Mommy, I gots poopy.

Well, Ty doesn't talk, but if he did that's what he would have said.  Here's the story.

As it goes when any mom is in the shower, the kiddo had troubles.  I'm almost done and Ty opens the door and points to the bedroom.  I assume his movie was done and tell him I'll be done in a minute.  A minute later Ty comes back.  I look down and opening my shower door is one poopy hand.  Make that two poopy hands!  He looks at me as if to say, "mommy, I gots poopy!"  Oh dear.  Mommy jumps out and inspects the situation.  Everything is contained.  Appears to be a hand down the back of the diaper situation.  Whew!  Cleaned him up and finished getting ready myself.

Now to the basement to do laundry.  Alicia sits on the toilet, and says "oh gross mom, there's water on the floor."  Oh dear Lord.  I run into the bathroom and inspect the situation.  Yep.  There's pee on the floor.  Lots of it.  "Oh gross mom!  I got pee on my foot!"  Yep, oh gross mom, I got pee on my foot.  What about the mom who has to clean all this stuff!?  Got the culprit to confess and I cleaned up.  All this before 9:30am.  

Back to my regularly scheduled household chores.

Have a good Saturday everyone!

Being Mommy in the Summer

Literally had a break down this morning.  Full-time mommy to three kids during summer break is rough.  I love doing things with the kids and for the kids.  I hate doing things for the kids and have them complain the entire time about this, that, and the other thing.  And the back talking!  Seriously??!!

I am not doing this for my health.  In fact, I'm in a short line for a heart attack if this continues.

Saving grace is a wonderful husband who tries to help out when he's home, and lets me go to bed WAY early when I needed it (last night).  THANKS HONEY!!

Maybe I'm coming into a really hormonal part of my week.  I don't know, but I've got to have a girls night soon.

I know all you parents out there know what I'm talking about.  There are days that I wish I worked.  I know that has its own set of issues, but this isn't easy either.

Days like today are rough.  Kids are being ornery, husband is working hard, house needs cleaning, laundry needs to be done, and the budget just doesn't quite come together.

Next week is a new week.  Hopefully things will come together.  The kids have been talked to, and a gentle reminder seems to be working so far.  Now for the laundry, and hopefully a mommy nap before everyone else emerges out of their rooms.

Thanks for listening.

2 Week Update

Two weeks I'm down a total of 9 pounds and 24.5 inches.  I can feel the difference in my clothes, and that feels GREAT!

I am a little disappointed in the 2 pound loss this week.  More so disappointed in myself in that I had a couple of cheat times.  At the time it didn't seem like much.  Just a good reminder that you're one bite away from loosing or gaining weight.  It's a thin line.

Also, I've never had good results when having to count calories.  (In this program, the "knife and fork meal" is a 400-600 "healthy low-glycemic meal.")  For some people it works out great....me, not so much.  I'm going to have to try something a little different this next week.  I think my saving grace for last week was a 2 day cleanse.  Without that, I don't think I would have lost anything.  In this journey of mine (probably about 4 years) I've figured out a few things about myself.  One of which is counting calories doesn't work for me - emphasized by this experience - and once I get the right food combinations figured out, I'll have better results.  

For anyone starting on their journey, I encourage you to allow yourself time to experiment and figure out what works for you.  There's a delicate balance between how much you eat, what your body does with that food, and how much you exercise.  It's not always as easy as calories in / calories out.  Every BODY reacts differently.  So experiment and allow yourself the time to learn what your body needs.

Cleanse Day update

As promised in my last blog, I'm giving an update on my cleanse day yesterday.  (These are not colon cleanses, they are more like body detox cleanses.)  

It went well yesterday!  Kind of hungry, but nothing unusual.  I am down 2 more pounds since Thursday.  Which feels really good since these cleanses are not always easy to get through.  It's interesting how the body processes food and drops weight.  The very first day on the program I dropped 3 pounds.  Then nothing for 2 more days.  It's advised to weigh yourself once a week, which is good advice.  Your body goes through cycles and the ups and downs of weighing yourself everyday isn't worth the mental stress.

Cleanse days are "no exercise" days.  Simple walks or yoga are OK.  I thought I'd miss hitting the gym, but I'm not.  For sure I will be either running or going to the Y tomorrow though.

After today I won't have to cleanse again for about 3 weeks.  Woohoo!

If you want specifics about how the program works, and how the cleanses work, you can touch base by email or Facebook.

Do we need to exercise?

So I've seen this saying come up lately on Facebook a couple of different times.  So can you loose weight without exercising, then why do we even need to?

Well, you don't need to exercise to loose weight.  If your only goal is to loose weight and you're eating appropriately, this would mean you don't NEED to exercise.  Actually, at one point I lost quite a bit of weight with minimal exercising.  Basically I walked about 3 miles a few times a week and watched what I ate.  So why should we care if we exercise?

I did some research  online and found a vast amount of information on the benefits of exercise.**  The common benefits are (in no particular order):

• muscle tone
• support weight loss
• helps prevent heart disease
• reduces blood pressure
• reduces cholesterol
• helps control/prevent diabetes
• reduces cancer (sorry, this is really vague)
• improves mood
• improves memory
• increases learning
• provides stress relief
• reduces stress's toll on aging process
• reduces symptoms of depression
• builds self-esteem/body image

**If you'd like to learn more about the benefits of exercising, I encourage you to do your own research on the particular benefit in which you are interested.  A quick Google search will give you lots of information.  Also see your doctor for help controlling any medical issues listed above.  The articles I used to research this topic meant to use exercise in an effort to prevent and/or use along with medications/treatments prescribed by a doctor.

Why do I exercise?  You'd think it was to support weight loss.  First before anything, I exercise because of family history with heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.  I would like to try to prevent serious complications with one of these, and delay need for medications if not reduce that need altogether.  If I'm already eating appropriately, the weight will come off.  Exercise keeps my blood pumping and strengthens my heart and lungs.

Do I AGREE with this saying?  Of course I do.  First before anything else, we need to feed our bodies appropriately.  Without that, you don't have a body to exercise.  Exercise is the icing on the cake - as the saying goes.  It's another tool in our tool box of building and maintaining our bodies.

What's on the agenda for tomorrow's blog?  Oh I don't know...maybe a few words about day 1 of cleanse #2 (?).  We'll have to see......

Trying Something New! Isagenix

I'm I a bit of a fanatic when it comes to eating and exercising?  Yes!  I have to be.  To be me and live in this society in this day, I have to be.

I'm a bit of an obsessive compulsive over-eater (self-diagnosed).  I eat until I'm stuffed and still eat more.  It all starts after my noon meal.  I can't stop until I go to bed.  I walk to the pantry hundreds of times a day.....for no reason what-so-ever!  It's horrible!  It is horrible to be obsessive, and obsessive over food is a nightmare because you have to eat.  It's not something you can "quit cold turkey."  Yet amazingly I don't weigh 300+ pounds!  I don't because I have used systems to help me control myself and I exercise.

As you know, I've been exercising and doing different eating programs....counting calories and Weight Watchers.  I've also participated in LA Weight Loss.  All of which worked for me.  To a point. 

So I learned of Isagenix from a Facebook friend.  I'm not the "gimmicky" gal, and I tried to just eat a balanced diet and exercise.  Because to a point it works.  (For sure I'm not into the pill idea, because in the end, a pill didn't change your habit.)  After following my friend for some time I decided to check into it more and went on the website.  I really liked the idea of the nutrition the different solutions this company delivered.  I like how the focus is on nourishing the body appropriately, and the natural side effect is weight loss. I liked how they explained toxins and how detoxing your body is beneficial. Everyone also claimed to feel so much better.*  Huh.  Sounds just like every other program, right?  But I couldn't stop thinking about the nutrition.  I didn't really believe I was doing the best I could do, even on all those programs.  

After a quick discussion with Jeff, we decided to give it a try together.  He's in the fitness industry and wants to tone up a bit more.  We jumped in a little over a week ago.  I won't get into the details of the program other than it consists of shake days and cleanse days, but of course we still eat "real" food too.  It has fit into our lifestyles.  Let me say, that it has taught me how many times I mindlessly search for food and how many times I eat the miscellaneous drop of food off the kids' plates.  I am down 7 pounds and 15 inches in my first 7 days.  Dangerous?  No.  The first week of a program you tend to drop a lot of weight.  The inches are spread out over my body, so it's a little over 1 inch in each area measured.  How fantastic is that!?  Over an inch around the bust, waist, hips, and butt....each.  Yes, my clothes feel good and I don't think about what to wear.  It all fits.  I open the closet, and it all will look nice.

I'll definitely blog more as we go.  But if you have questions, contact me or check out the website.  Or contact me through the website at: http://jenihemingson.isagenix.com/us/en/home.dhtml.  I'm not an expert on this system yet, but I'm happy to help you navigate an answer any questions.  I really do feel good!

*Yesterday I had Jimmy Johns....we were in a bind.  I could definitely tell I had too much bread because I felt terrible.  Don't get me wrong, Jimmy Johns has fantastic tasting sandwiches, but I don't think I'll down a whole one again.  My body is already changing and is loving it.  It knows when it has something good going on.

Summer Storms

Summer started with a bang yesterday.  We had storms all evening.  Nothing too terrible where we live, but others in the state lost property from trees falling.

Our big adventure last night was the power outage.  We weren't home when it started, so we drove up to the garage and couldn't get the door open.  OK, not the end of the world, but neither Jeff nor I had keys to the house.  Huh.  Now what?  Well, thankfully, we had left the garage door open a smidge for the cat....maybe Larson can fit under?  Poor guy "volunteered" to run outside in the pouring rain and squeeze under the garage door.  Lesson learned...always bring the house keys.

So now we're home without power.  No TV, internet on our phones was spotty. HMMMMM.  Brought out the few candles we had and started making up games.  The kids were sad when the lights came back on because they figured out how to have fun!

EEK! It's been a while.

I haven't blogged in a very long time.

The kids adjusted well to school.  Dad enjoys the shorter commute, and mom found some friends.  Woohoo!!

At this time, we are attempting to potty train the little guy.  He just turned 3 and it's time to get this show on the road!  However, I don't think it will be easy with this one.  He's cute and he knows it, and he has a stubborn streak.  Those two put together makes it really hard on mommy to get this guy to actually tinkle on the potty.  He'll sit there, but he won't go.  Silly guy!

My weight and eating struggles continued through the winter.  (The exercise part went OK though.)  Of course I gained the Thanksgiving-through-Christmas-15, which was painful to say the least.  Very frustrating!  The saying "80% food, 20% exercise" is painfully true.  I can exercise my butt off, but if the right food isn't going into my mouth, it's all for nothing.  I think this is common knowledge, but no one wants to really believe it or actually do anything about it.  Food is so good, and so abundant.  Or let's just say THE WRONG food is so good and so abundant.  I have done relatively well on Weight Watchers, but I decided to try something different.  I'm a week into it and I'm seeing some great results.  I'll post more about that tomorrow.

What about the Christmas 15?  Well, it's gone, but it took more work to get it off than put it on.

As for today, it's a regular day with a chiropractor appointment and running around with the kiddos.