Progress!

I'm slowly losing weight again, hooray! It goes on so easily but then takes forever to come off, but it is what it is, so I have to just keep going. I'm about 12 pounds down after 3 and a half months so that's progress!I'm still weighing and measuring my food and will probably have to continue with that for the rest of my life, because when I don't weigh and measure I gain. I haven't been to my exercise classes as consistently as I had hoped but I did go to Zumba twice last week. I was going to go to yoga today but I'm having a bit of a fibro day so I skipped it, plus I realized I don't like group classes when they get over crowded. Zumba classes at 7:00 are super crowded so I'm trying to go at 6:00 now, but the 6:00 classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and EVERY dang blasted evening activity I have to go to (meetings, kids' performances, etc.) seems to fall on a Tuesday lately. It's very frustrating. Yoga is super packed now too so everyone is squeezed in and I feel very uncomfortable with it; I'm a little claustrophobic I suppose. I love the studio I go to and the teacher is the most warm hearted, loving person you could ever hope to meet, but she's really outgrown her space. I'm happy for her that her classes are filling up and it's great that her business is thriving, but I miss the classes with only a few people in them. Sigh...

But other things are afoot these days! I am going back to school AGAIN to take coursework for certification to teach health. I've been considering a Master's degree in nutrition and that is the ultimate goal, but I was thinking about what I want to do with a Master's degree in nutrition, and one of the possibilities was to teach high school. (My fav grades to teach are 11th and 12th.) So, I looked up the requirements to teach health, and I can get that certification with 5 classes, one of which is a nutrition class, so I am taking that and human sexuality in the fall. The nutrition class will enable me to see if that really is something I want to pursue, so things kind of fell in to place. The pre-requisites for the Master's program start with chemistry and I was looking into the chem classes at the local college, but either the professors were horrible (thank you ratemyprofessors.com) or the classes were at a campus on the other side of the county or they started at the crack of dawn. (8:00 am classes? No, thank you!) Or they were on Tuesday nights- absolutely not!! I can try again in January, see what they offer for chemistry for that semester, or over the summer next year, and in the meantime, get that health certification. I'd love to teach high school health! It may kill me due to the fibro, but I would love it until it did. :)

Speaking of things killing me, I'm also going to take Zumba instructor training in July. It's an 8 hour, one day course, but if I take that and update my 1st Aid/CPR training (and I always try to keep that up to date) then I can teach Zumba! How crazy is that?! Me, teaching fitness classes! (If I'm in front of the class I don't have to worry about not being able to see the teacher through the crowds, either.) ;) That's something that will also help with teaching a health class; I need to set a good example, after all. Oh and hey, Zumba is really making a difference- there's a lot of squatting and it's making my legs a lot stronger, and, dare I say it, I think my flat white girl butt is getting a bit more rounded- woo hoo! It's not so great for my feet, but I'm tired of letting my horrible feet determine what I can and can't do. I want to dance so I'm going to dance, dad gummit. I've given up all sorts of dance classes due to my feet and not being able to find the proper dance shoes to fit my water skis, but you use sneakers for Zumba and I can put orthotics in them, so I'm dancing my heart out. Seriously, I've taken classes for ballet, jazz, and belly dancing and had to give up all of them due to the footwear. (Or lack of footwear for belly dancing- my bare feet on a hard surface? No, no no no no no, that did not work.)

So fun things are happening in my life! Losing weight, getting healthy, learning new things. It's all good, and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to handle it due to the fibro, but I'm sure going to try.

Here We Go Again

After losing 40 pounds in 2007, I kept off most of it for a very long time. I crept up 20 pounds and held there for many years, but recently I regained the rest of it so now it's time to get serious again. To back up a bit, there are reasons why I regained. First of all, vacations. Vacations just did not help in the weight management department, especially when I would say to myself "well, I'll be walking enough to balance out any over-eating", only, yeah, no. Didn't quite work that way. I'd gain 3, 4, maybe 5 pounds (or in the case of a 3 week 2009 trip to Europe, 9 pounds) and then never quite manage to get it back off. The next issue was a two year stint as a vegetarian, and thinking "well, I won't be eating meat, so I can eat all of these starchy carbs to make up my proteins", only, yeah, no. If you are trying to manage your weight as a vegetarian then focus on vegetables and salads, not carbs, carbs, and more carbs. I finally had to go back to meat when I got sick with severe anemia, and then I turned out to be allergic to prescription iron supplements. (I'm actually allergic not to the iron but to the sulfa the iron is mixed with, and ALL of the prescription supplements have it.) Oh, and the anemia made it impossible to lose weight as well, of course. I lost about a year to the anemia and still have to fight not to slip back into it even now. Let me tell you, it's no fun; it sucks the life out of you. I had no energy to do anything; I don't know how I managed to function as much as I did. (The doctors were threatening to put me in the hospital and give me transfusions at one point- I was pretty darn bad off.) So that's my tale of woe with my weight, and the whole time I was watching it go up since I weigh myself every morning when I get up. Every. Morning.

And every morning I would say to myself "today's the day, I'm going to get it together and get back to my goal weight", and sometimes I would manage to lose a pound or two, but I always gained that back plus a little more.

Until now. I'm over the worst of it with the anemia (I hope) and I have a good framework in place for exercise, and I'm back to weighing, measuring, and logging my food, which is key. I've lost about 8 pounds so far and that's very encouraging. I didn't think I could do it many, many times during the past nine years since 2007, but now I am! I feel very resolved and focused, much more than I have in a long, long time.

As for exercise, I am trying to go to Zumba classes (which I absolutely ADORE) twice a week, yoga once a week, (a deep stretch class), archery twice a week, and then walk the dogs most days. I also have some light exercises I try to remember to do daily, a good toe touch stretch, a few squats, some stretches for plantar fasciitis and shoulders to work out the kinks from arthritis, and some kegels. I often don't stick to the plan and do everything, but it's a goal to strive for!

For food, I try to make every bite count nutritionally and avoid "empty" calories. I'll have a small treat every few days but not daily. I've been eating a lot of salads (I <3 romaine lettuce) and making green smoothies. I'm also trying to meal prep a bit, but I have a teen boy in the house so anything I make often gets swiped before I can get it into the refrigerator!! (Although if I can get it in the refrigerator he'll leave it alone; he hates leftovers.) If I can keep some chicken on hand, or some type of lean protein, then I've got the basis for a meal. Hubby frequently makes salads and I can throw some chicken on that for a very satisfying lunch or dinner. We don't eat together as a family much anymore, which breaks my heart, but we're all running in different directions all the time with very different schedules, so we aren't usually all at home at meal time. Add our differing diets (one vegan, one vegetarian, one soy intolerant and sulfa allergic, one full on carnivore, and one who will eat anything, oh and 4 of us are lactose intolerant, just to make things interesting) and it's really getting impossible to plan meals for all of us anyway. We mostly all fend for ourselves now, which is getting very trying. Five people all cooking their own meals every day makes a lot of mess in the kitchen and is super inefficient, but what can you do? Almost forgot- we also cook a "top dressing" for the dogs too, so they get kibble with some type of cooked meat on top for two meals per dog per day. ARGHHHH!!!

So that's where things stand now. A constantly messy kitchen, but I'm losing weight again and I CAN do it! I'll check back with my progress every now and again, and maybe some of my recipes.