10 Day Green Smoothie Challenge!!!

Yes, I have returned…again. I realized the correlation between my blog posts and the sinkholes in my life. Blogging more than creating an audience, provides accountability. It means that I am actively doing what I need or desire to be doing and sharing it. When I stop blogging, more than likely I have stopped working, whether that me working out, eating healthy, caring for my hair, or going BEYOND for my family. I mean yea, I provide for the kids, play with them, teach them…but am I actively engaged while doing so? Am I striving for more than mediocre or routine? That is what I would like to do, but it is sooooo easy to fall into old habits, and when that happens, I am pretty sure that I have stopped blogging about it.

I say all of that to say this…. I have gained 15 lbs. -_-

Over and again I have started and stopped different challenges and I have just been left to big for EVERYTHING (literally) in my closet and feeling SUPER uncomfortable. After many failed attempts, I realized that desperate times caused for desperate measures. I decided to kick start this whole progress, I needed to detox, get all of that yucky stuff out of my system to get rid of the cravings and binges. Thus, I decided to join in on the 10 Day green smoothie challenge.

Today is day one. Overall I still feel pretty great, I am not irritable, hungry, feeling deprived, no headache, I still feel energetic and excited!

For Breakfast I drank a Spinach, Mango and Strawberry smoothie, my ratio of spinach to fruit was probably off because I literally felt like I was drinking grass…sweet grass…not enough sweet to say delicious,  but just enough to make it manageable.

Soooo because today is my first day, I didn’t want to dive all in, so I did the modified version, I ate a pretty decent salad for lunch, Kale….not sure if it is legal to add meat and cheese in it, but I did, with raspberry vinaigrette dressing. It was FILLING!!!!

So I sipped on more smoothie after that, until it was time to snack again (I try to eat every 2.5-3 hours), my snack was an apple and a few almonds.

It’s now 5pm….I will drink another smoothie, and yet more water….and HOPE to end my night on that. If I absolutely break down and snack more, I will probably boil and egg or two or munch on some veggies.

I really hope to and is excited about completing this challenge…weight loss benefits aside, I really just want to actually finish something that I have started.

Straight Talk: Children Are People Too

In the midst of busy schedules, bill payments, chaos of working, and everything in between, every now and then there comes a time when you realize that you are kind of an amazing parent!

I shall share my moment 🙂

So last year the boys began to save their allowance for the game Disney Infinitey Marvel. It just so happened that Santa surprised them with it instead! So they decided that they would spend some of their money on new character figures for the game instead.

In order to do this, I would have to go to Kroger to exchange their coins for dollars, first.

Let me begin by saying that I a very comfortable home body. If it isn’t going to work, the gym, or taking the kids back and forth to school, I would much rather just be at home, I HATE deviating from my routine route!

So the day comes for all of this to go down. I picked the kids up from school, according to my daily route, I should then just head back home. So badly, I wanted to just cancel on them, make up an excuse, tell them that we would go another day.
Instead I bit the bullet, and we went to exchange the coins for dollars, and on to Toys R Us!

While there K2 & K3 found the characters that they wanted, but K1 however, could not find the one that he wanted.
Naturally, he was disappointed. Imagine being soooo excited for a certain day to come, thinking about it all through school, only to be disappointed in the end….that was K1.

So I told him that he could either pick a different character, or wait, and we’d go to Walmart and see if they had that specific character there. He chose to wait.

GREAT!!! Now I have to make yet ANOTHER EXTRA STOP!!!

I JUST WANT TO GO HOME!!!

On our way there, I asked him a few questions about his day at school. He spoke in an unsual pitch, and was smiling for no reason…smiling hard…It was weird.
Didn’t take me long to realize that he was literally smiling to keep from crying.

I decided to just leave him alone and allow him time to process through his emotions.
I admit, I did start praying to God that Walmart had this toy.
I know it is a silly prayer, but I am a mother, I pray for my child, and at that moment that was his prayer.

I’m sure God answers kid’s prayers too.

It was then that I had my “Ah Ha” moment. I began to think about the big picture of parenting.
Here I was going out of my way, above and beyond, and nothing was in it for me.
That’s love.

I began to wonder how many other moms would do this?
How many would have just MADE him pick out a different toy, as if his choices didn’t matter?
Scold him for feeling sad, tell him to “just be grateful”, as if his feelings did not matter?

I admit, making him pick a different character did cross my mind, so did making him wait another day (I REALLY wanted to go home). Now I am glad that I didn’t.

In that moment, I was proud of him. He knew what he wanted and instead of settling for instant gratificiaction, just choosing any character he bit the bullet, he was patient, he waited for what he really wanted.

Then, I looked at the role that I played in that scene, and I became proud of myself. Proud because I allowed him to make his own decision, for respecting his emotions, for acknowledging his person.

His emotions, like my own, were a sum of his expectations and his reality, his are no less important than my own, simply because he is inside a smaller body.

He is still a person, a human being, who has hopes, dreams, expectations, desires, goals, all within the realm of his very own understanding. His desires are just as real to him, just as necessary to him, as mine are to me.

The only difference, is that he still needs my help to bring his to reality (kind of how we all need God’s help….but that is another post).

I am more than grateful for being able to be a stepping stone for him.
I am even more grateful that he was an aid into my own revelation, to understanding my children more. To be more cognitive of their choices, before I shun them off unimportantly, or force them to make a decision, that is not of their own.

So thank you K1, for being you, and reminding this servant, of exactly how much you matter.

By the way, Walmart had the character!!!
Stitch.

Fitness Friday: New Year Resolutions…How Do You Plan To Keep Them?

It’s that time of the year again!!! When everyone resolves to lose at least 10 lbs!! Myself included 🙂

So let’s get to it, every year it is a repeated cycle… it doesn’t help that the new year comes RIGHT after Halloween (candy overload), Thanksgiving (Turkey, dressing, yams, ALCOHOL overload), and Christmas (Ham, dressing, egg nog overload)… and let’s not forget New Years Eve…(alcohol, Alcohol, ALCOHOL overload).

Simply put, we are stuffed, feeling groggy, slow, and pretty miserable.

We resolve to GET FIT!!!

My plan! I am pretty excited about ordering Shaun T’s INSANITY MAX!! So my plan is to EAT CLEAN…TRAIN MEAN!

I plan on doing a hybrid of T25 & 21 Day Fix workouts, and add a dash of Insanity Max, in there, as it is my understanding that I probably won’t complete the whole 30 minutes of Insanity Max, and will need to do extra workouts to compensate.

I plan to eat as clean as possible…and NO ALCOHOL!!! No exception…except if I’m hanging with friends 🙂

Last year I lost weight pretty fast when I ex’d alcohol out of my situation…and then gained it all back when I re-introduced it back into my situation. So until I can get control of that harmless cup-o-wine a night turned … “TURN DOWN FOR WHAT!?” stage, I must refrain.

How do I plan on keeping up with it?
I journal my days, I track my weak moments, when I am feeling vulnerable to naughty food and drinks, and how I feel before I indulge (if I indulge) and how I felt afterwards, and/or how I felt after kicking temptations ass to the curb!!! Whenever feeling weak, I will read that journal, and remind myself of how much better feeling strong and resisting the urge feels, compared to feeling weak and caving.

Here’s to a New Year and a New You!!!

(Imagine that is sparkling water lol…not champagne!)

Any New Years Resolutions for you?
How do you plan to keep them??

#WashDayWednesday

My first #WashDayWednesday post for 2015! In case you are wondering what is “Wash Day Wednesday”?

No I am not talking about laundry, I am talking HAIR!!

Wednesdays will highlight my hair washing regimen, and since that can sometimes be repeticous, I will also talk on general hair care tips, methods, and more.

If you aren’t into hair care (caring for your own hair), then this may not be the post for you, but be sure to come back for #FitnessFriday 🙂

If you enjoy learning new hair care tips, product reviews, and all of the goods, well keep reading!

For this first post, I will breeze over my current hair situation.
I went for neck length to bra strap length in 3 years. After giving birth to the Quenn, my regimen quickly fizzled. It’s hard trying to finger detangle, which takes A LOT of patience, when you have a newborn crying, or baby crawling into crevices, or toddler rambling through cabinets.

I was hard for me to find the balance between mothering and hair care, So I just stopped caring…literally, for my hair. Neglecting my hair OF COURSE, led to breakage and me eventually deciding to cut my hair, back to neck length, that was last Summer.
I am finally ready to pic up the pieces (as everyone is when the new year begins lol) and begin caring for my hair again!

So every Wednesday I will discuss my regimen, products, progress, and more!
Feel more than welcomed to ask questiions, give tips, advice, or share your own hair story!?

Lost In Love???

So my husband and I were watching Sex Tape last night, in the beginning there was the wife reminincing on how she and her husband were when first meeting, leading up to what they have become in present time. In my mind I am thinking “scheduling sex??? yea right!” “Not knowing when the last time they had sex??” SHEESH! I wish I could get away with that type of lapse. Ironically at the same time a friend shared a link to a mommy blogger, who was blogging about the exact same thing, about how she and her husband had lost their connection to one another. I looked over to my handsome King and thought to myself… “Glad we aren’t like that!! How did we beat this statistic?”

But in reality? Had we beat it?? I began thinking back to the last time we REALLY had an intimate moment, not just going through the emotions, but really emotionally entwined with one another. That’s it, I had set the plan in motion, “We are going to make love tonight!” While putting the Queen to bed, hubby began to feel ill and decided to go to sleep, I SWEAR I tried to wake him later that night, (he argues that point)… long story short, I had to be at work at 6 AM, so I went to bed, he woke up in the middle of night, I’m half asleep, and we had what we always have “Lazy sex.”

So the question arises, how do you stop life from getting in the way of your marriage? Can you stop it? Avoid it? All of this time I have been blindly complacent in my marriage, thinking everything is peachy keen, but is it really? Or have I just been drowning out my husbands needs with excuses, children, and Life?

At some point, I guess, it’s natural for “love” to take the back seat to life. Bills must be paid, kids must be fed, clothed, sheltered, but the problem arises when love is tossed to the back, and forgotten about behind all of that “important” stuff, you know that “out of sight, out of mind” complex, never to be revisited again, until it is noticeably missing, which in most cases may then be too late.

So instead of my marriage being watered down by life, I want to bring life INTO my marriage. So for me, yet another renovation for 2015, is to “Make Over My Marriage!”

Hubby’s top complaints are my housekeeping….I promise I clean…and then it’s messy like 5 minutes later….I JUST GET SO TIRED OF THE CYCLE!!!!! So I MUST read some housekeeping blogs, and figure out how to tackle the never ending battle between kids and a clean household. Secondly the issue is INTIMACY! Yes, I have already divulged that all we have is “lazy sex”… so my plan there is to 1. Initiate more often… instead of being chased down and humped like a dog lol…. and 2. Spice it up, be more involved…I mean if you are going to do it, might as well enjoy it. and Lastly… JUST SAY YES!!!! Who wants to be told no…ALL OF THE TIME!

So with all of that being said… Here is to a NEW and SEXY Year Being in Love!

Self Realization…New Year…Improved Me

The Day of Realization.
#iAmTheProblem
I am the girl who has decided to stop coasting along with life’s current, but to begin creating my own story. Who I am, what defines me, and take responsibility for my very own place in life.
I am a mother of four children, who depend on me, my success, & my strength. You can’t be strong when you are only doing what life ‘allows’ you to do. It is time for me to take the bull by its horn, and drag it to where I want it to be, not just let it kick and buck me off whenever it pleases.
This is not about weight loss, this is not just about finances, or professional goals, this is about me!! Me, making no more excuses as to why I am not the person that I want to be, or where I want to be. The power is in my control, and my only 2015 resolution is to be the me, that I want to be!
I want to be financially smarter.
I want to progress professionally.
I want to get back into school.
I want to have all legal matters resolved.
I want to ALWAYS have well-dressed children.
I want to be well dressed.
I want to decorate my house.
I want to complete my children’s room.
I want to read more.
I want to be physically fit.
I want to eat healthier, cook more.
I want to eat at the table as a family.
I want to have weekly/monthly family nights.

I can do all of this, if I get my priorities in order and whole heartedly dedicate myself to a strict budget and routine. I want to be one of those women who operate by budget and routine, opposed to “emotions”. “I feel like this…” so “I want this.” Operating by emotions have failed me over and over again. Writing my own truths may, hopefully, be a revolution and motivation to not return to my old self.

The Love of A Husband

When I try to define love, I think of God.

How He loves me…protects me…teach me…forgive me…tolerates me

I think of the many stages of “me”, that I have gone through…think of all of the messes that I have gotten my husband and I in, and even tho I may get a good chewing out….in the end I always hear “I will take care of it.”

My husband has never left my side, never left me to figure it out on my own, as many times as he probably should have.

My “fears” or doubts, he takes as an insult, because he plans to give me the world…YEP.. the whole entire world…and he wants me to believe that he will deliver.

Feeling inadequate, stagnate, typical girl emotions, he takes it as me doubting him. I love him, trust 100% that he would break every bone in his body in efforts to deliver the world to me on his back. That is the kind of man that he is.

So often, I think back over my life, and I realize why God wants us to save ourselves for marriage. Truth is…if you marry right…take your time, listen to God, find your soulmate, then no one will love you like your husband/wife (besides God and your parents…hopefully 😛 ). I think back at all (well not ALL, but whoever..) I gave myself to and realize how BADLY they did not deserve me…cowards wouldn’t do 1/4 of the things that my husband does for me…wouldn’t deal with half of the things that he has dealt with because of me. Never made me feel nearly as deserving…nearly as beautiful… nearly as loved, as my husband does. I wish I could have saved that for him, given him something that no one else in this whole world have had…because he deserves that.

When I think of the kind of wife I am to him, I honestly do not think that I can compare. I try to tell myself that, something has to be right about me, I mean he loves me….but truthfully, I think he is just crazy. My heart swells with just the thoughts of him, and I can not thank God enough for him. He is truly a gift, truly a blessing.

When I think of the definition of love, I think of God’s love for me, uncondtional, eternal, undeserving.

All adjectives to describe my husband’s love for me.
I only hope that I can reciprocate such a love for him.
I only hope that I am as everything to him…as he is everything to me.

A NSV and Why Having A Personal Trainer May Be Beneficial After All

NSV (Non Scale Victory). I am kind of a yo yo exerciser…by that I mean, I may go a full month or so going hard in the gym and working out, then slack for like a week or two, before I kick start it back. I am trying to stop that cycle. Right now I am exercising regularly, I hope to keep it this way from here on out, no breaks.

Anywho, because of these break periods, when jumping back in, I often feel like I am starting over physically, (probably more mental than anything). So on to the victory; I was at a bootcamp class, the instructor instructs us, as a whole class, how to do leg raises (Put your hands under your butt, make a triangle with your hands…ect) So as we were doing them, I hear her saying “Put your hands behind your head.” I assumed that she just got it mixed up bc hands under your butt is the correct way to do a leg raise. So then she comes up to me, and tells me to put my hands behind my head… So apparently she wasn’t talking to the entire class when I first heard her say it, she was talking to a specific individual. So afterwards she explains that the “more advanced” would be doing them with their hands behind their heads, because it was more of a challenge.

Now this was only my 2nd time working out with her, how did she know that I was “more advanced”, was it in my posture, did I LOOK like it was easy the other way (bc it wasn’t) either way, I admit being considerd “advanced” in fitness did have me feeling a little proud, a little special 🙂

Which is funny I have the most awesome Beachbody Coach she is so positive and always cheering me on, and I guess me, focusing on my imperfections, I never really consider myself consistent, or determined or any of that good stuff. If I were to tell her that I was considered “advanced” she would be like “uhhhh DUH!!!” LOL But I was really shocked…. that leads me on to the next topic:

Why Having A Trainer May Be Beneficial After All.

I, personally, have never been to big on the idea of hiring a personal trainer for my own. I just felt like what is the point of having someone there just to tell me what to do? If I can do it while they are there, then I can do it when they are not… FOR FREE!!! Well my NSV today, got me to thinking, trainers are not just there to see that we do the workouts, they are there to help transform us! To get something that we have never have we must do things that we have never done, and that is what trainers are for, to push us further, harder, stronger than we would go ourselves.

For example, when I was new to the whole bootcamp and strength training, I was in a class where we would have to do 100 push ups, sets of 25! I had never done 1!!!! I HATED (and currently still hate) PUSH UPS! So I did 1 or 2 regular push ups…the rest were modified on my knees…and even further along modified to where even my legs were straight and I was only lifting up my upper body… well I was hurting, IDK how far along I had got, but my arms were burning, I literally felt like I could not pick myself up, anymore, it got so hard, I began to feel weak…like my muscles would atrophy…So the instructor sees me…she sees me struggling and says to do 5 more. FIVE!!! I can not explain to you in words, how bad my arms were burning…I literally struggled to pick myself up, the push ups became slower, almost non existant I was thinking “When will she realize that I physically can’t do anymore??”… the 5th one was probably half of a push up, I felt like my arms just would not work anymore… that’s the point of a trainer. Had I done it on my own, I would have maybe did 5 more past the burn, or when it hurt “to bad” just stop and rest… I would have stayed within my comfort zone. What she did was pushed me like 50 more past the burn + 5 more past the burn’s burn….like it didn’t just hurt to bad…IT FELT IMPOSSIBLE!

In our minds…we workout until it hurts…in a trainer’s mind, if your muscle can still do it, then DO IT no matter the pain. In a trainer’s mind, you haven’t really even started until the burn kicks in, then it’s time to WERK!!!
Even with the trainer today, I personally, did not feel like my leg raises were easy, but she saw something that told her that I needed more of a challenge, I never would have even known putting your hands behind your head made it more difficult, own my own, I would have remained in my comfort zone.

So I am not a personal trainer, I am not trying to sell anything to anyone…If you want to lose weight, sure, I’m sure you can do that alone, but if you are wanting to TRANSFORM, unless you are extensively educated on physical fitness, and highly motivated to make yourself cry, I think fitness coaches are absolutely 100% necessary!!

I have to say, I have worked with some pretty amazing women: Kameelah and the Wow Fitness Family ( http://wow-fitness.com/ ), and my love bug Carla…who it was who pushed me to do those damn pushups lol. I owe it all to you guys!

Proverbs In July: Chapters 6 & 7

I will be honest, I had to look up Chapter 6 “explained”, I originally read the text

verses 1-3:My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor,
if you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger,
you have been trapped by what you said,
ensnared by the words of your mouth.
So do this, my son, to free yourself,
since you have fallen into your neighbor’s hands:
Go—to the point of exhaustion
and give your neighbor no rest!”

and took it to mean that “If you promise your neighbor something then you are held to your word, that you must give your all and do your best.” Boy was I off.

After researching, I learned that verses 1-11 is talking about finances, it is referring to what we call “co-signing”, if I were to co-sign a car for a friend, that is me saying that I believe that this friend will be true to this contract. It is also me saying that if this friend breaks the contract, then I will pay the bill for it. God does not want us taking on another man’s debt if we do not have the means to pay it.
It also suggest that we “free” ourselves from that debt, to humble ourselves, giving that friend no rest, to basically plead to be left off the hook from that debt.

A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest—
and poverty will come on you like a thief
and scarcity like an armed man.
-Provebs 6:10-11

Basically today’s whole: “I’ll sleep when I die” attitude, there is money to be made.

Verses 12-15 speaks of recognizing a wicked or evil man: This proverb gives three more traits of a wicked man. First, he has a froward heart. His froward speech is not accidental (Pr 6:12); it comes from his perverse and unruly heart. Such men have an evil disposition. They are arrogant, difficult to manage, hard to please, rebellious, and selfish. They prefer to argue, complain, debate, and fight than live in peace. Godly men are the opposite. They are content, cooperative, gracious, and patient.

Verses 16-20 discuss 7 things that God hates, I find them all to be note worthy:

There are six things the Lord hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community
Proverbs 6:16-20

What I got most from this chapter were the first verses, regarding debt. IDK why, I pray for God to change my financial situation, but I have never really considered Him to be concerned much about money, this here proves to me that, I can not pray for Him to create a miracle, if I am not willing to put forth real work, I can not pray for him to change a situation and repetitively act in ways that he has warned us from doing.

On to Chapter 7, again with this Adulterous Woman warning!!
Different from chapter 5, this chapter kind of tells a story of a young man being seduced by a prostitute. The last 3 verses pretty much sums up the point of the entire proverb:

”

25 Do not let your heart turn to her ways
or stray into her paths.
26 Many are the victims she has brought down;
her slain are a mighty throng.
27 Her house is a highway to the grave,
leading down to the chambers of death.”

Proverbs 7:25-27

Proverbs in July: Chapter 5

I am doing Chapter 5 solo (and late, although I have continued to keep up daily, I am just now blogging about this chapter). I would not be real with myself or my readers if I just stopped writing or skipped writing about certain chapters which I did not fully grasp. That is not being honest about my journey, to growth, both spiritual and personal.

Chapter 5: Warning Against Adultery

It sounds simple enough right? Perhaps to simple, perhaps it just down out right is what it is, a warning against the wayward woman. As I was reading (which I continued to re-read again and again hoping to gain a more clear understanding) I couldn’t help but to think this was a huge metaphor, not only for adultery, but for sin in general.

“For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil;
but in the end she is bitter as gall,
sharp as a double-edged sword.”

-Proverbs 5:3-4

For me personally this could be metaphorically speaking of the devil/Satan who can appeal to anyone as their deepest desires, their every hope and dream, but in the end being a trap to lure you into his deceit.

I kept reading it in this way, but I was uncertain.

However in verses 15-17 :Drink water from your own cistern,
running water from your own well.
Should your springs overflow in the streets,
your streams of water in the public squares?
Let them be yours alone,
never to be shared with strangers.

I can understand metaphorically to mean to drink from your own cistern/ running water from your own well, indulge with the lady that is your own (wife). “Never be shared with strangers”, women who are not your own. Never share yourself with another woman outside of your own.

So then in that sense I can see it specifically referring to adultery literally. I guess I am just jumping ahead because most of all it confuses me that this is addressed to me, about women, but what about warning women of strange men.

Well these are my thoughts upon chapter 5. Nothing deep and insightful; more inquisitive and curious.