Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Negatives from this week:

I fell down on a hike

I have a 3" long blister on my foot

I got lost on a walk by myself today and was gone 2 hours

I got a very pretty sunburn on said hike, with a fancy design

My skin is a giant mess of allergic reaction to something

Positives from this week:

I did it.

I did it, and I did it all. No slacking, no sitting on the sidelines. I'm here to make it count. I'm here to push my hardest.

On today's hike (camelback), I went to the top of the camelback AND I went down into the vortex - something I couldn't do last time because it was full of water. Only 3 people out of my group of 10 made it into the vortex and 4 went to the top of camelback. I really like my new hike group. Tomorrow is a short day - there is no 6am class on Saturdays. You just eat breakfast and you choose whether you want to hike or do a 2 1/2 hour cardio class. Then when you're done there is a stretch class and you're free for the rest of the day other than meals. This is why I choose to leave on Saturday and not Sunday. So since my motto was to do my best, I signed up to do the dreaded stop sign hike again. I figured, it's my last day! I'm going to try to make it all the way up and back down again. If my legs are dead for the next two days, that's OK! I'll be at home! Fine and dandy until I got lost on my walk today and ended up with a painful 3" blister on my foot. So we'll see how it is tomorrow. Here are a buuuuunch of pictures. Enjoy :)

menus from today and yesterday

menus from today and yesterday

stop sign hike - the devil!

top of camelback

this is the vortex

starting to come back up - very hard! much harder than getting down

the knee (getting better!) and foot

Dumas

Dana down! I fell on the hike today. :( I was in a new hike group and feeling great, speeding along and keeping up. Then a rock came up from out of the earth and GRABBED my foot! Imagine! OK, maybe not. Maybe I was going to fast or not paying enough attention. Either way, I smashed up my knee. Nothing serious, just a bloody skinned knee. It was at the beginning of the hike, so it affected me a little, but I still finished the hike (Scout Cave). I didn't take any pictures because I was on this hike last time. I'll post the menu in an upcoming post.

I can't believe I forgot this yesterday. In one of our gym classes where you're supposed to push yourself to the max at intervals, we had a scary thing happen. This older lady all of a sudden couldn't move, couldn't see and didn't know where she was. She's the sweetest thing on earth; it was very hard to see. We thought she was having a stroke and about 6-7 emergency vehicles came really fast. She didn't choose to go to the hospital and is saying it was a mixture of aspirin and medication but some of us aren't sure about that so we're keeping an eye on her today. I told her today she's very popular and everyone's always going to be asking how she is. Every time she made a noise on the machine next to me, I found myself making sure she was OK. The weird part for all of us in the gym was that we had to keep going for the class. We weren't allowed to stop at all. It felt very selfish. But the trainer reminded us that we are here for ourselves and that she was in good hands. I'm glad she's OK!

That's all I gots! Short post today. See y'all tomorrow (maybe).

Struggling With Myself!!!

Here I am back at Fitness Ridge. I arrived on Sunday afternoon....nothing really happens on Sunday other than meeting everyone and the dreaded weigh-in. I was disgusted to see that I weigh almost as much as when I weighed in here 6 months ago. Of course, I did this to myself. I don't know what happened....I was doing so great for 3 months after I left here and then when I went home for Christmas, something in my head changed and I couldn't get back on track and started quickly gaining back everything I had worked so far for.

Monday we had the usual - 6am class, breakfast, long hike (Chuckwalla), mountain class, lunch, then three more classes. It felt a lot harder than I remember. But I made it. :)

Today (Tuesday), same thing really. I was pretty sore when I woke up, but that was to be expected. After the 6am class and breakfast, we went on today's hike (Third Ravine). They put you in a new hike group on Tuesdays. Monday is a sort of assessment hike and then they move you around based on how fast you were. There are 7 groups of hikers - one advanced, several intermediate and a beginner group. Based on Monday, I got put in the highest intermediate group. With the fast, skinny people. Now I know what it's like to bring up the rear of the group. My mantra for the day (before the hike) was NO SELF NEGATIVITY. That was out the window as soon as the hike started. I started the "look what you did to yourself," "you had no problem yesterday, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?" and the "I'm not going to make it; I'm slowing everyone down and they're all going to hate me." I'm well aware that this type of self-struggle leads nowhere good. All it did was make me stop more often and come close to tears. It's really the reason I'm here. I know how to lose weight and be healthy, and I feel great when I'm going it. But something's wrong in the ol' noggin'. I vowed to meet with the counselors here this time - something I didn't take advantage of last time.

By the time I got back to my room after the hike, I was a bundle of self-doubt. On top of that, I was really starting to feel some pain in the legs - hips, knees, blisters on feet, etc. I took a 20 min nap hoping it would get better but through lunch and the next classes, it didn't. Then I went to dinner and sat with a group of girls and we talked about the self-deprication. Everyone had done it. Everyone could relate. That felt nice, but still didn't make it go away. I meet with the life coach tomorrow so we'll see how that goes!

I posted some pics below and for the FB girl that was asking, I posted the meal plans as well. Hope it helps. :)

Views from Chuckwalla (above and below)

my hiking group (above) and my fat ass (below) - hey, I told you, I'm still working on it.

Mon and Tue menus (above and below)