So I have been wanting to write a post about this for some time.  I wanted to finish the book first however.  This is a topic that is very important to me. Both my husband and I are very big on natural consequences, and letting kids be kids. A few weeks ago, after I was telling my mom that my neighbor didn’t like that I let my kids play out in the fenced in back yard without me, she bought me this book.  I love it.

In a nutshell, the book is saying that we as a culture have been overprotecting our kids at our kids expense. Kids are no longer allowed to be kids. The author goes on to explain that kids these days are just as safe as we were as kids and are missing out on some pretty valuable experiences. One of the big ones is being able to go outside and just play. I remember as a kid being kicked out of the house and told I had to be home by the time the street lights came on. I wasn’t restricted to the back yard, heck I wasn’t even restricted to the front yard. In my neighborhood growing up there were 4 houses in a row with children all around my age. There were 6 of us who ran all over the neighborhood playing all sorts of games. We played out in the rain, hot scorching sun, and pleasant spring days, and nobody thought any thing of it. Our parents were not worried that we would be abducted. Why, because we lived in a safe neighborhood and most of the neighbors knew us and would make sure our parents knew if we were doing something we shouldn’t.

Basically Lenore Skenazy (the author of the book) gives 14 commandments on having Free Range kids and goes over many of the most common worries that parents face today. I highly recommend the book for anyone who is in contact with children. I think we need to give our kids more freedom, the same freedom that we had as kids. It is good for them. There is also a blog to check out.

Today I am thankful for fellow bloggers who don’t mind when I rant instead of writing an actual post with a point.

Not exactly sure where that phrase comes from, probably the Bible somewhere. But that has been running through my head all weekend and early this week. I mentioned in my last post that Thursday was a pretty stressful day. The reason is because of judging people.

My oldest son Alex has been taking a karate class at the Little Gym. We love it, he is really learning to focus and is doing much better both in and out of school. The class is a late afternoon class, so there is a mixed age range, and a mixed parent group. Stay at home, working, work at home, etc.. There are these two women who are very snobby and you average “I’m better than you because…” type of women. Well I must have a target on my back that says “FREAK” because man are they judgmental, especially towards me, and especially once they found out that I am a homeschooling stay at home mom, who uses cloth diapers. Immediately they assumed that I must not be as good as them because of all those things say to them that I don’t have as much money as they do. (By the way, I am not assuming this, they have pretty much come right out and said this)  Anyway, their boys have been bullying Alex. The first few times I let it go under the premise that boys are boys and they play a little rough. The third time this happened I became upset. I said something to the teacher, and then at the urging of both my awesome husband and the karate teacher I said something to the mother. I got a snotty, irrational response. Basically why should I have to discipline my children because of yours type thing. That may not have been what she was thinking at the time, but that is how it came off to me.

So this happens last Thursday, then today I have been engaging in and following a debate about covering up while breastfeeding in public. And the amount of judging going on over there is outrageous. To think that people assume that you want people to look at you while you are trying to feed your child, or that you are trying to arouse men, is just laughable.

My point is, why does everybody need to judge everybody else. You don’t know their specific situation, and unless you are very close to that person you may never know the whole situation. In the case of the women at the karate class. She had no idea that I grew up in the area that she thinks of as prestigious, and that if I wanted to work or send my kids to school I could, and if  I wanted to use disposable diapers I would.  Basically instead of assuming the best about the people around us we are so busy assuming the worst.  What drives me even more insane is the people who do the most judging get insanely angry when they are judged by others. Has nobody ever heard of “Treat others the way you want to be treated”

Okay, so I guess I didn’t have a specific point to this post, it is more of a rant. I needed to get some things off my chest.

GAG Challenge -

Today I am very thankful that I have a wonderful, awesome husband who is willing to take time from his busy schedule to go to said karate class with me this week to face down the nasty ladies.

So last week on GAG we were asked to give a goal for the week. My goal for the week was to not drink any soda, diet or regular. I have to admit it wasn’t easy, and there was two days last week were I had a soda. Thursday was an extremely stressful day and I caved and had a soda that night. Sunday we went to dinner at my grandparents. My grandfather remembers my college days when I drank a ton of soda. He insists that I have to have a coke every time I go over there. I didn’t have the heart to say no. I am weak I know.  As I said before, I am going to keep working on this, and one day I will be soda free.

Have a great week.

Heather

This question intrigued me. My immediate thought was that I wasn’t go to write a post about this question.  There is not much I wouldn’t do differently. Simply for the fact that everything that I did or didn’t do in the past has brought me to the point where I am today, and God has used those things to shape me into the person I am today. Except for my weight and fitness level, I am very happy with who I am today. So it took me a few days to think about what I would change, if anything. Then I realized that my weight and fitness level, the very things that I am unhappy with, were what I would change. Well at least how I got to the point I am at today. I think the key was the year I stopped swimming.

All through my childhood, and adolescence I was a swimmer. Every summer, and every winter in high school, I swam on a swim team. I was in great shape and had a killer metabolism. I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted (which is where a lot of my bad habits started) and it didn’t matter because whatever my body didn’t burn, I burned in the pool. I was swimming close to 2000 yards a day. I hit my peak my Sophmore and Junior year. Those two years I was swimming every morning and had drama every night. I was out of the house from 4 in the morning till 12 at night. I was very active and probably burned most of what I was eating, even when I ate junk, which is most of what I ate. My grades also suffered that year. They were never bad, just not as good as they could have been. So my parents insisted that I cut back on something. I had to choose, swimming or drama. As much as I loved to swim, I loved drama more, so that is what I chose. I knew that I would never swim competitively in college or beyond, I wasn’t fast enough, so I decided to focus on the drama.

That is what I would change. I would quit the drama not the swimming. I think if I had stayed with it my last year of high school, I would have been more likely to stick with it in college, even if I didn’t swim on a team, I had full access to a pool in college, If I hadn’t taken that year off I would have continued to at least swim on my own time at school. I stopped when I was 17, and except for a few half-hearted attempts I haven’t picked it back up. I do believe that I would in a very different place, weight and fitness wise if I were still swimming.

I do still think about joining a gym with a pool now and then, lately since GAG, it is more often than not. I still worry about putting the kids in the childcare. I am terrified that they are going to be sick constantly. In actuality it would probably be short lived, kinda like the first year they are in a new school. They catch everything that comes down the block, but then they build up immunities and they are fine.  I have actually considered telling people when they ask what I want for Christmas/Birthday, a gym membership, so that I can pick up swimming again. I hesitate though, not really sure why. It seems like an unneeded added expense.

That is one of the questions that Sue from GAG asked us this week. I answered this question first because this is probably the easiest one for me to answer.

SODA

This above anything else is what I struggle with the most. I always have from the time I was in high school. I probably had the most trouble with soda while I was in college. I was never a coffee drinker, so my caffeine intake of choice during college was soda, particularly Coke and Cherry Coke. At one point I was up to a 2 liter bottle a day. And since I can’t stand the taste of diet soda, and believe me I tried, I was unknowingly (at that time anyway) consuming thousands of calories a day, just in soda. All that soda had other side affects as well. I was getting horrendous headaches almost everyday. Of course at that time, I was not connecting the soda drinking with the headaches, and the weight gain. I probably hit my peak, my last semester of school when I was student teaching. Anybody who has student taught, knows that it is exhausting. So to stay awake in the afternoons so that I could get my work done, I was drinking large amounts of soda. Once I got out of college and was working I was able to slow down a little. I was teaching in a preschool class, which is not as demanding of your time in the evenings, so I didn’t feel the need to drink quite so much caffeine.  It was at that point that the headaches went away and I put two and two together. I didn’t start losing weight, but that is for completely different reasons.

It was at this point that I realized that I needed to cut back on my soda drinking. I was living at home again, so it was easier to control how much I drank, mostly because my parents only bought diet soda, and like I said before, I can’t stand diet soda. Since then I have drastically cut back on how much I drink. Even to the point of going for weeks at a time without drinking any. Once I knew that the soda was contributing to my weight gain, I was even more determined to cut it out of my diet. And every time the soda wins. It is almost like a drug at this point. I can go for a few weeks, even up to a month without it, and then I have a hard day and that is what I crave at the end of the day.

At one point I really did think it was the caffeine that I was craving. So I tried drinking tea instead. I have been told that tea has more caffeine than soda anyway. Guess what, it didn’t work, I still craved the soda. I think it is the combination of the sugar and the caffeine. It is something that I still struggle with every day. Some days and weeks are better than others, and I continue to work on it everyday. I am much better now at choosing water or something else that isn’t soda when we are out to eat. I don’t buy any soda, so it isn’t in the house, which often is half the battle.

I will continue to work on it, because I do believe that one day, this will be one habit that I no longer have to worry about breaking.

So this is our points challenge this week,

GAME TWO: SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR COMFORT ZONE.

It’s time to shake things up.

Between Tuesday October 20th and Monday October 26th you will receive 100 extra challenge points for every new activity/exercise/class you try. So, if you’re a walker and you add some interval running to your routine? BAM. 100 points. If you’ve always wanted to give Spinning a go? BAM 100 points. If you are interested to see if you are, in fact, that one person who has forgotten to ride a bike? BAM. 100 points. And of course, if you decide to Zumba? You guessed it. 100 points.

I have spent the week trying to come up with something, anything. At first I figured, hey this is easy, right now I am not doing any exercising, so doing something, anything is a step in the right direction, plus possibly a hundred points. There is my problem, I started thinking. I saw the weather report this week and thought, “excellent it is going to be a beautiful week, I can go out and walk” HA, has anyone out there tried to walk with a two year old and a four year old. We did go out and walk, but it wasn’t what I would call exercise. Can you really call it exercise when you stop every 30 seconds to look at leaves, sticks, bugs, the cracks in the sidewalk. Now don’t get me wrong, it was a great walk, the kids discovered all sorts of things and we all had a great time, but it wasn’t exercise, it took us 30 minutes to walk around the block. I realized that in order to actually get some exercise in, it would have to be without the kids. (for the record, I knew this, but I was hoping it wasn’t really true) So when do I have time without the kids? The answer your looking for is late at night or early in the morning, neither of which is a good time for me. I am neither a night owl, or a morning person, I just don’t function very well at either of those times. Over the summer I tried getting up at 5 am to go out and walk before the kids got up and my husband had to leave for work. I was very grumpy on the days that I got up that early. Not only that, but I could never really walk as much as I wanted to because my feet and legs hurt a lot while I was walking, I am still to this day not sure why, but they did.

So, getting up early is not a good idea, walking with the kids is not working. Next idea, going out after the kids are in bed. For me that is just not an option. That is my time with my husband, and to wind down at the end of the day. Often when I sit down after the kids are in bed, it is the first time I have sat down all day, other than when I was folding laundry. The last thing I want to do is go out and walk, take some sort of class etc.. Also, like I said, that is my time with my husband. We put the kids to bed early so that we can spend time together without the kids, and I think that is more important then any exercise class I could go to.

My next idea was to join a gym, I thought of this over the summer. Specifically a gym with a pool. When I was younger I used to swim a lot. I was on my high school swim team and loved every minute of it. I love the water. I can swim much much longer and get in more exercise than I ever could walking or running, or taking a class. I joined a gym with a two week trial membership. The gym had a child care facility so I could drop the kids off and go swim for an hour all by myself. The kids were in the child care once before they both got sick. If I am going to be taking care of sick kids more than I could exercise, than it is not worth it to me, especially with the H1N1 virus floating around this year.

That left me with the 4 hours a week that the kids are both in school. Wednesdays and Fridays both the kids are in school from 9 – 11:30. Sounds like a great time to exercise. right. Well Friday is my time. I usually spend Friday mornings sitting in a coffee shop, upstairs at Wegmans, a book store, somewhere quiet working on my Bible study, and honestly my time with God comes first. So that leaves Wednesdays, that is the day I do my grocery shopping. I could take the kids with me on another day, and this week, I got done my shopping very early, so I did go walk around the mall until I had to pick the kids up, but it just didn’t feel like enough.

I do have a Wii fit and the EA Active game for the Wii. I should be better about doing both of those. I just don’t have much motivation right now. That is what I am going to work on for this weekend, getting up the motivation to get in a workout. If anybody has any other ideas I would be happy to listen. Obviously I am in a rut when it comes to exercise. I have a million excuses and no motivation. I keep thinking that it shouldn’t have to be so hard.

In typical fashion last week went flying by. It really got away from me, and what a week it has been. First things first, my GAG weigh in. I used my first free pass this week. It was not a great week, I was stressed and very down. I tend to forget what I am doing when I am feeling like that and snack a lot. It was better than it could have been since I don’t keep high calorie snacks in the house. I was also PMSing this week, so that didn’t help at all. In the end when I finally did get on the scale, I hadn’t lost weight, but I hadn’t gained any either, which is a good thing.

You are probably now asking, why was last week a rough week? It is the same answer it usually is, school. I am so glad that we have chosen to home school starting next year. In the meantime though we have to get through this year. If you didn’t already know, Alex is a very active little boy. He does have some trouble sitting still and sharing with other kids, nothing that really has me concerned though. School is a different matter. He is in the oldest class in his preschool this year, the 4 year old class. Well I thought that he was doing okay. At least that is what the teachers told me after his first week. Well last week, his second week, I found out that he wasn’t really doing all that well. He wasn’t sitting when he was supposed to and was having a lot of trouble getting along with the other kids. This of course has me stressed out because I know what a sweet, happy, well behaved little boy he can be, and is when he is not in school. All his problems center around school. I know he is not perfect and yes he does have problems at home, but nothing more than any other 4 year old with a younger, sometimes annoying little sister. I was at a loss as what to do with him, since nothing my husband and I were saying to him seemed to be registering.We talked about his behavior all weekend, we took away his dinner out on Friday because of his behavior, nothing seemed to work. Monday he went to school and had an even worse day, and I was completely strung out and frustrated. I hate to sound like the parent who is saying that their child can do no wrong, and is perfect all the time. However, that being said, I do think the school needs to take some ownership here. I believe that a big part of the problem is that he is bored at school. He is way above about half of the class, if not more. Last year when they tested him at the end of the year, he was in the top five in a group of 24. That is both classes in the school that are his age. At home we are working on reading and counting to 70, while at school they are still just introducing the letter and numbers to 10. This is stuff he has been doing for years.

I spent all day yesterday and all last night praying about the situation. I am fully prepared to take him out of school and start homeschooling right away. He is more than capable of handling the kindergarten material. This morning I decided that rather than do my usual prayer about school in the car after I drop them off, I would pray with the kids after we parked the car and before we went in to school. Well guess what, both kids had a much better day today. (Lizzie, who is very strong willed, has been raging an all out war on the teachers, in an attempt to show them who is the boss. In her opinion it should be her) Alex was crying when I picked him up, but that was because he had to use the bathroom and somebody was already in there. I am going to continue praying everyday, I really want both the kids to have a great year. Plus the selfish side of me is enjoying going grocery shopping without the kids, and I love having 2 1/2 hours on Friday to do whatever it is I want to do, no kids attached.

Thanks for listening to me vent.

On a side note, please pray for a little girl from our church. I can’t go into details, but she needs all the prayer she can get.

God Bless

Heather.

I will be adding to this throughout the week so stay tuned.

Which brings me to GAG Today was our first weigh in. I was very good all week except yesterday, when I was mostly good. I changed a few scheduling things around the house for this challenge. I have found that both the kids and I do better if we eat our main meal in the middle of the day rather than at the end of the day. So I will be cooking what I would normally cook for dinner for lunch. My metabolism seems to do better when I eat my largest calorie meal in the middle of the day instead of in the beginning or at the end of the day. I am not sure why this is, but I decide to just go with it instead of fighting it. The only downside it that when my husband is working he ends up with a reheated meal at the end of the day instead of a fresh one. I have not figured out how to overcome that obstacle yet, but I am working on it. I also started using the Slim quick cleanse this week, as a jump start. Specifically to help jump start my metabolism, since it is horrible. Before I started this challenge last week, I had been working my but off, exercising, eating right, everything, and I only gained weight. I was getting very frustrated. So those were the two big things I did this week. The Slim quick, and changing the times that I eat my big meal.

And guess what, it seems to have worked. I weighed in this morning at 261.0. That is 11 lbs. that I lost. I was actually worried about losing that much (I still am) for several reasons. That is a lot of weight to lose so quickly, I worry that it isn’t healthy, and that I am doing something wrong. I am also worried that people are going to think I am cheating, but I promise I am not. I actually weighed myself several times this morning so see if the scale was wrong. I just keep telling myself that it can’t be right. My wonderful husband keeps reminding me that I probably lost a lot of water weight and that the next few weeks, I probably won’t lose anything. He is right I am sure.

Our point challenge this week is going to be a difficult one for me.

For every 8 oz of water you drink, you will give yourself 10 points.
For every 15 minutes of activity (NO house cleaning and “normal” activities should be counted here) outside of your normal routine give yourself 10 points.
For every day that you track your foods whether it be on your blog via in text or photos, give yourself 20 points.
For every evening you sleep for a minimum of 8 hours, give yourself 20 points!

I am horrible at keeping track of what I eat and drink. I just get busy doing whatever I am doing that day and forget to write things down and by the time I remember I have forgotten what it was I ate or drank that day. As for additional activity, I am going to try to get up in the mornings and walk again, but I get very grumpy when I don’t get enough sleep, so early morning is hard. The sleeping part is the easy part, like I said, I get grumpy if I don’t get enough sleep so I have always gone to bed early and tried to get in at least 8 hours of sleep a night.

On a side note, I have fallen in love with strawberries all over again. I love that they are so low in calories, (I forget who, but somebody once told me that it takes more calories to digest a strawberry than you get from eating the strawberry). They have become my new snack food. Plus they are sweet, so they help with my horrible sweet tooth at the end of the day.

Well I think I got in everything I wanted to say.

Have a great day.

Heather

So with the holiday weekend coming up Shiela over at GAG challanged us to come up with a plan for getting through any holiday parties that we may have this weekend. Well I am happy to say that so far we don’t have any parties to derail the diet this weekend. That is not to say we won’t have one to go to by the end of the weekend. My mom is famous for inviting us over at the last minute. I also figured it wouldn’t be so bad to have a game plan in place anyway since we are coming into a busy time of the year for us with a lot of social gatherings.

Step One: Be sure to eat in the morning and during the course of the day, rather than starve myself so that I can eat without feeling guilty at the party. In the past I have not eaten lunch if we had a evening party so that I could eat what I wanted. Well it always backfired. I was so hungry by the time I got to the party that I just ate and ate, way more than I would have if I hadn’t been hungry. So if I am not starving then I am less likely to overeat at the party.

Step Two: Avoid the appetizers. I am horrible about the mindless eating. Especially at parties. I always end up standing next to the chip bowl talking to somebody and end up eating a ton of chips and then I don’t even realize how much I ate so I still eat a full plate of food. I am going to work on staying away from the appetizers.

Step Three: NO SODA. I can’t stand diet soda so I drink regular which is filled with calories, and I never seem to stop at just one, so I am going to avoid it altogether.

Step Four: Use a small plate instead of a large one, that way my plate looks full and I am eating less, and I feel satisfied.

The second part of this challange is to give a recipe for something healthy that we would bring as an alternative. This is my husbands usual request. Roasted Potato Salad. It doesn’t have any mayo so it is better than traditional potato salad. This is my modified version for my kids allergies. The original recipe called for ranch dressing, which I substituted Italian Dressing. I use regular Italian, but I am thinking about trying lo cal dressing the next time I make it. It also calls for bacon, I am looking for an alternative for that as well. I put it in when I make it for my husband and kids and when I eat it I just pick out the bacon.

Roasted Potato Salad

2 Tbsp. olive oil

2 lbs. small red potatoes, diced

½ onion chopped

2 cloves garlic minced

1 tsp. kosher salt

Dash fresh ground pepper

8 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled

½ bunch green onions, chopped

Italian Salad Dressing

Oil a pan with olive oil. Toss together the potatoes, onion, garlic and salt, and spread on the pan. Bake at 425 for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a serving bowl combine the cooked bacon, green onions, and salad dressing. Stir in cooked potato mixture and serve.

Serves 6-8

Have a great weekend.

Heather