Hello, Strangers!

It's been 3 months since I posted anything on here and a lot has happened!

I moved into my own apartment!  It's so nice to have my own space.  I can do what I want when I want.  If I want to cook something at 2am, I can.  If I want to watch TV until midnight, I can.  I don't feel obligated to let anyone know when I'll be home or if I'll be late.  It's so nice!  It does get a bit lonely, though...

So I got a cat.  A very large cat.  She's 9-years-old and gets highly offended if I'm not touching her in some way at all times.

But she's a pretty chill cat.

A very chill cat.  She knows how to relax!

I also got into a car accident.  Someone was stopped in the road on the service road of the highway without hazard lights on!  Unsafe!  The damage doesn't look too bad...

But the car was totaled.  Unfortunately it took the insurance company a full month to find the time to assess the damage and tell me that.

So I got a new car.  (And a 7-year-old squirt to help me break it in!)  A nice little 2008 Kia Spectra that drives like a race car.  I frequently find myself glancing at the speedometer and thinking, "I'm going how fast?  Oops!"  Love it!

Saw this on a tow truck.  Superman is love.  No, really, he is.  I have him on my nametag at work.  A little boy once asked me why I had Superman on my nametag.  I said because he was my favorite.  He said, "Do you want to marry him?"  And I said, "If he asked me I would!"  The little cutie fell on the floor he giggled so hard.

Mad props to this truck, too.  Can't forget the zombies!  With how many zombie movies I've watched I'd totally survive a zombie apocalypse.  Well, as long as they were your typical ambling zombies.  No one can survive the runners!

That's all I got for now.  Now that life is settling back down I'll try to keep this up more.  Let's go!

Recovery

 This is what has been staring me in the face every day at work.  How evil is that?  I've been showing great self-control, though.  Those little balls are Sixlets and Sixlets are delicious!  Yes, I've indulged in some Sixlets but I'm limiting myself to two of the little tubes per day I work.  There's only 60 calories and 5g of carbs total there so I don't feel bad about it.  Plus, I get to eat candy.  Yum!

Today is the first day since Friday that I've been able to exercise.  Somebody remind me that walking stairs 45 times is a bad idea the next time I want to do it!  Saturday I was sore, but Sunday I was so sore I had to wrap my calves in ACE bandages so that I could push through work.  Sunday night I had to get out of bed to get a heating pad because my legs hurt so much.  Ugh!  I'm still sore, but now only marginally.

Today it was about 70 degrees and gorgeous outside so I took a walk.  I walked the half mile to a lake near our house.  I was standing on the sidewalk to take this picture.  Back to the left around the curve of the lake the sidewalk winds and then stops.  I stopped at the end and did a 25-minute arm workout on Workout Trainer, then turned around and came home.  It was very nice!

This was my lunch on Saturday.  One cup of broccoli, one cup of cauliflower, one-half cup of baby carrots, and one ounce each of cheddar cheese, pepperjack cheese, and mixed nuts.  I found the saltiness of the mixed nuts was a really great compliment to the veggies.  I've already packed my lunch for tomorrow the same way, except instead of nuts - which I'm almost out of - I've mixed some dip for the veggies.

And this was my lunch yesterday.  Are you jealous?  I'm jealous of myself for getting to eat it yesterday!  I spread two low-carb tortillas with a tablespoon each of cream cheese, then I layered on turkey lunchmeat and added one ounce of cheddar cheese.  It got grilled in a pan with some butter until the tortillas were nice and crispy.  Along with it I had a glass of juice that had carrots, parsley, and cabbage in it.  It was so very stinkin' delicious, the entire thing. 

My skin is starting to show signs of dehydration - mainly getting flaky patches that look like I've buffed with sandpaper.  I've been drinking between 7 and 11 glasses of water per day, but it's time to step it up.  It's so hard for me to drink a lot of water.  To me, 7-11 glasses is a lot of water.  I'm not sure if the dehydration is because I'm working out and therefore need extra hydration, or maybe it's from the cleanse I'm doing and that's causing me not to absorb the water I'm drinking before it's getting flushed out of my system.  In two days the cleanse will be over so I'll up my water intake and keep it up as I move into the next phase of my challenge.

Check It!

This morning I got up and decided to step on the scale.  I know, it's been 4 days since the challenge started but most of the ladies on DietBet weighed in this morning so I got the itch to do the same.  When I got on the scale I was so surprised that I stepped off and weighed myself again.  I'm down 5.2 pounds!  I'm sure a great deal of that is from the cleanse.  Yay!  It's so exciting. 

I was so excited and inspired by the loss that I decided that I was going, for the first time, to trek the stairs in my house as my workout.  I went up and down these stairs 45 times.  Let me tell you, stair climbing is insanely intense cardio!  I huffed and puffed like you've never seen.  I'm already dreading the pain that will be my thighs tomorrow, but I feel so stinkin' accomplished.

I showered and got ready to go pick up my nephew.  Once I was out of the shower I got a text from my friend who is leading the Advocare challenge that she wanted to go to the Arbor Hills Nature Preserve.  It is a gorgeous day out today and walking around the Preserve sounded like a whole lot of fun, so I agreed.  We ended up walking for an hour.  It was nice to be able to be outdoors and be active, but it was extra nice to do so while catching up with a friend. 

Between the stairs and the Preserve I walked over 10,000 steps today!  My daily goal is 7,000 so that tells you how well I did.  Suffice it to say that I am kicking butt in the challenges!

And because I can't post a blog without food in it - my breakfast, eggs and bacon.  Yum!

Challenge Day Two!

Today was a day full of eating things that just really did not taste good.  One of the first was this fiber drink.  It's part of the 10-day cleanse part of the Advocare challenge.  It's not yummy.  It's slimy, and chunky, and really just kind of gross.  It took quite a lot of mental pep-talking for me to chug it down.  It's the most unpleasant part of the cleanse, but one of the most important.  On days 1-3 and 7-10 you drink one in the morning, so only two more days until I get a break!  It'll be worth it to get all the toxins and bad stuff washed out of my system, totally worth it.

The second "bad" thing was this juice.  It was....  There aren't words for how bad it was.  It was just terrible.  It had this severe afterburn after every drink.  It was as if after I swallowed the juice was afraid I'd forget it existed so it scalded the back of my throat as a not-so-gentle reminder.  The sweet carrots just could not make up for the grossness of the garlic and parsley.  Oh, it was bad.  Really really bad.

This salad looks good, doesn't it?  Wrong!  Okay, it might look good, but it just tasted terrible.  Let me start with what's in it.  Lying on a beautiful bed of butter lettuce (that I'm upset I ruined by making this salad) was chia seeds, cheddar cheese, a horribly failed attempt at grilled tofu, and honey dijon dressing.  My attempt with the tofu was to make it like Pei Wei does.  Pei Wei's tofu is this gorgeous, thinly sliced, grilled tofu that has so much texture and bite to it that it's like eating meat.  My tofu was mushy, tasteless, and had parts that were lightly grilled and parts that were grilled to death.  It also just fell apart and stuck to the pan.  Ugh.  I need to figure out how Pei Wei does their thing because this is just not working for me!  The cheese got stuck in clumps, the chia seeds tasted weird, and the dijon dressing is calorie-less and carb-less so it just tasted funky to begin with.

One thing that I ate today that was not disgusting was my lunch.  A cup of baby carrots, 1/4 cup of walnuts, and 1oz of cheddar cheese.  Yum!  I love making meals that have a little bit of a lot of things.  Having a variety of foods, even if it's only a small bit of each, makes me feel like I'm eating a lot more than I am and it fills me up faster.  I made a few of these snack packs to get me through the week and weekend.

The good thing about today is now I know what doesn't work for me.  I can use that now to figure out what does work.

Day One

Welcome to day one!  I started my day at 7am, waking up early enough to get some exercise in.  I did a 30 minute full-body strength training workout on my Workout Trainer app, and did 30 minutes of a Leslie Sansone walking DVD.

To hydrate and energize me during my workout I had 16 ounces of coconut water with one scoop of mango-pineapple Rehydrate and a packet of watermelon Spark.  Yum!

The workout kicked my butt, but I am so proud of myself for getting up early and doing it!  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to sleep in so it takes real dedication to give up some sleep to work out.  Once I was doing the workout I didn't mind it....except the part where I got hot and sweaty.  Anyone who knows me also knows how much I loathe being hot and sweating.  Haha.  I'm going to have to get over that!

For lunch I made some juice.  This one had one cucumber, three stalks of celery, two cups of bean sprouts, and one bulb of fennel.  I wasn't ecstatic about it, but it wasn't terrible.  Really just tasted like funny-tasting water so it could've been a lot worse!

I failed to take a snack with me to work so I was so hungry after work that I made some bad decisions.  Chicken nuggets and some chocolate-covered pretzels aren't the healthiest choice.  That said, I've learned my lesson.  I'll be taking snacks to work so that my hunger doesn't overcome my good judgement.  I already bagged up enough for the next week!

A little while ago I took my new favorite supplement.  If I do strength training during the day I take this at night before bed and I'm not sore the next day.  It's kind of amazing.  It also helps repair your muscle and helps them grow and become stronger after you've worked them.  I like it!

And on a closing note...  A friend of mine texted this to me last week.  It seemed appropriate!

Falling Off the Wagon

Falling off the wagon is such an easy thing to do in the name of convenience.  It's so much easier to grab some chicken strips and toast at Raising Cane's than it is to wake up early enough to make lunch, or stay up late enough to make it the night before.  Am I right?  But that means making very unhealthy choices that I know will have negative affects on my health and well-being.  Do I do it anyway?  Oh, yes, all in the name of laziness!

Has anyone ever heard of DietBet? Essentially it's an online game where you bet a certain amount of money that by the end of the time period you can lose 4% of your weight. If you lose 4% or more of your weight by the end then you get some of the pot.  Everyone who loses 4% or more wins and the pot gets split between them, so at the very least you get your money back as long as you lose the weight.  Jillian Michaels is putting one on and so far the pot is $200,790.

I signed up for that, as well as an Advocare 24-Day Challenge that a friend of mine is putting on.  Through the Advocare products and the DietBet I'm getting tons of motivation that I am beyond excited for.

These are some of the healthy things I bought to help me out.  Cucumbers, avocado, bulk walnuts, coconut water, chia seeds, baby carrots, bulk spinach, cheese, and ginger.

Thanks to my dad lending me his juicer, I'm going to be using juice to help me get in the veggies and nutrients I need.  This is my first foray into juicing - spinach and carrot juice.  It was surprisingly good!  At least to me.  The other members of my household had varying reactions from not daring to try it to a shake of the head and a declaration that it was not for them.  I found the juice really filling so I'm excited to do more juicing!

As I do these 24- and 28-day challenges it's my goal to blog at least every couple days with progress and tidbits.  Let the games begin!

My Motivation

Do any of you guys watch The Biggest Loser?  I've been watching it the last few years.  When it's airing I tend to be way more motivated to work out.  Seeing these people, how heavy they are and how hard they work out in spite of it, is a great motivator to get moving.  One of the people on the show this last season was over 400 pounds.  It kept me thinking, "If he's that large and can work out that hard, then so can I!"  Not that I work out 4 hours a day, but you know what I mean.  I tend to use my weight as an excuse.  "Oh, I can't do that because I'm too heavy," or "I'd do that if I was skinnier, but I'm not."  These contestants are larger than I am and they're doing it.  That really motivates me into believing that I can do it, too.

Unfortunately, The Biggest Loser is now on break and the current season is over.  To keep up my motivation I decided to download some weight loss podcasts.  Jillian Michaels has one called...wait for the totally unique name...The Jillian Michaels Show.  A lot of it is incredibly long intros, outros, and segment breaks along with her joking about completely random things with the person I assume is her producer.  But interspersed amongst the unnecessary stuff is some actual really good material.  On one I just listened to she had her mom, JoAnn McKarus, a psychotherapist who works with people with eating disorders among other issues, on to talk about compulsive overeating.  In two others she talked about weight loss myths and why they were myths and not reality.  At the end of every podcast she takes a call from someone and answers questions.  It's all very informative and I'm really liking listening to them.

I bought this game a while back.  Like, years back.  I used it a couple times, but didn't really do anything with it.  This past week I had a moment that Jillian would call a "come to Jesus" moment.  I work at a salon and as I was blow drying a little girl's hair I was shaking my wrist to move the hairdryer back and forth so it wouldn't stay in one spot and burn her.  As I was doing that I realized that my wrist and the hairdryer weren't the only things shaking....so were my "wings" as I've heard them so eloquently called, i.e. my flabby upper arm.  Ew.  Yeah, gross, right?  Totally.  It was then that I realized that eating right to lose weight was great, but that wasn't going to help my "wings" disappear or help me get the shape that I want.  I immediately went home and set up a new fitness program on this game.

There's good and bad things about this game.  Some of the good things are that it takes you through a workout to assess your fitness level and then tailor a workout to you.  It also lets you track your calorie intake, works with you on your nutrition as well as your physical activity, and has some really fun and neat challenges like the ones they do on the show.  Some of the bad things include that you can pick how many days you work out each which but it doesn't allow you to choose which days, and it uses the Wii remote to sense your movements and track if you're doing the moves.  Some of the moves, like jump rope, tire jumps, and others that ask you to put the remote in your pocket, don't sense that you're doing the move even if you are so you get a bad score on it or the game thinks you weren't doing anything at all during that move.  That part annoys me so very much, but I've learned to just roll my eyes and move on.

With the game you can pick whether you want Bob, Jillian, or both to be your trainer.  Bob uses that soothing sweet voice of his to say things like, "Your personal goal is where you want to be and you don't get there by sitting on the couch."  Jillian says things like, "I know what you're thinking - you're dying, it hurts, wah wah wah!  Do you want to be skinny or not?!"  Jillian's a little harsh but there's just something so satisfying when you do one of the exercises and she says, "I'm impressed!" or "You make me proud!"  It makes me think, "Aww, I'm making Jillian proud.  I should keep going!"  Is that sad?  Haha.  Whatever motivates, right?

TheBiggest Loser is what helps motivate me to keep going, eat right, and exercise.  What motivates you guys to keep going?