Week one completed…

So my fitbit sends me things and this is a recap of last week. My first full week with the fitbit. I’m still working on figuring it all out but so far it’s done most of the work for me. I lost 1.1 lbs and didn’t eat any cereal or bread. It’s a beginning. Now it’s onto week 2. I had some gluten free bread and I’m not impressed but if I’m really missing it I can make this a go to bread. I had some rice cold cereal and I’m not impressed but know that this can be a good too also. I think I’ll just stick with no bread and cereal for a while. It’s to early in the plan to add these things back anyways.

Yesterday I got a gift from Deb. She sent me the Wheat Belly book written my William Davis, MD. We are going to read this together and learn how to limit and enjoy without feeling deprived and to learn why we need to do this. Since I’m not self diagnoising me, I’m just looking for a better way to eat and feel good I’m not going to take all wheat from my diet but will learn from this book the goods and bads and go from there. There has to be a place in the middle that works for health, body and soul and the mind that has to agree too.

So my stats from my fitbit for my first full week are below. I am doing okay and just need to keep it up. I am fine with a 1.1lb loss and don’t care if it takes me a year to loss all I want too as long as I listen to my body and teach it a few things along the way.

Hi Julie R., here are your weekly stats.

3/03/2014 to 3/09/2014

WEEK'S MOST ACTIVE DAY
Fri, Mar 7

WEEK'S LEAST ACTIVE DAY
Sun, Mar 9

TOTAL STEPS
79,074
DAILY AVERAGE
11,296 steps
BEST DAY
14,732 steps

TOTAL DISTANCE
34.07 miles
DAILY AVERAGE
4.87 miles
BEST DAY
6.36 miles

CALORIES IN VS OUT
-8211
WEEKLY TOTAL
18455 cals burned
6744 cals eaten
-3500 plan deficit

WEIGHT CHANGE
1.1 lb loss

AVG SLEEP DURATION
7 hrs 32 min
(good thing for weekends because my average sleep on the week days is less than 6).

Last week's badges

Take care my friends. I hope that you all have an awesome week. Blessings!!!

Almost wordless Wednesday….a bit early because I will forget...

This is what I drove this past weekend for a pep-band activity to Bagley. The band was awesome, the girls basketball team tried. I love my job both week days with 40-50 kids and weekends to activities.
Blessings my friends!

My first full week with my fitbit….

I am loving my fitbit. It’s helping me keep on track. I have anywhere’s from 4500 steps (on a Saturday where I go and do not to much but house stuff) to 15,000-18,000 steps where I’ve gone for a hike or walk with Mike or Kim (I go on my own too but I really love the company to walk with).

So today it’s 40 and sunny. It’s our first 40* day since last October. I took my daddy out for a walk and than I went for a jolk. Daddy and I went for 1.5 miles and than I went for another 2 miles. It is so nice to be in the sun and also getting out there doing something other than quick walks in town.

 

Do you notice the fence behind me? It’s a 5’ fence and there’s only about 10” of fence showing and the snow has settled some in the past couple of days with this warmth. We have snow!

So here’s to a good week. Tomorrow is weigh in. I’m not expecting much but I would like to see a bit of a result from no bread or cereal and today is day 7 without them both. I didn’t die without it but it still calls my name though not as loudly at first. I’m going to keep this up for another week and I’m also going to add limited sugar. I’m going to be fine with the sugar that comes in fruits, veggies, milk and juice but I won’t have things that I have added it to or candy.

I’ll tell you tomorrow what is up, or hopefully down that is.

Take care my friends and have an awesome week. Blessings to you all!!

Today . . .

Food in, not great in the calorie count but good that it wasn’t cereal or bread. Had dinner at the DQ with Mike, his treat, and over indulged. I did track it all though.

My walking and hike with Mike was awesome.

And I didn’t wear it this morning, I forgot to charge my fitbit last night. So I know I’m over the 10,000 steps for the day. I also had 17 minutes of very active which was my fast walking with Mike in our 45 minutes out.

So I slowly getting back into the swing of it. Gotta cut those calories though, I was at 2240….that’s double my normal intake.

Here I come day three. No cereal, no bread and no candy. Another hike. But first a good night sleep.

Sleep well my friends. Good night. Blessings!!!

Happy dance….

Not because I have it all together, heck I’m so far from all together it isn’t funny. I’m doing the happy dance because you guys commented, you guys had some ideas, you guys gave me support. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much.

Now day one went great with no cold/hot cereal and no bread. It was/is hard. Today isn’t any better however I thought a bit ahead and bought some banana’s, yogurt, cottage cheese and sweet peppers yesterday so have a little more go to stuff. So breakfast was a banana and yogurt and lunch was two cut up sweet peppers and cottage cheese. I am thinking soup for supper though don’t have time for homemade but do have two cans of healthy choice chicken and something and there’s a tiny bit of salad left.

For now the only things I’m going to even try and do is keep cereal and bread out of my diet and move my butt more. I’m not going to tackle anything else until I know I can skip that oh so yummy cold cereal and toast.

Marc took some time to email me a few words and that was the one that had me thinking. All of your comments were awesome, but Marc’s stood out and all day long yesterday I thought about it. He pointed out a couple things to me that I just couldn’t see beyond my fat. I am not a lazy, eat everything wrong, don’t take care of myself person. I just needed to see some good.

So it’s on, not a real diet, but it’s on. Learning to listen to my body, getting what I need and doing what I do best and that’s taking care of and helping others and working as hard as I can.

Suzi told me that I could copy some of her meals because making up a menu way ahead of time just isn’t for me. But she usually has the same stuff in her kitchen that I do or should I say I have the same as her…..anyways, I’m just going to take a few of her meals and work with them.

It’s a start, it’s step in the right direction. And tonight, it’s suppose to be near 25* (this morning when I got up it was –20 and I wasn’t not in the least bit thrilled) so Mike and I are going for a walk. We can’t get on the trails yet so we’ll just walk around his town and just enjoy the warmth. Going to take the dogs too because I’m not the only round one in this family, Wilbur is getting there too.

Blessing my friends. This is the day the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. I’m trying, hope you can too.

Fail, failure, just plain stupid and I can’t get it together….

I know what I need to do. I know even how to do it (well sort of), I just can not kick it in the butt and do it. The scale is going in the wrong direction. It started out pretty good in January and after that things didn’t keep going. I really need to start over, I really need too.

Do you think it’s okay to have day 1 yet again? How about a day 1 never to be seen again?

Mike bought me a fitbit. I have wanted one for a very long time and now I have one. It’s only 3 days old and so far I’ve learned that my sleep cycle bites, my steps are anywhere from 8000-15000 but they are just steps. It says the hardest I’ve worked is 7 minutes in a row and we all know that isn’t a calorie burner. There are lots of things on this band I need to learn.

I need help my friends. I don’t know if any of you read me anymore but if you do I need you. I am fat, miserable and I don’t even feel good. I think I have figured out that if I eat cold cereal, oatmeal, bread in anything but tiny portion I feel yucky. Not sure what that means yet either. Giving up these things, well to be honest, make me worried. They are my mainstay. It’s what I will eat 3 times a day (yep, I know it’s bad, that’s why the scale creeps in the wrong direction).

So gotta start somewhere. Where will that be? More to come ….. I hope.

Blessings!!

Project….

Well when you have a day off you do some work, you do some relaxing and you do some crafting. So I did the work…shoveling and shoveling and shoveling …. well lots of that. I cleaned the kitchen. I watched a full hour of the news. And than I made these….

a sun catcher ….

  

A cake plate….

Don’t look to close to the bottom of the cake plate, I didn’t have a big enough cake pan so used my cast iron skillet and it burned a little bit. But the top turned out awesome.

And I popped me some popcorn and I found a bunny.

  

And I made the birds and squirrels some food. Per usual money is short so that means they don’t get sunflower seeds but they sure do love the mixture I made up for them. Peanut butter, corn, apples, cranberries and oatmeal and a tiny bit of bacon grease.

It’s only 3:30. I never have time for just me, now what should I do. I could color my hair.

Blessing my friends!!!

A tale of a Minnesota winter morning….

It’s Friday, yea!! the weekend is coming I’m going skiing, it’s going to be a great day. Yeah right, as I look out and there’s 13” of new snow and it’s blowing to beat the band. Well they did say  some 1-5” and it was suppose to be a bit breezy. Get up, it’s 4:45 time to get dressed. No calls from work so we are on for the day. Get dressed, brushed teeth, phone rings ….. Good morning, school is two hours late this morning (I did check wcco to make sure just in case they forgot to call me). Look at clock, look at snow, look at bed….heck it’s an hour more sleep. I get back into bed (mostly dressed) and dream stupid dumb dreams I can’t remember but do remember them being stupid. Get up a tiny bit early cuz I know the roads aren’t nice and now that it’s light out I can see this….Gotta dig the cars out (notice the thermometer? It’s zero. Notice the windsock sticking straight out? It’s windy). Jim goes out and starts them, I get dressed into my santa suit (that damn red snowsuit I really hate but it’s warm), and move the cars down the driveway and clean them off. Les calls, he’s stuck in his driveway can I come get him, okay gotta run…good thing I got up and ready once.

Jim said he’d go first to clear a path but than stops at the end of the drive way to clean his windshield. I scoot around him and head up the road to find 2 cars stuck in a drift in the middle of the road and 1 being pulled out by a pick up truck. I slow down and figure I can squeeze pass them, I have a little blazer. NOPE!! NADA!! Opps the ditch pulled me in like sticky paste. There I sit and fume because I have places to be, things to do and there’s a couple of cars that were in my way and now there’s three. Jim comes up behind me, looks at my car says I can’t pull that out and say he has to get to work and leaves me there. He’s smiling knowing that if I had waited for him to just clean off his windshield maybe it would of been him instead of me. I walk 1/3 mile back to my uncle, up hill both ways in snow that’s up to my butt in places and wake him up. I get his truck started, the chains and tire ready and he comes out with a “I’m saving you, you owe me” smile. It’s now a bit after 8:00 and I leave the bus garage at 8:30 today (usually 6:30) and I haven’t even got my bus pre tripped or started. Mark saves me and make sure I make it to the highway and I call in to find out ….SCHOOL IS CANCELLED!!!! UGH!!!

Went to my parents on the way home and shoveled for an hour just so they can get out the front door and down the steps safely. Came home and shoveled because I have another load of coal to unload (that’s what’s under the blue tarp on the red truck). I did 5 loads, enough for today/tomorrow and Sunday morning. I’ll deal with the rest later.

 

My shovel job. It’s not wide by any means but at least a path to the back shed where the coal and fire is.

This is our coal elevator, the metal thing going parallel to the snow (the other is our dragline). Couldn’t use that anyways, can’t get the snow out of the way.

The snowdrifts is as tall as our 250 gallon fuel oil barrel. Nothing in there but it’s there in case we have an extra grand just sitting around to fill it up. That little building is the playhouse and slide. Don’t think the kids will be using that for a few weeks.

 

Don’t think we’ll be using out camper for a few months either. Oh winter, I wish you’d just go away.

Now no skiing tomorrow either (I was taking new scouts skiing and with the snow and wind and cold tomorrow figured I’d rather take them when it’s nicer out so they’ll want to go again, than when it’s not and they may not have fun), I’m taking an activity to Pierz. Need the pay, no work Monday or today….UGH again!!!!  Bus driver, no hands on the wheel, no pay.

Oh well, the life of this Riley. Hope your Friday is safe and awesome. I’m really not complaining cuz no one was hurt, I got more than enough exercise for today, my mama made me breakfast, I got extra coal done before I even knew I had a trip tomorrow, I have a trip tomorrow, I have this afternoon to just putz and do a craft if I want too. And the snow is pretty though I really would prefer some green grass sooner than later.

 

Blessings!!!!

Help….

Does anyone know how, have a pattern, know a website, can teach me …. how to take a hooded sweatshirt that chocks me and open it up and either put a zipper in it or at least open it up and have it look nice.

I did one a long time ago by just slicing it opened and sewing in a placket but it really didn’t look that great.

I love sweatshirts, in fact I wear one just about every day in the bus because you know that door opens and closes 50+ times a trip and out goes my heat each time.

I’ve been looking at pinterest a lot and have found a couple sorta ideas but not exactly what I’m looking for. I’ll keep looking but thought just maybe one of you guys have done this and have a pattern or something to share with me.

Hope that all is well with you. No school here tomorrow so I have daycare. It’s Abby’s birthday next week so we are celebrating it tomorrow. She wants pancakes for breakfast, spaghetti for lunch, chocolate cupcakes and the activity….ice skating. I’ll share pictures.

Take care my friends. Have a blessed night sleep.

P.S.

This is kind of what I have…

 

This is what I’d like….but with a hood

Or this…

Wordless Wednesday….

 

Monster Bobby and no teeth brushing tonight. :-)