Bet Your Bottom Dollar

Have you heard of Diet Bets [www.dietbetter.com]?  My friend Michele told me about the website, and I love the idea!  Basically you create or join a group of people  who want to lose weight, and you put your money where your mouth is.  You buy in to the bet, and whoever achieves their goal, splits the pot.  

My lovely friend Michele and me at a Braves game a few years ago.

So I created a diet bet that I am doing with some girlfriends.  Not really to get more money, but to create more accountability.  No one wants to lose a bet!  The bet is to lose 4% of your body weight in 4 weeks...yikes!  It doesn't sound like much, but once you do the math, you may decide it's too hard.  Not this gal!  I am super excited to push my calorie level back down to a little over 1200 to achieve my 4 week goal.  [sarcasm]

I started to diet on Sunday, and it's only been Monday and I want to quit!  I was so spoiled by eating pretty much whatever in reason.  It's back to frozen dinners for lunch and light popcorn for snacks.  Although I did find some Dole chocolate covered frozen strawberry halves at 4 for 60 cals.  Pretty good! [and delish!] Now I need to find out all the snacks that are under 100 cals and taste fantastic.  Got any suggestions?  

No turning back now though.  I will survive on a calorie restricted diet, and I will be much healthier in 4 weeks...and 4% lighter!!!

Bet your bottom dollar I will succeed at this diet bet!!!  

Hello, Muscles.

When you are pregnant, lots of glorious beautiful things happen to your body...ok...most of them are not beautiful at all.  Your joints loosen [sprained ankles, aching hips].  Your spine actually changes shape [love the pregnancy sway back].  Your body instinctively starts saving up fat [just in case you, I dunno, run out of ice cream and cheetos].  And my favorite, your abs get stretched beyond recognition and sometimes even separate and tear! Oh the joys of pregnancy.  Don't get me wrong, it is a huge gift to be able to have a child, and I wouldn't change it for the world.  But, you can really tell God is a man.  

Baby Cap at 6 weeks!

Now that I've hit the 6 week mark, I have been cleared to exercise!  Woohoo!!! I am actually excited about this.  I haven't had a great, high intensity work out for almost a year! When you start doing higher intensity work outs like I was doing last year, you get addicted to them.  They make you feel awesome and like you really accomplished something. Well, no crazy workouts for me yet. Here's the problem:

I don't know where my abs went.

I know they are in there somewhere, but all I feel and see is a bunch if mush! That is, until Thursday morning.  I did the Tracy Anderson Method: Post Pregnancy Workout DVD.  Wow! She is hard core!  She even said she created the workout for post partum moms and older folks.  That workout kicked my butt!  20 minutes was all abs...20 minutes...of trying to get my mush to cooperate!  Phew!  It was a great muscular workout that is supposed to make your muscles long and lean like a dancer's.  

I'm feeling my abs now!  And my butt, and my arms, and my thighs.  Hey, at least I know they are still there! I am proud of myself for finishing all 45 minutes of the work out.  Now I just need to psych myself up again for the next one!

I'm excited to be back on my weight loss journey!  I know I'll reach my goal, it just may take a while :)

I'm Baaaaack!

Here I am at 3:34 am on a Sunday morning, up.  Why?  Because I am feeding a child...from my boob.
I wonder how many of you out there just stopped reading...ha.  You also may be asking, why the heck is she breast feeding Ellis at 2.5 years old?  Welllll, I'm not feeding Ellis, I'm feeding our new baby boy!!!

That's right!  We had baby number 2 on May 15th at 10:12 pm.  More on that in another post.

This time around I started at a little higher weight, but gained only about 35 lbs instead of the 50-ish I gained with Ellis.  Yay me!!

Now comes the time to see if my previous research and experience with losing weight and getting back into good shape will pay off.  I have a short way to go to get back to pre-baby weight, but a long way to go to get into the shape I want to be in.  Feel free to follow along if you want!