"Mommy"

Being a mommy is hard work, on many different levels. Right now my kids are at pretty good ages and not too difficult most days. I mean yes I have to stop them from fighting with each other, make sure they get their homework done and make them clean their rooms, but it's pretty "easy" most days. What I am currently struggling with is just being on everyone else's schedule. Nick's job has been VERY busy lately. Plus he is in a Spanish class, and a few times a month he is on worship team (although he is taking a break from that), and then the occasional "other" meeting/practice has him away from home most evenings these days. So everything falls to me. So between homework, baths, dinner, dance lessons, soccer practice, Awana, school activies, and soccer games, I don't have much of a life. My job right now is just to take the kids to each of their activies. And even on nights when we don't have after school stuff (Monday and Thursday), it's still filled with homework, cleaning rooms, cooking dinner, and getting showers done. So there is not free time. It's just going from one thing to the next. And unless I am in the car or at an activity I rarely get out of the house. During the day it's laundry, and cleaning house, feeding Capri, and playing with Capri, grocery shopping, planning groceries/couponing etc.... Now let me stop here and say that I don't want to change what I am doing. I LOVE being a stay at home mom. I wouldn't want to go to work and put Capri in daycare. I love that I am home when the girls get home from school. I love that I get to take them to their activies and don't have to do all that on top of working full time. So I do understand that it could be worse. But it's still just really hard on my emotions sometims. I'm not Lindsay right now. I'm a wife, and a mother, and a cook, and a chauffer, and a maid, and a teacher. But I'm not Lindsay, and that's hard.

Sorry for my ramblings. Just had to get it out. :)

Weight loss commercials

I am finding weight loss commercials to be very funny these days. "Eat this, lost weight, don't eat this lose weight..." Special K cereal says eat 1 bowl for breakfast, and 1 for lunch and then a healthy dinner. Slimfast says drink one shake for breakfast, 1 for lunch, and eat a healthy dinner, and today I saw "eat one grain, 1 fruit, and a yoplait light for breakfast and lunch, and then eat a healthy dinner." The truth is you can eat ANYTHING you want for breakfast and lunch as long as it's around 250 calories, and then eat a dinner of around 500 calories, with 1 100 calorie snack, and you will lose weight. You can eat a donut, for breakfast, a snickers, for lunch, a granola bar for a snack, and a bowl of soup for dinner, and you will lose weight. Because the math behind weight loss is simple, burn off more than you eat. If you eat around 1000 calories everyday no mater what it is, you will probably lose some weight. But the problem I see is that most of American isn't fat because they don't know the right things to eat. So just saying "drink only a shake, and/or only a bowl of cereal" isn't helping. That works for a few days or weeks maybe, but it's not going to help them in the long wrong. Because even eating a snickers everyday would get old after awhile. I think weight loss is more mental than physical, and until we start to address those issues, I am not sure we are really helping anyone by telling them what to eat or what not to eat.

Half Marathon

I did it! I ran in my very first Half Marathon. I ran almost all of the 13.1 miles. I only walked during water breaks, and once on a road that was at an angle because it was hurting my ankles. Other than that I ran the whole thing. It was so much fun! I felt amazing all the way up to around mile 8, and then I hit a wall. But I kept going. It felt so great to see and cross that finish line. And 2 days later I feel perfect. Just a tiny bit sore, but no worse than when I do strength training. I am still in a bit of shock that I did it. It feels so nice to have reached a goal that I set for myself over a year ago. Here are a few pictures.

Nick too this picture around mile 4.

I stopped on the side of the race and asked a Disney worker to take this picture with my cell phone. :)

At the end with my medal.

Buckling down AGAIN!

With swimsuit season quickly approach in the sunshine state I am realizing more and more that I have a little extra weight or more importantly jiggling than I would like. So I am once again buckling down. I really think it's important to do from time to time. Sure it would be better if I just ate healthy and got regular exercise all the time, but as most of you know, that just doesn't happen. So I am buckling down again. I'm saying good bye to sugar and "white" foods and embrassing, lean proteins, veggies, and fruit. I will add back in healthy carbs after some time, but really it's best for me to just purge them completely for a bit so that I can detox from them and not crave them so much. This will not be the case on my long run days, I will eat higher level of healthy carbs on those days for the energy but for the most part it's lean meats, and veggies, with fruit as a "treat" each day. I know it's what best for me, and I see results every single time I do it, but it's still not "fun".

On the running side of things. I do my half marathon in 9 days. I am excited and a little nervous. I have come to learn that I don't really like distance running because of the time it takes so after my race I will go back down to running for an hour or less at a time. I also want to increase my strength training and add in biking just for variety. So give me a couple months, then bring on bathing suit season. :)

Running

On Saturday I set out to do my weekly long run. I have learned in the last few months that I HATE long runs. It's not so much the running, it's that I just get so bored. And to make matters even worse my Ipod wasn't charged. So I ran for 2 hours and 30 minutes with nothing but my own thoughts. But I did complete 12 miles, which thrills me. Actually I ran 11 miles, and ended up walking the last mile, but I'm still okay with that. I've got 3 more weeks before my half marathon. And I am just happy that I am going through with this experiance. I don't care anymore if I have to walk a small amount of the run (although my goal is to not stop), and I don't care how long it takes me (although my goal is to do it in under 3 hrs). I'm not a fast runner, I am still a little bit overweight and I just don't care that much anymore. I just want to do it to say that I CAN do it. I'm not breaking any records, and I am pretty sure this is the only one I will ever do, but it's still something that I can say I trained for and completed. After this I will go back to shorter runs, and I may add biking one a week just for some fun. But no matter what I do I'm just going to keep moving.

My battle with weight

I started this blog a long time ago to share pictures and stories of my girls with my friends and family, but then facebook got going and now I don't have a need to do that anymore. So I have this blog open, but haven't really decided what I wanted to do with it, if anything. I am not very good with words, I'm not all that interesting, and I don't really have anything profound to say. However I am dealing with my weight and so many people today are. Being healthy is important for me not only as a person, but as a mom to 3 little girls who I want to teach proper nutrition too. We are bombarded everyday with the "right" way to eat. Only eat organic, only buy locally grown food, become a vegan, eat low fat, stay away from carbs etc.... But what happens if you are a picky eater? Does that mean you can't still be healthy? What happens if your husband has a very high matabalism and needs to eat high levels of protein at each meal (my case?) What happens if you are packing lunch for 2 kids, and a husband, and following a "diet plan" and you are doing all of that on a budget? Do you use coupons.com to save, or follow e-mealz.com or just wing it? There are a million different plans programs, and books out there to tell us how to eat healthy in the right way.

So I've got all that bouncing around in my head as I try to decide what is best for my family. And it really comes down to the age old, eat less than you burn off. It's a mathmatecial thing, which for those of you who know me know I am horrible at math. ;) But I've learned in my getting healthy journey that it even goes beyond just eating less than I burn off. I can eat a cinnamon roll for breakfast (200 cal), and a candy bar for lunch (200 cal), and a small fast food burger for dinner (500 cal), and have rice cakes for a snack (130) and drink no calorie drinks throught out the day, and I've only reached 1030 calories for the day. I can burn that off by getting 30 minutes of exercise in and just moving throughout my day from point A to point B. But the problem with that is that I would be hungry or think I was hungry all day long. I would crave more sweets, and I would feel sluggish, and grouchy. Because even though I ate less than I burned off, I didn't eat well. And there is the key for me. It is simply a math thing, but it's also about feeding my body what it needs. The problem for me is that I AM a picky eater. I am not one of those people who has a wide variety of fruits and veggies that I just love. I try to like them, but I just don't. So somehow I have to figure out how to make what healthy food that I DO like to eat, work well for my body.

So my current goal right now is to lose about 15 more pounds, and maybe even more than that depending on how I am feeling. While running 20+ plus miles a week. I have a half marathon in about 3.5 weeks. After that I will drop my running down to at LEAST 10 miles a week, and add in some other kinds of exercise to keep it interesting, and to get me through the hot summer.

So this is what I am going to blog about. The ups and downs of my weight loss and eating healthy journey. Some days I may come on here and write about what I have learned and some days I may get on here and complain and feel sorry for myself. Because that's all part of the journey. There are good days, there are bad days, and everything in between. Read it if you want to, or don't if you don't want to. :) This is about me, and what I need to do to help me. If I can help someone along the way, great, if not than at least I have helped myself.

The ups and the downs

Since I am sharing some of my weight loss journey with you I thought I should share the not so great news right along with the great news. With Halloween, my daughters 8th birthday, soon Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. I need a new plan. In the past few weeks I have put on about 5lbs. That's not earth shattering or anything but for someone who has always struggled with my weight it is a red flag. It's just a reminder to me that I can't let my guard down. But at the same time I can't start into this Christmas season knowing that I will not eat any of those special once a year treats. So I thought I would share my plan to make it through the holidays.

For me the low carb thing seems to work the best. I have been unsucessful at other plans before. But the true of the matter is that I am addicted to carbs. They are my biggest weakness. So I found on things like Weight Watchers I would just eat all my points in "junk" because that's what I really wanted. But with low carb I really had to just say no to everything white/yellow and that did the trick for me. Now that I am done (for now) with the losing part I can add those back in on a small scale, but still avoid them when I can (ie don't keep them in the house). So my plan is that when I am home and cooking for myself and my family I will stick with a high protein, low carb (meaning only fruits and veggies, no breads, beans, or pasta....no matter what color it is) foods. Then at a holiday function or dinner I will allow myself protein as far as the food goes, and I will induldge in a treat. Notice I said a treat and not "all treats". With my running (I am aiming for at least 10 miles a week, with 1 long run a month). I should be able to keep things under control. That's going to be hard. That means when I bake something for the girls, I will remove it from my house ASAP. I won't make my treats days before I take is somewhere or I will want to eat it. I won't keep plates of it around the house. I will cook right before each holiday. If I am giving it as a gift I will make it the day before (or day of), giving it to that person.

So that's the plan. I don't want to come through this time of year with an extra 10lbs. I already want to lose another 10-15lbs once the holidays are over, if I add to that it will just be that much worse. So here is to a happy healthy Christmas season!