Frustration, Realization, and Execution

Hi there Peeps! (or Peep?),

I have had my ups and downs in this life I have chosen.

Recently I have been doing a lot of reading about nutrition and how your body is supposed to be fueled. I started following a mostly Paleo/Primal diet and after a few off days I started to feel amazing! It was like waking up from a bad dream. My head was clear, my digestion was normal, my energy was high and I was happy!

Then we ran low on money. I am still unemployed at the moment because we just have not been anywhere long enough for me to get a job. So with funds running low I started eating some of the off plan foods that where left in the cupboard. Now I am tired, achy, and cannot focus. My head is pounding and my digestion is bad.

I used to live my whole life like this? How did I function? I cannnot even imagine getting through anything that requires me to stay awake and pay attention right now. I cannot live like this anymore.

While in Norfolk, NE I started going to the gym everyday. I loved it! It was the best part of my day. I would go in there and I would pick a machine to conquer then I would pound it out as hard as I could for as long as I could. I would make bargains with myself. "Just 5 more minutes then you can stop." "Come on, you have almost completed that mile." "Lets try that again, I know you can do better." Every day I went in there and tried to go just a little farther and a little faster than the day before. I felt good.

Then in Kansas I would walk most days. If I could find a park that was great, but if not, I just took to the streets. Kansas is where I discovered the Paleo/ Primal solution.

Now we are in Iowa and it looks like we may be staying for a while. My goals right now are to get a job, get a gym membership (more on this later) and take a crack at the Whole30 challenge to reset my system and start the process of healing. I wanted to start it on July 1st but that is most likely not going to happen. I will be trying to get back on course though and hoping for August 1st as my Whole30 start date. We shall see.

In the mean time I will try to do better about keeping this blog updated and using it as a way to keep myself accountable.

Lots of love to the 2 people who accidentally read this. I hope you stick this out with me, but if not, I will understand. ;-}
Jenn

Still trying... or If at first you don't succeed.

I am not always consistent with my fitness plans, but I do keep trying. I had one of those clicking moments the other day. You know, when things fall into place and you finally realize something that you had been struggling with.

I want to live again.

Holidays, Resolutions, It has been a long time.

I have things that I need to accomplish this coming year. I am going to be 31 next month and will be moving to Nebraska on my birthday. I want to have a family which means that yet again I have to make my goals about getting healthy. I want to get married, have babies, homeschool, have a small family organic farm and live a sustainable life. These are my dreams. My goals are to get off the diabetic meds and get past my gastrointestinal problems. I need to be fit and healthy enough to make my dreams come true.

I have a hard time sticking to a diet and exercise plan. Always have.

That needs to change now.

Challenge Day 2- more relaxed

Sorry I didn't post last night. I was watching TBL and went straight to be afterwards. Yesterdays workout was 30 minutes on the stationary bike. I hate that thing but it does the job. On the food front I ate pretty well although I was over on my calories a little. Mostly because I had a second helping of brown rice as a snack later in the evening.

I will not be posting a long and positive review today as Aunt Flo just arrived and I am bloated and miserable. Hopefully that means I will be feeling great by the end of the week. We shall see.

Today is the Sansone walk and the lunchtime quickie workout. About an hour or so of exercise. I will try for a less bland post later tonight.

Melancholy Training,
Love Jenn

Challenge Day 1- Kicking Butt and Taking Names

I had an awesome workout this morning. I did 45 minutes of cardio and 15 minutes of strength and I am exhausted, but I feel amazing right now. For cardio I went back to an old staple, Leslie Sanson. However I didn't just go through the motions, I kicked it into high gear and made that 3 miles count. Next week I will set foot back in the gym for the first time in a while. I am a bit nervous about it though which is why I am doing this week at home. For my strength training I took a page out of Fitness Mag. Well 3 pages actually! I did the ultimate lunchtime quickie workout on page 75 of the march issue. If you don't have the mag you can go here and print a copy or watch the video of the moves. I thought the workout was fun and challenging. It took me a while to do it because I am starting from scratch so I only did one set of everything. In a couple of weeks I will work in another set. Another great thing is that I can take this workout to the gym! It also worked a lot of the core muscles without doing crunches. Yay!

So far, my food has been good. I started the morning with some PB&J Oatmeal and am about to have some light soup and baby carrots for lunch. Ummm! So far today I have downed 1 of my 3 liters of water. 2 to go.

Well, I am off to get some cleaning done. I will call that my spontaneous exercise for today. I will check back in with you all later to let you know how the rest of the day goes.

Happy Training,
Love Jenn

Making New Habits Stick

My new challenge starts tomorrow morning! I am excited and ready for the challenge! I will succeed! Positive thinking and positive energy and positive visualization will get me there. For those of you that are following along here is a recap of this quarters challenge:


1st 13-Week Challenge (04/06/09 - 07/05/09)

* 3900 Exercise Minutes (cardio and strength)=300 minutes per week=43 minutes per day

* On plan every day

* If it’s one flight, take the stairs

* Strength train 3 days a week


On plan means I:

* Eat within my calories (1,690)

* Eat at least 5 servings of fruit and/or vegetables

* Drink 3 liters of water

* Take multivitamin

I am determined to make some changes in my life and make my new habits stick. So I will also be gradually working my way into the Beck Diet Solution a few habits at a time. I will start with the exercise and motivation habits first then work my way into my eating habits. These are the habits that I will be working on for the next 3 weeks.

1. Motivating myself
a. read advantages deck
b. read response cards
2. Weigh myself once daily and record weight and change+/-
3. Get Moving
a. spontaneous exercise
b. planned exercise
4. Contact my dieting buddy (this blog and my blog peeps)

There are six more habits to incorporate in stage 1 of the plan but I will start with these. Once I am able to do all of them for 7 days without having to work too much to remember then I will start to incorporate more of them. I will post everyday on what habits I successfully followed and how I did. You can keep me accountable by coming back and reading my updates, commenting, and motivating me to continue. I will make my advantages deck and response cards tonight so that they will be ready for the morning.

So start sending all those positive vibes this way! Tomorrow morning I am going to be up with the sun! I will post and let you all know how I am doing. I may even let you in on some of the more personal, non- weight related goals as well. We shall see.

I know that I posted a lot today and hope that I didn't overwhelm you all.

Happy Training,
Love Jenn

Welcome to My Brand New Day

Sometimes I just feel like starting all over from scratch. I am at a point in my life right now where everything is changing. I have a new job to look forward to. I started this new challenge to get in shape again. We started our business. I quit smoking. I am coming out of my shell and starting to talk to the people in my life again.

Life is good right now.

Do we have lots of money? No.

Have all of our problems been dealt with? Not by a long shot!

So why am I in such a mood? Why am I suddenly so happy?

Well, sometimes in life you just wake up one day and realize that you have been looking at things all wrong. I get so depressed about the things that are going wrong in my life that I forget about the things that are going right. For example: Lets say you have this wonderful apple orchard (I'm in Michigan people, just go with it) in your yard. It’s late summer and the fruit is practically falling off the trees. Yesterday I would have been annoyed about all the hard work and all the time I would have to spend picking them and the dollar value of the ones that fell to the ground would have occupied my mind till I grew bitter and gave up. Today however I choose to see the beautiful fruit, feel the sun on my face and the wind in my hair as I pick, smell the ones that have fallen to the ground and broken open to reveal their sweet fragrance.

I choose to feel blessed that I have an orchard rather than feeling bitter about the work.

Isn’t it amazing, the difference a day makes!

Some of you may be wondering why exactly did I start a new blog when I could have just overhauled the old one like I usually do? Well, honestly I wanted to get away from the url (fatgirlrunning) because for one thing, although I want to run, I am not currently running. Also I am trying to be more positive about myself so calling my blog fatgirlrunning just didn't feel right to me anymore. Finally there is the fact that although I want to spend time talking about my weight loss journey and health in general, I want to feel more free to just put my life on my blog. To speak my mind about any topic that tickles my fancy!

Later this week I will be moving all of my old posts over to this blog and next saturday I will be (un)permanently deleting fatgirlrunning a.k.a.getting fit and loving it. If you plan to continue to follow me be sure to update your readers and blogrolls.

Welcome to my Brand New Day!

Happy Training,
Love Jenn