March 10, 2009
· Filed under Older children, School, Weight · Tagged eating right, personal responsibility, Weight, YMCA
I love my YMCA and have written about that fact here. One of the small things I really like about my Y is this nice little coffee area where you can get free coffee with flavored creamers, a French vanilla cappuccino or a hot chocolate. After working out, lots of Moms visit in this area for a brief time, sipping coffee and enjoying the peace while their children are still occupied in the nursery or hub. I also see seniors using this area for the same purpose (minus the kids in the nursery part), as well as business professionals, people engaging in English tutoring, parents attending kids sporting events, etc.
I was dismayed to find out last week that the Y is going to remove the cappucino machine and hot chocolate, and is getting rid of the flavored creamers. Apparently, someone thinks it’s not right to have such “fattening” temptations at a place where health is emphasized. Seriously?
I can understand not putting out bowls of chips or dishes of M&M’s because that does send the wrong message. But have we really reached the point where people cannot be responsible enough to limit their intake of free cappuccino, hot chocolate or flavored coffee creamers? How much of this stuff would you have to consume to negatively affect your weight loss goals or healthy living resolutions? And if there are people at the Y who cannot manage this temptation, what in the world do they do when they leave the Y? Shouldn’t we be teaching folks more about moderation and personal responsibility?
Then yesterday, my son comes home from school complaining that he took some Girl Scout cookies for snack that day and his teacher wouldn’t let him eat them because they don’t qualify as a healthy snack. Give me a break! The stuff that qualifies as healthy is ridiculous. You can take bag of “cheese crackers” that are full of preservatives, fake cheese, fat, sodium and more calories than I should consume at an entire meal, but two Samoa Girl Scout cookies (containing 150 calories) is off limits. Again — where is personal responsibility?
January 26, 2009
· Filed under Grace in the Small Things, Weight · Tagged Grace, gratitude, small things, thanks
- Sippy cups that are really spill proof.
- Mondays (MAINLY because it’s a new week to do better on my Weight Watchers plan and my weekly points allowance starts over).
- The Grover, MO post office where there is never a wait and the employees are friendly.
- My friend Karen who listens when I gripe and who really gets it.
- Clients who are generous with praise when they’re happy with my work.
See original post here.
January 24, 2009
· Filed under Product Reviews, Weight · Tagged chocolate, pecan crowns, snacks, Weight Watchers, Whitmans candies
Chocolate is a food group. I really believe this. But when I began really sticking to my Weight Watchers program a little over a year ago, I had to make some adjustments to my chocolate intake. I’m now a lifetime Weight Watchers member (which means I hit my goal weight and have maintained it), and I owe part of my success to these:
Weight Watchers Whitman's candies pecan crowns
These chocolates, made by Whitman’s Candies, are prepared to fit into the Weight Watchers program. They are 1 point per piece, and they are sold in 3-ounce bags that have six pieces at
Walgreens for about $3. I’ve also seen them at all the major grocery stores in my area and I’ve occasionally found them in packages of two in the candy bar aisle. They’re really tasty, and they don’t seem to have some of the negative side effects I’ve discovered with some of the other “diet candies.”
I like to throw a couple of these into my purse when going to the movies so that when my kids are munching on Junior Mints or M&Ms, I’ve got my chocolate fix, too. I also try to keep one or two in the diaper bag for chocolate emergencies.
You should try them.
January 3, 2009
· Filed under New Year's Resolutions 2009, Weight · Tagged exercise, jog, marathon, New Year's resolutions, resolutions, run, Weight Watchers, yoga
One thousand sixty-seven miles is the approximate distance from my home in St. Louis, MO to Sarasota, Florida. It’s a little further from my home to New York City and it’s just under the distance from my home to Ontario, Canada. It’s also exactly the number of miles I ran/jogged in 2008.
I run/jog for exercise and I do it almost every day. In fact, I ran/jogged all but 72 days in 2008. (I say run/jog because sometimes I’m running and sometimes I’m jogging – it just depends on the day). As you can probably tell, I kept a rather detailed exercise log in 2008. And I love running/jogging. It’s easily my favorite form of exercise. If I’m not training for a distance event, I run between three miles and six miles each day. You get that feeling of “cardio accomplishment” faster with running or jogging than you do with most other forms of exercise, and I feel like I get more bang for my buck, so to speak. I can run for 30 minutes and really feel like I’ve done something, but I have to do other things, like aerobics or walking, a lot longer to get the same feeling. I’m not what you would call a patient person.
So here’s the problem: although I was very committed to my exercise routine in 2008, and although I lost all my “baby” weight (via Weight Watchers) and am back into all my clothes, I’m probably flabbier than I’ve ever been except when pregnant. I’m at least less toned than I’ve ever been. Running/jogging is just not a toning type of exercise. It takes and helps keep the weight off, but it doesn’t keep the back-fat away, nor does it tone the arms or abs. And as I get older, I find myself limping to the bathroom in the morning and becoming less and less flexible. Thus, my New Year’s resolutions:
- Incorporate strength training into my exercise routine 2-3 times per week
- Incorporate yoga and/or pilates into my exercise routine once per week
- Continue running and train for the 2009 Chicago marathon
- Keep my new (used, but new to me) Honda Odyssey clean by vacuuming and wiping down the inside every Friday and washing the outside every other time I fill up. (I know - this has nothing to do with exercise, but it is a resolution of mine).
I wanted to write this post and have it up by New Year’s Day, but I’m actually glad I didn’t because my friend, former co-worker and fellow blogger Marijean of STLWorkingMom.com wrote a great post about making SMART goals versus resolutions. Smart is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Reasonable and Time-bound. After reading her post on SMART goals, I tried to write my resolutions like SMART goals. I think I did so.
There. Now it’s all in writing and it’s way more public than any of my resolutions have been in previous years. So far, I’ve kept to all four of them (the yoga class starts this Thursday). But, it’s only Jan. 3.
On another note: I’m secretly, selfishly hoping most of the “newbies” at my YMCA start falling off their resolution wagons soon because the crowds at MY Y are a pain and I expect they will be even worse this week. And I KNOW that’s a bad thing for me to wish for, because the increased numbers are good for the Y, and exercise is good for everyone, but I can’t help it.
September 10, 2008
· Filed under Weight · Tagged giving, hunger, Weight, Weight Watchers
I mentioned in a previous post that I’m a big believer in the Weight Watchers program. I’ve struggled with my weight for most of my life (like since puberty). Weight Watchers it the ONLY program that has ever worked for me. I’m a lifetime member and a regular meeting attender. It works ladies (and guys). Really.
As if losing weight and keeping it off wasn’t motivation enough, now Weight Watchers is doing something REALLY COOL. The company is kicking off a Lose for Good campaign through which it will donate one pound of food for every pound Weight Watchers members lose. The donations will go to Share Our Strength, the leading organization working to make sure no kid in America grows up hungry, and Action Against Hunger, which helps feed people in trouble parts of the world. The campaign lasts through Oct. 18.
This campaign hit home with me. A few months back, I was sitting in church watching this video of children in some other part of the world who were starving. I remember saying to my husband, “Gosh. I wonder how those kids would feel if they knew there were people here who pay money for drugs that make them less hungry so they can lose weight, or who pay money to surgeons to put bands around their stomachs so they won’t eat so much. It would be incomprehensible to them to know that some people have so much food that they need help keeping weight off, while they have so little food that they can’t keep enough weight on to stay healthy.” Then, I opened my September/October issue of Weight Watchers magazine (which is a great magazine, full of motivational stories, ideas and awesome recipes), and there was announcement of the Lose for Good campaign. The campaign dialogue, which I will paraphrase here, is awesome. “Why is that some of us have enough and some of us don’t? When did balance lose its balance? What if you and me and he she started taking a little better care of we? What if we could help each other by helping ourselves — by taking what we didn’t need and giving it to people who needed it – not everything, just what we could stand to lose? The more we all lost, the more they’d gain. Then one day, hungry might just become happy.”
Doesn’t that just make sense? So if you are among the masses who wants or needs to lose weight, and if you’d love to be down on the scale before you have to start worrying about those extra pounds that are the unwanted “present” of the holidays, then now is the perfect time to join Weight Watchers. Your loss will be someone else’s gain — for real.
July 22, 2008
· Filed under Weight · Tagged Weight Watchers
I may not have shared this before, but I’m a Weight Watchers member. I joined in 2005 because I had gained some weight and wasn’t having any success taking it off. I achieved Lifetime status in late 2005 (for you non-Weight Watchers types, that means you’re free for life as long as you stay within two pounds of your goal weight). But, I became pregnant in 2007, which meant the goal weight thing went out the window for many months.
I returned to WW when DB was about six weeks old, and to my delight, I found a meeting I LOVED attending. I’m a big believer that meeting attendance is key to the success of the program, but sometimes I just didn’t feel like going. That is, until this time around. I found Alice’s meeting on Tuesday mornings at a Chesterfield Weight Watchers location, and I almost never miss a meeting now. She’s the leader at this meeting. She is so motivational, so “real,” so “normal” and quite an inspiration since she lost 50-plus pounds on the program. With Alice’s help, along with several other women with whom I became friends at that meeting, I lost 30ish pounds and returned to goal weight in April, about six months after DB was born. I’ve maintained my weight since. Unfortunately, today we had to say good-bye to Alice. She’s returning to full-time employment in the education field. We are going to really miss her and her motivation, fun stories and leadership at our meeting. But, in her honor, I pledge to keep attending meetings. So, now I’ve got to visit a few others to see which leader I like second best.
