Body Changes; Workout Frequency

Last night I noticed an occasional phenomenon. I wonder if this is because I am so new to the weight lifting thing.

In one case, I was doing this set and it wasn't hard at all until I'd done like 6 reps, then the last two were very hard. I barely finished 8 reps each of three sets. Then after resting a bit more I decided to try more. A rocking song was on. And suddenly, it was like it had lost half its weight. I still had the muscle scream around rep 6.5 on each set, but as I was lifting the weight, it just seemed so... well, just so NOT heavy the way it had been the first three sets. It made me wonder if there is such a thing as a 'second wind' in weight lifting like in running.

Last week I did a couple kinds of rear deltoid raises and this week, oddly, I couldn't really do any at the 10# weight. I finally dumped the weights, worried I would hurt myself, and I could not for the life o' me keep decent form, and just practiced doing nothing but my arms, muscles tense, decently far back (I couldn't get them far enough back with the weights), and I really felt it bigtime, this with no weights at all. Which is odd. I don't think it's possible to get weaker is it. Anyway, no big deal, moving on.

One thing about working out at this size is that a lot of exercises that are isolation exercises (working one muscle group) become accidentally compound exercises (working multiple muscle groups). Anything with a knee bend becomes compound for me because holding my body up with a bent knee is easier said than done. And one done lying on the ground on my side becomes compound as it takes both my legs scissored a bit to maintain balance against the lift. Some are just plain hard, like the seated rear deltoid raise requires scrunching over and putting the dumbells behind your legs; my body proportions are just in the way.

My weight continues to stay the same or rise slightly, despite that I couldn't be more lowcarb (or more low calorie for that matter) short of fasting. I am slightly bloated, I have a couple areas where I can totally tell how much fluid I am carrying; my fault, not drinking enough water. But I could swear my stomach seems smaller. Maybe I'm imagining it. Well, I measure again at the end of next week, so we'll see.

My goal for today is to get the big desk with sewing machine and boxes out of my room, and into the living room, and then get this slant-desk/table I bought for myself like a year ago, out of the box and assembled fully and put in my room. Now that I finally almost feel up to kneeling, squatting, getting on and off the floor, etc. the number of things that need doing around my house are suddenly starting to pop into visibility!

Every exercise I do seems to hit my back or obliques in some way. They are chronically exhausted muscle-wise. They don't hurt like being in pain or anything; I'm not worried that I am injuring myself, and I'm being pretty nice to them. It's just that even walking to the kitchen or opening the refrigerator uses them. I have been so insanely inactive for years that any movement is more than they are used to. Now I am not only working them out with weights, targeted no less, but everything else I do that moves me around more, affects them as well. My entire torso from under the shoulders to over the hips constantly is telling me, "Let's just go lie down or something" even when the rest of my body feels fine.

But my body is demanding sleep. I've operated on basically 2-5 hours sleep most nights for most of my adult life. I have permanent black circles under my eyes, and that doesn't even start on sleep apnea and being oxygen deprived. Well normally, I work on the computer, I can sit motionless nearly from the time I awake till the time I go to sleep. Lack of sleep sucks, but I make do, because it's the life of a single mom: you don't have time for stuff you need to do let alone want to do. But now, I can't seem to do that anymore. Since I started working out, it's like my body demands 8 hours of sleep. If I don't get it, I will be so utterly wiped out that I literally have to go back to bed, spend my lunch hour sleeping, etc. I've overslept twice for work, and took part of a day off once and slept on my lunch hour twice, just for sheer must-have-sleep in the last 7 days of work! This has never happened to me before, so although the timing could be coincidence, it happening just after I finally started working out with weights makes me think it is somehow related.

I have a really good dehydrator. Not the $30 round kind at walmart, but the $170 kind that is square. I'm thinking maybe if I made some of that homemade jerky I would always have something to munch on; maybe that would improve metabolic rate a bit, since I'm still working on -- and not yet fully succeeding in -- eating as often during the day as I need to. It just seems like there's probably a lot of carbs in any jerky mix that tastes decently. If anybody knows of a good recipe I'd be glad to hear it.

Lastly for today, I have a question. I was going to ask one person but couldn't find her email. I asked another but apparently didn't phrase it well enough to make sense. Maybe if I try again here I will eventually get more than one response and different perspectives are always good. The question is this:

Is there any reason why I can't work out more than one time a day on the same muscles, if I give that muscle group a full week to rest? In other words, if I do torso exercises on Wednesdays, can I do a workout in the morning, and early afternoon, and evening, same exercises, if I then am not working out that body part till next Wednesday? This week I am trying all my exercise with at least 10# (I went through 3, 5, 8, sometimes 10, last week when I began). Next week, unless there is some compelling reason why not, I intend to do my work out 2 or 3 times a day. Since I can't work a lot of weight or a lot of reps right now, doing the overall workout more times in a day is about the only way I can get more use of that muscle group in. There seem to be many opinions on how many days between working a given muscle set, a person should rest. But I haven't heard much about the idea of working out more than once in a day.