Taking a sick day

I'm not feeling so hot today, so I've decided to take a day off. I feel guilty about this, but I don't know if I'm up for Chest, Shoulders, Triceps and Abs. So I think I'll just go to bed early and hope I feel better tomorrow. 'nite!

Day 37 - Cardio X

Once again, there isn't much to write about cardio. I sweat buckets and burned 375 kcal in 45 min. I didn't do very well on the nutrition side of things today.

Meals:

• Breakfast: 2 pieces multi grain toast with cinnamon
• Snack: Corn bran squares, coffee
• Lunch: Caribbean chicken soup (curiously, I didn't find any chicken), roll
• Snack: mini Dairy Milk bar
• Supper: Quiznos carbonara sub
• Snack: protein shake

Days 35 & 36 - Rest and Core Synergistics

This picture is actually my own, not one taken off the internet. It's of kitty #2 of 3 in our house. Her name's "Seven" and this was taken when she was a kitten.

Yesterday I decided to take a rest day instead of stretch. I find most of my rest/stretch days so far have ended up being rest days. Since that's allowed, I don't feel guilty at all!

Today was Core Synergistics. I am getting better at this workout. I remember the first time I did this, on day 1 of P90X, I thought it would kill me. I've especially had a hard time with "plank to chaturanga run" and "walking push-ups". I'm happy to report that I was able to do all 60 sec. of each of these moves today!

Meals today:

• Breakfast: 2 pieces multigrain toast with honey, protein shake with blueberries, milk and water
• Snack: protein bar
• Supper: 2 tuna melts (multigrain bread, fat free mayo, tuna, cheese), small glass diet coke

Day 34 - Kenpo X

Today I decided to do kenpo wearing 5lb ankle weights. It definitely made the kicks harder and I felt like I got a good workout in my butt and hips. I think I'll probably continue to use the weights from now on.

Today was also the first day that I used my new heart rate monitor. I'm still unsure if I'm setting my limits right, but I decided to set my lower limit at 133bpm (the lower limit for a moderate workout) and the upper limit at 170bpm (the upper limit for an intense workout). I spent most of the time in the 160's to 170's. If I noticed I was going over 170, I would pause and get it down a little bit, which is what Tony says to do.

From what I've read, staying in the low to moderate workout levels is better for weight loss, but this was pretty near impossible. So I just focused on trying to keep my heart rate below 175ish.
I ended up burning over 500 kcals during the kenpo workout. Afterwards, I went for a walk with my friend since it was so nice out today, so today I burned a total of 930 kcals!! This is really good because I had pizza for supper! I really haven't been doing very well with my nutrition lately.

Meals:

• Breakfast: 2 pieces multigrain toast with almond butter, juice
• Supper: 1 piece of pizza, garlic fingers with donair sauce, small glass of diet coke
• Snack: chocolate bunny, blueberries

Day 33 - Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X

I was bad today and had some chocolate bunny for Easter. You know how it is with chocolate, you only intend to have a little and you just keep going back for more!

As I've been in the habit of doing lately, I did Ab Ripper X first. The workout went just as well as last time. During Legs and Back though, I felt a little sluggish (this was before the chocolate).

Meals:

• Breakfast: 3 egg omelet (using only 1 yolk) with cheese and mushroom
• Snack: chocolate bunny
• Lunch: Caesar salad, coleslaw
• Snack: more chocolate bunny
• Supper: small bowl of maple curry chicken (there was a lot leftover!)

I really lacked in proteins today. Must do better tomorrow.

Day 32 - Yoga X

There is really nothing special to report about the yoga workout today. I know a lot of people really don't like this workout, but I don't mind it. I'm getting a bit better at the balancing poses, although I can only really do the tree pose when I'm wearing shorts, but not with pants. I was able to do the moon poses ok today, but I still need some work. As for the crane pose, I just skip over it. As a friend of mine said, I doubt that having the ability to do the crane pose will make a huge difference in my overall fitness. One day I'll try it again, but for now, I'm just going to skip it!

Meals:

• Breakfast: Harvest Crunch cereal with skim milk
• Snack: Fat free yogart, cheese
• Lunch: Rice, Greek salad, and a little bit of chicken, pork and donair meat (equal to about 1 serving of meat)
• Snack: Protein bar
• Supper: 2 hot dogs with ww buns, frozen fruit bar

On another note, I downloaded a program called Xtreme Fit Tracker that Mike mentioned on his blog. Here's the link to the program. It's specifically for the P90X program and you can track your workouts, measurements and nutrition. So far I like it!

Day ?

Today I skipped my yoga workout for a couple of reasons:
Every Wednesday, we go out for supper with friends at 6pm. Yoga almost always falls on a Wednesday as well, and it's really hard to a) do yoga after a meal, and b) fit the 1 1/2 hr long workout in when I get home after 8pm. So I decided to not do anything today and do yoga tomorrow. That way I've shifted my workouts so that I shouldn't have yoga on Wed.'s anymore. I figure it's ok that I took a day off since I've only missed 4 workout days in the past 5-6 weeks.

On my way home from work today, I stopped in at Sears and got myself a heart rate monitor (Polar F4). I played around with it this evening, but don't quite have the hang of it yet and the manual isn't that great. I'll try and figure it out this weekend.

I do have one question though that maybe people can answer for me. When you're setting your lower and upper limits for bpm, should the range be the lowest and highest you want to acheive during exercise? Or should the lowest be just above your resting HR, and highest be the absolute max? The monitor beeps when you're out of your limit (which can be turned off), so it's a little annoying when it beeps when it's lower than the range set. Any suggestions?