Year in Review

What an amazing year 2011 has been! I always love the end of the year and the start of a new one. A perfect way to start new goals and start fresh. Here is a little of what happened to me this year!

I experienced my first official runner's injury which is still returning off and on. This injury found me a new love with the swimming pool!

Craig and I enjoyed way too much tailgating and attended way too many weddings with many more to come

I was able to rock it out with my girls a few weekends over the course of 2011 including fun girl trips outside of Nebraska

The biggest event of 2011 for me was my trip to Costa Rica with Craig and I got engaged!

Sporting a new diamond ring to take back to the states

Our home town covered in water due to major flooding this summer

Baby showers and going away parties for friends

I have had the chance to teach two amazing classes of students this year

Cooper joined our family, he is no longer a puppy but a 1 year old 90 pound dog!

I could post picture after picture, but I don't feel like boring you. Not only have I had a great 2011 I have learned a lot of life lessons this year as well. I have learned that less is better when it comes to any form of exercise. I have learned that to love someone means putting them in front of your own wants and needs sometimes. I have learned to move from my comfort zone and adapt to a smaller community. Finally, I have learned that close family and friends don't come around often and it is important to hold on and spend time to the ones you love the most.

So what does 2012 have to offer me...well just a few important exciting events

-Getting married on Feb. 18th!!

-Buying our first house after we get married

-Returning to school this summer for another endorsement in education

-Applying to a new school district closer to home

-Attempting to have our first baby!!

I am very excited for 2012 as you can see!

What do you remember most of about 2011 and what are you looking forward to for the new year?

WIAW

I love holiday sales! I grabbed these snazzy heels at Target for 10 bucks today. I am thinking these will be PERFECT for the New Year Celebration. My only concern is that I don't think they will actually stay on the entire night due to the size of the heel. I am such a wuss when it comes to heels.

I can't believe it is already Wednesday, time sure does fly by when you are not working and enjoying the days off. In the last three days I have accomplished much:

Changed oil in my car

Met with the band who will be playing at our wedding

Met with Lisa who is in charge of our reception hall to run through and finalize our reception

Met with my future Mother in Law and showed her our ceremony sight

Found earrings for my wedding

Returned all clothing that was given to Craig for Christmas and exchanged them for other sizes

Completed my wedding programs

Cleaned out three of my closets in my apartments and got rid of three trash bags full of clothes

Hit up Costco and filled up on dishwasher soap, laundry detergent, almonds, trash bags, grilled chicken, Splenda, foil, and zip lock bags (all for 170 bucks!1)

Re-filled my gas tank twice already this week from all the driving around

Completed Day 1 and Day 2 of Live Fit Trainer

Phew!!

Tomorrow is a planned rest day from the gym. Can you believe it my second rest day of the week, I am doing great! I plan on hitting the gym four times this week and next week back to my regular routine of 5 days a week. I will admit, the last two workouts have left me pretty sore, but a good sore.

In a random order here is some of my eats this Wednesday...

Grilled Chicken mixed with a ton of veggies and Mrs. Dash Seasoning

Peanut Butter cookies I baked with Hershey Kisses

Protein Cookies made with Flaxseed, Egg Whites, Kashi Go Lean and Protein Powder

More Grilled Chicken and Broccoli

Half a grilled chicken wrap and pita bread with jelly and cheese..YUM

What is something you have accomplished so far this week?

Heels or flats?

Holidays Over!

I love the Holidays, but I am sure glad the weekend is over and it is a little bit back to normal. Saturday night was spent with my family and Sunday we woke up early to travel once again to Craig's family side for Christmas. By Sunday night, I was exhausted from all the driving, running around, and socializing over the past few days. Yesterday, I attempted to do some shopping/cleaning/long walk with the pup, and all of it was so tiring. I was just so worn out!

I woke up this morning raring to go! I started out my day with Jaime Eason's Live Fit Trainer workout 1. Now, I thought this would be cake for me. I did not keep in mind that I have not been strength training very often in the last two months. So it was much harder then I expected. I made it through the workout, and my arms were shaking. I came to the conclusion that I officially suck at push ups.

Just like anything with fitness, it takes a while to get your body back into shape to meet your goals. With running, you can't expect to jump on the treadmill after taking two months off and knock out an 8 mile run and with weight lifting don't expect to be able to lift massive amounts after a two month break. The progress may be slow, but the outcome is well worth it!!

Workout today:

Bench Chest Press- 3x12 12 pound dumbbells

Push Ups Narrow-3x12

Chest fly-3x12 with 30 pound weight

Tricep Pull Down-50 pounds 3x 12

Overhead Tricep-3x12 15 pounds

Chest Press Machine (supplemented this for the other push-ups could not finish them ) 3x10 30 pounds

Cardio: 15 minute treadmill interval runs (walk 1 min. run 5 min.) 10 min cycle and 15 minute elliptical

I know the plan states not to do any cardio, but I LOVE some cardio in my routine, just feel more energized to start the day. Well I am off to do run some wedding errands!

What was your workout today?

Overwhelming Holiday

This my friend is my new love, Guac 100 cal packs. Perfect with crispy crackers.

Okay anyways, what a day...and more to come over the weekend. I started out the day taking the puppy out for an hour walk in 15 degree weather, needless to say I could not feel my legs at all once the walk was over. Afterwords, Criag and I left the apartment by 10 this morning to set out on our list of to- do's. First stop, Marriage License. This was the easiest part of the day, completed the forms and was out of the courthouse in 10 minutes. We then moved on to the Christmas shopping...dun dun dun.

We spent most of the day from 10 till 6pm tonight shopping. By the end of the day we had bought both sides of our family gifts, we were hungry, irritated with people, and ready to go home! We did manage to buy one special gift though..lately Craig has wanted to get me a treadmill. I explained to him that I really don't need a treadmill, heck I have two gym memberships and a OCD personality when it comes to working out. Also, a big part of me enjoying working out is getting out of the house for my time. Well Craig has been interested in getting back into the workout routine (he is naturally skinny so he never has had to worry). He thinks that by buying a treadmill this will motivate him to get back into working out again. If it is at home, the more likely he will workout.

So we made a few stops along our shopping journey to look at exercise equipment. The more we started looking at the equipment, the more I decided that I would rather have a Spin Bike than a treadmill. Don't get me wrong I love to run, but lately it has been so hard on my joints and my ankle. Also, I can always go for a run outside if I had to. I really liked the spin bike. It is such a great workout, and not so hard on my joints. Craig also liked it. So we walked away with a new spin bike!! The only bummer is it won't arrive until next week :( That is okay though, I am still taking it pretty slow with returning to my workouts.

Everyone knows how the holidays can be so overwhelming, and with all the shopping today that is exactly how I felt. Not only that, we are down to less than two months till our wedding. We are expecting 400 guests. My checklist seems to be getting longer and longer. I feel so flustered because I would love to have the weekends free to catch up on running wedding errands, but the holidays and wedding showers seem to keep getting in the way. Plenty of people say it, and now I am saying it...I will be glad when this wedding is over with! I am getting a little annoyed with checking message after message on my phone, taking my breaks at work to call people about the wedding, planning, saving money, etc. So much work and not enough time in a day! So yes, this holiday for me is a little bit more overwhelming than usual.

If you could choose one piece of fitness equipment, what would you want?

Feeling overwhelmed this holiday?

X Mas Break!!

Ahhh, I officially made it to Christmas Break. I have 13 blissful days of no teaching! Pretty pumped about this one today. Christmas gifts were exchanged throughout the building today. I received several rather nice gifts including a extra early Christmas present from Craig, a new IPOD shuffle. Somehow I managed to bust my old one.

I think my staff members know me to well ha ha. Perfect box completed with Trail Mix, Muscle Milk Light and new crunch granola Cliff bars, which are very tasty.

To celebrate Christmas with my students, I handed each one a Christmas book...too lazy to actually wrap 20 books and they munched on Christmas sugar cookies while they read their new books. We also had a Heritage Celebration. Students had to research a country where one of their ancestors came from. They completed a research paper and poster. To celebrate all their hard work, each student researched a recipe and parents helped their children make the recipe and we had a Heritage Pot-Luck. The kids were stuffed!!

Go figure, majority of the students made sweets to share! It was a perfect way to celebrate the holiday and their hard work.

I can't tell you how happy I am to be on break. I can sleep in, enjoy my time at the gym, relax afterwords, and catch up on Christmas shopping and wedding planning (well needed). Third week since I became severely overtrained and things are looking up, up, up! Yesterday I hit the gym before school and did 20 minutes on the elliptical with low resistance and 15 minutes of walking 4.5 speed. I also did about 20 min of moderate weight lifting. My legs were still stiff afterwords, but no blood sugar issues or major fatigue. I am going to continue to go every other day this week and stick to what I have been doing. Next week, I am going to experiment going two days in a row and see how my body feels. I have made an executive decision that I am not going to return to working out more than 5 days a week.

I always tell myself that I would or will be able to work out 6 days a week, or do ample amount of cardio because I will just eat more. That is my problem, I like routine and adding excess calories to replace my workout tends to never happen. I know my body can happily function on 2,000 cals a day working out 5 days a week with moderate cardio. It is when I go crazy pshyco with my cardio and go 7 days a week that really messes up my metabolism. I am horrible about feeding my body correctly when I amp up my workouts.

It is also nice to have some of my energy back as well as my motivation. I am telling you, the last two weeks I have not wanted to do a thing. I kept telling myself I have all this extra time now that I am not working out so much so I should bake, take Cooper for a walk, make more projects for my students...but none sounding appealing, I just wanted to mope. My mood has increased so much over the past week. Slowly I am coming out of this workout coma and my old self is coming back :) Just in time for the holidays!

I did go to the doc today to get my yearly exam. He was very interested in all my symptoms, I looked at him and said "This is not new to me. You can run a ton of blood tests, and I guarantee everything will come back normal. I just overtrained and this is how my body is dealing with it." He still made me get the blood work done, which was fine with me.

I also want to say thank you for all the great encouraging comments. Sometimes when things like this happen, I don't want to discuss it with my loved ones or friends. I hate feeling like a sympathy case. I don't even want sympathy, I guess it is nice to have someone listen and not feel like I am being portrayed as an obsessive workout freak who can't control her body.

1st Wedding Shower

Today was my wedding shower (one of two) and these are just some of the great gifts I received...we received so much more but I don't want to bore you with all the pics. It feels crazy to be getting all these gifts for just loving someone and getting married to them. Not that I don't enjoy the gifts, it just feels a little weird. Craig and I are defiantly excited to try out some of our new things!!

My shower this weekend was in Craig's hometown, Columbus NE. My future Mother In Law had it at a Bed and Breakfast. It was perfect! Around 20 people showed up (all women) and the guys walked down the street for pizza and beers. My batteries died in my camera at the shower, so my Mom took all the pics on her camera so I don't have any to share.

The shower turned out to be a great day. It was one of those days that just reminded me that there is more to life then working out and fitness. I am getting married to a wonderful guy in 63 days, Christmas is right around the corner, and we are looking at houses to buy as we speak. No only that, I go back to school this summer and I am applying for a new teaching position come Feb. so I can work closer to home. Sometimes I can just get so wrapped up in me me me, that I tend to forget all the things that are going on around me.

I can officially say my eye has stopped twitching, all about the positives here! I have continued to eat, eat, eat...and oh my goodness I am not gaining weight! Three weeks ago I was working out for an hour and a half and day and eating less than I am now. I have always enjoyed my eating, but I have always thought that I needed the workouts to maintain my weight with such eating. This is such a pleasing feeling to know that I might just be able to eat my 2,000 calories a day and not kill myself at the gym. Not that I plan on stopping to work out, just nice to know that once I go back to the gym, I can even add more calories to my diet. I have managed to put in some activity this week...here it is:

Monday: Elliptical 20 min. bike 15 min. light weights 20 min (way too much, felt it afterwords)

Wednesday: 20 min. walk on tm (4.0) 10 min. cycle no resistance followed by 10 min of upper body light weights various machines

Friday: 20 min walk 4.0 tm 10 min. cycle 15 min. light weight and two sets of 12 lunges

Sat: Walk Cooper

So as you can see I am taking it VERY easy. Some might say I need complete rest, but I have to do something to get myself moving, the endorphins just clear my head. Walking it is :) Tomorrow I am going for another walk at the gym followed by some stretching. I will continue this next week...if it takes another month to get me stronger, so be it. I would rather come back stronger then go hard to soon and fall back at the start.

If you had a wedding shower, what would be your top three gifts?

Wedding Weekend

What a busy but fun filled weekend! Friday Craig and I up and left for his best friend's wedding six hours away in North Platte Nebraska. Ironically, the bride's colors were exactly the same as the colors I have chosen for my wedding...red and black. The reception was pretty similar to the reception I have planned out. I did take away some great ideas for tuxes and having a candy bar.

When leaving on Friday, I knew that the weekend was going to be full of rich filled food and lots of drinking. When you are part of a wedding party (especially one that includes many friends of Craigs) that is what you can expect. This was going to be hard for me, for one I am not even close to working out as much as I was (only a few times a week walking and stretching) and consuming many calories is SCARY when I know I can't work it off. This is what I figured....last week I was hungry about 99% of the days...I would eat, get this washed out tired feeling (blood sugar related) and then get hungry again. So I decided to use this weekend as an experiment. If the reason my body is feeling tired, worn out, sore, etc. is because I am lacking food and calories..then this would be my weekend to eat up! So I made my mind to enjoy myself this week, not worry about calories or how much I need to consume...I usually do this often during social events but I always have the pleasure of working out alongside.

So I ate and drank and enjoyed myself this weekend. I was put face to face with a huge pork chop dinner alongside cheesy potatoes as well as a plate full of pasta with chicken and cheese. Top these meals off with more than several glasses of wine as well as chocolate cake. I don't my eating this weekend really binging...I ate till I was full at every meal and I noticed that by Sunday, my body craved huge salads and oatmeal. I also noticed on Sunday, my face was puffy, my wedding ring could barely fit around my finger and I felt swollen...water weight from increased sodium. So returning from this trip, I figured I had solved my problem. I ate well over my needs of calories for the weekend and should feel great come Monday. WRONG!

Monday morning I hit the gym for a light workout consisting of 20 min. no resistance on the elliptical, 10 min no resistance cycling, and a 10 min walk. Followed by some light chest and bicep lifts. I felt refreshed after my workout, but then once again my blood sugar begun to drop and I felt as if I had to shove my face full of food. I resumed to eating my normal breakfast but continued to feel tired and exhausted for the rest of the day. Today was no workout, and I continued to feel irritable and starving every hour. My head throbbed after lunch and the only thing that got me through my afternoon was my one Diet Coke.

So here is what I know I am doing right:

Increasing my exercise slowly

Eating TONS of veggies

Drinking TONS of water

Limiting my caffeine (just one diet coke a day, I have to live)

Getting 8-10 hours of sleep a night

I just can't pin point why my blood sugar seems to be crashing still when I have knocked down my exercise by 75% and still continue to eat every two hours...is my metabolism so fast or is my body trying to hold on to whatever is inputted??

I promise, sometime in the near future I will begin to write again about how wonderful my workouts are and how great I feel. I think for now I am just pressing time with this over training. I am watching the days go by on the calendar and thinking to myself...okay it has been 10 days now, almost two weeks I should start to feel better. I made the decision today that if things don't start to improve (fatigue) some simple blood work won't hurt to rule anything out.

I will leave you with some healthy food choices of mine today :)

Recovery

Here are some of my eats from this week...just a few :) Lots of loads of veggies....

Almonds and Greek Yogurt

Smoked Salmon

Muscle Milk Oats...tried it for the first time this week and actually it was very filling...but not worth the four dollars for one container.

Apples, greek yogurt and frozen peanut flour!

This has been one HARD and ROUGH week. I want to say thank you for all the words of encouragement, you guys are wonderful! It is so hard for me to justify that I need to be eating more. For one thing I have cut down all my activity level by 90% this week. Monday I woke up dizzy and starving as well as Tuesday. Tuesday night I woke up in the middle of the night with throbbing quads and a racing heart. I know food is just not the factor here, and some of it is my body just recovering from the over impact I have put it through in the last few months...but I know that I do need to eat more.

Usually during the week I work out about 6 times per week eating around 2,000 cals. When I take my rest day I don't eat my pre/post workout meals which slashes about 500 cals from my daily intake. So Monday and Tuesday, my actual calories were about 1, 500 or a little more. In my mind, I think that is plenty enough considering that I am not working out...but in reality my body is trying to recover and needs all the nutrients it can get. So yesterday I added an extra large apple to my diet, some more nuts, as well as a bigger dinner. I hit about 1,700 cals. This was hard for me. This is eat more when I am working out less. It is hard for me to eat more during the week, while I still know this weekend we have a wedding to attend and there will be two days of lots of wine, cake and wedding food...and no gym............yes I am freaking out.

Going through this with my body is really waking me up and telling me that I need to make some changes in the way I eat and the way I train, which I last posted. I wish it were just that easy. To wake up and say okay I am going to eat 2,500 cals and not even care about it. To drive through Fast Food and eat what I want and not feel guilty about it. I know plenty of friends who eat as they please and don't workout, and I know for sure they don't balloon up over night. The only way I am going to recover from this is to eat well and deload on my training.

So far this week I have made it to the gym and just did 20-25 min of light walking at 3.9 speed with some stretches. My legs are rock hard once I am finished and I have a washed out feeling. During the day, the mornings are the worse. I am washed out, tired, and sore. By mid afternoon my body wakes up a little more and the washed out feeling goes away. Several weeks...I know I can get through this and it won't last forever.

I have been doing some research on over training and I found that when you over extend yourself for a period of time you over work your CNS (Central Nervous System). When you overwork your CNS you experience the following symptoms:

Lack of motivation

Poor Mood

Impaired Cognitive Ability

Fatigue

Hmmmm...all to familiar. So how do you recover, well by sleeping more, resting, and eating well. Which is exactly what I am doing. Each day is a new day, a chance to become stronger and to be thankful for the things that I do have and not think about what I can't do at the moment. I will get there, and when I do I will do things the right way and start to make healthy changes.

A Change Needed

I will admit it, it is time for a change this December. This message is coming straight from my body. This past week has been utter havoc on my body. My blood sugar issues have continued to bother me horribly after my workouts. I took rest days on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The first two days of those three days I felt pretty exhausted and restless. Three days of complete rest and maintenance caloric intake to try to recover. Friday, I started to feel good and refreshed and headed to the gym for a 40 min cardio workout followed by a shoulder weight routine. Minutes after my workout my blood sugar dropped and I felt exhausted, sore and tired even after I ate a good mix of proteins/carbs/and fat. What I am experiencing is reactive hypoglycemia due to over training. This is not the first time this has happened to me. My body has developed a wonderful way of telling me when I am pushing myself to far, my blood sugars get crazy and my eye begins to twitch.

Why may you ask that my body goes into such a state...here are some reasons why...

1. I don't eat enough carbs to replenish my endurance activities

2. I don't eat enough calories period

3. I only take on or no rest day at all a week

Ha, at least I can admit I need a little help. I love working out, I love it so much I feel the need to want to to do it everyday (thankfully in my case I have never jumped to twice a day). At the same time, I love to eat healthy and still battle food issues with feeling guilty for eating more than 2,000 calories a day or overeating "unsafe" foods. Those two just don't mix. For someone who wants to be strong when they work out, they have to eat right and train properly. This is why I am starting to nix my cardio. For one thing, all my cardio has started to strip away my muscles and I am looking very soft...it also seems as if my body is holding on to more fat (probably in starvation mode). I am not saying that endurance activities are bad, I love them! But, for someone like me who does not know when to stop or properly fuel themselves for those types of activities...not the best choice. I need moderation.

So a new month brings about new goals for me. This will not be easy, but over time I think I can accomplish them.

1. Recover from overtraining-this means returning to the gym only three days this week after work, walking on the treadmill for minutes followed by yoga or light, very light weights. These days will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with a weekend rest.

2. Once my body starts to feel more refreshed, I will take my weight lifting up a notch but I will be following a four day weight lifting plan...Jaime Eason's 12 Week Trainer

3. Allow more fat in my diet to up my cals when I start working out more again

4. Only stick to five days of working out, be consistent with taking my two days of rest

5. Last, this one will be the hardest, limit my cardio to 30 minutes a day for the month of December focusing more on intervals. I know this still seems like a lot of cardio, but I really do enjoy it and I can't completely erase it from my life.

I need to remember that when it comes to appearance the diet matters more than the gym, starving myself while killing myself at the gym just does not click.

So as for now, I am in recovery, not happy about it but I did this to myself. I have got to take it a notch down and realize that my health and happiness is much more important than hitting the gym everyday. This is all easier to write and it will be much harder to put into action. I am stubborn and I hate changing my ways, hence the reason why I get myself into this quite often. This is just God's way of saying, take care of yourself :)

Wednesday Recap

It was so nice to have the day off from work today...welcome Thanksgiving Break! The day started out with a big bowl of oat bran with yogurt and peanut flour balls.

Here are some other snacks as well from today...greek yogurt with carrots I had for lunch with a side of pita chips and turkey (not pictured)

Don't these protein cookies look delish...right...I popped them in the oven while making breakfast and completely forgot about them until 20 minutes later...my apartment has a burnt crisp smell to it now lol.

Some egg whites and jelly, best combination ever :)

Lately my blood sugar levels have been all over the place waking up in the morning. I have started to notice that I am starving when I wake up and if I don't stay on top of my every two hour scheduled meal...I have a blood sugar attack. I have a feeling it has something to do with not increasing my calories and increasing my swims on the weekends..my metabolism must b e catching up. I usually don't track my foods at all, but I decided to just to see how many grams of proteins/carbs/fats I am in taking. I entered every food item on The Daily Burn and here are the stats:

1,800 calories total

53 grams of Fat

175 grams of carbs

178 grams of protein

So as you can see I get my fill of protein and probably need to up my fat/carbs a little. My numbers on the Daily Plate tell me that to maintain my healthy weight of 135 I need to consume 2,400 calories a day at my activity level...this is scary. Today I added an extra huge handful of almonds to my morning meal before my workout. I know it is not much, but it is really hard for me to add in extra calories when I am not that hungry after my meal. I know overall I would probably have a little more energy to give if I ate more. I am not saying I need to go eat junk, just add some extra fruit and nuts in my diet. Plus...tomorrow is Turkey Day and I am 100% sure I will get my fill of calories :)

So this week so much has been going on it has been a roller coaster, I would love to say that it is full of joy and bliss...but unfortunately it has not been. On Monday I received news that a former co-worker of mine from my old district took his life. I was shocked. This guy was young, a runner, and always seemed to love life. I still can't get over the fact that just a year ago I was talking running with this man and now he is no longer around, and to even think he took his own life. Tuesday I had an emergency call from my school district, and we were called into a crisis meeting. Since I work in a very small district (1 High school and 2 elementary schools) everyone knows everyone. Three teenage girls were speeding down a main highway I drive everyday and flipped their car. One of the teens died and the other two are in the ICU. These girls were very well known in the community, and many of my co-workers children were friends with these girls. The media has been crazy around our district. From these past two terrible incidents that have happened this week, it really makes you thankful for your own life and what you have to appreciate. Enter in my own situation..on Saturday night while resting on the coach I started to notice a slight twinge/pain in my chest. I brushed it off, but this pain has continued throughout Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Finally today, I broke down and called my Mom and she immediately thought I needed to see a doctor because it was in my chest. No coughing, no cold, just pain in my chest. I took my Mom's advice and to be honest with you I am glad I did. Because the pain had continued I was really starting to worry and started to think of all the possibilities that could be wrong with me. The doc did a quick EKG and the results came back normal. The only abnormal thing he did notice was that my pulse was very low...which he claims is normal for me being so athletic. He said my EKG really showed how good of shape I am in. The doc reassured me that there are many muscles around my chest, and his best guess would be that they just might be a little overworked from exercise but nothing serious, I seem to be in perfect health! I walked out of that doctors office feeling like it really was Thanksgiving, I had my health to be so thankful for.

Do you ever track your food just because of curiosity? Do you worry about overeating?

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?