If I don't work out in the morning...

...it rarely ends up happening.  Case in point is yesterday.  It was a Thursday, so I was only scheduled to do my "light" workout.  I couldn't do it in the morning for a big reason - we were having family pictures taken.  Yes, despite getting back to the cottage at 12:40 AM, we had a photographer (A&M Photography here in Gaylord) coming to the cottage to take our pictures.  So I slept as long as possible and got up in time to get myself ready, as well as everyone else.  I did have a good breakfast - granola and greek yogurt (I did like this even before I read 50 Shades!).  Knowing I was not going to be able to work-out in the morning, I told myself I would go later in the afternoon.  Well, at least that was my plan.

Photo's were from 9:30 - 10:30ish.  One exciting thing for me - the dress I wore for the pictures was a size large - not XL or XXL - and it was a reward for reaching my second weight loss goal.  Here is a picture of it:

By the time the photo's were over, we were all exhausted.  Exhausted from the drive, exhausted from the photo's - it's tiring smiling all the time!  I was tired from trying to keep K entertained.  She was done after about the third picture.  Also, by the time we were done, it was already 80 degrees.  We knew it was going to be a scorcher (high 80s) but I kept telling myself I would go for a run around 2:00 PM.  

Well, 2:00 turned to 4:00, which turned to "guess I'm not working out today!'  UGH!  The heat was a  factor, but it was only go to be 20 minutes.  So - lesson learned.  I have to get up on Tuesdays and Thursdays and go for a walk/run in the morning if I want to make sure I get it done. Everyday is a learning experience.

Laters - 

Mummy Qua

St. Elmo's had me on fire!

Hello!  It is a gorgeous sunny day here in northern Michigan.  The lake is beckoning!

Our trip to Indianapolis was fast and furious.  Tuesday morning David and I got up and ran together for 20 minutes.  I did my strength training exercises and a little while later we hit the road.  NO ONE wanted to be in the car again, especially for another six hours, but we did it.  One quick stop at an outlet mall for family picture outfits and then we arrived at our friends house at 2:30 PM.  Our friends have a son E's age and a daughter K's age.  J was a little lonely but he survived.  We spent the afternoon at an amazing pool.  A good time was had by all.

That night we drove into the Colts hometown to an amazing restaurant called St. Elmo's.  It has been around for over 100 years. David and his friend Tim went there once or twice in college and David couldn't wait to go back.  It is known for great steaks and shrimp cocktail.  When we were shown to our table I made the mistake of asking about the chicken.  The waiter said "You do know we are a steak house, right?!"  I also don't like shrimp so that appetizer was lost on me.  That said, I did try the cocktail sauce.  Can we say HOT!!  OMG - I never knew horseradish could be so hot.  I mean - open my nasal passages hot!  I ended up ordering the filet mignon and it was fantastic.  The best steak I have had in a long, long time.  Melt in your mouth yummy.  And I am sure it was fattening as well.  I once had a college PE teacher tell me that anything that tasted good wasn't a healthy choice!  I cannot say enough about how good the meal was, but it was one that I won't have again for a while.

Wednesday morning we were treated to homemade biscuits and gravy.  I am not a gravy fan, so I helped myself to biscuits.  Many, many - ok, three - biscuits.  Then we were on the road again, this time to Chicago.  It seemed to take forever, but in reality was only about three hours.  We parked about a mile from Wrigley field and walked towards the park.  Lunch was at Goose Island.  I had some hummus me with delectable pita bread and cucumbers.  Then we were on to the park.  As a Red Sox fan I was very interested to see "Fenway of the mid-west."    

There were some things about Wrigley that I liked, but it is no Fenway.  I do like the ivy on the outfield walls, and the intimate feel of the park, but that's about it!  Luckily we had tickets under the overhang, so we beat the heat.  Unfortunately we could not get tickets together, so for the first three innings or so I sat with E & K, and DQ sat with J.  Believe it or not the park was pretty full, so our hopes of moving to together were dashed for a while.  Somewhere around the fifth inning DQ moved over, and he and J stayed with us until I left at the top of the ninth with E & K.

We had a LONG drive back to MI after the game, getting in around 12:40 AM.  I don't want to go on a road trip for a few weeks!  We were all happy to get out of the car.

Other than the amazing meal at St. Elmo's, I ate OK (ahh - I forgot about the biscuits!  oops).  Lunch on the way down was a salad from Wendy's.  I highly recommend the new berry almond salad there.  I didn't put on any dressing, and I didn't even see the almonds, so I think it was a good choice.  On the way home from Chicago I again got a salad, this time at McDonalds.  I got a bacon something salad with ranch dressing.  Not as low cal as my lunch the day before, but better than other things I think!

Hoping to get back on the "wagon" ASAP!

Laters - 

Mummy Qua

It's no BSC...

Greeting from chilly northern Michigan!  As you may know, my family is blessed to be able to come up here every summer for a chunk of time.  I am married to a teacher, and we take full advantage of having our summers off to spend time in our own little slice of heaven.  It is too complicated to get into, but we won't have this place to come to forever, so we want to make the most of it while we can.

It took us about 19 hours to get up here.  We could cut through Canada, and it would only take 14 hours, but that would require we all have our passports.  Of course one day before we were to leave, I realized I didn't know where mine was.  Nice.  NOT!  So last Friday night we left around 8:30 PM, drive through the night, and arrived here around 4:00 PM.  DQ was a rock start and drove the entire way.  Five hour energy was a huge help.  So we got here Saturday afternoon and were dead tired.

Sunday we had a lazy Saturday morning before heading into town for our annual trek to Wal-Mart.  We are in the middle of nowhere up here, and Wal-Mart is our mecca.  Next to Wal-Mart is a SNAP fitness, which I promptly joined.  We went home to unload the groceries, and then I went back out to the gym.

I was in for a shock when I went in!  SNAP is very well established, and are all over the country.  I have a friend from high school who owns two in CT.  That said, it is small, and NO BSC!  The best part of SNAP is that it is open 24 hrs, but not always staffed for 24 hrs.  You use a key card to get into the building.  Back to why I was in shock...it is SMALL!  I knew it wasn't going to be as big as BSC, but man-o-man is it small.  There are six elliptical machines, six treadmills and four bikes.  Then there are a variety of weight machine, and a floor to stretch and perhaps hold a small class.

Yesterday, Sunday, I jumped on a machine that I thought was an arc machine, which is my favorite machine at my home gym.  Turns out I was just on an elliptical.  I only made it 45 minutes, and was so frustrated.  At my home gym I determine how hard I am working by the number of strides per minute I am doing.  The machine at SNAP doesn't have strides per minute, but rather speed, like being on a treadmill.  After grumbling a little, I got over it and decided I needed to spend the month building up my speed.  I was eager to see how many calories I can burn on this machine.  At home I can burn 800 calories an hour.  Much to my frustration, I couldn't figure out how many calories I burned yesterday.  According to LoseIt. com I burned 450 calories for my 45 minute work-out.

Fast forward to this morning.  I woke up around 6:15, and headed off to the gym.  I chose a different elliptical, and had a good work-out.  I was sweating like crazy - something I didn't do yesterday.  I did went for one hour.  According to the machine, I burned just over 400 calories but according Lose It I burned about 600.  So I went somewhere around 500.  I feel pretty good about it.  This afternoon I did my second workout - twenty minutes or running and then a little bit of strength training.

My eating has been OK.  I think the worse thing I had was an entire bag of Bugles on the road.  I had pretzels in my hand, but I blame exhaustion and boredom for my poor choice.  The up side is I didn't snack nearly as much I normally do on road trips.

The next two days - Tuesday and Wednesday - are pretty nutty.  We are driving down to Indy to spend Tuesday with DQ's friends, and then Wednesday we are headed to Chicago to go see a Cubs game.  I will probably exercise tomorrow morning, doing the 20 minutes of cardio and then strength training.  As for Wednesday I know I won't get any exercise in.  Unless you count wandering Chi-town!

I'll write again Thursday!
Laters -
Mummy Qua

It's Friday, Friday, Gettin' Down on Friday!

God Bless Rebecca Black for giving us that song!  We will be singing it in our house all day today!

So this week has been nuts.  We are moving to a new house on campus later this summer, and are packing to go away for a month.  Needless to say I am a little stressed, and overwhelmed.  Throw in the fact that I can't find my passport for our drive through Canada and we're in the middle of a heat wave and you have a small idea of my crazy week.  

I made it to the gym Monday and Friday (today).  I also did a second workout Monday and did a workout at home on Tuesday (using the work-outs below).  Nothing but packing and cleaning for Wednesday and Thursday.  BUT - according to Lose It!  you burn lots-o-calories cleaning house, so hopefully that worked in my favor.  My eating has been OK.  Not the best, but I went to the doctor yesterday to have a mole checked out and I was almost two pounds lighter than when I went to the nutritionist on Monday.  I don't think I lost that much in just three days; the day I went to the nutritionist I had been at the gym and had lots of water before hand.  So my guess is the scale yesterday was reflecting the lack of water this time.  But I hadn't gained any weight, which was a relief.

Tonight we leave for the long journey to Michigan.  We were supposed to leave Saturday morning, and drive through Canada.  But as I mentioned, I cannot find my passport anywhere.  It is slightly concerning, and of course I wish I had located it weeks ago in preparation for our trip.  But I didn't, so we have to go the long way around.  Since we want to get there as soon as possible we have decided to drive through the night, or at least attempt it.  I'm going to be honest and tell you I am not a huge fan of this plan.  But DQ promises me that if he feels too tired he will pull over and we will get a hotel.  That takes dogs.  UGH.  On the plus side just the thought of getting to our place in MI is like adrenaline for DQ, so hopefully that will carry us through.  That and the eye masks I am going to put on the kids so they don't wake up with the sun at 5:00 AM tomorrow!

Speaking of plans, I have a plan to continue my workout while we are gone.  I have done a lot of investigating, and there is a 24 hr. SNAP fitness (www.snapfitness.com) in our little town.  I can join for just a month.  So I plan on going there M, W, F, Sa and Su, just like I do here.  Then on Tues and Thursday I will do the little work-outs below.  If I am feeling super energized I will also do those workouts later in the day on M,W, and F.  Staying on track with my eating will be a bit of an issue, as we will all be home all day, but I am hopeful that we just won't buy any crap.  I am really trying to expand my palate, and embrace berries.  The only berries I like are strawberries, so I am hoping to enjoy some blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries while we are up there.  And of course cherries!  So that is what I would like to snack on.  It won't be the same as chips and homemade dip, but I can have that once a week, on the weekends.  

Next time I post, I'll be in MI!!

Laters, <--------I have to give credit to E.L. James for this!  Hope it's ok with her that I am using it; I think thousands of women are signing off that way now!

Mummy Qua

Adding a little strength training.

Here is the workout I found on Tumblr via Pinterest.  If you want me to email it to you just let me know!  **Disclaimer - I am not taking credit for these.  Found them on Pinterest, and have tried a few different ways to find the actual website they are on without success.**

Enjoy!
Laters -
Mummy Qua

Here I go again...and again...and again...

Back in January, late January, I decided I was going to try to lose some weight.  My hubby had been working out since November with success.

Fast forward to now, the middle of June, and I am down 36 pounds.  What have I been doing?  Well, I have been making good choices, and hitting the gym.  I try to go to the gym five times a week (M,W,F,Sa, Su).  I do one hour of cardio and that's it.  My machine of choice is an arc trainer.  It looks like this:

I don't hold onto the bars, rather swing my arms.  On a good day I am able to burn 800 calories in an hour.  I would like to start adding strength training to my routine.  Since I've lost the weight, I want to start tightening things up.  I came upon a very simple work-out plan on Pinterest.com that is a workout for each day of the week; each day targeting a different muscle group.  I have done that several times, and I really like it.  If I can figure out how to share that with you, I will.  It was originally pinned from a website, but that website is no longer up.

As for food, I have been using www.loseit.com.  They have an app for iphones and the like.  David and I both use that track everything that we eat.  The thing I like about the app is that once you enter your weight, and age, you can also decide how much weight you want to lose each week - in half pound increments from 0.5 lbs to 2.0 lbs.  You can also choose to just maintain where you are at.  Lose It spits out how many calories you should eat each day.  

I have been working with a nutritionist to make sure I am eating the right things, as well as a balanced diet.  Breakfast is either instant oatmeal or cereal with fruit.  Lunch is a salad with meat on the salad, or salad with soup, or salad with a small portion of the meal of the day (I work at a school).  Dinner is much of the same.  I am trying to keep my calories around 1500 calories, but it is HARD!  Working out definitely helps.

I am hoping to blog more often now that I am on summer break, so see you soon!

Laters - 

Mummy Qua