Just Part Of My Journey

As part of my health and fitness journey a few things have changed over the last few months. Some day I might share about them, but right now I'm still kind of absorbing some of the changes and acclimating to a somewhat new lifestyle. Since some of this is new to me I hired a coach to help me out (it's kind of a long story and at some point I'll share how I found this coach).

My coach had this plan for me for this week:

Try to increase my protein intake. Here are the ways we decided I could do this

1. Have a protein drink with a meal
2. Eat cottage cheese
3. Eat my Greek yogurt/sugar-free vanilla pudding mixture (1 & 1/2 cup Greek yogurt, 1/2 to 3/4 cup milk, 1 pkg. sugar free pudding in the flavor of your choice) as a dessert

Do my strength workouts 2 times and do some body-weight work on Friday when I'm out of town.

Cardio (running or biking) for 30 minutes 5 times throughout the week - My coach doesn't think I'll need to keep this up indefinitely but we talked about how I am very sporadic with cardio work right now. For instance, last week I did a 20 mile (1 hour 45 minute) bike ride on Monday and didn't do anything else the rest of the week. For now we are focusing on getting some consistency going with cardio. My coach is working with me really well. I actually enjoy biking and running, but have gotten away from it. My coach isn't making me do anything I don't like.

Mobility work - I expressed my concern that I feel sore and tight a lot of the time and I really want to do some yoga. I like my 1 hour yoga classes I've gone to, but am not good about getting to them after I'm home for the evening so we decided I should aim for 3 - 15 minute yoga sessions this week.

Nutrition - track calories to see what the increase in protein is going to do to my overall calorie intake.

Sleep - this may be the hardest one to achieve - shut down all electronics (except tv) at 8:30. In bed at 9:00!

This may seem like a lot of changes, but it's not.

•  I did a stint of trying to increase protein and it was working, but I didn't like the meals I was eating so we just tweaked what I was doing so this isn't really new
• I have a solid foundation of strength work, usually getting in 3 workouts a week. 
• I've done the cardio work before but just kind of got away from it when I was focusing on strength work so I need to find a way to do both because I legitimately like both and feel like I'm missing out by only doing strength workouts. But I have to find a balance because I don't want to workout for hours on end.
• Mobility work - I'd consider this new as I haven't been consistent with this for a LONG time
• Tracking calories - I did this for a month, but stopped last week because I was super busy
• Sleep - I've done this before, but not recently. I would consider this new and probably the most important. I feel like everything else above would probably fall in place if I could simply accomplish the sleep goal!

So there it is, my plan for the week that my coach, with my input, worked out for me. Now I'm off to do some yoga!

Flylady To The Rescue: 51st year day 2

One of my quests at the beginning of 2014 was to reimplement the Flylady routines into my life. It hasn't been a total bust, because since the beginning of the year I speculate I've had about 6-7 weeks where I've consistently done my Flylady routines. That is far and above better than the last several years when I have had completed 0 weeks of Flylady routines.

Even though I haven't been consistent with the Flylady routines, my house is in much better shape with what I have done than it was before the first of the year. Now if I can just quit having those weeks when I feel like I'm too busy to do my routines life will be much better. It may sound crazy, but I am much calmer when my house is organized and clean. My goal for the coming week is to:

1. Do all of my Flydlady routines (swish/swipe bathrooms daily, clean hotspots, do a load of laundry, shine my kitchen sink, and deal with the mail) everyday.
2.  Do the Flylady Weekly Home Blessing (vacuum floors, sweep/mop hardwood floors, dust with feather duster, and change sheets) on Monday. I will not spend more than 1 hour on this task.
3. Work on my zone of the week which is the Master Bedroom and bathroom. During the zone cleaning I will detail clean and make my bedroom shine. I may not get it all done this week because I will only spend 10-15 minutes a day working in my zone, but I won't worry about what doesn't get done because next month I'll pick up right where I left off! Of course I'll edit Flylady's zone cleaning list to fit what works for my bedroom. I will not spend more than 1-2 hours on this for the entire week.

So this is what my bedroom looks like now:

A pile of clothes on the cedar chest that needs to be folded and put away and another pile of t-shirts I'm saving for a t-shirt quilt that need to be put in a box and stored somewhere. Also, shelves with sentimental items the boys made when they were in school...these shelves have not had a real dusting in 3 or 4 years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 and

Two laundry baskets of clothes that need to be folded and put away! Yikes the laundry has taken over! A pile of pants on my dresser that I'm currently wearing. I need to clean out my drawers of pants that don't fit, store them away and put these pants in the drawers. Then there is the misc. stuff laying on the dresser that needs to be put away. The mirror also needs to be cleaned. I think if I have time I'll go through my jewelry (necklaces and bracelets) and get rid of the ones I haven't wore in the last year!

Fabulous Fifty-One

Today I am officially an old lady, at least for the next six months. Well, according to my husband I am, lol! You see I'm six months older than Gary so he always calls me his "old lady" especially during the six months when age wise I am one digit older than him.

Age has never been something that has bothered me. Thinking back the only time I ever thought twice about a birthday it didn't even revolve around my birthday. It was my oldest son's birthday and it didn't bother me, but it did kind of take me by surprise. The year A.J. turned 23 I remember thinking, "Oh my gosh, I have a 23 year old kid. I can't have a 23 year old child, I don't feel like I'm old enough to have a kid that old!"

To me age is just a number. Life happens and I just roll with it!

Not too long ago I was with a group of women and we were just talking about some random things. One of the ladies said during the last year she took a picture every day to have a record of what her life was like that year. That got me to thinking. I have been wanting to blog more, but somehow I just don't get around to blogging like I want to. So for my fabulous 51st year I am going to try to write my thoughts down every day. I'm making no promises, that I'll actually blog daily, but I'm hoping to at least make a short note on the calender about the events of the day or my thoughts and at some point during the week get it in print in my blog. We'll see what happens.

If you'd like to see a recap of my life in photos take a peek at my facebook photo album My First 51 Years. Anyone can view this album.

H.U.M.A.N.

I am human. We are all human. What exactly does it mean to be human? I was thinking about this one day as I was pondering all the changes I’ve been making in my life in the last few years and I came up with an acronym for the word human. It is: 

Hasty

Undesirable

Missteps

Are

Normal

When a person decides to make long-term changes it doesn’t always go smoothly. As a matter of fact, it rarely goes smoothly. When a person has habits that they’ve been living with for years, it isn’t easy to change them and it doesn’t happen overnight. I am living proof of this. I have realized that no matter how perfect I want to be and no matter how determined I am, I will experience times when I make hasty undesirable missteps. I also realized this is perfectly normal.

In October 2004 I made a commitment to change and live a different lifestyle from any way I’d EVER lived before. I decided I wanted to lose weight and in order to do that I knew I was going to have to do two things 1) eat differently and 2) exercise consistently. Exercise hadn’t been a part of my life for several years, but as I was growing up I loved playing sports. I was the only girl in my high school that took P.E. classes after the required class our freshman year. I’m proud to say I took P.E. all four years and I loved every minute of it! So even though I had not been exercising I knew I wouldn’t have a hard time working it into my life because I knew I’d enjoy it. Eating on the other hand was a different story. Prior to 2004, I don’t ever remember eating healthy. Sure, I ate healthy foods, but I ate a LOT of junk. Healthy eating was going to be the challenge for me. However, I was so determined to lose weight that I managed to change my eating habits. I ate using the divided plate method. I ate normal sized portions of protein, high fiber carbohydrates, plenty of vegetables and some fruit and dairy. For the most part I avoided junk food. I lost 40 pounds in 14 months. I was so happy, but I was human!

From 2006 to 2012 I continued on my journey with a lot of H.U.M.A.N. episodes. I never really gave up on the healthy lifestyle/losing weight, but I definitely had my periods of time when I didn’t exercise consistently or my eating habits weren’t so good and I gained some of my weight back. In June 2012 I had an “ah ha” moment. It was the moment I decided I REALLY wanted to seriously get back to this journey of living a healthy lifestyle. At that point I was experiencing a lot of fatigue, which was totally abnormal for me. I was tired of being tired. I had begun eating a paleo diet (NF: The Beginner's Guide to The Paleo Diet) to see if that would help and although I found this to be a way of eating that I really enjoyed it didn’t seem to be helping my fatigue issues. So on June 16, 2012 I redoubled my effort and I haven’t stopped since. Now that is not to say in the last year and a half I haven’t had some H.U.M.A.N. episodes because I have.

I realized something, no matter how long I’m doing this I will always have H.U.M.A.N. episodes because, well, because I’m human! Each and every time I have a H.U.M.A.N. episode I could see it as a failure or I can say, hasty undesirable missteps are human and it’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t mean that I can’t pick up where I left off before the H.U.M.A.N. episode and move on with my life. After all, what is one H.U.M.A.N. episode in the whole scheme of your life? I am a huge fan of the Nerd Fitness site and Steve has a post about this very thing. It’s titled “GetThe **** Over It.”

Being H.U.M.A.N. means that even with the best of intentions, sometimes you just do something that isn’t perfect. Let me ask you this question. Do you know anyone who is 100% perfect? No. Hmmm, that doesn’t surprise me. No one is perfect. So then, why is it that when we decide to make some changes to live a healthier life we expect ourselves to be perfect? Stop, stop right now! Stop expecting yourself to be perfect and then beating yourself up when you have a H.U.M.A.N. episode. After all, we are all human. All of us need to realize hasty undesirable missteps are normal.

I will leave you with this one thought. When you have done something that you consider to be a failure, I want you to think of one thing. What would you say to a person who came to you with the same issue? For example, since the beginning of December I have been eating very healthy. Then about two-three weeks ago I let the number on the scale depress me and I ate some junk one day. One day turned into two days, and now I’ve gone about 3 weeks with eating more junk than I’d had in two months. I could get really down on myself and say “You’re such a failure. You won’t ever get this right. You’re doomed and you will NEVER get to your goal weight.”  Or, I could think about what I’d say to someone else who had experienced the same thing. This is what I’d probably say to them, “Hey, I understand. It’s okay. Think about how many good days you had in that 2 ½ months vs. the number of bad days. The good days far outweigh the bad days. Also, you were doing some awesome workouts and you never let those go. You can do this. You hit a little speed bump and it knocked you off your bike. Get back on and get going again, you can do it!” So if I’m willing to cheer up someone else with positive and encouraging words, why must I kick myself, making myself feel worse than I already do? The point is, I shouldn’t! I should treat myself with as much respect and encouragement as I do my fellow man/woman because we, myself included, are all H.U.M.A.N.

Crab Stuffed Mushrooms: New Recipe of the Week #8

Well it stands to reason if you are trying 52 new recipes in one year some of them are bound to turn out "not so good." The Crab Stuffed Mushrooms I made for tonight's Super Bowl gathering definitely fall into this category.

I got the recipe from Against All Grains. This is the first recipe from that site that I haven't really cared for. I made this recipe especially for my darling hubby because he likes mushrooms. I thought it would be a nice surprise for him. He was surprised all right, surprised by an overly fishy tasting mushroom that he didn't care for either. No one that tried these liked them. They were too "fishy." I don't know if all crab meat has a very strong flavor, but even as these were baking the fish smell was overpowering. I have had crab legs before and I like them so I thought I would at least find these tolerable. However, the fishy smell was so overpowering I didn't even try them.

  The crab stuffed mushrooms were easy to make and one I would be willing to make again, with some adjustments. The next time I try these I will be using chopped shrimp instead of crab meat. I think I'll change up the main part of the filling too. I'll be looking online for the filling used in crab rangoons. I'll add some shrimp to it, fill the mushrooms with it and see what happens.

Damn Fine Chicken: New Recipe 2014 #7

I eat a lot of chicken and I eat it prepared a lot of different ways. I have discovered chicken leg quarters are the cheapest cuts of chicken to buy and that works out great for me since my favorite piece of chicken is the thigh. The legs are probably my second favorite, but since my darling hubby likes the legs the best, getting the leg quarters are a good deal for us. With a package of chicken leg quarters I can make fried chicken, boil it to use the meat in chicken and noodles, marinate it and bake it like this recipe called for or grill it. I used to always buy the boneless skinless chicken breasts, but I think I'll be buying more chicken leg quarters in my future.

I'm not sure where I saw this recipe for Nom Nom Paleo's Damn Fine Chicken posted, but it looked really good and it only required that I buy one ingredient I didn't have so I was off to the store to buy some sherry vinegar. I didn't actually find sherry vinegar, but I did buy the sherry cooking wine and I used it. Apparently, I didn't substitute the right thing for the sherry vinegar, because after some searching I found this blog about The Best Substitute for Sherry Vinegar. Oh well, no harm done. I made the chicken using the sherry cooking wine and it turned out pretty good.

After going to the store my refrigerator was full of produce so when I was marinating the chicken I didn't have anywhere to put it in the refrigerator. It was a pretty cold day so I just put it out on our front porch. The aroma from the marinade permeated the house. It smelled like onion/garlic all over the house.

I didn't really eat supper the night I made this. I was busy working away on my school stuff and when that happens I just don't take a break to eat. This chicken turned out to be a nice snack at 8:00pm when I finally broke away from my lesson planning. I do believe I enjoyed it even better for breakfast this morning. My darling hubby looked at me kind of strange when he saw me eating chicken for breakfast, but honestly I can eat chicken at any meal and if it is good chicken I could eat it three meals a day.

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa: New Recipe 2014 #6

I whipped up some of the Roasted Tomatillo Salsa from the Against All Grains cookbook. Click on the link to get a sneak peak of  what is in the cookbook.

I haven't tried the salsa yet as a salsa. I use it in another recipe I make from the cookbook. When I this batch I decided to try it with a couple of chips. Oh My! I think I added too many Serrano peppers because it was rather hot and spicy! I need to let my dad try it, he's the one who always orders the hot spicy dip at the Mexican restaurants.

The green color is a bit odd. I'm not used to eating dip that is green, but other than it being too hot for my tastes, it seemed to be good as a dip.