Getting Muscled

Beat my personal best on the stationary bike 2 times today.

Did a total of 30 miles in 2 hours (divided in 2 with a one hour rest between them).

Burned 743 calories according to my HR watch (SparkPeople says almost 3000, but the estimates are always way over on those. I always enter my time and burn manually into the tracker rather than using the presets). My previous personal best was 10 miles in an hour (once, lol)

Also, last night, standing in the hallway waiting for my son to get out of the bathroom, I put my hands on my sides...

OMG what a shock. At first I was almost scared thinking I had found some weird hard lump, but then after I moved my fingers around, I realized I was feeling my obliques!!! HARD AS A ROCK, all up and down my sides. Yes, there's still plenty of fat there, but I have never felt that before. Solid muscle. My legs are starting to show that as well, but I wasn't expecting it on my sides. Wow.

Great Documentary on the Effects of Sugar

I saw blog today about a movie I'd never heard about. It's called "That Sugar Film" about the effects of the predominance of sugar, and especially HIDDEN sugars in so-called healthy foods today.

All I can say is WOW. I truly believe it is right on the nail.

I've long believed the aspects outlined in this film, but only recently started 'living' it... and living it really has made a drastic (good) difference for me.

It has for my hubby who has type II diabetes too. 

This is so worth the watch. It is a real eye-opener. 

Here is a link on Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/That-Sugar-Film-Damon-Gameau/dp/B0132THKIA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1489430725&sr=8-1&keywords=that+sugar+film

(It's free for Prime members, and only like $2 for non-prime-I think)

 Netflix has it, but only on DVD, not streaming (shame on you Netflix). There may be other places as well, but I haven't looked further than where I could get it easily on Amazon.

Doing Well and Gearing Up for the Challenge

I am a team leader in the 2017 Winter 5% Challenge on SparkPeople.com. I lead the Rookie team -- a team for people new to the challenge. I'm not new to it, but I like being the leader of that team and helping new members get involved with the challenge for the first time.

It can be scary joining in a challenge like that, especially one that is as big, there are a lot of members and a total of 15 teams, and somewhat complicated, there are a lot of things to do in the challenge. But people who stick it out find that it is a lot of fun, very motivating and they make a lot of new friends that carry over far beyond the immediate 8 week challenge.

We have been doing the practice run week. That ends today. Tomorrow the official challenge starts. My goal is to lose 16 pounds in the 8 week challenge... hopefully even a bit more like last time. I hit the 5% loss mark at a little over 6 weeks last time, and finished with a 6.2% loss overall, which was pretty good. Hoping to do that well this time, although I've found that winter time seems to slow me down a bit. Even so, I'm still losing, and that's all that matters in the long run.

Great Way to Tread on the Treadmill