Progress

Diablo
Last night, I was able to stay on the elliptical for six minutes! I blew right by my goal of five minutes, mostly because it went into cool-down mode (which was set at exactly the same resistance I'd been working at), and I figured, "Eh, what the heck. See what you can do."

I've noticed my elliptical workout goes like this:

0:00 - 1:00 - My feet are flying! I'm made of feathers! I will run, run, run! Wheeeee!

1:00 - 2:00 - Ohmygod... kill me now... I hate this. I'm too fat.

2:00 - 3:00 - Okay, halfway there. I can do this. Just breathe.

3:00 - 4:00 - Hey, this is getting easier!

4:00 - 4:30 - Wheeeeee! My feet are flying! I can crank this last minute out no problem!

4:30 - 5:00 - Stare at the timer, focusing on the numbers because I can hardly manage to keep my feet moving, push push push

5:00 - die

The machine won't let you set the timer for 30-second increments, so I set it to 5:00 Sunday and simply stopped at 4:30. Last night, when it hit 5:00, it went into cool-down mode, as I said. It added 2:00 and started counting backward. I was dead but not all the way dead, so I did kind of take it easy, enough to keep the machine from pausing, and did another minute of long, slow movements. Then I said, "Screw this," and stopped at a total of 6:00. I was pretty proud of myself.

Tonight is a rest night. I worked my triceps, pecs, and lats again last night, and I want to give my body time to process the water retention in my sore muscles before I weigh in tomorrow. Who knows what will happen when I get home, though. I may decide to do some cardio and skip weights. I really do love how I feel when I leave the gym, like all of the stress of the day is simply gone. I never felt like that after walking or doing a DVD. There's something about working my butt off on the elliptical and really pushing myself that cleanses me, like the endorphins take over and make everything okay. Plus, I'm too tired and worn out at that point to feel stressed. ;)

-=-

Now that I've added in weights, I've been having the dumbest thoughts ever. While I know it's a very good thing to build lean muscle, I also know that it might "stall" my weight loss in several weeks when I start to gain lean muscle mass.

I know it will be because muscle is more dense than fat, and my measurements will show that, but there's this little psychological component to it: I want to keep watching the weight go down and not do anything to stop that, however temporarily or briefly.

Again, I know this is stupid, especially since having lean muscle mass will help with weight loss, so I hope I get over it soon. I have no intention of stopping weight training, so I have no choice but to get over it.