The beginning..

This is me with our twins. This was our first family vacation since the twins were born. I didn't realize at the time how FAT I had gotten. I say fat because this was the heaviest I had ever been, I didn't even get this big while I was pregnant with them.

A new start

Here I go again. I am neglecting to post in my blog. Wow, what a whirlwind few weeks. So much to blog about.
After my last posting, Tyler came down with pink eye, then a virus which I believe led into a sinus infection. So he ended up missing 3 days of school, he was so sick it was pitiful. Any mom knows taking care of a sick kid is constant. So now he's all better, then I started feeling it come on. UGH! Luckly for me, taking my Vitamin D3 and drinking my Shakeology everyday gives my body that extra umph to fight off germs. I ended up having a little running nose and feeling a little tired but nothing like what it could have been. Not to mention, I started going through all of my PMDD symptoms. Again, luckly for me, with the help of my Shakeology and my Don Quai (herbal hormone help) I only felt tired. So I took a few days off of working out to let my body recover.

So now on to all of my excited changes. First I'm going to start with how amazing God is to me. He is really working on me and our family right now. I am praying for some specific things to happen in my life and he is opening doors right and left for me right now.

First thing that has happened that has changed my life is joining a local team. Because of this change, I am now able to connect one on one personally with my coach and team mates, go to fit clubs and events in town. For me right now, that is HUGE. I am in great need of some serious hand holding to carry me through. There are days where I just feel so alone and in a black whole. With my faith, family and friends rooting for me, I'm now seeing sun shining everywhere on me.

Second, my parents paid me to sell my grandaddy's car. I was able to use that money to become a coach and purchase a challenge pack making it possible for me to open up my own challenge group and start my own team. This was number 1 on my PUSH goal list. This goal is going to make my Big goal come true.

Last week I was able to get 2 friends to sign up as my customers, just on my list not purchasing anythiing yet. Still, that's the first step to bringing people on board with me on my journey.

Today, I was able to help one of those customers become not only a beachbody challenge member, but she decided to also become a coach. Now I only have one more customer to get and I will become an Emerald Coach. To know that I am supporting & encouraging others to make changes in their lifestyles so that they can become healthier and happier is something I can not put into words. I am praying everyday that God brings me people who want to commit to changing their lives forever. To watch someone transform in such a huge way is priceless. I just can't put it into words.

My hope is that I can get 4 additional people to join me so that I can have a team of 5 to encourage, support & motivate each other. I truly believe having others depend on me for some of those will in turn motivate me and make me push myself harder. I am in need of friends who can also help me. Lately I've been feeling so much more excited about my own life and changes. I've been really down lately about my transformation. I'm beginning to get reenergized about my own changes and I'm ready to help someone else feel the same way. I'm going to share my journey in pictures. I feel as though if I post my progress in the way of measurements and pictures, this will keep me going. I want to see these changes too. If I'm going to ask someone else to change their life and get fit, I have to too. So here I go, on my journey to helping others live a healthier more fit lifestyle, one life at a time.

Wow it's been forever since I've blogged

It seems like forever since I've posted anything. I kind of has been. I've missed venting. I've had a bad couple of weeks. Let's recap. Thursday before Christmas I was on my way to my very first Fit Club with Beachbody. As I was sitting at a stop light waiting patiently for the red light to turn green, I was rear-ended. At first I was fine. No pain, no issues, nothing. I ended up not making to Fit Club. The next day I worked out and felt okay. Then my husband and I decided to grab a sandwich for lunch, I got so sick almost immediately after eating it. I began to get dizzy, nausious, and extremely tired. I knew something wasn't right with me. I went to see my chiropractor the week after new years. Come to find out, I had a bad place between my shoulder blades. When I say bad, I don't know the technical term for it, when he pushed on my upper back to adjust it, I had a horrible sharp pain shoot down my left arm which made it tingle. Not good at all. After that, I went down hill quick. I felt very tired, sick to my stomach, just not good. I didn't do anything for the rest of that day. It was horrible. I was miserable. I tried working out the next day but got sick immediately after I worked out. That's when I realized, I was not going to be able to do anything until I started feeling better. So I haven't felt like doing ANYTHING for 2 weeks. I became very depressed. I was horrible. I felt unable to control myself. I was very emotional, I would get sick after eating certain foods, I would get fatigued quickly, horrible. I had absolutely no control of any of these symptoms. I just basically stopped everything. I was miserable. I felt horrible inside and out. So this is why I haven't posted in a while.

Finally the past couple of days I've noticed I'm feeling better. I find myself not getting sick anymore, I'm getting my energy back, I'm actually mentally preparing for working out when the kids go back to school on Tuesday, I'm able to concentrate better and stay focused better. If anyone ever hits me again, I think I might just have to crawl in a corner and stay there. I don't ever want to experience anything like this again. I haven't felt this bad since being pregnant or maybe after giving birth to our twins.

After this experience, I've decided it's time to get really serious about my body. I HAVE to make some changes. I'm sick and tired of feeling so bad about how I look. I'm sick of having such a low self esteem. My husband even notices it and hates it. I get sick when I look in the mirror. I know it can't be as bad as what I see, but I'm the one that has to see it. I have to fix this. So I am going to take my measurements and some new pictures of myself Tuesday morning before I workout and post everything. I'm hoping by putting myself out there and posting my progress, I will hold myself more accountable and if anyone is really following this, they will help hold me accountable. I want to see some big changes in the next 30 days. That means I have to count my calories, watch my water intake, eat clean & lean and workout according to my calendar. I'm also going to post my calendar on here so I know what I'm supposed to be doing and when. I'm also going to post my goals and deadline. I must make some serious changes. If I'm going to help other people change their lives, I have to start with my own. I'd like to invite others to join me. I want to start a challenge group. If I could find some people who want to get fit and healthy, we could do it together. I'd love to share this journey with somone.

Wow, it's amazing how much better I feel just laying everything out there. Even if I'm the only one who ever reads this. Getting this stuff off my chest really does feel better. So now that's it's 10:00 I'm off to bed. Tuesday is coming. I'm actually getting excited. Wish me luck :)

New day.. try again

Since yesterday was SOO crazy, hectic and a total disaster with my calorie count, I decided to start over today. Today the kids went back to school, YAY.. not only for me, but they were excited as well. I love that my kids love to go to school. Great feeling. Got up and made waffles again, this time using bisquick. Perfect. Everyone was happy. Dropped the kids off at school and came back to try to get things back in order here at home. Our house is still a pretty bad disaster. My plans for today were, make shakeology, clean up kitchen, workout, get laundry started, pick up kids rooms, get living room organized again. Great plans right? Yep, if they had all went as well as I had planned them in my head. First rule of Chalene's from her book PUSH, write down your goals/plans for the day. Make written to do lists. First catastraphe was breakfast again. I have been talking to some fellow, local coachs through Beachbody trying to get some help with my nutrition & fitness. I'm really trying to get out of this "stuck" issue I'm having with my weight. I'm also trying to get some energy built back up so I can do my workouts the way I need to do them. I was advised to incrase my calorie intake to 15-1800 a day making sure to get 3-400 calories in a every meal (3 full meals a day). That meant I had to add something to Shakeology to get it up to at least 300. I don't like PB. I don't like the smell or taste. But it's loaded in healthy fats, carbs, protein & calories, so I needed to try it. I really didn't think I would be able to taste is with everything else I put in it. I figured the chocolate is so strong in it, the pb taste would disapate. So I mixed my usual ingredients: 1 1/4 cup milk, 1 egg yolk, 1 cup of water, about 3 tbspn of honey & this time 1 tbspn of pb; through it all in a mixer and tasted it. Not bad, I can handle this. I got about half way through my shakeology and started to feel full. Normally when I feel full, I stop and put the rest in the frig. This time, knowing I was trying to get more calories in my meals, I forced msyelf to finish the entire 12 oz of shakeology. OH GOODNESS UGH!!!! That was not smart. I was SOOOOOOOOO sick. I felt like I was going to puke. I was totally miserable. I had to lay down and be really really still. Even breathing made me nausious. Oh I've never been that full. I will never do that again. Next time, I will stop, let my gut settle and then drink more after some has settled. HUGE HUGE mistake. It took me about an hour and a half to finally feel better. But by that time, I was feeling weak and shaky. I think part of that was from my sugar level, and part because of my gut being empty again. But, because of what my stomach had just gone through, I wasn't quite to excited to put food back on it. So I slowly and carefully ate some grapes and granola with a full glass of water. Finally I began to regain my appetite and had lunch. Wow what a learning experience that was. The idea for me is to get at least 300 calories at every meal with a total of 15-1800 calories a day. I need to get most of my lean protein and healthy carbs from morning until about 4:00, then nothing but fruits, veggies & lean protein from 4:00 until 9:00. The idea behind that is my body needs most of it's fuel in the morning and afternoon to burn off fat and give me energy to get through my workouts. I have to have the majority of my protein and carbs before my workout so I can push through them and have the energy to burn a goal of 300+ calories each workout. That gives me a deficit of 500 calories a day. Depending on what workout I choose will depend on how many calories I burn, which will depend on how many calories I eat. Which is why planning my day is crutcial. There are those days where my workout time and plans change, so I have to change my food needs along with that. I just have to stop eating carbs at 4:00 so my body doesn't get more than it can burn. After that, my body won't be able to burn the rest off and that's how you get fat. On the flip side, I have to have enough calories to fuel my body to do what I need for it to do. So, I didn't get a workout in today due to how I felt and messing up my morning. I guess tomorrow will be another retake. I'm just glad I'm feeling better.

Dear diary.... I need to vent

WOW... These last 2 days seem like such a whirlwind. I thought I was going to loose my mind, I thought I already had, honestly I think I did. I absolutely LOVE my kids and couldn't imagine life without them, I would never want to go back, but there are some days I just need a break. I need "me" time. That's usually my workout times, but with 3 boys running all over the place, in and out, neighbor kids running behind them, freezing outside where no one wants to stay outside cabin fever sets in and every one looses control. The last 2 days were complete craziness. Breakfast was a total disaster yesterday. I attempted to use my brand new waffle maker for breakfast for the very first time yesterday. DISASTER. The recipe I used called for Baking "Powder" where I used baking "soda".. HUGE mistake. So we didn't get breakfast made until 10:30. Three kids running around starving, the kitchen looking like a bakery gone wrong, not a good combo. So I used a backup and just threw together bisquick. Even though it wasn't my first choice of making homemade waffle, it worked and it was better than frozen. The kids loved them. Then it took me more than an hour to clean up the kitchen from that mess. While I was busy fixing that disaster, I had our 3 boys, Kellyn, a nieghbor kid and some of Sean's friends running in and out and all around our house. UGH!!!! There were toys, cards, games, books, you name it in every single room of our house. Chaos. Worse than that, the kids were whinny because they wanted to go outside and play but they kept getting cold. So our front door ended up being like a swinging door, up, close, up, close, up, close.. I didn't think our heat would ever stop coming on. This lasted ALL DAY!! Luckly for me, I think Michael felt bad for me. I got to get out last night and go to fit club. Ahhhhhh... very nice. Good workout, good people, adult conversations, very good end to a crazy chaotic day.

However, because of my morning and most of the day being so hectic and chaotic, I didn't do good about keeping up with my calories and keeping up with my body signals of sugar lows. So, since I didn't get to eat breakfast until 10:30, after I made everyone else their waffle, I missed my hunger signals for lunch. About 12:00 I began to feel really weak, tired, sluggish. By then it was too late to stop it. I crashed hard. I began to feel dizzy & fuzzy in my head. I couldn't think, I found myself walking in circles. It's hard to keep up with 5 kids when you can't think. I didn't really feel hungry, but I knew something was right, so I made myself sit down and eat a granola square & some grapes with glass of water. All of the sudden I began to actually want lunch, crazy how that works. I made baked chicken and greenbeans, I'm kinda on a kick right now. I felt totally re-energized after lunch. But because of the day I had, not keeping up with my calories and not watching what I was eating, I didn't do well getting enough calories in. So today was a redo... next post.

Bedtime

I was getting ready for bed about an hour ago but began to get hungry. I decided to take my own advice and drink a big o'l glass of water to help get rid of that "hunger" feeling. Then I remembered the last time I had looked at my caloric intake, I was way under what I was supposed to be. I think I was around 9??, where I'm supposed to be at least 1571. Oh man, as much I hate to eat after 9:00, I knew I had to put something in my gutt. If I don't, I will feel weak tomorrow and my body will not do well. So, knowing what time of night it was, the best thing I could eat is lean protein. At least by eating that, I will burn some calories while I'm sleeping. I was out of my turkey, so I decided the next best thing my granola, grapes & some water. So I went to town, I just finished 1 and half granola bars each of 130 calories. About a half cup of grapes and 2 cups of water. So now my calories are close and my water is closer. So win win on both sides. I wouldn't have gotten my total water in take if I hadn't made myself eat. Even if no one ever reads this blog or these posts. Even if I never touch a single life with these comments, suggestions, ideas and tricks, at least I feel good knowing I'm keeping myself accountable. I had not been keeping up with my water or calorie intake and dealing with this fatigue & weak issue a lot lately. I'm really feel I'm at least helping myself be more accountable and maybe changing my own life with these posts. I'm going to total my caloric intake and my water on the previous post. I still think I'm a little low on the calories, but not as bad as I was going to be. I'm trying to stay between 1200-1571. That will allow me to stay energized for my workouts, gives me room to play and "cheat", but also allows me to loose weight. I sure hope I'm in as much control of my diet tomorrow as I was today. Today was a really good day of control.

updated calorie and water count

As of 7:28 p.m. my calorie count is 984 and I have added 2 more glasses of water.

As of 10:56 p.m. (UGH! I hate waiting this late) my total calorie count for the day is 1335 and my total water intake is 120 oz. I am very pleased. :) I just hope tomorrow reflects this.