Ok, so when I do shoulder presses (Db) my left shoulder seems to 'pop'on the downward motion as my elbow lowers past my shoulder - like a ligament or something is catching?? Who knows. I adjust my shoulders to see if their positioning will make it go away and/or minimize it. So far if I position my shoulders further back (stand up very straight) and not bring the weights all the way down, it minimizes the pop, but it doesnt go away. It's not painful, but is definitely weird, so it's not something I want to continue to hear/feel. I also dont want to keep doing it, if there's a potential fo

Julie - as I review my workouts for the next several weeks, I'm concerned by my limitations with dumbbells. It looks like the workouts should change up and 'evolve' a bit, but I dont have all the options available to me for different workouts with the dumbells. I'm thinking I do need to invest in a bench and perhaps a barbell. I see there are exercises using the exercise bands too. Any thoughts on other small additional items I could include that would help mix it up?

Wow, weekends are really hard! At work I have structure, so it's easy to really get those meals in every 3 hours or so. On weekends, I'm up a little later and on Saturdays, I get up and work out so my first meal isnt until 9ish vs 7am on weekdays. From there it's usually go, go, go. This weekend, I stuck to good foods and carried a couple with me as needed, but had a hard time eating every 3 hours or so and found myself stretching to 4+ hours at times and getting hungry.

I also started taking a pre-biotic (digestive enzymes) Sunday for grains/veggies as I'm having some pretty severe bloating eating all the grains lately (TMI???). So far so good. Anyways, here's the rest of my 2nd week.

Ok here's my week so far, except for Monday. Ate well that day, but didnt write it down.

10/14:
M1 7am 1pkt oatmeal w/ stevia & cinammon, 1/2c Low Fat Cott Cheese
M2 10am baked chicken w/ black beans and hot sauce
M3 1:30 2.5oz grilled salmon w/ spinach salad, cucumbers, carrots, chick peas, orzo salad w/ olive oil (not much orzo salad) & lowfat cucumber/yogurt dressing
Snack 2:30 7 celery sticks (cut) & red pepper hummus
M4 4:30 very small amount of roasted chicken and snow peas - just to tide me over to dinner
M5 7:30 6 shrimp, 1/2 c LF Cottage Cheese, green beans
WORKOUT @ 6pm: 20 mins of cardio on treadmill doing walk/run intervals at 3.7 & 4.3

So, I'm in my second week of this and find myself thinking about "when do I get to eat again?" all the time! It's not because I'm hungry necessarily, altho if I think about it enough, I seem to become hungry!

Perhaps as this becomes more of a habit, I wont think about it so much, but right now, about an hour or two after I've eaten, I find myself watching the clock to see when I eat again!

Driving me nutz...

So my first week went pretty well! I'm still getting the hang of the nutritional guide (what to eat etc). I haven't done any calorie counting yet, but my portions have been fist/palm/thumb sized as appropriate and eating every 3 hours or so makes the smaller portion just enought to tide me over for that time period. I havent found myself snacking. While I found some suggested snacks (celery/hummus for example), is there a protein/carb guideline for that too? The sample snacks seem rather random and not necessarily in-line with the protein/carb guide for the meals? I think once the protein/carb combos become ingrained, counting calories wont seem like such a burden. One new thing at a time!

Ok, I cant find it at the moment, but last night on one of the many 'lists' I came across it listed peas, squash & corn as starchy carbs? I can understand the corn, but the peas and squash? I was kinda bummed because I'd had chicken and peas for dinner thinking it satisfied the protein/fibrous carb requirement only to find out peas were listed under starchy carbs.

Are there any other vegetables that are exceptions to the fibrous carb category that I should be aware of?

So I worked on my nutrition 'education' today and did pretty well I think given that I hadnt gone shopping nor had anything prepared. Here's what I did today. Would love some feedback, Julie :-)
1. 630am omelet (1 whole egg/1 egg white)w/ 1 Jimmy Dean turkey sausage patty/chopped, & 1 slice of cheese, cooked in about 1 tsp butter. 1 slice multi grain toast with about 1 tsp butter (butter is approx, I was careful to use the smallest amount possible for both the eggs and toast)
2. 9:00am scrambled eggs w/ diced potatoes (pretty sure they were whole eggs as it was a catered breakfast). The potatoes were obviously fried tho.

So I got my email & 'welcome' workout from Julia this morning. Since all I have are dumbbells and an exercise ball to work with at home for my resistance training, it took awhile to modify the workout 'assigned' to me with the alternates she had suggested. I really need to have that structure of knowing what I need to do ahead of time, so having the workout on paper was important to me to get started. I was kinda bummed that I had to go thru all that work to 're-create' my workout. I guess I thought GHF was going to do that for me? I'm going to have to do that now for each week of my weight training, so am not super happy about having to put the extra time into that when my time is already so tight :-( I'm sure it will get easier as I adapt and learn, but right now, for some reason, that piece of it is a little discouraging.

So I just signed up yesterday and wondering what's to come. Seems like I've been filling out tons of stuff already, like I do for my son each year when school starts! :-) As I look thru the website at all the resources I think "When will I have time to read all this stuff!" That's just how my mind works, but I'm sure I'll be spending many hours diving in deep to all of it. I'm totally addicted to finding out MORE about healthy living all the time, just wish I had more time to devote to it is all. My house is dusty, but I sure know alot about the enteric nervous system and how important it is your immune system! ha ha! Was never big on dusting anyways :-)