Today's Victories (so far)!

1. Breakfast consisted of overnight oats that had half a banana in it, some oats (clearly), chia seeds and Greek yogurt.
2. My mid-morning snack was a banana.
3. Lunch included a whole wheat wrap with turkey, spinach, sprouts, some mozzarella cheese and a small amount of mustard.  Additionally, I had some low-fat vanilla yogurt with raspberries and blueberries.

What does this add up to?  At least two servings of fruit, about 1.5 servings (if not 2) of veggies and some lean protein in every meal!  The best part is that my afternoon snack is going to be some delicious homemade salsa that is CHOCK FULL of veggies including corn, black beans, red pepper and avocado.

I will say that I did have a bagel and cream cheese this morning.  But I'm rather confident that the good outweighs the bad so far today. :)

Oh, and Zumba is tonight!  So excited!

Beautiful weather!

This is a beautiful time of year.  70 degree temps, warm sunshine...  But of course that's not really supposed to happen in March, but I'll take it.  With the warm weather, I am discovering my new obsession, so to speak.  I absolutely LOVE geocaching.  I love going out in the nice weather with my usually trusty handheld gps unit and walking around parks until I find the hidden treasure.  It's great.  The fact that it also means getting off my butt and in the sun is only one of the benefits.  Sometimes it's even aerobic as it often involves walking up and down hills a lot, maybe some climbing, etc.  One of the cool things about geocaching is that it can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.  Regardless, it's definitely turning into an obsession for me.

In addition to geocaching, I've also picked up Zumba, which I find to be really fun.  It is my new Monday night activity.  Tonight I am going to Fit Barre at my gym, which is more resistance training.  I'm really trying to not focus completely on cardio work because, while the benefits of cardio can't be denied, resistance training is also an integral part of it.

I'm also intensely curious about kettlebell; so much so that I'm half tempted to buy one on the way home.  Clearly I'd buy the lightest one (7lbs) as I'm a beginner and I don't have any experience with it.  But I'm extremely curious about it and it looks like something that I might like.

Finally, nutrition is a key component of weight loss as well.  I've been increasing the number of servings of fruits and vegetables.  But, I've also given up pop for the time being.  There is really no reason to drink pop from a nutritional perspective.  Maybe someday I'll drink pop again, but right now I'm trying to get used to how I feel not drinking it.

Happy thought of the day:  my best friend informed me that if I keep going the way that I am currently, I will visibly be losing weight in the next few months.  Hopefully that's right!

Graduation: It's kind of a big deal

Graduation is coming up and hopefully soon after I will finish all of my coursework.  With that, I will have a Masters in Library and Information Science, which is pretty cool.  After I finish my coursework and graduate, I will be able to come home from work and do whatever I want.  I won't have to worry about the paper that is due in a week or the discussion board stuff that I have to do that night or anything like that.  Because of this, there are several things that I am looking forward to:

1. Reading:  I have a list of books longer then I care to admit that I would like to read.  Now that I'll be able to read for something other than school, I'd like to read some of those books.
2. Social activities: I have many friends that I've lost touch with or just don't see as often as I'd like.  Since I'll have more free time, I'll be able to spend more time with these wonderful people who have put up with my absence during my Master's program.
3. Exercise: I really want to give this healthy living thing a shot.  The lack of schoolwork will eliminate excuses to not exercise, which I really need to do more consistently.  I would like to try geocaching and I would also like to explore the border to border trail that I have found here in Washtenaw county.  I'm also thinking about giving biking to work a try next year, especially since the company that I work for will reimburse me for some expenses related to biking depending on how much I actually bike to work.
4. Food: In addition to not exercising as consistently as I should, I also haven't been cooking as consistently as I should.  I can definitely tell the difference when I eat good, real food instead of food filled with additives and such.  There are a lot of recipes that I'd love to try my hand at and I'd really like to explore cooking in my crock pot more as well.
5. Hobbies: I really like knitting and I'm looking forward to finishing some of those projects that I started two or more years ago and starting new projects as well.  I also hope to learn new techniques along the way.

Blood Screening

For the Vitality program at work, I had to get a blood screening where they test your blood for cholesterol, glucose, whether I'm a smoker, etc. They also weighed me and took my blood pressure.  I already knew that my BMI wouldn't be in range, but some of my cholesterol numbers were surprising.  My bad cholesterol number was within range, as well as my overall cholesterol number.  A couple other numbers were high and low, depending on which is bad.  In terms of blood pressure, it was on the high range of normal.  I'm cool with that because it's not incredibly high.  Overall, I think that my health is a little better then I was anticipating, and everything can get better if I stay on track with healthy habits.  I'm calling that good news.

In addition to these numbers, this also adds vitality points to my overall score.  I hope that my due points are going to be posted soon.  But this means one step closer to lower health care premiums next year!  Oh, and my vitality age (similar to WiiFit age, but probably more accurate) went down four years because of my blood screening results.  Woohoo!  Also, vitality will generate goals based on the information that they have about me.  They just created a goal for me to MAINTAIN my cholesterol, not lower it.  I find that something to be proud of. :)

In other news, I bought a new cookbook.  It has a lot of yummy looking recipes using fresh ingredients, some of which I've never heard of.  That last part is one of the reasons I bought the cookbook; I want to encourage myself to try new things, particularly healthy foods.  This should be an adventure.

Small Victories

Sometimes it's easiest to achieve goals one day at a time.   That said, yesterday was a good day for my health goals, but a bad day for homework.

After work I went to the gym and did thirty minutes of cardio.  I know that I need to do more resistance training but at this point I think I'm going to stick to working mostly on cardio.  After that, I went home and cooked a stir-fry with delicious veggies (red pepper, onion, carrots, sugar snap peas).

Therefore, I'm going to start to rate my goals of eating, exercise and motivation on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being that I feel that I did very well.  For yesterday, those ratings are:
Eating: 8
Exercise: 10
Motivation: 9

Eating is 8 because I did partake in more treats during work then was necessary.  One of my co-workers is getting married and we had a cake, ice cream bars and a cream cake thing.  I tried both of the cakes but, and this makes me quite proud, I didn't have an ice cream bar.  On the bright side, dinner was home cooked and healthy, I packed a relatively healthy lunch that included vegetables and breakfast was an oatmeal breakfast cookie.

Exercise is 10 because I made it to the gym for the first time in a week.  I hope to keep up going to the gym at least three times a week and taking walks or doing something at home (like WiiFit) the rest of the week.

Motivation is 9,  mostly because I didn't really think about my goals before having a second piece of cake.  Even if I choose to disregard those goals for a piece of cake, I would like to consider them.