Level up with loot!

This is not a sponsored post. It’s also about a month old because I never hit “publish” lol..

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I’ve been chugging along for 2 months to the day,  back on the wagon.  I took my weights and measures today to see how I did and the results were less than stellar. 

In case you can’t read my chicken scratch,  I summarized the results by saying that the difference could just be in the way the measurements are taken. There is no concrete change one way or another. 

I’m motivated to keep going. Despite the heat,  I’m still jazzed about Pokémon GO. Earlier this week,  I walked for 2.5 miles just to hit up a pokemon gym. 

I don’t even walk that far to the regular gym. Of course,  that’s because I quit my membership,  but still.  Hahaha 😁

My most consistent work out has been playing with Little Elfkin. We go for walks,  which is great for my core because in bent over holding her little hands. I rough house,  which is great for lats and traps because I throw her into the air and catch her multiple times daily. 

To keep the motivation going,  I’ve developed a Loot List:

1. Trip to Target (something from the One Spot)
2. New nail Polish
3. New book
4. Fun pens
5. New t-shirt
6. ???

I’m just weeks away from my first big loot, which is the shirt featured at the top of this post. Active Apparel might just be a new go-to for big loot at the end of challenges. I already ordered the shirt and even received it, but I’m saving it up as a reward for a 4 week nerd fitness challenge or something similar. I see the package daily and really want to earn it. 

6 Week Challenge – Week 3

Today’s entry will be a summary of the challenge so far.

Sit tight, Baby Girl, it’s not time yet.

The following is a stream of consciousness about the upcoming arrival of our Baby Girl, and the possibility that it might just be time to start working from home until she gets here. See the rest of the content after the jump!

Body Image + NFR 6WC Challenge 7/27-9/7

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If you’re seeing this on facebook, you’re not getting the full story.  Click the link to read more.

CSA Day 3 – veggie overload!

I’m starting to wonder if maaaybe the CSA wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. I guess when I pictured farm fresh vegetables every week, I had hoped for vegetables that I usually actually eat and enjoy. Bell peppers, carrots, potatoes, even parsnips, cucumber, and celery would be cool! But what have I been getting? Turnips. Kohlrabi. Napa cabbage. I’m all for adventure, but when I get stuck on how to use an item, it gets abused and discarded. I really hate wasting the food 😦

Tonight’s CSA box includes:
– Brats from Von Hansen
– Broccoli
– String Beans
– Peas
– (unidentified root vegetables)
– Lettuce
– Potatoes
– (Unidentified leafy green)
– Purple Kohlrabi

We still have from the LAST CSA:
– Strawberries
– Rhubarb
– Napa cabbage
– Lettuce
– Broccoli
– Kohlrabi
– Beets

Plus, from our standard groceries we have bell peppers, cucumber, carrots, and celery.

This is decidedly a first world problem. I’m not complaining by any means–I’m thankful for the abundance–but I’m also worried about how to best make use of it.

Last night me and Jeff blanched 3/4 of the broccoli, and 3/4 of the string beans, and froze them. We’re giving the beets, some broccoli, and some peas to my parents. I’m hoping my sister wants one of the kohkrabi…

Kohlrabi

The CSA is going to last at least another month, if not longer, so I’m going to use this as an opportunity to expand my veggie horizons and eat a lot more veggies… Even if I *do* have to Google them first 😛

I think dinner tonight will be the brats and a cole slaw of kohlrabi, Napa cabbage, and carrots. I can bring it to my brother’s house to share tomorrow afternoon for lunch ^_^

Chef salad for dinner!

I’ll make another pie!

Broccoli cheddar soup!

Uh… Other stuff!!

Okay, WordPress readers… What would you do? Leave your ideas in the comments below.

End of a Chapter

I burned a bridge last night. This morning, I’m not happy about it, but I’m also not going to ever be the one to start rebuilding it. Because of the interconnectivity of the bridge I burnt with other friendship bridges, another one collapsed, and a couple more are smoldering.

This metaphor isn’t going to last the whole way through this blog entry. Basically, there are a few things that have been, and probably always will be true about me:

1. As a water sign, I’m ruled by emotion.
2. I will drop even good friends like a hot coal if I’m burned. I’d rather have a select few true friends than a plethora of fair weather friends.
3. I call it like I see it.

These three added up yesterday and it ended up spelling the end of an era. Before I was “MegsFitness” on WordPress, I was MegsFitness on SparkPeople.

Through Spark, I really got started in caring about my health, wellness, and fitness. I met a great group of like minded people there and we banded together as the Weight Loss Warriors.

With this group of inspiring women, I ran my first 5k. I completed the warrior dash. I started addressing my hang ups about food. And I realized that I didn’t have to wait until I was skinny to be happy.

There are a few success stories that sprang from that group. Women who set their mind and their money towards achieving their fitness goals and making it their sole mission in life. There are others who made family more of a priority. Others who focused on career first. It was a safe zone where we could, and did, talk about all of these facets of our lives.

And then there’s me.

One of the success stories posted her own personal opinion to her own personal timeline yesterday. But it was so far from the ideals that we had held as warriors that I was appalled. With open eyes today, I see that it’s possible that she just may not have explained herself clearly. The fact of the matter, though, is that she had friends trying to explain on her behalf and not only did she not disagree, but she voted her agreement with the handy dandy ‘like’ button. The message that I was getting loud and clear was that if you’re still fat, it’s your own fault, and you should be ashamed of yourself.  There were caveats and qualifications–she’s not talking about people with a medical condition, or people who are currently in progress of losing weight–she’s only talking about people who are unhappy with their weight and refuse to do anything about it. Well, okay, but how can you tell whether someone has given up by LOOKING at them? That was the question that went unanswered the whole night. The article that was shared in order to illustrate this woman’s disgust was a blog on HuffPo about a woman’s realization that it’s more important for her to be making memories with her son than to constantly be ashamed of her body. Perhaps the unintended message on the WLWs part is that motherhood is no excuse for being fat. This was CERTAINLY the message this woman’s friends were touting.

Here’s the offending paragraph from Huffington Post:

“I vowed to myself, there in that kitschy water park, that I won’t ever sit on the sidelines again. I won’t deny a pool date because I don’t want to wear my bathing suit. I won’t skip the ice cream with my son when he begs me to eat one with him. I won’t enter calories on my phone. I will wear my bathing suit. And I will do it and remember you, the mom at the water park today — and the role model I must be for all my girls.”

And here is just some of the vitriolic response from someone who was supposed to understand:

I went off on her. I called her out for being judgemental of a person based on looks. For not understanding that developing healthy relationships with family are more important than weight loss–but what I should’ve said is that they’re more important than burdening the next generation with the same self consciousness and shame that we had to overcome. Having one ice cream sandwich with your child on a hot summer day does not mean you’ve given up on fitness. I daresay it means you have a healthier relationship with food than someone who is constantly scrutinizing every morsel and tracking every calorie. That’s disordered eating, and it’s not healthy in the long run.

But this blog isn’t about that discussion again. It’s about burning bridges. Of course the natural action from me was to unfriend this person and stop following their fitness page. The angry part of me also called her friends a  douche-canoe and a bitch, respectively.

Then I took it to the Weight Loss Warriors. I asked if we could have a vote on kicking her out. After all, this group was always saying how it’s safe to go to the gym because no one is judging you–and here this member of our ranks was obviously judging everyone who didn’t drop the weight like she did. I expected discussion, even agreement! But I was wrong, and that’s why a second bridge collapsed and even more are smoldering.

Some agreed with me and actually booted the member in question outright. Some completely disagreed with me. One even left the group in a rush of wtf. They wanted to keep the group whole and invite everyone back to talk, but the damage was already done for me.  I’m not going to associate with someone who says that motherhood is an excuse and deems that you’ve given up soley based on the fact that you don’t say no to a summer treat and you’re still overweight.

I’m sad, this morning, about how it played out, and that I felt compelled to leave the group myself. They were such a huge part of my fitness journey and really making it into a lifestyle change. The good news is that I have the like-minded folks as friends on my page, and I still have the Nerd Fitness Academy behind me. I’ll be alright.

We’re Moving!

 

We found this lovely home within our budget… We had gone back and forth a couple times about actually buying it because there’s quite a bit of work that needs to be done in the house.  We had actually rescinded our offer to purchase the home, except the sellers altered the terms of the purchase and we came around.  This gives us so much to actually be excited about…  I know where we’re going to put our Christmas tree, and how I’d like to arrange the dining room.  I can picture what our guest bedroom is going to look like, and I’m pinning up so many ideas for what to do with the unfinished basement.

 

The real deciding factor was when we got our parents to do a walk-through of the house to get a feel for whether the problems that it has are insurmountable or not.  After seeing everything in person–including the pug room, and the spray-painted spare bedroom…

They said that they didn’t see anything that tells them to actually walk away from the house.  I think that the males in the family were impressed with the 30′ x 30′ garage, and I think that no one could really pass up the half-acre yard that’s already fenced in for pupper-duppers:

Even though we went back and forth a few times, we’re still trying to keep the same closing-date as before… so here’s hoping that we’ll be able to move the weekend of 9/27.  It’s going to be a flurry of packing and cleaning until then, and sadly, I have to revert the kitchen back to the brown/yellow/red mess that it was when we first moved in.  There was a term in the contract that said no contact paper, but apparently the office staff didn’t read it any closer than I did.  Thankfully, they’ll let me just remove it instead of keeping my security deposit..

Facebook Hiatus – Taking a Break From Social Media

I finally did it.  I acted on the idea that has been swirling in the back of my mind for more than a month now.  I changed my profile picture, my cover photos, and my settings… and I quit facebook.  For 30 days.  You can probably imagine why I would feel the need to take a break from Facebook.  You might even be reading this blog from your phone, from a place where the world is absolutely carrying on around you.  Or, you could be in the bathroom.  Can’t you be alone with your thoughts for even five minutes?

That’s the critique I gave myself, because I am on my phone, specifically on Facebook, CONSTANTLY.  Quite literally (not figuratively), I check my phone first thing in the morning before I get out of bed.  I’m not afraid to say that I bring my phone into the bathroom with me.  Everyone does it.  I check Facebook on the computer before I leave for work.  I check it again as I’m in my car, before I even pull out of the stall.  I check it after I park at work, just looking for something new that I might have missed.  I check it during the work day–it’s almost constantly in the background.  I check it in my car before I drive home from work, again in the parking spot at home, and then I migrate to my computer–and Jeff is on his–then we stare at our electronic devices in bed, then we kiss and fall asleep.

And why?  There is figuratively nothing worth looking at on my social media feed.  Good vs. evil, what state you should live in, what your vernacular says about you–and Buzzfeed! Gods, Buzzfeed.  What a time suck.

What am I missing?  Well, I don’t know–because it’s been this way for about a year or so.  I’m missing spending QUALITY time with my husband, I know that for sure.  I’m missing out on rich interactions with my friends because we’ve ‘interacted’ enough via facebook already that day.  The depth of my relationships is getting shallower and shallower.

Aside from relationships, I’m also losing out on productivity at work.  Do you think I can focus very well with Facebook taunting me in the backround?  3 new notifications! I must click them before I finish writing this e-mail.  Oops, I hear footsteps, better alt+tab.

I’m missing out on nature.  I try not to, but inevitably I’ll scroll through facebook while I’m out for a walk.  Someone honked at me while I was out for a walk the other day and I assumed it was some jerk from the high school judging me again.  Turns out, it was my neighbor.  If I hadn’t had my nose buried in my phone, I could’ve waved at her in a friendly manner instead of throwing my hands out in exasperation and shouting “What?!”  And for what?  Another Grammarly update saying that people on the internet will still correct you if you make a typo.

So, I’m calling it quits–for 30 days.  I want to WILL regain some of the depth to my most important relationships.  I want to WILL be present in my day to day interactions.  I want to WILL be more focused and productive at work.

 

I think that the hardest part of this challenge is that I am going to New York City in a few weeks.  There will be brand new experiences–sights, sounds, friends, and photos that I’m sure I’ll be tempted to immediately upload onto social media.  And selfies! Oh my goodness, the selfies.  The thing is, though, before social media, I actually cherished my photos.  I looked back on them, I printed them out, I scrap-booked them, and if you were a special friend, I’d print a copy for you too.  Maybe I’d even put it in a really cute frame.

Just imagine how much more vibrant my memories will be if I can actually live and experience them rather than ‘capturing them for posterity Facebook.’

I imagine that I’ll just be more cognizant of my choices, take fewer photos, live more of my life than I put on the internet.

 

Have you ever taken a hiatus from social media?  What did you take away from it?  

 

P.S. I still plan to blog during this time, so don’t expect radio silence after I *just* got back  ::wink::

 

Team Doge – Week 1 Update

Good morning!

The 1^st mini challenge is off to a great start.  Nicky made use of her social network to draw in many votes yesterday, and I’m proud to report that we are in

*drumroll…*

Ninth place!  At the beginning of the day yesterday, we had only about 8 votes, so to have 40 votes at this point is quite a feat!  Way to go, Nicky!

Now, some people are wondering, why do we care about votes?  What’s the point?  Well, the point is motivation and accountability.  If you’re asking people for votes, you’re explaining what it’s for—and the more people that know you’re part of a challenge, the more people who will help you meet your goals or cheer you on in your efforts.  For example, someone yesterday gave me a Cadburry Crème Egg.  I told them I was part of a 12-week weight loss challenge, and gave it back to them—and asked them for their vote!  Now, this person knows what’s up and won’t offer me chocolate any more, and we added 1 vote to our total.

How are you doing with your personal goals?  Please comment with ONE or more successes from the past week 🙂

If you would like to vote, here are the three easy steps:

1.       Access the HealthyWage website: http://www.healthywage.com/leaderboards/team_standings/?team_challenge=80&secondary_filter=1

2.      Using the drop-down menus, select “GE HealthAhead’s Lose Weight, Win Big 2014”  and “Mini Challenge #1: Best Team Name and Before Photo”

3.      Click on “Team Doge Wow Such Weight Loss!” and follow instructions to cast your vote.