Hard and Exhilarating at once

A rare afternoon post which means while typing this out I am consuming a Monster Energy drink, my usual go to afternoon energy source. But for some reason today I am totally feeling it. Like on what has otherwise been a fairly shitty past 24 hours I am feeling strangely over energetic… ha… All I’m going to say is that while I am growing in lots of ways, my personal life is experiencing growing pains of its own. I made a decision quite some time ago that this time around I would not broadcast my relationships ups and downs on this site so I will honor that and simply say last night was a VERY rough night. As we all know every single human relationship or interaction requires 2 to Tango so no one is blameless. Enough said.

Instead let’s discuss my gym trip last night because that is what I am at liberty to discuss at ridiculously great lengths and in great detail on this site. Granted last night was only my second personal training session in like a million I bought. Ha. Technically I haven’t paid for them all yet because it’s a monthly deduct but whatever, I committed, I signed the legally binding contract so I guess those sessions are mine by law now. Anyway, point is it’s only the second one and thus far my general demeanor is to be scared and fearful. I am not sure that will ever change actually. I think it’s my personality. I am generally an anxious and nervous type person I guess. Maybe someday I will actually come to not be as fearful but I think that is highly unlikely. I like to people please way too much and I’m just always afraid I won’t do good enough.

Let me just sum up personal training in a few sentences. Hard. Exhilarating. I can’t believe you pay someone so much money to torture you so much. That is my general thoughts on it. Oh yeah, and ultimately I am completely in love with it. Wish I could remember that come next Monday. I am sure I won’t and will be back to dreading it.

I got to the gym at 5 or so and did a quick warm up 20 minute 2 mile run. Burned 200 calories. Excellent. Then it was training time. I like my trainer more and more each time we meet so that is nice as well. These were my observations from last night’s workout. I am one sweaty ass mess of an exerciser. I literally have sweat dripping from me non-stop. So much so that half-way thru Julie asked me, “Are you generally a big sweater?” She was checking to make sure I wasn’t like dying or something because I was literally leaving every piece of equipment I touched drenched. Pretty sick but also kind of cool. She said she really likes it when people sweat because it shows that I’m working. My heart rate really does amazingly jump pretty high and then plummet pretty quickly as well. The stuff I did last night was HARD. During it I am always like I love to hate this or I hate to love this. Take your pick at which it is. I loved every horrible awful minute of it. And a few of them were really rough going. Some of the stuff is obviously completely out of my normal wheel-house and therefore challenged me in all these ridiculous new ways. I suspect this is going to be how it is forever really. The moment I am not challenged and dripping sweat like an insanely large man is the day that personal training isn’t working anymore and I suspect that will be never. There’s always some way to make it more challenging and crazy and I’ve barely started.

Did I mention that after 30 minutes I was so ready to be done? Like I don’t think my body could have taken another minute of that intensive one on one stuff. I burned 300 calories which is pretty much my max of what I can burn. When I am full bore, which is what running does for me and my heart rate is engaged at its max, I burn about 100 calories in 10 minutes. We are talking max heart rate my friends. Typically only running really produces that for me which is probably why I love it so much. I rarely get that from any amount of strength stuff. Yup, 30 minutes, 300 calories from my personal training torture. It’s pretty intensive go, go for a full 30 minutes.

So my trainer looked at me last night and said, and I quote… “Do you have any idea how tiny you really are?” I kind of shook my head and shrugged. And she followed up by saying, “No seriously, I know you’ve lost weight a couple times so maybe you don’t realize that you are a tiny girl. Do you really know how small you look?” Since she was apparently asking me a real question I had to stop and think about a real answer and I said, “I guess not. I know I’m smaller than I once was, but I guess I don’t know.” I think she was working on some of the mental as well as the physical huh.

The thing is, I don’t see myself as tiny at all. I see so many women at that gym that I consider tiny and I’m not even in the same ball park. It’s funny because I honestly can look into the gym mirrors and see someone who is fat. I mean this woman, my trainer, is truly TINY. Like I swear she weighs 110 pounds, maybe 100. Tiny little thing. That’s tiny to me. I don’t hate myself or the woman I see in the mirror. I don’t. I don’t think I look huge or anything but I don’t see tiny. Period. I am just not built “tiny”. I have hips and I have curves. I have a shape that is womanly and I wouldn’t trade that for a size 100 frame. Honestly I wouldn’t. I want to be curvaceous. Just toned and sexy. Sexy is the word that comes to mind. Yup, I want someday to look at myself and see a sexy woman. Maybe those pin-up shots I’m going to take will help.

I can tell you that in the past two weeks that I have backed off from daily running and instead done more strength training I have seen a huge difference in my arms. I have muscles. I seriously kid you not have freaking arm muscles, something I have NEVER had. I guarantee they are not huge and hopefully will eventually grow and get more noticeable even when I’m not flexing. However, for 2 weeks’ worth of training I am quite thrilled with the progress. That alone makes what I’m doing worthwhile. Even if nothing else budges for me, I feel progress in 2 weeks and that is so cool. This is the shit that keeps me excited and motivated and focused on my get healthy goals!

After my training session I immediately went into a 6:00 PM, Cardio Sculpt class. Another hard one, 30 minutes, burned 200 calories and then immediately following that was 6:30 Turbo Kick, now this was intensive and I loved every single minute of it despite my growing exhaustion. Yes, 1.5 hours of continual non-stop activity and I was feeling tired. I burned another 300 calories making my total for the day 2 hours, 1000 calories. And I truly did feel amazing last night until I got home and had to deal with life. That’s probably why I like the gym so much, I can block out the rest of life sometimes and just focus on the endorphins and getting “high!” the natural way.

Tonight I am back to the gym, but it will be a lot less cardio tonight. I am cardio-d out. Ha Ha, something I never thought I’d say. Since I didn’t do any free weights or machines last night, I think that is what I will focus my time on tonight. I will burn less calories but I need a bit of a break since tomorrow night is another 1.5 hours’ worth of 3 classes in a row that I am looking forward to. Therefore I must rest tonight more.

For some reason it suddenly feels like the end of the week to me and not a Tuesday at all. My bosses are leaving tomorrow for a long weekend and I guess I just have to work tomorrow and then I have a four day weekend. Excellent! Tonight is easy night at the gym, tomorrow night is a nice 2 hour kick ass fest and then Thursday is the 4th of July, but I am thinking I will start the day with some gym time to get me high and hopefully keep me on track with my eating for the rest of the day. We will see. I don’t have any significant plans for Friday-Sunday; other than be healthy. Considering I just found out I don’t have to work Friday it’s not shocking I have no immediate plans.

For the record I truly don’t think I am or will ever be “tiny” but it’s a nice compliment coming from a tiny active trainer at a gym. I’ll take it. Eventually I think I just said thank you even if I didn’t fully believe it in my heart.

And one last note, despite the very rough night last night and issues that never go away, today is officially the 9 year anniversary of the day I met Chris. 9 whole years. Holy freaking cow.