To Diet or Not to Diet!

I know my eating habits are not what they should be, and I can't seem to break out of my bad habits! I do really good in the morning, but come afternoon or evening, I'm ready to grab for the junk food. Yes, I know that I could deal with that by not having junk food in the house. It's rough during soccer season, I don't get to cook like I want to, so we eat a lot of cereal and waffles and quick stuff.

I thought about doing the Special K Challenge, but the more I look at it, the more unsure I am of it. Where are the fruits and vegetables? It seems kind of odd to eat a snack bar for lunch.  I feel like I'd be hungry all the time and that would just get me in more trouble because I'd be snacking all the time. I guess with some willpower, I could get through the 2 weeks and if it helped me to lose even a pound, that would be good. I could see it being a gateway to me eating better, but then again I could just start eating better and not do the Special K Challenge.

I'm torn! I want to eat better, I really do. Part of me is being lazy because I don't feel like taking my nephew food shopping, so I don't go during the week when he's here. Last time I took him, he screamed the entire time we were shopping! It was not an easy shopping trip! Part of me is so busy with everything else that I'm just not taking the time to fit in healthier eating. That is something that will change once I am not watching my nephew anymore!

I guess I could just buy a bunch of fruits and veggies and find recipes for healthier meals and get stuff ready so that I can start eating healthier. Instead of cookies I could eat an apple. I seem to eat a lot of pasta too, which I really should cut down on a lot.

I'm going to try to go to the library this week and take out a book on healthy eating. Maybe if I read about what I should be doing it will help me. I'm getting in a ton of exercise every week, the least I could do is eat healthier so I can actually see the benefits of all my hard work! It is stupid of me to keep eating the way I do. I'll be going food shopping tomorrow! Let's hope I can make better decisions on what I buy!

Week 4 Completed!

Today is the end of week 4 of my exercise journey. I have done really well, but not good enough! I have consistently done my weight training every other day and have done cardio at least every other day. I should be doing cardio every day!

I've tried to eat better. With soccer season here, I don't cook like I would like to, so we eat whatever we can find in the house like cereal or waffles for dinner. I seem to do better during the day, and then when the kids come home I want to eat cookies or ice cream. I do need to have more fruit and veggies in the house.  My plan is to go food shopping tomorrow to stock up on the good stuff!

As of Monday, I add a 4th day for strength training and I go from 3 to 5 lb. weights.  I started off at 3 lbs. to make sure it didn't hurt my chest.  But I find it easy at 3 lbs. so now it's time to move up.

I am proud of myself for sticking to my routine and pushing myself to make sure I do the exercises when I am supposed to.  Some days are harder than others and I have to force myself to get through it! Day 2 of strength training is still a rough one! At this point, exercise has become part of my normal routine so sticking with it isn't so hard.  I want to get the most out of my workouts, so I will continue to push myself through it every day and add more when necessary.

Now, to work on my eating habits...

The Greatest News Ever!

I got an email from my sister-in-law today! She handed in her resignation at her job. She said she had to give 30 days notice, so her last day is October 21!! WooooHoooo!!!

It will be awesome to finally have my freedom! I'll be able to volunteer in my sons classes/at their schools. I'll have time to get work done. I'll be able to go have lunch with my friends without having the baby with me. My house will actually not look like we have an infant of our own! Some of my stress will go away. I can feel the stress lifting off of me already! I am so excited to get my life back!

Who knew the word resignation could bring me so much joy! I am counting down to October 21!!

Inlaws = Disaster

I can't understand how some people claim that family is everything, and yet they will push family away and treat certain people in the family like crap.  Ah yes, we come back to the in-laws yet again.

My son has a grandparents lunch coming up at school, so I invited my mom and my MIL and FIL. My mom was all for it. She was excited to be able to have lunch with my son at his school.  My MIL told me she can't take the day off of work, so neither of them are going.

Ok, I get she has a job and all that.  Let me also state that my nephew has been sick, and at my house for the past 2 days.  I told my SIL on Tuesday that her son needs to go to the doctor. He was coughing and had a lot of chest congestion. He even sounded horse. She told me it was just him teething and not to worry about it. Yesterday, he was again at my house and he was coughing, very lethargic, and had a lot more congestion in his chest. When she picked him up, I again said she should make an appointment for him and even offered to take him to the doctor myself so she didn't have to take off work. She ended up getting an appointment last night and he has croup.  So she texted me and told me that he wasn't coming today, her mom was taking the day off to stay with him.

First of all, why can't she stay home with her son? Her mom always takes off to take care of my nephew when he is sick. It makes no sense to me at all.

Second, why can my MIL take a day off of work to watch my sick nephew, but she can't take the day off to have lunch with my son at school?  It's a one time thing. They only do this lunch in Kindergarten, so they won't get the chance to do this next year or any year after that. Not to mention she's been taking so much time off of work that she has been getting in trouble by her boss. She's going to end up losing her job all because she is taking care of her grandson.

My SIL is a prime example of why certain people shouldn't pro-create.  She relies on her mom for everything, and my FIL is getting sick of it! She can't do anything on her own. She doesn't even take care of her kid. She seems to have absolutely no maternal instincts what-so-ever! She took money from her parents, who took the money out of their retirement funds, to pay her mortgage for the past year. She also borrowed money from her husband's parents, and his dad has been battling cancer on and off for the past few years and had a couple of surgeries that cost them a lot of money. Both of their parents paid their mortgage for over a year, and then 2 months ago, they decided to let the house foreclose. So both of their parents are out of all that money for nothing and they will never get the money back. My MIL babies my SIL. She walks on eggshells around her and treats her as if she can't do anything. My SIL is living with my MIL and FIL, so they pay for everything for her. My SIL complains that she has no money, yet she does to Dunkin Donuts every day for coffee and they go on date nights every weekend.  Again, my MIL won't watch our kids so we can go out, but she will do anything for my nephew.

There was a night we asked her to watch our kids, and she said she couldn't because she was volunteering that night.  I later found out that she cancelled her volunteer time to watch my nephew so my SIL could go out. I was so pissed!

I really feel bad for my husband. He's learned a lot about his mom and sister over the past few years and he's really not happy about it. He keeps apologizing to me for his family. It's not his fault. We can't pick our family and unfortunately, they aren't always the people we expect them to be.  Lucky for me, they aren't my family and I can disassociate myself from them and stop asking them to be involved!

Making Time for My Family

It's been a while since I have posted here. Life has been so busy! Our business is picking up, the kids are back to school, we all have to get to karate twice a week, soccer 4 to 5 days a week, guitar lessons...that doesn't leave much time for taking care of the household! I should have a lot of time on my hands, since my kids are in school 6 hours a day, but there is this one major factor...my 11 month old nephew!

I love the kid! He's great! I'm so thankful that I have been able to spend the last year with him while his parents are working. It's been so nice being able to bond with him and my kids have gotten to be close with their cousin. When I was a kid, we were always around family. I knew my cousins well, and we spent a lot of time together. As we got older, that didn't happen as much, and now as adults I keep in contact with them through facebook and we get together on occasion, but we're not close.

My husband and I have been discussing a lot of things that need to change in our lives! We have a business for a reason...so I can stay home and raise our kids. The business is how I make money. It's been slow, so it hasn't been an issue for a while, but now things are picking up and I need more time. How do I get more time? The most logical answer is to stop watching my nephew. So my husband came up with a plan to tell his sister that we were done watching her son as of October 1. I told him 2 weeks notice wasn't fair, at least give her til the end of the year.  He agreed, and we wanted to make time to talk to her and her husband when we could both be there, but it just didn't work out. So he went to talk to them on his own.

I would love to say that they reacted well and were happy to get 3 1/2 months notice.  However, that wasn't the case. They got really defensive and said if I couldn't handle it I shouldn't have committed to it. Then she said it is my job, she hired me to watch her kid, and I am committed to it. She broke down into tears, got mad, made rude comments.  I'm sure it was a great conversation for my husband to go through! He said he was nice about it all. He told her that we didn't watch their kid for the money, it was to help them out, and that none of us committed to any specific amount of time to watch him. He explained how our business is picking up, and that is how I make money for the family and how I want to be able to volunteer at school for my kids. She didn't care though. It was all about her and what was she going to do. By the end, they said they weren't mad and they would figure something out. However, a couple days later, I forgot to give her back some stuff for the baby and asked if I could drop it off.  My husband said he was going there anyway to pick something else up, so I texted her and told her he would be coming later.  He rang the doorbell. She opened the door just enough to grab the bag, grunted when my husband said "Sorry we forgot to give this to you" and slammed the door on him.

My thoughts on the whole situation are this:

- they have issues with me because I stood up to them regarding them not treating my son the way they treated my husband's son and it was making my son feel bad. Because they didn't want to hear it, they stopped talking to us for 3 years.
- As with any job I have ever had, I have the right to give 2 weeks notice to end my employment. Apparently, she sees me as her employee, which I am not! She should be happy to have gotten 3 1/2 months notice. She would have gotten 2 weeks notice if my husband had anything to say about it!
- They have been struggling for months over money. They had a house and an apartment. They were getting money from his parents and her parents to pay the mortgage on their house for the past year or so. And as of last month, they stopped paying the mortgage so they could let it go into foreclosure. They should totally understand that we need to make money to pay our bills too, and our business is the only way I make money.
- To say this is my "job" when I only get paid $20 a day for watching her kid for 10+ hours is a joke! We did this to help them, not for the money. $20 a day won't buy much, especially for a family of 5.
- My family and my business come first. I can't not take new business because of someone else's kid. I can't not volunteer at my kids schools because I have to take care of someone else's kid. I don't think it's fair to my family to put someone else's kid before them.
- She has made horrible comments about me in the past. She is always very cold to me. It's awkward being around her. She has never liked me. We have never been close. So why should I give up everything in my world for her? She told my husband's brother when I first agreed to watch the baby for $20 a day that she was making out! She knew she was getting a great deal. She's ok with taking advantage of me!
- Along with the taking advantage of me thing...she is always picking him up late. Sometimes I get a call or text and sometimes I get nothing. He is at my house from 5:45am to 4pm. She'll get here anytime between 4pm and 5pm to pick him up. She claims she can't take him food shopping, so she will stop and pick stuff up on her way. As if I have nothing better to do with my time!

I think the thing that bugs me the most about all of this is that when my oldest son was younger, I did work full time and my parents watched him. They watched him for a while, and then one day, they told me they couldn't do it anymore because my dad had lung cancer. It was a horrible thing to hear my dad say he had lung cancer. Trying to deal with that was just too much for me to handle. On top of that, I wanted to make arrangements quickly so I had someone to care for my son. Did I get mad at them or call them names? Of course not! I understand that life happens and you have to take responsibility and go with the flow. I was able to find a daycare quickly and I enrolled him so he could start asap.  Still, I didn't get over the shock of my dad being sick.

My point is that I got a bombshell dropped on me when my parents told me they couldn't watch my son anymore, but I did what I needed to do without complaint. She is complaining about me stopping in December, and yet she has 3 1/2 months to find someone else. She has a lot of nerve.

Life happens, and it may not always be the way you want it to happen but you have to go with the flow. It's not the end of the world that we put an end date on watching her kid. Maybe it will push her to actually find a job and move to where her husband is so they can be together and she can stop complaining about that!

Day 10: I had to Talk Myself Through It

Today is day 10! I started my workout around 8am. Day 2 of the strength training workout that I do is rough! It's core and legs, so there are a lot of lunges and side lunges, which I really hate doing! I had to keep telling myself to just push through it and when I got to the 3rd set, I kept reminding myself that it was the last time I had to do these until next week! I pushed myself! I didn't give up! I got through it! It wasn't an easy thing to do, but I got through it!

After I was done with strength, I decided to try to Wii Active 2 game that I got a few months ago. I didn't even open it when I got it.  I had to peel the wrapping off of it and set everything up. It was easy to set up, just a little time consuming. But not that it is set up, I won't have to do anything crazy later.

As for the game, I got a good cardio workout and it kept track of my heart rate. I set up my own workout, which wasn't well planned since I had never used the game before. I just picked exercises that I thought might work for me and repeated some, but I really had no idea how any of them worked.  My creation was a bit messy and really had me repeating things that weren't necessary. It wasn't bad for my first time, but I would definitely do it differently next time.

Next week, I plan on doing the 3 week cardio workout plan they have set up within the game. It is 4 days a week for 3 weeks. It's worth a try! I have to get in at least 20 minutes of cardio a day and I think each day is a little more than that. It will be good for me to get into a routine. I'll have the other games I have as filler or extra workouts.  I don't want to review Active 2 until I have gone through the 3 week routine. We'll see how it holds up!

Review: Gold's Gym Cardio Workout [Wii Game]

I've had the Gold's Gym Cardio Workout game for Wii for a year and a half. I used it once in May 2010, and I guess I just didn't see the benefit of it.  Yesterday, I wasn't able to get outside to take my walk, so I put on the game and gave it a try.

I started off in a boxer shuffle and then did a series of punches. There were several different punching combinations, some harder than others. I started off with the easy stuff...6 minutes of jab, cross. Then I went into 6 minutes of jab, cross, hook. Finally, I did 12 minutes of jab, cross, hook, uppercut. I did a total of 25 minutes, maintaining the boxer shuffle throughout the entire time.

After 25 minutes, I was soaking wet with sweat! I haven't sweat like that in a long time. I had sweat dripping from my forehead and my clothes were soaked. I was huffing and puffing. I had no idea I could get this kind of a workout from this game!

24 + hours after doing this, in addition to my strength training, I am sore. My arms and shoulders hurt! Again, I had no idea this game could give me such a great workout! When I put the game in, I was expecting to be able to just move around a little and get some exercise in. I did not expect to sweat like a pig and be sore the next day! It was a lot like some of the workouts we do in karate. I can totally see this game helping me become better at karate. It will give me the practice I need with punches, accuracy, speed, etc.

I think when I first used this game, I expected that it was going to be more than just a boxing-type workout. I was pretty disappointed when I turned it on for the first time and realized there wasn't much to it other than boxing. There are a few other exercises you can unlock. After using the game yesterday and getting such an awesome workout, I am no longer disappointed. I'm actually looking forward to playing it tomorrow!

Days 4 - 9

I am still doing well with my exercising. I have stuck with doing something at least every other day. I haven't started running yet, but have found other ways, either by walking, videos or the Wii, to get in cardio. Karate is a great way to get in cardio as well! I've been tracking everything I do on a calendar on my wall as well as on SparkPeople.com. So I've made it over a week and am doing well! I even had a day of rest! 

Yesterdays workout has really made my arms and shoulders sore! I really worked hard yesterday and I am feeling it today! That means I got in a great workout! 

I am happy with my progress so far and am doing my best to stick with it!

I Caved!

I decided to give up soda.  Well, I decided that a long time ago, but didn't do it. So I decided to actually do it this time.  I was doing good...I wasn't buying to when I went to the store or when we went out to eat. I actually ordered Raspberry Iced Tea last time we went out to eat. I haven't had a soda in a couple weeks!

And then today I got lazy! I went to the store with my step-son to pick up something for lunch, and near the lunch counter was a cooler of soda.  Sure, I could have walked around to find something better for me to drink or even just waited until we got our food home to get a drink.  Instead, I chose a bottle of soda. It actually took me quite a long time to make that decision. I kept telling myself how good I was doing and that I didn't need the soda. But my laziness won out and I grabbed it, knowing full well I would feel guilty about it later.

3 hours later, I'm still drinking the soda, feeling horrible after every sip of it. Soda is horrible for you and it really makes me feel bad physically. I just can't see wasting it. I will say, it had a horrible taste now.  I'm not enjoying it AND I'm feeling guilty about drinking it, so what was the point of caving in and getting a soda. I guess there was none. At least I know it's just not worth it! And tomorrow starts day 1 of my no soda diet! Let's hope I don't cave again!

Days 2 and 3

So far so good! I've been sticking to my workout schedule and have added in some extra!

Day 2 - walked 3 miles

Day 3 - an hour bike ride with a friend and my step-son.
           - Day 2 of my strength training - core and legs - that was tough!
           - 2 mile walk
           - 60 minute karate class with a crazy workout

Ok, so maybe I went a little overboard on day 3, but I feel pretty good about everything I did yesterday. Today is day 4, and all I have planned is karate. Nothing too intense for today, I figured it could be slightly a day of rest because I had so much to get done today. My schedule says to start with doing everything every other day, so I'm on track! I just hope with the 4 day weekend that I'll be able to get in my exercise!