Setting New Goals

My weigh in on Sunday affected me more than I thought it did.  I've been totally off for the past three days, consuming mostly that chocolate cake I made Matt for his birthday on Sunday.  But I've been making popcorn and smothering it in butter and just not eating well.  Interesting how easy it is to slip back into bad habits.  I have also been so exhausted the past few days and I am wondering if it is because I have not been eating healthy and I've eaten way too much sugar.

After searching the internet for stories people have written about doing Chalean Extreme, I have decided that I can't get upset over my apparent lack of weight loss.  Most people report that their weight didn't change much but they did lose a lot of inches.  I took a sneak peak at a few of my measurements and it looks like I've lost another half an inch off my waist and a half an inch of my thighs!  So that made me cheer up a little and if i am losing inches I have to contribute my weight to building muscle.  I have been so sore almost every day this whole program so I know I am building muscle!

One of the ways you reach a large goal that you have set, it to break it down into smaller goals and work your way through those to eventually reach your large goal.  I thought I could just focus on my goal weight now that I have come this far, but that doesn't appear to be the case especially with weight lifting.  So I have decided to set a few goals for the next month to focus on during the last month of Chalean Extreme.  First I was reading up about your cheat days sabotaging the rest of your week.  I don't want to consume thousands of extra calories on my cheat day and have that mess up all the hard work I have put in over the week, so I want to get rid of my cheat days.  I need a lifestyle and having a day where I don't adhere to my lifestyle every week just doesn't seem right.

Goal 1: This coming month I want to focus on eating healthy and tracking everything that I eat.  I want to start educating myself again on what is in food and how it effects your body.  I need to know how much of each food you are supposed to be eating in a day.  How many carbohydrates should you be eating, how many grams of fat, how many complex carbs, how much dairy and really get down this healthy eating thing.  This will give me a project to work on and focus on this next month instead of just stressing about how I am not losing weight.

Goal 2: On that note I also have a goal not to weigh myself for the entire phase 3 month.  This is because I know how much my weigh in effects my mood.  If I hadn't weighed in on Sunday, I would not have eaten so horribly the past three days.  Before my weigh in I was feeling good, eating healthy, and had a very positive outlook.  After my weigh in I was eating sugar, processed foods, was tired, and depressed.  Otherwise known as emotional eating.  This is going to be tough for me and I need to make sure I have my food down pat because if I am not weighing myself I can't be positive that I'm staying on track, which is why tracking what I eat will be so important.

For the rest of this week, starting now since I have pretty much sabotaged the whole day already,  until my official end of phase 2 I just want to do my cardio and make sure to get back to eating healthy.  Fortunately the cake is almost gone.

Positive Self Talk

I've been thinking about the importance of positive self talk a lot lately.  It is so easy to talk negatively about ourselves.  I am definitely guilty of talking poorly about myself.  I am used to always telling myself that I am not good enough, not worthy enough, that I am ugly, that I am fat, that I look terrible.  When I was at 211 pounds and even throughout most of last year these were my regular thoughts.  I didn't have a very good opinion about myself and that is one of the things that triggered my desire to change.  I didn't like who I was and I wanted to change.

Since I have started weight training with the Chalean Extreme program, I have noticed changes in more than just my strength.  I have started noticing for the first time changes in the way that I think.  Since I have lost 63 pounds I startle myself every so often in the mirror and say "wow!  I look pretty good!"  Believe me, I am still way to focused on my flaws and how far I still need to go, so it is nice when I surprise myself and I look better than I think I do.  I have noticed an increase in my energy levels since I started lifting weights and I believe that is a mood booster for me since for as long as I can remember, I was always tired.  It didn't matter how much sleep I got, or what time of day it was.  I was always tired and never had any energy to do much of anything.  I'm sure that can be contributed to my poor eating habits and lack of exercise.

It is also nice that Chalean is so positive on her DVDs.  Throughout the whole program she is always telling you that you can do this, that you are worth it, that you are beautiful, that you are changing your life.  Chalean positive talks to you and it is some of the only time that I really get to hear things like that from someone other than my husband (which I tend to roll my eyes and think "you have to say that or I'll be mad at you").  But I have noticed that I have started to have these thoughts in my mind too, and it has started to change my mood.  Over the past few weeks I have been happier, and generally in a better mood.  When I think negative thoughts about myself, I put myself in a bad mood because I don't feel good about myself.  Then I start to take it out on everything around me: my kids, my husband, I eat more.  I get grumpy and snappy.  Now that I have started to think more positively about myself I have noticed that I am nicer, I don't get angry as quickly, I am happy to comply with simple requests and just generally happier.  For a long time I have been thinking about happiness and how I can be a happier person, and I never really thought about self talk.  Of course, I needed to change my life around as well so I could be happier with who I was.

Positive self talk I am discovering is very important.  What can we say to ourselves other than "I am fat" and "I hate the way I look" or "I am so disgusting"?  First I think we need to commit to change!  If you are not happy with yourself then why do you allow yourself to be in that unhappy place!  Perhaps it is familiarity or comfort, but we can change.  One thing that helped me a little with the negative self talk was thinking things to myself along the lines of "I am changing"  "I am working hard"  "I may be fat now but not for much longer" "I am getting healthier"  "I am getting more fit".  Progression thoughts.  I knew I was working towards my goal, even though I am not there yet I am still working, still improving and today I am in a better place than I was yesterday.  You need to tell yourself things that you can believe.  I couldn't tell myself "I am beautiful" because I didn't believe it.  I couldn't tell myself "I look good" because I didn't believe it and my internal voice would just scoff at myself and I would roll my eyes at myself if I tried to say these phrases and immediately I would hear "yeah right!"

Now I am starting to believe that I look good because I feel good.  I look at pictures of where I have come from and I amaze myself at what I used to look like.  I am still realizing how bad of a situation I was in.  I would sit around and wonder why I had no energy and blame things like the kids, when in reality it was my weight and my diet that was to blame.  It was me and only I could change myself into the person I really want to be.

27 more pounds to go, skinny, happy, fit, and energetic me here I come!

Trip to the Temple and Matt's Birthday

Yesterday was Matt's Birthday and it was a very busy day!  Matt turned 29 yesterday, one year left until he hits the big 3-0.  The morning was business as usual.  Wake up, feed the family breakfast, and then exercise.  I did the Push 2 workout today.  The push phase is pretty tough since we are lifting weights heavy enough to make your muscles fatigue by 6-8 reps.  For several of the exercises I don't have weights heavy enough, for example all the lower body exercises.  So I have to make due with what I have and try to "make the weights seem 50 pounds heavier than what they really are" as Chalean says.  I only have weights up to 15 pounds.  I still have plenty of room to grow on my upper body though.  My upper body has always been weak.  I did a little Zumba for cardio after my weight lifting to try and burn some calories to offset what I knew I would be eating this afternoon and evening.  I only burned off 400 calories since lifting weights doesn't in and of itself burn too many calories while you are doing it. 

Around 11:00 we packed the kids up, and headed out to Matt's parent's house to drop the kids off so we could go out to eat and then to the Temple.  Matt chose a Chinese place that his family is partial to called JPs over by where his parents live.  Since today was Matt's birthday I wasn't exactly worried about what I was eating.  I ordered the Moo Goo Gai Pan, which is a little better than getting something fried (but it still came with an egg roll and a crab cheese wonton which I ate so I am sure there were plenty of calories in those to make up for it). 

After lunch Matt and I went to the Temple

I thought I put together a pretty decent outfit for my general lack of fashion sense.  I pulled out my brown shoes I bought eons ago in Germany, and I traded the black sweater I was wearing for a brown one to match my shoes.  My cell phone is in my pocket, that is why it looks funny.  I don't have any black high heels (a problem I plan to remedy this summer).  I love the temple it is such a beautiful place!  And the new flowers have been planted and some of the perennials are starting to come up!  I am glad we get to go again in a few weeks for Emily's endowments.  We don't usually make it to the Temple very often but by chance we are going three times this month!  (once yesterday, once for Emily's endowments, and then again for Emily's wedding).

After the temple we went back to Matt's parent's house and played with the girls in the pool.  I wasn't sure about letting them in the pool since they are both sick with colds, but the water was warm and they both wanted to go so badly.  I just hope they don't get any sicker because of it.  I need to get a new swim suit since the only one I own is from my pregnancy and it is literally falling off.  It was falling off while I was walking around in the pool with Chloe!

After pool time is when I really did the most damage to my diet.  I knew it was coming but I still feel I could have eaten better.  We had mashed potatoes, with BBQ beef and some asparagus for dinner and I ate way too much beef and potatoes.  I should have put more asparagus on my plate and eaten half the potatoes and beef I did.  But the real damage didn't come until dessert!  Thunder Thigh cake, so called because it gives you thunder thighs if you eat it! (I am sure I can blame at least 10 pounds of my weight on this cake).  It's a German Chocolate cake baked and then you poke holes in it with the back of a spatula, pour a can of sweetened condensed milk on top and then half to 3/4 a bottle Hershey's chocolate syrup on it.  Then put Cool Whip on the top and sprinkle crushed Heath bars on top of that.  Matt's family calls it "the other woman"

I surprised Matt by bringing the gifts I bought for him to his parents house.  He was very surprised and excited to be opening them :)  Here is a picture of his main gift we got him:
It's a shadow box that says Dad on it and I got the plaque engraved to say "Love, Lily and Chloe 2014"

You can see the cake in the right hand corner!

So today I am planning on eating light.  I have been weighing in at 148.8 all week and I would like to stay that for the weigh in tomorrow.  I am going to start a new challenge for myself and see how many days I can go without eating sugar (translation: desserts and candy).  Hopefully I can make it through today and today will be day 1.

Chalean Extreme 30 day mark

Today is the 30 day mark and I am going to be starting the Push phase (phase 2) on Thursday.  I decided to make today another cardio day and then take tomorrow off.  The schedule had me taking today off and starting Push tomorrow, but starting on Wednesday just didn't fit well with needing to take Sunday as a rest day.  So the plan is to exercise Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then rest on Sunday, exercise Monday and Tuesday and rest on Wednesday that way I get the same feel of one week completed as I did in the first phase.  So without further ado here are my measurement results for the first month of hard work.

                                       Before                             30 days                        Change
Weight                            153.7                               148.6                        -5.1
Waist                              36 1/2 "                            34 1/2"                      -2"
Hips                               41"                                   41 1/4"                      + 1/4"
Abductors                      40 3/4"                             40 1/2"                      -1/4"
Chest                             36 1/2"                             35 1/2"                      -1"
Right arm                      11 1/2"                              11 1/8"                      -approx 1/4 "
Left Arm                       11 1/2"                              11 1/4"                     - 1/4"
Right thigh                     21 1/2"                              21 1/4"                     -1/4"
Left thigh                       21"                                    21 1/4"                     + 1/4
Body fat percentage       22%                                 20 %                        -2%

That is a total of 4 inches lost, or a net of 3 1/2 inches lost (if you count the two quarter inches I gained in my let thigh and hips) and most of it was around my waist and chest.  I have noticed that the waist on my pants fit a little better but I have not noticed any difference in my thighs.  I am bummed they didn't go down a bit since the thigh area of my new pants I've been wearing are pretty tight.  I am going to attribute the gains in inches to muscle building.  And I lost five pounds!  That is pretty good!  5 pounds in one month was my goal at the beginning of the year (to lose five pounds a month).  It just doesn't feel like I've come as far because I had to work off the weight I gained in January (which was almost 4 pounds).  And of course, I went down by two percent body fat! 

I'm not ready yet to show the pictures I have taken, and I am still not sure I will be showing them on my blog but I do have a pretty nifty picture that I put together for you to see.  The picture on the left was taken a few days after Chloe was born in January 2013.  I was still in the hospital and was about 220 when this picture was taken.  The picture on the right was taken just a few days ago.  My face has really slimmed down a lot with 63 pounds gone!

I start phase two on Thursday and hope to keep building muscle and losing body fat!  Hopefully I will lose some inches off of my hips and thighs this month.

Chalean Extreme

Surprisingly I managed to stay eating healthy today in the face of the stressful events.  Mostly just the kids misbehaving due to lack of sleep and not willing to sleep made for an extremely stressful day around the house as anyone with kids knows.  It's a good thing I had some dinner in the freezer that I had prepared yesterday.  I was planning on saving it for later but tonight proved to be the night I needed to pull it out since Matt was gone at the clinic and the kids were so clingy and whiny and fussy that I couldn't get two seconds to go prepare anything.  But at least I did get my package in the mail!

So I have been searching the internet for new exercises to do and also great at home exercise videos.  This started of course because I injured my foot and I am not able to do my usual routine, so I was looking on Amazon for Pilates DVDs and yoga and different things I could do while I was not using my foot so much.  During this search I came across a boot camp dvd and in the reviews some people were mentioning other videos such as The Firm or P90x and I decided to see what those were all about and also to Google what the best at home workout videos were.  It was in my Google search that I found my soul mate: Turbo Fire.  I am a cardio junkie.  I love cardio, and I am not very good with strength training (which is why I have been having such a hard time these past 3 weeks not being able to do cardio).  Turbo Fire is a high intensity cardio workout designed by Chalean Johnson.  She also does Turbo Jam and Turbo Kick, but Turbo Fire is the most intense of all and it is a 90 day program.  It also boasts killer music, which is a trigger for me.  That is one reason why I love Zumba because I love the music.  It is also more choreographed and dancy.   Perfect for me and the things I like!  Like I said, it is my exercise soul mate.  Unfortunately, I think that I have a few more months of rehab before my foot is going to be up to the task of doing a high intensity cardio workout.  It is still very sore to the touch, and still hurts to walk there is no way I will be doing Turbo Fire any time soon *sniff sniff*

So!  I also came across ChaLEAN Extreme.  Also a 90 day program, also by Chalean Johnson.  (I have heard only good things about Chalean so I am excited to give her programs a try).  Chalean Extreme is a weight lifting program that focuses on building lean muscle (not bulkey) to burn fat since muscle burns fat.  The program comes with a resistance band, and a nutrition guide as well as a schedule.  You spend 5 days a week working out, 3 are dedicated to weight lifting and 2 are cardio and stretch.  Stretching is also an area I am not very good at doing.  I have heard only good things about this program.  I have heard that you lose a ton of inches even though you don't lose a whole lot of weight since you are building muscle (and muscle weighs more than fat).  But hey! If you are burning fat and building muscle all the better.  This is going to be a hard challenge for me because I am not a big fan of weight lifting but I have heard that this is a great program for women and for people in all walks of life weather they are just starting (me) or have been lifting for a while.

I want to borrow some weights from my parents since I think that having the actual weights will yield better results than using the band for the whole time, especially in the last two phases.  Speaking of phases, Each month is a phase and each phase gets more intense and adds more weight.  I am thinking about starting on Monday.  That gives me a few days to watch the extra bonus DVDs (Chalean talking about nutrition and the motivational CD) and go through the nutrition book and start to make a meal plan.  I need to focus on eating healthy in the meantime and make sure that I am well and truly out of the food binging I guess you would say, that I have been doing the past few weeks.  So much for my month of no sweets!  Instead of losing 5 pounds I think I gained 5 pounds!  But with the excitement of starting something entirely new and entering into uncharted areas and the possibility of losing dozens of inches in the next few months and building muscle like I never have before and getting lots of energy and just being able to move and lift and making this whole mom thing easier!  That is a lot of motivation and rewards to look forward to.  I still have two months before Emily's wedding, that is two months of results and granted they say you burn the most fat in month three, but you still see results in month one and two, and I am ready to give it all I've got.  I just hope my foot cooperates, which it should since this program is mostly weight lifting.  Which is why I chose to do it now.  When this program is done, Turbo Fire is calling my name and I will be ready at the end of these three months to meet the challenge of Turbo Fire and do better than I would have been able to do it now.

So they actually left out my resistance band in the package which I was pretty upset about, so I called BeachBody and told them that they left it out and long story short, they are sending me one in the mail and it will be here in about a week.  Looking at the picture above it looks like one of the DVDs are missing (the one on the bottom right) but that is actually an additional bonus DVD that doesn't come with the program. I'm sure they put it in there to make you feel like you need to buy it to complete your set which kind of peeved me.  Can't they just be happy you bought a program from them?

Anyway, I watched the basic DVD with the intro and I am going to be taking some before pictures which I am not entirely sure I will be posting since I want to take them in my sports bra and bathing suit bottom which isn't exactly "modest" but it is the best way to see exactly how your body has changed over the course of the program.  We will have to see how I feel at the end.