Motivation For Getting Fit.

So lately, I've been binge watching The Biggest Loser. I feel like it's more productive than watching Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. Besides, I haven't quiet reached that level of self control yet. I used to watch it while I worked out, but now, if I did, I'm afraid I'd eat the entire kitchen. Literally, counter tops and all. 
Anyway, in the Biggest Loser, they talk a lot about what their motivation is. For a lot of them it's their kids. Some of them it's health reasons. And some just don't like where they are in life and want to go some where else. (I think the $250,000 prize helps a little bit too.)
Anyway, it got me thinking why am I doing this?  Mostly, because I can't fit into my pants anymore, and I've been relegated to my skirts. Another thing is, I didn't like what I saw in my videos. I know other people may not notice things, but we're our own worst critic. I would watch my make up videos and just have this entire dissatisfaction with how I looked. The same for a lot of pictures. 
Another reason, I want to feel good about myself. I know people freak out when people are down on themselves. It's not always that. Sometimes, we're not satisfied with how we are. It's never a bad thing to get healthy. 
At work, my co-workers are all trying to loose weight. Some of them are doing crazy diets. (I commend them for staying with them. I can't diet. I get mean and then I binge eat--everything.) Others joined gyms. Again, not my shtick. I count my calories, loosely albeit, but I try none the less. I've found I enjoy getting up and working out in the morning before work. Mostly because it wakes me up in the morning, and encourages me to be more ready for the day. 
So I figured, I'd remind everyone to look at their motivation. On those days when you say no I don't want to. It's too hard, just remember your motivation.  It doesn't have to be the most important thing in the world either. For example, I used to work out because I wanted to be hot enough to be in a PitBull video. Noble motivation. Not really, but a motivation none the less. 

Just remember, when you want to quit, what made you start in the first place. 

  

Eating Habits

Oh man. I hate talking about eating habits, because then I have to examine my own, which aren't too pretty.  Unfortunately, for my life examining your eating habits is crucial to weight loss.  Now, I don't know if any of you remember the Jenny Craig commercial.  If you're happy and you know it, eat a snack.  If you're sad and you know it, eat a snack. Yeah. That's me.  Or if you're bored and you know it eat a snack.  So examining my eat habits is terrifying. I can sit down and literally eat like two boxes of Cheeze-its and then eat dinner, and then have a snack. Yeah, I'm that person. 

That's me. 

But, honestly, you need to look at what you eat. That is a major part of loosing weight, and just in general being more healthy. 

Here are a few things I've found help me be aware of what I'm eating. 

Asking myself, am I hungry? 

I'm a bored, emotional, social eater. Basically, if you can use it as an excuse to eat, I use it. A lot of the time, I'm bored. Mindlessly watching tv, eating food, which is the worse, but because I feel like I need to eat something simply because I've trained myself that tv is the place to eat. 

Ok, one way to remedy this... don't watch as much tv. 

But on days I end up at my dad's house and there's junk food and tv galore I usually ramp up my snack intake. The thing I've started doing is drinking water., simply so I have the sensation of putting something in my mouth. Sure, it's substitution method, but it works for me. If I drink the water I don't eat the food. 

Another thing I do is count my calories. I use the my fitness pal app and count the calories. It really makes me aware of what I'm putting in my body. I don't believe in denying myself, but seeing something and then knowing I have so many calories left it makes me wonder if I want to waste my calories on it. 

Sometimes, the simple fact of being aware amps up what I do and don't eat. Along with this don't drink your calories. 

Have you ever thought about how many calories are in a soda. My two sodas a week thing hasn't worked as well this month. It's been a long month. But honestly, drinks count. 

Last thing is know your week points. That will help you avoid them. Where I work, there's a plethora of food, and most if it's fatty and sweet. At first, I had a problem with grazing at the food all day. And I still do, but not as much. I knew it was a problem area, so I took what control I did have and had the food choices be more healthy. Or I learned to say no to it. 

Now the problem is home. When I get home, I eat food non-stop. I get really horrible fast food cravings too. I know that on certain nights, I'm going eat out.  Those are the hard nights. 

 Those are the hard nights. But I overcome them some how, and some times I don’t. Personalty, food guilt is the worse guilt of all. 

I know we all struggle with it. I hope this helps you in some way. 

Here's a few more motivational posters for you to look at. 

Protein Shakes

So, one thing I’ve found that I enjoy are protein shakes. I’m not  a vegan—I require protein. A lot of it. I’m actually probably anemic. So I like to take protein shakes as meal replacements to get protein.

As a side note, you shouldn’t really try protein shakes or muscles milk if you’re not working out. It will make you fat—I’m speaking from personal experience.

At first I was trying the SlimFast protein shakes. It was supposed to suppress your appetite for up to four hours. I’ve noticed that anything that’s supposed to make me not eat usually makes me ravenous. No clue, maybe it’s all in my head. So I started shopping around for something that was in price range and I liked.

I stumbled upon TrueSource and the thing that compelled me to buy it was the coupon attached to the top. The SlimFast stuff is in Chocolate, but I’m not really a Chocolate fan. Sometimes I’ll use it still just because it’s there. The TrueSource is in vanilla. It has 20g of protein, and is gluten free.

So with protein shakes you need the shake mix, a liquid base, and you can other things if you want. Personally, I like mine to be a frappe/smoothie consistency so I add ice cubes and blend.

Here are a few of the recipes I personally like.

Coffee Shake

• Ice cubes
• Vanilla Protein Shake
• Coconut Milk
• Cold coffee
• Combine. Blend. Enjoy

Pina Colada

• Coconut Milk
• Coconut shavings
• Pineapple chuncks
• Ice
• Vanilla Protein
• Combine. Blend. Enjoy.

Fruit Frenzy

• All the excess fruit you can find chopped up. 
• Ice
• Vanilla Protein
• Combine Blend.Enjoy.

Carrot Cake Protein Shake

This one is not original to me. I found it on Crazy Adventures in Parenting and adapted it.

• ½ cup of grated carrots
• 5 to 10 Ice Cubes
• 1/2 to 1 cup of coconut milk
• Vanilla Protein Powder
• Nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, and cinnamon.
• Combine. Blend. Enjoy.

Gingersnap Protein Shake

Here's another adapted protien shake from My Recipe Magic 

•  ice cubes 
• 1/2 cup Coconut Milk
• 1 Scoop Vanilla Protein powder 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg 
• Combine. Blend. Enjoy.

I hope you all enjoy some of these as we pretend to get fit together. Although, sometimes these are just good to eat. 

Sorry no pictures of my own shakes. They're kind of anticlimactic. I don't get all fancy with them. 

30 Day Plank Challenge

So. trying to get fit, I've decided to take the 30 Day Plank Challenge. Why? I don't know. Just kidding. Goals. So this is the challenge. 

So far, I'm day 5, although, I had to switch dates for the Rest Day. I was sick last night and so yeah. No planking. The goal is get to 5 minutes by the end of the month. 

I can hold it for a whole 40 seconds. lol. 

Here's some funny stuff to make you laugh and revel in my pain with me. 

Anyway, 

As Always,

The Dreaded Cheat Day

Ok. The dreaded Cheat Day. 

We all know it's going to happen because life doesn't go according to plan. You go out to dinner here, breakfast there. You're roommate has a birthday so you get cake twice. 

Yeah. Cheat Day's happen. 

And you know what? It's all right to have a cheat day. Some times you're going to have more than one a week. Because life isn't a neat box tied up in a pretty ribbon. Life is... life. It throws curve balls and some times you just want the hamburger, or apple pie with crumble topping. 

So you know what? 

You keep going. A cheat day is going to happen. It doesn't mean that you aren't dieting any more. It really doesn't. It just means you're human and life happens. 

Even though you feel like this. 

Another thing to remember is that just because you have a bad thing for you doesn't mean you're whole day has to be bad. 

Yeah, so today, I was bad. It got chocolate for Valentine's day. I ate it. What else was supposed to do. I tracked it, and felt guilty. I still tried to pay attention to what I ate. But it happened. I was out with friends, and people have this tendency to freak out if you're not eating. Especially older people. They really don't take no for an answer. 

The important part is I'm going to get back up tomorrow and begin again.  

Yeah, I messed up today and yesterday, but that isn't going to stop me. Cheat days happen. You don't always plan them, but the most important thing is to not let the cheat day become a cheat life. 

Blending and Calorie Counting

Sorry I didn't do a Tuesday post; I haven't been feeling well this week and basically crashed on Tuesday. Even this one is going to be late because I'm just that tired. 

So, I thought I wanted to do blends, mostly because I don't have a juicer. I looked up a few recipes and decided to make them. Here's the website. I had about 8 recipes, and in my experience each one makes roughly two drinks. And don't, I repeat, don't add chocolate protein powder. It makes it taste gross. 

Here are a few of the ones I've made so far. 

Popeye Special

This one was pretty good. 

Citrus Zinger

I liked this one. It was like pulpy orange juice

Snake Bite.  

This is the one I added the chocolate protien powder too. I couldn't really get past the color. It had mostly carrots in it. I tried it, but it was nasty. 

I made the green machine, but added spinach to it because I didn't have enough kale and I didn't want to buy any more. I liked this one the best it didn't really have a whole lot of taste though. 

Now, I've found that I can't juice all day. I get really hangry if I don't put some protien and sugar into my system. It's really horrible. It really is. 

The blending helps me at work where snacks are fatty and readily available. I know you all know I don't believe in restriction dieting, so the blending is more to help and jumps tart my weight loss. I decided to still eat regularly but keep track of my eating habits. 

This too makes me more aware for what I'm eating. Because it's super easy to eat half a box of Cheeze-its in one sitting before I know it. So I use an app on my phone. I tried a few of them, but I prefer my fitness pal. They don't allow you to fully customize it, but it's easy to use, and it has the widest variety of food and exercises.

February Goals

So, February is health and fitness month I'm going to carry over some goals from January. For example, still saving for Israel and continuing to budget, which I'll do a three month check in for that. This month, however, I want to focus more on the things we do to be healthy. 

My lifestyle lately has lead me to be a Fatty Lumpkin

Except, less majestic. 

So, I'm going to do something to change that.

Now, you can read any of prior blog posts to realize that I don't believe in dieting for long term events, and I really don't believe in crash dieting. Now before anyone gets up in arms, I'm doing this because I want to. If you're happy with your body, then you don't. I'm not so there. 

I don't imagine myself to be fat or ugly or anything; I just want to be the best me I can. 

So, February Fitness Goals

1. Limit myself to two sodas a week

2. Drink more water

3. Work out twice a week, at least. 

4. Try to limit my sweet intake.

 (Yes, I know this one isn't specific, but I'm not sure I how I'll do it.)

5. Reach 150 lbs. by the end of the month. (Current weight 158.)

6. Save for Israel

7. Write 100 words of a novel

8.Submit a freelancing proposal

Anyway, that's my January Goals. See you all on Thursday.