Last week went really well. As we get back into the swing of things, we have come to the realization that a 3-mile walk several times a week just might not work. That is true for a number of reasons after all...life happens. That said, it is much easier to squeeze in a 1.5 to 2 mile walk and that is still 30 mins of not sitting on the couch :) We even got to use our walking blinking lights (You may recall how excited we were about getting those).
Secondly, we have started doing a family thing on Saturdays. We have always tried to do family things, but they didn't always work out. That said, with Kara doing school, kids in after-school activities, etc...we start to feel like we don't hang out as much and need to get out and about. Groupon can be really good for this and even found ways to get out and move. First it was a corn maze, but more importantly last weekend was a family 5K. It was a 5K to help raise awareness and support for Autism. It was a run/walk, which makes it perfect for the family. We let the twins drift a little off the path and it was at a very nice little park in Greensboro. There wasn't a medal, but we did get shirts for the walk and for being part of the UNCG team. So that is a win.
Lastly, we wanted to try something different for dinner for Sunday. We decided to experiment with fish...that's healthy, right? It was my responsibility and so I bought some fresh Salmon and found a sweet salmon recipe, but I used sugar-free syrup :) Let me just say that I thought that it was delicious, Kara also ate her whole piece, but it was still fish. I will take that :)
Things are going well and we are slowly finding that sweet spot where it is a little bit of a challenge and a little bit of fun to be healthy (we had fallen out of that for a while)
As you know, we have started to pay a little more attention to what we are eating and doing. While we have managed to get things together a little bit...we have trouble with the dreadful weekend. Oh make no mistake, it is not really dreadful!!! However, that is why it is also a little more challenging when it comes to making those "healthy choices" that we are supposed to make.
For the last several weeks, I believe that our weekend would completely cancel out the good choices of the week. You know, it is your typical weekend stuff...maybe a few chips here, a little larger snack than normal there, a few adult beverages, a few more chips, cheese fries, a few more beverages, did I mention CHEESE FRIES!!! Oh how I love cheese fries, seasoned well and dipped in ranch and....oh...um...sorry about that, I sort of blanked out...
Anyhow, this weekend we did much better. We still had fun and still ate a few things that maybe we shouldn't have, but you have to do that sometimes and our sometimes come to the weekends (some people say find a cheat meal or a cheat day, that is about what we do). That said, we also walked a little more and made better choices than we have during the weekends for the last month. So today we are calling it a win. The next question is whether that allows us to get ahead on the weight loss a little.
Today on facebook I was reminded that a year ago, we made it to Gold's Fit for the first time. I have to say that I am still glad that we started it. It has been quite the experience and I believe that we will keep doing it. That said, I do not think we are quite where we want to be...and by quite where we want to be, I mean there is still some work to be done. OK, fine...I mean there is lots of work left ;)
Summer was a little hiccup, we both put on weight and didn't exercise as planned...Oops! Don't get me wrong, we had fun doing it...too much fun...haha. Our summers are a little crazy, but by August we started staying up late and playing Zelda. Next were the snacks and maybe a few adult beverages., even made it to the Biltmore finally...they have incredible ice cream and ... I think that you get the idea. I guess we will chalk it up as focusing on mental health.
So, we are now working on getting a balance of mental and physical health. We are back to regular trips to Gold's Gym (one reason this slowed down was that there are very few in the midwest) and even found a chance to go for a hike in the Smoky Mountains. We have also started walking although now it is a two-mile path. We decided that it may be more realistic in terms of timing and squeezing it in on a regular basis. Why is that becoming a challenge??? We have had a few changes...well probably more, but a few stand out. Mainly, Kara has started school to get a second Bachelors (and her teaching certificate) and we found out that she has severe arthritis in her knee. And as for me....nothing new...yeap, still pretty boring...lol
Kara going back to school has been great!!! I get to see her much more and we have started a regular routine that includes a fair amount of Subway....see healthy choices. That said, this also means lots of homework and class time. It took us a little while to even settle enough to understand what a schedule would look like, but I think we are getting there. Of course, Kara had a little getting used to, but let me just say that she looks just like the 18-year old I met in her first year of college :)
The arthritis was also a pretty hard hit!!! She has taken it really well, but over the summer her knee really started hurting. It has given her trouble for a long time, but not like this. So she finally went to the doctor. The doc was nice enough to give her a drawing and basically said the cartilage in her right knee is gone, but she is too young for a knee replacement. Well, I wasn't surprised at the young part, just look at her, but this also means that running is out and he was pretty clear that cross-fit is out too. When we told our trainer, he said, "Good news, you don't do Cross-Fit...you do Gold's Fit." His claim is that things can be changed and modified now that they know what the problem is. You will have to Stay Tuned to see how that goes.
So, it continues to be quite a trip...I will say this, whether we gained weight or not (and we did, but still), We have made several changes that have stayed with us and we know what has changed and what we need to get back to. I think it helps a lot that there are the two of us. We have started our usual pep talks on our walks...lol...yes we always say the same thing and yes we both know it, but it is great to have a sounding board, to hear it out loud, and to have someone agree and confirm that we can do it.
Wow, I can't believe that we haven't posted anything since March 7!!!! I don't really know where to begin...so maybe instead I will just say something and we can try again...
So, what happened? Life happened. I guess that like anything else, things can get challenging. We continue to go to Gold's Fit about 3 times a week (well that stopped this last week because of company and things, but usually) and we have still been staying pretty good with our eating. In fact, we had been experimenting with a few things the last time we were posting so a few things we pretty much know for sure. Well at least when it has come to us
1) Gold's Fit, which is like cross fit is a great way for us to start our day. It gives us well-rounded weight training and also adds in some cardio. We still do this at 5:30 in the morning and after class we come home have a protein shake and eat a few fried eggs and some toast. This routine is great to build general strength, but...it is not the best way to lose weight. Don't get me wrong, we lose weight, but not as fast as we had.
2) Cardio is an absolute must if you want to lose weight. In general, just doing Gold's Fit we were slowly losing weight (but you are also building muscle so maybe it's more lose than what shows up in the scale). However, this spring we found 3 weeks where we were able to get back to our walks...several days a week and each one is 5K. During these 3 weeks we lost about 5-6 lbs. Note this is about double what Gold's Fit was doing. Let me add. PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS AS THOUGH I AM SAYING GOLDS FIT IS BAD. Gold's Fit is great and we have loved it, but it is not a replacement for cardio. We feel that finding a balance of strength training and cardio is best. Well ok, that not just us...I think most people would say that...haha
3) Life happens. Things got really busy for us this Spring. When it happens you are not able to always find time to do all of the things that you want. So what worked for us...reminding ourselves that this is a long-term permanent change, not some "quick fix". So, yes, it may take longer than we planned, but if we keep doing what we are doing we will get there. So, we prioritized certain things that we stick to and certain things that we keep working to add. For example, 3 times a week we work out, during the week we watch what we eat. These we do almost always...what we look to add is cardio or heavy weight training. We get those in when we can, but sometimes you have to have a mental health day :)
So, in short, things are going along great!! Things got pretty hectic and probably won't stop for another month or two, but we are definitely not finished :)
Guess what we decided to get?? An Air Fryer...actually, it is called the Power AirFryer XL.
"What is it," you may ask? This thing is another type of cooker. In general, it uses super hot air to "fry" things and as a result, no (or not much) oil is needed. As it says on the box, when not cooking with as much oil, the number of calories can be reduced. This is important because the kids are starting to rebel against some of our choice meals. We are trying to become more creative and it looks like this might open the door for some other options.
Today we decided to make fries, and let me say...they tasted great!! And it was only our first try!! There is room for improvement. I decided to take pictures to document the process. As you might expect, we had to chop up potatoes. For our family of five, we cut up five potatoes (each was 110 calories)
After cutting them up, we needed to soak the potatoes for about 20 to 30 mins (this recipe isn't something that you do in a quick 10 mins). I am not quite sure what this does but the recipes that we looked up all suggested this be done.
After letting them soak, we took them out of the bowl and dried them off. Next, add a tablespoon of olive oil (119 calories total) and seasoning. In our case, we added some salt and pepper along with some seasoning salt (a staple for us) and then put in the AirFryer for 18 minutes set on 400 degrees.
If you are thinking that it looks like a big egg...that's what we think too. While it is cooking you are supposed to stop it every so often and shake things up. According to the manual, this does not change the cooking time at all because it heats it right back up once you start it again.
Here is a picture of what it looked like half way through
At this point, it was starting to look cooked. It cooked a little longer and this is what it looked like.
As I mentioned before, they tasted great, but this was only our first time. When we do it again, I think that we will cook the fries longer so that they are a little crispier. :) We figure our serving of fries (about one potato worth) had about 135 calories.
Things to note:
1) Using this was pretty easy although creating the food did take some time.
2) The taste of the fries was excellent!
3) This was our first try with this, but it may be true that a lot of the things that you would use this for could also be baked.
4) It may save you calories by not using oil, but potatoes (for example) still have calories so you have to keep and eye out for that.
5) It does mention that it can be used to cook a chicken, roast, baked goods, and a large number of other items :)
We will definitely try other recipes and report back how it goes. I hear the blooming onion is great.
As we have mentioned, we have been trying to add walking back into our busy schedule. It seems like there are at least one or two days that walking will only work at night. What do you think that means?? You guessed it...we got our walking lights!! :)
They aren't anything too fancy but they are just enough for us to make a contribution to the kaleidoscope of magical butterflies (aka night time walkers).
They are pretty cool but maybe not quite what we needed. Based on where we walk and the fact that the time changes in a week, we may have done OK with a cheap flashlight or something like that. That said, we do like our little lights ;)
I know that it is supposed to be "whatever works for you," but for us, it was more about when does exercising work. Of course, everyone is different. When we started walking it was more of a "when we can get it done" type of strategy. That was typically in the mornings, but not terribly early.
Then we decided to start going to a class (Yes, I am talking about Gold's Fit again). We needed a time that would always work. This meant that during the typical daytime hours was out. Kara and I have varying schedules and it was very unlikely that we could consistently get a day class to work. It also seemed like the evenings would work. Specifically, the kids have different schedules of needing to be picked up and dropped off places. It is also true that during the span of a day, I can come up with millions of excuses why I can't exercise that day and AT LEAST 10,000 of them are amazing reasons that cannot be ignored.
So, when works for us? You guessed it. Early morning....ugh. I never thought that we would be getting up at 5 am for a 5:30 am anything. The first week was rough! So, how do we do it? I tell people that I get out of bed at 5am and typically wake up between 5:45am and 6:00am. By then, I am already at the class and almost done ;) Well, it isn't quite like that, but maybe closer than you might think. Basically, the alarm goes off and no matter how we feel we get up. After all, we usually have to pee anyhow...yeap, that's right, drink water the night before also :) We also have our clothes out so we don't have to look for anything. Basically, minimize the effort needed to make it there. So, does it ever actually get easy, you may ask...maybe a little, but it is still early. That said, it does become a lot like muscle memory. You end up just doing it because it is a habit.
I guess at the end of the day...it is really finding a time that mimizes the excuses and reasons for not going, planning ahead, and following through. It does eventually become a habit and that is what has worked for us.
Wednesdays are always a tough day. Tuesdays tend to be long and in the evening we are running kids to and from things or working late. So, as usual, on Wednesday morning we woke up to go to Gold's Fit at 5:30am. It's funny, people ask me if it ever gets easy...so far...not yet, but it does feel good after we are done.
Anyhow...back to the main reason I am writing. This evening we were driving back from picking up a child from school. It was getting dark and we were driving down the road that we normally walk down for our walks. On the side of the road, we noticed something blinking. At first, I just assumed that I was hallucinating from the lack of sleep or hunger, but Kara saw it too. Then we saw more blinking! The lights were even in different colors! Before long I felt like we were watching a Disney light show or maybe a wonderful kaleidoscope of magical glowing butterflies (Yes, a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope)!
It turns out that it wasn't anything quite like that, but still as cool. They are running lights for shoe strings, shoes, and more. It was a running group and they all had these lights.
No, we have not seen these and we hate that it has taken so long for us to find this little gem. That said, you can bet that we will have to try a few of these out. At that point, we will be able to easily move between the world of the day walkers and the world of the night walkers :)
Another crazy weekend in the books. The weather was beautiful this wknd. We got in our 3 mile walks on Friday and Saturday. Trees are already blooming here so allergies were insane!! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and had the chance to get out and get some fresh air. Heard the best thing from my cousin today. Her and her husband have "Fat Ass Victories"....Bob and I are totally going to start sharing some of ours. Love it. If anyone has any they would like to share please do. We would also love any other advice or recommendations.
We had high hopes to go the gym on Saturday or Sunday and start lifting more and taking the kids on a hike Sunday but I caught a case of the Pink Eye somewhere so that sidelined all public plans for yesterday and today. Bob got in a quick 1.5 mile run with like an 8.5 minute mile or something crazy like that. I napped while he did that :)
It was recommended that we try UMP by Beverly and we did and all we can say is WOW. We got the cookies and cream and I think I could drink it in place of every meal (I'm not going to do that but I totally could). Highly recommend it.
We also got some new shoes this weekend. Bob got the Nike Revolution 3 and I got the Zoom Winflo 3. Mine feel like I am walking on a cloud! Probably should have started with a smaller walk to break them in because I ended up with blisters on the back of both heals which was a bummer but I still think they are fantastic. I am curious to see how they will do in our GoldsFit class since I had to miss today (although Bob came home and looked like he was dying so I am kind of glad I couldn't make it..lol).
Finished up a pretty solid week...well except for a few minor hiccups called Friday and Saturday. Kara has already posted that we are trying to have more protein in our diet and we walked 5 days of the week (we missed Tuesday and Friday). We will have to see how that plays out over the next week or so.
Today was a wonderful day. In fact, the high temperature may have been some where around 78 degrees. So, we started off the day with a lovely family walk. The kids absolutely loved it and by loved it I mean...did NOT want to go at all.
Here is our "family" selfie...Andrew is just "a little" behind and Alyssa is way ahead of us.
After our walk, we had time to relax and enjoy the nice weather and we decided to have a steak dinner. Our meal included steak, pineapple, salad, and a new recipe that we are trying with mashed cauliflower (It was OK, but probably won't try that one again). That said, I did want to share something about a handy dandy egg cooker that I got for Christmas. This story makes sense because we are having boiled eggs on our salad...haha
Long story short, For Christmas I asked for an egg cooker and Kara thought that I was crazy. Good news...I GOT IT!!! This thing is absolutely amazing and I use it all the time. It cooks 7 eggs at a time and it will soft boil, medium boil, or hard boil the eggs (It actually steams them). While I have not timed it, it takes about 7 to 10 mins and you set it up and just press a button so it takes almost no time or effort at all. I have included a picture of the one that I use
Even better, the eggs are SO EASY TO PEEL. I haven't had a single egg that is hard to peel. Now it could be the steamer or it could be the little hole that they tell you to poke in the shell, but it is great! A few other things, but I haven't tried them yet, the manual says that it will also poach 2 eggs or cook 3 eggs. Really, I love it for the boiled eggs. Just thought that I would share.
It wasn't pretty and it wasn't fast but we got our 3 miles done. I really need to start wearing my knee brace when we are out there so we can speed back up. The weather was beautiful when we were out walking...still in the mid 60s at 5 pm...come on Spring :) We really enjoy our time together on the walking path. It is like a mini date...it lets us unwind and talk about our day. We had crockpot chicken chili cooking so it was all ready when we got back from our adventure (recipe below). These days that start with the gym at 5:30 a.m. end up feeling like they go on and on forever. Throw in kids homework, a high school application, and a grade school book fair we needed to attend...I am ready for the couch and a skinny cow ice cream bar :)
Have a wonderful night
Kara
Crockpot Chicken Chili
2 cans of corn
2 cans of black beans
2 cans of rotel
2 1/3 less fat cream cheese
2 packets of Hidden Valley Ranch
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp onion powder
Few chicken breast
Cook on low for 6-8 or high 3-4.
Shred chicken with about an hr to go.
Makes about 12 servings- roughly 250 calories a serving.
The whole family loves this modified version of the Zucchini Bread my mom always made (not sure who she got the recipe from). Would love to hear any suggestions to make it even better. Have heard you can also substitute the sugar with applesauce but haven't tried that.
Preheat oven to 350
Mix
3 beaten eggs
1 cup applesauce (instead of oil)
3 tsp Vanilla
3 cups Shredded Zucchini
1 cup Splenda sugar blend (instead of 2 cups of sugar)
Blend in
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon
Pour into 2 loaf pans
Bake for 50-60 minutes
We cut each loaf into 14 pieces which makes each piece 83 calories each
*have also done mini muffins. It has yielded 93 muffins at 36 calories each. These take a lot less time to cook...like 12 minutes or so if I recall correctly*
Today was brutal for a couple reasons. First off, we probably shouldn't have had such a good time on Super Bowl Sunday. We definitely paid for all the food we ate and the drinks we drank. It was wonderful spending time with friends but 4:45 this morning came way to fast. Secondly, the workout this morning was just exhausting. When your body was already mad at you this was not the kind of workout you wanted to do. The workout was:
-Warm up stuff like a little jog, butt kickers and stuff like that.
-5 min jump rope warm up
-500 meter row warm up
-4 rounds of a 9 minute circuit of:
10 burpees
150 jump rope
350 meter row
150 jump rope
10 burpees
(If you finished in the 9 minute then you rested until the 9 min was up)
Needless to say...I didn't get much of a rest. I ended up modifying the burpees during round 3 and took out the pushup and dropped down to 100 jump ropes at the end of the 3rd round...I mean I've had 3 kids...I'm lucky my bladder was holding as well as it was but there are limits :) Bob did great and finished all of us but he still thinks he might be dying..lol.
Started doing some protein shakes today too because we were told we need more protein. Wish it tasted a little better. Did a 2 mile when Bob got home from work today. It was so nice to be outside in the Spring like weather. Ending the night with some quality ice time :)
So yesterday we had to do burpee box jumps at Golds Fit. I CAN NOT do box jumps...like just the thought freaks me out. One of the trainers was doing 30 in box jumps so I thought that I would be cute and climb the box which in turn gave one of my fellow gym folk a heart attack (I'm rather clumsy and I think he was afraid I'd fall off...lol). Needless to say, I bruised the heck out of my shin (the picture doesn't do it justice but you can see it). Moral of the story...skip the box all together :)
It has taken me a while to start the first post. I sort of felt like the first post should be a good start....but...well, we are already a year in to it. So maybe just a quick post to tell you how we got here. By The Way...I will not always proof read and so...well...there may be just a few typos ;)
January of 2016 was the point where we had finally had enough. We were on the same page! In the past one of us would decide to be healthy while the other one would, well...not! That just never seemed to work. After all, who could say no to a beer and pizza...as a midnight snack. Yeah you get the picture.
Now, in the past we had tried different things ranging from at home workout equipment (does anyone remember the Gazelle?
Yeah, we tried it! Elliptical Machines? You name it we tried it, of course they all ended up being fancy drying racks for clothes. We also made monthly donations to multiple gyms. Well they called it a membership...I think...We never really went so who knows what they called it. Well, I never went, Kara did :).
Anyhow, by this time we decided that we were so out of shape that we did not really need specific equipment, the simple THOUGHT of walking would raise our pulse, cause us to be short of breath and make us crave a beer. So that's what we did. WE WALKED.
Starting in January we really changed four things...
1) Eat Less:
No matter how you slice it (pun intended) we can eat a lot of calories and fast. We started tracking our calories. I know that this is a pain, but we did find MyFitnessPal as an App seemed to work really well. We decided to drop our calories down to about 1500 calories. Once we started paying attention to calories, I realized just HOW MANY CALORIES I would eat in a day. Probably 3000 a day, easily and that does not count the weekends. So, once we started cutting out our calories, I was grumpy (that is the nice term, we had other terms for grumpy that I won't put on here). That said, a friend of mine put it simply, you can EITHER not eat a snickers bar (which is good for the 30 seconds it takes to eat it) OR you can eat it and then run 2 miles. Do the math, if I was eating 3000 calories, I would need to exercise all day every day, just to maintain my current weight and I knew I couldn't do that.
2) Plan our meals:
Something that would ALWAYS get us in trouble was talking about what we were going to eat at 4pm. At that point you only have an hour or two to figure it out, GO to the grocery store, AND then fix it. Who in the world wants to do that after a full day of work? So, what would we do...eat out. Believe me, there are very very very few options where eating out is a good idea (and we didn't choose those). We started planning our meals 2 weeks out and we would stuck to it. That didn't really make our kids happy, but we were making many more healthy choices, which made number 1 (eat less) much easier.
3) Exercise:
We started walking. As I had mentioned earlier...we did not need to do much to get our heart rates up. So we would walk, at first it was about 2 miles and it took forever. Then we found a path that was 3.2 (yeap about a 5K). We starting walking it at least 3 times a week and Kara would usually walk 5 or 7 times a week. Now our little stat trackers would tell us that this would between 600 and 900 calories, but I don't know if I believed it AND we did not get to eat that many more calories because of the walk.
4) We did it together:
For us the walk time became a time to chat. It was one hour with no TV, kids, cell phones, or work. Just regular communication, old style. We knew from the past how important talking was, but this was at a whole new level because it was a regular thing and was also associated with something healthy. We would bond in the past, but it usually revolved around food or beer. This was something that was healthy and made us feel good about ourselves. Plus we were changing and growing youngerish together. Don't get me wrong, when we walking faster, we may not say a lot (because we would need to breath) but we were still there together.
I don't know if this is something that would work for everyone. These are not brand new ideas. We even took a class for 15 weeks about Eating Less Moving More and Losing Weight. That said, what we were doing was a just enough for us. In fact, the first month we each lost 10lbs. Talk about a motivator. The second month, again, we lost about 10lbs. By then clothes stop fitting and maybe we would even treat ourselves to a new shirt. After 2 months of that we started to do the math of where we would be by pool time. Between the seeing the results and sharing the trip with each other it just seemed to work.
So, here we are now...January 2017. Between the two of us we have lost about 150 pounds. The weight lost has slowed down (they say we are gaining muscle, but I'm not sure). Back in the fall, we started doing Gold's fit at Gold's Gym (it is their version of cross fit). We are sticking our healthier life style, but it isn't always easy. There are weeks were we feel like we are winning and weeks that maybe we don't. We like to try new things, continue exercising together, hike, and whatever seems to be a good idea (note that these are not always healthy). So, we have decided to share. We share what was fun, what wasn't and even how things are going (the ups and downs). Please feel free to join us!
Lastly, we wanted to try something different for dinner for Sunday. We decided to experiment with fish...that's healthy, right? It was my responsibility and so I bought some fresh Salmon and found a sweet salmon recipe, but I used sugar-free syrup :) Let me just say that I thought that it was delicious, Kara also ate her whole piece, but it was still fish. I will take that :)
