Eating Clean

A follower recently confided that her eating habits are sabotaging her fitness goals and asked me what my daily diet looks like.
First of all, thank you for even thinking I might have the "secret" to getting out of our own ways. But I do not. I've blogged before about how I can go on junk-food benders despite the fact that I do indulge when eating well to avoid feelings of deprivation and doing just that. I don't know why, it's a compulsion of mine. If tasty naughty treats are in the home, I will eat it until it's gone. It's short-sighted really. I know eating well makes me feel better in the long run, but sometimes that immediate gratification of demolishing a batch of rich tasting cookies wins. Some things that help though:
a) keeping junk food out of the house and plenty of "clean" things to snack on (I love low-fat string cheese now that I can have dairy again!)
b) planning meals and snacks so that unhealthy impulse snacking is minimal
c) having something green and a protein at every meal
d) checking labels for sugar content; processed foods are notoriously loaded with sugar. Really, the fewer processed foods you eat, the safer you probably are in general

When I'm good, I'm an angel. When I fall of the wagon, I get a concussion and amnesia and it can take weeks for me to get back into good habits. I really rely on working out to keep gain slow during those times.

Time Flies

I truly, honestly, cannot believe a year has passed already.
Today last year I was pretty doubtful I would be having a baby because it was my due date and what were the odds that I would have TWO babies right on their due date?
But Bauer had received the memo and we've been so blessed since.

I get that teary-eyed, nose-burning sensation just thinking about holding him for the first time.
Happy Birthday my handsome chub-lump!

{i got him that crab romper to represent for Cancers everywhere :D}

Obsessed with Obsessed

I've been watching the A&E series, Obsessed, lately. And I'm always randomly referencing episodes with Damon and he tells me that I'm going to be on the show, for watching the show LOL
The show is about people with anxiety disorders that have manifested themselves into various forms of OCD. The show centers around a more hands-on type therapy called Exposure and Controlled Response, where they expose the patient to their anxiety producing situation and make them experience the anxiety and wait for it to subside, without using their typical compulsions.
I find it absolutely intriguing, because I'm fascinated by the human brain and the extreme ways we can react to trauma. What is it that allows some to recover relatively quickly and unscathed, yet other's minds are fragile and trap them in destructive behavior?
It makes me think about where we draw the line between habit and obsession. It makes me think about how I've responded to life events and examine my own worry-wart quirks.
Sometimes when I leave the kids in the playroom at the gym, Bauer gets pretty upset (damn my broken toe and long absence from the gym that allowed him to develop that!). When he starts to cry and is looking at me in distress, I feel my anxiety level rise (which is something I've been paying attention to since watching the show and seeing the therapists make their patients rate their anxiety on a scale 1-10). But I'm able to ignore my impulse to grab him and go about my workout. He calms down and plays, I work on my fitness.
I get anxious about working out in and of itself. I get very irritable if something is preventing me from working out as planned. And on days I've designated for rest, I get anxious if I feel like i haven't eaten well enough to deserve a rest day and often end up working out once the kids go to bed anyway. But I don't workout for excessive lengths or numbers of times, I do eat nutritiously and it doesn't really get in the way of enjoying my family. So I can still think of myself as a fitness fanatic rather than a compulsive exerciser.
I am also insistent on giving my family hugs and kisses and "I love you"s any time they leave the house. I worry that if I don't, they'll die in horrible accident and I'll have to live without closure and with regret. But not because I caused it per se, but that it's just the ironic way in which I think the universe works.

I think we're probably all a little bit crazy :D

The Family That Sweats Together

I've been asking Damon to do the Shred with me forever. He resisted because a)he's not really into traditional workouts (he prefers to play sports rather than train) and b)it's for chicks.
But yesterday he did it with me! And of course that meant Emberly had to. She usually does it with me if she's around, but "needs" lots of breaks when it's just us. She did the whole thing with her daddy participating too. So Bauer then had no choice but to join us. He got on top of us during the ab sections. He pulled him self up by our sweaty skin when we were in plank position.
The workout wasn't any easier with everyone doing it with me, but it was sure a lot of fun!
I'm moving on to the "Ripped" series this week!

Drunkard

My 11.5mo old son, who seemed to be content with just laying and sitting for the longest, has been getting increasingly bold with his walking attempts. It really just mostly makes me nervous because he frequently bites it. Usually, he's just going a few steps from the ottoman to the sofa, so it's soft and doesn't matter much, but today he was just one step short of making it to a chair outside and fell forward hitting his face pretty good. I thought he'd stick to cruising after that for a while. But he surprised us and took a long, obstacle filled walk from his sister's bed to the hallway this evening when they were getting ready for bed! We cleared most of the chaos from his path and tried to get him to do it again and we captured it on film (the hubby's phone, my camera is still out of commission).
He's pant-less, and missing a shoe and just generally looks inebriated. Awesome.

Being that I've done this before, I know that walking just means more falling, more getting into things, more of me chasing him. But I still can't help but be giddy and excited about it.

Flashback Friday

So, my camera stopped working. One week after the extended warranty expired. Yeah. Really.

So, here's a photo from a night long long ago that I just found because the bff tagged me in it.

{oh, boo, I didn't realize it'd be so tiny...}

I got that top from when I modeled at the grand opening of H&M in downtown San Francisco. Lace, metallic thread, rhinestones, bustle... what else could you want in a top? It's one of the few things I ever "got" from modeling. People think you get tons of free clothes. Maybe the super models do, but in 5yrs of modeling, I only remember 3 occasions where I got free clothes. Plenty of other perks though, admittedly.

One of those weeks

I'm usually such a homebody (mainly because I'm cheap). I get excited about going to the movies in the middle of the day.
But this last week we were all over the place with visitors and my birthday.
And...
I'm exhausted. I have lots of pictures and plenty of things to talk about, I just don't have the mental energy to actually sit down and make my fingers form sentences.
So instead, here's a photo bomb from our first trip to Rehab at the Hard Rock.
















I promise to be better this week. Really, I do.