Day 58/365 Blood Donation

I gave blood today.  I have always enjoyed doing it.  Such an easy way to bless another life.  Today I hit the two gallon mark.  16 people have received my blood throughout the years.  It would have been a whole bunch more but you can't donate while pregnant and it's a good thing to avoid while your nursing so you don't mess with your fluids.  After spending the last decade doing both, I haven't been a regular at the blood bank.

If you have never given blood, I encourage you to give it a try.  They are so good to you at a blood bank and it's painless.  Today, I didn't even feel a poke, she was that good.  Did you know it takes less than 10 minutes to squeeze out a quart when you are hydrated?  (Be sure to drink a BIG glass of water a couple of hours before you go in.)  If I could do this weekly, I would.

What I did today:
Elliptical Trainer 15 min. @ level 15

Day 57/365 Maintenance is the key to success!

I feel so guilty and lame.  I love this journey, I really do, and I feel I have let others down with doing the same thing day after day.  I like to shake things up, spice it up and I haven't been and I apologize.

I have been working on a project and any free moment I have, I am thinking about it.  I will share what it is soon, I promise.  Might be a few months, but I will share at some point.

Until then, I will continue to post every couple of days something more than just "what I did today."

I have to admit, being super busy makes it hard to try to do good, in fact, if you are like me, when you are busy, you like to take it out in your eating. "I'm too busy to think about it, I'll think about it when x is finished." Yea, I have found several pounds with that thinking in the past for certain.

So it's important to remember that no matter what's going on in your life, whether it's happy events, or sad events, busy or slow, whatever it is, you have to remember to keep the thinking that you are going to take care of yourself.

I will say that when I am in a busy mode, I probably won't be actively loosing weight.  But this is okay.  Just don't gain during that time.  If you can just maintain during the busy time you can continue where you left off when you can focus on weight loss again.

I'll explain the pattern:

Loose+maintain+maintain+loose+maintain+loose+maintain=HEALTHY WEIGHT LOSS

Loose+Gain+Maintain+Loose+Gain+Gain=YO YO (Not healthy & VERY frustrating)

So take the pressure off of the "I have to loose" mentality, because it puts on too much pressure.  If you keep the "Healthy choices" mentality and that maintenance is your best friend during stress, you will always come out on top.

What I did today:
Elliptical Trainer 15 min. @ level 15

Three Keys to Lasting Weight Loss Surgery Success

By Kaye Bailey

Nearly a quarter-million people in the United States will undergo weight loss surgery this year to arrest their morbid obesity and lose weight. In spite of the drastic nature of gastric surgeries not all patients will reach a healthy weight and some may eventually regain weight they lost initially with surgery. Obesity is not a simple cosmetic problem of excess body weight than

Sex After Weight Loss Surgery - When is it Okay?

By Kaye Bailey

People recovering from bariatric surgery for the treatment of morbid obesity often look forward to a healthy sex life that may have alluded them due poor health associated with obesity or simply the mechanics of sexual activity with a morbidly obese body. Surgeons are frequently asked how soon a patient will be able to enjoy sexual intimacy following bariatric surgery.

Day 56/365

What I did today:
Elliptical Trainer 15 min. @ level 15

Day 55/365

What I did today:
50 crunches

Bootcamp kicked my butt

Until this morning, I thought I was in excellent physical condition. After this morning, I realized the joke was on me.


Almost every exercise we did this morning was something I hate doing. I hate push ups. I hate lunges. I hate dead lifts. I hate jumping jacks.

Then there were the new exercises that I learned to hate too. The fake swimming exercise with stretchy rope thingies hooked to the wall, the reverse push ups with some straps hanging from the ceiling while lying almost parallel to the floor and holding onto the straps, jumping up on giant tires, the mountain climber exercises with sliding things under my feet, the burpee thing (ugh!).


I wish I could say it was fun, but when is pain fun? When is panting, sweating and gasping for air fun, especially when a young, 20-something handsome male is pushing you really hard, telling you "KEEP GOING, FASTER!!! FASTER!!!"? After fifteen minutes I thought to myself, 'if I get out of here alive, I AM NEVER COMING BACK!'.


After 35 minutes, my heart rate monitor said I'd burned 276 calories. It always reads half of whatever the machines say, so it's fairly accurate. Thirty minutes on the StairMaster only burns 200 calories, so I was happy with the results. Normally the bootcamp class is 45 minutes, but since today was my intro class the first ten minutes was spent going over the exercises with me.


Am I going back on Wednesday? Of course. Will I keep going after my month is up? No. One, normally it's $247 a month which is ridiculous. There are only three people in the morning class, which is also odd. The guy that owns/manages/teaches and is the CEO is about 20. He's in great shape, but he's 20! He was nice and seemed to know what he was doing, but the place was kind of strange.


I was slightly flattered when the owner said he would have to up my weights next time because the 15-pound dumbbells were obviously too light for me and the dead lift weight (I have no idea how much - it was a kettle ball) was too light. Next time he said he'd make sure I used heavier weights than the other women. I guess that's a good thing.


The most valuable lesson I learned today is that I don't push myself hard enough on my own, and I'm very competitive when it comes to exercising. Hence, group exercise classes are probably what I need to focus on to get the best workout possible. 


When other people are doing the hard stuff, like push ups, it's hard for me to say I can't do it. I feel like I have to prove something, like I may be 20 years older than you, but I can do everything you can do (and more!).


Overall it was okay. Maybe it'll be more fun when I feel more comfortable with the exercises. It was a lot of stuff to learn very quickly, and a lot of hard work. Plus the ton of lunges I did just about killed me. My butt is already sore!