Blazing Sun vs Me

Lobster Face here!

It's Christina writing, and today I realized that there is definitely a down side to fitness outdoors... it's called a sunburn. I am as red as the shirt that I am wearing right now and it ain't pretty. Freeze and I headed out on this new patch of trails I found last week and went exploring. Instead of running, we power walked the whole way which kept us in the sun a lot longer than I had planned. It was a really fun trail and offered a lot of different sceneries to look at (ie...hot guy running with his shirt off).

After our hour and a half workout we headed to her pool for some R&R and to catch some more rays. Now just so you all know, Freeze is a very very very tan white girl, who I swear can pass for a blonde and blue eyed pacific islander. I thought I could kick it in the sun as long as her, but judging by my sun smacked complexion that isn't the case. (This is where my need to compete came and bit me in the ass.)

Now that my sob story is out of the way...

Last night I was talking to my friend Ashkan, whom i refer to as Mr. Buff Dude, about the blog and what I was planning. He told me that when most people start a workout routine that they usually plateau around the month mark. This makes total sense to me, but I can honestly say I've only stuck to one type of exercise or diet that lasted me longer than a month. (It was roughly 3 or 4 summers ago when a friend and I would go to the gym EVERY SINGLE DAY and putz around like we knew what we were doing. I just liked to go and watch this crazy gymnast dude that would do these stretches that would make any girl jealous! Any woman who could bend herself into a pretzel like that would have Noooooo problem finding a date.)

All of that aside, I did realize that after a month we had to "up" and add more numbers to whatever machine we were on, treadmill we were running, or time spent on the big balls. (You know those big balls every gym has that are sometimes used for pilates exercises?) And after about 3 or 4 months we just stopped going. We had effectively burnt (no pun intended) ourselves out and stopped seeing results.

Then I remembered seeing an infomercial about that Insanity workout DVD set. They kept talking about MUSCLE CONFUSION and how you needed to switch up what you were doing every month or so to reap the best results. After a while your muscles will start to become immune (for lack of a better word) to any workout you've done for a long period of time. The problem that my friend and I had was that we were doing the same thing every day! (I would slap my hand to my forehead now, but it is also burnt and would equal pain beyond measure.)

So my plan for the next month is to start confusing the crap out of my muscles! I'm going to cut down on running to only 2 days a week and throw in some weight training with this video that Mr. Buff Dude lent me called 'The Firm.' It doesn't sound as intense as P90X or the Insanity workout, but i've done it a hand full of times and it kicked my butt. Also, next week i'm going to start that Isagenix Cleanse that I've been putting off. We'll see how it goes considering I've done it twice and never made it the whole 9 days.

And on top of all that I'm also going to start an exercise journal. I'll take down my measurements and weight once a week every Sunday and log my exercises every day. (I recommend this for anyone to do because then you can see your results first hand and start to see a progression whether it be good or bad.) I'm also going to get a separate journal and log what I eat every day. When my poor eating habits are staring me in the face its kind of hard to ignore. (There are some great online sites that are free of charge if you're not a pen and paper kind of person. Or if you own the Wii Fit that works great too!)

Now off to put on yet another layer of lotion!