Latest Design Project: Breanna’s Creations

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My daughter has been asking me to design a new blog for her for a longtime now. I finally finished up the design for her today, and you can see it live by going to BreannasCreations.com.

When designing for my daughter, I *tried* not to take over the project and infuse all of my ideas, but it’s hard. :-) I did let Breanna have input, though, since it’s her blog and all.

I do think it turned out great!

I even made her a cute little button. Breanna will be blogging about crafts she does, kid-friendly recipes, and, of course, her Lego creations.

It was a pleasure working with you, Breanna.

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Losing the Baby Fat Weight Loss Update

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Last week was a pretty good week as far as my eating went.

I lost .5 lbs., overall.

And I’m happy with that.

I’m down to 213.5 lbs., and that means I’ve finally reached my pre-pregnancy weight at 3.5 months post-partum! Not too bad. It’s something to celebrate. Now to get to my pre-firstborn-child weight. That’s a challenge. :-)

I have been more stressed out lately, which isn’t healthy, but I am working on trying to use my time more wisely and simplify as we organize the move to Georgia.

I do need to continue to work on spending more time on the treadmill. Just getting on the treadmill is a victory right now, so I’m not being hard on myself if I don’t work out for 30 minutes every time I step on the treadmill. My biggest challenge with the treadmill right now is that usually someone needs something within the first 5 minutes of me getting on, which results in me getting off of the treadmill.

The calorie counting is going so well that I can hardly believe I’m still doing it. I want to make it a habit though, so I’m keeping it up.

We are headed to take the kids to Chuck e Cheese today. David wants to use some of his birthday money there. It’s his favorite place right now. We almost always go early on a weekday, so the place is nearly empty and the kids have free reign to play. I do like that we can get lunch, plenty of tokens, and prizes for 4 kids for less than $25, because we can use multiple coupons there.

Back on track, though, here’s how I’m doing in terms of my weight loss goal:

Current Weight: 213.5 lbs.

Goal Weight: 170 lbs.

# of total pounds I want to lose in 2012: 50lbs.

# of pounds to go until I reach my goal: 43.5 lbs.

Total # of pounds lost to date: 6.5 lbs.

Have a great week!

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Watch the ‘Hungry for Change’ Movie for FREE until Saturday 3/31

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Are you interested in improving you health and don’t know where to begin? Have you tried everything to lose weight only to gain back the weight you lost plus more?

Well, I know of a movie that you can watch right now for FREE that could be extremely eye-opening and maybe even change your life. It’s called Hungry For Change. My husband and I watched it last week, and it’s already making an impact on our food choices.

The movie is only free to watch for about 5 more days.

And all you have to do to watch it is to input your name and email address on the website, and you’ll get instant access to the movie. It’s 90 minutes long, and I recommend watching it in one sitting, if you can.

The movie is made by the same people who created the extremely popular movie, Food Matters – which also helped shape our view of food and the way we eat today.

So what are you waiting for? Watch Hungry For Change today!

*I didn’t receive anything for recommending this movie. I just think it’s a great movie (and waited with anticipation to finally be able to watch it myself), and I care about your health, so I thought I’d share it. :-)

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10 Tips for Eating Healthy Away from Home

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Eating away from home can often be disastrous if you are trying to lose weight or simply eat healthy.

Here are some tips I’ve implemented to help me stay on track while eating away from home:

1. Bring your own food. If you are going on a road trip, pack a lunch and snacks to eat in the car or at a rest stop. If you are just going to be out of the house for the day, at work for example, pack a healthy lunch and snacks to eat on breaks and your lunch period. When I worked at my call center job, one of my favorite things to do for lunch was to pack a big salad. I was sitting down at a computer for most of my shift, so a salad was a good choice, since I wasn’t burning many calories or moving my body much.

2. Always leave the house with a bottle of water. This way, you’ll stay hydrated and avoid the urge to run through the drive-thru to quench your thirst with soda/pop. If you are on vacation, consider keeping a case of water in your car for easy access.

3. If you are on vacation, bring plasticware and disposable cups, plates, bowls, etc…to use in your hotel room. This way you can avoid the thought that you have to eat out in a restaurant because you don’t have utensils.

4. Buy food at the grocery store and take it back to your workplace, car, or hotel room to eat. When I attended a 5 hour class for a semester at the community college,  on my lunch break, I’d go to the local grocery store and buy a roll and some lunch meat to assemble a quick sandwich instead of going through the drive-thru. On our trip to Georgia, we did the same thing except we took the food back to our hotel room to eat.

5. If you do get fast food, don’t buy drinks or eat inside the restaurant. You’ll save money by not spending on soda and drink healthier by simply drinking water. I’ve found that if we sit down and eat inside the restaurant, we tend to spend more money and drink pop more often.

6. Order salad. Just try to be sure that the ingredients are actually healthy, because sometimes the salads at restaurants are higher in calories than their burgers.

7. Share a meal. Oftentimes, the meals we order are really enough for two people. Consider sharing a meal with your husband or kids.

8. Use coupons. I keep a good amount of coupons for a variety of restaurants in my purse, so that they’re on-hand if we find ourselves with a need or desire to eat out. Try to keep coupons for places with healthier options.

9. If you do eat at a sit down restaurant, order water. You’ll not only save $1-$3, but you’ll also avoid the added high fructose corn syrup by not ordering soda/pop.

10. Plan what you are going to eat before you leave the house. If you know you’ll be eating out and where you’ll be eating, visit that restaurant’s website and decide what you will order ahead of time. Also be sure to check out the nutritional content in the food you’ll be ordering.

How do you eat healthy away from home?

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10 Goals for the Week

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10 Goals to Tackle This Week

Last week was a pretty stressful week. The original house that we had made an offer on didn’t turn out in our favor, so we moved on to make an offer on our #2 house, which was a bit higher in price. And we found out on Thursday, after more negotiation, that our offer was accepted.

We’re moving to Georgia!

It’s starting to sink in a bit now, but it felt surreal at first. The saddest part of moving is leaving friends and family, so I’m trying to get in as much time with them as possible over the next month before we have to officially drive to Georgia to close on the house and move in.

I didn’t get as much accomplished as I had hoped in terms of my goals. But a tiny bit of progress is still progress, right?

Here’s how I did:

Family/Mothering Goals:

1. Continue reading through the Psalms with the kids. I didn’t read nearly as much as I had hoped. I think I only read Psalms once with Breanna, but it did spark a conversation that led her to read a portion of 2 Samuel. 

2. Spend time reading one-on-one with David. Done.

Personal Goals:

3. Walk on the treadmill 4 days this week for longer periods of time than I did last week. Done.

4. Continue counting my calories. Done, and I’m definitely keeping this up! It was another eye-opening week to find out how many calories really are in the foods I consume. We went out to lunch after church with Ruben’s parents on Sunday afternoon. We went to Chilis, and I ordered a salad. When I got home, I checked the calorie intake of that particular salad on the Chilis website. It had 1,300 calories! For a salad. Needless to say, I ended up having to be more careful about what I ate for the rest of the day, since I had consumed my calorie allowance for that day before dinner.

5. Wake up by 8:00am every morning. I honestly didn’t try hard enough on this goal. I stayed up way too late most nights, and probably woke up around 8:30am most days.

Home Management Goals:

6. Clean the refrigerator. I *thought* about doing this quite a few times, just never actually did it.

7. Pack up as many boxes as possible. All the packing was put on hold after we found out our offer was not accepted on the first house. Now that our offer has been accepted on the second house, packing is going to continue in high gear.

Business Goals:

8. Post one blog post each day. No….I’m hoping for a better week this week. I’ve decided to try to focus on writing all or the majority of my blog posts in one day and schedule them. We’ll see how that works.

9. Work on client project. Done.

10. Return emails. Done.

And now for this week’s goals:

Family/Mothering Goals:

1. Continue reading through the Psalms with the kids with a focus on reading a psalm together before lunch.

2. Continue spending time reading one-on-one with David.

Personal Goals:

3. Walk on the treadmill 4 days this week for longer periods of time than I did last week.

4. Continue counting my calories.

5. Wake up by 7:00am every morning. I’m going to try to go to bed earlier and start working my way down to getting up before the kids. Someday, I’d like to get back to a routine of waking up by 5:00am every morning. Today I got up around 6:45am, which is a start. :-)

Home Management Goals:

6. Clean the refrigerator.

7. Pack up as many boxes as possible.

Business Goals:

8. Post one blog post each day.

9. Finish designing a blog for Breanna.

10. Return emails.

What are your goals for the week?

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