It's ON!!!

*in my best Cartman voice*

"Well well weeeelllll, loooook who it iiiissss...what a pleeeaaasant surpriiiiiiiisse"

Finally, damn! I mean, I've only been texting you for the past two days with "Hey sissy, I posted on the blog, go read it!" and "Hey sissy, have you read my blogs yet?????!!"

* CRICKETS ... CHIRP! CHIRP! *

Anyways, it's ON LIKE DONKEY KONG now, hooker!! In terms of a "contest", I guess we could have one although I think I'm motivated enough not to have one. Still, the thought of WINNING something is enticing....perhaps winner gets a magazine subscription of their choosing? Must be health/fitness related, though - it would make no sense whatsoever to win this bitch and celebrate with my new issues of Paula Deen (Paula Dang) magazine, now would it?? I will think about the "terms" and get back to you.

Sissy, would it help you if I sent you some non-weightbearing exercise videos like Pilates and Abs? You should also try biking if it doesn't hurt your ankle. I think we should both log our food intakes each day - it will keep us honest!!

Foods for today:

-Avocado with Baked Lays

-HUGE Salad with 2 Morningstar Black Bean Burgers and Bolthouse Yogurt Ranch dressing on side

-Nectarine and Apple

-Cheese Toast with 2% reduced fat cheddar cheese and lightly brushed with olive oil rather than butter

-FIVE cups of hot tea with just a smidge of honey in the first few cups

Workout:

-Ran 30 minutes (about 3 miles) on treadmill

After guzzling several cups of hot tea and not even being able to taste the honey that I put in it, I've decided to avoid using honey in my beverages (ie, decaf coffee and tea) for awhile. If I can't even taste the extra sweetness, then what is the point of wasting 60+ calories per serving on it? That shit adds up FAST.

Also, I think I'm going to suck it up and just start jogging with the jogging stroller in the mornings. Mr Cuteness (I don't want to use his name on the blog for privacy reasons) hasn't really been taking naps in the mornings consistently, so I'd rather spend 30-60 minutes jogging in the early morning and get it OVER WITH! Then I can do my DVD workout for 20-30 minutes afterwards when he plays in his exersaucer - he likes to watch me anyway!

I took a nice bubble bath tonight and it was just what my sore muscles needed - I should do that more often, but it's hard to find time sometimes! I'm super tired so I'm outtie! Night night!!

Stop making me look bad, Biatch!

TANTAN! GAH! I see you are hard at work already, trying to best us! Well, here's what I have to say about THAT: you are succeeding. :(

But only for the time being! Just until my sprained ankle, which as you know, I sustained while running with YOU, is better. However, I am s-l-o-w-l-y lobbing my fat self back on track. Today, I cleaned the house for 4 hours (the Hubs was really batching it up while I was on "vacation" - you would not believe some of the places I found his dirty socks)! Surprisingly, I gained NOTHING in the month that I was away (this was in part because I cooked most of the meals, but also because I wouldn't let Grammy bake any cakes or goodies, which resulted in a rash of cake-baking and pie-fixing the day before I left, supposedly because Uncle Walter was coming to visit, but really so she could send half a pound cake home with me!).

It wasn't until we got back to VT, and had company for a week who wanted to sample all of VT's culinary offerings (read: beer, Ben&Jerry's, cheese, and more beer), that I started "puffing" up. Yes, I said "puffing" - imagine a startled blowfish, without the spikes. It's more than just general bloating...it's like my arms, legs (especially my ankles), and middle all just swell up - and it usually happens when I drink a lot of beer, sadly. Is it water retention? Is it air? It remains to be seen whether real pounds were gained, but I definitely puffed up a pants size.

Luckily, our farm share has started and is providing us with bountiful produce - the perfect excuse to increase the proportion of veggies to meat and starch on our plates, which should reduce the puff effect. We've been having fantastic salads with butter lettuce and micro-greens, and last night I cooked up a pot of turnip and beet greens with a new recipe I found that uses no salty meat for flavoring, but instead uses garlic and onions. I even threw the peeled turnips in there and the Hubs loved them. I also roasted our first farm chicken and it was the leanest, most chicken-y chicken I've ever tasted. I am surreptitiously pushing us toward a lower-carb diet...shhhh, don't tell Hubsy!

So, how are we running this new challenge? Are we counting days? Percentage lost? Should we have rewards or incentives?

Snickers Ice Cream cone, you don't own me!!

Today was a pretty good day. I'm getting back on track with my workouts and healthy eating - I just need to keep this up for 1-2 weeks minimum so I can re-establish my habits.

Workouts:

-3 mile run; up North and back 2 times

-JM Ripped in 30 Level 1; my legs and butt were KILLING me today!!! I can tell it's going to take a few more days to get all of the soreness out.

Eats:

-ZONE Mint Chocolate bar and coffee

-HUGE salad with two black bean veggie burgers, feta, and yogurt Ranch dressing

-one meatball for a snack

-two gummy worms

-4 (YES, FOUR!!) ears of corn with a little butter and salt/pepper

-pineapple fruit popsicle

I would just like to point out that I had the pineapple popsicle INSTEAD of a Snickers Ice Cream cone!! Dear Husband brought home a box of Snickers Ice Cream Cones from the store today, thinking he would be treating both of us. Normally I would have jumped all over that shiz, BUT I am really making an effort to reduce my sugar intake, SOOOOO I made a HEALTHY decision and decided to pass (THIS TIME!). I'm secretly hoping he will eat them all himself this week and take these decisions out of my hands, muahahahhaha!!! (my evil laugh)

TanTan in the Hizz-ouse!!

What up, loyal followers!! And by "loyal followers", I mean Hempa and Funny Nurse (although I think Funny Nurse quit this bitch a long time ago, hehehe) My name is Tanner and I am Hempa's big sis. Like the aforementioned crazy trinas, I am also in the quest to lose some weight - those last 10 annoying-as-f*$k pounds that are preventing me from being as hot as possible.

I recently had a baby - if "recently" means last November - and have lost all my baby weight plus an additional 15 pounds. I want to lose 10 more because I was kinda chunky for my body type before getting preggo, soooooo I'm hoping blogging every day will hold me accountable for what I eat and how much I exercise...which will in turn help the pounds melt off faster than that dude's face in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

My food for today:

-Baked Lays and avocado

-Gummi Worms

-4 small meatballs

-the remainder of a bag of Hershey's Nuggets (about 8?)

-a few bites of a WhichWich sandwich

-a few spoon fulls of White Chocolate Wonderful peanut butter

Yeah, so I ate a lot of shit today - don't judge! I have almost run out of candy in my house (just a few gummi worms left and some Lifesavers, but clearly the Lifesavers are for bigtime emergencies because REALLY, who is satisfied by those? How dare they call themselves "candy"!) and I'm going to TRY not to buy any more. Candy/refined sugars is what makes me hold onto weight, so if I can just avoid that stuff for a month or so I can lose some pounds fast.

My workout today was Jillian Michaels' Ripped in 30 DVD, Level 1 - that shit was HARD. A couple months ago I did the 30 Day Shred with Hempa and I saw good results, so I'm hoping this gets me even more toned. I can tell already that it will be much harder than Shred. It has 4 Levels, which you do for a week at the time. I'm going to do it Monday-Friday and save my weekends for long runs and possibly going back to ballet class? I want to lose 5 pounds before I DARE go into the ballet studio in a leotard with mirrors all around!!

Ok, so that was my first day. I should probably take some before and after photos but I don't have time right now...maybe later?!!

Tan

I wanna dance, too!

FunnyNurse! I'm so glad to see you! I was really hoping we weren't going to let this thing die just yet. It's been super motivating for me. The dance workouts sound awesome - I'm totally Netflixing that shit! I'm getting so tired of Jillian Michaels, I think I'm going to break that DVD as soon as I get through Level 3. Or maybe I'll just mail it to my mom.

I haven't been doing real "workouts" every day, either - I have come to accept that I'm just not cut out for that sort of rigidity. I would need somebody following me around, kicking my ass and making me do it. But I have been trying to do some form of semi-strenuous physical activity (as in, more taxing than carrying laundry up and down the stairs), even if it just means weeding the flowerbed. Which is quite strenuous, as it turns out. I'm sore today - especially my knees. Yes, she said that!

Nevertheless, I do feel like we need to get pumped up again about this getting in shape business...it's supposed to be a Countdown to Hotness, after all, not a Slow Progression Toward Mediocrity. How can we recipro-motivate each other? (Yes, I am trying to coin a term for reciprocal motivation. Help me out here.) Should we come up with incentives? Bribes? What sort of carrot/stick combination can we use to get our asses back in high gear?

Dance Dance Revolution

Okay. After my break via vacation time, I came back into this thing with a poot rather than a bang. I needed to find something to rock my ass back into workout mode- running on the treadmill while listening to Ke$ha just was not going to do it.
But you know was does?
Rocking your favorite work out clothes (complete with a t-shirt I cut so it turned into a shorter off the shoulder type thing) while dancing. I mean, not just 'dancing' like, by myself in my living room, but for reals, going on Netflix, going to Sports and Fitness and picking Dance Fitness. Yeah. There are like, 7 videos!! So I have been doing this at night, and it has been rocking my world.
I even did my hair one time and danced it out. Add some lipstick and DO WHAT I DO- pretend you are on the set of glee and are a cast member.
And just out of curiousty, I went to you tube and thought...hmmm, what if I want to learn how to dance the Single Ladies dance?  done-

So I have been doing this, but I have to say, I am not exercising every single day. I do not have the time/energy to do that and I get tired/hurt/bored before I can get a routine down. But I am still in this. GO HOTTIES!!

Happy Springtimes!

Oh, Springtimes! How I missed you! Living below the Mason-Dixon line these past MANY years caused me to forget what you were all about. I'm so glad we can be friends again! Instead of a week of vicious pollen followed by the blistering heat of Summer, we can enjoy together gentle breezes, warm sun, and at least a solid month of daffodils, hyacinths, and violets.

We can also enjoy outdoor activities! So, peeps (and by peeps, I mean FunnyNurse and my sister), it's true I haven't posted in a while. It's also true that the interruption in posts coincided with the Hubs's first stretch of days off since this little project started. I see you over there, all smug, assuming that he got me off track - that we spent those days gorging on bacon and butter, rolling around in bed, and vegging out in front of Battlestar Galactica. But you would be WRONG! Except about the Battlestar Galactica part. And the bed part - but not the rolling. We are way too fat for vigorous rolling. That's not to say we wouldn't roll downhill if placed horizontally at the top.

But ANYWAY...the real reason I haven't posted is that on his first day off, we went to a bike swap and he bought me a bike! A bicycle, not a motorcycle. Let's not get carried away here. And because of that bike purchase, almost every day since has been spent outside, biking up and down the little hills and valleys near our house, the wind in my hair and the bugs in my teeth. OK, not really the bugs - but, as my sister will attest, I did get bugs caught in my teeth while bike-riding when we were little. No, not on purpose. Gross.

Don't get me wrong - Jillian still made her appearance this last week. Twice with Hubby (I know, right? Shocker!), and twice by myself. Well, Sammy was there. He's gotten a little more "calm" about the whole thing...not surprisingly, that coincided with me finally figuring out how to turn Jillian's voice off but keep the music on. It's amazing that some producer had the foresight to include that option on the DVD...but, I guess, not so surprising. Clearly, my sister, my husband, my dog, and I are not the only ones in the world bothered by her nerve-grating screeching. But even with her voice turned off, the abs portion of the workouts has gotten more challenging, with the addition of a 13-lb. dog on my chest, licking my face and preventing normal breathing. I know it will make me stronger in the end.

I do have to admit, though, I've lost count of the days...I think we are on Day 15 now...right? Who cares. I know I'm going to keep going after 30 days anyway - the spurt (I know, gross word) of energy this whole thing has brought me was exactly what I needed to get past the blah of Muddy March in Vermont. It's been nice feeling like I'm actually doing something GOOD for myself. And, here's the kicker: without even really realizing it, I have lost 5.5 pounds! I've just been chugging away, totally forgetting about the scale in the bathroom, and I stepped on it this morning and BAM! For once, I feel like my efforts are starting to pay off.

And now, I'm going to ride my bike!