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.

Goals for the week of August 3rd:

1. Work out 5 out of 7 day (walk and EA Active) Done – I worked out Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  I walked all of those days, a few days, Thursday and Friday I had to cut my walk short due to rain and some very frustrating socks. I was happy that I got up and got out the door all week, which is a huge accomplishment for me. I think I am going to try the walking, or dancing program on the WII fit on rainy days to get my exercise in without having to walk in the rain.

2. Only eat out for Friday night dinner, no lunch out. Pack lunch if we are going to be out of the house at lunch     time. - During the week I did pretty good at this. I made sure we were home in time for lunch, which was actually pretty hard this week since Alex had VBS and we were out much later than usual in the mornings. This weekend we were out for lunch on Sunday and we had breakfast with friends on Saturday, but I was better than I normally would have been, so I didn’t do too bad.

3. Lose at least one pound. - Done. I have lost about 2 lbs. in total this week. I went up and down a little bit. I am not sure why, but overall I have lost, so that is good.

4. Drink at least 4-5 glasses of water a day instead of juice of lemonade. – I am drinking less lemonade, and I didn’t have any soda last week, so that is part one of the goal. In fact the last couple of days, since I ran out of lemonade I haven’t had any. My wonderful husband went searching for a glass pitcher to make sun tea in, so I have been drinking that instead. It doesn’t have any calories, but I think I still need to up my water intake.

Goals for the week of August 10th

1. Work out 5 out of 7 day (walk and EA Active)

2. Only eat out for Friday night dinner, no lunch out. Pack lunch if we are going to be out of the house at lunch     time.

3. Lose at least one pound.

4. Drink at least 4-5 glasses of water a day

Long Term Goals

1. Be able to run instead of walk every day by next summer

2. Lose 100 lbs. by next June.

3. Lose 150 lbs. by November 2010

Yes I know the goals are the same this week as they were last week, but It isn’t yet a habit for me yet so I don’t want to set new goals until these have become a habit and I don’t have to think about it so much.

Have a great week.

Heather

About two months ago I began a new exercise routine. Since Lizzie turned two in March I have become more and more aware of my need to lose weight. I no longer had the excuse of having just had a baby. My “baby” was two years old.  My other big excuses for not losing weight were also gone. While Lizzie was not yet sleeping through the night (yes at two years old!!) she was defiantly sleeping better and I was getting a decent amount of sleep at night most nights. So I was no longer a walking zombie. I had finally gotten the hang of cooking in a new healthier way, so I couldn’t use the excuse that I can only tackle one big change at a time. So two months ago I realized that I was out of excuses. About that same time I realized that I am just not happy with the way I look. I avoid pictures, I can only find a handful of pictures of me with the kids, and I can’t stand any of them.

Since I had already changed the way I cook for the family and as an extension how I eat most of the time, I figured it was time to start focusing on getting more active. I really wanted to get back in the pool. I have always loved swimming, ironic since I can’t stand the way I look in a bathing suit. I never knew quite why but I just love to swim, and when I am in shape I can swim for hours on end. When I decided that I wanted to get back in shape that was my first thought, swimming. Well getting in the pool and swimming lap after lap is not nearly as easy at 30 as it was at 15. My first major obstacle was the fact that I didn’t have a pool in which to swim. I started looking at gyms that had indoor pools. I finally found one that wasn’t too expensive and had child care. Another obstacle I didn’t have at 15, the need to find somebody to watch my kids while I swam. Well the kids were there for 2 days when they both got sick. In fact Lizzie got so sick that she ended up with a sinus infection and a uti. So I gave up on the idea of swimming, it just wasn’t working out. I needed to find something else to do.

After Lizzie was better we were doing our weekly shopping at Target when I saw the new WII game, EA Active. Now I have had the WII Fit for about a year and a half now. It is a great idea and I love that it has a built in scale so that I can keep track of my weight right on the WII. I was not a fan of the actual workout program. I never really worked up much of a sweat. None of the exercises ran long enough to really get going, and the one that did let you go for longer than 7 or 8 minutes was a bit of a pain to get to and get set up. I was a little leery about the EA Active at first. I was worried that it would end up being just another WII Fit. At this point however I felt I was out out of options so I went for it. I am actually pretty happy with the program. It gives me a good workout and I can chose from a lot of pre programed workouts anywhere from 15 min. to 45 min.

However I am still not losing weight. Why you ask, because I have been lazy and have had excuse after excuse not to get up in the mornings and work out. I have excuse after excuse for why I don’t eat well, why I still take the kids to Chick-Fil-A more that I should. It is no wonder I am not losing weight, I am not working at it hard enough. I am not trying to become the next big supermodel, and I certainly don’t want to be a size 2. I just want to be happy with me and healthy, and the only way that is going to happen is to get off my but and to stop making excuses.

In an effort to be more open I decided to post how I am doing. I figure if there are people out there who know that I am working on this, then they can help hold me accountable. Even if it is just so that I am aware that people are expecting to see a change in me. When I am the only one who knows why I am getting up at 5 in the morning, then it is much more tempting to stay in bed. If I know that possibly somebody is going to want to know how my walk went that morning than I am much more likely to get out of bed and go walking. Once I am up, half the battle is won. The other area I need to work on is what I eat. When I cook at home I do pretty good. I have had to change the way I cook and shop for the kids and that has carried through to me to a certain extent. The problem come in when we are out of the house. When I take the kids out for lunch I am much more likely to get something that I shouldn’t. I am setting weekly short term goals and a few long term goals to keep me going. I am going to post new weekly goals every Monday and update everybody on my previous weeks progress.

Goals for the week of August 3rd:

1. Work out 5 out of 7 day (walk and EA Active)

2. Only eat out for Friday night dinner, no lunch out. Pack lunch if we are going to be out of the house at lunch     time.

3. Lose at least one pound.

4. Drink at least 4-5 glasses of water a day instead of juice of lemonade.

Long Term Goals

1. Be able to run instead of walk every day by next summer

2. Lose 100 lbs. by next June.

3. Lose 150 lbs. by November 2010

Hopefully by being doing all of this I will begin to see some actual pounds drop. It is looking like we may be going to Hershey Park again with my parents next summer and Disney the following November. I would love to be able to go on vacation and be happy with how I look and feel comfortable instead of big and yucky the whole time.

God Bless

Heather

Last year, for my birthday my wonderful husband stood in line at the Nintendo store in NY early in the morning to get me a Wii. And yes I mean me. I wanted it to exercise on, and yes I have used it for just that purpose. Although I will say that the last few months I have been a little lazy in that area. I don’t like getting up early and that is the only time that I can get any exercising in during the course of the day. Especially if I do it on the Wii.

Anyway, I digress. In the last year we have also been using it to play games with the kids. They love watching Jason and I play “Super Mario Galaxy,” “Mario Kart,” and Star Wars, among other games. Alex loves it so much that he wants to have a Super Mario Birthday party in February when he turns 4. Notice that I said they love to watch Jason and I play. We have never let either of the kids actually play the games. They have just been too young and not coordinated enough and they, especially Alex, didn’t have the attention span to sit long enough to learn how to play. Occasionally if one of the remotes didn’t have any batteries or we had an empty steering wheel we would let Alex pretend to play and he never knew the difference.

In the last few weeks that has all changed. Alex has started to understand that he is not actually controlling anything that is happening on the screen, and he has asked many, many times to play. He had been to a friends house a few times and watched him play his Game Cube and was starting to catch on. So with Christmas coming up we decided that it was time to find him a game that he could play with little or no assistance from us adults.  We have always been hesitant to get the game systems that are geared for preschoolers. They have such a limited life span and we already had a Wii. I didn’t really want to spend the extra money on a completely new game system, when we already had nice system at home. So we decide to try to fine a Wii game that Alex could play. This is where I ran into some problems. Nintendo has several games intended for children as young as four, unfortunately all of them except one are geared for girls. There was a Dora game, a Disney Princess game and a Barbi game. As I am looking for a game I was starting to get a little discouraged, I needed a game for a young boy. Well we finally found one.

“Go Diego Go, The Great Dinosaur Rescue” This is a brand new game, it was just released at the end of October. The few reviews I had been able to find were good and since it was all we were able to fine we decide to give it a shot. I love it!!! We have had the game for two days now and Alex can play almost completely independently. He does need a helping hand now and then, mostly because he is impatient and tends to go to fast. When you are playing the game in the dinosaur rescue mode there are hints at the bottom of the screen that help the child figure out what they are supposed to do. The hints are little circles with a little person in it showing the child how to perform the action needed at that time and if the child needs to push a button on the remote there is a picture of that button at the bottom of the screen. You can also enable a feature called the helper feature. During certain times in the game at the bottom of the screen a circle with two people in it show the helper that they can use a second remote to help the child complete the action faster.

Alex loves the game, and it is a pretty active game. So he is not just sitting on his bottom playing a video game. He has to jump, dig, and swing, among many other actions. As with the computer we limit the time he is allowed to play, he is still only 3 after all. I don’t want him spending all day infront of the Wii, but all in all I am loving the game, and I am sure our next purchase will be a game for Lizzie, since she can’t stand to be left out of anything.