Hi daily chat ladies. I finally started stage 2 today. I'm not sore yet but I have read all over this forum that I will be tomorrow! I took advice in this thread and upped the step height for the step ups. Now up to 6 risers and the bench but I had to drop back from 25 to 20 pounds. It's a very ssllooww step up now so I guess it's working the quads even more. OMG the one-point rows were extremely hard balance-wise and really had my heart rate up. I don't know if I will really have those down after only 4 workouts.

For 2b I am looking for interval advice. Did anyone use eliptical for it? I hate treadmill. Other ideas?

One last thing - big difference from stage one to stage two... I WANT every second of those 75 second rests. I was worried they would be too long - surprise!

Hey I'm 2/3 for the week.i did my lifting and my acupuncture but was not even close on the protein.

Runza - I started doing c25k with my family. My girls and DH need the exercise- and I am not biking for a bit so we started it and will pick a 5k in the fall.

I cooked the whole weekend made cheese and Mac onfriday.Really it was mosty cheese. I love baking - but my husband asked me not to bake on Father's Day.

So I'm 1/3 this week. Got my water but didn't make it with the protein and didn't do my stretches either.

Anyway, I'm feeling very motivated again. I'd been feeling kinda down these past weeks. Neither the scale nor the inches have been moving in the right direction. So I took the past 2 weeks off to eat all the food in an effort to normalize my hormones, and eat I did. I gained 1.2 lbs! But the break also gave me a chance to go back and read one of my favourite fat loss books: Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto. One of the early chapters is about the importance of having goals: 12 month, 3 month, weekly, and daily goals. And also having goals of beating personal bests. I just typed up all my goals. It really reminded me why I'm doing this in the first place.

To meet my goals, my plan this week:
1. 3 days of lifting. I'm going to be starting Basic Training III in NROLS.
2. 1 day of HIIT cardio.
3. 1650 cals on non-lifting days, 1880 cals on lifting days. This averages to TDEE-14%.
4. 25% of cals should be from protein
5. 6 cups of water daily
6. 3 days consisting of 20 mins of stretching
7. No eating after 8 pm.
8. Eat 3 servings of vegetables daily. This is hard for me because I hate veggies.

So excited to be recommitted to getting all this fat off.

BTW, redlips, I LOVE those non-fitness goals. I think I need to come up with some of my own.

Hi everyone. I have been really bad this weekend. I was out for a friends 30th on Sat night and drank lots and lots of wine. and then ate lots and lots of food! I think I actually went over maintenance calories last week. Its hardly surprising that I am not losing any weight when i do that most weekends but by mid week I have still convinced myself that there is something wrong with me that I am not losing! I need to get more strict with my diet.
Last week I got 2/3, got in plenty of protein and lifted 3 times but failed utterly on my calories!
I have logged all of my food for today and I only have 64 grams of protein. :grumble:

Today I did 3B2, I like the start of the workout but there is too much core work at the end. I get bored doing all of that. Also, I don't understand how this happens but the prone cobra really hurts my shoulder! I have tried holding my arms in different ways and it still hurts. Does anyone else experience anything like that?

Marieann, some folks just love AMRAPs. For Stage 1 and 2, I was bored out of mind and couldn't focus and wasn't really pushing myself. For Stage 3, I set the timer for 2 minutes on each exercise. I did as many reps as I could for 2 minutes and that worked out really well. Sometimes, I needed to stop before time was up but that was fine and I was genuinely fatigued. On exercises that call for reps left and right, I started with my non dominant left side and worked with the timer. On my stronger right side, I would match the left and see if I could do a few more.

I'm into Stage 4 and my measurements are holding steady. I've also been going over calories regularly :blushing:

DouMc, I feel like I'm working a puzzle sometimes regarding protein.

I'm going out to dinner with a friend tonight and all my calories are planned out. I'm still nervous that we'll start drinking and just have ourselves a little party :grumble:

Runzalot--I hear you...AMRAP's were pretty boring today. I did push myself to fatigue on all but step-ups. I feel like jello now. What is the idea behind AMRAP's anyways. I am sure I read it in the book but cannot recall why we do it.

So my goals for this week are: No eating/drinking (other than H20) after dinner. Nightly walk/hike with the dog. Finish Phase 1.

Do I have goals? If I do I have no idea what they are. My bad.

Let's try to change the mindset a little here ladies. Instead of saying, "I was bad." when we don't necessarily follow our diet plans or hit the gym like we want. Stop wearing this stuff as personal failures. You went out and lived your life. There's nothing bad about. All good (or bad) things in moderation. and quit punishing yourselves for being human. When I hear people say, "Oh my God I ate a cookie." I seriously want to reach through my computer and smack you, lovingly. The world will NOT stop turning because you missed a workout or two or because you enjoyed your food over the weekend. Now if you stopped going to the gym all together and ate like a pig every day of your life, then you would have something to worry about.

Sam you're absolutely right about that. We do what we do so we can have the stuff we want. Instead of punishment, our exercise should be fun and what we do to enjoy life fully and instead of feeling like we have work harder when we eat treats.

So I'm not going to claim any goals this week. My macros were iffy, I didn't read a single line of NROL4L, and at least 3 days were logged after the fact and probably not very completely. My gf was here from England and we trekked all over Manhattan, and went to Medieval Times, Staten Island, downtown, Times Square, 5th Avenue. It was great to have her here, but she wore me out everyday! I'm glad to be back to my usual days!

I lifted this morning - I am going to have to see a sports doctor, while I was benching, I could feel clicking in my delts (at least I think that's where it is). No pain while lifting but I have a general overheated sensation in my shoulder, and a stiff, tight neck muscle.

My goals are the same for this week.
1. Truthful logging
2. Hit macros
3. Finish reading 4Life (and maybe get started on that routine)

I'm pretty tired tonight. Going to go to bed early.

I hate AMRAPS and decided not to do them anymore after stage 1. I was too bored :P

Did Stage3A3 and finally found my groove with the moves. I like this workout 10x better than workout B. For some reason today the 90 second planks were so hard and I dropped at 85 seconds for the second and third set. I just could not go on! I was feeling so much in my lower back.

I got the one legged Romanian deadlifts up to 25lb dumbells and for my fastest time ever on the BWM: 2:56