"The greatest wealth is health."

I know I haven't updated since last Wednesday. Last Thursday, I had a terrible headache. I don't drink much caffeine (none in the morning at all, maybe a diet coke at night) but I had a terrible headache and was so tired. I wasn't able to workout OR have any caffeine because I was doing a resting metabolic rate test on Friday morning. The test went pretty well, for those of you that don't know about it, you wear a mask and probably look similar to Hannibal Lecter (even the personal trainer said I did, ha ha), you have to breathe in and out thru your mouth which is kind of a challenge (or just requires more thought on breathing!) and you basically just sit and relax for about 20 minutes. SO EASY! I did this test a couple of years ago and my RMR was 1450 calories a day, that's what I needed to eat to survive and not let my body go into starvation mode. I really wanted to redo this test since I found out that I have hypothyroidism because I knew that my RMR had changed since then and it did. My RMR is now about 1250 calories which when I first heard was kind of like being punched in the gut. If I didn't workout, that would be very little calories and going out to eat would be nearly impossible! Thankfully, I get to eat a little more calories since I workout. However, I still will probably need to play around with the calorie intake to lose some weight. I had lost 5 lbs in a month but then I plateau'd and haven't lost anything the last couple of weeks.

I did talk to Shaun, a personal trainer and the one who did the test for me and we talked about my fat, protein and carb consumption so I am watching that now and trying to not go above 40% fat and about 50% carbs and not way over on protein but pretty much what I want. I have been really watching this since I did the test on Friday and today when I was looking in the mirror, I thought my stomach already looked a little smaller. I still haven't lost any weight but I took my measurement of my waist and I have already lost an inch off my waist! WOOHOO!!! I took my measurements a few weeks ago and nothing had really changed so I know that this is a loss that has recently occurred. I didn't check my other measurements but will keep watching this. The belly is definitely an important place for me to lose it since I feel like I carry a lot of weight there!

If anyone I know around here is interested in doing this test, I highly recommend it and can answer any questions you have about it!

I'm not going to go into alot of detail about my workouts. Friday, after my test I did the usual strike and burned 650 calories, would have probably burned more but I had to leave to go get a diaper and change it in the middle of class.

Saturday- did spinning and 30 minutes of athletic yoga and burned 1000 calories. It was really nice here on Saturday so I went to the outlet mall with my mom and Wes and Alan and got some new things for him for summer and next winter, along with some jibbitz for his crocs and some Thomas PJ's which he was pretty excited about, we got to do a little more walking because of this trip too.

So for the week, that put me at 4,850 calories burned for the week!

Yesterday, I kinda took the day off, I did some abs and then I did p90x legs on my own without the video which doesn't take long. I burned about 100 calories. I had a nice visit with my friend Kathryn yesterday afternoon and got some cleaning done, Wes took a good long nap and Brad went to the office to do our taxes, uninterrupted!

Today, I went to the gym for turbo, I haven't done that class forever. I'm really not very coordinated but I can handle doing strike on Friday b/c it's not as dancy. I think my problem is that I lose my focus and I forget the moves or my count, plus I have never been one to be able to pat my belly and rub my head at the same time or however that goes, I might have that backwards, ha ha. A lot of the moves in this class require you to do things with your hands and feet at the same time. I don't feel like I looked completely stupid but I definitely was not the most coordinated person in the class. I just focused on keep moving and you'll still burn calories no matter how dumb I look! And, I burned 750 calories!

So here's my recap of my weekly challenge since I'm in the final week (although I plan to keep trying to burn 3500 calories a week for as long as I can keep it up!)...
Week 1-4200 calories burned
Week 2-3500 calories burned (stomach flu)
Week 3-4150 calories burned
Week 4-6055 calories burned (that's kinda crazy, hu?) As of this week, I had lost 5 lbs since the beginning of this challenge
Week 5-4850 calories burned
Week 6- 850 calories burned so far and as of the beginning of this week I have lost an inch off my waist!