Thank you flu, your help is appreciated.

So this morning around 2, I started feeling sick.  My stomach was upset and I had a feeling it was going to get worse.  By 3 I had the spins that naturally occur when you've had too much fun the night before (which was not my issue) and felt like maybe I should venture to the kitchen to grab a large bowl in case I got sick, but I felt too bad to even make it that far.  By 4 I was throwing up in the bathroom, narrowly making it there in time!  I was sweating terribly, my stomach hurt and I felt like I was going to pass out.  When it came time for me to get up to get ready for work, I took a shower that only lasted about three minutes because I felt weak and dizzy and decided I needed to go back to bed.  Cody hasn't been feeling the best either so I asked Kurt to stay home and take care of Cody and me if I needed it.

I proceeded with my normal morning weigh in like I do every day and was pleased to see I was down 1.6 lbs!  Yes to being sick!  After I rested until around 9:30 I felt like I could be out of bed, so I watched some TV and had some coffee.  Kurt decided to run an errand with Cody around 10:30 and I felt like I was recovered enough to go to work for awhile as I am swamped!

This morning as I was updating my food journal and looking at my charts I realized it's time for me to reconfigure my calorie requirements since I've lost additional weight recently.  Now in order to keep losing I need to consume around 1,500 calories a day!  Wow, I thought 1,800 seemed hard to do!  I will do it though and I will continue to succeed!  My head is clear, my goals are clear and I need to just continue on my path.

Best wishes to all for the weekend, I am hoping that Cody and I make a full recovery from our illnesses!
Jessica

Sanity - Where did you go???

It's been madness.  My classes are in full swing now and I've got too much to learn.  I wish I had not signed up for six classes, it is simply too much with working full time and have three kids to take care of.  All I can do at this point is to just keep going and do my best!  I can't afford to back out now!  Next semester I won't sign up for as many, maybe just three classes.  I don't feel like I am retaining anything because I am just scrambling to get homework done.

My fitness time this week has suffered.  I will kick it hard next week though.  I am continuing to lose this week thanks to following my food journal and consuming less than 1,755 calories a day.  I need to sit down and figure out where I am with all of my assignments this weekend so that I can work out without thinking about what I am behind on.  I don't like this feeling!

I've been doing great with avoiding pop as well thanks to reading that research article.  It's been four days now, yippee!  Considering I went months before, this shouldn't be an issue.  At times of stress though I definitely feel like it is something I crave.

I don't have much to report.  Today I am getting my hair done, yes!  Time to get fabulous again! 

Have a great day everyone!

Jessica

Superfantastical sorta day!

Today was a great day for my waistline.  I've rededicated myself to my food journal and man does that pay off!  I am amazed at all the times I wanted a snack or thought about having a snack and then checked the calorie content and decided not to, yeah for me!  I also made it all day without having a soda.  I think this last week was just so stressful that it brought out my bad habits which then leads to all of the diet pop drinking.  I have no flipping clue either why I drink it so much because when I do, it makes me feel like crap, I get bloated, and then the next day I look bloated and it makes my nails go bad. 

This week for one of my courses we had to read a research paper on the consumption of diet soda and it's effect on our vascular health and it's link to metabolic syndrome.  There is a serious link and increase in these health issues with people who consume diet soda, even light drinkers who drink a can a day.  There is more research to be done because the study did not include the lifestyles of those who drank diet soda, but it makes me even more aware that it is not a smart thing for me to be drinking, not even occasionally when I fall off the wagon.

Interesting stuff that I am getting into, I am glad I chose to go this route with my education and career.  The health field is the place for me!

Cheyenne and I had an amazing run yesterday!  We ran 6.3 miles together which was the farthest she has ran so far.  She can easily do a half marathon, I am so excited for October!  We make a good running pair, our overall average was 9'30" miles yesterday which is super good!

Make this day your best!  Now I am off to work on lots and lots of homework!!

Peace out~Jessica

 

Happy Birthday....to me!!!

This is the theme of the day today.  Today I have turned 33 years old, wow, I am getting up there.  I don't feel that old, I actually feel pretty good.  I live an active, relatively healthy lifestyle and can hold my own.  I don't miss my youthful years filled with drama, but I miss my children being little and the years going by too fast.  I actually look forward to getting older.  I am looking forward to retirement someday, having my house paid off in the next twelve years and watching my kids find their true loves and having children of their own.  The next twenty years will be action packed.

I don't make new year resolutions but when I have my birthday it always makes me self reflect and think about what I want to do in the next year. 

I want to:

Reach my goal weight - 140lbs
Initiate and follow a household budget and savings plan
Plan for a 10 year anniversary trip with Kurt

These are my three goals for now.  I think they are accomplish able.  Next year my goal will include college graduation, yeah!

I am spending the rest of the afternoon around the house and will be going on a six mile run with Cheyenne, I love that girl!  Then I will come home to work on homework, housework and watch Big Brother, it's my guilty pleasure.

Thanks for reading!

Jessica

Balancing Act!

So this has been an extremely mentally challenging week this week.  My full time class schedule fully went into effect this week.  I am now enrolled in six classes.  Yes, I am still working full time, which has it's challenges too.  This week we were short staffed at my work and I had to step in and do a job that I don't normally do and have never done for the company.  This task was on top of my already full plate.  My manager would have liked to see me put in some overtime, but with my full class schedule and limited time that I have with my kids and regular household stuff, I just can't even begin to think about spending more time at the office and not at home.  By the end of the day today I felt like I was nearing a panic attack.  I got home from work, immediately started on my case study that was due tomorrow by noon and instantly felt more relieved.  Now I get to begin sorting through the rest of my class schedules and working on assignments that are due over the weekend.  I believe this will be doable, I just need to settle into a routine with my work and with my family.  It all seems to balance out after a couple of weeks.
My weight has finally dropped down to what I was before I left for the weekend.  I do need to step up my water intake and quit having so many not healthy snacks.  It seems like when I get under these high stress situations that I seem to veer off track.  I've had way too much diet pop this weekend and need to STOP NOW!!!

Below is a quote I saw on Coach Calorie this morning and I think it's a great quote to go by!



Have a great night!

Jessica

September 5th

Hello World!

The boys are back and school and my house is intact for a few more hours a day than normal.  It's nice to have them back on a routine away from home.  I am also offically back in school too.  I will be attending my second class at CLC this afternoon.  As I was working on homework last night for four hours straight I found myself daydreaming about what ever made me so driven to get my Bachelor's Degree.  It was like I literally woke up one day and decided that it was important to me to have a college degree.  I think some of it is status (which is strange because I am racking up lots of debt with the education), some of it is to show my kids that a college degree is important and lastly to get into a career field that I actually enjoy.  I love learning about fitness, healthy lifestyles, trends, health issues and exercise pyschology.  It's what I was meant to do.  Yeah, it kind of sucks that it took 30 years to figure that out, but hopefully I will wrap up my schooling in the next two years and be able to live out the rest of my working life doing something that I love. 
I haven't done much fitness wise this week.  I finally feel recovered from my run (yes!) and will start working out tomorrow.  I am excited and grateful that Nike replaced my beloved Sportband that decided to quit working after a software upgrade.  I will be back to logging those miles again online, just stinks that I wasn't able to record my half marathon through there.

Here are the details for my next Half Marathon adventure with Cheyenne!  Now to think of a costume!

http://www.minnesotamonster.org/

Peace out!

Jessica

September 2nd

Refocus.  Re-energize.

Hi Everyone,
Wow, what a weekend!  My mom and I ran in the inaugural Women Rock Half Marathon in St Paul this weekend.  The race itself was more difficult than I had envisioned it being.  I started my race with the 2:10 pacer.  As I was talking and running with her I learned that she paces over twenty races a season!  They can be a mixture of marathons, half marathons and triathlons.  How inspiring and what an amazing job!  She travels to an average of five states per season for various races.  She was so motivating and provided encouragement when tackling hills, encouraging to not stop, don't walk and providing updates when she knew a shaded corner was coming or reminders to roll our shoulders when running downhill.  I stayed with her for the first four miles then ventured out in front of the pack for the next five miles and then regrouped with them when there were around three miles left.  I was really glad that I ended up with the small group when their were a few miles left, I was really losing my pace and was mentally struggling with the hills.  At least with running with the group again I managed to maintain my pace and follow their feet through the end and never slowed down to a walk.  The course was MUCH more hilly that I thought it would be.  Even though the course showed a net decrease in elevation, the hills were so long, steep and rolling that it felt like the majority of the race was spent running up hill.  Oh well, I still made it and did pretty darn well!  I finished in 2:10, which is averaging about a 9:55 mile.  This was about twelve minutes faster than the overall average speed and nine minutes under the median for the race.  Yeah for me!
Of course with spending the day/night/day in the metro area I consumed more food than I would have liked to see myself eat.  I am not going to spend time dwelling on that and instead am going to choose to refocus on what I need to do to get where I want to go.  Obviously all of my work outs are paying off!

I also have a new event to look forward to!  While we were at the health expo my sister Cheyenne said that she really wanted to train for a half marathon and try one.  So we signed up and committed to running the Monster Dash on October 27th!  I love having goals like this because it forces me to re-energize in everything I do and continue my training and healthy eating.  Cheyenne heard that it could be the same race course, so if that is the case I will definitely be adding more hill training to my routine!

Have a great week!  Make today a great day!

Jessica