MamaVation Monday #5 – It will get better

What a week!  Was able to workout 6 of the 7 days.  Today (Sunday) was my lazy day to just hang out and cuddle with the kids.

Exercise:

Monday – Tennis
Tuesday – Elliptical and upper body weight program
Wednesday – Treadmill and upper body weight program
Thursday – Tennis (a bit lower key…I’ll explain below)
Friday – Treadmill
Saturday – Cardio Tennis (am), Treadmill and upper body weight program(pm)
Sunday – Rest

Activity wise, I think I did an excellent job.  I am comfortable with my work outs. I enjoy them, and I feel invigorated.  I burn a ton of calories on my tennis days.  The treadmill days are spent 30 minutes with the couch to 5k program. I am on week 2 of that.  Then I do additional walking.  I typically spend about 45 minutes on the tread mill and the Elliptical.  I feel myself getting stronger with my upper body/arm weight program.  I have added 5 pounds to most of the exercises.  My weakest is the chest press. I am up to 15lbs now.  Most other exercises like seated row, bicep curls, shoulder pull-downs, etc are about 35lbs now.  I typically do 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps.

Now Thursday, I played tennis.  We were short ladies from the regular Thursday players so me being the new kid (literally) on the block got bumped from league play, but the organizer gathered 3 of the Tuesday ladies to play with me.  Now Tuesday players are at a lower level than me, but this was special.  I was playing with 3 ladies that were all OVER 80!  So of course I dialed down the power in my playing a bit. I focused on technique and placement.  I didn’t want to serve the ball full strength and break someone. lol  I played, I dialed it down, but for being 81 and 82 years old, these ladies were absolutely amazing!  The oldest was 82 yrs old and had quadruple bypass surgery 4 years ago.  She was a player too and could move on the court.   She didn’t start playing until she was 46 yrs old! I am still 10 years away from that.  They are so inspiring and I hope to get the chance to play with them again!

Nutrition:

Well, this is still where I struggle.  I keep saying that I have to get serious about this.   I have a hard time though, and I have to come up with a different approach.  I constantly have the munchies for something sweet.  I catch myself mindlessly chomping on snacks.  Now the quality of the snacks have improved. My husband is finally buying in to a healthier pantry.  He has quit Pepsi. Pepsi was his drug of choice and he’s on 1 wk of having none.  I have put up with his grouchies because of it. He’s getting better, and I know how hard it was for him.
The hard part is planning meals.  I am NOT a cook. I usually rely on him for all the major cooking.  I have been adding more veggies to the meals that he makes.  I have a hard time with pasta though.  He likes to make lots of pasta, and we have converted to whole grain versions.  The kids like it. He balked about it at first, but now is used to the whole grain pasta and brown rice.  Our last step will be getting rid of the white bread for him and the kids.  I have a hard time getting the kids switched to whole grain when there is still white bread in the house. They want Daddy’s bread!
Slowly, I am getting to where I will snack on baby carrots or make a nice spinach salad as a snack.  We don’t have all the cookies and sweets that we used to.  I just never feel full after a meal when I shrink my portions down.
Tonight we had homemade spaghetti and meatballs with whole grain pasta.  I ate way entirely too much. I could have had lunch AND dinner for the amount of calories I ate.  I ate a lot slower than I normally would.  I drank water in between each bite.  I still ate a ton, but I just wasnt’ as satisfied as you would think I would be with a smaller portion.
So besides dinner tonight, I guess I am doing alright. It’s just a slower process than I would like.   We live in the decade of instant results.  Gotta wipe that from our minds!

Weight:

I weigh in on Wednesdays.  Last weekend and the earlier part of this week started out great so I am puzzled as to why I gained +1.1 lbs.  I did not think I was to the point where I would gain because of muscle quite yet. I may be wrong.  I did feel better since I lost inches combined of several of my measure points.  So yay me!  Gotta end on a good note.

100 Mile Challenge:

73 miles Total to my goal!

Here’s to a better week this week!