Well, here I am sitting at home again! I live in the south and we had some nasty weather roll in last Sunday (today is Friday) that pretty much shut the state down. There was some snow and lots of ice. Then the temperatures didn't get high enough to melt the ice and any ice that did melt would refreeze because of the night time temps. This means the roads are just terrible and the state department of transportation told everyone to stay home the first couple of days. Well, after that the roads didn't get much better and there have been roads and interstates that were shut down. People were stranded in cars because they just couldn't move and the traffic was backed up for miles and miles. After awhile people just started leaving their cars in the road and walking.....well I don't know where they were walking to. Home maybe or Waffle House or who knows but the abandoned cars in the roads made for even more problems because then the salt trucks couldn't get through to try to get the roads open!!

Luckily I haven't had to deal with any of that. I live pretty close to work so theres no interstate travel for me and I work for the school system and schools have been closed all week. So me and my boys have just been staying home, playing video and board and card games, playing in the snow and I taught my youngest how to snowboard in the back yard! We've stayed up late and slept in everyday. It's been a lot of fun. The only problem is that our driveway is up hill and is shaded by trees so its still covered in ice and the road out of our subdivision is uphill and that is also still covered in ice so we have not been able to safely get out and do anything. Even as simple as going to the grocery store. So that's been frustrating but we're dealing.

In other news: today is weigh in day and I lost 3.5 pounds since last week!!! Yaaayyyyyy!! I did change my weight loss per week goals on myfitnesspal.com to lose 2 pounds per week and that cut my calories by a lot! But I can't complain (too much) because I'm seeing results and I'm very happy about that. I've also worked out everyday which is good cause I can usually talk myself into taking a couple of days off.

So these are my goals for the upcoming week

• increase cardio time to 36 minutes per day (10% increase)
• I'm currently doing 6 kettlebell exercises. I do each one 10 times and do 1 set. This week I will increase one of the exercises to doing 2 reps of it while keeping the rest of them at 1 rep.
• 1 day this week I will do something "new" (in addition to normal cardio) i.e. video game workout or workout video.
• continue trying to get 8 glasses of water per day (did pretty well last week with only like 1 day where I didn't get it all in)
• cut down on my hot (sweet) tea consumption. I usually drink 3 cups a day and that really adds up with the sugar. Tea is good for me so I want to cut it down to 1 or 2 cups a day.
• start decreasing the amount of sugar I put in each cup of hot tea.

Well, I think that's good for now and its time for me to find something to eat so hope everyone is doing great and that's all for now!!

Snow Days!!

Howdy from the frozen south!! We have had a couple of days of snow and ice and are effectively shut down! I work for the school system and we have had 2 days off because of the weather now. Not sure about tomorrow yet but its not going to be much above freezing today so I don't know if the ice will have a chance to melt any and tonight is going to be a hard freeze so I guess we'll just wait and see what tomorrow holds.

I have managed to stay under my calorie goals even though it's my tom so I've been eating lots of sweets (this time it was Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream). I have stuck with my workout schedule so Friday's weigh in will tell the tale. I don't always crave sweets during this time. A lot of time I want salty stuff but this month it's definitely been sweets cravings! And being stuck at home because of the weather hasn't helped. I've got cabin fever and my boys are praying for another day out of school but if I don't get out of here soon I'm gonna start pulling my hair out!

On a more positive note I found my WII Sports game!! I was very upset because it was lost (how does something like that get lost??) and I wanted to use it for some additional cardio. I looked for it, hubby looked for it 1 looked for it and we couldn't find it anywhere! Then 2 found it!!! Yaayyyayyyyyayyyy!!! Where was it? you may ask. Well, I'll tell you. It was on the coffee table sitting on a drink coaster. Yep, right there in plain site and NO ONE saw it!! Ugh, we looked at it for 3 days! I'm glad 2 found it for me though. I need to think of a reward for him.

Alrighty, my peeps I'm gonna head off and do some laundry. Sounds like fun huh? Keep on keeping on!!

I missed you!!!!!! 2

Ok so after the new year I joined a challenge group on myfitnesspal.com. We are the Snowflakes to Sunshine group and our goal is to help and encourage each other along the way and to lose 40 lbs or more by June 1st. Our first weigh in was January 1st and thats when I discovered I had put on 6 lbs since my last weigh in which was the beginning of December right around the time I injured my foot. Oh I was not happy! I knew that I had gained back some weight but I didn't realize it was about half of what I had managed to lose!! Not a great day for me.

But I jumped right back on the wagon...er..treadmill. But I know I have to take it easy because of my foot so this is my new plan.

• Walking on treadmill 6 times a week for 30 minutes.
• Increase time by 10% every week until I reach 60 minutes.
• At that time I will add in a small amount of running
• Increase running time by 10% every week
• Started a weight lifting (kettlebell) routine 3 times a week
• Every week I will add in one kettlebell move
• After I have a solid routine I will increase by one set every week until I reach 3 sets
• 1 or 2 times a week I will do one "new" thing so that I don't get bored and I have some variety
• by which I mean work out dvds or video games.
• Do one plank everyday starting out at 15 seconds and increasing by 5 seconds every week until I'm up to 1 minute.

I think this all sounds very doable and the increases are small enough that I won't cause any more harm. I'm also trying to make a list of rewards for pounds lost. I have always been the one that takes care of everyone else and never myself. People stopped giving me money as birthday or christmas presents because they knew I would not spend it on myself. I'm learning that I need to be important too. Just because I take care of myself some doesn't mean I'm a bad person/mom/wife. So I figure if I make a reward list for the weight I lose then I'm not just spending money on myself for no reason. I can know that I earned that reward! I have a list started but I think I need a few more things (cause I have lots to lose) so if anyone has any suggestions just let me know!!

• manicure
• pedicure
• new haircut
• massage
• new e-book for my nook
• new item from sockdreams.com
• new video (workout) game

These are all I have come up with so far and I haven't decided if I want to reward myself after 5 or 10 pounds lost. I'm thinking 5 so that I can keep some momentum going. I haven't decided what order I will do them either but I'm going to try to get that figured out today.

Myfitnesspal.com is the website I'm using to keep track of my calories and weight. It has been a great site! There is a lot of information and encouragement for people that are the same journey as I am. I'm so grateful to have found the site and even more wonderful is that it's free!! You can't beat that with a stick!! At first I set my weight loss goal at 1 pound a week and that is what I have achieved so far but I decided that I want a little more than that. Saturday is the "start" of my new week so yesterday I changed my goals to lose 2 pounds per week. My suggested calorie intake went from 1740 to 1250! That was a big change! I did fine with it yesterday (despite a starbucks run) and I know that I will be able to stick with it because I eat back at least part of my exercise calories.

Speaking of exercise calories-hubby gave me a heart rate monitor for Christmas so that's what I'm using to keep track of exercise calories. It has been a wonderful tool and I'm so glad he got it for me!! As I mentioned in a previous post I started back to walking on the treadmill on January 1st and have noticed some improvements just in this short period of time. Not really in much weight or inches lost but in my heart rate. At the beginning of January my heart rate would jump up almost immediately to my target zone and stay there (or above) the entire time I was walking. I discovered that some deep breathing could lower it somewhat and also that helped my not get so out of breath. Even though today is only January 9th, I noticed I guess around the middle of last week that it was taking longer for my heart rate to reach the target zone and it wasn't going as high in the target zone as before. And when its in the lower end my breathing will bring it down so much that it is goes under my target rate!! That means I'm now having to work harder to keep in my zone. Which is good news for my cardio health.

In other news, we are expected to have some really nasty weather moving in tonight and my kids are praying it gets here so they don't have school tomorrow!! I guess we'll see what happens pretty soon. I went to the grocery store last night for my regular day of weekly shopping and had to fight massive crowds and they were completely sold out of so much stuff!! It's unreal. But we live in the south so winter weather is not something we deal with well. And the news channels are not being much help because they are telling us that its gonna be bad and we should go to the store and stock up in case we are snowed/iced in for a couple of days and to prepare for the possibility that we may be without power!! Doesn't that just sound loverly!!!??? Oh well, maybe we'll get to sleep in tomorrow.