Race Day

Last year, I ran my first 5K with my two oldest daughters.  At that point, my life was in a totally different place than it is now.  I had been jogging regularly for a while, my feet weren't hurting as much and I had already dropped around 20 pounds.  I had committed to losing weight and was finally succeeding for the first time.  I really felt the best I had ever felt in years.  When I ran last year my goal was to make it in less than 45 minutes and I made it in 42.  I was so excited.  Then in May, Taylor and I ran the Race for the Cure.  I beat my time by one minute.

It was right after this race that my mom fell really ill.  I kept up with my diet and exercise all the way through June, when she passed away, and then I just lost all motivation.  I went back to old eating habits.  My feet were a wreck so I quit doing any exercise.  I very slowly, over the course of a year, put those 20 pounds right back on and despite trying to lose it again from time to time, I just wasn't committed.  By now I was a yo-yo dieter which is one of the worst things to do for weight loss.  My metabolism was all screwed up.

This spring, Taylor told me she wants to do the races again and I got really scared.  I have been going back to the gym, and tweaking my diet to find out what my triggers are. However, when she told me she wanted to run again, I was really scared.  Thankfully I had remedied my foot problem.  For the last several years, I had been wearing Asics and my feet just kept getting worse.  I talked to a person that has the same problem that I do with her feet and she recommended some (very spendy) Nikes to me.  Boy, that has made all the difference in the world.  I have very little foot pain anymore.  I can jog, jump, walk in stores (that used to really trigger foot pain), with no problems at all.  I have not been able to shed a single pound despide my toughest efforts.  I am trying to push through this and keep doing the things I need to do without getting discouraged.  Some days are better than others.

Middleton Fun Run 2013

I am elated that my kids want to be a part of these races and go hiking and just be outside.  So I decided to go ahead and do this local race with my girls.  At this point, my goal was to just finish without dying.  I managed to make it through to the end in 46.5 minutes.  Twelve minutes longer than it took Taylor and 10 longer than Bridget.  BUT, I finished.  And it felt really good!  I remembered how much I loved doing it and have decided to go ahead with the Race for the Cure again this year.  It is the day before Mothers Day.  Almost exactly a year from the last time I had a "normal" conversation with my mom.  This Mother's day will be tough, but I think the best way to celebrate it, is by doing this with my daughters.  I am ever grateful that Taylor dragged me out there this last Saturday morning.

Summers end

It seems like this summer just flew right by.  I suppose having to travel to Tennessee plus having hobbies to keep me busy helped spur it right along.  The garden did 100 times better than I ever imagined it would.  It has totally served every purpose I wanted it to and then some.  My original intent for the garden, was to provide enough green beans to last us all summer and winter in the form of frozen and dilly beans, provide fresh home grown tomatoes, zucchini and squash to eat, and to try to grow a few new things. The amazing thing is that everything I planted, actually produced.  I am pretty proud of myself considering I have never grown anything in my life.

As the summer is winding down, I will be getting back into the groove of things.  I finally made it back to the gym.  I managed to pack on about 8 lbs that I had previously lost since I hadn't seen the gym all summer and only tracked my food sporadically.  It felt really good to get back in to the gym and back to a routine.  Also this coming week, I return to school.. again.  I took last semester off and am back at it with only two classes left.  Unfortunately I cannot take the classes simultaneously so my projected graduation date is Spring of 2013.  I cannot wait to be done with this.

This year all four older kids are in the same school.  I realized after sending them off that first day that this is the first time in about 10 years that I have only had one kid at home.  It is a strange feeling and I can't get over how quiet the house is during the day when they are gone.  That silence disappears quickly though as soon as they walk through the door.

Ever since my mom passed away, I have been trying to reflect on a lot of things.  It's been a difficult few months and some days it is still surreal and I can't believe she is gone.  I honestly think the more time goes by the harder it gets.  I have had plenty of bad dreams and still can visualize her with the panic in her eyes as she was telling me she was not doing ok that day I was there.  It has helped me reflect on my role as a mother and I have been trying to change the way I parent my children.  I appreciate my role more now than ever before, but it also makes that role very hard.  This was definitely an eye opening experience, and I know it will take a while to heal.

We are still budgeting but we changed from Pear Budget, to using Dave Ramsey's budgeting tool and his Total Money Makeover book.  I have had the book for years and tried abiding by it before but quit shortly after starting it.  Today, we don't have much debt and have a pretty decent income.  It allows us to do things we have not been able to do previously, such as go on a family vacation, purchase things for hobbies and fund expenses ahead of time.  However we feel we must stay on a strict budget or else we will find ourselves in the pitfalls of major debt.

I am still working on the rest of my 40/40 list.  I have about 9 more items to add to it before I can publish it.  I never thought it would be so hard to think of things, but I want to make sure the things I list are realistic.  Hopefully I will have lots of new exciting content over the next few months.  I have lots of content ready and pictures archived, I just need the discipline to get them posted.  Thanks to all my readers who have stuck by my side, not deleting me from their blog roll, and checked in from time to time.  I'm glad to know the little following I have is loyal.

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).