Burn Calories By Sitting On a Chair? I'll Take It!

Or at least that's what it sounded like. The ghetto gym I just joined advertised Zumba Sentao on Wednesday evenings. When I asked what that meant, I was told it's Zumba using a chair. Well hey, I was all over that! I have something to sit and lean on (translation:exercise without putting in too much effort). I decided to give it a try last night.

The chair ended up being my worst enemy. We did push ups using it, jumped up and down on it, squatted with it, crunches on it, and I don't even remember what else. By the end of the class my thighs were cramping and my arms were trembling! This morning when I woke up I have pain in muscles I never thought existed. I guess that means it worked, so that's a good thing.

Luckily this chair Zumba is only once a week so I have a chance to recover before my next hellish session. Regular Zumba is tonight and I think I might actually go. I've done regular Zumba enough to know where I can slack off and get away with it. Much more my speed....

Want to check it out for yourself? This is what it's all about!

http://www.zumba.com/sentao

Backyard Zumba

As I pop leftover Hershey's candy coated chocolate eggs into my mouth one after the other, I am writing to tell you how excited I am that a fitness center just opened up practically in my back yard. That wouldn't be enough to get me to join, but I saw that they have Zumba and Yoga classes (pretty much the only forms of exercise I will even consider doing) in the evenings! That means I can come home from work, let the dogs out, change into my workout gear, then take a 2 second drive (I'd walk but it's not though the best of neighborhoods) to get to my workout destination. I believe it was divine intervention that caused this to happen...since I have been whining about how fat I am and how much I want to find a convenient, affordable place to do Zumba. Ask and you shall receive, I guess!

I stopped by the place last night and signed up. Yes, I gave them my debit card as payment, and they will be automatically be taking $20 out of my account every month. Then they tell me that there is an annual $59 fee, but I can live with that too. The way I see it, I haven't found anywhere in the Fresno area where I can take a Zumba class for less than $8 each time, and some places are even more than that! So with the annual fee I'm paying about $25/month for this place, so if I go to Zumba 5 times every month it will be worth it. I was hoping to go more like 15 times a month (stop laughing, I'm serious), so that comes out to less than $2 a class! How can I beat that?

Sadly, when I posted on Facebook about my exciting new find, I got all kinds of warnings from other people who have been members of this gym. It's filthy, smells like BO, half the machines are broken and it's impossible to break your contract. Hmm. Glad I did my research before signing up. I did check the BBB and there were only 64 complaints against the place and they had an F rating. F is for fantastic, isn't it?

The good news is that I think I would have still done it had I known about all these bad reviews. I don't really care about the machines, I'll hardly ever use them. I just want a place where I can go take my classes that's cheap and isn't further than 200 yards from my house. Because if it was, I'd never go.

So wish me luck. I start tonight! Zumba Sentao....which apparently is Zumba using a chair. I have a feeling I'm not coordinated enough for this but I'll give it a shot!

Easter Calories

Happy Easter! I have been craving Peeps and Cadbury Eggs and Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs all day, but luckily I didn't have any on hand. I ended up melting some chocolate chips and dipping fresh strawberries into them which was a relatively satisfying alternative. Too bad my choices weren't that great the rest of the weekend....

It started on Friday when I had the bright idea to bring home Chinese food. I went to this new place and ordered fried rice and lemon chicken. I had never had Chinese lemon chicken before and it sounded like it might be healthy. It was not. Deep fried delicious chunks of chicken breast covered in a sweet lemony sauce....one of the best things I've eaten in a long time but definitely not healthy. It still wasn't healthy when I ate leftovers for lunch the next day.

Then, yesterday I was planning on staying home and eating some of the homemade turkey cabbage rolls I made earlier in the week, but my BFF ended up coming over and we went for a power walk. Sounds great, right? Well we armed ourselves with marshmallow vodka mixed with diet coke in Del Taco cups. It was a great walk! But by the time we got back my self control was completely gone and I was hungry. Cabbage rolls were DEFINITELY not happening....Domino's was calling my name. So I called them back and ordered pizza and cheesy bread. Ate quite a bit of it too!

I woke up this morning with a stomach ache, horrible heartburn, and absolutely no energy whatsoever. There's no doubt in my mind that the marshmallow vodka had a little to do with it, but by the time I went to bed last night the massive quantity of pizza I consumed soaked up all the vodka and just left me feeling bloated and sleepy.

I know I've said this before, but I'm really considering cutting out the booze. I can have a sip of wine and I lose all control over food consumption. If I ditched the alcohol, not only would I be saving those calories, I'd also be avoiding the bad food choices. Plus I wouldn't feel like a gigantic piece of poop the next day. It seems like an obvious choice to me.

I'm glad I'm not a pothead. I can't even imagine the crap I would eat if I were one.

Can you believe I'm considering heating up leftover Domino's right now? I need help! LOL

Alive and Well...

I have really been slacking on my blog posts. In my defense I have been traveling quite a bit for work. In fact, I've only been home for 3 days out of the last 3 weeks.

It's tough trying to keep on track with eating well when traveling. People want to go out to fancy restaurants for every meal and it is really hard trying to order the broiled fish and vegetables when the choice right next to it on the menu is steak with melted butter, baked potato and mac and cheese. I have spent most of the time I've been away in Texas, and they don't do anything small there. I had a tex-mex dinner last night that probably consisted of about 3000 calories if you add on the blackberry pomegranate mojito I had along with it. But man, was it good!

I have brought my workout clothes and sneakers with me on each and every trip, because most hotels have a nice fitness room. So far I've gone zero times. I'm quite proud of that. Luckily some of what I have to do during these trips involves a lot of walking and manual labor so I'm hoping I've been burning at least some calories. I am afraid to step on the scale when I get back though.

I have managed to make a few healthy choices. This morning I opted for the egg white omelet with spinach, mushrooms and turkey sausage. They gave me a choice between fruit and potatoes for my side and I chose fruit, but wouldn't you know it? When they brought me my plate it had both potatoes AND fruit. The universe is trying to sabotage my program. I didn't eat all of the potatoes though and was quite full from my omelet and fruit. I even ate the asparagus.

So the day is starting out well. Let's hope it lasts through dinner.

New Way to Rationalize Bad Food Choices!

I was doing so well yesterday....Ate healthy, exercised....even cooked a low fat, healthy meal for dinner. While I was cooking I decided to have a glass of wine (I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that even though I came to the conclusion weeks ago that one glass of wine every day is a health food and I was going to start having one every day, I haven't been living up to that promise. I can't remember to do it most of the time, plus I usually want to spend those calories on something else). So I have the glass of wine and start feeling fantastic. So I had another. This is all on a practically empty stomach so it's basically going right to my head.

Shortly thereafter, my best friend and worst influence says she's going to stop by. I said, we should get some cheeeeesecake. We live about a mile away from the Cheesecake Factory and not a day goes by where I don't think about indulging in a slice or two. Instead of trying to set me straight, she says YES! Let's do it! So I go put some pants on and a few minutes later we are looking at the ever-so-extensive menu.

I figure that since I ate my dinner at home, having just cheesecake won't be so bad. And another glass of wine. Besides, I have PMS and deserve some cheesecake. Kind of like a reward for having to go through that shit every month. If you eat something as a reward, it doesn't have any calories, right?

While we're perusing the menu, they bring us a basket of warm, fresh bread with butter. I polished off most of the loaf of sourdough while trying to figure out what kind of dessert I'm going to have. I'm off to a great start.

I decide on some crazy peanut butter cup, chocolate cake and cheesy goodness concoction with a side of hot fudge. Then aforementioned friend orders the diet plain cheesecake with fresh strawberries on the side. Give me a break, dude. Takes about two bites and boxes up the rest. Whatev.

Meanwhile, I devour about 3/4 of my piece before I start feeling like I'm going to explode. I didn't even take home the rest in a box. I guess that's one little silver lining in this whole big gigantic black cloud I have gotten myself into. Yes, I'm grasping for straws.

I come home and calculate the calories I've consumed on My Fitness Pal and as usually am ashamed of myself. I did learn a lesson, though. No matter how good any of the hundreds of cheesecake choices sound, your best bet is to always go for the original, plain with a side of hot fudge. I've been disappointed each and every time I've strayed. I mean, if you're going to eat a 900 calorie piece of cake, make sure it's something you can't live without.

Vintage Weight Lifting.

Hey Folks....I'm still at it! My New Year's Resolution is still usually the first thing on my mind and I'm trying to make smart choices. I've been going on walks around the block where I work at lunchtime, which has been great lately because the weather is amazing. The surrounding area is industrial and therefore isn't the greatest scenery for sightseeing and sometimes even gets a little creepy, especially when I have to walk back on the main road. I really hate that part. So today I decided to take a different route, which was actually longer than my usual one. Not only does that mean I don't have to deal with the creepy part, but I also burn more calories!

I also stayed up late last night and hard boiled some eggs to make egg salad to bring for lunch. Instead of drowning it in mayo, I only used a little squirt and supplemented the rest with extra mustard and dill pickle relish. And instead of eating it on bread, I used it as a dip for water crackers. It was zesty and tasty and low calorie and somewhat lower fat and full of protein. I had some Greek yogurt and an apple for dessert and I'm stuffed. AND I still have more than 1000 calories to play around with for the day.

I'm planning on taking my mid-afternoon break and heading over to the fitness center to pump some iron. We'll see how that goes.

I Fell Off The Wagon.

"Even if a person is getting the daily-recommended exercise of 30-60 minutes, being inactive the rest the day is still a health risk. The best strategy is to alternate between sitting and standing throughout the day."

I read this lovely little piece of advice in a wellness newsletter that is sent out by my place of employment. Talk about a buzz kill! Even if I was able to get my lazy ass to exercise 30 to 60 minutes EVERY day (right now I'm shooting for ONE day and thought I was doing well), I still wouldn't be healthy? Come on! That's just a mean thing to say.

They are trying to tell me that I should get up and wander around to the printer (whether I printed anything or not, and considering we're all about saving the environment, printing is discouraged which makes this even more ridiculous) every few minutes. Somehow I think that might put a damper on my productivity level and might even be frowned upon if my boss was to catch me walking aimlessly around for no good reason. Well, it is for a good reason but I have a feeling he might not buy it.

But seriously....talk about making people want to give up! Realistically, I can't get 30-60 minutes of exercise AND walk around for half my work hours. So why even bother?

In other news...I was invited to go to Red Robin for dinner. I perused the menu online so I could make sure only to order something with a decent amount of calories in it. I decided on the Avocado Cobb salad, which would have given me about 400 extra calories to have a few fries dipped in ranch. Seriously, if you're not going to eat at least a few of those why bother going to RR?

Once I got there, I had the bright idea to order the California chicken sandwich instead. I figured it was a grilled chicken breast so how bad could it be? Sadly, when it came it was served on grilled butter bun and was dripping with mayo. Had I been paying attention, I would have ordered the whole wheat, non butter bun and no mayo. But I wasn't. And I ate the whole thing, along with more than 400 calories worth of fries and ranch.

So later I did what anyone else would do when feeling guilty about over consuming tons of greasy, fatty food. I agreed to split a Mountain Mudd Pie for dessert. OMG was it good. I felt less guilty about eating this than I did all those fries and buttered buns.

It appears that I may have fallen off the wagon. That's okay...I have all weekend to get myself back on it.