Challenge Day 3..... and the real challenge begins

Today was one of those days where had I been able to convince my children of it we would have all gone back to bed and slept all day.

I could barely get moving for breakfast let alone think about working out.

My plan had been to do my video from yesterday right when I got up but as I got out of bed it felt as if I stepped on a knife, point side up going right thru my left heel.

NOT GOOD!!!

I am babying it a bit to see if its just from over doing it Monday and Tuesday but if it doesn't get better by next week I will be going to my Dr for a check up.

Since Wednesday's are crazy with tidying the house for my husband to come home and finishing up school with the kids I had only planned for the video and a walk around dinner. Our nights are getting lovely and walking is something the kids like to do with me......tonight it rained. 

This really felt like I was failing today and I know that our weekends get busy so I needed to make today count, I decided I was going to do the J Lo video again, it was much easier today. Then I did a few arm exercises with my band since I don't have any weights.

Food wise we did okay, yogurt for breakfast (need to make some more granola since we are out), Cheese Crisps for lunch (I know not good), and then a homemade Zuppa for dinner. 

Not my best day but tomorrow will be better, 

BY THE GRACE OF GOD I CAN DO THIS!!!!!

On a good note most of my kids and I have the verse down for this week:

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12

Blessings,

Cris

Challenge Day 2

WORKOUT 2: "Your Choice" Cardio, Muffin Top Makeover, and J Lo #1

A phone call from my hubby woke me up at 6:30 and it was so nice hearing from him first thing, I felt it started my day off right.

I promptly started the J Lo video from Clare, and wow!! I know I need the whole body workout but I never really focus on my butt. It’s much smaller then the abs and that is my main focus and with the Muffin Top going next it was a full blast hit today. I am still feeling the burn.

I decide since I was nice and warm from that I would hit the cardio right away. For that I chose to do the PussyCat Dolls Workout, I had found this at a yard sale for a couple buck, the old dancer in me jumped at it. 

Wow it’s been awhile since I did hip hop/ any real choreography (thirteen years to be exact) and I barely made it half way thru but this is going to be perfect for me. 

My kids and I also walked today before dinner. We left with the plan of a quick walk to my father in laws hills and back (we share 54 acres, I live on one side and his hills are on the other) but before I knew it we got back home and it had been over an hour. I was nice and sweaty in spite of the cloudy cooler weather.

I don’t plan on tracking all my food here but I thought I would share todays breakfast. I woke up starving this morning and I felt I needed protein so I made "Loaded Scrambled eggs"

This fed my 4 children and me.

• dozen eggs
• hand full of mushrooms
• one medium zucchini
• broccoli
• onion
• 2 medium potatoes
• 2 slices of  provelone  cheese cut into chunks with kitchen sissors
• bacon
• topped mine with  homemade  salsa (tomatoes, garlic, bell peppers and onions)

I took the onion, potatoes, and zucchini and ran them thru the fine julienne setting on my slicer.

Then chopped the mushrooms and broccoli, I am really wanting a chopper like this to help. Blended all the veggies together and cooked them before adding the eggs.

As for the bacon few months ago I started cutting our bacon in half and depending on the meal maybe even further from there. Today I used the half I had left over from last week. One it was cooked crisp I chopped it and then added it back into the veggies.

I really should have weighed each thing with my food scale but didn’t think about that till now.

Now mind you my kids HATE veggies, so I load them in there and julienned them very fine so they can't pick them out. I had my medium frying pan FULL of the veggie mix before adding in the eggs.

I thought I would share a few pictures from our walk

My joys in life and reasons for doing this!!!

 

A random shot on my property.

The cloud coverage made for some beautiful weather.

DAY 2...... DONE!!

See you tomorrow for my next workout.

Blessings,

Cris

Challenge Day 1

DAY 1

Wow was today a kick in the pants!!! 

First off I prefer to workout early before the kids are up so I don't have to compete for my space, that so didn't happen this morning. I woke up at 5am to it pouring rain, original plan had been to take my laptop out there and do Clare's video...... that didn't happen so I went back to bed. Go figure when I woke up again an hour later my power was out....one of the many pains about living off grid and having cloudy days. I kicked on the generator and powered the house back up and instead of working out since the kids were up we did chores and school.

Finally got my workout in about 1:30 when the generator got shut off.

Boy was that a workout, by the end of the first go round (did it three times) I was sweating like crazy. Good sweating. Bad thing is I forgot to drink water before and after so a little while later I started getting a bad headache. Meds and a shower helped as well as a scolding from my 10yr old daughter telling me that I know better then to workout without my water bottle close by.

A few things I have notice is that next time I do this video and probably most workouts:

• WEAR MY ANKLE BRACE--- I did the first Hover move but it hurt quite bad so I didn't go to my tippy toes anymore. I may go back into my doctor and see if its normal for me to still experience discomfort 7 months after the sprain and if I should just work thru it or what. I can't afford to further damage it.
• Double up on the sports bras!! I was wearing a regular sports bra and a tank top with built in support-- that wasn't enough when doing the jumping.
• DRINK WATER!!! This is my scatterbrained fault but I am going to start charting my water as well as my workouts. 

I also want to share that I have an accountability partner now she blogs over at Dirt Road Lessons. 

 I have also joined a Facebook group for this as well. 

Now here is the scary part of this post. I am going to do photos each check in, my lovely daughter helped snap these from my cell phone so they aren't the best quality. But here is the true me.....

I will be charting my measurements and pounds and will update once a week on if there is any loss. Praying hard that there is.

I CAN DO THIS!!!

Blessings,

Cris

Why the Living and Active Challenge

Here is some random information about me ......I don't diet as I feel it makes things worse ( being a daughter of a chronic dieter and I can see now that none of it ever worked and has now caused serious health issues. I refuse to do that to my kids). I believe eating healthy/ regularly and staying active  is how I will do it, however my problems are with regular eating I am never really hungry so I have to remind myself to eat and with staying active. We tend to get into a cycle and then something comes along and bumps it off track and before I know it its been a month or more. We do eat tons of fruit and veggies (my kids love snacking on carrots and homemade hummus), I make most of our meals from scratch and I don't drink alot of soda (only when hubby brings me home some as a treat or we go to town). We do have sugar and other treats but not often. I am trying to learn how to switch out sugar with honey in my baking.

Now here is why I am doing this challenge, I am a 31 year old mother of  four kids that hasn't been below 200 pounds in over 6 years. At that point I was at a high of 245 pounds which scares the crap out of me even now. I was a size 26 and barely able to keep up with my kids. We moved out of the city and almost instantly (first 6 months) I dropped to 220 pounds. Seeing that I started trying to lose weight then I found out I was expecting again... baby #4 was on her way, not a big deal I could do it but it did put a damper on my weight loss. Now here I am with her turning 4 years old in 6 months and I am still over 200 pounds. I don't want to be dropping  80 pounds in the next year but if I can do 30 or 40 pounds and actually KEEP IT OFF I will be happy. I want to help teach my children to enjoy working out and I want to be able to do fun things with my kids. One of my biggest goals is to be able to ride my bike with the kids when we go to the lake. There are a few trails that I think would be amazing, but I am not nor have I ever been a hiker. I did however LOVE my bike when I was younger. My biggest problem is right now I can barely do 20 minutes without my legs turning to rubber and having to coast some of the way. I do realize that I am just months away from being hit with snow but I want to ride as often as I can this winter. I don't have a specific weight or size in mind that I want to be, I just want to be healthy. I am taking this challenge to jump start my body before winter hits and I get stuck in doors.

I am planning on following the workouts Clare puts up on the site for the challenge but since we do PE in our home-school and its something that the kids NEED daily I will be doing more then just her 4 workouts. Our PE is very simple, we either do a circuit, a timed exercises, a walk (depending on weather) or a DVD. I have all of it written on index cards and then the kids rotate who draws the card each day. I will be doing the challenge early mornings and PE will be later in the day. I may even add some of her workouts into our schedule if my kids can do them.

Come back tomorrow night as I will post an actual photo of me and tell you just how hard Clare's Favorite Full Body Workout  and Ab Workout really was. I will also include what we did for PE just so its out there.

 

Blessings,

Cris

I am not a normal blogger

Okay no matter how much I have tried to schedule blogs or even plan topics my life doesn't allow for it. Being a stay at home/homeschooling mother of  4 children isn't easy and I am finding that as they get older its getting harder. I miss the days of just laying on the couch reading book after book or coloring all day with the kids. Now with having kids that need real lessons and a structured schedule I am out of time at the end of the night when all I want to do its watch one of my Netflix shows. (Yes Netflix before blogging!!! It helps me relax before bed and my laptop comes to bed with me on nights the hubby is gone.) I really don't understand how some of the blogs I read do it. I don't know where they get the time and how they always look so good/together when posting new pictures every week. I love them for it even more now that I have tried and failed.
BUT.....with all of that being said I am going to start using this blog DAILY for the next couple of weeks. I am going to be doing the Living and Active Challenge over at Peak313 Fitness. I have done a few of her exercises and I was doing a really good job of riding my bike every morning till sickness hit the house but now that we are recovering and needing the activity I am jumping in head first. Since I don't have anyone local to do the challenge with (part of it is accountability) I am going to just post here daily and if anyone sees it and wants to join in.
If you are reading and want to join me, DO IT!!!! and feel free to message or comment, I would love to see that someone is holding me accountable.

Chocolate, Banana, Peanut Butter Smoothie--- with Spinach

Okay yes it sounds weird and pretty gross but I have to tell you it definitely fixed my sweet craving tongiht.

I always buy the Carnation Instant Breakfast mix. If we are ever going somewhere really early its easy to make the kids a quick shake so they have something in thier system until I can provide real food. 

As I put the kids to bed tonight I started craving chocolate so I figured I would make a glass really quick. When I went into the kitchen I wanted to making it something kind of filling and I decided to make it a smoothie

Here is what I did:

6oz milk

1 med banana (frozen)

1/4 cup Carnation Instant Breakfast mix in Chocolate

1 Teaspoon Peanut Butter

2 Tablespoons Plain Yogurt

1 handful Spinach

I had the first 5 ingredients all blended and as I was putting away my yogurt I saw the spinach staring at me, so grabbed a handful and you know what it was really good. I couldn't taste the spinach much (I have a crappy Walmart version of the Bullet so there were some small chuncks but not enough to make me not drink it). 

The thing you should know is that I hate spinach!! I will only eat it a few ways:

• fresh salad but only a small handful with tons of dressing on it
• mixed into lasagna or meatloaf
• Knorr Spinach Dip
• Smoothies (most often just an OJ one with tons of frozen fruit)

So for me to say this was good--- it really was!!

I have been trying to make myself eat it more for my kids to see that mommy is eating stuff she doesn't like much either (not winning that battle with beets). Having some "anti veggie" kids really stinks when you grow a huge garden every year but I am trying my best to teach them better.
 I plan on making this first thing in the morning for the kids so I can then cook them a big breakfast like they asked for and not be crunched for time, I have spinach a plenty so I see green scrambled eggs on the menu for tomorrow also.

Enjoy,

Cris

Where did February go???

Wow I can't believe its already March, last month went by pretty fast. With me down for over 2 weeks from my ankle and a spur of the moment trip to visit family I got lost in a whirlwind of activities. 

Here is where my time went:

When we returned from our trip to the city we started hauling manure, you know the crap that is good for your gardens (sorry couldn't help myself). It took a full day (two if you count the fact that my husband over did it with his back so was down the entire next day sleeping)

Then we had a little party/get together with other farms and friends around us to see what everyone else is up to and if they needed any help getting things going-- it was really fun and I can't wait to do it again.

The following week I spent starting seeds, I started 72 herbs- 3 of each kind with 24 kinds to be found. Then I started my cabbages, mustard greens, head lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, and kohlrabi-- a total of 104 between all of them. Then today I started 72 peppers and plan on doing more of them tomorrow as well as some eggplants. Then on Wed I will start another batch of the cabbages, mustard greens, head lettuce and spinach so I can have a good amount for succession planting.

The best thing I have done this week is......

I HAVE HOT WATER INSIDE!!!!  

After 14 months of not having it I am ecstatic to have it again. I am very happy that I was able to make due and learn to live without hot running water but I tell you whoever invented hot water heaters are a blessing in my opinion!!! 

Since we had done without water running at all inside for over 10 months we were very hesitent to hook up our old propane water heater so I sent hubby on a research misson. He had talked about really wanting Hot Water On Demand when we first started planning for moving, saying that it would help with propane consumption and it would just be better over all. Our problem was that when we first moved from the city most HWOD systems were going for close to $1,000 and we don't have that (or  I wouldn't have been without water for 10 months)

After doing some resesarch and talking to a friend up by us that is also a plumber we found a HWOD system for under $400 bucks we had to wait till we had the money to do it right and I have to tell you this is the best money I have spent in a long time and at this moment worth waiting for.

I am loving the ability to turn on a sink and wash dishes right after using them, no more boiling 2 or 3 kettles of water to rinse them off after cooking or eating. No more worrying about what dishes aren't clean yet because I haven't had the chance to wash them (don't go spraining your ankle if you don't have hot water inside because carrying pots and pans outside to prewash while on crutches is not a good or possible idea).

Well as you can see my last few weeks have been crazy but well worth it. I thank God for the patience he has blessed me with these last 14 months and I also thank him for giving me a husband that understood how hard things got and tried his best to help me during such a trying time.

God Bless,

Cris