Size of a hospital?

Yesterday I went forth to download my 'before' photos for the 3rd Turbulence Training challenge. Yes, I AM on a Turbulence Training twelve week challenge, or.. more exactly...not. When I browsed through the memory cards, looking for anything that resembled my exposed midriff, I found only a selection of snaps from my recent weekend in Hamner Springs. Panicking just a little, I checked and re-checked all of the memory cards, finally coming to the conclusion that, in my enthusiasm for taking panoramic shots of the abandoned Queen Mary Hospital, I must have formatted the card that had my TT pics on it. Either that, or my butt rather too accurately resembles an expansive, white building. You may feel free to refrain from comment on this. Just hold it in, that will be fine.

As much as I love Turbulence Training, and the TT forum, I've been itching to take a little break from it so that I can play with my new toy, Wii-fit. Now that my official challenge entry has been scuppered by a technical glitch, I've decided to take a three week maintenance break and spend time fiddling with my Wii (does that sound strangely rude to anyone else?). I made a start yesterday and am so far rather *mmmmmm... dunno* about it. My main criticism is that there is a bit too much futzing around before exercises while your BMI is calculated and you are given a pep talk about exercising every day. Then between exercises there is yet more faffing while the machine evaluates your balance then the virtual trainer flaps on about the importance of improving your posture. Then you get scored against anyone else that has used the Wii-fit. All of that takes up valuable training time and I am very much a 'train hard, train short' girl. Twenty minutes of actual exercise took about 35 minutes in real time, and I know that for a fact because after each exercise an electronic time-keeper 'ka-chings' a few minutes onto your exercise tally, unlocking more exercises or more reps as time accumulates. The exercises themselves, all bodyweight, are mostly too easy for me, so today I picked up some dumbbells to add some resistance to the muscle training set of exercises. Of course, my brainy machine immediately perceived that I was inconsistently heavy and wanted to waste my time getting me to confirm that I was, indeed, myself. I had to use my toe to press the identity confirming 'A' button on the Wii-mote (get it?) because my hands were full of DUMBBELLS you aggravating machine. What I DO like about Wii-fit is the emphasis on balance and posture. I know that I have a lot of bodily imbalance, which is part of the reason I am so prone to back problems. This kind of exercise, where it is less about sheer explosive muscle power and more about stabilisation could be just what I need. Over the next three weeks I will Wii *snort* four times a week and get in two good HIIT cardio sessions. I'll write a full review once I've given my cyber-trainer a few weeks to try and impress me. So far, he just makes me hate him by enthusing 'that was a really tough workout' after six reps of something called the 'waist twist'.

Nutrition-wise it's time for a diet break and to see where my maintenance level currently is. I'm focusing on quality nutrition and weeding my processed food consumption down to a more healthful level. My noble plan is to do this without turning into a food nazi (or, conversely, a food slacker of the 'maintenance = daily indulgence' bent). After my three weeks maintenance I intend to attack the lard again using an Eat-Stop-Eat approach. In the meantime, should my maintenance diet go badly wrong and I DO start to resemble the Queen Mary Hospital, I'm relying on you all to let me know. Don't let me down.