9/17/2012 - Marqueta Love
Boy do I love me some Farmers Market. For a few weeks now the Gordo and I have been grocery shopping at Brother's Farmers Market (check them out in Davie if you find yourself in the South Florida area). They have super fresh fruits and veggies at jaw dropping prices. As in, I bought an amazing array of goods for less than $75 bucks. I'm talking zucchini, green beans, Fuji apples, brocoli, cantaloupe, seedless watermelon, sweet potatoes, bananas, onions, lettuce...I'm pretty sure I am missing a few things, but you get the idea. So when I got home, I tackled a pretty big project that I have really been wanting to start: organizing my kitchen to make it more user (a.k.a me) friendly. No hard feelings to Gordo, but I make about 95% of our meals. I kept seeing watermelon just sitting on our counters, cantaloupes going bad, cucumbers being neglected in our veggie draw in the fridge. I got home, emptied out the fridge, gave it a good wipe down, and started the process. I cut up as much of the fruit and veggies that I had plastics for and stored them in the fridge. See, cooking every meal at home is both a blessing and a curse. In my previous life, I must have been a chef, because I'm big on presentation, new ingredients, variety is the spice of life, etc etc. So sometimes, I spend a great deal of time in the kitchen. Most of the time, I love it; trying new ingredients, seeing my recipes coming to life, knowing my family is going to be eating a good, healthy meal...it really does make me happy. And other times, I would rather stab myself in the eye with a lead pencil than cook another meal. Why? Because I get tired damnit!!! Baby Santos #2 is still not sleeping through the night, my daughter has an amazing ability to always wake up at the butt crack of dawn, my fake guard dog (my toy poodle) barks at every noise as if she would really do something if danger was near (she wouldn't, trust me). Needless to say, there is a lot going on at all times in the Gordo household, and the thought of cooking sometimes makes me want to cry. My hope is that cutting up these fruits and veggies will make snacking and food prep a lot quicker for me, so that I don't call the Gordo at 5:45pm and beg him to bring home dinner because I physically cannot bring myself to open the fridge and start chopping veggies. With all the great fresh veggies I am also going to work on lowering my meat intake. Being Latina, your meal isn't complete without some form of a dead animal (preferably a pig...mmmmm pernil....I digress) on your plate. And as much as I love meat, I am really starting to pay attention to my body, and I am noticing that it takes me very long to digest meat. Even after digestion, I still feel very "full". Tonight was steamed broccoli, carrots, green beans, and a Biggest Loser recipe for "No Skins Sweet Potatoes", along with a mixed greens side salad. Got a little hungry some time after dinner, so had some cantaloupe, peach and raspberries. All in all, I'm feeling pretty good...let's see how long I can keep it up :-)
'Til later Gorditas!
9/9/2012 - Another Snafu >: /
...That's supposed to be an angry/frustrated face, by the way...So, I've never had great knees. From as far back as I can remember, my knees have popped, crunched, and made all sorts of other not so pleasant or appropriate noises. But, I've always just dealt with it and pushed through. Even after Baby Santos #1, when I started to work on my weight loss, I was able to push through the uncomfortableness and just ice my knees after. Well, it looks like that isn't going to be possible much longer. The Gordo and I were out with the kids yesterday, just running some errands around town. After some walking we were ready to head back home. Kids are strapped in, Gordo is in the driver seat, I'm ready to jump up into my seat (we have a Honda Pilot), and BAM! EXCRUCIATING, PAIN IN THE PIT OF YOUR STOMACH TYPE FEELING...my knee felt completely locked up, with a searing pain radiating in the back of my knee. I mean, I almost shed a tear, seriously. We came home, I jumped in bed...and guess what, pain is STILL THERE today. Don't ask me why but I was hoping to wake up today and have it be gone (I hadn't actually worked out HOW that was supposed to happen). Trying to figure out how to treat it at home is proving to be entirely too confusing: one website states the pain can be attributed to carrying extra weight (gee, thanks), which can be alleviated with weight loss...while the next line states that lowering your activity level might help alleviate some of the pressure...Ummm, what? I have to exercise to lose weight people, so which is it? It's not as intense today, but it hurt to lift my leg over the tub to get into the shower. Yup, it's that bad. That being said, I have to get my butt to a specialist to figure out what exactly I'm dealing with and start taking the steps to remedy it. Truth be told, I'm a little scared. I'm just shy of 30, and I feel like it's way to early for me to be dealing with such debilitating knee pain. But, I'm not going to self-diagnose myself. Yes, this could be really bad. But, it could also turn out to be something totally fix-able. Tomorrow my search continues. In the mean time, have you ever dealt with an injury? How did you pick yourself up and continue your weight loss journey? Oh, and for those of you on Instagram, follow me (rungorditarun), and Twitter (@rungorditarun).
'Til later Gorditas!
9/4/2012 - The Pool...My New (Old) Best Friend.
I have always loved water. When I was younger, we used to live by a river. Nothing fancy, but we actually used to overlook the Williamsburg Bridge and the East River, with an awesome view of Brooklyn. I still remember catching great sunsets, awesome thunderstorms, spectacular lightning. As I got older, I was always the first one in the beach or the pool, and the last one to get out. Fast forward to today, when I woke up with jacked up knee pain. From since I can remember I have struggled with knee pain, which makes most high impact moves really painful for me. Since I didn't want to not exercise today, I decided to give the pool a try. See, I've always heard and read the benefits of pool exercising, but never really gave it a try. So, I strapped Baby Santos #2 into our mommy and me inflatable pool ring (purchased for less than $20!) and headed to the pool. Well, I am here to tell you, what an awesome work out! I did walking laps up and down the shallow end of the pool, making sure I was really focusing on keeping my core tight. I also swam from end to end, which was a real workout considering I was also pushing the weight of my almost 20 lb son. When he got tired of being in the float, I took him out, sat on the steps, and used him as a weight to do some arm lifts. I spent about an hour in the pool, and I really do feel like I got a great workout in. I won't give up walking or doing the Insanity Cardio Recovery, but I am really excited that I have found a low impact exercise that I can do alongside my other workouts. Point is, use what you've got. We happen to now live in an apartment complex with a pool, and I need to be able to take Baby Santos #2 with me. Duh, hello. Just had an AHA moment.
9/1/2012 - It's the first of the month (s/o to Bone Thugs, lol)...I miss early 90s music...anyhow, I digress... In case you couldn't tell, I'm in a better mood since my last post. Part of it is that right now I am currently blogging this poolside after taking a nice dip! But I'm proud to say that a bigger part of it is that I have been able to walk relatively pain free this week. I've also thrown in some Cardio Recovery Insanity work. Eventually I would love to be able to actually start the Insanity fitness regime, but for now the Cardio Recovery is kicking my butt! It's great because while the actual movements are low-impact, you are holding the positions for long periods of time, which actually produces a nice little burn in your muscles. It's also great for me because I have No Upper Body strength, lol, and there are a ton of plank and core movements, which is forcing me to address my severe lack of core and shoulder strength. @RunGordoRun and I hit up a great farmers and meat market yesterday and picked up some awesome healthy food (fruits, veggies, salmon, lean chicken and pork) and snack options for the week. We are also going to start getting more serious about freezing our excess fruit and veggies for easy smoothie options. I'm going to try to harness how I feel right now and bring it up when I get discouraged. I don't know about you, but what I have realized about myself is that I get VERY discouraged, VERY easily. I am that person that misses a walk and thinks, Oh well, guess I might as well have an ENTIRE BOX OF FRIED CHICKEN since I'm clearly never going to hit my fitness goals...I wish I could say I was lying about the fried chicken too...anyhow, I need to learn to stop looking at this fitness journey as a sprint and start looking at is as a marathon. I know, corny saying, and every time @RunGordoRun says it to me I want to inflict some sort of bodily harm on him. But alas, he is right. I am NOT going to look like those awesome Instagram chicks tomorrow. I am not even going to look like them in 6 months, and probably not even after a year (I know, this blog is supposed to be uplifting, ha!) BUT, tomorrow, I will do the Cardio Recovery. And in 6 months, I will no longer be wearing my fat post-maternity pants. And in 1 year, I will be CLOSER to my goals than I was 12 months ago. Journey on my gorditas!!!!
8/25/2012 - You ever feel just really defeated? Well, that's what I have been struggling with this week. After feeling really well for the past few weeks, I decided to add some (actual) running to my routine. While my husband watched the kiddies, I ran .10 of each of my two miles, two days in a row. Not too much, right? Wrong! As some of you may or may not now, I had baby Santos number two 4 months ago, and actually developed horrible sciatica from about the 6th month on. While I thought this issue would vanish post-partum, it seems this is something that I will be struggling with for the long haul. Anyhow, it seems that my jogging triggered my sciatica, as I woke up in excruciating pain that night, and have been dealing with the ramifications since. Needless to say, very little walking has happened since then. While part of it is me not wanting to irritate my sciatica again, another part of it is all mental: I am feeling defeated. It's difficult to be riding on the high of hitting your goals, only to be derailed so early on in the process. And with South Florida under a hurricane warning the next few days, we will all be home-bound until the coast is clear. I am going to take these next few days to clear my head and work through these negative feelings; when the storm clouds part, I will start again.
8/15/2012 - Walked my 2 miles today! And I clocked in at a whopping...17.31/mile! Agh, that's horrible, right, I know. So why am I sharing this with you? Well, because, we ALL have to start somewhere, that's why. I am never going to be that girl that doesn't exercise for 6 months, gets up, and runs a 9 minute mile. But, I AM going to be the girl that continues to shave minutes off of my mile, and continue to work towards my 5K goal. And my goal is to RUN the entire 5K. For me, it's a pretty lofty goal. See, right now I can only run .10 of each mile. And my legs started to feel rubbery at 1.75 mile. And I got nauseous at the end. But, I kept going.
And tomorrow, I will be stronger.
