7 Day Jumpstart Workout: Day 1

Those of you who have been with me lo these many months know how this all started; I couldn’t find a coat that fit me. So I went on Sparkpeople and dieted and lost 10 lbs. Now I’m stuck at the 10 pounds which is 33% of my goal. The first 10 came off relatively easy without having to work too much, I learned some new habits and didn’t have to move much.

In two weeks I’m going to Black Butte with some of my ladies. That same weekend Derwood will be there on a family reunion kind of weekend and his ex-wife will be there. Her being there doesn’t bother me in the slightest because I’m clear on his feelings for her and it’s nice that his mom included Nat because Nat doesn’t have much family of her own. But I could meet Nat for the first time and she is tall and thin. Which leads me to why I need to be doing the 7 Day Jumpstart Workout referenced above; I figure if I concentrate on weight loss I should lose 20 lbs and grow 3 inches by the 14th of this month.

So to the 7 Day Jumpstart Workout. This isn’t really Day 1 because I started yesterday (Monday) but I’m only posting about it now (Tuesday). It’s an exercise/blogging continuum that hits the international dateline and records exercise 15 hours after it happens. It’s complex, don’t worry about it.

I have to Jumpstart things because of my 10 lb. plateau. I’m stuck. When I was in grade school, I was walking home after school on a rainy day with my Smiley Face umbrella. I loved that umbrella and I can’t find a photo of it online but it was clear and came down around my head like a dome not like a regular umbrella and there was yellow smiley face on every other panel of the umbrella. I also had some boots on, not rain boots — fancy boots like go-go boots. What?! It was 1975, alright? I took a short cut home through the woods near my house (yes, the woods where my mother told me I would be murdered if I ever went in them). My mother failed to mention that if I walked through the muddy woods on a rainy day in my go-go boots, I would get stuck in the mud and in order to get out of the mud, I would yank my feet right out of the boots instead of the boots coming out of the mud, my Smiley Face umbrella would blow away and I would walk the rest of the way home in the rain; a bitter, barefoot 10-year-old.

That’s how stuck I am at 10 pounds. I have no go-go boots, no umbrella, just me and 20 more pounds to lose.

I had to buy new shoes in order to Jumpstart my workout; go-go boots don’t offer enough stability for me. I went to Dick’s at the mall yesterday to get a new pair of trainers (that’s me pandering to my readers in the UK, they call running shoes “trainers” so ‘mericans, don’t say anything about it you’ll make them feel self-conscious… just keep reading). A little, cute, fit 22-year-old girl helped me find running stability shoes. Aren’t they cute?

New Stability Trainers

I usually select trainers by how cute they are but this time I had an adviser and she helped me and happily, the shoes are also cute. When I told her I typically don’t buy shoes for their stated purpose she said, “my mom does that, too.”  Yeahhhh, she did. I didn’t say  anything about how bitter I felt that I am, in fact, old enough to be her mother. And old enough to be her mother when I was out of college not like some high school mistake…old enough to have had her in my mid-20s out of college, working…gahhhh. 47 has really required some adjustments in how I perceive my reality. Instinctively I think I’m just a couple of years older than the cute girls working in the mall but nope! Nope, I’m 25 years older than they are.  They can suck it.

Sorry, back to the Jumpstart. I got home from work and reviewed my 7 Day Jumpstart Workout sheet from Sparkpeople. It said to warm up by walking or riding the stationary bike for a few minutes. I don’t have a stationary bike.

Yesterday it was a spring day in Portland. Today it is 20 degrees cooler and pouring rain but yesterday it was in the 60s and dry and birds were singing and unicorns played out in my yard. I went for a walk around my circle in my new shoes. It takes a few minutes, 10 minutes maybe, unless I have to turn around and retrace my steps and walk back to my house the way I came. I walked around the circle and came within about 4 or 5 houses of my house and noticed a neighbor talking to his yard guy.  His yard guy was my yard guy, too…last year. This year I have picked a new one who doesn’t leave the mown grass on the lawn and call it ‘mulching”, when I know it’s just dead grass on my newly mown lawn. I have chickened out from telling him that he is no longer my yard guy so I ran like the cowardly old woman I am. I didn’t run but a brisk warm up walk.

Got home did my exercises which were really easy….lunges, pushups (I do have freakish upper body strength) and crunches and then I walked the dog. And I have cute new trainers.

That concludes Day 1 of blogging about the 7 Day Jumpstart Workout. What?! I never said it was going to be interesting. If you want interesting I have 30 other posts, read those.