The Ten Days of Christmas Workouts

What better gift to give to yourself than that of good health? I am challenging myself to work out for ten days between now and the day after Christmas. I am focusing on arms, abs, flexibility, and cardio. Would you like to join me? I’ll post my workout each day and you can post yours to the comments or on your own blog. Let’s get active!

 

Today:

Cardio: 2 Mile Walk

Strength: Ab Workout I threw together myself (I will post it later) including traditional exercises combined with yoga poses

Flexibility: This workout from iyogalife.com. It’s supposed to be for Spring, but Spring is only 3 months away! I say get started early.

Will you join me in this challenge?

Sunday Update Number 3

As you can imagine, since I haven’t been updating Sarah Loses It this week, I haven’t been fully focused on my weight loss program. I did OK on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but on Thursday I went to camp with my boyfriend (more in tomorrow’s post) and was eating delicious, high calorie camp food for the rest of the week. Yum! I didn’t weigh myself yesterday because I had no access to a Wii fit or any other type of scale-thing since I was at camp. So I am just going to work my butt off (literally) this week and hope for a significant drop this Saturday.

That’s pretty much it for this Sunday Update. Keep living healthy!

Current Weight: Unknown

Goal Weight: 231 lbs

Goal Date: August 15

Weekly Goals:

-4 small meals a day

-Eat Breakfast!

-30 minutes of exercise/day

-Mix it up a bit: walk, bike, run!

-Sleep 8 hours/night

-Drink at least 32 oz of water/day

Day 9: Blood sugars and more cravings.

I think I figured out why all the cravings lately. The past two days, I’ve had horrible insulin absorption problems. My infusion set was in a bad place twice in a row I guess, because they were bleeding and I had consistent blood sugars over 250. Finally after walking tonight I got it back down. But high blood sugar was making me hungry and I wanted to eat anything I heard about or saw…again. All things considered I did pretty well today.

Breakfast: Trail mix, coffee

Snack: Peice of deli ham (wth? I’m weird) and the remainder of the sugar free pudding I made yesterday

Lunch: ham, cheese, green and red peppers, and onions on a sandwich (low carb bread)

Dinner: rice and veges and marinara sauce and cheese

Low blood sugar: 2 graham crackers

Snack: banana with peanut butter, low fat string cheese.

Exercise: 45 minute walk

That’s all for now!

Day 8: Cravings and Making Do

Fighting cravings is, for me, one of the hardest things to overcome. Today I was attacked by a pizza craving after I woke up from a nap. Since I had no way to buy any food, I scavenged the house. I found tortillas, cheese, and tomato sauce. I made a delicious pizza roll up with these items and it fought off my craving for a lot less calories.

The problems I face when it comes to cravings is the “See it, want it” tendency. If I see or hear about a food, I want it, and start craving it incessantly. For instance, the boyfriend and I were just talking about frozen custard and it’s all I can do to not dwell on wanting some! This is going to be a very hard thing to overcome. But I have been doing well. Lots of times when I crave something, if it’s high in carbs it makes me not want it as much thinking about how my blood sugars will climb after eating it.

SO! Today’s Nutrition:

Breakfast: Coffee with milk
Lunch: Pizza Roll Up
Snack: Sugar Free Pudding
Granola Bar
Dinner: 6 oz steak
TONS of green beans
Small potato
Snack: Sugar Free Pudding
Low:  Juice
TO stay up overnight: Graham cracker and temp basal

Weird how last night I was fighting highs and tonight I am fighting lows. Diabetes is up and down like that.

Exercise: 30 minutes of walking

See you tomorrow

Sunday Update Number Two

So this week has been awesome. I worked out 5/7 days and I tried my hardest to eat better and less. And I succeeded! I am happy to tell you that I lost 1.1 lbs! HURRAY. I am well on my way to reaching my goal!

Unfortunately today turned into another cheat day. But that’s OK, because it’s a new week and it can be my cheat day for this week! We had potluck at church for lunch and we had a Mexican buffet for dinner. All delicious of course.

And now, the updates!

Starting weight: 246 lbs

Current weight: 244.9 lbs

Goal Weight: 231 lbs
This Weeks Goals/Plan:

• 4-5 small meals a day
• exercise at least 30 minutes a day
• Eat Breakfast!
• Sleep at least 8 hours a night! That means go to bed at 10:30 on days I have school the next day!
• Drink at least 32 oz of water a day

So that’s all folks! Have a great week!

Calories and Blisters and Jicama and Plumbs…OH MY

Well I totaled up my caloric intake for the week and here is how it went down:

Monday: 1845

Tuesday: about a billion (admit to failure)

Wednesday:1205 WITHOUT dinner, because I have no idea on that salad cookoff, but it gives me about 400 cals of wiggle room, minus the fact that i’m sure i ate WAY over400 cals

Thursday:1790

Friday: 1685

Good. Three days under 2000. I am hoping to stay at 1800 on average. Yesterday I should have eaten more, I suppose. Here’s how today panned out:

I decided early on when I saw the boxes of Panera bagels on the tables for Tour de Cure breakfast that today would be a cheat day. I actually think I downed 2 whole bagels in small pieces. And those Panera specialty bagels are not low in calories. First of all, they’re huge. Second of all, I ate mostly Asiago cheese which are about the highest calories of all the bagels.

Aaand…they ordered Rib Crib pulled pork and brisket sandwiches for lunch (although I did load up my plate with salad and skipped the bread). The rest of the day actually didn’t go too bad. Drank lots of water due to the humidity and felt full pretty much the rest of the day. We had Elk burgers purchased at the Des Moines farmers market for dinner with watermelon and cantaloupe. Later, the boy and I went to the store and loaded up on veges and fruits and snacked on celery, baby carrots, jicama, and avocados all night (YUM) with a plumb for desert.

I didn’t ride today. I volunteered. Which means that today wound up as another rest day. But that’s okay because I have a giant blister on my left foot that needs to heal. You know how those diabetic feet injuries go.

(I need new shoes).

I weighed in on David’s wii fit tonight and guess what.

… I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Day 5: Well I ate a lot of graham crackers today.

But it’s OK because I mostly ate vegetables.

Breakfast: n/a (woke up at noon)

Lunch: 1 grilled cheese sandwich on low carb bread

Snack: graham crackers (2)

Dinner: salad with chicken,

Snack: graham crackers (like five oops )

But its still okay…because I went for like a 1hour 20 minute walk again…and 2 of the five grahams were because of low blood sugar twice after exercising.

The day of reconciliation is coming very soon…Sunday is my first weigh-in. I am still trying to figure out where I will weigh. I want to use wii fit since my first number came from that, but I don’t have it. David does, but I’m not in Iowa, so we will see.

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend. Tomorrow is the Tour de Cure in Springfield for the American Diabetes Association (hurray) and on Monday I’m going to start couch to 5k.

I made an omlette. (Day 4)

I usually attempt to make omlettes and fail. But today I succeded! I made the (poor looking) omlette above. It only has cheese in it (I wish for more veges! Soon, I hope). I made it with two eggs. I was pretty proud of myself.

Today’s Meals:

Breakfast: 1 2-egg omlette with cheese

Lunch: The last of the pasta with veges (still yum even a few days later)

Dinner: salad with a skimpy bit of honey mustard, one slice deli ham and a sprinkle of cheese, and an apple with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter.

Snack: 2 small cookies with milk

Exercise: 20 minute arm workout on EA SportsActive

Secret Goal

Guys, I have a secret goal. ADA Southwest Missouri is holding a 5k on September 11. Now, on Tuesday, I tried running 1/4 of a mile and failed miserably. But, if I keep walking and eventually start running, maybe I can run a 5k by September. Crazier things have happened, have they not?

So I copied and pasted this into an excel file:

http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml?cmp=2

Umm, I am nervous. Can I really do this?

All I can do is try, right? Failure is the worst that can happen. But what I’m learning is that failure isn’t really that devastating. It just means that you have to try again. And that you are human.

(P.S. Tomorrow…it’s Friday.)

Much Ado about Peaches

Day Number 2: June 9, 2010

I had a peach tonight. It was mighty tasty. I didn’t even know we had them until my dad told me about them. I’m weird, I peel the skin off with a carrot peeler because I don’t like the fuzzy outside. But the inside is so juicy and good.

I wonder what possessed Ronald Dahl to inhabit giant bugs inside a giant peach pit? He must have been eating a peach when he came up with this idea.

Anyway, today was much better than yesterday. Today’s consumption:

-One bowl of cereal
-One grilled ham and cheese (no butter) on low carb bread
-One graham cracker
-Three cookies (little ones) and one glass of milk
-Samples of several different salads at my church’s Salad Cook Off they do every year and I have to say it’s my favorite Wednesday Night Dinner of them all!
-One peach

Wow, is that really all I ate? FANTASTIC. I need more fruits and veges. Had a discussion with my dad about this. I prefer fresh but he hates spending the money on fresh fruits and veges. I don’t blame him! So he’s buying me some peppers and onions so I can whip up some fantastic stir fry in the near future. NOM.

Someday I’ll have a job and will be able to buy my own groceries. But until then, I make due.

Exercise:
1 hour and 15 minutes of walking with my new walking buddy, Pam. I highly encourage you to find an exercise buddy. It makes ALL the difference.

A revior until tomorrow, lovelies. It’s 2am and I have to take a test at 7:30 :-/. Next weeks goals include MORE SLEEP AT NIGHT. (and less sleep during the day).

Emotional Eating Monster

Day 2, June 8, 2010

Emotional Eating is going to be a monster of an obstacle to overcome.

Today, I felt depressed. So in the morning, I ate not one but two candy bars. I felt out of control, like I couldn’t stop it. I actually bought them and ate only half of one and put them in the freezer. I was hoping to get four days out of those babies. Maybe even six days. But then the emotions struck. And I not only wound up eating both candy bars before noon, but I also ate a whole plate of tortilla chips with melted cheese, which I counted as my lunch.

Bleh.

I can’t even bring myself to tell you about the rest of my day. It was not so good. There was a lot of eating. While it probably wasn’t the worst day I’ve ever eaten (I can judge by the total daily dose) let’s just say I fought three low blood sugars, had an Okay dinner, and gave in to two separate cravings. (boo)

On the bright side, I did go for two, that’s right, two 35 minute walks today, which was absolutely an accomplishment. I even ran 1/4 of 1/4 of a mile. Okay, that sounds ridiculous, but I did set a goal of being able to run 1/2 mile without stopping by the end of the summer. We’ll see how my legs can handle it. They’re actually quivering right now.

So all in all while it was a bad day of eating, it wasn’t too bad of a day of exercising. Now it’s time to go off to bed so maybe I can actually get the morning work out in that I want to.