A list of things!

  • I AM DONE GRADING ESSAYS (for now). A few good ones. A few okay ones. A good bit of not-so-okay ones. But the first essay is always hard, and I’m letting everyone revise it if they want to. I think I only have a few—like 4 or so out of 40—who are not passing right now at midterm, but they’re all really close, except one who never turns in homework. This makes me feel pretty good about the classes. I know I’m a hard teacher and a hard grader, but I have a good handful of A averages right now, so I know it’s not too much.
  • My body and my animals need to realize that 8am is not some magic time. When I got to bed at 11pm, then sure, body, decide you need to get up and pee at 8am. Sure, Checkers, decide you need to get in my face and meow. Sure, Topher, decide you’re ready to start clacking around the tile floor in hopes I’ll take you outside for a bit. But when I don’t get to bed until 2am, recognize. 
  • After two full weeks out of the gym, I will grace those weights again tomorrow. I think tomorrow I’m going to do front muscles (chest, shoulders, and quads) and Friday I’ll do back muscles (back and hamstrings). Which means tomorrow will be squat (and press) day and Friday will be deadlift (and row) day! I love squat and deadlift days! Starting next week, I’m going to do full body workouts three days a week until I get my squat, deadlift, and bench press built up. When I can squat and deadlift my body weight and bench half my weight, I might break it back up. For now, working all the muscles all the time!

This has been a freaking update!

Moment of truth

Truth is, I wish so hard that I had a time machine. Or that I had had this tumblr with this community ten years ago. 

Ten years ago, all I wanted was to lose five pounds lose five pounds lose five pounds. Within a year, I would gain 20 pounds after being on the depo shot for six months to prepare for a surgery. At that point, all I wanted was to lose twenty pounds lose twenty pounds lose twenty pounds. And then lose twenty more.

If I had had this blog then, I would have realized how much not eating was not helping. I would have realized how much I needed to eat to lose the weight my body never wanted in the first place. I would have realized how amazing my body was, no matter how much it weight. I would have never made all those insane goals for myself that I never even reached anyway.

But the past is past, and all I can do about it now is heal. And write letters to my 16-year-old self, like the long one at the bottom of this post. 

This week’s goal was to stick to my eating plan of calorie cycling and carb cycling so as to see the experiment through and have solid data at the end of the week. Cutting now because numbers.

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Last night is not this morning

I focused hard on all the things I’m doing this weekend. And I focused hard on all the things I like about myself, physically and otherwise. And I focused hard on the warm comfy coziness of that thermal sweater last night. And this morning, I woke up in a great mood. 

I walked the dog, and then Stuart and I went to the gym. Squats day! If you remember last weeks’ squat day, then you probably remember how upset I was at my first encounter with the barbell squat. Well, after some wonderful advice from the wonderful Claire, I got a box and moved my grasp of the bar, and BAM I had excellent squats! I’d always seen people grabbing the bar wide, and I thought that would help my balance also, but it hurt my wrists. So I kept a really narrow grip, with my hands close to my shoulders, and my wrists were fine. I used a box to tap my butt to so I wouldn’t be scared of falling and dying, too. The box put me at a little above parallel, but when I feel comfortable squatting without the box, I’ll use my gym’s shorter one. It’s way past parallel, so I didn’t want to start with that one. Anywho, I slowly added more weight until I got to 85lbs! I’m only 15lbs away from squatting 2/3 of my body weight! Hopefully by my birthday (October 29) I’ll be squatting AND deadlifting my body weight. Looks like I’ve got a goal! I’d need to add about 40 lbs to my dead lift, and about 60 lbs to my squat in the next six weeks. I feel like adding 10lbs a week to my squat wouldn’t be too much. Doing it!

I hope you all have great workouts today that put you in great moods! 

I’m in the best mood.

  • I had one hell of a cheat day yesterday, and I didn’t wake up fat!
  • I worked out on the bro side of the gym like it was no one’s business
  • Barbell deadlifts don’t hurt my wrist like dumbbell deadlifts, so I was much more comfortable!
  • I added five reps to my first set of hyperextensions this week!
  • I realized after working out that I didn’t have a bad body image day all weekend. A first in many, many weekends. I haven’t had a bad body image day since Friday before last—two and a half weeks!
  • My hair is still looking so amazing. It’s the most curly it’s every been. I love it a ton.
  • My jeans aren’t cutting off circulation to my legs or slowly etching bruises into my hips. (I think that means they actually fit)
  • My room is CLEAN! I stayed up late, much too late, and cleaned it. It’s so nice to lay in bed and not be stressed out or anxiety ridden over my messy, messy room.
  • Stuart is making me hamburgers and sweet potato fries for dinner.

What’s not to be happy about?!

Ah. Push it. Push it good.

That’s right. I went there. Salt n Pepa. What?

I feel like a total beast right now. I killed it in the gym this morning (fitocracy update coming soon) with upper push lifting and some genuine HIIT on the treadmill. Now I’m drinking my soy milk, cottage cheese, greek yogurt shake which totals out to 270 calories and 40 freaking grams of protein. 

I have a shit ton of work to do today, but I’m feeling like a major boss this morning. I’m owning live so hard. 

8am workout

is definitely the way to go. I’m no more tired tonight than I was Monday night, so waking up at 7 didn’t off set my day or anything. The workout really helped my PMS too! I’ve been a stressed mess for the past few days with my hormones and classes starting, but working out cleared my mind, and today has been a lot better. 

The whole backside of my body is going to be screaming tomorrow between rows, hyperextensions, and dead lifts. Excite!

I’m going again in the morning to do upper body pull muscles. I might only do upper body, depending on how my hamstrings feel in the morning. Chest and triceps are ready to be worked, but I’m not sure if I’ll pair in the lower body push.  Even if I don’t do squats tomorrow, I can always go on Saturday, take my rest day on Sunday (maybe just do a little yoga), and get back on schedule Monday.

Speaking of schedule, I’m not sure I ever posted my fall workout schedule, so I’ll do that now!

Sunday—yoga
my school gym is offering a begging yoga class, so this will be a good way to just get some stretching and relaxing into my schedule. Hopefully it will get my mind nice and clear to start the busy week!

Monday—Upper body pull + HIIT
lat pull down and rows and other auxiliary exercises 

Tuesday—Lower body push
squat and auxiliary 

Wednesday—Upper body push + HIIT
bench press and military press and auxiliary 

Thursday—Lower body pull
dead lift and auxiliary

Friday—yoga
same yoga class as on Sunday. This time as a relaxing close to the busy weeks! 

Saturday—Rest!

My auxiliary moves might change from week to week depending on what I feel like doing, but each day’s big compound move will always happen. So today I technically did my Monday and Thursday workout, but that’s okay. This week has been an adjustment. I’ll follow my schedule more closely next week!

Also, I need to find some time to walk Topher during the week too. Ideally, I would do so at night, after dinner, but I’m pretty tired by then. I’ll try to get out there tomorrow night. If I can just get out there, I think I’ll find it’s a nice close to the day. 

Anyway, the classes I’m teaching are going well so far. I’ll probably update about them this weekend. I don’t really have a lot of time Mon-Thurs, so I might be relegating most of my blogging to the weekend, but I’ll be sure to post each day’s workouts at least!

Fall Semester Lifting

I teach four days a week (Mon-Thurs), and I’m sitting in a Latin course on TR and have office hours MW before I teach. I have to be on campus Mon-Thurs at 3:30. So I figure my best schedule would be to go to the gym before I have to be on campus since I’ll be using the gym on campus. Which means I’ll have four gym days a week! So I’m going to try out Tory’s four day split. Excite!

Day 1: Upper body push + HIIT

Day 2: Lower body pull

Day 3: Upper body pull + HIIT

Day 4: Lower body push

Each day has a main compound lift or two and a few other lifts I can choose from. 

Starting August 9.

Someone inform me on this whole dynamic stretching thing

I guess I did about three minutes of dynamic stretching at the beginning of the 30DS, but that’s about it. So I need info!

Are there certain dynamic stretches I should do for the muscles I plan to work that day? Like is there a stretch I just must do on squats day? upper body pull day? etc.

Can you give me some examples?

I always forget to post my workouts

Chest and triceps:

DB Bench Press: 7x25, 10x20, 15x15

Incline DB Flies: 5x15, 8x10, 12x8

Incline Tate Press: 5x20, 8x15, 15x10

Military Press: 4x40, 8x30, 12x20

Triceps Extension: 6x20, 10x15, 15x10



No running today because I don’t like the dreadmills at this gym. I’ll probably be back in my college gym in a couple of weeks. It’s cheaper than the start up + monthly of the other gyms in town, plus it has amazing treadmills.

New Lifting Split

My four day split was just not working out very well. I wasn’t making it in four day a week, and the shoulder/ab day seemed a bit excessive anyway. I’m moving back to a three day split, and I’m going to try reverse pyramid training. Today I did exercises for day one and two since it’s been a week and a half since I made it to the gym, so essentially, I did my upper body.

For each exercise, I started with 7-10 reps of the move at about 50% and then 7-10 at about 75%. Then did my top set and two drop sets. I’m shooting for 6-10 reps in my top set, 8-12 in my first drop set, and 10-15 in my last. Once I get to max reps in a set, I’ll up the weight the next week.

DB Press: 11x20, 12x15, 15x12.5

DB Flies: 6x12.5, 10x10, 10x7.5

Tate Press: 5x20, 7x15, 15x10

Triceps Extension: 7x20, 8x15, 10x10

DB Row: 12x20, 12x15, 15x12.5

Zottman Curl: 6x15, 8x12.5, 10x10

25 minutes on treadmill — 2.23 miles

With the exception of the triceps extension, the weights listed are the amount I had in each hand. With triceps extension, I hold one weight in both hands.

RPT calls for four exercises: bench press, chin up, deadlifts, and squats. Which works for my chest/triceps, back/biceps, legs split. What doesn’t work is chin ups. I’m just not a chin ups gal, so I’m substituting DB rows. I have only four exercises for each upper body day and five for lower body, and I’m using dumbbells instead of the bar:

Chest/Triceps: DB bench press, DB flies, tate press, and triceps extension
Back/Biceps: DB row, lat pull down, biceps pull down, zottman curl
Legs: squat, deadlift, lying hamstring curl, adduction, abduction

If you have any suggestions for exercises that would be better than one I have listed, please tell me! These are just what I’m used to. I’d especially like to find something better for my lats and biceps than the pull downs, but for now, they’ll work. 

Also, on upper body days, I’ll run for 20-25 minutes. I’m thinking about also doing a long run on a fourth day if my week permits. Maybe 40-60 minutes. Anywho, this has been a long post. I’m going to watch the Matrix while my boyfriend cooks me cilantro lime chicken and quinoa!

Back and Biceps and Cardio, oh my!

Bend over DB row: 15x10, 12x15, 10x20, 12x15 (amount in each hand)

Lat pull down: 15x50, 10x60, 5x70, 10x50 (SS with bicep pull down)
Bicep pull down: 15x50, 10x60, 5x70, 10x50

Reverse flies: 15x5, 5x10, 10x5 (I really need to work on these!!)

Zottman curl: 15x7.5, 10x10, 8x10, 10x7.5

Hammer curl: 15x5, 10x7.5, 12x5 (SS with inner bicep curl)
Inner bicep curl: 15x5, 10x7.5, 12x5 

Treadmill: 2 miles in 20 minutes



My left bicep just can’t handle more than 10lbs, and once it’s managed to do two sets, it can’t lift 10lbs again. Poor lefty. She needs so much work. 

On a stalkier note, I totally had a gym creeper today. Dude was standing maybe three or four feet to my left and spotting his friend on flies. First he kept glancing over from time to time, and I thought maybe he was trying to check out how much I was lifting. So I started verbalizing to my gym friend about my poor little left bicep. Then dude took his turn doing flies, and I just kept lifting. Then dude’s friend was back on the machine, and dude started checking out my notebook. I’ll admit, it’s pretty fly. On the spread, there’s four days of workouts, and you guys know I’m a beast, so there’s a lot of sets written down. Once dude got his friend set up, he was back to creeper staring at me owning my 5lb dumbbells. Like, dude, tell me I have good form. Tell me you started with a puny arm too. Tell me I’ll get where I want to be. Ask me how long I’ve been lifting. Ask me where I find my workouts. SAY SOMETHING. Don’t just stare. Creeper stare is creepy



. 

Body, killed.

I haven’t worked out since Friday yoga. I haven’t run since last Thursday. My body is like, wut?

DB flies: 15x5, 10x10, 10x10, 15x5

DB triceps extension: 15x10, 12x15, 7x20, 10x10

DB press: 15x10, 10x10, 10x7.5, 10x5 (superset with tate press)
tate press: 15x10, 10x10, 10x7.5, 10x5

NB: Weights for DB press and tate press are amount of one dumbbell in each hand.

Treadmill: 2 miles in 20 minutes

That’s the fastest I’ve ever run. I hit 7.0 for the length of Fell in Love with a Girl, about two minutes.

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