days 2 and 3 :)

My day yesterday was pretty uneventful. Had to work from 7am to 330pm. Didn't really want to work out but thankfully I did. I took it pretty easy and only walked on a treadmill and then did a bit of bicycle. Really loosened up my leg muscles which were very very stiff after the short session with the trainer on Saturday.  Then went home and was super lazy. LOL


Today was slightly more eventful. Still had to work. ALL DAY! and then went to the gym and had my ass handed to me by my trainer. I can't really complain though because I signed up for this and he continues to say that I am doing well. I have learned that I absolutely HATE the stair stepper machine. That was my warm up today and it was brutal. Other than that it wasn't too terrible of a work out. He is a big believer in working out all parts of the body evenly. So for every upper body workout I did I also had to do a lower body one. As of right now my WHOLE body hurts, but it is a very good hurt. 


I know that reading this it just sounds like bitch, bitch, blah, blah, blah, bitch, bitch LOL but as much as I may be complaining I'm so happy :) 

Day 1

I decided that this needed its own post, even if its on the same day.


So today I had my first session with my trainer. I was actually dreading it in the beginning but was pleasantly surprised. I was pretty happy that the first half of my hour was just us chit chatting about my goals, his qualifications, and other random stuff.  That meant that I only had to actually work out for another 30 minutes which would be easy. Hahaha boy was I wrong. 


I think my trainer is pretty awesome. I think we have very similar personalities and he is easy to talk to. He is very passionate about living a healthy lifestyle and actually educated in how to do it correctly. This I will be attempting to take advantage of since I know absolutely nothing on what I am supposed to be doing. Even though we only had a short conversation I feel like I already learned soo much. We talked about my diet (which he seemed to be fairly pleased with actually) and how I could slightly improve it (basically by increasing my protein and watching carbs and salt).  We also talked about metabolism and what I need to do to keep mine going (eat more, YAY!) LOL. 


Then I strapped on a heart monitor and the torture began. Well, I can't really say it was torture since most people would be able to easily excel at what little I actually did today. But for a fat girl who almost never works out it was TORTURE! Here is a quick break down of what I did (although I doubt it really matters since it was only the first day and I know he was only trying to gauge how much I can take in a short time frame):

• Treadmill walking (speed range from 2 to about 5 with incline ranging from 1 to 12)
• TRX band squats (sounds easy, they were terrible)
• Alternate Arm raises (with about 5 or 6 pounds)
• more squats
• more arm raises
• Lunges (which will be the death of me because he likes to go more than just forward....I did crazy lunges that left me dying). 
• Ended with band pulls (arms) with the band around him for resistance. (this was the worst one because I was dead tired, out of water, and SORE! but I made it through and he seemed to be pleased with how it went) 

After my session I made my journey home so that I could make up a grocery list and get food for the week. I didn't buy any junk food and am SO proud of that since I usually get something bad. I even sat down and wrote my little meal plan (since my trainer wants me to keep a food log) and went the extra mile to figure out roughly how many calories, fat grams, protein, sodium, and carbs that I take in every day (which actually isn't too far off from what I'm supposed to take in with the amount of exercise that I will be doing on a weekly basis). 

Overall Day 1 wasn't too bad. I'm currently getting ready for bed since I work at 7am tomorrow morning. I'm sure I will feel like I was hit by a truck come morning, but I know that it's normal (or so says my trainer) and that for once I am doing something really good for myself. Good night day 1, hopefully day 2 will go just as well especially since I'm only going to do a bit of cardio and stretching and maybe some light wrights (can't go too overboard since I know Monday will be hell with the trainer for a whole hour).  :)

My process to a healthy lifestyle....

Hi, my name is Jessica and even if no one ever reads this I would like to document this journey that I am on. I'm too lazy to go into too much back story on myself but here are some quick points.

• I graduated with a Bachelors degree in Psychology in 2010. 
• I work as a Mental Health Counselor in a Nursing Home that houses those who are elderly and those with mental illness diagnosis. 
• My parents live in Nevada, I live in Illinois with my grandparents and sister. It can be kinda lame sometimes, but I am very family oriented and wouldn't have it any other way. 
• I have struggled with my weight for most of my life. As much as I don't want to share all of this I feel it is necessary. So, I am about 5'3 and 240 pounds. I love fast food and most foods that are bad for you (breads, pastas, desserts, etc). I also spent some of my life in Georgia so I also love southern food (as well as Italian, Mexican, and Chinese). 

Ok back to my story. As of last Thanksgiving (2011) I decided that I wanted to become a partial vegetarian. By this I mean that I am a vegetarian 5-6 days each week and I try to only allow myself 1 or 2 cheat days (usually where I have meat or really fatty foods). Surprisingly it hasn't been too hard. I wasn't really a big meat eater to begin with. I do love bacon though, and miss it a lot. LOL Now it wasn't really my intention but just by changing the way I have been eating I have lost some weight (before I started I was almost 260). 

Fast forward to mid-January. I was still doing the whole vegetarian thing, but had kind of come to a standstill with the weight loss. Knowing that I had lost some weight I wanted to keep it going. I kept telling myself that I was going to work out and tossed around the idea of getting a gym membership. It didn't happen at first because 1. I'M LAZY!, 2. I work awkward hours and by the time I get home most gyms are closed, and 3. I had no motivation. 

Well, continue on to the beginning of February. I became very upset because I was continuing with the vegetarian diet but I was actually putting some of the weight that I had lost back on. This really pissed me off because I didn't give up bacon and Taco Bell just to put on lettuce weight.  So I decided to look into gym memberships again. I have found that they are very expensive and very stressful to choose from. Mainly my issue is that it is expensive. 

Which makes what I did yesterday so surprising. I decided to go with XSport Fitness because they are open 24/7 365 which is awesome due to my crazy work hours. I decided to go to the smaller gym (an Express) due to not needing all the extra amenities and equipment which is nice because its about $20/month. But did I stop there.....NO. I (who am in no way financially stable) decided that  joining a gym wasn't good enough. So I threw 6 months of personal training sessions on top of my membership which in the end will be around $2000. (a little back story on why this is crazy. I work as a mental health counselor which means I make no money. I am currently making $25000 a year and have about $900/month in college loans and other assorted bills (not including food, entertainment, and most importantly gas since I work an hour from my house). Money wise I think it will work, but I'm far from calm about it. 

Here are my plans:

• My scheduled training sessions are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm going to try to go 2 more days (if not daily) just to do some extra cardio and weight lifting. We'll see how that goes. 
• I'm going to continue with the partial vegetarian diet, although my trainer would like me to add some extra protein to my diet (i.e. chicken, tuna, and lean beef). I haven't decided if I'll do it but I guess that can be on my cheat days. 
• I'm going to attempt to stay as healthy as possible. So I'm going to attempt to keep my immune system in check (if you know me at all you know I get sick easily) and take essential vitamins and such. And I may even look into the protein shake my trainer wants me to have even though I don't think I need it and I'm sure its disgusting. LOL

Here is my goal: 

It's actually pretty simple. I don't really have a time frame that I want to accomplish it in. But I would like to eventually be 160 pounds. For my height it will still be a tad pudgy, but I can't be a stick girl. So I'm hoping to work down to a toned 160. That's about 80 pounds people. 80-freaking-pounds. That is why I have no time frame. I don't want to drop it all super fast and have flaps of skin. I want to do it right, and I want to do it so that it can lead into an overall lifestyle change. :)

Here's to hoping I don't give up in a week. Wish me luck! :)