No matter who you are, no matter what you do, you absolutely, positively do have the power to change. ~Bill Phillips

Well it's been a crazy couple of days. This morning in my spinning class, I was thinking about what I was going to write today and I was kind of depressed because last week I lost a pound finally and kept it off but then I weighed myself this morning and it was back on. Well as it turns out, my husband pointed out that I should have placed the scale on the tile instead of the rug so the 1 lb is still off! HA HA Yes, I guess I'm a dork! So knowing this, I'm in a much better mood!

So first, I will start off with my workouts yesterday. I went to the gym for ashtanga yoga, one of my favorites, love this class, it's so hot, I sweat like crazy and it's so fun to challenge myself to get better every week. Ashtanga is the same every week, maybe sounds boring but I love it, I love trying the balancing poses to see if I'm getting any better which I think I am but it's baby steps! Then after this class, I did some pull ups on the assisted pull up machine, I did 2 sets of wide, underhand and close grip. I don't remember how many I did of each. I also had to point out that I used the "assisted" pull up machine because several people on facebook thought I was bada$$ enough to do a pull up on my own, HA, I doubt it!

Wes and I came home after that, got some lunch and I got on facebook for a bit which is my usual routine, my plan was to do the p90x chest and back video after lunch but somehow I got inspired. A while back, my friend Jennifer invited me into a group called 'the mommy group' and a recipe exchange. I have grown to love these groups and seeing people post there everyday and being able to help each other so I decided that we needed a group of our own for those of us that want to live a healthy lifestyle. I called the group 'we got this' because I found it online somewhere and I loved it and I had actually forgotten it was kind of my friend Rana's motivational theme! She has run numberous mini-marathons and just last fall, she completed 2 marathons! So she did "got it" hehe

So, as of today, we are up to 88 members and lots of active posts going on. I couldn't be happier, it's so inspirational and motivating to me that people truly want to be involved in it and I'm just so excited about it.

I feel like I'm all over the place this evening. Let me get back to the fact that I did finally do the p90x chest and back yesterday after creating the group, although I feel like I only did about 20 minutes of it because having done ashtanga and yoga the day before, I had done a lot of push ups and I had already done the pull ups at the gym so I didn't have much left. But overall, I burned 950 calories in yoga and doing weights.

Today, as I said started out rough, Happy Hump day! I thought I weighed a pound more but I went to the gym depite being kinda bummed. Had a decent workout though I felt like my heart rate was a little higher than normal in spinning class, it was still a great workout and then I did 45 minutes of piyo (pilates and yoga) and felt really good in that class. With everything that happened today, I actually don't remember how many calories I burned but I think it was around 1000.

Wes and I then came home to do our usual routine of eating lunch and getting on facebook. Well, I came home to find that my laptop (I'm on our computer upstairs that we have) had been infected with a virus so instead of cleaning this afternoon and showering and cooking dinner, I had to burn all of my photos to cd's and thumb drives before the computer ate them all! Definitely not what I had planned for the afternoon. Thankfully, I did have time to vaccuum the house and finally got to get in the shower by 5:30. And we had pizza for dinner but considering I didn't eat much all day and was still only at 660 calories by dinner time, I don't feel too bad about eating 2 pieces of pizza! If I get hungry again later, I'm going to make myself a spinach salad or eat an apple, although I'm still a couple hundred calories under my goal so maybe a protein shake too.

That's about it for me right now, I'm going to go spend some time with my hubby, stepson and my son before he goes to bed. Tomorrow, I am going to go to an indoor play place to meet a couple of friends in the morning and then I'm hoping that I have enough motivation when I get home to do some p90x weights. I really have a hard time doing workouts if I don't do them first thing in the morning so I'm going to need help!

Here's my calorie log:
4200 calories burned last week
3500 burned this week (already met my goal)

If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can't buy.

I think my little day by day titles are kinda boring so I decided to change it up. One that I would love to make my title but I know it would be too long is this one that I saw in my gym. I'm posting it here so that I can look back on it too because it really inspires me to do more...

I won't just reach my goals. I will crush them. I am here to work hard. To learn. To take back my life. Get a little help. Live a lot. I will not be content. I will push myself. And be pushed. I will build my body. And fill it with confidence. One on one. One day at a time. For one reason. ME!!!

So today, I had a pretty great day. I don't know why but I'm feeling really positive today, well since my workout anyway. This morning, I woke up thinking I hate the snow, I hate these dry cracked lips I have, I hate having to wear different pants to the gym and then change when I get there because it's too cold to wear capris. But then I went to David's spin class, I used to go to his class when he first started teaching there and I really didn't like him but now I really love it. I feel like I'm riding outside and he's a great motivator. I also did his 30 minute core class after that which was a killer (but still not as hard as p90x abs, ha). I did the p90x yoga yesterday which has lots of push ups in it and there were quite a few push ups in this core class today. I know you're saying that's not core but he did it more like yoga and planks. Anyway, I ended up burning 830 calories in that class today. I also went out and shoveled snow this morning too but I only burnt 93 calories and I'm not going to count that in my total for the week. Then Wes and I went to the mall to return a couple of things, I was proud of myself for not buying anything for myself but it's difficult to shop with a 2 year old! :) I did get a pretzel that I planned to share with Wes but he didn't like it so I ate that, bad me but sometimes you have to give in and I only eat those probably twice a year. So sometimes you give in but you have to let it roll off your back and keep on truckin'. :) Other than that, we went to a friends yesterday and I probably ate a little too much but it was all good because I worked out, today even eating the pretzel, I think I'm still probably way under my calories and not hungry. I'm also going to a special yoga event at the gym tonight which I don't normally like doing in the evening but I'm going to do it anyway because Tyler will be here and it will give him and Brad some time together and my friend Andrea is going who I haven't seen forever so she kinda talked me into it! That's why it's good to have friends that workout and keep you motivated!

• My week last week 4200 calories burned.
• So far this week 1550 burned
• 5750 of my 21,000 calories burned challenge!

Oh, I almost forgot

Despite having a bad night of drinking Friday night, I actually lost 1 lb when I weighed myself Saturday morning. This is a big deal for me because I have a really hard time losing weight since I have a thyroid problem. SO I'm hoping that this 3500=1 lb of weight loss is actually finally working!

Happy weekend

I don't think I will usually post on the weekends but while I was sitting here, I decided to recap my weekend. Friday night at the last minute, we got invited to a friends for happy hour, that turned out to be a late night. In one sense, it's really nice because now Wes will sleep in his pack and play at our friends house but we just shouldn't have had as much to drink as we did and stay up so late. Overall, with all of my food and drinks on Friday, I consumed around 2000 calories which isn't that bad considering I burned I think 800ish on Friday (I can't remember).

So Saturday ended up being kind of a lazy day, I planned to go do some weights but we slept in and then I went to get my nails done and then did a free photo book on snapfish along with some other things around the house and then my mom and Alan came over. I never feel good following a day of drinking and partying, it's fun and even though I really wasn't hungover yesterday, it just doesn't fit into my lifestyle. Why workout 6 days a week, eat fairly healthy and then I drink and feel icky. I guess I need to find some new friends, HA, kidding! Even though I didn't work out, I only had around 1200 calories so I felt good about that.

Today is a good day, I finally sold the spin bike that I wanted to get rid of. Then I went and did 45 minutes of the p90x yoga. I wasn't feeling all that flexible so I didn't do the full hour and a half of it. Then I was going to go to the gym to do some weights with the hubby but his gym is at the police station and they share it with the firemen and I just really didn't want to be there especially because we would have to take Wes. So I decided to do the kenpo x again because I really liked it on Friday.

Later we are going to a friends to watch the football games today so I'm going to have to be good today. I made a healthy appetizer so I'll have to try to eat a lot of mine and I know they are making chili and chili isn't bad, right? :)

So my tally for this week is that I'm at 720 calories of out 3500 for this week.

I'm not sure why I said day 6 yesterday, today is Day 6! HA

Well I reached and exceeded my goal, YAY me! I was actually incorrect in my total yesterday, it should have been 3425 and today, I burned 775 calories so I'm at 4200. I am feeling so good about this and really proud of myself. I worked really hard this week and even had to work out at home 3 days because of the childcare at the gym and Wes not liking it. It's actually really cute because he likes to imitate me doing weights. This morning, I did kenpo and he looked at me like I was crazy most of the time. Here's a picture of Wes working out with me...

Kenpo is a part of the p90x program, I really liked it. I normally do sort of a kickboxing type of class on Friday but since childcare at the gym wasn't back to normal, I decided to stay home and do this. I used my 2lb weighted gloves for some of it (which they didn't use gloves on the video so I was really pleased with myself, ha ha). I had to stop for a second briefly to fix Wes' choo choo that he was playing with but I still finished in just a little over an hour which is what the video is and I burned 600 calories.

I immediately ran upstairs and put in the ab ripper from p90x and I FINALLY made it thru the whole video, it's only 15 minutes but wow is it hard. It's all balancing type boat poses or roll up type of ab work which I think is just very hard. I guess I definitely have not been doing enough ab work. I had to quickly shower after this because Annie was coming over for Wes' speech therapy, my legs and arms felt like they had weights on them and I'm really hoping I'm able to get out of bed tomorrow! :)

Day 6

Well sorry, we didn't get around to blogging yesterday. We had a rather eventful day, we went to the gym but the childcare area is currently under construction so they are having childcare over in the basketball court. On Monday, Wes loved it, Tuesday, not so much but he tolerated it. Yesterday, he had a complete meltdown, I left him there with the wonderful manager and he cried. I went upstairs to my class to find that it wasn't the usual instructor so I went back down and talked to someone for a few minutes and then went to check on Wes (because I was still hoping to make it to a spinning class after that) but he was still crying so we left and came home.

This was difficult since we live pretty far (20-30 minutes) from my gym but I came home and got on the elliptical for about 30 minutes. We were then going to meet some friends at this play place called Recreation Unlimited but Wes didn't seem like he was feeling great, he just kept laying around and hasn't really been eating much lately. So I did the p90x abs after this. The video is only 15 minutes but is VERY hard. I have still only made it thru about half the video. I'm sure that if I pushed myself, I could do it but since I thought we were going to meet friends, I stopped it. We got ready to leave but then I couldn't decide if Wes would want to go or not, I kept changing my mind. We decided to stay home.

Then, my friend Jasmine who I haven't seen in a long time called and said she was going so we decided to go anyway. Wes ended up having a great time, they have 4 Thomas train tables, a huge Thomas store, which was thankfully behind closed doors or we would have never been able to leave and everything would have been pulled off the shelves. They also have a basketball court, about 15 swing/playsets INSIDE, some play houses and 3 trampolines. As I said, we had a blast, it's close to home and so cheap that we will definitely be heading back there again soon and are planning another playdate next week!

So anyway, back to my challenge, I burned 375 calories doing the abs video and elliptical which puts me at 2875 out of 3500.

Now on to today, we knew we were staying home today because Wes had his annual speech evaluation and since Wes had such a meltdown at the gym, I didn't want to risk taking him back. I am hoping they are back to the childcare area tomorrow so we can go back.

Wes did really well with his speech evaluation. He knows or says at least 80 words, probably more than that. He did really well with all of the other things that they asked of him so we just have to wait for them to grade him to find out if he's still eligible for speech therapy. It's provided thru the state so it's very inexpensive which is why we have to be eligible. I'm hoping he is still going to get it because I just think it's nice to have someone else here once a week to work on things with him. He doesn't listen to me as I'm sure you moms know! :)

So today would normally have been a day off from working out but since I'm doing this challenge and trying to get more weights in, I decided to do the p90x legs and back. As I said the other day, this can be as hard or easy as you want it to be depending upon the weights you decide to use. They actually don't even use many weights in this video and I didn't either. I didn't have a pull up bar yet but tried to do some of the exercises with a band as one of the girls in the video did. I would think this video would be VERY hard if you use a pull up bar.

So once again, here is what the video consisted of...

• 25 balancing lunges (one leg on a chair)
• 25 calf raise squats
• 25 reverse grip chin-ups (if you're using a pull up bar, it would just be as many as you can do)
• 25 super skaters (each leg) - This is where you stand up and then lunge back with one leg as if you were skating but your other leg never touches the ground.
• wall squats for a minute and a half, you get lower ever 30 seconds - VERY HARD :)
• 25 wide front pull ups
• 15 (each leg) step back lunges with a 10 lb weight
• 24 alternate side lunges with a 10 lb weight
• 20 close grip overhand pullups
• single leg wall squats for a minute, change leg every 10 seconds - I was about ready to fall on the floor by the end of this.
• 25 (each leg) dead lift squats (basically a dead lift on one leg)
• 20 switch grip pull ups
• 25 3 way lunges (side, 45 degree and front with a high kick after each one)
• 20 sneaky lunges reverse grip chin ups (I stopped keeping track of how many I was doing so just do as many as you can)
• chair salutations - hold for 30 seconds, repeat!
• 20 (each leg) toe roll isolated lunge
• wide grip pull up
• 20 groucho walks
• calf raises (regular, pigeon toed and out) do 12 slow and then 12 fast of each
• close grip pull ups
• 80/20 seiber speed squats (where one toe is barely touching the floor)... I believe they did about 10 and then did about 10 jumping squats and repeated
• switch grip pull ups

The End!

After this, I went out and shoveled snow very speedy like. Unfortunately, as I sit here and type this, my driveway is covered again so I might have to do it again but I really just did this for a quick additional back workout and it's still snowing so I'm not going out again yet!

So I burned 400 calories doing the P90x legs and back and then I burned 175 calories shoveling (I didn't keep track of the time but was probably around 30 minutes). Sooooo, I'm at 3450 of my 3500 calorie goal for the week! YAY ME! If I do get to to go the gym tomorrow, the class I do is a high calorie burner and I am hoping to do some yoga also!

Day 3 of the calorie burning challenge...

I am really having fun with this, I think most people will think I'm completely over doing it but I'm excited to finally see if I see some results, I'm adding p90x weights into my workouts so that's where I'm hoping I finally see some changes!

I'm 2500 calories into my goal this week and my goal is only 3500, yay me! HA! Today, I went to the gym for an hour and 15 minute HOT ashtanga yoga. I love this class! I never thought of myself as a yogi but I do really love it, I love when it's hot so you get a good sweat going and the poses are very challenging. I'm also seeing some definite improvement in my flexibility!

Then, I went to do 20 minutes on the stairclimber. I would like to do the bop to the top this Saturday morning which is (I think) 37 flights of stairs. I knew that I would have to do about double that on a stairclimber since it assists in you climbing the stairs so I got thru about 68 floors in 20 minutes. That was 700 calories between those two things.

I came home, I had 2 hard boiled eggs on the way to the gym this morning and scary enough, I have lost another hard boiled egg I had in a bag, I have completely cleaned out my purse and my car looking for it so I'm hoping it just fell out of the car! My car doesn't smell like egg but I'm going to keep checking for it! AGH! Then, I ate a banana on my way home and a bag of veggie chips because I was starving. (Oh and last night, we had leftover gumbo over rice, a piece of garlic bread and I had a chai tea) As soon as I finish posting this, I'm going to go pig out on a big turkey sandwich!

So, once I got home, I decided to do the shoulders and triceps workout from p90x. I don't have a pull up bar yet so I couldn't do the other one that I had. Here is what this workout consisted of (I did all weights with 10 lb weights unless otherwise noted)...
warm-up
20 alternating shoulder press
20 bicep curls
17 tricep kickbacks
repeat
20 deep swimmers press
20 sublination curls
20 chair tricep dips
repeat
17 upright rows
15 static arm curls
20 flip-grip tri's (with 5 lb weights)
repeat
16 seated 2 angle shoulder flys
15 (12 the 2nd time) crouching cohen curls... this one was pretty hard with a 10 lb weight and leaning against a wall
15 lying down tri's (basically skull crushers)
repeat
20 straight arm shoulder fly's (5 lb weights)
20 congdon curl (only 17 the 2nd time)... I already don't remember what this is, ha ha
10 side tri fly's on the floor... This was painful and I said I wasn't even going to do it the 2nd time but I did. You lay on the floor on your right side, hold your right arm up like you're crossing your heart then do a push up on the floor from your left hand... NOT easy!

So what I said above was challenging, was challenging, I need heavier weights to push myself harder with the other one's, doing 10 lb weights was hard and we'll see how sore I am but I feel I could have pushed myself harder. I still burned 300 calories in a hour of doing that which is how I got to 2500 calories.
500 Sunday
1000 Monday
1000 Tuesday

I still have the p90x ab ripper which you are supposed to do in conjunction with the weight days and hopefully I have the energy to do that, it's only 15 minutes. Tomorrow will probably be a spinning class and then I will do piyo and on Thursday, I will probably try to do p90x weights again. If you have any questions about the workout above because you'd like to do it, feel free to leave me a comment and I'll get you an answer!

New year, new me... hopefully

Well I know it's been a while since I've posted and my topics have been a little off topic as this blog actually started but, I have taken on a challenge that I want to post about. I have a hard time remembering things and writing them down and where better to remember by posting it here.

As most of you probably know, I have hypothyroidism and have had a really, really hard time losing weight. I have no problems getting to the gym and exercising, in fact, I'm quite addicted to it though I have hoped it would help me look a little different. I'm not one to diet as I like to enjoy my food so that probably doesn't help. I have tracked my calories for a long time and that didn't help. I also started weight watchers about a month ago and only lost a couple of pounds when I was sick for a couple of days.

So, my hope is that by tracking things here, it will make me more accountable and maybe, just maybe I will see some results. As for this challenge I have taken on, it is to burn 21,000 calories in 6 weeks which is 3,500 calories a week which is equal to 1 lb of weight loss per week, hopefully!

I wanted to journal the things I'm doing for my own record but also for anyone else who might care to read. I'm hoping I can keep track of this every couple of days so keep checking up on me to see how I'm doing and get on me if I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

I started this challenge yesterday and because I was kind of sore from a class I had done on Friday, I decided to do yoga, the P90X yoga. Let me tell you, this is not an easy one. I have been doing yoga 3 times a week for a few months and it was still hard. The P90X yoga is 45 minutes of yoga and 45 minutes of balancing poses and abs. I wore my heart rate monitor as I will when I do any exercise and I burned 500 calories in an hour and a half, that wasn't even hot yoga.

Last night, we had some friends over to cheer against the Patriots and most of us had too much to drink. This morning, I was meeting my friend Andrea to do some weights, I'm really glad that I had scheduled to meet her, because I might not have gone to the gym otherwise though I knew if I didn't, I would feel awful all day. So, we did about 50 minutes of weights which was a great workout and then I went to a spinning class. I didn't push myself as hard as I probably normally would have though, I still went. I burned 1000 calories doing that hour and 50 minutes of working out.

To some of you, that may seem like a lot. I do have my heart rate monitor set up with my zones and have done testing even though it has been a couple of years ago, I guess I just burn a lot of calories, unfortunately, it still doesn't seem to help. I really need to do the metabolic testing and test my zones again to find out where I am but I just haven't made it a priority.

So that is 2 days of my journey, I'm at 1500 calories of 3500 for the week. Tomorrow will probably be kind of a light day as I do ashtanga yoga on Tuesday's, I'm going to try to get there early to do some cardio before or after class. I also am hoping to get the entire set of P90X so that I can do that in addition to my gym workouts!

As for the diet end of it, I would also like to track things on here as well, just not sure how realistic that is. Yesterday, I ate egg beaters on a multi-grain english muffin with a slice of cheese, then I didn't eat again until dinner which was a spinach salad, half of a mexican meatball sandwich, some pasta salad and corn casserole. Since we had friends over, I was bad and did have a piece of red velvet cake and had way too many rum and diets. Today, I had a protein shake with peanut butter for breakfast and a hard boiled egg. For lunch, I had a homemade turkey sandwich with a slice of cheese, olive oil mayo and mustard. I'm not really sure what we'll be having for dinner yet but will try to update that later.

Well, I better go shower now, I'm looking forward to vegging on my sofa for a while after that!