Progress

I started to change my habits on July 6th. In a little over 5 weeks I have lost 14 pounds, 1 inch around my waist, 2 inches around my hips and 1 inch around my thighs.

I’m reinventing the wheel with recipes. I’ve had some that were hits like Mexican Chicken and Rice , and Healthy Chicken and Vegetables.

I have decided to undertake a 14 day meal plan. I am only planning dinner since I usually eat leftovers or salads for dinner. My hope is that planning our dinners will not only make things easy but also save money. I have a meal plan starting today that will fit in with that busy schedules.  Some of the meals we are trying over the next 2 weeks are, Mediterranean Chicken and Brown Rice, Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken, Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff, Slow Cooker Pork Roast, Saucy Meatballs, and Hawaiian Crock Pot Chicken.

School started August 5th and our afternoons and evenings have become a logistical nightmare once again. We have a small amount of time to do homework before the boys head to Taekwondo about 3 evenings a week. We also have swim lessons starting tomorrow for the next 2 weeks. On the days that the kids go to Taekwondo I have a crock pot meal, casserole or a freezer meal. The days that I have time I have plans for meals that take a bit longer.

Today I have 2 things in the works. I had some beans that I wanted to use so I am making white bean chili with ground turkey. I will be freezing half and I traded my neighbor for the turkey and I will give her the other half for her freezer. I also have in the crock pot.

I spent some time this weekend looking for healthier options for freezer meals and discovered a good blog called the skinny mom’s kitchen. It’s a good resource and I have written down several recipes to try. I encourage you to check it out.  I am hoping to make breakfast burritos for the freezer tomorrow as well as spaghetti sauce.

As far as a fitness plan I have had some help with that. The kids go to a school here on Schofield and there is no bus so I have to walk them each day. It’s 1 mile each way, so I am walking a total of 4 miles each day. I really don’t have to do much else on the days that I walk the kids to school. But I’m finding that I enjoy being active and the right activity doesn’t feel like working out. I’m not a gym person. I don’t like going to the gym and working out with a bunch of sweaty people. It makes me self-conscious about how I look. I am learning to be comfortable in my own skin but I would still much rather be outside hiking, walking, swimming, body boarding or some other form of physical activity.

This is a picture from today. I neglected to take a picture when I first started but it’s just as well. I probably wouldn’t have been comfortable posting a picture anyway.

I have also learned another trick with the SparkPeople website.  When you track fitness it doesn’t credit you with the calories burned for that day.  I decided to play with the activity tracker and see what effect changing my goals would have on my recommended calorie intake.  I changed my weekly goals so reflect the walking I am doing in both minutes and calories burned.  Once I did that my nutrition tracker now recommends that I eat 1300-1800 calories a day instead of 1200-1500.  It solves my problem and eases my concern about not getting enough to eat.  The fact is that when you do a lot of activity your body will need more fuel.  I was concerned because I want to lose weight the healthy way, not by starvation and excessive exercise.

My start weight: 207lbs

Goal weight: 160lbs for starters

Current weight: 193lbs

Total Lost: 14lbs

Skating my way to a better me

I went out Saturday and purchased a pair of roller skates.  I never got the hand of roller blades so I decided go to get a pair of quad skates.  I was able to try them out on Sunday evening.  I thought that I would just get back on skates and I would immediately start skating like I did 20 years ago.  It’s just like riding a bike right?  Wrong!

The first thing I did was wipe out.  The neigbor’s son came down as I was putting on my skates and was saying in cute toddler talk “chelle got skates”.  I stood up and took about 3 steps and hit the pavement.  I thought “ok so this won’t be as easy as I thought it would be”.  But I saw no reason to give up.

From the time I was 5 or 6 years old I loved to skate.  My friend Anne, who visited me with her sisters this weekend, and I used to spend hours skating around my basement or out on the street near her house.  I had birthday parties at the roller rink and I was always bothering my mother to take me.  All my memories surrounding skating are good ones.

I’m trying to rekindle my romance with physical activity.  I’m not sure when I became so inactive but I’m working on changing that.  I’ve always been more active than some with my scuba diving, hiking and etc.   But I am working on finding more activities that I enjoy because I know that I won’t stay active unless I find things that make me want to be active.  Along with that I need to find people who like being active with me.  My 7 year old is showing an interest in skating so it might be a fun activity for us to do together.

I’ve been practicing and I’m glad to say that I am starting to get the hang of it again.  My biggest obstacles now is those little rocks that make me stumble, the cracks in the concrete sidewalk, and my own hesitancy to go fast.  If I remember correctly the first two will be overcome once I get to the third.  I should have bought a set of pads in the beginning but didn’t so I think that will be my next investment.

Other activities I am enjoying these days include, body boarding, yoga, and taking the dog for brisk walks.  I am looking forward to getting back to diving in a couple weeks after the kids go back to school.  I have been carving out my work out time in the evening either when the kids are at taekwondo, or more often after dinner time.

I’m also enjoying trying out new recipes from all sorts of sources.  Eating healthy and being active both feel good and I hope that over time I will break old habits and establish new healthier ones.  An unexpected bonus is that because I am spending more time being active I feel better about myself even if my body hasn’t changed too much yet.  It feels good to know that you have exercised your body and given it good fuel to burn.  And of course to know that I am setting the example for my kids that I want to set.