Thursday, June 30, 2011
Poll: Focused or Free Flowing?
Do you like to be focused and get down to business with minimal distractions including talking or do you like to use it as time to gab, make funny sounds along to the music and just free flow it?
Personally, I like it focused. I'm down there to do a job and I am VERY easily distracted and will mess up or go half assed if my mind wanders and then I get in a bad mood because I'm not able to focus on putting forth full effort. This doesn't mean I GET a focused environment but I enjoy having it when I can! ;-)
Don't forget to enter the green produce bag giveaway if you haven't already!
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011
As Promised...A Giveaway (Winner Announced)
So my original intent was that once I reached 100 followers via Google I would do a giveaway but seeing how slow that was going to go, I decided to make it 100 followers and subscribers. Well we hit that number this week! Here's a giveaway of my new favorite thing...Earth friendly produce bags.
How to enter
Leave a comment below and tell me what kind of produce would you bag up in these bad boys? You have until Friday, July 2 at 6pm EST. The winner will be announced Friday night so come on back then to see if you're going help Mother Earth by doing nothing more than hanging out here!
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Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Roasted Root Veggies
If you want to give it a try, click here for the printable recipe!
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Monday, June 27, 2011
Mmm...splinty
We'd hiked 3x last week with the occasional hills at a park close to our house so I felt pretty conditioned to the terrain. Well this park had a LOT more hills and it was apparently much harder on my body than I knew. We took our HRM's and I remember looking at one point when the pedometer said we were nearing 2.5 miles and being disappointed I was only at 500 calories. Now I don't know what nitwit charted that trail but it was NOT 2.5 miles, even with the wrong turn we took at their confusing fork in the road. I was pretty sure they were going to find our bodies if we kept wandering around more. I felt my hip flexors ready to raise the white flag. I was close to tears when we realize how off track we were but more importantly how much further we had to go. Not a happy girl. By the time we got back to the car, I'd burned 1900. Yep, everything I'd eaten for the day so you'd better bet I got the best DQ treat I've had in my life and it didn't even make a DENT in my restriction goal. (My recommended restriction for weight loss is 850 and even after a sundae and dinner I was at 2000!)
We collapsed on the couches and later (10pm) when we decided it was time to go down and do the strength workout we had planned, the pain shooting up the front of my left leg was horrific. Oh, hello shin splint. I could barely put weight on it. I took the stairs one at a time and did my first strength workout with free weights in 3 weeks due to my left thumb sprain. My left arm was considerably weaker. I was able to do the warm up with 10's and went right back to my 15's and had no pain in my thumb at all. I was very much relieved. I thought a good night's sleep is all I needed. I woke up this morning and the pain shot up my leg again. Awesome. So I've got an ice pack on my thumb and one on my leg. I should probably just soak in a tub of ice at the rate I'm going! So the plan is icing it and massage and hoping for the best for exercise tonight. I'll take it easy and if I have to do floor work tonight, that's what will be done. Injury sucks! Time to baby my bones and muscles!
Have an awesome Monday!
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Saturday, June 25, 2011
Scale Makes Nice-Film at 11! Weigh In
Now who knows which combo did it, the new exercises because of trying to be kind to my thumb, starting to eat 30g of protein within an hour of waking up instead of 2 hours later or tracking high cal days BEFORE they happen and trying to reign it in a little more than letting ourselves go gonzo. Probably a combo of the three. We knew there would come a day where we could eat EVERYTHING we wanted on high cal days and that's fine. Right now weight coming off means more than how many cupcakes I can eat on my free day. (Rest assured cupcakes were eaten so yes Virginia, there IS hope to do this in moderation with your favorite foods!) We hiked 3x this week and I have been trying to isolate my thumb and do no punching. People have been telling me how it's taken their thumb sprains over a year to heal. Well mama ain't got that long so beginning in July, I'll be adding strength training back in. Ice, massage and wrapping and being careful when exercising will be my friends. I refuse to let a nuisance injury derail me. Sorry-ah!
I'm in such a good mood, I'll pass along some free samples I found. No clue how long they're good for so get 'em whilst they're hot.
Splenda Essentials Sample
Free Soy Joy sample with coupon
(If you don't eat either of these products that's fine, don't feel compelled to tell me how artificial sweetner and soy are the devil when I was trying to spread some free love! ;-) )
Have a great weekend y'all!
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Friday, June 24, 2011
Just Keep Swimming
Thursday, June 23, 2011
I Can't Wait to Incorporate These!
FYI: This video starts automatically! Click pause if you're at work or mute the speakers. (Who's got your back?)
You can click through to the article here.
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Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Total Trainer Home Gym Review
When we bought our Total Trainer DLX-III Home Gym
I was 412 lbs. The Mr was able to use it because he was under the 400 lb weight limit. We bought 2 so that we could workout at the same time. When I got down to about 405, I decided to give it a go and see if it could hold me. I was able to do my first workout that included leg presses and that made me a happy girl. That was a little over 18 months (and 95 lbs) ago and we're still going strong. Upon first glance one might say it's just a Total GymI looked at a review someone did comparing the Total Gym to the Total Trainer and the Total Trainer got way better reviews and not only that, for the same weight limit, Total Gym was twice as much! I don't think so, especially since we were buying 2 of them. We do all kinds of great exercises for some sweet guns (kissing my bicep), strengthening our legs and working our backs and chest. We are both thrilled with the amount of space it takes up...very little when folded. It is solid for sure and I can't recommend it enough.
The other reason I had for writing this is my rollers have become a little pitted over time. They claimed they had a lifetime roller, rope and pulley replacement policy. Well, we just got the replacements for both machines completely free. They didn't even charge for shipping. That is awesome and I will always recommend them to anyone looking for a compact home gym. Customer service is so rare these days and knowing they back up their equipment is proof enough for us that we made the best decision in getting the Total Trainer DLX-III Home Gym
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Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Whole Wheat Lasagna
If you want the printable version of the recipe, click here.
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Monday, June 20, 2011
Hearing Inspiration
Mandy Moore- Extraordinary
A window blowing
I know I am another sparkle in the sky
I shine on copper
Still undiscovered
But you might see me in the corner of my eye
And now I'm ready
And now I'm ready
And now I'm ready to be extraordinary
I know I am another sparkle in the sky
I shine on copper
Still undiscovered
But you might see me in the corner of my eye
And now I'm ready
And now I'm ready
And now I'm ready to be extraordinary
This is the Day- The The
This is the day your life will surely change.
This is the day when things fall into place.
This is the day when things fall into place.
The Stairs- INXS
Do you lead or are you led
Are you sure that you don't care?
There are reasons here to give your life
And follow in your way
The passion lives to keep your faith
Though all are different, all are great
Climbing as we fall
We dare to hold on to our fate
And steal away our destiny
To catch ourselves
With quiet grace
Are you sure that you don't care?
There are reasons here to give your life
And follow in your way
The passion lives to keep your faith
Though all are different, all are great
Climbing as we fall
We dare to hold on to our fate
And steal away our destiny
To catch ourselves
With quiet grace
Celebrate- Rare Earth
I just want to celebrate another day of livin'
I just want to celebrate another day of life
I put my faith in the people
But the people let me down
So I turned the other way
And I carry on, anyhow
I just want to celebrate another day of life
I put my faith in the people
But the people let me down
So I turned the other way
And I carry on, anyhow
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Can I Get a Witness?- Weigh In
Isolating my thumb is proving to be a pain in the arm (and neck) with my sling but I'll do whatever it takes to heal it right now. Ice, massages and finding interesting new ways to open jars using one hand. This weekend I will be re-working our exercise plan for the rest of the month to include non-punching activitahs and given I burned 1165 calories just hiking at our local park on a non-sweltering day and 830 in 38 minutes of step aerobics, (cue Mary Tyler Moore music) "I might just make it after alllllll!"
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Friday, June 17, 2011
Changes for the worse?
Now, I've loved oatmeal all my life with brown sugar maple being my favorite and recently a blueberry oatmeal from Trader Joe's. For some reason, when I eat it lately it grosses me out like I'm being forced to eat it. I don't know if it was because I forgot about it one morning and ate it cold and it was disgusting or what the deal is. But I have to choke it down now. I know this isn't a good thing. I'm supplementing with vitamin laden cereals but this is just freaky!
Has this ever happened to you? If so, with what foods?
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Thursday, June 16, 2011
I Might Be the Last Person to Know This
I thought it was a load of ca-ca until I was cutting sweet potatoes the other night to make sweet potato fries and was about to cut off my digits when my plastic board was sliding around. I put the paper towel under there and voila...no movement and all fingers are happily tippy tapping to you now!
So remember that kiddies! Sliding cutting board...paper towel to the rescue!
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Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Homemade Rice Pilaf
If you'd like the printable version of this yummy rice pilaf, click here!
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Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Supplementus Rejectus
I've tried St. John's Wort back in the day when it first came out. I had a horrible reaction to that including a tremor which was sexy. (It actually locked up my dog's limbs when we tried to go holistic for her anxiety issues. I've never seen the poor thing so scared) I tried probiotic pills when they first became all the rage in an effort to even out the digestive system since I hate yogurt. I felt horrible on them and discontinued after a few days. I tried aloe vera pills for digestion but it wasn't until I did research on them AFTER I started taking them that I saw some scary stuff about taking it orally so I stopped that pretty quickly and informed a friend that I knew was taking it too. The latest was Fish Oil supplements which are not known to give many side effects except maybe some...errr..."greasy" stools. I didn't care about that. I started taking it and the whole time my system was the opposite of what they said it would be and I actually didn't lose weight those 2 weeks I was on it. When I went off of them, I lost weight. So I think I'm done with those.
Matter of fact, I think I'm done with supplements period. I saw on a doctor show that sea buckthorn is supposed to be awesome for many different things from aiding digestion to improving skin and I was so tempted to try it but I already know it'd be a waste of money for me.
What about you? Do/have you taken supplements and if so, have you ever had any adverse reactions to them?
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Monday, June 13, 2011
This is gonna be harder than I thought
But I need to think of the positives. I still saved 1000 calories over what we had last Saturday so that's good. I managed to get in my normal amount of water not my weekend total...so 110 oz of water. I actually got in a decent amount of fiber too...28 grams. The sodium was a little high but much lower than if we ate out. So all in all it was a success but I will definitely have to make sure we have something planned because being lazy is not going to be an option if we want to continue these without much distraction or temptation. I hope the scale is nice to me next week! :-)
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Saturday, June 11, 2011
Thrown a bone- Weigh In
Why I'm hopeful the numbers are going to change. This is our first lower cal high cal day. Confused? Instead of going out to eat and guessing at the numbers or using other restaurants that do provide nutritional info to gauge what we've eaten after we've eaten it, I'm making a favorite dish that might be a little more than we like to eat during the week but less than we eat on the weekend. So I'm making a whole wheat spinach lasagna for lunch and will go into dinner too. I've unthawed a half of a small baguette of Boudin sourdough bread that we ordered and roasted garlic (with no olive oil oil) so it's not adding butter to the bread but still adding flavor. If my calculations are correct, I should save 1600 calories over what we had last weekend which was more than I thought it was once I started adding stuff up.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Help me get to 100!
I'm trying to get to 100 and I'll even do a little giveaway for hitting the number.
So subscribe if you like my ramblings! Encourage others to subscribe if you think they might like my ramblings! I'll make it worth your while. :-)
Also, I just want to check. Is posting recipes a waste of time? I know there's not much you can really say about a healthier recipe that you haven't tried yet but wasn't sure if anyone really paid attention to them or not other than me! HA!
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
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Thursday, June 9, 2011
Spring Herb Vinaigrette Recipe
Click here to go to the printable version.
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Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Vanity Sizing...do you fall victim?
Here is the short list of what Dr. Oz's show found about vanity sizing yesterday. In the 1950's, a size 12 (what Marilyn Monroe wore according to them) was 26". In the 1970's, that went up 2" to a 28" waist. In the 1980's, that went up 5" more to 33" and today? Today a size 12 is typically 36". That is 10" more than your mom or grandma wore back in the day! So if you're going through your grandma's vintage wardrobe looking for the perfect Mad Men look and think you've scored paydirt because she was a 12 like you, you might be disappointed.
Think those numbers are sobering? Try these on for size. They got a size 12 from several different retailers and measured the waistlines. The Gap's 12 was 38", Ann Taylor's 12 was 36", H&M's 12 was 35" and Coldwater Creek's 12 was 33". A 5" differential depending on where you shop. No wonder women hate dressing rooms and run out crying!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Never thought I'd say this
I'm also starting some physical therapy exercises to help me maintain and build my strength in it. Just simple mobility exercises like extending the thumb to the side, then extending it toward the pinky and holding the position. Another is picking up objects like a marble or paper clip between the thumb and each finger and wrist supination as well. I need to do those a few times a day since the stupid urgent care doctor didn't bother to give me anything, I went on sports medicine doctor websites to find proper exercises for thumb sprains and even tutorials on how to wrap it better. I'd better be all healed up by the end of June. I just can't take the wait and I'm so ready to do this little circuit I had all in my head before vacation to really push myself. I know I can't rush it but I do need to make sure I'm doing everything I can to aid in healing and not icing is a chump move. So if you want to occasionally yell at me to ice, this is the one time I'm giving permission to jump on my booty for my own good! :-)
Hope everyone is having a great week so far!
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Monday, June 6, 2011
Is this 'plus sized?'
http://youtu.be/zdgdiXw9S-c
Sooo because she has like 1" of muffin top and bigger boobs she's considered plus sized? Seriously? If this is plus sized, I wanna be it!
Thoughts?
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Saturday, June 4, 2011
One More Week Weigh In
We don't start the no high cal day until next weekend because of a few events that don't time out right if we started this weekend. So we're going eat out but still try to watch it and not go gonzo so it's less damage. I'm actually looking forward to it. We acknowledge these days can't be done the way they used to so I think it's time to be more careful about them. If only I could get my sweet tooth pulled!
:-)
So if this pattern of non weight loss because of the pills goes on next week as well and the week of my cycle, that will pretty much kill the zipline dream for me next year. This of course assumes that my body doesn't go haywire when I switch back to the other pill I was doing well on as I adjust back to it. So not fair. I won't give up on the dream just yet but come the beginning of July depending on how it goes, it might get official dropped which will completely break my heart. Sigh.
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Friday, June 3, 2011
My first "harvest"
This year I planted several different kinds. Don’t ask me what they are, I have no idea. But they looked like they were asking to be harvested so I answered the call. There is something about harvesting anything you grow yourself. You feel kinda proud of yourself even if all you did was water it. I found it amusing how I was treating it like gold. You realize just what kind of cleaning measures go into your store or farmers market bought food. Little spiders and unidentifiable bugs you’ve never seen before that tried to set up shop must be washed away. Then spray it with veggie wash to get off the debris. Wash off each lettuce leaf and dry them to be stored. Funny how when you’re washing regular lettuce you don’t really care if a leaf goes astray and washes down the sink but you wouldn’t think of doing that with the ones you’ve grown. You work hard to get those little leaves. Even though you may only have enough for one normal sized salad or two puny salads, it tastes better than anything you’ve ever had even if by restaurant standards you might’ve not thought it was anything special.
Grow your own stuff. You know where it’s been, how clean it is and it’s the single biggest geeky gardener’s thrill you can get…even if you don’t consider yourself a gardener.
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Thursday, June 2, 2011
Oh HELLLL no!
But what about the skin of a 12 year puberty stricken child? Well, that has actually gotten slightly worse but I just discovered it may not be pill related at all! I saw this thing on that TV show The Doctors where using astringent on your face can actually dry your skin so bad that it causes your skin to signal more oil production thereby clogging your pores. They specifically mentioned those pads with astringent. What do I do right after a workout? Slather my forehead and face with an astringent pad that had so much alcohol in it, it actually stings. So I switched and got an alcohol free toner (which is what Dr. O suggested) and just started using that last night. So I will report back if my face clears up.
I know you don't care about my pill cycle and skin but that's what's consuming my world today! LOL
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Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Do something nice for you...just because
One of my favorite things ever is smelly flowers. My favorite smelly flowers are plumeria, tiare, roses, freesia and lilacs. The other day I got some freesia and stuck them in a mason jar mug and they made me smile
I walk by them and just inhale their heavenly aroma. There is nothing more dreamy than the scent of a beautiful flower and it is such a small thing but makes me so happy.
What do you get for yourself on occasion "just because?" If you usually don't, what would you get?
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