Sugar overload

I hate to admit it, but that pan of rice krispie treats was just soooo tempting. I had been doing so well that I thought for sure I could make them with the kids and not eat any of them....WRONG. I'm sure I at MOST of them....grrr!

The good news is, that if I ever had a question of how much eating lots of sugar effects me the next day, now I know for sure! It was sooo hard to get up this morning. I kept falling back to sleep on the couch. Colby grabbed the box of rice krispie cereal off the counter, brought it in the living room, practically in front of my face, and dumped out a good portion of it. The only reason I knew is because Joel told me. Don't you think I should have heard at least some of this??? Like I said, wiped out!

Hopefully I have learned my lesson and will stay away from the sugar!

And the Scale says.....

around 182 lbs!!! I was telling my mom the other day that I needed to get a digital scale because it is really hard to tell exactly what number it is pointing at, but it was definitely almost to the 180 and way below the 185.....wahooo! I can almost fly!

"I think you've lost weight,

I can see your figure better" Said my husband to me today. It felt so good! I have been doing my diet and exercise for just over a week now, and I love that I am starting to see results already. Besides actually seeing results, I feel them too. I really do feel less sluggish and much more energized! It is MUCH easier to get up in the morning too. I feel like my sleep is better. Plus, as I mentioned in my last post I feel my core muscles getting stronger too.

Today was a great day! The kids and I made bird seed cookies to hang on the tree and we walked to downtown Elma and ran errands and really just accomplished a lot! My trip to Timberland Bank was useless, but it was my furthest location, so I am glad I went anyway because I logged more miles. We stopped by the dentist, another bank, and the grocery store. There is a pretty good size hill on the way home from the grocery store and I was amazed how well I did pushing the triple stroller up it! I even ran a couple blocks, while pushing the triple stroller with all three kids in it!!!

Things are really going great! Stay tuned for more updates!

If at first you don't succeed,

Try, try again! So, I think I am back on the wagon! I had a couple of weak moments, but I think even still that I had way less of a calorie intake then on a normal pre-diet day....so that is good. Today I only walked 6 blocks and they were pretty slow. I also organized the garage and priced most of the garage sale items so I was moving around a lot. I think I might go to the gym or do a workout dvd after the kids go to bed. They are up kind of late tonight since Jeremy and I were working outside. Good thing it started to rain, or my poor kids would still be outside with no dinner!

The last two times I've done my palates dvd I've felt way stronger in my stomache muscles, so that is very encouraging. Plus, I don't think that I could have passed the wall test last week, but I'm pretty sure I can now! For those of you who don't know, the wall test is when you walk straight upto a wall and see if your breasts or your stomache touches first. Who knew there was such a test? Not me! At least not until last week.

So that's it for today. Thanks for all the love and support!

Sunday showers

Church was good today. I think my object lesson really struck a cord with the kids. I had a teacher come up and try and break a piece of extra strong jean thread in half, then after he was successful I had him hold two pieces of thread and try and break those in half. The kids thought it was funny to watch him struggle. He did manage to break two threads, but could not break three pieces of thread together. I likened this to prayer and how praying together as a family will make us stronger and closer together. When we pray by ourselves, we are like the single thread and the more we pray, individually or as a family, we get stronger, just like having two and three threads together. Then Satan has less and less power over us.

In other news, I've been totally behind on my cleaning and laundry. UGH! I decided to just try and do a little, but once I started it was so addicting I just kept going and going. Now I know I really shouldn't do this on Sunday, but I needed to take advantage of the fact that I actually felt like cleaning and had the time and energy to do so. Since I've started the Cambridge I feel like I have more and more energy, which is such a good feeling!

I tackled Colby's room and even found some more things to go into my Garage sale. Dejunking and Decluttering feels SO AMAZINGLY GOOD! Then I put up a new shower curtain in my bathroom and decided to scrub my shower so that the new shower curtain wouldn't be doomed from the start! My poor bathroom gets so neglected.

I had to put in some serious elbow grease and I tried to remember to tighten my stomach muscles while I was doing it. I really did work up a pretty good sweat and felt my muscles working hard. Next I scrubbed the toilet, wiped up the floor, cleaned the mirror and dejunked and wiped down the counter and two sinks. My Colby came in near the end of my bathroom cleaning spree, well actually he came to my bedroom door crying and I finally took pity on him and let him in. He started getting into too much trouble so I stuck him in the bath, which he of course needed anyway. Then Joel came in and was happy to take a bath too! I don't know why it feels like so much work to scrub them both up and wash their hair, maybe because I am so out of shape, or the fact that you are half bent over the whole time. Anyhow, I felt like I got a workout in.

I also did a couple loads of laundry and could feel my muscles work as I bent and twisted and walked really fast from the bedroom to the laundry room so the big pile of clothes in my arms wouldn't fall all over the floor! =)

Burn fat burn!

A day at the beach

Yesterday Jeremy and the boys and I took a drive out to Pacific Beach, Moclips, and Quinault. Jeremy often delivers up there for work and loves to share all of his knew found knowledge of the area with us. It was not too windy and cold when we got to the beach, so we let the kids run around and jump in the sand dunes and walk to the water. Chalk up a little bit of exercise for me!

Colby loves to chase after Joel

They love to wrestle with each other

Next we drove to see some very old trees that Jeremy thought were very impressive because they were so big around and he wanted to share them with us. On the way there we passed a sign that read Quinault Big Cedar. We decided to park and take the hike up to see this big cedar tree. We had no idea how far up it was or how steep or what the tree was like. We've never taken the boys hiking, so we thought we would give it a shot. Colby had been sleeping in the car, but luckily I had my handy fleece pouche from Kangaroo Korner in the back, and I thought I would just carry him. As we went along, we could see steep steps and we ran into a group who were on their way back down. They said it was about a ten minute hike and would be very hard if I carried Colby all the way. I decided to carry him for a little while up some of the steps. Soon I started to get winded and he had woken up enough to walk, so we let him climb the big stairs with us. And just in case anyone is wondering, Jeremy did ask if I was OK about every couple feet and offered to carry him instead. I felt well looked after! We made it to the top and saw a very HUGE cedar tree that had been hollowed out and you could actually go inside of it. It was pretty cool. We took some pictures and then hiked back down. More exercise for me! Bonus points for carrying Colby up hill part way!!

We didn't think to bring the camera up with us,
so the pictures of us at the tree are on Jeremy's
phone. We took this picture of the sign after we got
back down to the bottom.

On the way to the beach we had seen a sign that said "Largest tree next left" I asked Jeremy if it was a sign for an actual tree and he said "yes" and that he had wanted to see it but never had the chance since he was always at work. When we got down from the big cedar tree we decided to drive over and take a look at the World's Largest Spruce Tree. The sign said that the trail was .3 miles long. We decided to walk it because I told Jeremy that it wasn't that far. It was starting to get dark, so again, I carried Colby all the way there so that we could get there faster. This was just a nice little trail and was flat with no climbing and no hills. This time we brought the camera. Yeah, more exercise for me, just over half mile round trip!

This spruce tree is almost 59' around!

Daddy and his boys sitting on the Spruce tree

I'm so glad that we decided to take a drive! We had a really nice family outing and that felt really good! I hadn't planned on all the added exercise, but I'm so glad we had the opportunity to spend the evening in God's BEAUTIFUL world. Jeremy said, "Isn't this cool. We can do all these things and we are only a little over an hour from home!"

P.S. For dinner I had a grilled chicken salad from McDonalds with a water. And on the way home we had bought some bite sized candy bars. I picked them because they were 100 calories each and so I decided that I would eat just one and then stop. Normally I would eat like 3. YIKES! 300 Calories, who knew? Anyhow. I ate it slowly, so I could savor the taste. I wanted more, but I didn't give in. Go me!

daily quadruples? And Potato Soup

So as I said in my last post, in the morning I did a 10 minute dance workout and a 20 minute palates workout, then a little later in the morning I walked just over one mile to the library pushing the triple stroller! And yes, all three kids were in it. We did great making it to the library in 22 minutes and working up a good sweat. The return trip was slightly slower as Joel decided that he would walk, even still, we made it home in 25 minutes!!! Not Bad! Later in the day Joel and I walked back into town to the variety store, probably just under one mile away. It was nice not to push the stroller this time, as we left Colby at home with Dad. Part of the way Joel ran and I power walked and I could really feel the difference between power walking and walking pretty fast with the stroller. I really need to set aside time to go power walking by myself or with a friend!

The morning started out great as far as dieting goes. Near the end of the day I fell of the wagon, but just a little. Really, I thought about not saying anything, but I am after all being honest with myself and whoever else reads this.

No Potato soup for me yesterday, and no migraine either!

Get up and get movin'

It is almost 8 am on day three of my journey. So far I have made lunch for Jeremy, put Colby back to sleep, eaten a handful of snow peas, had my Cambridge, have drank several glasses of water and did a 10 min dance video and a 20min palates video. I feel great! It was fairly easy to get up again this morning and food has not been a temptation thus far. Interesting side note, when I eat baby carrots it is easy to stop at just one or two but whenever I eat peas, I find it is much harder to stop. I'm not really worried about overeating on the peas or anything because one bag has 2 servings and totals 70 calories, so its no big deal if I eat the whole bag. I just thought it was interesting.

I am happy to report that last night I finally did make it to the grocery store. With the exception of adding in a few somewhat unplanned/ somewhat pre contemplated (does that make sense?) fruits and veggies, I stuck to my initial list of things to get. Not one treat in my basket, not even for the house! We have been getting WAY too many treats, and I am fully aware of this. Its just that until now it has been hard not to cave in.

While I am talking about food and dieting, I wanted to give a big hug and round of applause to everyone that diets and tries to lose weight while still being around food ALL day! Whether it be making breakfast, lunch and dinner for your kids, doing the grocery shopping or having lunch meetings. It really does take a lot of discipline to eat only what your body needs and can digest at once.

This morning I leave you with a thought that I saw on the Nutri-grain bar box, "One good decision can lead to another"

In the beginning, did I starve?

Today ends the second full day of sole sourcing on the Cambridge Diet. Surprisingly I did really well! I didn't 100% sole source but it was close. I would have thought that I would have felt more hungry and craved food. It was actually the opposite. I found out that I really didn't crave anything in particular and when I would think about food I would grab a handful of nuts or one baby carrot and a glass of water....that was it, I felt satisfied! The times that I actually did add in extra food, I made a very conscious decision to do so and I was able to stop myself after the "allotted" amount was gone. It felt sooooo good!

By the end of the first day I discovered that I tend to eat things not because I am actually hungry but because they are there and sound good. In reality it probably isn't what my body is craving anyway and so I end up eating more and can't stop because it just tastes so good. And then I feel disgusting for eating so much and having so little self control! Not such a great feeling. I could have consumed tons of calories that first day, and most of them would have been entering my body in "automatic mode." But I didn't, I did great!

Near the end of the first day I realized that I needed to go to the grocery store and I was pretty excited about it. First off, I love going to the grocery store so I can have some alone time, and second, I could taste a sweet treat in my mouth already.....It hit me like a ton of bricks, my mind has become conditioned to think "treat" as soon as I think "go to the store." Suddenly I didn't feel quite so excited. The more I thought about this phenomenon I knew that it was true! I almost ALWAYS buy a treat when I go to the store. Usually I buy one to scarf down on the way home from the store so that nobody else knows and sometimes I end up buying something else to have at the house. Every time I do it I feel guilty, yet I rarely seem to be able to stop myself. Amazingly, being on this diet for just the short period of time I have been, I was able to realize why I was so excited and prepare myself for it and I really didn't feel tempted by that treat any longer.

Another thing I noticed that first day, was that shortly after I ate a couple bites of the dinner I made my family, I seemed to get a migraine. I was thinking that it had something to do with the Dairy in the dinner, but I have had a migraine again the second day also. I am wondering if it actually has something to do with the Potato soup and something that it has in it because I got the migraine after lunch today, which is when I ate my Potato soup and after dinner last night, which is when I ate my Potato soup. Something to watch for anyway. I don't think it is related to the lack of food in any way.

Waking up the morning of my second day I felt so energized, which is really strange for me. I usually feel so "in a fog" or something and it takes me forever to get my day going. But this morning I felt good and awake. I think not eating all that unhealthy stuff yesterday really helped me feel better today.

This morning I added a banana to my Chocolate shake and it was so yummy! For lunch I did the Potato soup as I mentioned earlier and then I did Chocolate again for dinner. The more I think about the Potato soup, it actually makes me feel nauseous, so I think I will try not using it tomorrow.

While I was creating my blog this morning Joel decided he wanted to get ice cream today. Normally the very thought would have me salivating. Today, I told him after we ate lunch we could walk there and him and Colby could get ice cream. I didn't even feel tempted by the thought of having the ice cream. Awesome! I did have one tongue lick of Colby's cone as I tried to keep it from melting all over him and my stroller, and I still had no desire for more!

I can't wait to actually see some of this weight come off. That is always encouraging! My mom thought I would be wise to not add in a bunch of exercise until after the third day when my body had adjusted to the fewer calories, but I have to tell you that I felt like doing an exercise DVD today. Didn't actually happen today due to time, but I did walk! Maybe that DVD will make its way to the DVD player tomorrow.

Welcome to my blog: Lets get down and dirty

Welcome!

I realize that this is NOT a flattering picture of myself. This is exactly why I need to lose weight! I am a young Mama and want to be hip and hot, not fat and flabby.

I decided that if I am going to write a weight loss blog, then I have got to be brutally honest with myself. This picture is at least a little bit recent and I don't think I have ballooned up anymore since it was taken. So here you go world!

Currently I weigh 188 lbs! The very thought makes me want to cringe. What happened? I was so active in high school and I even ran cross country. The only time I do any running now is when my 2 year old escapes and I have to run after him, which strangely makes me want to run again.

It's not as if I sit on the couch all day. In fact I would attribute my weight gain to eating poorly, meaning lots of treats and junk food, stress and plain lack of motivation or rather lack of support that leads to lack of motivation.

But this week I said "enough is enough!" The only person who can choose to lose the weight and really do something about it is ME! I don't like feeling this way. I want to get pregnant and have another baby, but I don't want to be this heavy when I get pregnant. Although it is tempting because my last two pregnancies left me so sick that I lost 15 to 20 lbs before gaining any weight, and then weighed less after I had the baby than I did before I got pregnant. Then I realized that this will probably be the pregnancy that I feel great and don't lose any weight and will hate myself for getting pregnant. So I guess I have to lose the weight first. Wait, have to or have the chance to??? Being positive really goes a long way in success of weight loss. Plus who wants to be around a downer all the time?

Monday morning I decided that I was going to do the Cambridge Diet. My parents have done it and have had a lot of success with it. Plus, I like the fact that I know that I am getting 100% of the RDA of vitamins and minerals. I called my Mom and she had some cans in stock that I could buy from her and I was so jazzed that I loaded three kids in the car and drove the hour and ten minutes to her house to pick up the goods! Crazy I know, but I just decided that if I didn't get started when I was excited about it that it would inhibit my success. Plus I hadn't eaten a lot that day anyway and thought it would be a good start to Sole Sourcing.

I bought two cans of Dutch Chocolate and one can of Potato Soup. Each serving of the Dutch Chocolate is 110 Cal and one serving of Potato Soup is 140 Cal. The fastest way to lose weight on the program is to sole source and add in no additional food. Although you can add in up to 800 Cal of additional healthy food if you choose or you can use it as a weight management tool and just replace a meal with it. My goal is to sole source. Read my next posting for day 1 of the Cambridge Diet.