Mrs. G's Journey to Better Health

Tomorrow is a going to be a day I will never forget. The Space Shuttle Endeavor is going to be flying around cruising over various California landmarks. I am going to make an effort to view the Shuttle Endeavor. Fingers crossed!

Today is Wednesday. On Wednesdays I have a "Mommy & Me" class. The class itself is great. My problem is with snack time. The kids get a little snack, and, so do the parents. More often than not, the snack for parents is sugar. It can be cookies, doughnuts, brownies, ... sugar. It is very tempting to have one bite, and maybe one more bite. I used to think it was okay to have a bite or two since I'd be burning it off during class. When I started tracking my activity and the calories in the sugary treat, I discovered it was not true. I felt it was rude not to have the snack, but after a few times of passing on it, I'm okay with it. People have asked me to take ONE bite, but I still decline. Sometimes I will be asked why. Well, even if I get the rolling eyes, or other non-supportive remarks, I stand firm. I say, "I am counting calories." Bottom line, they don't care about my health or about my goals. So, why should I care about their remarks

So 2 months ago I got clicked to get an offer for a magazine subscription. $5.99 for 10 issues. The offer said I would get my 1st issue in 4-6 weeks. It's been 8 weeks. In those 8 weeks, I have seen the bill electronically twice and once in the mail. I'm wondering if I will ever get my 1st issue. I feel funny about paying for the subscription when I have not even received the 1st issue. What health, fitness, food, weight loss type of magazines do you subscribe to?

The day started out pretty normal. Take the kids to school, do my usual Tuesday morning routine. And then things gotten shaken up a bit. My previous plans scheduled for today kind of fell through. I was a bit relieved because there were a few things I wanted to get done. But, I did not get them done any way. Had my plans not fallen through, I would not have gotten done to begin with. I took advantage of the chunk of time. I took a walk. As I began my walk, I figured I would take a 5 mile walk. I looked at my watch and figure I could get in a 6 mile walk and still have time for a shower, a quick, lunch, and start on 1 task that has been hanging over my head. Okay, a 6 mile walk it is. My mind started to wander as I thought about how tough it would be to get regular walking exercise in if I had a regular full-time job where I would have to drive to/from work everyday. I am fortunate enough to live close enough to some pretty nice walking paths. A couple of years ago, walking 0.3 miles

Monday. My Mondays are usually filled up with house chores, laundry, dishes, trash, picking up toys, cleaning up this and that, reading letters, filling out forms, returning calls, ... etc. Scheduled workouts and intentional exercise is not a priority on Mondays. Despite my usual Monday activities, I think I did descent. Not great, but descent enough that I hopefully maintained. My breakfast and lunch are pretty stable. For dinner I had a salad from Fresh Express Kit: Salsa Ensalada. To it, I added kale, celery, and tomato, and this is what it looked like: I also had a turkey hot dog with a small amount of turkey chilli. I did not think I would find this filling. To my surprise, I was full. As for my walking, I did not make it 10K steps today. I only made it to 6K. My day was not too bad, I kept busy all day long and did not go over my calorie budget.

Sunday is the first day of the week and it was good. I really hope I continue this way all week, all month! Okay, one day at a time. This morning I was supposed to get up and out the door by 6am for my morning walk. I hit the snooze the button. I got out the door by 6:40am. A little late, but I got out. I walked 6 miles at a pace of approximately 20mins/mile. The views were nice, the cool air felt good, and I got to listen to 3 podcasts. The 3 podcasts were all related to weight loss in one shape or form. When I got home, I felt good, and tired. A quick breakfast and then we started cleaning out the kids room. We got rid of toys and clothing the kids had outgrown. Now their room has room! The day seemed to go pretty fast, I did not snack mindlessly, yay! My DH kept my water bottled filled  with ice water so I was able to drink plenty of water, mindlessly. That is a good thing. After my morning walk and all that cleaning, I needed to cool off. The temperature in our area was 1

A week ago I sent an email to SparkPeople.com's help support. I wanted to know why I could not post on their Facebook Page. I was able to do so for a while and then all of a sudden I was not. All of a sudden because I was not given a warning that I was doing something wrong. After the first round of emails I thought it might be because I was posting links on SparkPeople's Facebook page. Those links were always leading back into SparkPeople, my SparkPage to be exact. I was told I could do so, and so I did freely. I asked why I was being blocked again and they could not really say. I asked if I could be allowed to post again and I would not post any links. I was told they could not do so. This puzzled me greatly. What did I do? The person at SparkPeople.com helped me out by contacting the person over on SparkPeople.com's Facebook Page, apparently they related but the two are run separately. The following is the response I got from what I believe is the people over at Spar

It feels like I did very little all day, yet the day went by so fast. After I took my son to school we headed out to purchase napkins at the most inexpensive place I know, the 99Cent store. Then we went 4-5 miles to our next stop, drop off newsletters and receipts for reimbursement. A quick stop at home to gather our drinks (water for me and juice/water for the Little One), her lunch box, and we headed out to the Dr's office. No one was sick, just a routine check-up for her. We got there early, ... and we waited, and waited, and we were told the Dr. was running behind. We waited some more. Eventually we got out of the Dr's office, had a quick late lunch and it was time to pick up my son from school. We got home, did some homework, and all of a sudden it was time for dinner. Tonight's reading selection, The Magic School Bus, Weathers the Storm. Busy day, I think I did okay on calories, but my water intake was low and my salt intake was high. *sigh* I expect t

Monday was a holiday so today was my usual mundane Monday ritual of doing housework. After a 3 day weekend, I felt sleepy all day long. It felt like such a blah day. All of a sudden I got a second wind. I am a fan of The Biggest Loser and of Jillian Micheals. Today I found out Jillian Micheals will be returning to The Biggest Loser for season 14. Yay! My motivator and motivating show are on their way, January 2013. I want to share what I had for dinner, Grand Parisian Salad. I added Jennie-O Turkey Kielbasa, celery, kale, and some bell peppers.

Happy Labor Day Weekend! We spent the day at Disney's California Adventure. We started out with, "It's the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Come inside, it's fun inside, ..." It certainly is a catchy tune. The Newspaper boys were pretty nice too. Reminded me how far we have come. A long time ago there were boys selling newspapers at street corners, the paper boy delivered it to your door. Nowadays, it's an adult who delivers it to my door, or I can go online and get the latest news electronically. We caught a few other shows and some rides too. The Radiator Racer's has got to be a family favorite. Cars Land is a cool place to sit and people watch in a little town called Radiator Springs. Throughout the day we kept seeing people wearing their medals. Saturday was Disney's 1/2 Marathon. I got to chit-chat with some participants and they have inspired me to try harder to get into one of the 1/2 Marathon races. I have been contemplating it for while,

As I went through  my day I thought about what I would blog about at the end of my day. I would get excited because there were things I wanted to share. Then, I would get a bit bummed out because one of my blogs would be left behind, out of the loop. I blog about my weight loss journey on Blogger and on my SparkPage on SparkPeople.com. Unfortunately, I have been blocked on SparkPeople's Facebook page. Every time I made an entry on SparkPeople.com I would make a post on SparkPeople's Facebook page and include a link to my SparkPage on SparkPeople.com. I did ask if I could do such a thing and I was told I could. Now that I find I am blocked, I am told, "I asked the person who runs the facebook page about this, and they told me that the only reason your posts would not show up is if you have been blocked from posting.  People who promote their own facebook pages, websites, products, etc., are removed from the facebook page.  Could that have been the case?" I have d

The Fair is in town and we had to go. Since the fair started yesterday, they are holding special admission prices this entire Labor Day Weekend. We got in for $1, but parking was $15. They had $1 soda from 1pm-4pm (or maybe it was 'til 5pm). Originally I had been planning on taking a 5 mile walk before heading to the Fair, but I didn't. I stayed up a bit late last night so this morning I did not feel like getting up. I figured I was going to get some walking in at the Fair any way, so all I had to do was to be careful of what I ate. I had breakfast at home and packed a lunch. How'd I do? Pretty good. I had 1 treat and turned a blind eye to the calories. Curly fries with chilli and cheese. Ah! I did not have the whole thing. I had somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of basket. I threw away a good portion of it so I would not be tempted to nibble on them some more. They were yummy so I know I could have finished the whole thing by myself. It was a hot day an