Day 8: "Superstar of the week" with serious food cravings

Monday morning, 6 am – what better way to start the week than with a workout?? Good thing I didn’t realize it was raining before I was out the door, I might have had a different view on this otherwise…And no, for all you critical minds at work, this is not a “Yuppie-Marina bootcamp”, we actually do work out hard, we do meet rain or shine and we also "dig in the dirt" if necessary! As I mentioned last week, Monday is Basic Training “running day” – we ran to the Aquatic park, did some pull-ups and trizep-dips, ran hill-repeats near Fort Mason, did some more pull-ups and dips and jogged back. Overall, I think we ran approximately 3 miles, not too crazy, but it was a good workout (especially with the hills). A new girl joined the bootcamp today so I wasn’t always the slowest (what a nice change). Yay. I tried to put in more effort to keep up with the group, but honestly, I have no idea how to do it. Should I do longer strides or faster steps? It just doesn’t work! I talked to Michael, our instructor, and his advice was to do interval training...I guess I knew the answer before but I have been trying to avoid fartlek speed runs for a while and that is probably why my speed is not increasing with time. But he promised me that he will try to help me to work on it, I will definitely give it a try.

I had a “Quinoa Vegetable Tofu bowl” for lunch (can you believe it? Who would have ever thought I would order this voluntarily…but it was good, even the tofu!), however, I got some SERIOUS sugar cravings at 4 pm… I ate a cup of strawberries but that didn’t do it, I chewed fruity gum, that didn’t help either…By then, I really wanted some sugar so I decided that after a completely “treat-free”-week, a cookie would probably be ok. In low-sugar panic mode, I went to the desk of my coworker and said “You know, we really have to get a cookie. Or a muffin. Or a brownie. Anything that is sweet! NOW!”. He just said “Alright then, just give me 10 minutes” (I think he is somewhat scared of me when I am having low blood sugar and he knows when I am serious...). The good thing was that by the time we finally got to Starbucks to get me my treat (which was almost 30 minutes later), my cravings were gone. I was a little mad with myself because of my 3 year old habit, I automatically ordered a “tall skinny vanilla latte”. No!!! I am trying to get away from sweeteners and non-fat milk, so this order was a complete failure. I didn’t enjoy my drink and therefore, I only had half of it. And I would like to point out that I didn’t buy any pastry (but I was really close…).

I had another bar method class at 7 pm, I walked in the class room and Julia welcomed me speaking in her microphone with “Susanne is back! She is the superstar of the week!”. THE SUPERSTAR OF THE WEEK. That sounds sooo good and made up for all the sugar I resisted today. Thanks Julia!! I am really starting to like the bar method it won’t take long and I’ll be hooked. It is very relaxing after a long day at work. But it is a lot harder on my muscles after a day with a bootcamp workout in the morning…Altogether, I had a somewhat rocky start in week 2 with quite serious food cravings, I think I will allow myself a treat every now and then so that this won’t happen again. I weighed myself this morning and I was happy to find out that my current weight is 2 pounds less than last Monday. That’s a good start! There is definitely hope to fit in the dress in a couple of weeks!

8 days down, 34 to go, week 2, here I come!!!