What Happened To Your Boobs?!

Bloomsday 2013

Keeping my motivation has been pretty hard to do.  In April, I tried counting calories for a while, but I was planning my daughters graduation party and my parents coming.  I got so overwhelmed with trying to focus on too many things and had to give that up to keep my sanity.  It did help for a little bit.  In the end, I decided if I was going to look the way I wanted to for the big party, I was going to have to do some fasting.  I wanted to pray and fast anyway, because I was such a nervous wreck about having 100 or more people over to my house.  In the end, I weighed what I wanted to and the party was a smashing success with 120 guests in all.
  My son, his fiancé, my younger son and daughter and I are here in this picture right before we did the 7 1/2 mile run.  It was a good motivator for me.  I felt good about my time.  Last year, I ran with my girlfriends and thought I was going to throw up the entire time averaging 10 min miles.  This time, I lost my friend and her daughter in the first few miles, so I ran my own pace.  I still did 10 min miles and beat my time by a few seconds.  It was also a lot hotter out.  I was pretty amazed.

   My Mom and Dad were here for 2 weeks.  It was a good visit, with a lot of challenges.  A normal visit with my mom entails a lot of good food, chocolate, and board/card games.  Of course I was stressed out trying to buy and make good food and not gain a lot of weight.  After all, In my mind, feeding a person good is showing love right?  The first week and beyond, I pretty much gained 1/3 to 1/2 lb per day.  I'd look at the scale and felt powerless to do anything about it.  Finally, one day I got really fed up.  Something in me just snapped.  I was just cooking all this crap, and we were all eating it.  I was buying this crap, and we were all eating it.  We'd have a meal, a snack, another snack, another meal, and so on.  It was just too much rich food and it was sabotaging us all.  As I watched my kids eating it, I felt like I was going to be sick.  I was just keeping the same thing in motion that had gone on for generations before me, letting it continue its perpetual motion.  
    That next morning, I got up and prayed hard.  I asked God to give me the strength to fight this stronghold in my family.  I could feel opposition in the air.  I stopped eating so much and cooking so much.  I forced myself to pay attention to what I was eating.  I didn't do things perfectly.  I still had too many treats, but I watched what I ate closely.  I started to feel empowered.  Soon I was not gaining weight.  My mom and I had some good conversations.  It was a good seed planted. 
    Obesity is a generational curse.  We grow familiar to it and let it take us.  If I don't resist it, knowingly, its not long before I resort back to old patterns, especially when I'm around my family.  My mom thinks I need to gain 5 or 10 lbs.  I wish I could lose 5 or 10 lbs.  My mom says "you look the best you've ever looked", but she also says "what happened to your boobs?!"  She's funny.  Her idea of what I should look like is different from mine.  That's okay.
    I had a lot of flashbacks of my eating patterns from childhood and I see that my younger kids are all to willing to go that route.  I decided that I am NOT buying sugar cereal for the summer PERIOD.  Its not healthy, not needed.  I'm not "loving them" by getting it for them.  I'm using it as a cheap way to pacify my guilt trip to make up for a day of being gone at work.  No more.  So to make myself feel better,  I buy them this crap that spikes their blood sugar, makes them hyper, and fills their developing bodies with processed, chemically altered poison.  Nope.  No cereal all summer.  No, I'm not going to be a cereal Nazi, I'm just not buying it.
Truth is, I've always known that many generations of my family has fought obesity.  This is no surprise.  I just thought that I was on the winning edge.  I'd beat it and I was helping my kids to make different choices.  Then in the blink of an eye, I'm falling into all my old patterns of RECREATIONAL EATING.  Yes, recreational eating. 
Recreational eating means that you eat as a form of recreation, rather than as a way to fuel your body.  When you fuel your body, you think about what it needs, not what it wants.  Thinking this way is a never ending battle for me.  Most of my thinking has to do with finding a way to make my sugar fix, my salt fix, my fat fix.  Anyhow, I truly believe that my kids don't have to go through what my my grandmother, my mother, and I went through.  I'm just crazy enough to believe that with God's help, obesity's power can once and for all be defeated.  My children don't have suffer the things we did.  They can grow up being healthy and passing down healthy traits to future generations.   Selah.
    Sorry to disappoint you, I don't have it all figured out.  I just know I have fight in me.  Until next month.......

Hungry...Hmmmm.....

   Some how its been a WHOLE MONTH since we got back from Hawaii.  I didn't want the sparkle of the holiday to fade (or my tan for that matter).  I had worked too hard to see it over and done with.  Of course I was happy to be back home with my babies, but feeling the downer of what I had worked so hard for was over and I felt kind of deflated....
   HUNGER KICKED IN almost immediately.  I'm not sure if it was a "bored" kind of hunger, a "hungry" kind of hunger, or maybe just a "wanna be comforted" kind.  Whatever it was, came unrelenting and without rest.  Since then I've been waging a good fight to try and not gain (or lose) that progress!
   In a nutshell, I lost 50 lbs about 7 years ago.  Since then, I slowly gained back maybe 15 of those pounds.  For my trip to Hawaii I lost 20 lbs.  Roughly, I was 176 at my highest recorded non pregnant weight.  When I got home from Hawaii I was weighing in at 118-120 lbs.  Thetas almost 60 lbs I'm not - THANK GOD.  But how do I keep that off?!?!
   I tried writing down calories for a week and HATED it.  Even more dismal, I was coming in around 2000 a day, TRYING. UGH.  Tonight I read an article about "intuitive eating" which I'm going to give a go....
  More goals include upcoming Bloomsday, A mud run with friends, and keeping up on Zumba and weight lifting.  Above here is a pic from Mon at the Rec Center, which I try to get my kids to on a semi-monthly basis.  It breaks up the monotony of winter.  Desperately hoping to pull out some unforeseen motivation from thin air ;-)
  

My Hawaiian Hippie Dayze - for Fitness Blog

http://liteonthemtn.blogspot.com/2013/02/my-hawaiian-hippie-dayze-part-2.html is My Hawaiian Hippie Dayze Part 2
http://liteonthemtn.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-hawiaan-hippie-dayze.html is My Hawaiian Hippie Dayze Part 1

In the end, all the 3 months of working out and counting calories was worth it.  I had so much fun and I feel like God richly blessed our trip, marriage and all else.  I lived each day to its fullest and marveled in Gods creation AND it was really fun for me to feel confident in a bikini :-)

Its Actually Coming Together - WHAT?!?!

I have a lot to be proud of. Its been 11 weeks and counting since I started counting calories and logging them in. I started off at 139 and I was at 122 weighing in today. I am hoping I can shave off just a few more before Hawaii, but I am getting close. As I said, BORING with a CAPITAL B with writing down calories, but I have a selective memory when it comes to being hungry. If i don't write it down, I have a harder than heck time remembering that I need to STOP!! Here's a running list of whats been working for me :-) Maybe if you stumble across it will help you...... Food : - LOG CALORIES - Force yourself into diversity. That means i don't get to eat 1000 calories of pizza and nothing else. I make myself to eat a salad, fruit, dairy, nuts and seeds, varied vegetables, lean protein, yogurt and cheese pretty much every day. - Take vitamins (b is my fav) - Drink and log H20 (I'm doing about 80 oz a day) - Take a mandatory day off from counting calories every few weeks for sanity. - minimize breads, maximize proteins and veggies. Exercise : - Running in the snow few days a week - Zumba weekly when possible -Insanity Workouts (i'm warning you they are hellish) -Weight Lifting every week -Almost every night 200 variety crunch regime, push ups and planks (DOUBLE YUCK!) A Few Encouraging Moments : - When my husband complimented my arms in a work out T - When I climbed up this wall (pic above). The last time I was there, I couldn't get to the top. - The fun time I had hiking up a mtn and boarding down with my friend and daughter in photos above. It made me feel empowered :-) - Putting on clothes and not automatically trying to find ways to conceal bulge - a weird feeling.

10 LBS and Counting.....

Fun Day out in The North Face, Canada

Girls Day Out (and my day off from counting calories)

My Doe This Year (Part of our families organic meat supply)

How My Son Packed It Out!!

My Son, Art Dog's Mule Buck (providing organic meat for us)

Just Before Our Town's "Turkey Trot" - my daugter was the first female across the finish line :-)

So this one is from summer, but I put it up because I'm so thankful we did that hard work now and have organic huckleberries for winter :-)

   I promised myself I would not post until I hit 129, and I've seen 128 now 3x, so I suppose I'm way overdue :-)
 -  I am thankful for the organic meat supply of elk, bears and deer that my family has harvested this season.  It is a healthy staple for my family.
 - I've been experimenting with soaking and boiling, and then sauteing grains such as barley, wheat, rye in place of pasta and white rice.  Its working out pretty well - healthier and more economical.
 - On my 5th week of counting calories and I am down 10 lbs and counting - encouraging :-)
 - I read most of Jillian's Book "Master Your Metabolism".....pretty deep reading.
 - Ran our Town's Turkey Trot 5K with my daughter and friend.  Was real proud my daughter was the first female finisher.  Also its the best time I've ever run, but don't tell anybody, I'm pretty slow ;-)  29 min, 18 sec.
     Over all, its been a good month and things are going along as they should, though it feels painfully slow :-)

Goals for this month include adding in weight training, and a grocery budget (YUCK!)

,

Gettin' Down to Business

 

So here's the thing......

I'm running out of a precious commodity.  In other words, the clocks ticken' and every day is a day closer to my big lifelong dream of seeing Hawaii Bikini clad with my hubby.  I have declared Marshall Law against Miss Belly Fat.  Her days are seriously numbered ;-)

 

The whole cleansing fast thing went okay, but for the agony, the results were, I gained it all back within a week.  UGH!  Here's some of my newest strategies, some of which are actually working - lol!!

 

- Back to boring ol' writing down my food in a journal.  Did I mention B-O-R-I-N-G?!?!  Truly, I've been reading in a lot of places that most people successful at weight loss do that.  Harrumph.

 

- Been having SUPER CRAZY OUTRAGEOUS FUN doing Zumba!!  From the time I was about 3, I took dance lessons.  Even in college I was on the dance line.  That part of me has just been laying dormant for years, but its in my blood.  Its always been a buried part of who I am waiting for the right opportunity to bust a move.  In short, its kind of like stepping into destiny.  My biggest challenge is not to be dead serious about doing it all perfect, mentally telling myself its okay to be sexy and remembering that the goal is to HAVE FUN all the while sweating like a pig ;-)

 

- "Hara hachi bu" taken from Oct 2012 Fitness Magazine.  Meaning you aren't supposed to eat until your stuffed!!  I do a lot better eating a variety of foods I enjoy, just use moderation.  As much as I abhor counting calories, its been an eye opening reminder that a dollop of peanut butter, sour cream or butter can be a non damaging 20 or 30 calories or it can be upwards of 200.  All too often I wasn't really honing in on that.

 

HAWAII FOR REAL!!

The Long Bridge Swim Finishers (beat by my daughter by 4 minutes!)

 The "Fasting Cleanse" i'm doing

New Gun My Hubby Bought Me for Running With















WELL HERE I AM......gulp.... getting soft. All summer long i seriously thought about ditching this blog but I just couldn't. Its maybe not exactly who I am, but more who I want to be and I just can't give up on it. Truth is, we've moved 15 miles outside of town and life is easier. Theres no mountain to have to hike up and down every day. There's no "making due" for groceries when we're out of something. There hasn't been any more higher altitude 7 mile runs. No backpacking trips either. I've settled for easy 2 mile jogs and for a long run well, maybe 4-6 miles. I've enjoyed the summer and watched my hips grow a few inches along the way. I hate to confess it, but its where I'm at, THE UGLY TRUTH. Oh i didn't totally give up or anything. My daughter and i trained for The 1.76 mile Long Bridge Swim, and completed it. She even beat me - that little stinker :-) I still cook with a lot of veggies and wild organic meat. My kids are all pretty buff and healthy, but somewhere along in "convenience" i kinda lost my edge.


    A bunch of my girlfriends and I decided to take the "The Love Language Challenge", pray and fast for our husbands. That has been good so far. For my part of the fasting I decided to do a "cleanse" regime with the above "Perfect Food" recommended to me by a naturopathic friend. Week One you skip a meal once a day and take a serving of this stuff. It was kind of hard choking it down, but it wasn't the end of the world. The first day I felt really good. After that it was just kind of "so so". Now I'm into the second week which involves doing 2 servings and one meal. Honestly, that hasn't gone so bad either. I was thinking it would be worse. Am feeling like the marriage thing is going pretty good too. All that makes me happy.

And on to the most exciting thing, and my big motivation to get back into "This Redneck Mama's Fitness Blog"...... HAWAII!!! That's right... I bought real bonafide tickets for Kauai. Now the pressure is really on. I've gotta whip myself back into step and go beyond if I wanna have fun running around secluded beaches with my husband wearing less than fat friendly attire ;-)