Trainer Day 2

I feel so great right now! Besides the lingering hacking-up-a-lung cough, I'm fabulous. I went to see the trainer tonight for free session number two, and it was great. He taught me some more weight exercises and we came up with a plan for me to stick to so that I can achieve my goals. It is as follows:

I will be attending the gym at least three times a week, focusing on the resistance training workouts he has taught me. (I'll probably try to do more, but this is the workout I'll do at LEAST three times a week).

First, I'll warm up on the treadmill for five to seven minutes.

Next comes resistance training: 2 sets of 15-20 reps, increasing weight on the second set. I'll do one exercise for each muscle group. Some of the exercises he taught me are squats on the bosu ball, simultaneous tricep pushdown and bicep curl, and bosu pushups. Everything is focused on moving multiple body parts at once and improving core strength as well. This will change up in the future, but for now it's the plan and should take around 25-30 minutes.

After resistance training I'll do 20-25 minutes of cardio interval training, alternating one minute of hardcore, but not quite puke level running or whatever my fancy is that day, and two minutes of recovery time. I'll work up to doing longer intervals of the running and shorter intervals of recovery.

Now comes the diet part. We talked about what I eat on a daily basis and he surmised what I already know: I eat too much sugar and not enough fruits and vegetables. So the first thing I'm focusing on with diet is eliminating straight sugar and artificial sweeteners from my diet. This includes all soda, even diet. It also includes the mini Hershey bar I eat almost every day after lunch. It also includes ice cream. It's going to be hard, but he said some things that really made me think. This may be a load of crap, but he said even one tablespoon of sugar raises your insulin levels so much that it can suppress your immune system for four hours. When that sugar adds up, your body is pretty much screwed, and losing weight becomes extremely difficult.

I know this is going to be hard, but he wants me to tackle this beast in manageable sections. Right now I'm going to focus on having sugar free and sugar-substitute free days three to four days a week. Right now, this should be do-able. I'm going to give it a shot. Once I can maintain this, we'll try to make more changes.

I'm excited about the things I've learned and the plans I've made. Hopefully these changes will really help me become the strong, athletic person I want to be. They'll help me prepare for the sprint triathlon I want to do next summer. And they'll help me lose some weight.

Yay!