Thoughts: So much for tai chi today. I got up in time, but the line at the fire station that served as my precinct’s polling place was so long that I didn’t get to vote until nearly 8:30 am. Sorry Wei–I’ll try to make it to your class on Thursday, I swear.

I’m a bit overdue for my 8 week progress photos and measurements, but I’ll try to get those ready to go this week. I finally broke through the 130 lb barrier this morning! I know that scale weight is not the best indicator of progress, but I haven’t been 120-anything in so long that it was a shock to see the number 129 on the digital display of my Tanita, followed by a 16% body fat reading. This, I suspect, was skewed because the weigh-in was done after my HIIT run, and there was probably a huge amount of blood concentrated in my leg muscles. I also just received a pair of Isaac Mizrahi pants from Target.com in size 6, and what do you know? The waist and hip area are a bit loose already. The size small top I got from the same line is also a perfect, albeit slightly loose fit, even in the arms.

I reset my target weight for this challenge to 126 lbs by November 21 in my Diet and Exercise Assistant program, and now the blasted thing says I need to shoot for a deficit of -700/day on average to hit that goal. This is about twice as much as my old target deficit, so the extra cardio is no longer an optional add-on but a set requirement. I can’t drop that low in food intake without going into starvation mode. I think this pretty much illustrates why the Leanness Lifestyle stresses so much cardio for females–women have less wiggle room with calories than men (due to our lower muscle mass) before hitting the 1200 calories starvation mode cut-off.

As soon as I hit my goals, I’m going to happily go back to pure BFL workouts with no extras for maintenance.

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Nutrition (1200-1400 calorie low day)
1: Cottage cheese and strawberries
2: 3×1 veggie omelette and sweet potato
3: Chocolate peanut butter shake
4: Egg white sandwich on whole wheat bread
5: Oatmeal tuna spinach salad
6: Thai chicken salad

Supplements:
Multivitamin with iron
Calcium 500 + D
1 T. flax seed oil

Calories eaten and deficit for yesterday = 1208 / -1117 (target -337)
Water: 16 cups
Ratios: 44% carb / 36% protein / 20% fat

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Workout:
8:40 am HIIT cardio–treadmill run
Warm up- 4 mph / 0% incline / 5 minutes
HIIT - 4.5, 6, 7, and 8 mph / 0% incline / 4 sets
Max - 9 mph / 0% incline / 1 minute
Cooldown - 4.5 mph / 0% incline / 2 minutes

7:30 pm steady-state cardio - bike for 30 minutes
8:00 pm Holiday challenge (20 push-ups, crunches, squats, and jumping jacks)

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The Awful Truth:
1. Missed meal 6 yesterday because I fell asleep early.

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Brownie Points:
1. 100% workout attendance!
2. Did my extra cardio again.
3. Voted this morning before going to the gym.
4. Have not touched any Halloween candy since Sunday (free day).

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Short-term Goals:
1. Pick up some bananas at the store.
2. Do the laundry. (Does laundry ever end?)
3. Take some more progress photos.

There’s a stereotypical image we all have of geeks and nerds in high school–they are either scrawny and sickly or overweight and soft. They are never pictured as athletic or fit, and there’s a perfectly good reason for that.

Most geeky types LOATHE exercise from their very first ignominious dodgeball experience in elementary school. I speak from personal experience as a bona fide nerd and proud PE slacker throughout my public school years. Do you remember a quiet, brainy girl with glasses, frizzy hair, and a few extra pounds shrinking in the back of every PE class line up? That was me. (Hell, I’m still a geek today. I just dress better, work out, and know how to use the proper hair products.)

The team sports model that most PE classes use might be all right for athletically-inclined or average kids, but it completely demoralizes and turns off the less-coordinated ones to exercise at an early age. Forcing an introverted bookworm with no interest in the sport to stand out in a weedy field to play won’t make them a better soccer player nor will it foster team spirit–it will make the poor little bookworm HATE anything to do with the sport as he/she chooses a non-key location to stand and daydream for the entire PE period.

What is fun about being the last kid to be picked for a team or the first one struck out in baseball?

Where is the sense of accomplishment in being everyone’s favorite dodgeball target?

I used to hate PE classes in high school because what they usually amounted to was running…outdoors…in 98 degree Florida weather with 100% humidity. I’d never run more than maybe half of the way around the track because I’d feel my lungs start to burn and my legs tire. I’m sure I was horribly dehydrated back then, too. I never drank water, and I usually only had milk in the morning with cereal and a soda with my lunch. That was it until dinner time.

Anyway, my point is that growing up, I always quit as soon as I felt any discomfort because I didn’t know any better and had never had a positive experience with a phys ed class. I just figured that I wasn’t very athletic and didn’t have the lungs or legs for running. After I joined the Army, basic training totally opened my eyes about my so-called limits. Drill sergeants don’t give a $#!% whether you’re tired, crampy, sore or gasping for breath–you just have to suck it up and do whatever physical training activity was planned for the day. If the company was doing 100 push-ups, by golly, so were you. Same with the 3 mile runs, endless flutter kicks, and shoot-me-now-so-I-can-rest hour-long ab sessions. All of them sucked in those first 2 weeks, and didn’t every become easy even in week 8, but they got better, and my attitude about exercise changed. Despite enough sore muscles for two tubes of Ben-Gay in those 2 months, I soon realized that I could do more and more of the calisthenics each day without collapsing into rest position or slowing to a walk.

Eventually, muscle soreness became a point of pride as long as it wasn’t an actual injury. It meant that you had worked a group hard enough to cause it to grow back stronger than before. We moaned and groaned about it because we were soldiers and that is what soldiers DO when not actually engaged in work, but deep down inside we could feel out muscles adapting and growing.

If we want to get the increasingly sedentary kids in this country used to a lifelong regimen of physical activity, we need to recognize that every kid is not created with equal manual dexterity and natural athleticism and find activities that allow each person to strive for a personal best and individual achievement instead of trying to keep up with peers who can outrun, outhit, and outplay them in every team sport.