Day 664: Push Your Limits

 

                                                                                              🖤 Get well soon Tommy ! #teamrivs #RageOn 🖤

“Believe in yourself, push your limits,

 and do whatever it takes to conquer

 your goals.” 

 

It's day 664 of Nutrisystem. Today's quote is a simple sentiment that's perfect to push me over the mid-week hump ! For a long time I sat back and waited for good things to happen in life, instead of setting goals and working hard towards whatever it was I thought I wanted. That led to a lot of "poor me" moments when those good things didn't happen ! Well, duh. You really do have to believe in yourself, push your limits and do whatever it takes to conquer your goals. For 99.9% of us, life is not going to just hand us whatever it is we think we want or need. Some things in life are out of our control so it's up to us to focus on the things we can control. For me that was my weight, my fitness and my finances. None of those 304 pounds were going to magically disappear as long as I was shoveling all those calories in and sitting on the couch. Same goes for fitness. The calories had to go, I had to get off the couch and I had to work hard ! When it came to finances that was all about reducing expenses as much as possible and tackling one credit card at a time. My hard work is paying off and that gives me a great deal of satisfaction. It's also a huge source of pride. Nutrisystem gave me the tools but it was up to me to make them work. Same goes for iFit and Total Gym. I had to put in the work if I wanted to achieve my goals. Some things in life were handed to me. I can't take credit for the renovations to my home, since my insurance company paid for all of that after the fire. However, I can be extraordinarily grateful for that and I can take good care of the house. I do  thank the powers above for this blessing every single day. I've been through a lot in the past 20 years but the past 664 days have been some of the best of my life. I don't know what is around the next corner so I just enjoy each day as it comes and keep working hard to reach my goals.

Update on Tommy Rivs today indicates he is going to start eating real food ! I know that's a milestone he's really been looking forward to ! He also posted on Instagram today for the first time in over 4 months. The photo he shared of himself broke my heart and his update was hard to read. He shared that he's lost 70 pounds. He has pressure sores on his sacrum and his heels. He has to wear diapers. He stills struggles to breathe, often feeling like he is drowning. Through all of that he wanted to express how grateful he is for all the support he and his family have been getting. Classic Tommy. The road ahead is going to be hard and the outcome remains unknown but he's still fighting. That is all we can ask. Rage on Tommy !

Breakfast was a 2 ounce 180 calorie cinnamon roll and a 5.3 ounce 80 calorie Light & Fit toasted coconut vanilla yogurt. Morning snack was a 120 calorie chocolate shake with peanut butter powder. Lunch was a 1.7 ounce 190 calorie cup of spicy kung pao noodles and a chef salad. You add water to the noodles so the cooked weight was probably closer to 4 or 5 ounces. Afternoon snack was a honey crisp apple (90 calories) and an 80 calorie piece of asiago cheese. I stumbled across these individually wrapped pieces of cheese at Wegman's and they are perfect as a Nutrisystem Power Fuel ! Dinner was a 7.5 ounce 200 calorie tub of vegetarian chili with roasted veggies. This entree is something that I've had sitting around for a long, long time. I always skipped over it because it just didn't sound very good. Well, turns out it was delicious and I was sad to learn this item has been discontinued. Evening snack was a 1.8 ounce 140 calorie chocolate cupcake. Total calories for the day are 1080 and I got 80 ounces of water in.

I got up a few minutes earlier today but not as early as I should have. Still, I was able to squeeze in a 27 minute walk along Mission Bay in San Diego, CA with iFit trainer Aria Song. She did jogging intervals and I went with my own pace. I could swear I set the incline at 4% for the first part of the workout but my iFit stats show zero. I started at 3.2 mph and increased the speed by 0.1 mph ever 4.5 minutes. At the 18 minute mark I increased the incline to 3% and the speed to 3.6 mph. My lunchtime workout was a 29 minute hike in Sedona, AZ with Coach Pain (iFit trainer Dewayne Montgomery). The inspirational message in his workouts mirror everything I have discovered about myself over the past 664 days. It's kind of eerie ! He was doing jogging intervals so I went with my own tough pace. I set the incline at 4% and the speed at 3.1 mph. Increased the pace by 0.1 mph every 3.5 minutes. At the 14 minute mark I hit 3.5 mph and kept that pace for 7 minutes. Then I decreased the incline to 3% and increased the speed to 3.6 mph for 7 minutes. After work was the toughest workout of the day. 36 minutes in Leipzig, Germany with iFit trainer Casey Gilbert. He was doing jogging intervals (wtf .. everybody was today !) so I sliced up the minutes a little differently. Incline was 4% for the first 25 minutes. I started at 3.1 mph and increased by 0.1 mph every 4 minutes. When I got to 3.5 mph I maintained that pace for 8 minutes, then decreased the incline to 3% and increased the speed to 3.6 mph for 10 minutes. I had 1 minute left at the end and it was either going to be a cool down OR I was going to try doing 3.7 mph. After 35 minutes on the treadmill I was struggling and I could have taken the easy way out .. but I didn't ! I put that speed on 3.7 mph and finished the workout just the way I wanted to ! I earned every drop of sweat that was pouring off me and I took a photo to document it ! I logged 93 minutes, 5.2 miles and 628 calories. After I stopped sweating so much I spent 45 minutes on the Total Gym and then had a well earned dinner ! Fitbit says I did over 16,000 steps.

Today was another gloomy chilly day but late this afternoon the sun made a surprise appearance for a short time. It warmed up the porch enough that I didn't need my little heater. It was 40 degrees when I went out on the porch this morning but that powerful little heater was all I needed. I'm so glad my electrical was upgraded after the fire because my old glass fuses did not like electric heaters ! I had a wonderful day in every sense of the word today. I got a ton of work done, crushed my workouts and I will go to bed happy with all that I accomplished. What more can you ask for in life ? On that note, it's time for a shower and bed.