Tag Archives: GoWear fit

GoWear Fit

New week!  A dreary start to the week, too.  I decided to hit up the gym this morning.  I might ride on my birthday tomorrow if the weather is good, so I needed to lift today if that is going to happen.

I did the leg matrix for the finisher today.  I think that is what I will be calling a thigh-fecta now!

I was the only woman in the free weight area (the Iron Den as it is called at my gym).  I really want to just grab some ladies and get them in there!

I came home and since it was a cold morning, I made up pumpkin oats!  I had a pumpkin protein shake before my workout, so I really packed in the pumpkin today.

Good, too.

I have pulled my good buddy GoWear Fit out of the closet and started wearing it again.  This is the same type of device as a BodyBugg or FitBit thing. This is the arm band:

You wear it all the time and take it off to upload data or to recharge it.  You can sleep with it on as well (which I do).  It basically records movement and gives you a calorie burn and METS activity throughout the day.  It also records steps.  I don’t have the fancy other things where I can connect with a Garmin or whatever (I’m cheap and don’t have those toys).  I have the basic.  I got this in 2009 and the battery is still good!  I charged it up and started wearing it.  I really want to get a better handle of calories burned while biking and lifting to make sure I am getting in enough or not too much food.

Here is an example of Friday for me.

I know it may seem like I am very active, but note how when I work it looks like sleep!  That is the sedentary nature of my job and I can’t change that.  Until I get a foot pedal that I can work with my mouth (invention anyone???), this is how it goes.  I’ll periodically post some data from my gizmo for fun.

I do not think it is accurate for biking as the calorie burn is too low, so I am going to actually wear it on my leg for the next cycling ride and see what happens.

I love gadgets and numbers!

I also love lunch (or any meal time, really).

Nomf, nomf!

I did the latte honors this afternoon as work slowed down.

You are getting very sleepy….

I took a walk around the block in the afternoon as well.  Looking at the GoWear fit really makes me want to make sure I move more.  Guess it works!

Dinner time:

Pork chop.  Branching out from the poultry  :mrgreen:

I have a bit more work to do tonight and another walk around the block, plus my Larabar snack.

Yep, it’s been a typical Monday!  Tomorrow I am taking the day off for my birthday because I can – I love being an independent contractor! 😀

Question:  What is your favorite gadget? Or are you gadget free?

6-miler and surprise beauty in fall

(I forgot to hit ‘publish’ last night 😳  )

Today was a run day.  Too cold to go in the upper 20s when I first got up, so I had breakfast first 🙂

cakes1117

I worked for a while until the temp hit 39 degrees and headed out.  Pre run fuel:

zone1117

The addiction is still alive and well 😳

It was sunny and beautiful (if cold!)  I did a 3.2 mile loop, came back to the house and drank from my water bottle (and shed my gloves), then did another 3.2 mile loop.  2nd loop was the hill run.  If I had though about it, I would have done the hill loop first…..

Here is my GoWear fit today:

gsf

Can you guess where the run is in the graph??

Had the most wonderful lunch today.  John cooked up some pie pumpkins yesterday, so we have fresh pumpkin!  I mixed some with greek yogurt, pumpkin pie spice, cranberry sauce and some Hemp Plus granola.

lunch1117

Tasty!

When I was outside today, I saw one of my roses actually had a bloom on it!

rose1117

Even with the frost and everything lately, and the beauty bloomed!  Very fragrant and I was so happy to see this.  I don’t know if the other 2 buds there will open or not, but it’s possible!

Decided on a burger for dinner.  I don’t bother with the lean ground beef anymore because it’s just too dry.  I don’t eat ground beef very often, so I like to get the good stuff.  The trade off is the tiny burger:

din1117

Where’s the beef???  Good, though.

Last stop on tonight’s agenda was Starbucks!  We went with my mom.  I would have loved a gingerbread latte, but decided on a decaf skim latte.  I actually got almost 8 hours of sleep last night!  I hope to repeat that tonight.

latte1117

This last pic was taken with my mom’s Easy Share by Kodak.  She is actually trusting me with her new digital camera until mine comes back!  😀

Have a super night!

Brick training day!

I actually slept until 7 a.m. this morning!  Yay!  It’s so hard for me to sleep that late, although I didn’t get to bed until after midnight.

It looked pretty cloudy this morning, so we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to ride or not.

Breakfast was so yummy:

chocoats2

  • 40 grams oats
  • 4 grams cocoa powder
  • 1 small banana
  • cinnamon
  • Topped with peanut butter and (oh no she didn’t!) a drizzle of chocolate sauce.

Yum!  After dinking around on the computer for a while and checking the radar, it seemed clear and I really wanted to check out the duathlon course since the road was all marked up for the race in 2 weeks (!!!!).  I actually was overdressed for this, as the closer we got to Albany, the warmer it was.  It was probably close to 60 and really humid.  Ugh!  I had on jogging pants and a long sleeve technical shirt.

We started on the bike route and first thing is a big hill, a steep hill!  Holy crow.  This is a tough course.  It is a beautiful course, though, I have to say.  It’s going to be awesome with fall colors in 2 weeks.

With the humidity, I just wasn’t feeling at my peak and was slow on the climbs.  John actually went ahead of me, which is pretty rare.  We stopped at mile 8 to have a snack (Balance bar).  I likely won’t do this on the actual race day, but I needed it since it had been several hours since breakfast.

snack

Then finished up that route.  After we got back I wanted to do the 2.2 mile run and John decided to go with me!  I about fell over.  Drank some coconut water and headed out.  After about 1/2 a mile, there was a hill…. a long hill…. a really long hill.  Probably 1/4 mile or so.  We managed to plod up and keep going.  This was the big reason I wanted to do the course ahead of time, because I didn’t want there to be any surprises, and now there aren’t.  I do have to say that I am a little scared though.  Remember that I have to do the run *twice* – once before the 16 mile bike ride and then at the end.

I think I can do it – does my face look scared? It is.

sweaty

This was after we did the run part.  I was drenched in sweat.  I just don’t do well in humidity.  GoWear fit said 658 calories burned for the bike/run. Sweet.

I think I scared the geese with my sweatiness – they are running away!

geese

It was time to eat then and we stopped at Pasta Factory:

pf

Ironically, neither of us got pasta 😀

I did have an awesome pear and gorgonzola salad with walnuts on a bed of spinach.  It was sooo good!

salad

Shopped for a while and looked at some fun Halloween stuff.  The mall had one of those giant costume stores that seem to pop up this time of year.

Then a stop for a latte!  Yum, yum.

latte

They made it all purty for me, too!

I am pretty beat.  I feel a mix of both being excited and nervous about the duathlon.  It is going to be tough, no 2 ways about it.

Throwback for dinner!

eiab

Eggs in a basket!  This was fun, since we actually had bread slices big enough to do this with (Nature’s Pride)

So – lucky you guys to have an early post from me tonight!  Tomorrow is back to work for me, and then football where my Broncos take on my dad’s favorite team the Cowboys (booooo!!!).  So we will be watching the game together.

Question:  Ever have eggs in a basket?

Le ride!

It’s my weekend.  Yay!  Another chilly night in the 40s.  It’s crazy!  No gym this morning, but could I sleep in?  No!  I woke up at 6am…. sigh.  Then I just laid there for an hour trying to make myself get back to sleep LOL!

Fueled up for my ride with protein pancakes and blueberry sauce!

brekkie9

Extra good on a cold morning.

This is the shirt that I got the other day for $10 at TJMaxx!  It’s a New Balance.  I loves me a bargain.  John proclaimed this his favorite outfit!

lori1

Side note: Did anyone watch Project Runway last night?  Doesn’t this shirt look like the bowling ball dress? LOL!

I new that I wanted a sweet treat at the lake, so that meant packing a lunch and not buying something there (even though I love the little Indian place there).    It was a nice ride, maybe a little breezy, but nice and cool so I didn’t get really sweaty.

Arrived at the lake and ate on the dock.  I had a tuna/hummus wrap, Food Should Taste Good Chips and applesauce.  Except I forgot a spoon!  Good thing it was kind of drinkable 😀lunch16

View from my wrap:

wrap

Since I was by myself, I could dawdle around the stores and did a lot of window shopping.  Riding a bike is good shopping control, as I couldn’t carry much home in my bag!

Lots of flowers blooming today, including a bit of globe thistle.

globe-thistle

And this little bumblebee hard at work.  Look at all that pollen on his legs!

bee

p8280015

Was hungry for a snack at this point!  I wanted a latte, but knew there was another stop on my agenda first:

lgbc

I decided on an almond danish.  I was like a cinnamon roll, only with almond filling.  Yum.  Then I picked up a skim latte (hey, gotta save somewhere, right?) and sat at the beach and enjoyed:

snack6

There was latte art on this, but it disappeared as I walked to the beach!

I then biked home, the harder of the 2 ways because you start with a 2 mile climb uphill!  John actually met me at the frozen yogurt place on the bike path, although I didn’t get anything there.  It was nice to have him accompany me the rest of the way.

30 miles done!  I remember last year how I was so scared to bike to the lake and how tiring it was.  Now it’s no problem.  The hills are still tough, but it is a fun ride!

We decided to try a new place for dinner.  Kind of like a local Denny’s.  They serve breakfast all day, so you know I wanted to go there!  I decided on an omelet made with eggbeaters.  It was so tasty!

dinner19 The home fries were very good and not too greasy.  The wheat toast was buttered, though.  Didn’t stop me from eating it!  We so bad wanted a piece of pie, but I had already eaten a danish, so had to say no.

This is what my day looked like activity-wise:

gwfNow it’s relaxing time with Futurama and probably some football!  Hope your day was as great as mine was! 😀

51 miles, fair food and more FAQ!

Long post coming up, so grab a cup of coffee.  Dang, what a day!  Got up and fueled up for a big bike ride today.  Had banana oats cooked with cinnamon and with some fresh  made peanut butter on top.  Sooo good.

oats3

We decided to bike to the Saratoga County fair today (my BIL gave us free tickets – awesome!!).  Each way is 25.5 miles.  That makes it 51 miles round trip (or 82 km!!  That sounds so much farther).  Of course, we stopped at the fair for a few hours.  My niece was participating in some 4H stuff at the fair.  We were really hungry by the time we got there.  I could have taken a bite of this sandcastle:

sandcastle

Of course, at the fair there is a sea of food:

food

Can you believe we found Indian food?  It was actually not bad, and way better than a greasy fair hamburger or corn dog!

We got chicken tikka and korma with basmati rice:

indian

Here are some other hungry little ones, too!

pigs

Aren’t they cute?

After a few hours at the fair, we biked back to town to eat before hitting the last 20 miles home.  Wanted a carb hit, so guess what we had??

bagel3

Is this the fluffiest bagel you have ever seen?  It looks like a brioche!  It was honey wheat.  Yum.  Uncommon Grounds has the best bagels (and really good coffee – they roast their own).

That was good fuel to go the rest of the way home.  There were some serious hills on this ride.  It’s the farthest I have ever ridden in a day ( a littlemore than 4x the distance for my triathlon last week!).   I am pretty pooped now.

Here is what the GoWear fit shows the day to look like:

gwfThis is the plan for the rest of the evening:

relaxing

Watching the tour and blogging!  I have to laugh – that tv is 36 inches and it looks like 12 in this picture!

More answers to the rest of the questions (if you are still reading!)

Did you work with a personal trainer? Nope.  I have read a ton of books and basically have done all this on my own.  There is so much information out there to be had if you dig it up.

Do you have the dreaded “belly flap” – and if so, how bad is the loose skin issue?  Ah, the loose skin issue.  This is the most frequent question asked of me (2nd is how long did it take to lose 100 pounds).  Yes, I have loose skin.  I don’t have the belly flap really, because I have never had kids and my weight was never really carried in my stomach.  The skin on my tummy is loose, but not saggy like my thighs and upper arms are.  You can see in my triathlon pose the loose upper arm skin.   You can see how large my thighs look in the picture in the side bar of me in bike shorts.  A lot of that is loose skin.  I don’t know if I would ever get it removed (if I could afford it), and most times it doesn’t bother me all that much.  Clothed you don’t see it, and it doesn’t bother John.

Where do you find your recipes? And what kind of oats do you use for your morning breakfast? And can you post your recipes again?? I like to read cook books and online recipe sites.  Most recipes are tweaked to make them friendly to my palate or to meet specific nutritional requirements that I want.  Not all are successful LOL!  I use rolled oats all the time.  I am working on getting more of my recipes up here

What is the body weight matrix? It’s a move during the NROLW where you do 24 squats followed by 12 lunges on each leg followed by 12 jumping lunges on each leg followed by 24 jump squats.  Rest for as long as it took you to get through the set and repeat 3x.  It will kill you.

Do you have more goals in mind for youself? I have a few.  Several 5Ks, I want to finish the NROLW.  Possibly a 1/2 marathon, although not sure.  I am really going to enjoy being in good shape right now and do our long rides (like today’s!)

How did you KNOW that this time was THE time you would succeed? What was different from all the other attempts? Okay, funny thing is, I don’t know that the is *the* time or the last time.  I hope it is.  Every time I would try to lose weight I was sure it was the last time.   I can’t even tell you how many people have said the same thing, even big losers who gained it all back thought it would never happen to them.  I have never maintained a weight loss like I have now, so something has changed.  I guess it was me LOL!  The longer I do this, the easier it seems to be. I now really understand much more about nutrition and fitness and how it relates to me and what my body needs.  That is different, instead of trying to force a specific plan or timed weight loss goal or whatever, I let my body tell me what it wants, and how fast it wants to lose, and when to take a break and maintain for a while.  That’s why it has taken me so long. My body and I are friends now instead of battling it out.

Well – you made it to the end – congratulations! 😀

Brick and GoWear fit

Well, the weather wasn’t promising when I got up, but I decided to go for the brick anyway.  John actually decided to join me for the bike leg, which just about made my jaw fall on the floor.  He is usually sleeping when I get up and leave the house for the Y.

First, I fueled with this (half before the bike and half after the bike).

smoothie

We then biked for 6.7 miles in about 1/2 hour.  That was with a couple stoplights in there.  John went home and I continued to the school and ran 3.25 miles around the track.  It took about 37 minutes.  I am definitely slower after the bike, but that’s okay.  At least I ran the whole thing!

Here is what the brick looks like on my GoWear fit:

brickThen you can see me sitting on my butt working.

After watching Alton Brown last night and his blueberry episode, I knew what I wanted for brekkie.  Num!

cakes

I love this plate – just got it last week!

Lunch was the old standby:

lunch

For snacks, I had the same as yesterday, only the cinnamon chips were mixed with some dark chocolate ones.  The cinnamon chips are made by Hershey and you can find them in the baking aisle with the other chocolate chips.  They are good!

lattechips1

For dinner I was in the mood for eggs  again (for the 3rd dinner in a row!).  I made a giant salad with some of the POM vinaigrette, hardboiled eggs, toasted pecans, and provolone cheese.  Kind of a chef salad without the meat.

salad

Today was the end of my work week!  Yay!   No work until Sunday.   Exciting girl that I am, I might go to the library tonight LOL!

Challenge Day 11

Here is a picture of my run this morning on the GoWear fit:

gwf

Note how the rest of my workday is quiet.

I did very well on the challenge today!  Yay!  Lots of calories burned and stayed within calories (even with the bagel).  1 more day of challenge to go!