Day 7:A Day of Rest

So I was upset all evening about what transpired before. One nice thing though was that since the roomie was now gone, I had a room all to myself for a few hours. I finally managed to clean up to prep for the new roomie and I stayed up watching some t.v. after speaking to family and friends. I even got the new roomie a pair of earplugs. lol. As a sidenote, I just checked FR's website and the prices have gone up quite a bit! As of right now, they're booked until next April or May I believe... so I guess that's why they've raised the prices. When I signed up it was 1,400 per week for double occupancy and now it's 1,600 per week. Yikes! As another sidenote, if you're interested in staying off campus to save a bit of money, leave your email in the comments because I can direct you to some alternatives that are available to you.

So this morning I got up and really dreaded heading downstairs. While waiting to get weighed in, I had a nice chat with a lady that's here from New York. I've been holding in being upset in all this time so I decided that I'm not going to hold in all this negativity in anymore. I told her what happened and she offered her support. It was a nice gesture and I appreciated it. I was surprised that when I was telling her what happened and how it made me feel that I began to tear up a bit. I held it in because I hate showing weakness to others (it's a personal thing) but I realized that I shouldn't bottle this stuff up. I've decided I will have a chat with 'D' later but I'm not going to fly off the handle or anything. I'm simply going to ask, what the deal is and how I don't appreciate their actions and that they need to leave me the hell alone and focus on their own issues.

I decided to get weighed in today but didn't put the sneakers I had on when I weighed in last time. I asked the trainer John to weigh me but not tell me what it was but to enter it into my heart rate monitor. So he did and he asked if I really didn't want to know my weight. I really didn't want to know because I was afraid of being disappointed. Like I said previously, I have my period right now and I've never really had a great track record with losing weight. He did tell me that it was 'good' and that I had gone down. Now, did I go down down or did it just go down because of my sneakers? lol. I have no clue. I did hear about some other people's weight loss though! One lady lost 12 pounds, another lost 10 pounds, etc; I also heard about another lady who had been here in the past who told me she didn't weigh in this week because the first time she came, she gained a pound her first week (water retention probably) and then lost 7 pounds the next week. You just never know! What's most important is that people are getting fitter.

One really great thing though is that I'm not really in pain anymore. I don't know if it's because we only worked out yesterday for part of the day or if I'm just getting used to it. I really hope it's because I'm getting used to it. :) While at home in the past, I never seemed to ever make it past the sore stage. Then again, at home I never worked out every single day at this intensity either! At home, I would usually do what you read about in books and stuff and alternated cardio and weights every day, sometimes doing cardio every day but I was always sore. One thing for certain... I'm not stopping when I get home, no matter how much I want to. I never want to have to make it through the sore stage again because without the support of the FR staff, I don't know if I'd be able to break that barrier again!

Another thing is that according to my schedule, I have an extra 'Open Gym' in my daily schedule. One of the goals I had here is to be able to run. I'd be extremely thrilled if I could leave this place being able to run 2 miles continuously. In the past, I had once worked up to being able to run/jog 1 mile due to my friend P's insistence that I could do it. She was right. However, I did it only for about a week and then stopped and haven't done it since. Stupid me!! Anyhow, that's my goal during the Open Gyms for this week. I'm going to look up and follow the Couch to 5K program that's available all over the net. (google it) That's one of my goals for this year. As of right now, I can only IMAGINE being able to run a 5K. I'm going to make that dream a reality if it kills me.

I've also started getting hungrier while I've been here. One of the ladies here, her name is 'T'. T has been here for 4 weeks and she looks amazing. She says that she can't wait to get home and show off her new body. Well T has said that since she's been here she hasn't restricted herself when it comes to the salad bar and that she's just fine. On top of the salad bar, there's a piece of paper that tells you just how many calories are in each of the items. It's really very minimal when it comes down to it so I agree with her that calorie-wise, it's not going to hurt. It's better for you to intake a few more healthy calories than to be suffering and hungry all the time. At dinner, I've been usually getting a small plate of mushrooms, grape tomatoes, beets and cucumbers. Instead of dressing, I use the soy sauce substitute that they have here. Calorie-wise, I think it's probably less than 100 calories. Here are the items that are usually in the salad bar:

spinach
lettuce
spring mix
chickpeas
cauliflower
pickles
mushrooms
alfalfa sprouts
beets
cucumbers
carrots
oranges
bananas
apples
celery
peppers
onions

and a few other items that I can't remember.

Another thing that I've been doing to stave off the hunger is saving my piece of fruit. During the hike, we're allotted a piece of fruit to eat before, during or after our hikes. Hikes are normally right after breakfast so I never find myself to be too hungry during that time. So instead, I save my piece of fruit (usually a banana) until the evenings when I'm hungry. Dinner is pretty early here, around 5PM usually. I normally don't get to bed until around 10 or so because I'm trying to finish up blogs or keep up with work stuff, etc; So maybe around 8 or 9, the hunger pangs start and the banana comes in handy.

Today was our day of rest and my original plans included resting, doing my laundry and uploading my videos. However, Wayne suggested to a group of us that we go to the outlet mall to go shopping for the day. I decided to go with them and I had a nice time. One sort of bad thing was that the outlet mall is right next to a Carl Jr's. Now, ever since I got here, I've been scheming about trying out Carl Jr's & In-N-Out Burgers. We don't have these on the east coast and I've always heard about how tasty their burgers are. Um. I couldn't resist. I went in and I ordered a baby burger. I say baby burger because most of their burgers are GINORMOUS and 7 dollars to boot! It looked so delicious. I mean, I'm not a fast food person, I have fast
food maybe once every 2 months or so but maybe if these west coast burger places existed in the east, I'd be in trouble! They had burgers with guacomole on it, burgers with huge portobello mushrooms, burgers with jalapeno peppers, burgers with pineapple!! The list goes on! It was a burger fiesta! They had fried zucchinis, waffle cut fries, onion rings... and an amazing assortment of desserts as well.

So I was good and ordered just one of their 99 cents burgers, the Bacon Ranch Cheeseburger and it was really really good. I had about 3/4 of it and tossed the rest away. For me, the main thing was just about tasting it. I don't feel guilty because I made sure to eat a little bit less of dinner and I know that my main problem with my weight has nothing to do with fast food burgers. It's mainly to do with far too much red meat (steaks... yum)  and carbs and a sedentary lifestyle.

So! After I arrived back with Wayne & Di, I once again dreaded going into FR. I couldn't help it. Trust me though. I don't WANT to feel this way. FR was a dream/fantasy I held in my mind for months after all. Anyhow, I was in the lobby of FR and approached by one of the staff members. I don't know if they read my blog or if they heard about something through the grapevine about what happened with me but I had a small chat with them and I really say kudos to FR. The staff members care and they want all of our individual experiences to be great, in spite of what may or may not happen between guests. She offered to make an announcement regarding 'bullying,' but I requested that she didn't, that I could handle it on my own but I did appreciate the fact that she took time out on Sunday (their busiest day) to talk to me about it. I have absolutely no complaints about any of the resort staff whatsoever. They're great.

I headed back to my room in anticipation of meeting my roomie, I really wanted to get off on the right foot with her and on the way bumped into a very nice lady named 'R' who recognized me from my blogs. She was a sweetheart. I'm excited about all the new blood here. I really hope that the dynamic will soon be changing. While it was relatively pleasant last week, I KNOW that it can be even better. Afterwards, I ran into my friend 'B,' who is one of the sweetest ladies here. I helped her set up her Polar heart rate monitor and also spoke with her about why I had left graduation early the evening before. She told me she hadn't heard anything and that she had my back. :) The kindness of a lot of the people here is really overwhelming. It almost restores my faith in humanity. lol. Good CAN conquer Evil!

So I arrived back in my room and my roomie still wasn't there so I was chatting with 'N' a bit while I worked on my blog. Skype is an amazing invention, let me tell you. It allows you to be close to your loved ones even though you're miles away. It's nice. Anyhow, my new roomie arrived and she's one of my FB blog readers. :) I hope I made a good impression and that everything works out. She seems very sweet so far. What I absolutely love was the fact that she noticed that I had left her a pair of new earplugs. The best part was that she had brought her own as well! lol. So, I let her know as much as I could about the resort and the schedule and things like that and then we headed over to the main building so I could give her a small tour. I introduced her to Wayne and some of the other people here and met some of the other newbies here as well. We then had dinner.

Dinner was an FR version of a Cobb salad with feta cheese, turkey, onions, cucumbers, avocados and salad mix. Yummy but not the most filling dinner we've had here so far. Dessert was a chocolate tofu 'pie' with a soggy grape nuts crust. It tasted a bit odd but it was good enough that I'm not complaining. :) After dinner, the welcome orientation began and the mike was being passed around for people to speak. I saw 'D' there and I felt like she was giving me the 'stink eye.' Maybe she was, maybe I imagined it, I don't know. I've decided to take the advice of some of the people here and speak with her if I encounter any other problems. I'm not going to let one person ruin my experience here. Also, one of her friends from home arrived here to join her. Greeaaaat. Birds of a feather, right? Yech. I'm just going to stay away from negative vibes unless their behavior impacts me. I hate dwelling on negative things so I'm going to try my best to  not mention it anymore. (notice the word try.)

So I'm back in my room now and blogging this to you. I'm going to attempt to upload some of my videos (wish me luck) so you guys can kinda see what you've missed so far. I think I'm going to do my laundry sometime tomorrow as I'm already getting pretty sleepy this evening. Today was a day of rest and I think we all needed it. This next week's schedule looks intense. Every day I look at the schedule for the next day, I look at it with fear and apprehension... but take comfort in the fact that I've survived every day thusfar and if I can.. you can too. :)