Neck and shoulder pain really intensified last night, so I broke out the neck support pillow which helped me sleep without much pain. Once I was up today, however, it’s been really bad. No amount of light-usage or loosening up this shoulder is to be had, and it just cramps like crazy. On my second dose of Tylenol today, as it’s even worse after working out.

Yeah, I bombed on the morning workout again, but I picked up a 40 minute Kathy Smith workout and knocked it out over lunch. Good sweat, and pleasant stretching. Not nearly so tough as her step workout, but a nice interval training video. Check it out on Netflix here.

The secret to making through today, however, has to be pudding. Jello instant fat free-sugar free pudding, that is, which I happened to have stockpiled away in the pantry. I could feel the sweet-tooth kicking in at just the notion of the big salad I was going to have for lunch, so I went ahead and mixed up some chocolate pudding for snack. Low-fat milk, bonus calcium, no sugar, chocolate-fix, and a nice reward for working out.

As I mentioned, though, now this shoulder is killing me. I’d thought I could sit back down and get right back to work, but I think I’m going to have to go ahead and take a hot shower. Definitely putting Ibuprofen on my shopping list for tomorrow, since Tylenol barely takes the edge off. Speaking of which, tomorrow marks my first shopping day attempting to put to use some of the advice from the www.SouthernSavers.com website — I can has coupons and I’m not afraid to use them!

Update 6:27pm: Early salad lunch so I could workout made for early dinner hungry. Cooking more = cleaning more = moving more + good for budget, so at least I’m doing better sticking to that plan. Dinner tonight: ground turkey salisbury steak & twice baked potatoes. You know, I think the time spent on food prep and the cleaning up after really does help with my mental state as to feeling satisfied by the food.

I mentioned yesterday was the Superbowl, right? I’ve heard complaints that school kids in New Orleans got today off, but I’m now of a mind that anybody succumbing to Superbowl junk-food should get the next day off.  I joked that we ate until we were sick, but boy it wasn’t a joke. Attempted to go to sleep propped into a sitting position, but when I was still awake as the light on the alarm began it’s fade-up to “sunrise”, I knew it was going to be all bad.

So, didn’t make class this morning, and didn’t exactly jump out of bed looking to workout. Drank tons of water and kept popping the Maalox all day, then started feeling somewhat better by the afternoon so I walked a while on the treadmill. Still not exactly bouncy and energetic, but feeling a bit better. Really looking forward to some sleep — which seems to be the story of my life these days.

In other news, it seems not only can’t I stick to a workout plan, but we’re also bombing our tight budget this month as James and I decide to indulge in a Valentines Day expenditure for each other. On the bright side, they should enhance both our goals to exercise more — as we’ve ordered ourselves some Vibram Five Fingers. Sound kinky? I wish, but they’re just shoes… with toes… essentially going barefoot with a grip.  

Anywho, so what have we learned? Well, we’ve learned to discuss things before we buy, and hopefully, to never have a junk-food fest again. Man cannot live on greasy fried things alone. The plan is to get up tomorrow and get back on “the project”, so I guess I ought to get my butt to bed.

Motivating list of 52- ways to lose a pound a week.

Did an inventory of my workout videos this morning, and realized I have one set I bought and have never even done — yeah, shocker. So, this afternoon I put in the Step Workout, to try it out, and its tough as heck. At the heartrate check break, I’m over. Yeow, I had no idea I had dvds this rough on hand — it’s kinda cool.

And so it was also superbowl day, which was sort of a junk-food pig-out day, and I think we both ate ourselves sick. Walked a bit more after the game, but nothing too much. Did manage to finally get my Nike+ to sync to the website, so maybe it can actually track my Ct5K workouts now.

One week down, and you know if I’d lost a pound I’d have mentioned it by now. But, there’s no despair. All is good. Things are coming together. I’m not feeling so much like things are spinning out of control anymore. I really think a week of being back on my vitamins and drinking more water is finally starting to balance me out.

So now there’s 90lbs in 89 weeks. Hardly sounds daunting.

Sleep schedule is more sleep, less schedule. My right shoulder and neck are tweaked from who knows what. Did some light calisthenics to try to loosen it all up, but it just really hurt. Ended up with just walking an hour on the treadmill and nothing else. Still sore, and kinda down at being so sore from nothing in particular. Tomorrow’s another day — though, that day is mom’s birthday.

The slack is back… day six. Woke up at 4:20 without an alarm, and without the intention to workout that early. It was just the noise of the storm, which guaranteed I didn’t want to go out to Stone Mtn for a class or really turn on any electronics for a DVD. As it was I think I ended up watching people trying to break into a neighbor’s house, until the timer on our front light came on at 5 and they apparently noticed and shut off all their lights, so I lost them. Read More »

Tired of being tired, sore as all get out, yet realizing a great cure for soreness is activity, today I snoozed right out of my early workout. Reset my phone alarm for 7:30, thinking I’d try to do something before work, and of course, snoozed right past that, too.

My head is so much clearer today. I was still sort of yawning and groggy at first, but that didn’t last more than any other typical “just got up” grogginess. Did finally get around to doing a half-hour on the treadmill over lunch, and it did help the continued leg soreness. Clearly I needed to catch up on sleep, so I’m not going to fault myself this morning’s weakness. I honestly haven’t even really dwelled on it today, as I’ve been so productive finishing up some much needed work items.

It is week one, sure. Still doing well on eating, or so I think at least. There’s no bootcamp tomorrow morning, but that doesn’t mean I can’t attempt to get right back on it and do my own thing at the scheduled time. Maybe even over the weekend, I mean, a Friday, Saturday, Sunday seems like a great time to work on getting my sleep schedule handled.

Anywho, no use beating myself up over today. It’s just a day, put it aside and move on to tomorrow.

So, either this is another symptom of this week’s fuzzy brain, or else I honestly never realized how old Wil Wheaton is before. He’ll be 38 this summer, and I’ll be 39 shortly after. That’s only one year.

Problem is, being a few years older than some friends with their Wesley crushes from the Star Trek Next Gen days, I distinctly remember thinking his character was such a punk sometimes, and clearly just a kid. Yup, just some punk kid one-year younger than me and my already burgeoning grumpy-old-man syndrome, apparently.

I have to say, realizing his age was truly a shock to me. I’m choosing to think he was just young-looking for his age at the time, and did a great job playing younger than he truly was, so that he had me, at least, convinced he was such a punk. Of course, looking back on those days, end of high school, beginning of college for me, I think I was pretty good at playing younger than I was, too, especially in the case of acting like a stupid punk kid, so perhaps he wasn’t such a great actor after all.

Never-the-less, I am still fascinated with the punk — so that realizing his age causes the same sort of discord that my own does for me. Plus, since I’m always fascinated by the lists people compile of things “this generation” has grown up without knowing — things like floppy disks or life before the internet — now I have to wonder, does that include a generation of people who don’t realize why Wil Wheaton is cool? Because that’s just sad.

Eat less and move more. Eat less. Move more. How much more basic of a system could there be? Why doesn’t anybody who tries this just succeed? I mean, if the formula is so simple, why is there such an industry surrounding the next big thing in diet and fitness? I swear, sometimes I just think to myself “are you stupid or something? Eat less — move more! Seriously, it’s not rocket science.”

But instead of simple success, I get craziness and drama, and an endless boring saga of “gosh it was hard to get up this morning” and “doing that one little good for me thing led to me being a zombie all day” and I have to wonder, am I just stupid here?

Yes, day three is hardly a habit-forming streak, and it was expected that each day without an adjusted sleep-schedule was going to be harder than the last. Yes, I dragged ass up and worked out, and yes indeedy-do I’m so freaking sore today it’s miserable. This is all part of the expected “hump” to get over to get into this, so I guess I’m right on track.

I think it’s got to be during these early days when most battles are lost. When you’re so digusted with yourself because a little moving around has made your body so sore that you’re groaning like an idiot with every step. It’s these days when my mind can’t focus, and I realize I’m mentally weighing the eventual benefits of doing something good for myself versus causing myself more stress now for working slower — thinking, maybe if I just skip a day I can get a good night’s sleep, find that focus and crank out some work to lower my stress. Then I’ll be back on track to start again, except I know every day I skip adds to this horrible-painful adjustment period.

Power through. Keep getting up. Just focus as best you can, things will get done. Remember to soak and stretch more. The soreness will pass. The sleep schedule will work itself out. This isn’t about deprivation, it’s about enhancement. The more you sulk over things, the more it’s apparent your head is in the wrong place here — this is just a rocky start on a trip to a fabulous destination.

Oh and last but not least, drink more water, stupid! Chills after exercise are apparently a pretty common sign of dehydration. I’m pretty sure you knew that, if your brain had just been less fuzzy.

Day two wasn’t exactly up and at ‘em, but as I think I mentioned on Facebook already, when the alarm saves you from an amazingly tedious dream where you’re stuck working over and over on some frustrating work problem, you almost thank it — even after you realize the time.

Bedtime was horrible again, somewhere around 12:30 for my 4:30 wake-up. I decided to stop trying to force myself to go lay down earlier, because I end up laying there miserable for hours, mind racing, and I think that only added to my resentment and excuses when that alarm goes off so early. Sort of… “I slept like crap, how can I be expected to go workout.” Now, if I’m not sleepy, I’m not laying down yet. Whether that means only a few hours sleep or not, at least when I lay down, I’m out. I don’t wake up feeling like I’ve wasted time in bed. I’m tired, sure, but the only frustration is really that my body hasn’t made the adjustment to allow me to be sleepy earlier yet. I have faith it will adjust.

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It’s almost midnight, so clearly the sleep schedule is still wonky here, but I am happy to say that this morning I got up with the sunrise-alarm by 4:40 AM and went to workout. It was not so horrifically embarrassing as I’d imagined it might be, and I was really just sort of jazzed at myself that I was actually awake and doing it. Of course, stayed up too late, so as soon as I was cooled down all I wanted to do was crawl back in bed. It’s probably partially that it’s still cold and dark when I get done that doesn’t help. So, I changed back into PJs and crashed out hard. Don’t think I moved until I realized the shower was running and James was up — having never heard his alarm go off.
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