Life's Whirlwind Adventures

I have this great new planner that I bought at Michaels, I had one last year and started using it then but now it's taken over my organizing life.  It's great and I love it! It's helped me plan out my financial habits, my gym habits and all the activities in my life.  So this is where I was at the end of last year.  There wasn't as much movement as I had wanted I definitely didn't stick to my healthy eating as much as I could have, but there were no serious back slides and I did have some movement. In December I changed my weight loss goal, I have a big goal, but each month I didn't make that goal, it became discouraging even though I had made it a portion of the way there.  So right before Christmas I wanted to lose 6-7 pounds I gave myself 4 weeks to do that and I did it.  Even through Christmas I have kept that weight off, so my jeans still love me. I reset my goals in January deciding I'd like to lose 2 pounds per week for a grand total of 8 pounds i...

So Red Deer had a new gym open on Thursday and I joined.  I honestly joined back in March and have been impatiently waiting for it to open and now it is open and I am so happy. I went to the Grand Opening on Thursday night.  The place is huge, it's the largest facility in western Canada for Goodlife .  I have now been there every day since it's opened, I am concerned I am turning into a gym rat!! There is so much to do, so many classes to take and so many machines to work out on. My favourite class is Body Pump, I have done a class like this before when I lived in Saskatoon and I am feeling exactly like I did back then a day later.  Sore, and sore and strong.  I don't like doing weight training that is simply me doing three sets of 15 for different muscle areas that gets boring. I love doing weight training in class settings, I'm more focused and because there are other people around I push myself harder.  There are definitely some muscles I have not wo...

 In trying to stay active and healthy with exercise I made it my goal to be active to some degree every day for 30 days. I have a workout plan that I am following that is a full body Bikini workout and some yoga that I am doing as well.  But some days you need to rest your muscles to prevent injury so I need other things to do!! Enter my beautiful and active children!! One day when I was really dreading doing any kind of workout Leigham wanted to go for a bike ride. Usually he goes with his dad as I put Teddy to bed, but this night Teddy wanted Dad so I got to go on the Bike Ride!! We rode around our neighbourhood and headed to the Exercise park, which is one of Leigham's favourite parks to go to.  I was able to get a 30 minute bike ride in as well as 15 minutes of circuits on the equipment on the park.  It was a moderate workout, but for me that's all I need sometimes. Just something so I am not being lazy, and as I do these little workouts more and more it's...

I love Pinterest and if you check out my Pinterest account you will notice two things. I am not always on Pinterest but I got in waves and pin pin pin then nothing for months.  But I do have a lot of exercise routines that I use when I am working out at home. Here are the current ones I am using at home: 1. Biking around my neighbourhood and too work. It is just over 5 kilometers to my school.  On the way there it's a slight incline then a lot of hills down into a final flat stretch.  The way home we bike up out of the river valley.. it's killer on the legs, but we've never done it before and we made it all the way without stopping and walking the bikes so I am going to call that a win 2. 12 Yoga poses to get a good stretch: I found this on pinterest and it really has no instructions so I am just going through the poses holding them for 5 deep slow breaths then repeating the sequence another time up to three times.  It's a great stretching routine and I really ...

There are so many diets out there, like as many diets as there are people I would almost hazard to guess.  So how do you know which one you should follow?  How do you decide? I am not here to tell you what you should do and that this diet is better than another diet.  I am only going to explain why I chose a macronutrient diet and where you can find more information if you'd like. Now I have tried many diets, low calorie, portion control from Dr Phil (this was very successful for me ten years ago), paleo (that didn't last long at all in my house), South Beach, Atkins (not really I love Carbs), and most recently I've been doing the clean eating with Arbonne ( and this one fits nicely with macronutrients).  All had some degrees of success but none were long term options.  None really taught me how to make the changes with food that I needed to make.  And it was my relationship with food, my boredom snacking activities that I had to change. So I worked o...

Yes I just made my weight loss journey a comparison to breaking down a mountain because somedays it feels like I am trying to move a mountain in doing this and seeing very little results. I am so result driven that I have to remind myself (often) that this is a journey, it won't happen over night.  It's part of my logic also to only weighing and measuring myself every two weeks.  It can be very discouraging if I were to do those every week and so very little results. For the past two weeks I have been working the big muscle groups Abs and legs with some arm work.  I was doing so well then I pulled a muscle in my back and had to slow down.  Let's look back at where I was in the beginning. Total Inches 388.25 Total pounds 220. Bicep curls 10lbs 1 set of 15 reps after two weeks 10lbs 3 sets of 15 reps Tricep Extensions 5 lbs 1 set of 15 reps after two weeks   10 lbs 3 sets of 15 Shoulder raises 5 lbs 1 set of 15 reps after two weeks   10 lbs...

So I set my goals you can see something about them here. But here's the written down version of what I am trying to do. I am trying to spend some time focused on myself and on the things that I love about life.  I love running and exercising, not for weight loss (happy side effect) but for how I feel afterwards, that feeling of accomplishment and strength.  I love eating healthy food, food that not only fills and sustains you but food that also helps your body work in optimum capacity but that also tastes great!! I love when I find recipes that not only taste good but are in fact good for you!! I love writing and spending time in my imaginary worlds building characters and the world so that people may also come to enjoy them as well. I also like to focus on my job now, my job that is a dream job for me!! So let's start with writing. I vow to spend 60 minutes a day writing, thirty on my blogs and thirty on my novels. I need to get my second novel done and uploaded to Wat...

I never played organized sports growing up.  Aside from a few school teams when I was in middle school I never played any sports.  I guess they were out there but we lived in a small town and there weren't many options.  You could play hockey, ringette or figure skating in the winter and ball in the summer.  And that was it! I mean I barely recognized that other sports existed until I moved to the bigger city.  But by then I was not interested in being sporty, I was interested in boys..... So when I got to university I started dating this guy who introduced me to soccer, a sport I had always admired from the sidelines.  When I first started going to the all girls school a few girls were on this city soccer team and I so wanted to play but I really had no idea about it, so when I got the opportunity to play for fun I was pumped!! And I loved it! I loved the running the fast pace movement on the field and the camaraderie that exist on the field. Then I mo...

So I may have over done it yesterday.... I was so sore today and I am sure it will be worse tomorrow, but I made it through the day. And I kept trying to talk myself out of everything.... no run at lunch legs too sore... no walk after school have to get ready for swimming.... oh I already climbed into bed so no yoga tonight..... But then this other voice came into play, it was small but it was ferocious!!! "Get your butt out of bed, put on some workout clothes and just do Day three of yoga!!" The louder, excuse making voice kept making it's excuses, but the small voice it got louder and louder and finally I got out bed put on the yoga routine and just did it. It was very Horton Hears a Who-esque.... but you know what?? I feel so much better now that I did that workout, not more energetic but more relaxed, more centred. I love how I feel after yoga, like I've just had the most extensive workout but the most wonderful release of all those negative things. That...

It's going to take some work, but I think I can, I know I can do this!! I woke up today and I meditated, I woke up today meditated and did YOGA!!! Whooohooo!!!! I am really loving Yoga with Adrienne  its a nice relaxing way to start my yoga practice and get my butt in gear. I then worked all day but knew I had a soccer game I had to go to that evening.  It was up on the North end of town and really not too far from my house so I decided to be extra healthy and bike there. Now I used to love biking, I would bike everywhere as a kid.  It was great! And then I had kids and I am terrified of biking with a baby seat on the back and I've never had a bike trailer so for many years we did not bike.  About four years ago my husband bought me a bike for Mother's day, it's a fun cruiser bike and I love it!! I rode it all of four times, and I have not ridden in almost 3 years. Things you forget when you haven't ridden a bike in FOREVER...... those muscles in the insid...

Oh man holding to this commitment is going to harder than I thought, mostly because it is going to be tough breaking my unmotivating habits.  Television, I am talking to you!! But I'm doing it now, and yes Chicago Fire Is playing on the background, so this five minute post may take longer than the five minutes because the excitement of the show is drawing my attention. So this morning I woke up with only the thought that I had to go into work to get my lessons planned for the next week.  See I'm teaching again and teachers work on weekends.  I try to do it as little and I frequently as possible but it's something that has to happen.   My wonderful husband got up with the kids and had breakfast ready when I rolled out of bed. He can be such a sweetheart sometimes, most of the time.  So after a breakfast of elk sausage and farm eggs I packed up my bag and headed to school. I got right to work at school, Faith Hill Greatest Hits playing on my iPhone.  I worked...

*Disclaimer * I'm not being paid for this review, but if someone at Fitbit would like me to try other products I'd be most willing* So on the road to a healthy lifestyle, I've cultivated  few tools along the way to help me monitor my progress.  It's one thing to use a scale (which I frankly HATE) and use that as your bench mark but it really doesn't show you everything you need to know and it doesn't keep you accountable.  I have found my biggest success with weight loss was being active and being on my feet for long periods of time during the day and walking.  I wish I'd worn a pedometer back when I was waitressing, I must have walked miles and miles back then.  I've also found that when I am tracking what I eat I have more success and when I use body measurements as well.  I actually find body measurements to be more telling of how far I've come when compared with the scale. I've used different Apps on my phone, Fitness pal and Lose It, bot...

For this Friday Five Link up with Mar , Cynthia and Courtney  we are discussing fitness snapshots, I never take pictures when I'm working out but I do have snapshots of my different levels of fitness and they tell my journey to becoming healthy and happy. Fitness Snapshots.... hmmm well since I've never really taken pictures of me working out I think I'll just take you on a blast from the past chronicling my yoyo weight adventure. I am not a petit frame girl, so growing up when Kate Moss was the "It" girl sort of sucked. I didn't have that shape and I had friends that did so I was totally envious.  What teen girl isn't envious of girls who get to be like the "It" cover girl of the day?  I seriously wish I was a fat as when I first thought I was fat back in High School, because obviously, three kids later, I didn't know what fat was hahaha.  I've got an hour glass figure, with great "birthing" hips, yup a doctor has...

If you haven't read my first blog about drinking water, well this will be news to you, I HATE water, if you have read that blog, well it's old news! But I have stuck to my conviction to drink three litres of water a day.  I think I've had one day where I did not reach the three litre minimum but one day in 2 weeks that's not bad and I didn't let it stop me from continuing on. After one week of drinking 3 litres of water a day I've started infusing my water with lime juice from fresh limes and lemons.  I'm going to try some other fruits as well, to see what it's like, and maybe that will help me drink even more water. Here's some news, there is a bottle of Pepsi in my fridge, it's been there since Monday when hubby got home from camping and I haven't opened it, nor have I even been tempted. Ok I was tempted once but I filled up my water bottle and drank that instead!! The history behind this big revelation..... If there was a a pepsi...

Water, bleh, I'm not a huge fan of drinking water, I love swimming, boating, even dancing in the rain (sometimes), but drinking water, fine if I have to. That is literally my thoughts and feelings on drinking water, but I do understand it's important, it's just so boring. While I was pregnant I was quite diligent about drinking a lot of water everyday, even though my trips to the washroom increased exponentially with each drop of water I ingested.  But I did feel great, no headaches, no bone aches (back and neck) no headaches and my skin felt great, I didn't feel like I had any dry skin anywhere, and that was going through the dead of winter in Alberta.  I drank a lot of water because I did, and I would drink water throughout the night, which really increased my water intake. Anyways, since Prince T was born my water intake has dropped off.  To the point where I am sure there have been days when I am lucky to have taken in 2 glasses of water.  I've had headac...