Day 5, a walk on the beach

Well on an annoying note I got a splinter in my hand from the handrail on my cabin.  There actually were two splinters but with a push pin and plastic tweezers I got one out.  I am worried about the other one, and it hurts my palm to do quite a bit now, but I can suck it up for the most part.  Jen says it may get infected, but lets hope to not cross that path.

So the day started with a great stretch class.  This one was taught by Sam again.  His classes are good because they have the right balance of relaxation and core work in the stretching.  That set the day up for a good breakfast, which was a veggie fritata, mixed fruit and a hard boiled egg I took with me on the morning hike.  We found out that our hike was going to be the beach hike so I was excited to be on a scenic hike I could actually enjoy this time.

Here is the link to pictures and the slideshow.  I still haven't had time to work on image integration like I want:






Here is a link to the gallery.

The hike was great, and it was a good workout.  I actually signed up for a Saturday hike to do this one again. We walked the street on the first beach because there were two sets of guests doing the hike (they took the sand) and then it was up and over a huge ridge and down it to the next beach.  There was a nice shipwreck on the next beach, as well as some cool tide pools.  One of the guides was swinging around off the mast of the leaned over shipwreck.  I have a video and some pics taken of it above.  The walk back was not so great at the end since on the beach closest to our van was had to do the sand walk and it was much looser than the sand on the far beach.  I was dragging behind, but I finished it at a run as my fellow guests made a nice tunnel for me to run through at the end.

The class after the hike was H2O intervals, and then it was onto lunch.  Lunch was vegetable soup, which was good by itself, but I added some rooster hot sauce and mung beans to and that turned out even better. The main course was a sloppy joe and salad, and it was pretty tasty.

The first class of the afternoon was cardio disco jam which is apparently many of the women's favorite class.  It was actually pretty fun and a good workout.  It invovles dancing to disco music, and our trainer John dressed up as a crazy disco man.  I wish I had my camera for that.  Next week I will get a picture.  He did a great job teaching the dance moves and we burned a ton of calories.  There was even a disco circle which everyone had to do a solo in...  Pretty embarrassing, but all in good fun.

The next two classes of the afternoon went by surprisingly fast, and those were Liquid Moves and Circuit Training.  I got a good calories burn, but was glad those were two of my last ones of the week.  I am ready to get my rest on.

Dinner was a salmon pattie sandwich and veggies.  I had to get some ketchup out.  It was my least favorite meal for dinner yet.  It was edible though, not poisonous.  The dessert was a fruit skewer with raspberry sauce.  Not as good as grilled pineapple, but decent enough.

After dinner I was invited to go to Target by a fellow guest and so three of us set out to buy some stuff we wanted to make the stay a little more comfortable.  I have to say driving by all the great restaurants was hard, but passing up the Starbucks in the Target was INCREDIBLY difficult.  I did it though, and now I have some cheaper flavored water here on campus.  Target charges 3.49 for 6 bottles of propel, camp charges 2 dollars per bottle.  Do the math on that one.  I loaded up!

That was the end of the day.  Now I am getting ready for breakfast and a good beach hike.  Hope everyone is having a great day!

Day 4, the hike from hell...

The day started off well, there was no stretching class so I stayed in the room and Skyped with my beautiful wife and kids.  It was nice to see them and hear daddy daddy daddy.  Even though this only the 5th day away from them I miss them a ton.  At 7:15 it was breakfast time once again.  This time it was hot museli and mixed fruit.  The meal was good, it came with either rice or almond milk and was really tasty.  I added a little Truvia, and it was great.  Once again I am going to just post a slideshow and a link to the web album instead of putting all the pictures in the post to save time and get caught up.  Here they are:




Here is a link to the web album.

Next came the hike, and a world of pain.  This hike is called Reverse Zuma.  It was touted as the most difficult hike by the other campers.  This definitely turned out to be the case.  The scenery was beautiful, but the hike was straight up, straight down, straight up, straight down and back over and back of a mountain.  Making it the 3 miles in was not so bad, but going back nearly killed my ankles.  I didn't rest the entire walk back so I did a good job, but I was afraid my ankles were going to cause me to miss classes for the rest of the day.  We even got back late and luckily my next class was stretching.

Stretching was a nice relaxing one, and after that was lunch.  My ankles were killing me, but I found the energy to make it to the lunch table.  For lunch we had a turkey sandwich and mixed salad.  Once again it was great, the turkey was preservative free organic stuff and tasted great.  I skipped the cooking demo class (I bought the cookbook and come on, I know how to cook) and went and soaked my ankles in the hot tub for about 45 minutes.  That is what saved the rest of my day.  If you come here do not be afraid to take a rest to make sure you can continue.  Lots of people here are coming back because they had to leave injured their first trip.

After the soak I went to a water class, followed by a new class for me called Treading.  This class was hard, but probably one I will do at the gym when I get home.  It is broken up like this on your cardio machine of choice:
5 minute warmup

5 minutes hard as you can go
5 minutes back at warm up pace

4 minutes hard as you can go
4 minutes back at warm up pace

3 minutes hard as you can go

3 minutes back at warm up pace

2 minutes hard as you can go

2 minutes back at warm up pace

1 minutes hard as you can go

1 minutes back at warm up pace

1 minutes hard as you can go

1 minutes back at warm up pace

3-5 minutes of stretching

It is a very rewarding class and goes fast.  

My final class was ball works which was a resistance class with those huge workout balls you sit on.  It was challenging and gave a great workout.  

Last but not least was dinner.  It was a stuffed bell pepper with asparagus and rice.  Once again excellent food and even though I was ravenous I was full when I left the dinner hall.  There was no first week lecture after dinner so I spent about 45 minutes in the hot tub recovering for the day.  Felt great.  Ok, now onto day 5.  Feel good to have this caught up at 5:30AM in the morning.

Day three, just one more to go to be caught up...

Ok I am going to try to breeze through these last two and not post so many pics.  If you are interested in pictures for these I will post links at the bottom.  I have commented most of the pictures now so hopefully they will provide the subtext you need.  Also I apologize for the sloppy formatting I have not had time to review my html enough to situate the pictures and text correctly.  I hope to fix that problem over the weekend

Here is the slideshow:



Here is the link to the picasa web album.

Anyway..  Day 3 began for me at around 4:35AM PST.  I am trying to maintain my east coast time zone advantage by waking up early (7:35 EST) and going to bed early.  So far it is working I am having no problems getting out of bed.  I woke up sore, but not as bad as I imagined.  I believe that the stretching they do here after every class and the stretching class itself help tremendously with this.  That brings me to my first class of the day, stretching!  This class was taught by a biggest loser contestant from season 9 named Sam.  It was his first stretching class he has taught and he did a great job.  All the trainers here come around during our meals to talk about the program and it is no different for him.  He is very motivating, and I think a great asset to their program here.  After stretch was breakfast which was French Toast mostly with some nice maple syrup.  I took one of the optional snacks for the hike (hard boiled egg) and an apple.

Next came the hike which is called "Solstice."  It was one of the two hardest hikes according to fellow campers here.  It was very tough, going all the way up a mountain and then down a canyon behind it.  At the bottom of the canyon there was an old burnt down house that was really cool.  If you look through the pictures you will see I took several pictures of it.  Our guides were great, but they made us do an extra hill so I have to give them a B+ for the day.  I did well on this hike and did not have to stop at all after using the "Mountaineer step" that my guide the previous day, TJ, had taught me.

Once back to camp it was on to the liquid moves class which was great for my sore ankles after the hike, and then on to lunch.  Lunch was BBQ pizza and a salad I prepared extra which was amazing.  There was also beet soup which I liked after I added some tabasco and salt to.  Not my favorite one, but not terrible.

After lunch my class was a water class once again.  I really enjoy them and sweat for quite awhile once I leave the pool.  Some people here say they do not bur enough calories, but I think they are great.  Next came Kickboxing class...  That one wore me out completely.  It was pretty rapid pace and the trainer for the class was Megan and she is crazy intense.

Finally the last class was called Mountain!  This class was a 12 increase class where you get on a treadmill (or other cardio machine) and do twelve - three minute intervals.  Each one must either increase incline or speed. By the end of it you are humping it.  I enjoyed the class and it did beat me down, but the last class of the day just goes by pretty fast I find.

The end of the day was dinner which was a salad, a tortilla bowl filled with chicken, rice and some tomatillo sauce. Very tasty with some hot sauce added.  The dessert was mango sorbet. Again very tasty.  Finally we had a lecture on Intuitive eating which was great.

Ok, hopefully I can finish the day 4 blog before I finished day 5.

Day two from Day four perspective?

So I am behind, and will try to finish day two and three today (which is day four.)  Confused?  I am a little, but that is because the days here all mingle together into a nasty sweaty haze.  Anyway onto day two:

Tuesday!  So the day started out with a 6AM stretch class once again.  From the first day I assumed this would be an easy, wake up stretch and relax class...  That was so not the case.  The instructor (Cameron) turned it into a semi-core stretching class.  I was not prepared for this pre-hike workout mentally.  I definitely do not want to be sore on hikes that go straight up mountains, and worse... back down.  Anyway, I survived that "optional" class and then went on to breakfast which I did not get a picture of.  It was a peach smoothie and some eggs.  The smoothie is probably they only thing I have had so far I have not liked here.  I did not know there was optional granola and oatmeal.  Live and learn I guess.  Here is the menu for the day:

Next came the hike which was the Latigo Canyon Backbone hike.  It was much more difficult then on day 1.  I had to stop several times, but I finished.  It was about 6 miles of mostly up terrain.  Here are some of the pictures:

After the hike we came back and thankfully I had the H2O circuit class.  The water classes are difficult but they help out with all the ankle pain from the hike.  I wish it was always that way.  Each of the classes is 45 minutes, with a 15 minute window to get changed/move to the next class.  It is like high school but the classes kick your a$$.  Next was lunch which was a squash soup and turkey club wrap.  No picture of the soup, but I remembered to get the wrap.

Once again the food was excellent.  The soup was really creamy and good, and the fake mayo they use was actually pretty good.

After lunch there was a cooking demo lecture from the chef here and it was pretty entertaining.  I purchased the cookbooks and am excited to try the recipes at home.  After the lecture I went straight into my next class which was Cardio Intervals.  That was a fairly difficult class but I enjoyed it.  The next class was Total Toning, and that was your basic aerobic class with weights.  It was one of the more difficult classes   Last but not least was another H20 Intervals class.  This was fun and exhausting, but a great way to end the day of classes.

Next was dinner, and we had baked penne pasta with vegetables which was delicious.  I out a little hot sauce on the veggies and they were great.  We also had chocolate covered strawberries and they were amazing.  Both are pictured on the side here.  Last thing of the day was a lecture on spending calories wisely.  Good information.  That was it for day two.  Now on to day 3.

First days at The Biggest Loser Resort at Fitness Ridge Malibu...

One thing I will say about this camp is that from Monday through Friday there is very little free time.  For all of you that have been sending me texts and other messages that I haven't responded back to I apologize.  I have about 10-15 minutes between activities and those go from 6am till 6/7pm.

First impressions so far are great.  It is odd being driven in from LA into Malibu, it felt like going through Miami, however the ranch I am on is up in the mountains/valleys of Malibu so the scenery is much like Red River Gorge in Kentucky.  It is very scenic.  It is pretty chilly as well, and I did not pack for excessively chilly weather.

My first day here was on Sunday and I was checked in and had my initial weigh in.  Everyone here is exceptionally nice and the atmosphere is open and inviting.  All of the other guests are quick to start up conversation and the people that run the resort encourage this and go about setting up groups so you can bond with other guests fairly quickly.

Sunday was very basic, check-in, weigh-in, and then relax in the room till dinner.  Dinner consisted of a teriyaki chicken dish with brown rice and veggies.  It was very good, and there was a  desert at the end of a little sliver of some sort of whipped cream with Grape-nuts on the bottom of it.  After that it was off to bed for an early rise.

Monday... where to begin!

Woke up at 5AM and went to my stretching class at 6AM.  Stretching was great and relaxing on Monday.  It was an hour of pretty difficult stretches but very calming.  Next came breakfast which was great.  First came fruit plate and then an english muffin with eggs, some cheese and a little bacon.  It was really tasty, and was around 300 calories.  I chose to take a 12 almond snack with me for my hike later on in the morning.

The hike...

This was a horse trail right next to the campus we are staying on.  We walked over and the trail itself was challenging and fairly muddy.  I ended up getting some wet feet which was not too much fun.  Oh and the horses left presents along the trail for us to find.  We ended up having extra time after looping around these trails so we went and walked up some of the streets to the houses around here, and they were at crazy inclines.  That was actually more difficult than the trail.  Our guides were talking about how much they love challenging inclines.  They are fairly crazy if that is the part of the hike they enjoy if you ask me.

Here are some pictures from that hike:

For lunch I had Chili with cornbread and it was probably one of favorite meals so far.  The cornbread had pine nuts and dried cranberries in it and was amazing.  The portion seemed huge too, it was almost as big as my hand.  I will grab a picture when we have it again.

After lunch there was a lecture on calorie budgeting that was great information, but tough to stay awake through considering all the working out.  Next was core training which was amazingly tough.  Following that was H20 intervals class which is basically crazy intense water aerobics.  Not was easy as it sounds,  Finally, the last 45 minute class of the day was circuit training.  This was 2 minutes on cardio equipment followed by two minutes of weight training, rinse and repeat for 45 minutes.

One thing I wish there was a little more of was time here.  I am not able to do anything except change clothes from 6AM till 7PM so I get little time to chat with friends and family.  It is probably a good thing the time is short or I might fall asleep.

After the classes I got cleaned up a little and went to dinner.

Which you can see is Chicken with Yam Puree and asparagus.  It was once again very good, and I was very happy to have it after all of those classes.  The interaction at dinner with other guests is nice and I am starting to get to know the people that sit around me decently well.  The atmosphere here is crazy supportive and positive.  People are here from all over too which is interesting.  We have people from Venezuela, South Africa and the UK.  People stays vary quite a bit.  Many are here for just a week and some are here 2 to 3 months.  I can't imagine being here that long, but it is definitely a great place to be if you have a good bit of weight to lose.

After the nice meal pictured above they brought out:

Grilled pineapple with some sort of raspberry sauce on it.  I have to say this is the best pineapple I have ever eaten, and that includes my time on Maui.  Everything they have here is fresh and organic and with some of the things you can really taste the difference.  Believe it or not I ate this slowly and it lasted about 20 minutes.  I have noticed that most of us have slowed down our eating to enjoy it considering out limited availability of food.  I really am not feeling overly hungry though.  The food is filling even at these low calories and with a snack, or extra fruit here and there the days are not hunger filled.

After dinner we had our Spending Your Calories Wisely lecture which is two parts.  This is only a week one activity and I am looking forward to having some extra time next week after dinner to get to the room and relax.  The lecture is give by one of the dietitians here and is really good.  All the information here I have seen in one way or another, but they do a great job of collecting and present it here anew.

That is it for my Monday.  I am actually finishing up this post on Wednesday morning so instead of adding Tuesdays information to it I will just go ahead and get this first post up.  Hope everyone is doing well.