Feeling even stronger

Another 6 hours sleep in the bag!  I'm on a roll.   And the best thing is that it didn't take me as long at all to fall asleep - probably half an hour.  Its like - because I slept better on Wednesday night, I stressed less about falling asleep last night - and because I stressed less about falling asleep, I fell asleep quicker!!!  (Probably doesn't make sense to anyone but me).  Another thing I'm trialling is staying up later.  Supposedly if you stay up past when you feel like going to bed, ie wait until you are suuuuuuper tired, you will get to sleep sooner.  So I stayed up until 10.15 last night! (yeah I know - what a rebel huh?) and it seemed to work.

My afternoon trip to the gym was great.  I really enjoyed training at a different time - and I DID have more energy.  Two problems though - 1; because I'd been drinking water throughout the day I could feel it slushing around in my stomach while I was jogging, making my stomach feel a bit yuk.  I pressed on though.  And 2; I forgot that when I train in the afternoon that my eye makeup slides down my face!!  Talk about "panda eyes" when I was finished!!  Eye makeup is pretty much the only makeup I wear, apart from a little loose powder to take the shine off.  (Cant stand the feeling of foundation, makes me feel like my skin is choking).  Anyway, I forgot that I would need to take it off.  Lesson learned!

This morning was legs, caught myself a couple of times saying to myself 'I hate leg day' - I dont know why this is... some weeks I love training legs, other weeks I dont enjoy it.  Anyway, its done now for another week.

So I'm feeling great.  Went to a work morning tea today - lots of junk food lying around, but I didn't have any, and actually didn't even want it.  The more you say "no", the easier it is to keep saying "no".  I love feeling so in control!!

Feeling strong

I'm feeling all strong and positive again... AND... I had 6 hours sleep last night!!  It may not sound like a lot, but its a lot for me lately.  It still took me a while to drop off, but I managed to fall asleep in a lot less time than I have been... so I'm feeling much happier!

Today I had to start work early, so I'm making sure I leave at 3.30pm and go to the gym.  Its been a looooong time since I've been to the gym in the afternoon, I'm kinda looking forward to it!  Normally I just automatically get up at about 5.10am to hit the gym in the morning.  Today is just a cardio day, so I'm interested to see how much more (or less) energy I'll have.  At least I wont have to fight the "muscle-heads" for a spot at the free weights.  The funny thing about training at a different time of day is that you feel like a "newbie!" at the gym!!!  People that train in the morning dont seem to train in the afternoon, and vice versa.

The gym is starting to get busy again - even at 5.30 in the morning!  I guess with all this warm weather we've been having lately, people are starting to realise that bikini weather is just around the corner (although its been sooo good to see some rain this week!).  The gym has 16 treadmills, 16 bikes and 8 cross trainers in our cardio section, and the other morning they were mostly all occupied - something I never thought I'd see!  Anyway, as long as they leave me some room in the weights area, I'm happy!

The rest of my training and nutrition has been spot on, I'm so glad to be back in this positive frame of mind.  I gave my calf muscles a flogging yesterday, so I'm hobbling around quite nicely today. :) 

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Turning over a new leaf

Ok I've had enough of worrying and not sleeping, so I've decided to turn over a new leaf - starting now.  I bought a book on Sunday called "Why you cant afford the luxury of a negative thought" - I've only read a little way through it, but already I can feel a difference in my attitude.  My daily goals are back in place, so watch out - I'm going to be back to my old self in no time!!!

So I had the last of my non-sleeping nights last night, tonight I'm going to sleep like a log.  I refuse to go on like this anymore! :)  On Saturday night I thought I would try the old knock-myself-out-with-alcohol-trick.... I drank an entire bottle of champagne myself - and STILL had a restless sleep.  Surprisingly I didn't feel drunk, and I didn't have a hangover on Sunday either, just achey joints. 

I have a meditation CD that I've put onto my ipod, so I'm going to give that a go if things dont settle down soon.

We had an open house on Saturday morning, and would you believe - we had nobody turn up... grrrrrr.... never mind, the right person will come along soon.  Still we had two separate groups come through the house over the rest of the weekend, but no bites yet.

Puffy-lips has stopped - I think I know the culprit... the glutamine that I'd started taking.  As soon as I stopped taking it, the puffy lips stopped.  When things are settled down again I will give it another try though, just to make sure.  At least thats one less thing to think about!

Anyway, I'm back on track and ready to have a KICK BUTT week!  I will be back later tonight to read what everyone has been up to!

sleep deprived

Hmmmm.... sleep.... whats that?  I havent had much of that for a while, my mind is just a whirl of thoughts and i dont seem to have an "off" switch.  I think I'm lucky to get about 4 hours sleep per night, and even then its more like a doze than a sleep.  Cant remember the last time I woke up and felt refreshed.  I've got a dull ache behind my eyes, which at the moment feel like they can barely open, but the mind is always active...

think I need to learn to meditate or something.  Why oh why wont my stupid brain shut up??!!  Anyone have any suggestions? 

Well, the puffy lip thing continues.  I thought I'd figured it out on the weekend when one night I had half a glass of vodka, and the next morning my mouth was puffy again. So I havent had any more vodka, and for the last three days in a row I've gotten up with puffy lips again, which now keep splitting and bleeding on the inside.  So I think its just stress related.  I hope it goes away soon.

So I feel like we're just marking time at the moment.  We cant move on until our house sells.  I'm sure it will happen, its just going to drive me crazy until it does!!

I've started a different weight training programme this week - just 'borrowed' a 4 day training split from "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle" - so far so good, I love a change in routine.  Energy has been low due to lack of sleep, but I'm still getting muscle soreness, so I'm happy enough.  Tomorrow is legs!!  i'm a bit scared!

Had a chiropractic adjustment this morning, my chiro is fantastic, he's adjusted everything this morning, even my feet, and he said that this should help my body cope a bit better under all the stress.  Bring on some sleep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sorry for the whinge.  I sound like a bit of a basket-case dont I !!! hehehe

Saturday

Well I havent been around much lately, there is so much happening at the moment, but I've got no news to report!!

This week I've been training pretty hard, sore muscles every day which I'm loving. I'm in a 'muscle growing' phase at the moment, so I've changed things up a little. I'm having a hard time adjusting to having a few more calories on my lifting days, actually it scares me a bit. I have always weight trained on an empty stomach (at 5.30am) and now I've started having a protein shake with skim milk before training (with glutamine), and it feels weird!!!

Speaking of weird: after our BBQ last Saturday night I woke up on Sunday and my mouth felt raw inside, the way your tongue feels after you eat something thats too hot. Anyway, my the whole inside of mouth felt 'burnt'. It got better after a few days. Then on Wednesday I woke up at my usual time, half asleep getting dressed in the bathroom, when I looked up into the mirror and my lips were really puffy! Like hello - HUGE Angelina Jolie lips! What the...! They were so puffed up that the skin was smooth and tight, top and bottom - which caused the skin to split and bleed. Hmmmmmm. I trained anyway (although I must have looked pretty funny!!), and by the time I got home from gym they had gone down a bit. For the rest of the week my lips have been stinging and burning, but thankfully no longer puffy!

I assume I've eaten/drunk something that has reacted with my lips, but who knows what!! I have not eaten anything unusual. They seem to be slowly getting better, but its been very annoying!

We had an open house this morning, so we packed the two dogs and the cat up and took them to "survey" the new house. They had a ball. It still doesn't feel like home yet! I guess it wont until we actually move in.

Anyway, thats all folks. Happy Saturday!

Treats from the vege garden

This is some of the 'bounty' from the new vege garden! I think the carrots were a bit too small, but I had no idea how big they were until I pulled them out of the ground! Mmmmm mmmm home grown salads for me!!

It isn't fun....

... selling your house.

The guy buying our house has crashed the contract because he couldn't get the finance organised.  Bugger.

So we are back at sqaure one.  Some advertising will happen this week, we're probably going to have an open house on Saturday (joy of joys) and more people traipsing through the house.  Never mind, these things happen I guess!

Well my long weekend was BUSY!  Saturday was the usual cleaning, washing, groceries, plus I drove all over town trying to find two outdoor braziers for our BBQ that night.  Man was that a mission - apparently everybody in Brisbane wants to buy a brazier at the moment, and everywhere was sold out!!  Finally got some though, and then spent the rest of the day cooking and preparing for the BBQ.  It was a great night though, and a nice way to say 'farewell' to the house (even though it looks like we wont be moving just yet!!).

Sunday I spent most of the day oiling timber battens over at our new house. (these are for timber screening for the new fence), and Monday we started moving boxes of crap.  BF cleared out the whole garage, and I cleared out most of the wardrobes in the spare bedrooms.  I cant believe how much junk we have! LOL!

And with all that went on over the weekend I forgot to drink all my water again - and that just made me feel awful - dry mouth, tired, annoyed with myself!!  Anyway, I'm back on track with my small daily goals now so its all good.

I will try to post a photo later of some veges I pulled from the vege garden on Sunday.  mmmmmm we had a salad made from home grown lettuce, silverbeet, tomato and beetroot on Sunday night!  YUMMO!  

Does anyone know what to do with beetroot to make it taste good?!! :)  I boiled it like a potato, then let it cool.  Peeled the skin off, sliced it and put it in my salad.  And I have to say it tasted pretty bland, nothing like the tinned stuff you buy.  Think I might need to put it in some vinegar or something...?

Thats about it from me!  I havent been around much lately, but I'll try to catch up with everyone's blogs soon...

Why I love training

I love training, it always makes me feel better!  After feeling so stressed earlier in the week, I had a cracker of a leg session on Wednesday morning, even incorporated some "21's" into my squats, and came home floating on cloud nine!!  I was feeling so much better that I have decided that exercise is definetely the best medicine for me.  My mood improves, I start the day with a spring in my step, and if I get it done bright and early, then theres ONE less thing to think about at the moment!! LOL!

I'd never done "21's" on legs before, I've only ever done it with barbell bicep curls - but it got my heart rate up to 165bpm!  Basically you do 21 reps - 7 reps from the start point to midway, 7 reps from the midway point to the bottom, then 7 reps of the full range of movement.  All of that equals ONE set!!  I did 3 sets of barbell squats... ooooh that middle 7 is the KILLER - can you feel the burn????  Love it!

My legs are sore today, but I'm not crippled.  More 21's tomorrow on bicep curls!  Yippeee!  I've just thrown these in this week for a change, make it a little more interesting.

Anyway, I've got my 'moving/selling house' list together so I can stop stressing... hopefully.  Actually my list is a book.  I keep thinking of stuff to do, so I'm carrying the book with me everywhere, and when I think of stuff, well, into the book it goes.  I'm slowly crossing things off the list too - got the mail redirected today, cross that one off.   Seems to be working - each night I seem to be getting one more hour's sleep than the night before.  So on Monday night I got 4 hours, Tuesday was 5 hours, last night was 6 hours - so I'm looking forward to a big 7 hours tonight!!  Woohoo!  heheheh

Weekend will be busy - we've got a surprise birthday dinner to go to on Friday night, Saturday I'm hoping to get my hair trimmed, cleaning, groceries etc then packing boxes, then we're having some friends over for a BBQ as a sort of a "house cooling" party (ie the opposite of a house warming), Sunday will probably be moving boxes - and Monday - well that's my Ekka public holiday - so I'll probably spend it packing and moving boxes!!  Yay for me.

Hope everyone has a fantastic Friday, and a wonderful weekend!

Stress-head

Well - long time, no post!!  I'm a huge ball of stress here at the moment, luckily the buying of the new house all went through without a hitch, so we are now the proud owners of two houses ( = two mortgages) until our current house is sold.

I'm stressed because we actually have a contract of sale on our house, and the finance/unconditional date for the guy was yesterday, and we dont really know whats going on, this guy is waiting to hear what is happening with the buyer of HIS house!  Anyway, so we were planning on starting to move house over the next two weeks, but now I dont know what we're doing, because we dont want to move the furniture out of our current house until its sold (a house with no furniture is quite difficult to sell!).

So I'm trying not to worry about it too much, but I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment!  There are also a million other things running through my mind at the moment, all those fabulous things you have to remember to do when you move house... so I'm writing a list.  Get the phone connected, put the electricity in our names, change home insurance, change car insurance, get the mail redirected, get broadband set up on the phone line, fix the fence before the dogs move in etc etc...  I have been lying awake at night with all these thoughts just churning through my mind... grrrr sometimes I just can switch my brain off!!~!!

We went to the new house on the weekend (its only the next suburb over) and I got to explore the vege garden - its HUGE!  I will have to post a pic (before it gets demolished to accommodate a new shed).  This vege garden is quite run down, but even so, there are huge cauliflowers, broccoli, carrott, tomato, capsicum, about 3 HUGE chilli trees, passionfruit, pineapple, mulberries, lemons, pawpaw, beans, spinnach, lettuce and cabbage, onion and shallots!  Because its been uncared for, a lot it has 'gone to seed' - but a lot of it is quite edible, and I'm so excited!!  BF has marked off an area where we will transplant some of the vege garden into (so that he can build his shed) - but I'm a bit concerned about moving it, because I reckon it will all die if we move it.   Also, I'm no gardener, and I have no idea how to keep vegetables alive.  It makes it even harder now that we cant use a hose to water (drought) - so I carried many bucket-loads of water to it on the weekend!  Oh well its all good exercise!

Last night the Real Estate shouted us to Gold Class movies, so we got to see Miami Vice, and were wined and dined - it was lovely!  I wouldn't really recommend the movie though - it was 2 hours long and I have to say it was pretty boring!  Even BF yawned all the way through!

Not much happening

Not a lot happening in my world at the moment!!

I have banned myself from using the treadmill at the gym, in the hope that my shin splints will ease up (and they seem to be).  I have discovered that there are a few different types of shin splints, depending on whether the pain is on the outside or the inside of the shin.  I always thought that there was only one type, which is the pain on the outside of the shin (anterior) - because thats the only side I have ever got them!

Well anterior shin splints apparently can be caused by a few things, running on the toes (guilty!), walking up hill (guilty on Sunday), walking faster than normal (guilty on Sunday - Elke was pulling me along) - also I have always had a problem with walking on the outside edges of my feet (think this is called pronate)... and of course having old running shoes doesnt help! 

So at the very least I should be able to buy myself a new pair of runners... in the interests of better health!  (hey that's a great excuse! - honey I need new shoes!!)

Eating and training are going well, sleep seems to be my biggest problem at the moment.  Its super stressful buying AND selling a house at the same time, and my sleep seems to be a bit disrupted. This morning when the alarm went off I discovered I had a dead arm (must have slept on it funny) so I rolled over and started flapping my arm all over the place, trying to find the damn alarm clock... no feeling in the hand at all... hehehee I had to chuckle, despite myself.  Finally managed to find the off switch!

One more day until the weekend!  I need a sleep in!

Shin splints...

... is what I've got.  Used to suffer from them big time about 10 years ago - havent had them much since... until yesterday.

I think I did the damage when I took the dogs for a power walk on Sunday - my legs felt like rubber - like I couldn't get any speed happening.  In fact Elke was pretty much dragging me along for the last hundred metres or so!!  Then yesterday I did a leg workout, and increased my weights in just about every exercise - felt great at the time, but NOW - while my quads and hamstrings aren't really too sore, my shins are screaming!!  While I was able to jog on the treadmill this morning, when I slowed to a walk, I had to get off, it hurt too much.

I think I'm supposed to use ice on shin splints??

My daily goals seem to be working pretty well... one of today's goal is to drink over 4 litres of water.  Normally I drink at least 3 litres, but I'm striving to do better this week!  I feel so much better when I drink more water, if I dont drink it I wake up in the morning with a terrible dry mouth.  My other daily goals have included not adding any extra food to my meals.  All those little extra's add up - and its surprising how many calories you can save by not adding extra's to your salad (except for mustard of course - lol!!), or not adding a bit of cheese or saying no to a glass of wine!!  Every day I have been able to add a great big TICK to my training diary, so I'm feeling good!

And the best news is I have lost the kilo that I had put on during my week off!!  So now I'm back to where I was a few weeks ago!