Working Out - Rock On Challenge

In a few weeks, Mike and I will be going to this huge rock festival in Ohio called Rock on the Range (ROTR).  This will be our 5th time going (had to miss last year due to our wedding - finances and time off work didn't allow us to go :(  ).  I was hoping to be down back closer to the weight I was when we went two years ago, but so far this year I haven't been as committed as I could be. With ROTR only a few weeks away I knew I needed something to get me motivated.

You know what motivates me?  To- do lists. I freakin LOVE to-do lists. Something about crossing items off when I complete them brings me a great sense of accomplishment and happiness. So I designed a to-do list for my workout goals which I titled, Rock On Challenge.  Get it? Because we are going to a rock concert?

Oh, okay you got it.  Good. I formed the list into a calendar so I can keep track of the days as we get closer to Rock on the Range. Each time I complete one of the tasks, I X it out.

So what's on the list?

MWF - Cardio, Legs and Abs: I know the best way to lose weight and to have a healthy body is to do both cardio and strength training, so in addition to cardio I'm doing Legs and Abs on M, W, F.  Your leg muscles are your biggest muscles and the more muscle you gain, the more energy (fat) they need to sustain themselves. Abs are my weakest muscle.  For those reasons these get three days a week.

T & TH - Cardio, Arms and Yoga:  My arms are probably one part of my body that I'm decently happy with, so they only get two days.  I'm adding in a 20 minute yoga work out to help strengthen my core.  I know yoga is really, really good for you, especially to help strengthen muscles.  At my new job I share multiple desk chairs with multiple employees, so it's hard to adjust them to the right spot for me and it's causing a bit of back pain. I'm hoping yoga will help. I'm using a free app called Simply Yoga.

M-F - Met calorie goal: I'm back on MyFitnessPal.  I'm tracking everything I eat M-F.  I'm not tracking on the weekends, because I'm hoping to not burn myself out. My goal is to be under or met my calorie goal on any of my tracking days.

M-F - Extras: I'm giving myself X's in extras for anything I do outside of what's listed above that helps me towards my goal of getting back to a healthier weight.  Examples include getting up from my desk chair and walking once an hour for the whole day, taking a walk on my break, turning down a bakery item or other junk food, parking farther away in a store parking lot. If I do multiples in a day, I get multiple X's! And that makes me happy :)

Weekends:  I have no set plans for the weekends.  This is for a few reasons.  1. To keep me from burning out. 2. Weekends around here around crazy so it's harder to plan for all these items. 3. To keep it a bit more flexible.  Maybe I am super booked and only had time for a 10 minute workout - on the weekends that's good. 4. Having a rest day.  Mike's and my life is always. crazy. busy. so having a day to chill out is definitely needed for our mental health.

This week I'm rocking out my to-do list and it makes me so very happy!  I'm hoping to feel my clothes fitting better soon!

What do you do to keep yourself motivated?

Kickin' it into High Gear

This year kicked off a year of me getting my life back into a better, healthier lifestyle after last years reversal of my healthy life.  Mike and I got a gym membership at a gym by our house and we were hoping to eat better.  It has been about 2.5 months since we started, so I thought it was time for some reflection.

Fitness:

We are doing okay with it.  Each week we are going to the gym on average 3 times a week.  However, if I am being honest with myself, I'm not doing as well as I could.  Some weeks I work out more than 3 times, but some days, I just don't feel like going and those weeks end up with less than 3 times.  I need to muscle through that so I can get working out 5 times a week.

Can't wait to start riding my bike!

Food:

We are doing okay-ish, this previous weekend excluded.  We have been eating home cooked meals, however they haven't been well rounded and sometimes we are just throwing stuff together, because I have no plan.  Ideally, I'd like to meal plan and cook things over the weekend so we are ready with healthy, balanced meals and snacks for the week.

Since both those are only going okay, the weigh loss is going worse than okay. I'm stuck at the same weigh from the end of February.  Very frustrating, so it's time to kick my health into high gear!  It's time to aim for five workouts a week.  It's time to make sure that I'm doing cardio and weigh lifting. It's time to meal plan and it's time to focus on eating balanced meals throughout the day.

Let's do this!!

How's your healthier year going?

Realizations of Weight Loss

I haven't loss anymore weight than the last time I posted, however there are a few realizations that I have had while losing those five pounds from before.

1. Food lasts longer when you go by serving size.
Duh, right?  At my old job (I started a new one last week) I'd keep a box of Triscuits at my desk for snacking.  This year when I started focusing on my health, I started eating serving sizes and I was amazing at how much longer my box of Triscuits lasted! Which also means, I'm saving money by not buying as much! Bonus!!

And this takes us into the next....

Health Challenges

In my last post, I mentioned that have some Health Challenges to keep me on track with my goals.  Three challenges to be exact, with different groups of people.  I'm really excited to have so many people in my life that want to live healthier!

Birthplace

Dreaming Big -Eating Healthy

I have big dreams about my life; what I want to do and what I want it to look like.  My dreams are always down the road.  "At some point in my life, I want  ______." Then I realize, I'm 27 years old and will be turning 28 this year.  That's only two years away from 30.  I'm getting married this summer.  Although I don't feel like it - I am an adult.  So what better time than now to make those changes I want to make?!

The biggest change that I want to focus on right now is the food that I eat.  The concept of "healthy eating" is something that I am struggling a lot with right now.  I'm trying to lose a few pounds so I'm counting calories, but just because I get below my calorie count, does that mean I'm eating healthy?  I don't believe so.  I can tell you right now that my diet for the last couple months has not contained enough fruits and veggies.

Birthplace

And what about processed "healthy' food.  Today I had a southwest veggie stuffed sandwich made by FitActive, which is supposed to be Aldi's healthy food.  I love them - they taste great, have veggies, but the ingredient list is crazy long and full of things I can't pronounce!

 From what I have read in health books and on blogs, I think the best diet is one that is plant-heavy and mostly homemade.  By that I mean fruits, veggies and whole grains are the majority of the diet and animals based products are a smaller part.  In addition to this, most of the food should be homemade rather than store bought.  Both of these ideas seem to be very contradictory to a modern American diet. Which reminds me, portion control also needs to be added to a healthy diet.

What does this translate into for me?  Time. Which I don't have a lot of and, as of late, I don't seem to manage well.  I'm thinking in order to incorporate eating this way into my life, I'm going to need to meal plan and meal prep on the weekends for my week.  I don't mind doing that, but I just need to make sure I have the time for it.

Gotta use my planner!

So this is the thing I'm going to work on for the next couple weeks. I don't think that in a couple weeks I'll be a pro at it, but I'm going to at least take some steps towards this. I'll keep you updated on how it goes.

*Healthy diet here does not mean like Atkins, I just mean the entirety of what I consume.  Diet also often implies temporary.  I'm talking about a lifestyle, people!

Do you meal plan or cook food on your weekends? Any tips or ideas you can share with me?

I'm living to 95 years old!

I have one email that I send all my freebie offers to.  I think everyone has one of these - their junk email where items just collect and collect and collect.  I'm working on trying to stay on top of that email and slowly deleting the old emails. All 6535 of them.  My brother once said, "Katie why do you care?  It's like it's taking up space in your room or something."  I don't know why it bothers me but it does.  I am an information/paper hoarder, but I need to work on the organization of that information, including the digital clutter. 

Anyway, I was working on going through some old email and I found something really cool!

My planner - key to my organization!

February - It's on!

It is February 20th! Just ten days ago marked the six month mark until Mike and I get married.  My mind is flying with all the details we still have to work out. Mostly I just want it to be here.  I want us to be married.  I can't wait for us to move in together and start our life together!

However, there is still a lot that I need to do so I'm happy we still have six months to get it all done!  One thing that I am working on is trying to lose that holiday weight I gained. In addition to that just trying to work on toning my body in my problem areas. I have struggled all January to get back into a routine with my workouts.  Luckily, I've had a challenge that has kicked my butt into gear this month.

Yum pie!

Manage YOUR Weight during the Holidays [Challenge Tips #2]

The biggest most helpful thing you can do during the holidays to help you survive is to make a plan.
  A plan needs to be:
~ Realistic - in other words don't make it something that you know you are not going to be able to accomplish.  If you do, it will just lead to frustration and disappointment; which could in turn lead to you giving up completely! No good!!
~ Measurable - at the end of this you want to be able to look back and see how you met your goals.

 Here's my plan to survive the holidays without weight gain (hopefully!)

Manage YOUR Weight during the Holidays [Challenge]

Hi everyone! I have a challenge for you.  We are doing this at work, so I thought I'd see if anyone outside of work would like to do this as well.  This challenge was not created by me, however I am tweaking it a bit to fit the online format.

The challenge is to maintain your weight during the holidays.  We all know how hard it is to do that over the holidays.  I mean let's examine the facts:

• many holiday parties based around food and drinks
• overeating
• sweets/desserts galore
• sitting to socialize
• jam packed schedule with little to no room for workouts
• jam packed schedule with no time to cook = eating out and mall food court food 

Photo by WishUponACupcake from Flickr

There's a lot working against us here!

Desk Jobs are Killing Us

I have read somewhere and been telling people that sitting for eights hours a day at work is bad for us, that as a matter of fact, it is killing us, and that even if we work out every day it can not reverse the negative affects of sitting for eight hours.

Finally I have proof! Thanks to Cassie at Back to Her Roots for posting this great infographic!  Cassie even has a game to play to keep you moving while your at work.  Cassie's pretty amazing; you should follow her blog. Also thanks to Medical Billing and Coding for putting this together and doing the research!

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

Weekly Update - late

This update is a little late, so you'll get another update from me in a few days. The information in this post refers to the week of Aug. 21-27.

Weekly Update

GOAL #1: Walk 10,000 steps a day. Sunday: 7179
Monday: 8441
Tuesday: 12067
Wednesday: 10314
Thursday: 8901
Friday: 12993
Saturday: 8280

I'm very happy with this week's numbers. I just need to keep this up!

Steps & Health Quiz

Steps
My job's health and wellness program has a health challenge ever summer called Summertime Steps. Participants wear a pedometer everyday to try to see how many steps they take throughout the summer. I believe the goal of the program is to be aware of how steps you are (or aren't) taking and try to increase it. My goal this summer was to beat the amount of steps I walked last summer. I don't have the number of steps I did last summer in front of me and I don't know how many I have done so far this year, but I know I'm not doing as well. Granted I have forgotten to wear it a couple times and I had a broken one on for a while but still. I need to step it up (no pun intended)!!

The coordinators of this program said we should be doing 10,000 steps a day. I have heard this number repeated in two or three other places, so since many health professionals are agreeing on 10,000 steps I believe this is a pretty solid number. My new goal for the rest of this summer is to try to get 10,000 steps a day. Today I got a measly 3,946! I need to get my walking shows on!

Health Quiz
I get the email newsletter from DoctorOz.com and today's newsletter had a very comprehensive health quiz in it. I think there are over 200 questions on it. It goes by very fast though and after the quiz there are videos to watch about each question, so if you selected yes, I have this symptom, you can learn what might be causing it. I would recommend to everyone taking Dr. Oz's quiz Quiz: How Healthy Are You?!!

First Post on the New Blog

I like to write. Keep that in mind as my posts might be long. Hopefully you don't mind.

How did I get here?
That is a great question. I have never been overweight, never had any major health issues so how did I come to be interested in health?

At some point in my life, maybe high school, maybe during undergrad, I decided that I wanted to live to be 100. I thought, and still do, that seeing the changes in the world over the course of 100 yrs would be fascinating and it was something I wanted to do. I guess at the time my thought was that I'd make it to 100 on sheer will power. Now that I'm a bit older I know that is unrealistic, and further I have upgraded my goal from living to be 100, to living to be a good 100.

Partially I'm interested in health to help me reach that goal. But there were two other events that drew me in.