On My Quest For Exercise…

I did make it by the senior center and it’s really nice. Of course the day I went they weren’t accepting applications and I couldn’t do anything but tour because their “membership card machine” was not working. LOL. I love the idea of swimming, but it looks like a lot of rules for swimming, laps etc. I guess I’ll just have to find out the hard way what all of them are.

The fitness room is really nice. They don’t hold any classes, but there is a lot of equipment and a lot of variation. In the meantime, while waiting for my chance to make it back to the center, I have been a worker bee at a church “flea market” and have picked up a couple of Pilates videos. Just like my old ones that seemed to get lost in the move, these to were donated “unopened”. LOL.

Ready To Start Losing Weight…”Again”

Sea Lion Exercising

Yep, I’m ready to start losing weight again. My daughter called the other day and said she really needs to do something about her weight, so we decided that even though we live far apart, we could be each other’s support system. I explained to her that we both had to be accountable to each other. No dodging my phone calls because she doesn’t want to confess. LOL. We’ll see what happens.

I started tracking nutrition yesterday. Not really watching what I was eating, but more for just getting back in the habit of doing it. OMGosh, it’s no wonder I’ve done nothing but grow since I quit working outside the house! Between what I eat and no exercise… well, you know how it goes.

For exercise I think I have an ebook on my computer for good old ‘calisthenics’. If I can do a couple of jumping jacks without feeling like I’m going to fall through the floor, I may start doing those. I think she has a gym membership. Every time I do one of those I get into trouble. LOL.

Speaking of which, I am so mad at the “Right Stuff”. They sucked me in with low payments, no contract you could cancel at anytime, blah, blah, blah. Well, you can cancel at anytime, but you have to go in in person to do it, or mail them a letter. You cannot just call or email. Now they want several months worth of dues. What a pain. When we moved it wasn’t convenient to “go in” to cancel. Obviously I thought the mail was too slow, but now that I look back, I should have mailed a nice CANCELLATION letter. Ohhh, I hate them for my stupidity. LOL.

Still Working On Getting Sexier and Skinnier

My cats? LOL

Yes, even though I haven’t been very good about keeping up here, I am still working on getting Older, Sexier, and Skinnier. I’m just not doing it very fast. LOL. Actually I have been losing some weight lately, through no fault of my own. I’ve been losing it because of something I have always known. Because I am moving my body! I am working outside of the computer more. I am participating more in life. Which means I am not sitting on my butt. You know what this means don’t you?

We’re back to freakin’ exercise! Grazing, as they call it when you’re home working all day, and you keep wondering out to the kitchen putting things in your mouth, has never really been a problem, but when I eat, I eat pretty good. Even that would have worked ok if I ever did anything physical, but I don’t. I keep promising myself I’m going to start scheduling it in in the mornings so I get it out of the way, but by the time it’s light I’m already too wrapped up in what I’m doing, and I just don’t do it. Sound at all familiar? LOL. What I have done is join more things at my church, volunteered at a foreclosure center, and actually started living life again. That in itself is burning a lot more calories and fat than I have in the last almost 2 yrs., and I enjoy it. Maybe that was the answer all the time. The only exercise I like is something like volleyball or basketball. It’s kind of hard to find a bunch of fat old ladies like me willing to play. LOL. So this will do for now, and as I get in better shape who knows? Maybe I will be more apt to go for a walk now and then.

Weight Loss, A New Year, Free Gifts

Free Gifts For You

Here we are facing a whole new year in front of us and most of us have great aspirations. There is something in all of us that we would like to change whether it’s losing weight or something inside of us, begging to get out.

I recently got invited to a 4th annual “Self Improvement Giveaway” which is just like it says. It’s many, many products, (e-books, software) given away for free. Many of them are top products that would cost a fortune to buy them all. I would like to share this opportunity with you.

Just go to Self Improvement Giveaway 4 and register. It’s just your name and email, confirm your email address and you’ll get a link to log in. This year they have made it for internet marketers also, so the first couple of pages you see are “One time offers”, but if you’re not interested just scroll to the bottom. There will be a button to say “no thank you” and you’ll move on to the next page. Once you get past the couple of offers, there’s a whole treasure chest of stuff inside. It’s well worth the effort.

If you have never been to one of these online before, if you wish to get a product they will most likely ask for your name and email. You usually have to confirm and they send you a download link. If you start getting newsletters or anything else you don’t like, just “unsubscribe”. It’s that easy. Meanwhile you can pick up some great e-books, music, etc.

I hope you enjoy, but you’ll have to hurry. It’s only open until the 19th of January. If you should actually decide to make a purchase (which is totally not necessary to be part of this) I may make a small commission. By law I have to disclose this, but it’s not why I’m recommending it. I don’t make enough to make me recommend something I don’t believe in. I just think this is a great opportunity.

Self Improvement Giveaway

Day 5, Week 1, New Year, New Weight Loss Goals

Here we are on day 5 of week 1 of the New Year with our new weight loss goals instead of resolutions. How’s it going for you?

I’m not doing too bad. My goal was to add one healthy fruit or vegetable to my diet this week and I have been doing so every single day. My thing was to ad a salad at lunch. I almost always have a vegetable with dinner, but then that’s usually about it. The benefits to this are:

1) Salad is a natural appetite suppressant. I have a very good appetite so any help I can get in that department without taking some over the counter appetite suppressant works for me.

2) Obviously the one vegetable I eat at night is not going to replace the 5 servings a day I should be getting, even when I eat enough to count as 2 servings at dinner.

I’ve also been walking from the far end of the parking lot to entrances of the places I go. It’s funny. I got a handicapped placard for my mother, for when I have to take her to the doctors or take her anywhere, as she has a walker and cannot walk too far without needing to sit down. The police in the Bay area are starting to crack down on people using handicapped placards and stickers that aren’t handicapped when the handicapped people these things are meant for aren’t with them. I told my mother of all the times in my life that may have been me getting caught pulling that, they don’t have to worry about me anymore. When I took her to the doctors yesterday, it’s the first time we’ve gotten to use it, and there wasn’t a handicapped parking space open anywhere. I still ended up dropping her off at the bench out front while I went and found a parking place! LOL.

Let me know how you’re coming with the goals you set for yourself this year when it comes to weight and fitness. I’m always open to new, better, easier, ideas. LOL.

Weight Loss and New Year’s Resolutions

Sooo True

It’s getting to be that time of year again. The time where we once again set out to make our weight loss resolutions for the New Year. Do you ever wonder why they don’t stick? We start out so motivated, and then it doesn’t take long, we’re back to our same old bad habits. This morning I read an article from someone who had a totally different approach that may be much more helpful than the same old stuff.

We all already know it takes 21 days to break an old habit or start a new one. That’s no big weight loss secret for those of us who have been around the diet world for any length of time. It’s also hard work to incorporate new habits and get rid of the old. It’s very easy to backslide.

What if this year we took a different approach? What if this year instead of setting a weight loss New Year’s resolution to lose 50 lbs., we set a positive goal? Following the old “Turn It Into Something Good”, what if we laid out a plan like we would, say, if we were buying a car or something? If we were going to buy a certain car, we would figure how much it was going to cost and set that as our goal. Then we would figure how much out of each paycheck we would have to save (or how much we would be able to save) and how long it would be before we could go pay for it.

So what if we started on our weight loss goal this way. I have 50 lbs. to lose. They say I should be able to lose 2lbs. a week to be healthy. That would be 25 weeks from the 1st of January 2010. That takes me to June 25th, 2010. Hey, that’s just in time for the hot weather here. Perfect!

So my goal is to lose 50 lbs. and fit into my size 12 jeans and be able to wear a tank top by June 25th, 2010. Next is to figure the steps to get there. I think I would start out with 1 thing at a time. For the 1st week I’ll cut out sugar. Been doing a little of the Christmas snacking, so that is a necessity. The next week I’ll keep the “cut out sugar” and add “start some small type of exercise“. Maybe parking clear at the other end of the parking lot when I go to the store and walk fast from the car to the store, and from the store to the car. Just enough to get that heart beat up.

Then the 3rd week, I’ll cut out the sugar, park way far away (or start walking a little in the morning by my house) and add eating 1 fruit per day (because lately I haven’t been eating any). See how easy it would be to lay out a whole 25 week plan? You just keep building on the week before. You may not lose 2 lbs. the first week or the second, but you may lose 5 in the 3rd. Or the 1 step may be to not only weigh yourself, but to measure for those times when you don’t lose any weight, but you lose inches.

I could see how this could work. We all know what we’re doing wrong and we all know what we need to improve on. Talk about a personalized plan! It’s not rocket science. LOL. My pics are already up. I’m ready to give this a shot. Between just doing what I know, and drawing up a plan, I may just be ready to be older, sexier, and skinnier in 201o!

What Really Works for Weight Loss?

If it was out of the bag?

What really works for weight loss? No this isn’t going to be some sales blog for all my products, etc. I know what works, the same old sage advice “Diet and Exercise”, but what if you know what works, but you just can’t make yourself “do it”? That’s where I’m at. I just don’t have the motivation and some of the stuff I’ve done in the past doesn’t work as well now that I’m older and “post menopausal”. LOL.

I was getting in and out of the shower today and was looking at my body. I know, don’t hate, and I don’t. I just don’t like very much and it doesn’t feel as good as it did when I weighed what I am supposed to. I remembered how flabbergasted I was when I saw the picture of Oprah pulling 65 pounds of fat behind her in the wagon as a representative of all the weight she had lost this particular time. That led me to remember a WeightWatchers leader mentioning about getting a pound of fat and take it home and play with it, feel it, look at it. Yuck! So I was thinking how ugly that 65 pounds of fat would have been if Oprah had unleashed it in the red wagon instead of having it all neatly packed into the bag.

I’m thinking I’m really tired of making the same old resolutions this year that end up not being kept (doesn’t say much for my integrity does it? LOL). I think this year I’ll make a resolution to get more motivated by buying a couple pounds of fat. I can see a roll of fat that runs under my boobs across the front and then it kind of indents, and then the big belly fat below that if I was 30 yrs. younger someone may mistake for a small child growing inside. LOL. But my skin is sort of like the bag around the fat in Oprah’s red wagon. It keeps it somewhat contained. I think it’s time to unleash it and see what it’s really like, figuratively speaking of course. See if that works any better than anything else I’ve tried to stay motivated. Desperate times call for desperate measures. LOL.

Anyone else with any new ideas for staying motivated to lose weight in the new year? I’d love liposuction, but then that would lead to plastic surgery, and then, OMG where does it end?

Oh, speaking of losing weight and good food, I added a link to a food blog today. There is a beautiful recipe for Christmas pudding on there, that if you’ve ever wanted to try it or even see that it’s a real food, this is the place! A ton of recipes. Not all “diet friendly”, but I know how to substitute for most things. Like I said, I know what works, I just may not always do it. LOL.

Happy Holidays everybody, what ever that is for you, and Merry Christmas, Happy New Year for me.

Is There Really Any Weight Loss New “News”?

Is there really any new news about weight loss? When your as old as I am (fairly old) and you’ve been dieting your whole life on almost any diet that comes along, you still end up looking for that one new weight loss secret. While I realize weight loss is a super lucrative business to be in, I get tired of reading the same old tips, the same old advice (even if it does work. LOL). “Diet and exercise, diet and exercise.” Blah, blah, blah. LOL.

So when I see new things in the news about weight loss, I feel the need to share it since I don’t think a lot of it gets it’s share of media attention, unless of course you’re taking the weight loss miracle drug like Meridia.  If you haven’t heard the latest, I think it’s funnier than heck that they did studies to show Meridia improved risks to the heart, and it actually proved the opposite. Now the FDA is looking into it. I have one question. Why weren’t these studies done before they started giving it to everyone who could pay for it?

On a “I’m so confused” note, they are doing gastric surgery on morbidly obese teens now. I’ve always thought gastric surgery was like a “last resort” type thing and that it was actually pretty dangerous. Now they’re doing it to our teens instead of the parents doing they’re jobs and teaching kids about proper nutrition. On the other hand, studies show that it has improved their health substantially. So, what are you gonna do? Supposedly the improved health by the substantial weight loss outweighs the risks. Since morbid obesity is so dangerous to health and I would hate to see any child die as a result of it, I suppose if it was one of my children I’d probably look into it. I want to know why no one seems to have linked the fact that we no longer require PE in most of high school and teen obesity is on the rise. Oh yeah. Nobody makes money if every one exercises and learned proper nutrition in health class. LOL.

We all get it that no one diet works for everyone. No matter how good WeightWatchers has been to me, or how much I loved the Whipped Cream and Martini diet, it may not work with you. According to ScienceDaily, researchers have been studying the different diets vs. different genes and may soon be able to tell us from a simple blood test which diet would be most effective for us based on our gene make-up. I think that would be pretty cool. No more frustration going through 20 different diets trying to find one that actually works. Just take a blood test, get on the right type of diet, and zip…weight loss. Of course you still have to stick to the diet, but I still think it’s pretty cool news.

And now on the side of “medicine that contradicts itself once again”. Another new diet has hit the scene and teaches just the opposite of what we always thought about weight loss. Everybody says “if you starve yourself or cut way back on certain fats, your body will actually hoard fatstores and you gain weight“. That’s why “those in the know” are now touting eating more and losing weight, but this is totally different.

From the LemonDrop.com in the UK, the idea behind the Alternative-Day Diet is, as it sounds. There’s no calorie counting or meal plans. Dieters must simply eat a small amount one day (up to 50 per cent of your normal intake) and the next eat whatever you like.

As unlikely as it sounds, apparently a “skinny” gene is triggered by the feast to famine scenario and encourages the body to burn fat. It was Dr Mark Mattson, an America neuroscientist, who first made the breakthrough in 2003, when he discovered that rats on a low calorie diet experienced no ill effects when eating normally every other day. Now Krista Varady, an assistant professor of kinesiology and nutrition at the University of Illinois, has published the results of a ten-week trial involving 16 patients, all weighing over 14 stones (however much that is in pounds. Evidently quite a bit).

By eating 20 per cent of their normal intake one day and a regular healthy diet the next, they each lost between 10lb and 30lb. Dr James Johnson, author of The Alternate-Day Diet, has been using the method for five years. He told the Daily Mail: “I’ve always been a bit overweight. When I first started, I lost 35lb in 11 weeks.

This would back up the theory I had read years ago that if you get stuck on a plateau while on WeightWatchers, take a day or two  off and eat what ever you want. Then when you went back on the diet your metabolism would get a new kickstart.

That’s about all I have for you today.  Hope everyone’s getting plenty of exercise running store to store. You are parking far away aren’t you?

Staying Motivated This Time Of Year

Weigh In

Staying motivated to exercise this time of year is a tough go, even for the diligent.  You have so much to do, so much going on, including all of the extra eating and drinking, which is why this time of year exercise is so important.
Exercise is always a do-it-yourself venture. No other person and no machine can do it for you, dammit. LOL. Trust me, if there was a way for someone else to do the exercise while I lost the weight, I’d have found it. LOL.

Of course, once we are overweight, we usually want to trim down for a whole lot of reasons, some related to physical condition and fitness, while others would want to enhance their physique and appearance. And it is never too late to be fit or sexy (well, maybe).

In the past 50 to 75 years, physical activity has become the exception rather than the rule, both at home and on the job. People tend to drive where others once walked. People tend to flick a switch and machines do the hauling, lifting, pushing, and pulling for them.

This time of year we have to look ‘forward’ and prevent being a statistic. We don’t want to be one of the “ones” that gain at least 10 pounds from Halloween to January 1st.

The point here is that health experts believe that people lose their way, especially when it comes to dieting. They tend to go back to their old eating habits even after they learn to enjoy low-fat eating. They tend to return to sedentary ways even though they enjoy exercising.

Despite the momentum toward weight gain, you can stop it from happening. There are plenty of good reasons to avoid excess pounds, reasons that go beyond vanity or social appearance. There are many reasons in order to keep you motivated to exercise and stay healthy for the rest of your life.

Ways to Lose Big

1. Have an explicit goal

A simple statement like, “I want to lose some weight,” is an ambiguous and an indefinite statement. It will not the least motivate you to start doing exercises right away.

What is important is to be precise on your goals. It would be better if you will set some detailed amount of pounds that you really want to lose. Envision  what you will look like after reaching your desired weight. Doing this will inspire you to lose weight. In fact, maybe even more than what you have planned in mind. The idea is to use that figure to assist you to remain resilient and dedicated.

2. Develop a strategy

Strength of will does not work alone! To lose weight and stay with it, your strategy must comprise of both exercise and diet, and not either of the two.

Try to start motivating yourself by throwing away your clothes that have bigger sizes. This will put you in a situation where you only have your sexy clothes and that you have to make a choice by staying motivated to exercise or not wear any clothes at all. Which do you prefer?

3. Make out little, calculable measures

Put into practice actions that will suit your lifestyle. This means you have to implement moves that you and you alone will benefit from it and not somebody else.

The idea here is to opt for a more positive and attainable goal and not just to shun away from being plump and chubby.

4. Produce monitoring that has an important effect

It would be better to have somebody willing to take note of your progress or development. This will inspire you to keep on doing what you have started. Having somebody to listen to your achievements is definitely a better prize than just achieving your goal alone.

Besides, having an extra hand to support you and cheer for you when things start to fall short. It is that simple way of hearing somebody believing on what you do is one of the greatest motivations to keep you exercising for more.

5. Construct a vigorous, sensible timeline

What do you plan to achieve in a year? Try to suit your objectives to your calendar, and do not look forward to see the results in just a snap.

The bottom line is that in order to stay motivated to exercise entails a lot of hard work, which is contrary to what most people tend to think. The main idea is to let people change their lifestyle because it is only through this way that they will absolutely change their weight…for the better.

Back On The Scale At Long Last

This was the mother of all weigh-ins today. LOL. I haven’t had a scale for almost 6 months, but now we moved into a place that had one in the garage, and it seems to work just fine. Especially since I weighed less with all my clothes on than I did the last time I weighed myself necked.  It must be accurate.

Actually now that we’re doing our own cooking and I’m back on fat-free cream cheese, when I use it, and the same for skim milk vs. whole, that alone can make a heck of a difference. We use Shedd Spread instead of butter and the fast food is almost non-existant. Except for pizza, I probably had enough burgers etc. to last me almost a lifetime. It is so nice to have a home cooked meal, knowing that the ingredients are healthy or at least healthier.

Now I need to pick up on a few of the good habits I left behind, like adding flax oil to yogurt for breakfast every day, things like that. It will come. With just moving the budget’s a little tight right now, but it will get better.

If any one else reading this is revisiting the scale for the first time in along time, welcome! We can watch it go DOWN together. LOL