The day after Christmas of last year, I came out of a food/exercise tail-spin/dumpster dive that saw me binge up to what may be the fattest that I've ever been.
Since them, I've more or less been "eating clean," charting my food, weighing and measuring etc. I've started going to the gym three days a week, biking to work on the other two days (when weather permits), doing a long run/walk/run on Saturday and even taking to take a Yoga class on Sundays.
I've managed to do this without making myself or my husband TOO crazy. And it's working. I'm sitting here wearing a pair of pants that a month ago I couldn't even get into and two weeks ago I couldn't sit comfortably in.
I feel great, except when ye olde blood sugar makes a run for the border and I get a bad case of the Waaah-waahs and feel like I'm falling off a merry-go-round, but I digress.
Everything's good (kanine hora) on the food/body front.
EXCEPT!!!!
I'm doing the Seven Weeks to 100 Pushups program. with
filthgoblin as my long distance partner in Obviously it was never going to happen for me in 7 weeks. I've never had great upper-body strength even when I was doing weight training on a consistent basis. I knew I was starting from almost less than beginner. But I started with the beginner program and I've been able to keep up with the sets as they've increased. MOSTLY....
The biggest decision I made was to do "real" push-ups, with my toes on the floor, instead of "modified" push-ups on my knees, which to me are (sorry) "girl" push-ups.
Let's flash-back to the horrible days of my grade-school education. Mid 70's, Early 80's. President's Council on Fitness guidelines. Pull-ups. Push-ups. Sit-ups. I don't know when people started talking about crunches, but when I was in school it was full-on sit-ups with someone holding your feet down.
And I could never do it. Long before I was officially a fat girl, I was a girl who couldn't do push-ups (or pull-ups or sit-ups.) I don't think I ever completed the official guidelines.
I'll spare you the intervening 25 odd years of binging and dieting and exercise drama (I think leg-warmers WERE involved at some point) and trauma, but I will say that this time around, I decided to do push-ups. Real push-ups. And I have been able to do them.
Kind of.
I'm up to the six week of the program. I repeated the 4th and 5th week because I was having trouble with the last set of each group, which is always the longest set.
For instance today's sets were 6/6/10/10/7/7/7 and 28.
No problem with the first 7 sets. But that 28 (or 24 or 20 or 18) is a killer. Here's the thing...I can do it, but I have to take extra breaks. Like three or four or even five along the way. Just a few seconds. I don't even necessarily have to come off my hands and toes, but I have to stop.
I don't want to stop. I want to do the set as a set.
So the question is...do I go to my knees and do at least some of the push-ups as "modified" so that I maintain the momentum OR do I take the extra breaks so that I can complete the correct number of "real" push-ups?
I KNOW it wouldn't matter quite so much if I weren't fighting off the demons of pathetic wimpy girl, circa 1976.
I refuse to believe that I can't do it, and I really do not like the idea, which someone floated at
dailyexercise, that 100 push-ups is unrealistic for a woman who isn't taking steroids. I've tried going into the push-ups with no warm-up so that I'm not expending any extra energy.
I've tried having some soy milk a few hours before the gym so that I've got a little extra protein.
I'm going to start taking a multi-vitamin, as hubby thinks I should.
I'm fighting off the impulse to take a "fat-burning supplement" i.e. HEAVY DUTY CAFFEINE PILL THAT WILL MAKE ACT LIKE A GIBBERING IDIOT.
I just want to be able to do the damn push-ups without having to stop during the long set.
Is that too much to ask?