My Big Secret

It’s been a long 15 weeks in terms of trying to NOT tell you what’s really been going on with me on my blog. When I first started this blog – my goal was to help others be inspired to make healthier life choices, to create and meet goals for themselves so they could be happier people. My biggest focus was typically on losing weight in a healthy way, exploring different ways of buying and cooking foods, and picking physical challenges to keep myself (and hopefully others) motivated.

But the last few months – I’ve pulled a bit of a disappearing act. Not because things weren’t going on, but because I couldn’t really talk about losing weight or tackling vigorous work outs anymore. In fact, over the last few months, I’ve gained 4 pounds. I’ve incorporated wheat and grains back into my diet out of necessity. I have even had to quit teaching my fitness class – I’m not even allowed to do TurboKick right now. Doctor’s orders!

My whole life has changed.

And it will forever be changed because I’m going to be a mommy!

We finally made our announcement “facebook official” today – so I feel okay sharing my news here on my blog as well for the world to see. I guess part of my ThirtyStory was bound to include pregnancy, right? So now that I’m openly sharing my news – I hope to be able to share my attempts at trying to eat healthy and work out in low impact ways while I work on creating this little baby to be inside of me. It’s already been super challenging after 3 months of feeling like I could barely keep my eyes open, and dealing with the feeling of “I’m about to be sick” 24/7. Eating healthy has been a struggle, because for the most part – I’ve had an aversion to basically all the eating/food changes I had made prior to getting pregnant. I toughed it out the first month and refused to eat crackers or  bread to help settled my stomach.

But a woman can only take so much! So, I’ve been eating breads again – but trying to stay with non processed versions, so I’m not eating a ton of preservatives. I’m hoping that as I am now in the 2nd trimester I’ll be able to wean myself off a lot of the grains/wheats again so I can focus on getting my energy from healthy carbs, lean protein and healthy fats. It’s just been a bit of an uphill battle these last few weeks and I’m sure it’s far from over.  I’ve missed my Primal ways after working so hard to get there in the first place. I hope to find a balance between the cravings and my preferred eating styles.

I hope you’ll stick around so I can share with you my journey and as usual, I’ll tell you the wins and defeats along the way. And for those of you who have “been there, done that” – I’d love to hear your feedback and advice.

I’m excited about this next chapter of my life, and I’m so glad that you all are finally in on our secret and I don’t have to write mysteriously vague blogs anymore. Tonight I’ll be trying out my first water aerobics class – since I can’t do my high impact stuff, I thought heading to the pool might be a good option. I’ll give you the low down on how it goes next time!

Until then….thanks for hanging in there with me until I could be 100% with you again. I promise interesting and helpful content from here on out!

Weekend Review

As I consider things that make me think twice about making bad decisions, I find that realizing I’m going to have to fess up to it in a public way helps me stay accountable. As I was driving to work this morning I had the idea of doing a weekend review post on Mondays so I can start being more accountable over the weekend if I have to share it with my readers.

The hubs and I made a promise to try and avoid acting like we were in our early 20′s every weekend after a few weekends of doing that and realizing that we are not 20 anymore. So this weekend, we came home on Friday and just hung out. He broke his cell phone screen, so this guy came over who can fix the broken screen for way cheaper than it would be for us to pay for insurance or (God forbid) a new phone. He came over pretty late, so we didn’t end up eating dinner until almost 9. I let them have “boy talk time” upstairs as I went downstairs to  catch up on some of the DVR’d shows. Yes, I watched American Idol on Friday night. A long way from cool, I realize – but whatevs. I’m a grown up and i can do boring things and enjoy them if i want, too. :p

Kinda Fruity

I can probably count on one hand the amount of time I have eaten an entire piece of fruit in its natural state. I cannot get past the texture of about 99.99% of fruit.

Oh but I love the smell of citrus, my favorite body splash fragrance from Bath & Body Works is Mango Mandarin – and I have everything from the hand lotion to the body wash to the room spray. I love it. It makes me want to go visit a orange grove to just bask in the sun and smell the lovely smell of citrus all afternoon. But then…what will I do when I get hungry? I certainly wouldn’t EAT an orange. Let’s be serious. I also love tiny bits of pineapple if I’m in the right mood. But a big chunk of pineapple might throw me off, the texture then is too much to take. It must be small bites or as I start to chew that big hunk of pineapple I start to feel sick to my stomach and think I can’t bear it for any longer, but alas, I am in a room of people who are so excited about the fruit tray – I have to finish this one giant (why did they all have to be so big?) bite of pineapple! *sigh*

I like blueberries and cranberries – in things. I’ve tried the whole “fruit on the bottom” blueberry yogurt thing – thinking it would mask the terrible texture of those tiny little berries and just give me the flavor. I think I’m the only person on earth who LOOKS for the artificially flavored yogurt so I don’t get any sort of surprise chunk of fruit in my yogurt or ice cream. I also like strawberry flavored things – like those skinny cow strawberry cheesecake ice cream sandwiches. Totally do-able.

I am so bad at fruit that I only like certain flavors of fruity jelly beans or life savers. Cherry? UGH. All I can think about when I drum up memories of cherry is cough medicine. Why would anyone want something to taste like cherry? If given a box of chocolate covered cherries, or even strawberry’s glazed with chocolate – I would pass them on to someone else without a second thought. I saw a commercial for those edible art arrangements the other night. What a nightmare for me – someone dropping off an entire arrangement of fresh fruit for me to eat. I would think someone was doing it to be mean to me. Particularly if those fruit pieces are on wooden skewers (that is another post entirely on my thoughts about eating off wooden things).

So I’ve probably made my point, I have not found joy in fruit. If i were stranded on a tropical island, I would be the first to die because I wouldn’t eat the fruit (okay, I’m sure if i were starving I would eat something, but it wouldn’t be my first choice). So when I met with a nutritionist and explained to her my “fruit issues” she gave me this look like – “So you don’t eat any fruit, ever?”

“Well, not really,” I reply. I do SOMETIMES but half of a banana in a smoothie because if it’s blended up with a bunch of other stuff i can’t tell. But God forbid there be a chunk of REAL banana in it’s natural state in there. So when she put together my meal plan, she had to rearrange the protein/carb/fat amounts to take into consideration that it was highly unlikely i could meet the standard daily fruit requirement. But she told me – you HAVE to have some fruit in your diet and she said I could drink 100% fruit juice with no sugar added and it would count.

So it’s been a few months now, and I’ve finally found a few fruit juices I’ll drink. Of course, they are mostly orange based with an occasional “on no you didn’t” berry blast. I can deal with those. But every time I try a new fruit juice flavor, I make sure to get an individual serving first since if it’s not do-able, I’m not wasting. I have given away quite a few juice beverages over the last few months.

But as I’m sitting here having a rather late breakfast on my first day off for Spring Break – I’m drinking my juice like it’s sort of a normal thing for me to do. From a distance, maybe i’m not so fruity after all.

First things first

Well, it’s a Monday morning after a really busy weekend. Busy, but productive. The sun was up even when my original alarm time came around (we all know that you set your alarm clock for at least 15 minutes prior to when you actually plan to get up). So it was nice to wake up to some sunshine this morning – even if I’m not a morning person.

I’m looking forward to another week on target with my goals. Working out, eating healthy – staying on track. If you get enough of these weeks in a row, that’s what you can call progress, right? There are a lot of things that can de-rail you from your goals. But I wanted to just leave a quick note about something that helps me stay on track: Breakfast.

Some may think this is crazy, but I’ve been eating the same breakfast for probably the better part of the last 2 years. The thing is – I always enjoy it so its a great way to start my day. I bring my breakfast to work and make it here every morning and it’s like something to look forward to first thing when I arrive at work. It’s warm, tasty, and healthy – but it doesn’t make me feel like I’m missing out on that seemingly delicious fast food breakfast. I have definitely gone through phases where I stop and get fast food breakfast more often than not. I like to refer to those phases as the “dark times” when I wasn’t thinking clearly. Every time i would give in to temptation and drive through somewhere for a quick breakfast – it would set me on this terrible track for the rest of the day. I found myself wanting a cookie in the middle of the day, something sweet, snacks, etc just because I had started my day off on the wrong foot.

I encourage you to find a breakfast that you love (and that will love you back by not adding pounds to your thighs) so that you can start out every day with a positive, successful decision. Even though it may not be the magic cure for all your decisions, I find that if I can start off my day with a good decision it makes it easier to continue that trend the rest of the day.

Here’s what I eat for breakfast:

1 whole wheat english muffin
1 slice of 2% cheese (i switch it up but typically go with cheddar)
2 turkey sausage patties (I switch up the brands based on what is on sale..but Jimmy Dean has a good turkey patty!)

I toast my english muffin and then heat up the sausage patties. Split the cheese slice into 4 squares so i can spread it out equally on each half of my muffin. Then I put a turkey patties on each of my halves of the muffin and microwave it again for about 16 seconds. The result? A delicious breakfast sandwich is enough calories to charge your system, a good mix of protein, dairy, fat and starch, but not a ridiculous amount of calories. By eating each halve of the english muffin separately it lasts longer than eating it like a regular sandwich.

You’re welcome.

The bottle never lies