Round 2

I started round 2 of the 3-day military diet today.  I have been able to keep off the 4 pounds I lost the first round (yay!), even though I'm not quite sure how because I had cookies, cake, ice cream, lots of stuff I shouldn't have, but hey, it still stayed off.  So, not so hungry this time around which is great.  Drinking lots of water and staying busy definitely help!  I'll let you know how I do.

Chair Cardio Videos

Hi Ladies,

So I did one of the chair cardio videos and it was actually pretty good.  I was actually sweating.  They are no impact so it's not a problem with my foot.  So, my goal for next week is to do two of these videos every day Monday through Saturday.  Who wants to join me?

And the Winner Is...

4 pounds!  I lost 4 pounds in 3 days.  Yay!  Now not to turn psychotic and gain it all back!  Wish me luck!  I am going to break down and actually keep a food journal.  We'll see how that goes.

War is Heck!

Hello Ladies,
Well, I decided it was time to take control and quit making excuses.  I'm doing this all to myself, so it's time to say "No more!!"  On Wednesday I started the 3-Day Military Diet.  Yes, I saw it on Pinterest.  I also looked at some other blogs where people did try it.  The food was all something I would eat and easy to get and prepare.  It's actually super simple to follow.  Here's what I ate on Wed:

Breakfast- 1/2 pink grapefruit, 1 slice whole wheat toast, 2 tbs peanut butter
Lunch - 1/2 cup tuna on 1 slice whole wheat toast
Dinner - 3 ounces turkey, 1 cup green beans, 1/2 banana, 1 small apple, and 1 cup Breyer's vanilla ice cream

I weighed myself Thursday morning and lost 1-1/2 pounds!  Yay!  It was not too bad getting through the day.  Was a little hungry waiting for dinner, but not bad.  There is NO snacking.  I exercised for 1/2 hour on the balance ball doing boxing (since I am still in the boot).

Here's what I ate on Thursday:

Breakfast- 1 egg fried in Pam and put on 1 slice whole wheat toast and 1/2 banana
Lunch - 1 cup cottage cheese, 1 hard-boiled egg, and 5 saltine crackers
Dinner - 2 all beef hot dogs, 1 cup broccoli, 1/2 cup carrots, 1/2 banana, and 1/2 cup vanilla ice cream

I weighed myself Friday morning and have lost a total of 3 pounds!  I have to admit I was hungry all day.  Lunch was boring and not very tasty.  By mid-afternoon I was so exhausted I had to take a nap (but I figured it kept me from eating).  At 9:00 PM I cheated and ate one chocolate chip cookie.  I exercised for 1/2 hour like the day before.

So far today (Friday), here's what I have eaten:

Breakfast - 5 saltine crackers, 1 slice cheddar cheese, and 1 small apple
Lunch-1 hard-boiled egg and 1 slice of toast (I sliced the egg onto the toast)
Dinner - 1/2 cup tuna, 1/2 cup cottage cheese, 1 cup broccoli, and 1 cup vanilla ice cram

It was supposed to be 1 cup tuna, but who can eat that much dry tuna?  Yuck, so I substituted 1/2 cup with cottage cheese (similar in nutritional makeup).  I also added the broccoli because I was STARVING!  Tough day, have hunger headache.  I also cheated around 3:00 PM and had 1 chocolate chip cookie (Dang Covel for making a batch on Thursday while I was trying this diet).  I also ate about 6 baby carrots at lunch.  So I have cheated, but not too bad.  I can be sooo much worse :)  I was really tired all day, but made myself stay awake.  Keeping busy is the best antidote for this diet I think.  I found some videos online for chair cardio exercises which were actually pretty good so I did 1/2 hour of those (see my Fit Inside and Out Board on Pinterest).

Also, I've drunk at least 10 glasses of water every day during these three days (anything to try to keep my stomach full with something!).  I pee all night, which maybe why I'm so tired as well as the lack of calories.  This is between 850 and 1100 calories per day. 

I will weigh myself in the morning and see what happens.  The idea of this diet is to do it for 3 days, take off 4, and then do it again.  We'll see if the weight stays off.  I may try it again with a few modifications.  I think adding more vegetables would be a good thing.  I hope this will kickstart my metabolism and I need to make sure to exercise every day, even if it's only for 1/2 hour.  I'm thrilled to have lost 3 pounds so far because I haven't been able to do that for a long time.  I'll post what my final weight loss is tomorrow.

Good to Remember...

Lost My Mind, Then Found It...Briefly

Ok, Mel and Deb, I'm baaaack!!  Finally figured out my user name and password so I can join in the fun.  Deb, love the February posts.  Such good ideas.  My goal for today was to figure out my user name and password and so...voila!!  mission accomplished.  I am good for the day!  Our lesson in R.S. today was about the Atonement and how we need to remember the Savior is there to help us achieve what we need to achieve and to make up the difference when we've done all we can do.  The youth were taught a parable along these lines to illustrate...

A woman was walking along the road when she suddenly fell in a deep pit.  It was so deep she could not get out.  She waited and waited until finally someone came by and put a ladder down in the pit so she could climb out.  She couldn't do it all by herself and would not have ever been able to get out of the pit by herself.  Thus, it is like that for us.  When we sin, we fall into a pit that without the Atonement of our Savior it would be impossible to repent for.  However, not only does he put the ladder in the pit for us to climb out, he climbs down the ladder and HELPS US UP the ladder. 

We are asked to do so many things as LDS women.  The list is staggering and multi-layered:  tithing, service, callings, raising families, Word of Wisdom, scripture study, prayers, attending church, fast offerings, temple attendance, loving your neighbor, and on and on.  You get the drift.  It is impossible for us to do all  these things to perfection.  Heavenly Father and Jesus know this, that is why they gave us the Atonement.  After we have done all we can do, the Atonment steps in and does the rest for us.  I think it is a beautiful lesson and the good news of the Gospel, one that is so easily forgotten as we struggle to go about our daily living of JUST SURVIVING!!

So, with that in mind, my goal this week (taking a page from Deb's book of ideas) is to pray for myself.  This is something I almost never, ever do.  You pray for everyone else, right?  I need to pray for the motivation to do what I need to do to get healthy, for my foot to heal correctly, for energy to do even a modicum of exercise, and peace that the efforts I make are pleasing unto Him.  Believe me, this is hard for me.  I will make an admission right now...I've never been great with prayer.  I talk to God more in my thoughts throughout the day than actually on my knees in prayer.  Okay, that's out now...don't judge :)  I am very slow at coming to the Lord for help when I'm overwhelmed, but have always felt Him there.  I need to ASK for guidance and help instead of just kind of expecting it to show up.  Do you know what I mean?

Life is overwhelming and in so many ways totally SUCKS!!   The LAST thing I want to do is exercise and eat right.  I deserve that cookie, I deserve that ice cream, right?  Well, all the deserving is going to slowly kill me off.  I deserve better than that.  So, prayer, real prayer, this week, then next week we'll see.  Baby steps, right Deb?

Love you gals!  We can make things better for ourselves, our families, those we come in contact with.  Praying for you too!! 

New Week - New Goal

Okay, last week went great!  My goal was to exercise for 5 minutes Monday - Friday and I did it!  There were a couple days that I didn't want to do it, but I just told myself, "It's only for 5 MINUTES, JUST DO IT!!"  And then I did it.

I've been pondering what goal to do next this whole past week and have had a hard time deciding.  I've changed my mind every other day about what is the most important thing to work on.  It's hard because my list of "self improvements" is just sooo long (:

 But I ultimately decided I would work on getting my sleep schedule in order.  The ultimate goal is to get up at 5 am and go to bed between 9 & 10 pm every night, every day of the week.  It's such a hard one because I love having quiet time to veg at night, but  my days go so much better when I am up early (especially with getting homeschooling done) and I feel like I get so much more accomplished.  I also really need to work on always getting a full 8 hours every night.  I probably wouldn't be so desperate for that quiet time at night if I weren't so grumpy and tired during the day.

So my baby steps towards this goal, are to make sure every night this week I am  in bed by midnight and up at 8 am.  That seems easy enough.  Then I will slowly work the goal up 15 minutes at a time each week.

Since this will be week four and I now have 4 things that I'm working on, I'm going to make the baby steps to my other goals even smaller, so that it doesn't feel like too much.  I'll...

 1) keep listening to my audio thing at night

2) I've been drinking 3 cups of water a day.  I'm now just going to fill my water bottle to the top which is just under 4 cups of water.

3) Exercise 6 minutes a day.  Originally I was going to add more than a minute, but decided to keep it small because the sleeping goal is going to be a hard one for me.  I have such a hard time making myself go to bed at night.


While I work on this new goal I'm going to read an article every day around lunch time about the benefits of  getting a good nights sleep.  Just trying to motivate myself and remember why it's important.  My reward each morning for getting up at 8 is going to be a nice glass of pulpy orange juice in a special fancy glass that I someone just gave to me (:  Also I'm going to find some motivation quotes about getting up early and make it my alarm clock on my phone, so that I wake up to good reasons why I should get out of bed.

One thing the Zen Habits guy talks about on his blog is having simple rewards for accomplishing your goals, and triggers (a trigger is the thing you do right before your goal that reminds you to do it.)

For instance, my trigger for drinking my water each day was that I would get it out of the fridge and start drinking it with my breakfast.  The reward for drinking all my water was that I could then have my can of soda (:  Now the trigger for drinking my water is to get it when I exercise.

My trigger for exercise is to do it first thing when I get out of bed in the morning (after the bathroom and prayers of course).  My reward for exercising is I am not allowed to check fb until I exercise first.

So now my schedule will go like this :  Up at 8.  Change and enjoy PULPY OJ (:  Exercise 6 minutes and get water out to start drinking.  In bed at midnight (and listen to audio book).

That's it.  Are you still doing baby steps Mel?  Or have you decided a different course of action?  I Would love to hear what you are up to.

PS - Tonight I got totally ticked off at Ian, because he was complaining that it takes me 10 minutes to say what could be said in one sentence.  He tells me that I wander off topic, take too long to get to my point, and do too much unnecessary explaining.  Yeah, I was so mad, I haven't talked to him for a couple hours now.

I was only going to get on tonight and write 3 sentences covering what goals I did last week and what goals I plan to do next week.  Instead I wrote out another novel.  I'm beginning to think I have a problem.  Maybe I should give the guy a break for having to listen to my rambling all the time and start talking to him again...

The Tortoise and the Hare

So this past week my kids brought me a handful of books to read at bed time, and in the stack was the well known fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare."  As I was reading it I thought, man this really applies to what I'm trying to do right now.  To be honest, I've always known the morale of the story, but I've never caught on to how I could apply it to my life.  I was excited that it actually meant something to me this time around when I was reading it.

Here is a little excerpt from the story -
                 
'One day the tortoise was going slowly down the road when the hare zoomed along beside him.  When the hare saw the tortoise, he stopped and ran circles around him, laughing as hard as he could.
                   
"Oh, brother, are you ever slow," whooped the hare.  "I could get from here to China and back before you'd moved six feet!"
                     "I
"I'm not so slow," said the tortoise.  For you see, he knew the hare, and he also knew that the hare could never stick to anything for more than a minute or two.'
                   
First I thought about how I am so the rabbit in this fable.  I never stick to anything for very long.  I make huge grand efforts that usually only last a day or two before I'm exhausted or I give up.  If I'm really lucky my grand efforts may last a week or two or maybe even a month or two, but lately it seems I can't get past the first couple of days.

Here's the last part of the fable -

'Off dashed the hare, leaving the tortoise in a cloud of dust.  But the hare had not gone too far when he felt a little tired.  (Maybe because he was exhausted from trying to do too much at one time?)

"I'll take a nap for a few minute,' he said to himself.  "That tortoise will take hours to get to the lake."  And he fell asleep.  (Sometimes we go too fast because little efforts feel like it'll take too long to accomplish our goal, when we want "it" done NOW!)

Meanwhile, the tortoise plodded along slowly but surely.  Soon, he passed the hare sleeping by the side of the road.  And the tortoise kept right on going.  (the tortoise didn't tire out, because he was taking "baby steps")

As the sun began to sink lower in the sky, the hare woke up.  He rubbed his eyes, and then he remembered the race.  Off he ran as fast as he could go.  But he had slept far too long.  When he got to the lake, the tortoise was sitting there waiting for him.  (Frankly, I think it's impressive the Hare made it to the finish line at all, because I probably would have given up by then.  My grand efforts don't always get me as far as they did him)

"What took you so long?" asked the tortoise, chuckling.  The hare was out of breath, and couldn't answer.  So, as you can see, slow and steady is the way to win the race.'


At one point this week, I had one of those moments when I looked in the mirror, got a little depressed and thought, man I need to do something drastic and get my act together.  Then I remembered the fable and thought, "slow and steady wins the race."  Somehow over the past 6ish years I started letting bad habits take over, it seemed like it was over night, but maybe it wasn't.  Who knows.  Bad habits are so much easier to live by than enforcing good habits.

I also had a point this week when I thought, what if the baby steps theory doesn't work?  Or what if I develop a bunch of good habits and then after a year or two lose them all again, and once more, I'll have to start all over?  I'm hoping that won't happen, because I'm at a point right now that I really hate, so hopefully I'll remember what I don't want to go back to.  But "baby steps" and "slow and steady" is what's got to work this time right?  I'm pretty sure my grand efforts aren't getting me where I need to be, so it's time to be patient and do a little at a time.


So two weeks ago I made the goal to listen to my hypnosis thing every night at bed time.  I've actually stuck to it for two weeks now, and it's been easy because I haven't been focusing on twenty other things along with it.  Last week I added the goal of drinking two cups of water a day, and I don't let myself drink any soda until it's done.  Soda is my "reward" if you will, for drinking my water.  Wonder what my reward will be when I eventually give up drinking soda?  Hmmm...

Next week I'm going to 1)  Keep listening to my hypnosis every night  2) drink  3 cups of water every day, instead of two  and 3) I'm going to exercise for five minutes Monday - Friday, first thing when I wake up.

I plan on just picking out 5 different exercises I can do with either my weights, ball, or body weight (ie. lunges) and do each exercise for one minute.  The old me would think this is ridiculous and not even worth the effort, but it will be 25 more minutes of exercise than I did last week, and the point is I'm starting out slow and steady so that I can develop the habit.  If I don't feel like doing it one day all I have to tell myself is, "it's only 5 minutes, how hard is that?"  Also hopefully by the time I work up to my goal of 45-60 minutes, five days a week, it won't be so painful for my body.

These past two weeks I have felt a huge sense of accomplishment that I have stuck to something for two whole weeks.  Sure they were super easy goals, but still, I did it!  And hopefully by adding on just a little at a time it will always be easy and never hard or tiring.


C.S. Lewis said, " What saves a man, is to take a step; then another step."   That is my favorite quote these past couple of weeks.  I keep repeating it to myself when I wonder if these little efforts will work.  Notice he didn't say, what saves a man is to take one GIANT leap.