Tag Archives: Chunky Dunkers Club

Happy! Happy! Happy!

Good evening!

I just got home, and I just found myself sitting in the quiet of my living room, zoning! I am so absolutely tired, and and soooo absolutely HAPPY! I had my first Zumba class today, and I have to tell you – IT IS SOOOO MUCH HARDER THAN MY BELLY DANCING CLASS!! Or I might be saying that just because I did do two hours of belly dancing last night, and I must confess, today I was still a little sore. Now, after doing my Zumba class, my sweetie might as well just wheel my sorry booty up the stairs and chuck me into bed, because I am

T-I-R-E-D!!!

Tired, but very happy!! I love getting to know what this body of mine can and cannot do! I am literally in awe of the fact that if I consistently do something, I will get better at it, and it will get easier!

WHAT A NOVEL CONCEPT!! 😉

OK, so back to my Zumba class.  The class was fun. We were in a gigantic conference room at the hospital and there were 15 of us, not including the instructor. She had provided belly dancing coin skirts for everyone to wear, so we could have fun jangling with the music – I thought that was funny!! 😉 The music was AMAZING!! There were some modern pieces as well as some upbeat Latin pieces, but everything was happy music!! Which was good because we were all having fun sweating, giggling, and dancing like maniacs!!! The dance moves were a mix between belly dancing, Latin steps, and pop – CRAZY FUN!!! The only time the class wasn’t fun was when our instructor sneakily threw in a song that was just for squatting, and then another song that was just for balancing on one foot, and one song just for doing situps, plank, and a ab-crunching Pilates move! OUCH!!! Let me just tell you, I am just so thankful that I don’t have to do that again until Thursday!! I have a day to recoup, and honey, let me tell, you I need it!! 😉

Well, I know this sounds crazy, but I am going to go swimming with my sweetie before bed tonight, so until tomorrow…

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

PS. Chunky Dunkers, we are SO ON for tomorrow night!! I will meet you here!! 😉

Chunky Dunker’s Night, Week 11!

Good evening!

Welcome to week 11, of the Chunky Dunker’s Club!! Welcome back to those who join us every week, including those of your who silently follow us, and welcome to those who may be new to my blog this evening. I am happy to say, that after last week’s slight hiatus, we are no back on with our regular weekly meeting.

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!!

Tonight’s topic: Cleaning Out the Kitchen!

There is something that I am sure a lot of you have already done, me?? Well, apparently I am having a tendency to do some of my fitness tasks a little out of order. This week for our house is a week of getting out kitchen ready for fitness, which means we need a Major Kitchen Cleanup STAT!!! That means, throwing out the junk food (sugary, processed, chemical-laden, energy sucking food) and replacing it with healthy substitutes (whole, once alive, colorful, energy giving foods).

So for our kitchen that looks something like this:

LESS OF/NONE OF MORE OF
  • Sugar
  • Nuts
  • Sodium
  • Beans
  • White/bleached/enriched flours
  • Seeds
  • Unnecessary chemicals
  • Fresh fruits
  • Processed foods
  • Fresh vegetables
  • Saturated fats
  • Whole grains
  • Trans fats
  • Lean protein
  • Polyunsaturated fats

Now, I realize that that is easier said than done, but I have to tell you that the man that I have been married to for almost 17 years, the man I love, the meat and potatoes man made me the MOST DIVINE vegetarian dinner this week, and I WAS SHOCKED!! It was light, delicious, filling, and we both commented on how GREAT we felt after we had finished eating it!! Not only were we not overly full, we felt good about having made such a healthy choice! I want to have more nights like that!!

And knowing that Jason has lost about 6 pounds, and I am down a little over a pound from last week, I have to say that we must be starting to doing SOMETHING right!!! 😉

So, in the comments section tonight tell me how you are doing, but also what changes you have made in your kitchen to help make your fitness goals easier!!

I am rooting for you!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

Belly Dancing Night!

Good evening!

I’m here! I’m here! I am sorry, I had forgotten that my e-mail account was hacked into a couple of days ago and it broke my connection to my Blackberry, so I wasn’t able to blog today like I had wanted to. To make it up to you, I will make this one a little long to tell you about all the things going on with my day!!

I did not get a post up this morning, I was running around like a buzy bee trying to get out the door in time this morning! I am not sure why but time seemed to pass really quickly, and before I new it, I had my flat iron in my hand and it was 7:30! AAAACK!!! 10 minutes AFTER I normally leave for the office!!!

Then by lunch time, my day had completely flipped, and was now going SOOOOOOOOOOOO VEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERY SLOOOOOOOOOOOWLY!! I almost couldn’t stand it!!! 😉 I was soooo jazzed about my belly dancing class tonight – I just wanted to get out there and get to it!! It was supposed to be veil night!

 VEIL NIGHT!!!

WHOO! HOO!!

I mean, come on! What little girl didn’t dream about playing dress up and being a little Indian Girl layered in veils, dancing beautifully, while being adored by her audience??? No? Not you?? Oh, so it was just me then?? Oh. Ok. Man I am so wanting to learn how to do an actual dance, and I realize we are learning all of the kinds of moves you can do so that way when you do put dances together you know what you are doing – BUT, PUT ME IN COACH!! I AM SOOOO READY TO PLAY!!! 😉

My co-workers were SUPER UNDERSTANDING this afternoon, seeing that even the boss wasn’t too into the idea of getting any work done, so they spent a little time talking about all of their plants that are coming up in their vegetable gardens, and I was soooo jealous!! I want a garden too, but that is kind of difficult when you live in a condo. However, they gave me all sorts of ideas on how to grow plants in my own container gardens, or even in small greenhouses that I can use year round! Isn’t that just DIVINE??? Really! I am so inspired! and you HAVE TO KNOW, my hubbie would just LOVE that!!! I can’t wait to tell him all about it!!

After work tonight, I started my artist date with myself and did a lot of walking around downtown, going from craft place to craft place looking for art or craft classes that I could take, and I have to tell you I found quite a bit of them that I am going to look further into. One is an encaustic painting class. I had seen an artist doing that on a craft program some years back and it has always intrigued me, so I put it on my life list! It is the one about painting with wax – that is was encaustic painting it. I also found a quilting class I want to take and a collage class that I am going to take!! They all sounds REALLY FUN and EXCITING! and I am sure they will be, but what I am most excited about is a class that I have signed Jason and I up for tomorrow!! We are going to be taking a glass fusing class at one of our local art studios here in Salem. This is going to be a first for both of us, and I JUST KNOW we are going to have A BLAST!! My co-worker was just SHOCKED that Jason agreed to do this for our date night, but he WAS TOTALLY GAME!!! Jason has a bit of an artistic streak running through him too!! I told you we were MFEO!!! (Made For Each Other!!)

We will do all of our glass cutting/designing/assembling tomorrow evening, and then the studio will kiln fire it for us, and we will pick it up in 7 days! I hope they turn out looking FABULOUS!!! I can’t wait to share pictures!!!

Oh, talking about pictures! I spoke to my belly dancing class mates tonight, and besides myself, the vote for me taking pictures of the class was a RESOUNDING HELL NO!!!

BUMMER!!

I was shocked (doesn’t EVERYONE put there life out on the internet for public perusal??? LOL!), and a little bummed (boo! hiss!), but I will respect the wishes of the class, and refrain from taking , for now! HOWEVER, if we should ever perform, you had better believe that I am going to task Jason to take as many pictures as he is able to, and HONEY I AM SHARING THEM ALL WITH YOU!!! 😉

So, I will be taking pictures of our glass class tomorrow! (I hope that is alright???) and I will share them with you tomorrow! They should be GREAT!!! Until then…

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

NOTE TO CHUNKY DUNKERS: I did 1/2 an hour of walking downtown, and an hour belly dancing class today! I at a strawberry smoothie for breakfast, a small whole wheat english muffin ham sandwich for snack, mini-bite Crunch candy bar, baked carrots, a baked potato with sour cream, and some baked turkey for lunch, a large chocolate chip cookie in the afternoon, and then I had a super healthy chicken, veggies, and rice for dinner! Looking at this, I can see that there is a lot of room for improvement, so I will be conscious and try to do better tomorrow! GO CHUNKY DUNKERS!!!

A Productive Tuesday Morning!

Good morning!

I have had a pretty productive morning, this morning! I am busy learning about all sorts of features in WordPress that I have just been too chicken to learn previously. I am realizing that if I take it one change at a time, it is a piece of cake! 😉 I hope that any and all of the new links/features I am adding will be helpful to you as you continue to read my blog, and hopefully share with your friends!! 🙂

I am trying to decide what my creative task will be this evening. I have been trying to devour the information in quite a few blogging books, and also still trying to get all of the The Artist’s Way program assignments completed, and this week there are a lot, however I am only supposed to do half of them!! I have my camera with me, so I need to continue to look for the beautiful and interesting to share, and I think that today I will take a nature walk, and dry some flowers for some Spring and Summertime Artwork! I have decided that my banner, although perfect for Winter, is a little too heavy for my tastes for Spring, so it is definitely time for a change in that dept! I need to rotate artwork, create some new pillow coverd and maybe make a small quilt to cover and lighten up the couch! That should be fun, and make for a PLEASANT change in our little place!!!

Well, I see that it is almost time for me to head out to the office today, I have a busy day of work ahead of me today, but I am optimistic that it will be a good day!! I am just hoping to keep my head down and knock out some assignments before I leave to come home today! 😉

Have a FABULOUS day!! 😉

Note to Chunky Dunkers: Please don’t forget that tomorrow night is Chunky Dunker night! I will see you all a little after 6:30 om, tomorrow!! I can’t wait to hear how everyone is doing!! Until then, TOODLES!!! 😉

The Chunky Dunker’s Club, Week 8

Good evening!

Welcome to week 8, of the Chunky Dunker’s Club!! At some point I am going to just have to call these posts “Chunky Dunker’s Club” and take off the week number, but I am very excited, and proud of us to have made it to week number 8!!! Can you believe it???

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!!

Did you attempt your homework from last week?

LAST WEEK’S HOMEWORK: Write down 5 choices you make every day, and what pain you are trying to avoid, and what pleasure you are trying to gain from each choice. Look at your answers, if you were to change you pain/pleasure that you associate with these choices would your physical life improve. Underneath each choice, write what the reality of what you are doing here – this might be eye-opening for you.

How did that go? It wasn’t as easy as you thought it was going to be was it??

Well, I am excited to hear how everyone is doing with their own personal fitness goals this week, but before we jump to the comments section to chat, let’s discuss tonight’s topic!

Tonight’s topic: Visualizing Your Best YOU!!!

Myself, being a very visual person, this is one of my FAVORITE get fit exercises!! And there is ABSOLUTELY no sweating, pain, and you can do this dressed exactly as you are – or not, whatever the case may be, for my possible nudist readers!!! 😉

Visualization!!!

Try closing your eyes and see if you can envision yourself at your perfect fitness level. Don’t envision yourself from sometime in the past, but envision yourself fit, healthy, and vivaciously energetic right this minute.

What do you look like?
What are you doing?
What are you wearing?
Where are you?
Who are you with?
Are you doing something different then what you are doing now?
Hmmmmm…very curious, don’t you think???

In doing this type of exercise, you are tricking your brain into thinking that what you are seeing in your mind’s eye is actually your reality. Have you ever stopped to think that reality is all about perception anyways??? My reality is not the same as yours, and yours may not be the same as the next person – but YOU are still the one HAVING TO LIVE IN IT!!! Why not make your reality one filled with a YOU who is living fit and healthy???

TONIGHT’S HOMEWORK: Try visualizing your most fabulously fit and perfect self in your mind. Make your picture as clear, crisp, and as colorful as possible. For the rest of this week, bring this picture to the forefront of your mind when you have any moment of quiet. Work on fine-tuning your vision, tweak your hair, your smile, your boobs (come on ladies, I know you are thinking it!!) your posture, your speed, your stamina, your strength, your flexibility – ANYTHING YOU WANT!!! I think you get the picture THIS IS YOUR LIFE AND YOUR REALITY!!!

Life is not about finding yourself, it is about creating yourself!

If you need help with this, find healthy, realistic from magazines, or news articles, or heck draw one yourself!! If your mind can see and believe, it can achieve.

I fully believe that!!!
Get out there and get visualizing!!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!!

The Chunky Dunker’s Club, Week 7

Good evening!

Welcome to week 7, of the Chunky Dunker’s Club!! Where does all of the time seem to go??

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!!

Tonight’s topic: Emotional Eating!

I am not sure about you, but I sure am guilty for eating, not because I am hungry, but because I am needing something emotionally. For example, I got home from a not so pleasant day at work not to long ago, and went right to the cupboards and ate two cookies. With nary a thought about, why I was eating those cookies. Was I hungry? What was I really needing? Were those cookies going to satisfy whatever those needs were?? Uhm…no, no, and no!!

What I am learning, as I go through this get fit journey with you, is that sometimes to have any kind of success, you first have to figure out why you do what it is that you are doing. It is all about pain and pleasure.

I believe there are two kinds of forces in this world that sway you to make a decision either one way or the other. Pain and Pleasure. What pain are you trying to avoid, and what pleasure are you trying to gain? Think about it, I ate the cookies because I was trying to avoid the pain of having to deal with my day, and to gain the pleasure of tasting some really yummy cookies.

How else do we use pain and pleasure in our get fit choices?

I am not going to get up to exercise because I want to avoid the pain of having to get out of bed early, and gain the pleasure of sleeping for an extra hour. I am convinced that this pain/pleasure principal applies to EVERY CHOICE WE MAKE!!!

HOMEWORK: Write down 5 choices you make every day, and what pain you are trying to avoid, and what pleasure you are trying to gain from each choice. Look at your answers, if you were to change you pain/pleasure that you associate with these choices would your physical life improve.

Underneath each choice, write what the reality of what you are doing here – this might be eye-opening for you.

For me, my homework would look something like:

Choice #1: I let Jason make my breakfast, snack, lunch and dinners, and whatever he makes I’ll eat
Pain I Am Avoiding: Having to take time out of my busy day to plan and do the work for this myself
Pleasure I am Gaining: It feels so good to have someone do all of this for me. I feel spoiled!! 😉
Reality: I don’t think it is wrong to have Jason help me in this way, but ultimately I have to be the one to be responsible for what I put into my mouth. I need to speak up and let him know what I want in my lunch box, so he doesn’t always have to guess, or over pack my lunch box.

Choice #2: I choose not to take time out of my work day and go exercise like most of my co-workers.
Pain I Am Avoiding: I am avoiding looking silly, sweating, or getting sore
Pleasure I am Gaining: I think that I can spend that hour a day doing more work at my desk
Reality: I think the reality is that the longer I sit at my desk, the slower my metabolism is going to get, the more weight I am going to gain and in 10 years, when I have all sorts of weight related sicknesses, I am going to look back and say, “why I didn’t I do something about my health when I could have?”.

Choice #3: Watching more than an hour of television every evening
Pain I Am Avoiding: Having to deal with chores that need to be done, or having to deal with negative emotions the might have emerged from my day
Pleasure I am Gaining: I get to zone out, and just stop thinking for myself
Reality: I spend more time watching other people “Live” than I actually do living myself. These people on television are not my friends, they don’t know who I am, they are not even real! Sheesh!

Choice #4: I choose not to get out of the house of the evening and go walking, or swimming with Jason
Pain I Am Avoiding: It feels like too much work
Pleasure I am Gaining: I make excuses for myself to not have to go out, “I have earned” being a lazy hermit somehow. So it is almost a sense of entitlement, plus I just LOVE being home.
Reality: I am really missing a great opportunity to not only increase my physical fitness, but to also spend some quality time with Jason. Realizing that makes me sad.

Choice #5: Not getting to bed early enough that I get at least 8 hours of sleep every night
Pain I Am Avoiding: I have this weird feeling that if I go to bed early then I will either “miss something”, or I will just have to wake up sooner to go back to work again
Pleasure I am Gaining: Uhmmm…getting to do one last chore, or cross off one last thing off of my to-do list
Reality: Who am I kidding?? This just makes me more tired, and irritable the next day, and it gets progressively worse until I get myself some sleep – that is not helping anyone!!!

What would your choices look like? Let me know in the comments above!

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

Hi, Honey! I’m Home!

Good evening!

I have just gotten home from work, and man did I have a rough day!! Nothing in particular, but there is just a lot of work coming at us, and not quite enough of us to get it all done yet. I am so excited that Julie starts on Monday, even though part-time, I can’t wait!! She will be a breathe of fresh air for our team! Aaaah!

Anyway, there are so many changes going on at work right now, I have decided to pull out my copy of the book, “Who Moved My Cheese?”. Have any of you read that book before? This is a book that I pull out occasionally when I am feeling a little unsure of what the future holds!! I am not sure if my cheese is going to be moved, but let’s just say that I am getting my running shoes on and getting prepared. I know my cheese is out there, I just have to go find it!!!

It is Tuesday, which means it is my turn to cook tonight, and I have TOTALLY FORGOTTEN!! So, I gave my husband my leftover lunch, and I think I will have a bowl of cereal! Not the dinner of champions, but there you go!! Actually I may try and get it together enough to maybe make myself a healthy breakfast burrito! Ok, that sounds good!! I hope my meager lunch fixings will tide my Sweetie over until dinner is made! 😉

I have not been sleeping well, I am not sure why. I have been getting to bed earlier and earlier, but I seem to just toss and turn all night, and last night, I sat awake in bed for about an hour and a half, which kind of negates the reason for going to bed early in the first place, don’t you think??? 😉 So, I am going to take myself to bed a little bit early tonight, and then try and get some reading done before it is actually time to go to sleep. I will see if that gets me through the night. I am also thinking about possibly taking a melatonin. I hear that is a chemical that is a normally occurring drug your brain releases, maybe that will work. Has anyone used melatonin before? I have had success taking it before, but it has been so long that I have forgotten if I stay asleep all night, or if I have any problems getting out of bed in the morning! Anyone else have those problems??

Alright, so I do seem to be rambling a bit this evening, so I am going to get on the ball, and go make us some dinner – that is unless I can sweetly talk my honey into doing it for us tonight, which would be AWESOME!!! 😉 UPDATE: my sweetie has agreed to make dinner!!! YEAH!!! He gets to claim so buck-o brownie points tonight!!! Won’t he be pleased about that???

Have a FABULOUS evening!!! 😉

Note to Chunky Dunkers: Don’t forget that tomorrow night is Chunky Dunker’s Club Night!! I hope that all of you can be there! It is ALWAYS so much fun when we have a full house!! It is in’t too late to get some extra exercise in, or plan on eating a couple of healthy meals before we meet tomorrow!!! I can’t wait to see you there!!! YOU CAN DO IT!!! 😉

The Chunky Dunker’s Club, Week 6

Good evening!

Welcome to week 6, of the Chunky Dunker’s Club!!! Can you believe it has been Six 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!!

Tonight’s topic: Staying with the Program When the Program Gets Tough

We are at six weeks in our get fit journey, and I don’t know about you, but there have been a few times that I want to throw in the towel. WHY? I don’t know, there are lots of reason at different times:

  • I’m tired
  • What’s the point?
  • This is taking so much time
  • The weight isn’t coming off fast enough
  • This is too hard
  • Blah! Blah! Blah!

Have you dealt with any of this yet?? Or is it just me? I thought tonight would be a good time to talk about this. To get this out in the open so that we can push through this sixth week so we can keep going on our journey to get fit. How can we make the lulls easier??

  • Get support, reach out and talk to someone who will genuinely cheer you on and help motivate you to keep going!
  • Do at least one thing that you didn’t think you could do before. Once you accomplish that task it will empower you to keep going!
  • Change it up! Is the reason you are wanting to quit because you are bored? Try a new activity, recipe, or something that you have been wanting to do but haven’t taken the time to do yet!
  • Look at the “old you” versus the “new you”. For example, the old me would have eaten that whole box of cookies in one sitting, changes to, the new me was able to eat just two cookies, and walked away.
  • Find something fun to do as exercise, so you trick yourself into burning more calories. For example, tomorrow night I am starting a belly dancing class, something fun, but something that will also get me moving!!
  • Remember why you wanted to get fit in the first place. Me wanting to be able to walk all over Paris without getting tired is great motivation for me to keep going!

What are your thoughts on sticking through to your journey of fitness? Have you had any inclinations of quitting, or giving up? What were some of your reason? Do you have any ideas to add to help the group keep on keeping on?

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts and how all of you are doing. If there is anyone new who has just stumbled onto this blog, feel free to join the discussion in the comments section. This is not a closed group – the more the merrier!

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

Wednesday Reminder!

Good morning!

Here is your friendly reminder that it is Wednesday!! Trust me, this is the week that I really need a reminder of what day it is today!! I thought I would share just a few pics from my nature walk last night! It is trying so hard to be Spring here, but it is unfortunately, it is still really cold, and there is snow in the forecast for later this week, so I am not sure what all that craziness is about!

Spring I am sooooo ready for you to get here! Sunshine, warmth, everything in bloom, you coy sexy thing!!!  😉

Oh, and before I forget! A reminder that tonight is the meeting of the Chunky Dunker’s Club!! I will try and have our post up by 6:30 this evening, then the comments section will be open for all of your discussions! I can’t wait to hear how everything is going!!! I will see you this evening!! 😉

Have a FABULOUS day!! 😉

The Chocolatier Is In!

Good evening!

This is going to be a nice and quick post! My sweetie is busy in the kitchen filling our home with the smell of chocolatey goodness! I took a quick peek, and what I saw made my mouth water!!! 😉 Our counters are covered with chocolate covered strawberries, haystacks galore, and a new invention that he dreamed up tonight, which doesn’t have a name yet. They look like haystacks, but they are dollops of crushed pretzels, chopped walnuts, and rich dark chocolate in the cutest little white paper cups – very creative, my love!! I can’t wait to taste one of your delectable homemade treats!! 😉

Anyway, just to give you an update on what I did today…well, nothing too exciting! I spent most of the day by myself, which was kind of a nice change from the norm! I hit St Vincent de Paul’s to check out their book selection, and of course I walked away with 3 books, but one of them is a gift, so I don’t feel too badly about that! Besides they totalled exactly $3.50 – so there you go!!

Next, I headed over to the craft store, which was ABSOLUTELY SWAMPED!!! There were people doing craft classes, and demos in almost every department, but I still managed to spend at least an hour toodling around, looking for inspiration and ideas, and I am very proud to say that I got out of there empty handed – thank you very much – that took the will of a saint!!! 😉

Afterwards, I met Jason for a very late lunch at one of our favorite little restaurants, and have spent the rest of the afternoon at home, watching a couple episodes of Bones, and spending time together just the two of us and our two little girls hanging out! Now he is busy creating all kinds of goodies out in the kitchen! Well, I am going to have to do some extra working out to keep on track with my fitness plan, but don’t you worry! I will behave!!

As for you…

Have a FABULOUS evening!!! 😉

Note to Chunky Dunkers: This is a good time to say that you don’t have to give up all of your favorites to get fit and healthy. Just remember to enjoy your favorites in moderation. It is all about balance!! GO CHUNKY DUNKERS!!! 😉