My Journey to Better Health, Part 5

"VIGINTI, VEINTE, VENTI!!!"

I did not mean to abandon this series for so long! Some of you may have been wondering if I'm still keeping up with my health journey. Sorry to leave you all in the dark! We've been staying busy here finishing up the school year, having Gabriel's birthday party, took our first real family vacation, had all the kids sick with colds/sinus infection for a week and had Josh away for a week for fire training in Texas. So, not a lot of blogging time for me.
I've been doing really well at keeping up with my exercise routine of working out on my elliptical machine for 20 minutes every morning except Sundays and have only missed 1 or 2 days since getting the machine! I've also been trying to stay active throughout the rest of the day and going on walks or playing outside with the kids later in the day. Eating well is also going well, even while we were on vacation! Juicing has fallen by the wayside for a bit, but I'm hoping to get back into that soon.
I've had days where I felt like nothing was improving, no weight was being lost and just plain discouragement, but I pushed through it and kept working and am now starting to see the affects. I feel like I'm slimming down, but thanks to being a taller person haven't gone down in my clothing size yet. Finally yesterday, curiosity got to me and Elli and I walked over to the fitness center here and used their scale to check my weight... I lost TWENTY pounds! I can't believe it! I was expecting maybe 10, but not 20!

I have lost the equivalent of 2- 10 lb bags of potatoes!!!

I'm so thankful to all of you who encourage me and all of you are on similar health journeys, it's such a blessing to think of you all while I'm working towards my goals. Let's keep working hard!

My Journey to Better Health, Pt. 4

"My new Toy"

I have wanted an elliptical machine for a really long time. I've watched craigslist and thrift stores, but never came across one. One day while Josh was at Sears looking at tools, I popped over to the exercise equipment and fell in love with this elliptical. They had a used one at a great price & I was hoping to get it. Josh's only worry was where would we put it. There's not exactly an abundance of space with 6 people living in this apartment. We decided to give away our oldest computer and clear out what was my old desk area and I could fit it there. This process ended up taking longer than I planned and I missed out on the used one. Bummer! The next week's Sears add came in the Sunday paper and the same one was going to be on sale $400 off! Plus if I used my Sears card I would save 5% more! And I had a $5 off coupon (every penny counts!), so I got a screaming deal on a NEW one, cheaper than the used one I originally looked at!

My first few times on it, it was evident how out of shape I was. I could hardly do more than 5 minutes of a jogging speed without needing to stop. But I was determined not to be discouraged. I've kept at it exercising every morning, except Sundays and I've gotten up to being able to do 20 minutes! I'm doing just over a half a mile and increasing the resistance each week. This thing will be whipping my butt into shape in no time!

My Journey to Better Health, Pt 3

"Getting my juices flowing"


I have had numerous friends suggest that I watch the documentary "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" and give juicing a try... They were all on juicing diets, seeing great results and loving it. I've never been one to jump on bandwagons or follow the fads, so it takes me a while to finally give something a try.
One night while searching for something to watch on Hulu we came across the documentary and decided it was time to listen to my friends and see what it was all about. What was different in this movie that I hadn't already heard from all those infomercials in the 80's and 90's? My brother had a mini juicer back when I was in high school and it ended up being too much of a hassle cutting the fruit and cleaning the machine that no one ever really used it. More recently Josh's mom gave us an old full size juicer, but it had the same fate as the previous one... Never being used. (Actually we ended up selling it on Craigslist in our failed attempt to move off to Texas.)
Anyhoo... back to the documentary. Josh and I were very skeptical at first, but the movie won us over. They went over how a healthy diet needs to be more micro-nutrient (or was it macro-nutrient?) based, as in the pyramid below;

note; I have no idea who Dr Fuhrman is, he just had the right pyramid on his site =)

While Josh and I weren't too keen on cutting down our meat/protein consumption to once a week and the idea of Josh "rarely" eating a steak is almost laughable. We did glean a few good points from the movie and decided to give juicing a try. The day after watching the movie I found a Jack LaLanne juicer at Costco and brought it home. The following weekend we went to Cash and Carry and bought a pallet cart full of fruits and veggies to try. We quickly learned what combos we liked and those we didn't.
Now we are about a month out from that and I've been making (mostly orange based) juices every morning and often make either a juice mix or a salad for lunch and have a regular dinner. I've also cut down my caffeine consumption from 1-3 servings a day to about 3 servings per week and have been working on drinking more water to stay hydrated. What a huge difference it has made! Between the juicing and the vitamins I started taking, I really feel the difference in my health... I haven't even had a single migraine since I started juicing! 

I encourage you all to watch the movie and see if juicing can benefit you! 

And here's a little video for you to watch and laugh at the juicing craze from back in the day... If you are not familiar with In Living Color or Jim Carrey's early work, this may not be funny to you. To me it's hilarious! ;-)

My Journey To Better Health, Pt. 2

"Check yourself before you wreck yourself"

My first step on my new weight loss journey was to learn what condition I was really in. As I was saying in my last post as the fall turned into winter I was becoming more and more tired and lacked the energy to just do normal day to day things. I was like Eeyore from the Winnie the Pooh stories, LOL. Of course my over active imagination went into high gear thinking of all the things that could be wrong with me. Did I have Diabetes? Or maybe my iron levels were just low? So as soon as my medical insurance became active I scheduled an appointment with my Dr.
He ordered a whole panel of lab work to check for diabetes, my cholesterol levels, my kidney function, my thyroid function and all my vitamin levels. Everything came back perfectly normal, with one exception. My vitamin D levels were really low. "Vitamin D, really?" I thought "I take a vitamin D supplement almost every day". The Dr, suggested that I up my supplements to 2,000 IU's a day and make sure I take it every day. I did and after the first week I was feeling really good, but would still start feeling tired mid day. So, I decided to up my supplement to 3,000 IUs, plus the 800 in my daily vitamins. This made the hugest difference! Right away I started being more active. Seriously, the second day of taking the 3,800 IUs I was running around the backyard playing soccer with the boys. Something I hadn't done in over a year. I'm sure it didn't hurt that by this time the sun had finally started coming out and the weather was perfect for playing outdoors.
I learned online that vitamin d deficiency is a very serious problem that can lead to the bone disease Rickets, because without vitamin d your body can not absorb all the calcium it needs. Because we live in an area with low sun exposure (Did you know Alaska gets more sun than Western Washington?), I don't drink milk and was spending most of my time indoors through the fall and winter I wasn't getting all the natural vitamin d that my body needed. Thankfully it didn't effect me in a way that would have lasting consequences, like bone damage.
Hearing that I was perfectly healthy was such a relief! Now I just needed to make positive changes to my diet and lifestyle to keep everything that way!

My Journey To Better Health, Pt. 1

"Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail"

I hope you don't mind or get bored by these posts, but I have decided to chronicle my weight loss/ health improvement journey here.

I have always had the idea that as long as I felt healthy, could keep up with the kids and still fit into my clothes; it didn't matter what my weight was. That was until after going up a size with each pregnancy and then I discovered I had put on 20 lbs after having one my last child and never changed a clothing size. Slowly I wasn't able to keep up with the kids as much as I used to and began to feel sick more often than not. I knew I needed to change something... to eat healthier and exercise more, but felt trapped because of our past limitations, when we were without a regular income. Eating healthier usually means spending more on fresh healthy food and how does one exercise regularly in the rainiest state of the US without some sort of indoor equipment or membership at a gym? I was bound and determined to make a change as soon as I was able to.

I thought that opportunity had come when I friend put together a weight loss accountability group back in the fall. Josh was working again and I had the support of a small group of friends, I was going to succeed this time, right? Wrong! As fall turned into winter and the holidays came around I found it harder and harder to put forth the effort needed (more on this in a later post) to succeed at my goal I had set of losing 30lbs by spring. I would lose 5lbs, gain it back, lose 3 and just yo-yo back and forth. Very discouraging. Looking back I realized my problem was that I had no plan of attack and made no drastic changes to my daily habits that would produce lasting results.

Which brings us to now. I have made some changes and am seeing some results (mostly health wise, not so much weight wise yet) and would love the support of my friends and family who read this blog to cheer me on. I have a lofty goal of losing 50 lbs by the end of the summer, which would bring down to my pre-3rd pregnancy weight. The next installment of this series should be up in the next couple of days. Then there will probably be weekly or bi-weekly follow ups. If you'd like to join me in this journey, we can talk more about the changes I'm making one on one sometime.

Pray for me friends this is going to take some major strength and determination.