Another Milestone; And I Can't Believe It!

Well, I planned my Thanksgiving all out to try and stay ahead of the weight gain possibilities and offset it and I succeeded. Yay for me. But, I also slowed down in progress and plateaued a little bit, not gaining, but not losing either. I got a little down on it for a few days, but I stuck with working out and eating right, even though I was straying from my Beginner Triathlete plan because I was bored with the bike. So much biking.

Anyways, I got a job, rather suddenly, and that has kept me very busy and I have not had much time. I also have my first test for the A+ certification coming on Monday, so I have really been stretched to the max and just trying to hang in there with all this change and fluxuation. I haven't been watching my weight or been as focused on tri, just trying to continue working out and eating right. Lori and I had our first meeting with our personal trainer, Sharon, this past Thursday. Part of the Club membership includes a trainer to work with you towards fitness. In our case, she has been pretty flexible with tailoring our program to our strengths, weaknesses and goals. She has been awesome so far. I discussed my plateau with her and she said that likely it is time to shake it up. My body is used to what I have been doing, and it's tapering off in weightloss because there's not any more challenge.

So, we went in this morning to start on a different routine of strength training to get the body shocked again and started into significant weight loss progress. I am rejuvenated and excited with a new workout. It was very humbling though. I had a hard time today with things I thought would be much easier. They were probably not much harder, just different. We started out with a 10 minute cardio warmup getting to our target heart rate. Mine happens to be 145-155 for weight loss and 155-165 for aerobic. We then did a full body workout that logically worked muscles in a complimentary way. The whole thing should take 45 minutes. I ended up getting really nauseous from working so hard. I had to leave the workout floor, go to the locker room and cool off with the blow dryer on cool and just sit for a bit. I seriously thought I was going to hurl. But, as soon as I cooled down, I went right back out and finished. A very humbling reminder that the war of my weight loss is not over, the first battle was won and its time to continue the fight. I have decided to change my workout in the week to the following:

Mondays: 10min cardio warmup, strength training
Tuesdays: swimming
Wednesdays: 10 min cardio warmup, strength training
Thursdays: swimming
Fridays: 10 min cardio warmup, strength training
Saturday OR Sunday: bike riding around Lake Natoma

I'll be following this for the next month or two until it is time for a change again.

So, moving onto milestones. I really hadn't been paying attention to the scale, because I didn't want anymore disappointing news after the Thanksgiving plateau. And I was just way too busy. Well, I checked in yesterday, and again this morning to verify it. I have lost 4 pounds this week. That takes my total weight loss to date to 31 POUNDS!! So, I have passed the 30 pound milestone. My goal this year was to lose 40 pounds, so I am going to keep on plugging away and see if I can do it. I still have 4 more weeks within which to give it a shot.