I've decided to keep myself accountable with monthly updates on my plan and progress.
**The Plan**
1. Work out in the gym 4-5 days/week for at least 30 minutes. On the days I don't go to the gym, I can substitute with walking, playing "Just Dance" on the Wii and every now and then... I'll just take the day off. The more pressure I put on myself the more I am likely to crumple and fail the first day I fall off the wagon. I've done the diet rodeo enough times to know that if I eat one cookie it's all over.
2. I'm not counting calories because I lie about that anyway. I am not going to weigh myself everyday because I get discouraged so quickly if I'm not making amazing progress. Gain a pound and the gig is up.
3. I am going to substitute one meal for salad or cereal and for breakfast I will have my green smoothie or jimmy dean d-light (I love the turkey sausage and egg white sandwich).
What's a green smoothie? Only the BEST thing I've ever discovered. I saw this recipe on pinterest and tweeked it a bit to make my own:
(Roll Tide is a must on this Championship morning!)
wanna see it close up?
looks gross doesn't it?
Well, it's not. It's green because it is loaded with spinach but I swear you cannot taste it. Joe wrinkles his face and refuses to drink it but that's because he is a child about green things, not because he can taste anything bad.
Here's my recipe and I put everything in the blender in this order:
- 1/4 cup crushed ice
- 1/2 frozen banana (sliced)
- 1/2 cup vanilla greek yogurt
- 1 T chia seeds** (optional)
- 1 T PB2 powder or regular peanut butter
- 2 cups baby spinach
- 1/3 cup almond milk (unsweetened)
- Stevia or Splenda to taste.
That's my favorite, most basic recipe and I've guessed on all the measurements because I would never measure them out because it would take too long. Sometimes I use regular yogurt instead of greek which cuts out that bitter taste so you don't need to add sweetener. If I use regular yogurt I add a little chocolate flavored protein powder and it's yummy.
Other alternatives:
Substitute Apples for peanut butter. I have tried strawberries and blueberries and didn't think it tasted quite as good although it wasn't bad. The peanut butter really takes over the flavor of the spinach well. Oh, and NEVER try to make this without banana. It gets funky real fast and I have no idea why. I just buy spinach and bananas from costco, wait till the nanas are ripe then slice them up and freeze them.
Emmy likes the sliced frozed bananas in her munchkin mesh baby feeder or at least she likes to teeth on it until it gets mushy and wet and absolutely disgusting then she drops it on the floor.
**Chia seeds are a strange thing a coworker told me about. I'm still not too sure what they do but she said something about feeling fuller so I bought them and convinced myself I was fuller.
**The Progress**
So far, I've gone to the gym everyday before work and shop-walked on Saturday and played Just Dance on Sunday. I'm tracking my exercise automatically with this guy:
The Jawbone "Up"
It's basically a pedometer that tracks your movement "steps" and shows you a graph with your daily exercise patterns. It also tracks your sleep so you push this little button and it tracks how long it took you to fall asleep, when you were in a deep sleep and when you wake up.
I woke up twice one night to slap my cat and toss him off the bed. It only caught one time so it's not perfect but still very helpful. The thing I like most is that it reminds me how sedentary my life really is. If I don't exercise on a weekday, I get less than 4,000 steps a day which sounds like a lot but the app suggested my goal be 10,000 and 40 minutes of exercise and half a day at the office and I'm only at 75% of my goal. It syncs with all iphones and ipads so it's very easy to plug it in and check your status. I love that I don't have to actively do anything to keep track of my calories burned (it even has a tally for active and resting calories burned!).
Look at all the pretty color choices!
I went with black because it was available at the local Best Buy. The bright blue is available there too and the black and turquoise are sold at Apple stores. The other colors aren't available yet but you can check jawbone.com for updates.
I almost have Joe convinced to buy one so we can compete. He's waiting for them to have the android app ready so he can upload without having to use his old ipod.
A few months before Joe and I got married I started working out a lot and I loved it. I continued until I found out I was pregnant and I started getting cramps when I was on the elliptical and I panicked. I did a few pilates classes and then stopped altogether. It's amazing how much better you feel when you have started your day with exercise though, it's definitely addicting and I really hope I don't give up on myself!
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