The holidays bring joy and…well lots of food.

Let me start by saying MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope everyone thus far has had a wonderful holiday season.

Next let me say how much it sucks that the gym is closed on such holidays. There are plenty of people who a) do not celebrate these holidays, b) who work these holidays, and c) who just want gym time to combat their holiday food! I realized how crummy it is that they can't have a few worker bees at the gym on holidays. I work holidays, lord knows the hospital never closes. Gas stations, Jack in the Box, grocery stores for a certain amount of time, plenty of people work holidays. I wish there were some gyms that were just open!

Now that the rant and rave is over… weekly update time! Last week I posted a picture of my workout calendar with all my pretty highlighted colors on it. Well, haha… my brother came in that Thursday, then there was a party where we drank a lot on Friday, and Saturday was an entire day of family early Christmas celebration. So now, for the month of December, I have 4 naughty orange marks from days I should have worked out but didn't. I can't fault myself too much for it being the holidays and all--even though I just complained that the gym should be open…! :) Well this week has been back on track. Colin and I are changing our gym routine. Not only does a lot rely on my physical well being this year, but so does his. He is leaving for a 9 month intense super medic course with a lot of physical demands. Sunday we went ahead and tried it out, after an 1 hour and a half of pumping weights, dripping sweat, and being sore for legitimately 4 days, it worked. That's our new plan and we're sticking to it.

This week finishes up a month of Brazil Butt Lift. I think my butt is more square now like… sponge bob square pants, it's weird and I don't like it. The next two weeks is the advanced part of the program and then I'll move on to Hip Hop Abs. Today I was cleared by my orthopedic surgeon to go forth and conquer the military nursing job. So I really have to kick it in gear. I have been doing 100 push ups and 100 sit ups daily in addition to my 1-2 hours of work outs daily. I really need to be doing more cardio however so that's on me to use my elliptical, swim, light runs, etc. That's the next goal is introducing those things.

For Christmas my awesome parents got me the fitbit force. I am completely in love. http://www.fitbit.com/force So, a brief overview of what it does: it has a clock, you can use the timer function to start and stop times of workouts, it tracks steps taken, distance traveled, active minutes, stairs climbed, calories burned, hours slept, quality of sleep, and a silent alarm (which is awesome, Colin doesn't wake up now!). It also has a food diary but the cool thing is that it connects with MyFitnessPal which what I use to log my food. So based on my activity for the day and projected activity for the rest of the day, with my 500 cal deficit a week for 1 lb weight loss/weekly, it will adjust how many calories I can eat the rest of the day. It.is.AWESOME. I am super obsessed. There is the band I wear on my wrist which is stylish and gives you all those featured numbers, a phone app, and the whole overview with charts and data and stats on the website. I'm in love. So I've been tracking everything this week and have been kicking butt. I realized where part of my weight gain came from however. Christmas was yesterday we did family stuff, sat around, napped, and ate food. No gym (cause it was closed duh). I ate my usual 1600ish calories and barely even burned that much to include my BMR. CRAZY. So I think back to the last few months and all my days off which all I did was eat nap watch tv eat nap watch tv. More intake than outtake = wt gain. Bam. Not any more. This awesome thing really plays into my OCD. I'm motivated. I check it all the time. And at the end of the day if I'm not where I need to be I can do some quick exercises or take the dogs around the block. But throughout the day I really aim to meet my fitness goals and this tracks it all and keeps me going. Seriously worth the $129 for it if you're serious about your fitness goals and you don't mind being ocd. There are less complicated and less featured ones out there. It really helps sink in that my days off I have got to be active to meet my goals.

Today I also took a lovely trip to Whole Foods. Colin has decided for 2014 his goal will to be more health and fitness oriented as well. Which means, he is going to be pretty much doing the Whole 30 with me (and we will use almond milk for our protein shakes as a somewhat dairy--but no dairy other than that!). I am super stoked because that'll make it much easier for me. Not only is there the Boise Co Op and Whole Foods, Trader Joe's is right around the corner and almost built. So we have plenty of good places within 10 minutes of us for our healthy groceries. It'll be a month of struggle as far as using are recipes and creating food diversity, but we'll make it, together. I'm really excited now that I've about finished an entire month really getting good work out time and in the habit that I can now work on some additional dietary changes. I'm not going to count my chickens just yet, but I'm down to 121 now and 20% body fat. Progress!

Justin (Colin's brother) and his parents, got us two awesome recipe books: The Men's Health BIG Book of Food & Nutrition and The Healthiest Meals on Earth. That along with the Whole 30 recipes, we should be good to go. Next week we'll have our weekly grocery list and take a trip to the Co Op and Whole Foods. Obviously it's ridiculous to throw out everything in our pantry and fridge, so we'll use up what we have and anything we need comes from healthy organic sources. Your health shouldn't have a cost--so we're willing to cough up some more money to alter what we put in our bodies. Super excited!

That's it for now. I'm going to go through some recipes and make plans and grocery lists. Anything we make that tastes good I'll be sure to share on the recipe section. This week I've just been kicking up doing 10,000+ steps a day (5+ miles a day), being under the projected calorie requirements, and doing the stairs at work. Baby steps.

Happy holidays, talk to you next week. It'll be another drinking period but it'll be our last one for a while. New Year's Eve party and the 1st is our 4th year anniversary so more drinking. Thennnn we'll be right on track. Don't forget, mindful eating on the holidays! Stick to the protein and veggies and super small servings of the rest of the stuff, and don't go back for seconds unless it's for the meat!

-Nicolette

PS: Weekly motivation quotes, this first one, I'm finishing 4 weeks and I'm seeing my body change!

And if you every ask yourself this question, the answer is YES! This is the flowchart I love the most.

Try try again

Well, it's been since JULY since I've blogged. There has been a lot that has happened in the last several months. I ended July with a full month of Insanity. I learned to love it, loved the soreness, loved the energy, loved the changes my body was going through. I mentioned before August would bring Army annual training and surgery. It ended up being both at the same time pretty much. I stopped blogging because I felt I needed some privacy to deal with all the stress of my life at the time. SO what happened? And what made me blog again? To spare you all the details I'll give an abbreviated version of the last few months.

1) Annual training did a week in the field (kinda sucked at the time!!!)
2) Underwent surgery (ovary remnant and tube removed anddd a inguinal hernia repair with mesh all at the same time)
3) 2-3 days later went back to annual training and stayed on base to finish it up
4) Finished recovery from surgery and started physical therapy for pubic symphysis instability (basically the front bone of the pelvic ring sucks and hurts all the time)
5) Switched from night shift to day shift, found working out time to be way harder
6) ALL my days off filled with doctors appointments
7) Weight gain from hormone adjustment (and not the best eating habits and too tired to work out with 12 hr shifts)

That probably sums up the majority of it. I'm still doing physical therapy and massage therapy weekly. The mesh from the hernia repair is (just my luck) peeling up!! So pelvic pain from the instability and pain with the mesh. How fun! Can't get into see my surgeon until January, so we're heat packing it and see if I can form some scar tissue to tack that sucker back down. Lucky me!!!

So the reason I'm jump starting my blog again is to help keep myself accountable with healthy life style choices and of course having the support from the wonderful people in my life. According to my last post early July, I was 116. Dec 1st I started a fitness program and I was 124! According to my doctor last week I've gained 4 pounds since the end of August after surgery, and 12 pounds since I started seeing him 3 years ago (not bad  right?!) You'd think hey that's not bad, BUT the majority of those 12 pounds have been this year alone.  I've been exhausted. Sleep as much and as often as I can without feeling like it helps. Not as chipper as usual. Diet not great but not the worst. It's just discouraging to start a program and due to work or medical issues having to stop. So there we go, it was time to start up again and keep it up.

December 1st I created a workout program and have been sticking to it thus far. I haven't taken pictures and I haven't taken measurements. Definitely not the priority right now. The priority is gaining my energy back, feeling better, and trying to be pain free. I'm hoping 2014 will be a better year for all parts of my life!!! I can say from Dec 1 with my exercise program and enforcing myself to have a bed time, I've been feeling a ton better already.

So here we go Dec 1, 2013 my start weight was 124. I know for a fact from the doctors office last week I've lost 2 pounds so far. So my 2 week check in I'm 122. My goal is still about the same. I want to get down to 110. 2 down, 12 to go. See the pictures below for my motivational tools!! Since working 12 hour DAY shifts (yay!) it's been really hard to find a time to work out. No way in hell I'm getting up between 4-5ish am to work out! And it's really hard to work out after a 12 hour shift. I've made a pact with myself. Days that I have to work I work out for 1 hour and so far it's been after work. Colin has been supportive in giving up some us time so that I can work out after work. It sucks because I come home, work out, shower, and then get to spend an hour with him before my 10 pm bedtime! But we've been making it work pretty well. One of my goals is to be able to start my day with my hour work out before work instead so after work is us time. Then, on days I do not work, I work out 2 hours a day usually if Colin is free an hour of that is with him. It seems like a lot but it's working! I feel more energetic, I get plenty of rest and have a bed time, and my body is responding to it. I still have pain and that sucks. But more to come on that after the surgeon appointment in Jan.

Now, I'm on the tail end of my recovery for my surgery. I've had a lot of trauma to my abdominal and pelvic region to include 2 surgeries, a pelvic stress fracture, and the instability! So as far as abs and upper legs go, I really have to be careful and go slow (as proven with the stupid hernia thing). While I am dyingggggg to go back to Insanity, that is totally the wrong answer. I absolutely love Beach Body programs and with my crazy schedule, it really helps to work out at home with DVDs. So, I lined up the programs. I'm doing Brazil Butt Lift right now. I'll move on to Hip Hop Abs, then Turbo Jam, then Turbo Fire, THEN Insanity, and the Asylum 1 and 2. It'll be a good 8 months or so of building up to Insanity again. Good progression. Inbetween the DVD workouts, I also bought myself an elliptical as an early Christmas present. So I have some low impact cardio I get to do. Then the weight lifting I do with Colin (benching 85 lbs woo). It's a good spread!! So 1 hour a day when I work a 12, 2 hours a day on days off. So far so good. Check out the pictures below.

I literally created a calendar from Dec 1 13 to Dec 31 14 with my workout schedule 6 days a week the entire year. I put my work schedule in there and adjust to my work vs off days. Every day lists what workout I'm doing. Every week has a weekly goal to accomplish. Every month has a goal to accomplish as well. I have specific colors I highlight the days with for a rest day, workout day, and missed work out day when I didn't do an exercise. Here's my calendar for December. I've missed 1 day so far this month (out of the 18 days). So this visually motivates me to see what I've accomplished! I take all my workouts and put them into www.mapmyfitness.com  It's an awesome phone app and keeps track of my work outs to include hours worked out and calories burned. I write that to the right of each week when it's complete.

In addition to the calendar and fitness app, I saw this idea on pinterest and created it. A weight gained jar with some marbles and a weight lost jar with some marbles. 14 marbles in the left jar with my start date and weight, then 2 marbles in the right jar with my goal weight and date. I'm aiming for my goal by my 26th birthday so giving myself 6 months to make weight. It's pretty exciting actually to move a marble from the gained to the lost jar.

So rather than working on all this weight and exercise business, I know that 80% of weight loss/gain is about what you put in your body; the food you eat! I recently read the book It Starts With Food, Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life In Unexpected Ways. It's an awesome book and the program has changed many peoples lives. So, while it has some great information and I'd like to try it out, I'm not going to go full blown with it. It's really hard to do some sort of diet when your significant other isn't doing one, and you can't clean out the fridge and cabinets. It goes off the basis of the paleo diet without being obsessive and strict. Essentially you have to cut out all the crap (and the alcohol!! :( ) and base your meals off protein, vegetables, some fruit, and healthy fats (no dairy, gluten, booze, etc). So that's the basis of it. Good read and I definitely recommend it. http://www.whole9life.com/itstartswithfood/

The biggest thing I need from friends is good recipes! I really need some recipes mostly for vegetables and crock pot meals. That's my hardest thing to eat veggies in different ways and making meals on those 12 hour days. Any help with that would be awesome! After the holidays I'll have finished a solid 4.5 weeks of exercise and then I'll do the harder part of the diet clean up. In the mean time I'll just keep focusing on introducing veggies.

Well I'm tired, I've talked myself out. In some exciting side news, I'm applying to be a Nursing Officer in the Army! It'll be like going to drill as I do now, but as an officer and doing a nursing job rather than being an enlisted medic. Wish me luck!

Until next week,
Nic

And to keep up with tradition, here's the weekly motivators!

(and 2 hours is only 8%!)