Welcome to my blog!!

Welp, here goes.....not sure how I'll do at this but I'll give it a whirl! Hope you enjoy. "Yearning to be Average" has to do with my desire & goal to just be an average size person.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Stairway to Hell

I've been pretty firmly back in my routine for a couple weeks now (almost 3?) and feeling good so far!  Weigh-in is not until Thursday and I'm trying to prepare myself in case the scale doesn't move much. Reason being, I've been hitting the weights really well and I know that the scale number might be a bit misleading -- I could still be losing fat & gaining muscle so my weight might not go down as much as I'd like.  We shall see!  I do feel smaller already and not as lethargic as I have for a while so that is a win.

I had grown accustomed to doing longer runs on the treadmill back when I was in the thick of my weight loss journey (bad pun haha).....in the last year or so, I've gotten away from that and just done shorter runs.  I've changed things up a little bit the last few weeks, which I am hoping will boost my metabolism.  I have done HIIT (high intensity interval training) the past few times I've run on the treadmill....that is a workout!  Basically I run for 3 minutes, then raise the incline quite a bit and up my speed as well for a 30-second burst....then I slow it down for 3 more minutes, then another 30-second burst, slow it down, and repeat....I usually do this for about 30 minutes total.  I try to lengthen each 'burst' by 2-5 seconds as I progress through my run. 

So since my goal right now is to lose fat (not just maintain my weight as I've done for a while before I got lazy haha)....I wanted to add in something else for my cardio workout to change it up and keep my body guessing.

I have never used the stairmaster/step climber at my gym...until last week.  Holy cow.  Now I know why I haven't.  I thought I was going to die in Planet Fitness.  All the way in the last row.  Under the step climber.  This could be partly because I attempted to use it right after doing my 30 minute interval run on the treadmill...but I believe it's mostly because I've been out of shape for a while!

I wish I had it on video the first time I tried it.....I almost fell off just getting on the stupid thing because I didn't realize the steps will start moving as soon as you step on it.  haha  There was a younger girl next to me (cute Russian-looking girl, I'll call her Svetlana)....thankfully she was nice enough to show me how to use it...all the while maintaining her speed on the climber, seemingly without breaking a sweat.  Ugh...I hate Svetlana.  Haha  Anyway.....this day was a victory as I did 5 minutes on the step climber......and a few days later, over the weekend, when I did cardio again, I did 6 minutes! 

I am toying with the idea of trying to do the climber for my cardio routine next time (prob Thursday?) just to see if I can make it a whole 20 minutes (that's the normal default workout time on there and I'm curious if I can do it).  Just to switch it up a little, I may try that and then do a short, fast run on the treadmill after.  Will keep you posted!