Kosamakazie

This morning I woke up in a really good mood, despite the slight headache I had which was either a result of allergies or the few glasses of Moscato I treated myself to last night at Olive Garden (YES, I spent a take-out token on it, though we were celebrating… I’ll come back to that shortly…). I actually woke up around my normal work-day wake up time which is either due to getting enough sleep, my excitement for today, or the coming apocalypse… I didn’t get out of bed at that time of course, as I am not crazy and know that I should value the extra hour or so of sleep I can get on a Saturday morning, but I did wake up at 7:30 refreshed and ready.

Ready for what, you ask? Starting today, my husband and I are “taking the plunge” and starting an 8-week teammate fitness challenge at our local Kosama in Tempe (hence the blog title Kosamakazie – see what I did there? 😉 ). I am REALLY psyched about this because a) I was looking for some kind of fitness bootcamp to kick me in the ass and get me back on track and b) the cost was actually reasonable at $98 each, versus some of the redonkulous prices other “private-ish” gyms charge.

This morning we had our weigh-in which is done on a Tanita scale. If you’ve never been weighed in on a Tanita, it’s pretty awesome. You step on the scale barefoot, enter some stats into it including your age and height, and it sends a signal through your body that returns not just your weight, but also you body fat percentage, hydration level, etc… Now, measuring body fat percentage this way is not an exact science, and I personally prefer having someone do skin folds on me using calipers. That being said, it still gives you a good baseline to work from, and since everyone is being measured in the same way, the results will be “skewed” the same for everyone. We didn’t get our stats today, but I am excited to see what they are as I have been working on eating a little bit healthier (easier to make gradual changes than to do a 180 and change everything at once), and I have also been trying to work out a bit more since my weigh-in with Katie a couple weeks ago. I’m also interested to see how close their measurements are to the ones Katie gave me.

We start full swing, five days a week, on Monday, but they also have a  Saturday class which took place right after the weigh-in so we hung around. Today was plyometrics, and they have a screen on the wall which tells you which exercise is coming up next as well as how much time is left in the current set. The rest breaks rotate between 15-second, 30-second and one minute intervals and the different exercises target all your muscles, get your heart rate up and keep it interesting. I was very proud of myself for not pushing too hard when we joined in today. I tend to go full force any time I am in a class (especially when there is good, upbeat music to keep time to), and when you are as out-of-shape as I am, that’s not such a great idea. I did make sure to eat a little something before the class so I wouldn’t pass out (a few grapefruit wedges and rye toast with peanut butter) and I modified the set or rested whenever I needed to, drinking plenty of water. I use a heart rate monitor anytime I work out, so I was able to keep an eye on my heart rate and slow it down whenever it spiked too sky-high. I torched 501 calories in the 45 minutes we were there.

The classes are normally an hour, but we had plans with our friend Jenn and some other people to go hiking at South Mountain at 10, so we cut out a little early. Yes, I am crazy for doing plyo and then going on a hike. You don’t need to tell me, my husband already did. The hike was about 3-miles (maybe a little more, Z didn’t start Endomondo on his phone until we had been going about a half hour already) and took us an hour and twenty minutes. The first half (or more) was all uphill and rocky, but the views were great (even if part of the view was the terrible smog hanging over the city in the distance). I actually felt really good on the hike despite having just worked out, and having run with the dogs the night before and gotten shin splints. I torched 583 calories on our hike!

We came home and had a healthy breakfast (mine was two eggs, scrambled with grated Parmesan and spinach, some red chile and a multi-grain English muffin). I put my workouts into Fitocracy as soon as I got home, eager to see how many points I would earn for them. The points came out lower than I had expected. I had to go back and fix my entries, so if you ever do a workout on anything but flat ground, be sure to click on the advanced options on the tracking screen so you can tell the app the correct elevation. I earned 1,050 points and leveled up. I love this kind of competition!

So back to the take-out tokens… I had my annual review yesterday and it was STELLAR. I have been fortunate that what I perceive as my hard work is usually recognized by my superiors each year, but this year’s review was just great. Last year, I was promoted to IT Site Manager, and this year I received a nice raise for my success in the role. How motivating is that?! I get burned out at work sometimes, but this sort of thing really motivates me to want to work harder. Anyways, I started debating last night whether we should have built some “exemptions” into the take-out token program, such as for celebrating these types of things and for anniversaries, birthdays, etc… Jenn and I discussed the possibility of earning more by working out extra, but since I’m dedicating myself to 8-weeks of 5-day-a-week workouts, and since the goal was both to eat healthier and spend less, I’ve decided to just keep it as it is for now. I feel like it’s too early in the “program” (a whopping two weeks) to start making exceptions. Maybe after we’ve stuck to it successfully for a few months we can make some modifications.

Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading today, and I’ll leave you with this: I can’t wait to be able to say, I got 99 problems but my weight ain’t one.