Week 2

Claire has already posted about her week as a comment on last week, but I'm going to create a new post anyway. Some people have told me that they are having trouble posting or commenting. We might go back to just doing this by email because email tends to work well for everyone. What do you all think?

Claire, I've tried the intermittent fasting before. It doesn't work for me because I binge the moment I'm done with the fasting portion--even if it's healthy food, a binge is still not what I need. But I know it works for a lot of people, so if it works for you, more power to you!

I hate to say that I've had another bad week, but I have. Not "bad" as in I've eaten garbage, but "bad" as in we're on the last push to move and clean, so that's all I think about. It's taking me forever because we are leaving behind a fully furnished house, so I am washing and polishing and scrubbing and repairing everything so that it is picture perfect for my parents when they get home on Monday (yay!) I even cleaned Dad's car so they're all ready to take my kids places (yay!) But the good part of this all is that when your hands are busy cleaning, they are not busy sneaking food into your mouth. And I get a great upper-body workout everyday.

How are the rest of you doing?

Calling the Living: Week 1

Yesterday I was super busy with cleaning, packing, moving, hosting family and friends, etc., and I didn't get a chance to post. So sorry to let you down our first week! Thank you Claire for your thoughts, and Birgitta for actually being accountable! Please comment on this post to let us all know how you did this week!

I had great success with exercise this week, but not so much with eating. It is amazing to me how the best of intentions can be so crushed by life--this week moving, cleaning, all the kids home, AWOL husband (not permanently, thankfully), worried about the money to buy food in the first place, and not even a chance to think about meals until we are an hour, two hours, three hours over when we should have eaten. Not sure how to juggle everything. So I am changing my goals up a bit this week to keep it healthy, but more simple than journaling. I am calling it the 100-Day Berkley Challenge after my father-in-law who insists that if we eat the right foods we can eat as much as we want and still reach a healthy weight. So I'm putting his advice to the test so I can not worry about journaling for the next little while during our stressful transition. And I'm going to keep exercising--even if some days that is just lugging boxes up and down the stairs for hours on end.

What goals worked for you this week? What got in the way of doing what you wanted? What can you do differently this week? I'd love for you to post your thoughts here!

Rising From the Dead Tomorrow!

Ladies, tomorrow is the day! Are you ready? (I am so ready at this moment, although I hadn't thought about it all day, so we'll see how ready I am when I get halfway through tomorrow and realize, "Oh, yeah. I was supposed to be tracking what I am eating.")

Whatever your goals, post them here or post them at home on your bathroom mirror, refrigerator, steering wheel, etc., but write down what you are going to do to LIVE this week and post them somewhere that you will see it frequently. They don't have to be perfect goals--you can adjust them each week as you figure out for yourself what works and what doesn't. Don't make major adjustments to them everyday because that's procrastination (i.e. "I didn't exercise yesterday, so I'm going to exercise six days a week starting TODAY, and today will be my one day of the week off.")

Also, comment on this post to let me know what day of the week you want to post inspiration on. Pick a day that your head isn't spinning already with deadlines and pressure.

Good luck ladies! We can do this!

Zombies Don't Need Goals

I thought I'd post my goals today to either inspire the rest of you, or make you rethink this whole thing. I'd love for you to post your goals as a comment to this post sometime between today and Monday so that we can get this thing rolling--away from the hearse. (We gotta keep this theme going til it's dead.) Here are my goals (drum roll, please):

1. I am going to track everything I eat on myfitnesspal.com. If you haven't used it before, check it out. I have used Sparkpeople in years past, but it has gotten far too "busy" for me. I just need somewhere I can check in everyday and track my eating, and help me remember to stick to specific limits. Part of this goal is also that I will stick to the calorie guidelines on the website. I am not setting a weight loss goal because weight loss is something I can't control. Behaviors I can.

2. I am going to participate in 60 minutes of aerobic activity five days a week. Hopefully it will be six days a week, but I know things will get hectic some weeks and I don't want to feel like a failure for only getting five days in. Five days is pretty darn good.

3. I am going to do strength training three times a week (core, upper body, lower body). I have only recently developed a real appreciation for strength training. I highly recommend getting into it as much as you can. It makes a world of difference in what you are capable of doing in your everyday life, and muscle burns more calories than fat, so it's great to have around! The best thing about it is that you can get wonderful benefits from a fraction of the time it takes to get benefits from cardio exercises. (You need both, but strength training shouldn't take forever.)

I'd love to say that I'm going to get 8 hours of sleep per night too, but that's asking a little much, so I'll leave it at that. What are your goals all you Morgue-Dodging Mamas? Let us know!

The Life Support 4-Month Challenge

1. Set your own personal goals--and be as specific as you can be. They don't have to be weight-loss goals, although tracking weight can help you monitor how you are doing at your other goals. Don't set your goals too low because you are capable of more than you think you are, but don't set them so high that you give up before the four months is up either. 

Some ideas: decreasing resting heart rate, decreasing cholesterol, triglyceride or blood sugar levels (you'll need a doctor to track these ones), decreasing waist circumference or dress size, exercising for more than 30 minutes for a specific number of weeks, strength training a specific number of weeks, tracking food (or sodium, or fat, or sugar) everyday, decreasing body fat percentage, or increasing muscle mass. (If you have somewhere that you can have your body fat/muscle mass measured, I would highly recommend getting it done. It can be very motivating to look at your body as fat vs. muscle instead of just as weight. To stay out of the morgue you want less fat, more muscle, not just less weight.)

2. I will post a reminder on this blog every Monday. You check in each Monday by commenting on that post. You show off to the living world your progress towards your goals. ("I exercised six days this week.") If your goal is a weight-loss goal, you don't have to tell us your weight. When you start the Challenge, consider your weight 0, then track your changes based on that. (For instance, if four weeks into the Challenge you had lost four pounds, you could write, "I am at -4 lbs. this week." Hopefully you won't have to ever write, "I am at +4 lbs. this week," because that would mean you had gained four pounds since we started the Challenge!)

3. Every living person in our group chooses one day a week to post on this blog. It can be short and sweet, but it has to be positive and health related so that we can all keep our goals in mind. On your designated day, you can post a health tip, a recipe, a hunger-fighting snack idea, a motivational quote, a fun exercise you have discovered, something you have learned about yourself along the way, etc. It doesn't have to be complex, but it has to be positive because some days the only thing harder than staying alive is trying to do something difficult when you are surrounded by people reminding you how impossible what you are trying to do is! Only zombies can be negative.

4. If you run into snags or frustrations, or you don't understand how to do something, you can post here as well, and we can all contribute ideas and suggestions. But we still need to keep the discussions positive!

5. At the end of the four months, we will have culminating, non-morgue activities. If you live close to other people participating in the Challenge, I would highly recommend running/walking/crawling a community 5k or 10k. I know that might not sound like fun, but when you have worked so hard to get fit, a community race is a wonderful place to realize what you are capable of. If you do not live close to anyone participating in the Challenge, do something extra wonderful for yourself with people who love and support you--something that you really look forward to doing throughout the four months.

6. If at the end of four months this Challenge has been helpful to you, we will do it for another four months. Although we are trying to make life-long changes, it is important to have a beginning and an end to the Challenge so that we don't put healthy changes off "until tomorrow" indefinitely.