Thank You.

Today I was able to officially announce that I am now a size 8. Previously I was in a size 10 but there was a couple months where I probably should have been in a 12. Now I've been able to wear a size 8 from time to time in the past couple of months and even got into a couple size sixes, but it was never consistent or the pants were still a little too tight. This weekend though, I went shopping and purchased 3 pairs of work pants, all in a size 8 and all but one fit wonderfully. That last pair is going to be exchanged for a size 6, I'm convinced that the pants just run big. Regardless today was a huge milestone for me, I've been working at losing this weight for months and have yet to be at a consistent weight. Today I finally feel like I've got something to show for it. (aside from the feeling I get when I check myself out or the increase in energy) But I cannot, and will not, take credit for this milestone on my own. I could not have done this without the support of the people in my life. I'd like to take today's blog posting to ramble my thank you's to those people, who honestly, have never read my blog before in their lives but they will once I post this. (I hope) 


Nicholas - When I first started waking up at 4:30am, 3 times a week, alone, it was really hard to keep it up. But Nick did everything in his power to keep me moving and helped to make my mornings easier. He took care of the dogs, dealt with me waking up so early, packed my lunches the night before, and even packed my car for me every night. He listened to be bitch about the class and took me to my 5k's to watch me cross the finish-line. He put up with me being cranky or so sore that I couldn't do a thing once I got home for the evening. He has been my #1 fan, cheerleader, and support. 


Mary - After talking about wanting to join a bootcamp for months on end, I pretty much resigned that I wouldn't find one for awhile. Then one day while out scouting for work I happened to see Body Evolution and that was pretty much all she wrote. Without Mary pushing me to work harder, lift more weights, run faster sprints, and teach me that there is no can't. Since starting bootcamp I have run two 5ks, the first one I shaved 3 minutes off of my only race time previous to that and the second one I achieved my PR of 28:something. I've also taken my 1.5 mile time down to 13:00 flat, done 18 pushups and 22 assisted pushups in a minute, and increased my strength overall. She lights a fire in me every day and I love every moment of it. (she also wants me to do a figure competition, it is now officially on my bucketlist, but do not see it happening this year) 


Rachel & Jessie - I know it seems silly but I have a great internet relationship with both of these girls. I know both of these girls from college but I can't honestly say that they were girls I spent a ton of time with while in college. We knew a lot of the same people but rarely hung out but thanks to the wonderful world of Facebook we somehow connected on the exercise front. Through this relationship we have committed to keeping each other updated on what we're doing with our fitness and it always seems that one of the girls sends me an email when I've been struggling with keeping myself in check. It's just been so nice to have them to cheer me on and to be able to cheer them on as well, they're great motivators when the girls are moving and I'm not. Plus it's really hard to type excuses out and to make them sound legit. 


My Body Evolution Babes - Eva, Jill, Tonya, Lisa... I hope I'm not forgetting anyone!! I live for these girls some days. Tonya, Tonya, Tonya... Tonya was the first BEB to push me. I don't know what day it was or what we were doing but there was one day where she just called me out when I paused. She pushed me to finish more sets than I thought I could and then to end the day she threw the SHIT out of my legs. I loved it. I loved that she challenged me, she called me out, and basically just told me to suck it up and get it done. How can I argue with that? Eva... Pushes me so much. I feel like I have a similar body type to her and I feel like I have a healthy competition with her. If I'm not sprinting fast enough, she's calling me on it. If I'm using 10's instead of 12's or 15's, she's calling me on it. If I'm tired and resting, she's calling me on it. The best part though is that she's calling me on it and saying c'mon, let's do this. Jill & Lisa - These two are pretty much a package deal. They train with Mary and come to bootcamp, they sometimes do legs two days in a row, which I wouldn't wish on worst enemy. But these ladies do it and then come to bootcamp. Lisa knows how to make sure that I'm not slacking, she's so sly about it too. "You sure that's enough weight?" as Mary walks by... Damnit Lisa! :) Then Jill, she just tells me what to pick up, I don't even get a chance to try to go to lighter weight. I guess you can call these girls my fantastic four. Between the four of these ladies I couldn't get away with anything less than 100% and I wouldn't change a single thing about it. 
I don't want the other BEB to think that I'm not great-full for them either because I truly am, each and every person at BE has influenced me to be better and to do greater. 


My Family - My family has watched me go from healthy, to unhealthy, to healthy, and back to unhealthy, yet no one has made me feel any less loved for it. But let me tell you, the moment I started losing weight, they were the first to notice (Minus Nicholas) and the biggest cheerleaders (Minus Nicholas) of my progress. Even when I went home and felt super fat, they were all "you look so great". My family keeps me grounded and I would not be who I am today without each and every one of them in my life. My favorite part of it all is that they will all be there on our wedding day to see the results of all of my hard work. 




I hope that each and every one of you know how much I value our relationship, whatever type it may be. Without you in my life I don't know that I'd still be on the path that I am on. Yea sure, I did this, it's my hard work and commitment to myself but honestly, we all know that I'd be eating candy and sleeping in if I didn't have everyone to keep me in check. Please do not stop keeping me in check. I could not do any of this without each of you and hope that one day I can repay you for helping me get my health back. Oh and a slammin body as well. 

You Get Better

This is true. Truer than it's ever been. This week has been extremely challenging for me. Work has been insane, completely stressful and crazy, its awesome but draining. On top of that last weekend I got a horrible cold, couldn't shake it all week and now I've got bronchitis. So on Monday I did not workout because I was sick. Tuesday I did not workout because I was sick. I went to bootcamp on Wednesday. Started out with a nice and cold mile run, I'm pretty sure I ran it in like 10+ minutes, not my best showing. Luckily we did the remainder of the workout inside and luckily is a very loose term. It was leg day, which is tough to begin with, but Mary is trying this new method, which is great minus it's toughness. We did a rotation of cardio legs and stationary legs. I slept in on Thursday instead of working out. I wasn't too sore either, mostly because I didn't push myself because I was still sick and finally decided to go see a doctor. I did go to bootcamp this morning and I can tell that my body still needs to rest. Just about any running killed me and most of my strength was just missing. 
So I made the executive decision to take the remainder of the weekend off from working out. Tonight I did some laundry, cleaned the bathroom, and am now resting for the evening and planning on a bedtime here shortly. I plan on cleaning the entire house tomorrow and then Sunday just finishing up laundry if anything. My hope is feel healthy come Monday morning so I can get back to life. I can't wait for it to be warm again though. I've decided that I'm going walk my dogs in the mornings on Tuesday and Thursday instead of going to the gym, I'll still make sure I am doing incline walks on the treadmill at least once a week. 
I'm also pretty proud of my will power this week. I am really trying to remember how bad I felt about myself when we got back from Michigan. I mean I put on a good chunk of weight in the month of December and I just let it happen, I didn't even really fight back, it was awful. I never want to feel like that again. This is the promise I'm completely okay with making with myself. 

Happy Weekend. 

I Hate Vacation

Okay, so I don't really hate vacation but I hate what happens when you go on vacation. Well it might not happen to everyone but it happens to me... I get lazy! Like not just a little bit lazy, but a LOT lazy. We started vacation on Christmas Eve and finished shortly after New Years, this is far too long of a vacation. I went for a run the first day we were home, it was not that awesome and that was the end of that. Pathetic is right! 
I'm sure you're thinking, oh well that's not that bad, well you're wrong. It was that bad. I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. It's like once I break on something, the whole freaking damn breaks. 
Well I've been home for almost 2 weeks now and I've only made it through 3 of the 7 bootcamps that have been available for me. The first day back was the day after we got back from Michigan, so that was understandable. That Friday, I was sick, yay traveling, so I did not make it to that boot camp. I did make it to every boot camp last week and worked out on Thursday as well, with intentions of working out on Saturday as well. Then Friday showed her ugly mug, not all Friday's are ugly but this particular one was, she brought on the crud. By 3pm on Friday I knew that it was already too late, there was nothing left to do but wait for it. That night I had some rough sleep, with a fever capping 100. So I resigned to the couch and my bed for the weekend, vying to rest enough to be back to normal on Monday and I was right on course too. Sunday night I picked out my outfit, packed up my gym bag, picked out my workout outfit, and had everything in the bathroom, just waiting for the 4:30am alarm clock. Well around 1am my internal stomach alarm clock woke me up and kept me up for some time. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep about 20 minutes before the actual alarm clock went off. Now I'm hardcore, but I'm just barely getting better so today I deferred to better judgement and stayed home to sleep. 
So here we are, it is today, the last day of lazy. And tomorrow is the first day to reaching my goals. 
Goals you ask? Why yes, I have goals, they are as follows... 

1. Get down to my goal weight (135) by the end of March 
2. Workout 5 days a week
3. Get my 1.5 mile time down to 12:00 by the end of March
4. Have clearly defined calf muscles & triceps
5. Pass the Air Force Physical Fitness Test (I just want to know I can do it, I don't want to join)
6. No back bulge in my wedding dress

How am I going to do this you ask? By not being EASY!
It's time to start taking responsibility for my actions and working harder. One day at a time. 


Tomorrow's Plan of Attack
-Breakfast, Eggs over easy and coffee
-Snack, Fruit & Maple Oatmeal
-Lunch, Salad 
-Dinner, Pork Chops
-Snack if needed, SF Jello


I am hoping to update this daily or at least every other day.

Don't Be Easy

Today is more of a rant than anything, so if you're looking for inspiration, this may or may not be for you. This is your warning. :)


There is no short cut to losing weight. Losing weight takes determination, will power, and sacrifice. You don't get to will yourself skinny. You don't get to take a short cut to be skinny. Yes, there are fad diets, there are pills you can take, surgeries, injections, and any other sort of "get rich quick" types of 'cheat' methods, but these DON'T WORK. Yes, for the short time they will work and you'll get some sort of satisfaction from being "skinny" but it will not last. But yet there are still times where I think oh I'm doing so good, I can cheat today and I'll be okay. IT DOES NOT WORK LIKE THIS. 
You want to know what does work... Making decisions and sticking to them. No it's not that much fun to say "no" to a piece of birthday cake, or that cookie, or ice cream, or that snickers because you're hungry and it satisfies you. Sure it's easier to go out to lunch every day. It's easy to get fast food on your way home instead of cooking. It's easy to just shop for packaged dinners, lunches, and breakfasts. It's easy to just "go with the flow". But nothing worth having is easy. Nothing. Think about it... Sure falling in love is easy, but staying in love takes work, but the work is 100% worth it. You don't get to make exceptions. When you start doing this, you'll find a reason to make an exception for EVERYTHING. Trust me, it's what I've been doing the past 4 weeks. 
Luckily I only have Thanksgiving, a wedding, and Christmas between now and the end of the year. I can justify eating a healthy but large Thanksgiving dinner. I can justify celebrating slightly for a friends wedding. I can justify eating slightly different than usual over Christmas. I understand that sometimes it's nearly impossible to do things properly because you're just not in your element. There is no shame in that because you're allowed to have a life. Just be SMART. You are in control of how your body looks and what you put into it. On Thanksgiving I plan on having a healthy breakfast and lunch, then having a nice semi-indulgent dinner with my fiance. The next morning I also plan on going power shopping and eating super healthy all day because I indulged the night before. And the week leading up to Thanksgiving I'm going to say "no" to all the home cooked goodies and pot-lucks because it's one thing to indulge once in awhile, it's another to indulge all week because it's a holiday. For the wedding I'm planning on doing the same thing as Thanksgiving. I am only human and I do have a life to live but I can control what I allow myself to "falter" on. 
As for Christmas break, that is going to be hit and miss. We're driving 14 hours to Michigan and eating well + traveling in a car makes for tougher eating choices. I'm going to pack a cooler or something so we can just eat the things we pack instead of stopping in drive through's the entire trip, which will also save us money. As far as the week we're home goes, we have 7 wedding meetings, one is food tasting, the other is cake tasting, so needless to say the days we have that I will be eating super healthy. Which is really hard at my mother-in-law's because she always has sweets around the house. Luckily we'll be able to workout while we're home and be conscious of what we are eating most of the week. Then I'll just have to repack for the trip home and I will have made it through the year without being super destructive!  I hope by this point I will be able to report that I am weighing in at a nice 135. 


And back around to my original rant. Saying you're going to start eating healthy and working out is easy sure, but actually working out and controlling myself, that's the hard part. I wake up at 4:30am 3 times a week and 5am 2 times a week, there is nothing about the wake up time that is easy. There is nothing fun about waking up before half of the world does but I do it because it is the only time I can consistently workout and I have no excuse not to get up. I'm so sick of people whining about being overweight, or that they can't control themselves, or that they just 'can't' do it. Seriously, you CAN do it. Stop being an asshole. Stop buying bags of candy to eat by yourself. Stop drinking copious amounts of booze. Stop picking up fast food because you're too much of a lazy ass to make something for dinner or lunch. Stop eating crap for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you want to change it starts with YOU and you HAVE to make time to do that. 
Plan your meals and stick to the plan. Yes it's a pain in the ass, deal with it. Make your lunch every day and pack more than you think you need because some days you might be more hungry than others. Find ways to make it work. Because if you don't care, I don't care. But if you piss and moan, you better start making some changes. It all comes down to self responsibility. Surround yourself with supportive people. You need to know who is on your side and who will bring you down. Make better choices and quit your bitching because I no longer have a tolerance for people who piss and moan about shit and don't do anything to change it. If you want to change, do it. If you want to bitch, find somewhere else to whine. 


-No I am not perfect. I fail and fail but I am constantly striving to be better. I am working out 5 days a week and working on my eating habits. I am a work in progress. But I am trying and I am working hard. All of these bad habits are things I have done or have been doing to myself, I know what it's like to be lazy, sad, fat... etc. I'm just sick of people not taking responsibility for themselves.-

Fail.

I have officially fallen off the diet wagon. It is official. I mean I still sort of follow it but I have had like 984760349854324 sweet things in the past 2 weeks and have no intentions of stopping. Well I do have intentions but I don't think they'll kick in until Monday. Luckily I've been working out every day and because I'm such a horses ass, I'm running a 5k tomorrow as well. 
A few positive points throughout this terrible cycle I've fallen into.. 
-I finished the flower balls! Now I just need to start touching them up because well, they're sorta falling apart. 
-I feel stronger than I have in a long time. 
-I realize that eating the way I have does not fuel me at all, it actually causes me to feel more tired. Yet it still hasn't stopped me. 


So here is the commitment I make to you, my readers, not like I have any faithful readers but if I put it on the interweb it's official, like your relationship isn't official until Facebook knows, right? So here is my commitment. Starting Monday at the latest I'm back on the diet, 100%. No cheating, no nothing. This means that Monday night when all the stupid little trick or treaters come to my house asking for candy, I cannot have a single piece. Not ONE. This also means that all day on Monday while I'm in the office and kids are trick or treating throughout the offices and every office is supplied with candy I also cannot have a single piece. This is going to be a miserable day and if I make it through without cheating I'll be amazed, there is going to be a TON of temptation in my face and I'm only human. Usually I can walk away but the 2 places I will be spending the majority of my day will be surrounded by candy. Not excited. 
I plan on starting with a blitz of the diet, which means Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday will be pure protein days. I'm hoping I'll drop about 4 pounds during this blitz. Then I will get back into the PP/PV alternating days again. Hopefully by the end of this 6 week boot camp session I will be down below 145, which would be an all time low and isn't too far out of reach, and is actually very attainable. 
So what I need to commit to each and every day and week are the following things...


-Plan out meals weekly
-Make jello cups weekly
-Make egg muffins weekly
-Make oat bran muffins weekly
-Get more sleep!!
-Pack lunch on EVERY PP day
-Keep working out 5 days a week 
-Walk the dogs at least once a week
-No more cheat days or "celebrate" meals (aside from Thanksgiving obviously)
-Schedule your days according to your meals


Well here is to better days, better decisions, and a better lifestyle. With that I will leave this link to my Healthy Lifestyle Pinterest Board. It will be my inspiration again. 


Song to get my amped up... Rihanna - We Found Love

What I've Been Doing...

So I know I've been MIA for a few weeks and this is to show you all what I've been doing in my time away from this blog. 


First I want to point out that I have still been doing my boot camp and have recently incorporated Tuesday and Thursday morning workouts with my man friend. 


The last time I updated was before we went home to Michigan for a wedding. I had all intentions of sticking to my diet and I did until the wedding. Well that's not true, Friday night I was late to the airport and had to get some food so I had a nature valley bar. Got to my sisters and had a yogurt and then had some cheese, which is not in the diet but I was STARVING. It was better than bread. So in the morning I had a good breakfast and had a great lunch then headed to the dreaded wedding. Well the wedding wasn't dreaded but the food and drinks were. I had salmon, salad, and veggies.. Then bread, and a brownie or two, and plenty of rum and diets. So really, not horrible but not good either. Then Sunday showed up and I said, eh I'll be good.. And that failed. Had some egg bake, which was okay, but it was the birthday cake I had as breakfast dessert that did me in. So Sunday really just fell apart which was fine. Monday we got back on the horse! Then I worked on this... 

These are the fabric flower balls that I'm creating for our wedding ceremony and I couldn't be happier, except that I'll have to "fix" them all before the wedding because they are sort of falling apart sometimes. Oh well, I still love them! 
Then I also worked on some baking so I could elaborate on what I've been "creating" and then this happened... 

Oops!! 

Thursday, October 6th was my birthday, yaaay, and I didn't cheat all day until my man friend took me out for my birthday dinner. We had sushi, a hibachi style dinner, then dessert. Oops! Obviously the dessert was the worst part but really the oil and butter didn't help. Oh well. 

After that we were back on like good kids and so I took on project #2. This was getting a HUGE 100 pound mirror, painting it and then hanging it on my wall. Yay mirror. :) 

Beginning

 Middle, with a sleeping man friend

Finished!!

I will post a mounted photo soon. :) 

So now on to this weekend/week.. See the middle photo with the red chair in the background? Well 4 or more months ago we tested out different paint colors and oddly enough, we have 4 different colored chairs and not a single one is finished. So I started my next project, project #2.4..  I painted all the kitchen table chairs the same black as the mirror, finally, to match the table. No pictures yet, but I will share those soon as well. 

But here is the bad news, well good news as well. Wednesday night my man friend really wanted pizza and I fought and fought and fought him until he finally broke me down and we had pizza for dinner. And cake for dessert. And the next day I had cupcakes and the day after that, candy and then after that I ran a 5k in 31:05, yea that rocked...

 then I had pizza, and cupcakes, then had mexican and then finished the night with some ice cream. IT WAS AWFUL. I felt terrible and the worst part is that I didn't gain more than 1.8 pounds.. WTH. Sunday night before I went to bed I felt so sick and immediately vowed to get back on the diet. I went full steam back into it this week, lots of protein days minus the roommates birthday dinner. We had a cheat meal, which was okay because I'm still losing weight while working harder at boot camp and my alternate work out days with my man. 

This weekend it's our anniversary so we're taking a trip to Atlanta to tour the coke factory and aquarium. 

Oh and the good news is that I'm finally down to 146, which after 3 weeks of half cheating I'm pretty proud of myself. I've finally gotten lower than my lowest weight and my trainer has challenged me to lose 2 pounds this week... We'll see!!! 

Pumpkin Cheesecake Roll

First off, can I start this post off saying that I did steal this recipe from the "Dukan Diet" Facebook page. Secondly, I was very skeptical of the recipe, mostly because I had never made a regular pumpkin roll. Third, it turned out DELICIOUS!!!


This week has been a good week. I have officially dropped below 150 and am at a firm 147!! 17 pounds away  from my goal weight and 24 pounds down from the biggest I ever was. 

So ignore the yeast and add baking powder. It was Sunday night and I was sleepy. 

Ingredients for the Bread

• 6Tbs oat bran
• 1Tbs corn starch
• 1/2tsp baking powder
• 1/2 c sweetener/ 4Tbs Truvia
• 4 eggs, separated
• 4Tbs yogurt
• 1c pumpkin puree
• 1Tbs pumpkin pie spice
• 1tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 F

Mix together all dry ingredients. (I forgot to take a picture of this.. OOPS!)

Add yogurt, yolks, pumpkin and vanilla, mixing well.

Beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

This is mine finished... Peaks hanging high.

Fold whites into batter.. Do not over-fold them because you will break up all the fun little air bubbles you worked so hard to whip up. Or rather you let your mixer work so hard for. Let's face it, we're no Morgan Wilson from Top Chef Desserts!!

Looks promising!! 

Take your spatula and spread the pumpkin/egg white solution and spread evenly on parchment lined jelly roll sheet pan or on aluminum foil if you do not have parchment paper. I did not have parchment paper, I thought I did but it was freezer paper. DO NOT USE FREEZER PAPER, it will melt and ruin everything, I assume that last part but don't test it. Bake for about 15min, or until done. (I ended up baking for about 25 minutes.)

While this is baking and cooling you can relax and then make the cream cheese filling OR you can do what I did and make the filling AND then make batter for a modified Apple Spice inside-out Muffin. Which is way more delicious now that I've modified the recipe, but more on that later. 


Ingredients for Cream Cheese Filling

• 16 ounces of FF Cream Cheese
• 1/2 cup splenda (or more to taste)
• 1tbs of cinnamon (or whatever flavors you want and completely optional)

I opted for some cinnamon and a tad more splenda and changed it up from store brand 10/$10 FF Cream Cheese and splurged for the name brand and it was a GREAT upgrade. 

Here is the bread finished cooking..

 I could still see a lot of the egg whites so don't worry about that!!

I let this bread cook a lot longer than suggested because the tooth pick kept coming out moist. But honestly, I think I could have cooked it for an entire day and it would still be a little moist, I just think that is part of the Oat Brad effect. 

I failed to take a picture of the cream cheese spread out on top of the bread but all you need to do it evenly spread it on top of the bread. Simple enough. 

After you have spread the cream cheese on the bread start rolling the bread like a sleeping bag. Just pinch the one end in and keep going. I used the aluminum foil to help me keep the roll tight, well ha, as tight as you can get it on your first try. It should look a lot better than this but you get the idea. 

So obviously it's not perfect but it's absolutely delicious! I would probably only use 1.5 packages of FF cream cheese next time because it is a lot BUT I love the cream cheese so it's kind of like less is not more, but more is more and that's amazing. So obviously I'm torn. 

Since there is only 6tbs of oat bran you can eat roughly 1/4 of the roll as your oat bran allowance for the day, but only on PV days. 

So on some personal notes... I ate bad chicken on Sunday, well didn't know it was bad until AFTER I had eaten it as leftovers on Monday afternoon. So that sucked. Today I had my appointment with my orthopedic and basically because I have child bearing hips my knee cap is sliding with the tendon. I'm not sure of all of the technical stuff he said but basically I have to wear a brace for awhile and just deal with it until it fixes itself. If it gets worse I get to visit him again and then we'll go from there. Hopefully it won't end up with surgery, HOPEFULLY. Good news is that I get to resume boot camp and do it at my own pace and I'm SO excited for it. It's been such a great experience and I have met some great women. So starting Monday I'm back at it, 3 times a week.... So stay tuned!!