Weigh-In-Wednesday

This past week has been up and down. I finally got on the scale yesterday morning for the first time since the end of June. To be real, I have been so scared to step on that scale. And honestly, I think that is why it showed what it did yesterday morning. 174.8. Almost 20 lbs up from my lowest weight of 155. Cue me having a minor meltdown/panic attack/ freak out yesterday morning. Tears and all. 

It wasn't pretty. But it was a wake up call and a slap in the face all at the same time. I am the only person that is responsible for me putting weight back on. No one else. Just me. So I need to be responsible for getting it back off too. 

Although I have been struggling to stay motivated, I know that I can do it because I did it once before. I need to buckle down and get serious. Serious about what I am fueling my body with. And serious about my workouts. That is all there is to it. 

I can do this! And I will! 

Blog Ideas

Hello Blog World! Happy Monday! 

I have really been wanting to blog more and more lately. Small problem though. I sit down to blog and I can not come up with anything to write about. Not a single thing. Writers block I guess is what you would call that. Whatever the name for it, it is frustrating. 

I am here to ask for some help. What do you guys do to get ideas for your blog? I want to know how you guys get so creative with posts and what to talk about. Do they just come to you in the middle of the night or day? Do you use a website that gives you some ideas? Do you use a planner and plan every blog post out? Or do you just write down a general idea? 

I really want to keep up with blogging. It is something I really enjoy and is very therapeutic at times for me. Even though I don't think I have a lot of readers, which shouldn't matter. If I am happy doing it, then that is enough for me. But having some awesome post ideas might just help keep me going. 

So, how do you get your creative juices flowing? Teach me your ways! 

Time to Be Real

It's time for me to be real. With myself more than anyone. I worked so hard for months to lose all of the weight I wanted to. And I accomplished that. And I am still really proud of that fact. But it is time for me to admit to myself and everyone else that I have been struggling lately. 

I have gained some of that weight back. Not a ton. But probably about 15 lbs. Now I know that some of you are thinking that 15 lbs isn't really that bad. But for me, it is enough to make me feel uncomfortable with myself again that I know that I need to step up and do something. And it scares me. I worked so hard to get to where I was. And I can't go back to that person. I won't go back to that person I was before. That person was miserable and hated how she looked and felt. 

That is hopefully where this blog comes in. I need a way to hold myself accountable again. I need something that I can come to on a daily or weekly basis to put it all out there. My struggles, my triumphs, all of it. If I don't get this under control now, I feel like I may end up exactly back where I started. And that is not an option in my book. 

I can say that I have kept up with some of the good habits that I fell into during my journey. I am still working out. I haven't been working out as hard though.That right there is an area for improvement. I need to up the intensity of my workouts again. I need to make sure that I am hitting my calorie burn every day. No more days of not hitting or even being close. I need to get off my ass and make it happen. 

One area of my workouts that I have been struggling with is that I have had a hard time finding something to fill that void for the days that I did Zumba. It took me a while, but I have a new workout love, and that love is TRX. If you aren't sure what it is, it is essentially suspension training. All body weight type exercises. It is amazing! There is a TRX class at my gym on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and I am addicted. And it just so happens that it is filling that same time slot and void that was so vacant after I quit teaching Zumba. Bonus! 

My biggest struggle has been my eating. I do great some days, and then horrible the next. I need to get back to eating clean and loving it. There for about a year, I didn't crave the junk. I found healthy alternatives to things that I used to eat all the time. And somehow over the last year, I have kind of gone away from that a bit. I need to quit making excuses and just do it. So starting today, no more sugary coffees (I will miss you Dutch Bros), no more eating out at junk places. No more junk food. No more ice cream and chocolate. It all has to go. Will I allow myself to cheat every now and then? Absolutely. I have to. Or I will eventually go insane. But a cheat meal needs to quit turning into a cheat day(s) or cheat weeks and months. 

I'm determined and focused to get this weight back off. I know that I can do it. I have done it before and I will do it again. I want to be leaner and have more muscle definition again. I want to be the healthiest version of me. And guess what? I will. Today is a new day. And it is always a great day to get better! 

Gardening and My Not So Green Thumb

In the past I have always been horrible with keeping any type of plant alive. Didn't matter what it was. Flowers, office plants, you name it, I killed it. My track record isn't the greatest. I always have the best intentions when it comes to keeping them alive, but for some reason something always happens and they don't make it. 

When Jeremy and I moved into our new place back in December, there was a raised garden bed already in the back yard, so we started talking about putting a garden in. Spoke to our landlord about it and they actually encouraged it, which I thought was pretty cool. But in the back of my mind I just kept thinking about all the plants I had previously killed. I was worried I would do the same with our garden. 

Well thankfully Jeremy has an amazing green thumb. I helped plant everything, but really he is the one keeping them alive. He makes sure everything gets watered and is in there pulling weeds all the time. And everything we planted has actually started coming up!!! It is so cool to see. We planted baking pumpkins, yellow squash, cucumbers, small watermelons, carrots, beets, green beans, snap peas and we bought pepper plants that were already started. 

Pumpkins

Carrots

Yellow Squash

Cucumbers (sorry, not the best pic)

Watermelons

Green Beans

Pepper Plants

I can not wait until everything is ready to harvest and eat. It will be so nice to be able to walk out to the garden and pick fresh produce. I'm especially excited for the watermelons! 

After we got the garden all ready to go and planted, I got a little gardening bug. I suddenly wanted to buy a bunch of flowers for all these flower beds that were already on the property. I figured why not. The worst that would happen is that I would kill them. Not like it hasn't happened before. We headed out to a green house one weekend and bought of bunch of different annuals and planted them. They look great and they are all still alive. It has been three weeks people! That has to be a record for me! 

I also purchased a rose bush and some hydrangeas from Lowe's. My roses are doing amazing! I love them. They look so great. My hydrangeas on the other hand, whomp whomp whomp. I had bought hydrangeas once before and they didn't last more than two weeks. These made it about three. I am not really sure what happened. I honestly think they just don't do well in the Colorado climate. I think it is too hot for them. Oh well. Can't win them all. 

I am absolutely loving how our yard and our garden turned out. We are still working on it a bit, but for the most part we are done. Jeremy has done such a great job with keeping everything alive that it has made me want to do a better job with it as well. Maybe his green thumb will rub off on me a bit. I can only hope, right?!

Sunday Hike

Sunday. One of my favorite days. Usually because of Football, but when the weather is nice and Football isn't in season, we try to always take Sunday as our day to get out in the sunshine and get away from everything else going on in the world. 

Yesterday morning we packed up a backpack with some food and water, loaded Bentley and Ringo into the car and headed to the mountains. We took a trail that we had been on once before but didn't get very far. We decided to try it again and see if we could actually get to the end of the trail and up to the reservoir that it leads to. 

It was a lot longer of a hike than we expected, but it was absolutely beautiful. 

And we actually didn't get to the reservoir, but we did get to the end of the trail. What we didn't know is that the trail ends and then you have to take another trail to get to the reservoir. We wanted to keep going, but it looked like a storm was moving over the mountains and in the summer in Colorado, the mountains is the last place that you want to be when a thunderstorm rolls over.

We decided to head back down the trail and try to get ahead of the storm. And to be honest I was already pretty tired at this point. By the time we got back to the car I was exhausted. And so were Jeremy and the boys. The storm ended up not even hitting where we were, but better to be safe than sorry.

With our boys. They were exhausted after the long hike too!

It was a long hike. We were out there for around three hours and considering how much of that was uphill, it was an intense workout. No wonder we were so exhausted. But as exhausting as it was, it was beautiful and we are already planning on heading back up another Sunday to try and get to the reservoir. I really want to see it because it sits at the base of a beautiful mountain and all of the pictures I have seen look absolutely gorgeous. Something to look forward to for another day. 

Homemade Dog Treats

I have been baking up a storm lately. I have been obsessed with finding new recipes to make and especially new low carb recipes. While I was going through my ridiculous folder of recipes that I have printed and yet to try, I came across a recipe for dog treats called Woofies that I had printed years ago. After looking at the ingredients list, I realized that I already had all of the ingredients sitting in my house. I figured why not. If they suck, I won't know and the dogs probably won't care either way. 

Woofies Recipe 

Source

The recipe was really easy. Add all of the  ingredients in a bowl and mix together. It makes a thick orange looking dough. I pulled all of the dough out of the bowl and rolled it out flat and then rolled it into a long roll like you would if you were making cinnamon rolls. I ended up cutting the roll in half long ways because it seemed too thick. So I actually had two long rolls. I rolled these out a little bit more even just to make sure that they weren't too thick. Wish I would have taken pics of this. Would have made explaining this part much easier. 

Once I had the two rolls to the thickness that I wanted, I cut them into the 1/2 inch pieces like the recipe called for. Each roll made about 32 pieces. I packed all 32 pieces from one roll onto one cookie sheet. I placed them in the oven and baked them at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. The recipe called for 40 minutes, but after 20 they were already pretty hard, so I took them out. (**EDIT** Since posting this I realized why they said 40 minutes. Although they were hard after 20 minutes, a few days later we noticed some mold spots on a few of them. So make sure you cook them the 40 minutes so that you don't run into this issue**)

I let them cool for a while before I fed them to the dogs, but I am happy to say that they loved them! I mean just look at these faces!!!

Very Difficult Decision

Not sure if you guys remember this or not, but last February I became a certified Zumba instructor. I was so excited to be teaching something that I loved and enjoyed so much. At first I was only teaching here and there. Subbing really for the regular Zumba instructor who was pregnant. Then when she had the baby, Monday and Tuesdays became my class. 

I knew when I took over that I probably wasn't going to keep everyone. A lot of them were there for her class. But quite a few of them stayed and I appreciated it. And we gained a few new regulars here and there. 

Over the last year we went through a lot of change with the gym. First came new owners who decided that they wanted to turn the gym into more of a Crossfit gym instead of just a regular lifting gym. Because of this they couldn't have cared less about the group classes (i.e. yoga, spin, and of course Zumba.) They were rude at times and not always keen on what we had to say when it came to our class, but we stuck it out and eventually they sold the gym and we didn't have to deal with them anymore. 

This past October/November the newest set of owners came in and started making even more changes. But these changes seemed to be for the better. Brought in more equipment, more weights, more of everything. They were trying to turn the gym back into a heavy lifting gym. And they really seemed to want to get our participation back up in all of our classes. The only downside was that they decided to change how they paid us. We used to get paid a flat rate per class and then they changed it to where we were getting paid per person that attended our classes. It wasn't bad at first, but I definitely wasn't making the same amount that I was before, but I didn't mind too much because I still loved teaching. 

As the months went on, attendance in classes started dropping, which meant I was really not making much at all. Normally I wouldn't have cared, but I had just moved to the other side of town. Some days I was spending more in gas to drive over there than I was making because I just didn't have the numbers. But I stuck with it because I loved the ladies in my class and I didn't want to let them down. 

More and more I dreaded driving over to that side of town to teach. It was becoming more and more apparent to me that I wasn't enjoying it as much. And to add to the non enjoyment, I started having issues with the new owners not wanting to pay me in a timely manner. Every time I would approach them about it, they had some excuse. I was maybe getting paid once a month and when they were paying me, they weren't even paying me the full amount that they owed. And they were doing this to the other instructors too. This got old really quick. 

I finally had enough. This past Tuesday I went in to talk to them about it. And of course, they weren't there. This seemed to be happening more and more too. When we needed to talk to them, they were conveniently never there. So I got on my phone and called the owner and told her I was done teaching. I told her that I was frustrated with not getting paid anymore and driving all the way over there to not make enough to even cover my gas. She was really nice and understanding about it and told me they would call me when they had my final check for me. But I think she was just trying to save face because I still haven't heard from her and still haven't received my last check. 

This was an incredibly hard decision for me. My regular ladies that came to class every week made this decision even more difficult. I love these ladies and they have become great friends, but I had to make a decision for me. I was tired of being stressed out about it. I wasn't enjoying myself anymore. And I am a firm believer that if you aren't happy with what you are doing, you need to not be doing it anymore. So I had to listen to my gut and I quit. And I already feel a million times better since making my decision, but at the same time I am going to miss my Zumba ladies so much. 

I haven't decided if I want to keep teaching or not. I may look around a bit to see if somewhere else closer to my house needs a sub from time to time. But until then, I am going to take some time for myself to re-establish a good workout schedule and just get back into a great routine for myself. I think I owe it to myself and it is the best thing I can do for me after being in such a stressful situation for a while. 

Remember, you have to take care of yourself sometimes. And although sometimes the decisions you have to make to take care of yourself are not easy, they are for the best.