Little Bits of Life…

So partly because I love to cook so much, partly because I love food so much, and partly because I want to have a catering business or bakery someday, I’ve started a food blog. My current plan is to take pictures of things I make that I’m pleased with or that I’m trying to improve on, and post them on the food blog. Where applicable, I’ll post a link to the recipe. If I’ve made modifications to the recipe, I’ll try to remember to say that as well. And I’ll try to be sure and put my family’s response to each item so you have a little idea of how it will go over for kids. If you have an interest in the food blog, you can subscribe to it. (It’s different than this blog so there’s a separate link to subscribe – not the one you see on this page to the right. Click here, then click on the link that says "Subscribe to my Food Blog" and you’re off.)

…or maybe it’s the way to avoid the torture?

A friend of mine read my latest post about exercise and sent me an email informing me that perhaps I’m going about my weight loss goals in the wrong manner. He sent me a few links(Interval Training, Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week, and The Hacker’s Diet), and told me of his experience losing weight, and I’ve decided that it sure can’t hurt to give it a shot. I am so close to meeting my goal at this point but unfortunately I keep losing and then gaining back the same 2 or 3 pounds, over and over. I can’t seem to exercise as much as I eat, no matter how hard I try. Part of that is probably due to my tendency to over-do it every few weeks with my food, because I’ve done so well so far and I surely deserve a break. But part of it is that doing enough exercise to burn off the calories in just one candy bar takes an amazing amount of time, and if I’ve already eaten my food limit for the day but happen to crave and cave, I don’t always have the time (or self-discipline) to invest in working off my extras.

So anyway – I’m going to give this new method a try. I’m changing from tons of cardio to some HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) 3 times a week on my stationary bike with alternate days of strength training (the same strength training videos I’ve been doing, because I love them and they give me great results). And that’ll be my exercise routine for a while. And I’m going to quit counting calories, because it just kills me to obsess over that, and because my friend has given me an improved method where I’m still conscious of what I eat, but not so much that I’m obsessing over whether or not I have enough calories left for any specific food.

This will hopefully be a much more relaxed method of eating awareness, and I’m hoping that the HIIT will turn out to be an awesome way of losing weight. I’ll keep you posted. Keep reading for more in-depth details of what I’ll be doing. If you don’t care so much about the details, this is the end of the post for you. 🙂

My new routine will be as follows:

MWF: Strength training, using two 8 lb hand weights and my own body weight. I use a video called "I Want That Body" which has a total of 6 routines, 1 regular and 1 advanced routine each for: abs, arms, and buns. Each routine is 15 minutes. I do the advanced routine for both arms and abs for a total of 30 minutes. (If you want to tone your muscles this is a great way to do it with only a chair, some hand weights, and a floor mat. Doing these routines twice a week (a total of 1 1/2 hours over the week – twice for abs, twice for arms, twice for buns) has given me spectacular results.)

TThS: Advanced routine for buns of "I Want That Body", followed by stationary bike: warmup (probably not too much since I’ll be warm from the buns workout); HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) for 10 reps, intervals of 20 seconds at high intensity and 40 seconds low intensity, working up to 20 seconds at high intensity and 20 seconds low intensity for up to 15 reps (or until I can’t do them any more, which might just be 10); 5 minutes of cool-down.

Sundays off

If this works, I think I may decide to put all my exercise on the same 3 days, by doing HIIT and then the strength training immediately following. I’m not sure I could do that, however, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea either, but there may be some benefit to doing other exercise during the hour immediately following the HIIT. At any rate, I guess for now I’ll give this a shot.

A few other things I’m doing:

1. Eating about 30 minutes before beginning my HIIT.

2. Charting my weight and watching for the trend I’m looking for (this charting method is thanks to Hans). My goal is to go down at the rate of about 1 pound every 5 days or so. So I’ll be stepping on the scale every morning and charting the number on a piece of graph paper, where I’ll also have a guiding line approximating the loss of 1 pound over 5 days. The most recent 5 days will be examined each day to determine whether or not it’s a "dessert" day. If my 5-day trend is approximately the same as my guide line, I’ll be in for a regular eating day, including dessert if it happens to come up (which I’m sure it will). Should the trend be upward (heaven forbid) or flat, I’ll be drinking an extra glass of water before each meal, going a little leaner on my portions for the day, and skipping dessert.

3. Drinking less water during my workout (previously I was going through 40-72 oz during my 90 minute workout, depending on how thirsty I was), mainly because I don’t have enough time for all that water and because I want to drink more water during the day to help with my food cravings. I’m still aiming for over 100 oz/day at a minimum.

4. Managing my eating differently. No longer will I be counting calories, though I am still aware of how much I’m eating. I’ve spent a while counting calories and I’m aware now of how full my plate is when I’ve typically hit around 300-400 calories. Also, I spent enough time cooking while counting calories that I know what kinds of things are better choices. Instead I’m going to base the eating off the weight charting above, and hopefully find a happy balance. I hate counting calories and am overjoyed at the prospect of not doing it any more. 🙂 If I can obsess less over how much I’m allowed to eat, I’m hoping to start eating the amount my body is asking for instead of trying to eat exactly every last calorie I’m allowed.

5. I was previously doing my strength training routines twice a week, and I’ll be increasing that to three times a week with the new schedule.

All these changes have brought with them a few things I’m not exactly wild about:

1. Getting up 30 minutes before I start exercising, so I can eat first. Apparently this is better than exercising on an empty stomach which I had previously been doing. But I guess the extra time in the mornings will give me a few minutes to work on my blog, so that’s one con turned pro.

2. No more TV. My exercise time was my TV time – I’d watch an episode of something during my stationary bike workout (45 minutes roughly), and I’ll miss that a little. But, on the flip side, I only started watching TV as a way to kill time while I was exercising, so I guess it won’t be hard to get used to no TV again.

3. HIIT is HARD WORK. Yes, it is only about 10 minutes of my day, but that is 10 minutes of misery. At least once the 10 minutes are up, I’m done for 2 days. And if it does what I’m hoping (helps me lose those last 2 or 3 pounds and then keep them off) then it’ll be worth it, especially since it means I get lots more sleep this way! And it brings my total exercise time down to 3.25 hours a week instead of the 9 hours I have been doing every week – a VAST improvement! If I was to cut the strength training (which I won’t because I like having tone muscles) then I’d go down to 1 hour total a week, where only 30 minutes of that is actually exercise (the other 30 minutes is warmup/cool-down). Now how would that be? 30 minutes a week to be the weight I want, and still eat what I like???

All in all, I’m not sure I believe in this but, like I said before, I’m willing to give it a shot. Sometimes the new stuff turns out to be right. If you’re a bit skeptical (like me), take a look at a globe and remember that a revolutionary idea isn’t always immediately accepted.

So I suppose it is time for an update on my exercise/weight loss project. I set a goal this year to reach a certain weight by the end of the year. It meant I’d need to lose a total of about 35 pounds (since I started in about July of last year) which seemed pretty daunting, but I figured it was less than a pound a week if I gave myself a whole year. That’s pretty doable, and very realistic. So I set about it, working my tail end off (quite literally, in fact) to lose the weight and get in shape. I worked out for around 90 minutes a day and cut WAY back on how much I was eating. I was getting up early (5 or so every morning) so I could fit in my exercise and shower before my kids get up (because honestly, I don’t get much done when my kids are awake other than maintaining my household and caring for the kids, so if I don’t do my workout in the morning then I don’t do it at all). And slowly but surely I began to see the pounds drop off. I was doing lots of cardio exercise and a fair amount of strength training exercises (with hand weights and my own body weight). I also increased my water intake quite a bit (anywhere from 64-130 oz per day, depending on which month you want to know about). I found I actually have some muscles I’ve never noticed before (the strength training brought those out after I lost enough weight that they weren’t covered in fat any more) and I went on a shopping spree to replace my wardrobe (you try losing 35 pounds and then see if any of your clothes fit… if you need an excuse to go shopping, this is a fabulous one).

And so, in May of this year (2008) I met my weight goal. I had lost the 35 pounds I set out to lose, and it was even before my birthday (in June) which I had set as my hopeful completion date. I was, to say it mildly, pleased and excited to have reached this goal.

Unfortunately, this glorious accomplishment wasn’t to remain for long.

I backed off on my exercise – took it down to about 45 minutes a day. I slowed down on the water intake – down to 64 oz/day. And I started eating more. (Side note: these are all things you can and should do when you reach your weight loss goal – because if you don’t mellow out with all the stuff you were doing to lose the weight, you’ll keep losing more and pretty soon you won’t be more than skin and bones!)

Frustrated, I watched the numbers on the scale climbing again. Within the course of about 1 1/2 months I had added another 10 pounds. Talk about a major bummer! I was upset with myself because I knew EXACTLY what the problem was, and yet I still did nothing to change it.

My problem? I love to eat. I love food. I’ve mentioned this before. Food is one of my vices. It is a necessary part of being alive – to live, you must eat. But for me, food is emotional, it is social, and it is fulfilling. I eat when I’m stressed, lonely, or bored. I eat when I go on a date with my husband or when we go out with friends. I cook because I love cooking, and then I eat the food I’ve cooked because otherwise it just goes to waste.

And so, in desperation, I signed up for a boot camp offered by one of my neighbors. I was determined to get the weight back off. I gave myself a stern talking-to and decided that NO MORE would I eat an entire batch of frosting simply because I accidentally made twice as much as I had intended (that’s the sort of thing that happens when I talk on the phone while I’m cooking). NO MORE would I eat the entire bag of chocolates, just because I opened it and I love them so much. NO MORE would I eat the whole box of wheat thins just because I love the taste of salt. And NO MORE would I eat the whole jar of peanuts simply because they are open. And so I increased my exercise time again to 90 minutes/day and I vowed to cut back on my food intake again.

Boot camp was interesting. It taught me new exercises that I hadn’t ever seen before. It gave me the motivation to keep trying to lose weight, even though my previous attempt had failed to stick with me. I also learned that my 64 oz per day of water intake was good, but not enough. My instructor taught me that in general, I should be aiming for at least 100 oz per day, and even more if I’m trying to lose weight. That for every 15 minutes of exercise I should drink 8 oz of water. So I changed that as well, and started drinking around 110-120 oz per day. But still, I wasn’t losing any more weight. Try as I might, the exercise and food modifications weren’t making a difference.

So I talked to my boot camp instructor. I told her my dilemma. I told her I was frustrated because I was exercising 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week. I was not eating everything in sight (much to my dismay). And when I worked out, I was getting my heart rate up where it needed to be. I had changed up the exercises I was doing (a good idea every 4-6 weeks). And still the weight hung on.

She said, I’m sorry to say, that most likely it was my nutrition that was plaguing me. *Sigh* My old friend, food, was at it again. So I told her that I had lost the weight I wanted to about 2 months before, but that I had felt hungry a lot of the time and dissatisfied with the food I was eating because I never felt full for long. She told me I needed to be eating foods with a lot of fiber as that would help me to feel more full. And then she said the magic words – the words that clued me in to my mistake and answered the question of why I couldn’t seem to keep the weight off. She said, "It all comes down to calories in versus calories out. You have to burn more calories than you take in if you want to lose weight." Simple, but I had never thought of it before in those terms.

And so, as is typical for me, I went home and began to research. I had to find the answer to my problem. I started by looking at some of the foods I typically eat, trying to find out how many calories are in them. And I looked at that in connection with how many calories I need to consume to maintain my weight with my current activity level (meaning minutes per day of exercise). And I looked into roughly how many calories I was burning doing the different kinds of exercises I was doing. And then the realization came that, although I wasn’t eating the whole world any more, I was still eating WAY too many calories. I was devastated to find that just the week before I had managed to eat all the calories I needed for a whole day in just one take-out meal! I began to examine the meals I typically eat when I go out and found that I could easily consume nearly a day’s worth of calories in one meal when I went out. And so the answer to my problem had come. And I have become something I never dreamed in a million years I would become: a calorie counter.

For nearly 2 weeks now I have been tracking the number of calories I eat each day, and keeping it where it needs to be for me to lose weight. And I’m proud to say that since starting that, I have lost about 4 of the 10 pounds I had previously put back on after my first weight loss attempt. I’m on my way to success, and this time I will be able to keep the weight off because I have taken the time to educate myself about food and exercise and weight loss. And in a few more weeks, when I have met my weight loss goal (again), I’ll re-evaluate my exercise time and caloric needs and modify my habits to reflect my new goal: maintaining my weight. At that point it will become a balancing act, where my goal will be calories in equal to calories out. 

Amazingly, though I’m consuming a considerably smaller number of calories than I was when I gained back the 10 pounds, I’m still feeling like I get enough to eat. I’m not starving all the time, and because I know how many calories I get to eat I’m making better choices about what I will eat. I do everything I can to make those calories go as far as possible, because while I want to lose weight, I don’t want to feel hungry because of it. And it is possible to do this if you’re willing to put some time and effort into it. I have found that my best bet is to plan the night before what I will be eating the next day. That way I can keep my calories in check, be sure I get enough foods from each food group, and make sure I’m eating enough food often enough that my stomach doesn’t feel empty. (Hopefully some day soon I will be able to recognize good food choices without having to look them up.) These changes have made a huge difference!

During my research, I found a few things online that have been a WONDERFUL help to me. And so, in the spirit of sharing and wanting everyone else out there to be able to reach their weight loss goals and keep off the weight, I have listed a couple of web sites that have helped me in amazing ways to figure out what I needed to do. Good luck to you in reaching (and maintaining!) your weight loss goals. Learn from my mistakes so you don’t have to make them. The information you need to lose weight and keep it off is out there if you only take the time to look at it and educate yourself. Hopefully these will help save you some precious time!

www.mypyramid.gov – a wonderful tool for calculating your caloric needs as well as learning what types of foods you should be eating, what counts as a "serving", and what food category each food fits into

www.calorieking.com – a great place to find out how many calories are in the food you’re eating (includes some fast food and restaurant foods as well)

I honestly can’t believe I’m saying this, but I went camping this summer for 4 days and actually enjoyed it!

Anyone who knows me will be amazed by that statement, as I’ve spent most of my life avoiding the outdoors, especially when combined with sun and heat. To say I don’t do well in the summer is to put it mildly. More accurate would be to say I loathe the heat with a fervor unknown in my life in any other respect; the sun and I have been bitter enemies since my earliest memories of the outdoors.

However, camping for a week turned out to be a pretty fun experience. I went with my church youth girls’ group as an adult leader. This was certainly not my idea of a good time, but I did say yes when they asked me to go so I suppose I’m as much to blame as anyone for the dread I felt in the months and weeks leading up to the camping trip. I was (thankfully) not the one in charge of planning the whole operation, but I was involved in a lot of the planning and preparation, which only increased the bad taste I already had for camping.

About a month before the camping trip began, I decided I needed to do something about my fear and dread and so I began to pray for help to change my attitude (and also for cool weather since my main problem with camping – aside from bugs and dirt – is heat stroke anyway). My belief in the power of prayer and faith was reinforced and in fact strengthened when, about a week or two before the camping trip, I found myself inexplicably looking forward to the week I was to spend out of doors, without my bed or my shower. I mentioned my excitement to my husband who was similarly shocked by my new attitude. And to add more to my faith in Deity answering my prayers, we were slated for abnormally cold temperatures at the campground for the week I was to attend.

The morning of the day I was to leave for camp, I got up early and loaded up my last few things before leaving. As I was about to leave the house, I was hit with a multitude of fears for the weather, my ability to stand the temperatures, transporting other people’s children in my husband’s car for 2 hours on a drive I had never made on roads that twisted and turned in a car no longer equipped with power steering (this made me so nervous my knuckles were white for most of the drive), the fact that I’ve never enjoyed camping before, and the daunting task of being semi-in-charge of 20 teenage girls for 4 days, most of whom I didn’t know. Tears of distress and fear trickled down my cheeks as I woke my husband, asking him for a priesthood blessing before I left. He readily agreed, and through that blessing I was again reminded of the concern God has for me and the extent to which he knows me personally. The words of the blessing were such a comfort to me, as I was blessed to find strength and courage to do things I didn’t know I could do, and to know my own limits and not to overstep them. I was given courage and comfort by my Father in Heaven that helped calm my nerves as I left the house.

Over the course of the week of camping, I learned to build and extinguish fires, cook over a camp stove and dutch oven, and pitch a tent. I formed bonds with the other leaders and the girls and gained a love for the outdoors I didn’t think I’d ever find. I spent most of the mid-day hours in the shade with a cool bottle of water, and only twice did I have any trouble with the heat (and both times it was caught early on so I was able to resolve it quickly). My early mornings were spent kindling fires and heating water for hot chocolate. The late nights were spent extinguishing fires, washing dishes, and cleaning up camp. Certainly camp was more work as a leader than I remember as a youth, but I’m thankful for the chance I had to attend, and for the skills I was able to gain. And most of all I’m thankful for the chance it gave me to exercise my faith and be reminded of the love my Heavenly Father has for me as his daughter. He knows me better than I know myself, as evidenced by the fact he trusted me enough to send me camping in the first place. 🙂

For more information on my church and my beliefs, visit www.lds.org.

Here’s a picture of the first fire I built all by myself, Thursday morning (my 3rd day at camp).

Every now and then I have a parenting moment where I find that something I’ve been doing to raise my kids has actually paid off. Just the other day, I had one such moment…

After a normal morning at home, it was time to make lunch. I gave the kids some choices for lunch and asked them what they wanted. Erica, whose morning had been less than wonderful and who was rather moody, loudly and rudely informed me that she wouldn’t be eating lunch. The rule at our house is that skipping lunch also means skipping afternoon snack, which is usually enough to entice the kids to eat their lunch. But Erica was determined to stick it out and, as she informed me, she was "not going to eat again for the rest of the week." This was Tuesday. I was amused, but contained myself and settled for my standard answer of "it’s your choice." I proceeded to make lunch for the other two kids and myself, and we sat down to have the prayer and eat lunch. Cue Erica. "I’m really hungry." I told her, politely, that I was sorry she was hungry but I had already made lunch and the time had passed for me to make more. Should she want something to eat, she was welcome to find some lunch food and make it herself. After moping around the kitchen and looking in the fridge and pantry, she decided on the rest of the leftover scrambled eggs I had warmed up for Cambria. She got a barstool and managed to find herself a bowl on a low enough shelf that she could reach it and proceeded to pour the 1/4 cup of scrambled eggs into the bowl and eat it. She also found herself a water bottle from the fridge and drank that. Not surprisingly, she wasn’t full after eating such a scant meal, and out came the pouting and whining again, saying how difficult her life was because I didn’t make her any lunch and she just couldn’t make anything herself. I suggested she try making herself a sandwich, thinking she would make a boloney sandwich (which she knows how to make herself and which she asks for almost daily for lunch). Surprisingly, she got herself a piece of bread and the peanut butter and jelly and proceeded to make her own sandwich. The peanut butter was relatively easy to open and she had no problem getting it spread on the bread, but the jelly was another story. Try as she might, Erica just couldn’t seem to get the lid off the jar. She asked me very politely to please help her but I, wanting to drive home the point I was trying to make, reminded her that I had already made lunch and that I was sorry she had made a poor choice but that I was sure she would make a better choice next time. So Erica turned to Isaac and asked if he could help take the lid off the jar. I watched in amusement, trying my best to stifle my laughter, as my 5-year-old daughter tried to bribe my 3-year-old son into opening the jar of jelly by telling him that if he could get it open she would give him "something really neat." He gave it a valiant effort, if you can call two fingers and a lot of grunting valiant, but to no avail. On stayed the lid, and Erica was forced to be content with a plain peanut butter sandwich. I was impressed that she had managed to get herself such a decent lunch, and also pleased that my teaching moment had gone as well as it had. As lunch was ending and Erica was putting away her dishes she said, to my satisfaction, that she was sad she had made such a poor choice at lunch time and that she hoped she would make a better choice at snack time so that Mommy could get her food for her.

These are the moments I realize my teaching methods, while often seeming futile, do actually work when done correctly. And I’m grateful to have learned a way to teach my children to think for themselves and make their own choices (within reason of course). And certainly thankful to have such funny stories to write about to remember on the days when the teaching doesn’t seem to be going so well. 🙂