Saturday, July 25, 2009
Day 6

Today’s schedule:
· 6:15 am Meet
· 6: 30 am Hike
· 9:30 am Breakfast – English muffins and jam and strawberry smoothie
· 10:15 am Circuit training
· 11:15 am Stretch class
· 12:45 pm Lunch – Garlic potato soup, garlic salad nicoise
· 1:30 – 4:30 Free time
· 4:45 pm Video of our weeks achievements and graduation for people leaving
· 5:45 pm Dinner – Meatball sandwich and veggies, 2 cookies (or side salad)

Stop Sign Hike
And the weigh in results will ……………………………………..have to wait until next week. This is as bad as the television show. You don’t reweigh until you leave here. It’s to take the focus away from just weight loss and refocus on fitness. Well, we’re definitely getting fitter.

This morning’s 4.5 mile hike was a repeat of the time trial we did last Monday. It’s partly on an undulating paved trail through part of the National Park with the last 2 miles being straight up on the roadway. It ends at a STOP sign Betsy improved her time from 1hr 28 to 1 hour 22 minutes – pretty good after only one week; I moved from 1 hour 15 to just over the hour at 1 hour and 2 minutes. Goal for next Saturday is to get under the hour. The program is definitely working.

We had a few exercise classes in the morning but the rest of Saturday we had off – and it was much appreciated. Did a little art gallery window shopping in a nearby artist’s community (pottery, art, photographs, sculpture) – it was a cute little place and hardly anybody there - all local artists and not a “Made in Macedonia” sticker to be seen.

Thoughts for the Week
At the end of today, they showed us a DVD of all the photographs and videos they had taken of us during the week. It was amazing to see how far we had all come. There are some pretty heavy people here and very few are our age. There’s a lot of young kids ranging from 18 to 22 who are bordering on morbidly obese and it’s just incredible to see them running up a hill. If you ever needed inspiration for what you can do, this is the place. As they say, whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.

It’s also a pretty interesting example of immersive learning – you’re in an environment where you’re totally focused on eating less, eating more healthily, exercising more, longer, and harder than you’ve ever done before and making it routine, instinctive, and second nature. It’s the only thing that concerns us all week. It’s physical, mental, and emotional. You’re learning using all modalities: visual, auditory, read/write, and kinesthetic (VARK). It’s learned behavior; it’s muscle memory. It’s positive reinforcement. And the best thing is that it’s all about ME! (I’ll fix the world after I get back.) Self-indulgent yes, but also very successful (if it sticks, but that’s for another time.)

Close
We’re both pretty tired but very happy that we’re doing this program. We’re not changing into calorie Nazis and it’s obviously going to be different for us when we get back – you don’t get to spend 6 hours a day in the gym in real life. We’ll happy to point to info about what we’ve learned after we get back, and you can check it out if you want.

Sunday is a day off from exercise – even the good Lord rested for one day – so no post tomorrow. I’ll be back online again on Monday evening.