Tag Archives: Zumba Fitness

August 18, 2012

Help Is On the Way!

By Angie Bullock

NOT dieting seems to agree with me, at least for now. I don’t know if it’s all the extra water weight I may have been carrying or what, but I am down 6 lbs since starting to “not diet”. :-D

I got in my two Zumba sessions this week and a little mild swimming. Yay!

However, I still feel like I am not active enough on a regular basis, and I’m not talking about scheduled exercise. I’m talking about just moving, in general. I feel like I’m either sitting on my butt on my computer (a bit unavoidable since I work from home on the computer…) or exercising. Sedentary, or regimented exercise.

So, I want to approach this the same way I do food: be more aware of my general activity level, just like I’m now more aware of the food I’m putting into my mouth via Lose It! (which I’m loving, by the way)! Being as I’m a huge tech geek and I love to compete with myself, I think I might have found the perfect solution for me, and it’s on the way right now!

I ordered the Fitbit Ultra! I’m so excited! 

One of the neat features is that it will wireless sync my activity/steps to Lose It!

It’s very small and can be (should be!) worn all day and all night (it tracks sleep patterns!). Additionally, not only does it track steps, but it also has an altimeter so it can track stairs/floors climbed.

Just like a lot of popular social apps (that have nothing to do with exercise), it also taps into our competitive nature and has badges and such that you can earn when you hit different levels. Fun!

My first day wearing it, I am going to try and just go about my normal day as I would now, so I can get a good baseline of how active (or, as I suspect, not active) I am right now. Then, I can challenge myself to increase that activity daily, even if it’s just getting up from my desk every once in awhile and taking a walk up the stairs, around my house, and back to my desk again.

Maybe I’ll start walking to get the mail (which is actually a good distance) and parking farther away from entrances (especially as our cooler Texas temps start to arrive in the next month or so).

It’s scheduled to be delivered next Tuesday (happy birthday to me!), so I’m planning on next Wednesday being my first “Fitbit” day. Oh, and a special thanks to Julie/Towards Healthy Life for my discovery of the Fitbit. :-)

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dieting, Exercise, Weight Loss, Zumba

August 6, 2012

Sad and Powerless

By Angie Bullock

Well, the fact that I haven’t posted a blog post in a really long time has got to clue everyone in at how maintaining my weight loss is going. :-(

It’s truly alarming to me the rate at which I can gain back weight when not paying attention at all. Clothes now don’t fit. Confidence is gone. I give it to God; but I keep taking it back. It is not well with my soul.

How many times have I written that I believe the key for my personal success in this journey is moving? God knows I will give him the diet, but He wants me to stop sitting around and get in shape. I feel like since I haven’t truly been willing to do that yet, I haven’t been able to maintain success with food either.

So, today I started using a new website (Lose It!) and mobile app to track my food. Honestly, it’s not so much about how many calories I eat, exactly, but about being aware of what I’m putting in my mouth. I so have a tendency to take it to either extreme – dieting like a mad woman and losing weight like a fiend, or simply not caring and eating whatever I want in any quantity I want (read: fully succumbing to gluttony).

I am starting slow. I am not diving in to any grand diet plan. I’m taking this first week to just be aware of what I put in my mouth and track it (which, by nature, makes me eat better). I’ve alrady been putting my Zumba DVDs to better use and have been having some friends over for “class” twice a week (which is actually fun!!). I’ve been using the community pool and swimming more and yesterday morning I started exploring some of the beautiful neighborhood trails in our new neighborhood (oh, and did I mention that we started eating out constantly because we were packing/moving/unpacking and just never stopped?). But none of that is doing me any good when it’s not consistent and I’m eating fast food regularly.

But this time, probably the most important component for me, is that I’m not doing this alone this time. I have friends who are sharing this struggle and we’re going to do it together. I bought Lysa TerKeurst’s Made to Crave Ministry Kit awhile back and today I finally opened it. It’s a 12-week DVD study that really unpacks the things, and goes even further, than the book I’ve already read and talked about, Made to Crave.

Included is the Made to Crave Devotional, which I have not yet read. The very intro itself is what prompted this blog post and really all I wanted to share right now, but of course that would have been cryptic on its own. ;-)

I also know what it’s like to feel sad and powerless in this battle to get healthy.

I want to lead Jesus girls on a journey that will help them find a stick-to-itiveness and a lasting want-to that taps into something much more powerful than the surface desires of wanting to weigh less and wear a smaller size. We need to tap into this power because the battle we face isn’t just with sugary, fatty or salty foods. There is a spiritual battle going on. It’s real. And it’s amazing how perfectly the Bible gives us specific ways to find victory with our food struggles.

Even for girls like us who don’t crave carrot sticks.

Can I get an Amen? Can I also get some prayer for this journey? I really want to see it through to the end, for once in my life, and I can’t do it alone.

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dieting, Exercise, Gluttony, Prayer, Weight Loss

April 21, 2012

My Body Failed Me…

By Angie Bullock

Following The Metabolism Miracle plan, I should be exercising a minimum of 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. This week, Monday – Friday, I only managed to get in 3 days. But, they were all Zumba, which is far more intense than just walking or something, so I didn’t feel all that terrible about missing one day, especially considering that today I was planning on doing the 45-minute intermediate Zumba routine.

Alas, my body had other plans…

As I walked up the stairs with Zach to pray with him before his nap, I noticed that my ankles were really sore. I kinda chuckled to myself, thinking that it was an odd part of my body to be sore from Zumba! Then, I came back down, turned it on, put on my tennis shoes and started the warm-up routine.

I think I realized by 2 minutes in that this was NOT happening today. My ankles are NOT the only sore part of my body! Within 1 minute of starting the routine, my legs turned to pure jelly and I just knew there was virtually no chance that I was going to make it through 45 more minutes… :-(

Of course, I still needed to get in some sort of exercise, so I decided to flip on the Wii and do the “Free Step” routine on Wii Fit Plus (if you’re not familiar with it, it’s kinda cool – it just counts off a beat on the remote, so you can turn the channel and watch TV while stepping on and off the Wii Balance Board), which I did for 1 full hour. I logged just over 6,100 steps.

While an hour of that didn’t even have me as sweaty as 20 minutes of Zumba, I was warm when I was done and it felt good to move my body in a way that didn’t make me want to die! ;-)

As for the low carb/no-carb diet, it’s actually going really well and is much easier than I anticipated. Being such a meat and cheese lover has made it much easier!! :-D

Have a great weekend! :-)

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dieting, Exercise, Metabolism Miracle, Weight Loss, Zumba

April 12, 2012

Detox Sucks!!

By Angie Bullock

Ok, I’m sure that my body detoxing from carb overload is nothing compared to the detox an alcoholic or drug addict goes through, but since I’ve never experienced either of those things, this feels fairly cruddy to me!! ;-)

I didn’t start the Metabolism Miracle diet on Monday, as previously planned (see this post for the background on my discovery of this book, if you missed it), because I just wasn’t able to finish the book (or do any shopping) on Easter. So, I finished the book on Monday, did a little shopping and started on Tuesday. Only one day later than planned, yes, but that means I’m just starting day 3 of the 3-day detox on not day 4! Boo! :-P

To be honest, it’s actually going really well, even though I’ve been a bit weak and had a mild headache (which the book said was likely for the first three days as your body releases its 3 days of glycogen stores). The science behind the book seems to make complete sense (of course, I don’t have anything to compare it to, but the author has been a dietitian for 25 years) and I am extremely hopeful this is a plan that will work even better for me than Weight Watchers. While I started out gang busters on that plan, the weight loss was slowing… slowing… slowing… and I couldn’t understand how I could be eating so few calories and not losing weight! This is something else addressed in the book that applies to the ½ of the population that is plagued with “Metabolism B”.

The dietary side actually reminds me a lot of SlimGenics (and even somewhat validates just how healthy, overall, I was eating on that plan), which was clearly very successful for me, but it seems to take it to the next level and requires mandatory exercise, which SlimGenics actually seemed to somewhat discourage. Of course, after finishing the book, I can totally see why; they are very scale-based and advertise losing 3-5 lbs a week. With regular exercise, your body will attack the fat and not the muscle (which weighs more), and you’ll lose inches faster than lbs on the scale. Personally, even though I’m a numbers person, I would rather look great and feel great than see a number that I perceive as “ideal” on the scale.

It also seems to explain why, even at my goal weight with SlimGenics, I was still very unhappy with how my body looked, unclothed. I was still very loose around the middle and felt like I weighed a lot more than I actually did. Here, it’s supposed to be the opposite. You will look like you weigh a lot less than you actually do, because you will be shedding purely fat. It also goes into far more detail about when to eat and how to spread out different foods, when to exercise, etc. These are things that have never really been addressed specifically with any other diet plan; they’re generally just about calories in must be less than calories out/calories burned.

The exercise part is very interesting, too, as it’s far less stringent than what the traditional exercise plans mandate. The minimum requirement is 30 minutes a day, but since it’s about activating your muscles and not gaining cardio benefits at this point, it’s just fine (and even recommended to keep your muscles active throughout the day) to do 10 minutes in the morning, 10 more at lunch and finish off with 10 at dinner. Well, that’s easy! Tuesday I did about 40 total minutes on playing Wii Fit Plus, three separate times throughout the day. Yesterday I did about 20 minutes of WiiFit Plus after lunch, then about 3o minutes of Zumba Party on the Kinect last night after dinner. Despite feeling less than fabulous, I find I still have plenty of energy for exercise! :-)

So, today is Day 3. The last day that my body should have glycogen stores to deplete, hence the last day I’ll feel this way. Tomorrow I’m supposed to wake up feeling great – more energy, etc. Looking forward to it! ;-)

Oh, and I’m not supposed to step on the scale AT ALL until I’m finished with Step 1, which is 8 weeks! Umm.. yeah, pretty unlikely. But, I am going to try and resist until the end of the first month, when I’m supposed to take my measurements again. We’ll see how successful I am with that… :-P

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dieting, Exercise, Metabolism Miracle, Slimgenics, Weight Loss, Weight Watchers, Zumba

April 2, 2012

Short and Sweet

By Angie Bullock

Well, this is going to be one of my shorter posts (yes, it IS possible! ;-) ), because I honestly don’t have much to say, but just wanted to check in.

I haven’t been doing great – not dieting, not exercising, not even logging into Weight Watchers. Luckily, I seem to have managed to maintain less than a 5 lb weight gain, so that’s a blessing.

Our little boy has been really sick and it’s been doctor’s appointment after doctor’s appointment, as well as many sleepless nights. I haven’t had the time (or the desire) to think about much other than him and getting my work done.

I am starting to feel fairly normal again and God has been nudging me to get back to exercising and doing my Zumba (I really miss it!!), so that should be happening this week.

Hope to have a much more positive and encouraging post soon – but I will say that God is still better to us than we deserve, and Easter is coming and He is risen! So, I can’t complain. :-)

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Dieting, Exercise, Weight Loss, Weight Watchers, Zumba

%d bloggers like this: