A large slice of Pizza Hut pan pizza with pepperoni, sausage, jalapeno and pineapple

I ordered a large pan pizza from Pizza Hut tonight. They currently have a deal where you can get “Any Pizza, Any Size, Any Toppings” for just $10.  So, being the greedy piggies that we are, I ordered a large and piled on the toppings. Tim’s half was covered in mushrooms, diced tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and jalapenos.  I opted for pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, jalapenos and pineapple.

I know I’ve been talking a lot lately about working out and eating healthier. So why on earth did I order a pizza with slices that are about 430 calories each?  It’s because I know myself well enough to say confidently that if I put myself on a “diet” where I ate healthy all the time, I would never stick to it.  Being able to still eat what I want while making healthy choices most of the time is key for me.  With the exception of the 2 slices of pizza tonight, I made otherwise healthy eating choices today.

Additionally, today was a cardio day. On days where I work out intensely, I eat more carbs because I know my body needs the extra fuel. My body will use the energy created from those carbs and it’s not going to get stored as fat.  In the time it took the pizza to be delivered, I did the intense BodyRock.TV 20-minute HIIT cardio routine and a few targeted leg and butt exercises (15 reps, 3 sets of each).  Not only does the HIIT routine get your heart pounding and your sweat dripping, but it really works out your legs, and with the push-ups in round 2, your chest and arms get in on the action.  Tonight was my third time doing the full routine and it’s not getting any easier.  There’s such a great sense of accomplishment after I’m done.  I always begin with “I can’t believe I’m going to do this” and end with “Hell yeah! I just did that!”

After all my workouts, be it the HIIT, bench, callanetics or dance cardio, I make sure to have a glass of protein and simple sugar.  This is usually in the form of non-fat or low-fat chocolate milk or non-fat milk mixed with dextrose (a simple sugar also known as D-glucose or simply glucose).  I do this to quickly raise my blood sugar levels which in turn triggers the release of insulin.  Insulin is important for amino acid uptake and protein synthesis—processes that are essential for muscle growth, repair and recovery.  Furthermore, the insulin helps break down the newly introduce blood sugar to replenish the energy stores of my muscles and liver that may have been exhausted during my workout.  You can find a lot of post-workout shakes and drinks out there that have this same combination of simple carbs and protein, but I’ve read quite a few studies that have shown that chocolate milk is just as effective as the fancy stuff and much cheaper.

Further Reading

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) [Wikipedia]
My 20-Minute HIIT Cardio Routine [YouTube]

Chocolate Milk: The New Sports Drink? [CBS News, 2006]
Got Milk? Try Chocolate After Your Workout [Fitness Magazine Online]
Post-Workout Chocolate Milk [AskMen.com]

After about 3 months of not working out (my longest stretch in years), I am finally exercising regularly again. During my hiatus, I surprisingly lost about 10 lbs. I think this is because I loss muscle mass. I also lost a bit of body fat because I’ve been eating a little bit healthier.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been doing a regular routine and the results are coming fast! It’s mainly because of my body type; I build muscle very easily and quickly. I have pretty muscular legs and I don’t really do anything to work them. In fact, I’m trying to reduce some of their bulk. Getting your calf skin caught in a boot zipper is not fun! Almost all boots are very snug on me.  My Day 1 exercise below works to lengthening my muscles.

My first couple workouts were tough. I had lost endurance. In the past, I would be able to do 8 - 15 reps for some exercises. Now I was struggling to do 5 - 6. However, that didn’t last long and I see my muscle tone coming back.

What I’ve been doing:

• Day 1: Callanetics
  I don’t remember how I first learned about Callanetics. I bought the VHS a few years ago and then last year bought the DVD.  Callanetics is similar to pilates and focuses on micro-movements and deep muscle contractions and super-fast results. It’s designed to tone and lengthen muscles. There’s an emphasis on stretching and avoiding bulk. The exercises are tough at first but get easier as you get stronger (and toner!) The video is a 60-minute full body exercise.

  Favorite line from video: “Turn that pear into a sweet, tight peach.”
  

• Day 2: 20-Min HIIT Cardio, Leg Exercises
  As mentioned earlier, I am doing a 20-minute high intensity interval cardio routine from BodyRock.Tv. It is intense and gets me so very sweaty so very fast. It is extremely challenging and I love it!

  Favorite part: Round 4 of Long Hop Forward, 2 Short Hops Back

  Afterward, I do a series of leg exercises with ankle weights on.  They are basic exercises such as kick backs, squats, and deadlifts. I try to vary it a bit and do some of the exercises from here: Top 10 Best Butt Exercises for a Great Butt Workout and these Glutes, Hips and Thigh Exercises. The latter exercises make use of my exercise ball.

  Favorite leg exercise: Standing Kickbacks

• Day 3: Total Gym, Free Weights and Dance Cardio with Weights
  I have an older version Total Gym machine that works great. I use it to do several upper body exercises such as the row (multiple types), fly, chest press, and lateral raises.  I also alternate working on the machine with working with free weights (10 lbs in each hand) and doing chin-ups and pull-ups. I can only do 2 pull-ups at the most but I’m very happy with that. They are so hard!  I also lie on the bench with free weights and do more chest and arm exercises.

  Favorite exercise: Seated Cable Row

  After the weights, I do 60 minutes of medium-high to high intensity cardio. Basically, I just play dance/clubbin’ music and dance for 60 minutes. I have ankle weights on and dance holding weighted sticks that are about 4 lbs each. I try to vary my dance movements and work my arms and legs at the same time.  Sometimes I will use my twist board.

  Favorite move: Cross Punches with the Sticks

• Day 4: Rest
   
• Repeat

I make sure to get enough protein and to replenish properly after each workout. I’m also taking a daily multivitamin and fish oil.

While I was trying to find the Callanetics DVD on Amazon, I stumbled upon this other DVD. I don’t know anything about it, but I like the look of the model on the cover! I hope to get there myself.

Awesome Legs and Butt

Tonight, we stumbled across a series of exercise videos on YouTube and the author’s website, BodyRock.TV. The workouts were intense 20-minute HIIT routines and boy do they look brutal! She employs a lot of plyometrics and leg work into her exercises. Her sets, or cycles as she calls them, are as many reps as she can do in 20 seconds, rest for 10, more for 20, rest for 10 and so on. She does this for about 4 minutes per exercise times 5 exercises for only 20 minutes of workouts per day! I get tired just watching her.  However, the hard work pays off as evidenced by her incredible body.  I’m going to try them soon.

Below is the 3rd exercise in a routine she calls “Best Cardio.” All 5 exercises are available for free on YouTube.

About a month ago, on impulse, I bought the last Iron Gym on the shelf in Walgreens.  It was $29.99 and I walked home thinking “Man, did I just throw away my money?”

I have a history of impulsive buying, especially of makeup, shoes, and home exercise equipment.  I don’t often wear makeup, prefer to sport my sneakers everywhere, and as for my exercise equipment, well, they’ve mostly been gathering dust.

I have a treadmill; it was a great buy for $30 from Out of the Closet despite the fact that it maxes out at 5.5 MPH.  It is now a rack for my purses.  I have a set of 10-pound dumbbells that I got from Target that I hardly use, a jump rope I have never used, a twist board that I feel silly using, a Swiss ball that just sits there, and a set of the Perfect Pushups that I try to use but just can’t.  So of course, with my track history, it only made sense that I buy the next trendy thing: the Iron Gym.

If you haven’t seen the commercials, the Iron Gym is a contraption that claims to turn any doorway into your own home pull-up bar.  They call it a “gym” because you’re also supposed to be able to use the thing down on the floor to do dips, push-ups and ab crunches, but honestly, it’s just silly to use it for that.  It was designed for one thing and some marketing guy came along and thought it would be lucrative to pitch it as a multi-tasking piece of equipment.  I have no desire to use it for anything else but push-ups/chin-ups, and to my pleasant surprise, it’s great for that.

First things first: set up and assembly.  It wasn’t until I got it home that I saw the box said it was for doorways 24″ - 32″ wide.  I measured one of my doorways and it was nearly 35″ wide.  Uh-oh!  Then I noticed an even bigger problem: the doorway I wanted to use it on goes all the way up to the ceiling.  I guess I wasn’t very observant during the commercials and didn’t realize how the Iron Gym works: part of the Iron Gym needs to rest on top of the molding/frame at the top of your doorway.  If your doorway goes all the way up to the ceiling, or has no frame around it, you can’t install the Iron Gym there.  There needs to be several inches between your ceiling and the top of your door’s frame for the Iron Gym bar.  Check out the picture below:

The Iron Gym bar needs a frame to rest on.

As you can tell from the picture, it fit on my bathroom door despite it being wider than 32″.  You can see behind it a type of door that would not work.   That door goes all the way up to the ceiling so the Iron Gym bar would not have any room on top of it.  What this means,  though, is that in the above picture, on the door frame that the Iron Gym is on, the other side of the door also goes all the way up to the ceiling (my ceiling is higher inside the bathroom than it s outside).

The other side of my Iron Gym setup has a much lower ceiling than the other side

I would have prefered to install it the other way around, but obviously this isn’t possible, not only because of the lack of room above the door frame but also because the actual door itself would be in the way.  With the above pictured setup, I was worried about not having any room to do a pull-up, but once I actually did one I realized that you don’t need much room on top unless you have a gigantic head; you don’t go above the bar much higher than your neck.  Also important to note from the above picture is that you can’t have a very wide door or else the edges of the lower bar will have nothing to lean against for support.

Okay, now that the technical details are out of the way, the Iron Gym in my opinion is great!  Actually, I should say in my experience because I have been using it every day.  It feels very secure and safe and lets me do pull-ups and chin-ups any time I want in the comfort of my home.  Even though I do go to the gym, I don’t like doing pull-ups there.  The main reason is that I haven’t been very good at pull-ups and have been too self-conscious to be struggling through 2 pull-ups in front of others.  However, all that is changing!  On a good day (plenty of rest, water, light meals), I can do 10 reps before fatigue!  This is awesome considering many people can’t even do 1 pull-up, and most people can’t get beyond 4.  On a normal day, I can do between 5 - 8 per rep.  What’s great about the Iron Gym is that, simply because it’s there, I often just do a pull-up or 2 whenever I walk into or out of the bathroom.  Pull-ups are really fun to do and give a great sense of accomplishment when you’re able to pull yourself up and lower yourself back down; it’s almost like an instant high.  Plus, they are one of the best exercises you can do.  It’s a really powerful move that works your entire upper body, including your abs.

Since I’ve gotten the Iron Gym, my upper body strength has obviously increased by the numbers of reps I can do.  Also, my torso is trimmer and my abs are more defined.  I want to be able to do 20 reps in a set; this is a lofty goal but hopefully with the help of the 20 Pull-up Program I’ll be able to do this in 8 weeks.  I just need to pick a day to start Day 1!

P.S. Tim’s been using it too, more intensely than I have and there’s been a definite change in his physique in less than a month, namely, his upper back and abs are getting really cut!  If you really want a great piece of home exercise equipment that really works, I highly recommend getting the Iron Gym.  Even though it’s nearly thirty bucks, I do think it’s worth it, however, if you can’t even do 1 pull-up, you need to build up your upper body strength or this will be a waste.  Check out this link for ways to build your strength up so you can do pull-ups.  When you’re ready, can you find the Iron Gym at a number of places like Target, Walgreens, and Amazon.

An oldie but a goodie

A few years ago, and I don’t remember how I came upon it, I ordered a VHS tape of an old exercise routine created in the 80s.

Callanetics is a form of deep-muscle exercise created by (and named after) Callan Pinckney.  It’s similar to pilates, I would say.

The exercises are simple in that you can do it on your living room floor and that you don’t need anything special besides a chair or a coffee table. However, they are hard. I consider myself in pretty good shape and I struggle through many of the exercises.

The reason why callanetics is very challenging is that it works muscles you normally don’t use very often.  You’re forced to target then, and then work then again and again for 50 to 100 reps! Now, the reps are very tiny, smooth movements and it all seems rather easy until you actually try it.

For example, one of their warm-up exercises works your arms, especially your tricep.  Stand with your feet about a foot apart and hold your arms out, palms down, so that you form a T shape. Twist your arms around by moving your thumb down and then around so that your palms now face up.  Then move your arms together behind you, keeping them straight, as if you were trying to touch your thumbs together behind your back.  Your palms should still be facing the ceiling.  Get your thumbs as close as you can, and then move about a 1/2 inch closer, then back apart.  Repeat 50 times, keeping your arms held as straight and high as possible.  Believe me, you will definitely feel the burn and your arms will be sore tomorrow!

After years of not doing the Callanetics (and never being consistent with it in the first place), I got the DVD off eBay about a month ago (Amazon has it but eBay was cheaper).  Last night, I put it in and went through the whole routine.  Now, I have been going to the gym pretty much every weekday, hitting the weight machines and sometimes also doing some cardio on the stepmill.  Never, never, have I been this sore from that.  My arms, thighs, upper back, and legs are aching.  Not in a bad way though; it’s telling me that I definitely reached in and worked those muscles yesterday!

I’m looking forward to completing the “10 hours” of workouts and seeing what kind of results I get.

It’s blazing hot today.  I usually love walking in the sun, but I had to stick to the shade while walking the dogs this morning.

Yes, I, Vuthy, was up early on a Saturday morning and walked the dogs to boot!

It’s a gorgeous day. Bright, clear blue skies brushed with tall green palms.  It is hot, about 80 right now, and it will only get hotter.  I’m thinking about walking down Hollywood Blvd and going to the gym, but I gave in this morning and took my allergy meds. I couldn’t stop sneezing and my nose was runny yet stuffy at the same time. I kept waking up at night just to blow my nose. Argh.

So now I’m feeling groggy and tired.  I could easily lie down right now and fall into a deep sleep for the next couple hours, but I’m fighting it. This day is amazing and I should be awake to enjoy it. I’m going to force myself to get ready for the gym now and then walk there. It’s a good 40-minute walk along Hollywood Blvd, which is always an interesting and enjoyable trip. Ugh, it took me a couple minutes to write that last sentence because I just started to feel light headed and my eyelids feel real heavy now.

Don’t lie down! Don’t!

Gonna make a cup of coffee while I gather my gym stuff. Let’s get at it!