Life O'Limey

A transplanted Brit muses about life, health, nutrition and her beloved cats.

  • About Me

    I am a Brit living in Louisiana, I met my now husband in July 1998 playing text adventures online. In Sept 2002 I moved to the States to get married. I am a gamer, a geek, a pet (furry and scaley) lover, a book lover (fantasy and sci-fi) and just lately a health nut.

  • Reading:

    The Body Fat Solution by Tom Venuto

    Legends by Weis and Hickman

  • Playing:

    World Of Warcraft

    Rockband 2

    Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop)

    Champions

    Aion

Archive for February, 2009

Week 1 Success!

Posted by Morkai on February 23, 2009

So weight watchers is definitely working for me right now. By Friday I had dropped to an current low of 182.4 which is officially 10lbs down from where I started in January.

A mexican birthday party on Saturday night boosted me back up a little for my official Weight Watchers weigh in this morning  (183.8lbs) which was expected but I still netted a 1.6lb loss for last week. I didn’t go over points either just bit into my activity points a little. I expect that to be water weight which will vanish off this week.

So I am doing the happy dance on the way to class tonight and feeling highly motivated right now. Life is good when you’re on a roll :)

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Workouts Week of Feb 16th

Posted by Morkai on February 23, 2009

Monday: Jiu-Jitsu – 60 mins

Tuesday: Jiu-Jitsu – 90 mins

Wednesday: Circuit Training

20 mins alternated jogging/walking

  • Ring Dips
  • Barbell Cleans
  • Burpee Pullups (Do a burpee under a pullup bar, grab bar on jump and pullup)
  • Box Jumps (12″ box)
  • Squat Thrusters (45lb bar)
  • Slosh Pipe holds (12′ pvc pipe half full of water. Gotta try and hold it level)
  • Kettlebell Clean and Press (12kg bell)
  • Plate grips (45lb plates, grip on in each hand and just hold it)
  • Sandbag Squats (5olb sandbag, swing sandbag onto shoulders and back to floor on each rep)
  • Rowing

Thursday: Jiu-Jitsu  – Had an in house tournament. I lost both my matches but that wasn’t unexpected :)

Friday: No Training as Beth was moving house.. Probably should have volunteered to help :)

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Workouts – Week of Feb 9th

Posted by Morkai on February 17, 2009

Gonna try a weekly log format since there is not much to log regarding my actual Jiu-Jitsu Classes.

Monday: Jiu-Jitsu – 60 mins

Tuesday: Jiu-Jitsu – 90 mins

Wednesday: Circuit Training

  • Air Dyne 44 calories
  • Medicine ball slams: 10
  • Air Dyne: 33 Calories
  • Medicine ball slams: 15
  • Air Dyne 22 calories
  • Medicine ball slams: 20
  • Air Dyne: 11 Calories
  • Medicine ball slams: 25

Tough -much harder than it potential sounds.

Thursday: Jiu-Jitsu – 90 mins

Friday: Training with Beth

Warmup:

  • 10 mins walking on treadmill. 2.9mph holding water pipes.
  • 5 mins stair master – lvl 4
  • 40 x Squats – 45lb bar
  • 40 x Swiss ball pushups

Circuit – Repeat x2:

  • 30 x Kettlebell swings – 20lb kb
  • 30 x Medicine ball bounce (hard 30lb ball)
  • 15 x Medicine ball slam (soft 30lb ball)
  • 15 x Medicine ball squat and throw (soft 20lb ball)
  • 30 x Jumping pull ups

Cooldown:

  • 10 x Ab wheel
  • 10 x crunch and squat from slanted bench.

Awesome workout. The last item was pretty cool, to explain it a bit further you lie on the bench and roll forward like a crunch ( ie putting all the work on your midsection) but you then stand up. Then you drop into a squat and sit back down and roll back with the same crunch style action. Beth said eventually that will be done with all kinds of weight added. I think she was being nice as by that point I was dripping with sweat and probably looking like I was about to expire. Fun stuff :) I am very much looking forward to our future sessions.

Overall a very successfull week, I enjoyed 2 days of I think well deserved rest over the weekend :)

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Weight Watchers

Posted by Morkai on February 17, 2009

Well after my last small rant at life and myself dearest Pa came up with a suggestion, Weight Watchers.

My initial instinct was pfft, done that (many many years ago) bunch of crap, nasty processed foods, counting points ocd eek, but I heard him out and figured what the hell. :)

This might potentially be the best thing I did. The points thing is not triggering my OCD. I don’t have to weigh every single blasted lettuce leaf, just my non-veggies. Nothing is banned. Now with that said most of the elite nutrition systems poo poo WW because they don’t teach good nutrition. If you want to spend all your points on 100 calorie snack packs in a day you can.

And yeah I have seen a good chunk of that in the message board etc but you don’t have to eat that way. And even WW is now teaching ‘healthy guidelines’ which include plenty of water, fruits and veggies, lean proteins and healthy fats.. sound familiar?

I am applying all the healthy nutritious eating I have learned within the points structure and so far its working. Even with valentines day which included a trip to a japanese steakhouse and the ice cream parlour after I lost weight. I weighed in 2lbs down this morning which is fantastic. I am over the moon. :)

Granted I got in my 5 full days of workouts last week which probably helped a lot but it really showed me what I can do when I put my mind to it.

Speaking of which, Beth Rocks :) Friday night was a full hours session and she put me through the wringer :) I’ll leave that for another post but I felt real good this weekend that this plan works, I can see it will work, I just have to stick to it.  And on that score my beloved husband has decided I am going to stick to the plan 100% for 6 months and he is going to help me. I believe this currently involves unlimited tickling (which I hate) when I go over my points. And kicking me out of bed early to get extra workouts in to make up for the points.

I’m think I’m either going to be in awesome shape or divorced in 6 months :)

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Support and Accountability

Posted by Morkai on February 11, 2009

“I am the only person responsible for my results”

This has become my new mantra. How easy it is for us to kid ourselves.. to think just one won’t hurt. Or to say I don’t care today I’m stressed so I am gonna comfort myself, one day won’t hurt. And then you find it spiraling into over indulgence and yet another week down the drain.

I have been spinning my wheels for 15 years. I have gone from not caring to caring to half hearted to down right ocd. And where has it got me? zilch.

I have read so many books, looked at so many diets, mangled my brain over the right mental attitudes and tricks. I have started afresh with new found determination over and over again.

Where am I? No further than when I started. Learned a lot yes, but it seems I always missed that crucial lesson. I keep looking for the answer, for the new trick, the new tip. And it’s sitting right under my nose all along.

Me..

I am the only one who can decide to make this work, I am the only one putting food in my mouth or choosing not to exercise.

Eat less, move more. Stop kidding myself that one won’t hurt. Plan my indulgences, don’t let them just happen.

That’s not to say no one can help, I finally hired a personal trainer to do just that. Someone who can beat me up when I misbehave (and I know she can as she goes to my Jiu-Jitsu school) . Beth is a prime example of what I want to look like, she has a fantastic figure, is strong and lean not just skinny. She can throw the weight around with the best of the guys and she can do unassisted pullups (one of my own personal goals). I have always highly respected her abilities in training sessions so I finally bit the bullet and asked for her help professionally instead of just oddball chats here and there.

I am starting once a week with her on Friday nights after work. I figure she can help me work out some of my weaknesses that don’t get addressed in the more generic group classes, like my inability to do a real pushup or hold my feet straight out at 2 feet off the ground let alone 6″. I suspect there is going to be a lot of core and upper body work :)

I’m also looking forward to it as a way to measure progress. John’s circuit training classes are awesome but we rarely do the same thing twice so it’s hard to really measure progress on a weekly basis. ‘Getting fitter’ is a bit too vague for me :) I’d like to see my bench press weights steadily improving or number of squats in a minute etc improve.

I have been behaving myself for the last 3 days nutritionally, well mostly, I did have some crawfish cheese dip at lunch on Monday (along with my salad) but I adjusted my dinner to account for the additional calories and that was my only slip for the day. I have totally banned myself from any cream or sugar in my coffee. It’s the start of a slippery slope for me.

I’ll wait to see what Beth suggests before I make any other drastic changes. I’m not sure if she is going to go in depth to my nutrition or just give me some guidelines. She gave me an awesome price so I suspect it might be just straight training. If it is I will probably ask if I can upgrade to the ‘delux’ package :)

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