Devin did another fitness assessment of me and in four months I have:

• lost 8 pounds
• lost about 2.19% body fat
• lost centimeters around my arms, waist, hips and legs

This is the reason I like tracking. I get to see the results. Can I tell I’ve lost weight and body fat? Yes. I have a pair of work pants that drag on the ground when I walk because I’ve lost so much around my waist and hips, but to see the actual numbers is very satisfying. I can see where I’ve made progress and specifically how much progress I’ve made.

Now in the few weeks left before the wedding I have to find a way to eat healthy and keep up with at least a few workouts a week.  I gained 10 pounds in a month in the past, and if I’m not careful I could do it again and lose all the work I’ve put in for the big day.

Any other brides out there? How are you doing with being healthy before the big day?

The highlights:

12 minute run: 1.66 miles (average speed was 8.3) last fit test: 1.57 miles/7.9 speed, first ever fit test: 0.89 miles/4.5 speed
Lat pull down: 50 pound weight, 11.5 reps, last fit test: 50 pounds/12 reps, first ever fit test: 42.5 pounds/8 reps
Squats: 25 pound weight/40 reps, last fit test: 25 pound weight/30 reps, first fit test 20 pound weight/15 reps
Bench Press: 65 pound weight/17 reps, last fit test: 65 pound weight/14 reps, first fit test: 65 pound weight, 12 reps
Sit ups: 41 in 1 minute, last fit test: 42 in 1 minute, first fit test: 28 in one minute

So I improved on my run, squats, bench press, weight, measurements and bodyfat %. I stayed pretty much the same on the lat pull down and did one less sit up. I can’t compare the push ups because on my previous tests I did “girl push-ups” and this time we switched it up to doing them on a bar which is significantly more difficult, so while the reps went down the difficulty factor went way up.

I was surprised not to improve on the lat pull downs – with all the work I’ve been doing on pull-ups I thought that would be better (although Devin tells me my FORM was better so I suppose that’s something anyway). The sit-ups were also a surprise. I’ve been doing sit-ups on an incline bench while holding a 20 pound weight so I thought FOR SURE regular sit-ups would have improved. Not so much. hmmmm.

As for the run, it improved but I think I can do better. I ran as hard as I could on that day, at that time, but I think on another day I could have pushed it harder. Something to aim for next time!

Overall I’m quite pleased with the results and the benchmarks I now have set.

Tonight it’s off for an upper body workout!

Mom and I hit the treadmills for a warm-up – she doing jogging and incline walking and me doing an interval run. Mom is as competitive as me so we were having fun checking out each others speed. After my warm-up I did 30 second intervals at 8.0, 8.5, 9.0, 9.5, 10.0, 10.0 and 10.0. It felt pretty good today. The 30 second interval is doable – will have to see how good it feels when I lengthen them.

After the warm up it was straight into weights. We started with some wood chopper squats, then some lunge curls, squat presses and all sorts of other good stuff. Mom is a trooper – she was doing great with all of the exercises Devin threw at us and had a really great workout.

In between some of the other workouts I did a set of chest presses and I was TERRIBLE. I could barely get 10 reps out at the weight I was lifting at the last fitness test – and then I had 26 reps!! Same problem with the lat pull downs.

This of course worried me – I don’t want to be losing strength. Devin and I talked about why…could be that I don’t eat enough (and truthfully I probably don’t eat enough for training), could be that we haven’t done those particular exercises for several weeks. Either way I have my work cut out for me. I built up some decent muscle last winter so this winter will be building time again.

One thing about focusing on weight loss is that it’s really hard to find that balance between how much to eat to lose weight and eating enough to fuel my workouts. I’m going to keep a food diary for awhile so we can review the balance.

Today’s workout was a good eye-opener on what I need to work on. It felt great and I know I’ll be the “good” kind of sore tomorrow.

Having Mom there was a blast and great motivation too – I want to be working out that hard when I’m her age! Hopefully it won’t be the last session we do together.

One comment I frequently get is “I could never run as long as you do” and “I don’t have the energy to workout like that”. Not surprising if you’re just starting out – when I first started I couldn’t do it either! So that prompted me to take a look back at some of my own journal entries from when I first started working out. I started seriously working out (with a trainer) in May, 2008 and my first fitness test wasn’t until December, 2008. Even with 8 months of workouts behind me my results were just so-so. The fitness test started with a 12 minute run and I honestly didn’t think that I’d be able to get through the entire 12 minutes without stopping. My pace was 4.5 on the treadmill and even still it took some serious effort. 1 minute of skipping almost did me in and I only managed 67 skips. If you had asked me to go outside and run 5K I couldn’t have done it without taking walk breaks.

It was the fitness test that pushed me into high gear (comes from being a competitive person!) Devin put together a training program for me to follow weekly and I really started to train. Three months later when I did my next fitness test I had some great improvements – my 12 minute run had gone from a pace of 4.5 to 6.7, my 1 minute of skipping had gone from 67 to 148, my body fat percentage dropped by 4% and I had lost 30 pounds, my strength had also improved significantly. Seeing those results kept my focus strong and 3 months later when we tested again I saw similar improvements.

Looking back at how I felt after workouts is an eye-opener as well. I had trouble walking up stairs for 2 days after my first training session and there were days when I simply didn’t think I could do it. Pushing through was absolutely worth it and now my workouts are my favourite part of my day. So if you’re just starting out on a workout program keep in mind that you have to start slow and you aren’t going to see immediate results – but if you keep at it over a few months you’ll start to see some fantastic improvements!