And lo, the Six Week Challenge has begun!
Don is doing this with me, even though he can almost never get to weekday classes. He can add in regular workouts at home, and - if he's a better man than I (and I suspect he is) - could attend both Saturday and Sunday morning kickboxing.
So. Last night. We got there early for all the tests, the results of which were written down on index cards. Six months from now, we'll repeat each test and marvel over our improvement. I hope.
First was the body fat test. I went first. The testing device was a handheld electronic instrument. Age, height, and weight (bastard people made us say it out loud) were entered. Then, you held it with both hands out at arm's length, and after a few seconds it told you your body fat and (I think, 'cause I didn't look too closely) your BMI.
The moment of truth: 25.7.
I'm told that's in the healthy-ish range. I want to see it drop several points. We shall see.
Then we did push-ups until we flagged (knee push-ups for me, and only 27), sit ups (within a minute - 36. meh) and finally, held a wall squat until we could hold it no longer. Now, I always thought a proper wall squat meant tabletop legs. Most of the people were nowhere near that, and held their squats a lot longer than I was able. Oh, well. The person who held the longest: 12 minutes. I crapped out at 2:45. I suspect I'll improve on that, but again - we shall see.
After all of that, we had a killer class. Angela pushed the hell out of us. I admit I flagged a bit. Made it through, but WOW, was it a slog. And I'm thinking of taking Renata's class tonight. The time may have come to bump it up to four classes a week. *whimper*
It may be a good thing that this six week challenge is overlapping my ten week nutritional course. I've done pretty well this week. All the prep work is a right pain, but I'm not going to let that be an excuse to cheat. Also? I've found that if I have to write down what I eat, I will be scrupulously honest. Therefore, I am severely disinclined to cheat. That handful of M&Ms isn't worth the humiliation I'll feel when Angela looks over my weekly food log.
For some reason, I'm craving pizza in a HUGE way. Won't give in. Won't!
Oh, and for you who may know more about this than I, I've been using 1% milk. I have a full half gallon, and I don't want to let it go to waste. I use it but sparingly. I had cereal for breakfast twice this week, and I've used maybe a cup of milk total. Anyway, the eating plan calls for skim milk. Is it really going to break me, to ruin the diet, to have 1% instead of skim? Which, by the way, I really do not like.
Don is doing this with me, even though he can almost never get to weekday classes. He can add in regular workouts at home, and - if he's a better man than I (and I suspect he is) - could attend both Saturday and Sunday morning kickboxing.
So. Last night. We got there early for all the tests, the results of which were written down on index cards. Six months from now, we'll repeat each test and marvel over our improvement. I hope.
First was the body fat test. I went first. The testing device was a handheld electronic instrument. Age, height, and weight (bastard people made us say it out loud) were entered. Then, you held it with both hands out at arm's length, and after a few seconds it told you your body fat and (I think, 'cause I didn't look too closely) your BMI.
The moment of truth: 25.7.
I'm told that's in the healthy-ish range. I want to see it drop several points. We shall see.
Then we did push-ups until we flagged (knee push-ups for me, and only 27), sit ups (within a minute - 36. meh) and finally, held a wall squat until we could hold it no longer. Now, I always thought a proper wall squat meant tabletop legs. Most of the people were nowhere near that, and held their squats a lot longer than I was able. Oh, well. The person who held the longest: 12 minutes. I crapped out at 2:45. I suspect I'll improve on that, but again - we shall see.
After all of that, we had a killer class. Angela pushed the hell out of us. I admit I flagged a bit. Made it through, but WOW, was it a slog. And I'm thinking of taking Renata's class tonight. The time may have come to bump it up to four classes a week. *whimper*
It may be a good thing that this six week challenge is overlapping my ten week nutritional course. I've done pretty well this week. All the prep work is a right pain, but I'm not going to let that be an excuse to cheat. Also? I've found that if I have to write down what I eat, I will be scrupulously honest. Therefore, I am severely disinclined to cheat. That handful of M&Ms isn't worth the humiliation I'll feel when Angela looks over my weekly food log.
For some reason, I'm craving pizza in a HUGE way. Won't give in. Won't!
Oh, and for you who may know more about this than I, I've been using 1% milk. I have a full half gallon, and I don't want to let it go to waste. I use it but sparingly. I had cereal for breakfast twice this week, and I've used maybe a cup of milk total. Anyway, the eating plan calls for skim milk. Is it really going to break me, to ruin the diet, to have 1% instead of skim? Which, by the way, I really do not like.