Shape Magazine June 2006

So I recently decided that I really want to get my arms in better shape.  This isn't exactly a new thing.  My arms have always been what I'm going to call a trouble spot, mostly because I'm not really a fan of lifting weights and so they're not very strong.  But I now have a reason to need a little more strength in my arms. 

Somewhere along the way, while debating about how to strengthen my arms, I was reminded of this magazine: Shape from June 2006.  In it was a really awesome workout called 21 Days to your Best Bikini Body with some really neat moves.  I remember trying the workout and being really impressed with it.  Sure, it's not going to get someone into stupidly good shape if they're brand new to working out (like I was when I tried it).  But I thought that if it got me into somewhat better shape in 21 days I'd be happy enough.

Of course, when I remembered the workout, I couldn't for the life of me remember what issue it came from.  I remembered that there was a blonde lady in a bikini on it, and that the cover was sort of yellow.  Beyond that, a whole lot of nothing.  But I wasn't too worried.  I mean, I must have blogged about following the workout on here, right?

Wrong.  After searching through this blog I couldn't find a single reference to this magazine.  I don't think I actually blogged about this workout at all, probably because I gave it a try during the summer of 2006, a year before I started blogging.

So my next thought was to track down the workout online.  Of course I didn't remember what it was called when I first started looking.  All I could remember (besides the aforementioned cover) was that the workout helped your entire body, and that part of it used an exercise ball.  It may have used a medicine ball, too, but I'm not 100% sure about that.  So I did a search for exercise ball workouts on Shape.com.  That brought up hundreds of results with no easy way to sort through them.  Another search for "medicine ball" brought up less results, but being unsure of whether or not a medicine ball was even in the workout, I quickly abandoned that search.

It was around that time when I started looking for Shape back issues.  I couldn't remember the exact year, so I stumbled onto a back issue site that had cover pictures.  Looking around the mid-2000's, I stumbled on the March 2008 issue.  There's a blonde, in a bikini, on a yellow background.  That must be it!

So next I started trying to track down a copy of the magazine.  I was hoping to find a digital copy, but no such luck.  I did find the back issue for sale on Amazon.com though.  But for some reason, the whole magazine, while looking really familiar, didn't seem right.  Of course, at that time I was regularly buying Shape, so many of the issues looked familiar.  And I was almost positive that the workout was mentioned on the cover (which it wasn't on the March 2008 issue). 

It was around that time, when I was waffling about buying it, that I took another look on Shape's website and the words of the article sort of came to me: 21 Days to being Bikini Ready, or something like that.  A quick search on their website gave me no obvious hits (and neither did a Google search), so I went back to looking at the back issues website.  Paying close attention to the magazines I recognized (because I knew that the issue I wanted was one of the first issues I bought at that time), I realized that the issue had to be from before 2007.  So with that in mind, I looked at the 2006 issues and found it almost immediately; on the June 2006 cover was both the blonde in the bikini and the article I remembered: 21 Days to your Best Bikini Body.

So after all of this, I ended up buying myself a new copy of the magazine.  I can't find my original copy (and believe me, I looked everywhere I could think of) and I really want this workout back.  And even if I do one day find the original, I'm totally ok with having two!

Goggles!

A few weeks ago, I bought a pair of goggles for swimming.  They're Speedo Vanquisher 2.0's.  I did a bit of research online and this pair came recommended, so I bought them from Amazon.  I finally tried them this past Thursday and boy do I love them!  They have amazing peripheral vision!

The reason I wanted goggles was two-fold: I wanted to go swimming and I didn't want to worry about the chlorine hurting my eyes.  I've been swimming with my eyes open underwater for years.  Unfortunately, in recent years I haven't been swimming in pools very often.  When I do swim in a pool, I noticed that the chlorine hurt my eyes so badly, so I thought goggles would be a good idea.  And they so were.  I'm just sad I didn't buy a pair sooner so I could have been swimming sooner!

I wanted to mention on here that I used my skiing strategy to control my glucose level while swimming.  I was a bit worried about going because I've had some lows recently (I'm thinking they might be due to my weight loss - my basals haven't been adjusted yet so I probably have too much insulin.  Don't worry, I'm working on that!) but the 30% dinner bolus/25% basal starting approximately an hour before the activity worked rather well.  I started out a bit lower than I would have liked (4.4 mmol/L) so I had a bit of juice as well.  Just before heading to the pool I was 9.8, so I ate a bit more (a pack of Thinsations cookies).  In the pool's changeroom I was 13.3.  After almost an hour of swimming I was 9.3.  I forgot to plug my pump in at that time, so I went and dried my hair, ending up 10.5.  An hour later or so I was 9.0, and just before bed I was 12.7.  All in all my glucose stayed relatively steady.

My one regret is that I didn't pay attention to how many laps I did.  I'm pretty sure it was at least 10, possibly more.  I'll try to keep better track of that next time I go!

Accutane is Over!

Yeah.  So I have completely failed to update this blog for almost the entire time I've been taking Accutane.   To make the long story short: earlier today I took my final pill.  It's over. 

All's been well over the last several months.  Well, other than the super dry skin.  I was expecting to be finished taking Accutane before winter started.  As you can tell by the date, that failed to happen.  But once I was taking it there was no point stopping prematurely. 

So now the healing begins.  It'll take a good six months to a year for my skin to heal properly.  With that logic, I'm expecting my skin to no longer be stupidly dry come summertime.  And honestly, that's something I can hardly wait for!  I've been doing my best with the mositurizers, but during the really cold spells that just hasn't been enough.  The absolute worst has been my nose, which really dried out over the last month (leading to some nose bleeds). 

I've also been a regular at the lab for blood work.  There's actually one of the ladies who knows which arm to take blood out of.  That's kind of weird (I usually think of a regular as someone who frequents a bar or a restaurant, kind of like on Cheers), but also pretty nice.  I mean, they know where to take blood from without asking.

Another plus has been the compliments I've gotten from people on my complexion.  Hopefully now my acne will be gone for good!