What Is Working for Me Right Now...

Like I said before, life is good. I'm feeling successful in several aspects of my life right now. I have come to realize that when I'm just starting to feel good about something, another part of my life likes to rock the boat. So I am fully prepared for some kind of crazy upheaval. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying the smoothness of things.

I've managed to take control of my weight better than I ever have in my life. Losing weight is something that has NEVER come easy to me. I can't complain too much, because I've never struggled with large amounts of weight, but like 90% of women out there, I've wished for a weight loss of some kind, at some time in my life.

I am the type of person who doesn't lose any weight when they tell you you're going to. Breastfeeding? Not a chance. My body held onto that baby weight like it was gold. Training for various endurance races? Nope. I think I gained weight during my first half marathon training plan. Eating vegetarian for an entire year and a half? Absolutely not. I was never the waify hippy vegetarian that I imagined I was going to be. And then there was the few months of my life where I did all of these things at once. Post-Macy, I trained for a half marathon, breast fed an 8 month old, and gave up meat products. My fat cells laughed at me.

Fast forward to now. I've discovered a couple of things that are seriously and consistently working for me. The biggest one? Myfitnesspal.com. I'm pretty sure most dieting people have discovered this site by now. I've tried weight watchers before, and the premise behind MFP is similar, but free. You track your calories in and calories out, simple enough. The benefit is all the little extras. You can link up with your friends, similar to facebook, for some extra accountability. My favorite part is when you complete a day, the program prompts you with a message of "if every day were like today, in five weeks you would weigh..." This seems so simple, but to me, is highly motivating.

Second thing that is helping? Shakeology shakes. My good friend Hillary introduced me to them. I've researched a lot of shakes and their ingredients, on a quest to find a shake with the most real components. Well, shakeology is that shake, my friends. I do not look at it as a weight loss shake, but as an easy, healthy meal replacement. It has HELPED with my weight loss tremendously because it gives me a consistent energy boost in the morning for a minimum amount of calories. I often get a good hour to hour and a half workout done off of one of these shakes for breakfast. The downside of these shakes? Their cost. It apparently costs a lot to turn real nutrients into a fine powder and then give them a chocolate flavor. It is definitely worth the cost, now that I've seen the results. But the 120 bucks a month was a hard thing to get over in the beginning.

So come find me on myfitnesspal (josieO1979) and we can motivate each other. We'll all be feeling sexy in our swimming suits in no time.

Still Here!

Life is good, folks.  Busy and good.  Patrick and I are in full training mode, and besides feeding and entertaining small children, have time for little else. But I think we are both thriving on the chaos right now, and actually really enjoying life. 

My first "race" of the season was the Warrior Dash.  It. Was. Awesome.  I put race in quotations because I did not look at it as competitively as I should have.  My good friend and super fit badass, Ryanne, did the race with me, and she pushed my lazy butt through two thirds of the race.  I was thinking "fun run" while she was thinking "military qualification test."  The dash was alot harder and muddier than I was expecting, but that's why I loved it in the end.  I had a super huge feeling of accomplishment when it was over.   

We look good even AFTER 49 minutes of mud, swimming, climbing, jumping,

running, fire leaping, and dead fish.

I was cleaning mud out of my ears for a week.

My shoes were white and purple at the beginning of the race.

Best part:  Turkey leg, free beer, and live music at the end.  Note to anyone interested in this next year: not an especially child friendly environment.  As much as I wanted my kids to see me jumping over the fire pit, they would of been hot and bored all day.

Next up on the agenda:  Tinman.  I have been working out hard to do well at this race.  It is a hometown classic and my husband always has very good results at this race, so I feel a lot of pressure to not tarnish the family legacy.  I certainly don't expect to place, but I would like to improve on my personal best (from the one other triathlon I've ever done in my life).  My secret weapon?

My beautiful, sweet Kinvaras.  I love them.  I have knocked four minutes off of my 5k, probably mostly because I love to run in these shoes so much.  They look fast, which is super important (seriously, ask my neon shoe loving Hubs).  Secondly they have thinner soles which have allowed me to feel how I push off.  I can focus on pushing off with my toes instead of shuffling with my whole foot.  It was like a revelation when I felt the difference.

I'm also spending hours on the bike trainer.  Not so much because I am THAT dedicated, but really because I've found a new favorite show on Netflix that I look forward to catching up on during nap time.  The United States of Tara.  I love that show so much right now.  I was expecting something a little raunchier since it was on Showtime, but really it is not too bad.  Tara, an Overland Park housewife, and her dysfunctional but lovable family, are learning to deal with her multiple personality disorder now that she has decided to go off her meds.  Strangely enough, I totally relate to Tara and her family, except for the personality disorder. 

I highly recommend the show for it's characters and plot lines, but the references to the Kansas City area are a super bonus.

On the home front, I have stuck with the dinner plan for a whole year and a half now, and I have to say, I am seeing serious improvement.  Four nights a week, I make a real dinner and expect each child to at least taste it.  If someone refuses even a taste (usually Macy) then they spend the remainder of the evening in their room. Macy usually comes down after a half hour or so and chokes down a minuscule bite of whatever so she can rejoin the family for the night.  Her palate definitely has room for improvement.  Jackson Henry, on the other hand, has expanded his tastes by leaps and bounds.  He even comments on how mature he is getting because he eats "grown-up" healthy food.  There are some dinners where he eats a fair amount of everything on his plate (meat, veggies, etc.).  He is still highly motivated by dessert, but the boy can stand a few extra calories, so I'm okay with it. He even wrote in his Mother's Day card that he loves his mom because she makes him healthy dinners!  His growth is what gives me patience through Macy's anti-food phase, because he too used to refuse everything.  All I can say is sticking to your guns works, sometimes it just takes over 500 days of trying.  I am thankful I never gave up.