Oh....hi!

Well..... hello!  It has been FOREVER since I have blogged last.  I am not going to make any excuses about being too busy, I know many of you are busier than I am and still find time to blog.  I have zero sh!@ togetherness, but I am working on it.  Seriously, I need to.  Here is an innocent victim of my lack of sh!@ togetherness-

This is my loyal, loving dog.  I feed, water , walk him and shower him with love on a daily basis.  For some reason I HATE taking him to get his haircut.  I kept procrastinating, he kept getting shaggier.  Then I became embarased about how long his hair was... resulting in more procrastinating.  FINALLY, I did what any normal person would do.  I took the money for his haircut and bought a dog clipping kit.  I watched a 15 minute DVD and fancied myself a dog groomer!  Well... hours and hours later he looked BETTER, but not great.

Anyway... I am still going strong with Les Mills Pump!  Today is day 39, I am almost HALFWAY through!  The bad news is that I have maybe lost 2 lbs, some days 1... hard to tell lately.  This is not the fault of Les Mills- There is new muscle under that little layer of fat!  I can feel it.  Since mother's day I just haven't had the dedication I had when I was doing BR.  There's always been an exception of some sort- Mother's Day, my son's 1.5 birthday, Father's Day, etc.

Recently, it was my brother and his wife visiting so LOTS of eating out.  I didn't eat too much or anything, but I did fill up on things like Asian Pizza (seriously sounds weird, but so good) rather than making sure I got my veggies in.  I did like Jillian's meal plan quite a bit and used it as a guide- the Les Mills meal plan is not good (frozen waffles, shakeology, etc).   So all that rambling means I need to REFOCUS on food.

Les Mills workouts are full body workouts, so some weeks you do the same workout 3 times.  This week my main workout is Pump and Shred. This workout is crazy and is about 45 minutes in length.  Each body part is broken up into tracks (the length of a song).

- Start with a five minute warm up
- Squats- a little over 5 minutes.  I am currently squatting about 30 lbs plus the weight of the bar.  5 minutes of squats didn't seem like that long to me, but it wipes my legs out every time.  The squats are varied- by speed and range of motion.
-Chest- again about 5 minutes.  I am using 20 lbs plus the weight of the bar.  This is the hardest for me. 4 minutes of this are chest press.  Sounds boring- right?  No!  You are constantly switching it up.  Down and pulse, singles, down and hold.  After this you do a minute of push ups.  After 4 minutes of chest press I am lucky if I get 30 seconds of push ups on my toes, I have to come to my knees- my arms are TAPPED!
- Back, Glutes, Hamstrings- Classic moves- dead rows and a lot of clean and presses.
- F-ing Lunges- Okay this is my least favorite track because it is murder on your legs.  Slow lunges suck !  I am so grateful when they speedup the lunges.  So you do about 2 minutes of lunging on one leg, break it up with squats for less than a minute, then do 2 minutes on the other leg, then squat again.
- Shoulders- Here you go Bar-Less!  More push-ups then you go into moves with just the plates- side raise, mac raise, overhead press.

One thing I should mention is that with each 'track' is a new trainer.  So if you don't like someone, you only have them for 5 minutes.  The shoulder girl is EVIL.  She is drop-dead freaking gorgeous, she is very soft spoken with a sweet little voice, but her words do NOT match her demeanor:

EVIL.

-Abs- We do various moves in a 'hover' (forearm plank), then do some traditional crunches, and some twists on crunches to work the obliques.
-Cool Down
WHEW!

So,  I try not to become wrapped up in all the Beachbody Hoopla, but I am intriqued by the Ultimate Reset.  It is freaking expensive, but I am friends with my 'coach' on facebook and she keeps posting meals and they look fantastic!  She gave me the recipe for one of the salad dressings and I made it and it got rave reviews.  I seriously want the reset for the recipe book alone.

I don't think I can justify this one, but I keep thinking about it.  Even these cheesy videos are starting to convince me.  Talk me down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfobGC_gAZY&list=UUCRLav5uZ3PdcNhxaMpoXOQ&feature=plcp

Good Night Friends.  I need to read about your happenings tomorrow.  It's gonna be another scorcher so I'll be inside!!

And we're moving again!... The wrong way.

Just a quick little blog today- because I want to put this out there.  Yesterday I weighed in at 134- YAY me, low 130's-go.... go!!  This morning I weighed in at 138- I haven't seen a number that high in awhile.

Yesterday wasn't a 'bad' (why do we use these words) day foodwise either and I got a good workout in.   I certainly didn't consume 14,000 calories.

This happens sometimes!  Last time it happened I freaked out and thought ZOMG, I am doing something wrong, I need to work harder.  That wasn't the case at all and in fact doing that caused me to hang onto the extra few pounds.

I don't know why I weigh so much more today.  Maybe TOM is coming, maybe I had too much sodium yesterday, maybe my muscles are swollen from upping my weights yesterday.   Who knows?

I just know some people are struggling because the scale has gone up and I just wanted to put it out there that it happens to me too!

Have a great weekend all and celebrate those awesome fathers in your life!

And we're moving!

I've been avoiding blogging because for some reason I can't find the words to write my review of Les Mills.  I want it to be perfect because I don't want anyone spending money on something and hating it because of my review! I know you guys will forgive me for not doing it yet, but I hate it that I said I would and still haven't.  One of my favorite quotes I kept on my desk at work was 'Integrity- Do what you say you're going to do'.  So- I am sorry!!

I did have to share my news though. The scale is finally moving again.

One more pound and I am in the LOW 130's!  Whoot.  The once a week sweet thing is working for me as usual!  Who knew that diet mattered more than exercise?  Just about every expert out there- oh, that's right.  Should have listened!

So Les Mills has got very intense and my butt and abs have been constantly sore.  I turned on Insanity a couple weeks ago and during the warm up it just didn't feel good.  Very jarring on my body.  My younger, but wiser husband said 'Maybe there are walk days for a reason'.  I have backed off the Insanity hybrid for awhile because it was just insanity.

I am still following Les Mills schedule and on walk days I may walk, I may bike or just do a workout of my choosing.  I was surprised that today I chose:

I really like this one!  Every time I think about unloading P90X, I think twice because of plyo. I thought it would be hard since I haven't done any hardcore jumping for a few weeks, but I felt really strong and more in control than normal.   Les Mills is doing wonders for my legs, butt and core strength.

Other than that- life is great!  This morning was such a treat.  My husband said that when blueberries were ready for picking he would take a couple of hours off and we would go picking.  It was a perfect cool morning and it was so nice to have the extra family time out in the open air today instead of the usual rushed morning start.

We didn't get that many berries and some we picked are a little too ripe, but we had a blast this morning.  I have a new appreciation for why these are so expensive at the store!

I hope everyone has a fabulous day!!  :)  Oh, and if you have any light read book recs that aren't 50 Shades of Porn- please let me know.  I haven't read anything 'for fun' since the Hunger Games.

Sugar Momma Check In

Not Sugar Momma in the usual sense, just a momma who is trying to avoid sugar.  It seems like a lot of us BR bloggers are struggling with this lately and for some reason I thought if we needed a support group 'Sugar Momma' would be a great name for our group.

I could NOT commit to no sugar until after today.  Today my little one turned 18 months! And I know it isn't an official birthday, but it just seemed like a much bigger deal than a one year old birthday.  He has matured so much in the past couple of months and I am just bursting with pride at his cheerful, inquisitive nature.  We just had to celebrate.  We didn't have a fancy party with a lot of people, but we did go to one of those kiddie pizza joints with rides, arcade games and go carts.  We then went to the Farmer's Market listened to a band, then came home for birthday cake.

So that's it, I'm done- no sugar for awhile.  At least a week to get me back on track.  That just means no obvious sugar.  I'm not going militant on a gram here and there or natural fruit sugars.

That being said, even though I haven't lost any weight-I am feeling pretty good about the old body these days. I am definitely tighter than when I finished body revolution.  My abs have a lot more definition.  Here I am today after Hard Core Abs:

Really, the only thing I'd like to refine is the pooch in my lower abs.  I really don't want to get any thinner in the arms or the upper ab area.  Why oh why can't we spot reduce where we want to?  I really hate how I drop weight top- down, but I guess that is typical.

Exciting Food News:

First CSA deliver- yay!

I roasted the Kohlrabi today with garlic scapes for a snack.  It was okay, but I wouldn't go out and buy one.

I've always been intrigued by coconut water smoothies, but I don't care for coconut water out of the bottle. I bought a young coconut and got the water out for a smoothie today and it was soooo much better.

Then I made an AMAZING smoothie.  CSA spinach, coconut water, cherries, a scoop of vanilla protein powder.

Soooo good.  My son grabbed it and drank at LEAST half.  That's okay, it's his birthday!

See my cup is Starbucks. They are opening a juice bars now in response to the healthy 'trend'.  I am calling it now-  I think this is going to be a big miss.  The target demographic are people who pride themselves in NOT going to Starbucks.  Raw foodies are out because they aren't going to dig the pasteurization.  And if the produce isn't organic, I think people are going to stick to whipping up their local produce in their Vitamixes and skipping Starbucks.  I could be wrong though, it has happened before.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/20/us-starbucks-juice-idUSBRE82I05Y20120320

Have a great night!  Gonna catch up on blogs tomorrow.

Food...

I mentioned in my last post that I haven't lost any weight post body revolution.  Not for lack of working hard, but it has been a slippery slope for me food wise.

It all started innocently enough.  I was listening to Jillian's podcast and she was talking about how she allots a certain number of calories a day to 'treat' foods.  In particular she talked about a brand of chocolate named Green and Blacks.   The next day I was perusing the Health Market and I saw that Green and Blacks were on sale as well as my trusty favorite brand Newman's Own.  So I picked up a little chocolate for the snack cabinet.

Now these chocolate bars have a TON of calories if you were to eat the whole thing, but that was A-OKAY in my mind.  I pictured myself breaking off a piece and then neatly wrapping the remainder of the bar back up, putting it in the snack cabinet to be enjoyed another day.

Well, let's just say that isn't exactly how it went down- our girl Jill has really good taste in chocolate!  So, if I didn't wholeheartedly believe that I am responsible for all of my experiences- I'd blame Jillian!  BUT,  I can't sugar responsibly- no more unplanned treats for me.  Back to once a week, that's what works for me.  It was a good thought though.

I have been doing really good the last couple of days though. I have tried some really good new recipes.  Some recent faves:

Dr Oz Fat Burning Chili- I don't like Chili, but I had to make this when I saw it. There are a lot of ingredients, but we froze this- have had it twice and probably have 3 to 4 more meals left.

http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/fat-melting-vegetarian-chili

If you don't like spicy food, skip this!  If you do like spicy food- TONE it down.

Unsweetened Coconut crusted chicken:

Asparagus Soup and Tomato Cucumber Salad:

So yeah, back on the wagon and feeling good!  

Other great news- I finished body revolution without doing a single wheel push up, I just held the wheel.  Today I tried after my Pump and Burn workout and I did TEN wheel push ups.  Les Mills must be doing something for my arm strength!  Whoot!

Have a great night everyone! :)