Observations from day 8

Today seemed hard. It was back to back, chest, and abs and I was pushing myself hard today.

My muscles were screaming and some of the push ups I wasn't even able to do as many as I did the last time. I've got burning arms right now.

I also have been playing with different times to work out. School is going to start up again soon so I wanted to see if I could do P90x in the afternoons.

Like I said today was hard. I'm tired. I hadn't eaten prior to working out (which is why I think I felt like I was going to be sick when I got done working out) and it's kinda hot in my house.

Gotta just push through it and keep working out. Did I mention I'm tired? lol.

Ok so besides being tired I have a couple of observations about my fitness/health journey in general:

-total strangers comments affect me way more than they should. I use myfitnesspal.com to track calories and someone actually said that there was no way I could burn so many calories from doing a p90x program at home. oh the best part is she's a beachbody coach too. Nice huh?

-On the same note someone I hadn't seen in 2 weeks saw me yesterday and said that I was looking really trim. Not just weight wise but overall. So even though the scale said a 1.5 lb weight loss this week I'm actually losing inches too. I haven't measured. I'm trying to refrain from doing that until my 30 days since I don't want to become obsessed with the numbers on my scale or what the tape measure is measuring.

-Heart Rate Monitors. My calorie burn is higher on somedays than others. I think it's affected by several things.

One the heat in my environment. If it's hot in my house my heart is working harder to keep blood flowing to keep me cooler.

I chase after my kids all day and therefore do not have a low resting heart rate and probably start my workouts with my heart rate even higher because of that.

HRM's are great for cardio but may not be the most accurate when it comes to programs like p90x that is a mix of cardio and strength training. Yes I'm working hard but an isolated strength training will elevate the heart rate to get blood pumping for that one particular exercise but since I'm only focusing on one area at that time my whole body may not be burning more as a whole at that moment. Does that make sense? I think it might be projecting higher burns for a few things than it actually does.

It's not exact. While it's a nice tool I shouldn't be depending on it too much to tell me how hard I'm working. I should listen to my body and let it dictate for me how hard it's working and use the HRM as a tool to help me in estimating my calorie burn for now.

I think that once I reach my target weight I will probably not use it as often. Right now I need to burn calories later on I will need to maintain them which is something completely different.

Eating:

Man oh man am I hungry lately. I am working harder and thus need to eat more to keep up with the changes in my body. Must eat. No qualms about it. I'm still eating things I love just in moderation and finding that other things just don't satisfy my hunger so I'm just skipping those things all together.

Overall:

Still feeling good and am encouraged by the changes I'm making. It's not easy to do p90x everyday and yet I'm doing it. I will try and not let others (especially people I don't really know in real life) to affect me too much. I am working hard and it shouldn't matter to me what others think. This is my journey after all and I will succeed. :)