Lifting and Clean Eating Part III; My Initial Workouts

Lifting and Clean Eating Part III: My Initial Workouts

When I started working out, I was incredibly intimidated by the gym and by the thought of working out because I had no idea what I was doing but for some reason, I thought everyone else did and that it was stupid for not knowing. I mean, I considered myself pretty "in shape".

I used to ride my bike and roller blade all the time when I was younger, and in high school I golfed on our varsity team all four years (that equals a lot of walking). And yet  I always hated gym class, running, lifting … they made me majorly intimidated!  I didn’t know how to do these things, I didn’t feel like I could do any of them, and I didn’t want to do them at all.

Well, my husband decided to get a gym membership as he had kind of taken a break from lifting for awhile after his last show, etc, and he was ready to get back with it. So a few weeks went by and he kept hinting that I should join him. I finally gave in and started going with him. The first few times we went were unbusy times when I thought no one else would be there (ha, yes, I'm serious because I felt embarrassed to have to have Erik tell me what I should be doing for some reason?) Overtime, he helped me and showed me how some of the weight equipment worked, and advised what I should start out doing with cardio, etc.

I started out by:

• Exercising on the elliptical for 15-30 minutes and running through the nautilus weight equipment a few times

I'm a little low on iron already and with my body used to a fast food diet and hardly any water, I got lightheaded quickly when doing cardio. I can't say that I enjoyed myself at first, either. It was a fight to stick with it. Thankfully, our gym had TVs on each piece of cardio equipment so I brought my headphones and tried to focus on the TV. I was slowly able to increase my distance and level of difficulty and pretty well stuck to the elliptical because it was what I was most comfortable with and at that point, I had no idea how anyone could stay on a treadmill for longer than two seconds without getting bored out of their mind, ha. (I love the treadmill now but I sure hated it then).

Eventually I got to the point where I was faithfully doing at least 45 minutes on the elliptical and going through each piece nautilus weight equipment (3 set of 12 reps) 4-5 days a week. I even sometimes would stay on the elliptical for a hour (or a little more) but because it felt so good that I could actually do it!

Along with the new foods that I was consuming I was able to actually fairly quickly drop the extra 20 pounds I had put on. At that point the question of "What next?" came up. I lost the weight, I'd grown to really like how I felt when working out, and I felt amazing. I was as small as I wanted to be, as much smaller and I probably wouldn't have been my healthiest self.

I had come to realize that even despite the fake ingredients I was still eating I had so much more energy, my self confidence was rising, and I was feeling awesome!

So now that I had lost all my excess weight, I had to decide what was next and figure out how to tweak my diet and workouts while maintaining my weight loss.

"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will."
-Gandhi-

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