Well....I guess the parade got to me after all!

 Well, I thought I was far too lazy to do anything about all of the new colors and ideas from the Parade of Homes, but I guess I underestimated my ability to be swayed like a sheep. I immediately thought my decor was too dark, and originally wanted to paint all of the kitchen cupboards to white, pull the stone off the fireplace and replace it with glass tile, and possibly yank out all of the carpet. I calmed down soon, but there were a few pieces in my house that had been bugging me for a while that the Parade got me to do something about. The first was my headboard. Here's what the before looked like (above). I've since changed the curtains and bedding, but the headboard stayed dark. 

 Here's the after. I painted the copper tile in the center a cream, and the headboard to grey. I went back and forth about antiquing it, but finally went for it with some encouragement from my friend. 

 Here's the glazing up close. I didn't go crazy, just a bit around the edges.

The final bedroom. I was kind of sad about the mirror. I was going to just refinish it to match, but it...got wet... and fell apart. I HAD to buy a new one!

 Next was the desk in the dining room. This is a really old picture! Wow. Jeff's grandpa made this desk by hand, so the pulls needed to stay. 

I just brightened it up a bit. Cream, with antiquing around the edges. I kept the black top, and I'm not sure it was the best decision, but it's done so... Anyway, notice my little toast and protein hot chocolate ritual there? I'm watching "Gambit" on Netflix instant. That was a fun show (It has Snape in it!).

Next I'm recovering the dining room chairs in this fabric. I will show you when they are done. I'm also touching up paint around the house (finally after years living here!).

 We've been getting some amazing weather around here. This sunset was particularly spectacular. 

 So dramatic you ...sky! Geez. Calm down.

 I've been getting in around 30 miles up and down the canyon on my bike on weekends. My friend Sadie says September is the best time of year for biking. I'd stick the end of this year's August onto that. 

 Things have been calming down a little (today anyway) on the Primary visiting front, so I was able to take a little walk in the sunshine.

 When I got to this Virginia creeper, a little mouse grey bird was sitting on top of the railing. He might have been eating the berries, and I wondered if they weren't poisonous like I'd thought. As I got closer, he tensed, but I hoped he'd stay. He took off right when I was opposite him. Made me a little sad.

I got home and picked some of everything in the garden. I steamed some stuff, and left some raw. I always think of Laura Ingall's Pa saying "as long as the garden holds out we can eat like kings!"

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A short history/update of nearly everything

 

Sorry I've been slacking lately in the blogging department.  I've been writing a lot for myself at night, and somehow it takes away the need to blog as much I guess.   I've had a lot of birthdays around here, hence a LOT of cake!!  My brother's birthday was in February --ergo the caramel frosted carrot/coconut cake.

 

My neighbor's birthday --thus an orange chocolate cake with chocolate dipped orange slices, dark chocolate drizzle, and citrus cream cheese filling (I went a little crazy on that 'cause it was a birthday present.  then I pirated the picture from my friend's blog because I suck :) ).

Finally Tia's birthday cake which was a banana cake with homemade whipped cream frosting, and strawberry sauce and filling. 

With all of that cake making, I've been getting some intense workouts in luckily.  Upped my deadlift again (!) to 165, and I got 5 reps in instead of a shaky one rep.  I also started rotating in Chad Waterbury's workout that's made for people wanting to lean down without a strict cutting diet --just to minimize damage.  It's kind of a HIIT program mixed with some heavy weights.  I'm still doing my heavy lifting days, but just use these on days when I teach a weights class and want some cardio (cake cake cake!!!) and a little lifting to keep my muscles stimulated. I'm loving it (no that's not a McDonald's endorsement).

I'm letting go of my BYU classes after this semester because I'm starting to get a few clients to train in my home gym, and it's getting to be a little much.  It makes me sad to let them go, but I think it's a good decision.

OK, me me me --I know I've got other people in my family too right?  For Tia's birthday she just wanted clothes.  We gave her a budget, and I thought we'd have to go shopping at least three or four times to spend it.  Nope.  All gone the first night, and the first store.  Sigh.  I wonder who that girl's mother is.  Ari got up in church today to speak for the first time and did fantastic.  I was so proud of her.  Kai is getting a little crazier and more rambunctious every day.  I hope the weather warms up permanently soon so he can GO PLAY OUTSIDE!

OK, that's all for now, but next post I'll show you my garden plans and seeds (yay seeds!  little tiny packets of possibilities!) .  Also, I should say that my DREAM garden plans for this year would involve a full time gardener, and a ton of concrete.  Oh well, I'll suck it up like I always do.

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PR deadlift! ....and still working on those squats.

Had some major carb loading last night ---unplanned, but hey, might as well use it the next day right?  Anyway, I had a great workout this morning!

The video above is from my back squats, and dang if I'm still not going below parallel!  In subsequent sets I turned my toes out and got down lower --according to my husband who was watching me, but no video --I was too tired to balance my phone on the leg machine again. 

Here's what I did today:

Assisted Pullups (I'm getting really close on these!) 5 sets of 5
Squats: 95 lbs (down from my fantasy land 155 --it makes a difference with a fuller range of motion!) 5x5
Deadlifts (conventional and from the floor) :115 --5 reps; 135 --5; 155 --4; 160 (!!!!) --1 (with my husband behind me yelling at me to go go go!)  sooo proud of that deadlift.  Usually I can do about 140 and I whine and cry about it.
Shoulder press: 20's/5 reps; 25's 5,5,5,5.
Barbell rows: 70/5; 90/5; 90/4; 85/4; 85/3   --I'm also proud of this, because obviously it was right on with the weight.  I always tell my clients/students, if you fail you win.  I kept pushing to my limits here. 

Last week I did  3 sets of ten for my lifts, and I think changing it up a little pushed me through some barriers.  I have to state here too, that i know these aren't super heavy lifts for some girls, but the whole point of weight lifting is to get stronger, not compete with anyone else (although some girls have really inspired me to know I could do more than I ever thought I could).  I'm getting stronger and it makes me happy!

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Full body compound workout.

I found a couple of new blogs to follow and it's funny how my tastes have changed.  I used to follow religiously a girl that taught cardio classes and talked about what she ate all of the time, then I followed a runner/triathalon girl, now there are a few lifting girls I'm following.  One isn't too careful about swearwords so I won't post her link here ( although I think she's just young or something), but here are the other three:  Foods of April,  Mother Fitness and Nia Shanks  (and yes, that is the author down the side of the page on Mother Fitness) . So this Nia lifts HEAVY --girl can deadlift 300 pounds (and she weighs 122), and bench 145.  She advocates doing full body compound exercises only --not focusing on and burning out specific muscle groups. Think pull-ups versus biceps curls, or squats versus quad extensions. I'm not positive about doing this exclusively, but it's VERY interesting --and makes good sense to me.  These are functional movements for the most part. You're always going to want to pick things up off the ground for example (actually --I think Nia USED that example ).  So I've done two workouts so far like this, and I'm FEELING it.  Here's Wednesday's:

Barbell squats 135 pounds (a small note here: I "thought" I was able to do a lot more weight squatting, but I wasn't going all the way down.  It's so easy to trick yourself! This is down to where I can feel the tops of my thighs touching up against my pelvic girdle): 6 reps, 6 reps, 6, 8 (I got the hang of it here).

Deadlifts 95 pounds (note --these aren't "straight leg deadlifts" --they are conventional deadlifts) 8,9,9,7

Pullups (note --I was doing assisted by putting my feet on the bar and trying to do as much as I can with upper body, but I never felt like I was making any progress.  I tried "negatives", but found I ended up doing assisted without noticing --like I'd trick myself.  Finally, I asked Jeff to spot me, and finally I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to doing them on my own.  He says he's only pushing up about 20 pounds worth of me and I don't know about that, but I really feel like I'm maxing out finally.) 3 1/2, 3, 2 1/2, 3

Shoulder Press -25 pounds each arm: (note: standing is what Nia recommends.  I usually would do these sitting and one arm at a time so I could spot myself with the other arm -- and I could do 35's this way.  Standing, with both arms at once, your whole body is working to stabilize.  Much more "neuromuscular stimulation" --core, shoulders, legs, etc.) 7,7,5,4

Inverted Row: (here's a link in case you don't know what these are --I didn't, and they aren't on bodybuilding.com ) 10, 10, 10, 8

That's it.  I did another workout today, (Nia advocates three times a week, but I didn't see her program until Wednesday) substituting "step-ups" for the squats.  These (I think --I asked her to send me a link to a video) are where you start on a step --like 4 inches --with a barbell, and step back down into a lunge.  So hard to keep balance and form!  I started with 115 for the first set, and had to go down to 95 to keep the form without Jeff holding my torso.  I'm the kind of lifter who always seems to start out heavier than I can really do!

Anyway, here's some tips if you want to train like this for a few months. Pick 4-6 compound exercises, and do somewhere between 3 and 6 sets.  Pick a weight that you can do for 5-10 reps, but that should be all you can do by the last set.  Go until your muscles give out. Be safe! Have a spotter there, or make sure you have a place to drop the weight safely if you need to.  If you can do more reps at the end, do them, but pick a heavier weight next time.  You need to get adequate rest in between workouts, and get enough protein into you: 20-25 grams within 45 minutes after your workout, and 100-200 grams every day.  This doesn't have to be meat or dairy! Good sources include beans, nuts (higher in fat, so watch these a little), quinoa, oats, and protein powders like rice, hemp, soy, or yellow pea. This allows your muscles the rest and raw materials to rebuild stronger after you break them down working out.  That's the whole point of your workout!
 Do this three times a week if you can, or at least twice, until you can build up to three.  If you notice that you aren't able to increase reps or weight every couple of workouts, it's time to change things up.  Either change the number of sets, the number of reps (or both), or the exercise.  This is how you push through a plateau, but make sure first that it isn't an issue of not getting adequate fuel or rest. 

If you find that you'd like some help, feel free to contact me, I'm a trainer, and would love to work with you.  You'll find that you get addicted to the feeling of lifting just like you did with cardio, and I really believe it does more things, and better things for your body (although I'm not above getting an extra kickboxing session after a cookie binge party!).

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That's why they call them skullcrushers.

So, I finally got around to doing bi's tri's, and shoulders on Saturday.  All last week I focused on big muscle groups, because I know that they will work things like shoulders and arms anyway, and I felt like I've lost some muscle mass in the last couple of weeks.  But then toward the end of the week I noticed some definition and mass loss in my arms too, so decided to hit them up.


I like to superset everything because time is always of the essence for me, so I did a cool rotation between the three:

bi curls with triceps overhead press (dumbbells for both)
shoulder press with preacher curls (dumbbells again)
(shoulder) dumbbell side raises with triceps kickbacks
biceps cable curls with triceps cable extensions
shoulder front raises with biceps hammer curls (dumbbells)
internal and external rotators on shoulders (i've had injuries in the past and I'm trying to build them up) with Skullcrushers for triceps ---and here's where I had a problem (so glad it was the last superset)

We've got a bench that has a pin that only goes halfway through the adjust holes.  That's how it's made.  There's a plastic sleeve that fits inside to keep it from shifting from side to side and letting the pin drop out if its hole, but that plastic sleeve has been broken for10 of the 14 years we've had the bench.  I guess I didn't double check the pin, and when I was a couple of reps into my skullcrushers (see the link if you don't know what these are), the pin shifted out and the bench collapsed.  Taken off guard, my arms must have given way, and one20 lb. dumbbell hit me in the head (thank goodness it was a high-rep lower weight rotation!).  Here's a shot of it 2 days later:

No biggie right?  It was scary looking at the time.  You know how head wounds bleed a lot?  Yeah.  My ten year old ran downstairs when she heard me yelling for my husband and started screaming "I don't want my mom to die!!" That was encouraging.  My husband did a spontaneous Jacob Black imitation and ripped off his shirt to hold to my head, but it was completely lost on me and he was a little disappointed I think.  "How come you didn't say 'I'm sort of beautiful'?"  Riiiight.  Just so everyone knows, when you're bleeding and hurting, you don't CARE how anyone looks.   Jeff didn't let me finish my last sets or let me do the Christmas tree that day.  I just laid in bed until his work Christmas party that the devil and all his angels couldn't keep me from (someone else cooks for me?  I'm there). It was still oozing blood at the dinner table, but was so worth it for that dinner.  Plus, I got to wear my sequin fancy top.

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Personal Trainer

Just thought I'd give an update on the personal trainer thing. I passed (yay!), and now I'm trying to get the business thing up and going. I've got some forms I need to get copied, but at least I found them all, and I'm ordering some equipment, but I've got one (count 'em one!) official client (my sister-in-law), and one other potential client (my OTHER sister-in-law).

It's a little hard to give Training the time it needs because I'm teaching 6 classes a week, and I take a lot of time preparing them (this last week I taught 7 classes). Tia and Ari are doing classes after school, and once again we have speech twice a week up at BYU.

I gotta tell you though, I REALLY like it. I've put together a few programs for people so far and I'm loving it. I do the same kind of thing for 4 of my classes, looking for new ways to work your muscles, and researching safety and things, and I just love it.

Also, after that comment from my brother "you're crazy", I realized I was. I stopped being so strict and regimented with my diet, and went back to tracking calories online. It is sooo working for me. OK, I'm not losing 10 pounds a week, but I'm able to control my eating a lot better with a little more leeway in my choices. I am glad I did the other diets just to help train me to make better choices, but now if there is a fun-size butterfinger offered to me in my YW class, and I'm starving, I eat the dang thing and just enter it in when I get home. My only guidelines are that I try to get in at least 100 grams of protein a day, avoid junk food for the most part, and I try to get in a lot of vegetables at every meal. If I do those three things, I usually do pretty great in my eating. No comments from girls on my bowling team!! :0 We had some treats there at our Friday tournament, and I swear --I had close to 900 calories of stuff that left me hungry in a half an hour!! That's rotten. I did some extra exercise, but then didn't beat myself up when I didn't make my calorie goal. I just tried to go a little lighter the next day, and I was OK.

I plan on counseling clients to use the free calorie counter I'm using, but if they want a nutrition plan, will work with a dietitian from the Utah clinic to develop one for them. I know it was helpful in training me to figure out good choices . It's just that when my diet's too restrictive, I binge. I guess that's a common problem with restrictive diets. 

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New rotation

So I started the third diet rotation on Sunday; and by coincidence it is a three-day rotation plan. I have to say though, my stomache has been bothering me since Friday night. I don't know if the seitan (gluten) is finally getting to me, or the stevia is adding up with all of the shakes, or what. Maybe it was something I ate Friday that just won't go away? Yuck.

Day 1

¼ cup oatbran, soy protein shake

5 oz. Seitan ; 1 cup vegetables

1 large grapefruit (or 1 cup fruit) 1 T. omega butter

¼ block tofu with 1 cup peppers, cucumbers or tomatoes, balsamic as dressing

salad with ½ cup beans, whey or hemp protein shake

Brown rice protein shake with 2/3 cup mixed berries.

Day 2

¼ block tofu with mushrooms, peppers, onion ; ½ cup oats

whey protein shake with 3 large strawberries or ¼ cup blueberries 1 T. omega butter

5 oz. Seitan 1 cup vegetables

Apple with 1 T. omega butter

brown rice protein shake, salad, tahini dressing, 2 rice cakes

hemp or soy shake ; 1 cup green veggies (can add spinach to shake)

Day 3

soy shake with spinach; ½ cup oats

4 oz. Seitan with 1 cup veggies

whey shake with 1 T. omega butter

double brown rice shake ; 1 cup beans

salad with ¼ block tofu, hemp shake

Apple with 1 T. omega butter

I think this is doable once again for bodybuilding, but I don't feel like I'm really giving it a fair shot like i did the diets last summer. I'm not as motivated not to cheat maybe? When I thought I was doing the show it was a great motivator: someone was going to be seeing all of these cheat days in a couple of months on my thighs! I think I need a new goal. Anyone want to do a show with me this fall?

In other news, I'm learning how to swim (again)! I had swim as part of P.E. in High School (I grew up in San Diego), but I swear I forgot how to freestyle. I can still dog paddle.... Anyway, Jeff and I went to the Cayman Islands a few years ago, and if you're a snokeler or scuba-er, it's the place to go. Yum. Plus, on the diving side of the island we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. We decided to swim out to the reef one afternoon. On the Grand Cayman Island, a reef surrounds the island all of the way around making for a beautiful, sheltered place for viewing fish and coral. We thought though, that there must be a ton of stuff out ON the reef so started making our way out. When we got a ways out, I realized I was being PULLED out. There was a huge hole they had blown in the reef to allow ships to pass out and in, and we didn't know it was there. I found I couldn't make any headway against the current and panicked. I told Jeff to bring me in. I tried to keep my mask in the water and kick, and not look up to see our lack of progress. About 200 yards back, we hit a sort of boulder/sandbar we could stand on a nd rest. Jeff later confessed he didn't know if he could have brought us in if it hadn't been for that boulder. We literally could have not come back home to our kids if that boulder hadn't been there. We would have been swept out to sea. Ever since then I've been terrified of waves, and how weak I feel in the ocean. In Hawaii, I was fine scuba-ing because it was under the water and didn't feel the same, but snorkeling I kept having panic attacks, and couldn't go out past where I could touch the bottom. Does that even make sense? Fear doesn't always make sense (but it sure helps me be more compassionate with my kids when they're afraid). Anyway, my friend Pam is a swimming teacher, and started last night to teach me technique. I'm going to go Mondays and Thursdays to learn, and Wednesday mornings to practice on my own. Yay me! I already feel more secure in the water. Thank you Pam already for your patience with my flailing arms....

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Finally! a stevia I can use.

No.

No.

YES! Finally a Stevia that works. I took the recommendation of a fellow blogger, and finally tried this kind (after HATING the other two kinds above) and it works. If you want a zero calorie sweetener that won't hurt you, and actually tastes good, I recommend this stuff unconditionally. The serving size is 1/4 teaspoon, but even if you quadruple it (like in a blender full of smoothie) you won't taste the bitter. Love it. It also actually makes things sweeter, which isn't really the case with the others (at least with my taste buds). I thought maybe there was something wrong with me, but no, I just like sweet when I'm promised sweet.

In other news, I started the yoga thing. There's a girl that teaches classes in the city next door to us, and I've been going Thursday nights. It is so intense! I really get a muscle workout, and she's so good about walking around adjusting everyone into place, which I really need, since I've got a few wacky joints. I then found a place online that podcasts free 20 minute yoga routines everyday (for free! --I'm all about free): here so I can just do a little on my own everyday I've got a little extra time. I usually do a short cardio sesh in the evening (I'm trying to work off a few Halloween parties), and maybe I'll do one every other night. I don't know. I know yoga may not burn as many calories as a hard cardio, but I really feel I'm getting some usable, functional strength and balance doing it. It just feels GOOD. At least with this teacher, It's a real intense class. Have you ever tried yoga? What do you think? My experience has been that it really depends on the teacher.

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