Clever Title?

I hate having to come up with a title every week, but I hate leaving it blank even more :) so lame titles it is. This week hasn't been really productive for me. I was sick for a while and couldn't seem to run farther than 3.5 miles at a 10:30 min pace for an entire week. The next week even though I was feeling better, I lacked the energy to do more than 4 miles at an equally crappy pace. I am happy to report that this week, I am feeling much better, and am back to my 5 miles and my pace is back to normal, so that makes me happy. I did exercise my 5 days a week even though I was sick, because I am incredibly obsessive about my exercise. I just can't let myself work out less than 5 days a week. My husband just laughs at me. Of course if he hadn't been TDY he would have been having a heart attack. I guess this is enough rambling, I know that no one likes to hear people complain about being sick, so I apologize for that, but now that I have gotten my once a year flu or whatever it was, there will be no more complaining from me!!!!!!!!!!! :) Hope everyone has a fabulous week!!!!!!!

Oops

So, I guess it has been too many days between blog posts. Too bad for me. I don't really know what to say about this week. I have been running, although last week, I wasn't able to run farther than a 5k any of the 5 days, but thankfully this week I am better and getting back to my usual 5 miles. My husband finally got back, and I actually got out of the house without taking a child with me last night for the first time in 3 weeks, so that was a bonus. I finally went through all of my clothes yesterday and got rid of everything that doesn't fit me. Today's task is to take the 7 bags to good will. It was a little sad, because I did have a few things I really liked, but I really like them being too big too, so it was time to part with them. I have a much smaller amount of clothes, but that will increase, when occasionally I walk past something that catches my eye, although I must admit, I am a girl that doesn't like to shop. Well congrats to everyone this month on their accomplishments, I am so excited that I have almost made it to the maintaining stage, I have 6 more pounds to go!!!!!! My goal this month is to make it to that. Hope everyone has a fabulous week!!!!!

Running

So I was at the gym this past week, and I was running on the treadmill (not my first choice of locations but it is freaking cold and still snowy) and when I was done, the girl on the machine next to me and asked me if I have been a runner my whole life. For me that was an odd question because even though I started running about 2 years ago, I have been running, not a runner. She told me that I made it look so easy, and wanted advise on how I have improved the past couple of years. It was such a strange experience for someone to be asking my advise, especially since a few days earlier this girl and her husband busted out half an hour running at a 9.5 and a 10, that made me feel a bit on the slow side. Anyway, that's about all I've got for this week. Still drinking my diet soda (no I will never be converted, and yes I know what it supposedly does being a chem student and all), and spending lots of time at the gym. My husband laughs at me because every time he calls me, I am at the gym, he tries to wait a little longer to call, or call a little earlier, but it doesn't seem to matter. Excited about weigh in happening in a couple of days, I am getting so close to my weight goal next month I should be there!!!!!

This Week

OK, so this week, I can't think of a title, so this is as good as it gets. This week, I have discovered 2 things. First, stress = large quantities of diet coke, and I am totally OK with that. Instead of stress eating I stress drink diet coke. At least it happens to be something that has no calories. And yes, I am sure that there are people having a heart attack reading this (that is assuming someone actually does read this ;) ) people are very passionate about their opinion on soda. On the other side of that, the time that I spend at the gym has doubled. Since I don't have to worry about hurrying home to get my house work done so that I can relax in the evening, I have all evening to do my housework. So the second thing I learned is that No Husband= insane quantities of Diet Coke + Extra Time at the Gym + A Ridiculously Clean House. This deafeningly does not mean that I prefer for my husband to be send on random TDY's 6 weeks before he deploys. I am just happy that stress doesn't = high calorie food intake. So, hope that everyone has a fantastic week.

Clothes Box

Being a military family, we move a bit. In fact I think that the longest we have ever lived anywhere since we have been married is 3 years. Every time we move we are given a weight limit based on my husbands rank. Anything over that weight limit, we have to pay for out of pocket. Having kids and all of the furniture, clothing and toys that go with them, plus text books and tools, really adds up. We go through all of our things every couple of years as we are getting ready to move, and I have had 2 waist high boxes that have moved with us to every location of clothes that don't fit, and that I have had every expectation of eventually getting back into. Before Christmas, I finally pulled those boxes out of our shed (which is set up in our garage, but that is something else entirely) and started going through them. I am pleased to announce that after this weekend, I no longer have a box of small clothes that I will someday fit into. That someday has come and with the exception of one pair of jeans, the box now only contains my fat clothes (which will promptly go to the closest Goodwill). It will be nice to have 2 less boxes to ship across the country and dig through after every move and wonder if they will ever fit. Only down side is that it has been so long since the clothes have fit, that they are slightly dated. Most of the clothes a barely worn since I bought them before I realized I was pregnant with my first kid. I am close to my goal weight, and I was thinking how nice it is going to be to maintain my weight instead of constantly trying to lose. My whole adult life has been working on trying to get a little of my extra weight off. I know that maintaining weight will take some work as well, since this is a lifestyle change and not just a diet, I have learned how to eat better and I have fitness goals that I have for myself, but I do look forward to the day where I have achieved that goal (although my husband did tell me that after this competition my scale is going to have a mysterious accident). Hope everyone has a fantastic week, and is getting to see progress as well.

Pants

After almost a week of being snowed in, I was finally able to make it to the gym this morning. It was sooooo nice!!! I did work out at home last week, but for whatever reason aerobics just isn't effective enough for me to lose weight. I can maintain, but not lose, so I am very excited to be able to get out and to the gym again. Anyway, moving on to my title, to understand that little story though, I need to preface it with a little story from my early married life. We I met my husband, I weighed about 110 pounds and wore a size 2. Six weeks before we got married I went on birth control (I was not interested in ever having kids), so because I didn't want to worry about the pill daily I went on Depo. Now this was all before I discovered my love of food. I started to really gain weight and it didn't matter how much I exercised. I was pretty active, I was taking 3 gym classes in college plus my husband and I did a lot of hiking (we went backpacking for part of our honeymoon) and I didn't eat much back then. Apparently my body didn't get the message and I gained 50 pounds in 6 months. My husband didn't really know how to deal with me because I would stand in front of my full length mirror and just be in tears trying to put on my clothes that had fit not so long ago and now I couldn't zip (those that know me know that I don't cry, they call me heartless). So finally he decided he couldn't take it anymore and removed my mirror, broke it in half and threw it in our dumpster. He has since forbid me to ever own another full length mirror. He told me that he didn't care if I had gained weight that he still thought I looked good. So 12 years later, I still do not own a full length mirror. Now to my more recent story, over Christmas break I had a gift card to Aeropostle and decided that while we were in the area I would run into the store and use it. My husband, 5 kids and my dad were all waiting in the car, so I just found a few things and bought them without trying them on. One of them was a size 9/10 jeans. I was sure they weren't going to fit, but since my 12's were getting too big, I figured it wouldn't be too long. I was pleasantly surprised when I put them on and they did actually fit. So I absolutely love my trendy new jeans, but again I do not own a full length mirror, so in the past anytime I walk by a big mirror or see a picture of me, I am like, I didn't realize I looked that bad. So we were at the furniture store looking around and we walked past all of the standing mirrors, I really didn't want to look because I knew if I didn't like what I saw in the mirror, I would never wear my favorite new pants again, but of course I couldn't keep from taking a peak, and I was so surprised to see myself in a real mirror, and not be horrified at how I looked. I was sure it was just how they had the mirror angled, but they all showed the same thing. It was so nice to actually look in the mirror and not be embarrassed. So anyway how this all ties together was we brought home the pamphlet for the bedroom set we are looking at and one of the pieces is a full length mirror and my husband finally decided that I am happy enough with how I am starting to look, that he is OK with me having another mirror. Hopefully he doesn't read this because I must also tell another story about him, and this one will embarrass him. We were having a good time watching the Patriots lose yesterday and they of course showed the cheerleaders, and he says to me those cheerleaders are kind of chunky. And for some reason a few minutes later he told me, well some of them are the same size as you. I looked at him and was like you know you just complimented me and insulted me all in the same sentence? He totally didn't realize what he had just done, luckily for him it wasn't last week, and I found it funny rather than insulting. Anyway, I know this was a long post, but I decided to start being a little bit more personal and post the good things and not just the frustrating things.

New Compititon

Hello!!! So for everyone that doesn't know me (which is pretty much everyone but my mom and Sarah, and I did meet Karilynn once), I will tell you all a little about me. I am the mom of 5 kids, 2 girls and 3 boys ages ranging for 11 to 2. They keep me pretty busy, I was working on my bachelor's in Chemistry when I had my last kid, and than we moved 10 days later, so that has been put on hold for a little bit. My husband is active duty Air Force, so we get to move around quite a bit, which is nice. I absolutely love being a military family (minus the deployments of course). Right now we are stationed at Offutt, NE. Not the most exciting assignment, but certainly not the worst either. The best thing about the military is their emphasis on fitness. Not only do we have free fitness center access (to an amazing gym none the less) but we also have fitness classes, personal trainers, a heath and wellness center (it has healthy cooking classes plus access to nutritionists) and the gym here sponsors about one 5K a month. So one day I was thinking about all of these great tools that I have to aid me on my journey to weight loss, and I was wondering how I got to the point I am at all. If through out the 10 years that my husband has been in the military, I had bothered to really take advantage of all of these programs, I wouldn't even be in this situation. But alas due to my love of food and lovely genetics, I am here, but the good news with all of this is that I have started using most of the great tools that I have. I go to the gym at least 5 days a week(when it is too cold to run outside), I have gone to some healthy cooking classes and I have run every 5k that the base has put on lately with either my oldest 2 kids or my husband. It has really been a lot of fun having them go with me. About 2 years ago, I was really frustrated and talking (probably actually more like whining) to my husband about how I can never seem to reach the weight goals that I set for myself, and he said I don't care what your weight is, I think you look great now, if you want to set a goal, set a fitness goal instead. So he challenged me to beat him at his military fitness test. He has to run a mile and a half in less than 15 minutes (he does it in 12). He knows me so well, I never back down from a challenge. So I started running, and sadly I have yet to race him, but I have completed 2 half marathons, and I kept pace with him without any problem during the 5k we ran in the middle of December. So far I have lost 50 pounds since I started running, 35 of them from the last competition I did, so that has been amazing. My goal for this competition is to lose the last of my weigh which is 10 possibly 15 more pounds, I certainly won't weigh 110 again like I did in high school, but my doctor said any less isn't healthy for me, so I feel inclined to follow his advise. This year I would really like to run a full marathon, but I'm not sure I will be able to train for it. It will be very time consuming and with 5 kids, I just am not sure. Training for my half's I have had the kids with me, the older 3 on their bikes, and I push the younger 2, but I never had them go on my long runs. This year my husband will be deployed and I will have to take all of them on all of my runs, and they will be longer training for a full. I'm not sure about pushing 70 pounds worth of kids (plus the weight of a stroller) for 14 miles, or making my other kids bike quite that far, so we will see. Maybe I will run the half here in Omaha again this year, and pick a different full to run later on in the year. I would also like to run the slacker half marathon this year in Georgetown, CO. It is a half that is all downhill which just sounds like fun to me. Anyway, that is a lot about me and a lot for anyone to read, but I am really excited about this new competition, and wish everyone participating the best of luck!!!! Also, thank you sooooooo much Karilynn for organizing this and putting it together for us!!!!!!