Fitbit and why I love it

I have always loved pedometers
Dave laughs at me when I would grab the cheapo 2$ ones from the grocery store end caps but I love them
those are horribly inaccurate
but not bad for a cheapy

For Christmas my MIL gave me a 100$ gift card and I was thrilled
I used it to buy myself a present
I bought
my fitbit

If you do not know what they are go to google
I will give you the basics
a fitbit is a very fancy pedometer
I wear it all the time except when in the shower
and when it is charging
it is a rubber like bracelet that tracks my steps
and it tracks my sleep

The fitbit syncs with the fitbit website and I get to see how Im doing through the day and in relation to my fitbit friends

It also syncs with other sites like My fitness pal so my calories burned through walking count and I can eat a wee bit more ( my biggest problem is getting enough calories and balance sodium intake since I try to eat 1500mg or less of sodium a day)

Other sites it syncs with?
Pact
I love the Pact app I get paid money for stuff Im already doing
not much I mean last week I make something like 1.60 but HEY that is 1.60 I did not have before!

I have a fitbit flex
The neat thing about it it is so motivating
especially for a competitive person like me
I have some young dude in my friend list
he keeps topping me
I WILL NOT be topped by some kid
so I hop on my treadmill and blow his punk ass out of the water

NOW for the cost
over $100.00 (tax shipping and what if you want more than one color bracelet?)
is it worth it?

HELL YES
those that know me know I am the cheapest person around
I am cheap and often broke
BUT I attribute much of my success and motivation to this little bracelet
I check the site several times a day
I go for more walks to meet my step goal(which I set myself my current step goal is 15000 steps per day)

I walk all over town
I walk on my treadmill for 45 minutes a day
and if the treadmill is not working I pace my kitchen
there are tons of things I do to get more steps
why?
because I like to see the little lights dance on it and feel it vibrate when I have gotten all my steps
I like seeing that I am number 1 in my friends feed
I can tell you this
BEFORE my fitbit I was not getting a full 10,000 steps a day
not even with doing the Leslie Sansone videos
because those videos while great (and yes they are awesome)
are not enough steps
the video says it is going 4 miles BUT you are not stepping that much
she counts the miles based on the beats per minute of the music
you are not stepping on each beat
It is roughly half the amount of steps

I look at my fitbit like my sports bra
I need something good to give me more support
It is a tool
a fun fun tool

Moderation

If you are looking to get healthy or lose a few pounds or transform your life whatever
you will go looking for something to help
and get an overwhelming amount of information
remember I am old
OK not THAT old but I have been around diets and dieting people all my life
I remember my mother bemoaning her middle aged body
upset that she was not as thin as she was when she was young
and she would go on a diet
remember the Grapefruit diet?
my mom was a huge fan
remember Tab?
she drank TONS of that
Rice cakes were new ish when I was a kid
mom would crunch on those things like crazy
she would drop about 10lbs feel great and give up
why?
she would get hungry
she would get bored

fast forward 15 years
my mother in law and father in law went on a diet together
at this time Atkins and South Beach diets were HUGE
MIL chose South Beach for them
FIL started working out
MIL cooked
after a while
they got bored
good news on that one they did not get hungry just bored

NOW if you read stuff on diets the "fads" are Paleo eat like a caveman diet and of course all things gluten free
I see various friends eating plates full of food no grains no potatoes locally grown veggies (which where I live means no veggies because very little grows well here)

all I can think when I see this is
where is your portion size?
if you do not pay attention to portions you can indeed get fat eating ANYTHING even grass fed beef
I think it would take more spinach than anyone could ever tolerate before they got fat on it however the sodium content of spinach is pretty high for a veggie so I guess you would retain a lot of water

THIS is where moderation comes in
those that know me will be shocked to hear ANYTHING moderate coming from me
I am an all or nothing kind of gal
jump in both feet
damn the torpedoes etc etc

but moderate eating
foods YOU like
ones YOU can eat for the rest of your life
even the occasional treat
by occasional I do not meant once a week for ME occasional is once a month

So yes
I will have bread
YES I will eat some pasta
but remember 2ozs of pasta is a lot less than most people thing

THIS is where the food scale comes in
THIS is where knowing your portions comes in
THIS is where logging food comes in

if you are not keeping track of it how will you know?
will I have to track my food forever?
NO eventually I will be able to stop
eventually I will be in maintenance
I will be able to eat more than I am now that I am in weight loss mode
but for now because I am still working on this
I will be obsessive about it
I will be a slave to those numbers
is it hard?
yes
but it is becoming habit
the reinforcement I get from my results has been fantastic
55lbs gone
inches in the last month alone I have lost 8.5 from my body
wearing a size 14 for the first time in 25 years
feeling GREAT

THAT makes the work worth it it only takes a few minutes each meal
I can handle that

my addiction

yes
I am addicted
luckily this stuff is not so bad

low sodium
gluten free for those following that
low carb
almost no sugar
low fat
AND best of all
I can have 17 of them

 

the carbs on it are not great BUT most things are higher 

I eat these for lunch with cashew butter and some of this 

This is the lowest sugar fruit spread I have found it has 6grams of sugar per 1TBS serving
and it does not taste like ass!!

oh and it has fiber and all kinds of other good stuff

those are my product recs for this week
if you follow me on My Fitness Pal and look at my food diary you will see I tend to eat the same thing over and over again I am a creature of habit
I just had to change my habits to something I like that is also good for me

 

Why I weigh myself every day

Changing my attitude about everything has not been easy
and one of the biggest attitudes I had to change was my relationship with the scale
many of us have this
a love hate relationship with
a tool
that is all it is
it is a tool
it has no control
having a digital scale makes it a slightly more accurate tool than my old scale
but it is still a tool
weight fluxuates
it depends on so many things
especially for a woman
water , sodium intake, hormones, clothing , exercise causing water retention, time of day, time of month, the moon etc

so what am I doing weighing myself daily
sounds like torture
I am looking for trends
so long as my weight is trending downwards over the course of a week
then I am doing well

remember this is not about weight 
this is about health

here is an example of a trend
I weighed 185.5 last week
then it "went up" to 187.2
well the day before I had eaten a lot and had walked a lot and had a lot of salt
I KNEW it would go up
so I adjusted
cut back on sodium
watched my snacky tendencies (Almond nut thins are addicting)
today it is 185.2
I weigh myself at the same time daily
and only the downward trend gets recorded

most of all I do not beat myself up over one day
I do not kick the scale or throw it
The scale did nothing to me
this is long term
I will not be derailed by something simple

The difficulty would come if I had gone months at a plateau
I would not be as happy then
but there are other measurements to consider then
the tape measure
how do I feel
how is my blood work

30 Day Challenges

I love them
I really do I like everything about them
I can look up pictures on Pinterest
and find before and afters
I can look at the challenges and dream of getting together a big group of friends where we can support each other and taunt each other tease each other into doing them

I just completed this squat challenge with a friend of mine (HI LOONEY!)

It was fabulous and painful and not so easy but overall GREAT

I feel stronger
and leaner after doing this

of course doing this made me want to do an Ab challenge because my abs are buried under several layers of flab but I have abs and they need to be stronger

if I tighten those my stomach will look better
and my back will feel even better than it does now

and here is where we run into a problem
Like many women in my situation
I have Diastasi Recti
I know sounds like a great excuse to not exercise the abs
kinda like being big boned (which I am legit !)
is a good excuse to eat a bucket of chicken

but I digress

Diastasis Recti is serious in some cases it can lead to hernia or ruptures not pleasant at all
how did I get diastasis recti?
I'm short
I had 5 babies over 8lbs
I have been obese most of my adult life
I have had 3 cesarian sections

All of those factor lead to a split in the middle
if I try to do situps or crunches
you can see a football shaped dome in my stomach

and that is diastasis recti

doing things like sit ups and crunches and planks can make it worse and
make my tummy stick out even farther

my first response to learning this
fanfuckingtastic
so the search began to find a nice free exercise plan to fix this issue

why free?
I'm cheap
and I do not think good health should cost a stupid amount of money
I do not think I should pay to join a group
or pay for a program that comes with a belt and dvds

Been there done that
and I have piles of DVDs I do not use as it is
(hubs and I are the proud owners of some belly dancing DVDs and P90X )

So to google I went
wanna know what I found?

a lot of info
 and a lot of pay to join here and I will help you

and I searched Pinterest
LOADS of info on Diastasis Recti
but sadly
NO 30 day challanges!!
with the encouragement of some friends
and a willing partner in crime (Hello Sarah sweetie)
and hubs help

I have created

this : 
HERE you should be looking at a fabulous picture of a calender
sadly my program for that sucks so it did not work out
SO I'm looking for a volunteer to make me one AND in the meantime I will be using
as a template that ab workout calender above HERE are the substitutions for those of us with "mummy tummy"

Hip Bridge = sit ups
Squat = crunches
4 point kneeling = leg raises
Ballerina =   Planks

 

THE KEY to doing these exercises is holding in your tummy

things I have read say things like:

pull your belly button back toward your spine make sure you are breathing while holding it in.

Another direction is to stand tall and pretend to zip up your stomach imagine the whole thing just being zipped in from bottom to top

once you can do this breathe AND hold it while moving 

THEN you can do these exercises.

notice I did not chose the lunges 

I did this because they hurt my knees

The 4pt kneeling thing looks easy try it 

get on your knees and hold your stomach in tight while breathing for the amount of time that the challenge says 

Ready? lets DO IT !!

Diastsis Recti

I believe I have found my reason to not ever do burpees (up downs)

Diastsis Recti
it is caused by abdominal trauma and lets face it 5 pregnancies with babies all over 8lbs on a petite(short) torso is traumatic if you want proof I can put up pics of me pregnant with my assorted children I got as wide as refrigerator. all belly

and when I had them the balloon deflated a bit
I have always been fat
I have always carried my fat in my upper arms and my gut
now what to do about diastsis recti ??

I can't do crunches or situps or planks those only make the mummy tummy worse

shame really Im pretty good at planks

traditional ab work is out
so I have to find other exercises to do for them

I can do squats good thing I am on the last day of the squat challenge

I looked for a 30 day challenge thing for diastsis recti but there are none
I might just have to make one up myself

if I write one up anyone wanna join me?
we can test the 30 day diastasis recti challenge
OR better yet someone else want to write it or find one that we can do? 

Josephs Lavash Bread

While shopping for some whole wheat tortillas I found these
it was the 50 calories that caught my eye along with the size of these things
they are about ax big as a cookie sheet!
and I can eat half of one
and it is only 50 calories
and they taste good
the only "bad" thing about them is the salt content

now what can you do with these?
wraps
open face sandwiches
wraps!!

Here is one the things I do
I take 3ozs of shredded cooked boneless skinless chicken breast
1oz of goat cheese
1TBS of plain Greek yogurt
I mix that all together
then I spread it out on one half of the Lavash bread
I top it with
diced roma tomato
diced onions
and spinach
sprinkle some Mrs Dash on it
and stick in the oven for a few minutes
pull it out and melt some swiss cheese on top (the 40calorie slices 2 of them)

delicious