journal provided with the Team Beachbody Club. That was a big deal for me, because it was a commitment with my pocketbook! I used the expression “Say no to yourself once: at the grocery store!” that I’d learned from another member in my Beachbody Challenge Group. That saying made sense to me, and I wanted to teach my kids the same thing. Rather than me having m&m’s in a bag that they ask me for 10 times throughout the day, not even having them on the shelves was a few less “no”’s I had to tell my kids. It helped me get creative in making the snacks fun, and the meals tasty!

My kids really resisted at first. Well, the older ones. They were grumpy that the junk food they’d grown accustomed to were no longer an option. Oh, I’m all about moderation, and they still had desserts, and sweet foods, but I changed their options for the more healthy counterparts: Fat free yogurt instead of go-gurts, lime Perrier (“bubble water”) in place of soda, thin crust, light cheese & veggie pizza instead of the thick crust, oozing cheese pepperoni pizza’s of old. We had tons of different fruits, and instead of calorie laden casserole’s we had grilled chicken, lots of veggies and instead of white rice, we had whole grain rice and quinoa and bulgar. Havent tried em? Neither had I until I found the Beachbody Club and then I was hooked on these new flavors! In fact, my kids actually (and this is the truth!) used to say “Brussel Sprouts? Yay! Thanks Mom!” It sounds so fake and cheeseball, but they really love brussel sprouts – a veggie I’d never made before then. Because the truth is, healthy foods DO taste good, and its possible to re-train our habits and taste buds.

Oh, we still have soda, and ice cream every now and again, just not every day or week, and you know what? My kids are healthy, strong, and adjusted. So be encouraged if you are just starting on your journey to a healthier family – with time and consistency, and open, honest communication, ie: “I cant in good conscience give to you what I know now to be so unhealthy for you, son.” your kids WILL adjust and when they’re adults they’ll thank you. When they do, you can pat yourself on the back knowing you did the hard, but right thing by your family.

Take The Beachbody Challenge™ for the motivation you want and need to get fit and then you can win big!

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STEP 1: I’m in! Take The Beachbody Challenge!

You can win $500 each day.*

Choose your Beachbody program, take “before” photos, and start tracking your progress!

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The story below is one from a few years back, before we had the big social networks. Since then, the bonds of new relationships and accountability partners has grown even greater, thus your opportunity for success! 

This is a unique time in history, where relationships are cultivated while sitting alone in a room at a keyboard. Some of my dearest friendships that I’ve developed in the past 10 years have begun in this way and if I hadn’t experienced it, I might be more than just a bit skeptical. Can you “hug” an email? Can you really call someone a friend whom you’ve never seen face-to-face? Some might say no, but that would not be someone who’s truly experienced the power of the Beachbody Coaching community!

I’d never been on a message board when I started posting in the Beachbody Boards (pre FaceBook days) back in 2003. I didn’t even know there WERE boards to find other people going through the program I was going through until I learned of them from a fellow Beachbody member. I logged on and started posting my journey and sent this question out into the internet abyss: “Who’s with me?” It wasn’t long before someone answered. And then another. A “Challenge Group” was born. We lived in different states, different time zones, our family sizes varied, as did our lifestyles. We had different religions, different backgrounds, some worked doing manual labor, some crunched numbers for big companies, and some (like me) were stay at home moms. It didn’t matter. What drew us together was the common goal of weight loss, reclaiming our health, and going through it …TOGETHER.

Some people would drop back in participation because life pressed in, and when they did the community would reach out and tell them they were welcome back at any time, and assured them that they were missed. Because of that we didn’t lose anyone. It was a safe place to come back to; where successes were celebrated and backsliding was forgiven. Every Challenge Group brought new friends into my life, and because we went through something so personal as weight loss together, bonds were/are created and in some cases, life long friendships are made.

Yes, if you workout consistently and eat well consistently you WILL get results. But when you add the third cord to that system – the cord of accountability – not only will you see the odds of getting results climb, but you’ll feel a part of something. Something new, something good, something that will make fitness and healthy eating a lifestyle and not just a passing phase.

That’s the magic of Beachbody. People need people, and with Team Beachbody’s Challenge Groups for accountability you WILL cross the goal line. And you’ll do so linking arms with those who ran the race with you! ☺

When she mentioned that we should do the Spartan Sprint in Malibu, I immediately shut that ish down.  No way, no how was I doing another mud run.  I checked that off the list when I did the Camp Pendleton mud run and I’m still complaining about that race to this day.  But after giving it some thought, I figured I’d give it a shot.  After all, the Camp Pendleton run was a 10K and the Spartan Sprint was a 5K…and well, there was NO way anything could be harder than the Pendelton mud run.

Uh —– yeah.  I was wrong.

I’m going to get a little wordy here but bear with me.  Yesterday after the mud run, I was literally too emotional to write this post.  That’s how life changing it was.

December 1, 2012 – I met up with my group around 11 in Pasadena and we headed out to Malibu for the race.  It was Jenny, our friend Denis who was already an official Spartan, and myself.  The entire way there, we were all pretty nervous and cracking jokes about how hard this was going to be and  “OMG WHAT THE HELL ARE WE THINKING?!?!”

Soon after we made our way through all the pre-race formalities (and signed the paper that said in bold red capital letters that we were literally risking DEATH), it was time to line up at the start line and we were off!  The first oh….2 minutes were fine.  Then we came up to a water obstacle.  It was not just any water obstacle…it was a friggin’ DEEP river.  This river to be exact.

Now, I’m a decent swimmer but this was different.  There were a bunch of people trying to cross the river together which made it extra hard to move around in that frigid water.  I looked to my right and Jenny was clearly having a tough time too so I grabbed onto her and we started making our way across together.  Let’s just say this shit got real verrrry quick.  We were both terrified.  Like – “OMG I’m going to drown” terrified.  Luckily, a good samaritan came up behind us and pushed us across the second half of the river.  We climbed out and realized this was going to be a lot more challenging than we had bargained for.

As we made our way through the next couple of obstacles, my confidence grew.  They weren’t “easy” per se, but much more manageable.  We had to scale some walls, crawl under some others, climb up and down a cargo net wall, haul a heavy ass bean bag up and down a mountain, wrap a resistance band around our ankles and hop up a hill…all stuff I anticipated and could do.

The tough part for me was making it from obstacle to obstacle.  There was some light rain most of the day so the course was super muddy, as in it swallowed Jenny’s shoe a few times.  Let me tell you, I *do not* do well when I feel like I’m going to lose my balance.  It screws with my head and completely paralyzes me.  Add in the fact that most of the course was made up of steep hills…I was shaking just trying to walk.  THANK GOD for Denis.  He was always aware of where I was and he either stayed right behind me, right in front of me, or literally held my hand the entire way down some hills.  If it were not for him, I’d probably still be trying to make my way down.

The rules of the Spartan race state that if you fail at an obstacle, you must do 30 burpees.  We had some fun with this on the course.  There were some obstacles that I looked at and decided right off the bat that I was going to burpee out of…like the monkey bars.  I didn’t even touch those.  And I never really did 30 burpees.  Maybe 5-10 max. 

However, the course had the last laugh when it presented me with this beauty.

An uphill barbed wire crawl.  Sorry – scratch that.  An uphill MUDDY barbed wire crawl.  It was so muddy that I could not gain any traction at all and ended up slipping down a lot of it multiple times.  My body was in a huge amount of pain and my feet kept cramping up as I was attempting to climb.  Like the river, this was another humbling experience.  Jenny was the rockstar of our group and made it to the top first.  Denis followed shortly after.  There was a point where I looked up at them and said “I can’t do this one.  I’m out.”  Except…there was no way out.  There was no way to go around this obstacle.  I had no choice but to crawl up.  It was like life was going in slow motion here and there was some major negative self-talk going on in my head.  Who the hell did I think I was?  I was no where NEAR as fit as these other people.  How did I possibly think I could succeed at a race this difficult.  Thankfully, I had Jenny & Denis at the top battling my negative self-talk with some encouraging cheers.  I noticed a bunch of people making their way up easily on my left so I crawled that way and something just took over and I climbed up the rest of the way pretty quick.  Denis was at the top reaching out his hand and he pulled me up onto my feet.  I’m not going to lie – I teared up at the top of that hill.  It was the hardest thing I had ever done…and I did it.  Truly unreal.

The rest of the course was more of the same.  Tough but manageable obstacles, terrifying muddy hills and my pals helping me through most of it.  As we neared the end, we could hear the music playing at the finish line and I knew the final obstacle was getting closer.  Final obstacle: Jump over fire.  WTF?!  Yes – Fire.  Actually, it sounds worse than it was.  As long as you move quickly over the flames, it’s no big deal.  The trick was getting a running start though.  I was SO spent by this point that speeding up to a jog was going to be questionable.  Not to mention, you are pretty much doing this alone with all the finish line spectators looking on and big gladiator dudes holding huge stick things…their job: hit you with the stick as you cross the fire.  Again – WTF.  Luckily, I made it over without scorching myself and the dude with the stick was seriously the least of my worries at that point.

We had made it to the finish line.  It took us just over 2 hours for a 5K, but we did it.

Allow me to get emotional for a second.  I have never EVER in my entire life been athletic.  Anyone who knew me 10-20 years ago knows that if you put me on any team, regardless of the sport, I will help you lose.  I played basketball in elementary/middle school and the only basket I made all season was for the other team.  I tried softball and I don’t think I ever hit the ball.  Soccer, tragic.  No matter what I tried, I sucked.  So – I joined the dance team!  That was much more my speed.  As I’ve gotten older, and after I found Beachbody, I started to get a little more confident in my athletic ability and have since started running.  Why do I run?  Because I suck at it and I want to prove to myself that I can do it.  Does that make me a perfectionist?  Maybe.  But I’m determined to conquer things that I swore I could never do.  It’s my 30-something crisis.

Crossing the finish line at this race was life changing.  Maybe that sounds a little dramatic but I seriously never thought I could ever physically do what I did yesterday.  I must say though…the part that makes me emotional is the amazing support I received from my friends the entire way through this race.  We needed each other at so many points and we never ever lost each other.  From the scary river start with Jenny to the absolutely treacherous climb up the barbed wire hill, to Denis helping me down every muddy incline, we were all there for each other the entire way.  THAT is what impacts me the most.

This race humbled the crap out of me.  I’m glad I did it, but I have absolutely no desire to do it again.  No way, no how.  Jenny, don’t you even DARE think about posting a link to another Spartan run on my Facebook page.  You and I know I may not be able to resist and we’ll be knee deep in mud again cursing like sailors.

Aroooooooo!

I try to meal plan at the beginning of the week but always end up with the same boring dinners on my list.  This week, I decided to head to Simply Organized to find some new recipes.

Enter the best Marinara sauce I’ve had in my entire life…….

I’ve never made marinara from scratch before and this was SO easy to make.  You can even double or triple the recipe and freeze it for later.  I made just enough for one night to try it and now I’m kicking myself for not making more.  It was seriously so fresh and healthy.  I could actually taste the tomatoes & the garlic without tasting a bunch of added sugar.  I dumped it on some whole grain pasta and called it dinner.  A SUPER yummy & healthy dinner!

Now if only I didn’t eat it right before bed, it would have been a total win.  There just aren’t enough hours in the day!

Check out the recipe here and give it a whirl for yourself.  I promise you will not be disappointed.

I grew up in a Mexican & Chinese family where food was the centerpiece of all celebrations.  At 23, I married my husband who ended graduating from Le Cordon Bleu with a culinary degree.  For several years after that, our hobby was to try as many fine dining restaurants we could in Los Angeles.

I also LOVED pumpkin pie and could eat half of one all by myself.

We ate, and ate and ate until I gained so much weight that it was impossible to walk without my knees or my back aching.  This is when I decided that enough was enough and it was time to lose weight.

…and I did.  I lost 40 pounds.  Honestly, it wasn’t that hard.  Sure, adding daily workouts was an adjustment and I did change my eating a bit, but not that much.  I would probably eat healthy 50% of the time, and eat fast food the other 50%.  Those first 40 pounds came off pretty easily and I was finally comfortable in my own skin.

That’s all good, right?  Wrong.  I still have about 15-20 pounds to go and I’m stuck.  I’ve been stuck for about a year.  The main difference is that I’m not desperate anymore like I was before because I’m comfortable, but I know I still have a ways to go.  My activity level has increased substantially with all the running I’ve been doing and I’ve added some more intense programs to my workout schedule…but the scale is still stuck.  Now – I know weight is not everything and I’m building muscle…yada, yada, yada.  But that number on the scale has to start coming down.  I’m not happy with the amount of body fat I carry around and I’m certainly not happy with how my clothes fit, for the most part.  I still have terrible body image issues…and I’m sick of it.

So – it’s time to get serious.  My #1 problem is that I absolutely love food.  I am passionate about trying new things, new flavors, new textures.  I laugh at the thought of having a salad as an entree.  Food is not just fuel for me…it’s a hobby.  A passion.  But, I’m also aware that 80% of your weight loss results come from what you eat and only 20% comes from exercise.

What the heck am I to do?

I fired up my computer to write this post tonight and I came across Chalene Johnson’s Motivational Monday post where she talks about 3 “must follow” rules to break weight loss plateaus.  Score!!!

Basically, she suggests:

1. Stop eating 3 hours before you go to bed.

2. Plan your meals the day before.

3.  Write everything down.

I really encourage you to take 10 minutes to listen to her audio post.  I’m going to attempt to put her plan into practice.  The hardest thing is definitely going to be not eating before bedtime.  Just tonight, we went out to dinner at 5:30pm which is when I should have stopped eating.  Instead I came home and had a Klondike bar…I don’t even like Klondike bars!

I’m hopeless!  Gotta get control of this love for food and start loving the RIGHT kinds of foods.  I’m gonna give it my best shot!

Say whaaaaaat?!?!?!

Yeah – crazy.  I’ve never ever been a runner in my entire life.  Even in high school P.E., I was in the group of girls who would walk the mile and return to class well into the next period.  So you can imagine my hesitation when my friend, Christine, emailed me in January to see if I wanted to join her team for the 6.2 mile mud run in June.  I said (HELL) NO initially but then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that training for this would truly take my fitness to the next level. I had to do something scary.  Something I never thought was possible…so the mud run made my summer schedule.

I’ve been training for this run since January starting with the Couch to 5K program, then Bridge to 10K.  I sprinkled a lot of organized races in there to keep me accountable and gauge my progress.  Recently, I’ve been running about 5-6 miles, 3 times a week without much difficulty…I was ready for this mud run.

………or so I thought!

The hubby and I started the drive to Camp Pendleton early yesterday morning and I was seriously freaking out the entire drive.  There were moments my heart was racing, other moments where I was screaming at the top of my lungs…but mostly I was just staring out the window in sheer terror.  After about 30 minutes in the car, we came upon this lovely sign that sent me into a complete panic.

When we hit this, I was hoping that they would turn us away since I didn’t have our most recent auto insurance card.

No such luck.  The marine at the gate checked our ID and said “Stay Motivated!” and off we went.  *insert freak out here*

We parked, jumped on the tram that drove us to the start line and before I knew it, we were there.

After meeting up with my team that consisted of 4 ex co-workers (who are in WAY better shape than I am), getting our bibs, and checking our bags (which explains the lack of pictures from here on out), we were ready to go!  I was starting to get excited at this point, actually.  The energy was crazy and the music was awesome.  I also spotted some people who were clearly more out of shape than I was which helped my confidence (I know…that’s terrible, but anyone who has run this kind of race will tell you they’ve done the same thing.)

The first few waves set off (including my hubby who KILLED this race like the champ that he is!) and around 9:45am, we were off!  Early in the race, we came across some fire hoses that did their job at getting us nice and primed for the run.  I ran through those no problem and held my own for the first mile.  Then I started to get a little tired and I realized that I took off WAY too fast.  I decided to drop back from my team a bit and walk for about 30 seconds.  I didn’t want to crap out so early.  After a few stream crossings that left my feet completely soaked, the trail we were running on turned into sand.  And it wasn’t packed sand…it was deep sand like the kind you’d find at the beach.  This killed my ankles so I decided to walk yet again.  I ran some of it, then walked more, then ran again…the sand just kept going and going for a little over a mile.  Finally, we were on a normal trail again and my confidence started to build.  My run was steady and I was ready to conquer the rest of the race.  I went about 100 yards before I hit the most massive hill I have ever seen in my entire life.  It was more like a mountain, actually.  I started a steady run up the mountain but crapped out early and just decided to walk it. I trained on some hills the past few weeks but clearly, not as much as I should have.  At this point in the race, I wasn’t even half way and my confidence started waning.

About half of the race was just running with those small obstacles I mentioned above and the massive mountain climb.  As soon as we started down the mountain, we hit our first mud pit.  I was actually kind of happy for the change of pace and jumped in happily.  We had to scale a 5 foot wall which was no problem as there was a friendly marine who offered me his knee.  The hard part was jumping OFF the wall once I got to the top.  You really don’t know how deep the mud goes and if you are going to have  even soil to land on.  But off I went and I actually hit the landing pretty well.  I survived my first mud pit.

As the race went on, we hit a few more streams and fire hoses but I felt ok.  Then I came upon the second mud pit.  I was confident since I survived the first one, but still cautious.  I decided to go in very carefully as there was a pretty steep incline into the pit.  As I was reaching down to steady myself, the guy in front of me decided to BELLY FLOP into the mud pit, which resulted in him kicking me in the eye.  He swam off happily and there I stood, covered in mud from head to toe, unable to open an eye and definitely not able to clean it off since my hands & clothes were filthy.  With my good eye, I spotted an ambulance that was sitting to the left of the mud pit so I made my way toward them, climbed out of the pit carefully and asked for help.

They gave me a few saline vials to rinse my eye out and after a few minutes, I was ready to get back out there.  I could still feel something in my eye but it was good enough to get me through the course.  Unfortunately for me, the EMTs have to radio in every person that comes to the ambulance for help.  I had to wait to be cleared in order to take off again, which took about 20 minutes.  I was totally stressing since I knew that my team was probably already at the finish line waiting for me and I was still about 30 minutes away.  In order to avoid being disqualified, your entire team has to finish together so I knew they were just standing there waiting.  I was finally given the green light to continue and off I went back to the mud pit except this time, I completely went around the walls we had to climb.  I was over it at this point.

The next obstacle was a tunnel that we had to crawl through.  That one wasn’t so bad except that it killed my knees, and my quads were on fire so pushing myself through that thing was tough.  I remember saying to myself “You are almost there!” then looking up and realizing I still had about 3/4 of the way to go to get to the end of the tunnel.

After the tunnel was the slippery hill which is basically another mountain you have to climb up except that this time, there is a guy with a hose at the top.  I made it relatively unscathed.  I did slip up a little but luckily, a guy who happened to be dressed up as Captain America helped me regain my footing.

I knew I was close to finishing at this point so I started running a bit again.  My shoes were super heavy from all the mud and every time I ran, I felt mud going down my back.  It was DISGUSTING but I powered through as much as I could.

As I rounded the final corner, I spotted the last obstacle: a 30 foot mud pit that you had to cross on your stomach.  I’m pretty sure I cussed the mud pit out before I dove in.  I was moving pretty slow when a Marine came up to me and yelled “THIS IS THE MUD RUN!  NOT THE MUD CRAWL!”  He then got down into the pit with me and told me he was going to finish with me.  That was the final push I needed and before I knew it, I was at the end of the course.  I spotted my hubby at the finish who gave me a huge smile and yelled “Good job!” and just a bit further down, I saw my team who had linked their arms and were waiting for me to complete the chain.  I grabbed on tight and we ran to the finish line.

I seriously could not believe I completed the course.  I was bruised up, super filthy and exhausted but I did it.  I finished…and that was my goal.  This is seriously SUCH a huge accomplishment for me.  6 months ago, I could not run 30 seconds without stopping. My time was a little over 2 hours so yeah…not ideal.  My team finished around 1 hour, 20 minutes so they did end up waiting for me for quite a while…but I FINISHED, damn it. My hubby’s time was 1 hour, 2 minutes…told ya…ROCKSTAR STATUS.

I wish I had a muddy picture to post but we hit the “Hog Wash” (a giant human car wash) and changed out of our clothes as quickly as we could.

Now the million dollar question: Would I do it again?  Maybe.  Honestly, I did feel a lot of pressure knowing that my team was waiting for me at the finish line for 45 minutes.  It was *cough* fun *cough*…kind of…but I really need to do it just for fun…nothing else.  The pressure I put on myself to keep up with people who are clearly more athletic than I am was difficult for me.  And getting all dirty was not fun…nor was getting kicked in the eye.  So yeah – maybe I would do it again…but I prefer races where there are paved roads, no obstacles and no hills!