Work Out Update

So as mentioned in a previous post, I’m sharing my exercise routine my personal trainer is having me do. I call him my trainer but I don’t pay for his services, so basically we are meeting once a month, he sets up a workout plan and walks me thru it to make sure I’m doing each exercise right, takes my measurements, and maintains parts of my bodybugg. If I was to pay him, my workout would change daily, I would meet with him more frequently and I would be broke because he is $600 for 14 sessions so I think I’m getting a deal for what he has agreed to do for free!

Last week he took my measurements, last time we did this was Oct 11th. By following his plan, I lost 3 inches in my waist! I lost 3 lbs, 3% body fat, 1 inches in my arms, but gained 1 inch in my hips. Ya, I freaked out when he told me this. How in the world do you lose or maintain in all areas but my hips grew by an inch? Makes no sense but he said don't worry about it and I should lose it by my next measurement date. Overall I think my bodybugg is paying off.

So here is what he has me doing. The below exercises I do every other day. The cardio I do at the end is 20 minutes of rolling hills on the elliptical at a level 2. On the days I don’t do this, I do interval running on the treadmill for 45 minutes at a 1.5 incline the entire time (when my shins can handle it or else it’s a flat run). So cardio everyday.  Rotate between the two workouts 6 days a week, 1 day rest.

(First 3 are stretches)

Calves 2 sets @ 20 sec/hold (I use a roller and roll out my calves)

Hip Flexors 2 sets @ 20 sec/hold

Neck/Traps 1 arm behind back, pull head with other arm (good for knots in my neck)

Back Lunges: 2 sets of 20 (10/side)

Good Mornings: 2 sets of 20 reps with weighted bar

Squats: 4 sets of 15 reps w/ 10 lbs barbells, use a box that is one foot off the ground and squat until your butt touches this box.

Bent Over Rows: 4 sets of 15 reps w/ 10 lbs. barbells

Planks: 4 sets @ 1 minute. 30 sec breaks in-between each set

Push Ups: 4 sets of 10 reps

Shoulder Presses:4 sets of 15 reps w/ 5-10 lbs. barbells

Cable Twists: 2 sets of 15/side w/ 10 lbs. barbells

Cardio: 20 minutes

You can look up how do each of these exercises on the internet.

Okay for the honest part now, I rarely go 6 days a week. It is normally 4, maybe 5 times on a really good week but I do follow all the exercises when I am there. I still eat a lot of crap. I can think of a million other things I’d rather do than work out. My motivation to go to the gym sucks. I can easily talk myself out of it. I get frustrated when my shins splints kick in or just how time consuming working out can be. Fit people are only somewhat motivating, more so depressing to look at because I know how much work it takes to look like that. Working out doesn’t come easy for me anymore, it’s hard. It’s hard to push myself at times. I struggle big time between what my main focus should be, health and not self-image.  Ugg. 

Now something funny. Last night I kept getting a whiff of someone and I was like holy smokes who is stinky? Yep, it was me :) I didn’t realize it right away. I was the smelly kid.  Every time the fan swirled around, I got a taste of my own medicine.  Here I am, trying to blame someone else for my stinky pits.

More Kraft Recipes

Been awhile since I’ve posted a recipe so I have 2 to share that I have recently tried and both made it to my recipe box. Unfortunately I was too hungry and forgot to take a picture of the finished product but the pics in the links are pretty much what it ends up looking like. Now I didn’t serve these two recipes together, the carrots were a side dish to chicken and potatoes and the pasta dish I just served with a little bread and butter. Both are delicious!

1) Balsamic Carrots, a different twist to a side dish, looks fancy too! (I omitted the brown sugar, between the carrots themselves and the dressing, that is sweet enough for me):

http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/balsamic-glazed-carrots-120719.aspx

2) Creamy Baked Ziti, great comfort dish! I suppose you could add meat to it but we liked it as is. This one is easy to cut a few calories back by substituting reduced fat options and whole grain pasta:

http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/creamy-baked-ziti-120729.aspx

Found the carrot recipe in my Kraft magazine subscription and the pasta one on kraft’s website. Oh kraft.com how you make my life easier, I’m in love with you!

November Love

I Love the Month of November….
November is one of my favorite months of the year!

• Aaron and I started dating November 2005

• Our wedding anniversary is November 7, 2009

• Black Friday! Need I say more.

• People start to get into the Christmas Spirit

• Thanksgiving Day – oh how I love turkey!

• I’m excited to wear sweaters whereas by February I’m sick of sweaters

• Christmas music starts to play on the radio

• Time to stop doing yard work! I do NOT like yard work!

• Day Light Savings Time – yeah for an extra hour of sleep!

• And best of all… the chilly weather promotes snuggling with my husband... cuddle up on the sofa and watch a movie!

MyPanera Cards!

My favorite restaurant in the whole wide world Panera Bread now has reward points!  Already earned a free smoothie/espresso drink.  YES!!   Ask the cashier for a mypanera card.  Life gets better every day!

A Darn Good Reason to CELEBRATE!!!

Last weekend we celebrated our anniversary even though it was actually on the 7th, this past weekend worked out better. Saturday we got massages, always a good way to start out a weekend of relaxation. Then off to Holiday Inn where we had our reception. We relaxed in the hotel’s hot tub and then went to dinner at Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse (restaurant attached to the hotel). When we arrived to our table, there was already a bottle of champagne waiting for us. What we had for our wedding dinner they do not have on the menu anymore, but since we gave them notice when we made our reservations, they were able to make this meal especially for us. How nice! In addition to our free bottle of champagne, they also gave us free dessert too. Awesome perks!

Cinnamon Ice Cream and Chocolate Cake - Yum!

On Sunday, we ordered breakfast in bed. Then we went home and put up our Christmas tree, played Christmas music, and had some wine. To end the night we ordered in pizza and watched a movie.

Santa's Little Helper!

This was really the perfect weekend; I really didn’t want to travel anywhere far to just relax. It helped to stay at the hotel away from home so we were forced to relax. I could use a weekend like this once a month; it was exactly what we needed. Aaron said he called the hotel on 8 occasions to make sure everything was set up according to plan. On top of the 5 emails I sent to Holiday Inn confirming everything also… they definitely know who we are! Called us by name when they saw us, ha ha!

The weekend before, we had exchanged gifts. I was really nervous because I didn’t have a gift idea for Aaron and found out he had already bought my gift without even asking me for any ideas! We never talked about expectations and he wouldn’t give me any information so I was stuck trying to figure this out on my own. Luckily there was a watch that had caught his eye when we were out in San Francisco earlier this year. Only problem… no one around here sells the brand Swatch! So I had to order it online and Aaron was very happy with the watch when it arrived.



I was surprised to find that Aaron had bought me an anniversary band for my wedding ring! It is the exact same as my wedding band, it just gets added onto the top of my ring. He did a good job and he had me stumped, the jewelry store had the info on file so he didn’t even need my ring to get this. He also always gets the best cards; he knows how much I love cards and never fails at getting the perfect sentimental card.

 

All in all, great weekend, great 1st year and already well onto our 2nd year of marriage together!

 

Body Bugg

Early last month, I bought a Body Bugg and have been using it every day since. A Body Bugg basically is an armband that collects data from your body with over 90% accuracy such as calories burned. The Body Bugg is pretty much useless without the subscription to the program. The program uploads the info from your Body Bugg for analysis. One of the biggest draw backs of the Bugg is that it doesn’t tell you how much you are consuming, I have to manually input this information which does get easier after the first few weeks because I tend to eat the same things over and over and the program keeps all the nutritional inputs on file.

This program can do a lot! I can easily tell where I am at for caloric intake/burn, same goes for nutrition – easily tell my fat/fiber/protein/etc intake at a quick glance, it also has a pedometer so I can track my steps, I can tell how much I’m burning down to any minute or time frame in a day, I can look at my data averages for any specified time range (week/month).

One perk is that since I bought it from my gym I get assistance from a personal trainer to help keep me on track. Since I'm familiar with all the trainers at my gym, I knew who to work with (I have a good idea of who knows their stuff!). This was a bonus because he tailors my workouts each month for me and inputs all my updated measurements into my Bugg so I don’t have to.

When I first got the Bugg, it was somewhat annoying to wear but I’ve gotten use to it. I only take it off to shower and sleep. The new Bugg is smaller, most of the time no one even notices it, especially since it's long sleeve season, whereas the older version was more bulky/noticeable. It stores up to 2 weeks of info but I upload once or twice a day. It also only needs charged once a week so normally I do that Sunday nights.

It is definitely keeping me more in-tuned to my diet/exercise. Sometimes I get so excited when I’m at the gym because I am sweating a lot and can’t wait to get home to see how much I burned. It definitely makes me push myself more so that I have a better burn each day.

I will post the workout the personal trainer has me doing in an upcoming blog post, it’s pretty good. I would recommend the Body Bugg, there are a few minor things I dislike about it but overall it’s a great tool and worth spending on.

Good Message for a Wednesday!

Happy moments, praise God.

Difficult moments, seek God.

Quiet moments, worship God

Painful moments, trust God.

Every moment, thank God.

Our 1st Year Anniversary!

YAY! Our one year anniversary is here! Can’t believe we are already celebrating our one year anniversary, it flew by. I’ll have two blog postings, this one in which I will recap the year and another post about how we celebrated.

What words sum up this past year…craziness, happiness, sadness, love, life lessons, emotion-filled, companionship, blessed… Let me explain. We’ve experienced more this first year than we have in all the years we’ve been together.

Craziness/Sadness/Emotion-Filled/Life lessons – well we’ve gotten our fair share of upsets this year. Luckily what we have gone thru this year we did not do alone but we had each other through it all. This past year seemed like an emotional roller coaster with the passing of our friend Chris, my Grandpa’s burst aneurysm and a lot of other unfortunate news from friends/family. From the outlook of how it affected our marriage, it definitely made us stronger as a couple. We’ve talked about how life is too short to let it pass by. We have a better understanding and a changed perspective of what we want out of life and we both agree on what we want for our future. For both Aaron and I who don’t like to show and talk thru emotion, this year forced us to do so. Overall, like I said, it made us stronger and I’m thankful for that.

Love/Companionship – we definitely love the one-on-one time we have together and cherish it far more than we ever have before. There is just something about being at home with my husband doing nothing that is awesome. I can be totally myself around him and he knows me so well that I don’t have to explain why I am the way I am. And vice versa… We are two peas in a pod!

Happiness – our honeymoon to Napa Valley this year was a lot of fun. We’ve gone to a lot of weddings this year, actually spent the evening before our anniversary at a wedding reception! We’ve shared some good belly laughs this year (especially thinking of instances we’ve shared with Aaron’s friend Mark and my sister Heather). A lot of good conversations have taken place in the car since we’ve been on the go a lot this year. Little acts of kindness to each other have brought us happiness. We are definitely still goofballs that like to make each other laugh every day.

Blessed! We are definitely very blessed. I’m so blessed to have a GREAT husband who loves me and makes me feel special. Blessed to have great family. Blessed to have great friends. Blessed to have a good house. Blessed to have jobs. Blessed that we are happy. Blessed to have Faith. Blessed that our marriage has only grown stronger over the year. Blessed that we realize the importance of marriage.

So Happy Anniversary to my Snuggle Bug! I can’t wait for year 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 25 and 50 and 65 and … well not sure how many anniversaries we will share but we have a lifetime's worth to look forward to!

National Men Make Dinner Day -- Yes someone was brilliant enough to make this a national holiday!

Did you know that today is National Men Make Dinner Day? I didn’t but my man is about to be informed! :)  Thank you kraft.com for bringing this to my attention!!!

http://www.menmakedinnerday.com/home/index.php

Halloween Went Back In Time....

No need to adjust your screen folks... you are seeing this correctly... crimped hair, mesh shirt, Rustler jean shorts (very short!), lace, tight tees, leopard print, bows, lots of hair, white socks, sweat band..(aka that t-shirt that is wrapped around Aaron's head - ha!), yes it was a throw back for Halloween this year!  Two years ago we did 70s, this year we did 80s.  The clothing really inspires some never seen before dance moves as well, it's amazing how a little pizazz in an outfit can bring out some personality! 

How much shorter could he have gotten them?

Paula Deen's Amazing Pumpkin Bars!

I got this recipe from my friend Amy’s blog. I thought pumpkin bars sounded really good. Plus when I saw it was Paula Deen’s recipe, I knew they would be delicious. So last weekend I made them and they were the best pumpkin bars I’ve ever had!! So good that I’m stealing it to share on my blog as well. For the part on the applesauce/oil, I used ½ cup no sugar added applesauce and ½ cup of oil.

Pumpkin Bars -- Paula Deen recipe.

Ingredients

 4 eggs

 1 2/3 cups granulated sugar

 1 cup vegetable oil

 15-ounce can of pumpkin

 2 cups sifted, all-purpose flour

 2 teaspoons baking powder

 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

 1 teaspoon salt

 1 teaspoon baking soda

Icing:

 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

 2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Using an electric mixer at medium speed, combine the eggs, sugar, oil and pumpkin until light and fluffy. Stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix at low speed until thoroughly combined and the batter is smooth. Spread the batter into a greased 13 by 10-inch baking pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting. Cut into bars.

To make the icing: Combine the cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the sugar and mix at low speed until combined. Stir in the vanilla and mix again. Spread on cooled pumpkin bars.

I substituted a cup of unsweetened applesauce for the cup of oil in the batter. I like to put a little Brach’s pumpkin on top of each bar.