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Shortly before my mom died July 13, I had decided to undertake the "100 push-ups" challenge that I’ve been reading about on other blogs.

Nothing is normal after a death, as you know. So although I made it to the gym a few times in the last two weeks, it was only a few times. I didn’t throw my food plan out the window entirely, but I missed a lot of meals (something that I can assure you never happens when my appetite is normal) and ate many more carbs than is usual for me.

I love carbs, and for me they’re absolutely necessary to sustain weight and cardio workouts. But typically I eat about 40 to 50 percent carbs, 30 percent protein, and 20 to 30 percent fat.

In the last couple of weeks I was probably consuming 60 to 70 percent carbs. For some reason, that’s all that appealed to me. Comfort food, maybe? Note that with a few exceptions I wasn’t eating sugar–but I couldn’t get enough bread.

In any case, yesterday I began counting calories and tracking activity again.

And then my friend Toni threw down the gauntlet on her blog, Living al Dente:

I must confess that until today I was not able to follow through with the push up challenge I wrote about a while back. Let’s just say I got distracted and we’ll leave it at that.

I decided today that I could not put it off any longer and immediately got down on the floor to see what I could accomplish. I am more than pleased to announce that I was able to do two. That is 2, people, as in more than one.

Mary, you’re on. Let’s hear how you’re doing. Can you beat that? (Yes, my body building friend, I’ll bet you can.)

And now that I’m pumped with excitement over my achievement, I will proceed to ye olde treadmill and begin my workout for the day.

When her post popped up in my RSS feed, I immediately dropped to the floor to see how many I could get. I was at work, but it was about 6 o’clock, and most people had gone home for the day. Besides, people at my workplace expect the unexpected to occur in my office.

Was it wrong of me to brag a little in my response to Toni’s post?

Probably so. Here’s some of what I said in response, in a comment on her blog:

My tally also begins with the number 2.

But it ends in zero.

Yup, I got 20. Full-length push-ups, of course–not the weenie kind.

It just about killed me, but I did it.

Toni, hope you have a nice day.

Mary

I should add that I was able to get 20 only because I’ve recently been bench-pressing in earnest. And it will take extreme effort to get to 100. But I have begun.

Now I guess I’d better read the training program and see where I need to go from here.

Posted on July 29th, 2008 under muscle, nutrition. Tags: push-ups. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.