March 7, 2010

Thanks for the reminder about the healthy snacks, LilSis. I think it's really smart to keep good things on hand in case of a snack attack, which is going to happen, sooner or later!

Remember me talking about P90X last weekend? I was all psyched up to start it. I did the fitness test, and was able to pass it, but the darn thing kicked my butt and made me realize how puny and weak my upper body is right now. Even though I wanted to jump in 100%, a voice of reason in my head told me I'd probably end up getting hurt, or getting so sore that I'd quit, or getting discouraged because I couldn't do the whole workout. Those would all be bad outcomes that I don't want.

So, for once, I decided that I should be smart and ease into the new workout.  In addition to my gym workouts five times a week, here's what I'm doing.  If you're chompin at the bit to whip yourself into swimsuit shape, but need to ease into a heinie-kickin' workout like me, give these workouts a try!

• Inhale Yoga with Steve Ross – it comes on live here on the Oxygen cable channel at 5 am and 6 am.  I record it on DVR now, so I can do them whenever I want.  This is my favorite yoga.

• 30-Day Shred with Jillian Michaels – I talk about this all the time.  You get 3 levels of a 28-minute workout that is surprisingly effective.

• No More Trouble Zones with Jillian Michaels – this workout uses lots of weights and runs for close to an hour.

• Banish Fat Boost Metabolism with Jillian Michaels – this workout is also close to an hour long, and includes lots of cardio.

Amazon has the set of all three Jillian Michaels DVDs for $22.99.

After doing  a month of rotating these workouts, I think I'll be ready to start P90X.  Yoga is great for building strength – both upper and lower body – and Jillian's videos all incorporate excellent upper body exercises.  I'm hoping that doing a month of prep before embarking on P90X will decrease the probability that it will kill me!  What do you think?

~BigSis

January 16, 2010

I hope everyone had a great week! It just flew by for me.  I feel like I had a healthy, productive week even if I did slip up a couple of times. We went out on Tuesday for a friend's birthday and enjoyed a few cocktails, then on Wednesday we had friends pop over to say a belated Happy Birthday to SirHoney which led to me staying up way too late that night.

On a positive note, I was able to accomplish almost everything that I had on my list.

• I had great cardio workouts for all but one day. (Which was the morning after I stayed up too late.)

• I started off the week with a great Yoga class at the Y that focuses more on stretching and I finished off the week with a really hard Power Yoga class at 24 Hr Fitness.

• I managed to stick to our weekly menu plan and even made a healthy choice the one time I went out to lunch during the week. (Even though I was craving Mexican food.)

• I was finally able to get HayHay to show me how to operate the new TV and Wii so I took a new Fit Test and set my weight loss goal on the WiiFit to help me monitor my progress. (One nice surprise, the Wii shows my weight 3 pounds lighter than my digital scale.)

• I haven't had one. single. beer. all. week! (Did I ever mention how much I love beer? This is a tough one for me, but I'm sticking to the “no beer during the week” rule.)

• I lost two pounds this week. Seven more to go.

I received my fitbook in the mail this week so I was able to start recording all my goals, workouts, and food all in one place. I have never had any desire to follow any kind of diet program where I had to count calories or points. I just know myself well enough to know that I won't stick to it.

But, after these past two weeks of recording what I ate, I've discovered that it has helped me be more accountable to myself and my commitment to cut down on my snacking and mindless eating. Here's my food log from yesterday. I love how you can rate each meal with the happy face or sad face. 🙂

I only did crunches once last week and was sore for DAYS, but this week, they're on the calendar for three days. Here's my workout plan for next week.

My goals for next week are:

• Go to bed early EVERY night. It's amazing how much better I feel in the morning when I actually get 7 or 8 hours of sleep.

• Plan meals for the week, do the shopping on Sunday and stick to the plan.

• Start every morning with a positive attitude and stay away from any negative influences.

This Challenge isn't just about losing weight; it's about feeling healthier and happier with myself, making better choices in all aspects of my life and keeping a positive attitude about 2010 being a great year! Have you ever heard that a home is said to be lucky and will have a prosperous year if a plant blooms on New Years Day? Look what I found on my Jade plant on New Years Day.

When we first moved to our home almost eight years ago, I moved this sad little Jade plant to my front courtyard because I heard that a Jade plant symbolizes prosperity and good luck. I've nursed this Jade ever since and it's grown to be quite large but has never bloomed until now.

If the Chinese superstition proves to be true then we should be looking forward to a prosperous year! (Believe me when I say that we need for that to happen.)

Have a great week everyone!

~LilSis

January 9, 2010

As I mentioned before, I'm going to do a weekly post on my Ten in 10 Challenge progress. Our team leader and creator of the Ten in 10 challenge, Lori of The Recipe Girl is posting her progress on Saturdays so I thought it made sense for me to do the same. I know some of the other participants are posting on Saturdays as well. At last count, there are 317 people participating in this challenge. 🙂

I feel good about this first week. In looking back at my specific goals, I was able to achieve most of them. Since I want to keep on a positive note, I'll start off with what I was able to accomplish.

• I forced myself to go to bed earlier! (This one is REALLY hard for me.)

• I got up earlier and got my workout done early except for Wednesday when I took the long walk at lunchtime.

• I wrote everything down; food, workout, and weight.

• I planned our meals for the week, did the shopping on Sunday and stuck to the menu.

• I restricted my cocktails and my happy hour snacking. (Had green apple slices instead of cheese and crackers.)

• I was able to lose my one pound for the week. 🙂

I also joined the ten-in-ten-challenge team on Spark People and am excited about making more time to get that all set up. There are some amazing features on this site, including tracking the nutritional information of everything you eat each day. This is a good article that I just received from them yesterday called; “The Four-Letter word that can end mindless eating forever.”

Just a couple of things that I couldn't squeeze in this week were the ‘after dinner' walks, The 30 Day Shred, and the hula hoop on the Wii. We got a new t.v. recently and HayHay has been too busy to teach me how to set up the WiiFit and turn everything on by myself. I'm hoping to have time to do that this weekend. Just 15 minutes of that Hula Hoop is a real workout!

Here's something that I stumbled upon that I thought I'd pass on to anyone that might be interested. Have you heard about or seen the fitbook from fitlosophy?

What I really love about this little book is that there is a place to record your workouts, log your daily food intake, and list your stats and your goals each week. I think having just one place to log everything for each day is going to be really helpful for me. You can take a virtual peek at the Fitbook to get an idea of how the planning pages are designed. You can order the book directly from fitlosophy, but I found fitbook on Amazon, so it's sitting in my shopping cart now just waiting for me to finish my order. Thanks for the Amazon gift certificate, SisMama!

Have a great weekend everyone! I ran across this quote recently and I think I'm going to post it in my bathroom so I can read it every morning.

“If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

– Thomas Edison

~LilSis

January 7, 2010

Seven days into the new year and all is good! I've been able to stay focused this week, have been getting almost 7 hours sleep each night, and have been writing down all my workouts and everything that goes into my mouth. I'm pretty happy because I've already obtained my weight loss goal for the week.

Am I still talking about the Ten in 10 Challenge? Yes.  Am I going to talk about it every day? Probably.

Just kidding. Once I get through this initial week of organizing my schedule and getting myself on track in all aspects of this challenge, I'll get back to talking about other jibber jabber. I'll try to post at least one healthy recipe a week and I'll also post about my progress once a week. I'll probably do that on Saturdays since my official weigh in day is going to be on Fridays and a lot of the other participants have mentioned posting their progress on Saturdays.

I think that to get past a plateau, which is what I'm trying to do, you've got to change things up a bit. I've found a great new bike at the Y that really kicks my fanny, but I don't want to be in the gym every day. I want to be outside on cardio days when I don't also have weight training scheduled.

Since I was in the gym Monday and Tuesday mornings and since yesterday was so gorgeous, I decided to do my walk from the Harbor down to the beach to walk the pier and do some stair climbing. This is one of my favorite routes.  I do this particular walk when I can manage to squeeze in an extra half hour that day.

I don't normally take my camera with me, but I thought it might be fun to snap some shots along the way. Let's go for a walk.

This is where I start. This is also where we spend most of our spare time when not working or doing chores at home.

When the water is not quite so cold, this is where I like to kayak.

I know it's hard to make out what this is in the water, but they're seals sun bathing. These are just their fins sticking up out of the water while they're floating on their backs.

This is HayHay's favorite spot to surf. On any given day at 6:30 in the morning, this spot is full of local surfers.

When we first moved here, this is where I always dropped the kids off with their boogie boards. I still love the view from this spot.

Now, on my way to the Historic Oceanside Pier.

Next, I do a couple of jaunts up and down the ramp to the Pier. A lot of local firemen are normally here doing their workouts. Bummer, no eye candy today!

This big guy is rumored to be the infamous “Charlie the Pelican”. Charlie just made our local news a few days ago because he apparently just returned to Oceanside Pier after being missing since February.

It doesn't look like Charlie is real crazy about having his picture taken. The bait shop owner on the Pier put up the old sign next to Charlie that says “We bite stupid people”! I'll think I'll take a step back now!

A view of the shore from the end of the Pier. Oceanside Pier is one of the longest wooden piers on the entire West Coast. It's over 1950 feet long.

After coming down the ramp from the Pier, this is the first set of stairs that I attack.

And then, I go up and down these a few times.

But, these wooden stairs are my favorite. Once at the top of these, I'm done with stairs for the day.

Now that I'm over 3 miles away from where I started, I normally turn around here and head back towards the Harbor. This is the “Top Gun” house. Don't you just love the old VW Van on the side of the road? Classic!

Last year there was talk that Tom Cruise was buying this house and moving it somewhere else. I don't know what ever happened to that or what's planned for the house but they've cleared this entire lot and left the house standing.

Almost back to the Harbor, this Pink Hibiscus caught my eye as I walked past it so I turned back around to snap a quick shot of it.

After over seven miles round trip, I'm back to the Harbor. I always feel so good when I finish this walk. I don't have the opportunity to do this that often, but when I need to clear my head, this is where I go.  I hope your 2010 is off to a great start!

~LilSis

January 2, 2010

Goodbye 2009. Hello 2010!

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to put 2009 behind us and I'm looking forward to 2010 being a happy, healthy year! I don't want to waste time talking about how stressful 2009 was for us; instead I want to focus on lots of positive energy to kick off this New Year! Being that 2010 is the beginning of a new decade, I think this is the perfect time to make some changes.

We all have good intentions when it comes to making our New Years Resolutions but how many times have you started out super, duper excited yet within a very short period of time, you lose focus? It's happened to me before, but this year I'm feeling really motivated and determined to achieve my goals.

When first read about the Ten in 10 challenge that was started by Lori of The Recipe Girl; I knew right away that I wanted to participate. If you read The Recipe Girl or follow RecipeGirl on Twitter, I'm sure you've already heard about the Ten in 10 challenge. It's got a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Ten in 10! I decided that my overall goal is going to be to lose ten pounds in ten weeks in 2010! 🙂

This challenge was officially kicked off yesterday and you can read the details of the Ten in 10 challenge to find out how you can join. Anyone can participate and there is no deadline to sign up so you can hop on board at any time.

I’m working on a few new ‘work related' projects that are going to require a lot of focus and time. In order to get everything accomplished that I want to get done, I'm going to have to work harder and smarter. I'm going to try to get to bed earlier so I can get up earlier and instead of working in my office for a few hours before my workout, I'll be doing my daily workout first thing in the morning. That way I'll start my day off right and won't get irritated if something comes up that prevents me from exercising. If I don't have that time for myself to relieve some stress, I'm in an entirely different mood for the rest of the day.

Since I’m already on a pretty regular exercise routine and have still managed to hit a plateau that I can’t seem to get past, I know that there are several specific things that I need to do in order to reach my overall goal.

Losing a pound a week doesn't sound like an unrealistic goal, but I know it's not going to be easy. It's time to get serious and crank it up a notch.

Here are my goals:

• Go to bed earlier so I can get up earlier.

• Plan healthier meals for the whole week and do all grocery shopping on Sunday.

• I've never done this before, but I'm going to write down everything I eat.

• Work out first thing every morning, Monday through Saturday.

• Add 30 minutes of weight training two days a week after one hour of cardio.

• Go to Yoga class three days a week. (I feel so much better when I do this.)

• Walk or ride bike for 30 minutes after dinner at least two or three nights a week.

• Restrict “weekday” cocktails.

• Have a piece of fruit for afternoon snack instead of cheese and crackers.

• Weigh in every Friday and track progress on WiiFit.

• Try to squeeze in one of the Jillian Michaels workouts once a week.

• Add 15 minutes or so of WiiFit Hula Hoop a day or two a week. (It's a great workout, but also a lot of fun!)

For me, this challenge isn't just about losing the weight; it's about eating leaner, exercising more, managing stress, and just basically feeling stronger and healthier.

I’m hoping that by participating in this challenge, I'll connect with some of the other participants who have similar goals and we can help each other stay motivated and on track to achieve our goals for 2010. I'm really excited about this and would love to see some of our readers join this challenge.

~LilSis

May 2, 2009

May 1st was going to be Day One in my 30 Day Shred.

Yes, I was mentally prepared to jump on the Jillian bandwagon and start shredding some pounds. I was so ready to kick it up a notch! Notice, I said ‘was.'

Instead of kicking it up a notch, it seems I have to take it down to first gear! Yesterday, I was informed that I have a stress fracture and I got this lovely thing put on my foot.

Very fashionable, wouldn't you say?

How does that saying go?

The best laid plans, blabbedy, blabbedy, blah…

I'm really, really bummed! But, the good news is that I went to the podiatrist early enough before the stress fracture got worse. The Dr. informed me that if I had waited, I would have ended up in a big boot or cast for 6 to 8 weeks. So, I guess I should be grateful that it's only for two weeks.

Oh, I almost forgot…The icing on the cake is that when I see him next week, he wants to go over the x-rays and discuss bunion removal surgery for sometime in the near future! LOL!

~LilSis