life interrupted

It seems I have slipped a bit again.  So much has happened since my last post and I don't really know where to begin.  On May 12th, Taylor and I ran in the Race for the Cure-Boise.  It was a gorgeous day and I felt really good.  I beat my first race time by 2 minutes and of course Taylor was waiting for me at the finish line again.  She is a speedy little thing.  It was a lot of fun and I look forward to my next one which is probably in August.

Boise Race for the Cure 2012

My friend is a nutritionist and I decided to work with her and try and get my nutrition on track and I am so glad I did.  I also took progress pictures for the first time since last September and all I can say is I was so shocked at how much my body has changed for the better since then.  I attribute it to beginning weight lifting.  Even though the scale hadn't moved much at all, I have definitely lost a lot of inches.  The first week of working on my nutrition I lost 5 pounds.  Its a 30 day program intended to help me become a "cleaner" eater and eliminate added sugar and processed foods.  It has been challenging and I will have to incorporate a lot of this for the rest of my life but I am happy with it so far.  I am officially coffee-free and have been drinking green tea instead.   For anyone that knows me... this is HUGE! I can't wait til the end of the 30 days so I can compare it again.

My garden is doing wonderful!!  I have four types of tomatoes, jalapenos, bell peppers, cucumbers, Lemon cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, summer squash, lettuce, scallions, spinach, wax beans, green beans and carrots all growing now.  I have room for two more cucumber plants and then they will all be full.

My first radish

The radishes I have picked since this are a bit bigger and the plants in the beds are a lot bigger now.

Mother's day this year was great.  My husband (and children of course) thought of the perfect gift.  When we bought this house, the front landscaping was a MESS.  There were three huge nasty rose bushes and I wasted no time digging those up immediately and I pulled out all of the myrtle that had taken over.  I uncovered a truckload of river rock and listed it on craigslist for free so it would get hauled away.  The bed has sat empty for over a year now.  On Mother's day I woke up to this beautiful sight-

Mother's day 2012

This wasn't enough to fill the area so the next week I went and bought some more to fill the space.  I am so happy with how it looks.  It is different than most people have around here with their bushes and daylilies.  I wanted lots of color so I have it now.  Now all we need is some mulch and it will be complete.

Summer has officially started and we are going to have a busy one.  My son graduated from kindergarten, my oldest is officially a middle schooler, we have two kids in tee-ball and games or practices 4 of the 5 days a week.  I have decided to cut back on work so I can be more available at home.  It was a hard decision to make but one that was needed and I think it will really help on many levels.  As it was before, I would have missed every single game of theirs and that was just not acceptable.

I am sorry I was neglectful and I hope I have been able to play a little catch-up with this post.  Thanks for visiting!  

My own worst enemy

I have been going to the gym now for a good 2 months.  I have lost 5 lbs since January.  Out of context this seems great.. but guys.. its APRIL! Even if I only lost a pound a week, I should be down about 15 lbs.  I have really been struggling with this lately but I can't beat myself up about it.  I am eating the best I have ever eaten.  I finally feel ok with eating very little processed foods.  My daily diet consists mostly of : almonds, eggs, greek yogurt, chicken, tilapia, broccoli, salad, whole grain bread and peanut butter.  I'm learning to like other things like hummus, and chickpeas.  We eat more beans and brown rice.  I bake or pan sear nearly everything and only treat us to a "fried" food occasionally.  Even the kids are adapting.  They are eating fruit, popcorn,  and homemade granola bars for snacks, I hardly buy packaged snacks and stopped buying chips.  I make homemade tortilla chips baked in the oven instead and my oldest LOVES them.  I know its time to get groceries when the refrigerator is getting empty.

After meeting with the personal trainer, I have been trying to incorporate more weights with my exercises but for the last month, the scale hasn't budged.  I began researching and realized that likely my 1400 calorie diet was too LOW.  It seems odd, but I needed to increase how much I was eating in order to jump start my weight loss again.  I am still in trial mode as I only began this a week ago.  Although the scale isn't moving, it hasn't fluctuated up either so this keeps me hopeful.  Like I had said this was really dragging me down.  It is so frustrating to watch your husband literally decrease his food intake and start dropping pounds every day.  I have to keep going to the gym even when I don't feel like it.  I did have my body fat percentage evaluated though and I have lost between 3-5% body fat so that makes me want to keep chugging along also.

Today for example, I was going to skip it.  I was tired, had a headache and just was feeling down.  Right before I went to pick my son up from school, I told myself , "Who am I kidding? Jessica, get off your butt and go to the gym."  So I did.  After picking him up from school, off we went.  While I was warming up on the treadmill, a couple moms from the school showed up and they invited me to come lift with them.  I thought sure.. why not.  She set up a circuit training routine and said we were going to do 4 sets.  When I got off the couch today.. I had no idea this was in store for me.  This was THE hardest workout I have ever done.  I burned more calories in that hour than I ever have before.  It was so hard but I am so glad I got up and went today.  It looks like I now have my own personal trainer and workout partner.  She invited me to join her anytime she was there and gave me her schedule.

I really hope this is what I need.  I realized today that maybe I just wasn't doing enough or pushing myself hard enough and I just need to keep doing it and keep being patient.  In time the weight will come off, for now I am enjoying my victory of defeat over the old me and becoming friends with the new one.

Keepin' it Trim.. or tryin' to.

I have officially decided to quit being a slave to the scale.  It's making me crazy.  I make good choices with my food, I make it to the gym at least 4 times a week and the scale..isn't...budging.  I have lost about 4 of the pounds I gained over my little hiatus but I have been bouncing the same 3 pounds around for about a month now and it is really frustrating.  I know I am getting healthier and stronger, but something must be off.  

The gym I go to has a staff of personal trainers that try and recruit people to sign up for private personal training sessions. Every new member gets a complimentary fitness evaluation but honestly I came away from mine with zero new information.  I didn't feel like dropping a ton of money on a personal trainer so I kindly asked if I could have someone go over the equipment with me some more. One of the trainers agreed to meet with me and go over some weight training so I can shake things up a bit and hopefully work some of the weight off.

Now when it comes to cardio, I can run all day like a hamster in a wheel because really that's what we are doing.  Just tuning out life around us and running on a conveyor belt or pedaling away to nowhere.  The weight machines though, those are a different story.  I had no idea how to use any of them and was very intimidated by them.
 

Meeting with the trainer was the best hour I have spent at that, or any, gym in my life.  The amount of direction and information I received is really going to help me in this journey.  I was asked to push myself to limits I would have normally stopped short of and now I know that I am stronger than I thought I was.  I am more and more convinced that weight loss and most other challenges in life are about 95% mental, and 5% physical.  You have to have the right mindset in order for the results to be seen.

I think once I let my head stop getting in the way, the results will start to come.  I have been competing with my husband since we started this together just short of a year ago and even though some competition is fun, this sort is counter-productive to what I am trying to acheive.  I will say I am very proud of my husband and how far he has come.  We have both made some tremendous changes and they are starting to pay off.  Now my goal is to steer clear of the numbers on the scale, dedicate myself to doing the work that needs to be done, and to quit being my own enemy. Because like a quote I recently read states, "Its not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think your not" (author unknown).

Weigh-in Wednesday

I know it isn't Wednesday anymore but I was so unbelievably tired today that I just didn't get to it in time.  Why so tired?  Well today I had a complimentary fitness evaluation with a personal trainer at my new gym this morning at the crack of dawn.  I had no idea what to expect so I went into it with an open mind.

This young kid was there to show me the ropes of the place.  I spent a lot of time at the YMCA last year but I realized that I was only cozy with the elliptical and the treadmill.  I hadn't rendevouz'ed  with the resistance machines much at all.  They are so intimidating to me.  I really have no idea how to use most of the machines and the fear of looking like a moron who doesn't know what they are doing isn't so glamrous to me.  I was happy that he was going to take some time and show me how some of them work.

After a few reps on a handful of machines and also some workouts I can do sans machines, it was time to get down and dirty.  I had to face the hard cold facts of the dreaded BMI and mass distribution.  In other words, how much of this body is fit and how much is flab?  I'm not stupid, I know I am extremely out of shape and I have a lot of weight to lose still, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  The trainer confirmed that my personal goal was realistic and that with diet and exercise, I shouldn't have a hard time reaching that goal.  He also informed me that even though my BMI was too high, I have a lot of lean mass under this layer of flab.  This is really good news and I am pretty happy about it.

As for my weigh-in, I have lost 3 of the 7 pounds I had gained back.  Only 4 to go and I will be back where I was before I lost focus.  I feel my motivation is back finally.  I have been able to run very short periods of time on the treadmill with very little foot pain.  Next week I am going to get fitted for some REAL running shoes with the proper support my feet need.  I am so excited to finally get real running shoes because I know I need proper footwear in order to take care of my feet.

I can't wait for spring.  I have already started looking at races that I can do and am leaning towards the Dirty Dash in August!  How fun will it be to run a 5 mile race in goopy mud??  I also intend on running (not walking) a 5K by the end of the year.  I just want to get moving again.  It feels so good even when I am exhausted.  I need to finish what I started a little less than a year ago.