athousandwords

Woohoo! Hope you're able to keep them comfy all week! Hope you had a good evening 😊

Put on an episode of Queer Eye and busted out two 1.5 mile intervals.

Following along as a fellow parent of two youngins (and fellow nearly-40, though I still have two years to go). I'm honestly shocked at how much you're getting done - I feel tired all the time and I think I'm not doing half the exercise you're doing! Like your workout today sounds amazing! And skiing this weekend! And your plans to climb this year! Just, go you for staying with your programs and being such a good example for your kids. ❤️ Yeah - we're in a similar place. Happy to have a home that generally suits our needs, but feeling locked in here due to interest rates rising and home prices still being high. I think it's okay to want something different (and maybe even to obsessively check the Zillow listings across the street...) but also recognize that it probably won't happen any time soon. I'm just trying to lean into what we have (and keep an eye on the market). Hope the littlest one is sleeping better and feeling better soon - RSV is awful. 😢

Absolutely AMAZING progress! You are a rockstar! Yikes - be careful out there and take care of yourself! Sounds like you make some really good progress on all your lifts though. 🎉

Developing a healthy mindset around CICO is so hard. I think you're showing tremendous progress and strength. You should absolutely be proud of yourself! One day you probably won't be using the app anymore, and making real changes to your relationship with food is going to be the most important thing, not a variable number of calories tracked. ❤️

Yeah we gotta do that too... the holiday toy creep has started to invade the rest of the house... Soup season is the best. 🤤

Could it be a sinus infection? I have no idea, but that sounds awful! I get chronic nosebleeds (nowhere near as many as you described) and it's the worst. I hope you get some relief soon!

Catching up! So many exciting things going on in your life right now - I hope you start to feel better soon! re: Language learning... I wonder if there's a bilingual program through your local library or something to do a language exchange with Spanish-speakers looking to learn English? I felt like that kind of exchange was really helpful once I had the basic vocab down and just needed practice. Other options... watching TV or reading books in Spanish. Or changing the language on a video game to Spanish.

Week 2 1. Use it and LoseIt 🟢 2. Complete Pathfinder Fitness every other day 🟢 3. Run 3, Walk 2 🟢 So this is kind of awkward. I'm due to run today, but it's absolutely pouring freezing rain out so outdoor running is a no-go. I'm lucky enough to have a treadmill, and today's run is pretty short so it wouldn't even be terrible on the treadmill (although IMO all treadmill runs are pretty terrible). But we have a friend staying with us for a little bit, and he's currently living/working in the basement... where the treadmill is. I've already missed my normal time to run, right after bus stop dropoff, so my routine is all messed up anyway. Then having to run on the treadmill and having someone in my space is like the perfect storm of friction to make me want to skip today's run. 😩 I should do it. I'll check back later today. I'll probably do it. I think. Noooo feel better! This morning I literally gritted my teeth and reminded myself that this was my choice - that some part of me wanted to get up early.... it kind of helped. 🙃 I didn't do any journaling this morning, but I did try to practice some mindfulness and gratitude while drinking my coffee. Then little dude actually woke up before I could go up and wake him, which meant he was in a really good mood this morning. All in all a good start to the day! Except for the rain.

Week 1 1. Use it and LoseIt 🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢 2. Complete Pathfinder Fitness every other day 🟢⚪🟢⚪🟢⚪ 3. Run 3, Walk 2 🟢⚪🟢🟢⚪🟢 First week down and it felt really, really good. I mean, fitness wise. The kids were in a holiday hangover, we all know how that impacted my emotional state, and I got next to nothing done at work. But hey - look at all that green on the board up there!! ☝️☝️☝️ Let's focus on that! I really like the change I made to my calorie high/low days on LoseIt. I never felt like I had too many or too few calories this week, and getting those extra exercise calories was good motivation to get a workout done. Sunday's run went well - I strung together some my sets of .5-miles and managed two 1-mile sets with a walking break between. I feel like that's really good progress for the week, just being able to run 12 minutes or so without stopping, when last Tuesday I felt like I was going to collapse after 5 minutes. This week I want to get up to three 1-mile sets, then I'll try multiple miles at a time. We're getting there. The Darebee Pathfinder exercises have been good so far. My husband is doing the exercises with me, although we do them at different times (I usually do mine first thing while he tends to workout at night). It's fun to have someone to compare notes with and complain about the truly outrageous number of high knees we're having to do. And on Saturday, my 6 year old hung out and did the exercises with me, which was a nice way to get to spend time with him. Actually this weekend was really nice in general with the kids. One helpful thing that came out of Friday's breakdown is that my husband started picking up more of the discipline, letting me be the more relaxed/fun parent for a bit. It's one of those things that I don't think either of us were consciously doing - he certainly wasn't slacking, he probably just felt like I had it handled and was letting me take the lead. But I noticed he stepped in earlier to get the kids to pick up their toys or run the show at bedtime and it definitely helped. I started today feeling like my cup of patience is full again, I was able to be kinder and more gracious, and when my 6yo started the morning grumpy we were able to turn it around without me getting grumpy as well. One new thing I tried this morning was to wake up about 20 minutes earlier than I normally do. This gave me time to have a cup of coffee and wake up a little before I have to wake him up for school (that's the other problem - he has to wake up so early! Who wouldn't be upset about waking up at 6:15, to stand out in the cold and catch the bus at 7?? 😩). I'm not much of a morning person, but I think having a little time to myself to start the day makes it easier to process the whole morning. I want to try journaling a little about mindfulness and gratitude, too, to try and reinforce the good things before the day starts. I'm also not much a journalling person, but I figure I can give it a try.

Why feel guilty though? Did anyone outright hate it? Were kids not eating? We do a leftovers night here where we pull out everything that's built up in the fridge and let the kids pick whatever they want to eat. They love it because they get to pick their favorites from the week, we love it because it's easy and uses up food. Win/Win! Sounds like a win! Plus he's getting valuable life skills!

I hate this too. I don't know how much you rely on the calorie goals, but I've seen people set their calories super high (like 3000 a day) so that they can avoid the red, then they track and just keep an eye on where they end up. Good for you! That's hard to do when you just want food NOW. Maybe you could keep some struggle foods on hand to snack on while cooking? Like nuts or carrots or beef jerky - something quick you could chew on while you cook to help hold you off. Love the updates on the OCR training - that is so cool and rangery sounding!! 🤩

Drooling over here at the descriptions of all that yummy good and that gorgeous fire! Glad you had a great weekend! ❤️

Same here - I swear it's much more exhausting getting the decorations down than getting them up. Although I love how clean and decluttered everything looks after! Love this!

Y'all are so sweet you're going to make me cry a third time today. 🥺 The rest of today actually went really well. We got the kids home from school a little early and took them to the bakery for a treat. 6yo have me a big hug when he got home and we spent some time building a huge fort. We also played a family game of bananagrams, which was most just hubby and I playing while the kids pointed out letters/words they knew. Bedtime even went smoothly, and we got some good cuddles in while 6 read a book to me and ms 3. All in all, the best ending possible for today. Hopefully the weekend goes just as well. Keep your fingers crossed for us that we get a few inches of snow tomorrow - we didn't get any last year, and the kids want a snowball fight! ❄️

Week 1 1. Use it and LoseIt 🟢🟢🟢 2. Complete Pathfinder Fitness every other day 🟢⚪🟢⚪ 3. Run 3, Walk 2 🟢⚪🟢🟢 Ugh. today was hard. We've been having some behavior problems with my six year old here at home (at school he's doing fine, thankfully) and getting back to routine after the time off has been especially painful. I worked really hard to get us to a place where he's not screaming at me every morning when I get him ready for school, but that's backslid and this week - especially this morning - was so very rough. I feel like I'm at the end of my rope because school mornings and evenings are like walking on eggshells around him - the smallest thing is likely to trigger an explosive meltdown. It's heartwrenching and I just feel like a terrible parent. I scream and yell, I have a short fuse because I'm on edge, and I'm just not parenting the way I want to. And when I try to be gentle, he just doesn't seem to respond and the whole thing escalates. My husband was up for an early meeting this morning and it's the first time he's really seen his morning behavior (he's hands on after school, but he's not an early riser) - in some ways it felt validating for another adult to see how difficult he can be, but mostly it just made me feel like a failure. Then I had to volunteer at the elementary school and I had to interact with the cliquey PTA moms with no social spoons so I felt terrible again. And then the prospect of going out for a run, when I've lost so much stamina and feel like I'm starting out from scratch? Yeah. More failure. I had a good cry in my car. Then my husband asked if I was okay, and I had another long cry and all the intrusive thoughts just came bubbling out. In the end, I basically put everything else on hold for the day - it's my day off so I was going to go to Costco and take the Christmas decorations down, but instead I drank tea and read fanfiction and tried to be kind to myself. And then, when it had at least warmed up above freezing, I went for an afternoon run. And I pushed myself a little harder: 5 sets of .5 mile runs, shorter walk breaks, a few hills. I'm hoping by next week I can string together a full mile at a time. I'm still not feeling great, but the run and endorphins took my mind off things a little. And it's the start to the weekend - I don't have to wake anyone up early so at least I won't have to start my day getting frustrated. It's going to snow all day Saturday here, so we'll be cooped up, but we're planning some fun games and we've still got shiny new Christmas toys to keep everyone happy. Maybe we can get back to balance over the weekend and the week ahead will be calmer. Hope everyone here has a good weekend - thanks for being a safe space to vent. ❤️

Aw, your coach sounds so considerate! Glad you had a good workout. And bummer to miss D&D but gold star for adulting and taking care of your health! 🌟

When I was pregnant with my first I drank so much ginger to try to counteract the nausea that I actually couldn't stand the taste for years - it had the opposite effect of making me feel nauseated because I associated it so strongly with the nausea. I'll have to see if I can stomach it again! 😆 Yes, me too!! I feel like I wasn't really taking advantage of it before now either. I'm excited to see how this works out. 🎉

(ps: it's definitely you)

🚩 CW: Calories and CICO talk in post 🚩 Week 1 1. Use it and LoseIt 🟢🟢 2. Complete Pathfinder Fitness every other day 🟢⚪🟢 3. Run 3, Walk 2 🟢⚪🟢 Yesterday I decided to give my LoseIt goals a little refresh. I was actually a tad bit over on my calorie budget for the day, when I realized I could just adjust my high/low days for the week to cover myself (stealing some calories from Friday, when I workout anyway). Then I realized that my current plan - high calories on the weekend - made a lot less sense when I take into account my workout days. If I run on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays and walk on Mondays, Thursdays I really don't need the extra calories those days because I earn exercise calories anyway. And actually, on a day like yesterday, when I don't do any added activity, I'm not even hitting my minimum burn target - which isn't being realistic about my true input/output. So I shifted my plan from "moderately active" to "sedentary", which does cut back the number of calories I'm targeted to burn on a rest day. Then I shifted my high calorie days to Wednesday and Saturdays, when I don't have any exercise planned so that I have some cushion. On Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri/Sun I can eat back my exercise calories, which makes sense anyway. I think this all better reflects my actual CICO even if it might take some time to get used to seeing such low calorie numbers (my budget before exercise today: 1,150 cal 😱). And honestly I'm glad I didn't try this right off the bat, because I think it would have really f-cked with my head, trying to recover from the 1200 calories is "enough" days. After 3 months of calories budgeting, I know I'm going to earn about 500 extra cals on the days I workout, so I can plan appropriately and it doesn't trigger some anxiety-induced binging. But I'll keep an eye on that too and may revert back if the numbers are messing with me. In other news - I made lentil soup for the first time ever tonight and it was a surprise hit! I was fully prepared for the kids to eat chicken nuggets, but they actually both finished their bowls! I made the recipes mostly as is with a couple changes (honestly 1tsp of oregano for 8 servings of soup? Please.) Lentil Soup + modifications: 2 tbsp oregano and basil 4 cloves of garlic Add 4 oz of tomato paste Use chicken stock instead of water I forgot to add vinegar in the recipe, but we drizzled balsamic on and topped with Parmesan before serving 👩🏻‍🍳🤌🏻💋

I had no idea ginger tea helped with DOMS! Sadly didn't have time for a nice salt bath, but I took a long, hot shower at least. ❤️ Also, me of three days ago had tremendous foresight and gave myself a rest day on Wednesday (it's my busiest day at work, so it just makes sense to not try and squeeze a morning workout in). Having a day off to recover really helped!

I did the same, but then I got into the bad habit of getting on Facebook from the mobile browser. 😭 I wish there was a way to block that site entirely. The doom scroll is reeeeaaal.

No complaints here! It's nice to hear some variety for egg whites! My protein is always lacking, so I'm taking notes.