Hi again

Amazing how when weight loss bloggers are gone for a while it's because they gained weight.  I had gained back about 14lbs not handling some stressful things but I have relost it again and some more.  I'm down 42lbs!!!  I have also chosen to stop eating animals in any form.  It's been about 6 weeks and I feel fantastic! 

Here's my little sister and I on her wedding day last weekend. 

I was so happy that day.  Not only was my sister marrying her "Man Friend" finally, my husband was going to come home from spending two nights in the hospital for blood clots in both lungs! 

I wanted to share my new favorite fall recipe, Lentil and beefy crumble Shepards pie with sweet potato top!! Here's what's in tonight dinner.  I love making this to use up veggies from my fridge. 

2c cooked brown lentles

1c beefy crumbles 

1.5 small onions diced

2T minced garlic

3 small carrots cut on the bias 

1 small bell pepper diced

2 celery ribs

1.5-2c sliced mushrooms

1T mushroom stock base

2c cubed sweet potatoes 

Veggie stock

Corn starch 

Light olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Smoked paprika 

Italian seasoning 

1. Preheat oven to 375f.  Boil sweet potatoes in a pot of water

2. Add a small amount of oil to pan with straight sides and cook onion till transparent and then add garlic.  

3. Add carrots celery  and Bell pepper season with salt, pepper, paprika. If anything begins to stick add a splash of veggie stock. 

4. After a few minutes add mushrooms and beefy crumbles stir ass it cooks then add lentils. 

5. In a glass mix cold water and corn starch add that and mushroom stock base to the pan along with some Italian seasoning. 

6. While gravy thickens drain cooked sweet potatoes and mash with a dash of oil and pepper and salt. 

7. Pour veggie mix in 8x8 and top with mashed sweet potatoes and bake for 20mins or till potatoes reach your desired doneness. 

8. Rest 5mins and serve warm. 

Idiot Scale

Amazing how a couple little numbers can make you feel so defeated.  It's been a year since I started Zumba and I'd lost 26lbs and gained by 14lbs.  I don't want to be one of those people to crash/fad diets and bounce back and forth with my weight.  I just want to be healthy, physically and mentally.

I've started taking supplements for my PCOS to help with the physical and emotional issues.  I suffer from acne, male location hair growth, thinning hair on my head, extreme fatigue and depression related to PMS/PMDD.  I swear the more hair I lose on my head it grows on my face and chest.  I've taking 2 amino acids, lots of vitamin D, krill oil since fish oil makes me burp like crazy, green tea.  I'm finding I have more energy but I will report back in a month.

Boating Season

Time to get my tan on!  Celebrating 34lbs GONE with a high waist bikini!!  Spent Sunday afternoon on the lake.  Forecast said it was going to be CLOUDY but the sunshine followed everywhere we went.

Spent a bit of time in the marina putting our new prop on the boat. (or as I explained it to my sister as a "propeller")

I'm 24lbs lighter than last season and couldn't be more excited.  Certainly feels funny to have the cold lake water hit a bare stomach!!


I'm still keeping up on my minimum 3 days per week of Zumba but I need to eat more veg!!

Here's an amazing shot from this weekend.

32 pounds destoyed

Just wanted to update.  I've been doing Zumba about 4 days a week and weight lifting (body pump) once or twice a week since February.  I have switched to a mostly vegan diet for the last 6+ weeks after my husband had a cancer scare (he's fine).

I feel so much better with cutting out meat and dairy except maybe once a week.  It actually felt kind of gross to eat chicken wings today... It's very strange going from eating cheese daily.

I'm down 32 pounds and in a size 16!  Still a 2x top since I carry watermelons on my chest....

Here's a side by side comparison.  On the left is current (230lbs and on the right is 252lbs in December with my foster cavalier king charles spaniel Trudy) 

On my way to my boat/anti diabetic body.

Looking Forward 2015 Goals

Home Life:
- find balance in cleaning and laundry (even if I have to hire someone to scrub my floors)
-Purchase a 2nd income property (duples, triplex, or storefront with rental)

Fitness:
- Lift weights 3x per week
- swim or run 1-2x per week

Nutrition:
- Continue with my Isa shakes and increase them for lunches
- add Primrose and Biotin suppliments
- drink more wanter

Work:
- Quit my day job!
- Help DH build his IT company

Dog Rescue:
- Learn more about training
- Help find more dogs homes

Every Day Battle

I haven't been doing much of anything expect for work lately, and eating out.  Working 10+hours some days.  Still happily stuck around 240lbs even with eating like crap.

I've always had skin that hasn't been clear.  I've never had the issues that some people have but I have a few blemishes at a time and they always leave dark marks behind of my fair skin.  I finally gave in after trying a million different products from the drug stores (natural ingredients and not) and bought Proactive.  After the 1st week I'm impressed, I had tried the original formula many years ago and that just made my skin mad, red, dry, gross.  Tried their new system and very happy with how moisturizing my skin feels along with the slow changes I see in my skin.  I've seen a lot of change with my black heads and minor fading of my dark marks on my cheeks.

I keep going back and forth on eating "south beach" style or just sticking with whole foods.  Working towards whole foods and leaning on the low carb south beach background.

Took this photo with my phone camera today, really can't tell how different my skin is but I love my new hair color.

Moving on down (in sizes)

Yippy I can fit into a pair of Old Navy 16's!  I may have a hugest muffin top but I can get them on and breath.  I stomach fat is very... smooshy... I wounder is some sort of belly band or tank would help with the look...  I also have some Levi's 18th that I can fit in pretty well, can't wait to lose another 10lbs or so so they look nicer.  I was really hoping that I'd lose the weight before my thighs wore though my last jeans.

I spent the day hunting for a mustard yellow cardigan but I had no luck.  I tired TJ Maxx, Target, Kohls, Boston Store... none, nada.  Going to hit the mall and try Old Navy and maybe some of the plus size stores if I get desperate..

New Change New Job

So Thursday on my way to the vet office early in the morning my phone rings and it was a call from a company that had sent me a rejection letter almost a month to the date.  The cat is meowing backseat and I'm about to jump out of my seat cause I'm so shocked and excited.  Positive thinking worked, I wanted a new job, I pictured myself happy in a new place of employment.

I give my two week notice on Monday and I'm a bit scared because I love my co-workers and my boss.  The company I work for currently isn't doing well so I feel bad leaving with only 2 weeks for them to find someone and make things work.  Most people don't know all that I do for the company so I have made a whole list of what I do, when, and how to do it.  I hope that helps them transition.

I did go to the gym today, that felt nice.  With my new job I'll be getting out of work at 3:30 so I'll be able to hit the gym right after work and miss the 5pm rush!!  I'm so excited!!! Not to mention  I will no longer have a total commute of an hour I get back almost and hour!

Think Positive, Be Positive

There is something that I have tried to teach the girls I had coached for 4 years.  If you are positive positive things will find you.  You see these teenage girls get picked on for such silly things and it hurts them so much.  How often to we pick on ourselves,  negative self talk, emotional eating.  All this negativity causes us to back petal and continue down that path we were trying to move away from. 

I'm now working towards keeping all negative thoughts out of my brain.  No complaining about work, being tired, not even the weather.  Keeping positive isn't the easiest thing the 1st day or even the 2nd the more you practice it the less you think negatively about things.  You start brushing off the negative things your coworkers complain about, you find the positive things in the grey boring things. 

When I focus on health, fitness, and work out I find that everything is easy.  When I forgo my hyper focusing on getting healthy I start slipping more and more and the weight goes right back on.  Through positive thinking and planning I shall be who I envision myself to be.

Stay strong my friends.

Restart South Beach?

So I've been having a hard time with eating well.  We're trying to eat at home more often to save more money to purchase more rental property.  I'm looking at restarting the South Beach Diet.  It worked really worked when I first did it and I lost 25lbs with eating on plan and exercise and weight training.

I'm working on getting enough recipes together that will keep my hubby interested and happy for a while.

I found with the South Beach plan I wasn't finding myself overly hunger at any time because it focuses on lots of veggies (even at breakfast!), high fiber and high protein.

I'm going to try and post each day's meals once I start.

Weekend Check-in

Things are crazy and usual, I truly dream of a day that I can have a schedule home.  I hit the gym hard on Monday and Saturday and my clothes is fitting better but no movement on the scale.  I really need to get a full length so I can do some chubby girl outfit of the day and just to track my style and size as things change.

Here's my bottom 1/2 from Valentines day! Sorry for the ugly carpet... I was at work.

Breaking Promises

"I promises to start a diet tomorrow" haha, how many of you have said that to yourselves?  I think at one point or another we all have said something along those lines if we felt we needed to lose weight.  I know I've heard my mom say it, I know I've said it. 

The more we lie to ourselves the easier it gets and the farther we get from our goals.  It hurts when someone else lies to us so why would we lie to ourselves?  I guess I never though about it till I hear Oprah say it on her show. I had been watching on summer vacation as  kid.  I have since learned that "diet" isn't something you "go on" it's whatever you eat.  Going on a diet says that at some time you are going to switch back to you old ways.  If you change your diet your not planning to. 

I am continuing to make changes to the foods I eat along with learning how to fit exercise in my life.  With out change that we can keep up with we will fall back on what was so "easy" for us before.  I'm not sure how it's easy to haul around extra weight but I do it... 

Don't start tomorrow, start today, start NOW. Your future is only a moment away.

Feeling Pretty

So Friday while I was out shopping and felt really pretty so I snapped this photo with my phone

No was I was not driving, i was stopped at the world's longest light! 

I also gave myself a new manicure using a water marble technique I learned from Colette over at  My Simple Little Pleasures.  My hubby was rushing me so we could go grab some dinner and see Top Gun in 3D so my clean-up wasn't really even done.  I used 2 Orly polishes I've gotten from clearance at Sally Beauty.

Saturday morning while hanging out on the sofa before heading off to the gym I had this adorable group gather.

Monster the tabby on the sofa arm is 7, Belle-bel is the Linx Point Siamese and she's 4, Kiki is the little tabby getting groomed and she'll be a year in March. Maverick my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel will be 6 in March.  I love them all.  If you notice the cardboard taped to our hutch... the vacuum fell over and broke the ugly glass and I haven't had the time to get new glass, I want to get something textured. I'm hoping to find some sort of cool plexi glass as that would be safer for when we move out and rent to someone.

Fitness wise I have hit the gym Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I've taken off Tuesday and Wednesday and planning on getting up early and going before work tomorrow and early Friday.  Been doing the 30 minute circuit and alternating days with treadmill running hoping to get up 30 minutes of continues running by end of April.

Foul Follow-up

It's amazing how much you can want to do something but habit just keeps you in one place.  I want to lose this excess weight for so many reasons, but I'll still finding myself stagnant.  I'm thinking about "restarting" the South Beach diet since I was able to lose weight steadily and pretty effortlessly.  Aside from the planning that goes into not hitting Applebee's or a the drive though every day.

I've had a pretty good week, I've been kind of half ass counting calories (even though I really hate doing it) just to get an idea of what I'm consuming.  I hit the gym on Monday with the hubby.  We switched to a Planet Fitness so it's only $20/mo for the both of use where it use to be $60+/mo.  The have a self led circuit training section and I tried it for the 1st time and really enjoyed it.  Now I'm sore... 2 days later!  I went for a walk with my crazy tenant and the little pupper... should have gotten a photo of him in his snow suit and boots.

They are forecasting snow for tomorrow so we'll see what we get... I'm hoping to be able to get up and down stairs tomorrow so I can do the circuit training again with out falling on my FACE!

Hitting it Hard

My husband and I switched gyms today.  We use to go to a small gym that had a few too many of my husband's clients (he owns a computer business), and it was small so if there was a class going on there really wasn't room for you to do your strength training.  We've switched to the cheap-o Planet fitness that even thought the parking lot looked really full it felt pretty empty inside.

I warmed up at 3.0 for 3 minutes cause I had been practicing line dancing prior to heading out, then I ran for 10minutes at 3.9. I went back and forth between walking at in incline and running for the rest of the 40minutes.

I'm going to add some strength training in at the gym once I figure out when the weights are the quietest.

I will update my current weight on Friday when I weigh in.

Stay strong my friends.

Doctor Visit Update

So here's the update from my visit.  They ran at least 5 blood tests on me!  They wanted to cover type 2 diabetes, male hormones, and cholesterol! Everything came back normal!!! I'm just fat and there should be nothing keeping me from losing weight, I'm not sure that I believe them but I'll take it.

Tomorrow the Husband and I might be signing up for a different gym. My current gym membership isn't up but he hates going there cause they are all up in your business.

I just wanted to get you guys a quick post in prior to hoping in bed!

Goodnight internet land (good morning or afternoon if your reading this then).

Scheduled the Appt!

 I wrote this back months ago but it never got published.  I'll write a follow-up tomorrow.

This girl finally scheduled a doctor's appointment to get everything checked out. Haven't had a physical and all the "lady check-up" stuff done in 4 years so it really is about time...  Looking forward to see if I really have PCOS and to do something with all the excess belly fat, facial hair, shedding from the top of my head!  I'll update when I find out.

Day 2 of Phase 1 of South Beach diet. I had fallen off over the last few months and been eating fries, fried food and the like, Luckily only gained back 5-6lbs. I started back over in phase one since I had been also eating candy and a lot of diet soda. I really don't like to drink diet soda or diet anything. I'm hoping that once I get to a healthy weight I can eat natural organic sugar when I want to have something sweet. I try to stay away from HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) and trans fats as much as possible. I like to eat whole foods and those kinds of things but man does a Culver's chicken tender basket w/ fries just hit the spot... then make you fall asleep after your sugar crashes from too many simple carbs...

Tomorrow for lunch since I have no leftovers will be shrimp w/ a salad from the salad bar at the grocery store.

Stay positive, till the next time.

Week 1 of 2013

So I weighed myself, I was scared but I did it! Boy was I surprised!!!! I'm sitting pretty at 242lbs!!! So excited that I hadn't gained a ton like I thought I had.

Tomorrow I'm going to pick up a yoga mat so I can really get into yoga and now slip on the carpet.

Hope all is well!

New Year and New Resolutions.

Most people write these kind of posts on December 31st or the 1st of the year, me I'm writing today.  I've been thinking about coming back to writing on my blog now that I'm feeling normal again.  I had done really well for the first 6 months of 2012 on being healthy and weight loss... But then my Grandpa's cancer came back and anything that wasn't a habit went out the window.  There was lots of tears and emotional eating after we lost him in August but I'm finally doing better. 

What I have found to help me was getting projects down. I love working with my hands and I finally tackled some projects.  I made pillow covers for my sofa pillows, finally painted our bedroom doors (they were the grossest brown green I have ever seen!) and hall trim, and hung some floating shelves in our main bathroom.  When I sat down at my sewing machine I said out loud to myself, "hello old friend".  I have truly been missing this big part of who I am, taking part of it again has made me feel whole again.

Beautiful Bathroom. Basket on the shelf and the potted fake plant I got at Goodwill for 99cents!

Newly sewn pillow cases: Mustard Yellow with white polka dots, dusty blue zig zags, and beautiful Paris design to go with our art we picked out before we moved in together 8 years ago.

This is a before of the bedroom... the picture makes the colors look much better. We now have a white ceiling, glossy white trim and oatmeal walls.

Well On to my resolutions.

1. Healthy- eat at home, less processed food, higher quality ingredients (splurge on the local butter, organic sour cream)
2. Be Positive- I'm removing anything and everything I humanly can to be more positive. Unsubscribing to emails that I never open has really helped. I have also started removing people from my facebook that I don't need to that in your face contact with.
3. Fruggleness- Your going to think Wha!??! she just said splurge on butter and sour cream! Where I need to focus on is bringing in crap, just cause it's a good deal does not mean I need to stock up on 20 shampoos!
4. Blog more, I know I'm not the best writer and most of the time I DON'T proof read my posts but I enjoy it.  I'm going to try to get a post up at least once a week.

For those of you who are wondering where I am with my weight, I haven't stepped back on the scale but I'm guessing around 248-252lbs.  I'm hoping to see 230lb in March.

I'm off to try some yoga tonight to relax. Here's the video I'm going to try.

http://youtu.be/e6Wt9CFb-4s

Take care and remember tomorrow is always within our reach.

Friday Check-in!

Guess who was at the gym 2 times in one week? ME haha of course me, it's my blog. My weight is holding steady at 235lbs but I'm ok w/ that after enjoying over 1/2 a bottle of wine last night at the downtown's Girl's Night Out thing. Worked in my MIL's furniture store with my older SIL, it's always a blast.

Ok so back to the gym, did about 20-25 minutes of the treadmill, some running, some walking on an incline. All good stuff. Got to see the director of training and he's like I need to meet with you to set up a new plan.  It's such a happy go lucky guy, and so motivating if you are motived by one of those people. So next Friday I'll be meeting with him.  Next Friday is also Homecoming for my cheerleaders! AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh HAHA good stuff.

Now it's time to clean, laundry, shower, and then go coach...

here's a great one of them where you really can't see their faces. Love these girls as much as I love my puppy.

Stay happy, healthy, and smile!