So, who else made a new years resolution to get in shape in 2014? I know I did, I knew with swimming coming to an end, I knew as much as I wanted to keep eating anything I wanted to, it was unrealistic unless I wanted to be about a thousand pounds overweight. To be totally honest, I am of average height and average weight I'm five and a half feet tall and started my journey at 133 pounds, I do not NEED to loose weight, but my body is one thing I can control. Coming into a time of life where I have very little control over things like, what grades I'll get, what guys like me, who will hire me, oh and that future thing I like ignoring, I can control my body.
Once swimming ended I decided to get fit. Not in an unhealthy way where I was going on a juice cleanse and not eat any solid food, I like scratch that, I LOVE food too much to do that to myself. I went through the routine of pretending I would be able to swim without my teammates, turns out, I cant do that, I like to talk too much to them in the pool and am not motivated enough without them to do anything longer than ten minutes. Turns out changing from an athlete to NARP (non-athletic regular person) sucks more than I thought it would.
Now that I realized I was shit out of luck with trying to swim after the season was over, it was almost funny that I actually thought I could pull that off anyway. I turned to the scary gym and fitness classes. I tried yoga, everyone says how amazing it is and how great they feel after the class is over. I gave it a shot, the entire hour the class was going on, felt like years of my life were taken away from me, as it turns out, I cant sit still and be calm enough to do yoga. Now that yoga is crossed off the list, I turned to the actual gym... The big bad scary gym that I am typically lucky enough to hide from thanks to swimming. The only real times I would go there, was to lift for swimming, now was not lifting time though, it was time to sweat out all of the food and drinking.
I got over being self conscious in the gym really quickly. At first I was too worried about what else was going on, who was in the gym that I did or didn't want to see and everything except actually working out. Finally when I got over my fear, I hopped right on that elliptical, yes the elliptical in the back corner of the gym so I could people watch to the best of my abilities. After a half hour of that, I was feeling pretty good about myself, pretty motivated, my music was pumping in my ears and the adrenaline was going so why not do sweat some more. I moved onto the stair master, while on that all I could think was "hell yeah look at all I'm sweating, I must be burning millions of calories!" Turns out, I was wrong, unless I wanted to do cardio for three hours, I would never burn as many calories as I did during swim practices.
That was a sad sad realization for me. I guess I would have to start keeping track of what I was eating. Then I remembered a friend telling me about FitBit and how much they loved it. Typical me, I go online, look up this FitBit thing, think it sounds interesting, so $100 and a few days later it's in my hand and I'm trying to figure it out.
I got the Flex, and it turns out I'm obsessed with it. It tracks my sleep patterns, how many steps I've taken, how many calories I've burned and all I have to do is input how much I am eating each day. Yes, inputting what I was eating was depressing at first, but I quickly adapted, and stopped eating so much crap. I realized that a lot of the time, I was eating because I was bored... shocking right. I wear my FitBit every day and everywhere I go, It synchs up to my iPhone 5s and to my computer wirelessly so I can always check how I am doing for the day. On top of that, when I first got it and set up my account, I was given three options of what I wanted to do: maintain weight, gain weight, or loose weight. I obviously wanted to loose weight, my plan was set to loose 1.5 pounds a week. Let me tell you, it has worked wonders! I'm down to 123 pounds and still going!
I can't just credit the lovely FitBit for the weight loss. I have been drinking a ton of water, eating well and shocking but also exercising! Yeah, yeah, yeah I do the crappy gym routine of the elliptical, stair master and the bike, but I get so bored from that. I also have been turning out spinning classes like they are going out of style, as well as this fun new thing called Tabata HIIT. You can read the basics of it here.
Tabata is pretty much circuit training. Since tabata is High Intensity Interval Training, it burns more calories in a shorter period of time than say just running would. It burns fat, boosts metabolism, I do 8 different circuits, and 8 repetitions of each one. So it takes 45 minuets to get a great sweat in. The training goes as such, 20 seconds of exercise and 10 seconds rest per repetition.
Once all eight repetitions are done, there is a minute break before starting the next exercise. Amazingly, you can tailor the workouts to focus on anything you want, for instance: you can have it be heavy on cardio and core work one day, and more strength training the next day. This is great to not get bored, and the workouts go by so quickly because so many different things are going on.
Best of all, it's a fun workout! I have the Tabata Pro app on my phone, where I can link it to my music! The app does cost a fee, so here is a link to the online version of the app for free, Click Here. It will say things along the workout, like "tabata complete", "work", "rest" as well as other things. It helps to do it to music you enjoy working out to.
Even though wokring out sucks... try and enjoy it a little more like I have. The FitBit and tabata have worked wonders for me. Here is a play list I love working out to! PlayList
until next time... xoxo J
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