In typical Procrastinating Miranda fashion, I’m ending up writing about Week 1 of the Biggest Loser program I joined at the gym when I’m almost halfway through Week 2. My health club, The Works, is having their own version of the Biggest Loser, although no one gets voted off, so I decided to join it.
The major upside for me was that the program involves 12 sessions with a trainer in a small group (4 people) for much much less than I would pay for just 12 sessions with a trainer outside the program. I’ve never worked out with a trainer before, so I thought this would be a good way to kickstart my weight loss and get in shape, and try out the whole trainer thing before I invested money into sessions of my own.
So far, it’s been pretty good, although I am so sore all of the time! That’s what I signed up for, though.
Last Tuesday, we had our initial weigh in and some fitness tests: pushups for 1 min, situps for 1 min, and 1 mile as fast as you can. I managed a whopping 6 (girl!) pushups, 17 situps, and 15:48 for my mile (mostly walking). Then on Thursday, our first real workout. So far, all the trainer workouts have been in the aerobics studio because our session is at 8:00am and there are no classes in there at that time. Melissa (my trainer) says this is a great advantage because the other teams don’t get to work out in there, but I think she just likes making us do exercises for the whole length of the studio!
I ended up doing 3 days of cardio last week, too, for 1 hour, which I thought was what I was supposed to be doing but then Melissa told me I should do 5-6 days for 30-45 minutes. I was also doing it at too high of a heart rate, so hopefully this week is better.
One of the hardest parts has been the food tracking. I have always liked to eat. Food tastes good! And so I always eat too much of it. We have been using MyFitnessPal to log food and exercise. It’s so easy to eat a big Panera Bread cookie or something even when know that you shouldn’t really eat it, but when you have to write it down and see that your pool of calories for the day shrinks, it really makes you reconsider it.
I had thought this whole program was just for getting in shape, not really a competition like the TV show, but I found out today it is a competition and there are prizes! I don’t know what all of them are yet but I think there’s some trainer sessions and a heart rate monitor in there.
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