Holy hell am I in pain. Every once in a blue moon I'll do something, usually in the weight lifting realm, that just cripples me for 2 solid days. Not in an acute injury kind of a way, but in a holy mother I fatigued these muscles kind of a way. I am hurtin today. Bigtime.

I lifted and did some abs/lower back work yesterday. Pretty standard. I scaled back on the lifting recently (in the past, I've generally lift 3x a week, if I could get it in, but lately I've only been doing once or twice a week because I'm enjoying the cardio more right now) and it definitely seems like I've lost strength very quickly because after only a little time not focusing on thigh-lifting, for example, I seem be in agony the day after any kind of squat or lunge. Must try to find a happy medium there - where I don't have to lift religiously three days a week, but I do enough on the days I do lift to keep the muscles in working order.

ANYway, I did this new thing yesterday that I've seen trainers asking people to do at my gym. You basically stand at one side of the room and "lunge-walk" to the other side, meaning every step you take is another proper lunge - front leg out, butt goes straight toward the ground and back up again - after another. Until you've done 40 or so lunges just from walking across the gym twice.

Looks easy enough.

Brutal. And that's without any sort of free-weights in my hands. Imagine if I was holding weights! Argh. Right as I was doing it, I was like Ohh man this feels good, like too good, like my legs are gonna be screaming at me tomorrow and I KNOW it. I lift enough that stuff doesn't feel like that a lot. So when it does, I know I'm in for it the next day. But what am I gonna do, stop? Hell no.

You get the idea. Today, I'm limping like a pregnant lady who's walking on ice. Embarassing.

Food, although knock-on-wood as it's only Day 3, is going well so far this week. My plan of attempting to not exceed 30 points a day, but to accept that I'm allowed to consume 30 points in one day, seems to be working! Which is awesome. And I've gotten in enough exercise (just a couple small workouts) to offset things too so that I didn't eat 30 points total on one of the days. So I feel really on track so far this week.

I still have a weekend of some get togethers and food-related events that will be challenging but I feel ahead of the curve right now, which is nice. And the scale is reflecting that.

I won't get to workout today, and I wouldn't want to if I could. (So effing sore it's not even FUNNY. GAH!) Hoping to get something in tomorrow either on my lunch break or in the evening.

Tonight we have a surprise party for a friend's birthday. I don't plan to stay too long, I desperately need to catch up on sleep because I don't think I'll get to this weekend. The party is in the east village and we'll probably grab a quick sushi dinner on our way to the party.

Tomorrow night should be relatively low-key. We live in a brownstone, on the ground floor, that is owned by two women who live upstairs with their twin babies. When they go out of town from time to time we take care of their cats, and in the past, they've taken care of Kevin's cat when he's been out. So they're in Texas right now and we're watching their little guys and we might go up onto their deck tomorrow night to grill out and enjoy the summer evening, since they're out of town and probably won't mind if we use the space. Daniel might join us. No big plans for the evening besides some drinking, some food, and some outside time. Looking forward to that.

Then on Saturday we're most likely taking two of our good friends up to the town Kevin grew up in to pick up his parents car (35 min train ride out of the city, near Westchester) and borrow it, because his parents are ALSO out of town. We will probably drive to a nearby resort called Bear Mountain and spend the day swimming, hiking, picnicing, whatever we choose to do. Then we might also return to his parents house that evening to grill out on THEIR porch with our friends and Kevin's sister, brother-in-law, and their baby. Er, I guess he's 2 now. Not exactly a baby anymore. That should also be a lot of fun.

We'll spend the night in the area and probably have breakfast with Kevin's sister and her husband on Sunday morning and return to Brooklyn in the afternoon. I can't WAIT for all the time to relax, take in some sun, and eat food on the grill. I have seriously needed this kind of summertime relaxation so I'm going to really soak it up while I can this weekend.

I'm hoping next weekend will also be filled with some pool or beach action. I need the SUN!

So, a busy weekend, but a relaxing one. And we'll get out of the city for a day! That's never a bad thing.

I'm going to make a committment right now to getting in some light exercise this weekend, even if it's only a hike or some abs or pilates or a brisk walk, and to making healthy, responsible food choices whenever possible, pushing the fruits and veggies. I have a feeling that I have it in me to continue having a kickass week. And I plan to do just that.