13 Weeks Post - Weight Loss Update

Ptttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

(That would be me, blowing a raspberry at my metabolism.)

So I've had a lot of inquiries regarding my post-baby weight loss journey and I have to officially say that...

...it stinks.

I suppose if I'm going to be honest, I have to give you the bad with the good and people, it's not pretty.

This is about as current a picture as it gets.  With my crew at the beach!

Let's back up for a moment so I can paint you a picture.  Three kids, in under four years.  I have stretch marks, wobbly under-arm skin, and spider veins.  My stomach, once flat and hard, continues to pooch out and resemble the home I swore my son was going to set up permanent residence in.  I realize that this is not entirely unusual and are "battle scars" many moms proudly display in the name of having children...but I'm more than a little over it and ready to get back to my pre-baby body ASAP.   

Yesterday, Scott and I had our physicals for our insurance policies...you know, the standard height, weight, blood, urine, blah blah blah.  I had fasted for the blood work so I was curious to see how my weight compared to my last doctor's visit, seven weeks ago.

And it was the same.

And I was a wreck.  

Now, I have a wonderful support system in my husband and friends, who are continuously complementary and encouraging.  Just last week, after hearing my belly aching about not losing weight fast enough, my friend Susie lovingly told me to "stay off the stinking scales for a while."  

I also realize that it took me nine months to put on this weight (close to 40 lbs) and that I should be patient in getting it off.  But that being said, I am ready for the scales to move.  Downward.  Under 150.  Puh-lease.

Therefore, it's back to the drawing board.  I began keeping a food journal again, although we don't think that my weight is a calorie issue because I'm honestly eating cleaner than I ever have.  Scott believes it's an exercise thing, so that's where we're going to focus more.  

He calculated that, within the three pregnancies and few months after delivery, I have probably had a combined 12 months of little to no physical activity within the last four years.  Prior to Elizabeth, I was very active - getting in about an hour of cardio and an hour of weights most days, plus the physical demands of coaching.  My metabolism was going full force in order to match my activity.  Today, it is far less.  While I am constantly on the go, it just isn't the same and I don't have the means to do the same amount of activity I did before kids.  Therefore, the rate that my body burns calories for fuel has gone way down.  If my metabolism was a blazing fire before, it's embers now.

So, we set a game plan.  Maybe you're in the same boat and need a jump start.  Me?  I need straight gasoline.  And that would be high-intensity exercise.  

As I've said before, I have an hour at the gym.  I've been lifting for the past couple months, but it's been mainly to get my muscles back to being acquainted with the activity.  Now, I need to pick it up a notch and keep my heart rate up as much as I can.

So this was my workout today (legs focused).

5 minutes warm-up on the rowing machine

4 x 10 Squats (bar)

4 x MAX Reverse hamstring raises (no weight)

4 x 7, 6, 5, 5 Leg press (90 lbs)

Then I performed a very poor rendition of this workout from Zuzana Light.  I did it only for 10 minutes because I thought I was going to keel over, not to mention rip every muscle of my core with the crab touches.  (If you haven't checked out her new YouTube channel out, you really should.  She does a lot of body weight exercises and updates new workouts frequently.)

Finally, I ran for as hard as I could on the treadmill for 10 minutes - getting up to 7.5 mph.

And that was an hour.  I was tired, sweaty and fatigued...which is actually encouraging because I know that those are the factors that will help my body change the way I want. 

Are you on the same journey?  How are you doing and have you found any secrets that work?  

Have a great day!

Saturdays Around Here...

Very rarely do I post on Saturday, but I feel like I have so much to tell you, that an update is truly in order.  This morning was shaping up to be a busy day with lots to do at home, so we opted out of the gym and had a family breakfast of waffles instead.

I had been eager to try the Paleo waffles from the Eat Like a Dinosaur book I've been raving about and not only did they LOOK like real waffles, but they were pretty darn tasty as well!  Check them out - gluten and dairy free! 

Today was the first Saturday to pick up our CSA box at the farmer's market, so we carted the crew off and met the farmer who is going to supply us veggies for the next several months.  It works out to about $20-30 a week for a mother-load of freshness.  And the lady said that this would be the lightest box we would get!

I found our CSA through this Local Harvest website.  You can search for one in your area, if you're interested.

Of course, the girls were more excited that we stopped by a couple yard sales on the way home, looking for some more sleepers for Caleb.  We struck out on those, but did score a $5 three-wheeled scooter for Rachel and a 10 cent My Little Pony for Elizabeth...and there was much rejoicing.

I believe she named it Cloudia.  Not to be confused with her other pony named Rainbowa and her stuffed dog named Sparkla.

Now, to get a box like this was the closest I will ever get to Iron Chef and I spent a couple hours this afternoon looking for new recipes to use the vegetables I've never cooked with before - especially beets.  (AND NO, THERE WEREN'T ANY ZUCCHINI, YOU SMARTIES!!) 

The smell of beets cooking reminds me of my Memaw's house growing up, when I swore off the stinky things forever.  This evening though, I pulled up my big girl britches and started to work.    We made this Beet and Apple Salad from the Food Network and it was AMAZING.  I roasted the beets beforehand and caught myself eating them straight out of the pan.

Scott and I were just talking about how our taste buds have changed since limiting our processed foods and sugars and this is just an example of it.  Fruits and vegetables taste so much sweeter, without the need for dressings or dips.  In fact, even the girls are starting to accept newer veggies and eat more things on their plates - HALLELUJAH!!

And speaking of limiting sugar (ha!), we had ice cream for dessert and the girls enjoyed them in cones for the first time.  (Aldi had them for 99 cents a box and I thought that would be such a fun treat.)  So after dinner, outside we went and they were so excited to feel grown-up with cones in their hands!

Posing with the cones...

Posing with the cones and Daddy (who is NOT eating two, but is holding the photographer's)

 

See, you lick it with your tongue Mom...SEEEEEE???  AHHHHHHH!

Hey!  Where's mine??!!

Enjoy your weekend, my friends!!

31 Ways You Can Get Healthier Today: Eat More Zucchini (or Cucumbers)

Our garden has been going crazy.  I mean, flat insane.  This must be the weather it likes because all we've done is plant seeds and water and the thing has taken care of itself.

And our zucchini just takes the cake.  I have been doing nothing but picking these huge zucchini's and trying to figure out things to do with them.  

So I thought a great nap time project for Elizabeth and me would be to bake some zucchini muffins and then take everyone on a walk around the neighborhood to deliver goodies.  Now, I already know what you're thinking and no, I didn't try to healthify these up.  We used sugar and oil and all the "good" stuff, baked them up and bagged them for our neighbors.  

My happy helpers were thrilled with the idea of a walk and we took off down the road with our bounty and Caleb in his stroller, content for the first time ever.

Seriously, just look at my little man.  Not a cry the whole time!

 
I had bagged the amounts of muffins based on the size of families and stacked them in a box in the order I planned to travel.  I thought it would be nice if we stopped first at the girls' little friends house.  So stop we did and I gave Elizabeth the bag with muffins and Rachel a random zucchini (because we had PLENTY to spare) and told them to go ring the doorbell and tell their mommy that we had baked them some muffins.

I neglected to tell them to only ring it once.

I finally made it to the door by the 20th time Elizabeth had rung the doorbell and pried her finger off the button.  I tried to explain to her that they weren't home and we would just leave it in a bag with a note. 

That didn't fly with my oldest.  

She cried.  She screamed.  She did not want to leave it on the door.  She wanted to see her friends. 

It was really the exact impression I wanted to make on the front porch of one of my neighbor's house, let me tell you.

So dragging her along, we stopped at the next stop, which belonged to another set of little friends.  

They weren't home either.

More hysterics.  

At this point, I was totally rethinking my neighborly good-will, but we had three more stops to go and still a million muffins left that were full-fat and had no business in my house, so I thought we'd take a chance that the next stop was home since their cars were in the driveway.

That was a success.  We didn't know this family well, but they always stopped to talk to us when we were out and about so they made the muffin list.

Next up was the little girl and her family who watched the girls during my lessons and then we had one more stop to make.  I had planned to give it to our neighbor across the street, but she wasn't home and some other neighbors were out who we hadn't met before.

Now they lived on top of a hill and it was a straight 45 degree angle up their driveway.  I knew better than to try it with the stroller, so I loaded the girls up and told them to hike up and give the nice people some muffins.  They got halfway up and then came back down.

Good girls, trained on strangers and all.

So I pulled Caleb out of the stroller and proceeded to walk up Mt Everest to introduce myself to our neighbors.  (I know, we've lived here a year...don't judge...)

The girls handed over their treats and while I told the couple about our family, the girls proceeded to bend down and grab giant handfuls of nice white pebbles out of the woman's flower garden and dump them all over her clean sidewalk.  Horrified, I bent down and attempted to make them pick them up, but the pebbles were so little that there was no way they could get that many back in there. The sweet woman (obviously just wanting to get rid of her mini yard crashers) convinced me she'd just sweep it up, no problem.

Saying goodbye, I turned, carrying Caleb and planning on how to get down the driveway when my two daredevils decided to take off running...

down the 45 degree mountain...

in flip flops...

Oh yes.

And then a truck began coming down the road.  

I swear, the whole scene went in slow motion as I was screaming at the girls to stop running and the plumber's truck was slamming on it's breaks and my obviously deaf children were laughing and squealing at the delight of the momentum pulling them down the hill.  And just when all hope was lost...

Rachel bit it.

Sobs of hysteria and a scraped knee followed suit and I just wanted to crawl in a hole underneath my mounds of zucchini.  Carrying my baby, I scooped up my squalling toddler and, unlike Lot's wife, had no issues not turning around to see what I'm sure were horrified looks behind me.  

To wrap up the evening for you, it was a wash.  Scott was home late and the girls were wired and I had to play the evening fight of getting Rachel to stay in bed solo.  (This has been in progress ever since she figured out how to open her door AND take off her diaper, which is as fun a combination as it sounds.)

So at 9:00 p.m., I decided to delay fixing myself dinner and sat down to write this blog post.  And I was going to comment on not planting so many zucchini plants next year, when I looked at the fun little diagram I made of the garden so we would know what everything is...

AND I REALIZE THAT MOST OF THEM WERE CUCUMBERS!!!  

I have TWO zucchini plants.  I have FOUR cucumber plants.  

I totally forgot.  I didn't label the plants because I had my handy-dandy diagram and looking at them on the counter, I totally couldn't tell them apart.  And now I just gave my neighbors cucumber-zucchini muffins.  

If you need me, I'll be under my bed.

Back to our roots

We went to the gym as a family this morning, which is one of the things I love most about Saturday mornings.  Also topping the list was the fact that I was able to sleep until 7:30 a.m. - thanks to my loving husband and cooperative little children.

But really, the gym was a close second.  

I normally do a full body workout on Saturday and it hasn't worked out since Caleb was born that Scott and I were on the same schedule to do one together.  So I was thrilled when he suggested we give it a go as a duo today.

After dropping the kids off, we sat in the sauna for 5 minutes and then warmed up with a mile on the treadmill.  HGTV and I did it in 10 minutes flat... booo...

Then, we headed upstairs to the indoor track and I proceeded to do my first, full scale Crossfit workout.

Let me tell you, I never thought I could do it.

It was 4 reps of:

500 meter run

20 Kettlebell swings

15 handstand pushups (I did regular pushups, Scott did the wall)

10 situps

I think we finished in about 9:30.

Then we did 3 rounds of 100 jump rope jumps followed by 10 wall ball's (which I had never done before).   With these, you pick a spot on the wall about 3 feet over your head and squat down with the medicine ball, exploding up while throwing the ball up to hit the spot.  As the ball comes down, you time your squat to catch it as you bend your knees.

I'm sure I looked graceful as all get out. 

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I know I've said it before, but it's worth repeating that I truly advocate working out with your partner.  There is just something about putting in that physical time together that is powerful.  I've always thought it would be interesting to stage one of these dating reality shows in a gym...Biggest Loser meets The Bachelor.  For Scott and me, working out goes back to the roots of our relationship. 

He could have very easily left me in the dust during this workout, but he didn't.  During the first lap around the track, he took to my pace (which I didn't think was horrible, 9 weeks post-partum) and pushed me the whole time. 

Years ago, this was how our relationship started.  Being too poor to do much else, instead of dates, we went to the gym and enjoyed working out together, turning up the radio on the way home with the windows down and later crashing on the couch.

I had lifted in college and spent my fair time in the weight room, but Scott taught me so much more about technique and form and different machines and lifts.  And there was never a trace of impatience or irritation on his part in my lack of knowledge or questions.  

Looking back now, I learned a lot about the man I was choosing to spend the rest of my life with by how he interacted as a workout partner.  He was always encouraging and supportive, knowing when to say something or when to be quiet. When things got hard, he was never hateful or snapped.  And he demonstrated his trust in me by asking me to spot him or support him on heavy lifts.

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As we walked a lap after the last wall ball Saturday, my mind drifted back there - to the beginning of us.  And how fulfilling to know that almost five years of marriage and three little kids later, he's still right beside me, supporting and building me up.

We "cooled down" by sitting in the sauna for ten excruciating minutes, daydreaming about future plans and talking about swim lessons for the girls, and then picked up our three little darlings to come back home and go through the rest of the weekend.  

I would tell you that the best part was the calories I know I burned or the fact that I plowed through a hard workout that day...and don't get me wrong, that was pretty high up there.  But being able to workout with my husband again was my greatest joy.

Life gets so busy sometimes and it's easy to get caught up in the dirty diapers and tantrums and frustration over not looking like I want fast enough...but I remain so grateful that God sends me reminders at just the right time to be thankful for this partner in life He's assigned to me.

Hug your love tonight and have a great one.

Chicken Pesto with Squash Noodles

By the end of last week, I was getting close to the end of my vegetable stash and didn't want to haul all three kiddos to the store so I began the grueling task of figuring up a meal with what I had.  

You know those shows on the Food Network where they give the contestants just a handful of ingredients to come up with something edibley awesome?  Yeah...I wouldn't do good on those shows.

So when Scott called and had a stressed out tone to his voice, I decided to go with chicken pesto pasta, which was one of his favorites.  The only problem was that I didn't want to eat spaghetti when I was just getting the scales to move in the right direction, so I started looking at some options with the summer squash I had on hand. 

(Now, before I go any farther, I will tell you that I did not feed this to my children.  In fact, I didn't even attempt it.  They got noodles and red sauce and were as happy as clams.  I just wasn't in the mood for a fight this particular night.)

Me:  "Rachel, eat your beans."  Rachel:  "What beans??"

Earlier in the day, I had thrown a whole chicken in the Crockpot with salt and pepper and set it for about 6 hours.  After it was cooked, I shredded the meat and then threw the carcass in the pot to make stock later.

I had three yellow summer squash and three zuchinni, which I washed and cut the ends off and then peeled into strips with the vegetable peeler.  I loved the look of the yellow and green!  After tossing them with salt, I put them in the strainer and let them drain for a while.

I heated some olive oil in a skillet and threw in my squash for a couple minutes - just not long enough for them to get mushy.  I would love to tell you that I then whipped up my own pesto, but I didn't.  Not when Costco's is so tasty...

Topping the squash with the shredded chicken, I added about a tablespoon or two of pesto to each plate and then sprinkled the whole shooting match with a little bit of parmeasan cheese (making it technically NOT Paleo, but who's counting...).

Scott walked in the door during bath time (which was much needed, as I refer back to the earlier picture of Rachel) and, after getting the kids to bed, we enjoyed this dinner and a well deserved date night in our own dining room.  The verdict?  For the little bit of extra work, this is definitely something we'll do again.  It had more taste thank pasta could provide and really didn't take that much longer to make.  And I could even look my scales in the eye in the morning... :) 

Enjoy!

Workout with the Lawn

So here are the top ten reasons why I chose to workout with my lawnmower than in the gym today.

1.  It was a gorgeous day.

Isn't there something about sunshine that just gets you going?  We had to stick around this morning since the bug guy was coming by.  We've had a family of ants move into the girls' room and I had already called someone when Scott found a handful of pretzels Rachel had been hiding under her bed.  (Of course, the bottomless pit would store food...does anyone else swear that their toddler has a tape worm?)  So, with the sun shining and my baby sleeping in his crib, we ventured outside.

2.  The grass needed cut.

Well there is a duh statement.  This weekend, it didn't need cut, but after having rained all day on Sunday, today the grass was looking a little shaggy.

3.  Today was just going to be a recovery cardio day anyway.

Which means the ellipitcal and the HGTV network for an hour.  I probably burned as many, if not more, outside hossing the lawnmower.

4.  It gave me the opportunity to sun my cheese.

In the course of a year, my MIL lost about 40-50 lbs and is really an inspiration to me.  I've been meaning to write about her journey and will do so when I'm fully recovered from my maternity leave...ha!  Anyway, before she lost her weight, I'd call her and she'd be sitting on the back porch of her beautiful home, "sunning her cheese," as she put it (referring to her cellulite as cottage cheese).  It's always made me giggle, and now that my deflated belly resembles just that, I shall use the term as well.  Feel free to steal it. 

We have a privacy fence (thank God), so I stripped down to my shorts and sports bra and went at it.

5.  I get to have a front row seat to my kids playing outside. 

We have a good size yard and the girls run crazy in it.  One of their biggest arguments is over who is going to be "it" in hide and seek...as in, they both want to be it.  Crazy kids.  Wasn't it just the opposite when you were growing up?  I know it was for us...  They are going to be WAY popular when they get old enough to have neighborhood kid bashes. 

These pictures were taken earlier this spring (obviously, since the apple tree was blooming and I'm obviously not coordinated enough to mow and snap pictures at the same time!)  

Those are blueberry bushes that were here when we moved in.  The girls like to pick off the small blueberry buds and throw them at each other.  I know...awesome. 

Here are our raised garden beds, before we planted them.  I'll snap an updated pic this weekend - they are going crazy!

Here is Rachel throwing dirt out of the raised garden bed.  You know, expensive dirt that you pay for in the store?

Her daddy always yells at her to pump her arms...

Contemplating life...

6.  Push mowing is a workout!

Legs, arms, core, hands...got it covered.  Our backyard is pretty flat but I think you could triple your workload if you had hills.

7.  A loud lawnmower drowns out a whiny two-year-old perfectly.

Nuff said.  It also works out if said two-year-old is potty training.  My poor carpets...you.are.welcome.

8.  I am able to take at least one thing off my husband's plate this weekend.

Don't you love being able to do that?  

9.  Two words you rarely hear as a parent:  instant gratification.  

I can look outside and see exactly what I did.  Ah...

10.  I got my belated mother's day gift from my oldest:

Upon sizing me up with no shirt on, she said, "Mama!  Your belly's getting smaller!" 

Enjoy your

What's in a name?

Overheard this afternoon while I was nursing a baby...

Elizabeth (Pulling both panels of my living room curtains together in front of her and then opening them all at once in an exploding fashion):  Ta-dah!  My name is Deliah!  What is your name, Rachel?

Rachel (Scurrying off the potty, and ignoring my coaching to concentrate, she scooted bare-butt in front of her sister and closed the curtains in front of her.):  I'm Annie!  (Not me, mind you, but the character from Little Einsteins.)

Elizabeth (With curtain still pulled):  No, no...you are (insert dramatic pause for effect)...Lipstick Jewelry!!!

Rachel (Throwing the curtains open):  Ta-dah!!!

Enjoy your Wednesday!  And yes, *sigh*, it is only Wednesday...