Posts by dreadfulpenny

So glad to have finished the first month. I missed two workouts when I went to Reno, but otherwise I stuck fully to the schedule.

Ultimately I'm only down one pound, but I can see a really obvious difference between the picture I took on the first day and the picture I took today. Somehow my backside seems to have canceled its longstanding love affair with gravity, and my stomach is firming up for the first time in too long. Oh yes, and my calves have almost zero fat on them.

I'm going to restart month one after recovery week because I'm hoping to get through a full workout without my heart rate monitor beeping at me every five minutes because I'm getting too close to my safe max.

I did the fit test yesterday and was really happy to see improvement in all areas. For most of the exercises it was a big difference, although not so much for the globe jumps, where I was only able to do one more. Still, improvement is improvement.

I'm finding a lot of it... not so much easier as less killing me. I lost just under a pound this week, and it seems to work the most on my hips, which I don't mind in the least. I lost another half inch off my hips over the past week. I can't imagine that my hips will keep shrinking like this forever or there will be a black hole where my hips once were.

I haven't missed a day so far, but I'm going to Reno this weekend, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to do Saturday's workout or not. I'm going to try. I want to keep my momentum.

I adore my VFFs. I have a pair of sprints that I got just before Thanksgiving and I love running in them and working out in them. They just make so much sense. I do recommend going slow with getting out and running in them, but I find it worth the time. I also found that my running gait almost automatically adjusted itself very quickly when I started running in them.

I started up C25k again with them because I thought that it would be a good way to ease into minimalist running and I have say that it really helped. Even though I spend almost all of my time barefoot when I'm not working/going to work, and always have. At first I had some soreness in my calves/shins and glutes, but that went away fairly quickly.

These days I'm not getting much/any running in because I'm doing Insanity, but I work out in them as well and they're great.

I'm on the last day of my second week today. I've been following the meal plan closely because it's all very reasonable, healthy food. I don't do the shakeology shake and just make a smoothie and toss in some protein powder. I am finding that I'm hungry a lot more often, but it's not because of undereating (not with 5 300-cal meals a day) it's just that my body's getting used to those five meals a day and expects it. 

I lost 1.8 pounds and an inch off my hips in the first week. I lost anywhere from a quarter to a half inch in all my other measurements except bust and calves. Bust stayed the same and my calves went up - one a quarter inch and the other a half inch. That's not really a problem to me since they still look properly proportioned.

I whine to myself every day before I do it, but I haven't missed a day yet and I'm going to do my best not to miss a day.

Original Post by purespark:

It's great, Maxx.  I got the kind I linked to (I used to live in Santa Cruz, CA).  They cook the bacon crisp before they dip it into the chocolate.  It's salty-sweet and awesome!

I saw your post and immediately thought of Marini's "Vegan's Nightmare" and then I saw that you used to live in Santa Cruz.

I get this at work fairly often and I have a coworker who takes it as a personal offense if you don't eat her fat and calorie-laden treats.

I go with "Oh that looks delicious, but I:" add appropriate excuse "... just had something heavy earlier," "...am sensitive to X ingredient" "...have dinner plans and want to go light" and the simplest, "...can't today, but thank you so much."

Fortunately, everyone in my group remembers me nearly 70 pounds ago and even though the one woman still gets offended, everyone else is very supportive.

Agreed, fiction.

I always conserve calories from my daily allotment to be able to eat after 7 or 8 because I always get hungry later in the evening. Considering I've lost 67 pounds, I'd have to say from personal experience that it doesn't sabotage weight loss.

In general it seems that advice is mainly to keep people from late-night binging while they're bored and have already eaten everything they should for the day.

I wish I could remember exactly what I once read on here about the myth of gaining more weight when you eat after an arbitrary time of day. Something to do with the fact that if that were true, the world could solve many of its hunger problems by simply feeding the hungry late at night.

Congratulations! Boast! Do a happy dance, and absolutely pat yourself on the back.

I lost my 8 year old son. I have carried him on my back and just marveled at the fact that I used to walk around with that 24/7.

Oh absolutely. But then again, I talk to just about every animal I come across, from my cats to random squirrels on my walk to class or work.