Overcoming resistance

It was sooo hard getting through the Chest & Back workout today.  All my "stars" were totally misaligned; it was raining and miserably cold; I must of slept crooked or something because I woke up with a terrible kink in my neck; and I simply felt tired.

And you know you're fighting a uphill battle with yourself when the thought of hibernating like a lumbering bear feels like the ultimate goal in life.  And it didn't stop there; rationales left and right were springing into my head persuading me to skip the workout: "I strained my neck, so I shouldn't do an upper body workout" (doesn't that sound reasonable?); "It's dangerous working out when it's so cold, I could pull a muscle" (also very reasonable, no?);  "My husband's being lazy and sitting on his ass eating yummy bonbons, maybe I should join him, wouldn't want him to be lonely" (Ok, that's just me desperate to find any reason to get out of the workout).

But I stared down all those sinister thoughts and shouted "NO!"  I've suffered worse "resistance" in my days.  (Resistance was coined by Steven Pressfield in The Art of War to describe our inner antagonist that essentially goes around sabotaging our life's goals, such as I want to lose weight, but instead end up ordering a McDonald's meal with a double-thick chocolate shake!)

In the end, to overcome resistance, you simply just have to bulldoze it over; there aren't any magic tricks.   And I simply told myself that I can do it; if I simply take it one-step at a time, and don't think about the gasping pain of the pull-ups, chin-ups and all the tortuous push-ups introduced by Tony Horton, then I can get through it.  In fact, I cleared my mind of thoughts and simply pushed the play button.  I concentrated on the moment, never thinking about the last move or the next, simply working on the present and extracting every ounce out of myself that I could.

And I got through it!  In fact, even with a neck strain I was able to perform just as well as my last Chest & Back workout, woo hoo! (See my workout stats for Jan 9 )

I didn't let resistance beat me today.

Magic Pop

Magic Pop: Strawberry flavour shown

I've discovered another wonderful low calorie snack that'll help keep the munchies at bay; it's called Magic Pop.  It's essentially like a rice cake the size of a medium pita-bread but "popped" in a pressurized contraption.  But the real "magic" is that it's only 15 calories per "cake"!

How does that happen?  Well, essentially a small amount of flour (traditionally rice flour is used) is added to the machine and subjected to high pressure, then low-pressure; and it's this extreme pressure differentiation that causes that tiny-bitty amount of flour to explode and expand multiple-folds in volume, kind of like popcorn.    

In the end, you have a product that is low in calories but big in volume.  So you can eat the entire bag completely guilt-free!  

And what's more, the taste is pretty decent; it's very similar to rice cakes: crispy, crunchy and lightly flavoured in a variety of flavours.  

I've tried strawberry, onion and honey; my favourite is honey (tastes least artificial), but I think there are 7 other flavours, so you have a wide selection.  (Ok, it can't compare to chocolate ganache cake or BBQ ribs, but then you shouldn't be comparing apples and oranges, right?)   

Great low calorie snack: main ingredients is wheat & rice flour.

I discovered Magic Pop at my local HEB grocery store, but you can find them in a number of grocery stores on the East Coast or order their products online.

The only complaint I have is that a bag of their Magic Pop is kind of pricey.  At $2.99 for a 75g bag (contains 15 cakes), you're really not getting much in real substance.  If you compare it to a normal box of crackers at about the same price such as Kashi crackers (which you get 255g/box) then Magic Pop is over 3x more expensive!

Nursing my stiff neck muscles

Since waking up with a really bad stiff neck a couple of days ago from overexerting myself, (you can read post here) I've been learning about how to nurse my poor neck back to health.  

So after researching online, a pulled muscle, strained muscle, stiff muscle, whatever you want to call it, is usually the result of tears in the muscle cells due to exercising improperly.    

Which is why to protect your muscles you should always, always do a pre-exercise warm up as well as concentrate on achieving proper form in your routines, i.e., don't overextend your knees over your toes, don't bang your joints, etc.  I understand now that the warm up is really important, especially going into a hardcore workout.  The warm up helps pump more blood to your muscles which supply them with life-giving nutrients and oxygen so that they have the energy necessary to perform their job, which is essentially contracting, relaxing, contracting, relaxing.  

The warm up also helps prepare the nerves-to-muscle pathways so that your brain and body are in a more ready state to perform physical activities.  Incorporating some stretching is also essential to help "relax" and make your muscles all happy and pliable for a hard workout.  I suppose you can think of it like caramelized sugar; when it's hot the caramel is fluid and pliable and you can do so many magical things with it, but when it's cold, it's hard and brittle and if you exert too much force, SNAP! and oops, you'll have broken something, just like your cold muscles.

Now should you end up with a pulled muscle from exercise, the standard remedy for mild pulls involve: cold compress (to alleviate swelling and pain), resting (well your muscles are in pain, so give it a rest), hot compress (to increase blood flow so all the wonderful goodies of nutrients and oxygen can be delivered) and stretching (well your muscles are sore and stiff, and probably feeling very down, you've got to help them rebuild their self-esteem with baby-stretching steps).  

I essentially followed this formula to nurse my stiff neck, except for the cold compress because by the time I learned of the cold compress, it was already many hours after my injury.  (You're supposed to apply a cold compress immediately after the injury).  But, everyday I made sure I did a proper warm up before exercising, in which I added a neck stretch before and after the exercise.  (I essentially followed the neck and back stretches shown in P90X).  Afterwards, I would take a hot shower, making sure to bath my neck in the hot water while also stretching it out again.  And, I avoided strenuous exercise in the injured area.  

On the first and second day it was painful to just stretch out my neck muscles, but I noticed significant improvements with each passing day.  And by the 3rd day I barely noticed the pain any more; and certainly by the 4th day the pain was completely gone.  Given that in the past it has taken at least 1 week or even longer for me to recovery from a stiff neck, this experiment was quite a success.  

Happy Holidays!

All the things I ate for Christmas Eve dinner! I must have eaten 4000 calories, I can't be sure, I lost count after my third helping of food.  

Ain't the holidays grand; best excuse to "hog out".  

Just a few of the things I ate: fried chicken, green bean casserole, baked potato, baked cauliflower, salad
and some strange rice cracker potato salad mix (strange but tasty)

Close up of fried chicken.  Wooo, look at the crispy, crunchy golden skin

Glazed ham, hmm hmm

Tender beef tenderloin, yummy.  I had at least 3-4 pieces.  

Major neck pain from hard workout

Following up from yesterday's post where I was describing my boneheaded attempt at working off a crazed food binge through hardcore exercise.  Well, not only did I nearly make myself throw-up, but I woke up with a major stiff neck today.  I can only look at people by turning my shoulders!  My relatives think I've been imitating Michael Jackson's robot the whole day.

When I crashed out of yesterday's exercise I already felt a strange kink in my neck.  And I think I've isolated the reasons for my pulled neck muscles: 1) I was exercising too hard, i.e., over-extending my punches and over-twisting my shoulders to try to squeeze out as much calorie burn as possible, and 2) taking long "water-breaks", hence allowing my muscles to get cold.

Now I totally blame myself.  I ended up having to take long water-breaks because my stomach was stuffed to the brim with the mountain of food I had eaten.  So, as a result, my muscles got "cold" but then I threw myself into the exercise with a vengeance whenever I restarted the video.   

I'm going to do some research and self-experiment to see how to nurse my strained neck muscles.  

My daily caloric burn and food intake

Date	Weight (lbs)	BMR	Workout	Workout Burn (calories)	*Total Daily Burn (calories)	Total Food Intake (calories)	Net Caloric burn
Feb-5	123	1332	Zumba Sculpt	560	1950	1530	420
			Ab 200	58
Feb-4	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	637	1969	2100	-131
Feb-3	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	638	1970	4000	-2030
Feb-2	123	1332	P90X: Yoga	269	1601	1530	71
Feb-1	123	1332	P90X: Chest & Back	775	2155	2430	-275
			P90: Ab 200	48
Jan-31	123	1332	None	0	1332	2350	-1018
Jan-30	123	1332	P90X: Plyometrics	869	2201	1570	631
Jan-29	123	1332	Zumba Sculpt	702	2114	1780	334
			P90: Ab 200	80
Jan-28	NA	1332	None	0	1332	2200	-868
Jan-27	NA	1332	None	0	1332	1570	-238
Jan-26	NA	1332	None	0	1332	2350	-1018
Jan-25	123	1332	Zumba Sculpt	658	2060	1850	210
			P90: Ab 200	70
Jan-24	123	1332	None	0	1332	2500	-1168
Jan-23	123	1332	P90X: Legs & Back	846	2232	1860	372
			P90: Ab 200	54
Jan-22	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	698	2030	1630	400
Jan-21	123	1332	None	0	1332	2500	-1168
Jan-20	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	617	2018	1410	608
			P90: Ab 200	69
Jan-19	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	366	1698	1510	188
Jan-18	123	1332	P90X: Yoga	340	1672	1530	142
Jan-17	123	1332	None	0	1332	1710	-378
Jan-16	123	1332	P90X: Chest & Back	814	2203	1940	263
			P90: Ab 200	57
Jan-15	123	1332	P90X: Plyometrics	883	2215	1800	415
Jan-14	123	1332	Zumba Sculpt	745	2161	1800	361
			P90: Ab 200d	84
Jan-13	123	1332	X-Stretch	NA	1332	4000	-2668
Jan-12	123	1332	P90X: Legs & Back	834	2166	1980	186
Jan-11	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	748	2156	2320	-164
			P90: Ab 200	76
Jan-10	123	1332	P90X: Yoga	325	1685	1430	255
			P90: Ab 200	28
Jan-9	123	1332	P90X: Chest & Back	762	2094	1650	444
Jan-8	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	737	2138	1500	638
			P90: Ab 200	69
Jan-7	123	1332	Zumba Sculpt	769	2101	1880	221
Jan-6	123	1332	P90X: Plyometrics	984	2390	1850	540
			P90: Ab 200	74
Jan-5	123	1332	None	NA	1332	2480	-1148
Jan-4	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	748	2080	2490	-410
Jan-3	123	1332	X-Stretch	117	1479	1280	199
			P90: Ab 200	30
Jan-2	123	1332	P90X: Legs & Back	872	2204	2520	-316
Jan-1	123	1332	Zumba Sculpt	723	2055	2680	-625
Dec-31	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	754	2157	2350	-193
			P90: Ab 200	71
Dec-30	123	1332	P90X: Yoga	310	1642	1520	122
Dec-29	123	1332	P90X: Chest & Back	801	2133	1570	563
Dec-28	123	1332	P90X: Plyometrics	941	2336	1580	756
			P90: Ab 200	63
Dec-27	123	1332	Zumba Sculpt	433	1765	2600	-835
Dec-26	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	701	2133	4000	-1867
			P90: Ab 200	100
Dec-25	123	1332	P90X: Legs & Back	829	2161	4000	-1839
Dec-24	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	708	2040	4000	-1960
Dec-23	123	1332	Zumba Sculpt	670	2069	2280	-211
			P90 Ab 200	67
Dec-22	123	1332	None	0	1332	3080	-1748
Dec-21	123	1332	P90X: Core Synergistics	609	1941		-169
Dec-20	123	1332	Zumba Cardio	687	2093	1650	443
			P90: Ab 200	74
Dec-19	123	1332	P90X: Chest & Back	686	2018	1515	503

·         Total daily burn: is equal to BMR + Workout burn.  (* Total daily does not account for the calories I burn from normal daily activities.)

·         Net Caloric burn: is equal to Total Daily Burn – Total Food Intake