Category Archives: Goals

The Chunky Dunker’s Club, Week 5

Good evening!

Welcome to week 5, of the Chunky Dunker’s Club!!! Can you believe it has been Five weeks already??

Every week I post a new Chunky Dunker’s article ever Wednesday evening, and you have the opportunity to comment, and cheer each other as you each go through your journey to get fit and healthy!!! We will discuss hints, tips, and ideas on losing weight, staying motivated, and achieving your fitness goals, whether that is to lose 5 pounds, to do 10 sit-ups, or just incorporate some healthy habits into your daily life!!

Before I get on tonight’s topic, I am VERY HAPPY to report that I have lost 7.2 pounds since our very first week!!!! YEAH!!!

Tonight’s topic: Tracking Your Way Towards Progress

By no means am I an expert in this area, but I am coming to realize that tracking your journey could be the key to your fitness success. The primary benefit of logging your diet and exercise is motivation. It is much easier to stay on track if you can look back after sticking to your program for a period of time and see that you’ve lost several pounds or shaved a few seconds off your routine neighborhood run; and if you should keep your weekly weight on a simple chart, then you can see that descending line or the ascending graph of your weight loss progress. These visual cues are reminders that you are taking small steps each and every day toward your larger goal and it’s working.

Having your diet and exercise plan in writing greatly increases your chances of sticking to them versus simply trying to “cut back” on unhealthy foods or “exercise more”. Defined goals and plans to reach those goals will ensure that you achieve what you wish. Sometimes your mind will tell you that you’ve been exercising regularly when you can look back at your training log and see clearly and definitively that you’ve only averaged one workout per week for the past month. I find that when I track my food, I actually have eaten more than what I thought I had, or eaten more of the wrong things, then what my memory could recollect, which is why writing it down has become key for me.

Whether your goal is to lose 10 pounds by next summer, lower your blood pressure by 5 points, or shave 30 seconds off your weekly club 10k time trial, you will need a plan. By tracking your exercise times, distance, diet, measurements, feelings, and any other thoughts or goings on a daily basis you will be in a much better position to understand what you need to do to reach your goal.

There are many ways you can start tracking your progress. There are many online tools that you can use, my personal favorite is LiveStrong.com Thier . Or, you can keep your details in a journal, spiral notebook, or some other paper-based device – the choice is yours. I personally track my food and exercise using LiveStrong.com’s My Plate (which is free, btw) and I journal for the most part either on paper, or on my daily blog, which most of you already read. 🙂 I weigh and measure every Wednesday morning, and I LOVE keeping that progress in a simple Excel graph! Being visual it is GREAT motivation to keep doing a good job!
So, tell me what you think?? Is tracking your progress something that you might want to do? If so how, and what are you going to start tracking? Also, how has your Kaizen assignment been going from last week? Also, I want to know what is working, and what isn’t working with our Chunky Dunker’s Club. Do you have any ideas that might help us make our group more successful? I am always up for suggestions!!
With that, I am going to wrap it up, and we can open up our discussion in the comment section of this posting!
Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

A Tired Tuesday Evening!

Good evening!

I think my body is still trying to recuperate from being so sick this last week, because for some reason I am really achy and if I were to close my eyes right now, I would be out like a light!! So, I am going to keep this short! 😉

I wanted to make sure I posted my Kaizen activities for today:

  1. Got up on time
  2. Brushed my teeth
  3. Walked 2 blocks from parking lot to my office
  4. Walked up 3 flights of stairs
  5. Had a healthy breakfast
  6. Tracked my breakfast
  7. Walked down 5 flights of stairs
  8. Walked 2 blocks to lunch and then back again
  9. Had grilled chicken instead of beef at lunch
  10. Requested extra veggies with my lunch
  11. Walked 2 more blocks to get from office to parking lot
  12. Drank about 2 liters of water today
  13. Had some extra vegetables with dinner tonight
  14. Ate an orange for dessert
  15. Started reading a health/nutrition book this evening
  16. Doing kegals while blogging! 😉
  17. Brushed my teeth again
  18. Flossed
  19. Will do a stress relieving meditation before bed
  20. Took some time to stretch before bed

Today was a day about hope, love and gratitude. There have been a lot of stressful things going on in my life, at both work and at home. Today was a day that I chose to change my perspective and focus on all of the blessings that come my way everyday!! There are a lot of things and changes going on at work right now that we are hoping will really help make our jobs more enjoyable, and less stressful. My home is clean, and my husband loves me like crazy, and I love him right back! We have every need taken care of, plus some for helping others with. We are blessed!

We are blessed! We are blessed!
and today, I am just soooo thankful!!!

Before I go for the evening, I wanted to remind you that tomorrow is our Chunky Dunker’s Club meeting!!! I will try and post by 6:30 tomorrow evening! Don’t forget to hop on so I can hear how everyone is doing!! I am excited to weigh in the morning and let you all know how I am doing too!! 20 pounds is the goal!!!! YEAH!! 😉

Have a FABULOUS evening!!! 😉

A Taxing Kind of Morning!

Good morning!

Having meditated before bed last night, which in turn caused me to fall asleep faster, I woke up early this morning raring to go!! I’ve decided that I needed to gather my tax papers so that I can file my taxes! I was sure I had a fail-safe plan when I chose a location to “stash” all of the random incoming papers, so as not to lose them, but unfortunately there must have been some kind of a hiccup in my plan, because I am missing two very important papers! Dang! It is going to cause me to have to serious spend some time this evening looking for them!! Oh well, that will teach me!

As I continue to think about where I could have placed those tax papers, I look around and see a couple of stacks of things that just need to be donated, or even tossed in this room! I am sitting in our spare room, which has kinda become a craft room/office/mini library. As you may already know, I go through phases of cleaning/purging/using this room, and other times this room stays completely closed up and unused all together! Sad, really! and what a waste of square footage!! My office is talking about having us telecommute on a more permanent basis, since desk space is becoming a rarity at work right now, which means that this would be the room that I would have to work out of. In it’s current state, I am not sure that would be possible! Not to mention, this chair is not meant to be sat on for long periods of time!!! I think what I am trying to say, is that I have got to keep making this room more of a priority to get FINISHED!!! This room could be such a SWEET spot!! I will get on that!! 😉

As for work today??? Well, I am going to have to be a little more focused in my tasks otherwise I will have a repeat of yesterday, where I had gotten a lot of work done, but they may not have been the BEST use of my time! I have some big assignments that a lot of people are waiting for! I am hoping to knock one of those out of the ballpark today and into the hands of one of my customers!!! That would make for a GREAT day!! 😉

I am going to run and set myself up for a LEVEL 10 day!!! as for you…

Have a FABULOUS day!! 😉

Spending the Night With Ruby!

Good evening!

I am needing some chearleading to stay on the straight and narrow with my fitness plan this evening, so I am spending some time watching some Ruby!! I love that girl! She is just such an inspiration to me, and I just hope that I can finally start seeing that blasted number go down on that scale. This episode is the one where she realizes her dream of going camping for the first time! I love this episode, and I just ADORE camping!!

I must tell you, Jason makes camping soooo much fun! I love the zen, the quiet, the peace, and being in the great outdoors! I just love the whole experience of camping!!!

Anyway, back to Ruby and getting back on my own wagon of getting fit! I did do some Kaizen actions today, and I really do want to share them with you today!!

Kaizen actions:

  1. I have drank about 2 liters of water today
  2. I had a healthy breakfast
  3. Walk two blocks to and from lunch today
  4. I had a very vegetable heavy lunch today
  5. I literally took a break just to breath when things got a little stressful at work this afternoon
  6. I did some extra walking after work today
  7. Had a large salad with dinner
  8. I took some time after work to have a really GREAT laugh with my sweetie – a few times tonight!!
  9. Throughout everything I have done today, I have really tried to keep perspective and remain thankful for the blessings that I do have
  10. I did some stretching before going to bed
  11. and I did a 10 minute meditation to get me ready for going to sleep.

So between seeing this list, and the inspiration of watching Ruby making progress, I know I can do this – little by little. Ruby reminds me to not give up on myself – that I AM WORTH IT!! and that I can wake up every morning and find it inside of myself keep taking my baby steps!! God bless you, Ruby!! You keep going girrrrl!!! I know I will!! 😉

Have a FABULOUS evening! 😉

Note to Chunky Dunkers: If I can do this, so CAN YOU!!!! Don’t give up on yourself!! GO CHUNKY DUNKERS!!! 😉

Getting With The Program!!

Good morning!!

It has been a while since I posted first thing in the morning, so I thought today, I would get with the program, and get my morning thoughts down on paper, so to speak!

A couple of years ago, I remember watching this woman, on Oprah. This woman had the seemingly perfect life, whatever that is, and decided it was time to edit her life and surround herself with only the people, things, and activities that were the MOST important to her. I was so in awe of the changes that she made that I recorded that clip on my DVR, and literally watching one, two, and sometimes 3 times per day for almost a year. I no longer have that DVR clip, no longer having a DVR and all, but I am still so drawn to the idea of learning happiness through your actions, versus happiness through accumulation, that I often think of this woman and her family. It was AMAZING to me to see the transformation in her life, and to listen to her story. How calm and soft spoken she sounded – TWO MAJOR things that I AM NOT!! and how utterly happy she was, with what looked like SOOO LITTLE. I find that as much as I am drawn to the idea happiness through simplicity and focus, my actions in my own life don’t reflect this belief.  Knowing that I don’t has caused me to live in an almost in a constant state of fear of the unknown and a never ending barrage of stress knowing that I am not honoring my authentic Christina.

With all of the stress that I have let myself be put under, I have been wanting to learn more about stresses effects on a person, so yesterday I watched an interesting documentary on stress and what it does to you on a biological level. What I heard was not good. Without going into any long, boring details. Mamma has got to start making some serious life changes here – and I have to do more than just TALK about it!! I want to live a LOOONG and HEALTHY life!!!

So, that is where my focus is today! What can I do to live a life that is more in balance with work/play, good stressers/bad, togetherness time/alone time, and me time/others time. I am not sure what that is going to look like, or what form some of those actions might take, but I am excited to see where the journey takes me!!

As for this exact moment? This journey is taking me to get my booty to work!! 😉

Have a FABULOUS morning!!! 😉