Cookie Monster

So remember this post about lent and the Feel Great in Eight Challenge?

Yeah, so I actually did it! And yesterday was the last day!

So this is what my Monday looks like-

^^^Yes, cookie bars that happen to be eaten in the shape of Utah. A complete coincidence, by the way. (The shape of the cookies, not the cookies. The cookies were deliberate and much needed.) Guess I am just so excited to come out to Utah in a week and a half (because Stacy is getting MURRIEEED!) that my subconscious is doing all sorts of weird things!

So yeah, as you can see in all the absent cookies, I learned some great habits from the Feel Great in Eight.

Ha, but in all seriousness I did learn some good habits. I am giving myself a “free week” to eat crazy, and then I am going to try to be good again.

Anyway, I really did enjoy the program. My goal was to maintain my weight and put on some muscle, but I did end up losing a little bit anyway. I lost 3.55% of my total weight, so not a ton. What I was really surprised about was when I did the before/after measuring. She had us measure our waist, hips, thighs, chest, and arms. I was pleasantly surprised to see a difference! I had noticed that my clothes were a bit bigger, but I attributed that to the jump from winter to summer clothes that I made during the program.

Want to see my before/after picture?

^^^Haha not really. Ken got this app that makes you put on weight by distorting the picture. (The one on the left is distorted, Stacy. I can totally see you making a joke about the pic on the right. ;)

Oh yeah! And I never mentioned that I did end up winning one of the weekly drawings! Total luck, but I got $30. So that was nice. :)

And the final results haven’t been posted yet, but I don’t think I won any money or anything. That’s okay, though. I was forced to do some good healthy habits, and hopefully I will be able to keep some of them. :)

Lent 4.0

So I am a couple of days early starting my lent goal for this year, but my sister-in-law Suzanne introduced me to a program that starts today, and it was too good to pass up!

I am doing a “Feel Great in Eight” challenge that focuses on helping you become healthier physically, mentally, and spiritually for 8 weeks. I really like this program compared to lot of other “diets” out there. This challenge is really well-rounded. Everything is point-based, so you get points for “healthy” choices. Like most “diets” you get points for eating well, but for this program you are also rewarded for things like writing in your journal, reading your scriptures, exercising, doing service, etc.

I am really exciting about this! Today is the first day, and it is going okay. This is the first time I have ever tracked my calories before (thank you MyFitnessPal!), so it is kind of eye-opening for me. (Pasta has how many calories? Gah.)

So I may or may not keep you updated on the blog with how this is going. It depends on how good/bad. (If it is just average and boring, I probably won’t get enough motivation to actually write about it on here.)

Oh, and bonus! There’s prize money. So . . . if I win some of the weekly drawings, I may do a little jig and post it on here.

Which sort of related, but Kenny’s dancing cracks me up.He puts one hand in the air and bobs up and down like he is about to drop it. Pretty funny. Especially when he does it during the church hymns.

Here’s the best clip I’ve been able to get of it (there is music playing, but you just can’t hear it)-

Anyway, wish me luck! Oh, and Ken is doing it too, so I guess you can wish him luck, too. ;)

Alarm Clocks and Races

You know that Seinfeld episode where the Olympic racer missed his qualifying race for the Olympics because his alarm clock’s volume was set too low? And then Jerry obsesses over him not missing his next race so he sets like a million alarms, but Kramer blows the electricity with his massive hot tub so all of the alarms don’t go off?

Well that totally describes this morning . . . except I didn’t have a ton of alarm clocks. I actually didn’t set any alarms. I was totally depending on Kenny to wake me up at the usual time, but my Kenny alarm clock didn’t go off.

We somehow made it to my 5K race on time, though!

Seriously, not quite sure how we made it on time.

^^^This picture was literally taken seconds before the race started. That’s how close we were cutting it.^^^

^^^And here are the ladies I ran the race with! So fun!^^^

^^^As you can see, I was #1 in the race!!! . . . that is, #1 for bib number, not placement.^^^

^^^And here are my cute fans that made it out on such a cold day.^^^

So moral of the story is that if you want Kenny to sleep in, tell yourself that he is going to be your alarm clock for a specific time you need to get up in the morning. Reverse psychology. They tell me it works all the time.

Lazy Man

I feel weird blogging about this, but I feel obligated to report that I did do my goal to finish the Lazy Man Iron Man (besides the swimming). No fun stories to really share.

Ken did the Lazy Man Iron Man completely. He got an awesome shirt to show for it. Sort of jealous.

And to include a completely unrelated picture-

And no, he still doesn’t take a pacifier. This picture was completely manipulated to make it look like he does. However, he does suck on my finger occasionally now. Still a cutie, though.

The Lazy Man

So I am choosing to publish this on the world wide web so that all the people reading  this (aka my Dad) can hold me to what I am about to say.

I am doing the Lazy Man Iron Man that is put on by BYU. The Lazy Man Iron Man is an ironman extended over a month, but there are still 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of cycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming, except I made a few changes before I agreed to said triathalon. The event is suppose to end on March 31, but I decided that I deserve 3 extra days because I still hadn’t gotten the “a-okay” from my doctor that I could workout on March 1 when it started. So I will finish on April 3.

Second, I am not swimming. I am just nixing that whole little leg. Am I a wimp? Yeah so what. I took swim lessons growing up, but I still do not like swimming laps because I have no form. It may be because whenever I had swim lessons as a kid, my sister and I would eat a pound of sugar beforehand and so the lessons always resulted in endless giggling between the two of us followed by individual punishment laps. (Am I right or am I right, Tracey?) You think the individual laps would have taught me form, but usually I would just end up pushing off of the wall hard, swimming under the water for as long as I could, and then dog paddling the rest of the way. Awesome.

So there you have it. Ken is doing this also, but he is doing the swimming portion, too. He did almost half of the swimming in a hotel pool when he was in South Carolina this past weekend. What I would give to see him endlessly swimming back in forth in that tiny pool. So funny! He did 225 laps in a 25 foot pool. Talk about boring!

Lent Update

So it’s been 3 weeks since the beginning of lent. I am happy to say that all of us are doing well except for little Kenny. He broke his lent within two hours after I wrote the post. He managed to spray into Ken’s dresser and all over Ken’s clothes. Awesome aim, bud. He’s getting better now, though.

Another good thing is that we aren’t breezing through peanut butter anymore. Within the last three weeks, we haven’t opened a new jar, which we were going through at least one a week before. (I like peanut butter, okay?) And I guess we haven’t gone through as much powdered sugar. Hard to say, though. The other day when I got home, I walked into the living room and saw that Ken had powdered sugar on his face, shirt, pants, and even his socks. Guess he just eats it during the day now . . . and dribbles down the front. I can see where Baby Kenny gets it from. :)

Lent

For lent this year, I decided to give up peanut butter. Man, this one is going to be hard.

Kenneth decided to give up eating after 8:00 pm (my husband, not the baby. Little Kenny actually has been doing really well! The other night he slept for 6 hours straight in the night! Hopefully he keeps it up.) because sometimes I will find Kenneth eating spoonfuls of powdered sugar late at night.

We decided that whoever caves first has to buy the other a treat. If I lose, I must get Ken a Mountain West Burrito. If Ken loses, he has to get me a Georgia Mud Fudge Blizzard from Dairy Queen. If both of us last the 40 days then we are going to celebrate by getting  our respective treats. (I just decided that right now, so hopefully Ken goes along with it.)

Oh, and baby Kenny is giving up peeing on Mommy. (I wish.)

Wish us luck!

Lent

So remember this post from last year?

Well ladies and gentlemen, we have been trying to do it again this year. Kenneth decided to give up chocolate. (Gasp! I know! I would never!) It’s been pretty good for me, though. I’ve been able to eat all of his chocolate. You should have seen our chocolate chip cookies. We made half raisin and half chocolate chip. The raisin cookies got finished super fast, so Kenneth moved on to the chocolate chip cookies and left the chocolate chips for me. Double score for me! :)

I decided to give up complaining. It’s been interesting to try to give something like complaining. Since I’ve started to try to do lent, I’ve given up Facebook and treats (did that for a few years), so I’ve never tried something that wasn’t physical. I know that lent is supposed to be something that you really enjoy so that you can  sacrifice it, and no I do not enjoy complaining, but my whole purpose of lent is to try to focus on something that will make me a better person. I figured complaining would be something great for me to work on.

It has been kind of challenging especially in a school setting. This has really helped me realize how much I do complain. When professors spring projects on us, it is so easy to start speaking negatively, but does that really help? Does it get the project done faster? Nope. It’s been really good for me to take the time and focus on this weakness of mine.

Iron Woman

This past Saturday Kenneth’s persuading skills most have been top-notch. He talked me into going to the gym with him to lift weights. I usually just exercise on the elliptical while reading a book, but for some reason he persuaded me into switching it up and getting a little crazy. So on Saturday he taught me different things I could do and exercised right next to me for most of the time. Man, the next day I was so sore. It hurt to turn the steering wheel . . . yes, I am a baby.

I try to put a picture with every post, so I thought this picture accurately depicted me as a baby, and with Halloween only 3 days away, I thought it was perfect.

So on Tuesday we lifted weights again. Kenneth asked me if I wanted him to stay with me again. I said that I felt comfortable enough to break out and try things on my own. He agreed and said he would just come check up on me every so often. So I went out on my own, and I was doing awesome! I was unstoppable on this one machine. I just kept going and going. I seriously had the thought in my head, “Man, I’m rockin’ this! Look at me go! I must build muscle fast.” Then, Kenneth came over to me and whispered in my ear, “You are on the machine backwards.” Ha, oops.

Lent Update

I know that everyone has been dying to know how the lent goal has been going. Well, let me relieve you of your worrying.

 

When we made this goal, it was a Thursday around 11:00 am. I had already had a treat that day (I think treats are appropriate at all times of the day . . . even breakfast), so Thursday counted for one of the treat days. Friday was another treat day because at work we do “Fat day Friday” aka we have treats every Friday. So that was the second and last treat day of the week.

 

Luckily, we just had to go without Saturday, and then we deemed Sunday a treat day as well. But now we have gone 2.5 days without treats!!! Impressive for us. We just have to hold out for 1.5 more days! We can do it! (While trying to type “Can do it”, I put “Candy do it”. I guess you can tell what’s on my mind. Maybe I can’t do it.)

 

To reminisce in the days of irresponsibility (those days were, oh so, long ago . . .), I found some yummy pictures of candy.

 

I really like that white chocolate sitting on top . . . num num num.

 

 

I don’t know why I make these torturous goals.