Thanksgiving! ending of our 6th week!

So this is the day before Thanksgiving. You know what that means. FOOD - Glorious - FOOD! I'm not to worried about it because fortunately this day of feasting comes once a year! I just hope Joe & the guys don't kill us on Monday after our long weekend off. I'm going to try to do some sort of workout but it will probably will consist of chasing after "little Mary go girl!"

A couple of things that I wanted to get off my chest. If a trainer looks at you and says, "I'm going to take it easy on you today!" Just get ready to work hard - real hard!" Also, I was asked if I could tell a difference in myself after this short period of time of working out. Absolutely! I definitely have more stamina. I'm shrinking, eating better & believe or not I'm wanting to work out even on the days that I don't have boot camp! Yes! Bring it!

Today is the day we weigh in - never fun. Last week I lost 31/2 lbs, even with Aunt Flo visiting! Very Cool! Who knows what will happen today. Wish me luck!!

Ok, so there is ONE reason I posted this picture. Can you guess why? :) I pondered whether or not to put such a goofy picture of myself on this blog thing, but I figured, why not? I have no shame! And look at my MUSCLES! This was taken while I was singing last weekend, and when I saw it, I could not believe my eyes - yes folks, Jessie appears to have some muscles for the first time in her LIFE! All thanks to boot camp. :) Ok, I confess that the lighting makes my muscles look better than they actually are, but I'm still proud. :) I have always had a super weak upper body, but I think it's gettin' better! Maybe if I keep this up, I could one day look like the Jolly Green Hulk below me. :)

Now I'm just trying to find healthy recipes for Thanksgiving, because I know my sweet southern GA family is going to have every pumpkin pie and casserole you could possibly think up. Now, I'm not going to deprive myself completely, because then I'll just eat everything in sight on the way home from Thanksgiving. :) But I also know that as soon as Thanksgiving is over, we're gonna get weighed-in in front of all those dang trainers. So we gotta stay good, at least for this year! (he he :) )

11/19

Alright! I am down 10lbs from 10/20/08, whoooo hooooo. I am on a ROLL. They don't like that I am not following the meal plan to the letter, I will try harder.

Yesterday was tuff. Those cross over push ups are a killer. Especially since I can barely do push ups. Of course I tried to get out of doing them and they were not going for it. Joe had Mike stay with me until I finished the whole set. (PAIN)

Then, the run to Yazoo and back with a 10lb-er. Tom felt sorry for me and did it with me even though he had already did his run with everyone else. Thanks Tom. :-)

After that was the circuit, Killer! I think by the end of it all, everyone was shaking at some point. That boxing drill was pretty tuff, but fun.

I thought I was going to be very sore today, but I am actually ok, no soreness at all.

One thing about all this working out, it definitely helps me sleep a lot better. I like that part.

Until tomorrow. Au Revoir

Keeley the Hulk

My Muscles are Too Big...

Seriously. I warned everyone that this would happen, but no one believed me! My initial goal was to stay the same weight and lose no more than 2% body fat. Well... I've stayed around the same weight, but my body fat was at 18% two weeks ago (down 2% already) and I'm much more muscular this week, so surely I've already failed (If you can consider being really strong a failure).

My main goal was to increase stamina and strength, and I've done that for certain. Today they told us to start of with a run around the "long block" and none of us really knew which route they went, so we just all ran the longest route we've done so far! Haha! As it turns out we ran over a mile longer than they had planned, and it's mostly my fault because I lead the way. Usually Jessie runs faster than me, but she was afraid of getting lost, so she kept my pace. It felt great though. Just a month ago if we ran two miles and they told us that we ran farther than we were supposed to we all would have thrown a fit, but instead everyone was nonchalant about it. Our indoor routine included:

Cross over push ups down the hall (probably about 30 push ups in a row)
Run the length of the building with a weight over our head (I had about 10 lbs)
Indoor upper body circuit. At each station we do the same thing for a minute and a half.

1. Tricep pull (triceps)
   
2. Curls (biceps)
   
3. Lateral pull (shoulder/upper back)
   
4. Some machine (upper back)
5. Another machine (shoulders)
6. Butterfly machine (pectorals)
7. Punching bag... jab style
8. Over head press (10 or 25 lb weight over the head up and down)

Following the circuit we did ab excersizes, which always wears us out. I'm not really sure what all we did. I was in zombie mode at that point. After it's done, I'll do some yoga moves for about ten for fifteen minutes so cool down and stretch. No one every joins me. It's a shame because it helps make such a difference in releasing all of the tension the next day.

11/14

Hello all,

Today was good. We did a calistenics type workout today. It was pretty cool. Even though we did not do our normal run first we ALL worked up a serious sweat anyway. I even did the full minute of bicycles at the end. Yeah me. My arms though are still sore from Wednesday. Not a hurting type of soreness, just when I try to lift I can feel something.

Afterwards, some of us hung out with Keely and did some Yoga to help stretch us out. It really felt good. More of us should actually do that after every workout.

Also, Gary made a good observation afterwards. After the workout I still feel sort of rev'd up. It's a good feeling sort of like energized. It probably takes about 1 hour to come down from it.

Until next time. Au Revoir.

Hello all,
I am finally figuring out this BLOG thing. This actually might be cool. So, I have been doing the TIB boot camp for 4 weeks now and have lost 4lbs (started 10/20/08). Doesn't sound like much right? Well, my train of thought in the past was "i'm not in any rush, this is a 10 week program, so I'm pacing myself". Well that's not exactly working for me. I am definitely going to have to be more strict with the meal plan if I want to see any progress. What a task that is. This meal plan is the most tasteless thing I have EVER encountered and I am really struggling with it. My plan though is to work this meal plan so I can see better results. Overall, I do feel better about myself if nothing else. Also, there is definitely something to working out with my co-workers in keeping me motivated.
Yesterday, 11/12/08 was a good workout. We ran through Marathon Village for cardio, and then we did a lot of upper body with weights and as always finished with ab work.
Today, 11/13/08 I went in early and did a mile on the treadmill in 16mins. Obviously I am not a jogger/runner. I am however on a mission to be able to jog an mile comfortably in the next few weeks and bring down my jogging time to maybe 12 mins. Wish me luck. Until tomorrow.

It Rained Today! The official ending of the 4th week!

At first I was excited that it was raining because that means no running all around the neighborhood but then it dawned on me ohhhhh what instead!!! YEKS! Well, we learned the inner workings of the very large Marathon Village building! Up & down long halls, up & down stairs -- over & over. The only thing refreshing about it - it was different. Overall not to bad! Then we got a lecture from our macdaddy trainer Joe about our diets apparently not all of us are losing weight like we should. Well, I knew I was one of them. We have been weighing in every Wednesday. I was doing well at first & I still feel like I'm doing well but my lifestyle sometimes can't support the meal plan that I was givin. I'm not even sure where I am but I think I maintained from the prior week. You know, I had my jeans on, a big sweater & I didn't get any love for that. Not even a pound! I have to say that I'm truly bummed about not losing this week but honestly I know that my diet has changed so much for the better since I started boot camp. I did take my measurements before I got started so I'm hoping that I have lost inches!?! My clothes certainly feel like it!

My Meal Plan:

6:00 am
4 egg whites
3 oz of salmon or ½ cup of oatmeal( if you have oatmeal, do not eat the melon or the cantaloupe
1 serving of cantaloupe or Melon
multivitamin
9:00
raspberries, Blue berries, Black berries, Strawberries
12:00 pm
6 oz fish or tuna
½ cup of brown rice
1 serving of vegetables
3:00
8 oz Meal replacement or yogurt or tsp of natural peanut butter
6:00 pm
6 oz of grilled chicken breast
1 serving of vegetables

do not eat after 7:30pm
drink at least 1/2 gallon of water per day.
vegetable fresh or frozen

Apple Square Dessert Thingies

Good grief!

Last night, two of our DJs were given 8 boxes of ice cream as a gift. And lucky me, they sat right next to my desk for hours. I daydreamed of opening one of those boxes and just grabbin' me a big ol' fistful of that creamy goodness. But, I restrained myself, seeing as how ice cream isn't exactly in our "Meal Plans," and the DJs would rightfully have my neck if I dug my bare hands into their ice cream. :)

Then, I was told to look up pictures and pictures of unbelievable cookies and brownies on the internet for station gift baskets! Gee whiz.

And THEN, this morning DAN brought in the most unbelievable apple square-dessert thingies his wife made from scratch, and placed them RIGHT ACROSS FROM MY DESK!! (Sshh, don't tell the trainers, but I had one! hehe :) It's just plain wrong! (But oh sooooo right). Everyone who has passed the apple square-dessert thingies today is having the same reaction: "OH NOOOO," and then they sneak a bite. :) Ha ha, but it's okay, because before bootcamp, we would have cleared that plate in no more than 12.5 seconds, and now the dessert has been sitting across from my desk for well over 2 hours, and it's still full. Go 'head Lightning!

Week 4: Fun Run

Sprints

I think today is day 9 (end of week 3) of our 10 week (30 day) workout. I'm feeling much better, especially now that I am getting into a habit of eating. I'm also able to go longer in my workouts without stopping. For example we would do the same move for one minute and I'd pause for a rest at about 45 seconds or less, but now we will do the same move for one and a half minutes and I don't feel that anxious desire to pause until well after a minute has passed.

Every day we start off with a half mile, mile, or two mile run (depending on how much Marathon Fitness wants to push us) then proceed to circuit type workouts. Today we all walked a block and as we came around the last corner we were told to stop because we'll be sprinting. Yes! Sure I did cross country in high school and afterward started to run more 5ks, but my passion was always sprints (hurdles to be exact). Laurel and Jessie beat my butt at the distance runs but I'm positive I can whoop everyone in sprints! So, as a group we run at 60% speed for 100 meters about 3 times. All the while I'm in the lead and someone (I'm guessing Gary) is shouting at me, "yeah right, if that's your 60% I want to see your 100%." Bring it on! When they finally tell us to run 100% they split up the girls and the guys... BULL CRAP! I know I could have beat them all.. now we'll never know.

Meal Plan... not too shabby for me!

Everyone is complaining about their meal plans... and I don't blame them. The studio smells like tuna most of the day! I lucked out with a pretty good plan. My goal is to stay the same weight and to lose no more than 2% body fat (otherwise I'll start to look like a body builder). My problem is that I don't eat and am extremely active with Team Green-- even more so now with bootcamp (lets see: bootcamp on mondays, yoga on tuesdays, bootcamp on wednesdays, indoor climbing on thursdays, bootcamp on fridays, and who knows over the weekend... maybe backpacking or paddling or horseback riding). Below is my meal plan:

7am
4 Egg Whites
1 Yolk
1/2 cup oatmeal
What I actually eat: 2 eggs and a packet of oatmeal, milk
What I used to eat: maybe a glass of milk or bagel

10am
Meal replacement or yogurt

1pm
3 oz fish or chicken
Complex carbohydrate (rice, potato, pasta)

3pm
1 tbsp peanut butter

4pm
6 oz chicken
Veggie serving

7pm
6 oz chicken
Veggie serving

All of that chicken can get monotonous so here are some recipes I came up with:

1. Garden Salad
Romain Lettuce (handful)
Baby Spinach (handful)
Grapes (handful): substitute strawberries, blueberries, or rasberries
Craisins: cherry flavored (less than handful)
Chicken (3-6 oz)
Olive Oil (drizzle)

To make the olive oil dressing (per Nadine's suggestion), buy a bottle of extra virgin olive oil. Cut 2 or 3 cloves of garlic in half. Add garlic cloves and 1 or 2 stems of rose mary to oil. Let sit.
To make chicken, drizzle olive oil in glass pan. Place chicken on top. Add garlic powder, pepper, parsley and basil. Drizzle some more oil on top of chicken. Broil on hi for 9-15 minute (depending on size of chicken breasts/strips). Cut up chicken. Add salad ingredients, chicken slices, and drizzle some more oil on leaves. Shake and voila.

2. Chicken Salad
Chicken (6-12 oz)
Grapes (handful): substitute strawberries, blueberries, or rasberries
Craisins: cherry flavored (less than handful)
Onion
Nuts (pecans or walnuts)
Mayo (or oil)
Honey
Tortilla wrap, buns or Romain lettuce

Broil chicken same as above.. only instead of garlic powder, use cinnamon!! Using two forks shred chicken. Drizzle honey (local preferably) and mayo (or oil) over shredded chicken and stir. Chop up grapes (or other fruit) and add. Slice slivers of onion then chop and add. Crush nuts and add. Add chicken salad to tortilla, buns or Romain lettuce.

3. Chicken Stuffed Bell Pepper
Chicken (3-6 oz)
Cottage Cheese (few tbsp)
1 egg
Large Bell Pepper or 2 small
Tomato
Spices (parsley, basil, rose mary, etc)

Broil and shred chicken same as above. Cut circle around stem of bell pepper and pull seeds out (keeping shape of bell pepper). Stir cottage cheese, egg, chicken, spices, tomato (and any other veggies). Stuff in Bell Peppers. Place peppers in glass pan with olive oil. Broil on high for 5- 10 minutes (keep checking until pepper looks crispy and cheese is melting).

4. Broiled Talapia
Talapia
Lemon Juice
Pepper

Place frozen Talapia on cookie sheet. Drizzle with lemon juice and sprinkle with pepper. Broil on high for 8-10 minutes. Use fork to test if done (should separate easily). This tastes really good on top of green beans.

Week 3: Playground Photos

ICE CREAM HILL

Monday our mac daddy trainer Joe told us at the end of our workout that all of us will be experiencing Ice Cream Hill on Wednesday! The What!! What in the world of pain is that going to do to me! I thought about it all night. Even the next day however, I didn't think about it too much Tuesday night. I was glued to the TV set watching the historic presidential election unfold- incredible night! Wednesday morning first thing I said was - ice cream hill! The day slowly moved along & it was time to face "the hill." We all ran up this incredibly slow incline of a hill. It went on & on. You never think about the hills when you're driving in your car but when you're trying to run up a hill like this - it takes forever. So the cherry on top was the stop sign at Jefferson. Unfortunately there was no strawberry river to take us back down. Yes, we had to jog all the way back. Overall I didn't do to bad. I almost made it the whole way without stopping! Of course there are several of us who took down the ice cream hill like a champ!

The rest of the work out was all about the upper body! We started with our own Lightning 100 field day on the street! Had 3 groups, each group had weights weighing anywhere from 40, 50 to 75lbs! One person from each group would run with the weights to a cone down the street turn & come back & so on! Believe me this was no contest! We were all just trying to get - r - done! From there we split up into 3 groups & continued to work out our upper bodies. My favorite part was being able to put on the boxing gloves & punch the bag. Great way to get the everyday frustrations out!! You know!

We always end with abs! So much moaning & groaning from all of us! But I will say this - fun is still being had!

Oh - my husband, Shawn, called so excited to hear about Ice Cream Hill. He forgot the name of it and called it Cry Baby Hill. Hilarious!

Until the next time. See ya - Bye!

My wrist are too sore to type!

Posted by Brian


No, this is not the chorus to an emo song. It is only a description of how I feel today after our 3rd week at the Marathon Fitness Bootcamp. Today I did more push-ups than I heard cheers for Obama last night at Red Door. We started our work out today by going on a jog up "Ice Cream Hill", which in my opinion is one of the most evil names I have ever heard. After that, we moved on to sprints while caring weights. Joe, our trainer, was nice enough to put me in the 70 pound weight line for the sprints, which is a little under half my body weight. After that we took a jog to the playground(literally a child's playground) to work out our upper bodies. I remember not being able to do pull-ups as a child on the playground, but now it's even more embarrassing. It's what I need to do to become the buffest website guy in radio though. Now that I think about, that's probably obtainable.


Go Obama!

Halloween - scary for sure!

Yes we worked it out on Halloween. Scary for sho' but in a good way!! It was a crazy day - after the work out that we were told that they were going to take it easy on us! HA!!!! Whatever! I had to bolt home get myself dressed in my costume, "ghetto pippy", get my husband - "Devil Man" & my little cuteness Mary, "pirate princess" back into town for the big Halloween party. I was spent. I couldn't move. So, I kept close to the house. Actually, I didn't leave. The funniest part was when I had to change my babies diaper. I'm bending over Mary & my muscles are so fatigued that I couldn't hold myself in a 90 degree angle over her. I felt myself slowly falling on top of her. I'm calling out to Shawn to get some help! He didn't come so I'm on my elbows trying to change Mary. I was laughing so hard Mary thought I had lost it. Hilarious!!! The next day - whoa - even worse. I couldn't move. But I got out there & got busy. No running or anything, except chasing after Mary. Sunday, well, that was all about the Titans!!! Right on!!

Come Monday, we are back at it again. I found myself getting frustrated because we always start with a run. Which I've made no secret that I'm not a fan of running. But hey I'm down. Why I was getting frustrated is everytime we go to the bootcamp they add more to the run. I just once want to finish without stopping the run or I should say jog! I want to feel like I've accomplished it! You know. I hate to see what we'll start with on Wednesday. That's the only thing I don't look forward too. Alright moving on - so on to the ab section. I've been apart of athletics for years however, now I'm all about being a Mom! Cool right!! When I had my c-section you don't realize how it will affect you physically. You have no more stomack muscles, it also affects your thighs & your back strength. So, we do some crazy ab work. One of the is called the plank! Just throw me in the water - O.K! I feel like my back is caving in! Where's all my strength! Oh yea - it's gone. My mind is doing one thing & my body something totally different. I know it's all good but it's hard to think -- boy you are so outta shape girl! But that's why I'm there - to get it going on!!!

Until the next time - see ya - bye!!