Delayed my Challenge

 I decided to wait until after Labor Day, or rather the Sat and Sun of Labor Day weekend.   The family went camping, I stayed at home cause someone needed to care for all the cats, dogs and horses.  I even went to town to feed our oldest daughter's cats.  They dropped their 2 dogs off at our house.  So I had 6 dogs to care for.

But now that it's Labor Day and "summer" is over

It's time cause I weighted myself and it was bad.  But yet, I ate chips, dip and so much sodium in my diet this weekend.  That and it's been

I mean high temps near 100F.  HOT.  Way to hot.  I always retain fluid like mad when it's hot like this. Today is a lot cooler, thanks to thunderstorms that rolled through yesterday and this morning.  Tomorrow back to the oven, but then it FINALLY decides that maybe fall is here and temps cool off to more normal.

I've been loosely tracking macros off and on the last month or so.  I kind of think part of my problem is that I don't eat enough calories most of the time, then I kind of binge eat 3000 calories for a couple days and totally blow any calorie deficit away.

And I think the low, almost to low if you ask me, calories I eat are helping me not have the energy to really get up and go.  So for the last week or so, I've made more of an effort to get more calories in me.  200-300ish.  And you know what,  I'm feeling more energetic, sleeping a little better and over all feel more peaceful.  Like my brains is like "finally, I've got enough food"   

I think this fall/winter I'm going to work on a small body recomp.  Workout hard, actually push myself with how heavy I can lift, and eat at maintenance.  Then maybe when winter is tapering off, I can cut calories by 100-200 a day, nothing to strick, and cut a bit.  

I'm also going to try and grow a butt during my recomp.  I've been half ass 😂punn not intended, working on a good glute routine, and I do think it's helped a little. But well, I want to grow a little more of a booty and keep what I do have up where it belongs.  I think the small amount I've done has mostly helped lift up what I've got, which is great.  Now I need to grow what I've got.

That's about it for this time.  Gonna try and bump up the amount I blog.  

My 75 Soft Challenge

 Something I've thought about doing for a long time.  Something I've started, a few times, then quit or something happened and I'd stop.  But it's always been nagging me in the back of my head that I should really see what 75 of consistency would do for my health and wellness.

Then, to add to that, while surfing TikTok, this kept popping up

I mean every few videos I'd watch this popped up as an add.    So I ordered it.  Got it this week. 

And Monday I'm going to start.    I'm also going to give myself little rewards for completing the first 7 days, then day 25, day 50 and day 75 will be a bigger reward.

I think for day 7, it will be something small.  A couple new watch bands for my Galaxy watch. 

Day 25 maybe a new eye shadow palette or new fingernail polish. 

Day 50 new workout shoes, or new workout wear.

Day 75 I don't know LOL.  Something a little bigger.   Maybe a nice shopping splurge.   I'll try to figure it out eventually 

So you'll be reading up on how I'm doing for my Soft 75 Challenge over the next 12 weeks or so.

I'm sick and tired of being fat and tired

 This is me. I'm 100% over it.  I'm so tired of being fat.  Buying clothes and they either don't fit right, look horrible, or I just hate the very large number of the size they are.  I'm over it.

Tomorrow my official plan gets made.  I'm going to see what I can accomplish before the end of the year.   I'm going to start a weight lifting routine of 3 days a week plus spin 1-2 days a week  My weights will be a focus of glute building. As I've gotten older, by butt has both gotten flatter but it's also started to head south.

And cause your glutes are the biggest muscle group, building them up will burn the most calories. So hey I'll look better, have stronger glutes, I'll also burn a few more calories 

And the best thing is my husband is going to do his own weight loss journey too.  He got on the scale this last week and was horrified at how large the number was.  The most he's ever weighed.   And he's been told a few times that losing weight might help his back pain.  So he's actually going to try to lose weight.  Start slow,  Walk a few times a week with out fat beagle Odin.  Maybe get the Total Gym out to do some resistance training.  And clean up our diet. 

Cause of course eating healthy is the super hard part.  Add in all the food contamination that we're having right now.  Diarrhea lettuce,  contaminated eggs, beef with flesh eating worms, and God knows what else it's almost scary to try and eat. 

On Monday I'm going up to the city and I'm going to hit a few grocery stores that have veggies that are not from Taylor Farms.  Seems like that's where the contaminated lettuce is from.   Cause eating more fruit veggie and plenty of protein is in my future. 

I took a whole week off!

My hubby is away for about 10 days.  I don't mind. He was military and gone sometimes for months after 9/11 and I'm very use to both being alone, and my introverted self is happy being alone, with all my book boyfriends LOL.  I keep getting more and more book boyfriends the more I read. And I read a lot.  Like over 120 new books this year alone 

At first I was all like "I'm going to do this and this and this, and workouts all the time and get so much stuff done"

This is what happened

Yep I've not done much of anything.  But read.  I've done a lot of reading.  A couple rereads of favorite books and like 5 new books have been read in the week hubby has been gone. And watched A LOT of horror movies. It's scary movie month, don't you know.  Oh, I've still taken care of our animals, cause they still need fed, let out to potty and looked after/  And I've done laundry and basic stuff like that.  I did also manage to declutter some of my lipsticks and lip glosses cause that needed done.

But I've not worked out in a full week.   And to be honest, I'm fine with that.  Tomorrow I'll get back on track after enjoying my time off.  

I think every so often it's not a bad thing to just take some time to do literally next to nothing.  It's been very enjoyable.  

Maybe I'll plan for another week to do nothing or next to nothing, sometime in Jan of next year.   Maybe I just need to plan for a week off every 3 months or so.  

Tomorrow I'll get back on my walking and weight lifting.  Maybe I'd better get my log book set up for the next week. 

Well that sucked

 So I went on antibiotics for about 10 days due to an infected cat bite.  My own fault for getting bit.  Anyway, I had a 10 day course of Bactrim and Clindamycin.  I finished up on Wed.  Noticed a bit of a rash around my right forearm close to where the bite was.  Nothing much.  Thought I rubbed up on something taking care of my horses or the fly spray I sprayed the horses down with got on me.  No big deal

WRONG

I woke up Thursday like this

And the rash didn't just cover my back.  Oh no.  On my chest, belly some down my legs.  I even had a few hives on my toes. And on my face as well.  Thank goodness not much on my face cause well, having facial hives was making me a little like "am I going to start getting throat swelling?"  

So itchy  I literally wanted to scratch my skin off cause if my skin was off, maybe it wouldn't be itchy anymore.    It got worse, and worse and worse as the day went on. 

Finally I went into the doctor on Friday and well. I'm on Prednisone now.  And Benadryl, and Pepcid cause Pepcid also has antihistamine properties.  and to double up on my Zyrtec for a week.  

I am SO DRY now.  My mouth and lips feel so dry.  And I still look like some sort of runaway from a leprosy colony.  But it's fading.  And it's no longer itchy.  Thank goodness.  I hope in a few more days I won't be covered in a rash cause it does just look bad.   And sweat still makes it feel itchy, so I'm going to reduce my intensity of workouts for a few more days.   Cause I'm finally getting better, and I don't want to go backwards.   

Here's hoping that my rash goes away really quickly and I can get back to crushing my workouts again really soon. 

This was me on Friday

 Yep, I did a leg day on Wed.  Now Thus I was plenty sore, but man on Friday I was MEGA sore.  And I kind of liked it in a weird way.   

Silly thing is, I'm doing leg day again on Monday.  I'm going to bump up my weights to 4 days a week with 2 leg/glute days.  So I'll not be able to walk at all all week long LOL.  Oh well.  You don't build a booty without doing leg/glute work a few times, right.

My walking challenge has been going great.  I've walked at least 20 min everyday this month.  And I've doing some sort of workout for 9 days in a row.  I'm feeling better, sleeping a little better, and overall just feel really good.  

I've been also working on getting in one more serving of fruit/veggies every day.  Just one more cause I want to make it a habit.  And I'm working on getting a little more protein in my diet and cutting out sugary snacks.  I need to get back into the habit of eating a higher protein breakfast.  I tend to have way less "I want a snack"  in the evenings when I get a good amount of protein at breakfast time.   So maybe tonight I'll make up some hard boiled eggs cause they are a quick easy breakfast staple for me. 

I need to really decide what reward I want to give to myself when I finish this walking challenge.  Cause I'm going to do it!

I think in Oct I'm going to try a Soft 75 challenge.  I mean, why not, right. 

We're in the "ber" months now!

 

My favorite months!  It cools down, Halloween, the bugs all die and go to hell, Halloween, scary movie month, Halloween, Christmas. Halloween LOL  I like Halloween, what can I say.  

I officially started my Walking challenge yesterday.  Two days in the month and I've walked more than my 15 min for both!  YIPPIE.

I also got back to lifting heavy again today.  Man it felt great!  Chest shoulders and just a bit of booty work.  It's time to start building that booty. So I'm tacking on a little booty work on after upper body days. 

Now for the month of Sept, I'm only going to lift 3 days a week.  It's a break in period. Then I'll take a week off, do some of my DVD workouts, and then my plan is to go up to 4 days a week of lifting.  2 leg/glute days and 2 upper body days.  I'm also planning on sticking with walking 15-30 min every day, minus days I'm sick of course.  But I don't get sick very often so that's a good thing.

I also got this book out.  

I read a big chunk of it a couple years ago. So I got it out and decided it's time to really read it.  I'm only on chapter 2 but me and my highlighter have hit up a few phrases that spoke to me.  

It feels good to get back to really trying to take care of myself.  I lost 24lbs, and regained 7.5.  Which pissed me off.  It just feels good to work on getting that 7.5lbs I regained off, and then I can focus on losing the 25-30lbs I want to get rid of.  I want to be a fit and healthy grandma for all my grandkids, and for me as well.