I was going to the gym a minimum of 3x/week until Easter and was drinking my green smoothies. I was still losing but slower than before. So all in all not too bad. Then Easter happened..........

I was good though I didn't eat any of the easter chocolate at all, but.....

We went to my daughters and she cooked amazing meals for us including desserts for 3 days. It was wonderful!! The food was healthy food but I ate a lot of it!!  I didn't exercise while I was up there because I didn't expect for it too be so cold and for them to still have so much snow and didn't pack accordingly. Also I just wanted to spend the time with my daughter and grandbabies.

I thought no big deal I will just get back to my routine once I get home, but there were other plans in store for me.

An hour after we got home our van died, a friend from church said he would take a look at it for us, but that took time to organize schedules. No big deal.

We live close enough to the stores to walk, so I have been doing that for the last few weeks but the price of produce at the close stores is more than double what I was paying at Costco so the green smoothies are out of the budget for now. So I have switched back to oatmeal in the mornings and usually leftovers for lunch.

With everything going on I have forgotten to weigh in recently. I did weigh in once after Easter and I was up to 327.4. So I gained 1.2lbs from all the yummy food and no exercise. That is OK though as long as I don't give up and keep working towards my goal of better health.

Cheers!

Have been consistently going to the gym on Monday, Wednesdays ,and Fridays. I am really enjoying it too. This week I had to get some new runners because the ones I was wearing had completely worn out and I ended up getting a few blisters. Ouch!

Weight didn't change this week. Hopefully will work past this plateau soon.

Off to make my smoothies for the day.

Cheers!!

Loving being able to go to the gym again!!

I went 3 times last week and plan on continuing that until I can manage every day. My goal is to be able to get 10,000 steps everyday. I am not there yet but when I do go to the gym I get 6,000-8,000 steps. My speed is slower to make sure I don't injure my heel again, but once I can speed up I should be able to get my steps without a problem. Can't wait!!

Still doing the smoothies, and loving them most days, other days I just suffer through them. I have finally convinced myself that food doesn't always have to taste good. It is meant to be fuel for my body, nothing more. Not treats or rewards - SIMPLY FUEL!!!

Weighed in today and the weight hasn't moved yet. So still at 326.2lbs. Hopefully this week will be better.

Today is a good day for smoothies and I am off to finish mine.

Cheers!!

I am finally back at the gym. I can't walk on the treadmill for as long as I was before and I have to go at a bit slower pace to make sure I am not pounding down on my heel. But I can live with that as long as I can start going again. I have been managing 30 minutes a day so far. I had almost forgotten how good it felt to finish a workout.

This wasn't a good weekend for food. My friend's, daughter's birthday was this weekend(that's a mouthful). Anyways because her house is in the middle of a renovation, we had the party here. Not a big deal except, all the food was here too, and I ended up eating way too much.

Needless to say, weigh in wasn't great this week. But I didn't gain so I can't be too upset. I will just have to make better food choices this week.

Cheers!!
 

Not much to report this week.

-Still doing the green smoothies.

-I have started tracking my activity again, so I can work on beating myself everyday.(Just a little bit competitive. LOL)

I weighed in and am down 0.8lbs this week. It is that time of the month so I was actually expecting a gain so am very happy with the loss. So I am now at 326.2lbs.

Off to run errands and drink my smoothie now.

Cheers!!

I haven't gotten started with an exercise routine yet, but this week my foot hasn't hurt at all. YAY!!!

I think I will start slow just to make sure I don't injure it again though. I am actually excited by the prospect of exercising again. Weird?!?!?

I am still doing the green smoothies and still enjoying them. With the results both my mom and I have been getting, I would have to say I love them!!

Mom has been doing the green smoothies with me, so we are getting the exact same ones, because we make them together. She has lost a little bit of weight but we have seen huge results with her medications and blood sugar numbers. Her blood sugar numbers have been staying in the normal range without any medications and last week the doctor cut one of her blood pressure medications in half. Amazing!!

I am not on medications so my results were with weight loss. I weighed in this morning and am now 327!! Down another 7lbs!

I'm off to finish my smoothie.

Cheers!!

I started drinking greens smoothies on February 6th, I make a large batch(about 2 litres!!!!) in the morning and drink it until I am done sometime before dinner. The first couple days I needed more fruit than veggies, but have slowly been cutting back on the fruit, while adding more veggies. The smoothies as of now are about 40% fruit and 60% veggies. I also started with just spinach as the vegetable, simply because it has such a mild taste and the baby spinach almost tastes sweet. I also add some flax seed and hemp seeds for added nutrition.

I was worried that the smoothies wouldn't be filling enough but that has not been a problem at all. When I thought about all that I put int them I realized that I would probably not be able to eat that much during the day. It is at least 10 servings of fruits and vegetables!! Way more than I was getting before.

The only thing I don't like about them so far is the colour.

I have a blue shaker bottle so I have been putting it in there to drink so I can't see the nasty colour anymore.

Besides getting all my fruit and veggies for the day without any problems there are 2 other reasons why green smoothies are awesome that I have found so far:

1. I have so much more energy now!!

2. I am losing weight!!

I weighed in yesterday and discovered that since I started drinking them I have lost 5.6 lbs. That means I am now 334, the lowest I have been in a long time!!!

Time to go and drink some more of my smoothie.

Cheers!!

I am still here, I got really busy, first with Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and then of course Christmas.

At the end of November I injured my foot, I damaged the pad on my heel and the doctor told me I had to stay off of it for 8-10 weeks. I was so frustrated and discouraged. I had just started to get more into a schedule of working out and then I got hurt. I did keep swimming and that helped but when the temperature dropped below -25C, I didn't feel much like getting wet and then having to drive home in a cold van.

Anyways, my foot is healing, not 100% yet, but it is getting there. On the warmer days (anything above -15C), I go to the pool, and soon I will be able to start the treadmill again.

Last week I decided to add green smoothies to my meals, it will boost my veggie intake and all the vitamins I get from the extra veggies. I will keep you updated on how that goes.

I decided to start using the blog again to force me to be accountable for my health choices, that included weighing myself again, which I haven't done since I hurt my foot. So I weighed myself on Monday and I am 339.6lbs. Which means I gained 4 lbs over the holidays, definitely not good but still better than I expected.  So here is to starting again.

Cheers!!

I loved the aquafit class!!!!!

I had so much fun!! I think I had forgotten how much I loved the water. I also wasn't as sore as I thought I would be. I was a little stiff but not really sore at all, which was an awesome surprise. I ended up going on Tuesday and Friday because Emily had a field trip on Thursday that I had forgotten about. I plan on going twice next week also, but have a doctors appointment on Tuesday so not sure which days yet.

 So.. I was more careful with my eating this past week and I added in some extra activity causing me to lose the 1 lb that I had gained. So I am back on track now. Yippee!!

The next few weeks I have set a new goal for myself also.

Getting more sleep!!

I started tracking my sleep and I am only getting about 6 hrs of sleep every night. It's no wonder I am tired all the time, so I will be tracking and working on upping the numbers for the next little while. Not sure how much I am aiming for yet as every body is different. For now I will be just focusing on getting more and seeing how I feel.

Cheers!

The last week has been filled with not so great food choices. We have been busy trying to get the renovations completed and I started going through all the homeschooling supplies that have accumulated over the last 9 years(can't believe it has been so long). It was a lot more work than I expected and because of that I was lazy with food. I did try to make good choices but didn't succeed at every meal.

But... It must not have been as bad as I thought because when I weighed myself I was only up 1 lb. Not great but a lot better than I expected.

Onto a new week and I will make better choices this week. I also plan to start an aquafit class twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That should be a blast once I get past the intial pain. LOL!!

Cheers!

So I didn't post for the last few days as we were having some computer problems, but I did manage to almost finish the juice fast. I say almost, because I didn't make the last juice on the last day of the fast. The juicer decided to malfunction, I think the computer started a rebellion. LOL!!
Thank goodness Costco has such a great return policy.

On day 4 I ended up having Sunny Citrus Beet juice and Kissed By the Sun juice. The Kissed By the Sun juice was not too bad, but the Sunny Citrus Beet juice was not good. It was so sour that it made me feel sick before I had even finished it. I ended up juicing some apples and carrots to add to it so I could stomach it.

On Day 5 I had the Spiced Apple and Carrot juice, and I enjoyed that one a lot. For these 5 days I lost absolutely no weight, I was doing better before the juice fast. I also didn't notice any of the other benefits that people were talking about. Since the juicer broke I decided not to replace it. It was more work for me, having to make juice for me and then a meal for everyone else. So I have decided to go back to what I was doing.

Back to just healthy eating. I am planning to make some muesli for breakfast, if it works out I will post the recipe.

Cheers!

Yesterday was day 2 of my juice fast and it went really well. I did have the Morning Tang juice again(and I made it right this time), and the Green Juice for Weight Loss.  The Morning Tang juice is really good when it is made correctly. LOL!! The Green Juice for Weight Loss was way too sour for me, but my daughter loved it. I think next time I would only use half a lemon in this one.

Today was day 3 and it went pretty good. I had a headache for part of the day and felt a bit run down. So hopefully tomorrow will be better. The juices I did today are Rainbow Summer juice and Sweet Blueberry Blast. I managed to follow the recipes for these without forgetting anything too. Yay me!!

The Rainbow Summer juice was alright, but if I did decide to make it again I think I would leave out the peach(it didn't seem to add much) and I would add a whole orange instead of half. The Sweet Blueberry Blast, on the other hand, was amazing!! It was delicious!!!  I will definitely be making it again.

For tomorrow, beets will be on the menu! A friend brought some by today for me to try. So, I am off to look through the recipes for a juice with  beets that tickles my fancy!

Cheers!!

Juice Fast

I have decided to do a juice fast!!!

So I signed up for the 5 day juice challenge on Joe Cross's site. The juice fast started on Monday but I started a day later because I didn't receive my juicer until Monday afternoon. I choose to do juicing for breakfast and lunch and then to eat a healthy supper. I was considering doing just juicing for the 5 days but since I have never attempted any kind of cleanse or fast before I thought this would be a bit easier on me.

So today was my first day of juicing and I made Stars and Stripes juice, yummy, plums and blueberries. It was delicious, but I think next time I will put less ginger in and I could probably add more greens because the fruit was really sweet. I also made Morning Tang juice, it was pretty good but I forgot to add the lemon, so I will be trying it again.

I thought I would feel really hungry through the day or maybe have a headache but I actually felt pretty good today. Hopefully tomorrow will be just as good or better.

I think tomorrow I will try the Morning Tang juice again(and make it right this time), and the Green Juice for Weight Loss.

Cheers!!

First Weigh-in

So in June when I went in for my physical I weighed in and was 350lbs. I almost cried. I needed to fix this NOW!!!

I decided to start with small changes. Ones that I knew I could manage and I would wait for a few weeks between each change, so that I could make sure it had become a habit.

First change was to pay attention when I was eating, eat slowly, stop when I am done. Sounds easy enough, but to someone who was used to eating quickly and was taught to clean the plate, it was alot harder than it sounds.

As a mother of  5,  I was always rushing my meals so that I could deal with feeding the kids or getting them into the bath, or off to bed, school, etc,etc. I worked in a factory type job and I had a half hour in which to eat my lunch, change clothes, check-in with the sitter, etc, etc. Clearing the table and the kids left food on their plate and you eat those too, because you don't want to waste food, and it is only a bite.

It was hard and I had to be very intentional about it. I had to constantly remind myself to chew slowly, I used my left hand instead of my right for awhile(very awkward which = slow). I left at least one bite on my plate at every meal. After a couple weeks it became easier so I moved onto my next change.

Second change was to cut back on my sugar intake. I didn't eat a lot of junk food to begin with so I was looking for where the sugar might be hiding in my everyday meals, which meant reading a lot of labels.

We discovered that our regular tomato sauce had both sugar and salt added, so we switched to plain tomato paste. Bread, buns, wraps and pasta we switched to whole grain varieties. Not whole wheat but whole grain. We only bought granola type cereals but when we read those labels, we discovered more sugar, so we switched to oatmeal topped with fruit.

This change is going to be on going, I can't believe all the hiding places sugar has.

Last week I started working on adding more fruit and veggies. So far so good!!

Now to the weigh-in......................................

 335lbs

I have lost 15lbs this summer!!!

A New Beginning

I have struggled with my weight since I was in my twenties. It was just a slow gain, a bit more every year and every pregnancy.

Just before I turned 30 I weighed in at 220lbs, I decided I needed to get serious and get into shape. So I started working out and managed to lose 40 lbs. Woohoo!!

Then I found out I was pregnant again. I was thrilled!! During that pregnancy I gained back all the weight I had lost. I wasn't too upset because I had a beautiful baby girl to cuddle.

A few months later I started working out again, but the weight didn't seem to be coming off this time. I was extremely frustrated so I went to my doctor to see if we could figure out what was going on.

After a complete physical and lots of bloodwork they discovered my thyroid was the issue. It turns out I had Grave's Disease or an overactive thyroid. When the doctor told me I looked at him like he was crazy and said, "Umm, I think you are mistaken, I mean, HELLOOO, I'm fat." The doctor laughed at that, and then proceeded to inform me how that in a small percentage of people with Grave's Disease they will gain weight instead of losing it. WELL THAT'S NOT FAIR!!!

So over the next year they monitored my bloodwork and I continued to gain weight. The doctor finally decided that they needed to get rid of my thyroid, and they scheduled me to have the radiation treatment to kill it off. And I continued to gain weight.

After my thyroid was gone I really started to gain weight. This continued over the next few years while they tried to figure out the proper dosage was for thyroid replacement meds. Every three months I would get more bloodwork and then they would raise my dosage a little bit more.

 This year when I had my physical they adjusted the meds again, but they also discovered that my liver wasn't working properly. The liver problems are a direct result of all the weight I have gained.

I need to fix my health and that starts with losing weight.