A Slap in the Face for me and You

Lately I've been thinking about how I've spent most of my life slightly over weight. I was never the thin girl or the healthy girl. Looking back I would have never called myself fat outside of a short stint in elementary school but definitely wasn't healthy.

Ready for the slap? Here it comes. Being over weight was a choice that I made. By making the choice to eat whatever I wanted and to sit on the couch watching TV versus exercising I made the choice that those things were more important to me than losing weight and being healthy. After spending so much time and energy feeling bad about not being that healthy girl I wanted to be I slowly forgot about the "choice factor" in all of this. It became this big thing that was out of my control. I was destined to be a slightly overweight girl my whole life. It was the card that was dealt to me and I would just have to accept that.

S L A P

This was my choice! I have control over what I eat, I have control over how much work my body does or doesn't do, I can decide if I'm going to give in to being "that girl" my whole life, or if I am going to step up to the plate, take responsibility for my life and change. If we traded in the time that we spend complaining about how we don't like how we look or feel with exercise and healthy eating we would be in the best shape of our lives.

So where does this start? How do we change? I think it really starts with training our brains to think differently. We need to start thinking that it's possible to be different than we think we have to be. We need to stop with all of the excuses that we let rule our lives and thoughts. We need to want something more for ourselves than the standards that we've been living up to. Ultimately, we need to have hope.

Those are all of my thoughts for now. I hope that this cry for hope fills your heart and inspires you to be something more than you think you have to be.

I'm Back! Insanity and the7 Stages of Grief

Hey everyone! I am back to blogging and I'm back on my game as far as being healthy goes. Yay!

To recap, after the birth of my daughter (almost 10 months ago) I decided to get serious about my health. I was working out every day and was eating really well. I ran a 5k, did something called the Warrior Dash, and lost quite a bit of weight. All the while my daughter, who has always been a terrible sleeper, was waking up about 5 times a night. I finally got to the point where I was really burning out and decided to take a break from working out and save that energy for necessary things, like going to the bathroom :). In my mind my daughter would be sleeping well in a short period of time and it would be an easy transition, that was not the case. Finally, at 9 3/4 months, my daughter has been sleeping through the night. I am so excited that I've had extra energy to clean my house and I finally feel capable of taking care of my body by working out. I should let all of you know that my pattern of being completely on or completely off about being healthy wasn't any different this time around, which is something I'm pretty disappointed about. While I wasn't exercising I was eating really poorly. I gained back some weight but not all of what I lost, which I'm really thankful for. I'm still 13lbs below my pre pregnancy weight at 162.

So what am I doing now you ask? Well I just started a really intense workout video called INSANITY. Insanity claims to be one of the hardest workouts that you can do on a video and I am a believer. Because it's so hard you get results fast, which is what I'm looking for since we're going on a family vacation to Puerto Rico at the end of February!

With Insanity you start by doing a fit test. This sounded pretty easy before I actually did it. The fit test consists of doing 8 different exercises as many times as you can in the allotted amount of time that you're given. The idea behind the fit test is that you push yourself to your limits and redo the fit test every two weeks so that you can see clearly how you're improving. I love that aspect of this program. When I was doing Jillian Michaels videos (which I still like, don't get me wrong), she would say things like "Remember how hard this used to be?", but honestly, I never really remembered. It was all just a painful blurry mess of sweat and yelling. I love how clearly I will be able to (hopefully!) see my improvement. The fit test lasted about 30 minutes and during those 30 minutes I think I went through all of the stages of grief. Let me go through them for you:

1. Shock/denial: This would apply to the point of deciding I would do Insanity until the moment that I started. I tend to think I'm capable of anything and I'm generally really dedicated once I start something. Being that I knew there was no going back once my mind was made up the moments, hours, days preceding the fit test were filled with me telling myself over and over "I'm sure it won't be that bad", "You survived Jillian Michaels, this can't be much harder", or I just completely blocked out the fact that I was about to have my world rocked by a little thing called Insanity.

2. Pain and Guilt. Ok, I'm just going to go with the pain aspect of this one. Man, it was painful to push my body to that limit. It wasn't painful like "you should stop because you're hurting yourself", it was painful like, "Remember all of those Christmas cookies? Well this is payback." My throat immediately felt like I had swallowed a fireball and about 5 minutes in I was ready to throw up everything I had ever eaten. I have never been that physically distressed before in my life.

3. Anger and Bargaining: This was another pretty intense stage for me. I kept thinking in my head all of the reasons I should stop working. I, thankfully, didn't. This one mostly came in after the fit test was over though. When I was looking at my scores right after the overwhelming relief of being done, I realized that I scored high in two areas. That means something is wrong because I am not physically capable of scoring high at any physical activity at the moment. We realized one of the numbers needed to be split in half because we counted it wrong, but then my husband told me that I didn't have the best form in the other, which is probably why I scored so high. I have really good work ethic and wouldn't feel right about taking a score that I didn't earn. The realization that I was going to have to immediately turn that video back on and do MORE work just about killed me. I definitely yelled a little at this point. Happy Nyki was out of town.

4. Depression: Ok, so that's a little extreme, but about half way through I definitely didn't know how I was going to make it through. At some points I was just collapsed on the floor saying over and over "I can't do this, I'm going to die". You know when you commit to something and then finally have to do this impossible task and you say to yourself, "Self, what in the HECK were you thinking? Seriously Self, what was going through your stupid brain that would make you think this was a good idea?". I would say this was the stage that I stayed at during the majority of this workout video.

5. The Upward Turn: According to the site that I'm getting these stages from the "Upward turn" refers to the point where the depression lifts slightly. I would say that would have been when there was about 5 minutes left on the clock. I can do just about anything for 5 minutes so I knew that somehow I would survive.

6. Reconstruction/Working Through: This would have been the cool down/stretch part of the video. I just had to work through this last little step in order to be done with this painful and terrifying experience. My brain seemed to be slowly becoming more functional (though it took at least an hour post-fit test before I could do something as simple as typing.

7. Acceptance/Hope: I did it! I took short breaks throughout the video but I finished and I finished strong. You are overwhelmed with such a deep, unique satisfaction when you push your body to its limits and you succeed. We spend our lives underestimating what we're capable of in almost all aspects of our lives, so it is SO refreshing to be on the other side of a workout like that knowing that you could do more than you thought.

I started on Sunday with the fit test and woke up on Monday SO INCREDIBLY SORE. My calves felt like they were being cut off with a chainsaw and my back muscles (which I didn't know existed until Monday Morning) made me have to bend into this little hunchback position while walking, which was really awkward. Although I was in pain I pressed play on Monday for my first real workout. The normal workouts are about 45 minutes. It was really, really hard but I finished. Then I woke up this morning (Tuesday) even more sore than the day before! I pressed play again today and survived another day of Insanity (literally).

I'll be working out 6 days a week and will be eating five 300 calorie meals a day.

I think I've probably scared anyone reading this out of doing this workout video, but my hope is that eventually my before and after pictures will push all of the fear out of your head and you will take the jump too!

Post Camp Update

Hey everyone! It's been so long- it's time to update!

It's Deeper Life time again! I have been going to the same camp in Blackduck, MN for the last.... 15 years. I counseled for, I believe, 10 years, and this year I figured I wouldn't be able to go to camp since I have a baby. I asked the person in charge of staffing if there was anything that we could do as a family and found out that they needed a camp nurse for the 9th and 10th grade week so we signed up. Camp was June 26th- July 2nd, so we got done at camp and went straight to camping at my aunt's house in Bemidji for the 4th and came home late Monday night.

Camp was really good, but definitely different. After counseling for so many years it was really hard to be in a position that wasn't as intense. I had to keep reminding myself that this season of life is about being a mom and getting to be at camp at all was a huge blessing. As the week went on I had some great conversations and we had some great moments as a family. We brought Zoe to the lake one day and she got to go in the lake for the first time. She went in a pool (quickly) at 2 weeks, but had never been in the lake before. At first she hated it (it was pretty chilly) but didn't mind once her butt was in the water. We only had her in there long enough to snap a few quick pictures but it was fun. Wednesday night at camp was a really intense and redemptive night at camp and from that point on you could really see a difference in the lives of the kids.

Now to talk about my healthy lifestyle, or lack of a healthy lifestyle, while I've been away. I had big plans to do Ripped in 30 every day at camp. I don't know why this didn't occur to me, but I had absolutely no space to do it. Even if I would have rearranged my entire cabin I don't think I could have fit in the exercises. That went out the window immediately. My second plan was that I would run every day and with 90 degree days that went out of the window pretty quickly too. Overall I ended up going for one run in the entire time I was gone (a little over a week). As far as eating goes, that was also really hard. All of my meals were made for me so I had to eat what was made. I tried to eat in moderation but I still ate dessert when given to me and made a lot of poor and reckless choices in regards to food. This experience has been a good example of what you would call a fail.

In the past, when dealing with issues of being healthy, if I failed I would just quit. I've never been able to mess up with eating or exercising and get back on the horse. With the craziness that my life has been since getting home I haven't been back on track yet. This time I plan to get back on track again. Tonight I'm going running so that will be a good start. I got new shoes and I'm so excited to try them out! I've been having quite a bit of pain in my right heel when walking or running so hopefully good, supportive shoes help. The good news in all of this is that even though I didn't lose weight while I was gone, I didn't gain any either, so I haven't back tracked.

Update! Since writing the first part of this I weighed myself again and am now 21 lbs lighter than my pre-pregnancy weight! YES! It feels good to be 153! I can't tell a huge different in how I look other than my thighs, they seem like half the size they used to be :).

I have many more thoughts so there will probably be an explosion of new posts soon since I haven't had the chance to post for so long!

Ripped in 30

This is our new workout called Ripped in 30. If you haven't been following my blog, here's a quick recap: I had a baby and then started out doing Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred. During those 30 days I changed my eating habits and ended up losing 12-13 lbs and went down in pant size. After that I spent two weeks running and then ran a 5k. Now I'm on to my next workout adventure, which is this video.

This video has been pretty similar to the Shred so far. It's another circuit workout, which means that you do 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio, and one minute of abs, three times through (with a warm up and cool down). The work outs are 24 minutes long and one difference with this video is that there are 4 levels instead of three. They are broken up into weeks, with week 4 being called "Madness" (which makes me shiver a little). This video seems a little bit more difficult than the Shred so we didn't skip ahead to higher levels, we started off on week 1. Today will be day 7, meaning that tomorrow we will move on to week 2. It definitely makes you sweat but it's only 24 minutes so it's completely do able. If you click here it will take you to Amazon where this video is about $10. Also, if you have Netflix and don't need the DVD portion for the next month, you can get this DVD through Netflix too.

I would recommend that you all incorporate some sort of circuit training into your workouts. I recently learned that the difference in circuit training is that it kicks up your metabolism, which causes you to keep burning more calories through the day when you're not working out. This is why a 24 minute video can make such a big difference in your looks and health.

So I started Ripped in 30 at 159 lbs. I just weighed myself after 6 days of working out (8 days total) and I am now 155! It's been so awesome to watch that number drop. I'm starting to slowly lose that hopeless feeling that I've always had regarding my weight. It can be done!

PLEASE READ: I just want to throw it out there that I am breastfeeding, and that makes a difference in my weight loss. By just feeding my baby I'm burning about an extra 500 calories a day. If you're not nursing a baby right now you're not getting this advantage so please don't compare your weight loss to mine, it's not fair. You can lose weight though, and you will if you just stick to it!

People actually read this?

I keep having people mention my blog, or tell me that they have read it. That is so awesome! I honestly didn't think that anyone would take the time to read it so I'm glad that people are and hopefully they're getting some motivation.

This last week was pretty hard. Mac's work schedule changed to one where he's gone from the time we wake up until I'm putting Zoe to sleep. I'm used to getting his help at night when he gets home, so the result of this has been an extremely tired Nyki. I've worked out almost every day but there were a couple days where I felt too exhausted to do anything that day.

After my "tired week" I have two thoughts that I've been processing. The first thought is that I need to have grace for myself or this "healthier living" is going to be short lived. There will be days when, because of whatever circumstances, I am too exhausted to work out and that's OK. I cannot be perfect. As Jillian Michaels says in Ripped in 30, "Perfect sucks!", ha ha. My second thought was that although it's ok to take a break some time, I can't live in a world of excuses. Yes, sometimes it would be healthier to not work out and take a personal day, but you could probably come up with a reason to take a personal day every day. The fact of the matter is that life is generally pretty wearing. We live in a "busy" society. You don't just lose weight and become a healthy person without effort, so some days this looks like working out even when I'm exhausted.

Now I'm off to tell you about our new adventure called Ripped in 30...

5k Update!

Saturday was finally the day of the 5k. The two weeks before the 5k were supposed to be dedicated to running, but with 90 degree weather that didn't work out well and my friend and I only ran a few times, leaving me feeling pretty nervous and unprepared. I kept questioning whether or not I was really capable of running a 3.1 mile race 3 months after having a baby.

The day of the race was here! I woke up early and took a warm bath to try to loosen up my calves (they were sore from running the day before, which I shouldn't have done). The bath seemed to help a lot. I then ate a small breakfast and put on my workout clothes. The night beforehand my friend and I decided that we should go and get some fun new workout clothes, so we did. My thought was that my awesome new clothes might just distract everyone from noticing how out of shape I was :). Before we went shopping I decided that I wanted a shirt that was the color of a tennis ball and some shorts, and that's just what I got. My brother (and parents) were visiting from Bemidji and my brother had agreed to do the 5k with me, so my brother, Mac, and I got into the car and headed to the 5k. We got to the St. Francis High School where the 5k started and registered. Last years shirts were tan and not very attractive at all. This years shirts were burnt orange (one of my least favorite colors) with blue and green font.... very, very ugly. This was a bummer considering that at least 10% of the reason I was doing the 5k was for the shirt. I wonder how many 5k's I will have to run before I can get a nice looking shirt?

The whistle blew and we were off! My friend and I intended on running together but once we started things were changed up a bit. My friend ended up running with Mac since they were both a bit faster (7 minutes to be exact) and my brother stuck with me. He ended up being the least encouraging running partner ever. He kept telling me how slow I was going and even stopped to point out that my jogging was as fast as his walking pace. It ended up being pretty great though because I don't get to spend much time with him and after he got all of the discouraging words he could think of out of his head we were able to have some good, deep conversation, which I wasn't expecting.

41 minutes after the whistle blew I crossed the finish line and finished the 5k without walking. My time is pretty slow but my only goal was to jog the entire way and I did it! I really love the feeling after finishing a race, even though I was super slow I felt like I could do anything after that. The world was my oyster the moment after crossing that finish line.

Now to my next goal. Before the end of the year is up I would like to run a 10k (6.2 miles), again with the only goal being that I would jog the entire time. I am going to look at the different options for this soon and I'll update when I choose one.

Breakfast

I just finished cooking and eating breakfast. I had 2 fried eggs (fried in a very small amount of olive oil), 2 pieces of toast with a very small amount of margarine on each piece, half cup of orange juice, and a banana. I'm full and feeling ready to go for the day!

My question to you, reader, is: Does eating (or not eating) breakfast affect how you feel during the day? Do you have any fun breakfast suggestions?

Personally, I can tell a huge difference in my day if I don't make time for breakfast. I am sluggish, tired, and unmotivated. I also seem happier when I eat breakfast because it just feels like the day was started off right. In an article by the Mayo Clinic here it talks about how breakfast keeps you from unhealthy snacking later in the day, fasting too long (by missing breakfast) can cause you to store fat and gain weight, people who tend to eat breakfast eat a healthier diet throughout the day because they start on the right track, and you have more energy if you eat breakfast, leading to more physical activity (which burns calories!).

FOOD:

- I usually eat the egg meal I ate today if I have time or a Kashi granola bar and a piece of fruit if I'm in a huge hurry. I eat a lot of hard boiled eggs at breakfast so I will boil about 10 of them at a time (Mac eats a lot of them too) and I will put them in their own egg carton marked "Hard Boiled" so that I can easily grab one for breakfast or a quick snack.

-Here are some links for fun, smart breakfast options! Please add your own in the comment section too.

* This page is titled "Smart Breakfast Ideas For Children", but I think anyone would enjoy these meals.

*This site talks about healthy living as a whole and if you scroll down it gives some good breakfast meal ideas.

*This is my favorite page so far because it has an easy to read lay out full of good meal options.