sweat is fat crying

Hey there all. So much for my streak of posting....two days in a row and I blew it on Thursday :( But I did do my workouts and as always they are slowly whipping my butt into shape. Today I actually did a 21 minute workout! I will tell you about it in just a minute, but first I wanted to share some equipment I'm hoping to add to my collection. The first is the abs and dip station.



It will be amazing to have this piece to use in my workouts. There are so many different things you can do with this and my goal is to just really be able to rock out some reverse pull ups with this thing. The cost of this station deflates my excitement a little because it's $129 bucks! That's a little too much for this cheap skate sitting here, but if I could find it on sale and then dig up an online coupon some where, well then folks I might just be willing to splurge a little. However, my solution is even better and probably a lot cheaper too! The good ol' handsome (and handy!!) hubby is going to build me one for Mother's Day (per my request of course!). He found some plans online and will be putting those little babies in motion soon! I am uber excited for this.

The other thing that I would like to invest in is called an Ugi ball. Here's what it looks like



I think the 8lb would be perfect. They're similar to a medicine ball and also soft like a bean bag chair rather than the rough exterior of the medicine ball. Guess how much this baby is???.....Give up? It's another $129 bucks! That apparently seems to be the magic number for all the things that our catching my. With this, I'm willing to compromise, I'll invest in a good old fashioned medicine ball and just be tickled to death with it. We have been doing a little browsing locally and they seem to run about $45. Big difference and since I've found them locally, there will be no online purchasing or paying for shipping! Double bonus.

I also wanted to share with you the website that I get my workouts from. It's called BODYROCK.tv and it's awesome. I'll post a link here to the homepage and you should definitely check it out. I will warn you the videos can be very intimidating, but they will break it down for even the newest beginner. Also, another warning the girl doing the videos is wearing some tight and tiny clothing some days, but after doing these workouts, I understand the lack of clothing, baggy t-shirts and long basketball shorts are very frustrating when completing a move. So even my wardrobe has changed a little since doing these exercises. And another thing, my looks NOTHING like the girl in the video, so no worries. I still have a little post baby pouch that is hanging around much longer than I want it to! I'm hopeful it will be gone soon!

I digress. This website will even give you meal ideas also to help you loose weight faster. I've only browsed through some of them, but I'm hoping in the next couple days to really go through them and see what it's all about. I seem to be in a pretty good rhythm with my workouts so I'd really like to start focusing on my diet. I've taken the steps to improve it, but I think I can do better. I seen a thing online that said being in shape and fitness is 30% exercise and 70 % diet!! I'm hoping to develop a personal challenge for myself through dieting and see how it goes. Now when I say "diet" don't think I'm going all granola and yogurt on you or no meats, etc. That will probably never happen because I've mentioned in earlier posts, I'm a meat and potatoes kinda gal. The problem is with all the information coming out about chemicals in our food and the processed meats, etc, as a mom it's very scary for me to think of what I could be giving my kids. I'm trying to buy more organic fruits and veggies and we're researching buying our meats from local farmers rather than the big chain super markets. If you're interested, there's a great documentary on Netflix called "Food, Inc" it will change the way you look at the food on your plate. Or it did for my husband and I.

Sorry for my tyrant there, the whole food thing sorta got away from me. Back to my workouts, so from now on I'll try to post the link to the video of exercises I did so you can see someone doing them. I don't always do the exact video, some times I take different exercises and make up my own workout so I'll explain those to you when I do.

The workout I completed today is Sexy Girl Crush and then I completed a 9 minute ab challenge. It's posted on the same page. If you scroll down you'll see it. Needless to say, the workout was a real butt kicker today. The sweat today was disgusting, I mean running down my stomach and face, man sweat kinda sweat. I jumped in the shower immediately afterwards! The kiddos were down for naps so it was easier. Then after dinner we took a family walk (our doggie included) and it was hot outside.I have a feeling we're going to have a pretty intense summer.

I have my workout for tomorrow already. Very basic exercises, squats, push ups (fingers crossed) tricep extensions and crunches. This is a challenge I found on the website so I'll do as many reps as I can tomorrow in my 50 secs and write that number down and then after 30 days of exercising, I'll come back and re-do these exercises and compare my reps to the first day. So check out the website and let me know what you think! Do you think you would be interested in workouts like these? Do you have a workout that is just awesome and working for you? Hope everyone has a great night!

Two days in a row.....woo-hoo!!

I'm starting late, but dang it, I'm getting it done. Today was.......a little crazy. We got started super late, like I'm talking kids weren't even out of bed until 8:50am! We're normally up and moving between 7-7:30 so almost two hours later was a pretty big deal. Normally by 9am we're starting any errands that need to be done! So all day long I felt rushed because I had a million things I wanted to get done today, of course. Now a lot of it got pushed back to tomorrow (fingers crossed!). With everything being a little off today, so was my workout time. I didn't get it in until 9:30pm tonight!! It was ridiculous. So this post will be a shorter one because it's 11pm now and my baby girl has school in the morning.

Alright I told you I would take pictures of all the items I have on hand to help me with my workouts so I actually took the picture and have it for you!! In the picture below I have my exercise ball (it's actually weighted a little with sand because it's suppose to be used more for Pilate's and yoga), the black thing laying on the ball is my "band." These come in different colors and different levels of difficulty. Red (easiest), Blue (medium), and black (hardest). I like the bands because once the black one becomes easier for you then you add the red one with it and it changes the level of difficulty for you without having to purchase any new equipment! Next is the blue ball with the black handle, that's the kettle ball. Ours is 35lbs and it's a beast! You wouldn't really think so, but when you have all that weight rolled up into that little ball, it's a butt kicker. The blue piece by the kettle ball is "tubing." This also comes just like the bands. Tubing is one of my favorite pieces, I do a  lot of my arm work with that and I feel great afterwards. Next is my jump rope (the red and blue piece laying next to my shoes). And lastly, are my workout shoes. I don't wear these for anything else. They've never been worn outside, just in the house and only during my workouts. Having a specific pair of shoes just for workouts is a new thing for me. I never worried about it before and frankly I am too cheap to buy them. My dear old dad got these for me when I picked up my new running shoes a couple weeks ago. I was so stinking excited and he thought it was hilarious.

This pink thing is my Gymboss. It's my timer that I've mentioned before and this thing is the best. It does all the time keeping for you and all you have to do is program it for how many sets you want to do, then put in how long you want each set to be and how long you want your 'rest' time to be. For example, from the left, the BL is the beep level (low), the 12 is my total reps (4 exercises, 3 times each), the 0:50 in the top right is my 50 sec workout and the 0:10 below is my rest time. After you've done your 50 secs it beats letting you know to begin your rest/get into position for next exercise. Then after the 10 secs it beats again telling you to start your next exercise. And so on it goes. Each time you start a new 50 sec the number in the box counts down for you so when you have completed you workout it lets off a series of beeps notifying you that your time of torture has commenced. It changed my workouts completely when I got this little gem. I'll get the website for you and post the link tomorrow along with the dip station we'll be doing.

So my workout today was all about the abs. And it was torture. I was nasty, man sweaty mess. There was one point I was in the middle of an exercise and a bead of sweat rolled down the side of my nose and into my eye......it sucked because I was using the exercise ball so my hands were occupied, but in the attempt to get off the ball and wipe my eye, I'm sure the scene was hilarious for any fly on the wall because I looked like a big uncoordinated mess! Of course as I'm flailing my body the words coming out of my mouth were not rated G, if you know what I'm saying. There were some, "oh shits," and "damn it's" in there. But have no fear, I survived and completed my workout without any other ridiculous incidents.

Today my circuit went like this:

Opposite toe touches: laid on my back, then got up placing my feet flat on the floor and placing my hands underneath me on the floor also, I raised my right leg straight in the air and came across my body with my left hand and touched my toes while supporting my body with my right foot and left hand and laid back down again. That was one. I continued to do this for the first 50 secs.

Ball tucks: using my exercise ball, I placed my knees on the ball and then rolled out into a push up position while leaving my feet on the ball. Then I bring the my knees to my chest by rolling the ball with my feet, next I roll the ball back out so I'm back to the push up position again. I continued this exercise for the next 50 secs. This was the exercise that the sweat ran into my eye. Now you understand the flailing.

Side jumps: I talked about this one yesterday. It's a great one and really works your triceps and your sides. I started by placing my hands flat on the floor  and my feet slightly out to my left side, then I jump my feet to my right side and continue doing that until the timer beeps.

V crunches with exercise ball: Laid on my back with my hands extended above my head holding the exercise ball, I crunched up bring both the ball and my legs up all at the same time and placed the ball between my feet and lowered myself back to the floor. Then I crunched again bringing my legs, holding the ball up, grabbed the ball with my hands and went back to the starting position.

I completed each exercise 3 times and I was thrilled when that timer beeped for the last time. After it beeped I had a brief moment where I wondered how I was going to get off the floor because I didn't want to have to crunch up to get up because I knew it was going to hurt.

Before I go for the night, I wanted to share a couple pictures of our "princess snow white" as she's being asked to be called, helping me make our homemade whipping cream biscuits that we made for dinner tonight. Here she is crazy post nap time hair do and all. She loves helping in the kitchen so I try to include her every chance I get.

The best thing about our dinner tonight....none of it came from a can or the grocery store shelf! We had sausage biscuits, eggs and water! The sausage and eggs we got from our local farmers market this past Saturday and the biscuits were homemade!! That was exciting for us and we're hoping to be able to plan more meals like this in our future! Well, it's almost midnight so I better hit the sack! Thanks for stopping by and let me know if you're working out and how it's going. Any farmer's market trips that you've been on lately?

Holy cow! What is up??!!

Okay, wow!! Too long without a post! That is just terrible. SSSSOOOOO much has happened since, um, let's see....October! First and for most, we became an awesome family of 5 on February 7th when we welcomed our second son......

Say hello to Mr. Benjamin Richard. Born at 3:03am weighing in at 8lbs 6oz and 21.5 ins long!

He is absolutely perfect in every way. He's actually 12 wks old today! And might I say, he's adjusted very well and takes the absolute craziness of our day to day lives all in stride. Oh, and he's a super happy little guy....always smiling at everyone. So now he looks like this.....

I adore him :-) and here he is with his brother and sister,

Check out that "cheese" face on the little guy in orange!! My husband calls him our little politician because every where we go he's saying hello and waving to everyone. And I mean that literally, people just eat him up. He gives that grin, waves his little hand and says, "hi" in this upbeat little voice that just makes you smile back at him. But that's them, my crazy, stressed to the max, 'is it bedtime yet?', sweet, couldn't live without them babies! I love them so much it makes my heart hurt, really it does. Or I almost cry, either way, I'm sure I'll be a HUGE embarrassment for them in the future!

But anyway, how the heck are ya? I'm doing really well. Like I said our littlest was born on February 7th (by emergency C-section, that wasn't really in the plan!) so my recovery time was longer that I had planned and longer than my patience could take. I'm still "recovering" I guess because I do still have tenderness and weird warm shots of pain around the incision. I don't know, kinda hard to explain I guess. However, despite all that I'm back at the workouts. Have been for 3 weeks....whoop, whoop!! I've lost 8 lbs so I was super excited about that. I've sorta hit that plateau right now where the weight isn't coming off as fast and that is a little discouraging. That and like I mentioned, I have ZERO patience, so it's an all around learning and growing experience for me. I gained about 33 lbs during pregnancy and I've lost almost all of that, but I'm still hoping to drop another 20, give or take. I told my husband I'm not so worried about the "number," I just want to feel good. So I'm chipping away. To help get the weight off faster, I've also decided to limit my sugar in take. So no sugary drinks or cereals (I LOVE Captain Crunch), no candy, no ice cream, no doughnuts.....you get the idea. It's actually pretty depressing to see it all written out :-( But I'm allowing myself to enjoy some of those things on Saturdays, as long as my workouts were tough during the week. I'm doing other dietary things as well, I'll share that next time.

I'm attempting to workout 6 days a week and take Sundays off. So far......hasn't happened. I'm also attempting to become a morning person. My dream plan is to wake up between 6-6:30, eat breakfast, workout and get cleaned up all before the kiddos wake up. So far.......it's happened, mmmmm, twice maybe? So I'm still improving, but I workout Monday through Friday. The time of day generally depends on kids and schedules. If we have preschool, then it's the afternoons. If we have nothing planned, then it's in the morning. Today I worked out in the afternoon after preschool and during naps. It was tough and I'm not going to lie, it sucked a little because it is so stinking outside and my house has no central air!! So I'm hoping that the extra heat will help the pounds melt off also! For today, I did a 12 minute workout, four exercises for 50 seconds with a 10 second rest in between. I was panting like an overweight, out of shape dog. Funny I mention that because our golden retriever, Crash was laying literally in the middle of the living room floor where I was working out and never once did he offer to move. He just laid there, dreaming away, slightly snoring while I was working like a slave in a sweat shop!

Like, I said, I did 4 exercises:

 couch push ups: instead of being parallel to the floor I place my hands on the edge of the couch and the push up is on an incline. They're tough, but I have wrist issues right now and this is one of the only ways I can get push ups in.

lunges: this one is actually tough to explain because it wasn't just a lunge. I lunged backwards with one leg and then brought that leg up and touched my knee with the opposite elbow. Make sense??

kettleball bench press: laid on my back and benched pressed the 35lb kettleball we have.

side to side jumps: stood with my hands flat on the floor, in downward facing dog position. Started with both feet slightly to the side of me and then jumped my feet to the other side while my hands remain on the floor. It's also helpful to use something to jump over so I know I'm jumping high enough to feel the exercise.

I did these four exercises each for 50 secs completing as many reps as I could until my timer beeped. That's the order I completed them in also, so it's like a circuit. I'll put all the equipment I have together tomorrow and take a picture so you can see what I have and that way when I mention a piece you'll have an idea what it looks like. I'm super excited though because for Mother's Day my awesome husband is building me a dip station to add to my collection. I've wanted one for a while and we think it would be pretty easy to build, so stay tuned for the story on that one.

I also got in a little organization today. My fridge was getting a little out of control and it was already slightly organized, but something about it was just bothering me. The system I had, just wasn't working. So the wheels started turning and I cruised through blog land and with the help of some very thrifty SAHM's I was able to pull ideas and customize them to fit my family's needs. So here is what my fridge started out looking like,

The bottom left drawer holds cheeses and the bottom right drawer holds meats (hot dogs, bacon, etc.)

Random condiments and such collecting in the door.

I took everything out of the baskets, cleaned them all out and re-organized. Here's the after shots, not a huge transformation, but just cooking dinner tonight, I felt it working better already. I just need to make some new labels because everything got the ol' switch-a-roo.

Top shelf holds eggs and the drinks basket. Parents of the year right here with our kids' pediasure in with the beers! Second shelf is the leftovers and opened products (on the left) and on the right is dairy products (butter, yogurt, cheeses, etc). This basket is a little full. I'm debating gettign another small basket and putting just the cheese in it?? In the drawer under the 2nd shelf are the rolls, pizza doughs things like that, that always seem to get shoved to the way back then you forget you have them, so I gave them their own drawer. Third shelf holds the small meat basket, our Brita, extra milks and things. And now in the drawers, on the left is fruits and on the right our veggies. Not a lot in those right now because it's slim pickins' at the grocery.

Not a huge difference in the door. Just went through and threw away anything outdated. Pretty simple stuff.

A re-cap of my day....

So today we got up (at 6:45am), got my daughter to preschool, the boys and I went to the grocery (my oldest started not feeling well during our shopping trip, came down with a fever out of nowhere), picked my daughter up from school, got home did lunch, my son still not feeling well, so all the kids go down for naps, I work out, get all groceries put away, clean out the fridge, call the doctor about the fever and let them know he's not eating real well and they tell me they want to see him. My appointment is in 50 mins! Got all 3 kids packed up and in the van, took my daughter to my girlfriend's house while I took the boys to the Dr. My son has the "funk" with a temp of 102 and we should be fighting it for the next 4 days (come on Friday!!), leave the Dr, pick up my daughter, get home, start dinner, hubs comes home from a long day of surgery, we all eat dinner, watch one cartoon, do a few minutes of quiet time, then it's jammies on, kids in bed by 7:45pm. And again, I'm panting like a dog! Now we get to get up and do it all over again tomorrow! I'll end with this family picture of us. Our first family photo as a family of 5.....pretty amazing!

A Marine and a medical student!!?? Yes, ladies he is real and I just love him to pieces!

Night everyone :-)