Black Friday- Was it really worth the wait?

Uhmmm - in a word NO! I was outside at Target at 11:30 last night to wait for a few blankets and some movies! I mean really, I don't think it was at all worth my time and the crowds! OH MY!! I have been an avid Black Friday shopper since I got married and I have never seen crowds so bad for the big event! We are in a college town so there were way too many college students out spending mommy & daddy's money and standing in the middle of the aisles at Target!! But I was home and in bed by 8 and got to sleep in a quiet house all to myself, better than if I had been at work the night before and even better since I am at home now on call! Although I am sure my bank account would rather me be at work tonight, you can't ake it with you! The good thing is I think I have gotten my kids shopping all done, I am going for the minimalist approach this year, they are way blessed and to spoiled and they know it so this year I am keeping it to a minimum or at least that is the plan. We will see how that works out.

As for the health and fitness in my life well I did not pig out yesterday and even made sure I ate my veggies! and i skipped the cheesecake!! But I have also skipped the workout and I am feeling guilty about that so tomorrow I will make up for it and just make it so I moved my rest day! Here is hoping for a good night sleep!
Later!

SO total randomness starts now!!

The whole purpose of this blog starting was to track my weight loss for the contest at work but now it is going to just be ablout life in general. I really don't feel like my life has a whole lot to be exciting enough for anyone to want to keep track of but I find myself reading other peoples random thoughts so I figure, who knows I may get a few followers eventually and especially if I work at it, so that is on my new list of goals! Being a successful blogger! Now to get followers?? Hummmm?? Note to self work on that!

I have been reading a book, well sorta reading a book! It is a prebook to a book that will come out in Dec. The book is PUSH: 30 Days to Turbocharged Habits, a Bangin’ Body, and the Life You Deserve, by Chalean Johnson. For those of you who do not know who she is, she is an exercise guru and self made millionaire. The book is about getting where you want to go and giving you a road map to do it! You do a chapter a day with homework!! And by the end of the 30 days you should be well on your way to having developed habits of getting this done to accomplish the goals that you set in the 2nd chapter. I am on day 11 and have been doing pretty good about it. If I only could seem to stay home then I would be able to get more done!!! But that will come with time, well maybe, and maybe I will have to just learn to be more efficiant at getting it done on the run. In the book you choose 1 goal from your list of 10 that is your PUSH goal and it is the one goal that will give you momentum to accomplish the rest of your goals, not necesarily the most important hing on your goal list but the momentum builder. My PUSH goal is organization of my house and my time!! I figure who couldn't use that and let me just tell you that is a big project in my house, sometimes I feel like I beloongon Hoarders!! OK not really! So tomorrow starts the first small step of getting the garage cleaned out and organized, the purging of the winter clothes! I think I might be able to clothe a school not a child!! So tomorrow the project starts and the list builds!! I am really excited about getting this out of the way and over with! Join me on the garage cleaning journey!

If you are interested in her book here is a link to her website or you can purchase it through Barnes & Noble http://www.chalenejohnson.com/pushjumpstart/

The biggest loser is over

So the Biggest Loser contest at work is done. I am not the winner but I do believe I won my team. The best thing about the whole contest was not that i lost weight, because really I did not lose to muchonly about 10-11 lbs, but that it has gotten me motivated. At least I think so, although you would not know it from the last 2 days of my lazy life with no exercise! But really it has gotten me motivated to get the extra pounds off. So I will continue in the weight loss until I hit that covetted goal weight, which I will share at a later date! Once I am closer to it! I also have the goal of keeping up the blogging about my weight loss and life in general. I will continue to share about my journey and hope that i can even get a few people to join in along the way.

Almost done

So i stayed the same this week on the scale. Not a great feeling. But not much I can do about it at this point. I wish i had pushed harder at the beginning so I could have lost more than I have and more importantly gotten the $$$ involved in winning, I was looking forward to a new camera that didn't really come out of my pocket. Even though they do this at work about yearly, I have a feeling this will be my only attempt at the Biggest Loser so here is to the last week and we will see where it takes us. At least to the top of my team and that is probably it, there was no published results from last week so i don't even know if i am still in the top 10, but I will give it my best shot this week and see what I can lose and although I am happy with the loss of space, the shedding of pounds right now would be better!

One more week to go!

My computer has been freaking out for a week now so I am once again behind!! The reason for that freak out would be that I tried to install Dragon Naturally Speaking so that I could just talk my posts and it would do all the typing for me, since my brain runs faster than my fingers but that did not seem to work out for me, instead it raised my blood pressure and my blood sugar!! And cost me a lot of time on the phone to the antivirus company!! But on the weight loss subject...I am # 10 on the Biggest Loser challenge and that is better than I thought I would be. I figure that the field will widen this week because I am guessing that the people that are in the top 10 or so will really try to kick it in to gear. I know I have been working a little harder at it this week, not that I am sure it is really helping out, but I am working atit. My hubby keeps telling me I am losing weight or at least space but "you have to remember that muscle weighs more than fat." Yeah Yeah Yeah!But I need to scales to drop not the pants size or the bra size right now! So I am hoping that this week proves better than last since the final weigh in is next week and i would love to have some $$$$ from all this effort!!

Not feelin it!

I am so not feeling like I have lost anything this week, I weigh in tonight so I guess we will see. I have not done great on my eating this week but I only missed one day of working out so not as good asI should have been, I am a little disappointed in myself, but I will do better next week. I am making out a grocery list and I will eat off it only even if my family doen't join in. I probably need to hit up my Beachbody coach and get some quick tips so I can pass them on and use them myself! Oh and i am enjoying the TurboFire workouts, even though I look like a drunk monkey half the time. If you are looking for something to get you or keep you moving you should give it a shot!

Here are the links to the beachbody sites if you are interested in purchasing any of thier workout programs that I mentioned in a previous post. I thought the link worked, only to find out it was not there later. You should definatly take a look at them and see what they have, I have been drinking the Shakeology and I have only good things to say about it, well mostly, it grows on you as far as the taste but I feel better andlook better, my skin and my hair have improved so much and I am pretty sure it is part of the reason that I am losing weight! So check it out!

http://www.blogger.com/www.beachbodycoach.com/STHOMPSONFOTO ( you have to copy and paste, the stinking thing won't let me add a link thatyou just click on!)

Winning the Team!

I am down 3 lbs this week!! That puts me on the top of the list for my team by about 2%! Still not great but at least I am losing and I am winning! So this week my goal is to be down 10% from the start of the contest, yes that is a big goal, I need to lose about 7lbs to do that, so I am sure that is a little to much of a loss to achieve but so far I am doing good on my intake and my exercise! Oh yeah it is just Sunday!!

Not a good blogger!

I Really suck at this whole blogging thing! I feel like I sometimes suffer from short term memory loss and I just forget to do it! So I am probably also suffering from the lack of the 1/2 percent point that I would have gotten from this also, which also sucks because I really am in need of it. Right now I am at least on the first page of competitors in my weight loss and much to my suprise in the lead of my group I think. This week I am beginning my newest Beachbody program TURBO FIRE with Chalean Johnson. I have done another of her programs, Chalean Extreme with good results and I enjoyed it. CE was a lot of strength training with some cardio, Turbo Fire is lots of cardio with some strength the plan is to take off more weight with it than with CE. So we will see how that works out. I am starting today with the 5 day inferno plan. I will be better at keeping informed and I may even post a picutre once I am done (only if I lose alot and its not to scary!!)
If you are interested in Beachbody programs or Shakeology click this link to check it out!

Back to internet access!

AHHH! Back to the internet and civilization! Not that I really missed it to much it was sorta nice to be seperated from life and on a real vacation with no contact with the outside world and therefore no worries! My family just spent a week with my husbands family in the wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a beautiful place with no modern conveniences. At least not where were at. We do have running water, sorta, with the old fashioned hand pump for the well. So I got my strength training in for the week with priming the pump and filling the jugs and the buckets everyday! I also got my workouts in with walking “the loop” while watching for bears! And even got my runs in for the C25K program with no shin splints, I am not sure if it was because it was all done on sand or the new chi-running style, but my shins were not sore regardless. So I will take it! I also spent my fair share of time kayaking on the open waters so my arms got a pretty good workout, if you have never tried kayaking backwards across a lake you should, I assure you your triceps will be on fire!!!

Now we are in Wisconsin at the dells with my family. Yesterday I ran on the treadmill for my C25K, not to bad and today I ran in the halls (which are endless) and played in the wave pool and the AWESOME ball and play area they have here at the resort. I am sure that if I could have calculated the calories burned it would have added up to several thousand! So tomorrow I may take the day off and really vacation a day at the local spa for a massage is sounding great and I think my feet and my back would thank me for it by the end of the week!

Couch to 5 K underway

So day 1 was on Monday, not a bad walk run but my stinkin socks were to short and I ended up with blisters on my heels becuse of it and i probably did not have the best shoes on for running either, which in turn contributed to the shin splints I ended up with. I really ahte running but a, I am determined to do this even though I have such strong feelings about the running process. To hopefully help with the running I have checked out a website that I am hoping may help, I just am not sure that I have enough time to read the whole site to find the answer. Oh yeah it is www.chirunning.com if you are interested. Hopefully it will help me run with better form and less pain. But I must press on! So today was day 2, yet again not a bad time just did it through the pain! Now for one more workout before bedtime!

This Weeks Workouts planned

So today after my 14 hours of sleep last night I got up and got right to the workout process, Fat Burner was the first on the list. Sounds gross when i type it but I guess I have a lot of it to burn so maybe I should do it again later today! The plan is to start the Couch to 5 K workout later today and do my 3 days this week with that and once I get my van back to workout with my exercise machine of a sister in law doing Turbo Fire with her this week before I head to the woods next week with my other sister in law the other exercise machine to work my booty off with her next week! But first this week must get over and I must live through it. So later today,C25K then Tue - Turbo Fire (TF) and Chalean Extreme (CE), Wed TF & C25K, Thur-TF & C25K, Fri - CE (maybe 2 workouts. Hope I live through all that! But I am looking for more than 1.5 lbs off this week! Now to make up the menu for the week so it doesn't include mac & cheese every night!

Weigh in #2

WOO HOO!! Down 1.5 lbs! Not to bad since I really just started this on Tuesday, I am pretty happy with those results. I would be happier with 4 lbs but I will take what I can get, I only (I say that as if it is not a big deal)have to lose 2 lbs a week to meet my goal so i am on the way there, so it seems.

So here we are on Thursday morning of week one! And all I can say is OUCH!! I woke up Minday with a sinus issue and now hava a slight occasional cough and my abs are so sore that everytime I cough I think I need some Motrin! But this too shall pass, they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger or in my case skinnier! So that is what I am goin for here, the skinny portion not the dead portion. Last Friday was the official 1st weigh in and i don't think that right now I will share that info with the entire world, but I will say that my goal is 20 lbs and I would be even more thrilled with 25. My cousin and Beachbody Coach (that is for the next post) says that I can do it and gave me some great pointers to get there. So I am looking forward to reaching that goal with a little help from some friends!
Until next time~
Stacy

Takin' it down a notch!

That's right, the pounds are coming off! Or at least that is the plan. Starting Thursday I will be participating in a "Biggest Loser" contest at work. I will be on a team with five or six other people and we will be winners based on the percentage of weight that we lose over the next 12 weeks (yes, I am already spending that money!). We are also given "bonus lbs" or percentages for completing other activities, one of which is, you guessed it a blog!! Therefore this blog was birthed, Takin' it down a notch, because I plan on doing that with the belt. I am not good at going it alone on things like this so I am hoping for some great results with my team dictator pushing me through it. I recently completed an exercise program and only lost about 10 pounds in 3 months, but I did gain so muscle mass in the process and lost 1-2 clothes sizes so I am not complaining but would like to see bigger results this time. I don't want to push my luck but I would like to lose about 20-25 lbs in my 12 weeks! I know pretty ambitious!! But I will give it my best shot, thanks for joining in on the ride.