Tag Archives | getting healthy

Dairy Free… Me?

By on August 8, 2012 Comments { 10 }

Cheddar Cheese

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but, well I just never seem to get around to it. I’ve said before how I feel awful a lot of the time and how I know that it’s due to the food that I eat. I’m overweight, and that doesn’t help, but even so it’s FOOD that makes me feel the worst. So I’m going to come clean, here and now.

I have a sugar addiction. It’s really, really hard for me to turn down sweets.  The most difficult are ice cream and really super high-calorie candy-bar-in-a-cup coffee drinks. These are my downfall by far. But they aren’t the only ones.

For a while now I’ve been thinking that I have an issue is either wheat, dairy, or a combination of the two.  When I eat, I often get a gut ache to the left of my navel. It can hurt for up to 2 hours and sometimes it just hurts all day long. If I eat something with wheat or dairy, I get a very gurgly, upset stomach on top of the gut ache. It’s really not fun. Not at all.

About a month ago I decided to cut out wheat, sugar, and dairy from my diet completely, just to see how it goes. I know that these things make me gain weight. I know that these things either cause or contribute to my feeling sick a lot of the time. So I cut them out, for two weeks. I planned on doing it for longer.

I felt GREAT. I did keep track of my calories with my My Fitness Pal app so that I made sure didn’t cut out my needed calories, but otherwise I didn’t limit or change anything. I just didn’t eat any pasta or breads, cheese, milk, ice cream or yogurt, or anything with added sugar in it. I skipped the sugar in my iced tea. I used honey rather than brown sugar in my oatmeal (which I prefer anyway). I did really well and over the course of the two weeks I lost 5 pounds, without really trying to. It just happened.

Now you would think I would be happy with that, see the progress and how much better I felt, and stick with it, right?  HA. You don’t know me. We had two weddings two weekends in a row, and my special don’t-eat-crap diet disappeared. Well, mostly.  I was still careful about dairy and avoided it for the most part. Except for pizza. It’s hard to not eat pizza when the family is eating pizza.

But then there’s that wheat again. I ate pizza, felt awful, and had this horribly upset stomach for that evening and ALL the next day! And yet…

Each day I make these food choices, and each day I fail to prevent myself from eating what makes me sick. I am pretty sure it’s the dairy, but then again since I often have dairy with wheat (pizza, fettucini, grilled cheese sandwiches) I don’t really know for sure. I need to cut out dairy and wheat again, for sure, and sugar again, because my sweet tooth came back and kicked my butt into the ice cream carton way too many times over the past couple weeks. (There’s that dairy again!) And I always feel like crap after I eat it. And I still have 35 pounds to lose.

So if you think about me, I’d love it if you’d lift me up in prayer because quitting this stuff is HARD. I can replace milk  with almond milk, but I have yet to find a replacement for cheddar cheese.

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Race Motivation

By on April 15, 2012 Comments { 2 }
Bloomsday 2011

@MamaKautz and I before Bloomsday 2011

NOTE: If you’re visiting from the Ultimate Blog Party, my PARTY post is right HERE!  

I recently mentioned that my husband and I are wanting to take control of our eating and eat better so we’ll FEEL good. Along with this goal, I have another one. You see, I’m a wanna-be runner. I enjoy running, most of the time. Okay, actually I don’t enjoy it unless I do it fairly often. Then I LOVE it.

I ran this morning. I made it 3.03 miles. The last mile I was able to get into my “zone”. I wasn’t looking around, or thinking about a whole lot, or dodging rocks, I was just running. I love it when I get to that point. I can just GO. But I lost “the zone” after just a few minutes when a dog stepped out of its driveway, causing me to be on the alert. Then I was tired. Seriously tired.

You see, I have a bigger goal than just running: I’m running Bloomsday again this year! Bloomsday is 12k– 7.46 miles of fun with 55,000 other people! And if that sounds kind of crazy, that’s because it is. It was my first real race  ever, last year, and I had so much fun! Mama Kautz and I both ran it last year. Not together, because she was in an earlier start group than I was, but we rode the shuttle there together and met up afterward. Do I want to win it? NO WAY. I’m happy with my 10.5 minute miles!

My plan this year was to get a personal record–a PR– on last year’s time. Last year I finished in 1:35. This year I want to do it in 1:25. Only trouble is, in order to get ready for something like shaving off ten minutes, I need to actually BE RUNNING.  Regularly.  This week, I ran Tuesday morning (2.68 miles, following my boys on their bikes) and this morning (Sat., 3.03 miles).  First runs in 3 weeks. I’m back to needing to walk a lot more. I’m fatter. I’m tired-er. This is not going down the way I’d planned it.

Bloomsday is Sunday, May 6th. I have 21 days. Three weeks to try to get myself ready to run it. I can do this! Last year I didn’t do much training at all and I did pretty good. I have somewhere between 9-14 training runs I can take before the race. Potential. Motivation.

They say the hardest thing when it comes to running are the first few steps out the front door. I agree. And I’m going to do it anyway.

So tell me, what do you have to psych yourself up for in order to get it done?

Today’s Ultimate Blog Party free download is McGuffey’s Eclectic Speller! <– (downloads expired)  And here are Friday’s and Saturday’s freebies!

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You Feel Like What You Eat

By on April 12, 2012 Comments { 1 }
Harvest

A little of last year's harvest

Imagine feeling so tired and sluggish you’re falling asleep when ever you sit down to do something quiet, like read or check your email.

Imagine having a gut ache after you eat. Almost every time. No matter what it is.

Imagine gaining back the same 5# you recently lost, and knowing you need to watch what you eat and get back to running, but you’re just too tired and your stomach hurts too much to run anyway.

This is how I’ve been feeling lately. I am exhausted, achey and just generally feeling terrible. And I’m not the only one. My husband has also remarked to me how he isn’t sleeping well, doesn’t have much energy, and feels yucky a lot of time. I don’t think both of us feeling this way is a coincidence. We realized that we need to do something about it, starting with what we eat. It just makes sense, doesn’t it, that if you eat a bunch of garbage, you’re going to feel… like garbage.

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. Well, not really SICK, but feeling awful.

Over the course of the past year or so, E and I have been really starting to pay attention to what we eat, and more specifically, where our food comes from.  This journey began with a documentary on Netflix.

Quick explanation/disclaimer: Some of the documentary links in this post open to the Netflix site which, if you aren’t a member, you won’t be able to view. If you are a member, go ahead and sign into your Netflix account right now in another tab, and then you can view the videos.  I should also mention here that I am NOT an affiliate of Netflix, although I did apply and was rejected because they didn’t feel that I could send them viewers. They obviously don’t understand homeschoolers… But I digress… We watched all of these on Netflix, but I linked the ones I could to Hulu just in case you don’t have a membership. And I’m not affiliated with Hulu either.

This eye-opening movie was called Food, Inc (Netflix). From it, we learned the down and dirty details of where our meat, poultry, eggs, and produce originate. And it’s not pretty folks. Forget about bright shiny farm scenes and cattle scattered across green fields. Forget chickens fluttering in the farmyard. Forget about healthy, back to nature-grown corn and wheat. Throw all the animals in close confines, mix in massive amounts of manure, minimal if any sunlight, and a lot of hormones, genetic modification, and chemicals. That’s what you get when you buy today’s commercially raised food from the supermarket. Buying sides of beef and pork from a rancher, and getting our own chickens for fresh eggs were a direct result of watching Food, Inc.

The next one we watched is called Food Matters (Netflix).  This movie blew both of us away, and made us begin to think differently about how we eat. There are a number of others, and I will just list them for you.

So we’re going to do something about it. Last weekend, we bought a juicer. E and I are going to go on a juice fast. E is planning on just a weekend, and I am planning on a week. Or two. We’ll see how I am feeling at the end of a week. I know I’ll feel better eliminating some things, like dairy and/or wheat, as well as all the processed sugar I consume normally. Both of us are looking forward to a total detox.

I’m not sure yet when we are beginning this. I’ll keep an ongoing journal about it and posts will be forthcoming. Our juicer arrived today.  We bought this baby…

Join me!

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Long Overdue Fitness Update

By on September 12, 2011 Comments { 4 }

It has been a long time since I have posted a fitness update. In fact, I can’t remember when it was… I think my What I Wanna-Be post maybe?  So I’ll just give you the skinny, er, the lowdown, on what I’ve been up to lately. This is going to be a long post. I have some exciting news!

The Couch-to-5K ® Running Plan

I finished the Couch-to-5K program!

I can run 30-40 minutes without stopping!  This is a huge accomplishment for me.  When I first started, I felt like I was going to DIE after only five minutes. Now, I’m just getting warmed up and into a good stride around a half mile, which is about 5 minutes into the run. I went from being in very poor shape physically and having almost zero endurance, to beginning to get into good shape and my endurance is improving all the time.

My weight?

That’s another story.  I started out on this running journey sometime after the first of the year. I was really inconsistent about it, but at least I was getting out there and moving.  From January to now I have lost a total of only 5#. Yes that’s right, 5 pounds.  I have also lost lots of inches though!  My 40th birthday is coming up the first week of October, and I really want to start off my next decade with a healthier outlook on life. This is just the beginning!

My legs have muscle definition starting to appear and fat is disappearing. I love that.  My middle, while smaller than it was, is still not where it needs to be. I’m going to be just totally honest here and tell you that I weigh 168 lbs. and I’m 5’3-1/2”.  My BMI is definitely out of the healthy range, and although I feel a lot better than I did a year ago, I have a long way to go.  I wanted to be all skinny when it came time to go to the Relevant Conference, but I don’t know how close I’ll get to that goal this late in the game. I am 12# lighter than I was at Relevant last year though! 

I have taken my belt in two notches since January.  My size Medium ladies t-shirts  have wiggle room in them now.  My 17 year old gave me a pair of jeans, size 11 in juniors, and I fit them. Granted, they are stretchy, but they fit! Slowly I am getting in shape.  I was complaining to a friend last week about it taking me so long to lose the weight and she  reminded me that the slower it comes off, the more likely I am to keep it off. She’s SO right! I would like to see a couple pounds loss per week though, rather than 1# a month!  Other things I’ve been doing:

  • Logging my food intake, although that is the area where I struggle the most. I’m not very good about keeping track of it.
  • A Plank-a-Day. I found this through someone on Twitter. There is a #plankAday stream which I follow now. Basically you do a plank (like a pushup but you don’t move, and you lean on your elbows) and hold it for a set period of time. I started out with 30 seconds and I’m up to 1:10 now.  I also do side planks, which are harder, and I’m doing only 30 seconds on each side so far.  The planks were super hard when I first started them a couple weeks ago, but are getting easier.  Another thing?  My abs HURT!!  After the first few times I did this I was definitely feeling it!  No crunches necessary.
  • Zumba!  My daughter and I go to a Zumba class at a local church twice a week.  I am uncoordinated and more than a little inhibited, but I.LOVE.ZUMBA!  It’s so fun and SUCH a great workout! If you’ve never tried Zumba but you like to dance, it doesn’t matter who bad you are, you’ll have fun.  If I could do Zumba every day, I would. I even bought a jingle scarf! (Don’t judge me.)

So there you have it. Me, totally transparent. I hope to be even more healthy and fit in 53 days when I see my Relevant sisters again! 

What are you doing to start living a healthier lifestyle?

 

 

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