Great t-tapp forum post of the week

Okay this isn't a new post or anything but as of late t-tapp twist has become my favorite exercise and this post is grrrrrreat. Since doing anything other than just BWO+ has seemed to aggravate my back my goal for now is to give 1,000% on learning BWO+ the best I can. T-tapp twist is definitely the one exercise that as a whole I think for me, and I bet everyone, takes the longest and the most energy to get totally right.

This thread HERE by Kiona on the t-tapp boards is a gold mine of information on learning exactly how those hips should feel when doing t-tapp twist. I felt so much better when Kiona on the thread says that it's almost impossible to have your hips be 100% perfectly stable. So even the pros are still getting better at it. So I definitely feel a tad better about myself and my attempts at TTT. On the thread she gives great instruction on doing it sitting and against a wall to stabilize those hips. I plan on doing one of them once a day to really get it down. So run over and check out Kiona's amazing TTT thread HERE.

A nugget of wisdom from the amazing Charlotte

Remember Miss Inspiration herself Charlotte from my blog entry? If not, run over here and check out her video. On a Christian women's message board I'm on there has been a discussion/review thread of Charlotte's ebook. I won't give away a lot but I will say I really want to read it. She is such an inspiration and my friend Kim has said that the book is really inspiring. She shared with me a quote from her book and it really spoke to me.

You know, time is going to pass
whether you decide to T-Tapp consistently or not.
You can choose to give up or be “too busy”
and 6 months from now
wear the same size (or larger).
Or you can choose to be consistent
and work the workout
and 6 months from now
wear a smaller size and/or be toned and shapelier.
Six months will pass either way.

Where will I be in 6 months? I have been gaining about 5 lbs a month. So I can either be heavier than I've EVER been or I can be under 200 lbs! I can be fitter, healthier and happier. I can be disappointed in myself or I can be proud of my consistency.

I can't afford Charlotte's book right now as I have another t-tapp workout I want to get with my 50% off coupon that expires in January. But as soon as I can I'll do a review here. For myself of course LOL.

Did BWO+ (well Basic Tempo Plus since it's my favorite right now) this afternoon. Fighting the urge to do SATI. I need to break that "More is Better" mentality that years of diet and exercise have hammered in my brain. I may do PBS and t-tapp twist before bed though since my theory is that t-tapp twist and PBS are helping my back the most. We'll see...

Making cookies, eating cookies and um.....

Every year I make 4 bazillion cookies for Clay's work. I'm happy to do it. He is such a blessing to me and it honors me to be able to let him be "that guy". He likes being the guy who walks in with the mass amounts of tins of cookies. He likes being that guy who can take tins down to the Union office and give them to the head guys. He likes looking not just respected at work but respected at home as well.

But man I make A LOT of cookies. This year is was 10 kinds of cookies and many batches of each kind. 800 cookies maybe? We won't get into how many I ate. We just won't. You can imagine all on your own. If your imagination wants to be kind about it, I'll appreciate it.

I learned a couple of things yesterday in my cookie madness.

1. - I want, no I need, to remember just how gross eating sugar makes my body feel. After a day with way too much sugar, boy did I feel gross. In fact I feel even worse today, the day after with my body working to recover from a day with too high blood sugar.

2. - I want, no I need, to have t-tapp principles become natural. SO many times I found myself realizing how horrible I was standing, things like that. AND I got to the end of the day and poked around online and realized that not ONCE had I thought to do some Hoedowns to deal with my raised blood sugar. I have been getting into the habit of doing PBS (Primary Back Stretch) before bed hoping that will help my back. But had I been standing tight and tucked to protect my back and ribs up, lats set I would have had much less back soreness today.

Hiding my head in the sand

I have come to the realization that when things are bad I bury my head in the sand and hide. No posting on the t-tapp forums, no talking to my HK friends, and of course... no blogging on my new t-tapp blog. So here we are. Time to shake the sand off, buck up and hop back on the wagon and any other cliches you can think of.

I took a good week off. I don't know why I do it. Well I don't know why anymore than I know why I eat 10 cookies instead of 1. Or none. Wouldn't eating none and feeling fine be just amazing? Anyways, so I didn't get around to tapping for a week. I was feeling invincible back-wise. My back just was feeling great (after the week of tapping before!) and I just let myself not do it. Do we know where this is going? Yeah, my back became a MESS after a long day in town, at the store, then cleaning my mom's house. No tapping+hard work=downright painful and hard to walk in the morning. Sigh.

So this week I started again. Monday and Tuesday I did BWO+ (okay I did Basic + Tempo which is a version of BWO+ but it's my favorite). My back was still stiff in the mornings but hey I could walk and make breakfast for the kids. I was on a roll. And again the feeling of invincibility crept in.... and Wednesday I tried to do the lunges after BWO+ (I got my TWO DVD 2 in the mail that day!!). I know, I know, I have a bad back, a back that makes it hard to walk at times, and I know that overdoing it is a recipe for disaster. But I'm an all-or-nothing gal. Sue me. So needless to say my body wasn't so happy the next morning. Was discouraging to have done my t-tapp and have my back hurt. But I did push it past my comfort zone and I know it was the cause. But discouraging nonetheless. I really want to be able to do TWO.

I did B+Tempo last night but was still sore this morning from the day before so today I'm taking a full day off. I did PBS (Primary Back Stretch) today with the kids and will do brushing before bed. But I am hoping that a full recovery day (though I admit it took everything I had not to pop in SATI (Step Away the Inches) and do that). but hopefully this full day will help me to really get my back ready to tapp again tomorrow. Less is More is SUCH a hard thing for me to comprehend. I hear it said on the t-tapp forums a million times but it's SO hard for me to embrace. I've always been the "add as many plates to my barbells, run as fast as I could, working out twice a day is always better than once" person. It's time to retrain my thinking on this!

Workouts for the week of December 13-17th:
M - BWO+ Tempo
T - BWO+ Tempo
W - BWO+ and lunges from Instructional 2
Th - BWO Tempo & body brushing
F - Day off/PBS and body brushing

Weight: 212.2 Sigh. I know that measurements matter and weight shouldn't but when you're over 200 lbs seeing that scale goes down is a great thing. I WILL have it down next week. And if I don't I'm sure I'll pretend this blog doesn't exist :)

If this doesn't inspire you I don't know what will

Poke around the t-tapp forums, get to know enough about t-tapp and you will eventually hear of Charlotte. Charlotte is the mom of 12 kids and THE most inspiring t-tapp testimony in MY opinion of course. With regular short workouts, with consistency with t-tapp she went from a size 22W to a now size 4! Seriously. That's something. And what's amazing to me as well is that as you watch her from the first segment to a year later, she has gained so much self-confidence as well as looks amazing. Okay we've seen a million transformation stories where someone goes from being 250 lbs to 120 and how they now love the gym and workout an hour every morning at 4am and run marathons. But I will never do that. There was a time in my youth when we lived in the city that we went to the gym early but I'm not that spring chicken, I live in the country, I have horrible back problems and now find that I am incredibly lazy Bwahahah. But over and over at the t-tapp forums and things like in Charlotte's video I hear the same thing "you don't have to workout hours a day, you just have to BE CONSISTENT". Smaller shorter workouts where you give 100% and be consistent. I've watched Charlotte's video a million times because it always makes me feel like I can actually DO THIS. I can be thin again, I can be healthy again, I can find strength and self-confidence again.

Measurements and the dreaded pounds

Somewhere on this whole blog of mine I know there needs to be some starting point in terms of measurements and poundage. More than anything this blog is to be a journal of sorts because written journals just don't work for me. I LOVE them but the curse applies to them too. Curse you ask? Yes curse. The "I don't finish anything I start" curse. It's that one that I hope to break with this whole t-tapp thing. I've had umpteen journals. Maybe more. But I really want to be able to track my workouts and being honest with myself, I KNOW that I'll lose my notebook or a sweet little girl will take it and color walking talking smiling flowers all over it and it would cease to be mine. So this blog will have to do. I surely spend more time sitting my rump in this chair than I do writing in a notebook anyways. So that ups my chances of success as well right?

So weight. And measurements. ACK! Do I have to? Yes, Kim, you have to.

Weight: Part of me wants to believe what everyone has been saying. Trish in particular. Trish has lost Down 174" and 8 sizes since 1/26/07! That's from a 22W to an 8!!! (But only 31 pounds) That's amazing right?! And over and over on the t-tapp forums she has counseled people to stop weighing and just measure. But MAN I want that scale to go down. I do. I hate looking at the number and I'm just not sure I'm ready to give up my scale just yet. So my weight as of this morning is a whopping:

210.6 lbs

Measurements: Now I want to document my original starting measurements of a month ago and my ones as of today in case I lose my paper version or it becomes a paper airplane and gets thrown off the porch into the area the dog "goes" where I do NOT go.

Original starting measurements:
Bust/Chest: 45
Pecs: 41.25
Ribs: 39
Waist: 42
Abdomen: 42
Hips: 44
Upper Thigh:
R: 26.5
L: 26.5
Lower Thigh:
R: 19
L: 19
Calves:
R: 16.25
L: 16.25
Upper Arms/Biceps:
R: 12.5
L: 12.5

Today's Measurements:
Bust/Chest: 44
Pecs: 41
Ribs: 37
Waist: 42
Abdomen: 42
Hips: 43.75
Upper Thigh:
R: 26
L: 25.5
Lower Thigh:
R: 18.25
L: 18.5
Calves:
R: 15.75
L: 15.75
Upper Arms/Biceps:
R: 12.5
L: 12.5

Well so about these numbers. Let me say that I have NOT lost any weight this month. And it's definitely an eating thing. But we'll note that I lost 7.5 INCHES! And I've gotten compliments that I looked thinner through the middle. No weight lost but body changing. Am I believer in ditching the scale? Still not yet LOL!

So there it is. In all it's glory.

eight: Part of me wants to believe what eve

Month 1 update and chat

So as soon as I started this blog Thanksgiving rolled around and I just well.... ate whatever, didn't workout for a week and well you know how that goes right? I'm certainly not the only person in the world who does that kind of stupid thing and lives to regret it. Right?

I think sometimes we do things because we need to be reminded of just how crappy they make us feel so we get re motivated to NOT do them. So after a week of no t-tapp I woke one fine gorgeous Sunday morning unable to walk. Truly the worst day since I started t-tapp a month ago. It was the worst day since this lack of disc started causing me problems. Truly a dark dark day.

And of course Clay asked why I haven't been doing my t-tapp. Sigh. I don't know honey, why am I overweight, why do I eat so much, why is this house a mess, why didn't I brush my teeth last night, why didn't I do my t-tapp? Argh. Just because I know it's good for me doesn't mean I do it. Clearly.

*quick sidetrack* So that dark bad back no good day? So after hours upstairs in bed I decided to brave the downstairs. I literally had to brace myself on the wall and stair rail, white knuckling it the whole way down. I got about halfway downstairs and our HUGE 100+ lbs handmade with rough timber siderailing on our stairs ripped off the wall and crashing to the ground. It was quite scary since it hit the chair where on a weekend morning a child is usually playing some of their only allowed "game time". It was 3 feet away from our 1 year old. Scary. And at the same time incredibly depressing that me and my 200+ lbs was too much for the railing. Now I should note that WE did not make that handrail, the guy who made this rocking little house did. Just making that clear to save my husband's reputation and all that. Turns out those screws the dude used just weren't that long. Go figure. And I'm fat and exert way too much force. Pfft.

So I hopped back on the t-tapp wagon. Monday I did BWO+ and yesterday did BWO+. After Monday's workout I woke up able to walk but still a tad sore. And after yesterday's t-tapping I awoke this morning feeling pretty darn good if I do say so myself. This whole t-tapp thing never ceases to amaze me. I was such an anti-t-tapper for SO long. And here I am unable to skip even a day without my body freaking out! Who would have thought?