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!

sharing some of my favorite recipes

My good friend Talia who just recently moved in with her boyfriend at IU asked me to share some recipes with her. I thought that this would make for a good time to post some of them here for everyone to enjoy. I'm not posting any of my soup or stew recipes here so post and let me know if you would like me to make a separate post for that.

For some reason, when I paste my links here they aren't working so go to www.cookinglight.com/food/recipe-finder/

Search for these recipes...

• Pork chops with Maple Mustard Glaze
• Latin Baked Chicken
• Cheese Enchilda Casserole
• Pork Chops with Country gravy - this is a favorite I haven't made in a long time... really good with mashed potatoes (try Bob Evans refrigerated mashed potatoes)
• Barbecue Rubbed Pork Chops - This rub is also excellent on chicken!
• Fettucine Alfredo with Bacon - I haven't actually tried this one but wanted to throw some pasta in here.

Here's a good slow cooker recipe that I found as I was flipping thru my recipe book...
Chicken Stew
3 medium potatoes
2 cups of baby-cut carrots
1 package of whole mushrooms cut in half
about 2.5 lbs of chicken
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp of instant chopped onion
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 jar (15 oz) roasted chicken gravy
1/2 cup of dry white wine or water.

Toss potatoes, carrots and mushrooms in a slow cooker, arrange chicken on top. Sprinkle salt, onion and garlic powder over chicken. Stir tomato paste into the gravy, pour mixture and wine or water over all. Cover and cook on low for 8 to 10 hours or until vegetables are tender.

Parmesan Chicken Breasts
1 1/2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 cup of grated parmesan cheese
4 tso dried oregano
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp pepper
2 eggs
4 tbsp butter

Pound the chicken breasts til they are thin, combine the cheese thru pepper on a place. In another shallow bowl, beat the eggs (you can also just use water). Dip the chicken in the water then the cheese mixture, coating well on both sides.

Melt the butter in a heavy skillet over medium-low heat (a higher heat will scorch and melt the cheese) and saute for 4-5 minutes per side, or until cooked thru.

Here is one that I love but it makes a TON so I would highly recommend cutting this in half unless you plan to feed an army!

Crockpot Lasagna
1 box of rigatoni, cooked
1 1/2 lbs of ground chuck, browned and drained
1 pkg of sliced pepperoni
1 green pepper, chopped
2 large packages of mozzarella cheese
2 jars of pizza sauce
2 large cans of sliced mushrooms
green olives, sliced

Put all ingredients in crockpot and cook on low for 5 hours.

Okay, I hope that's enough to get you started with. Let me know if you have any questions or any other requests!

why am I sitting inside updating my blog when it's gorgeous outside?

Ah, yes, it's because I have a sleeping toddler upstairs. I can NOT believe he's going to be 2 in just 2 weeks! AGH, seriously where does the time go? I think that the terrible 2's have started early, he has been into everything lately and driving mama nuts. The other day, he broke the Indianapolis snowglobe that Brad bought for me a couple of years ago. :( He loves jumping (even though his feet don't come off the ground! HA HA) He got his first little scuff on his knee the other day just walking out of the gym with me but fell forward a little bit, he didn't even cry, such a big boy! The big thing that I wanted to mention is that last week he said "go bye car" which is huge for him!

Another reason I'm inside is because Brad went out for a bike ride. I guess he was feeling guilty that I have ridden 55 miles this week so I think he was going to ride about 10, HA! That's okay, I'm glad he's finally getting some use out of his $600 bike that he got 3 years ago that only has about 30 miles on it! Mine has over 450 now. I finished my first sprint triathlon last week and it was tons of fun. I still don't like swimming but I did it and will probably do more. There is one in Fishers this month that I would like to do but they are expensive. Anyone want to sponsor me? ;) I am trying to get some major mileage on my bike this month as I really want to do the hilly hundred next month but it's kinda dependent upon the weather since it will be October in Indiana, you just never know.

We are doing family photos next week and I'm really excited about that so I will update that soon! Off to do some shopping online! :)

Long time, no see!

Well I know it has been forever since I have updated this and I was just looking at the blog and it still had a Christmas background and Christmas photos so I thought it might be time to update. It's summer now and we've been having a great one. I'm not going to add any photos to this post because there would be a ton and anyone who is reading this can see our photos on facebook. We are all doing really well. Wes is growing like a weed... speaking of weeds, I have some serious weeds that I need to get outside and pull but it's a little difficult with a toddler running around. Wes had his 2nd dentist appointment today, he wasn't too thrilled about it but thankfully our dentist is super fast and counted his teeth and brushed them really quick and we were out of there. She is super nice and I highly recommend Dr. Carol McKowan in Carmel, IN.

Wes is also still doing his speech therapy which he is doing really well with. I have actually started making a list of all of the words he says now and it's really adding up so here we go.... He says... toe, shoes, socks, juice, dada, doggy, truck, car, woof, duck, choo choo, go, chips, boo, book, vroom, more, bath, bubbles, pop, and cheese. Some of these words may be one's that he doesn't say very often and there are more words he has said but only said them once so I may not have written them down. But he is definitely communicating so much better with us which makes life so much easier. He also understands a lot more of what we are saying which I have to be thankful to the ear tubes for that b/c he never really used to do things that we said before b/c I know he didn't hear us probably. Now we can ask him something and he will shake his head yes or no or if we ask him if he's ready for bed, he will run over to the gate. Oh and most of the time he just shakes his head no and then usually changes his mind a few seconds later, very rarely does he shake his head yes! HA HA He loves lots of things but mostly loves cars, he really likes playing outside and we have been having a fantastic time at the lake and finally got him in the water last week and he loved it. He doesn't like spray parks but we went to the pool at sahm park which had some sprayers and he really had fun there but really just wanted to be a big kid and go in the deep end.

I can't really answer for Brad but all is well with us here on the homefront too, Brad has been busy working and I've been busy doing everything else and working out like a mad woman as most of you know. I have started swimming with my friend Kathryn and am working my way up to doing a triathlon very soon (hopefully). I'm still not a great swimmer but getting there and it has been really fun to keep doing it and finally see some progress!

I better run because Wes is in the living room getting into some things that he shouldn't be and I need to go change clothes so that I can go swim with Kathryn! I hope that you all are having a fantastic and safe summer!