Check-In Wednesday: New Rules of Lifting For Women

In an effort to add more strength training to my plans, I re-started the New Rules of Lifting for Women program on June 2nd, 2013.  On this program, you gradually increase weight and sets (but reduce reps as the weights increase). I'd made it through stage 1 once before (back in 2012) and looking back, didn't really have decent results then either.  I did things a little differently this time.  In 2012, I was completing the workouts 3 times a week instead of the 2 times a week this round (I just couldn't fit 3 in with triathlon/relay/half marathon training without going completely nuts).  I also didn't alternate the exercises the way they prescribed because I found an app to help keep track and I couldn't get it to work that way, so I did them all in straight sets.

Maybe these 2 changes are why this time it was a fail - again.

Or maybe I'm still not eating right.

Or maybe I just suck at strength training.

In any case, here are the changes I made over the course of just over 8 weeks:



If you scroll through my training logs, you can definitely see I increased the amount of weight I could lift.  But who's to say I couldn't lift that much from the start.  I also topped out pretty quickly on some of the weights.  I could never go higher than 15 pound hand weights for the shoulder presses, for example.

Now for the measurements.  They ended up a little better than I thought they would, but I'm still not very happy with them.



I haven't posted a weigh-in for about 3 weeks now because of some really stupid choices and events.  I had managed to get back up to almost 149 and I know a lot of that was salt/water but it still pissed me off.  This week I'm basically back to where I was 3 weeks ago (I lost 2 pounds last week and another 2.6 this week).  Pretty awful because that means the 5 pounds I gained weren't just salt and water or they would've been gone the next day.  I tried cutting out beer completely but I just couldn't do it.  At least I cut back quite a bit, but what can I say? It's summer and beer tastes good.

I started investigating the Whole30 plan and decided I'd probably rather be fat since according to their plan, EVERYTHING I eat and drink is WRONG.  No sugar, no grains, no legumes (like hummus!), no alcohol, no dairy.  No running fuel like honey stingers or gummy bears.  No carb loading.  How the f*ck would I still train and run?  Carry broccoli on my long runs? Pack a steak in my spibelt?  They say start today, no matter what events you have coming up - you can plan around them.  Um...How would I run my relay next week?  I'm pretty sure we aren't packing a grill and oven in my van.  I know there are a lot of vegan and paleo runners out there who have figured this out and major props to you.  I just don't see how I'd make it work.  I finally figured out what I can have without feeling like I'm going to puke or bonk and all that is wrong too.  It's pretty frustrating if you ask me. They say you can do anything for 30 days, but I can't cut all that out without wanting to cut someone for a cookie, so I think for the safety of my family, I need to stick with what I've been doing.  Even if I'm forever stuck in the mid-140s.  Maybe this shows I really don't care enough or want to be skinny bad enough.  I think I'm starting to be ok with that.  I like to have a life and be able to go out with friends and order off the menu.  Even have a beer if I so choose.