Day 15 - You Spin Me Round

Somebody hand me a gold flag to twirl around and some gold nail extensions thingers.... 

Oh yes, this is needed on a Monday morning at 5:50 am.  Yep, that is what time I woke up to Spin myself right round, baby, right round.

Although sadly I didn't have the rockin' purple kimono and fabulous 80's frizz hair...ok a little frizz, but it was not on purpose.  My spin, was actually on my spin bike.  Yes, I have a spin bike!  You may ask, "Leah, why on earth are you excited about having a spin bike in your hot humid garage?" Well, it is because I love spin [and because I have no room in our little house for the spin bike to live, so it is in the garage]! Don't worry, I have a fan pointed on me when I work out...no fainting in 90 degree heat for me!  Oh, and I ride it really freakin' early in the morning.  [5:50 is more like 4:30 on a Monday morning] 

Anywho, this is what my "gym" actually looks like.

Forgive me because my home gym, aka garage, was a mess due to my hubs and his bro brewing some beer this weekend. So, if you ignore that, you will see my fan, water bottle, towel, ipad, and baby monitor. You may ask, what kind of work outs do you do on your bike? Do you make them up? Nope, not that creative and, well, I am probably too lazy to do that.

My secret weapon, YOUTUBE!  It's even more useful than to just look up crazy 80's music videos! [which are now playing on loop in another browser window, love me some Safety Dance] Go to Youtube, type in spin class, and tons of FREE classes show up!  I love it.  Here is the one I did this am:

Perfect for Monday morning, no jumping, no running, just working hard on the bike.  And it is only 25 min.  PERFECT!

Here are my stats from it:

Calories burned: 257
Avg heart rate: 132 bpm
Time: 27 minutes

I'll take that for a Monday morning!

What is your favorite Monday workout?

Day 11 - Jury Duty...ugh

A few weeks ago I got the dreaded summons in the mail.  Jury Duty. I've only been summoned once before and never stepped foot in the court room.  This time I was part of the original 12 that they wanted, and they got me. For 3 whole days, I was stuck in either a courtroom chair or the jury assembly area in a chair, or the jury room...you guessed it...in a chair.

Should have tried this one...

Don't get me wrong, it was fascinating and I am happy to do my civic duty, but REALLY!  Now? Being confined to chairs and rooms for 3 days! Not a very good mix for trying to lose weight! So here was my plan [similar to my plan from my day of meetings]. 

1 - Try to eat as healthfully as possible.

2 - Get up and move as much as allowed.

3 - Try to exercise before or after at home.

I did ok at this. I ate at the court cafeteria each day, and luckily they did have some healthier options...as well as burgers and fries. The people that worked in the courthouse in other offices probably thought i was crazy though. "Who is this woman walking around the offices all the time?" I'm sure this was thought or said. I walked around and around the main areas in the building to try to get some steps in! I did get in 2 days with exercise at home on these days - 2 out of 3 isn't terrible I guess. 

All in all, it could have been worse. I weighed yesterday and looks like I have lost about .4 lbs so far this week. Not great, but it definitely could have been worse!

Where am I now?

I've lost 1.5 lbs in 2 weeks. 

Not really on the pace that I wanted.  So, I guess I need to step up my game!

I've been eating my exercise calories. I'm some sure some of you are like, "How can you eat exercise?"  HA! Well, if you read any of my blog from before when I lost weight after having Ellis, you will know that I use My Fitness Pal [www.myfitnesspal.com]. It is a diet and fitness tracker...and I LOVE it!  You basically log everything, and I mean EVERYTHING you eat into it. Yep, even that half a spoonful of Nutella you just swiped from the pantry. That delicious little morsel of chocolate hazelnut goodness probably had 100 to 200 calories [depending on the size of the spoon and blob of deliciousness on it]. THEN, when you exercise, you enter how many calories you burned and the type and duration of the exercise. In MFP, those calories are added to your core calories that you set up to determine what you need to eat to lose the amount of weight you want to lose at the rate you want to lose it.

For me, I get 1,386 calories per day. I did yoga for about 25 minutes yesterday and burned an extra 165 calories. My fitbit recorded that I burned an extra 340 calories in addition just by walking around and chasing my crazy kids. So, that is 1,386 + 505 that I could eat yesterday.  So I went a little crazy and actually ate 59 over that yesterday ... ugh. Stupid nutella.

Anyways, what I'm thinking is that I need to stop letting myself eat all of those exercise calories. Maybe cap myself at 1,500 calories each day that I exercise. Maybe that will make the scale move a bit more. I'll let you know how that goes!

I'm going to go hide the nutella now.  

Day 3: Meetings!

My life consists of running after 2 sweet babies, trying to spend time with my hubs, and working at a job that I love.  I work in marketing, and it is something I had invisioned my self doing since I took my first marketing class. It took me a round about way to get here, but I'm here now [yay!]. My work days when I don't travel are pretty predictable...MEETINGS!

Yes meetings. some of which are like this...



and like this...



but thankfully NONE are like this...[thank you Jesus!]



Mostly my meetings include lots of sitting and going out for lunch or dinner or both.  Both of these can TOTALLY derail my weightloss train.

So, I'm going to try a few things today:
1 - Each time we take a break, I am going to make a lap around the office [and it's a BIG office]
2 - Lunch will be something protien heavy and carb light.  Maybe a salad with chicken. Maybe Chinese without the fried part or the rice.
3 - Drink a LOT of water.  Restaurant food has a crazy amount of sodium in it, so gotta counter act that!

I'm going to try to do these, but I won't beat myself up if I don't do all of them.  Wish me luck!!

Day 1...Again

Good Morning!

It's the Monday after our vacation. I stepped on the scale this morning and saw that I had gained 1.2 lbs since the last time I weighed about a week and a half ago. So now I am only about 2.2 lbs away from where I was when I got pregnant with Cap.

No bad. But, I still have about 30 lbs to go to be where I want to be. I would like to be there by November 21, my beautiful friend, Michele's wedding day! I'm so excited for her! 

That gives me about 20 weeks to take off the weight. That's 140 days. That's about 1.5 lbs per week.

So, I'm putting this out there.  I will be 30 lbs lighter in 20 weeks by eating healthy and exercising. I will not do any fad dieting. I will not starve myself. I will be a good example to my family. 

Oh, and I will be an awesome Maid of Honor!

More on this to come....

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!