We are back in the Red in DFW. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m wearing a mask even when I workout. What inconvenience is it really to me? None. I put on clothes in the morning so a mask isn’t any different to me anymore.
I actually haven’t worn makeup since the masks requirement went into effect. With the exception of mascara of course but no actual face makeup. It’s been great! My skin has never looked so even toned and breakout free! I wash my face often or use face wipes. I also wash my mask regularly so that helps quite a bit to reduce any skin issues.
I really don’t mind wearing a mask even after the mask order is lifted. Honestly I’ve never gone this long without catching even just a cold! I credit that to the masks, over disinfecting and hand washing. I know masks are annoying to some but I’m one who doesn’t mind it. I’ll do whatever is going to keep my family and myself healthy! Better safe than sorry!
I’m not a baker. Never have been. I actually have ruined 95% of the things I’ve tried baking over the years. I can cook decently well but me and baking just can seem to mesh
However, I did successfully bake the best zucchini brownies ever! And I’m not a brownie person! I actually very much dislike brownies, cookies, cake, etc. But these were pretty good! Would I crave them again? No. But that’s because I’m not a brownie person. If I was I’d be making these every week!
I think what I liked about them was that they didn’t have that oily texture. I hate that so many baking items require an oil base. Zucchini replaced the oil in this case. So instead of an oily feel, it was just very moist and soft. None of that greasy feel when you picked them up. I also didn’t feel as guilty having one because I was like well, there is zucchini so I’m getting a hint of a veggie!
Ingredients:
•2 cups flour (I used rice flour)
•1 cup grated zucchini
•1/2 cup cocoa powder
•1 cup granulated sugar
•1/2 cup skim milk
•2 eggs
•1 cup chocolate chips
•2 tsp baking soda
•2 tsp vanilla extract
•pinch of salt
Frosting:
•8 tbsp cocoa powder
•8 tbsp water
•4 tbsp sugar
•1 tsp vanilla extract
Recipe:
•Preheat oven to 350 degrees
•Spray 9×9 pan with cooking spray
•Combine all ingredients (minus the ingredients for frosting) into a bowl and mix until smooth
•Pour batter into pan
•Bake 25 minutes
•Combine ingredients for frosting and mix till smooth
•Once brownies are done and cooled, top with icing
I went to the gym for the first time in 6 months! It’s crazy to think masks are the new normal. However, I honestly don’t mind! I love that people aren’t sneezing and coughing all over the place. I actually haven’t been sick in months! By now I’ve normally had a cold at least once or twice. I swear it’s thanks to the masks I haven’t caught anything!
Working out with a mask on wasn’t exactly easy. The gym wasn’t very busy thank goodness so I took my mask off a few times. I do honestly really appreciate the distancing and cleaning required now. I hope it stays that way after all this corona stuff settles. Literally everyone in the gym wiped up and disinfected after they used a machine. It was great! Normally I’d see maybe a few people doing that. It was annoying because you have those sweaty people who use a machine and don’t care to take the time to wipe up after themselves. It was so gross. But now, everyone is cleaning! I love it!
I also really appreciate the distance requirement! I HATE when people stand too close to me in the gym. I like my personal space and when I workout I like to be left alone. By requiring 6 ft between people I get the space I’ve always wanted! It really it was like heaven for me.
I know wearing a mask, distancing and disinfecting is inconvenient for some, but I absolutely love it! Like I said, I hope life stays this way. It’s as if people have finally learned how to be clean respectful individuals
All our lives we have been told (if you paid attention to your Dr or in health class 😉) that fevers are beneficial to fight infection. Having a fever can be scary, especially if it gets into the 104+ range. However, it’s also good. A fever, which is an elevated body temperature, sets in motion a series of mechanisms that regulate our immune system.
If you remember back to health class in high school, your hypothalamus is what sits at the base of your brain and regulates body temp. When your hypothalamus detects pathogens from the immune system, it signals for the body to generate and retain more heat. Thus triggering a fever.
There’s a saying…..”feed a cold, starve a fever.” If you have a fever you should avoid eating. You want your body focusing on the fever and riding itself of pathogens. By provoking digestion, you are over stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system.
Most fevers, a doctor will tell you to just stay home in bed and rest. When my son was 2 he got a fever of 104. The doctor told us to put him in a luke warm bath. If him temp continued at 104 or higher for two hours or more, then we were to take him to the emergency room. It’s scary, but again the body is just fighting an infection.
What’s crazy now days is the minute we find out someone has a fever, we go into full on panic because it’s possible they have corona virus! Before this pandemic, if someone had a fever they were told to go home and rest and no one really thought twice about it. But because of this virus, you get a fever, and people literally run from you! Lol
You body does some really cool things if you just pay attention to it. People are so focused on a quick fix and pump themselves with medication too early so their body becomes reliant on medication vs allowing it to use its immune system and fight it as god planned. Mind you, not all illnesses can be fought off by the immune system. I think we can all agree that there are quite a few cases where medication is needed. Please don’t go on the attack. I am not anti medication. I am just one who prefers to let the immune system try to work first. Then if help is needed, you call your doc and get your body extra help!
Ever gone on a diet and felt achy during it? Sort of those body aches you get just before you actually get sick? Well, that’s not uncommon. So what causes it?……
When you eat unhealthy foods for a while, your body builds “immunity” to these junk foods. That’s why you don’t feel any major discomfort after having eaten them for weeks, months or years. Once you remove these foods from your diet, your body can actually go through withdrawals. Your body became addicted to these foods so it’s a shock to it when you remove them. Symptoms can include body aches, anxiety, exhaustion, irritability, jitteriness, and tiredness.
A lot of people who get these symptoms while dieting feel like their diet isn’t working due to the symptoms they experience. What they fail to remember is that dieting isn’t easy at first. You have to get your body into a routine. They often feel this discomfort, get discouraged and immediately want to feel comfort. They remember how junk food was a comfort feeling for some of them, so they go right back to eating it.
Don’t get me wrong, I eat my fair share of junk food. However, I eat it in moderation. I may eat a burger and fries for dinner one night. But all my meals before that are healthy. I don’t do an entire day of eating terrible. If I do eat terrible one entire day, my body goes into a shock and I actually get an achy, tired and uncomfortable feel. It’s one I can actually feel in my muscles and stomach.
There is what I call the “diet hump.” For me it’s always around week 3 or 4 of my diet. I start to feel achy and I get tired and discouraged. I think to myself how much I hate this feeling and I just want to lay on the sofa with a box of pizza and Chinese food. But once I push past those thoughts and a few days of the achy, tiredness passes, I feel better. Things get easier after that hump. My diet becomes more of a routine and easy to follow. I don’t crave unhealthy foods as much. My body actually feels stronger after.
Diet and weight loss is not easy. It honestly takes a lot more mental work than people realize. It’s not 100% physical when going on a diet. You have to keep yourself on track and not let what may be withdrawal symptoms, set you back if they come on. For me a lot of “self talk” is involved. I tell myself regularly “I can do this.” It’s a lot of mental pushing. But it’s worth it on the end. Especially to wake up feeling better every day. Having my stomach feel clear and not heavy and bloated. To not have my joints an muscles ache when I try to get up or sit down. With two kids under 3, I need all the strength and energy I can get from this body!
My Sadie bear had to go on a diet per the doctors orders. She weighed in at 82lbs at her last visit. The vet recommended getting her down to the low 70’s.
She said no more packaged treats and to cut her dog food by 1/4. She said absolutely no table scraps. However, hard boiled eggs and baked chicken were great snacks for her (in moderation).
After starting her diet I realized I’m the one who made her fat! My poor dog! I never realized how many table scraps I actually fed her. If I made Ryder a sandwich and cut off the crust, Sadie got the crust. Leftovers from dinner that I didn’t want to keep, I’d toss to her. Random parts of my snack or lunches I would give her. It had become such a habit to drop her food, over half the time I didn’t even realize I was doing it. That is until I put her on a diet. I was cutting the crust off Ryders sandwich and went to hand the crust to Sadie and stopped myself. Feeding the dog was literally a habit I was having to break!
It’s been exactly a month and I took Sadie to the vet to get weighed. She weighed in at 72 lbs! That’s a 10lb weight loss in 30 days! You can see she feels better. She moves around a lot more. She actually goes bounding after the kids to play with them. Before she looked like she had to drag herself up off the floor if she needed to move.
A one mile walk used to about kill Sadie. She would come home and lay on the floor for a while panting. Now she can go almost 4 miles and needs maybe 10 minutes to recover before she’s ready to go and play with the boys again.
I think she still has a few more pounds to lose. The extra weight can be hard on her joints, especially with her being 12 years old. But she’s made great progress! I think 5 more pounds should be no problem for her. I’m proud of my old pup. She’s getting healthy so she can take care of her brothers for a few more years 💙
Living with mom after 30….. Ok it’s not exactly as sad and pitiful as it sounds. 😂 We are building a house. In order to get our old house ready and on the market, we moved out of it.
We are redoing the kitchen floors and refinishing the downstairs hardwoods since the dogs nails destroyed them. We would have to be out for a week while all this got done, so we just moved into my moms house. Rather than move back and have to gather up both kids and two large dogs every time someone wanted to come view the house, we figured staying at my moms during the selling process was just easier. The idea of having to scramble to clean up a million toys and the mass amounts of dog hair before someone comes to see the house (possible multiple times a day) just gives me anxiety. Not to mention, with all this Coronavirus stuff still flying around, I don’t want to have to disinfect everything each time after someone views it.
So yup, I’m living with my mom after 30! But not in a sad and pitiful way! 😂 Do say a prayer that we don’t drive her crazy before the house is built. The boys and I are a lot to handle. Their toys alone have pretty much swallowed up every bit of free space the house had.🤷🏼♀️
I started my “summer slim down.” This year I have a good friend helping hold me accountable. I’m a week in and I’ve done pretty good! I’m someone who does better with a goal. I’m less likely to cheat on a diet or get lazy with workouts if I set a goal to work towards. I think it’s the competitive side of me that kicks in. I don’t like to lose. Plus, having a friend give me that little push tends to help.
I’m not doing an extreme diet or anything. I’m simply cutting out a few items that I regularly grab while grazing or boredom eating. So less cheese, less milk (I drink a crazy amount), less sugar, less carbs and less alcohol. I still consume a good amount of carbs. I need them to fuel my body. But I’m aiming to add in more complex carbs and reduce my simple carb intake.
The word diet doesn’t mean you’re going on some strict meal plan. A diet by definition is “the kinds of foods that a person habitually eats.” So I’m making little adjustments to my regular eating habits.
My overall goal is less snacking. I’m someone who goes to the fridge to eat just because I’m bored. So I’ll grab a snack when I’m not even hungry. I’m attempting to cut out these extra unnecessary snacks/meals.
My father-in-law gave me the biggest compliment the other day. He said my kids were the most well behaved kids he’s ever met. This might not seem like a big deal to most people, but I took it as a major compliment!
I work very hard to help my kids learn to be respectful and kind even at a young age. Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t without our temper tantrums and meltdowns. But those I don’t consider to be completely behavioral. They’re typically related to communication struggles and frustrations in understanding their own emotions. So I consider meltdowns and temper tantrums to be more learning and developmental related vs behavioral. Not to mention, they are starting to become few and far between. A majority of ours were due to my toddlers lack of communication since he was struggling with words. Now that he’s gotten more words, he’s less frustrated and able to voice what he needs. So we saw a significant drop in temper tantrums and meltdowns.
I’ve also worked really hard to change my mindset. I used to get so frustrated with my toddler when he would have a meltdown or temper tantrum. After I learned they were mainly due to his frustration in not being able to communicate, I was able to change my thinking and my actions. When he has a meltdown, I try really hard to talk to him softly, hug him or sometimes just let him be. Sometimes he needs a hug and other times he just needs his space. Same as adults!
Meltdowns and temper tantrums aside, my kids really are pretty well behaved! They listen well (most of the time.) They are good with following directions and doing what’s asked of them. My oldest loves to please people. If you ask him to do something and he does it, he gets so proud of himself. Sometimes I have him do goofy little tasks for me just because I know it makes him so happy and proud to help mommy.
By no means am I saying my kids are better than anyone else’s. I’m just saying how proud I am of them and how I appreciate someone pointing out how well behaved they are. It makes me feel like I’m doing something right and navigating this parenting stuff successfully!
When it comes to workouts, I’m a “superset” person. A superset is when you perform two exercises back to back with no rest in between exercises. 🤔
I don’t like to do the same exercise movement and rest in between. I’m someone who has to keep moving in the gym. I don’t like down time. So supersets work well for me. I typically do 4-5 supersets which is a total of 8-10 exercises. I do anywhere from 3-4 sets of 8-15 reps depending on the exercise and the weight. 🏋️♀️
Obviously this type of workout doesn’t work well for everyone but it’s been great for me. It’s helped keep me from getting bored at the gym. I also don’t have time to piddle around and waste time. 💪🏻
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