After two weeks I was finally given the okay to hit the gym again. Worked the arms. Head never hurt. Arms are in excruciating pain.

Pain. Excruciating.

New layout is finally in the works. Should be up by end of weekend.

Must stop moving arms now. Will post more when it does’t hurt my arms when I blink. heh :thumb:

For the last two weeks when I go to the gym I get massive, horrid headaches. As soon as I start to lift weight it’s like this pressure builds up in my head and continues to build until it’s so unberable it literally almost drops me to the ground and makes me get sick enough to vomit. By the end of a set of 12 reps I’m hurting so bad that it takes about five full minutes for the pain to subside enough to do another set. And when I do the next set, since my head is already hurting, I can only do about 8-10 reps AT MOST before the pain is unbearlable again. At that rate it would take me almost three hours to work half of my body. To me it feels like a sinus headache but it never starts hurting till I’m actually working my body. It’s right at the front of my head. behind my eyes.

I don’t know what to do because I can’t work out like that. Tonight I did three full sets of an arm exercise and had to go home. And that was at 6:00 and it’s 9:30 now and my head STILL hurts. It really frustrates me because I get really upset with myself when I can’t complete my workout. It feels like a whole day was wasted.

I’m going to make an appt tomorrow to see a Dr ASAP. I’m not giving up on working out. I *want* to do it. It feels SO good to work my body and I get such satisfaction out of seeing the results I’m getting and all the strength I’ve gained. There’s just only so much pain I can take. I have a REALLY high pain tolerance and up till tonight I was just working through it. But tonight it was finally just too much to take. I was literally starting to tear up on the floor of the gym. And I have to REALLY be hurting to show that weakness.

I had a bad week last week. I missed the gym twice because I had a miserable headache. I’m back on track now though. Did arms tonight and MAN, I can’t believe how much more I’m able to lift after just three weeks. I’m love the feeling after a workout.

Because I missed two days, I was kind of feeling bad about doing a free day tomorrow. I was thinking about just skipping it this week… that thought passed quickly. I’m just gonna go in and do a good cardio session tomorrow to make up for the day I missed.

I’m going to take pictures to mark the 1/4 way point early next week. I’ve only lost a pound but MAN, I can really FEEL muscle in my legs. I can see it too. My calves are getting more defined already and I can SEE my biceps!! I never thought that I’d have results like that so fast. So I’m really not feeling bad about not dropping pounds because I can tell that clothes are fitting loser and I am MUCH stronger. I’ll measure my body fat index too.

My first challenge has started off very well. The meal plan has been very easy to stick to since I made a buch of food ahead of time on Sunday. For instance tonight after the gym I came home and grabbed a chicken breast out of the fridge, added some veggies (green and red peppers, onion, mushrooms) that I cooked ahead of time to it and had that. The best thing I’ve tried so far is a fruit topping you make by blending cottage cheese, some fat free plain yogurt, a small about of sugar free jello and some protein powder. Cut up some fruit and add that and YUM! Of course there have been bars and shakes too. I really can’t believe how hard I thought this was going to be when it’s really not!

The hardest time for me is at night when I’m used to eating a really big meal. But, I’ve trained myself to NOT eat till I’m full and the portions are really the perfect size to satisfy your apetite. Plus, you know there will be another meal in 3 hours!!

The workouts have been great too. Ben and I did upper body Monday. Chest, shoulders, back, bicepts & tricepts. WHAT. A. WORKOUT! Ben really had me pushing myself.. if I started to give up he’d say ‘What’s your goal?’ ‘ARe you going to just give up?’ ‘Think of the end result!’ At first I wanted to slap him but it really helped! I found myself not giving up and doing that one or two last reps that pushed me FAR into the 10 zone.

Tonight we did cardio. That workout is going to be the death of me. I’m SO determined right now that I’m putting 120% into my workouts. Tonight I was SO close to giving up on the last hard phase and then I had a flash back to my before picture and not only did I up the resistance during my 10 goal time but I started pushing as fast and as hard as I could make the damn eliptical machine go. By the end of that minute I was breating so hard and my legs were SO weak! The guy next to me kept looking at me like he might have to catch me if I passed out. It was funny.

But now as I sit here I think back to that ONE MINUTE and think to myelf, ‘You could have done better. Thursday you need to push harder.’ HA!

I’m sorry all my posts seem to be about this right now but it’s just such a big thing to me! I’ll make a better effort to post about non-BFL stuff soon!

BFL.

Short BFL Rundown: Body For Life is basically a weightlifters workout/diet augmented to be used by real life people. You follow a strict, but VERY doable, diet and follow a workout routine that REAL people that have kids and jobs can actually do!!

The meal plan: Has you eat small portions six times a day. The meals include one portion protein and one portion of carbs. A portion is an amount the size of the palm of your hand or a clenched fist. So, you can have a chicken breast and a half a cup of brown rice.. or scrampled egg whites and a slice of toast… the point? You get to have carbs! I’ve found a bunch of Body For Life specific recipes that I’m more than certain I will ennjoy. Plus I LOVE cottage cheese and fruit. Cottage cheese is PAKCED with protein!

So that I don’t have to prepare and carry six meals a day I’ve invested in some Myoplex shakes and bars. One shake or bar can be substituted for a meal. And these shakes are VERY thick and VERY filling.

There really is a lot of options:

That’s a WHOLE lot of food to choose from! And when you think about it, that’s a lot of food to eat in a day also. Twice a day you add veggies to the meal and you are set. It’s that easy.

The Workout: Is 20 mintutes of Cardio every other day and 50 miutes of high intensity weight training every other day. Do it will look like this for the first week:

Monday: Upper Body Training
Tuesday: Cardio
Wednesday: Lower Body Training + Abs
Thursday: Cardio
Friday: Upper Body Training
Saturday: Cardio

The next week you switch and do lower body twice and the upper body once. The workouts have you focus on ‘high points’ where you REALLY push yourself to do the best you can. The cardio, while only 20 minutes is an INTENSE 20 minutes of exercise. And the weight training is the most important of the exercises for sevrel reasons:

1) Healing muscles eat up a LOT of energy (fat)
2) Even when you are sitting doing nothing, muscle is using that energy just to sustain itself.
3) You get stronger!!!

I joined Gold’s Gym today where Ben is already a member. We are going to work out together every evening.

The Free Day: The one thing this plan has like none I’ve seen before. One day a week (Sunday for me) you can eat whatever the hell you want AND you don’t have to work out. WHATEVER YOU WANT. The plan allowes this for a few reasons two of which are:

1) You don’t set yourself up for failure that way. It’s not realistic to think that you are going to go 12 WEEKS without slipping once. This plan GIVES you a day to do that. This also allowes you to set short term goals within the long term goal (If I can make it till Sunday I can have that ice cream too!!)
2) Once you realize how good your body feels when you exercise and eat right, all that heavy food and the lack of energy and the heavy feeling will MAKE you want to start all over again on Monday.

I’m extremely excited to start this plan. On Monday I’ll take all my measurements (Body fat index, weight, measurements and pictures). When the 12 weeks are up I hope to have gained muscle, lost weight and have so much energy I don’t know what to do with myself.

Excited!!!