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Monday, March 23, 2015

Make a Change Monday - Week 12


Before the close of 2014, I signed up for a 52 week challenge that was based on making one small change per week to become a happier and healthier person. This is hosted by a "new to me" site I have been following called the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans.  Click here to go to their challenge page, and check out their site for some other awesome stuff while you are there. This challenge is based off of the book "52 Small Changes: One Year to a Happier, Healthier You" written by Brett Blumenthal.


So this week's change is TAKE A DEEP BREATH!
I know I definitely don't do this enough and I really did not realize the value in taking time every day for deep breathing. The book highlights some of the benefits such as helping to relieve stress, lowering blood pressure and aiding in digestion. The author also says that by not breathing deeply, we are more susceptible to tension headaches because we are using our neck and shoulders to lift our rib cage instead of using our abdominal muscles when we deep breathe.  

So the author recommends taking time once per day to breathe deeply. And here are his tips for accomplishing this:

  1. Sit comfortably with your back straight.  Sitting cross-legged is often a position used.
  2. Put one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach.
  3. Take a deep breath through your nose.  The hand on your stomach should rise, while the hand on your chest should move very little if at all.
  4. Exhale through your mouth pushing out as much air as you can while contracting your abdominal muscles and pulling your belly button into your spine.  The hand on your stomach should move in as you exhale, but your other hand should move very little.
  5. Continue to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.  Try to inhale enough so your lower abdomen continues to rise and fall.
  6. Continue to do this for a total of ten breaths or until you feel relaxed.
I am really excited to try this throughout the week!  I know I have been feeling very stressed lately and this may be a key in helping relieve some of that stress!!!




So here is a summary of our weekly changes so far:
Week 1 - Drink half of your body weight in ounces everyday.
Week 2 - Get 7-8 hours of GOOD sleep each night.
Week 3 - Implement regular and routine activity into your lifestyle.
Week 4 - Keep a food journal.
Week 5 - Develop an optimistic outlook.
Week 6 - Take a multi-vitamin.
Week 7 - Keep the outside out. 
Week 8 - Eat your veggies.
Week 9 - Enjoy time alone.
Week 10 - Take time to stretch
Week 11 - Read the box.
Week 12 - Take a deep breath

By making one small change each week this year, we will be making huge steps towards becoming happier and healthier!

I am still on the search for more stories to share for Transformation Tuesday! If you would like a chance to tell your story, click here to fill out the form. I LOVE seeing all of the inspiration and we have to lift each other up! We are all in this together!


Sending you all love and healthy wishes!

Keep Losing,
Kari

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Scenes from the Weekend

KHope you all had an awesome weekend! I know we did! Just sharing a few pictures from my weekend!
My two boys and my nephew getting ready to head to Winter Jam with the youth group! They had to leave right after school Friday and didn't get home until about 2:45 in the morning!

Then my youngest had to leave at 7:30 Saturday morning for a school trip to Washington D.C.

And I got myself an Ariel trash can for my workout room! 


Yesterday I got to visit my my sister, brother-in-law and my two nephews. It was great to get to snuggle baby Spencer again!
Then today was church followed by an awesome lunch at El Rancho del Burrito where I had a naked burrito. 
Followed by some relaxing and puppy snuggles! 
And that was my weekend! Now settling in to watch The Walking Dead!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Sending you all love and healthy wishes!

Keep Losing,
Kari




Thursday, March 19, 2015

Thursday Weigh-In

Today has been a GREAT day! I'll admit the past few weeks have been very stressful and my healthy eating kinda took a back burner. I have been struggling with this back injury and was finally released to start back on easy activity. So today, I went back to the gym for the first time in about 6 weeks. I was really nervous, but it was wonderful to be back and it felt so good to get in a good workout. 


I also went back to Weight Watchers today for the first time since January. I was expecting a gain, I knew I was up from the steroids and the poor eating choices. Honestly, I was not up as much as I was expecting so that was a nice surprise. I was up about 10 pounds since January. It feels like I have really struggled lately, but I think I finally have my mind convinced that it is time to get back on track! 

So starting today, my weight is 337.6. I'm looking forward, not backwards. The number on the scale will not define me!

And even better is that today, I've been on track with water, food, and activity ALL day! I tracked my food in MFP and in my WW app. Woohoo!!!!!

That's it for today! This momma is exhausted and ready to relax and watch some TV and have a big bowl of yogurt and strawberries!

Sending you all love and healthy wishes!

Keep Losing,
Kari

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

What is tomorrow?????

This totally started out as a Facebook status, but I had way too many words  

Tomorrow, I'm finally able to return to my WW meeting. After a back injury, steroids, injections, no activity, comfort eating, and many pounds of weight gained back, I've been released to stop the meds and slowly start back the activity. My goal for tomorrow is to look at the number on the scale as my new starting point because seeing the gain would break my heart. I worked so hard to lose 106 pounds and I'm sure maybe half of that is back. So I'm going to the meeting, weighing in and using tomorrow as the first day in a new chapter of my journey. 

I also get to start back in with my trainer. He and I haven't got to work much together since Sam left and he took over and then I injured my back. 

So my goals for tomorrow:
1. Exercise
2. Track my food
3. WATER, WATER, WATER
4. Weigh in and stay for meeting even though I'll be disappointed

I'm ready! My life has been overwhelmingly chaotic and stressful. Routine doesn't exist and my OCD is about to drive my insane. This is one area in my life I can control right now!

So no matter what you're going through, focus on the things you can control and let God handle the rest. 

Each new decision in the right direction is a victory worth celebrating and each mistake is an opportunity to learn a better choice or behavior. 

Let's love life and ourselves!

Sending you all love and healthy wishes!

Keep Losing,
Kari

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Transformation Tuesday - Meet Dacia

Happy Transformation Tuesday!  I am SUPER excited to share Dacia's story with you today.  I even had the pleasure of meeting her last year at FitBloggin!  She is AWESOME! So, I am going to stop typing and share her story!



Hello everyone! I am excited to be a part of Kari’s weekly feature. I am pretty sure this is the first time I have ever been asked to participate in something like this J

My name is Dacia, I am 37 years old and I started blogging four years ago as a way to help keep me accountable on my weight loss journey. When I started out back in 2011 I weighed 286 pounds. I cannot tell you with absolute certainty that this was my highest weight because I hadn’t owned a scale prior to that point, so really it could have been higher.  Through blogging and social media I developed a support group that helped me grow and change and find friends and role models that inspired and motivated me. Although I have lost and maintained (for almost 3 years) the excess weight I carried, so much more than just the weight loss occurred throughout my journey.

I had hit my personal rock bottom and knew in that moment that if I didn’t change I was just going to continue to gain, to continue to get sicker, and basically throw away my life. I didn’t want that. More than anything else, I didn’t want that to happen. But I didn’t know where to start. Ok, maybe I knew where to start but I didn’t know how to make it stick. You see, I had been to this place before- that point of frustration with my weight and determination to make big changes but nothing before had ever worked. This time around someone told me, in not the nicest way, that I lacked the accountability to ever make a difference in my life and that was it…my ah-ha moment that helped move me forward. I knew this time around I needed some accountability. No one could make me eat a certain way or make me exercise other than me- and before this realization I think I always expected someone else to do the pushing, someone else to make me do things. But we all know that’s not how life works. No one can make me do something I don’t want to do. I needed to learn how hold myself accountable and that was my starting point.

Throughout the past four years I have made sooooooo many changes. Some of those changes I changed and changed again. To me, though, I think that is the way it should be. Always continuing to tweak and change your routine to fit into an ever-changing life. Early on, I joined Weight Watchers and that provided me with the basic tools I really needed to help get me on the right track. Prior to that point I didn’t understand portion control or tracking. The word moderation meant nothing to me. WW helped me create a good foundation. From there, after I had lost about 60 pounds or so, I started to take a more personal approach to help determine what types of foods would help support my lifestyle. I began to learn more about nutrition and the importance of different macro and micro nutrients. I changed from someone that relied on convenience and processed foods to someone that packed their lunch every day and created weekly menus based around eating primarily whole foods. On the activity front I was also changing. I went from a completely sedentary lifestyle to walking a few times a week, then riding the recumbent bike, then some weight machines at the gym, then yoga, boxing, Nia, pilates, Tai Chi, QiGong, Zumba, Boot Camp (I really love group fitness classes- can’t you tell), then cycling, and then after I had lost 110 pounds I started running. Once I was maintaining, I trained for and completed my first triathlon. Everything in my life on this journey was a progression. From reducing my soda intake, to cutting it out completely, to drinking primarily water (and of course beer on the weekends). From eating without control or consideration to eating with a purpose- this took at least a solid 6 or 8 months just to get to that point, and I still tweak my diet pretty regularly. My activity was the same way. I was wycwyc’ing before there was a popular phrase for it. I started out with what I could do and maintained and slowly progressed to doing more and doing other things.

My life today is so different than what it was in the beginning. Recently I wrote a post that goes into detail about that transformation so I won’t go into too much depth here (I am already taking up so much of Kari’s space) but all I can say is I wouldn’t recognize the person I was four years ago if she walked by me on the street, and it is not just because of the obvious physical changes although they are quite noticeable.  Four years ago I couldn’t comfortably walk up a flight of stairs, an entire medium pizza would have been dinner, I spent hour after hour in front of a TV, and I had no energy, I was sick all the time.  Life was very hard four years ago. It was a struggle, mentally and physically, just getting out of bed. Now I have a new perspective, something I needed to find in order to be successful, and here I am about to run my 7th half marathon, I eat more whole foods than most people would ever think possible (my salads fill up our largest mixing bowl), I have boundless energy and I sleep like a baby. I can do more today than I ever dreamed possible. And that feeling, the feeling of hopefulness mixed with excitement, is the best feeling to wake up to every day.

Being someone who has been able to lose and maintain a substantial amount of weight often opens me up to a lot of questions about how to do it or what worked. My advice, and I say this often, is to find what works for YOU. If what you are doing is making you miserable you will not be able to sustain those behaviors for very long. If you hate running, don’t run. If you hate eating celery, don’t eat celery. If you hate only getting 5 hours of sleep every night, get more sleep. I know that seems like ‘easier said than done’ advice but it is the truth. The whole ‘it’s a lifestyle change’ is the truth. There is no finish line, you don’t just workout for four hours a day and only eat salads, lose a bunch of weight, and then stop. That’s how people regain. It is about finding sustainable healthy habits that you can happily continue on with for the rest of your life. For me, I abide by the 80/20 rule (because I am just not Type A enough to live any other way) and make sure that 80% of my meals come from whole foods. I meal plan. I bring my lunch to work. I eat to fuel my body for activity and recovery. But that 20% allows me for dinners out with friends, a beer or two at happy hour, a cupcake. That 80/20 is my moderation. I don’t deprive myself of anything but I also know that the more crap I put in my body the crappier I will feel. And I deserve better. I encourage you to find what works for you, it’s a learning process and this will continually change and morph with you. But if you are not happy (truly happy, not just surface happiness) doing what you are doing today then you won’t be happy tomorrow or a week from now or a month from now. Period. And that happiness is what you will need to make your lifestyle sustainable. 


Wow, just wow!  Not much more I need to add to that!  She is simply amazing and I am so inspired by her blog and I love following her on Facebook.  I will list the links below so you can check her out as well!  Thanks you Dacia for sharing with us today!

http://myrootstogrow.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/MyRootsToGrow

am still on the search for more stories to share for Transformation Tuesday! If you would like a chance to tell your story, click here to fill out the form. I LOVE seeing all of the inspiration and we have to lift each other up! We are all in this together!

Sending you all love and healthy wishes!!!

Keep Losing,
Kari

Monday, March 2, 2015

Make a Change Monday - Week 9


Happy Monday!  It has been such a busy day so this post will be short and sweet!

Before the close of 2014, I signed up for a 52 week challenge that was based on making one small change per week to become a happier and healthier person. This is hosted by a "new to me" site I have been following called the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans.  Click here to go to their challenge page, and check out their site for some other awesome stuff while you are there. This challenge is based off of the book "52 Small Changes: One Year to a Happier, Healthier You" written by Brett Blumenthal.


.
This week's change is to enjoy time alone!  This can be so difficult for us mothers as it seems our job never ends! But making time for ourselves is so important so we don't get burned out and grouchy!! Lol  
And let's face it, we really can fit in a half an hour per day for ourselves if we really take time to look over our schedule and think about the time we spend doing things that are not all that important!  Here are a few ways to spend your alone time:
  • Reading
  • Quiet time with God
  • Exercise
  • Take a nice walk
  • Take a bath
  • Sit on the porch and enjoy nature
So this week try to find a way to spend 30 minutes per day ON YOU!!!

So here is a summary of our weekly changes so far:
Week 1 - Drink half of your body weight in ounces everyday.
Week 2 - Get 7-8 hours of GOOD sleep each night.
Week 3 - Implement regular and routine activity into your lifestyle.
Week 4 - Keep a food journal.
Week 5 - Develop an optimistic outlook.
Week 6 - Take a multi-vitamin.
Week 7 - Keep the outside out. 
Week 8 - Eat your veggies.
Week 9 - Enjoy time alone.

By making one small change each week this year, we will be making huge steps towards becoming happier and healthier!

I am still on the search for more stories to share for Transformation Tuesday! If you would like a chance to tell your story, click here to fill out the form. I LOVE seeing all of the inspiration and we have to lift each other up! We are all in this together!

Sending you all love and healthy wishes!


Keep Losing,
Kari

Share with me one way you will spend time alone this week?