* A Strong New Me! *

I woke up this morning feeling lazy and unmotivated, and I slapped the snooze button a dozen times.  Gary knew I had planned to get up this morning and work out, so after watching me roll back over, settle in, and start drifting back to sleep, he leaned over me and said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

Our walk this morning meant more to me than he will ever know.  It would have been easy to let me just go back to sleep, and I’m sure he had no prior intentions of getting up so early and heading out into the chilly morning for a walk.  But he did it to help me out.

As we neared the end of our walk, I said, “Thank you for walking with me.”  I should have said more.  Thank you for pushing me, thank you for caring enough to not let me neglect me this morning, thank you for listening, thank you for really knowing how important this is to me. 

Last night we caught the tail end of The Biggest Loser, and I loved the motivating speeches the contestants gave after their makeovers.  They looked great, and their families were so proud they were ready to burst.  When Gary and I climbed into bed later, I was still thinking about what some of the contestants had said, and I was feeling discouraged about how I had slacked off yesterday. 

I turned to Gary and admitted, “Sometimes I feel like I can’t do this.”

Without hesitation, he told me, “If you put your mind to learning to fly, I believe you could do it.  You can do anything.”

No motivational speech from any Biggest Loser contestant could top that for me :)  Knowing someone I love believes that I can do this, and much more, meant a lot to me. 

In that spirit, my goals today are:

1. No soda

2. To limit myself to salad, a small piece of ham, and vegetables at our work luncheon today.  (I know there will be pie, desserts, and lots of fattening treats, but I am deciding right now that I will make good choices!)

3.  To do at least 45 minutes of cardio this evening

4.  To make sure I let Gary know how much I appreciate him

I have three cats (my furry children, as I like to call them), and they seem to be gung-ho for my weight loss efforts!  Do anyone else’s pets “help” them work out?

My cats can be passed out cold, sleeping in another room, but let me pop in a workout DVD, and all three of them suddenly hustle to the living room, not wanting to be left out.  Tweetie, my oldest cat, likes to plop down in the middle of the floor, right where I need to be, making sure he will get stepped on and not happy unless he’s smack in the way.  If I try to move him, I am rewarded with a grumpy huff and a dirty look…and he’ll sneak right back to that spot anyway as soon as I get back to my workout.

Rosie, the next oldest and our little black panther cat, can’t resist push-ups.  He will curl up beneath my chest so that with each rep, I am face to face with his fuzzy black belly.  He purrs and gives me head-butts as if to say “You can do it!  Go for the burn!”

Then there’s Sylvester, the youngest and by far the craziest.  He’s a holy terror of fur, and his exercise of choice is crunches.  As soon as I hit the floor, he races over and simply MUST have his cheeks scratched this very instant, or else he’ll walk on me and make me laugh until I can’t do crunches anymore.  He helps me out by adding resistance: he will climb onto my chest and sit there as I do crunches, watching me like he is wondering what on earth I’m doing, sitting up and down for no apparent reason when I could be rounding up treats for him instead! 

I guess I burn extra calories by leaping over them, moving them, yelling at them to get out of the way, and shooing them away :)  Please tell me I’m not the only one with crazy pets who feel the need to get in on the workout action!

If you have any workout DVD’s to trade, head on over to the forum:Workout DVD Swap!

Since I work out primarily at home, I have quite a collection of workout DVD’s by now.  After a while I get bored with the ones I already own, and I need to add a few to the rotation.

It gave me an idea, since I imagine I’m not the only one who uses workout DVD’s here.  Would anyone be interested in trying new workouts and spicing up their routines by swapping workout DVD’s?  I could start a thread on the Forum if anyone is interested, and we could post descriptions of the DVD’s we are willing to trade.  Once two people agree to swap, they can use private messages to send each other their addresses. 

You get to clean out the old, get to try something new, and for just the cost of shipping a DVD!  (If you use Media Mail at the post office, it is really cheap, about $2). 

Just leave a comment here if this sounds like something you may want to participate in; if it seems like people are interested, I’ll start a thread on the forum for us to work out the details of swaps.

Yea, I am officially a Wildcat again!  Thanks, Nancy and Kama and the rest of the cats, for having me back in your group.  I am trying to catch up on all the posts, but there are a LOT there!  I already see some challenges I’d love to join.  I’m glad I decided to come back to the gang.

I took it easy again last night, since this cold/flu/bubonic plague is kicking my ass :)  I take my medicine, get my rest, and manage to just keep getting sicker!  I feel like one of those Mr. Yuck stickers, remember?

Ha ha.  I got a new workout DVD yesterday from Netflix that I want to try, so maybe with the proper doping up of decongestant, I can make it through a workout today!

Looking at some of my goals, and realizing I won’t meet the timeline I had hoped for, I confess to falling prey to some desperate thinking yesterday.  I’ll slash calories, work out a lot, do whatever it takes to lose weight FAST!

Luckily I thought twice and realized I won’t ever stick to a crazy, unrealistic plan that would ultimately threaten to harm my health.  Being thin is not the same as being healthy.  Taking unhealthy measures to lose weight is, well, incredibly stupid. With that realization and determination, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.  So it will be later than I thought it would be when I reach goal weight.  So it won’t be right on my timeline as anticipated.  But it WILL happen, and I will make sure I am healthier and stronger when I get there, not wasted and worn out and burned out and fried.

Well, tonight I’m trying yet another kickboxing class, in my never-ending quest to find another class to fall in love with!  I miss kickboxing so much, but there are so many bad classes and instructors out there.  I cringe when the instructor has bad form, or doesn’t correct the knee-straining bad form of someone in the class, or when an instructor doesn’t protect her face.  I know, I know, it’s cardio kickboxing and not the sparring, hard-core kickboxing classes I got used to years ago, but I still get the urge to do what any of my serious instructors would have done: walk up, whack him or her in the face, and tell them to get their hands up!

No workout motivates me or gets me lit up like kickboxing.  I will push myself farther during a good kickboxing class than I will anywhere else.  Fatigue just becomes something to laugh at if I am really fired up.  Me, tired?  Let’s go another round!

I hope I like tonight’s class, but if not, I have a back-up plan.  I’ve been cruising around collagevideo.com, a website that sells workout DVD’s.  It has extensive reviews by people who have already tried the workouts, the main reason I love that site.  I’m going to pick up a new kickboxing workout DVD or two if this class doesn’t pan out. 

Any suggestions for workout DVD’s??