Leida

It’s the only one I have!

It nurtured, grew and birthed to my daughter.

We have a long history together and unlikely to part for a while yet.

No matter how much abuse I through its way, it rallies when I call for it.

It’s designed to do all sorts of things, the ones I tried already, and I haven’t yet thought of doing.

When I look at other bodies and feel envious, it doesn’t give up on me and walk away.

It takes me places, and didn’t give up on me in any major way.

All it needs is a bit of good food and a chance to get moving to show off what it can do.

Did you know that a human being that starts excersising improves percentage-wise pretty much the same, no matter what’s the age? Amazing, ei?

Here is my Halloween without a Nightmare the Morning After:  

1. I will start my Halloween with a workout with or without my wee one.

2. Candies might be a staple, but so is the nutrition-packed, anti-oxidants rich pumpkin! I will wash & toast pumpking seeds for healthy snacking, and one of our pumkins was already half frozen and half pureed to become stews, muffins and soups in the future!

3. We will eat a protein packed mushroom omlette for breakfast and low cal pumpkin soup for lunch

4. Before we head out for a trick and treating session #1 in the local Recreation centre, we’ll squeeze in a family play in the pool.

5. We will do session #1 trick and treating and session #2 (neighborhood) at as fast a pace as an impatient 3 y.o would want.

6. We will have a nice nutritious dinner before doling the candies out ourselves.

7. We will not steal our child’s candies, and everything we will have left over will be split into 2 even piles that we will pack away very sturdily and stash in a secret and hard to reach location, and take to the office 1 week later, when everyone else’s offerings had run out and people are ready for more!

8. We will try to have our candie fix with the dark 70+ % chocolate instead of the less healthful sugary treats, and we’ll try to stay under 250 cals from treats.

9. We are going to rent a couple of cool movies to watch while giving the candies away to keep us occupied instead of munching & leave the candie bowl in a place remote to the couch

10. We will go to bed happy, and will not beat ourselves up if something didn’t go According to Plan! We’ll just plain forget about it.

11. We will make our Sunday a day of exemplary eating and slip in an extra hour or two of a good fast walking or hiking or doing anything else fun and active!

I had an absolutely marvelous weekend. It was the Canadian Thanksgiving, and I was taking Group Fitness Foundamentals Course with Choreography component in my bid to become a fotness instructor one day. We worked out a lot, and got to learn a lot of stuff, like fitness music beats per minute, and cueing… mainly it was fun!

It is also bitterly cold here, and we had a fresh dump of snow - the first snow came in on the morning of my daughter’s birthday about a week ago… It’s would be whickedly beautiful, if we haven’t had such a short and cold summer this year. But, as usual, here, the trees turn from green to white.

We also did have a very healthy turkey dinner that even my husband can cook (and he did, in a sense!). I skinned a cheapo whole turkey, seasoned its abundant breast with lemon pepper, and loaded it into the slow-cooker. The small slowcooker got loaded with chopped sweet potatoes, coconut and pecans. My husband then flicked the appropriate switches, and the dinner was ready when I came back home, save for gravy, a bit of mushing and topping the potatoes with mini-marshmellows. I am going to make stock from the left-over turkey.

We’ve also got 2 lovely pumpkins. Believe it or not, the store run out of canned pumpkins, so I got one for making pumpkin-cream cheese squares I promissed my husband. It’s easy to process, actually, I just cut it into 8 or so large chunks, and I microwave each for 20 min, then mush it, boil it up with a bit of sugar and salt, and put in sterilized glass jars to be stored in the fridge. I have a feeling we’ll have a lot of pumkin favored breads, muffins and what not over the next few months.

A beautiful Thanksgiving, yes. The only dumper is that I managed to pull my back when we were unloading the groceries, and couldn’t take my daughter out on Monday afternoon because of it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it heals quickly, and I can work-out again. I am planning to do a gentle stretching routine tomorrow morning… and will build up from there.

I still can’t believe how cold and snowy it is, and it’s only mid-October.

I saw these photos (link below), and I was not only stunned by their beauty, there was also some sort of a thought nagging at me when I looked at it. I finally managed to formulate it, and it may have come out as a platitude, but here it is: 

A Grain of Sand Doesn’t Need to Become a Pearl to be Beautiful

Link: http://geology.com/articles/sand-grains.shtml

I (blush) made myself a motivational poster with it. I feel that I need that reminder, because I tend to lose the sight of the most important thing chasing perfection and numbers sometimes. And the most important thing is that being fit is the best thing for the body you are in.

Other than that, it was my birthday today, and my husband woke up at 4 am to congratulate me and give me my gift - heart rate monitor! Are you surprised I left for work half an hour late?

Hope you all are having a MAGNIFICENT DAY!

… but did I pick a wrong day to have low-energy, slumlpy look and a bloat. A crisp good-looking male just made me all the more aware of how pathetic I appear today. The morale: one should never let herself to have a bad hair day in public!

So, on Saturday, I did my first serious run, exploring the trails in my new neighborhood. I went a wee bit too late to see the sunrise over the hills, so next weekend I will try it 15 or so min earlier.

It’s not as spectacular as my old places, where at some point I ran out on the bluff above the river, and could run trails on the terrace, but it is a good trail, that winds between the houses for a while, and then cuts between the two parts of the private golf-course for a bit, so you can see alot of the suburbia, plains taking off in the distance, and, if someone got up earlier - a glorious sunrise.

There is quite a few possibilities to extend a run (I was aiming for 30 min, but when it came close to 40, I did a couple of loops around our cul-de-sack to add it to 45).

All and all, I think it will be very nice, and I am looking forwrad to exploring it!

In the weightloss news, this month is shaping up as rather tough for keeping food on track. Housewarming party for 40 people or so on the 12th, United Way Bake Sale on the 15th (that’s where the leftover cookies from the HW party go, thankfully!), United Way Taste Of on the 6th of October and my daughter’s 3rd birthday party on the 10th.

So, I am putting my plans on hold for the moment, and will restart with a stricter diet in mid-October. Meanwhile, I will just try to stay under 120. I am having my doubts about it being wise to go lower than 117 anyway, since I am just not at my best that low. We’ll see.

Okay, that was not long, strenous, or major calorie-burning run… and my foot is still hurting a bit.

But my story (and I am darn sticking to it!) is that I was late for my precious first bus downtown. So, seeing it was 20 after 5 in the morning, stars out and nobody to witness, and I had my walk&run shoes on, I just went ahead and ran.

15 min instead of 22 min walking, both uphill and downhill, and yes, wearing a short red dress & a huge backpack with all the stuff I lag to and fro work (hey, I did that backpack bit before, running home). As I said - nobody to see me and appreciate any unintended comic side-effects.

For those result-oriented: I caught my bus! In fact I beat the sucker by 2 minutes (yeah, I did all sort of stretching at that bus-stop before, so I did it again).

And I got my runner’s high even from this short of a run.

I am thinking if I don’t get any noticeable aggravation to the annoying bunion, I will just leave my dress at work, put on a spare excersise gear for my going home, and repeat the run tomorrow morning. Too good to miss, before winter comes, and we have ice and snow… it’s unfortunately very close now.

Anyway, looking forward to my upper body workout at lunch Life’s good today!

And that FitDay journalling and logging site works out BEAUTIFULLY for me. I am not going back to the BS’s journal.

It seems that low intensity and eating very close to BMR worked for me in these 2 weeks. I am however surprised that I’ve lost that much in a week; I was thinking it would come off much slower. Must be all the gardening and unpacking! Lol, keeping busy, the first and foremost condition for the weight loss!

Weigh in Results: 115.8 lbs.

Measurements:

Chest: 33″

Waist: 26″

Hips: 35″

Thighs: 33.5″

So, 2 lbs in one week… that’s a lot for me. So far so good, no dizziness, no side-effects, so my long maintaining period (4 months) after losing the first 28 or so pounds helped. During my first leg, I couldn’t go under 117 lbs without feeling sick! Now I feel great. 

The inches are coming off the ‘right’ places, my waist and my thighs (I was 27″ in the waist and 34.5″ in the hips at ~118-120 lbs). So, I dearly hope that 2 more lbs is all I need to sculpt myself to size 2, which is 33-25-36.

I will apply myself to maintaining around 116 lbs for one or two weeks, since I do not think I will be able to sustain loss.

Okay, I broke down and re-set my goals. I really want to look great in a 2-piece bathing suit if we go to the tropics this January, so I will need a couple of months to stabilize the loss.

 I was planning to do it IN October, now I want to see if I can do it BY October. So, 5 lbs to lose and 3 months. I know the goal is a little bit low for someone my height, so my actual, main goal is actually NOT weight, but 25″ in my waist and ANYTHING in my thighs!!! My waist lags two sizes behind my chest and hips/thighs, I don’t know why.  I think 5 lbs is what I need to lose to get my proportions more even, but if less does that, I’ll take it.

 I still can’t run (bummer!) but I will walk and do my curcuits and strength and pilates and… whatever else I can think of.

That’s what you do when life hands you out a basket of lemons. 

My foot is a bit out of sorts (old bunion problem), so I had to miss one of my fav classes today (a dancy aerobics thinggy). Instead, I headed to the gym and went on the stationary bike for the first time.

Boy, it’s hard! Or maybe I shouldn’t have started with level 7? I did treadmill before, but yep, it uses some really cool muscles that running either doesn’t activate, or activates in a different way. I could only do 15 min cycling intervals, so I did a workout routine in between made from the 10 most effective excersises (in E-diet’s trainer view). Apart from lunges. Can’t do lunges because of my foot. What a pity! (A sly wink… if there is one excersise I hate, it’s lunges!)

I even used A Machine… for lateral bar pull down. Doesn’t matter that I wanted to sit down the wrong way round on it at first, and I suspect didn’t put my feet in the designated place… heh.

The main thing was I could excersise and I tried new things It was fun, and I didn’t notice how an hour slip away… well, apart from those 2 last minutes of my second cycling interval. Those lasted forever! Good thing I had wits enough to bring a book!

Real curious if I get sore tomorrow.

Have a glorious day, everyone!