A Day of Temptations

For those of you who may have been looking for this earlier today.  I apologize; I didn’t get home tonight until 10:30, and still had to cook and eat dinner.  And what a day it has been.  Up this morning at 7:30 and in the gym by 8:00.  I completed day two of Power 90 this morning; this included Sweat 1-2 (cardio) and Ab Ripper 100 (torture).

For as good as I felt about yesterday’s workout, I felt like I was just too fat today.  After the warm up, Sweat 1-2 goes right into stretching (called power yoga).  I’m not a big fan of the term yoga, so I’ll call it stretching.  I am one of the least flexible people to walk this earth.  I still have nightmares of my gym teacher yelling at me to go lower, and me unable to touch past my knees, let alone my toes.  But I stumbled and tipped and cried my way through the 5 minutes of power stretching and moved into the cardio routine. 

The cardio was hard, as the old saying goes, fat guys hate jumping jacks, but I was able to complete it and only yelled at the TV once or twice.  I’ve heard a lot of people complain that the cardio level in Power 90 is weak and not much of a workout.  I would have to disagree.  I was dripping sweat within a few minutes of starting, and had to do the lower level or “modified” version of a number of the exercises just to keep going.   

Finally after cardio, they move in to a secondary workout called Ab Ripper 100.  You would think for a 4 minute workout it wouldn’t be too bad:  10 exercises with 10 reps each to give you awesome Abs. Well if there is any enemy to the fat guy, it’s the crunch, and at its core this workout is basically 100 crunches - each harder than the one before.  I think I made it through about 40, maybe 50 throughout the 4 minutes and was left a quivering pile on the floor.  It was crazy hard, but I am looking forward to getting back at it again on Thursday!

Well, I called this blog a day of temptations, and it had nothing to do with the workout.  Yesterday was one of those great days where the meals were easy, and I was able to eat about every three hours so I never got hungry.  Today that was not the case, work seemed to fall at all my meal times during the day, and my evening got far longer than expected leaving me constantly hungry throughout the day.  

Beyond that my soccer team had its final game of the regular season.  We won and finished in first place, after the game tradition says everyone down the street for ice cream.  I thought I could resist and took my kids (who deserved it) only to pull in and find the PB Cup Sundae on sale this week; my favorite.  I really wanted one but thought I found salvation when my daughter needed to leave for a bathroom stop.  Well I loaded her into the van and headed down the street to the grocery store.  Unfortunately the parking lot was closed so I went past to McDonalds.  Now I don’t even like McDonalds, but I used to stop here a lot.  It was on the way home and it became almost tradition to stop and grab a couple McDoubles before dinner.  And don’t even ask me about the holiday pies.  Well my daughter finally got out of the bathroom and we headed home.  I was hungry and ready to cook some dinner and settle in, but low and behold our neighbor was throwing a going away party (Exchange student) and he was doing fireworks.  So now I’m sitting watching everyone drink hot chocolate, it 10:00 pm and I haven’t eaten since a lite salad at 3:00.  My wife accused me of being grouchy.  She may be right.  

Anyway I pulled through and ended with low calories once again at 1650 calories for the day.  I did get some great advice from an old friend about how I can drive those calories up.  Here is a copy of today’s menu, although I was so hungry tonight I forgot to take a picture. 

                Post Workout:  Protean Drink (1 scoop protean 8 ounces skim milk)   (220 Calories)

                Breakfast:  Ham & Cheese Omelet (2 Large Eggs, 2 ounces Ham, 1/4 cup shredded cheese)    (425 Calories)

                Lunch: Salmon Salad (Mixed Greens, 4 ounces salmon, bacon bits, Croutons, Light Ranch 1/4 cup shredded cheese) (511 Calories) 

                Afternoon Snack: String Cheese (60 Calories)

                Dinner:   Imitation Crab Legs, Red Bell Pepper (270 Calories) 

                Evening Snack:  String Cheese (60 Calories)

Well I will call this a night as I am heading back to hit day 3 workout Sculpt 1-2 in just about 8 hours.  I hope this is helping you on your weight loss journey. I know it’s been huge for me.  Keep reading and tell a friend if you think they would be interested is reading about a fat guy trying to lose weight.