Notes from Bootcamp

I have a crazy schedule this week leading up to my chorus retreat this weekend. So I'm going to keep it short and sweet this week. I made it to Boot camp twice last week!!!I missed Friday due to a trip to Santa Cruz. Below are some of my thoughts.

1. I wish I had never stopped
2. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting
3. While my athletic ability has deteriorated, it's not as bad as the very first time I started boot camp
4. I still hate waking up at 5am   

Next week I will be updating my S.M.A.R.T. Goals in left column because I've achieved both of them! Also I'm hoping to bring you a new recipe I've been thinking about for a while.  Oh and one last thing I lost another 1.5 #'s :)

The Sacramento Valley Chorus "Blue Divas" are Going to Rock the House This Weekend At Retreat

Let's Get Cookin'

On December 30th, 2011 we had a major loss in the family. After hours of steaming tamales our poor stove couldn't handle the pressure and cracked.........more like exploded.

Glass Shards Flew All Over the Kitchen

The tragedy continued as delayed insurance claims and a back ordered replacement left us without a stove for two months. But I'm proud to announce that we now have a new stove!

Can't Wait to Take This Baby for a Spin!

The one upside to being without a stove for 2 months is that it was the catalyst that lead me to recommitting to getting healthy. However I couldn't have been this successful without one store and that's Trader Joe's. When I decided to stop eating out at fast food joints I knew that it meant eating prepared microwaveable food. While I was not looking forward to a diet of Lean Cuisine I knew it was needed. Then I decided to check out Trader Joe's to see if any of their food would fit in my diet......and WOW did it. I found SO many entree's that fit into my diet! I love their food because they feature all kinds of cuisine from Indian and Mexican to Italian. Their food is so flavorful and so different from the big box store prepared food that I actually crave it. My favorites are Tandoori style butter chicken 360 calories, reduced guilt pizza primavera 250 calories, and Grilled Eggplant 270 Calories. While I can't wait to start cooking on the new stove I will definitely be keeping Trader Joe's prepared meals in my diet. 

On the waking up early and going to the gym front, I won half the battle this week.....This past week I've been waking up between 6:15 and 6:45am while I've spent most of that time still in bed reading...I know that it will come in helpful when I go back to Boot Camp on Tuesday! Also I lost 1 more pound this week!

My Brother Abe Assembling Tamales

Oh Snooze Button How I Love Thee

Let me count the ways.........In my mental battle with the snooze button this week, the snooze button won. It won big time! It was my goal this week to get up early and go to the gym twice this week and I failed.  In part because I spent the weekend being lazy and catching up on sleep lost during my weekend in San Diego and also because I just couldn't stop hitting the snooze button. This is how a typical morning goes with my alarm clock.
It is set for 5:50 am; I have to leave by 7:15 to be on time to work.

• 5:50 am- Alarm goes off: without thinking about it hit the snooze button and go back to sleep
• 6:00am- Hit snooze and think to myself “The next time it goes off I'm going to get out of bed"
• 6:10am- Hit snooze and think to myself “The next time it goes off I'm going to get out of bed, I mean it this time!" 
• 6:20am-Hit snooze but without realizing it like a trained monkey
• 6:30am-Hit snooze but without realizing it like a trained monkey 
• 6:40am-Hit snooze but without realizing it like a trained monkey 
• 6:50am -Hit snooze but without realizing it like a trained monkey
• 7:00am- Hit Snooze then think to myself " How many times have I hit the snooze button?" look at clock and curse myself for running late again. 

I don't know why I thought I could break this pattern with no real attack plan While I didn't change the time my alarm usually goes off I was hoping of getting up at 6:10am so I could stop at the gym for a quick cardio workout before work. I guess since getting back on a healthier diet was so easy for me this time around I figured this would be too. Never mind that when I go back to Boot Camp on March 5th I have to leave the house at 5:40am. So I have one more week until I go back to Boot Camp and this is my attack plan.

1. Pack gym bag and layout workout cloths before I go to bed.
2. Go to bed at 10pm and read. Instead of watching Netflix until I fall asleep.
3. Sent Alarm clock on opposite side of the room.  
4. Don't go back to sleep, no more snoozing!
5. Wake up earlier even on weekends. 

Here’s hoping I defeat the snooze button this week! In other news the food diary/App MyFitnessPal continues to be a great tool. I lost 4 more lbs!

One Week Down

I'm officially one week in and I've lost 3lbs! The food diary has been SO helpful. Since the last time I used My Fitness Pal they've added a new feature where you can take a photo of the UPC Code of any food item and it pulls all the nutrition info from its database. It makes keeping my food diary quick and easy, especially since we still have no stove and I'm eating mostly microwavable food with some eating out.

Love this new Feature!

This weekend I was in San Diego for the California Democratic Party Convention. I had a great time getting fired up and ready to go for the 2012 elections. Plus as a bonus Alex was able to drive down from L.A. and spend some time with me :) I started with my food diary but quickly realized that eating out at restaurants with no nutrition info made that very hard. I did the best I could, I choose grilled over fried food, lean proteins, only ate half of my portions, plus my hotel was a mile away from the convention so I walked all over downtown San Diego. I lost one of my pounds over the weekend so I must have been doing something right!

Governor Brown @ the CDP Convention

My goals this week are to continue my food diary and make it to the Gym twice in the morning before work in preparation for going back to 6am Boot Camps!

Reboot

So it's been over a year since my last post. I could go on and on about what happened, but you don't want to hear my excuses. To make a long story short, work got overwhelming and I became less and less motivated to make the right choices. I stopped going to Bootcamp in March of 2011 and really by May I was back to my old habits of eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I've gain most of what I lost back, thankfully not all of it but most of it. I'm ready to start anew and make a new commitment to my health!

I've been thinking about getting back on a program for months now but didn't have the motivation. Then at the end of December our stove and oven broke on the same day (can someone say planned obsolescence?) Due to insurance shenanigans and our stove being on back order our kitchen is still out of order. I've been eating out for every meal and I'm just sick of it. Which is why this is a blessing in disguise, even though it will be hard to eat right on store bought prepared food. I'm so sick of fast food that I have no desire to eat it. I feel like I need to detox from all the crap I've been eating the past month.  My face and hair have been extra oily lately and I just feel fatigued a lot more.

So this week I'm starting small with restarting my food diary and keeping my calories under 1200 a day. Next week I'll add something else with the goal of being back to Bootcamp by March.