Measuring Up: A Month's Progress

I took measurements yesterday, as I will on the first of each month, with this very nifty (and cheap) tape measure, which allows me to measure myself far more accurately than with a regular tape.

Here are the numbers:  Down 1 inch in my waist, 2 inches in my hips, half an inch in my arm (not flexed) and a quarter of an inch in my thigh (at thickest part, also not flexed).  Great!

Weight pretty much stayed the same for the month, which bothers me much less than I thought it would, because my jeans are definitely more loose, and it was Thanksgiving with family here for the weekend, after all.

I also figured out how to use this thing

which puts me a little higher than my scale does for body fat percentage (down .3 for the month).  Tom the Trainer recommends taking more than one measurement in more than one body place, then averaging out the total because otherwise I'm just getting lumped into an average for my age and height, which is what my scale does.  I may or may not continue with this particular measurement, since the consensus seems to be I should only take it every eight weeks (!).

The three days a week of training is exhausting, but man, I'm making such great progress!

For example, yesterday one of my last sessions was rows, and when I picked up the dumbbell Tom the Trainer had chosen for me, it looked like this:

EXACTLY like this

I looked at Tom the Trainer and I believe my exact words were, "You must be out of your mind."  He looked back at me and said to do 10 reps each side.  And I did.  Three sets of them.  I.  Was.  Amazed.

My wonderful Megan trained with me on Friday, and she and I were both so sore on Saturday, we could barely get up the stairs to hang with the rest of the family.

Now, areas where I need to improve:  You guessed it, the hour and a half a day of cardio.  I did 45 minutes yesterday just after the training session, but alas, today all I could manage was my massage at 11:30.  We've had freezing fog all day and it didn't get above thirty.  Granted, that's not the case for the interior of my garage, where my treadmill and a space heater are, but nonetheless.  I'm open to ideas.  Maybe do some Zumba CDs or something other than treadmill....