Shakeology

Ok, so I caved and spent the money on Shakeology. I know so many people over here who use it and they all say so many good things about it, I just wanted to see if the hype was warranted or not. I'm doing the 3 day cleanse right now and I'm on day number 2. I cheated yesterday and ate more fruit than I was supposed to because I was *so* hungry. I could barely even make it through my workout of the day. So, I had 2 chocolate shakeology shakes, 1 greenberry shake, an asian pear (they are super awesome by the way), two handfulls of grapes (yeah, I know shame on me for cheating), a small salad of organic baby arugula and two small pieces of tilapia. Oh, plus lots of water and a cup of green tea.
I started yesterday at 150.4 lbs and I started today at 146.2 lbs. Holy crap!! That's insane! I really wonder how much I'm going to lose over the next couple of days. Plus, I wonder if that weight will stay off or immediately pile back on after I get off the cleanse. I will say this though, I've gone a day here or there where I have consumed less calories than you are consuming on the cleanse due to being distracted and super busy all day. On those days I would only lose about half a pound at the most, so it's definitely not due to consuming a low amount of calories in the day (approximately 1200). Hell, I never even lost that much weight in one day when I had the stomach flu and couldn't hold anything down. So, there's definitely something to this whole shakeology cleanse thing. Like I said though, I'm curious to see if I can keep that weight off after the cleanse with good eating and continuing my regular exercise.
Speaking of exercise, I know I haven't posted in awhile and last time I posted I was doing Turbofire. Well, I was lame, and lost motivation about a month into it. Right now we are about to move to a different country at the start of next month, so I don't have enough time to complete a full round of turbofire, so I'm just doing some of the exercises here and there on top of going to the gym, running on my treadmill at home, doing bodyrock.tv workouts, Jillian Michaels 30 day shred, power walks around the neighborhood, light jogs around the neighborhood, and anything else I can do to keep myself active. I've been striving for at least half an hour everyday. There have been a couple of days here and there that I didn't actually work out, but most days I get in an hour of intense working out.
In route to our new home, my husband, daughter and I are going to be making a trip back home to visit all of our family and friends. The last time we were there I was 175 lbs. At 5'5 that is *not* cute, not to mention it's also not healthy. I was fitting into a size 14 pants and considering my whole life I've been pretty small, I just felt like a big blob.
Well, right now I'm at 146.2 (thanks to shakeology cleanse, since before that I was 150.4) and I'm fitting into my larger size 10 pants, close to fitting into my smaller size 10 and larger size 8 pants. I'm so stoked, but I really need to bust my butt so that I can actually fit into my pants before we go on our vacation. My goal is to fit my prepregnancy pants before October. It's probably going to be some pretty hard work, but I'm super determined.

Trying to Eat Better

I'm trying to actually eat healthy. Lately I've been skipping meals. I've been feeding my baby and forgetting to feed myself. When I would eat something, it would be a quick unhealthy snack. The only meal of the day that I actually ate was dinner and that was probably only because I have to make dinner for my husband.
So, to help my body out, I'm trying to get in breakfast, lunch and dinner every day now. With a couple of healthy snacks here or there if I get hungry. For breakfast I had a Carnation Breakfast Essentials vanilla shake with half of a banana, half of a kiwi, 5 frozen straweberries and a cup of milk in it. My baby had half of a banana and half of a kiwi mashed up in her Organic Gerber Oatmeal cereal.  For lunch, I made a salad with some romaine lettuce, 5 grape tomatoes, half of an avocado, 1 egg, turkey meat and a serving size of low fat italian dressing. My baby had half of an avocado, a small handful of blueberries, turkey meat, and a small piece of my one egg. I know I could go even healthier, but I'd say this is a good start so far. And it was so yummy, so that's definitely a plus.

Oh yeah, and I already did my Turbofire workout of the day. HIIT 15/Sculpt 30. I'm so sore today from my intense workouts yesterday that I kind of almost wanted to cry while working out, lol. It was that bad, but I did it all adn I'm really proud of myself for that. While I was working out, I told myself that I'm definitely not working out again today, but tomorrow's turbofire is the Fire 55 EZ class, so I'm thinking I might just bust out a bodyrock workout for the shoulders since tomorrow's class won't be too hard.

Hardcore workout day

Before getting to yesterday's workout, I just wanted to say that my baby's rash is almost gone! I'm so happy about that. It was hurting my heart to look at it because it looked *so* bad. My poor child.

Well, yesterday's workout kicked my butt. I'm super sore today. First thing in the morning I went to the Commissary and bought a bunch of healthy, yummy food (I only spent $110 including $11 for diapers and $13 for bulk toilet paper, so I'm pretty stoked about that). Then I got home, put my baby down for a nap and got to business. First, I did the Turbofire Core 20 workout. As I was doing it, I was thinking to myself, "wow, this is kind of a lame core workout." Well, I definitely felt it later on yesterday and I can really feel it today too, so I'm eating my words on that one.
Anyway, after Core 20, I logged onto http://www.bodyrock.tv/. Since I am a little ahead timewise over here in Japan, there was no new workout of the day, so I found this one that I hadn't done yet and looked pretty good http://www.bodyrock.tv/2011/07/06/cardio-legs-core-workout/. Definitely a good workout for the legs. Instead of setting my interval timer to 36 reps, I only did 15 because I was trying to get everything in before my baby woke up. So, that was about a 10 minute workout for me.
After that, I went back to Turbofire and did Stretch 40. Let me tell you, that was intense. I didn't realize how not flexible I have let myself become. I loved it. I can't wait to do it again. I definitely need to work on my flexibility.
After that I showered, my baby woke up, we ate lunch (salad with romaine lettuce and grape tomatoes, couscous and kidney beans. Very yummy). We went about our day like normal. I eventually logged back onto http://www.bodyrock.tv/ and found this workout - http://www.bodyrock.tv/2011/07/12/marine-corps-workout-beating-our-personal-bests/. I swear I broke out a sweat and burned a few calories just thinking about doing this workout. Well, I posted the link on my Facebook page a few minutes later, one of my friends replies "Wow, you actually do that?!?" No, I wasn't planning on it honestly, it looked super hard, but after she wrote that, I wanted to be able to reply that I had. So, since it's pointless to lie about things like that, I put on some workout clothes and did it. Yes, I had to modify it because I'm not nearly hardcore enough yet to do the moves how Zuzanna does them, but it was still a killer workout. And I was proud to reply, "Yes, I did do a modified version of that today."
Needless to say, I am sore as hell today. I'm still going to do my Turbofire workout though. Today is day 11 of Turbofire and I'll be doing HIIT 15/Sculpt 30. Can't wait.

Week 2 of Turbofire

So, we never made it to the zoo this past weekend. We did get to spend 5 hours at the ER though. My darling baby broke out in a REALLY bad rash all over her body. We were pretty worried about it, especially with how quick it got that bad. Turns out she has hand, foot and mouth disease.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/revb/enterovirus/hfhf.htm
It's nothing to worry about. She never even had a fever from it, so that's a plus. I'm guessing she got it because of all the super cool kid places I took her to the other week. Oh well, things happen. I'm just glad that she is ok. And I'm pretty sure that I'm more upset about her rash then she is. For her everything has been business as usual, so that's good.

This is also officially week 2 of my Turbofire journey. I took Sunday off which is supposed to be a core day. So, I'm going to do that tomorrow since Turbofire has Wednesday as an off day, but I would much rather take Sunday off. Anyway, I did HIIT 20 today. I wasn't looking forward to it at all, but I forced myself to put it in the DVD player, hit play and then BAM, I was dripping sweat and the workout was over. I *love* how quick the Turbofire workouts are. After I was done, I didn't feel like I had done enough for the day (especially since I ate like crap yesterday and the day before), so I went to http://www.bodyrock.tv/ and did the "Dirty Bit Workout." It was only 12 minutes and I don't have a dip bar, so I substituted frog kicks for the reverse pushup, but man it was an intense workout! I love Bodyrock.tv. I definitely need to start doing her workouts more often. I used to do one almost every day, but lost motivation for a while and then just never got back into it. I think I could totally double up turbofire and bodyrock on days that I have extra energy.

I can't wait til October.

Day 5 Turbofire

Well, today will be my day 5. I have Fire 30 to do today. I went to spin class first thing this morning and it was killer, so now I'm working up the motivation to do my Turbofire workout for the day. On Thursday I did both Tubofire and spin class as well and it wasn't that bad, so I'm sure I'll be fine.
I do believe that I'm officially addicted to spin class. My instructor today had an awesome class for us. The music was great and by the end, I felt like my legs were going to fall off. The last song we did had 2 different 2 minute sprints at a level 8 and that was INSANE!! I wanted to quit, but instead I just looked straight down at the floor, thought about how hot my legs are going to be in a few months and just kept pushing through the pain. I felt so good after not giving up. I already know how lame it feels to give-up and I hate that feeling. The feeling of success, however, is absolutely amazing.
Here in a few minutes, I will be putting my daughter down for a nap and then I'm going to get my Turbofire on! After that we have a day at the zoo planned. I sure do love weekends.

HIIT 15

Well, today was day 2 of my Turbo Fire workouts. I did HIIT 15 and that was definitely a workout. I can't believe 15 minutes had me feeling so worked out!! These past two days of workouts have my entire body feeling super sore and I haven't done any strength training, it's insane how well this stuff is working.
Tomorrow I have an in person, real life Turbo Fire class and I'm excited to go. The class is free and they are offering child care for $5, so I'm really glad about that. Tomorrow evening, I also have my weekly spin class to go to. Tomorrow is definitely going to be a rough day with all that intense working out I'll be doing, but it'll all be worth it in the end.
In October, we are heading back to the states and I want to be in incredible shape by the time we go back. I used to be in pretty good shape, but the last time we went to the states I was really over weight and it mad me really self conscious, so I'm really looking forward to going back in great shape and feeling amazing about myself. I've got 3 months to do it in, so I definitely need to stay super motivated for these next 3 months. I can't let myself get sidetracked like I normally do.

Turbo Fire and Shellac

Well, I went to the post office today and was excited to find that my Turbo Fire DVDs had come in. I went straight home, put my baby down for a nap and then popped the first DVD into the player. It was definitely a good workout. A little fast paced, so I had a hard time keeping up, but I'll get better with practice. By the end of my workout, I was dripping sweat. I can't wait to see what tomorrow's workout has in store for me.

After working out, I showered and dropped my kiddo off at a friends house so that I could go and get a Shellac manicure. I had Cecilia paint my nails a beautiful dark red color and so far, I am definitely impressed with the Shellac. It's so shiny and pretty, but best of all, it's supposed to last and be chip free for about 2 weeks. I'm so excited to see if that's really how it goes. I love having my nails painted, but I hate how quickly nail polish chips, so I'm really hoping that this is the answer. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one, but I will definitely let you know how it turns out.

Fourth Of July Weekend

First and foremost, Happy 4th of July everyone! Such an awesome holiday. I love patriotic holidays.

Friday night we got to meet Jesse James and then see her in concert. On Saturday, we spent our day hanging out at Americafest. We saw Jesse James perform again and I had a little too much beer. Our little girl had a blast running around and seeing so many people too.

Sunday, we went to see the bull fights which wasn't too interesting, but the Eisa Dancers were definitely awesome. Some of the best that I have seen so far (haven't seen too many, but they were definitely good). We ended up leaving the bullfights early because our baby was getting irritated with having to sit in one spot for so long and it wasn't too exciting anyway.

Instead of heading back home, we decided to head up north and see if we could find the Pineapple Factory. Tickets for the tour were only 600Y each for the two of us and then our baby was free. We got to ride around in a cart that drove itself and we learned a few things about pineapples and how they're grown. Our little one loved the ride in the cart. Then we went and tasted different pineapple wines, japanese lime juice, pineapple cakes, pineapple cookies. They even had pineapple perfume. We ended up buying a pineapple from there because the samples they had of the fresh pineapple were absolutely AMAZING!! My husband seriously ate almost all of their pineapple sample pieces. I've never had better pineapple before. So delicious.

After all of this, we leave and go to our car to leave. Well, our car doesn't start. It was so hot and humid outside and it felt like such a bummer after such an awesome day. My husband went to try and find someone who had jumper cables because ours were in our other car. Well, he finds a couple of Americans who are willing to help, but don't have cables. He then asks a Japanese guy in the Pineapple Factory for cables. He didn't think the guy understood him, but he handed him a bag with jumper cables in it. Definitely a God send. So, we got our car started and off we went.

We decided that instead of heading back home, we would head even further up north to Cape Hedo, the northern most tip of the island, to watch the sun set and take some more pictures. It was a long trip, but definitely worth it. It was so beautiful up there. The sun setting over the ocean is always a beautiful sight.

Afterwards, we made the two hour long drive home. Our sweet baby fell asleep for the whole ride, she was exhausted. All in all it was an awesome day with the family.

Another Fun Day

Today we went to Monakids Jungle. My baby had a blast! Well until 1230 when she started having a sleep deprived meltdown. We went back home right around that time and were pleasantly surprised with my husband being home so early mowing the lawn. I always love it when he actually gets home at a decent time.
Now I'm going to take a short nap since I'm exhausted from chasing my baby around all day. My husbands at the gym and when he gets back, it's time for spin class.

Wago Family Fun Land

Well, unfortunately I did not get in my C25K workout last night because I was being lazy. It's all good though, I can always get a workout in tonight.
On a good note though, I went to Wago Family Fun Land with a couple of friends and all of our kids (there were 7 kids total). It was a pretty good time for all of us.

My baby had a blast in the balloon pit. I'd never even heard of a balloon pit before, but it was definitely pretty cool. I also discovered Grape Mountain Dew in one of the vending machines...... super awesome.

After that we all went out to lunch and I had a BLT (haven't had one of those in ages). All in all it was a pretty good day, now let's just hope I can be motivated enough to actually get a run in tonight.

Weight Loss

First and foremost, I want to say that I'm typing this while chowing down on some Haagen Dazs. So, so yummy. Now that I've gotten that confession out of the way, I want to say that I need to start getting serious about this whole weight loss thing again.

Before I got pregnant, I was 148 lbs. I then used pregnancy as an excuse to eat anything an everything. I continued to workout 5 days a week up until 28 weeks into my pregnancy and regardless of that, still ended up at 210lbs a couple of days before going into labor. I even had ny baby a month early. I can only imagine how much more weight I would've gained without the exercise and early labor.

I got my butt into gear about 6 weeks post partum. It was hard though, due to having a c-section. I started doing biggest loser bootcamp almost everyday with 8lb weights. When I finally got bored with that, I went to the gym and would work out anywhere from 40 min to 2 and a half hours. In 4 months, I made it down to 166lbs. It was awesome, but my self esteem was so low, I was still just plain fat and not good enough in my own eyes (my husband hates it when I say that, he thinks I'm sexy no matter what).

We went on vacation to meet each other's families and show off our baby and I went back up to 173lbs. It sucked, but man the food was good.

When we got back home, I was back into motivation mode. I was hitting up the gym and doing bodyrock.tv workouts. Then my motivation fizzled and died.

In march of this year, I found Stroller Strides. It was awesome. The ladies were so great to be around and I went down a pants size the first month. I did that 5 days a week until last month. Last month I started only going 3 days. Then this month, I started having a bunch of morning appointments and then I sprained my ankle. So I just stopped going.

I'm down to 152.8lbs as of this morning, but I still have 18 more pounds to go for my goal weight. If I can reach my goal body type before then though, I'll be happy with that.

I just ordered turbo fire and should be getting it any day now. I'm so excited to start. I've also been doing C25K. I'm only on week 1 day 3, but I really enjoy it.

Picky Eater

So, my wonderful little todler used to be an awesome eater. She would eat pretty much anything. Just in the past couple of weeks however, she has turned into a picky eater. It's pretty lame, but I think I'm starting to adapt to it nicely. Sometimes I need to offer her 4 or 5 different foods before she will finally eat one of them. She loves most vegetables though, which is most definitely a plus.