Anyone care for some Jello...and other random things

So I just got done cleaning out a LARGE double shelf cabinet in my kitchen. The kind of cabinet that is curved, and has nooks and crannies that I swear could hide a small child. Anyway, I kept shoving cans/boxes etc in there hoping to create a little more room. Well, it was getting ridiculous so I cleaned it out. Guess what, I have 25 boxes of Jello/jello pudding mix in there. Good heavens...see this is what I do, I buy stuff, it gets put in the never ending abyss that is called my cabinet, then I forget it's there, because it's at least 4 rows back, then I buy some more, shove it in the cabinet, and the cycle repeats. STOP THE MADNESS!! Anyway, I need to start using some of that pudding mix!!

Also, just a cute story (well cute to me), about my dear children and their Grandma. Last night I went with the kids to go have dinner at Grandma and Grandpas (my MIL and FIL) We were all sitting around chatting and Grandma tells us she has lost one of the lenses out of her prescription sun glasses (it has fallen out several times before). She goes on to tell us that she had come in the house from outside to get something and then noticed one lens missing. She said she has scoured the whole house through and through and it is no where to be found...so she'll have to go to Costco to get it replaced. So I half jokingly say to my son "go find Grandma's lens", and he jumps right up and starts looking under the cushions of the couch, and Grandma says "oh I already looked under all those", so then my daughter crouches down to look under the couch and she says "he he he here it is Grandma" in this cute little giggle. And I'm thinking, she's just teasing (she likes to tease....and she's only 3...eeks). So there my son looks down there too, and says, "yep, there it is", and pulls it out and gives it to Grandma. This happened in less than 30 seconds from the time I asked my son to find it. Grandma just laughs...she can't believe it..she said she had already looked under the couch...she'd been looking for 3 days. She then gives them each a dollar, which they were ecstatic about. I guess God answered her prayers that day!

So then I am sitting with my son looking at his new dollar from Grandma. I said, do you know who that president is on the dollar bill, he says 'ya, it's George Washington', I was a little surprised he knew because we had never discussed it before. So then I ask, well who was George Washington, and he says "he was the President", and I said "what President was he", and he says "the first President", as if I asked him what color the sky was. I have no idea how he knows this information, but I'm pretty sure I didn't know all that until at least the 5th grade. So then Grandma asked (she always amazed at what he knows...as a good Grandma should be) "How do you know that", and he shrugs his little shoulders and says "I don't know, I guess God put it in my head for me to know". What a precious child! I sure hope God puts some math skills in that head too. I'm already afraid of having to help him with his math homework anywhere beyond the 3rd grade or so. I was NOT gifted in math...and luckily, in my line of work, it is not terribly important. Good choice on my end!!

Just an update

Well, first off I have to admit that the last few days have not been shining moments in clean eating. Free day was Friday, and I enjoyed it to the fullest. Saturday I got busy, starving, and ate 2 pieces of leftover pizza, then later had 2 oatmeal raisin cookies. The rest of the day was clean. Yesterday was clean eating until dinner at a friends house. It all started out well, but ended with some bread with olive oil, and homemade ice cream with a brownie. I'm not beating myself up about it though because to me, this is what life is about. Mostly good eating combined with the occasional indulgences that make life great. However, I did indulge more than I had planned, so I felt I needed to come clean with that :)

My arms and back are still really sore from my boxing adventures. Today I did a variation of the Turbulence Training at home. I had to modify because I didn't have all the proper equipment, and didn't think the gym's child care was open, so didn't want to go to the gym. I started with the jump rope and beat my own personal record of # of consecutive jumps (which was 261 yesterday), I got to 317 today. I don't know what my jump rate is, I should time it sometime, but I'm going pretty fast. Seems like I have much better form when I first start...before I start getting fatigued and losing form. Then I did squats with a exercise bands under my feet, and with each stand I did an overhead press. I did 20 of those, then chest presses with the exercise band and a 5 pounder in each hand, 20 of those. Rinse and repeat. Rest. Then I did push-ups with my feet on a fanner lifter (left over from my "The Firm" days) x 15, then hip extensions, rinse and repeat, rest. Then dips on the fanner lifter, and bulgarian squats. I don't think I repeated that one...they were both hard. Then I did some bird dogs and plank. Somewhere in there I also did some different squats with the exercise bands under my feet, but pulled through my legs in the back. I was trying to mimic a kettlebell exercise I saw. I thought it worked quite well. Then some more jump roping. Then I came in to do some boxing. My new best score for the punching bags in 1 minute is 25, that's 7 better than yesterday, woohooo. Anyway, I boxed for 20 minutes, and was sweating a ton. I think I will try to box tonight also just for some added calorie loss.
Today's eating is right on. So far I've had a breakfast sandwich (WW english muffin, 1 whole egg and 1 egg white poached, and 1 Morningstar breakfast patty), a canned turkey and broccoli casserole I made yesterday (which was amazingly tasty), 1/2 a cantaloupe, a PureFit protein bar, and a Enviga green tea drink. I'm looking forward to some cottage cheese and fresh tomatoes later, and may be having steak for dinner..not sure yet.

Oh, and just as a side note in case there are any other Wii people out there. I learned 2 nights ago that I bowl SO much better backwards..yep, I stand facing away from the TV hold the controller B button up and flick my wrist from pointing at the ground to the TV. I bowl so much straighter this way, however, out of 10 rounds, I left the 6 pin up 7 times I think...just the 6 pin... At least I was consistent I guess. Now if I could figure out how to adjust this to strike consistently, I'd be set :) My dear 6 year old son keeps asking me why I am only bowling backwards now.... mommy likes to WIN :)

Fun with the Wii....

Okay, I have to admit that I am a closet gamer. I have always loved playing video games, and so far the Wii Sports is one of my favorites. I'm the one who actually convinced my hubby that getting a Wii would be a good idea. He thought the graphics were poor, but he gave in...it really didn't take that much effort since he is really a 10 year old in a grown man's body. If you are not familiar with the Wii, watch this

Anyway, so last night after reading a little more about Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto, I decided I needed to try to be a little more active every day...not necessarily doing cardio, but just moving around more....especially since my job involves sitting at a computer...not a lot of calories burned doing that. So, I decide that I'll play the Wii...I had already done a 30 minute HIIT with the jump rope..showered, slipped into some comfy clothes. After 15 minutes of boxing, I was seriously sweating again. I was only doing one of the training exercises where you try to punch out as many punching bags as possible in 1 minute. Well I was trying to beat the high score, so I just kept trying. WOW, today my arms and back are sore!

Moral of the story, exercise does not have to be a drag...find things you like to do and commit to doing them!!

As for me, I'm off to box :)
Oh, and I did beat the high score yesterday :) I got 18 in 1 minute

The importance of a FREE DAY

One of the reasons I love the Body for Life program so much is that it allows for a free day. A day when you eat whatever you want, whenever you want, all amazingly guilt free. Previous to Body for Life, I would eat well for about 1-2 weeks (usually it was a matter of days, okay maybe one day) then I would eat some naughty treat, feel horrible about it because I had failed, then say "forget it I can't do this", give up, and feel horrible because I hadn't followed through with what I said I was going to do. This cycle repeated itself for years. When I first started BFL I was SO excited I didn't have to completely give up some of the foods I loved. I would plan ahead all the things I wanted to have on my free day, and then (and this is the beautiful part), I would enjoy them GUILT FREE. Yes, there was no self loathing about free day, because it was PART OF THE PROGRAM. I hadn't failed because I had eaten dark chocolate, ice cream, squishy white bread with butter, pasta, etc.
I really believe that anyone that is doing a reduced calorie diet will have a very hard time sustaining any type of long term weight loss, because it just isn't realistic to reduce calories indefinitely. Besides, how sad it would be to give up all those wonderful 'naughty' foods forever!!!
Let me remind you that in my first BFL 12 week challenge, I lost 12 pounds of fat and gained 2 pounds of muscle...and I took 12 free days eating whatever I wanted. I'm not one of those people who, after eating well for weeks, then got in the 'habit' of eating well, and didn't crave any bad foods anymore. I still LOVE all those foods I loved before. I am more careful about what I choose to eat on free day because I don't want to blow it on gross fast food, I make sure to eat things I really LOVE.

So what is the reasoning for a free day you might ask. Well, our super smart bodies know when we are calorie restricting, and after a while it adapts to this calorie deficit by slowing down your metabolism and going into sort of a starvation mode, holding on to the body fat in case food is going to be scarce and it needs the fat for energy. Having a day where your calories are higher, announces to your body that all is well, food is not scarce, and boosts your metabolism to burn off those extra calories. Recently there has been more research on this idea. Read this interesting article about a former BFL champion who has now written his own book The Cheat to Lose Diet I have not read the book, and the fact that the word DIET is in the title puts me off a little, but since it reinforces why the cheat day/meal is so important, I was happy.

Anyway, I would not have stuck with BFL if there was no free day, it's psychologically and physically important. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

On a side note, I got on the scale today (I vowed to only weigh in once a week), and the scale HAS NOT MOVED...not my weight, and not my body fat% (insert expletive here). Oh, this is infuriating. I'm convinced that I'm not getting enough calories. I haven't been feeling 100% the last week because of an infection, so my appetite was a little low. I'm going to try to boost clean calories next week, and cross my fingers. That combined with the new exercise routines should confuse my body enough to get off this plateau.

So, I'm off, just had some delicious fluffy bakery white bread french toast made by my DH. I plan on having a Starbucks iced mocha, some more white bread, maybe pizza tonight with a glass of wine (strange combo I know), then ice cream tonight. YUMMM

After day 1 of TT

Well, it took me forever to figure out exactly HOW to do the sets/supersets etc, before I even attempted the actual exercises. I started with the warm-up and beginner workout, which seemed WAY to easy, and I didn't take any rests periods either. Then I went to go jump rope...did for about 2 minutes and for some reason I lost all motivation (plus I was getting some familiar shin splint pain). I think it was because I was just discombobulated. Like I had planned on going to the gym..then I had spent so much time trying to figure out this new routine...and because I didn't understand all of the exercises in the intermediate program, I just did the beginner (which was all stuff you can do from home). Later this evening I did do some more jump roping while watching a storm roll in with my daughter. After we take our little pool down I'm going to use the interlocking mats we have underneath it, and use that to jump rope on...much easier on the body!! I can say that my triceps are strangely sore, has to be from jumping rope yesterday like a crazy person. I'm getting better at it.
Also been tracking my calories for the last 2 days. I'm usually very anti calorie counting. It messes with my head. However, since the weight isn't coming off like I wanted/expected, I figured I would see what my intake was like. Well, it's a little lower than I think it should be. I was about 1300 yesterday and 1430 today..and the only reason I hit 1430 today was because I put everything into fitday before my last meal...so I added peanut butter to boost my calories a bit. So I figure if I'm creating a calorie deficit (which I definitely should be), but the fat still isn't coming off despite my workouts...then I must not be eating enough.
Why can't this be an exact science??

Turbulence Training

So for the last few weeks I've been stewing over what to do next. I love the BFL workouts, but they have become a bit monotonous, and I'm bored with them. Mostly my own fault for not learning new exercises etc. Also, the weight does not seem to be coming off as fast as I would like, or even as fast as my first challenge last year. My eating has been about 95% clean, so I feel it is time to change up the workouts. Last night I purchased Turbulence Training . The website looks a little gimmicky, but it is suppose to be a great program for fat loss. Heck, if Skwigg does it, it's gotta be good. What I really like about it is that the workouts are fairly simply, fast (45 minutes 3x a week), including high interval cardio (which I already do), and the eating plan is what I am already doing. So, I will keep you informed on how it goes. I am a little nervous about the new exercises, as I don't want to look like a complete idiot at the gym. I'll get over it.

Also been jumping rope for my HIIT, which has been great. For some reason I had never given this form of exercise much thought because it seems so simple...like cardio has to be complicated in order to be effective? Anyway, here is an interesting article on a Jumping Rope . So besides the whip marks I've been giving myself which make it appear that I am into some strange S&M stuff, I am going to stick with jumping rope...maybe I'll get better at it.

For all you Moms out there....

This is a little different from my usual posts, but hey, it's my blog I can do what I want

This song touches me like I Can Only Imagine, by Mercyme did when it came out. It is called In My Arms, by Plumb. If you are a Mom, you will get it, and if you are a Believer, it will have even more meaning.

The video is just for the song...




Plumb In My Arms
From the album Blink

Your baby blues
So full of wonder
Your curly cues
Your contagious smile
And as I watch
You start to grow up
All I can do
Is hold you tight
Knowing

Chorus:
Clouds will rage and
Storms will race in
But you will be safe
In my arms
Rains will pour down
Waves will crash around
But you will be safe
In my arms

Storybooks
Are full of fairytales
Of Kings and Queens
And the bluest skies
But my heart is torn
Just in knowing
You'll someday see
The truth from lies
When the

Chorus:

Bridge
Castles they might crumble
Dreams may not come true
But you are never all alone
Cause I will always
Always love you


Label: Curb Records

Lyrics may not be reproduced without permission from the publisher.