Tired, very tired

I went to bed too late last night and 4:50am came way to early.  By body still ached a bit from my weekend work out so I decided to do yoga, 45 minutes of beginner’s yoga.  It was still quite the workout for me but my body feels much better.  I was fighting to keep my eyes open as I drove to work today.  It was pouring down rain and I gotta be honest, it was a bit scary.

I’m going to restart my hardcore workout again tomorrow, probably start with Jackie Warner again.  I really enjoy that workout because when I am done with it I feel stronger and leaner.

I’ve been doing really well with my diet.  I know I haven’t reported much on it but I am starting to hit that 60/20/20 mark a bit better than I have in the past.  I’ve really had to increase my protein intake to make it happen.  So what they looks like for me, typical meals throughout the day is something like this:

Breakfast
Fruit smoothie (organic yogurt, strawberries, blueberries, ice, water, scoop of protein)
Mid Morning meal
4 egg whites
3 pieces of turkey bacon
1 slice of Ezekiel bread
Lunch
chicken/lean beef burger(10% fat)/pork chop/ground turkey/tuna
veggie and/or brown rice
salad with protein
Mid Afternoon meal
tuna with organic mayo
hummus with low carb veggie (cucumber/tomato/celery)
lean meat
Dinner
lean meat
vegetables
brown rice

My snacks consist of:  almonds, veggie sticks, carrots, celery, peanut butter, Laughing Cow cheese
Dessert: Low carb ice cream, skinny cow sandwich

I am usually anywhere between 1100-1400 calories a day.  Once you start getting into the groove it really isn’t too difficult.

Tip: I have found that preparing my food the night before can be really helpful.  For instance, I’ll peel my eggs and take out the yolks and put them in a tupperware container, get my lunches ready, and if I need to decide on dinner, I’ll take something out of the freezer to thaw, if not already thawed.  It can be extremely helpful for me, especially the mornings that I am running a bit late.

Speaking of, my routine is shifting a bit again.  Sawyer is starting to sleep until 8-8:30am so we have decided that I am not going to get him up in the mornings to feed him anymore.  My husband will get up with him.  This way I can work out for 4o minutes a day and not have to rush to get myself breakfast, showered, and the dogs fed.  I think I’m going to miss that time with Sawyer in the morning, but it will help me with not feeling so rushed in the morning.

There is an app for that

Before I tell you about the app that I am now using on my iphone, let me share with you about how my day went.

Got up at 5:00am with Sawyer.  He was so pleasant today.  I gave him some breakfast and then stuck him in his jumpy.  He enjoyed watching me torture myself to Holly Perkins yet again this morning.  The backs of my legs are still killing me and it’s 8pm.

I then made myself some breakfast.

Breakfast
3 egg whites
2 pieces of turkey bacon
1 c of milk

I got in the shower and afterwards stepped on the scale.

Zero.

Not my weight, but rather the pounds that I lost and the pounds I also didn’t gain. UGH!

I was pretty frustrated. But once I regrouped, I decided that this was all worth it and perhaps I may have lost inches rather than weight. I’d be okay with that.

So I texted my friend, the trainer, and shared with her what I’d found out.  She said we’d come up with a strategy, that I may need to be eating more calories.

So now I am doing a 60/20/20 method.  60% protein, 20% carbs and 20% fat. We’ll see how it goes.  So how do I track this you ask?

Well, there’s an app for that called “Lose it!”

I’ve had it on my phone for awhile now, used it once before but now it’s going to come in handy again.  I can record everything I eat, search for calorie information, it calculates the nutrients of the food according to what I select, and it sets my goals.  We’ll see how it goes, but it has been helpful to know how many carbs I am eating, even though I haven’t had any bread, pasta, or other snacks today.

Speaking of, what I did eat today:

8am meal
oatmeal – 1 instant packet

Snack
10 almonds

Lunch
salad with grilled chicken and balsamic vinegarette

Mid-afternoon snack
1.5 c carrots
1 tbsp hummus

Dinner
grilled eggplant – 4 slices
grilled tomatoes
1/4 c of ricotta cheese with garlic powder

NOTE: Dinner was a Bobby Flay food network recipe and if you like eggplant parmagna this is a great spoof on it. It’s absolutely delicious.

I then ate a tbsp of peanut butter to try and up my calories. But I finished the day with 1136 calories. Not high enough. I am supposed to be at 1455. Hopefully I can get there tomorrow.

Routine Revised

It happened again today.

Sawyer got up at 4:54am and was wet and ready to eat.  I think it may be because we are putting him down a bit earlier at night.  Today, I was ready for him though.  I got him changed, fed him breakfast and got him back into bed all by 5:30.  I then found a yoga program to do today on ExerciseTV.  It was taught by Shiva Rae who is apparently a professional yoga trainer.  The program was said to be geared towards beginners and an overview of how to do yoga.

It was definitely different.  There was a voice over of her while she did the various yoga moves.  After I got over that, I was able to concentrate (somewhat) on the moves themselves.  What I found most difficult about it was the way my living room is configured.  It did not allow me to always be looking a the TV once I found myself in a yoga pose.  I also found the voice over difficult to follow at times, and so I wasn’t quite as relaxed as I probably should have been by the time I was done.  Oh well.

After I showered, I grabbed a quick breakfast and was out the door.  By the time I got to work, I was so tired I felt the need to grab some coffee from the kitchen.  I went for the good stuff:  a Latvia latte for 46 calories. I realized later that was 46 empty calories that I hoped didn’t bite me in the butt later in the day. But it was good!

Breakfast:
egg bagel toasted (150 calories)
1 tbsp salmon cream cheese (45 calories)
1/2 c of lite chocolate soy milk (45 calories)

Mid-morning snack:
cappuccino latte (46 calories)
almonds (100 calorie pack)

Lunch:
Leftovers from last night
1/2 tilapia filet (45 calories)
1/2 sweet potato (90 calories)
Entenman’s multi-grain cereal bar, chocolate chip (150 calories)
water

As you may have noticed my mid-morning snack was not as hefty as it normally is.  I went from one meeting to the next and had no time to make my english muffin and peanut butter so I grabbed what I could from my purse.

Tip: Always have healthy snacks in your purse, diaper bag, or gym back so you aren’t tempted to purchase something from the vending machine, grab something from the kitchen at work, or head to a fast food or gas station.

Oh, Sawyer

It was a rough start to a morning.

Sawyer woke me up before my alarm at 4:54am.  Close enough, right?  I thought it was a blessing in disguise.  Usually when he wakes up that early it’s because he realizes he lost his pacifier and if I pop it back in his mouth he’s off to sleep again. I tried that this morning and went to the living room to turn on Exercise TV.  Found out very quickly that “On Demand” was not working today.  Great.  Good thing I picked up the 30 day shred DVD.  My husband had worked out to it the day before (I’m starting to rub off on him) so it was ready for me in the Xbox.  I got almost all the way through it before Sawyer started having a fit.  Apparently he decided he was hungry at 5:30 in the morning.

I was really tempted to wake up my husband and have him take care of him so that I could finish working out, but the good wife that I am, I instead paused my video and got him up.  Poor guy was soaked down the front, so I did a quick diaper change and brought him into the kitchen.  He was a needy little fellow this morning, so with one arm I made his bottle and his oatmeal with peaches.

Sawyer’s Breakfast:
4 oz. bottle
1 tbsp of oatmeal and a tbsp of peaches

Note: Better to feed starving baby then to wake a grumpy husband.

Once Sawyer was fed I put him back down to sleep and I went back to my DVD to finish up my workout.  I figured better to complete it then not to do it at all.  The workout went pretty well today.  I feel like I am starting to conquer level 1 of this DVD.  It’s split into 3 levels if I haven’t mentioned that before.  I am considering moving to level 2 this week. I did have some pain in my sciatic nerve again, but I pushed through cause Jillian told me I was strong and I could do this!

After my workout, I made myself some oatmeal and a couple of turkey sausage links.

My breakfast:
1/2 c. oatmeal with a cap full of vanilla, 1 packet of sweet n low, some cinnamon sprinkled on top and some milk poured on top.  (180 calories)
3 turkey sausage links  (110 calories)
Large glass of water

I couldn’t believe it, on the way to work I started feeling hungry again.  I’ve always heard it said that you should eat some oatmeal in the morning and it’ll stick to you longer.  My oatmeal apparently wasn’t sticky enough so I popped a piece of gum in my mouth in the hopes of my hunger pains disappearing.  It totally took my mind off my hunger and it wasn’t until about 10am that I realized it was time for a mid-morning snack and time to spit out the gum that had now hardened in my mouth.

Mid-morning snack:
1 english muffin (100 calories)
2 tbsp of peanut butter (140 calories)
glass of water

Around 11:30am I started feeling hungry again so I finished what I was working on and started making myself some lunch.

Lunch:
left over whole wheat pasta from night before
salad from two days ago
glass of water

No idea the calories, my guess: around 200 for the pasta and another 100-150 for the salad.

Tip: Don’t waste your food, eat your leftovers until you can’t eat them anymore.  Then make sure you make less the next time you cook that meal. I always try to eat my leftovers the very next day, cause if I don’t I more than likely never will.

So now I have another couple of hours of work to get through.  Sometimes it feels like I go from one meal to another.  I need to figure out how I break the cycle of dreaming of my next meal.  There has got to be more to life.

It’s a new beginning…kind of

It was just this past week that I really started getting serious, really serious about losing my pregnancy weight.  For a couple of weeks, maybe a month I have cut my calorie intake and saw at one point a 5 lbs. weight loss in a week, to only learn that I gained it back over a weekend.  Nobody I’ve asked can figure out why it happened, maybe too much sodium intake, no idea.  At any rate, it was at that point that I decided I needed to get serious about this weight loss or I was going to keep this weight on for the rest of my life.

3 days old

But let me back it up a bit.  Almost 16 months ago, January 31, 2008 I found out I was pregnant for the third time with our first child.  I had two miscarriages before this pregnancy and so though I was elated to be pregnant, there was still some anxiety as to whether I would actually get to experience pregnancy this time.  8 months later, at 35 weeks (due to preeclampsia) I gave birth to Sawyer James, 5 lbs. 3oz. and 19 in. long. He was and is still perfect.  I was able to breastfeed him for the first 5 months of his life.  I was told around that time that due to my preeclampsia my body was just not going to produce anymore milk and I was going to have to give it up.  I had such mixed emotions about not breastfeeding anymore, I didn’t want to lost out on that time nursing my son because it was so precious to me, but I knew that this may mean a chance to start losing the weight that I thought would have come off from breastfeeding.  As you are probably already guessing, I am not one of those new mom’s who lost my weight within the next few months because I was breastfeeding my child.  When I got pregnant with Sawyer I weighed in at my doctor’s office around 135 lbs. (Height 5’41/2″)  It was more than I had wanted to weight when I got pregnant with my first baby, but it was what it was. Since I had to be induced and didn’t get to my next doctor’s appointment my best guess at how much I weighed when I delivered is somewhere around 170 lbs.  I thought I was doing okay weight wise because I had only gained about 35 lbs, and my doctor told me to stay in the 25-35 lbs range and it should come right off.  Well, with my preeclampsia I am not completely sure that was true.

So now my son is almost 7 months (March 6) and I am, as of a weigh-in yesterday, 145.8.  I am determined to do whatever it takes to lose this weight and get fit again.  Now you may be thinking, well, you only have 10 more lbs to go to be at your pre-pregnancy weight.  True.  However, I’d like to be fit and trim as well, so my goal is 125.  I know when I am at that weight I tend to feel best about myself, I am working out and eating healthy to stay there, and I like the way I feel in my clothes.  That’s really what this is all about isn’t it…feeling good about who you are in what you have to wear.  So I have twenty pounds to lose and I am hoping to do it by May if possible.

So here is my plan and what I hope to blog about each day.  I realized and embraced the reality that the only time I have to work out is in the morning before I feed my son, feed my dogs, and get myself off to work. So this past week I have been getting up at 5:00am and using Exercise TV as my means to exercise.  For those of you who do not know what  Exercise TV is, if you have cable on-demand you may want to check out the channels to find out if it is available to you. (In my local area, the channel is 426)  Since we are currently on one income, I didn’t have money to work out at a gym and the thought of doing the same exercises over and over again from a DVD just didn’t seem appealing, I like variety.  Exercise TV offers a wide variety of options and tells you exactly how long each workout is going to take.  And, for the most part, it is exact.  I say for the most part, because earlier this week I chose a workout and it said 22 minutes but the countdown clock said 42 and I didn’t quite have the time to finish a 42 minute workout.  At any rate, my plan for the next 30 days, if not longer,  is to workout each day taking one day off to rest.  I will blog about the workout that I chose, share how I am feeling, what the exercise felt like to go through, maybe comment on the trainer, and share my food intake, etc.

Thus far I have seen some great benefits to working out.  Since about my first trimester I have had sciatic nerve issues.  I thought it would go away after I had the baby but it didn’t which is why I have been putting off working out for so long and why I stopped working out during my pregnancy.  However, I have done cardio strength workouts, yoga, Pilates, and ab exercises and I have to say, except for the day that I did yoga, which increased the pain, I have had little to no pain since. I think the stretching and poses done during a yoga exercise, aggravated it a bit, but also helped to heal it. I also feel much better about myself already, I can feel some of my muscles again, especially in my abdomen and I am starting to feel stronger. I feel better about what I am putting in my body.  I had found some recipes on food network this past Sunday and made a few of them throughout the week.  I found them to be healthy, though some were lacking in flavor so I’ll have to tweak them for next time around.

Starting today, you’ll begin to read what I do throughout my day, what food I eat (how I liked it or didn’t like it), my mind-set, how my body feels, etc.  I hope that this blog will speak to women who felt the same way I did about their pregnancy weight, but hopefully my actions will encourage them to do what it takes to take it off.  The reality is only I can choose to take off this weight, no one can do it for me and thinking that it’s going to come off on its own or that it will come off later, will not get me anywhere.  The time is now and so I am ceasing the moment and embracing a mantra a close friend once said to me, “I eat to live, not live to eat.” I get one body and it’s my responsibility while I am here on this earth to keep it healthy.