New Pants

So this month has been a bit disappointing. We have not had weigh-in yet, but I know so far the scale has not moved for me. I'm not putting any weight on, but no negative numbers yet either. Its only one week until weigh-in so hopefully this week I can be extra good and get some good numbers. It should help that I work this weekend and will not be sitting at home stuffing my face all the time.

The real story I want to share is the story of a pair of pants. I have been told in the last month that my clothes look bad. All of my pants are sagging in the rear area. While I have noticed this, I have not paid much attention to it, because 1. They are still comfortable, 2. I'm cheap and don't want to buy new ones yet, and 3. Most people only see me from the chest up or I have on a white jacket so it doesn't matter. I really want to loose about 10 more pounds before I buy new clothes. This week though I decided to check out the clearance rack at Ann Taylor's when I had a few extra minutes. They had some cute jeans and I decided to try on a pair. I picked up a 14 (the size I have the most of though a size smaller than what I was wearing) and then decided to pick up a 12 also. I actually went into the dressing room and tried them on. Those that know my shopping habits know that I pretty much know what is size I need and hardly ever try things on. I'm glad I went in and tried them on. In the dressing room, I went ahead and just tried the 12 on for S&G. I thought, you never know I might actually be able to fit in them. Lo and Behold, The 12 slid right on and was loose. LOOSE I tell you! I might have freaked out a bit. Then, I decided to not try on a smaller size. Not sure my exact reason, but I will tell you that it revolved around what if this was a fluke and you know if the smaller size fits you'll buy them and do you really want to spend that much.

Well I ended up thinking about it all night that night and then all day the next day. That day I had a little bit of time to kill before going out to dinner and decided I had to go try on the 10s. I went in grabbed the pair and then spotted a really cute sweater. It was only in a size large. I never buy a large sweater always an extra large. I decided to try it on as well. In the dressing room I held my breath and pulled on the jeans. They slid on okay, over my thighs which can be a test, and then I tried to button them. Lets just say that I held my breath. And....They fit. Perfectly! Even after I let out my breath. I felt so awesome! I may have even teared up a bit. It has been forever since I fit into a 10. Needless to say I bought them. Oh yeah and the sweater it looks great too. Holla! I just hope they continue to look good or even get a little to big. Even the hubby agreed once I tried them on for him. So here's to hoping for a good weight loss week.

Missing in Action

So the last couple of weeks have been a bit rough. We have been short of help at work lately and along with me being sick and Mike being sick it have been hard to get anything done. Hopefully, things will start evening out in the next couple of weeks.

I have a couple of updates. I'm still doing P90X, although I haven't been as religious about it. But I'm still trying to keep up. At least 4 days a week I'm belting out a DVD. I can tell that its working, because I can do more of the reps and keep up a lot better. I enjoy most of the videos, but I like the Core and Cardio ones the best. I am in love with the X-Strentch DVD. It is just a relaxing, working jaunt through a lot of different stretching moves.

So has it paid off??? Well I'm gonna be honest and say that I did not take my 30 day pictures. Why? Well one I was worried that I wouldn't see a difference, two I was pretty sick when those were supposed to be taken, and just a little laziness. I did get around to redoing my measurements for 30 days. It was actually around 35-36 days. This was an awesome experience. I lost a total of close to 9 inches. Not in all the places I wanted to, but still they are gone. Hopefully for good. I lost 1 inch around my neck, 3 around my waist, 2 around my hips, and the worst is 3 around my chest. My arms and legs I'm not gonna count because they both went up a bit, but not by much.

I'm still trying to stick to a good diet also. I have been pretty good all in all. I'm actually getting to where I'm getting full. This doesn't happen to me. I decreased the portion size of my food and now I can't always clean my plate. If you know me you know that is odd. I kinda like it though. So has this worked as well? Yep it has. I had weigh-in for Well's Weighs-In yesterday. This was our 60day weigh-in. I was a little keyed up about it, because the last weigh-in was a little disappointing. I weighed my self the day before and when I went in for the official measurement it wasn't the same in the wrong direction. This time I weighed myself at the Y the day before and was pleasantly surprised with the results. So when I went in yesterday I was expecting to be disappointed. I was not disappointed at all! I weighed in at 175.something. Awesome! So that makes an official 13 pounds since the initial weigh-in. YAY!!! I'm so excited.

So as a recap: I'm still on the path, but have had bumps along the way. I've lost 9 inches and 13 pounds. I just hope that I can keep this up and not hit a plateau until I at least hit 20 pounds down. Lets see what I can do.

I also plan to keep this up better too.

Oh yeah and I've been accused of having droopy a** syndrome. My goal is to loose another 8-10 pounds before I let myself buy new clothes. Can't wait!

Jeff-fuh-fuh Dun-Ham! TeeHee!

My last week has been busy. Between the flu and work it has made me a little run down. I have still been trying to get my work out in every day and have done a decent job of it. I am still having a bit of a problem with shortness of breath and coughing, but other than that I've been trying. I start week 4 tomorrow. I hope I can remember that things change next week and the week after that. I'm excited. I have 9 more days until its picture day again. I really hope that I can see a difference. When I look in mirror I really can not tell a difference, but my clothes are fitting differently so that seems like a good thing.

So I had to switch my schedule around and worked a Monday. I don't normally work Mondays. It wasn't horrible, but it was busy. I switched my schedule to be able to go to the Jeff Dunham show in Fort Wayne last night. Mike and I went with my brother and sister in law. Mike and I started watching Jeff Dunham on Comedy Central several years ago. His shows are those that you always stop on and watch no matter how many times you have seen them.

We met for dinner before hand at Ruby Tuesdays. Mike and I both had the Cowboy Steak. It was really good. I had the barbecue sauce on the side and didn't use it at all. I also had a salad and the grilled green beans. I definitely recommend the green beans. I had been to Ruby Tuesdays before and  it was okay, but not my favorite. I really enjoyed dinner last night. I hadn't eaten a lot through the day knowing we were going out and everything tasted good.

We then drove across the street to the Coliseum and braved the cold again to hike inside. By the way, it was really cold last night. Here's a shocker, we were on time. LOL. We had seats on the floor pretty close up. A little after 7:30, the first act came out. It was the Dancing Trombone player. I definitely recommend that you check out some of his clips on his site or on YouTube. He was awesome. My sister-in-law and I were both dancing and laughing. It was great. I think I could have watched him perform for a lot longer. The next act was the Guitar Guy and he was pretty good. Man could he play. His songs were pretty good and I laughed quite a bit. We then had a 15 minute intermission.

Once Jeff-fuh-fuh came out I think I laughed for the next 2 hours. It was great. We all loved it. He did a bit to start out showing old pictures from his past and they were hilarious! OMG! Then we got to see Walter. I love Walter. He cracks me up. Then came Peanut and his craziness. I love purple guys! I also got to see Jose Jalapeno on a Steek. I know that I'm weird, but he may be my favorite. Mike's favorite came out next Achmed the Dead Terrorist. Complete craziness, he is insane. LOL! There was a new puppet last night. It was Achmed's son. I can't remember his name today though. He was different. We didn't get to see Bubba J, Sweet Daddy Dee, or Melvin the Superhero. I was hoping that we would get to see everybody, but figured we wouldn't. I love the other guys too. I would definitely recommend his show to anyone. It was great. Mike and I were still laughing on the drive home.

I downloaded these images from the website. Just so you could see the characters if you were not familiar with them.

Have a great night!

Homemade Chai Tea Concentrate

Yay! I don't know about you, but I love Chai Tea. Anytime I am close to a Starbucks I stop and pick one up. Usually it is the humongous one with some whipped cream. Love them! I like the mixes that you can buy too, but they always seem so expensive. Not that the Starbucks ones are not crazy expensive.

I have been noticing recipes on the net to make your own concentrate. Now this intrigues me, because looking at the list of ingredients I have most of these spices in my cabinet. I have not used much of anyone of them, so they are just hanging out in my dark cupboard. I decided to give it a try. If I did not like it I wasn't out much right?

I found the recipe here. I love Tasty Kitchen. They have some awesome recipes and ideas on here. I studied the recipe. I'm not sure why. It looks really very simple, but I have never made anything like this before so I wanted to make sure I had everything straight in my brain.

It was very easy to make. Basically you throw everything in a pot of boiling water and let it steep for 15-20 minutes depending on how strong you want it. I wanted mine a little stronger so I left it in there the full 20 minutes.

It was awesome! Tasted great, was not overpowered by the milk, and just all around good. My only words of caution would be to watch how much ginger you put in there. I think I may have put to much. It has a bit of a bite. I did not take any pictures because I basically forgot. I will next time I make it so that you can see what I did. I definitely recommend that you try this if you like chai tea, but do not like the cost.

More Snow, Still Sick, and Week 3 Day 1

So I woke up this morning late again. Still feeling bad, but hopefully I'm going to start feeling better soon. As I was getting up I look out side and see that it is snowing again. Yay! At the time it looked like it was just flurrying. I did not think to much about it. I was hoping that my BFF would be up and wanting to do CoreX today. I have still been trying to work out as much as I can without falling over or coughing my head off. I missed 2 days last week, but made one of them up. Today was supposed to be Core. I did it, but it was rough. I coughed and coughed through part of it. That's core work right? I did not really fall over either. I did have to stop afterward and take a nap. It absolutely wore me out. I'm happy I made it through it though.

After working out, I looked back out the windows and realized that we had gotten about 2 inches of snow. Ugh, this is on top of all the snow we already had. Ugh. As the day went on it just kept snowing. Now we have about 4-6 inches. I went ahead and fed the horses early so that I could see what I was doing. It was not easy. Still had to worry about the layer of ice underneath the snow and falling through that to the snow underneath. On top of that though you had to trudge through the extra snow. Once I was finally inside, I snuggled up on the couch.

So I'm kinda proud of myself that I've made it to the 3 week mark of P90X. I really wasn't sure if I would put up with the time commitment for this program. I'm glad I have so far. I put on a belt Thursday that I wear all of the time and it went right past where I always wear it and went 2 inches past that hole. It was great. I actually wore it on that hole all day long and did not feel uncomfortable. So I am thinking that this is working for me even though I have not seen the results myself. I just have to keep going with it. I do not see this as a problem right now. So I am gonna just keep plugging along, even through the Himalayan Death Flu.

Snow, Ice, With No Possibility For Parrole

It has finally stopped snowing for the present time. I have heard mixed reports that the storm that hit us last night is swinging back around and is going to hit us again sometime tonight. I sincerely hope this is not true. Mike and I both made it to work okay today. It was a longer trip than usually, but kinda fun. Mike had the truck and went out first. I followed closely behind. He told me not too close though, that way if he got stuck then he could use my car to pull him out.

I wish I had been riding with him so I could have been taking pictures. It was gorgeous out this morning. Cold, very cold, but it was so pretty out. Ice had caked most of the snow drifts, so some of them you could walk on top of. Others not so much, you just sank. I scraped and scraped at my car windows, until finally Mike got out of his truck and showed me how it was done. LOL. Who knew that the groves on the other side of the scraper busted up the ice so well. I think he has to show me this at least once a year.

So I got to work and my technician showed up shortly after me. She's such a sweetie. We are both sick. We got through the morning with ease though. Only had one person call in. We were dead though. We stayed busy all day though.

On my way home from work I had no problems at all. The roads were not clear, but were not slick. All of the snow drifts my Jeep took with ease. Well at least until I get to our drive way, I looked over the situation. It doesn't look that bad. I'm thinking no problemo. I pull up, then start backing in. Okay, looks like I'm in the driveway. Everything is going good. Then, I feel the back end of the Jeep slide right (and yeah I really mean right, well my right as I was sitting in my car). UGH! I was stuck. I just missed getting in the driveway right. Had to wait on Mike to get home to help me get out. Sucks. How do you drive through snow drifts a couple (2-4) feet high and get stuck in the driveway? Just have the name Jeri. LOL

So once inside the house, I slept, and slept, and slept. I was wiped out. Then I got up and went out to feed the horses. So last nights trip with me was nothing. The layer of ice on the snow kept cracking, so then you had to pull yourself out of the snow and the ice. Carrying buckets was next to impossible. It was made worse by the fact that I was hacking my head off. I got it done though. The boys are happy.

Mike got home and we got my Jeep out easily. Thank goodness! We came inside and watched some Ghost Hunters. One of our favorite shows. I did not do my P90X workout tonight. I'm going to make it up though. I am just having some shortness of breath so I an exhausted even with my nap.

Hope everyone has a great night!

Trudging Across The Frozen Tundra, Again

So we are experiencing some extreme winter weather here in our area. The snow is blowing, the wind is howling, and I'm freezing. Well can't say that 100% as I'm still sick, maybe sicker, and I go between freezing and sweating like crazy. I really thought I was gonna feel better today, but this morning I think I passed out for a while . I was getting ready for work and it happened. I didn't fall or anything else that you expect to hear from me. I managed to just lay down on the floor until the most of it passed. Finished getting ready, then headed to work.

So back to the weather. As most of you know its bad out there. I still needed to go out and feed the horses, so I thought I would take you along with me. I only took my P&S as I really didn't want to screw up my nicer camera. So here we go.

This is me right before stepping outside. Please be kind and remember that I'm sick. Just wanted you to see how bundled up I am. I have on 4 layers on top, 4 layers on my head, 3 layers on my legs and 2 pairs of socks with snow boots. I really did not get that cold tonight except when the wind made it through a layer.

This is our back door. Notice that the door had to push snow out of the way to open. Most of this has came from today's snow.

These were my footprints from where I came into the house tonight. Now this may look like soft fluffy snow, but it was really individual pellets aimed for maiming you.

This is how fast it is drifting. My footprints disappeared shortly after being made.

Mike's car through the snow. I know you can barely see it. It was coming down so hard and fast. The snow here was almost up to the bottom of the car. Don't think he'll be driving this anytime soon.

These are the boys, Buckshot and Frank. They were excited to see me tonight. I keep a door to the barn open for ventilation and the snow was even blowing in here. The boys were still dry and comfy.

Ahhh! Frank, happy as a clam. Here is one relaxed boy.

Buck. The best time to do anything with this horse is when he's eating. He LOVES to eat. He sighs and everything. Makes me laugh. He is very happy right at this moment. You can almost see the bliss in his face. Okay maybe it bliss and a little "Mom get that camera out of my face" action he has going on. What can I say I love him in pictures.

This is Clover. Our new kitten. She is a lover. She is a lot like Buck and always wants fed.

This is her realizing that I have not filled up her water dish yet. She is coming over to complain to me. She can be loud and bossy.

 With the light in my hat it can cast interesting shadows on the ground. Add that to the flash from my camera and you have one crazy kitty. You can't see her hear trying to capture the shadow, but it was quite funny to watch.

Next it was out across the tundra with 2 water buckets and a hope that the wind would not blow me over or I wouldn't trip and fall. Now you know its bad out when the cat that usually follows you to the faucet, takes one look outside and turns and runs. Clover did not want to have anything to do with go out.

Water works at the outside faucet. Check! Love it when the water works outside. Check!!!

Two full buckets of water. Okay so maybe not totally full to the top, but in my defense if I fill them too full then I just slosh a lot of it out and the boys have actually have not been drinking that much. And I headed back to the barn. I was going to take a picture so you could get an idea of how far I had to go, but at that moment you couldn't see the barn anyways, so you still would not have known.


So I trudged back to the barn with my buckets in hand. Gave the boys theirs and filled up Clovers dish. Made sure that I had given all of them enough of everything. Then, I made sure I was all bundled back up. I had to move my car back for my hubby. Made it back inside with only a few stinging welts from the sleet.

So an update on P90X and the diet. Yes I have been sick, but I have still been trying to do my exercises. I have not really been bringing it, but I have done the best that I can do right now. Yoga was tonight and I thought I was gonna die after 10 minutes. I made it 15-20, then I went to the end to the cool down part. I did part of that. Still love corpse pose. So I did some of it if not all. I have had some weight loss though so that is awesome.

Till next time!

Himilayan Death Flu!

So I finally am getting to posting. My husband, after 3 weeks has finally managed to give me his cold. Yes I know I should know better than to stay to close to him, but he's cute and I can't help myself. Anytime he gets sick though the world needs stop so I can take care of him. He always calls it the Himilayan Death Flu and if anyone else were to have what he does it would just kill them outright. I usually end up with whatever he has and it has yet to kill me. I do know that my head has felt like exploding all day and sitting up was a struggle. So I made my way to the couch this morning and pretty much lived there all day long. Only moving long enough to roll over or send a quick message to my BFF on my progress of feeling better so we could do our workout together.

I was really hoping that I would pop out of bed this morning and feel fit as a fiddle and get Cardio in early, Then, I would have all day to what ever I wanted to. I had some grand plans. Yeah I know I shouldn't make any of those. Plans for me never work out. Seems to be a theme I have lived with all my life. So finally tonight I managed to peel myself off the couch, got changed and asked the BFF is she had already worked out. She had, but if you read her latest post she felt fat and wanted to do it again. I made it through most of it. I did almost fall on my face a couple of times and my head started spinning again, but I made it through it all. Wasn't to bad. I picked up the kenpo part better tonight so that was an improvement. Hopefully this means that the Kenpo is going to get easier for me to do.

Well, here's to hoping I feel better.

The Y, Leg and Back, Abs, and Some KenpoWow

Yesterday was a little busy for me. I got up early (well early on a Wednesday for me). I needed to get a shower before the DirectTv guy was supposed to be at the house. Also the house needed to be picked up a bit. Mike got up and off to work then I got busy. I did some dishes and put away some clean clothes. Picked up some stuff laying around, then hurried up and waited. Now I asked for them to come earlier, but that wasn't going to happen. The guy showed up around 10:45 and didn't get done until 12:30. Those in the know, know that I'm supposed to be at work by 12. So of course I was late, again. That is a conversation for another day though. The high note was that I finally got TV back after almost 2 weeks. Now I can watch some of my shows again.

On my lunch, a member of my Well's Weighs In team and I went to the YMCA for our free day of the week. We didn't have long as we were on our lunch. We got there and took a tour. Its a really nice facility. Everything was really clean and well taken care of. Definitely would recommend it. Then, got changed and headed to the elliptical machines. My friend had never been on them so I gave the the skinny. I then proceeded to do over a mile on that machine. Then we moved to some other machine that was similar, but doesn't have the up and down motion, just the slide motion. I did about 1/2 mile there. We didn't do any of the weight or anything else. Wish we had had more time to wonder around the room and try everything. Oh well next time. We get 1 day a week so hope to use everyone of them. We want to get to one of the classes they offer in the next week or two. So I'll let you know about it when we make it.

I got home late last night, but know I had do my P90X workout so I didn't get off schedule and let myself down. I ran out and fed the horses, then came in and popped in Legs and Back. I liked it, but I had a problem with the stuff on the pull-up bar. I don't have a pull-up bar, but I do have the stretch bands. I used those, but had to wing it because I don't have any place to  hang the bands from. I think I made it work though. Someone should have warned me though about doing the first week of Legs after doing the elliptical machine. This morning my legs felt like jello. I kept stretching them out all day trying to ease some of the tightness. I liked this workout though it was tough. Then it was on to AbRipper. Ok so better than the first try at it. I didn't stop as much and really brought it the first couple of moves, then had to start pacing myself. I felt like I had knot tied in my stomach by the end. It worked out quickly though. I then relaxed for a few and hit the bed.

Today at work was interesting. Just a hint to those out there, your pharmacist is not a dumb ass. We did not make it through 6-8 years of upper level schooling for no reason. I know who to watch out for and who to ask extra questions from. Don't get pissed off at me if you are lying to me about your prescriptions and you get caught. I can not and will not help you get a few extra pills every month. This is also another rant for another day.

So we got a few inches of snow today. It was getting bad when I left work tonight and the ride home was slow, but uneventful. I did get to 4-wheel around the drive-way to clear up some of the snow. FUN!!!

Tonight's work-out was Kenpo. As I said before, I was not sure that I would like this workout. I found that it was okay, but I'm still torn about it. I got some of the moves, but still had problems with others. I am definitely not pretty when doing these. I'm just gonna have to keep doing it to try to figure it all out. I think if my balance improves it should get even better. I finished it, doing most of the reps for each move that I got. Others I tried I really did. I hope that it gets better. Most people seem to enjoy this one, so there has to be something about it that is fun. I just get frustrated when I don't get something I should be able too. Coordination must improve right? I've always know I do not have any so this could be a challenge.

So, tomorrow is Day 7. I am going to do X Stretch. I do not want to give myself a day off. I do not want to let my muscles rest and get sore so it on again for tomorrow. I like stretch the last time I did it anyways. Well everyone enjoy your day.

Yoga, Yoga, Yooggaa and A Little Bit of Shootem' Up, Too

So today was rather uneventful. Apparently I was more tired than I thought, because I actually slept in until 9:30 this morning. Usually the latest I sleep is 8. I only woke up then because my hubby wanted to play video games. We have been wanting to play Call of Duty Black Ops together and finally had a day to do that. We got already to play and started the game, then realized that there was no mission co-op mode. Mike and I have been playing co-op video games together since Halo first came out and it is good together time for us to shootem' up in a video game. I think it makes us work as a team to complete a common objective. It also can help with frustration with each other because I am admittedly not a great video game player and Mike is very good. This means he gets frustrated with me for dying all the time and I get frustrated with him for running off and leaving me behind. So while we love to play together, sometimes we have to remember each others limits. So back to Black Ops, I even got on-line and tried to find how to get into the co-op mode and found that the game is only co-op if you play the zombie game. Not what we wanted at all! Everyone has been telling us what an awesome game this is and now we find out that we can't play together. It's just not fair. Also, I think it is a bit of miss advertisement on their part. Note to everyone, co-op for this game is not what you thing. So we did the next best thing. We have 2 other games that we have played together that do have co-op missions mode that came out with sequels so we started the first game of Army of 2 over again so that we would be ready for the sequel. We both really liked Army of 2 and were very happy when the sequel came out. We just haven't had a chance to start it. That is how I spent the majority of my day. Playing a shooter game and taking some aggressions out of screen. By the way Mike said I may be improving a little.

We then took the dog back to his Grandma's and went out to eat. Cebolla's was the choice for tonight. Yummy! I love their tamales. I may have even had a margarita, well okay just half of one. No mariachi band tonight so we could actually hear each other. Got to see my Step Mother-In-Law tonight too and catch up and that was a welcome surprise too.

When we got home I got busy getting the boys(horses) fed and watered. Still a frozen tundra out there, but my arm really are not sore from Shoulders and Arms so it was no biggie carrying the buckets. The boys are always (well almost always) happy to get their grub and to have me stop pestering them so it makes it an okay if not enjoyable job.

Then I came in the house undressed from my 500 layers, got into my yoga gear to start Day 4. Now I know that my BFF hates (and I don't use that term lightly) Yoga, but I'm gonna be honest and say that while I am not very flexible and some of the poses hurt a bit, oh yeah and I almost fell on my face a couple of times, I kinda enjoyed it. Maybe I like to torture myself. Who knows. While I did almost kill myself when my fat rolls rolled over my face and cut off any way to bring air into my lungs, and my feet and legs kept cramping up, I feel invigorated after completing the video. I am still tired and just want to go to bed, but my mind feels a little cleaner. That may be due to brain damage due to a loss of air and I may not remember my name tomorrow, but I will take it tonight if it means I sleep good. My favorite part was the cool down. I think I could do the cool down every day. Corpse pose, I am a pro at. Fetal pose, Oh yeah lets do some more of that (I sleep this way 50% of the time). Meditation pose, I'm down with. The omms were a bit weird, especially in front of someone not doing the video, but that was ok. Mike watched me through most of it and helped me with form. He also helped when my fat rolls were obstructing my breathing and vision and I could not see the tv and know that the pose had changed. While it felt weird to be doing this in front of someone, I think I would have to recommend it the first couple of times so you can get a little critic. He even made me feel better when I couldn't hold some poses and got frustrated with myself, telling me that it was my first real attempt at them and to just give it time. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to keep doing the Yoga for a while more and see if it gets easier. If not then I may change it up to something different in the future. God knows I've got plenty of things to try.

Well hope everyone has a good one tomorrow. I know I'm gonna try. Hopefully we will get our tv fixed tomorrow. I might actually know a little more about what is going on in the world. It is hard when it has been out for more than a week. Hubby is trying to drive me nuts. LOL

Busy Day

So, I didn't get on here to update last night as I was mentally and physically exhausted. I had worked all day, then came home and did Day 2, which was Cardio. I like it overall, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna like Kenpo. I have a hard time following along. Not sure if it is a coordination problem, an ADD problem, or a if I'm gonna punch something let me punch something problem. Definitely gonna have to follow the BFF's advice and use weights next time, because I think that may help. Otherwise, I did all the exercises, maybe not all the reps and maybe not as pretty as them, but they got done. At the end I fell to the floor gasping for breath and I think my hubby chuckled at me. Hey at least I'm trying right. Definitely got my heart rate up there.

Speaking of heart rate, I would make a horrible nurse due to the fact that I basically think I'm dead every time I try to find my heart rate. I just can not for the life of me figure it out. Its as if my veins jump around, even while they are pushed down to the point of cutting off blood flow. Since you are supposed to make sure your heart rate (which I'm sure mine did since it felt like it was gonna explode out of my chest a couple of times) stays up I decided to follow Tony's advise and by a monitor. A wrist one like the ones they are wearing. Me being the ever faithful employee, went to Wal-Mart today (on my day off(had something I needed to do for work)) and pick one up. Now I'm not sure how it will work, but I'll let ya know. I'm not a big fan of the wrist blood pressure monitors (hardly ever accurate) but I'm hoping this one works well. Maybe I'll see that I'm not working as hard as I thought.

Today was Day 3 and for me that meant Shoulders and Arms and AbripperX. I really liked S&A. I'm gonna have to buy some heavier weights though. I used 3lb weights for the whole thing and while I may really feel it in the morning, tonight I don't feel much at all. I have never been as strong in my upper body as I am in my lower body. Heck in high school I was leg pressing upwards of 500lbs, while bench presses were very hard for me. I will again tell you that push-ups are not my favorite thing, but this is mainly due to the fact that I have (had) very little upper body strength. The arms are just plain hard for me to work out. I expected this work out to be very hard for me. It really wasn't. I gonna say again that I enjoyed it. Maybe the reason that this wasn't as hard for me as I thought it was going to be is that I have been having to carry buckets of water across the frozen tundra that is my yard to the horses every night. Still, I do think that this week I'm gonna pick up some 5 and 8lb weights just so that I can push myself a little more. I may have just jinxed myself though and wake up tomorrow and not be able to move.

Oh dear, what can I say about AbRipper but WOW! I did all of the moves, but could only do about 10 of each one. That was an intense 15 minutes. I spent a lot of time laying on the floor watching them going how the heck are they still moving. Oh what I wouldn't give to have my 6 pack back. I promise that I would trade in my mini-full keg just for a couple of packs. LOL. I think one of my biggest goals from this whole program is to be able to do all 15 minutes the complete 25 reps each and still be ready for more. Now this I really feel. I feel like I may have lost an inch today just because my abs are still cramping. I think I'm gonna have a hate-love relationship with AbRipper. I'm gonna hate to love it. I hope after 90 days I can love it.

So enough about P90X. I had a busy day today. I had a chiropractor appointment this morning and I woke up to snow. It was coming down pretty good too. Left early to make it to that. While I was waiting I filled out some paper work for my doctor. Had my appointment, then high-tailed it to work. Started a program that I need to get done, but had questions about so I had to go to the back and get help. Picked up my heart rate monitor, then left. Went to my doctors and dropped off the paper work. I then drove through the snow to the Fort and picked up my Mother-in-Law to take her out to a late lunch. We went to Mr. Coney on North Coldwater. We love that place. When we go out to lunch that is usually our choice. I kinda blew my diet today, but I was good the rest of the day so I didn't go over to bad. My coney dogs were fantabulous and I split an order of chili-cheese fries with my mother-in-law. Yum!!! Next time we go I'll take my camera so I can share pictures.

We then made the rounds to some shops. I wanted to go to the camera store and ask about a lens I've been thinking about getting. Now the question is do I save up and buy the realllllllllly expensive lens or do I buy the cheaper glass and wait on a price drop in the one I'm dying for? They were also sold out of a flash I was thinking of getting so that will have to wait. I did however acquire a screen calibrator so I'm hoping that the pictures I take will start to look better once I edit them. I haven't been happy with the printed results lately, so I hope this helps. We also went to a salvation army store just to browse and I picked up a few things. The deal of the day was an plastic egg plate w/ lid for 75 cents.Couldn't believe it.

Then we went back to her house, I picked up the dog and came home. Did my exercises, fed the horses, and had a bowl of cereal. Now I think its probably bedtime.

Day 1 Overview

Okay, I did the first day of P90X last night and I made it all the way the way through the workout. It was the core synergistics routine. Now I'm not gonna tell you that I did all the reps or even completed all the moves the way they were supposed to be completed, but I did it. I sweat a lot, too. I usually don't do that. So that means I worked hard and pushed myself.

I am just going to state for the record again that I hate push-ups. It seemed like we were doing push-ups every 2 seconds. What the heck? I know, I know - push-ups work the entire body, yadda yadda. I am just saying that of all of the parts of my body that could be hurting and my wrists hurt the worst. Poor little things haven't gotten the message that the rest of me is fat and they need to bulk up a little to hold my weight in all of the different push-up moves. Oh well, no pain, no gain right?

Other than that I did better than the first time I tried this to see if I was gonna like it. My BFF and I have been using Skype to exercise together for the last couple of weeks. You might ask why do they have to do that why don't they just meet somewhere? Well she happens to live in South Florida and with me in Northern Indiana it makes it a little difficult. She is a month ahead of me, but the regimen matches up pretty nicely. So we can still work out together most of the time. Push-ups aside, I liked the moves in Core. They were simple and to the point. This time I figured out how to do Superman-Banana and Banana Rolls. Bow-to-Boat was still difficult, but I got there. By the end I could barely hold myself up, but I did and by the end of cool down I felt pretty good. I relaxed a few, then had to go out and carry water to the horses, but that wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be either.

So overall, I think it was a successful first day and can't wait to see what Cardio is like tonight! 

Well's Weighs In

So I didn't get a chance to tell about something else I'm doing to hold myself accountable. I have joined with a team of girls at work to enter a contest in our area called Well's Weighs In. Its a fun contest, developed on the Biggest Loser concept. You get into teams of 4, women or men and are weighed once a month. It is over a 3 month time span.

Thursday was the first weigh-in. I knew how much I weighed, but still was nervous about anyone else seeing what I weighed. I had to go in while I was on my lunch, which was difficult, because I still had to eat lunch and I only get 30 minutes. If you ask anyone that really knows me you know that it takes me 30 minutes to eat lunch not to mention doing something else in that time too. So I rushed to the back of the store (we were getting lunch that day) and guess what no food. They started whipping some up and I ate as fast as I could. I don't think I remember what it even really tasted like except the pancakes were really good. I then ran out to my Jeep and had to scrape the windows do to a layer of snow and ice and then high tale it to the weigh-in.

Once at the place it was fairly simple and straight forward. Sign your life away, get all the paperwork, take off you coat and shoes and hop on the scale. Of course I get the scale with the cutest guy working there. Of course he has to see that I'm a cow. Oh well what the heck, I figure he's been doing this all day, because I have been talking to other people that were also getting weighed and they were talking about him. My weight shouldn't surprise him all that bad. I was right, he didn't even bat an eye. I raced back to my shoes and coat and threw those on (this is meant pretty literally since I think I almost hit someone with my coat), almost ran back to my car, jumped in and took off. I have to admit it took me longer than 30 minutes (not surprising if you know me), but I really tried. I did I promise.

So my hope with joining this program? My hope is that I am no longer just accountable to myself, but to other people as well. I work with these people almost everyday, so we can talk about how we are doing. Hopefully we can push each other to attain our goals and support each other when needed. This is another avenue to help all of us improve our health and feel a little better about ourselves. My hope is that we prevail with our goals to ourselves and each other, even if we don't win anything.

Well I think I had better go. I'll tell you about my first official P90X workout tomorrow.

Fit Enough?

Ok, did the official start of P90X this morning with the question am I fit enough to handle the program. If you had asked me that question 15 years ago, heck even 10 years ago, I would have laughed at you. I was a basketball player in high school and some in college. We ran miles a day and did calisthenics on top of that. We only had a couple of weeks "off" a year and I loved it. I had abs of steel, legs that some guys said might snap you in half, and better than Madonna arms (mine were not all veiny). I then went to college, stopped playing ball, and things went down hill from there. I no longer had someone telling me I had to work out all the time. I didn't realize at first that I needed that motivation. I also didn't realize that the eating habits I had to support our work-out regime was way to much to keep my weight down. As the years went by I would try here and there to lose weight, but it never seemed to happen.
I also found out I have poly cystic ovarian syndrome when I turned 18. I was told then to not gain weight. Oh well. Some people say I don't listen well. They told me that if I did gain weight it would be especially hard for me to lose it due to my hormones being so out of whack. Man were they right.
Now I'm up to a whopping 185 and can't run a full mile anymore. So back to P90X and am I fit enough. Well I have done a few of the dvd's with a friend and knew that it was tough and I couldn't do all the reps that they did, but I could make it through them. Tomorrow is gonna be the first day that I do them on my own and I had to do the fit test and initial pictures today. Guess what! I passed and I could actually do more than what was asked of me on some of the items. I'm just gonna say now though that I hate push-ups! Always have. Even when I was at my prime it was hard for me to do full push-ups. Add in the fact that I have broken a wrist and had to have it surgically repaired (it doesn't like to bend like it used to) and I weight much more than I used to and you get me just getting through a measly 3 push-ups before I said fewwy on you and gave up. Did I forget to mention that I hate push-ups?
So again I passed the fit test and then had to do the pictures. I love photography and taking pictures, but I hate having my own picture taken. I have not taken a good picture since my senior pictures and before then it was when I was 3. I know that these pictures are horrid. I had my hubby take them for me and I couldn't even bring myself to look at them. How sad is that? I don't think I'll be posting those any time soon. As my BFF is doing, I think I'll wait and see the results after day 30 or 60. Then I might post them so that you can wish you could gouge your eyes out with a rusty spoon. I really hope that I see an improvement. Not to torture you, but because I want to look 18 again. LOL.
So I'm fit enough and ready to start this, I just hope that my body is ready for this too. Here's to all of us starting this journey!

Turning Over a New Page

Hi there, I'm Jeri. I'm a 30 something woman, hoping to make a fun site to give myself inspiration and motivation to do all the things that I want to do. Hopefully this is what this will turn into. I hope to chronicle my crafting and photography efforts, making me more likely to do more of both of those. I love to do both so hopefully combining them will make me happier. I also will be posting regarding my weight loss journey and life in general. I plan to start P90X in the next couple of days and hope that this site holds me accountable to the program. I know that it has helped one of my friends with that process.
A little about myself. I have a loving family and support group. I wouldn't be who I am today with out each and every member. I tend to love very deeply and be passionate about things. I am like my father in that I sometimes have a hair trigger, but like my mother in that I can try to control it. I'm eclectic in my tastes. I like lots of different things that I hope to talk about here. You could probably say that I'm pretty random, but very predictable. So as this is my first post and I have to get ready for work. I hope you all have a great day and safe travels.