So... It's Been A While...

So... it really has been a while since I've visited this blog. I got really caught up with my other blog KalamityJaneKosmetics where I've been posting reviews and different makeup looks, and it totally got me distracted from this blog. I haven't gained or lost any of the weight since my last weigh in last December (bummer, I know) but I have started a workout routine and I've actually been staying true to it. I'm on my third week of the Blogilates Beginner's Calender and I'm really loving it. I feel so energized and healthy and I've been getting so much stronger, it's friggin awesome. But, I've pretty well ditched my dieting ways, which is awful I know, working out is not going to make up for all the junk I eat. But I've got an idea that should fix that up no problem. But we'll get to that in a minute.

So as I said, I've been doing the Blogilates Beginner's Calender, and I am currently on Day 17. This is the longest that I've ever committed to a workout routine, and I am working out 6 days a week. If you aren't familiar with Blogilates, it's a workout/healthy living blog written by Cassey Ho who is a licensed Pilates instructor and she started the POP Pilates routines. I am currently in love with Pilates, and Cassey posts videos every week on YouTube with fresh workouts. I've been doing all the routines on her beginner's calender every day (approximately 25 minutes a day) and then I add extra workouts from her catalogue so I'm doing about 45 minutes to an hour of exercise. I would highly recommend these workouts for anyone trying to get in shape! I haven't lost any weight, but I am shrinking. It's totally weird that my scale says I haven't lost any weight, because I am seriously smaller than when I started this routine. I guess I'm just gaining a lot of muscle. I'm guessing that when I start eating better the pounds will start dropping like what.

And as far as the dieting bit goes, I'm not jumping on board with another fad diet. I'm done with that crap. There is nothing more obnoxious for me than some one, or something, dictating how often and what I will eat. It just restricts and frustrates in the end. And I'm not going to just go around counting all my calories either, it's a total pain in the arse when I'm trying to make a meal for my entire family. I love cooking, I love eating, and I'm not going to restrict myself anymore. I am going to start making healthier choices, and I'm going to start rewriting my favorite recipes to incorporate more healthy foods and less pre-processed crap. And to make this all a bit more fun, I've worked out a way to help motivate me in my eating healthy. I'm going to work on a cook book. I'll try to make at least 1 original, healthy recipe a week and then I'll record it in my cook book and I'll post it here. Probably be posting it on my other blog as well, but we'll see. 

I am going to be changing this blog around a little. I'm going to kind of transform it into a fitness/beauty/lifestyle blog instead of just focusing on weight loss. I would ideally like to merge this blog with my other blog as I honestly just don't have that much to say about just makeup stuffs. I'm going to continue my weigh ins, but instead of doing them every week, I'll do them on the first of the month. And instead of just a weigh in, it will be a weigh in with measurements and a picture. And yeah, I'll be posting healthy recipes, workouts, and pretty well whatever else meets my fancy. 

I'll do my weigh in and measurements later tonight or tomorrow, and then on the first of the month. Hope you're all having a nice evening!

xx

Danielle

12/28/2012 Weigh In

So Christmas came and went since my last weigh in and I actually didn't do too bad. I did gain some weight, which is a little bit of a bummer, but I managed to stay under 190lbs even though I totally gorged myself this holiday season.
So today is the 28th of December 2012, and I, Danielle Hughes, am weighing in at 188.8 pounds.
So I did pretty good, not great, but at least I didn't kill all the progress I've made. I'm hoping that by next week and can break through the obesity barrier to just being overweight. And next week is going to be the first weigh in of the month (and the New Year!!!!) so I will have another comparison picture up.
So send good wishes my way! I will be so stoked when my BMI is under 30! Feel free to drop a comment below with good wishes or weight loss tips. Til next time!!

End of the World Weigh In

Alright it's Friday and it's time to weigh in. I've been doing pretty good with my diet, I did reintroduce carbs though only whole grains. No more white bread for me! And I've kept up with my little exercise routine as well. And again, I have lost weight this week!
Today is the 21st of December in 2012 (supposedly the end of the world) and I, Danielle Hughes, am weighing in today at 187.8lbs.
Not a huge drop, but it's still something. Here's hoping the holiday festivities don't totally kill my progress for next week. Til next time!

Quick Thoughts

So I have been doing some research about healthy weight loss and why it's hard for some people to lose weight. A lot of it was stuff that I had heard before; eat healthy, drink lots of water, exercise. But I came across a few things that I hadn't really thought about that were quite interesting, and I thought I would share my findings with you.
Why are you fat? The body stores fat for a variety of reasons outside of what you are eating. So if you're eating a low fat diet and can't lose weight there is obviously something else preventing you from doing so. So what's keeping the fat on? Simple. Toxins. And not just the obvious stuff either. But basically, your body stores fat cells to trap toxins and prevent them from making you ill. It's really pretty effective. Unfortunately we live in a society where toxins are everywhere! The air is loaded with pollution, a lot of people smoke, drinking alcohol, prescription drugs, household cleansers, our water is loaded with crap, I mean pretty well everything is just bad for you. But there's still more. When your body is under a lot of stress or you're depressed you produce stress hormones. For the average person, these stress hormones would be processed and removed by your body while you sleep. But, the average American just doesn't get enough sleep to combat all the stress hormones. So what does your body do? It has all these excess stress hormones stored up inside and you're consistently producing more. the body doesn't know what is causing the stress so it generally goes one of two ways, either you start losing weight and lose your appetite, or your body takes all the excess stress hormones and stores them in fat. Which makes sense, as until the past hundred years or so famine was a huge stresser for people. Store fat, don't die in famine. Great except there's not a famine. So you're just storing up all this fat from outside toxins and stress, which will undoubtedly make you more stressed.
So what do we do to combat all of this? First, take some time to really think about what has you stressed out or depressed and why it has you strung out on hormones. Just take a deep breath and come to terms with who you are. Take time to think about all the good in your life. If weight is a huge stresser for you think  about your other traits that are awesome. Like I may be heavy, but I'm a good friend, I'm a fabulous musician, and I have great skin. Don't just stew on the need to lose weight.
And for the more external toxins, there are cleanses that one can do to help remove them. Most of these cleanses involve juicing and a lot of veggies and water. More specifically veggies that are loaded with chlorophyll. The chlorophyll will flush out those toxins super quick (and the fat that the toxins are in), and it's just good for you. Most of the veggies that are high in chlorophyll are the green leafy veggies such as collard greens and kale. Fresh parsley is also a good one to add to things as it is a super cleanser. It will even make your breath fresh and your sweat less smelly. It's that good.
After doing a little research I am pretty interested in trying one of these cleanses. Maybe for 2 weeks, not sure yet. But I am a smoker, I'm epileptic so I have been on meds since I was like 14, and I find myself stressed and/or depressed quite a lot. I would like to start this new year with a good cleanse to not only help me lose weight but to just be healthier. Start the new year fresh and clean on the inside, ya know. I will give up smoking during the cleanse which will be tremendously difficult, though I will probably start smoking after it is done. There are few things in my life that I truly truly enjoy and smoking is one of those things, so I'd probably have to lose a lung (I do mean that literally) before I would quit for real. You might think I'm crazy and stupid, but I assure you I am not. I know how bad it is for me. I know it could kill me. I just don't care. Getting in a car and going down the road has a greater likelihood of killing me, so yeah. I'm a smoker. It's a part of who I am.
But I have some more research to do on cleanses, find some recipes and what not. I'll fill you in when I have more to share on the subject. So til next time!

Random Update

It's been a while since I have posted anything but a weigh in, and I figured it's probably important to let people know exactly what I am doing to lose weight.
I have modified my diet slightly, so it's not really the South Beach Diet anymore. While I do try to stick to lots of veggies, lean proteins, and whole grains, it simply isn't always cost effective for me. My mine source of protein has to be eggs. They're cheap, versatile, and delicious. Perfect for the slightly broke dieter lol. I have also successfully given up regular soda and only drink diet, though most of my fluid intake is black coffee and water, which is probably where a lot of my weight loss is coming from actually. Before I started dieting I was consuming probably 3 cans of Coca-Cola a day, and at 140 calories per can, that's a total of 420 calories per day! That's almost a third of my daily allotted calories (I'm not a super active person, therefor I try to stick around 1200 to 1500 calories per day) in soda! Gross, right? I've also been eating at least one salad a day with an extremely light dressing (it has less than 3g of sugar per serving) and I keep a plethora of frozen veggies in the freezer to mix into eggs, serve with chicken, throw in the crockpot, etc. and when my husband just has to have some fast food, we go to Wendy's where I can get a cup of chilli and a baked potato. Wendy's chilli is one of the healthiest things you can get off of a fast food menu, btw, at 310 calories for a large chilli and 210 for a small. So not that bad.
I've also made it so that one day a week, usually Saturday, I can eat whatever I want. Pizza, burgers, whatever. This does not apply to soda, I still drink diet as I'm sure that the first time I get a regular Coke I probably won't go back to diet. But it's like a little reward every week for being good and eating proper. So far this has proved to be a good system to keep me on the right track.
I've also started working on a little exercise routine. I've recently started using Pinterest and I like to look there for little mini exercises. So far I have 2 that I have found to work into my everyday routine, it's not a lot but I'll be adding more to it as I find stuff I like.
The first routine I found is as follows: 50 jumping jacks (I hadn't done a jumping jack since high school! lol!), 20 crunches, 5 push ups, 20 mountain climbers, and a 30 second plank hold.
The second routine I found is an ab workout and it is as follows: You lay on your back and extend your legs into the air, toes pointed to the sky, then you "write" your ABCs with your toes. The bigger your letters, the better the workout. And let me tell you, it is a TOTAL ab workout! And it's not as easy as it sounds.
This week was rather monumental for me as I have finally broke through the 190's and have made my way into the 180's. I haven't been in the 180's since I was about 7 months pregnant with my daughter, which was roughly 2.5 years ago. Yeah. It's been a while.
I have lost a decent amount of weight recently, so I checked my BMI to see if I had gone from barely obese to just overweight. The answer was sadly no. However, I only have 3 pounds to lose before I am simply overweight and out of the danger zone. At 185lbs I will no longer be obese, and I am hoping to achieve that next week sometime. When I do hit that point I'll probably do a dance and post a sappy little bit here about how happy I am and how good I'm starting to look and what have you. Maybe I'll even include pictures as it is a pretty huge step in my weight loss.
Unfortunately I do not think that I will be making my first weight loss goal, which was to weigh 175lbs by the new year. It just took me too long to get my butt in gear and really start trying to lose weight. But I will be darn close to it, and I think that is totally possible for me to achieve my second goal of 150lbs by my birthday, September 22, next year.
So if you're here looking for inspiration, know that you CAN lose weight if you really put your mind to it. You just have to try and really dedicate yourself to the cause. I'm proof of that. I've lost 12 pounds in a month simply by eating right and working out. Good luck to you, and til next time!

Friday Weigh In 12/14/2012

It is Friday and I have had another productive week. Yay! I have remained diligent and haven't been overeating and I have been more active; the results are making me quite happy.

Today is the 14th of December in 2012 and I, Danielle Hughes, am weighing in at 188.0lbs.

For those who might be wondering what happened to my darling cousin Katie, she gave up on her diet. Of course, she didn't really have much weight to lose to be to her ideal weight and was already in the healthy weight zone. She did lose some weight, I think she's around 125lbs now, which is awesome, and she's pretty well content with that. So from here on out it will be just me weighing in here. :(
Lately is does seem like everyday is an accomplishment for me with my weight and it is awesome. I feel great and plan on having more good news for you next week. Til next time!

First December 2012 Weigh In

Yay it's the first Friday of the month! That means you get your normal Friday weigh in plus pics from day 1 and pics from today to help visualize my progress.
If you read my last post you know that I am officially the smallest I've been since I had my daughter over 2 years ago, which is pretty awesome to me. And you would also know that I've been doing really good with my diet, which is also pretty awesome as its the first time I've ever been able to commit to a diet. So I'm feelin pretty darn good about myself right now.

Danielle, 16 November, 2012, 200.0lbs

Danielle, 7 December, 2012, 191.2lbs

Danielle, 16 November, 2012, 200.0lbs

Danielle, 7 December, 2012, 191.2lbs

On the 7th of December, 2012, Danielle Hughes weighs in at 191.2 pounds. I have lost a total of 8.8 pounds since I started  my diet regimen. Til next time!