the gym, habits, bread and cute kids

Oay, so you may remember this post about our families friendly biggest loser competition and you may remember this post about joining the gym. I figured it was about time for an update...so here goes.

I am actually enjoying going to the gym. Gulp! Did those words just come out of my mouth? I don't look forward to it everyday and sometimes I have to make myself go but once I'm there it's actually not that bad. I really wish I had a personal trainer so that I knew what to do in order to reap the biggest benefits. Anyone wanna chip in an purchase me some PT hours?

Anyway, we go at least three times a week and usually right after breakfast. I go get my shoes and Naomi says, "I don't wanna go to the dym", but I tell her we're going anyway. She loves it there, don't let her fool you. She gets to play with other kids and they have a slide there, she loves slides. Micah is doing better too, he may protest me putting him in the carseat but once we're inside and he sees the "stairs" he's hooked. Today when I went in to get them after working out I found Micah on the bottom of the slide on top of a little girl, she was lying down as if just having slid down and it was like he just climbed up on the slide on top of her. They were both laughing and having a good time, so I guess it's okay.

My workouts are different every time. I read somewhere that if you do the same thing every time your muscles get "complacent" (my word) and don't work as much. So, I walk for 30-40 minutes on the treadmill and then lift weights for about 20 minutes. I have started to run more on the treadmill too. If you know me well you know this is a HUGE accomplishment for me. I am NOT a runner. I only run when being chased. So I started out small. Walk 15 minutes, run 1, walk 1, run 2, walk 2, run 2, walk 1, run 1 and then up to three minutes running. Today, I ran for 11 minutes without stopping. Mind you my run is probably a jog for most people but it was still running for me. So, it made me feel good anyway.

I know that I'm not going to be where I want to be in order to win the competition in July but at least I'm actually starting to get some of the healtier habits in place and I think that was the whole point of the competition.

After the confession post Greg and I have had some great conversations. One thing that came out of those conversations is the accountability thing. We really have a hard time being consistent and keeping each other accountable is not always the best thing for us. So we decided it would be best if we could see what we were and were not doing every month. So on our calendar we have five different colors for the five most important things that we wanted to change.

Each color represents a specific task and when we complete the task we write our initial on the calendar for the day in the specific color. It's not as complicated as it may sound. So we mark a red "X" when we do our Family Devotions. Orange is for personal devotions. Green is for getting out of bed by 7am. Blue is for going to bed by 11pm and Purple is for exercising. It's really good to see very clearly what we are doing each week and what seems to be getting neglected. Since we're getting up at 7am I am able to take time for my personal devotions while Greg hangs out with the kids if they're up before he goes to work. This makes my whole day SO much better. I'm not going to lie and say I do this everyday but it is much more often now than it ever has been. So, let's just pray that these good habits continue and the old ones die hard.

Next task...eating better. I'm starting slowly. Very little soda. No more chocolate during nap time. That was by far my biggest weakness. I would just sit down at the computer and pig out on sweets while the kids were napping. No one could see me so I figured it wasn't a big deal. But really it wasn't helping me. So, now I drink crystal light instead and just try to forget about the sweets. The eating healthier thing will be my biggest challenge but I'm trying to do something everyday that will benefit me in the long run.

In other news. Naomi and I baked some banana bread today. You can find the recipe here. It's super yummy!