Bootcampin It

I started instructing my first bootcamp on Monday and let me tell you.. it's tough to gauge how much someone you don't know likes or dislikes the level at which you are kicking their ass.

Since Monday I've gone back and forth hoping that they appreciated it and they are sore but not so sore that they never want to come back. Have I ever told you all that I tend to worry about anything and EVERYTHING???

Tonight is day 2 for this week. I hope see all 7 people return but I would be happy with the original 5 who signed up for the month. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

NEXT weekend I am hosting a free meetup bootcamp in Goose Creek for all ladies who would like to attend. It's at 9:15 a.m. at a park in Crowfield (have I already blogged this? It sounds really familiar!) If you're interested send me an email at fitlowcountry@gmail.com. I also have a website that I've created. Please don't be appalled at my website building (or lack thereof) abilities. I HAVE LIMITED TIME PEOPLE SO BACK OFF! (www.fitlowcountry.com, you can click on ads there too but I found out that I don't get paid until I have $100.00 worth of clicking. Right now I'm at $10.00 so I'm not holding my breath)

New random subject:

Today is grocery list day. Wednesday is the day that all the stores come out with new sales.. how frikkin' exciting! I have a list for Publix and a list for Harris Teeter. I'd like to give a big shout out to Bi-Lo for having NOTHING TO OFFER THIS WEEK! I do have .05 off my next purchase of gas though *Fist Bump*. It looks like it will be Harris Teeter London Broil and Ground Turkey on the menu this week. What healthy recipes shall I conjure up?? Sheesh.. who knows!

New Venture

Well tomorrow starts my first official bootcamp class here in Goose Creek. As of now I have 5 women signed up. I've been obsessing, writing workouts, re-writing workouts, practicing workouts, obsessing. I'm feeling more confident now though.

I just put every piece of workout equipment in my car. I think that I will probably be getting worse gas mileage from all the weights, this could affect my 35.00 a week gas budget.

Anyway, if you want to come by and try out my bootcamp go to www.charlestonpersonaltrainer.net and sign up for a free one. I am also having a free weekend meetup bootcamp on 8/7/2010 in the park in Crowfield Plantation. I think it's for Ladies only as is my weekday bootcamp. Sorry dudes... no wieners allowed. You can find that RSVP at www.meetup.com, look for meetups in Goose Creek.

So the coupon-ing is going ok.. my buy of the week is .50 cent milk from Publix. I have to go tomorrow and get 2 cartons. On sale for 2.50 with a 2.00 off coupon... WHAT??? I haven't been too great with the budget overall. I've stuck to the grocery budget + 10.00. But I've been a little frivolous this week in preparation for bootcamp. I'm going to feel it next week. The gas budget is right on par but that's because I do the same thing every day.

Back to work tomorrow... bleh!!! Not that I don't like work I just want to get paid for sitting on my couch instead.

I have to go now and turn off the sprinklers. I have a bad habit of leaving them on all night.

Maybe next I will post about my lack of triathlon training and my complete hatred for biking...


PS. CLICK ON MY ADS... come back tomorrow and click some more. I am up to 3.98.. I'd like to at least get a chick fil a combo out of this nonsense. CLICKIE CLICKIE..

Grocery challenge

Well... as predicted I am completely over this whole grocery thing. I failed last week because of an unexpected trip to the store in which I had to buy specific non sale items. I ended up spending 42 in groceries for the week. I did it again this week because I had a specific meal in mind I had to make (see meatloaf reference below) I spent $15.00 in one trip and I still haven't filled my pantry. My problem is that I have NOTHING in my house so each week I have to buy enough to make me dinners for the week. They have to be healthy dinners too, that shit's not cheap. If this grocery budget starts making me fat it's going to have to go out the window.

There ain't shit on sale this week either. I will be over the $35.00 but I'm still overall doing much better in not eating out and grocery spending than I have been. I will keep it up but I'm NOT a good coupon organizer and spending an hour mix and matching my grocery list with different stores to travel too is exhausting. I miss being frivelous.

I mentioned in my last post that I had canceled cable. I have to say that unlike the grocery thing I think this is an awesome decision. With the help of a couple of laptops, some remote control software, HULU, and netflix.. I'm not really missing anything. I want to post some pictures but I don't have a phone with a camera anymore and I can't find my USB cable that fits in my camera. But believe me, the picture on the TV as I stream hulu from my 4 year old laptop is pretty amazing. (By the way, if you are reading this take some time and click on my ads to the right of my post. I want to see how much I get paid for having those. Perhaps sign up for a trial of netflix!). CLICK... CLICK... CLICK... come back and click again tomorrow.

How is it that I ran 13 miles today and I'm laying on the couch feeling like a super lard? My eating has been like shit. I literally had pasta (whole wheat, but still) for about 5 meals in a row this week. It could have also been the pizza and ice cream I ate yesterday. I'm in denial about my meatloaf and mashed potatoes because I used greek yogurt, sour cream, and low fat butter in the potatoes, and lean ground beef, fat free milk, and multigrain crackers in the meatloaf. Did I mention it was AWESOME?

I think this post is lame so I'm ending it. How the hell do you spell SIANARA? Whatever, I dont care you know what I mean.

$70.00 a week

So I'm testing myself to see if I can live off of $70.00 cash a week. This amount would cover both groceries and gas for a whole week from Thursday to Thursday. Based on my 6 month budget from Mint.com I have determined that at the current gas prices I have spent approximately $35.00 in gas per week. Groceries... I spend a LOT more! Every Thursday I will remove $70.00 cash from the ATM (although they don't give it out in $10.00 increments so it will be more like $60.00). Half that goes to gas and half to groceries. This means I have to pay for my gas BEFORE pumping.

I've figured out that at the lowest point ever I have had to fill up with 11.5 gallons of gas. I average 30 miles a gallon and when my gas light comes on I can get up to 320 miles safely. Based on this I plan on putting 11 gallons in the tank (multiply gas price x 11) PREPAY and GO! The gas is the easy part. I actually started this last week and so far I filled up the tank last Wednesday($25.00) and drove until the gas light came on plus some. Then I put in another 10.00 on Monday. Tomorrow is Thursday and I am about to get a gas light again. So far, so good.

Groceries are a little more work. I've had to resort to EXTREME resourcefullness, also known as COUPONS. Now I never look at grocery prices and I always considered people who coupon synonomous with cat ladies and now.. I am one (Hello? ASPCA? Yes do you have 12 feral kittens I can get IMMEDIATELY!!!??). Again I tried this first 2 weeks ago Friday. Wednesday is the day that the stores put out new sale items so today I have spent time evaluating the BOGO's (that's the Buy One Get One Free for you rookies). So far I have a pretty decent grocery list that should last me for the week with dinners and breakfast covered. I have to admit that I cheat SOME because they give us free lunch in the cafeteria at work.

I'm way too excited about this whole coupon thing. Last time I got a free 1/2 gallon of Smart Balance Milk (HEY a commercial for this milk just came on TV) and an .89 cent 1/2 gallon of Almond Milk. I feel a little like I'm sticking it to the MAN! Thanks to the power of google docs I have a portable list of coupons, when they expire, what they are for, and where I got them. I use www.SouthernSavers.com for my deals. It's all there in a little package. Money savings.

So.... $70.00 a week.. can I do it? After week 1 I feel pretty good. I'm sure this will be like a new diet. You see some weight loss the first week and you feel all energized and excited and then you realize that it's a lot of work and it kind of sucks. I'm actually going to dress up like a cow on Friday to get a free value meal from Chick Fil A in order to stay on budget... what have I become? Did I mention I canceled cable too? That's for the next post...

O-town

I hate coming up with titles and subjects for things. I usually just make up something obscure, but then I did it at work and my boss tried to find the google document and had to ask me what I had named it. When I told him he said "ah I knew it was titled something that didn't quite fit what was inside".. I told him that was me in a nutshell and isn't it true?

Hence I named this blog O-town because that's where I am headed next week. I have a shiny new CPR card in my wallet and I'm off to Florida Mania to take some certifications. I'm putting it out there, although I'm a little hesistant. I am getting a certificate in personal training and one in Sports Nutrition and Body Composition. I got my books in the mail last night and immediately started reading them (while watching TV). I want to be like Jesse Spano and run around singing "I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so SCARED!!!". Shit I guess a blog is about putting it all out there so I might as well put it all out there. I have a million things running through my head like: What am I going to do with a personal training certificiate? Do I have time to actually do this? Will my job schedule get in the way? When will I workout? You know Me, Me Me! Those aren't all the questions but since 2 sentences ago I decided to not put it all out there. People tell me I will be great at it. Obviously they don't know my robot ways or about that small problem I have with hiding what I'm thinking from my facial expressions.

I have to drive to Orlando alone. I don't know if I've ever driven that far by myself. I'm pretty sure that my max is 4 hours. Please take note everyone I will be calling! Since I am poor right now as well I signed up to not only attend the convention, but also to work it as a staff member. I get to practice my bouncer skills and thrown down with other fitness people trying to get into a class that they aren't registered for. Should I bring a taser or tranquilizers? I'm soooo good at being assertive (not really).

"Um.. Ma'am??.. I'm sorry but your badge says you aren't registered for Geriatric Zumba"





The staff assistant position also means that I can't leave until the convention is fully over at 5 p.m on Sunday. This means I will have to drive back in the dark. Could I sound more like a whiney little bitch? Probably not.

That's it for this week folks.

Biggest Loser is over

I ended up losing 2.3 lbs in the biggest loser contest at work. I was on track with the diet for just about 3 weeks in preparation for the photo shoot and the biggest loser finale. I had a binge day on Sunday to post celebrate my birthday with Corley (Dave), Katrina, and Elizabeth.

The celebration consisted of watching horrible lifetime movies, gorging our faces with awful-for-you food, and making fun of the movies. I can't even list the things I ate, let's just say that I probably could have been featured on the "I eat 33,000 calories a day" show on TLC. It was extremely fun and we watched one movie that was awful movie GOLD. It was actually a soap net movie of the week from a few weeks earlier. I happened to catch the commercial and had Katrina DVR it so we could watch it. If you ever have a chance to drunkenly watch "Beautiful Girl" on SoapNet.. DO IT. Here is the IMDB information on it: Beautiful Girl and a scene shot


Yes.. she is saying "I am engaged to Mark Consuelos, he left Kelly Ripa for me!" I'm sure you get the picture of the the awful awesomeness.

Post-binge it's hard to get back on track with the diet. My mind screams for all the things I had managed to make it forget about such as pizza, ice cream, Publix chocolate overload cake, ice cream, nachos. So now I'm trying to wrangle the beast back into it's cage. I read somewhere that weekend eating can cause as much diet damage as the holidays and I believe it. It's Thursday and I'm just now getting back down to my pre-binge weight. Now it's time for the weekend again... what a vicious cycle.

This weekend is the bootcamp challenge. All of the East Shore bootcamps are going to face off against each other in a points system to see who can take home the trophy. My gym, Johnnie Dodds, is the defending champions. We plan to take it home again. I plan to run my fastest mile! Anyhoo.. witty comments just aren't flowing out this morning so I'm ending this post because it's LAME!. See you on the flip flop (my dad used to say that all the time, not that he's dead, he just doesn't say it anymore).

I have a LOT going on...

I don't even know where to start this blog. First of all I turned 33.. gross. I'm not normally bothered by age but for some reason this year it did.

The big thing I did other than turn another year older having still put off the idea of having a child (while my eggs shrivel up), was to do a triathlon. This was my first one and it was a smidgen more than a sprint but not as far as an Olympic. It took place on Isle of Palms and was a .6 mile ocean swim, a 16 mile bike, and a 4 mile run. How did I do? I finished. I expected myself to take about 2 hours and ultimately I beat that time by 6 minutes which I was proud of. However, there is always ALWAYS that not-good-enough part of me. So when I saw the results and realized that I was 5th out of 5 in my age group I had a little bit of a 'failure' moment. I was happy to see that after all that I still ran a 31:57 4 miles which is the fastest recorded 4 miles I've done to date. I've been chasing the sub 32 minute 4 miles for a couple of years now. It's crazy that when I finally do it it was after swimming and biking for the past 1.5 hours.

Here is a picture of me coming into the finish. That's my friend Nancy giving me five. She is an awesome personal trainer to boot. I don't think I could have finished as well as I did without having gone through all of the bootcamp ass kickings that her and Cissy have put me through. SHOUT OUT!HOLLA






Shout out to Sarah too, she is my triathlon buddy. I roped her into signing up and she did great. She's got tri #2 in a few weeks. I didn't have the cash for tri #2 but I plan on doing another one soon. (Augusta half ironman is $225.00! Are you kidding me??) While I'm on the subject of signing up for things I perused the Disney sight yesterday to window shop the Goofy Challenge. (That would include a half marathon on Saturday and a full marathon on Sunday). It's $310.00.. wowsers!


I once again tried to get my infamous Disney pose at this race but I guess the photographer didn't get it. He got the "flex" instead.


That race belt is not flattering to my straight-as-a-board figure, what would Stacy and Clinton say?.


My time was 1:54:05. I wasn't last (outside of my age group). I wasn't even last in the awful swim. Did I already mention that the ocean was not friendly that day? The water was extremely choppy and I couldn't see the buoys or the pier that I had planned on sighting for. Honestly, I panicked a little (or a lot) and almost called one of the kayakers to take me in. I composed myself though and did a lot of backstroking,so no, it was not the best but it got me through the panic.

Besides that my diet has been going on for two weeks. I'm down about 3 lbs so far. My focus is on watching my calories, eating whole grains, and vegetables. My weight today was 116.4 and the body fat (according to the scale) was 18%. The seems like a lot in my psycho brain. I plan to keep up the hard coreness for another month and then I figure by that time it will have just become nature and I won't miss pizza, and chocolate, ice cream, cake, and all those things I LOVE.

Anyhoo... stay tuned for my next blog which will include details about my fitness photo shoot that I did on Monday and some pictures to go along with it. If you're wondering, I have no idea what I will do with the pictures.