Is this thing on?

About 4 weeks in and I am down (I wish I could say 10 dammit!) 9 lbs. It's been a bit of a long road, but it's a big step in the right direction.  I still have 6 to lose this month (yikes) to meet my goal. But we are trucking along.  The 3 day military diet worked a little, I guess.  I was pretty much cheating and a hungry mean person by day 3 but I lost 4 lbs. I ended up gaining 1 lb back, only to lose it again a couple days ago.  Some days I just don't want to do it. It is getting hard to stay motivated, and I am pretty hungry all the time. But that's what happens. Jillian Michael's says "Get comfortable with uncomfortable." in one of her DVDs and I am at that stage! This is a life change, and life change of any sort is HARD WORK! You just can't afford to be inconsistent.

I'm still plugging away at 4-5 days of cardio.  I keep trying to add strength training to that, but that only happens about 1 day a week.  I'll try for 2 next week, scouts honor! I did start running again and instead of trying to work my way through the c25k program I decided to just screw it and go balls to the wall and put in 2 miles every other day.  And I did, I logged 6 miles this week, improving my total time by over 1 min. (It's half running, half walking, I wish I could just jump right in and trot 2 miles! Psh!) I also add in some turbo jam or one of my Jillian workouts on my off days.

My next move is cutting back on calories even more, trying like heck to stay in the 1200-1500 range, since it looks like I'll be nursing even less now that little guy is eating solids. I'm a little sad to lose out on the calorie burning benefits of nursing! But he and I have found a good groove where he nurses about 3 times a day. And I am done pumping in the middle of the night! Whew!

Send happy thoughts my way, as the next couple weeks I'm looking for a big push at 3 lbs each week. I could use the good mojo!! I am also trying another detox drink thing, that doesn't affect my eating (Yea!) but should cause me to lose some water weight. Again, I'll be your Guinna pig and report back to you! If you'd like to know more about the 3 day military diet, just shot me a message!

Winning at pinning, food, ch. 2

I was supposed to do this yesterday, oops. We got busy doing nothing in particular and I never got to it.  But here is another winner, winner chicken dinner recipe from pinterest that we love.

Mini Chicken Pot Pies:

 Ok, pretty freaking easy:

*Bisquick (my hub does this part and mixes 2 batches worth to get 12 mini pies, also stick with the only use water kind, I buy a big box because we use it for tons of other things which I'll feature here as well!)
*Diced chicken
*Add your own  diced veggies ( we used carrots and potatoes the first time, but the carrots were still crunchy and I don;t love cooked carrots, so we just used the potatoes the second time. You should nuke the potato in the micro for 7 mins to get it tender)
*I thought of this genius idea of using cream of chicken soup as the traditional "gravy" for the pot pies, and let me tell you, it was fabulous!! I used about a tbsp and will try 2 tbsp's next time!
*Shredded cheddar

preheat oven to 375
Mix up your 2 batches of pancake mix and fill a greased (or pam or whatevs) muffin tin with 1 tbsp of mixture

Add veggies and chicken
Add cream of chicken soup on top of veggies and chicken

Cover with 1 tbsp of batter
Add a sprinkle of shredded cheese (or you can mix it in with your chicken and veggies)
Bake for 25-30 mins (they should be a nice golden color)

These are so good, and you can make them and freeze them for later (apparently) and also mix and make different types as well. My little guy even loves these kid sized friendly "muffins"

Enjoy!!

It's all for science

So, last week I had a bad week.  And by bad I mean that I didn't lose any weight.  I didn't gain any either, but I did work out 4 days for what seemed like nothing.  Boo.  I was sooo ridiculously hungry all week and I had no idea why.  Was it from working out so much? Was it from not eating as much as my fat A is used to? Or was I just hungry for no reason at all?  Then the answer became very clear, something that I didn't anticipate, Aunt Flo showed up.  I was wondering when she'd return, usually right around nine months post-partum my OB said, but my Aunt showed up a few months early.  It's cool, I'd rather get this show on the road and get back to normal. But since the mystery was solved (and copious amounts of food was eaten!) I have resolved to be much more proactive this week. 

I have decided to take it up a notch since now my knee (praise the Lord!!) is feeling much better.  Work outs will still be 4 days a week BUT an hour long each day, with weight training added in.  And I am starting a 3 day "military diet" tomorrow. After I complete it, I will let you know the results and give you the deets, but for now, let me be your Guinna pig.  You all probably know that my philosophy is never about finding a quick fix, it's about slow and steady wins the race, but I'm looking at this as a "detox" of sorts after my naughty weekend, and as usual, I will probably slightly modify it to meet my needs.

I am close to hitting my first goal, losing all weight gained from Lucas, I have 11 lbs to go and plan on killing that this month.  Then it's off to conquering my Ethan weight gain, which will end up being about 38 more lbs...yikes!! But the goal is to have that gone by Jan 1st!! Then to my Everest!! The final 30-50 ( I may hit a certain wight and be cool with never reaching my soft goal weight) To which I promise some gnarly before and after pics, but there's no way in H-E double hockey sticks I'm putting up before pics without there being some afters to show as well!! Yikes! Stick with me kids, this is the real deal this time!

Winning at pinning, food, ch. 1

Heyo....So lately I've been making some food and crafts that I've gotten off of pinterest and I really want to share some of it with you all because stuff this awesome! This is the food part of this "series" I'll probably also do a craft series. It depends on how much y'all like this part. So, feedback??

This week's recipe is one we tried last week and it was so sublimely tasty I wanted to share it first! We ate the whole thing and I could have made two and eaten one by myself! Here is the original link, as I never follow a recipe to the T, I love having a little room for creativity so I just follow the basics. Thanks to emmalinaviolet.wordpress.com for the original recipe and photos, because credit is due where it's found!

Buffalo chicken garbage bread (or as I'm going to call it, Buffalo Chicken Calzone!)

1 tube of premade pizza dough (or any pizza dough, rolled into a rectangle, I get the Pillsbury stuff)
1-2 cups diced chicken (ok, I didn't really measure, I use the frozen diced Tyson chicken and eyeball it)
2 cups of mozz cheese ( I only know this because 1 bag of shredded cheese = 2 cups)
Hot sauce
ranch dressing ( or blue cheese if you prefer...)

Grab that pizza dough and roll it out to form a rectangle, let that bad boy sit for about 20 mins.

Spread dough with a layer of ranch, here I didn't measure either, I used a basting brush and brushed on probably about a half a cup of ranch, if you use too much it will definitely overpower the roll.

Toss the (cooked) diced chicken in hot sauce, use as much of the hot sauce as you'd like here, we went easy on it this round, next time we will use much more for that extra kick! Add chicken to dough, here you can also add more hot sauce if you'd like, experiment!!

Put shredded cheese on top of all this deliciousness, you can use all 2 cups or as little as you'd like, but if you like  cheesy, gooey goodness, use 2 cups, it's perfect.

Roll that beautiful creation up like a burrito, it will be sticky so be gentle as to not tear the dough.

Bake at 425 for 20-25 mins, it should be nice and brown on the outside, but apparently sometimes it can be doughy on the inside, ours came out perfect at 25 mins.

Eat the crap out of this yummy stuff! If you try this one, please let me know how you liked it!