Week One, Stage One

As of yesterday I've completed my first week of Stage One in The New Rules of Lifting for Women. I'm absolutely loving it! This is so different than the strength classes I was taking. It is nearly impossible to significantly increase your weights in that class because of the massive amounts of reps done. I do plan to occasionally still do that class after I'm finished with this program for maintence purposes, but I'm no longer veiwing that class as strength building. It's purely an endurance thing....

So, this week, I did very little outside of the weight room. I wanted to see how my body felt on my off days and how well my muscles recovered. We did go for some family walks several times this week and that felt really good on my muscles. I'm going to add in some swims and some easy runs on my days off. Nothing too taxing, but enough to get my heart rate up, some calories burned and some blood flowing to my muscles to aid in recovery.

One thing I found this week ~ I was STARVING! It's no joke when they say strength training leaves your metabolism revved up for hours after your workout is finished! I didn't religiously track all of my calories this week, but I made good choices and I still weighed/measured everything I ate (except for that Haagen Dasz last night, that was purely a pre Rapture celebration, though!). I'm sure some days I went over my calories and some days I was under. I'll get back to counting as soon as I'm comfortable in this new program and determine exactly how many calories I need to fuel these workouts. So, I'm not sure how my weigh in on Monday is going to go, but I'm not sweating it....

I cannot "weight" to show you guys my before and after pictures after this first stage is completed!