Tuesday, July 13, 2010 | By: Tangy

Starting stats and a look at where I was in the beginning


This picture was my inspiration to start a new healthy lifestyle. It was taken in April 2009. I think sometimes it takes a picture for you to really realize how you look. I am still not happy but sometimes I just need to take a peek at this and my old numbers to see how far I've come and give myself a little credit.
Stats then:
weight-180
chest-36
waist-39
hips- 47
thighs- 25
I know it's kind of backwards not to have this with my new pictures, but oh well. When I update this, I'll take new pictures and put them next to the old pictures and put all the new measurements together, too. I am really hoping for results!!

July 13, 2010

height- 5'8 1/2"
weight- 165
bust- 37
chest- 33
waist- 31
tummy-38.5
hips- 40
thighs- 24.5
arms- 12

I am starting to keep track of all my calories in and out on dailyburn.com so hopefully it will help me get into the 150s and beyond!
Sunday, July 11, 2010 | By: Tangy

Like a kid in a candy store

Foods no longer in my house!!

my produce for the week! homemade pesto, strawberries, grapes, blueberries, red pepper, sweet potatoes, cherries, apples, spring mix, potatoes, bananas, and I forgot the carrots!



Yesterday was an awesome day. We decided to take our oldest, Peter, out with just mom and dad. We left his younger sister Riley with grandma and grandpa and we headed out! We saw Toy Story 3 in 3-D. It was our first 3-D movie and it was great! It was very cool to see the images popping off the screen and we were almost the only ones in the theater, so Peter's restlessness didn't bother anyone. I don't think he saw much of the movie so we decided not to try to see a movie with him again for at least another year. He just doesn't have the attention span yet at nearly 4 years old.
Since we were just down the street, I asked Pete to stop at the only health food store I know of within a one hour radius of home (just the city we were in was almost an hour drive away! gotta love living in the middle of nowhere surrounded by cornfields!) so I could go take a look around. I ended up with a cart full of stuff! I wish I would have looked around longer since I did not get a chance to look at produce, frozen, bulk, or health and beauty items but here are a few of the things that I bought!


I have yet to find a healthy salad dressing that I like...I hope this one is good!




real raw sugar




Rice milk for either baking, drinking, or coffee!






chocolate almond milk to try in my coffee




organic cornmeal for a recipe I have in mind









nutella....omg one day I will do a post entirely devoted to nutella!




aluminum-free baking powder





whole wheat flour...it kind of looks like dog food in this packaging!



organic corn starch for a clean cherry pie recipe I want to try




organic wheat gluten to bake my own bread!



and that's not even close to all of it. I even found some grain-sweetened chocolate chips! A little splurge, but they will be used to make cookies one day! I was just in awe of all the healthy foods I have heard of but have never actually seen! I will have to make the trip there once a month from now on. Just for whatever I can't find at Walmart or Meijer, since it is a lot more expensive!

I got home and immediately started to re-arrange my kitchen. I took everything out of my cabinets and put it all on the kitchen table. I threw out a bunch of things that I didn't use or that were expired or that were just plain un-healthy (see above photos). I put all my new clean baking supplies in a cabinet that previously had misc. kitchen gadgets. Then today I moved onto the fridge! I now have everything organized nicely and I threw away some more bad stuff. I'm going to make it as easy as possible for me to eat clean!
Friday, July 9, 2010 | By: Tangy

The cost of being healthy

So I have taken some new pictures. If you know me, you know I am constantly taking new pictures of myself! lol I guess I like reminding myself how far I've come and where I'm at now and where I need to go! I can start to see some muscle definition but of course there is that lovely layer covering it all up! Hopefully soon I can kiss that layer good-bye!











Today was a hard day for me. I was doing great until about 4 this afternoon. Breakfast was the same egg scramble as yesterday, only all egg whites this time. Mid-morning snack was a banana with peanut butter. Lunch was oatmeal--1 cup cooked oats, 1 tbsp brown sugar, walnuts, craisins, cinnamon, and 2 tbsp wheat germ. So good! I did p90x cardio x for my workout. Then I had a cherry blossom smoothie--my name for one of my best smoothies! 15 fresh cherries, pitted and halved, 1/2 cup ff plain yogurt, 1 scoop chocolate whey, 1/8 cup haagen dazs vanilla ice cream, and a handfull of ice (I will try to remember to take photos in the future!) Then around 4pm, I started getting so hungry! I didn't experience that at all yesterday and today I just did not feel prepared! I caved and had a string cheese and half a chicken breast--not so bad, I know, but still--I didn't want to have to eat anything til my next meal!

I was so torn tonight for supper. I wanted it so bad to be a clean meal but I was hosting movie night at my house for my aunt, my sister, and my nephew. And of course my kids as well. I didn't have enough food to make a big meal for everyone--really setting myself up for failure there! I think in the future I can use these nights as opportunities to try out new recipes. I knew they wanted to order pizza, so I was thinking about making my own on the english muffins in my kitchen. I just happened to check the label and whoa. Like 20 different ingredients, most of which the average person could not pronounce. SO not clean. ugh. The take-out pizza would have home-made fresh dough, freshly prepared sauce, real cheese...nothing whole-grain. Which is better for you?? I ate four slices of pizza. The square-cut kind, so not huge pieces, but I still am second-guessing my decision. Definitely too much sodium. That, I can taste. I had literally two Fritos, just as impulses, and I do feel bad about that. My aunt brought over a(n open) bag of pretzel m&ms--omg. why. did. she. do. that. I had at least 20 of them. I'm a sucker for sweet and salty. And she brought over my favorite cheesy bean dip--but I resisted, besides the two chips I had dipped in it. I fought back. I sliced up two apples from the fridge and loaded them onto my empty plate and munched on those instead of chips and dip. Go me. lol

I realized I really need to get my whole kitchen prepared to whip up a healthy dish at a moment's notice. I looked up tons of healthy, yummy-looking recipes from another blog and started thinking...I don't have any of these ingredients in my house! I need to spend two week's worth of groceries on one trip just to get my healthy clean essentials! And that isn't all that I need. I started making a mental list of everything I will need for my new lifestyle. I think every purchase will be worth every penny, but I never really realized how much I had to invest in myself to become healthy and get the body I've always wanted!

Things I really really want, in order of importance
  • a kitchen full of clean foods. Pastas, rices, beans, non-dairy milks such as coconut, almond and soy, agave nectar, organic corn meal, grain-sweetened chocolate chips, grains, and the list goes on and on... $300
  • food processor to make a lot of the foods I want to try...$150
  • rolling pin, parchment paper, also for cooking...$30
  • new running shoes--whatever kind the running store suggests I should get after evaluating my current shoes and seeing my stride...$100
  • pairs of 20, 25, and 30 lb dumbbells...$222
  • new yoga mat--mine is old, cheapy, yucky, and not cushiony...$15
  • new workout clothes--I am severely lacking here....$300
  • 2 20 lb kettlebells...$94
  • Lauren Brooks kettlebell dvd...$39

grand total...$1250. And that's just my short list. **sigh**


Thursday, July 8, 2010 | By: Tangy

Cleaning up!

After a week of carb, chemical, and sodium-laden high-calorie food, I have decided I am sick of feeling like crap. I've noticed lately that when I eat processed foods high in sodium that I not only gain weight, but I also feel bloated and just all-over nasty. So today starts the new me! Eating right and fueling my body with high-quality fuel and keeping my heart and muscles healthy by exercise. I went to the store and got some delicious produce--fresh cherries, grapes, apples, strawberries, and blueberries. Went through my fridge and made some fresh pesto sauce with the basil I had sitting around. Here's what I put in it



2 (packed) cups of basil, stems removed

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1/2 cup pine nuts

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (I'm guessing here...I kept adding oil til it got to the consistency I wanted)



It looks and smells delicious! I love pesto in a panini with chicken, roasted red peppers, and a little mozzarella or over some whole-grain pasta--yum!



I've been enjoying my fruit all day. So far, it has been very easy for me to stick to eating clean because I am prepared with lots of healthy food! I'm going to try and transition my whole family into eating clean. I know it will be easy for me and my daughter but my husband and son are really addicted to the junk!



Today's food diary



breakfast- 2 eggs, turkey sausage, potato, and sharp cheddar. I know turkey sausage isn't technically "clean" but I really used a very small amount. Same with the cheese. A tablespoon or less. I baked some potatoes for 30 min @ 350* and then sliced them thinly and put them in a HOT nonstick skillet with a little canola oil, and seasoned them with pepper and garlic powder. Breakfast was delish!



snack- cherries



lunch- 1 cup Schwan's golden fruit blend (strawberries, pineapple, mango, and peach), 1/2 cup nonfat organic plain yogurt, 1 scoop vanilla whey, 1 tbsp flax



snack- banana with 2 tbsp Smuckers all-natural peanut butter



dinner- chicken pesto panini. 2 slices ww bread, each sprayed on the outside with some evoo cooking spray. Spread pesto onto one slice, then top with cut up baked chicken, topped with roasted red peppers, then sprinkled lightly with low-fat mozzerella cheese, then topped with the other piece of bread. I ate this with some cherries.



snack-none



Today's workout:



Jari Love Get Ripped 1000 (approx 60 min of cardio/strength training) -burned 580 cal

p90x core synergistics- burned 280 calories

I would have burned more during p90x but my lovely daughter was in the room with me and kept crawling under me while I was in plank, or took over my yoga mat while I was trying to do my "Superman-banana" rolls...so I didn't get in all my reps and I didn't stick around for the bonus round.
Friday, July 2, 2010 | By: Tangy

Shania Twain - Up!

Rock bottom

Tangy says...

Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can climb back up. I had been doing so well, being the good girl in life and well, life game me some lemons. 2010 has been a year full of transitions. The biggest of which, transitioning from Army wife in civlian world to cilvian wife in civlian world. After living in this world, I think I prefer living in my Army wife bubble. It was a happier time. I think we (the hubs and I) got to see each other more then, even with deployments, than we do now. The little we do see of each other now consists of "my day was worse" stories and morning breath. Not exactly where I thought we'd be after five years of marriage.

Besides the career transitions I've had this year, I've been going through a lifestyle one: going from fat to fit. I was doing so well with my clean, healthy eating and losing pounds and inches and seeing numbers on the scale I hadn't seen since way, way before children and then this current stress in my life happened (I won't get into detail here) and all of my hard work came to a stand-still. Worse, when I stepped on the scale this morning I realized I had gained 10 lbs in the last three months when I should have been losing it. It was the last straw. I spent the morning a teary mess, consoling myself with the last of the chocolate cake I had baked the last time I was in one of my lows. It wasn't until I heard some kind words from one of my workout buddies that I decided that I could do this. If losing weight was easy, it wouldn't be a multi-million (or billion?) dollar industry with endless "gurus" trying to sell us their brand of weight-loss. I have motivation. I have determination. I have willpower. Well, I do somewhere. I will not let myself go and spend this time moping around the house feeling sorry for myself!! I will not be a fat frumpy housewife!! So here I am, venting my frustrations instead of heading to the fridge. I cleaned my house this afternoon and spent time outside with the kids so I could free up time tonight for my workout--something I've been avoiding.

I am a self-sabotager, afraid of not succeeding. All-or-nothing kind of girl. So I am stepping up and giving it my all. I will not let myself down one more time. Like Shania says, "up, up, up, there's nowhere but up from here."