Hi. My Name is Sarah.....

And I have been away for quite a while!

I have been busy doing a 14 week challenge(for fat burning and muscle building) on a forum that I have to journal/log weekly/daily and that has been about all this girl can handle in the way of typing/writing!!! If I could just talk to you people(is that presumptuous of me???!!! ;) )!!! That would be so much easier--because I assure you I am not nearly as quiet when chatting as I am on the old blog!

As I said I have been utilizing my time off of homeschooling to finally indulge in some selfish behavior, as in exercise and diet. By selfish I am saying that the me me me aspect of this challenge that I am in is almost unbearable....it reminds me that physical well being is only part of the package when it comes to improving! And that when one is out of balance in the physical/spiritual aspects of life then God is quick to bring it to the forefront! I don't know why, but I have a hard time being balanced with those two aspects. I suspect that that is a human characteristic?! ;) At any rate I have been focused mainly on the physical part of Sarah, I wanted to once and for all lose the baby weight from my first child(nearly 10 yrs. old) and then maintain(I have proven that I am a great maintainer over the past 10 yrs!!! ;)). I am happy to report that I have successfully achieved my goal! I am down to 163 lbs. with 16.5% body fat which puts me at a lean body mass of about 136 lbs. give or take a little! I am in better shape than I have ever been in in my whole adult life! Now, I hope that I win a free trip to Maui--because that is the prize for the challenge that I am in! AND all of this is just in time for.....SCHOOL to start!!! :)

School. I love homeschooling for SO many reasons, but I don't really like homeschooling for other reasons! Most of the reasons that I don't like it have to do with the training up of my children ie. the doing ALL things without grumbling and complaining.....is is just me and my kids or do others have children that are not all that excited about having school????!!!! I mean I hate to hear all the complaining....makes me cranky, just thinking about it!!!! ;)

We will be using Sonlight, again! LOVE LOVE LOVE Sonlight--I can teach multiple kids for several subjects and THAT my friends is what makes this momma happy! Math-u-see for math, again. And some other extras as my daughter needs some more challenges. I think that I will be encouraging her to write more book reports this year, she LOVES to read and devours books like nobody I know, so I think that a book report every now and again will be a good thing!

We will be starting school a little late this year as we are going to be taking care of my dh grandparents after his grandma has open heart surgery at the end of this month, for a month or so. Since that will be priority then school will have to be put off for an extra week or so, and that is one of the reasons I love homeschooling!!! :)

All in all it has been a wonderful summer. Hot, but wonderful. God is good and has been continuing His work in this vessel, albeit slowly(because of me not Him), but nonetheless He is still changing me from image to image and glory to glory!!!! Thank you Jesus for your patience with this vessel.....

God bless!

I Started Wondering....

Whether or not I was in fact right about my stats. I mean really? 5.5 lbs of muscle??? At first, I of course was VERY excited, but after the excitement dissipated, I started to wonder if that in fact could be accurate. I know for a fact that I am leaner and my muscle is hard! I know for a fact that the scale says that I have lost 14.5 lbs. But the fat caliper testing, have I been pinching the SAME spot EVERY time? I started to doubt, so I went back to the instruction manual and read it and looked at the demo and tried again....I think I may have been pinching in the wrong spot from where I first pinched....SO this Saturday I am going to have my sweet hubby do a 4 point skin fold test(I did one around the start) and compare from around the first part of January to March 5th how the numbers have decreased. I just don't know how I could have packed on 5.5 lbs. of muscle! It seems a little too much to me! I will just continue with that. Obviously, this bit of news was discouraging! I am probably not as lean as I was thinking and that in itself is a bummer! Oh well, just happy that I am at least on a path that is actually getting me somewhere instead of where I was! :)

In other news, I get incredibly sick of myself. That is why I haven't posted on here for a while! I deal with me ALL day and why on earth would I want to get on ye olde blog and write yet MORE stuff about, you guessed it, ME! I know that in order to keep accountability, I need to stay in the loop! So, for those reasons I tell you that I have still been maintaining my cardio/weight training for 6 days a week for 3 weeks straight! I am planning on this being my 4th consecutive! AND I have been eating clean for about 80% of the time for the last 2 wks. In light of the fact that my eating has not been spot on I have amped up my cardio and ended last week with 20 miles logged in running! Not too mention the elliptical and the miles walked after my runs! I believe that because of this one fact I have still been able to lose fat, albeit, slowly, but lose none the less! :)

With that I am signing off, I hope that you are all well and achieving the goals set before you! God bless each of you with His PERFECT WILL in your life!!

S

Just Need To Keep It Real....

Real as in I am at a break in my progress. I(not surprisingly) am an emotional eater. That means that when I am not sitting perfectly on top of my proverbial mountain I need to feed on food that isn't healthy! I don't know about any of you, but health food is not the variety I grew up eating ALL the time. So, when I need some comfort it definetly does not comfort me to sit down with a BIG bowl of chicken breast and broccoli with a heaping side of brown rice!!! :) Just being real. So after 9 wks of meticulous eating I am struggling....And it is a vicious cycle--I am not emotionally on top of my game so I want to eat but the food that I should eat makes me sad.....Pathetic, isn't it?!! To have such a problem is so.....menial in the grand scheme of things. I mean look at how many children die EVERYDAY because they have NOTHING to eat....

Which leads me to something other than my diet, thank God. The Lord has been bringing some SERIOUS conviction to this servant of His. I have been SO convicted over everything that I have not given up to serve Him. I(we in western civilization, actually) live in such abundance compared to over half the world population, and the sad part is that I find myself still wanting more....But I DO NOT need more, I have EVERYTHING that I could ever need and WAY more!!!!! While these people live in poverty, literally starving to death the people like me(and much of western civilization) say oh well, it isn't in my country, my town , my neighborhood, etc. etc.. But what if I had been born there? What if you had been born there, fighting for your very life, scrounging for food so that you could eat once a week? These people did not ask for their circumstances they just are what they are and what are we doing about it, better yet as a Christian, a follower and friend of Jesus Christ what are we doing about it? Because I bet you when it is our time to stand before the throne of judgement He is going to ask us why did you not feed me when I was hungry? and why did you not give water when I thirsted? and cloth me when I was naked? What will I say, what will you say? I have been praying that God would open the doors for me to be His hands to help the desperate and I know that whatsoever I ask in His name He will give......

Amen.

Still Going strong!

So, I am still alive and going at it!

I finished this week as ANOTHER week of 6 days of exercise!!! Very excited about that! In fact I did something that I almost always convince myself I don't need to do, I worked out/cardio 7 days in a row!!! I am notorius for saying to myself that "I should take a break, I deserve it"! But not right now, there will be time to take breaks once I am on my maintenance part of this adventure and that isn't for another 11 lbs of FAT!!!! I will be 14% body fat by Apr. 19th(that is when my sweet hubby and I will be on the beach in South Carolina without children!!!!!!)! :D That was the happy dance right there, did you see it?! :P Anyway, I must be looking good enough(not to mention be able to fit into my new size smaller than I am) to wear my new bathing suit!!!! I will do it you shall see!

Thank you Jesus, for EVERYTHING! :)

I AM SO EXCITED!!!!

AND I JUST CAN'T HIDE IT!!!!

So, I am going to tell you about it--

When I became pregnant with our third child at the age of 32, I decided that this pregnancy would be different in that I would exercise through out the WHOLE time I was pregnant. During my two previous pregnancies I used them as an excuse to relax because I was in a "delicate" way! Combine that with the "I can eat anything(not to mention ALL I want)I want" mentality and you have a recipe for some pretty severe weight gain! So, having learned my lesson I changed strategies. I did not gain as much with my 3rd as I had with 1 and 2, however I also started out 18 lbs. heavier! Needless to say each time I gave birth I weighed exactly the same! And trust me, it was not a pretty number!

Ok, so after having exercised the WHOLE time during #3, after he was born and was the ripe old age of 7 wks I started running again. I lost about 37 of the 70 lbs. that were necessary to lose, so that I could be my pre-baby weight as per the 1st! I ran ALOT started training for a 1/2 marathon and everything, I ran for 2 yrs.(obviously not straight! ;)), trying to keep up a consistent habit of exercise. When I reached a point where I wasn't seeing ANY change in my weight not to mention the burnout of running, I started going to the gym and using weights. This helped, I lost another 8 lbs. or so, but after doing it for a year and pounding out the cardio 5-6 days a week I became desperate... I was starting to believe that I had thyroid problems or that my metabolism was shot! You can imagine how discouraged I was after 3 yrs of consistent exercise I was not seeing the kind of results that I desired!

If you have read my blog at all then you know that my VERY best friend is Jesus Christ, I love Him. He saved me from a road leading to an early grave for sure! I tell you this because I pray about E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. including my weight issues! I begged Him to help me get healthy--show me the path! That is when it dawned on me that the VERY best way to lose fat(which is my ultimate goal-not just weight-but fat) would be to google bodybuilder diets! This is when Tom Venuto and the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle e-book came on this scene, that is my life!!! I cannot express to you HOW MUCH THIS BOOK HAS HELPED me! Thank you Jesus for leading me straight to it! I bought it, read it, started implementing the diet RIGHT AWAY and I am not kidding immediately started seeing results!!!

So here is what I started doing, eating 5 times per day every 3 hours, having lean protein with EVERY meal, and eating what Tom calls A+ to B(he grades food based on whether they are in their natural form)foods only! I of course already exercised consistently, but now I was going to start lifting with HEAVY weights! :)

I am happy to report that my muscles have not gotten bigger, but have gotten REALLY hard(dense!), thank God!!! And I have lost 8.4% body fat with a total loss of 18 lbs. of fat and gained 5.48 lbs of muscle!!!! AND since muscle burns more calories than fat that my friends is A-OK with me!!!! As you can imagine I am ecstatic! ALOT of hard work for not much payback is NO more! I am(thanks to my Saviour) no longer spinning my wheels on the exercise track!!!

I just had to share ALL of that with you maybe it could help you! If it helped me, who thought I would NEVER lose another pound then I am sure it can help ANYONE!!! Just need to stay the course and eat that elephant ONE BITE AT A TIME!!!

I DID IT!!!!!

I ended up going to the gym yesterday evening! I did 30min. elliptical, heavy weights for chest, shoulders and tri's then onto the treadmill for 3 miles! So, mission accomplished for the week! Thank you, Wendy for the challenge! Eating has remained clean other than the cheat meal of saturday evening with my hubby and children for V-day.

I am tightening up my eating schedule as I believe that I have been eating too many calories according to my level of activity....oh well, just two weeks of not a whole lotta progress but didn't gain either!

So, my stats, I need to redo them and post them later! BUT,my goal is soooo close I can taste it! ;)

So far today I have gotten the workout business out of the way and now it is off to do laundry, manhandle a 3 yr. old(who is as we speak smearing playdoh on my walls) and edjumicate my kiddos! ;) Have a good one! God bless!

P.S. here is a photo of me before I started this ride!

Did not make my 6 workouts....

I don't have a good excuse other than this weekend has been an emotional challenge for me.... And unfortunately when I have difficulties in that area ALOT of times the exercise? it does get sacrificed on the altar of self pity....Which in turn creates a problem because exercise? it does improve my outlook. So, I might possibly go and do some cardio on the elliptical or run later today, we shall see. Then my 6 days would be fulfilled and I will have managed to fill my verbal agreement thus also helping my overall mental status....Thank God that I have Jesus otherwise it would REALLY be hard and bad and all of that!

In other news it is snowing here. AGAIN. Snow it is not a bad thing when it happens where it should!!!!! ;) So, that means that I will probably not have access to the internet either later today or possibly tomorrow! Which leads me to my next random thought--I will be working out and doing cardio at least 5 days next week and continuing on my burn the fat feed the muscle endeavor with GREAT fervor!

I hope that you all have a wonderful evening and day tomorrow! :)

We have satelite internet and because it snowed a MASSIVE amount of snow in our neck of the woods for the better part of yesterday I could not log a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g.!!!! I couldn't even check the weather!!! How do ya like them apples!!!

Wednesday:
stairmaster-30min.
1 hr. cross training class
ate my 5 meals and kept it clean!

Thursday:
workout with heavy weights--chest, shoulders, triceps and abs
ran HIIT for 2.2 miles and walked .75miles.

ate good ALL day until the end....I could not control the urge to binge...I HATE THAT!!! Sometimes it is SOOOOOO hard to stay on a healthy plan for eating. Oh well, off to a good start on the eating plan today!!! And that my friends is how you(I) have to do it! Mess up, and just get back to business with the next thing! My workout was canceled this am so I am off to workout! See ya!

Keepin' on keepin' on!

Ok, so I got my workout in for the day. I did legs, back and biceps today followed by a 4 mile run on the treadmill. Needless to say I am TIRED!!! :)

My eating has been clean and top notch! Only by the grace of God and the strength of Jesus Christ that is FOR SURE!!!

Changin' my approach....

So, I am going to give this blogging thing a new go. I need a place to journal and track my progress towards a challenging goal that I set for myself and I need to make it official by publicly declaring it thus hopefully keeping me accountable(or more accountable)!

Starting off with my stats:

I am 5'7"
today I weigh 177lbs.(I started 7 weeks ago at 189)
my body fat(using a one site hand caliper) is 19.6%
Body fat mass is 34.7 lbs.
Lean Body mass is 142.3 lbs.


My goals:

1-Achieving 16% bodyfat by April 15, 2010.
2-Getting down to a dress size 8 and feeling comfortable in a swimsuit for once!
3-Eating 5-6 times per day and only eating clean A+-B graded foods(as per Tom Venuto's book Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle)
4-working out 5-6X/wk.
5-drinking at least a gallon of water/day

These a short term goals and of course they are only my physical goals for health.... I have MANY areas in my life that I have goals for, but like I said I need to become more accountable. For some reason I let my health goals slip because I know noone cares and so it makes it easy to let them slide. BUT NO MORE!!! I cannot blame my 3yr. old "baby" for the last 15lbs. anymore!!!! They(the pounds) are ALL mine! I, coupled with 35 yr old metabolism, have been lazy in doing the appropriate things to exterminate this unwanted fat!!!

So there is my public declaration! I will be posting progress as I go. Not sure how often but hopefully at least every other day.

daily workout today was as follows:
ran 3 miles walked .5 mile
1 hr cross training class

meals:
1-protein shake with psyllium husk
2-1whole egg, 4 egg whites, 1/2 c. old fashioned oats with 1 1/2 t. natural peanut butter pluss 3 T skim milk
3-5 haven't eaten yet!! :)