Today The Scale is Not My Friend

With us, the actual Christmas and New Year's holiday are quiet events because we prefer to stay home and have a "jammie day". The weekend between is when invitations for play dates and meals are exchanged. Friday we went out for sushi. Lots of sushi because my husband always over-orders. Saturday we visited friends in Danbury. They had clam and bacon pizza as well as a more traditional sausage tomato one. We provided the dessert of home-made banana bread served with a choice of vanilla and/or eggnog ice cream. Later, we went to see friends in Newtown to view a UFC match. There was beer, cheddar, summer sausage and the spiciest jalapeno cheese I've ever sampled in my life. We didn't get home until after 2 am (my son fell asleep on the way home) but we were up early the next day as our Danbury friends were headed into the City and wanted our son to accompany their son on their "field trip" to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When they returned to drop our son off, we invited them over for dinner: grilled chicken and flank steak, potatoes, mac and cheese (mostly for the 3 boys), and of course, rainbow marzipan cookies and chocolate truffles for dessert.

I got up this morning, took the dog out and promptly fell back asleep for another hour. My husband is technically on holiday until Thursday when he has to drive up to Boston, but he had a conference call. My son was completely comatose so I snuck out of the house and headed for the gym, getting there mid-morning, just in time to greet B as she hustled on her coat to leave. I get on the Precor and punch in 15 minutes and trot at a leisurely 150 SPMs. But I don't think this qualifies as LISS so my New Year's resolution is to cut my warm ups to just 10 minutes, adding my cardio to the back end of my workout sessions. I just need to grit my teeth for the unpleasant unavoidable initial weight gain. I still plan to do HIIT workouts twice a week though. I'll give it a few weeks to see if this results in the body fat loss I want.

Meanwhile, it's Universal Bench Press Monday so down to the free weight area. Today I toss a pair of 45s and a pair of 25s down on the floor next to the bench. Much much better! I feel stable finally. I can't actually remember whether I put 2.5 lb plates or 5 lb plates on the end of the bar last week. My notes say 2.5 lbs (totalling 120 lbs) so I bite my lip, say WTF to myself and toss on 5s today. Okay, that's 125 lbs. I don't bother to see how many I can get because my program says to just get 4 reps. And I get my 4 reps. Then I reconfigure, stripping the weights bit by bit, and doubling the reps for each set. At 75 lbs I can get 20 reps, and I'm not breathing all that hard. This is better than last week when I had to pause twice with a mere 95 lbs. "Yep", I tell myself, "definitely going to cut my warm up time next week."

Next are Incline Presses. I'm not quite sure why they are so hard except that I don't really fit very well into the bench. The stays are too far away, and the angle of the bench seems quite severe at 60°. Still, I persevere, figuring that at some point I'll get better at it. Five sets later and my right front delt is twinging a little. But not enough to keep from Decline Benching. I'm more comfortable with this. The weights don't feel as heavy, but I know my arms are starting to fatigue so I keep this short. Just five sets here too, but ending with a nice 20 rep pump. The Chest Program I've looked at calls for 3 sets of15 reps of pec dec flyes but I don't do those so I grab a pair of 20s and do actual flat bench DB Flyes. I'm worried that the weight will pop my shoulders or spine out of alignment so 20 lbs is plenty for now. I use the same 20s to warm up for Standing Lateral DB Raises. Then I swap them for 25s. I look back in my log and see that I've done sets of 12 reps at 27.5 lbs, so doing less reps at 30 lbs should be doable. And I do them. Yay!

Just some light abs and a quick stretch at the Cage. But I don't feel satisfied so I find myself climbing back up to the cardio area and getting on a Precor. I punch in 15 minutes (it automatically adds a 5 minute warm up) and I start walking at the snail-racing 89 SPM. It's boring and I catch myself speeding up with the quick tempo of my cardio music mix. But what surprises me is that I start to perspire. I'm barely moving, and sweat is dripping off the back of my neck! This is extremely unexpected.

I brace myself for the gym scale's bad news. I'm expecting 115 lbs. I get 116 lbs. Ugh. Okay, I'm not that surprised. I caught a side view of me in the DB area and even I think my triceps are freaking huge. I've put on size everywhere (I took a tape measure to myself over the weekend), especially my thighs (a whopping two inches from 19 to 21 inches in about a year) so now I'm thinking I have to cut back on my Leg Workouts, lowering the volume a lot. Genetically, I have big legs. I never work my calves and they're 13 inches. It's a nice balance to the upper arms (also 13 inches), but really, I like my pants and don't want to buy new ones. When I get home, my own scale tells me 113 lbs, with a BF just over 21% (double ugh), but muscle mass back up to 37% and bone back to 4.6 lbs. Very odd.

Monday Workout:
20 min cardio warm up (elliptical 2.15 miles)

Bench Press: 12 @ 45 lbs / 4 @ 125 lbs / 8 @ 115 lbs / 12 @ 105 lbs / 16 @ 95 lbs / 20 @ 75 lbs
Inclined Press: 12 @ 45 lbs / 10 @ 75 lbs / 4, 6, 6 @ 95 lbs
Decline Press: 12 @ 45 lbs / 12 @ 75 lbs / 12 @ 95 lbs / 16 @ 85 lbs / 20 @ 75 lbs

DB Flyes: 3 x 15 @ 20 lbs

Lateral DB Raises: 12 @ 20 lbs / 12 @ 25 lbs / 3 x 6 @ 30 lbs / 15 @ 25 lbs

Cage Stretch with BW heel dips & calf raises & side kicks

Ab Crunch Station: 100
Torso Twist Machine: 2 x 25 @ 50 lbs

20 min cardio LISS (elliptical 1.5 miles)