The Biggest Loser -- one week in...

...And I'm doing okay. Well, mostly okay now that I'm getting over the nasty chest/head/sinus cold thing that came back for round two just over a week ago. 'Tis the season...

In spite of the nasty little bug invading my body, I still managed to teach two hours of Zumba. I had no new students this week, so it was go-go-go all the way through! When it came time to record the activity on the WW site, I had to do a little skulking around online to find out how many points an hour of Zumba is worth! Everything I found said to record it as high intensity -- makes sense to me, judging by the amount of water that leaves my body during that hour! So, I recorded each session as 55 minutes of high intensity activity, and I was shocked to see that I'd earned 10 activity points for each! Wow! I could go on a real pigout! Or, maybe not...

Several people on the WW forums say they use all their weekly points (49 'extra' points a week to use as you will) and their activity points every week. I don't think I've every used all my weekly points any time I was actually following the plan. But it's nice to know I have them in case we go out for dinner or something like that.

I saw Brett on Wednesday and she went through the program Craig built for me. As I was still feeling pretty cruddy, we didn't do anything too strenuous, so I didn't bother recording any extra activity points. There were a few things we had to get Craig to demo for us -- it's that yoga thing of his. I may be a pretzel by the end of this! One program is all 'push' movements and the other is 'pull.' In addition, I have 3 sets of core exercises every time I work out, and I'm supposed to do another 20 - 30 minutes of cardio, but I think that two hours of Zumba each week ought to take care of the cardio end of thing! I also plan to sign up for TRX/bike class at the end of the month and that always ends up being major cardio, especially if we're on the bikes!

I went to the gym this morning and hopped on the scale just to see how it compares to my scale at home. My home scale says I'm down about two pounds, and my body fat percentage is down -- according to my scale. On the scale at the gym, I'm also down about two pounds this first week, but I needed to make sure I've been eating enough to cause my body to burn fat, not muscle. Yay! Body fat percentage is down too! But, I realized I need to start recording the body fat each week too, so I know exactly what is going on.

After confirming that yes, indeed, I did lose a couple pounds in the past week, I tackled the first workout. The first round is a set of four different exercises, all done for one minute each, one after the other. I'm supposed to do two to three sets this first week, but I managed two. then I went to the next round of exercises. I don't read very well. Craig had written down the number of reps for each exercise, but I did each for a minute because...well, because I'm a creature of habit -- and I don't read well! Then again, when I really read the program and saw that he wanted me to do 100 leg extensions, and my quads were crying by the end of a minute... I think I'll be doing some 'building' towards that 100 reps!

I'll have to play around for a couple sessions to figure out which fitness ball will be the best so that I don't put too much strain on my back (those Zumba booty circles did a number on me!), but none of the exercises are crazy stupid. I also know my own body well enough that if I need to modify, I can -- and I will! As the 'boss' keeps telling us, we're in this for ourselves -- and yes, I am. I'll do what I need to do to lose the weight I want to lose -- safely. I have a closet full of clothes waiting to be worn again!