We're in the "ber" months now!

 

My favorite months!  It cools down, Halloween, the bugs all die and go to hell, Halloween, scary movie month, Halloween, Christmas. Halloween LOL  I like Halloween, what can I say.  

I officially started my Walking challenge yesterday.  Two days in the month and I've walked more than my 15 min for both!  YIPPIE.

I also got back to lifting heavy again today.  Man it felt great!  Chest shoulders and just a bit of booty work.  It's time to start building that booty. So I'm tacking on a little booty work on after upper body days. 

Now for the month of Sept, I'm only going to lift 3 days a week.  It's a break in period. Then I'll take a week off, do some of my DVD workouts, and then my plan is to go up to 4 days a week of lifting.  2 leg/glute days and 2 upper body days.  I'm also planning on sticking with walking 15-30 min every day, minus days I'm sick of course.  But I don't get sick very often so that's a good thing.

I also got this book out.  

I read a big chunk of it a couple years ago. So I got it out and decided it's time to really read it.  I'm only on chapter 2 but me and my highlighter have hit up a few phrases that spoke to me.  

It feels good to get back to really trying to take care of myself.  I lost 24lbs, and regained 7.5.  Which pissed me off.  It just feels good to work on getting that 7.5lbs I regained off, and then I can focus on losing the 25-30lbs I want to get rid of.  I want to be a fit and healthy grandma for all my grandkids, and for me as well. 

Project "Build a Booty" will be starting soon

 After a summer of wishy washy workouts, not being able to decide what I want to do, what I want to accomplish as far as fitness goes, and TBH, just sitting around and reading to much (is there such a thing???)  I've finally decided what I want to try and do with myself.

I want to have a butt.

Oh, I physically have one, I mean, it's hard to not have one, but I've been a founding member of the Flat Booty Squad for decades now.  Back in my CrossFit days in the early 2010s, I was starting to build a little bit of a round booty.  But then cause I changed jobs and it was much harder to get to CrossFit, I quit going and started working out at home more, and it didn't get any rounder or nicer.

And then these last 4 years I've slacked WAY off and now, that little bit I had went on vacation.  South.   And I'm sick of it.  

I've been watching a lot of videos, reading some programs, and on some fitness groups dedicated to growing your glutes, and I'm trying to come up with a program that works for me, and what equipment I have in my home gym.  I have quite a bit of equipment so I can do quite a bit.  I've been thinking I'll lift weights 4 days a week, 2 days for lower body both with heavy emphasis on glutes and hamstrings, and 2 days for upper body and abs.  

Every 6 weeks or so, I'll take a week to do other types of workouts, like my DVDs and YouTube workouts cause I have quite a few of them, and I still want to do them from time to time  So if I can schedule a week to do them every 6 weeks while taking a mini break from lifting heavy that's a good thing.  

I'm also doing a challenge in Sept with a group of ladies on Facebook, all of us are 50 and older.  It's a walking challenge.  I'm going to walk a minimum of 15 min everyday in Sept.  Working up to more, but 15 min minimum.  I'd like to start walking outside with my fat beagle Odin, but it's gonna have to cool off a bit for us to go out and do that.  But it looks like maybe in Sept the temps will go down a bit and I could start walking out with Odin a couple days a week.  Do us both good to get some extra steps in.   He needs to lose weight himself just like I do.

So for the rest of the year I'll be like this

Followed up with this

Twas my birthday yesterday

 

I turned 54 yesterday.  A pretty good day too.  I sat and read a book, the whole book.  I also watched some Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was great cause the movie was just awful!     OMG I just love MST3K.   They always make me laugh.

And I've decided to just relax a little this weekend.  I've got my youngest grandchild's 1st birthday party tomorrow.  We share a birthday so she's just a little extra special in that way.   Then on Sunday my hubby and I are going to go see

And it's federal law I get movie theater popcorn and candy when we go to the movies.  Which is only about 3-4 times a year so I can have it and not feel guilty about it.  And this movie, I've been waiting for SO BAD. Little mad I have to wait until Sunday but it is what it is,

Then Monday, I'll get back into my workouts.  Get back to walking on the treadmill while watching an episode of TV.  Back to lifting weights, I think I'm going to do the PS series for this first week, and back to eating healthy again. And prepare myself for getting in a much better state of health and fitness for when I hit 55 years old.

Well that was depressing

I decided to take my measurements and actually get on the stupid scale.  I was feeling a lot like this

It was rather depressing.  I'd done so well losing 24+lbs only to regain 7.5lbs officially as of today and over an inch back in my waist 😢  I mean it was a gut punch.  And a kick in my pants as well.

I can't allow myself to get back to where I was.  Super duper unfit and unhealthy.  I mean at my weight I'm still unfit and unhealthy but far improved over where I was.  I need to get my crap together and restart my health and fitness journey, or rather get moving in the right direction.

I've been enjoying the Peloton treadmills ability to stream a few streaming sites on the screen.  Been watching TV while I do longer walks, as a lot of shows without commercials, are in the 45 min range. 

And I need to get back to my weight lifting again.  But I think I'm going to use my Cathe DVDs for a while cause I bought them and I need to use them.  STS Meso 3 is a good lifting set, STS 2.0 is pretty good.  I also love the PS series, and of course the Gym style series.  Then after that, start lifting on my own.  

That's about all I have for today.  Gonna spend a nice long weekend mostly alone in the house.  Hubby went off to a GI Joe convention.  Yes, GI Joe.  The doll, err "ACTION FIGURE" LOL.  He collects vintage GI Joes and he's there with my blessing.  I'm going to read my smutty little books, play some video games, mop in the laundry room cause it really needs it. and make some action plans for me getting back on track with my health and fitness. Oh, and pick up some groceries. Cause I'm about out of fruit and veggies cause man, that stuff doesn't stay fresh as long as I wish it did.

Blogging helps keep me accountable

 Probably why 

No, really it's more like

But I'm getting a new diet wagon, and deciding maybe I need to get my butt back on it, get back to my workouts. Cause I've backslid.  I've regained 7lbs of the 24lbs I had lost 😢 And my blood sugars have crept up a little bit and that's REALLY not a good thing.  They are not horrible, but not where I want them to be.  And being a nurse, I really know what can happen

My own fault.  

Yep, I'm 100% accountable for my backslide.

So it's time to start moving forward again.

I really need to get back to monitoring my food intake  Increase my protein, cut down my carbs, start lifting weights again, getting my steps up and just being a healthier person overall.

You'll be seeing me blog more often cause well, it just seems when I write down my thought and progress, I tend to do better. 

Had my Well Woman today... ugh

 Ok so maybe it's not the worst thing ever, but ladies, I think we all know that the "scootch to the edge of the table and put your feet in the stirrups" just sucks, right?

By my scale I was up 4lbs 😡  But the doctor said I was actually down from my last weigh in a half a pound so I guess it's good I lost from 6 months ago, but I've gained back some. 

Had my lab work done yesterday, everything was good, or has vastly improved from 6 months ago.  My cholesterol and LDL is still just a little high but my cholesterol dropped over 50points and my LDL went down 60 so that's a great thing.   I still need to work on getting those numbers down another 15-20points to be in the healthy range, but it's a great start so I'm happy.  So is my doctor cause I did it without meds!

So I gave myself a "come to Jesus meeting" this morning.  I've been slacking and snacking WAY to much.  And sitting and reading which while is a great hobby to have, it doesn't burn a lot of calories LOL.   But reading also makes me happy, so I just need to balance being more active with my reading time.  And my gaming time cause I'm also a gamer.  I mean if given a chance, I'd happily sit and read half the day, and game the other half and only move enough to prevent bed sores by going to the bathroom and getting snacks and something to drink.  In fact, when I am in a big gaming splurge, I tend to lose a couple pounds cause it's hard to snack when you have both hands on a controller or you're using your hands on the mouse and WSDA keys moving your character.  I have gone all day without eating anything during LONG gaming sessions. 

But that's really not healthy.  Fun AF, but not healthy LOL.  To bad I can't get the calorie burn my Dragonborn gets while running up some mountain in Skyrim cause I'd need to eat 5000 calories a day to maintain during long gaming sessions😂

So today, I put my Cathe Live subscription to use.  Something I hadn't done in about 3 weeks, so it was time to get my money's worth out of it.

I did this.

And Mac here was my gym supervisor, soaking up the sunshine

He was a pretty lousy supervisor, but he's cute so it's ok

Tomorrow I'm planning on hitting the spin bike cause it's also been about 3 weeks since I did a spin workout.  Been doing more walking on the tread but I do miss my spin classes, so it's time to get back on the bike.

And maybe on Thur I'll do another Cathe.  I've got some of her leg workouts that it's been a while since I've done.  Probably time to do some of them. 

So maybe I'm cheating a bit to much

 

And maybe just maybe it's been a little more than one per week. 😕

My blood sugars have been about 10 points higher than I'd like them to be, overall. I mean I've had some readings under 100, which is great, but some fasting sugars over 110, which isn't good at all. 

And it all comes down to this.  Cheating with to much food, to often.  Sigh. The scale is also not moving.  Good it's not going up, bad it's not going down.  So again, cheating to much.

So time to have a little talk with myself, and get back to counting my macros.  I started today.  It sucks that I have to really pay attention to what I eat, how much I eat, what kind of foods I eat, but it is what it is.

I've also been having fun getting back into my Cathe workouts, and getting back into spinning.  Ok, maybe I've only done 2 spin classes this month, but I was late Oct since I did my last spin workout, so doing 2 this month, and the month isn't over yet, is good for me.  Now I've been using my Peloton tread quite a bit so I'm getting my money's worth out of my membership.  But getting back into spinning has been fun.  

Today I'm going to try and do Cathe's Leaner Legs, which has earned the nickname Meaner Legs.  It's been YEARS since I've done this one and I'm a little like EEK. It's from a program called Crosstrain Express, and it's kind of hard.  I'm just going to do lighter weights, do what I can without killing me, and maybe next time, do better.

I'd like to also do 1 Firm workout this week and one Cathe Live workout this week.  Plus a spin and maybe a walk or a walk with stretching/yoga.  

I'll keep you all updated.