My geeky #s NSV (w/ pics because people love those)

I think you look a lot younger now too! Great job!!

I certainly FEEL a lot younger now (it's amazing how much more energy you have when you don't have to carry an entire extra person's worth of weight around with you all day)

what kind of strength training do you do? I HATE weightlifting but know how important it is. Did you follow a program?

I thought I hated strength training... and then I had someone show me what I was doing and now I'm in love with it.

I won a contest through my local news station and my prize was a month of 3x/week personal training. It was fabulous.
I learned how to use all of the different machines and how to maintain proper form and how to know if I was using a weight that was too light.

Now, on strength days (I probably do them 3-4 days a week), I go through the basic routine I learned from the trainer:

10 minute warm-up (usually the treadmill or elliptical)
Lower body (leg press, leg extension, leg curls, abductors, adductors, weighted wall squats)
Upper body (bicep curls, chest press, cable flyes, lat pull-downs, assisted pull-ups, dips, push-ups)
Core/Back: crunches (with a medicine ball, bicycle crunches, and with resistance bands), pelvic lifts (these are my favorite).
And then the dreaded plank - I can do a 2 minute plank, but someday I want to be able to get up to 5 minutes.
5-10 minute cool down.
The whole thing takes around 45 minutes, maybe an hour tops.

I do heavy weights, few reps, and go slowly - 4 seconds to initial extension/contraction and then 6 seconds on the negative.

I really, really want to do free weights but I am afraid of not knowing what I'm doing so unless someone shows me or I can afford to hire a trainer, I will just stare longingly in that direction every time I go to the gym.


ETA (just because): I love eating my exercise calories.