GPS: New Direction for Fitness and a Healthy Lifestyle

When you leave your house… do you usually know where you are going? I do. I know before I even get ready to leave. Depending on where I am going determines when I leave, who or what pet goes with me, what I wear, if I do my hair or put makeup on, and what I bring with me. I live in the country and am surrounded by woods and fields so, very little I do involves not getting in my car. My car has a fancy dashboard with satellite conveniences, including GPS. Programming the GPS is easy and has several benefits… I rarely leave my house without a destination in mind, so I almost always have my GPS programmed. I love the precise knowledge of expected time of arrival and the ability to be alerted of traffic updates and detours.

GPS- global positioning system. Did you know there are actually 24 global satellites and when four of them are unobstructed and line up with you, BAM! that’s how you get your GPS location (so says Google and Wikipedia). I thought of this amazement with a revelation… why can’t we have a weight loss journey or fitness GPS? How fantastic would it be to hear “700 calorie chocolate chip cookies ahead, turn away now” or after you have made a less than desirable choice you may hear, “recalculating, use the elliptical for 30 extra minutes and resume normal activity as planned.” Let’s face it, most of us know how to succeed in our journey. It is the action of succeeding that is challenging. I am fully aware of what to do, it’ the doing it that pains me.

I am challenged with a healthy lifestyle. I am challenged with a desire to lose 100 pounds. I am challenged to build a community of others like me and share our strategies, successes, and struggles to support each other through. Three years ago, I used my blog to celebrate my 40^th birthday. I created a list of 40 fantastic things and enlisted the help of friends and family to check off and add to it. Weight loss was an item on my list… it remains unchecked.

Here I am on another journey. This journey is a story of success. It is a story where I set up a series of strategies to assist in achieving a healthy lifestyle. Just like the varied unobstructed view of the satellites in space for my GPS, I know that not every strategy will be in full effect every moment. It is my hope that a few will remain lined up and just like GPS, BAM! enough line up to provide me with the path to success.

So, join me on my journey. Watch, learn, offer insight, share strategies and successes.

Here’s to a healthy lifestyle, and of course… a little less of me. 

Jen

Balance 2.0

I promised a few weight loss blogs and this morning, I am holding myself to it. This week was like most others, full of ups and downs. I failed to plan out the week, failed to pack my bag of snacks and meals, and found myself with too many trips to the cafeteria at work. They have a fantastic cafeteria where I work, full of healthy and not so healthy choices. A fresh pizza being taken out of the oven with a plethora of yummy toppings yielded my reach for the salad bar more than one time this week. An early day without pizza lead me to the country store for a slice of pizza on the way home. I love pizza. I could live on pizza and ice cream.

Having pizza for lunch pretty much zaps out my points and allows for fruits and veggies the remainder of the evening. I did acknowledge the points calculator and got a little creative with dinners this week. I balanced out my slices of pizza with roasted vegetables for dinner. I love broccoli, cauliflower, anything smothered in garlic and roasted in the oven until it begins to blacken. You can eat almost a whole bowl for virtually no points. I baked our chicken and other meats and actually weighed my portion. I filled my plate with about ¼ meat and the rest roasted veggies. Yum. Satisfying. Point friendly.

The key to weight loss is really about balance. Be aware. Admit and log what you really eat; bites, licks and tastes included. I believe the yard work and stacking wood helped; but I managed a 2.0 lb loss this week. Hooray! I’ve moved another twenty stones to the LOSS jar and the LOSE jar is actually showing some space in it. May the movement be with you this week too! J

Portion Distortion?

Weight watching is not for wimps. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. I have learned a few good things along the way and I’ve struggled with a few I can not seem to get through. Here’s a post about a little bit of both.

Lesson 2: Portion Control. My husband and I have classic cars. Neither our 67 Chevelle nor our 65 Impala have a cup holder. No cup holder. We have an early ninety something Rodeo that he loves, and is great on gas. It has no cup holder, and it is not an automatic. Do you know how difficult it is to shift, steer, and hold a venti mocha? My thighs are too big and the drink is too hot to balance it gracefully between my legs they way my sweety does his Dr. Pepper. We adored our ninety something Jetta. It had a cup holder. A cup holder that only allowed a child sized fountain drink to fit below the rest of the console. No large, absolutely no supersized sweet tea could fit. Now, our 2000+ SUV and extended cab truck…. not one, not two but four cup holders in the truck and six in my SUV. These cup holders could fit a liter bottle of soda, a supersized drink or maybe even a quart of OJ. Just like the cup holder evolution, our liquid intake has at least quadrupled over my adult life. It is easy to drink more than a healthy intake of calories for an entire day in one super sized beverage from the drive thru. The rest of our portions have grown as well.

Normal portions seem to be some sort of cryptic secret in society. A healthy portion of meat is 3 ounces. Why do our burgers come in pounds?  1 pound is equivalent to 16 ounces, a ¼ pound burger is equivalent to 4 ounces… and let’s not forget the common “double quarter pounder.” Really? That is almost 3 servings of meat alone! A serving of meat is visually equivalent to the palm of your hand or a deck of cards. Really? When was the last time you got that on a plate??? When we compare nutritional values and portions to what we actually consume, it can be quite a difference.

This week, it is my challenge to capture my portions. I vow to drink an extremely limited number of calories. I am planning water, water, and more water. Somehow, I have trouble counting my mochas and lattes, so it’ll be just my old faithful black coffee this week. I vow to actually use my measuring cups. I have really cool ladelish ½ and 1 cup spoons… they make me feel like I am not actually measuring. ;) This makes me more likely to use them. I actually bought a food scale. I have never owned one of these. I plan to be shocked.

This is Week 3 of tracking (well, mostly) and weighing in. I lost a few pounds prior to the “official” weigh in, but the success has certainly shown on the scale. Week 1 I weighed on a Sat morning and was down 2.2 pounds. I smile with each stone as we transfered 22 stones from the LOSE to the LOSS jar. Basketball bumped the following weigh in, so I weighed Week 2 only 4 days later at 6pm and was up 0.8 pounds. That actually was a good feeling for me, because I expected a few pounds up due to the breakfast, lunch and snacks on board. I reluctantly removed 8 stones from my LOSS jar and placed it back in the LOSE jar. Week 3 I weighed again in the evening and was down 2.8 pounds; 0.8 pounds I had lost once already and 2 new pounds. Yippee! It was fantastic to transfer 28 stones from the LOSE to the LOSS jar. I am enjoying watching the stones, and chose to celebrate with a new digital, glass scale to help me keep in check between weigh ins.

If you are considering buying a food scale or a you scale, our CVS had sleek, glass scales that were only $9.99 each, regular price. A $20 bargain and hopefully shocks and smiles to come.

Turning a Failure into Success

Weight watching is not for wimps. It is a week by week, hour by hour, minute by minute struggle, at least for me and I bet for a few of you too. The reality is that there is no true, done, voila, check. It is a constant, never ending commitment- sort of like marriage. In my first marriage, I failed. We married young and lasted in blissful denial for nearly ten years before the edges unraveled and we fell apart. My first weight loss success failed. I lost, got new clothes, gave away the old, and somehow one morning nothing in my closet fit.

My core being does not really believe in failure. Every person, every thing, every issue has a lesson for you to learn, a step to help you get to your best. The trick, blog readers, is to endure the lesson, learn from it and improve from some perspective. I was given many gifts in my first marriage, learned many lessons, and hope it all sets my current marriage up for success. It was certainly not a failure. Today, I am trying to apply this theory to my weight loss journey, and help set it too up for success.

Lesson 1: Plan your intake. I cannot count how many times I scooted to the school, picked up an SUV full of boys, plowed through homework at McDonald’s and dashed off to football practice only to pile those same stinky, smelly kids in the SUV, dash through the drive thru for shakes and pies, and hurry them all home. My calorie consumption rose to nearly a week’s plan in just a few hours. Planning the night before, packing a sandwich and a few snacks (at least for me, if not for the kids too) would have saved me at least a pants size. I can not blame it all on the kids. I have happily stopped for a biscuit in the morning, grabbed a mocha instead of a skim latte, and bought a burger and fries alone. A few minutes of planning and a good selection of healthy grab and go choices make all the difference.

This week, I tried some very successful grab and go ideas. I stole a Pinterest idea and made several jars of salad. Here’s how I did it: Slice your favorite salad stuff, cucumbers, green peppers, and grape tomatoes were my pick. Tear up assorted lettuces and layer the ingredients in pint size mason jars. I added a teaspoon of feta crumbles and a tablespoon of balsamic vinaigrette dressing. There was an easy salad to grab and go each morning for a week! A tablespoon of dressing saturated the salad and I will certainly cut that in half next time. That was almost my only source of countable calories, so I splurged for the full labeled serving. Toward the end of the week the greens were still pretty crunchy, but may have endured a bit better without the dressing. I’ll try ½ with dressing and ½ without until midweek next time.

I stocked my cabinets, car, pocketbook and desk with plenty of fresh fruits, low calorie/high fiber bars, cheese sticks and froze sliced strawberries in containers for a sweet, thawed midday treat. Canned soup and salads were my staple for lunch, and the snacks carried me quite well. I found some fantastic 80 calorie mini ice cream sandwiches to help with my night time struggles and make me feel like I was not on a diet. Not to forget, was my ever full, always carried water bottle and a few no cal/low cal flavor packs. Learn from my lesson. This week, plan it, stock it, and don’t forget to take it… and save a whole bunch of calories… and maybe even a pants size. J

The Jeans from the Bottom of the Pile

I have been comfortable with my weight most of my life, but I have never been the skinny chick. I think big girls can look great, be sexy and all that goes with it. It has become the point in my life where I am “thicker” than I’d like to be, struggle to enjoy the way I look and can not enjoy movement as much as I would like to. I reached this point about two years ago and lost a good deal of weight, dropped several sizes and began to enjoy a new me. Unfortunately, it has all crept back and brought a few extra pounds with it. I believe I weigh more now than when I delivered my near teenage son. The previous loss gave me a feeling of accomplishment and fun with clothes and movement that I haven’t felt in years and it has left me longing for it again.

The List includes a weight loss of forty pounds. Forty pounds is actually just a beginning to what I would like to accomplish. Sixty- five pounds would put me in a place I have not been in since my twenties. Eighty pounds would be an almost unimaginable weight goal for me. It is on. Two or three weeks ago I really began working at it with two simple facts, move more and eat less. One week ago I took a great step and joined and attended Weight Watchers (WW.) It all paid off, I pulled out a pair of jeans from the bottom of the pile Friday… they fit for the first time since the summer of last year. I rocked ‘em with sexy shoes for date night with the hubby! It probably means about a 7-10 pound loss to fit in those jeans. I followed date night up with my Saturday morning WW meeting and confirmed a loss of 2.2 pounds for the week. I may have been unhappy with that, but added to the jeans… fantastic!

A few blogs will be devoted to weight loss from here on in, hopefully stories of success… but I leave room for some challenges and maybe even failures too. With a little inspiration from Pinterest, I made a very practical and pretty reminder for my kitchen counter. Pictured are two glass jars, one represents “pounds to lose” and the other represents “pounds lost.” Each stone represents 0.1 pound, ten stones represents a pound. Saturday afternoon my husband helped me happily count out 22 stones for the empty “pounds lost” jar. Visual things are so important to me, the not so comfy clothes becoming comfortable are the best. With any luck, they will become too big and get handed over to another. Perhaps I will have a pair of way-too-big-now-big-girl-jeans to sew a great new Pinterest inspired purse!

The List

Here's how I will I will fly into forty fabulously...

1.      Complete 40 blog posts. Feed Your Soul Fantastic

2.      Lose 40 pounds. Attainable with a loss of less than 1 pound per week for the year.

3.      Complete 40 Random Acts of Kindness.

4.      Have sex 40 days in a row. I’m thinking this could change my marriage, LOL.

5.      Take control of my spending and journal each penny spent, for at least 40 days.

6.      Share an event in NYC with my son; a play, a parade, a panhandler. We’ll see how this one unfolds.

7.      Photograph and frame a series that has meaning from this experience.

8.      New INK!

9.      Go horseback riding.

10.  Do something in the sky; parasail, skydive, hot air balloon.

11.  Inspire one other person to embrace their life moment with positivity.

12.  Meditate more, rage less.

13.  Music, music, music. Feed my soul with music everyday.

14.  Find out what my gifts are, and use at least a few of them.

15.  Listen to and take my own advice and allow the eternal optimist image to flow inside and out. What Was I Thinking?

16.  Try 40 new recipes.

17.  Pose for pin up style pictures with our classics, at least 40 poses.

18.  Memorize 40 verses of scripture.

19.  Volunteer somewhere new for at least 40 hours.

20.  Dance in a mud puddle, with company.

21.  Experience a sunset in a place where I have never been.

22.  Climb a lighthouse. Maybe one with at least 40 steps?

23.  Send 40 handwritten notes by mail.

24.  Purchase $40 worth of scratch off lottery tickets.

25.  Have professional family photos taken.

26.  Reduce my own carbon footprint. Easy Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

27.  POLAR PLUNGE!

28.  Make contact with, make time for, and make memories with friends; old and new.

29.  Make a gallon of wine from honey or fruit.

30.  Experience a girls weekend!

31.  Participate in a local festival I have not experienced.

32.  Do nothing. Suggested by one of the wisest women I know.

33.  Unfriend 40 people who really aren’t my friends on facebook.

34.  Be the wife that makes my husband smile.

35.  Ride a mechanical bull.

36.   Get to know my brother and newly found family.

37.   

38.   

39.   

40.   

The List

I am taking this year seriously. I will fly into forty fabulously. Here's the start of how I will get there...

1. Complete 40 blog posts. Feed Your Soul Fantastic This will display my commitment to the entire project. It should be easy to achieve, that commits me to one per week with a week off a month!
2. Lose 40 pounds. Attainable with a loss of less than 1 pound per week for the year.
3. Complete 40 Random Acts of Kindness.
4. Have sex 40 days in a row. I’m thinking this could change my marriage, LOL.
5. Take control of my spending and journal each penny spent, for at least 40 days.
6. Share an event in NYC with my son; a play, a parade, a panhandler. We’ll see how this one unfolds.
7. Photograph and frame a series that has meaning from this experience.
8. New INK!
9. Go horseback riding.
10. Do something in the sky; parasail, skydive, hot air balloon.
11. Inspire one other person to embrace their life moment with positivity.
12. Meditate more, rage less. I think my family can quantify and qualify the progress.
13. Music, music, music. Feed my soul with music everyday.
14. Find out what my gifts are, and use at least a few of them.
15. Listen to and take my own advice and allow the eternal optimist image to flow inside and out. What Was I Thinking?
16. Try 40 new recipes.
17. Pose for pin up style pictures with our classics, at least 40 poses.
18. Memorize 40 verses of scripture.
19. Volunteer somewhere new for at least 40 hours.
20. Dance in a mud puddle, with company.
21. Experience a sunset in a place where I have never been.
22. Climb a lighthouse. Maybe one with at least 40 steps?
23. Do 40 consecutive push-ups, without collapsing. J
24. Send 40 handwritten notes by mail.
25. Purchase $40 worth of scratch off lottery tickets.
26. Have professional family photos taken.
27. Exercise at least 40 minutes a day, 4 days a week. This is an extremely lofty goal for me!
28. Complete the Dr. Oz Belly Busting Workout seven days a week until it no longer makes me burn and out of breath in three sets.
29. Reduce my own carbon footprint. Easy Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
30. POLAR PLUNGE!
31. Make contact with, make time for, and make memories with friends; old and new.
32. Make a gallon of wine from honey or fruit.
33. Experience a girls weekend!