Everything in Moderation

That is what my Trainer/Bootcamp leader/Yeller told me on Friday.

I talked with him after class, expressing my growing concerns about my growing waistline.

After hearing that I had lost 18 pounds last year by NOT excercising and by going on the South Beach Diet, he informed me that I most likely lost a bit of fat and a lot of muscle. By doing so, I slowed my metabolism and all the weight I have gained back (about 10 in total) has been in the form of fat.

Now my body is freaking out because I truly am packing on the muscle. I’m just not losing fat at the same rate, therefore I am getting bigger and gaining more weight. It will, however, eventually start to budge.

He told me to keep working out, perhaps try fitting in more if I can and to make sure I am eating the right things. Good carbs, fats and protein, basically The Zone diet. Everything in moderation and often.

I’m not a moderate person by nature, I am more an all or nothing type of gal.

So, I wonder if this will be the downfall of my existence. Yesterday, I came across my old “teacher, mother, secret lover:”

TIM TAMS!

For those of you unlucky enough to never have been to New Zealand or Australia, Tim Tams are like the national food of yummyness.

These chocolatey biscuits (a lighter version of the UK’s Penguins) are part and parcel of what lead to my weight gain when I got back from my first trip Downunder. And probably the second trip too.

I went nuts for these things. I ate them with coffee, slurping the liquid through the bitten off ends of the biscuit. I ate them in the morning and at night. I even started the “Tim Tam Diet” (patent pending) in which I allocated one box of Tim Tams to eat per day. The downside of the diet is that you are only allowed to eat the one box and nothing else. But I found that if you are really craving those highly caloric brown beauties that the best thing to do is eat the whole pack until you are so sick of them that you wont want one for at least a month.

Tim Tams haven’t been available in Canada…until now.

I was grocery shopping with Ross at the President’s Choice Superstore yesterday when low and behold I came across a huge Tim Tam display.

I think a few tears came to my eyes. I immediately cried out a bunch of garbled, happy obscenities and lunged at the packages of biscuits.

Thankfully, my trainer/bootcamp leader/yeller’s words resounded in my head, “Everything in moderation.’

And I only grabbed two packs.

I could barely wait until I was in the car to munch down one.

And then two (biscuits, not packages).

And then I felt sick. Huzzah.

Turns out that the Tim Tams didn’t really taste as good as I had remembered. Maybe you have to be on foreign soil to truly enjoy them? Regardless, it provided me with a nice flashback to my years in OZ/NZ.

Now all I need is Kylie Minogue playing on rotation with Madison Avenue and a steeming cup of Milo.

No pain no gain? You got that right.

So, I've been doing Cardio Core Bootcamp for a week now. I've realized there is now a routine to things...

On Monday we have Perky Instructor who shouts "Go, go, go!" and does false counts like:
"OK, three more seconds of jumping jacks... Three.... Two.... One.... One.... One.... One.... One... One."
She likes to work our legs until we puke (as I almost did during class on Monday - I actually had to excuse myself for a moment. Something about lactic acid makes us nauseous, I dunno). But she's sweet, if not a bit too energetic. I want to discover her secret.

On Wednesday we have Pushy Instructor who will shove you into the ground in order to demonstrate a move and doesn't take well to people who go at things half-way. She is unsympathetic and out to cause as much pain as possible. I get her tommorow. Yay.

On Friday we have Cool Instructor. He is a guy. He wants us to do kickboxing. We spend Fridays pretending to ram people's heads into our knees. He mixes stern military commands ("Suck it up, Ladies!!!") with positive reinforcement ("You guys are doing so awesome!"). He is my favourite so far.

I'm proud of myself for lasting a week and I do enjoy the endorphine high I get afterwards as I walk home through the cool, dark streets of the downtown core. But when I am in it, it is the toughest thing. It is pure hell. If I don't feel like puking, I feel like fainting and if I don't feel like fainting, I feel like I will actually collapse. It's never been a case of, "Oh I don't want to continue because I'm too lazy" (which, I admit, is what I used to say in the past), but it is instead one of "I can't continue because my leg won't physically move." It's tough and especially tough for someone who has never properly worked out a day in her life.

But I feel some benefits already. I feel like I have more energy. I go for walks almost everyday now, usually just running errands, but the idea of getting up and going outside doesn't phase me anymore. I actually like it.

And today, I ran to my therapists and ran back. It was the longest that I have ever run (jogged) without stopping and that alone made me feel like I was getting somewhere. I live in fear that jogging will never get get easier for me. I see women jog past, their iPods playing, their ponytails bobbing in their wake, they look like they are enjoying it.

Well, even though I feel like being active, jogging is still hell after a minute...finger's crossed that one day it I can do it without too much difficulty. But does it? Are all these jogger's secretly in pain, counting down the kilometers until they get to stop? Or does jogging actually become doable and enjoyable after a point?

At any rate, I have been feeling better. On the down side, I have been eating more. Now I am not pigging out, but I have become suddenly ravenous and wolfing down whatever is available. Luckily I am wolfing down things like salad and multigrain bread with cheese and carrots and chicken stir-fry and brown rice. But for the first time in my life, I am actually hungry. I'm not eating out of boredom but because my body is craving this stuff called FOOD.

So, I'm not sure if this extra eating is my wrong doing or not. After all, I understand that I need to eat to fuel my workouts, but in order to get the BEST results out of this bootcamp, I should be eating less. At any rate, I stepped on the scale today out of curiousity and...

I gained FOUR FREAKING POUNDS!

????wtf?????

I can understand if this was all due to muscle...today I noticed my shoulders were firmer than normal. But come on, I have been doing this a week, muscles don't just sprout out of nowhere, it takes time! Where did these four pounds come from? I don't want them, send them back!

So, a week into this effort, I am afraid that I feel a bit disheartened. I didn't expect to drop weight over this - and I especially realized that after I realized that working my ass off increased my appetite - but I certainly didn't think I would GAIN weight.

Therefore, there is going to be some drastic measures being made:

On Thursday, I am giving up my regular glass (or two) of evening wine.

I would start now but I just opened a beautiful Reisling from Germany and, well.....

Where am I? What's going on?

An hour or so ago, I was wandering around downtown Vancouver in a daze. I slowly schleped down West Georgia street, not knowing really where I was or what I was doing. I ended up at a Starbucks and proceeded to have great difficulty ordering an iced coffee...words were coming out of my mouth but they weren't making much sense. The Barista noticed my camo ballcap with the words Cardio Core Bootcamp on it and forgave me for being a fuckwit.

This is what I will have to look forward to for the next month. This is me after Bootcamp.

At any rate, I did survive it, which is a lot more than I had hoped for.

The "camp" was held indoors at Fitness World (in summer, it's held in Stanley Park), in one of the aerobics rooms. There was about 30 or so people there, mainly female with a few men scattered about.

I was relieved to see most of the women were slightly overweight just like me, so I didn't feel too self-conscious.

*start rant* That was until I noticed a few thin women...one, especially, was perky, fit, tanned and blonde.

"What the hell are you doing here you skinny Lululemon beyatch?!" I yelled at her. "Trying to upstage us all, or what?"

OK, so I yelled it at her in my head, but the point is: if you are already fit and toned, why are you here? Just go to the gym like everyone else does, don't join a bootcamp for fatties and then proceed to rock the push-up test harder than everyone else...and longer than the instructor did it for. In fact, it prompted our instructor to make a remark about the program not being a competition.

I can tell Miss Fit is going to be on my nerves for the next few weeks.

*end rant*

That was just one rant and I have many more so I think I'll just call the whole rest of this post one long rant. Keep in mind my writing skills at this moment are quite nonexistant, I think I recieved a lobotomy while I was there.

Anyhoo, the hour consisted of non-stop excercise led by our leader. She wasn't the one to yell in your face, instead she was full of boundless optimism and energy...which somehow made me prefer the "spit in face" method. At any rate, she kept us going. And going. And going. Non-stop. For one full, nauseous hour.

After the ten minute "warm-up," which consisted of 30 people running with their knees high in a circle, I was ready to throw in the towel. At least, I would have if the program was up to me. But it wasn't and we were pushed to go on and on. This was not even our cardio day so it was all about the weight training. I used to like weight training. I always thought it was the "easy" part.

Nuh-uh.

The weight training was more like circuit training, with different groups of us rotating between the ball, the steps and the bands, working on our muscle groups with cardio in between. This ensured we wouldn't get bored.

I was too busy dying to care if I was bored or not.

Literally, I felt like I was going to puke during my push-up test.

Also felt like puking when I started using the stretchy bands to work my arms and the band slipped off my foot.

Hit me right in the face.

Ever had someone snap an elastic band on your arm? Well, enlarge that band by 100 and apply it to your face.

And then I really felt like puking when they took me aside for measurements.

Oh dear.

My weight is one thing, but the width of my thigh? The horror. I'm even wearing the wrong bra size - I'm MUCH larger than I thought...which reminds me, a sports bra would probably be in good order too. I don't want to have to worry about elastic bands AND boobs snapping in my face.

A good note though, was that they didn't weigh us. It's obviously more about losing inches than pounds, which is great because that's what really counts. And speaking of my weight and inches: if it's a notable difference (and I don't know how it won't be if I'm going to be burning my lungs and buns off 3 times a week) I'll be sure to let you know at the end. Finger's crossed!

So, to sum up my first day at Bootcamp: I survived. It was tough. It was scary (especially when you have to run around with all these mirrors around you). It was challenging (tripped over my own feet while trying to keep up with a certain excercise...it's times like this that being naturally clumsy is NOT endearing). It was...not fun. But I don't regret starting it and I'm excited to see how far I will come. After all, the first class is down. It can only get easier from here on in.

Though ask me how I am doing tomorrow and it might be a different story - one filled with many explicit words.

***
In other news, I am going to the Police in May. Woot! And I have an extra, single ticket if anyone should be so interested to be doing a doo doo doo and a da da da.