Workout Wednesday: It was all good until it wasn't.

It was all good when I began my week last week, which for me, begins on Wednesdays typically, food-wise and exercise-wise because it's when I weigh in. Which coincidentally, I weighed in at the Sisterhood and that post is here. (Don't know what the Sisterhood is? Check it out!)And my first log of the 100 Pushup Challenge came in vlog form.  2 minutes of sheer gracefulness. (NOT!)

It was all good when I rocked the first 100 pushup challenge workout and the tworkout with The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans and was sore till Friday.

It was all good when I realized I had muscles I didn't know I had, like right down near your armpit but not your armpit and not your chest, but right in the crook of it in that region there, there's a tiny muscle that lives there and it was mad.

It was all good when I did spin class on Thursday, had a swimming date night on Friday and swam a mile, and did a 10 mile run on Saturday. It was alllll good. Until then.

Then Sunday I got sick. And then it wasn't. I felt it coming on and it went downhill since then. I think it was the shopping cart. I always blame illness on shopping carts. I believe everything begins with the shopping cart.

So anyway, guess what I've been doing. (Rhetorical.)

Does blowing my nose count as cardio? Hacking?

No?

Well ok, I did run my intervals on Monday after sitting in the parking lot of the gym for 10 minutes contemplating it. And for exactly 30 minutes, I had no cold! Gotta love adrenaline. Don't worry. I wiped the machine down real good with antibacterial.

And I haven't gone shopping so you'll see that in my Sisterhood post I am severely lacking in the eating well area.
Anyway, in sum, I'm redoing week one of the 100 pushup challenge. Because I want to and because I want to be better this week and because I want to pretend that the latter part of the week never happened and that I don't have one million zillion things to do before the kids return to school.

Are you doing the 100 Pushup Challenge? Do you want to? Read more...
And because it's Wednesday, here is the next installment of my...

101 No Excuses Fitness Tips to Get Your Butt Out the Door!
(Read 1-10 Here, this week we're beginning with #11 -- support. Very important. Ps. I realize that some of them overlap my BFF Tara Costa's tips from last week, but these are tried and true and worth repeating. Plus I wrote them before she told me about them.)

11. Get the support of your husband and/or family and make sure they all know how important it is for you to take this time out for you and how you'll be a better person for them if you do it. Everyone really does win!

12. Getting support actually takes some work and time. Sometimes no one believes you're serious. Sometimes you won't want to go (aka guilt) and sometimes they won't want you to go. You might have to prove yourself to them about how important it is to you. But that's ok, because you'll be proving yourself to yourself anyway, so eventually they'll be believers. They might even be on board and working out, too.

13. Have a wall of motivation. A corkboard or posterboard or something on your fridge or in your office that reminds you of your goals and what you're working for. Put pictures on it, before pictures, dates, mottos, slogans, anything and everything that inspires you. You can add "after" pictures as you hit different goals. You cross off goals you've reached.

14. Make lots of playlists of rockout music for you to get pumped to.

15. Find a workout buddy or a run or cycling or swim or tri group. These are people who can help you stay accountable, help you through tough workouts and inspire and push you.

16. Remember that everyone in the group is or was just like you. It took me a while to get the courage up to join a group but I wish I'd have done it sooner. Have courage.

17. Every time you have courage, it builds your confidence for the future. It goes in the bank. You can draw from it forever.

18. Log your workouts on Facebook and/or Daily Mile (http://www.dailymile.com/) which will publish your workouts to Twitter. There is a huge online community of exercisers out there and when I read what they're doing, I always want to do more!

19. Find workout bloggers like me, here, or at The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans! Blog about your workouts, your frustrations, setbacks and milestones! Blog blog blog away! Safety in numbers!!!!

20. Journal. Whether you blog or not, always journal your workouts and food. Keeping a food journal keeps you accountable and keeping a workout journal helps you figure out how much further you can push yourself, what worked and what didn't!

Have a great Wednesday! And Happy Anniversary to my parents! Who have been married for an infinity!

101 No Excuses Fitness Tips to Get Your Butt Out the Door

Each Wednesday, I will be posting 10 of my own favorite fitness tips as part of my 101 tips for finding a place to start, smashing down those excuses and getting your (my) butt out the door. I'm starting this week with 10 and I'll follow each week with 10 more until I hit the magic number of 101, where they will all eventually end up in their home in my Fitness section up in the tabbies up there. And they start from the very, very, very beginning. From square one. From where I started, right near that place I remember as "rock bottom." (I had one of these.) They span everything from food to fitness to motivation, so I hope you find them useful!**

Here we go:

101 NO EXCUSES Fitness Tips (to Get Your Butt Out the Door!)

Number 1. Make a plan. Have a workout plan and a food plan, all rolled up into one. (You can see what worked for me here and here.) If you don't know what that plan should be, talk to a nutritionist, a doctor, personal trainer, etc. and solicit professional help. Try to figure out a workout schedule that is something doable and something you (dare I say) like, and find an eating plan to go along with it. Do your research. Not everything works for everyone, so it might take a few tries to figure out what works for you.
2. Do not get discouraged if it takes a few tries to figure out what works for you. The important thing is that you're not waiting another single day to make changes and living your life! Every day that you're exercising and eating healthy is leading to a healthier you, even if you don't see it on the scale. (For me, what worked was a combination of 6 days cardio/3 days strength training + healthy eating, but it took some time for me to figure that out. Give it time.) DON'T GIVE UP!
3. Have a fitness goal and a date for that goal and put it on a calendar. Mine was a 5k. Having a visual on a goal helps you stay motivated. Make sure your workout plan fits into that goal. (My motto was: "I can be the fit chick running the 5k or the fat chick, it's up to me." Sounds rather crass to talk about myself that way, but it worked.)
4. In direct contradiction to #3: stop the negative self-talk. Be nice to yourself. Your performance or ability to even make it out the door depends a lot on what you're saying to yourself and about yourself to other people. If you don't start talking nice and encouraging yourself, you won't believe in yourself. Period. During the weight-loss process, you will learn to love yourself because if you're consistent, you will eventually see your hard work paying off and you will see what amazingness you're capable of. So get a head start and start loving yourself now.
5. And while you're at it, change your inner monologue to reflect your newfound positivity. Remove words like, "Can't," "Never," "Won't," and "I don't have time."
6. Stop putting yourself last. If mama's not happy, ain't no one happy. Besides, if you don't, you're teaching everyone around you it's ok to either put mama last or that it's ok for them to put themselves last because they watched you do it. We tend to make a lot of sacrifices for our families but our health should never, ever be one of them. We're no good to anyone when we're an unhappy hot mess. If you need permission to make yourself a priority, I AM GIVING IT TO YOU RIGHT NOW. (Sometimes we just need to hear it from someone else.)
7. Don't completely eliminate foods from your diet. Just remove them from your home. Go ahead and have them, but try to buy them in only one servingful if at all possible. If not, purchase, have one, then send the rest to someone's breakroom! When someone tells me I "can't" have something, I want it even more. So don't eliminate it (unless you're capable of handling that pressure and if so, awesome! I am not.) just remove its power over you by saying that you can have it when you want, but only in small portions and not every day, or at the very least, in accordance to your calorie count or eating plan.
8. And on this note, OVERHAUL YOUR ENTIRE KITCHEN PANTRY AND FRIDGE! Get rid of all the crap. Start fresh and within the guidelines of your food plan.
9. Do not allow your "downfall" foods to even enter your house. At least not for the short term. Eventually, when you can be trusted again, you can add it back in (that's my own philosophy.)
10. Write all your workouts in the coming weeks down on a calendar, in pen, aka in stone. And then share it with everyone in your world so they know that time is blocked out. And if you need to compare schedules with everyone to get that time blocked out, do it.

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Stay tuned for the next 10 which are coming next week!!

**Disclaimer: These are tips that worked *for me.* I am not an expert. Different things work for different people, so consult with your doctor before you start any workout or eating regimen.**