My Journey

Proud Mommy Alert – My Baby Girl is now a Teen!

Okay, I just had to share this with you. My oldest daughter turned 13 this month and she chose to spend her entire day with me… isn’t that cool?!  I wrote more about it on my Living-Life-at-Home blog, but still I thought you might enjoy these photos from our day together.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Losing 100+ pounds – Weekly Update – Week 23

I’m still out of town this week, so I can’t give you a proper update, so instead I shot this quick video for you from outside my hotel in Westminster, Colorado. Take a look at these wonderful walking trails. Love the ability to be able to get outside and walk just by walking outside my hotel.

Hope you are having a great week!
….Shannon

Losing 100+ pounds – Weekly Update – Week 22

A quick update as I’m preparing for going out of town next week. On Tuesday, for my weekly weigh-in the scale was at 286.8 so about the same.

I have to confess that other than a really good interval training session and several stretching sessions I’ve not made the time I should for exercise.

One request also… I am seriously needing to get back to freezer cooking (OAMC), and I’m failingly miserably at cooking beef for my husband (who prefers it). If you have any tried and true freezer-friendly beef recipes, could you please share them with me? 

I’m getting desparate, esp since I don’t eat beef and can’t taste what I’m cooking.

Baseball season is in full swing, so we’re at baseball games and practices 3-5 times a week. But unfortunately I’m not getting as much exercise in as I had hoped, or that I did last year. 

Our neighboorhood swim team season starts here at the end of April, that’s going to be great because we walk back and forth up to the neighborhood pool everyday for that. Great time for exercise.

Next week I’m in Denver, without my family, presenting at a conference (5 times). Went and got new “work” shirts last weekend, and that was actually fun because I fit into the next size down much better.

The thing about the Denver trip that has been interesting has been figuring out food. Normally I bring with me much of my food, usually things that can be eaten cold or that can be reconstituted with hot water (from the room’s coffee pot). It helps save costs. But this year, I”m not eating many of the things that I would normally take. So, rethinking the travel with food thing.

Thankfully I will get my case of water when I arrive, so that will be covered

Hope you have a fabulous week. And I’ll check back in with you from Denver.

…Shannon

Losing 100+ pounds – Weekly Update – Weeks 19-21

Well, after a  couple weeks of being ill and barely eating anything, sandwiched in between some good days, I’m finally back on track with food and exercise again. 

The weigh-ins over the last few weeks have been unreliable given how I’ve been feeling, but today I’m finally ready to give a new weigh-in.  And the number is 286.6 basically another pound down from a few weeks ago. 

As you can imagine, while I was sick I wasn’t eating much and definitely wasn’t exercising, but I’ve been back to exercising for a little over a week now, working in “functional exercise” (aka… physical labor and walking) with the Turbulance Training challenge I have for myself for March. And it’s good to know that I’m feeling good – walking faster. Even I’m now able to do walk/run intervals on the treadmills, which is pretty cool.

Even though I’ve been sick, I have been doing  a LOT of research and reading, learning more about changes I should be making to faciliate good health and weight loss.  In the last 3 weeks, I’ve read:

•  The Diet Solution by Isabel De Los Rios
• The Maker’s Diet by Jordan Rubin
• Restoring Your Digestive Health by Jordan Rubin
• Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon
• The Metabolic Typing Diet by William Linz Wolcott and Trish Fahey
• Mastering Your Metabolism by Jillian Michels

Over the last 12 years, we’ve learned a lot of about customizing nutrition to balance each person’s biochemistry. I use nutrition to influence (control) my children’s behavior. And we’ve seen DRAMATIC differences in behavior with the kids once we found the right nutritional blend. And finally, through these materials, I’ve finally found good explanations of the why and how of using customized nutrition. very cool!

But the biggest deal right now is that my husband has finally found the food combinations/timing that makes him feel good.  

When we were doing the carb rotation meal plan from Jayson Hunter that came with the Fat Loss Quickie program, the difference in his attitude, energy levels, and ability to stay calm was dramatic and nearly immediate, even though he was not doing the exercise portion.

Within 3 days, HE was noticing the difference in how different foods made hime feel. And now, two months later, he is completely unwilling to eat things he knows will make him feel poorly.

But the odd thing was that I did not do well on the carb rotation diet, but after reading through Isabel de Los Rios’ materials, we learned why.  And because I’m interested in nutrition and the biology side of it all, I basically have been reading through the reference/resource section of Isabel’s The Diet Solution manual, learning the why behind many of her recommendations.

It’s been interesting, for those of you who know my husband, amazing – no miraculous – that he is caring about his nutrition (he’s – was – a fast food junk food addict!).

So hopefully I’ll get back here more this week and share more of what’s going on here in that department.  It might not be weight loss, but hey – I’m all for feeling good. Who wants to be exhausted for the rest of their life? Not me!

So how’s March been going for you?

Checking in & Sharing an Aromatherapy Tip for Stress Eating (video)

It’s been a few weeks since you’ve heard from me because I’ve been really sick. But Spring has come and I’m feeling better, so I thought I’d say hi in person and share a quick tip from the garden on how aromatherapy helps me combat stress – without any calories

And I’m curious…what are your favorite scents? Mine are vanilla, chocolate mint, and lavendar (can you tell?)