Happyyy Birthday!

Today is my nephew's birthday! I cant believe he is one! This has definately been a whirl wind year for my sister and her husband. They has their first baby, sold a house in New Orleans, moved to PA with a new born (can you imagine, moving is so stressful as it is!), and now have bought a house in PA! Phew. Makes me exhausted just thinking about it. Unfortunately Stephen and I live about 5 hours away from my family, so we dont get to see them as often as we would like. But since this new job of mine should allow me a lot more free weekends we will hopefully get to see the little guy a lot more often! We are heading to PA this weekend though for his birthday party! Cant wait to see him! I havnt seen my nephew since August, so Im sure he has grown a lot!

So I cant believe how productive I have been today. Its only 7AM here in New England, the sun is just coming up, and I have gotten so much done. I have done 2 loads of laundry, done all the dishes in the sink, cleaned the living room, and gone for a 4 mile run right at sunrise. woohoo! I wish I had this much energy everyday!

It has been somewhat bitter sweet this past week. This is my last week at Healthtrax as a Wellness Program Coordinator before I start my new job as a fun accountant. Its odd because I really have no negative feelings toward the job itself or any of the people I work with. I am going to miss all the trainers and the program coordinators so much! While its weird to move on from this position that I have loved, I know this is a good move for me and my family as far as schedule, financial, and for longevity of my career. I am really excited to start working in accounting again... expecially because it isnt TAX accounting! ugh, I just really hated that!!!

The workouts and food consumption have been going well :) And I am moving right along with my 1,000 miles :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

A tribute...

Warning.... This post is about to get incredibly sappy...

I decided to do a tribute post to the most important person in my life, my amazing husband.

Stephen and I started dating in college, and I knew within 6 weeks of starting to date that this was the man I would spend the rest of my life with. He was completely the ying to my yang, and I had never met someone whom I had SO much fun with while being so much in love. Our relationship was totally easy and everything just sort of fell into place. When there was a disagreement we actually DISCUSSED it and come to a logical conclusion. We never got into drunken screaming matches. Our relationship felt so grown up, and amazing. I KNEW this was it.

Now we have been married a year and a half and our marriage is as strong as ever. We have been through a lot and have never waivered our love. He amazes me everyday in his ability to so effortlessly balance the pressures of work with home, masculinity and sensitivity. Everyday I appreciate and love him more and more, and just when I dont think I could love him anymore he will do something amazing, yet simple and unexpected (ie: bringing me McDonalds french fries with sweet and sour sauce when he works late and KNOWS its my favorite guilty pleasure). I look at him everyday and know that we are going to build an amazing life together. Whether we have a lot of money, just enough, or barely enough to get by (which we have had all 3 in the past year), we are always a team through everything.

I love you, honey :) I cant wait to see what happens with our life together :)

Its official...

I have a new job! I found out yesterday I have been hired as a fund accountant for a software company. While I really do love my current position, I have been feeling very restless lately. This is mostly due to the fact that it is not very challenging and I don't feel like I am using my brain most days. Also, with my current position I end up working a lot of evenings and weekends. Even though its only a 40 hour week, my schedule is completely different compared to my husbands, so that has made things a tad difficult. I am really excited about this new opportunity. In order for me to take another accounting position it has to be the RIGHT position. No taxes, no busy season, and no insane bosses who make you feel incredibly guilty for not doing something correctly or not working 80+ hours a week. This job has NONE of that! The atmosphere is casual (jeans and sweaters! cant wait) and everyone is really young. It is completely team oriented and everyone seems to have a life outside of the office! I will, however, miss my current position for many reasons....

1. I will miss sitting on a physio ball all day instead of a chair
2. I get to talk about health and fitness all day wth people
3. I get paid to take fitness classes
4. I love the people I work with

But I am not going to miss it for several reasons as well...

1. When something goes wrong I seem to be the punching bag
2. The hours are incredibly irregular
3. I WORK ALMOST EVERY WEEKEND!
4. I hate working late into the night.

Annies All Natural Cow Girl Ranch Dressing

I am moving right along here in my journey to eat whole foods. In my quest to look at ingredients first before calorie content. And my never ending struggle to constantly think about what the food I am eating will be able to do for my body as a whole, and how it will use the things I am putting in it as FUEL, not just as effecting the number on the scale.

That being said, I think I made a big breakthrough yesterday at the grocery store. I was trying to pick a salad dressing that was new and would add a little much needed ZING to my ol' midday meal usual. I was stuck between two choices....

a. Hidden Valley Fat Free Ranch (HVFFR)
b. Annies All Natural Cow Girl Ranch Dressing (AANCG)

Lets compare...

Cals:
HVFFR: 30 per 2 Tbsp
AANCG: 120 per 2 TBP

Is Annie's higher in cal? yes. But then I scanned everything else, and while it is also high in Fat, it is much lower in sodium and carbs. Then the tell tale sign: THE INGREDIENTS! Annie's had about 5-7 ingredients, all of which I could pronounce and all of which I was fairly certain my body would be able to process correctly. The Hidden Valley? About 20 ingredients. Some of which I recognized but none of which seemed ok.

The Hidden Valley seemed to hold up a white flag of currender as I put the Annie's All Natural Cow Girl in my cart. I used one Tbsp today on my salad (romaine lettuce, baby spinach, red bell pepper, organic dried cranberries, pine nuts, some avacado, and 3 oz left over haddock. SALAD BEAST aka: perfection in my mouth) and it was amazing. Full of flavor, even though there was a inimal amount on my meal.

So in the never ending war of all natural vs. processed and chemical infused food, it looks like all natural has won this time around :)

Goals for the rest of October, 8 minute abs/arms

So starting next month I am going to break my goals down by week and month for food, life, and working out... I have thought a lot about this and tried different ways to set and keep track of goals. I really like how Fitting Back In prints out her strength workouts and takes them to the gym with her! I decided to try and start doing something similar.

Yesterday I put a binder together with some workouts that I made (and some from Fitting Back In!) so I always have a place to go and pull one on my way to working out! I even made a section of the binder for the "Current Week". The plan is to try and plan my workouts for the whole week on Sunday night (while watching Desperate Housewives of course) and print them out for the binder :) To make my workouts one of the trainers gave me this fantastic web site called exrx.net. Its awesome, you can chose different muscle groups and they show you example of exercises to work out that part of your body!


The great thing is that I have put together a lot of workouts that I can do at home! I have 5 and 8 pound dumb bells that I keep at home, and with the help of a chair, a yoga mat, and a coffee table (and a little creativity of course) I have been able to make some great "do-at-home-while-watching-Criminal-Minds" workouts. Side note, does anyone else love this show as much as my husband and me? Its sooo good!

So here is the plan for this weeks workouts:
Week of October 19:

Monday:
Run 3 miles
Chest, Shoulders, Triceps

Tuesday:
Run 4 miles
Bicepts, back
8 minute Abs video

Wednesday:
Run 4 miles
Legs

Thursday:
Run 4 miles
8 Minute Abs
8 Minute Arms

Friday:
Off (traveling to Bucknell!)

Saturday:
Run 4-5 miles at BUCKNELL with Katie :)

Its pretty aggressive, but I'm excited about it!!!!'


So I found some total 80's "8 minute workouts" on youtube this morning and was surprised to see that everything in them (besides the outfits) still holds true! I especially like the 8 minute abs, and 8 minute arms.

Have a wonderful sunday everyone! I am hoping to keep posting this week to update you on how I'm doing witht he workouts goals! Also, you can see my calendar to the right with what I have done even if there isnt a post :)

Exercise Hiatus

Helllllo blog world.

It has been a week since I completed my half marathon and I can say with confidence that my body FINALLY feels back to normal. The morning after running this race I woke up at 3AM and literally could not bend my knees! My quads were SO tight and my knees were SO sore! I got into a hot bath and relax them and that helped. On Tuesday I thought I was ok to take a nice 5 miles EASY run. Nope. It hurt. And it hurt A LOT. I made it about 4 before giving up (as you can see on my calendar!!!). I have no attempted since tht day to run again.... but I think I am ready...

I am planning an EASY 5 miles tomorrow on a treadmil so I can watch TV. I usually prefer going outside, but I think since its going to snow in new england tomorrow (yes, snow!) its ok to hop on the treadmile :)

My goal for maintaining my running habit while I am not in training mode is to do at least 4-5 miles 5 days a week. I might add a few speed workouts in here and there, but I am not particularly concerned about that right now.

Have a great weekend everyone :)

11 Weeks and Counting

There are 11 weeks left in 2009 and I want to make a pledge right now to make EVERY WEEK COUNT. 2009 has not been a completely stellar year for me or my husband (lost jobs, new jobs, lost jobs again, lost apartments, moving, moving back, etc...). Things have been (dare I say it) GOING WELL for both of us in these last 2 months (despite my recent restless ness). I want to end 2009 with a BANG and hope it leads into good things for 2010 :)

Goals for the end of 2009:

1. Keep up with the exercise! 5 to 6 days a week. Yoga, running, abs, and light strength training.

2. Focus on the continued eating of WHOLE foods that fuel my body. Instead of looking at nutritional facts all the time (fat content, calories, carbs) focus on eating lots of fruit and veggies. By doing this I am confident that everything else (weight, complection, etc.) will fall continue to improve and fall into place :)

3. Really try to focus on staying on track on the weekends. Even when I am out to dinner with family I want to try and eat whole foods that dont just taste good but that will make me FEEL good as well.

4. Breath. Relax. Love your life and appreciate everything about it :)