FLABULOUS

Have you ever heard of the Freshman 15? It’s a “milestone” for kids right out of High School, in their Freshman year of colleger per say. Basically the tradition is, life is so different, so out of whack and we’re on our own for the first time so we eat terribly, drink too much alcohol, stay up too late and party too hard. In our Freshman year we gain the basic 15 pounds. Cute story but hardly realistic. I mean, for me it was the Freshman 30 and it just went up from there.

Well I’ve hit another famous 15, ok it’s not famous, but it’s about to be. This past week I hit the flabulous 15. What does it mean? After years of being flabulously fat, I’ve finally roughed it past the hovering pounds and lost 15, a milestone for me. Actually I skipped right past 15 and went straight to 16 pounds lost, but you get the poin. It’s not even a quarter of where I want to be, but it’s something. It’s going down.

LJ here, keeping on trucking.

read comments (0)

I love to go on vacations. Driving or flying. Fancy hotel or motel. Sightseeing, walking around, sleeping in and YES the food. Let’s face it, when you go on vacation one of the main planning happens in the “where to eat” category. It’s so fun to try different foods from different places. But do vacations cause “diet” sabotage?

My take is that vacations can either kill a healthy lifestyle or work with one and YOU are the one that makes that choice.

I just got back from a week long vacation in New York City, lucky me! We flew and had to deal with airplane food, we stayed at a nice hotel and we planned a lot of things to see, do and eat. It was a total blast. While I wouldn’t say we ate like health angels, my husband and I both made a conscious effort to scale back on the food portions, eat healthy when we could and the main thing? WALK everywhere.

We really worked hard at this plan and I have to tell you, my feet have never been so tired. But you know what? It totally paid off. I lost 2 pounds on the trip!

The bottom line is that you can’t let vacations sabotage you. They are supposed to be exciting times where you can let your hair down. They can be that and still not crush your healthy lifestyle if you simply make a plan and stick to it the best you can!

read comments (0)

Photo by Presidents Challenge

Remember in grade school when you were in gym class and you had to the the Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge (I can’t be the only one that had to do it)? I HATED that. I was pretty good at most of them, push ups, sit ups, the mile walk/run, the how far you can stretch, but I was the worst at the pull ups. Who does pull ups anyway?

Now to my point, I don’t have to do this test anymore, and now I want to! I thought it would be fun if on the first of each month I do the test to see how far my fitness level has come. It would certainly be a motivator and a measurement of progress that isn’t a scale.

Here’s the Physical Fitness Challenge:

Workout as usual and then once a week, once every other week or once a month check your progress with the above challenges below.

1. How fast can you walk/jog/run 1 mile?
2. How many push-ups (on your knees or regular style) can you do without stopping?
3. How many sit-ups (or crunches) can you do without stopping?
4. How far can you stretch? For this challenge I am going to see how close I come to touching the floor by holding the measuring tape and seeing how many inches I have until I reach the floor.

I did my first test of this at the beginning of last month, and now this weekend, just by doing the Physical Fitness Challenge I’ll be able to see how much progress I’ve made in the fitness area.

Give it a try!

read comments (0)

I’ve hit a lot of milestones lately; 100 days without any soda, 10 pounds lost and finishing a 5k. So why all of the sudden am I totally losing motivation?

Over the past couple of days, while I’ve kept up my workout routine, my eating habits have been down right shameful. I’ve eaten so much sugar, I haven’t really had a good balanced meal,  I haven’t really had breakfast and my fruit and veggie intake has dwindled significantly. Plus, I haven’t really blogged much if you hadn’t noticed!

Why is it that every time I’m really making progress my mind goes crazy, my motivation fades and I just stop? Well, I’m not going to stop this time, I’ll eat a good lunch and dinner today and there is a banana on my desk. But I feel like even though I haven’t gained any weight back, the past few days have really set me back. Grrrrrr.

I’ll get my motivation back.

read comments (0)

Doesn’t it suck when you are trying to eat healthy and you are trying to work out and you are getting really excited for your progress and then you hit a road block? Well that’s what has sort of happened to me and KJ over the weekend.

See, as I’ve said before we’ve been training really hard for our upcoming 5k, it’s this Saturday. So of course what happens? We BOTH are suddenly struck with knee injuries. I got mine when I was doing some workout videos from Jillian Michaels from The Biggest Loser, cardio kick boxing and getting up and down and up and down for the strength training workout. KJ got hers after a hefty 5 mile workout. She hyper extended it while standing in line after the walk.

What are 2 girls doing a 5k on Saturday to do? I guess our plan is lots of icing the knee’s, not pushing ourselves with anything to do with knee’s, knee wraps, resting and Advil. Hopefully we’ll be feeling better by Saturday because frankly, we’re doing that 5k even if we have to crawl across the finish line! And as we all know, road blocks were made to be pummeled through.

Update: I’ve also pulled my inner thigh muscle which is really painful. Still, we’re going to do it!

read comments (0)

Photo by: Great Beyond at Flickr

This is sort of a great week for me health-wise. I finally lost 10 pounds and now, another milestone. As I said previously in my intro post, I’m a soda addict that has quit. I love the way almost all sodas taste, I love the sugar, I love the bubbles, I love the way it feels going down my throat, I just love it. Or should I say loveD?

I can now use love as a past tense word because today marks my 100th day without soda! I can’t believe I made it this far but I have and I’m going to have to believe it. Should I go out and celebrate with a soda? Just kidding! That would be grossly wrong. But I AM going to celebrate.

I was such an addict to the sugar and caffine that the first week I quit I had headaches, I was tired and I was grumpy. I couldn’t even look at a soda can without drooling. Now a-days, while I might want one every now and then, the intolerable cravings have gone away and I can control myself and say “I don’t need or want that.”

Even though it’s been 100 days and what I think is a milestone I still have to work at it you know? When I was 17 I quit soda for an entire year. Then the 4th of July came. You are thinking “so what?” right? Well on that day it was really hot, I was with all my friends, there was lots of bad food and my stupid friends (no longer friends) encouraged me to drink a soda and like a stupid little girl I did.

Basically what I’m saying is, as silly as it sounds, no matter how long I go without soda I have to keep on actively trying to stay away from it. I think it’s going to be a bit easier this time around because I’m not just dropping soda, I’m living a healthier lifestyle all around and seeing great results, so that’s a good incentive.

No soda for 100 days. Man does that feel good!

read comments (0)

I’ve finally hit 10 pounds lost! For a little over 2 weeks I’ve been hovering around 8 pounds and it’s been killing me. Granted I haven’t been the perfect picture of health, but I’ve been working through it and it’s finally paying off with a 10 pound loss on the scale.

In the grand scheme of things, 10 pounds isn’t really that much. I mean, I want to lose like 80 pounds. But this just means I’m 1/8 of the way there. Also as I’ve said in previous posts I feel a little lighter, I have more energy, my fitness level has greatly increased and I’m sleeping better. So who says 10 pounds isn’t much?

Go me!

read comments (1)

Just a vent. Most of the time I hate the scale. It’s just such a numbers game and any little thing can throw you off, thus scale hell. That’s why, even though I was supposed to weigh in, for my weekly weigh in on Sunday, I just couldn’t.

It’s been hard lately with just life in general getting in the way to plan out all my healthy meals and take the time to work out. I just couldn’t even stand to pull out the old scale let alone stand on it. I was too scared that not only wouldn’t I have lost, but I might have gained!

Sure I’ll get back on the scale this coming Sunday, but man, isn’t it okay to skip a week once in a blue moon?

read comments (0)

I don’t know about the rest of the world but it’s extremely hard for me to figure out what to eat for lunch everyday. Salads, chicken breast, Subway sandwiches, Lean Cuisine; it just gets really old after a while. Plus I’m always eating alone so I don’t have a pal to make suggestions or go to a restaurant with.

This kind of lonely uncertainty makes eating healthy kinda hard, in my opinion. So for the past little while I’ve been trying to run errands during lunch or do a light workout and then have a quick sandwich at my desk. But today, I’m tired. My calves hurt, I don’t have any errands to run and I’m extremely tired of Subways Tuna Special Friday (no offense Subway!).

So what happens on these days is I either munch or lunch. I could sit here for another hour tormenting myself about what substantial healthy meal to eat, or I could munch on things around the office, I have some veggies, cereal, granola bars, there are some Girl Scout Cookies and a candy bowl. And you know, this is kind of stupid because food shouldn’t really be this important that it’s plaguing my mind! Yet it is somehow.

What do I do? Munch or lunch? Sometimes trying to be good feels kind of annoyingly bad!

read comments (0)

Do you ever have those days where everything just goes wrong? Well, so far, I’m having one of those weeks.

What’s bad about that, besides the endless frustration, is the emotional eating! I don’t know about you, but I’m an emotional eater. Sure I eat to celebrate stuff, but mostly, I overeat and/or eat bad things when I’m sad/frustrated. Basically, when I get down in the dumps I can’t be trusted around food.

Lately I’ve done better. I’ve been frustrated since Sunday and it took until Monday night for me to start piling in the junk. Sure I stayed within my calorie range for the day, but I ate terrible stuff so I was low on protein and high in fat and carbs . . . oh and probably sugar.

Emotional eating is one of those monsters that can be extremely difficult to tame because most of us have been using eating like a band-aid for so long that it’s become second nature, we just do it. So, I guess that’s the next goal on my hit list. Learn to STOP eating just because I’m sad about something. I’m sure I won’t be able to do it cold turkey, but I WILL kick this emotional eating habit . . . eventually!

read comments (1)