For some reason I have not been a big 4th of July decorator. I really don’t know why. This year, Zach really pressed me to get some July 4th decor and spiffy up the house. So, I agreed. It’s kind of simple, but it’s a good start.
I won’t lie…adjusting my diet and keeping it adjusted is hard! I avoid eating out and I stock up on a lot of fruits and vegetables. Noom gives me a lot of positive reactions to my food choices. This helps a lot! Part of the app, Noom has a couch and a support group you can reach out to. I have been tapping into these two resources a lot lately. I really like connecting with others who are in my same boat. Their stories and support are tremendous. It’s not like connecting with someone who is dieting, but someone who is also going through the Noom process to make permanent life changes.
At this point, I would highly recommend the Noom app to get healthier. I feel like I’m very tied to my phone, but that’s okay.
I’m steadily losing weight. I’m enjoying reading and listening to the daily articles Noom provides. My diet has drastically changed. Noom helps me with my diet as I log my meals and snacks. Noom has an analysis feature that tells you the amount of “green”, “yellow” and “red” foods you have eaten. Green is mostly fruits and vegetables. I’ve never met my limit in the “green” area. The “yellow” area has a variety of foods like, healthy cereal, a Chic-fil-a grilled chicken sandwich or a grilled lean steak. The “red” zone has foods such as bacon, fried foods, white bread. There’s no bad food with Noom. You can eat bacon, but not a lot of it. Portion control is key. This makes sense to me because I’m in the process of learning how to make and keep healthy eating habits.
This week I started to “Track More Progress” in the Noom app. It’s finally time for me to dust off my Nordic Track Elliptical.
Along with eating unhealthy during COVID. I also did not do a lot of exercising. Ok, I did basically nothing!
Stepping onto the elliptical was an extremely difficult and humbling experience. I had to start with the setting on 1, the lowest setting. I only did 2 to 3 minutes of revolutions until I had to stop to catch my breath. This pattern continued for 20 minutes. This was bad, really bad. This was another wake up call that I was extremely out of shape. What had I done…or not done to my body this past year?
Every day I kept getting on and every day got better. More resolutions, less breaks.
I’m so glad we bought our Nordic Track Elliptical many years ago. It’s not hard on my knees. It challenges me and it’s a great workout.
In addition to going for a long walk in the morning, I have been going on short bike rides through my neighborhood in the evening. Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved riding my bike. In college, I was really big into Mountain biking. I’ve owned many bikes over the years. However, I’ve never owned a road bike because I am afraid to bike near traffic. I prefer paths and I like the stability of a mountain bike.
My current bike is a Cannondale and I love it! I spent about $950. on the bike several years ago. It was worth every penny. I’m not as hard as I used to be on bikes so it’s lasting longer than my other bikes.
The six year old twins that live next door to me noticed that I have been going on bike rides in the evening. So they begged me tonight to come with me. I should clarify that they screamed, “Can I come with you? Can I come? Can I come? Please! Please! Please!” Their mom was okay with it, so I agreed.
I was not used to riding my bike with six years olds. They would speed up slow down and weave in and out of me. At least this is how these twins rode their bikes.
We had made it to the end of the neighborhood so I told the twins we needed to head back. I had them ride on the sidewalk lined with trees so they wouldn’t be out in the busy street. Again, the were weaving in and out of me. Suddenly, lower hanging limbs from a tree were in my face and I was inches from running into one of the twins. I over corrected and found myself falling face first in the dirt. Luckily I didn’t hit the concrete. I couldn’t believe it – I hadn’t crashed on my bike since I was 8 years old! It must have looked pretty bad because a car stopped and asked if I needed any help. I told them, “No! I’m fine! It looks worse than what is is.” They drove away. I wasn’t fine. I was in a lot of pain on as I made my way home.
I walked in the doorway and asked my daughter, “Is my face bleeding?” She said it wasn’t. I cleaned up my face, knee and elbow while my daughter picked dirt debris from my hair and my husband placed my bicycle back in the garage.
We’ll…. needless to say it left a mark that was visible to everyone
The one thing Noom has you do is weigh yourself every day. The psychology behind it is motivation. The daily weigh in was driving me crazy!!!! Watching the scale ping down a little, ping up a little, down, down, up, down, up, up…..I was going nuts! I had to stop this practice and only weigh myself once a week. Right now, I’m losing 1-2 pounds a week. That’s something, right?!?!
This week my goal is to increase my physical activity. Noom suggests that you walk at least 10,000 steps to lose weight. Noom has a built in pedometer, so it tracks your steps for you – just be sure to have your phone with you at all times. I bought a bunch of yoga pants with pockets to help keep my phone with me. I bought a bunch off of Amazon and I found a few at Kohl’s. These are my new favorite finds.
This week I’m going to work on Reaching the daily 10,000 step goal and being more active.
Just one step at a time – not everything at once! I’m really liking Noom. It has helped me get back on track with getting myself healthy – inside and out!
This week was a huge challenge for me. Noom helped me understand that no food is bad, but I was eating a lot of bad food. Noom taught me that portion control is key.
When I first downloaded the Noom app, I answered a gazillion questions about myself and my habits. It gaged my caloric intake at 1300. For me, that was a big drop. Plus, I couldn’t remember the last diet I was on where I counted calories (was it Weight Watchers? I can’t remember!).
Noom made it easy to log my meals and count my calories through their app. Noom also taught me how to gauge my portions, so it wasn’t like I was weighing everything I ate.
This week I have been focusing on improving my eating habits, eating healthy snacks and drinking more water. My goal for water consumption is 15 cups a day. That means I fill up my Contigo (I bought my water bottles at Walmart) bottle 5 times a day. I have to pee a lot (hee, hee!)
I can do this!
Here we go! I paid $150. and downloaded the Noom app through my Apple App Store. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I spent a lot of time navigating through the app by exploring what the set up was and what was included. There were little mini lessons about nutrition and tfw psychology behind losing weight. This was definitely not a dive head first into deep waters, which I feel is what most diets are all about. Noom is a slow, but steady process. Taking things one step at a time.
Based on the Noom lessons I decided to tackle my eating habits the first week and increase the amount of water I was drinking. I decided this because I had some pretty bad eating habits. 2020 was a pretty stressful year to be teaching – I know, COVID-19 was hard for everyone! I wasn’t in isolation. I was still going into school to teach virtually and then when kids came back with masks, it was still a difficult way to teach learning disabled kids how to read.
During the school year, I started my day with a large breakfast burrito and a 32 oz. Diet Dr. Pepper (I LOVE Diet Dr. Pepper). I went nonstop through my day not eating because I was full from my breakfast burrito. When I came home from school and chilled with a bagel with blueberry cream cheese (It had blueberries in it. That was a fruit, right?!?). Finally, I fixed a heavy Neal for my family like, lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, heavy cream sauce with chicken. Any recipe I found on Pinterest, I tried.
Staring week 1 of Noom I quit my Diet Dr. Pepper fix cold turkey and replaced my dense, delicious, easy to grab breakfast burritos with a healthy cereal with nonfat milk. I actually like Khashi cereal so I picked up a couple of boxes. I also added fresh fruit for snacks since Noom strongly encourages fruit and vegetables. (I needed more than just the blueberries from cream cheese)
Getting ready for family pictures was a big wake up call for me. Finding an outfit for to wear became a rather daunting task. Nothing in my closet fit, outfits in stores didn’t fit right and what I ordered online was a waste because I had gained so much weight. Ugh! When you’re only 5’ 2” tall – it’s hard to find clothes that fit you just right. To say the least, I was frustrated. I told my husband that I either needed to start buying larger clothes or go on a diet. I hate diets!!!
I saw the Noom app advertised on Instagram and television. I really didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was another fad diet. I had tried so many of them – South Beach, Keto, Atkins, Fit For Life. No thanks! Then, I ran into my neighbor. I hadn’t seen her for quite a while, but I immediately noticed that she had lost a significant amount of weight. She told me she had lost 30 pounds. Thirty pounds – wow! She said she had lost the weight with Noom and she was keeping it off. Keeping it off is where I had failed with diets before – the maintenance. That’s when I decided what the heck! I’d give it a try. I was at my peak weight. Why not?
Many people take pictures of the beginning point in their diet. I’m just going to go off my most recent picture where I am cubby along my midline and everything about me is bloated. It’s not a bad picture, I just don’t feel like it’s what I normally look like. Here’s the hard truth: I’m starting off at 180 lbs. (that’s a lot for me!)
There are five of us in our family. Devin (aka: Dad), Me (aka: Mom), Zachary, Kendra and Noah. Let me take a moment to intruduce each one of them.
Let me start by introducing my husband, Devin. He is completely opposite of me, but somehow we work so well together. Devin is a fabulous father and my best friend. He’s really outgoing, calm, cool, collective. When I get upset about something, I always go to him and he lets me know if I am overacting or not. He’s worked at multiple companies and has been successful at each one.
Zachary is our oldest child. He goes by Zach, ZR or just Z. When Zach was four he was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disoder which later morphed to an Autism diagnosis. Raising a child with Autism has been an adventure in itself. Zach is the time keeper in our family. He does things like clockwork. He’s probably one of our most busiest children. He is involved with many special needs acitivites and works at Smith’s as a bagger. He loves his job.
Our one and only daughter, Kendra, is our middle child. She’s smart, beautiful, artistic and has an amazing singing voice. Kendra is very outgoing and easily makes a connection with anyone she meeets. She’s very social – always has been and probably always will be.
Our youngest, Noah, is hard working and a little bit shy. He turned out to be a big gaming nerd. The friends he goes to high school with all connect together after school online and play video games. He has the big set-up in his bedroom and it’s what he spends the majority of his money on. He was a real trooper getting through his junior year of high school during COCID-19.
Welcome! 