Getting tired

It's really hard to stick to a diet, workout plan and not drink at the same time.

I'm doing good on all fronts, but I'm starting to get tired.

I do the gym 6 days a week.
I'm doing the diet everyday of the week.
I have kids everyday.
Take care of a little baby mon-fri.
Practice twice a week.
Work on the weekends.

Man is it catching up with me! This is the hard part of the beginning. My body is trying to hold on to the last of the pudge and isn't used to being used on a regular basis.

But it's coming along. In another few weeks I won't be so tired. And hopefully the crazy sugar cravings will calm down too.

And on top of it all, the whole not drinking thing sucks! Having an occasional drink at the end of a hard day was a nice treat. But hoping to not feel it the next day or affect my workout was really too much to ask.

I suppose if I was rich enough I could have a glass of wine or two at the end of the day. But as we're poor people it's ghetto liquor around here. And nothing good can ever come of any alcohol that comes in a plastic value size.

Carbs freakin everywhere!

Well at least I've been good about working out.

The gym and me have been pretty cozy of late. It makes skating sooo much easier.
The candy, cookies and chocolate have been cozy of late too. Not so good for the skating.

It's not like I was expecting to be perfect over christmas. And they say a break now and then is a good idea. I don't think a sugar binging 5 day break is what they were thinking. But I can't really change that now.

So my punishment for the past transgressions come in the form of negative carbs and coffee.
All the next five days I will go pretty much carb free in hopes of killing off the 3 pound gain.

Coffee may be my only solace.

Christmas Eve Eve skating!

On a random chance I got to go to the adult skate in LBS last night.
I missed practice due to a late arriving hubby, but he was home in perfect time for that lovely flat roller rink.

It was really nice to get out and use my skates, see some friends and in general socialize. I do miss skating at LBS. They have a really nice, if sometimes candy strewn, floor and a good open space.

I spent most of it trying to get a good workout in. I'm finding that carrying less weight makes it much harder to work up a sweat. The speed skate took care of that.

I really need to spend more time on skates at the faster speed as my crossovers are wobbly when I get going. And I am still the slowest person on the speed skate, no surprise there.

But my other skills are good, crossovers, drunken sailors, and I am definitely seeing improvement in my transitions.

I'd like to spend an entire skate session skating backwards. It's really the only way to get backwards skating down. A lap or two here and there just does not cut it.

I'm really trying to push myself to do transitions at a faster pace and I think I did that last night. It of course wasn't super fast, but it was better. I haven't had as much regular skating since we went banked and I would like to change that.

Anyways it was a very happy Christmas eve eve.

Happy Holidays!

Merry mimosa christmas!

Well mimosas are great and all, but I think two days of merry mimosa reveling has sealed the decision for me. I'm going to stop drinking.

I really don't drink much or very often, so it's not an "issue" decision. But the last two days I have been wanting to go to the gym and get a good workout in, which I have gone, but it's a lot harder with a hangover.

With derby I have found new focus and resolve to do and have the life I have always dreamed of and one of those dreams is getting my body running really well. Alcohol doesn't really hinder that, but it in no way helps.

I'm missing skate practice tonight for christmas stuff, which is fine. But when the holiday is over I want to kick into high gear and get my body into serious shape. And having the alcohol decision already made for me just makes it that much easier.

Besides, I am easily much more fun without it!

When the bitches get you down.

And bitches are both guys and girls.

You have to remember a few things.

Why are you here? To be someone's best friend or to skate!
Do you love derby or just socializing.
Everyone else is just as much unaware of how they affect others, or they really are just bitches.

You didn't spend all your time and energy to become the prom queen. You spent it to skate, to feel physically good, to see derby, to be derby, to learn the rules and apply them. There are so many people that love you, you just have to trust in it and forget the rest.

On the track!

Well not the banked track, well yes that too, but that's not what I'm talking about right now.

So I am a cyclical workout/health person. I get into the exercise thing and usually have about 3-4 months of serious intensive energy before I get bored and a little lazy.

Well this is the first week of being back on "the track" and I am about as pumped and crazy as I can get.

I came home from practice last night and was practically boiling over with excitement. All I wanted to do was get back on the track and skate skate skate!

I worked out hard again today doing weights. I upped a few weights and definitely increased the repetitions. And now I am reveling in the crazy energy that makes me want to work out more!

Things that are cool. I can cross my legs easily now. When I use the stationary bike I no longer hit my beer gut with my knees. I have tons more energy. And it's a hell of a lot easier doing everything without the extra weight!

So for the next few weeks I've decided to hardcore it, Christmas not included, diet wise. I have the last 20-30 to go and I want to get it done with. While I would be happy if I didn't lose anything and replaced it all with muscle, sadly it doesn't always work out that way.

SO hard core time again!

Ref Practice!

Don Juan is a wonderful ref from Rat City who has kindly volunteered to do some coaching for our ref group.

He led through a bunch of drills which I am still really working on. I can skate and I can even skate "ok" but I still have a long way to go before I am a competent skating ref.

We also did a bunch of laps on the banked track. This is what is so cool about our practices. We get the track all to ourselves.

So up until now I have probably only skated a dozen laps on the track. It's weird, I didn't know how to stop or get off, and I was kind of low energy.

Well tonight things were great! I skated on the track for about 20 laps and all of sudden it started to feel really good! I was able to crossovers in the straight aways, no corners yet though. And skating stop feeling weird and got a lot faster. I loved it!

Oh getting off is easy now too. Yeah banked track!

Getting Serious

So I had a real long hiatus with all the organizing and track work.

I used this time to do the crazy lazy ninja diet. Which worked really well in terms of losing the gut, but did little for my strength and endurance. But honestly, building up muscles is a cake walk in comparison to losing 2 children's worth of weight.

Anyways I've been waiting to get to near the end of my shrinking journey to start back up serious working out, cause let's face it, losing weight is hard enough as it is. That and I am a lazy fuck sometimes.

But once I get back on the work out bandwagon things tend to go pretty quickly. I've been pretty fit in my life, while always packing a bit extra, and tend to shape up easily.

This week, after starting up part time work (yeah!), I was able to rejoin the gym. This is extremely important for me as the fact that they have 90 minutes of free daycare is pretty much the only way I get to work out often.

So I'm definitely a bit out of shape, but not that bad. I did weights the first day and they were hard. I didn't push quite as hard as I could, but whatever.

It was the next day that things started to pick up. I did a cardio day, and while my lungs hurt from the exertion, my muscles had no problem with it. This is cool because the lung thing only lasts a week or so.

And today I did a heavy weights day. I've been reading a vegan body builders website and the tips for muscle building are really great. Basically you push as hard as you can, every time. And do 4-5 reps instead of 2-3.

What I found was that the first rep was really hard. Then after 20 sec or so of rest the next two reps were easier. Then the 4th was usually the most I could do. I did 4 on almost all of them, and 3 on a few. I'm a lot stronger than I thought I would be.

And everything is a lot easier when you're carrying 80 less pounds.

The big day!

It happened! We had our bout!

So we played in the Everett Comcast Arena. Which we only took up half the stands, but we filled them up pretty well.

It was an amazing day for our league. There has been a huge amount of work to get us to where we're at. We raised money to build a track and rent a warehouse. We rehabbed the warehouse and then started building.

In a little more than two years we made it to our first real banked bout and played like champs!

My ref crew worked extremely well together and even with a little bit of nerves we pulled it off.


I got to back up the Head Ref by taking care of rules questions. We had a ton of penalty challenges and I think I did very well answering and interpreting rules. It was actually my favorite part of the game!

The game ran, the teams rocked it and suddenly it was over. We did it and did it well.

Nuts are bullshit

Sorry but it's total bull.

Snack on a hand full of nuts! They are good for you!

Nobody mentions the fact that like 8 almonds is a 100 calories. Which doesn't seem so bad, but who the hell eats 8 almonds?!

A cup, which is like one big handful or two medium handfuls, is 800 calories!
I don't care how good it is for you, 800 calories of anything that fits in my hand is total bullshit.