Fitness Friday: New Routine!

I have been sporadic again I know.  So have my workout routines.  I don't think I've updated that number along the side in a minute.  Damn I should do that.  Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post my weight has been hovering in the almost 50 pounds last range for weeks.  Part of that due to stress and not hitting the gym as much as I could be it felt like I was plateauing a bit.  I mentioned it to my trainer and we are switching it all up.  Today was my first day of the rebooted routine and I LOVED it.  One or two moves I need to perfect and I need to get used to actually jogging instead of just walking briskly.  Tried it today and both impressed and disappointed myself.  I haven't run in a long time for more than a few seconds so improvement there but I actually made it through three cycles of my walk, jog, sprint cardio time before my body said no mas.  We're going to tweak a few things and head back at it.  I'm a happy girl who is excited to get back in sweat mode.  Yippee and I signed up for tennis lessons so hopefully that doesn't you know kill me or more aware of how limited my sports skills are lol.  How are you doing?

FItness Friday: Sweaty Saturday Summary

So my Fitness Friday post is late again this week.  I did hit the gym as scheduled this week so now I'm three workouts away from 100 for the year.  Much as like last year though, the vast majority of them came at the end of the year when my brain and body finally said enough damn it.  I'm still learning my body and what works and what hurts and instead of just plugging along at something I'm not interested in doing I'm speaking up and making changes as needed.  My trainer is helping immensely and I'm figuring out that some of my old food wasn't so bad as long as it's not a daily kind of thing. Next week it's homemade pizza time--I'll try to take a photo, actually that's tomorrow so yeah I'll try to take a photo before I slice it up.  I had pot roast for Christmas and last night, I'll probably have that again tonight instead of a twice baked potato.  I do like potatoes but yeah not in the mood for one today.  That is something I have noticed over the last few months.  Even food that I love can either feel too heavy or just not what I'm craving.  Thankfully there's a lot of flexibility in the meal plan so I don't ever get too far off calorie count.  Trying to balance the dairy and protein and what not is a challenge some days but it's better than it used to be.  I'm not going to claim it at this point but it looks like I'm back on the losing end of things again after a week of flat weight loss.  If it holds I'll be down 25 pounds since I started this whole reboot two months ago.

I did just find out that my yoga class is moving to the same time as my swim lesson so I'm going to have to figure out when to sneak it in during the week.  Yoga this morning was different cause we had a new instructor for the day.  I got in a good sweat which is always nice but I really liked having yoga then scooting down the stairs to swim.  Ahh we'll see. 

Oh and I had a doh moment at the gym this week.  Remember I'd been having trouble with my heart rate monitor.  The readings would be all over the place like the sensor was losing its mind.  Well I was washing my hands and trying to get the sensor to read normally when the band came unhooked--again.  Why this didn't occur to me before I really can't say but I have NEVER tinkered with the band ever since I bought it.  I've been losing and gaining the same 10-15 pounds over the last year until recently.  There is actually less of me to wrap around so I had to make the band tighter.  Yeah for tangible proof of weight loss but damn that was an easy fix that had I just thought of earlier I might not have been checking out other fitness bands.

How goes the sweaty life for all of you?

Book Review: Becoming Princess Charming

A few weeks ago I was contacted about potentially reviewing a book that seemed to about empowering women to achieve their goals through self-reflection.  Of course I said yes because I love reading and any book that actually helps one reach their goals is a win.  Not to mention I've been struggling with being stuck in a few areas of my own life and this book's description was all about getting unstuck in a few major areas.  Just to make sure I don't misquote it here's the synopsis that was provided in the initial email:

Do you ever feel “stuck” or like you’re going through life as some kind of pseudo version of yourself? Are you ready to realize your greater potential - and live like a princess in your very own fairy tale? 

In this engaging, easy-to-read book, intuitive healer and spiritual mentor, Morgan McKean, takes you through a journey of self-discovery, so that you can create your life the way you want it to be. Each chapter represents a personal strategy session that can be used alone, or in conjunction with the other chapters, as a way to expand your mind, while setting the mental and emotional foundation for creating your happily ever after. 

Covering topics like Fun, Food, Fitness, Men, Money, and Meaning, Morgan shares her spiritual insights and real world techniques for making you the princess of your very own fairytale, called LIFE.

Because there's a little part in each of us that wants to Become Princess Charming, Morgan is offering you this unique opportunity to create your very own fairytale. 

The book was written by Morgan McKean (click here for more details) and even though it's around 300 pages it's a relatively quick read, I covered it during an insomnia fit one night, that provides you with a variety of things in each chapter.  It focuses on women she's already worked with by giving you examples of how some of us arrive in our stuck state with each of the categories, explores how to make our view of the world more productive for us as well as encourages exploration of what it would take to get there for you.  A lot of the book's focus is really about changing how we see the world and our potential in it.  Yes the good old power of positive thinking.  That's easier to achieve when we are feeling great about the world but this gets into trying to do it when things aren't working as well as we would like and how to move beyond that.

Some sections worked better for me than others, namely food, fun and money.  I have an awkward relationship with food sometimes.  I rarely eat to excess but when I do it's normally because I'm stressed or disappointed and that just starts a nasty cycle until I break through it.  And I have known for quite sometime that I have blocked my own avenues to have fun because of fear about the expense of the things that I really like to do.  Even though a flight to Vegas to catch a Prince show wouldn't have broken the bank.  The timing of it, near Christmas, in my brain meant I would be short changing relatives for gifts and the timing of our checks being off said no nice lady you have responsibilities.  And I do but all that's meant is me being frustrated because the people I'm responsible for don't seem to cut back on what they see as fun to help me out if that makes sense.  Which leads to me being resentful and continuing the stuckness.  My money and fun are linked together too but the other aspect of that is investing in myself to potentially make more income so the fun things aren't distant ideas and can come to fruition easier.

All of that is not to say the fitness, men and meaning sections are not relevant they just weren't as applicable to where I am stuck at the moment.  I enjoyed the exercises at the end of each chapter but my therapist brain, since that's what I do for a living till I start my new job ha, wanted a bit more of them--possibly a section to revisit after you made the changes to compare how you thought it would look and what it actually manifested itself as in your life.  I like exercises as they get your mind in the thought process it needs to approach in order to see if something can actually be different.

Many of you know I'm in the process of house hunting long distance and have been frustrated repeatedly by people not getting back to me and getting moved before the job officially starts so I can at least be unpacked.  It was driving me nuts and ratcheting up my contacts wasn't doing much to make a dent in getting help.  Well this will seem unrelated but as part of the moving I've been storing the DVDs in a large storage case so we weren't packing all of these cases that at this stage no one really needs and take up a ton more room than a case that can hold 320 dvds.  After hunting online I found out that Best Buy had one on sale and appeared to still have some in stock at a local store.  I ran out to get it among other things for the nice lady that lives with me and drives me slightly crazy, known as mom, and was quite frustrated when no one in the store could find it and figured it would just add to the craptastic luck I've had with realtors as I had called one that morning and hadn't heard a thing at by noon when I left for the store.  I was almost out of the store when I said let's just try to make this trip not wasted if possible.  The Geek Squad guy was able to order it for me and get it shipped to my house for free.  He rang it up and to my amazement the total price was less than what I had seen online when I left home.  Well that's because the store had marked it down 5 bucks less than the online price and that's what I paid.  I figured if nothing else that was a win for the day and I was going to believe that my luck would change with the housing front soon.  When I got back home after errands, a house I saw last week was marked down 15K so I said screw it and put in a contact request with the realtor.  I hadn't heard from her by the close of business but they were an hour ahead of me so a morning call would be fine.  Nope she called mid pizza preparation and asked me what I was looking for, what I would be willing to pay, deadlines and preferences and unlike her counterparts didn't seem freaked out by me being out of state and trying to relocate.  She told me she'd be in touch soon and I hung up feeling fantastic.  I ate my pizza, got cranky with the Voice results and went to bed on time for the first time in a long time because I wasn't as stressed about this house hunting thing and started to put more positive energy out there that all would come to fruition.  Turns out after I went to bed she sent me like 20 houses that mostly hit on all of our discussion that I showed to mom the next day and we agreed on about 5 to look further into.

I'm not saying that the results would have been different if my brain hadn't switched over to this can and will happen because I want and need it do.  The fact that they were different and that I quit thinking this person isn't going to call me back could totally be a coincidence but as a lifelong pessimist to my exes, realist to me lol, it felt better to not be in a negative head space about my goals.  That's a really dumbed down synopsis of what I felt the book was about but really the book makes an overall good point.  How can you be your own princess if you don't believe in your fairy tale?  If you discount, dissuade, dismiss all of the things you want in your life best believe they probably won't happen for no other reason than your energy won't allow them to do so.  

If you are intrigued go ahead and head over to Morgan's SITE and you can purchase the book, sign up for other services and learn how to host a Princess Party for us big girls if you are so inclined.  For you new era princess in training you'll be thrilled to see the book in kindle format.  For an older era princess to be like myself I did miss flipping through physical pages but I totally recognize I'm a bit of throwback in that regard.  I do still love a good bookstore and library--ahh book smell lol.  Final thoughts, if you are stuck in area and don't know why or how to get unstuck I think this can be a great tool to help you along provided you are willing to learn how to refocus your thinking to make the changes you want in your life.  I think it would be great in a therapy setting if I just remembered to print off the pages in time which yeah can be a problem sometimes ha.  Okay enough of my babbling, I'll be back later with another post.

Selected questions from the Q&A with Morgan:

Question :: What inspired you to write Becoming Princess Charming?

McKean :: Well, after a couple of false starts in my twenties, and a lot of resistance to writing anything longer than a blog post or magazine article in my early thirties, last Summer, as I was contemplating how I could best share my spiritual ideas for fabulous living, as I believe that when we understand how magnificent we really are, we can create our life the way we want it to be, I received over eight requests, and two demands, from clients and friends, in less than a two week period, to write a book.

Then, as I finally sat down to write, and the book was essentially pouring out of me, I began to see that I was finally at a place in my own life, where I could allow myself to be the catalyst or messenger to deliver these ideas.  And, when the book was completed in less than fourteen weeks, having very little to do with me personally, I really got the message, it was time.

Question :: What can people expect from this six-session guidebook?

McKean :: I believe that living the life of “Princess Charming,” is first about learning to love and accept yourself, and then, being able to create your fairy tale, or life, the way you want it to be.  Accordingly, I’ve broken this guidebook down into six sessions, including; fun, food, and fitness, and men, money, and meaning, so that you can see who you are being in each of these areas of your life.

In each “session” with me, you’ll go on a trip of self-discovery as you learn more about your fear-based ideas and thinking, and develop the ability to identify old programing and limited beliefs that are currently holding you back from living your life the way you want to be.  Additionally, through out each chapter, and at the end of the session, you will have access to real-world exercises and new ideas that will help you shift your perspective, or expand your awareness so that you can create your happily ever after.

My dedication to embarking on this journey of self-discovery and spirituality, as well as doing the work daily, has transformed every area of my life for the better.  I’ve learned to have more compassion, love, understanding, and appreciation for who I am, what I’m capable of, and how what I really believe about myself and the world around me influences how I experience our physical reality.

Working It Out

So today was a wash with work.  Saw one client at one site, rushed to another to evaluate an emergency, killed 90 minutes waiting on a family member to arrive, went to my final site for the day and half the clients were really not doing well.  Also got a chip in the window that pissed me off lol.  Thankfully my insurance will cover a repair for free if it can just be patched.  Going to take it in to Safelite tomorrow after work.  Going to try to see as many folks and take a nap before heading over to get the patch job.  I don't want it to sit and get worse with the weather going up and down as much as it does.  Then off to interview on Sunday.  I need to roll my hair up cause it fell in my frustration over not working much today.  That and the totally unnecessary fight I had with mom. 

I got out of the house for a bit afterwards, trolled through Hobby Lobby and got myself some takeout.  BUT before I ate it I made myself get up and work out.  I love the Wii because I won't stop working out until the time piggy bank dances which is 30 minutes in at least.  Today was 35 minutes and I could tell I hadn't worked out in a bit.  Will shoot for at least one of the next two days and then try to sneak it in whenever I can again next week even though Monday through Wednesday may be a wash since I won't be in for the night until around 10 each night.  But first work out is done and it felt great.

Tomorrow is the First Day of The Rest of Your Life

Well I guess that should be my life but really it's another day with another chance to make it a little bit better than the last one.  First let me say HAPPY NEW YEAR Y'ALL.  I am a Texan (i.e. I was born there and I didn't just live there--Texans understand that distinction lol) so I have to say y'all every now and then to retain my position.  As everyone else around the world does on December 31st, I started thinking about what I learned over the last year and what I could hope for in the next year.  This has been an interesting year.  After leaving the only real grown up job I'd ever had in July, I realized just how unhappy I'd been in it recently.  I loved my clients but hated the people I was working for and the system they were constructing was just gonna make me more miserable.  Turns out they are crapping on the staff even more than they had been so I got out at a good point.  I have a new job which I found relatively quickly and while it feels like I've been lied to about just about EVERYTHING concerning it, it made sure I wasn't unemployed, gave me insurance again and allowed me to do my side gig.  The side gig has help offset bills and random expenditures but so has saving like the dickens.  I have a new campus interview coming up soon which may lead to relocation back to the family I like and the state I tolerate which would be good and bad.  I love my brother and his family but I kinda like a lot of things about my life here.  If I could take a few of those things with me it would be ideal but hey such is life it's always changing.

For those of you that have been around for a while then you know this blog is about my hair care journey.  My hair from July of last year to now is completely different and not just because I'm letting it go grey.  My hair dresser says the black dye isn't as hard on hair so I may think about spiffying it up but I'm not sold on that.  My hair had gotten pretty thin and was really damaged and had hit what I thought was it's terminal length cause that's the point it always broke off at.  The first few months didn't net major growth but my hair got full and thick again which was great because it meant I was doing things well and the length has slowly but surely come so that now I can say my hair is on my shoulders.  If I can get the one spot in the center to grow out like the hair around it then all will be good.  And I need to develop tolerance for new hair styles and possibly developing the two day wash and style process if I am going to keep avoiding heat like the plague.  I haven't used my sit under dryer in so long it's dusty seriously and when my blow dryer died I just opted not to replace it.  I only use my flat irons in an emergency.  But this whole hair care thing gave me new insights into how much I ultimately valued me too.

I had avoided taking better care of me because I was tired, lazy, didn't feel I deserved it, whatever the case may be I was crapping out on the self love stuff.  Since leaving the job and even taking slightly better care of myself I have fallen in love with parts of my life all over.  I'm listening to to new music, enjoying new shows, reading books from the library and best of all cooking.  I've baked and made more home made ice cream in the last six months than I have in the last three years seriously.  Even when the experiments didn't work it was fun for me.  And clearly I have been missing fun.  I've slowly but surely worked on part of a project that I need to get back to work on.  But that rocked when I did it.  I'm doing all those happy homemaker things that I envisioned myself doing as a child save you know the husband, 2.5 kids and four bedroom house.  But I had been ignoring that part of my life because I didn't have the husband or kids.  Correction I had a husband but he wasn't my husband and while his kids were great I never got to see them because his ex didn't want me in their lives.  I won't spend too much time on that because even thinking about it makes me take a deep sigh but I was waiting on him to take care of things so that we could be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious wonder coupled up and the problem is/was there was always going to be something else and after four and a half years I felt defeated.  I'm not sure if we were good for each other even though were good to each other.  I miss him and the cute kids but I also knew/know that if I want the husband, 2.5 kids and four bedroom house before I die waiting on someone else to figure their part out isn't in the cards.

So I'm single again, in pursuit of a new job, watching my hair grow out of my head and be all healthy and beautiful and it's time for phase two or three or twelve whatever it is.  My weight has been pretty stable but too freaking high for at least the last five years.  I'm sure stress and underlying dissatisfaction with parts of my life added to the weight not coming off in any meaningful way or my ability to stick to any kind of workout routine.  I wear oversized clothes so I don't look five months pregnant constantly.  Well that and I'm always very conscious of my boobs which have been in the way since 5th grade and have only gotten bigger since then.  My FIRST bra was a 32/34B or so.  I was all out of the cute training bras and into the you got boobs bras.  The last time I allowed myself to partake of the Cacique bra sale at LB I bought a 42DDD.  Yes three Ds which is actually much different than an E as E is still thankfully too big.  Because I knew that reboot started in January which is now less than 48 hours away I allowed myself to eat as much of anything as I wanted before the 1st.  That stops tomorrow and it's back to watching portion sizes and eating sensibly and drinking as much water as I can without making my bladder bitch slap me all day long.  I drink a fair amount now it just tends to be after work instead of throughout the day.

So to keep myself honest I'm going to post my starting weight and add a tab to the Random Goodness box that tracks any weight loss, gain, whatever.  I hope that it's usually loss but we'll see.  Weigh ins, other than today, will probably be on Friday or Saturday--maybe wash day since I'll be in a routine anyway.  I'm also going to share a photo with you of the round wonder that is me and try to do an update photo monthly or at least every other month.  Monthly I may depress myself ha.  And my hope is at the end of the year there is enough tone and loss that the the pinup photos make me happy to shell out lots of money to look purty.

Hmm what else is there to tell you about right now. Ahh no idea why you need to know this but I'm in a sharing mood lol.  So remember all the cute pajamas Victoria's Secret used to carry?  They were cotton and very comfortable.  At the time I got myself two or three pajama shirts and two sets that had tank tops and pants.  I haven't worn either in a while because I tend to just pass out in whatever is comfy and near me.  And I hadn't worn the tanks cause I was doing some serious hate on my arms and again the aforementioned boobs that fit great in the tanks when I was still a C cup but now look like whatcha doing with all that up there gal.  I guess because of the weather it finally dawned on me sleeping in lightweight pants would help me not freeze so out came the VS pants again.  But it's cold so it's not tank weather.  Ahhh light bulb moment.  The cute tops that stop at my used to be ample now too damn big butt work great with the pants--I mean they are the same material after all.  So I've created two new pj sets for myself after not wearing either part for a LONG time.  I'm such a dork I know.

It was raining here today so my cute hair was tucked under a hat whenever I went out in the elements and the curls fell a bit but I promised myself I'd take photos so here ya go.  And there's a picture of me at my current weight of 243.8 pounds--my scale is fancy and does points of pounds.  Glad it doesn't round up though and it's too high to round down to just a flat 243.  That means I've gained five pounds in the last four or five months.  Not major just not helpful.  So the goal for a year from today is to be at 203.8 pounds or less.  I don't want to set it so high that I get disappointed that I can't hit my goal and 40 seems reasonable.  If it's surpassed EVEN better.  And I'll be grabbing my jar soon to put next to the bed and be prepared to fill with all the goodness for the next year.  Woo this was a long post wasn't it?  Now it's time for gingerbread martinis after I eat a little bit so there's more than chicken bites and a Cinnabon on my stomach.  And if you made it all the way down here let me just say again, happy new year to you and yours and hope it's blessed beyond measure.

Accepting That My Mother is Crazy & Other Resolutions

This year has lead to a lot of surprising things.  I finally left a job that was stealing my joy and found a new one quickly thankfully which let me figure out my next moves.  I've started teaching again which while busy is so much more fun than working just the one job I had prior to now.  I've started making moves to get myself closer to my family and out in the job market in general.  I'm also trying to restart my research too which is necessary if I ever want to get a full time teaching position ever.

After lots of frustration and no major changes in sight, I ended another long-term relationship.  I thought about it a few weeks ago and over the last decade I've been in a relationship with nothing in the way of progression.  And in an ironic twist there's nothing to really accuse the other person of doing that made it crash and burn.  Circumstances and commitments can screw up the best laid plans.  So now I'm single, no munchkins and I still have a crazy old lady living with me (even though I doubt she'd ever hold up her end of the bargain about leaving for two years after I got married).  Speaking of McCrazy I have now realized that no matter what I do, say, think, or imagine my mother is going to continue to behave like a hormonal teenager.  She has made almost every conversation we've had in the last two months into an argument about some perceived slight that I inflict but not doing x.  The next conversation when I do x she's mad about y.  And I can avoid fictional thing, x, and y there is g to look out for.  Yes I know that's not z but there's nothing logical about these conversations at all.  It's very frustrating but if I want to remain mostly mentally healthy and out of jail I really am just going to have to ignore her.  It's not an ideal way to coexist but nothing else I've tried has worked.  My resolution for 2013 is to just let her tantrums go by the way side.  Ok moving on.  And this post may be long so you've been warned, just stop now if you're easily bored by lots of babbling.