Wanted: Smoothie Recipe's

Apparently the universe thinks I need to A: have a blender and B: be drinking smoothies. Why do I think this?

A. My mom mailed me a blueberry smoothie recipe. I looked at it and thought it sounded good, but since I didn't bring a blender on the road with me, I just put it in my three-ring binder cookbook and called it good.

B. My friend Christina called me the other day and said, "Dude, you have to write this recipe down right now." It was a banana/peanut butter/ prune smoothie recipe.

C. An interesting recipe showed up at Curves a month ago. I'm not even going to say what it was because my husband looked like he may have vomited when I told him. But I'm brave and willing to try it. But, the recipe required a blender...

D. I'm starting to get tired of my egg white breakfasts paired with a glass of water.

E. I discovered another friend of mine blogs, and she had a whole post about her fruit juicer and the awesome breakfasts she and her husband have been having.

So you see, the universe really does want me to have a blender! So, even though I'm pretty sure I have not one, but two blenders already in storage in Oklahoma, I'm going to break down and buy yet another one to have in our house on wheels. Any delicious *healthy* smoothie recipes would be greatly appreciated!

I need a large serving of Inspiration, please.

Lately I have been so uninspired and unmotivated. You may remember me mentioning that I'd like to loose 25 lbs. I've been following Weight Watchers and going to Curves, but unfortunately, I haven't been doing too great with the whole Weight Watchers thing. I go over my points every week, which is so frustrating. I blame most of it on going out to eat way too much. Thankfully I have been ordering what I consider to be more healthy choices, but still.....

As far as Curves goes, I am steadily approaching my second weigh in day. My first weight in was extremely successful! I had lost 7 3/4 inches! Yay! Most of which was in my abs and waist. I typically go to Curves on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Sadly, Curves only counts as 1 activity point as far as WW is concerned. Ugh.

It's been almost two months since I began my weight loss journey, and so far I've only lost 6.2 lbs. I'm not very impressed. Which lead to me not going to Curves one week (well, that was mainly because I pulled a muscle in my back) and not caring about WW for about two weeks. I wasn't really putting any pressure on myself because I felt like bathing suit season was a long ways away. That is until the temps reached the 70's last week. Which made me realize that summer will be here before I know it. I figured it was time I got some new inspiration. How did I do that? I went bikini shopping! ie: I looked at bikini's online. And the picture I've posted is of the bikini I'm going to buy as soon as I loose the remaining 19 lbs. Wow! That's a scary number to me!

So, my game plan has been refreshed! I'm determined to follow my WW points better. Luckily, my week starts over on Wednesdays, and I'm proud to say I stayed within my points yesterday! I'm also going to start walking 45 minutes to 1 hour on my non-Curves days. And, I'm doing crunches every evening. I'm also thinking about going to a yoga class on Wednesday evenings since the yoga class I usually went to in the afternoons was canceled.

Wish me luck and hopefully in another couple of months I'll have some exciting weight loss news for ya'll!

This is hard stuff

Some of you may recall me writing a few months ago about my work-out plan. Well, I'm sad to report that I have fallen off the bandwagon. About November I got so discouraged because I wasn't seeing any changes in my body that I made excuses to not go to the gym, I quit going to yoga, and was easily persuaded to not attend Nia classes. But, with a new year comes new beginnings, so I told myself that when we came back to Lamar after our Christmas vacation that I would join Curves.

What I hadn't planned on doing was joining Weight Watchers. But, I happened to see a commercial about a free week trial on TV, and coincidentally, the next day my friend Krissy blogged about how she was going to start on WW. So, I decided to throw all caution to the wind and make a go for it. Last Wednesday was my first day on WW, and let me tell ya, it was majorly hard! For those who are not familiar with WW, they use a point system. The way it works is I type in the computer (because I'm doing the online version) what my age, height, and weight is, and what my goal weight is. Then they base a daily amount of points for each person. My daily point level is 20. They also have flex points. I have 35 flex points each week and I can use those all in one day or spread them out. Another cool thing that WW offers is activity points. I enter in my activity, be it walking on the treadmill or vacuuming for twenty minutes (not like that applies to me anymore), and the system calculates how many points you have earned. Once you use your flex points for the week, it begins subtracting your activity points.

Now that you know the process, let me just tell you; my first week was extremely hard. My first day alone I ate 39 points. Wow! And for the first three days I literally went to bed feeling like I was hungry. My initial reaction was that I hated WW and that I just wanted to EAT!!! That was when I realized that that is exactly what my problem is. I kid you not, I can eat pretty much the same amount of food as my husband. Not good. What is ironic is that before I got married, I would literally have people ask me if I have eaten anything recently, or if I wanted some extra food. I used to be that skinny. Also, people always warned me that one day my metabolism would catch up to me. They were right.

Yesterday was my last day of my week. And really, by the last few days, I didn't feel like I was going to bed hungry. And surprisingly I didn't even eat into my activity points (which came from going to the gym and walking on the treadmill for 45 minutes). Believe me, I was pretty stoked to "weigh in" this morning and see that I had lost 4 pounds!!!! My ideal goal from the beginning is to loose 25 pounds. I'm so excited that it looks like I am well on my way to achieving that goal!

Today I finally signed up for Curves. I love that you get a complete work out in in thirty minutes! And next week my yoga classes start up again! I honestly can't wait! Visions of being able to fit into my favorite Lucky jeans again, as well as a sexy new bikini, are really helping me trudge along!

Please keep your fingers crossed for me and I'll try to keep everyone posted on my success!