Treadmill hills

I've been trying to up the intensity of my treadmill workouts lately. Most days I have less than an hour to get in a good exhausting workout and since I've been using my treadmill to work out for so long, my body's getting used to things, to say the least. But I still love it. My husband stuck a TV right in front of the treadmill so I can DVR my favorite shows and watch them as I run! No boredom! (Speaking of shows, Lost starts tonight. Woohoo!)

I'm an amateur runner and worker-outer and I'm just doing my best on very little knowledge. But I read somewhere that it's good to run at your usual pace then add in several minutes of sprinting or hills, then recover at your normal pace (instead of walking for recovery). So I've been doing this. My normal pace is 6 mph at 0% or 1% incline, then I'll kick it up to 7 mph or a 3% incline for 5 min to change things up. Yesterday I was doing that and upon finishing my 5 minutes I pushed the 6 mph button on my treadmill to slow back down and recover. I kept running and running and couldn't figure out why it wasn't getting any easier. I pushed 6 mph again--maybe I hadn't pushed hard enough. Still I was killing myself. Why? Suddenly I realized I was at a 3% incline the whole time! Duh! Boy, do I respect all you out there who run hills outdoors on a regular basis.

Weight Loss Throwdown: Weigh-in Time

I just can't hold it in any longer. I lost two pounds this week! I had a pretty straight-forward week without excessive temptation and it paid off! I can tell my clothes fit better and I feel good. So I'm off to a decent start, girls. Can't wait to see what you all have lost this week!

Starting weight: 151.4

Current weight: 149.4

Left to go for 7%: 8.6 lbs.

I have about four pounds to go to be within the healthy BMI range for my height and I look forward to that milestone.

I was up til 1:00 last night with a 2-year-old with what appeared to be nightmares. I missed my workout window, but there's not much time to rest today! I'm off!

We Thank Thee, O God, For a Prophet

The passing of President Hinckley came as a surprise last night. He was seeming to tire, and we sensed his time wouldn't be much longer on this earth. This was not something we were used to, however, as his energy and enthusiasm always far exceeded a man of his years. He was a chosen prophet and he was blessed to be able to do the things this day and time demanded of him. A worldwide church needed a friend of the media and the public, a dynamic globetrotter, and a leader by example. Gordon B. Hinckley was all of these and more and he did it with humor, wit, and humility.

I will miss him, and I thank the Lord for sending that man at this time. I do thank thee, O God, for a prophet.

Blessings

I've felt very blessed lately.

Today was Trevor's day off (he gets alternating Fridays off) so after Simon got on the bus the we grabbed Eli and the three of us took off. We checked out Tai Pan Trading and I saw a ton of things I loved. After that, I really wanted to eat lunch out, but we both knew we shouldn't for several reasons. So we stopped by our regular hangout, Deseret Industries. I go to DI to look for things to sell on ebay, but also to shop. I think it's fun! On the way home we stopped by our neighborhood produce store and picked up a bunch of fruit and vegetables. So for lunch I had a big plate of veggies and dip. It tasted so good, and Eli helped me eat, although a little while later I found a half-chewed carrot on the floor of the front room. He's not quite ready for raw carrots, but he sure wants to be!

Later, Trevor and I went on a date (a rare occurrence)! A friend of his invited us to a Quick Wits show in Salt Lake, so Trevor picked up his mom from the care center while I made dinner. After dinner (more fresh veggies with fish sticks and mashed potatoes, which my kids love) we took off to the show and I laughed like crazy. It was a great show, but it's held in a big warehouse with pretty bad acoustics, so they turn off the loud heater so people can hear the show. I froze. Somehow my body has lost it's ability to stay warm! I had to thaw out before I could sit down to blog about it. Next time I'll bring a blanket or two.

But getting to my point, tonight was the first night in almost 2 weeks that we didn't have family scripture study. We've known that our family needed to study the scriptures together, but there was always something that stopped us. But since we've started up again things have been very good in our house! We have our share of trials, and our children are not exempt from their own, but since we started studying the scriptures together I've noticed that their problems are not as much of a problem anymore! These are the blessings that we've been promised by the prophets. Our family is living proof and I'm grateful for it. We plan to keep it up!

COLD

That's the best word to describe the weather today. My neighbor said she looked at her thermometer outside at 7 am this morning and it was 3 (yes, three) degrees. I made the mistake of going outside to take Simon to the bus stop and I felt like my ears were going to freeze off. Now, I'm not trying to complain, and I really don't mind the snow and the cold most of the time. And although I'm not a native Utahan, I've even gotten used to shoveling and scraping and bundling up. I like going inside into the warmth after a time in the cold--it makes me appreciate my home more :)

But today! I'm sitting here with three layers and a blanket at my computer. This I'll never get used to!

Sort of makes a person look forward to spring...

Weight Loss Throwdown

With some trepidation, I've accepted my sister-in-law Kari Ann's challenge to a weight-loss throwdown that includes her and my two sisters. She explains it all on her blog, so I won't repeat everything.

I say I've accepted with trepidation because I feel like I'm just a regular gal trying to feel good about my body for the first time in a long time. Don't get me wrong, the motivation is well-received and appreciated, and I do plan to win, but I have to admit that I don't have any grand designs for this except to lose weight and if I lose the $20 theatre bucks (I think I'll make it $25 to match what everyone else is putting in) then that's a small price to pay. Many have paid much more than that :). If I win, all the better!

Today I got on the scale and weighed 151.4. I haven't been that low since my 8-year-old son was a baby. And even then it was only for a few months.

My plan to win this challenge is what I've been doing since the beginning of the year (I've lost 6 lbs. since then!): I will eat about 1400 calories a day, keeping track of it online. I will run on my treadmill 30-60 min a day and may try to work in some circuit training or Pilates.

My stats:

7% of body weight: 10.6 lbs.

Starting weight: 151.4
Goal for throwdown: 140.8

So it's on, girls. Watch out!

Breakfast anyone?

Since my last post, I've been thinking about breakfast. It's a tough meal for me, first because I'm hungry, as you know from my last post, but also because I can't eat just anything.

So I'm asking: What do you eat for breakfast? I'm asking because I feel like I may need to revamp my menu for My Favorite Meal of the Day. I usually eat cold cereal, as I've said. Lately I've had 2 servings of Corn Chex with a cup of skim milk and a banana sliced on top. And one packet of Equal. The only time I EVER sweeten my cereal with sugar (or a substitute) is when I put a banana in it. Don't know why. I grew up putting sugar in my non-sugar cereal (we never had anything sugary) but when I left home I stopped doing it. Who knows. I just couldn't stop sugaring the bananas. But I digress.

I have felt like cereal is a good choice because I don't love just drinking plain milk and it's a good way to get milk in my diet. Also it's easy and tasty. The drawbacks are that to eat enough to really satisfy my hunger I eat too many calories. But I also wonder what WOULD satisfy my hunger without eating too many calories? I know oatmeal doesn't do it. I love oatmeal and could eat buckets full (okay, I know that's an exaggeration, but I seems like I could) to satisfy my hunger.

So what to do you all eat for breakfast? What could I eat that would satisfy a ravenous breakfast lover without blowing my calories?

Also, I've never really thought about the Glycemic Index. Is this something I should be considering when making food choices?

By the way, it's interesting how my post for the last few days all have to do with food! Hmm...

Ravenous

One of the many differences between my husband and me is our hunger and cravings when trying to lose weight. He and I are working together, encouraging and helping each other.

I'm hungriest in the morning and he's hungriest in the evening. Most nights he's craving something to eat, while nights for me seem to be easy. I might get a little hungry, but I don't really have a problem ignoring it. But for me, I wake up ravenous! I feel like I could eat all my daily calories just for breakfast! So I usually eat about 450-500 calories and still want more. And to make matters worse, I have a weakness for cold cereal and I adore breakfast food. Silly, I know, but I could eat cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Trevor could skip breakfast if he was running late for work without batting an eye.

I can think of at least one reason why this may be the case. One is that I work out in the morning while he does in the afternoon. Another is that he doesn't think about eating while he's at work, but I'm around food all day at home and eat more during the day. But then again, this could be attributed to our cravings and hunger. So which came first, the chicken or the egg? I don't know; I just want to eat them!

Lazy Dinner Success

I was gone all day yesterday and didn't plan dinner, and when I don't plan, it doesn't always turn out great because it's just thrown together. Besides that, I only had a couple hundred calories left (see below) for my daily allotment and I didn't want to make a huge dinner and not be able to eat it. Is that terrible?

Well, I had stopped by Great Harvest Bread because it was on the way home from my MIL's rest home, and grabbed a hunk of bread for Simon to eat while we drove--we weren't going to get home in time for him to eat much before he had to be at the bus stop to go to Kindergarten. I also picked up two loaves of delicious, diet-busting bread. I was able to resist eating too much (that doesn't mean I didn't eat any--see above), but I knew I wanted to use it quickly because I didn't know how long my will-power would hold out. (I'm a carb lover.) I thought about having a breakfast dinner with toast and eggs, but at the suggestion of a breakfast dinner, Parker requested waffles. Then Trevor suggested a childhood frequency: poor man's pancakes (toast with butter & syrup on it). Then I thought, why not just throw the bread in the waffle iron and have "poor man's waffles?" That sounded good to Parker, and when it came out it looked like checkerboard toast. He buttered and syruped it and inhaled it, saying how good it was (even though the toasted parts were VERY crunchy). Autumn and Simon wanted some too, and they each had two. So my poor man's waffles with our breakfast dinner were a success. We tried to come up with a snappy name for them and this is what we thought up: Toastifulls, Breffles, or Waffle Toast. Unfortunately, I couldn't try them, but they sure smelled good! And the kids kept saying, "Mom, you need to put this on your blog!" So here I am blogging about my lazy dinner success. I'm not sure this is something to be proud of, but at least the kids were happy!

Celebrity hair, non-celebrity face

Well, here you go... I think all of mine look terrible! Autumn's looks cute, though, doesn't it? She did that herself! She loves doing stuff like that, such a girly girl.

I don't know, there's just something for me about looking at my face over and over again in a pictue that's hard to get used to.

One Semester of Spanish Love Song

My husband emailed me this video this morning and I thought it was hilarious. You all probably saw it ages ago, but this was my first time and I couldn't stop laughing! Those of you that understand just a little bit of Spanish (or even if you don't) will find it funny, too.

Zero, zilch, nada

I got on the scale this morning. I was a good girl and waited a whole week to weigh myself, but I kept waking up last night thinking about it. I feel like I've slimmed down a little bit, so I was so impatient to see what the Omnipotent Scale had to say. I could hardly sleep, and kept thinking about it so at around 3:30 am I just had to weigh myself. (Man, that is sick! I must be so obsessed!) Guess what? Yep--I had lost NOTHING! My weight was exactly the same as it was a week ago when I weighed last. I felt like a contestant on The Biggest Loser who gets on the scale and sees a big goose egg there. I was bewildered and astonished and LET DOWN! I just needed to see something!

But I won't quit. Oh, and I'll never wait a week to get on the scale again. No way. That's too much pressure! And hopefully I'll have good news for y'all soon...

Women's Conference

Yesterday was our Stake Women's Conference and Barbara Barrington Jones was the speaker. She's been a motivational speaker for 25 or so years and also was a professional ballerina and trained girls for beauty pageants like Miss America. The conference went from 10 am to 3 pm with lunch included then there was an evening conference where husbands were invited. Sounds like a long day, doesn't it? But Sister Jones is so funny and engaging that those 5 hours during the day went fast and didn't feel like an eternity.

There are some things that I learned that I want to change in my life. She talked about how we as women are under Satan's subtle attacks. We have been given gifts as women, such as multi-tasking. But we start doing too much, and then we might not have time to pray or read scriptures. She talked about how in war, one of the first things to do is to jam the enemy's lines of communications. Satan is trying to do just that, by jamming our lines of communication with heaven. She talked about needing to simplify our lives and used an acronym for the word BUSY:

• Bent
• Under
• Satan's
• Yoke

She also talked about needing to find the humor in our lives and how that can be the gateway to love instead of criticism. Just that kind of thing happened to me the other day. Autumn left the house with hair that looked like she had just woken up and stains on her sweatshirt. You can't tell a 10-year-old what to wear or how to do her hair (at least not MY 10-year-old). So after I saw what she looked like I criticized her. I should NOT have done this and knew it after I said it. Later she told me she had tried to look as nice as she could and had just thrown on the sweatshirt because I told everyone to wear one. I should have just laughed about it (in my head) and chalked it up to pre-teenagehood. I should have just kept my mouth shut!

There are 88 scriptures that tell us to have joy and 73 that tell us to rejoice. Life should not just be endured, but we should find the humor in unpleasant situtations and make the most of it. We should be able to laugh at ourselves.

Okay, I'm not trying to preach, but to share what I learned. And of course I've heard all of this before, but it was good to hear it again, especially now that I have children that need humor and love and not criticism. I find myself being much too negative and critical of myself and my family. I'm going to try to change that. And I'm not going to let Satan win!

Torture

I've been focused and on track this week with my diet and exercise and feel like I'm doing pretty well. Case in point: Trevor made pizza for dinner on Thursday night, which I love. I made spinach soup (pureed onions, chicken bouillion, water, potatoes, zucchini, spinach). I ate about a cup of the soup (it didn't taste too bad for water and vegetables) and HALF a piece of pizza. I took a whole piece but halfway through I knew I could only eat half of it. It was good, but I couldn't afford the calories. Boo hoo.

So I'm only going to weigh myself once a week. This is different for me, because I usually weigh myself once a day--correction: I weigh myself once when I wake up and once after I exercise (I like to see the false water weight loss from sweating). So this once a week thing is like torture! What if what I'm doing isn't working and I weigh in on Monday and I haven't lost anything? My expectations are so high that I'm afraid I'll be disappointed if I don't lose enough! But I can't lower my expectations, either! I've got to have hope so I can keep this up. So how can I have hope without my expectations being too high?

Perhaps I shouldn't worry too much about this until I actually weigh myself on Monday. I may be worrying for nothing...or maybe not.

Euro Treasures Antiques

Gary, a friend of my husband's (Gary, who's Gary?) told him about this new antiques warehouse in downtown Salt Lake. Apparently it's the world's largest collection of antiques ever sold, and it's all in a huge, cold warehouse on 600 S. There are some pictures on this website: http://www.eurotreasures.net/. So we found the entrance, tucked away on the south side of the building (you can't park on the south side) and let ourselves in. We stepped inside an unheated building (at least it felt that way) surrounded by rows of towering furniture aligned in what seemed like a maze. We made our way through the narrow aisles enthralled by the furniture, some of it beautiful, and others in need of a little (or a lot) of TLC. There is SO MUCH to see there--a little (or a lot) of everything! I was almost afraid we'd lose our children, so I made sure they stayed nearby, but at one point the 5 and 7 year olds wandered off. My husband found them quickly, but I think Simon was done in. That was a scary place for a little one! Later that night, after he had already gone to bed, he came downstairs and told us that he hadn't wanted to go to that place! So obviously he was still thinking about the dark, seemingly skyscraping furniture he saw all over. Trevor and I plan to go back, but sans children next time.

Not to change the subject, but my family and I love popcorn and movies! So I'm entering the contest sponsored by weightwatchen.com (http://weightwatchen.com/) and Orville Redenbacher's (http://orville.com/) to win free popcorn and Netflix movies for a year! Yeeha!

my, how time flies

Yesterday Trevor and I dragged our kids to too many stores, including Tai Pan Trading, Ikea and a huge antique store called Euro Treasures Antiques (I'll have to talk about this warehouse store later--it actually gave Simon nightmares). So we stopped at Krispy Kreme to let them do something they wanted. Trevor took this picture with his phone, remembering a picture he had taken 2 years ago when Eli was only a few months old (that's him in my arms on the far right side of the picture). I think it's great because you can see how much they've all grown, and you can't miss the wonder of a cool donut-making machine and hundreds of donuts being fried and glazed! The first picture was taken in December 2005. The second picture was taken last night. Notice that Parker is wearing the same coat in 2005 that Simon had on last night.

And I'll admit that yes, I had a donut. Who can resist a fresh, hot Krispy Kreme donut when it's offered to you for free? Not I! And it tasted sooo good! But for the record, I'm down 3 pounds since January 1. Yay!

good times

Parker was baptized today! What a happy day. After having to wait for Trevor's white pants to dry in the dryer, getting there late (making 3 other families wait for us), forgetting a change of underwear, changing the venue for the get-together afterwards and having to scramble to get our home ready, it was a very nice time. The best part is that Parker's baptism was a wonderful spiritual experience that he will always remember and I'm very proud of him for his descision.

Thank you to all of you that came to support us! It was awesome to see you all and wish everyone could have been there.

All in all, it was a great day.

new year, new attitude

This is it, folks. Yes, I'm about to start blogging about weight loss. I've had about 25 pounds to lose for over a year and it just won't come off. I trained for and ran a marathon last year and did I lose any? NO! I started really watching what I eat in September and lost 5 pounds, but then gained it all back during November and December. So now I'm right back where I was. I run 4-5 times a week (but I know exercise alone doesn't do it for me).

So what it comes down to is that I need some accountability. That's where the blog comes in. If I make my goal public, I'll be embarrassed if I don't achieve it. Right?