Half Assed Fitness

Well, I've had to modify my plan a bit. I originally intended to follow the Sexy Abs In 6 Weeks program that I found on Fitnessmagazine.com but in my new environment I only have a dial up connection and unless I want to wait until I'm old and gray for the videos to load, I opted for a plan that was printable. I don't enjoy trying to figure out exercises from a worded description but I've got to work with what I've got.

So this is a four week plan, no where does it state how often you are supposed to do them. I'm going to shoot for every other day. I'll report back soon and let you know how it's going.

Click here to see the workout.


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I finally made it to the gym. It's been an entire month!

Here I thought I was going to miss like two weeks or so. I walked to work when I was still in Helena and I've been riding a bike (in the wind) since I've arrived on the island so I'm not just sitting on my butt but it felt SO good to lift weights again. It felt like an actual workout.

I was quite impressed that I haven't really lost any progress. Just to be safe I reduced the poundage on a few of the exercises but didn't really feel like I needed to. It's been so long I know I will be sore tomorrow. Probably for a few days. I'm not going to be doing any cardio at the gym, not when I bike a few miles a day now. I can't wait for my mountain bike to arrive, this loaner does not fit me at all. That and the bearings are going out...doesn't help the situation. I probably wont see my stuff for another month though. I might just have to walk for awhile.

So now that I'm back at the gym..I'm going to start that ab workout I mentioned before. First I'll post all of the exercises I'll be doing here and then I'll report on how it's going.

Oh and have you been thinking about what you would do if you had all the free food you could eat everyday....I'm in that situation now and I'll be posting about it soon.


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I am just now getting settled after my 5,343 mile move across the world. I now live in the Marshall Islands on a tiny island called Kwajalein. This world is totally different than my last one.

The tropical weather is nice; shorts, short sleeves, and sandals, all the time; even to work. Because it is an island and there is not much elevation, the wind blows all the time. It's actually a good thing or it would be miserably hot. So the nice weather makes it more enjoyable to be outside. No more excuses about it being too cold.

One of the biggest differences is that now I do not have a car. It's not even an option. The island is small so the main mode of transportation is bicycle. I work just over a mile from my living quarters and on the way to work the wind is at my back but on the way home or any time I need to conduct business "downtown" (you have to see it to know why that is in quotes) I ride against the wind. What a workout!!

Today I had to run several errands spread out over the course of the day so I made 4 trips into the wind altogether and besides my rear end being sore because I rarely rode a bike up to this point, I'm pooped. It takes a lot of effort! I'm not complaining...it's a fun new way to burn calories and I'm kind of happy about it.

I finally found the gym here today but because we are on a military base, it has a code on the door and I couldn't remember it so I didn't make it in. I'll try again tomorrow. I really want to lift some weights!

I will be experiencing snorkeling tomorrow for the first time in my life. I'm not sure if it's exercise or not but I'll find out and let you know.

My apologies for taking so long to get back on track, this was a pretty major change and I can already see some new topics for discussion coming up so stay tuned!


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Getting ready to move out of the country has disrupted my exercise routine significantly. I'm squeezing in what I can, walking a lot, a bit of yoga, moving boxes....

When I get where I'm going next week though, I'm going to try a "6 Weeks to Sexy Abs" program I found at Fitness Magazine.com. I can't link directly to it because you have to have an account to view their videos but I'll see if I can put together a breakdown of the exercises and report back on how it works.

Moving to a tropical island means a lot of bathing suit time so I'm going to be a bit obsessive about the workouts I think. Plus I need to make up for lost time.

To see what's going on with the move and how this all came about, visit my other blog Kwajalein Adventure. I leave in three days and I'm starting to freak out a bit. I still need to keep my diet and exercise in check no matter what's going on in my life!


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Despite what you think,
It's not a torture chamber.
Give the gym a chance.

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One of the restaurants we regularly frequent started carrying Boylan's sodas. This was during my refined sugar free trial and I noticed that they are made with all natural ingredients and cane sugar. I was having a bit of a hypoglycemic moment and thought I'd give it a try. I tried the Black Cherry and whoo hoo it's sweet, but yummy. I may have been a bit overly sensitive having had no refined sugar nor any other type of sugar other than from fruit for over two weeks at this point. I almost couldn't finish it and if I hadn't been eating, I know I couldn't have. One thing I enjoyed about it was that it wasn't overly carbonated. Black cherry has always been one of my preferred flavors and this one was just as black cherry as the next. While the sweetness was on the same level as other black cherry soda's, cane sugar sweetness is just different.

A couple of days ago, I tried another one. This time I tried the Creamy Red Birch Beer. It's very red but tastes very much like root beer. It's a fun drink, the color is very cheerful and the vintage styling of the bottle makes it extra fun. I'm a root beer fan too but normally I can never drink a whole one because of the intensity of the sugar. With cane sugar, it's more of a mellow sweetness. Birch beer and root beer aren't exactly the same;

The difference between birch beer and root beer: They’re close, but made from different barks. Birch beer is made from birch bark extract (and can vary in color depending on the species of birch tree the sap is extracted from). Root beer is made from non-specific roots and barks (often sassafras and/or sarsaparilla plus herbs like wild cherry, wintergreen and ginger. The original root beer, created in the mid-1800s by Philadelphia pharmacist Charles Hires, was actually a beer — a very low alcohol, naturally effervescent beverage made by fermenting sugar and yeast with the aforementioned ingredients. Today’s products have no alcohol content.

—Karen Hochman

I'm going to try the remaining flavors since I've enjoyed these two so much. There is a Creme Soda and an actual Root Beer I'm interested in trying. I'm not a cola fan so if anyone has tried the Cane Cola version of this, let us know what you think.




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Amazingly going sugar free of the 31 days of January turned out to be much easier than I anticipated. As a reminder, my rules for sugar free were this:

• No refined sugar
• No corn syrup
• No high fructose corn syrup
• No sugar substitutes
• Fruit OK
• Carbs OK
• Natural sugars OK

I had been on kind of a sugar bender through the holidays and thought I would have a much harder time giving it up.

For the first 5 days or so I ate a lot of fruit. I wasn't getting the refined sugars anymore so I had to up the natural sugars to kind of balance things out. After that I still ate a few pieces of fruit each day but not as much for the sugar as just to have something to snack on.

The most unusual part of the whole thing to me was how much hungrier I felt in general. I had to keep a close eye on my calorie intake because I was overly hungry the entire time. My theory on this is that sugar kind of numbs your hunger. Coffee will do the same thing for me. I can stave off eating with coffee for awhile, not forever.

So one of the gains that I made was an awareness of how much sugar is around and how often I reach for it out of habit. I also learned that there are many natural alternatives and natural sugar doesn't wreak havoc on your system like refined sugar does. I didn't experience the usual highs and lows in my mood or energy levels that had become part of my life. That was a huge thing.

Typically a "sugar free" diet consists of removing ALL sugars and anything that gets converted into sugar by the body as well.

White rice, pancakes, bread, corn flakes, crackers, parsnips, and potatoes are some of the foods that act like sugar in your body.

This is borderline crazy to me. The rational part of me knew there was no way I could possible cut ALL of these without failure.

I've decided to continue on with refined sugar free and make it part of my life. How about you? Anybody else have a different experience?



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