Can I get Some Fries with that Shake?

Has anyone ever tried shakeology before?

A friend of mine has been using it for awhile and really loves it. She is also gluten-free and has a lot of other food allergies (like this kid) and finds it a great, nutritious option for her breakfasts each day.
I'm the kind of person who does not usually like to eat a big breakfast because I'm lazy not a morning person and snooze my alarm too much to have time to make a good breakfast.Today I did the chocolate shake with a banana, a gluten free graham cracker, and unsweetened almond milk. It was super yummy! (Even my fiance kept trying to steal sips!)

I'm not looking to lose weight with shakeology, I'm looking for a healthy alternative (gluten-free) that will make me feel better. I got the sampler pack this past Friday and have had a shake each day for breakfast. I have noticed a difference in my energy level, as well as noticed that I am not as hungry throughout the rest of the day. Shakeology offers a 30 day trial policy where if you try shakeology for 30 days and end up not liking it or not thinking the product is working for you, you can return it for your money back. So, I'm going to take the 30 day challenge and see how it goes.

On top of that, my back is still pretty messed up. I'm still in physical therapy twice a week, but nothing seems to be loosening. My therapist recommended that I start doing gentle yoga to add in more core strengthening and flexibility to help my back heal and get stronger. I took my first class at Bloom Yoga studio last Thursday and I loved it! I was very uneasy at first because I'm not a flexible person and when I think of yoga, I think of crazy poses with people wrapping their feet around their necks. But the instructor was wonderful and provided us with foam blocks, blankets, pillows, and straps that we could use to modify our poses so that we did not hurt ourselves. I actually only had difficulty with one or two poses, so I was happy. But, after not having had a good adrenaline and endorphin release in a very long time (due to not being able to run or do HiiT or strength train) the gentle yoga class moved slowly enough that I could keep up, but was intense enough that I worked up a small sweat. I felt so relaxed and fluid afterwards, it was a great feeling!

I plan on continuing my yoga classes once a week for the next few months. I do not want to do two times a week because I'm not sure how my back will handle that just yet. Once I get the okay from the doctor (and my work schedule) though, I will definitely be up for doing gentle yoga twice a week.

Anywho, I refer back to my original question- has anyone ever tried shakeology, or anything similar? If so, what was your experience?

Wake Up Call

I was persuing facebook earlier today and a friend of mine posted a link to this article HERE.
She also posted a quote from the story with the link that caught my eye:

"But also that so many people deal with this, this exact and pervasive struggle at whatever size they are, whatever shape, whatever they do. That we're not good enough, with the implication that the best we have to offer to the world is an appropriately sized pair of jeans."

I thought, "Whoa. I kind of want to read this!" So I opened the article and was blown away but what this woman had to say! To summarize; the writer once weighed 300lbs and was going in for weight loss surgery. She lost 180lbs but still was not happy with her appearance because although she treated, what she thought was, the problem, she hadn't really addressed the main issue of soceital pressure to be perfect.

I don't know how many of you fellow readers are considered overweight, fat, fluffy, obese, chubby, stuffed, curvy, plus-sized, Athena, etc. (and you don't have to share) but I am. I am a size 16 and all my life I have been called all those names and more. I've struggled for years to get my weight down and become an acceptable body image- that's part of why I started this blog, it's part of why I started running to begin with.

Over the past few months with working tons of hours, training for my half marathon, and getting engaged, I've done a lot of thinking. Yes, I would LOVE to be skinny for my wedding. I would LOVE to walk down the aisle in a size 6 dress and have everyone oooh and aaah at me, but I've come to realize that that is not who I am. I am a bigger girl, it says so right in my blog name, and I'm a runner. And after reading this article, I've come to realize that I am a healthy person- I eat well, I drink mostly water, and I exercise on a regular basis. I've run 3 half marathons and countless 5k races- and I'm still a size 16.

There's another quote from this article that I love because it's the revolutionary idea that no matter what dress size you wear, you can still be a happy and healthy person. The writer says, "I want this: I want to say, don't love yourself even though you're not perfect - love yourself because you have a body and it's worth loving and it is perfect. Be healthy, which is perfect at whatever size healthy is and at whatever size happy is."

So many of us continue to struggle to lose weight- some people do it to be healthy and to save their own lives, but most of us just do it because if we become skinny, then everything gets better. Skinny is magical. Skinny is acceptable. But why? I'm not going to stop eating healthy or exercising, but I am going to transfer my (sometimes obsessive) focus from losing weight to being happy.

Because, let's face it folks, we only get one life to live- might as well make it the happiest we can.

How to FAIL Epically

I saw this posted in one of the forums on MyFitnessPal.com and loved it so much, I just had to share it.
The real credit goes to this guy though. I hope y'all enjoy it as much as I did. (I'm a stickler for sarcasm!)

From Steve at Nerd Fitness -

"I spend all day, every day trying to help people get healthy.
(Well, sometimes I play video games all day too. Damn you, Assassins Creed!)


I feel like I’ve found what I’m meant to do with my life: Inspire and work with folks who are interested in losing some weight, building some muscle, and feeling better about themselves. I can usually tell within a few sentences of an email, or a few minutes of conversation who’s going to succeed and who’s going to continue to fail to get healthy.

So let’s run through the best ways to fail at getting healthy. Think of this as the worst instructional email ever.

How to fail at getting healthy

1) Compare yourself to others. Pick out people who are different sizes, shapes, builds, and genetics. It doesn’t matter that their body functions completely differently than yours, or that they eat differently and exercise differently than you. Find those people and say, “you won the genetic lottery, and I can’t lose weight, not my fault.” Then make yourself feel better by finding people that are REALLY overweigh, unhealthy, and unhappy. Pat yourself on the back and say “meh good enough!” Non-applicable comparisons FTW!



2) Make yourself miserable. We all know exercise only counts if you are suffering and hating life, so only do exercises that make you want to dropkick a puppy. Pick the least enjoyable form of exercise you can think of (for me, that would be running on a treadmill like a hamster), and then force yourself to do it for hours. Every day. Combine this with some sort of diet where you starve yourself, so that you have no energy and hate life. Even better, combine this with a SUPER unhealthy diet (telling yourself, “I earned this!”) and then wonder why you’re not losing weight.



3) Blindly follow conventional wisdom. Don’t eat fat. Avoid foods with cholesterol. Eat as many heart healthy whole grains as possible, all day long. Ignore advice to consume all natural foods from “fad” diets like the Paleo Diet. Buy “healthy” microwaveable dinners that taste like feet – those are the best.



4) Change workout plans as often as possible. Don’t stick with a good plan for 6-12 weeks (or even longer if it’s working). Be sure to freak out after two weeks when you don’t see drastic changes, and then pick another plan that promises even better results. The faster the freak out, the more quickly you can move on to the next routine!



5) Treat the symptoms rather than the cause. Screw wasting precious time and energy on figuring out why you are unhealthy – that requires things like “effort.” Gross, I know. Just take high blood pressure medication to counteract the cholesterol medication, which balances your weight loss medication. Find a way to combine it with your sleeping pills and caffeine addiction. Get that stomach staple surgery or gastric bypass surgery instead of building better habits and learning how to eat right. Why do any of that when you can just throw thousands of dollars at the problem and wreck your insides in the process! Everybody wins! Except you. And your insides.



6) Chase the quick fix. Nobody wants to WORK to get in shape. That could take months or even years, and who has that kind of time? Instead, just take that pill, or use that next fancy piece of workout equipment. The faster it says it’ll work, the more likely you’ll be to succeed.



7) Complain! As loudly as possible. Try: “I don’t have good genes!” or “I don’t have time!” If that doesn’t work, there’s always: “I just can’t lose weight!” or “sorry, I’m not as lucky as you!” Complain to anybody that will listen, and even those that don’t. The more disdain and self-loathing, the better.



8) Make big changes quickly. When you’re ready to get in shape, wake up two hours earlier than normal, DRASTICALLY alter your diet overnight, and go from a sedentary lifestyle to exercising for 90 minutes a day. Run yourself absolutely ragged for a week or two, confuse the hell out of your body, which is going to fight you every step of the way, and then after one day goes poorly, COMPLETELY fall off the wagon. Bonus points if you get really angry with yourself for “sucking at getting healthy” even though you tried to change 50,000 things at once.



9) Be nonspecific. Be as nebulous and generic as possible : “I should get healthy” is a good start. “I need to work out more” or “I should lose weight” is even better! Don’t be specific, and CERTAINLY don’t measure your progress. Don’t bother saying things like “I will work out four times this week at this specific time” or “I will lose 10% of my body fat by December 31st.” Those goals are WAY too specific, and you might actually accomplish them! Can’t have that, now, can we?



10) Give up. When things don’t go your way, rather than analyzing, adjusting, and trying again…just give up! When you step on a scale this week and it’s half a pound heavier than last week, rather than making changes to your diet and cutting out one extra soda this week, flip the **** out and give up. Giving up is so much easier than working hard, struggling, and perservering. Get over it and move on? Pssh. Give up! Guys like Joe are AWFUL at failing – he just kept going for MONTHS. We can’t have that!



How to actually get healthy
Ready?

Set tiny goals. Build TINY habits. Eat less crap, and move more. Find an activity that makes you happy and do it as often as possible. Then, find ways to eat a little healthier. Cut out liquid calories. Add in strength training. Sleep more. Repeat these small daily changes and improvements until these things become habit. Repeat until your desired results are achieved, generally for months or years. Then push yourself to be even better.

I just made every past, present, and future Nerd Fitness article obsolete.

Crap. This is not the post you’re looking for!


Well anyways, I still plan on cranking out epicly nerdy posts twice a week, so thanks for humoring me. Lord knows what would happen if I was left to take care of myself. Scary thought.

Thanks for letting me stick around!

-Steve "

It's Going to be a GREAT Day!

I know it's only about 10am, but so far, today seems like it's going to be an AWESOME day!

"But why?", you may ask. Well, mainly because I got myself up and out of bed at 5:30 this morning and went to the gym for a run. Yup. Even though it was only 24 freezing degrees outside and my car was a monster block of ice, I shivered my way to the gym for a run.

Want to know what makes it better though? My run was pretty epic! I did a 35 minute run and managed to do 2.6 miles! That's 13:27min/mile! That's about 40 seconds faster than most of my usual runs! AND (yes, there's still more!) I managed to run the 30:12 of the 35 minutes! Frigging sweet! My lungs still aren't too happy with me, but I've stopped caring. They're going to have to get on board with the rest of my body and start functioning at high capacity again. Darn slacker organs.

I'm also pretty psyched because I went to Ocean State Job Lot the other evening and scored a fair amount of gluten-free food for real cheap. Seriously- I got two boxes of pasta, 3 boxes of crackers, a loaf of bread and 2 huge things of coconut water for $10. SWEET!! The gluten-free challenge is getting better. I'm not having as many cupcake based dreams cravings as I was before. I think my body is starting to get used to the switch. I am proud of myself because I had lunch with a coworker at an italian restaurant yesterday- I can proudly say that I did not eat any rolls, nor pasta, nor even the croutons in my salad. I also ordered this amazing risotto meal with peppers and onions and scallops in it! YUMMY! I ate half and have the other half for lunch again today.

It feels good to be eating healthier again. Today's menu consists of:

Breakfast-  Oikos greek yogurt with blueberries on the bottom (and a handful of almonds mixed in).
Snack 1- Granny Smith apple with Bee's Knees Peanut Butter
Lunch- Left over risotto meal and a LARGE salad with cut up deli sliced turkey/chicken/ham
Snack 2- Pine nut roasted hummus and baby carrots

Haven't figured out dinner yet, but I'm sure it will be pretty awesome as well.

What are some of your favorite snacks?

Who Says Cross Training Can't Be Fun!

 Whoever said cross training is boring never had the cross training day that I just had! And he/she should be jealous!! Originally, my goal was to go to the gym and do the bike and/or elliptical with some weights and core work. But when I woke up today it was all rain and gross and blah out. Makes one not want to drive to the gym... or anywhere, for that matter. So, instead, I decided to pull my Wii console out of my room, bring it down to the living room and pop in my Just Dance 2 game. There is a setting on the game where you can choose how much of a work out you want to do over the course of the day/week, and then you go to it. As you dance, you earn "sweat points"and depending upon what work out level you choose, depends on how many sweat points you want to earn.

I chose to do the "Tough" level, which is actually the middle level, where you have to earn 1000 sweat points in a day/7000 in a week. Easy peasy! My mother and her friend sat down on the couch to watch me embarrass myself on my Wii and I did my first song: It's Raining Men. It took me a bit of time to be able to follow the feet for most of the songs, but my lack of dance experience helped me along. Eventually, my mother and her friend got into it as well and decided to get up and dance the songs with me. Some of the hits we performed were: Proud Mary, Wake Me Up Before You GoGo, Jungle Boogie, It's in His Kiss, TikTok, Hot Stuff, Jump in the Line, and Walk Like an Egyptian.

 As per request, my mother took some photos of my performance for your blog-reading pleasure.

 

This was one part during the Jump in the Line dance

 

(check out that awesome leg pop I've got going on! Chelsea would be SO proud!)

 

Walk Like an Egyptian! (Don't judge my outfit too harshly haha)

Check out all the rocking moves I had going on! (I know, you're beyond impressed. It's okay, I am too.)

We played the Just Dance 2 game for an hour and earned 3,058 sweat points! Take that Wii! We kicked it up not one, not two, but THREE notches for our sweat points! So proud of us and our work out. A few moments after we finished our dancing, my brother came home and decided to bring his Xbox Kinnect downstairs for us to play as well. We did a Kinnect Adventure game which had water sports, a brick-breaker game and an obstacle course. Fun times all around! I'm very happy with all our exercising and I'm impressed that I managed to get my mother, my brother and my mother's friend all up and moving. I fear that a healthy lifestyle is spreading around the house- and I'm LOVING it! Now, I'm off to destroy my abs with one of Chelsea's core workouts. Yay!

Questions of the Day:

1.  What is your favorite activity to do for cross training?

2. Have you ever used a Wii or Xbox Kinnect system for exercise purposes? If so, what games/activities did you do?

Happy 2011!

Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and an even better New Years. My New Years was very entertaining and I spent it with some of my most favorite people!
In keeping with tradition, I am blogging about my resolutions. I have a catch to mine though- normally, I post my resolutions, and by January 15th, I've forgotten all about them. So, this year I am enlisting the aid of friends to help keep me on track. Hooray!


1. I resolve to become a healthier person. I plan to do this by developing and implementing a daily fitness routine to continue to lose weight, and to make nutritional and balanced food choices. This includes cutting down on carbs, sugars, trans fats and calories.


2. I resolve to Stress Less! I will not let things weigh me down as I have in the years prior. Money, work, social drama, etc will all be allowed 1 minute of stressing and then I will do something productive to clear my mind and relieve the stress. This includes, but is not limited to: exercise, blogging, photography/creative outlet, singing, whatever else I can think of at the time.


3. I resolve to keep in better contact with my friends. Throughout the years I have lost true contact with a lot of my friends from high school and college- solely through no one's fault but my own as life just seems to get me too busy. I will send letters (for those I have addresses for), emails, or even facebook messages in order to keep in touch.

All in all, my resolutions are based off the same basic aspect as my blog- creating time for me where I can focus on me and continue to make myself happy and loved. Granted, I will have some help from Kurt (he has agreed to be my personal trainer of sorts) as well as the aid of multiple other people in my life, and for that I am beyond grateful.

it's going to be a long rod, but the outlook for this year has already started to take shape, and I'm liking what I see.

Expansion and A Slightly New Outlook

I've been crazy busy lately (what else is really new?), but in between work, rehearsals and sleeping, I've managed to squeeze a bit of contemplation about a few things. I've been SO happy lately. Let me explain: not only do I love the new place I'm working at, and the show I'm rehearsing and all of the people involved in it- BUT! I'm also just more content in general. I've found myself more into the holiday season than I have been since I was 8 years old. The family gatherings, the festive lights and music, the overall message the holidays bring just makes me smile! I used to be one of those people who could watch a heart-touching, holiday movie and not shed a tear. Now I find I have to keep a box of tissues around me whenever I turn on the television! And I'm not crying out of jealousy or sadness... just tears of connection and happiness. It may sound extremely odd, but it's the truth. I'm just THAT happy with myself and life right now. My 90 days of Being By Myself was such a success that I've decided to do a couple of things:

1. continue with my blog and my "being alone" as I had originally planned.
2. expand my blog to encompass not only keeping myself happy, but also keeping myself healthy.

I've decided to incorporate fitness and nutrition into my blog. My goal is to update daily, which is going to be a challenge with my busy schedule, but I figure if I can record my daily fitness and nutritional feats, I can continue to provide myself with mucho motivation.

I have new goals for the continuation of my blog as well. In regards to my "Being Healthy" status, I want to be a size 16 come the end of January and a size 14 come the end of March. I'm relatively close to a 16 already, and with the running, and now dancing, that I've been doing, I see these as very realistic goals.

Also know that I plan on posting motivational things, healthy recipes, fitness routines, things I've accomplished, etc. It's a no-holds-barred blog now :)