NROLFW, starting again to really change my body.

Hello all, I honestly have just not had the motivation to write on this blog. I am still trying to figure things out with where this blog is going but for now I will update where I can. My fashion page has been lacking, and as it if a passion for me I just don’t have the money to get lots of new clothes. I will start posting more pictures of outfits as the weather is nicer. 

Now lets get to the meat of this post. New Rules of Lifting For Women, aka NROLFW. This training program is based on heavy weight lifting. The idea is to abandon the barbie doll weights and really start lifting heavy to see a change in your body. After countless hours doing cardio, I have decided to give this a real shot. For me this means following the program preferably 3 days a week, if only 2 happens sometimes I will not be too hard on myself. If you want more information about this program and book check out the website here

 http://www.thenewrulesoflifting.com/nrol-for-women 

I attempted to start this program a while back but I was not dedicated. I think I was also half-marathon training or something so heavy weight lifting was not something I could really commit to. After reading lots of success stories and seeing that lots of cardio was not  giving me the body I wanted I am going to commit to NROLFW at least until the wedding. I will most likely continue when I come back but if I can commit 4 solid months I should see some great results. I have not had a chance to take starting measurements or photos but here is my starting weights.

 

Starting weight for workout 1A

Squats- 65lbs- 20lbs added to weighted bar.

Push-ups- On knees

seated row- 45lbs, I think I can bump this up next time.

step-up- on 4 risers with 10lb weights in each hand

jacknife on ball- 10 reps

I feel good an strong today. It is going to be hard not doing as much cardio, I do love a good run here and there but since my foot is messed up anyways I can’t run for a while. I plan to do light cardio on my off days, hopefully biking and swimming.

Starting photo’s and measurements to come! Come on weight lifting, get me to a super toned body for my wedding in September!

Yin Yoga, My new love

This Monday after the race I tried Yin Yoga for the first time. Here is the Wiki description of Yin Yoga-

Yin yoga- Mostly sitting or lying postures for promoting growth, clearing energetic blockages, and enhancing circulation.

My fitness buddy Nicole invited me to check out a new studio and I figured why not give it a shot. I have been wanting to have more Yoga in my life so this was a great opportunity. Even if it isn’t the kind of yoga that I am used to, I was willing to open my inner yogi and explore what other styles had to offer. Nicole had told me that this class is extremely chill, basically just laying in the various positions so I figured it would be a piece of cake. Well I should have know that no matter what kind of yoga it is, it can always be a little intense.

When we walked into the small studio I was told by the instructor to grab two bolsters ( large pillows with handles), two blankets and two blocks. I set up my area and laid down, ready to stretch out my sore muscles from the race the day before. The instructor then told us that we would be doing so basic cat and cow poses to start off the day before getting into the more “yin” part of the class. When we got into the Yin part that was when we needed to use the bolsters and blocks. The poses were ones that I am familiar with, like child’s pose, forward bend, and pigeon pose; but we were using the props to hold up certain parts of our body so we could sustain the position for 3 minutes. As I was moving through the poses it felt really good but also somewhat intense because of the length of time. The hour and a half somewhat flew by except for the fact that I was hungry and had to pee the last little bit. When I was leaving the class I had a yoga-high that I always love. It made me realize that even though it wasn’t what I would consider a workout, it was still really good for my body and mind. Now that I have tried Yin Yoga I think I will keep doing for a while, it if anything to keep my crazed wedding brain at bay.

Oakland Marathon Recap!

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I didn’t bring a camera and my phone was not cooperating. I have learned my lesson and will bring my camera to every race now!

This was the first time that I was lucky enough to run in the Oakland Running Festival. A few months ago I was searching for how to keep racing in my life, but not have it take over since I do have a wedding coming up on September 14th. I saw that the Oakland Marathon had an option for a 4 person relay race. I asked a few girls to see if they were down to take on the challenge, and the Bay Area Betty’s were formed. The months leading up to the race seemed to fly by and then it was the day before race day and we had to pick up our packets. This was the first race I have ran that was local so it was really nice to just have to drive 5 minutes to go to the Packet Pick-up. Me and my girl Nicole ventured to the Marriot convention center, in the pouring rain, for the Oakland Running Festival Expo. I, of course, didn’t have my bib number printed out so after some searching through my phone found the info so we could grab our bibs. We grabbed our bibs and left the others for the other girls and worked our way through the small expo. This was somewhat of a disappointing expo compared to the ones I have been to in the past. There we not a  lot of vendors and the free stuff was lacking. We left the expo slightly disappointed but excited for the race the next day, hoping that the rain would stop before morning.  Later that day I got a call from one of my teammates, apparently the volunteers at the expo gave the last of our packet to someone else. That means that our first runner didn’t have a bib or the timing chip band to pass as a baton to each leg! After some frustrating phone calls we were able to get all new numbers, but that meant we had to meet up before the race to collect our bibs for the race. 5:30 AM rolled around the next morning pretty quick and I was getting dressed in my pink tutu and hot pink shirt, scarfing down an almond butter and jelly sandwich before picking up Nicole. I grabbed her and we were off to downtown Oakland to meet up with Amelia and Katie. We met them at a closed starbucks,(Lame!) and got our bibs on. The 2nd leg runner had to be at the bus at 7am so she hightailed it to the bus to get to the second leg of the race. I was the 3rd leg of the race and my bus left at 7:30, apparently some people are pretty darn fast for relay’s. I hopped on the bus and met up with my race buddy Carol,(who I know from Lavaman last year). We went over to our start and waited in the cold. Honestly at that point we were just happy it wasn’t raining like the day before. At 9:45 I started getting ready to see that tutu coming down the hill. I saw Amelia running down and then I got in the right spot to grab it. Once I had the timing chip I took off running. I only made it about 10 minutes before I started to get really hot. I took a little walk break to strip off my long sleeve, which was under my short sleeved shirt so I chilling in a sports bra for a quick minute, but was back to running pretty quick. Now I was a little worried about this race before actually running. I have not ran in the past 2 weeks, and even before that I was only running 1-2 times a week and my max was 4 miles. This run was 7.5. I was surprised that I was feeling so good, I made it a little while doing 9:1 intervals (9 minute running, 1 minute walking) then felt good enough to do a mile then walk a minute. As I was booking it down international I met a sweet runner named Priscilla, she was a cute little thing that was running like a beast. We started chatting and decided that we would run the last 4 miles together. As I was running down International Blvd. (one of the ghetto-est roads in Oakland) I couldn’t help but smile. It felt so good to be running a race, seeing people cheering and cheering others on. I was completely glowing from all the energy. I checked my garmin and saw that I was at the 7 mile mark and started looking for where the pass off would be. Then, as I came around the corner I saw Nicole rocking the tutu and I screamed at her “ you better be ready to run!” I handed her the timing chip and reveled in my joy of running 7.5 miles. I found Carol and we headed to West Oakland bart to get back to the start point of the race. At the start I met up with Katie and Amelia,  and I drank my free coors light that the race gave me. I was all smiles and a growling belly at this point. I inhaled half of a luna bar and we found our spot at the finish line to cheer on Nicole. A little while later she came in all her glory, I unfortunately had ran to the bathroom at this point so I missed her crossing the finish. We congratulated each other and grabbed our medals, then we had to split out ways. Nicole and I went and grabbed brunch to fuel after the race. Mimosa’s count as fuel right? Hehe. I went home and passed out, it was a really early morning! Now that the race is over I am thinking about my next race, I am also thinking about doing a full marathon! I would love to do the Oakland half marathon next year! But maybe I will just do the relay again, or who knows maybe even the full.

The Headache from hell!

Yes I have a migraine. And, yes I decided to write about it. Maybe just writing a little about it will send it back to hell where it belongs. I am fairly certain that hell is where it has come from. I am blaming it entirely on stress, bottom line. I think I need more yoga or meditation in my life. Today I sat down and took a few deep breaths and told my brain to calm down. The headache on the other hand decided to rage on. I have an acupuncture appointment for tomorrow morning and I know that is one of the few things that makes me feel better when my head gets angry. Thank you to everyone who has given me tips on what might help. I will now revert back to my spacey day of trying to avoid the sun like a vampire. Yumm, maybe I should go watch The Vampire Diaries again and dream of Stephan. I really need this headache to go away as I have the Hunger Games movie to go see tomorrow night and A marathon relay to conquer on Sunday. More about that on the next episode. Love you lots, kill the Migraine!

A long overdue update

Hey there, Not sure that anyone is actually  reading my blog anymore since I have not updated it in so long but things have just been beyond crazy. With wedding planning and my demanding love for exercise it seems that the blog falls on the wayside. In any case, I figured I can give you all a brief summary of what has been going down in the wonderful world of Aly. Lets begin shall we?

 

Wedding stuff

Well things are moving along quite nicely. Me being the crazy planner that I am I have a ton of the planning stuff done. We have a caterer, my florist is growing my flowers from seed! (Yes I said from seed) My dress is bought and paid for in full. I have an amazing officiant, and the bridesmaids dresses are purchased! I am hopefully going to lock down a DJ this week. And lets not forget that our honeymoon in Bali is already planned and booked! That is my most favorite part of planning by far.

Weight Loss

Well I was floating back and forth with the holidays. But recently I started doing Boot camp and really focusing on my tracking with Weight Watchers. I really like the way that I look and I am trying to focus more on that and my fitness than the number on the scale. It is still hard to see the scale go up but it has been going down the past two weeks! This is a great thing.

 

Emotions
This is an important aspect to this blog as I have in the past gone into my emotions on here. This week has been tough I will be honest. Saturday marked the 6 month mark of my brother’s death and it has been pouring rain all week. Both of these things can make me extra grumpy and emotional I have been doing a good job of keeping it mainly under control, but some days are better than others.

 

Right now I am just super excited to get ready for some st Patrick’s day festivities!

 

I will be  cooking both this

http://www.skinnytaste.com/

 

and This

http://steamykitchen.com/14556-guinness-corned-beef-with-cabbage-recipe.html

This was found on this amazing website http://steamykitchen.com/14556-guinness-corned-beef-with-cabbage-recipe.html

Yum get excited!

 

What are you doing for St Patrick’s Day??

Going in with a Smile

This week I decided to not do a weight review. I honestly didn’t go to my Weight Watchers meeting last night either and I planned to not weigh myself this week. The main reason I am doing this is because of the horrible relationship I have with the scale, and I wanted to go into the wedding dress shopping with a smile. I tend to take the number and twist it in my head no matter what it says. If it says I lost, I give myself more justification to splurge a little. If it goes the other direction and shows a gain, I usually just beat myself up and swear to myself to do better the following week. This then leads into me feeling guilty about everything that goes in my mouth and it is just not a good thing. I am not breaking up with the scale permanently, I really do believe that keeping an eye on your weight is a good way to stay on track with your goals. This new scale might change my mind when I am not doing Weight Watchers

The Zero Scale.

I really like the concept of not seeing an actual number on the scale.

Non-Scale Victory!

I was at the gym last night and have a serious NSV; while I was looking at myself in the mirror doing body pump I noticed some muscle definition in my shoulders and arms. I tried to not stare at myself the whole time but hey when your sexy it’s hard Then as body pump went on I was doing side planks and saw what looked like the starting of a baby 4 pack in my upper abs. I was like whoa! Seriously?? When I went home I realized that it might have just been my angle and the way I was laying but hey I will take anything that looks like abs!

So now I am still beaming over the progress I saw from all my hard work the past few months. I could care less what the evil mean scale says anyways, I am going into wedding dress shopping with a smile

What are your thoughts on the scale?

I personally have always had a love hate relationship with it, as I said above. But I am not sure that I can truly give it up.

Dresses dancing in my head

I am crazy excited to go try on wedding dresses this weekend! I have been staring at this dress shop that is right around the corner from my house for the last 3 years that we have been living there. Naturally this place was going to be my first stop when the time had come for looking at wedding dresses, and the time is Sunday! I keep looking at pictures and thinking about what I might want but honestly I know that I am going to have to see what everything looks like on me. Drooling over pictures can only do so much (but it sure is fun!) In an effort to keep in an actual surprise, I don’t want to put any pictures up of what I am thinking of, you will just have to imagine. But here are some stuff I am definitely not thinking will be an option for my wedding dress.

(Source)

This dress is really just too much! And even thought I am not a virgin I am feeling more white.

(Source)

This one is just crazy. I honestly don’t think it is that bad besides the shoulders.

(Source)

Well there you have it, I had a bit of a hard time finding really bad ones. I honestly don’t think the last ones are too bad but they are somewhat ridiculous. But really who am I to judge what people want to wear on their special day?

Would you wear any of these dresses?

 

New Goals for November

Wow it is hard to believe that October is already over! Especially since I didn’t drink most of the month, I swear it was going to take forever hehe. November is upon us and I am ready  for to take on this month! before we talk to much about goals lets see my super cute Mad Men style Halloween outfit for Saturday’s party.

Aww didn’t I look totally Mad Men style? It took me forever to get my hair even that big, I learned from my researching that for the fabulous “Joan hair” they use false hair, I guess I can’t fake fake hair!

Now that you are all jealous of my first Halloween where I wasn’t super slutty, lets look at how this month went as far as my goals are concerned.

October Goals!

• lose 3-4 pounds- Well since I had that big drop at the beginning of the month I have been able to  keep it off! I was hoping to have a little more but I will take what I got. My final WI for this month is on Thursday so we will see what the scale says. I am hoping for the best, but this weekend was a little crazy with food.
  
• strength train 2 days a week with my running training- I have been doing body pump at my gym 1 time a week and also doing yoga 1 time a week pretty steadily so win!
  
• relax and enjoy life even if it means not losing weight that week- This goal is always something I seem to forget, but I did good this whole month weight wise, and relaxing is something I did without trying much because I was fighting the nasty cold Jason had (that counts right?).
  
• cook 1 dinner a week- Lets just say this happened. I have been cooking a lot more since I am meal planning more.
  
• Don’t worry about what happened yesterday, focus on today- this is something that I will forever have to work on. I stress so easily about everything! I am working on it lets just call it a WIP (work in Progress).
  

Overall I am really impressed with my results. I even had a few people tell me they can tell I am working hard on my fitness and food, and it is showing in my body. I feel really confident this week with my body and what it is capable of. Well since I kicked major ass on my October goals lets shoot for the stars in November.

November Goals

• Lose 2 pounds by December 1st
• Finish my  book (seriously!)
• Make sure to get 2 days of non running in a week (spin/yoga/body pump)
• Meal plan every week

I think these are very attainable goals. Since last month I pretty much completed all my goals with flying colors, I am going to keep on keeping on! This month is going to be nuts with training for the Half Marathon in Vegas and Visiting my sister in Oregon, but I am ready for the challenge. I also joined the Pile on the Miles challenge to help keep me in check. Now if only I could make my legs not ache I would be set! Oh well, At least I already did my run for the day.

Thursday Thoughts…food porn, workouts

Happy Thursday! I love Thursdays, there is only one more day in the week and most people treat Thursday like Friday anyways so there is usually fun things going on. This week has been pretty mellow, just work and working out and trying to kick whatever thing is going on with me. For the last week it seems that every day I feel good in the morning, then in the late afternoon sometime I start feeling like crap. I get a headache and almost get the chills, I feel congested and just really tired. I have tried sleeping extra and not working out but it seems no matter what I do this keeps continuing. Jason has been really sick for the past week so I am convinced that my body is fighting whatever is going on. Bottom line, right now sucks! It is almost Halloween and I feel like dirt. My BFF aka Man of Honor aka Drew has a tendency to get deathly ill for most of the major holidays so maybe he passed the torch to me, and now it is my turn to get sick for the holidays. Either way I want it to stop. I keep looking at food porn on How Sweet It Is and it is not helping. Let me just say I want to devour everything on this blog! Thanks Nicole for introducing me to my latest addiction If this doesn’t look like food porn I don’t know what does.

I digress.

 

Lets take a look at my workouts this week shall we?

 

Monday- rest from still feeling slightly sick…Gross.

Tuesday- Run that felt like death, I somehow managed to squeak out 4 miles in 50 minutes, how that happened I have no idea!

Then on wednesday I decided to try Bikram again. This time it was a much better success I actually went in there somewhat excited to give it another try and hope for the best.

And I left feeling good and revitalized. I swear I looked exactly the same after the class, you don’t need a post bikram picture

Thursday- Well I woke up at 5:25 before my alarm! I decided to sieze the day and start getting dresses for my run this morning. Well as I was naked in the Kitchen trying to get dressed for running an earthquake hit. I quickly ran to the doorway and then realized if I had to bolt it naked It was meant to be. Thank fully I didn’t have to do that and I went ahead on my run. Besides it being cold and extremely dark I had a great 4.5 mile run! (I just purchased a headlamp to defeat one of those things)

Tonight is my WI and Weight Watchers! I am hoping for the best but I swear I never know what tales from the scale I will learn come WI. Have an awesome day and lets hope I shake this disease Jason gave me.

Do you run at ungodly hours in the dark? What is your favorite food porn website?

All Hallow’s Eve, the sober additon

I am sitting here stuffed to the gills with yummy salad. Because the fiance has been utterly sick and defenseless I did what any loving woman would do….not a damn thing as far as grocery shopping and cleaning went. Maybe it was sympathy pains? or maybe I just really wanted to lounge when I was free during this weekend. In any case, today’s lunch was brought to you by Mixt Greens, so good I could eat another mondo salad. Sorry for no picture I seriously devoured the giant thing in less than 4 minutes. Well maybe it took longer but you get the point.

I was thinking of what is a good topic for Monday to talk about and honestly the only thing I can think of is that this is the first Halloween, in a long time, that I am not drinking. No I did not start going to AA or claim myself to be an alcoholic instead I am trying my hardest to lose some weight(especially around the middle) before I try on wedding dresses on November 6th. We have an appointment at a dress shop right around the corner from my house and I am really excited to squeeze into dresses and feel beautiful, at least that is the hope

Back to not drinking, I had my official first day on October 6th, and the dress hunt starts on November 6th, 30 days of trying to not eat all the sweets around me(I have to have a little fun right?) and working my butt off at the gym. So far I am 2 weeks in, and the results?

Well according to my scale at home I lost 1.3 last week, and the week before that I lost 4.2 at Weight Watchers. It will be interesting to see what the scale says at the end of this experience but I can tell that drinking slows down my metabolism. I am sure you have all heard that before from fitness guru’s and the like. I guess being a 26 year old in the SF Bay area I just didn’t want to think about it. But, now that I am seeing and feeling the results I have come to the conclusion of the truth that I already knew; Drinking (can) makes you gain weight.

What am I going to do with this new information? Well I am going to keep my drinking to a minimum. I think that having 3 or 4 drinks a week is pretty decent for most of the time, and the occasional “Drink like a college student” night will just have to be kept occasional. I still have to figure out my Halloween costume and since I won’t be drinking I will be much colder, or at least realize it