Here’s a great (read evil and mean) walking workout for a treadmill. If your elevations are different, adjust to what you can. Elevation at a 3 is just slightly uphill. A 12 is pretty steep.  Good luck!

Keep your speed at 3.5…if you’re already in shape keep it at 4.

0-5 min…elevation at 3.

5-7 min…elevation at 9.

7-8 min…elevation at 5.

8-10 min…elevation at 10.

10-11 min…elevation at 6.

11-13 min…elevation at 12.

13-14 min…elevation at 10.

14-15 min…elevation at 12.

15-20 min…elevation at 3.

p.s. Did you know a treadmill used to be a torture device? Guess some things just don’t change.

A couple weeks ago I invited a friend to come work out with me…I need motivation. And if I know someone is coming over, it’s motivation to push myself and give her a good workout. I get a sick kick out of making someone sore. 😀  Really, that’s when I know I did a good job and did it right…not trying to be mean or anything.  I’m not a personal trainer but I know what to do and how to do it well.

I told her this week I had been thinking about starting a workout group…a walking group on Tuesday and Thursday and a body sculpt/weight train group on Fridays. She thought that was a great idea, especially since she was thinking along the same lines. She also volunteered her house for Fridays since it’s rather big, and we can exercise there on the walking days if it’s cold or rainy.

So YAY!!! I made fliers and we’re starting up next week! The area where we’ll be walking is hilly, so it should be fun pushing 2 kids in a stroller uphill. Extra calorie burn! Wa-hoo!!

A while ago, I found a food blog that had a dinner plan for portobello burgers and sweet potato fries. I asked for the seasoning on the fries (cuz I’ve never done the fries before) and she posted the recipe. It looks so good! This is our dinner tonight. So much healthier than a beef burger and fried fries…not that I have anything against burgers and fries. It’s my winter jeans that do. So if it looks good to you, too, go check it out.

Two weeks ago, I decided to get serious with losing weight. *sigh*

My goal is to lose 1 pound a week…I set it low because my time is limited. I don’t have a big chunk of time during the day to devote to any one thing…Dean cries, or Pierce wants attention, etc. I wanted to set something I could accomplish. So I figure, from that point, it’ll take 15-17 weeks to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Yeah, Dean liked Dairy Queen and Burger King while he was growing in there. Had to feed the growing baby, right? 😀

I met my goal the first week, and tomorrow, for “Weigh-In Wednesday” I hope to meet it again. We pulled a stationary bike out of the garage over the weekend and I tried that out today. OW! I was surprised I could only do 15 minutes. So I finished off my time on the treadmill. I felt kinda jelly-legged when I got off, but it always feels really good to work that hard.

I’m dying to get back to a gym, but my old one closed down. The closest one to me charges for daycare per child, so I’d either have to go at night or take the 2 boys while Gab’s in school and pay for the 2. Plus most of their good classes are in the evening. But with my headaches and cooking dinner and everything else going on in the evenings, it’s very difficult to impossible.

So I’ll do what I can on the treadmill, bike and badminton and hope it works!

As you know, I’m always looking to get new ideas for posts, and someone sent me a link to an article by msnbc. It’s about tanning.

“Prior to the 20th century women were fanatical about avoiding exposure to the sun. Umbrellas and parasols went everywhere with any woman who could afford them. The French fashion designer Coco Chanel changed all that.

Back in the 1920s, Coco, looking to create a new “healthy” look to promote summer wear, popularized tanned skin. Women began sunbathing and those with a tan were seen in high society as beautiful. Voila! Skin damage as fashion accessory. You’ve gotta love an industry that has made anorexia and damaged skin cool.”

Nice, huh? My views are this:  Yes, tan does look better, but probably because it’s ingrained into my mind and taste by societal pressures since I was tiny. But, if someone is so vain as to tan their skin to a dark leather, why aren’t they thinking about how they’re going to look in 40 years? Have they not seen a woman in her 50’s or 60’s who’s tanned her whole life? NOT pretty. At all. Ever. Which is why I’m glad there’s spray-on tans and self-tanning lotion! I can have the best of both worlds.

And that’s to say nothing of melanoma; half of all cancers in the US are skin cancers! If people would wise up and realize they’re frying themselves on purpose, cancer would decrease by 50%!!

I saw a project done once on tv about tanning. A middle school-aged girl got 2 hot dogs and placed each under a tanning light bulb. She smothered one with sunscreen and left the other plain. Obviously she wasn’t planning on eating them. After some time (I wish I could remember how long), the hot dog with the sunscreen looked the same. The plain dog was shriveled, dark, and wrinkled. Precisely how we look in the same circumstances. The point was that this is what happens to our skin when over-exposed to tanning beds and the sun.

Here’s the link to the article if you’re interested in reading the whole thing:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25378496/

One of the great perks of being pregnant (for me, anyway) is not having headaches for 6 months in the second and (mostly) third trimesters.  Then the pregnancy ends and the headaches come back. Why? No one knows. It’s the great mystery in my life. Headaches/migraines started when I was 16.

“Have you seen a doctor?” Of course. A couple times. They found no reason for my problem.

“Didn’t they give you any medication?” Yes; the most-prescribed one for headaches/migraines. An anti-seizure med that was great in helping me lose weight, but also made my hands tingle and go numb. It worked for about a week then it quit. So the doctor upped my dosage. Then it worked very well for a couple weeks. Then it quit. That happened a few times until I finally quit the drug altogether. I didn’t see the point in staying on a drug if it didn’t work.

So now I’m not pregnant anymore and the headaches are back. Every day. It’s really more annoying than anything…being in constant pain and soreness in my head gets old. Paul and my mom keep pushing me to “go see a specialist; find someone who knows what they’re doing”.  I know I really should but it just sounds so lame…”Yeah, I have a headache.” I don’t want to be a drug guinea pig.

The whole situation is quite ridiculous!  Just a vent  🙂