Approaching the Holiday Feast

Okay... not me, but the majority of you are going to have multiple opportunities to enjoy your favorite foods over the next few days. Ham, turkey, prime rib or maybe even a tradurken. Not sure if that's spelled correctly, but it's a duck stuffed in a chicken then a chicken stuffed in a turkey... meat-lover's dream! Then you add potatoes, gravy, stuffing green bean casserole (not as healthy as it sounds), breads, pies, cookies... well, you know what's ahead.

Since beginning the road to a healthier way of eating, I'm not even in the mood to do my holiday baking this year. In past years I've spent one entire day baking upwards of 70-100 dozen cookies to share with friends and businesses. So far this year I've made one batch of chocolate chip that although edible, are not as good as they should be. I also made snowballs (my granddaughter's favorite), gingerbread men (made with splenda and my daughter's favorite) and no-bake cookies (my future SIL's favorite). Those all got shipped to TN. I have my shortbread sandwich cookie and the uber-rich sugar cookie doughs chilling in the fridge. And I've even bought the box of rice krispies for 1-cup cookies. And I just can't get in the mood to bake any of them. I'm thinking of making one sheet of each of the sugar cookies then freezing the rest of the dough for this spring when the granddaughter comes to visit. They'll make just as adorable Easter Egg shaped cookies as they will stars and bells.

Now, I can't say I've been a good little girl all the time. More aware? Yes. But I'm also human and know I've eaten things here and there not on my plan. I've also not been on the Wii in almost two weeks. Not because I didn't want to. I LOVE it! But we brought all the Christmas decorations tubs back from storage and they've been taking up the work-out space in the living room. Hopefully I can finish getting them emptied tomorrow and they can get out of the way.

Oh yeah.. and I've not done well on our local BL group. I lost a total of 1.4 pounds over 7 weeks. I yoyo'd. To add to that, hubby offered up a challenge. Whichever one of us loses the most weight in the 3 weeks he's gone, gets a $100 shopping trip. Hmmm I still have a week to go. Wonder how well I'll do. I know he's been doing the Slim Fast 1-2-3 plan. So I'm thinking that $100 is his. I hope so... because after all his hard work this trip out, if he doesn't lose any weight, I fear he'll just give up and he needs to lose the weight or further damage the hip he already has issues with. I'd sacrifice the $100 for that.

I'm taking the next week off. But I'll be back to wish you a Happy New year and maybe stay on track.

Merry Christmas! and Enjoy the Journey

Catching up and a New toy!

Yep... Santa came early to our house.

While we were in TN at our daughter's, my husband got the Xbox bug. He didn't actually try it out, but he liked the option of playing games while NOT being parked on the couch. Unlike the PS or Direct TV game channel, you actually have to get off your duff and get ::: gasp ::: exercise while playing a game.

So Thursday night we hit the pre-Black Friday sale at our local Walmart for an XBox bundle - only to find out the 'tickets' for them were handed out long before the sale was to start. The next day we went to a SuperCenter in a nearby town. We didn't anticipate any systems left but thought we'd look anyway.

What we came home with was the Wii and Wii Fit Plus, along with Wii Sports pack, Jillean Michaels (Me), Tiger Woods golf and Dangerous Hunts 2011 (Bob). I'm really enjoying the Fit and Sports. I do the Wii Fit plus for an hour in the morning and then play some of the sports games in the evening. My fav on the Fit Plus is the Step workout. But I use some of the balance games as my warm-up, then do the Step workout for aerobics, the some of the other aerobics as a cool down. I'm also enjoying the boxing.. something I didn't think I'd like at all. However, this morning I managed to pop my left knew - the one I'd injured summer of 2010. So my legs are cramping a lot right now. It will be a 'take it easy' kind of day and no tennis/ bowling tonight, I'm sure.

I am down to 179 according to my scales. I managed to gain 2 pounds while we were in Nashville. Ate what I should most of the time, just not regular. I really need to focus on that end more when I travel, which I hope to do more of in 2012.

What's your favorite way to exercise?