Friday, May 29, 2009

Kick That Bag!

That's what I spent 45 minutes doing yesterday, and it was awesome! I attended my first cardio thai kickboxing class last night. It rocked! I did however injure myself a bit, nothing serious, but both knees are purple and I busted a blood vessel on the top of my right foot. It was so worth it though. It went kinda like this:

Minute 1: Skip until your calves feel like they may seize up
Minutes 2-3: Skip while lifting your knees up
Minutes 3-4: Skip faster
Minute 5: Skip until you feel like your calves may explode, seriously
Minutes 6-8: Standing leg lifts
Minutes 8-10: Standing quick side kicks
Minutes 10-11: Pushups
Minutes 12-13: Walking pushups (I stared at my friend open-mouthed when he asked us to do this)
Minutes 14-15: More freakin' skipping
Minute 15-16: Plank

Minutes 17-40: Kickboxing! Various drills with the bag, punching, kicking, kneeing, super fun!

Minutes 41-45: See skipping interval above, and repeat
Minutes 46-50: Stretching, sweet sweet stretching


I would seriously recommend this workout to people looking for a real challenge! It was awesome!

Thursday, May 28, 2009

You Think You Gnome Me, Homey?

I'm going to bet that most of you don't know I'm a gardener. I think I do it mostly for the gnomes.

Today I took a vacation day to stay home with Stephen and get our garden plot ready for planting this weekend. I secretly stayed home to be able to do enough yard work and gardening to earn an ice cream in a chocolate dipped waffle cone from Stephen's workplace. See, Steve's a gardener by profession. I'm just a good actress.

We will have a garden that is at least four times the size of last year's garden. We borrowed my dad's tiller and made us a nice plot. I CANNOT WAIT to plant it and watch it grow. I will be posting many many pictures.

Also stopped at a local greenhouse that was recommended by the wonderful woman who runs our doggie daycare. I will actually post a special post devoted to her tomorrow. I love her! Anyway, so the greenhouse was great, owned by a man who couldn't have been less than 117 years old. So cute. Once we told him Laura told us to stop by, we quickly became best friends. And he told us that everything they have is grown organically!!! YES! We will definitely be back! Today's purchase was a million pansies for my window boxes, for a total of $21.

The next couple of days will be mayhem. Steve's mother and her boyfriend (of a million years) are coming to stay for the weekend. They tell us it's to go fishing, but I find it hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would travel over 2 hours to go fishing when they live on the coast of the province. The last time they came down to go fishing, we caught one fish, one. And I was traumatized. I just don't think fishing's my thing. I'm not one to get up at 4.30am to sit on a riverbank and fight flies. Call me crazy. I do love the outdoors and fishing, provided someone will bait the hook and deal with touching any fish that might be dumb enough to land on my rod. That's about it though. So I'll probably take a novel.

This is what happened the last time:


Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Today's Meeting Topic: Motivating Strategy

*Sigh* Such a difficult topic...

We all start out with a great attitude and all the commitment in the world when we get on the weight loss wagon. But, once the initial weight loss tapers off, many people drop out of Weight Watchers before they reach goal. Or once they reach their goal weight, many people don't even hang around long enough to reach Lifetime status. And some, after becoming a Lifetime member, start to slowly gain their weight back. Most often people blame this on having lost their motivation.

Motivation: whatever inspires you to do the things necessary to reach your weight goal and stay there.

"Last straw" incidents are important to get members started, but to sustain motivation they need to focus on the good feelings they'll get when they achieve what they want - which inspires them to take the necessary steps to achieve it.

So, have you left your motivation somewhere? What does it look like? Where can you find it again?

Monday, May 25, 2009

Life's Too Short Not to Eat Cake

Life's too short not to eat cake, or ice cream, or cheese. Really.

It amazes me to no end that people are willing to sacrifice good quality, delicious food for the sake of losing weight. Or that they are afraid to eat good food once they realize the amount of calories they're about to ingest. But you know what? Life really is too short not to eat these foods.

For me, it's cake, ice cream, cheese, wine, good bread, or good chocolate. Why would I deprive myself of those things? None of these things are deemed "bad" foods, as long as they're eaten in moderation. Well, cake is probably the worst of the bunch, but still isn't bad for you in moderation.

I had a WW member tell me once that she was at a birthday party one weekend and said no to a slice of cake. You want the punch line? It was her birthday! Yeah, HERS!

I felt awful about it, because I thought it was my fault, that somehow I had led her astray, or given her the wrong impression, or painted cake in a bad light. So I addressed the group of people the following week, just in general, to let them know that it's not one slice of cake that got us here, or even one slice a cake in the course of a week. It's lots of cake, after having eaten pizza and fries, or too many scoops of mashed potatoes, or a double serving of spaghetti. And it's a lifetime of these habits that landed us in a Weight Watchers meeting. It's NOT ONE TIME that gets us, it's a LIFETIME.

So eat cake people! Let's not deprive ourselves of the good foods we love. Just learn to make choices.

Life is just too short not to eat cake.

Wake up and smell the roses

Ah, the smell of the roses... I can't wait! Yesterday was a great gardening day, so we took full advantage of it.

I've decided to plant a hedge of roses and other lower lying white flowers along the driveway. We filled it in with natural mulch. It will look like the following:

OK, I can't get my diagram to post properly. How's about I just post pictures later? :-)

Anyway, the roses I chose (from left to right):
- Mellow Yellow, a light yellow hybrid tea
- Toro, a dark red hybrid tea
- Marina, a yellow-orange blend floribunda
- Iceberg, a white floribunda
- Intrigue, a mauve floribunda
- Chicago Peace, a yellow-pink blend hybrid tea
- another red one whose name escapes me right now

The smaller, shorter white flowers that will make up the background of the bed are called campanula white clips (or bellflower). I cannot wait until all of them start blooming!

I also potted all of my herbs yesterday. So far I have lemon balm, basil, cilantro, parsley, chamomile, thyme, and rosemary in pots, as well as chives, garlic chives, lavender, and chocolate mint planted in the ground from last year.

I love gardening season!

And we haven't even touched the veggie garden yet! EEK!

Friday, May 22, 2009

10,569

Steps.

Yup, that's how many I took today, or so the peed-o-meeter says. And it's wrong and I know it.

New rule: No wearing the thing on my runs. I don't know why, but the steps just weren't being counted right. On a normal work day 10569 steps ain't too shabby, but when I park further away from the office to get more steps in AND I go for a run, this number should be higher. Crud.

Oh well, our team is still winning. If I can manage to get enough steps in to make up 1090km by the middle of October, I get a $50 gift card of my choice ya'll.

My Virtual Walking Tour of the Province

We have a new competition at work to virtually walk around the province, 1090km. I'm on a team of 5 who are trying to complete this.

So I bought myself a new WW pedometer. Very interesting. A bit expensive (even for me with a staff discount), but interesting. So far today, 2855 steps, which translates to about half an AP earned.

On another note, I've come to realize that I work very closely with a serious food snob. She thinks she knows everything about food, and is very VERY picky. Drives me nuts. So now I love proving her wrong. I know it's not right, but I'm just that kinda girl lately.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

The 16 Days of Working -- Day 11

What day is it? Where am I? WHO am I?

We actually had a day off in the midst of the 16 days. We had Sunday off. Ahhhh... I got to hang out with my mom and my sister, and it was great. We went shopping. Bought myself a pair of chocolate brown wide-leg capris and a couple of cute shirts from R&W.

Got out running at lunch time. This is the only possible time I can get out running, on the days when there's nothing going on at the office (rare). So I took advantage of others being in meetings today, and went out. Went about 4.7km in 32 mins. Not too bad, considering I haven't been running in a week. I want to be able to finish a 5K in under 30 mins, comfortably, before the end of the summer. I'm pretty sure I'll make it.

Eating's on track so far, but even though I know I'm not hungry, I just want to eat! Ugh!

Hoping we get something good brought in for dinner tonight. It's getting tiring eating out every single night.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

The 16 Days of Working -- Day 8

Wow, these are making for long days, especially when you're in the same room with the same people 12/7. Oy.

At least we finally got some fruit and veggie trays to much on today. Yay! For the most part, us ladies in the room all eat quite healthily, so that's good. It really reduces the amount of junk food that gets brought into the room.

I think we're taking tomorrow off too! Bonus! I'm hoping to get a little bit of activity in, considering I've done nothing for a week or so. It's discouraging. Fingers crossed for good weather!