RULES:

1. If you haven’t yet, join the challenge here: GET FIT and GET HEALTHY
2. Every Saturday come back to The Art of Making a Baby and ShutterMama to read the tips on how to be fitter, healthier and more confident.
3. Weekly write a post about your progress, following the questionnaire below, take a self-portrait (optional) and link up with us.
4. Don’t forget to grab the GET FIT challenge button on the sidebar and display it proudly on your blog or GET FIT post.
5. Link your post with Selfie Saturdays if you took your week’s self-portrait.

My entry for week 15

1. Height: 5’11, weight: 136 lb

2. Your fitness challenge(s) for this week: Special exercises designed for pregnancy to increase flexibility (daily) + Kegels (twice daily). An hour of walking/running + 20 situps every hour of the day

3. Your health challenge(s) for this week: Continue eating whole grains, veggies and fruits only with a few servings of kefir and sardines daily (sardines are low in dioxins and mercury)

4. How well did it go:

Fitness: I wasn’t able to work out the whole week for for very good reasons. So i don’t feel too bad about it.
Water: Drinking 64 oz a day
Food: Still not eating any sweets for some reason. Even my granola cereal without any added sugar tastes too sweet. I have been going crazy when it comes to potato chips (kettle cooked salt and pepper only) and roasted potatoes. I’ve been good about not allowing too much of them. Also I’ve been entering all the food I eat into a tracking website and making sure that all my vitamins, minerals, omega 3s and protein were at 100% or above. And I can proudly say I’ve exceeded 100% on most nutrients (except for zinc) and protein.
5. Failures and slip-ups: I’d say kettle cooked potato chips. I tend to eat about a serving or two of them a day, which is fine since I don’t eat ANY sweets at all. Otherwise, no complaints.

7. Advice to fellow GET FIT members: Honestly, I think I’ve given everything I have for now.

8. Self Portrait: This week’s challenge was a STOP MOTION VIDEO and I had so much fun making it!

<center><a href="http://www.shutter-mama.com/search/label/Get%20Fit/"><img border="0" src="http://i788.photobucket.com/albums/yy169/sonyamarie89/getfit.jpg" /></a><br /> <a href="http://prebabyblog.com/category/getfit/"><img border="0" src="http://prebabyblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/gethealthybanner.jpg" /></a></center>

RULES:

1. If you haven’t yet, join the challenge here: GET FIT and GET HEALTHY
2. Every Saturday come back to The Art of Making a Baby and ShutterMama to read the tips on how to be fitter, healthier and more confident.
3. Weekly write a post about your progress, following the questionnaire below, take a self-portrait (optional) and link up with us.
4. Don’t forget to grab the GET FIT challenge button on the sidebar and display it proudly on your blog or GET FIT post.
5. Link your post with Selfie Saturdays if you took your week’s self-portrait.

RAW OR COOKED?

I’d like to share something I recently found out about nutrients of certain vegetables. I was always under the impression that if you cook vegetables, you basically effectively eliminating all the good nutrients and vitamins from them, so it’s best to eat msot vegetables raw or lightly sauteed. However, it turns out it’s not true for all the vegetables, actually quite the opposite for some of them.

Check out the nutrition breakdown:

“Broccoli and spinach , if eaten raw your body will absorb less than 5% of the nutrition for which you are eating them . With the exception of lettuce all the green leafy veggies must be heated. This is the only way to release the vitamin E and the Iron for your body to get at it . If eaten raw your body will get neither of those and only a small portion of the flavonoids . The calcium can be retrieved without heating .
Tomatoes if eaten raw your body can only acquire the vitamin C . The main nutrition you eat a tomato for is the lycopene! This is the enzyme in the tomato that gives it the red color.”

So green leafy vegetables? HEAT! Kale, spinach, collard greens. have an amazing spicy kale stew recipe that I really need to share with you guys.

 My entry for week 15

1. Height: 5’11″, weight: 136 lb

2. Your fitness challenge(s) for this week: Special exercises designed for pregnancy to increase flexibility (daily) + Kegels (twice daily). An hour of walking/running + 20 situps every hour of the day 

3. Your health challenge(s) for this week: Continue eating whole grains, veggies and fruits only with a few servings of kefir and sardines daily (sardines are low in dioxins and mercury)

4. How well did it go:

• Fitness: Did really good. I am feeling good and motivated, taking my time to do exercises rather than rush through them
• Water: Drinking 64 oz a day
• Food: I have this strange sweets aversion this week. I didn’t have ANYTHING sweet AT ALL. Eating really well otherwise: lots of beans, salads and vegetables with fruits.
   

5. Failures and slip-ups: Nothing really. I am very happy with this week6. Weekly challenge wisdom: Sometimes we get caught up and want to do things other than working out, but I found if you let yourself know that this hour is for exercising and that’s how it’s going to be, you take your time and actually enjoy it, rather than rush through it to be done for the day.

7. Advice to fellow GET FIT members: Is your partner helping you and supporting you in your quest to be healthier and fitter? If not, you need to get him to be on the same page with you. it’s so much more fun to eat well and exercise when you don’t have to accomodate someone else in their eating or couch habits.

8. Self Portrait: This week Selfie challenge was  Collaborations. We were to hook up with one of our bloggy friends and do a photo together, even though we might be 3000 miles away from each other. Here’s what Teagan and I came up with. I think the tagline is really fitting :)

<center><a href="http://www.shutter-mama.com/search/label/Get%20Fit/"><img border="0" src="http://i788.photobucket.com/albums/yy169/sonyamarie89/getfit.jpg" /></a><br /> <a href="http://prebabyblog.com/category/getfit/"><img border="0" src="http://prebabyblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/gethealthybanner.jpg" /></a></center>

RULES:

1. If you haven’t yet, join the challenge here: GET FIT and GET HEALTHY
2. Every Saturday come back to The Art of Making a Babyand ShutterMama to read the tips on how to be fitter, healthier and more confident.
3. Weekly write a post about your progress, following the questionnaire below, take a self-portrait (optional) and link up with us.
4. Don’t forget to grab the GET FIT challenge button on the sidebar and display it proudly on your blog or GET FIT post.
5. Link your post with Selfie Saturdays if you took your week’s self-portrait.

OMEGA-3S (fatty acids, DHA, EPA)

This week I paid more attention to my Omega-3 intake. It’s relatively hard to get enough Omega-3s in your diet especially if you are vegetarian and don’t eat fish.

The Daily RV for Omega-3s is about 2.5 grams and it needs to have a proportion of  no more than 1:3 with the Omega-6s ( which are abundant in American diets, due to processed food). Omega-3s reduce inflammation, Omega-6s promotes inflammation. So it’s very important to have a good balance between them ( 1:3), and consider that msot America diets have a 1:24 balance instead.

Omega-3s are crucial for brain development and growth ( our brain is made up of those fatty acids exclusively). It promotes good cardiovascular health and reduces inflammation. It is CRUCIAL during pregnancy, as children of pregnant women who didn’t get enough Omega-3s have a high risk of developing eye and nerve problems as well as brain development issues.

The problem is the body cannot make those fatty acids, we HAVE TO get them from foods alone. And very few foods contain enough DHA and EPA to make a difference.

I get half of my Omega-3 intake in my morning cereal and another half but having an ounce or two of walnuts. Walnuts and fatty fish ( sardines,salmon) are probably your best sources of Omega-3s. Aim for a 1/4 of a cup of walnuts or tale a fish oil supplement.

To read about ALL the benefits of Omega-3 supplementation, go here

 My entry for week 13

1. Height: 5’11″, weight: 134 lb

2. Your fitness challenge(s) for this week: 30 minutes of pilates every other day + 30 minutes of cardio ( rollerblading, running, swimming or treadmill) every other day+20 sit-ups every hour for 8 hours on cardio days. Special exercises designed for pregnancy to increase flexibility (daily) + Kegels (twice daily). A total of about an hour or more of physical activity a day.

3. Your health challenge(s) for this week: Continue eating whole grains, veggies and fruits only with a few servings of kefir,eggs or sardines daily (sardines are low in dioxins and mercury)

4. How well did it go:

• Fitness:I was pretty lazy this week and while I hit all my exercise goals, I felt I did them half-heartedly. 
• Water: I’m back to my KleenKanteen bottle and being hydrated.  When I don’t drink enough, I start getting sooo thirsty, almost like a withdrawal.
• Food: Food intake was perfect. Nothing to complain about.
  

5. Failures and slip-ups: I totally forgot about Kegels this week. I maybe did them for two or three days, but that sucks. I need to resume 100 Kegels a day.

6. Weekly challenge wisdom: I’m really proud of myself and those people who stuck with this challenge. It’s tough and it’s so easy to quit because I have no motivation, no weight to lose, but somehow I’ve been going. I feel guilty when I skip a day’s work out or eat more than I should ( never happens, but I can imagine I’d feel guilty). I love having this as a routine, as a part of my life.

7. Advice to fellow GET FIT members: Healthy weight, good nutrition and overall health is a lifestyle choice, not a temporary state. If you just want to lose a few pounds and go back to how you were eating before, then you might as well not try. It’s about being a healthy person, which means daily effort, make it a lifestyle, and your weight will come down as a result of that. It should not be about dieting, it should be about becoming a better person.

8. Self Portrait: FAMILY PORTRAIT (for more family portraits I took for this challenge, go to Selfie Saturdays)

LINK UP HERE

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RULES:

1. If you haven’t yet, join the challenge here: GET FIT and GET HEALTHY
2. Every Saturday come back to The Art of Making a Babyand ShutterMama to read the tips on how to be fitter, healthier and more confident.
3. Weekly write a post about your progress, following the questionnaire below, take a self-portrait (optional) and link up with us.
4. Don’t forget to grab the GET FIT challenge button on the sidebar and display it proudly on your blog or GET FIT post.
5. Link your post with Selfie Saturdays if you took your week’s self-portrait.

 My entry for week 13

1. Height: 5’11″, weight: 136 lb

2. Your fitness challenge(s) for this week: 30 minutes of pilates every other day + 30 minutes of cardio ( rollerblading, running, swimming or treadmill) every other day+20 sit-ups every hour for 8 hours on cardio days. Special exercises designed for pregnancy to increase flexibility (daily) + Kegels (twice daily). A total of about an hour or more of physical activity a day.

3. Your health challenge(s) for this week: Continue eating whole grains, veggies and fruits only with a few servings of kefir,eggs or sardines daily (sardines are low in dioxins and mercury)

4. How well did it go:

• Fitness: I was happy with my fitness this week, did pretty good and even worked out when I thought i couldn’t.
• Water: I’m back to my KleenKanteen bottle and being hydrated.
• Food: Food intake was perfect. Nothing to complain about.
   

5. Failures and slip-ups: I usually work out with my husband ( i get bored working out alone), and this week he was so busy he barely got out to work out towards the end of the week. I had to muster up the energy to do that without him which was hard. But i don’t feel I did as good as I could have, because I didn’t have the help.

6. Weekly challenge wisdom: I’m wisdom-ed out, to be honest! This has become a habit for me which is great. So there’s nothing new that I learned this week.

7. Advice to fellow GET FIT members: A few of you seemed to have fallen off the wagon. Whatever excuses you’re telling yourselves, they’re worth nothing. If you’re working out on your own - great! But if you’re not, then find the strength to start it again. Every little bit helps!

8. Self Portrait: JUMP

LINK UP HERE

_________________________________________________________

RULES:

1. If you haven’t yet, join the challenge here: GET FIT and GET HEALTHY
2. Every Saturday come back to The Art of Making a Babyand ShutterMama to read the tips on how to be fitter, healthier and more confident.
3. Weekly write a post about your progress, following the questionnaire below, take a self-portrait (optional) and link up with us.
4. Don’t forget to grab the GET FIT challenge button on the sidebar and display it proudly on your blog or GET FIT post.
5. Link your post with Selfie Saturdays if you took your week’s self-portrait.

Vitamin and Mineral Supplements.

In the course of my preparation for pregnancy, one of the topics I did extensive research on was vitamin and mineral supplements.

We all know the importance of taking daily vitamins, especially if our diet leaves something to be desired. Now supplementation it’s not as simple as pop a pill each morning if you want to do it right.

There’s vitamin toxicity to pay attention to, minerals mashing together in all the wrong ways and negating each other, proper absorption, etc etc…

Here’re a few important fact everyone taking a supplement needs to know. This is especially useful to pregnant women or those TTCing, because having proper nutrients in your body is crucial:

There are certain minerals and foods that prevent absoption of others and vitamins that aid in absoption. You need to know that to get the maximum  out of your vitamins.

• Pretty much anything interferes with iron absorption, so if your goal is to make sure you have plenty of iron in your stores, read the following:
            -do NOT mix calcium rich foods with iron rich foods, the same goes for supplements. Take iron and calcium supplement at least 2 hours apart.
            -do NOT drink tea after eating an iron rich food or taking an iron supplement.
            -the easiest way is to make sure you take an iron supplement completely separate with iron rich food
            – take vitamin C with iron for best absorption.If you’re a vegetarian, great sources of iron include: beans/lentils,some nuts, spinach, collard greens. Make sure to add some of those at every meal.
• If you’re taking an iron supplement, make sure to take zinc and copper with it. Iron supplements interfere with the absorption of copper, which in turn is very closely related to zinc. So if you’re taking copper, you need to supplement it with zinc and visa versa. Since excess of one will give you a deficiency of the other So since iron interferes with copper and copper interferes with zinc, you need to take all three to make sure you’re even. In nature it’s done automatically, most foods high in iron are also high in zinc and copper. Never exceed 100% of DV an any of these minerals, because of it’s close relation and intricate balance system.
• Calcium is best absorbed with Vitamins D. Most  Calcium supplements have vitamin D in it, just make sure it doesn’t exceed 50% DV, since vitamin D has a toxicity level.
• It’s hard to get enough DHA in a pill form and it’s pretty expensive so look for a morning cereal that is a good source of Omega-3s and load up on some avocado and walnuts.
• FOLIC ACID: TAKE IT!!!! Please please please, if you are of childbearing age and not infertile, please take a folic acid supplement, even if you’re not “planning” any more kids. Neural tube develops during the first 27 days of pregnancy, well before most women even know they’re pregnant. Folic acid can prevent most neural tube defects in a baby as long as you take it before and during the first month of pregnancy. Unless you’re like me and plan pregnancies that meticulously, the last thing you’d want is to get pregnant, not know it for a month and miss that 30 day window.

If you’re pregnant or planning to get pregnant:

NEVER EVER (unless advised by a doctor) exceed 100% of DV on any supplement. It’s hard because most over the counter prenatals stuff 200-300%DV of vitamins in it to appeal to the less educated women thinking they’re getting a better value. You are NOT! You should be getting plenty from food, so all you need to do is create a safety net.

Fat soluble vitamins get packed away in your fat thus making it possible to create a toxicity hardful to a fetus if you don’t know what you’re doing.

-Do not take vitamin A in any form but beta-carotene, that includes milk and animal products that have a decent amount of vitamin A in retinoid form. High doses of vitamin A causes birth defect and it’s easy to go over board if you’re a meat eater and take supplements
-Watch your vitamin D intake.
- Vitamin E has been linked with heart defects at birth. That is even vitamin E taken before pregnancy at as low as 2/3 of recommended daily value (DV). Now since, oil has lot of vitamin E, I suspect those finding might have had something to do with women who ate lots of oily foods that are already bad for the baby. But we can’t know for sure, and these are my personal speculations. I am not taking any vitamin E supplement, since we get plenty through oil use and nuts.

Folic acid is a MUST before you’re even pregnant.
Supplemental iron is helpful taken before pregnancy so that you go into it with your stores full of iron.
Unless you eat lots of fruits and veggies ( and I do mean lots and varied, making up most of your meals), you might not need to supplement A,C or K vitamins, since you get plenty from fruits and veggies.

Since everything tend to interfere with everything and you can’t take more than 100% of the certain type of vitamin..bla bla bla… I found the best way to make it easy is to buy each supplement separately and take them in batches:

iron+C+zinc+copper= 1st batch
Calcium+D= 2nd batch
Folic+ B+DHA+other= 3rd batch

So there you have it!

Now, my entry for week 12

1. Height: 5’11″, weight: 134 lb

2. Your fitness challenge(s) for this week: 30 minutes of pilates every other day + 30 minutes of cardio ( rollerblading, running, swimming or treadmill) every other day+20 sit-ups every hour for 8 hours on cardio days. Special exercises designed for pregnancy to increase flexibility (daily) + Kegels (twice daily). A total of about an hour or more of physical activity a day.

3. Your health challenge(s) for this week: My eating habits are close to perfect, however I could improve on my water intake. My goal will be 8 glasses of water daily + continue eating the way I do now. Start snacking more during the day to prepare for the first trimester of morning sickness.

• Fitness: It was awesome. I did everything I set out to do. Worked out daily. I feel it’s starting to become a habit, one that I will not want to give up. Yesterday, hubby and I even did both strength and cardio and abs in one day, even though we’re supposed to do cardio/strength every other day.
• Water: I’m back to my KleenKanteen bottle and being hydrated.
• Food:Food intake was perfect. Nothing to complain about.
  5. Failures and slip-ups: Can’t say anything here. I’m getting in the groove and getting stronger.

6. Weekly challenge wisdom: It’s true that they say it takes a while to form a habit, but once that habit forms it becomes a joy to do the most mundane things.
 
7. Advice to fellow GET FIT members: Stick with it! It will get better But if you give up now, it’ll NEVER get better. You will always start and stop and start and stop and get nowhere, or give up and continue living unhealthy and overweight.

{for more shots, go to my photography blog, Selfie Magic}

LINK UP:

Nutritional Data

While we’re are concentrating on cutting our calories, let’s also talk about nutrition. It’s such an important topic to discuss especially if you’re living on a limited amount of calories in order to lose weight. There have been a few studies that showed that people who habitually eat smaller amounts of calories, lived quite a few years longer than those who had a normal caloric intake. It can be attributed to many factors, such as not having to tax our lower intestinal tracts that hold so many toxins, or to the fact that most people consciously reducing their caloric intake as a way of life tend to eat much better.
Which brings me to this: if you’re going to cut your calories, you need to ensure you’re doing everything possible to receive all the necessary vitamins, minerals and nutrients within your lowered caloric intake.
But just like most people didn’t know they were overeating until they were faced with the data inputted by them into loseit.com or some other calorie counting service, you most likely don’t realize that a lot of the foods you’re eating are nutritionally empty. And if you’re going to waste an already limited amount of calories on certain foods, wouldn’t you want to make sure that food gives you all the nutrients your body needs?
I talked about ,a href=”http://prebabyblog.com/2011/03/whole-grains-and-fiber-week-8-of-get-fit-healthy-and-confident-challenge/”>refined grains vs whole grain last week, which is a no-brainer.
It helps to get education on what certain foods give you nutritionally. So I wanted to share my favorite nutritional website with you: http://nutritiondata.self.com/

Take, for example, the seemingly nutritionally weak snacks I made a few weeks back. One would think that potatoes (starch) and zucchinis aren’t THAT well packed with nutrients and vitamins. Well, one would be very wrong.
Sweet Potatoes (with skin) and zucchinis are quite the superstars in the glitzy world of nutrition.

1 BAKED ZUCCHINI                                                                                                                 1 BAKED SWEET POTATO

You simply type in your food and the whole nutritional breakdown comes out in front of you! Brilliant!

Using this site, I created a special table of most commonly consumed foods ( by me) that I arranged by the amount of certain vitamins that food has. I did that specially in preparation of pregnancy to ensure I do not go overboard on Vitamin A which can be toxic to a fetus in large doses ( unless it’s beta-carotene found in most veggies) and that I receive as many vitamins naturally through food as possible and then supplement whatever is missing.

I will be a sweetheart and share this table with you. It took me literally three days to organize it into this format. I taped it to the refrigerator to make sure I pick the right foods and keep track of whether I’ve gotten my needed vitamins.
{I am also working on the minerals table, but, like I said, it takes so much time, I haven’t been able to finish it yet}

You can print this table out on legal size paper in a landscape orientation and hopefully it’ll help you pick better foods.

NUTRIENTS TABLE
{click and save as or right click on the link and chose save target as…}

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Now, my entry for week 9

1. Height: 5’11′, weight: 132 lb  ( i seem to be holding steady at 132lb. I might have to accept that that’s my weight for now and continue to eat as much as I can)

2. Your fitness challenge(s) for this week: 30 minutes of pilates every other day + 30 minutes of cardio ( rollerblading, running, swimming or treadmill) every other day. Special exercises designed for pregnancy to increase flexibility (daily) + Kegels (twice daily). A total of about an hour of physical activity a day. I decided to pick up the pace and work more on my abs more, inspired to go into pregnancy as fit as I can possibly be.

3. Your health challenge(s) for this week: My eating habits are close to perfect, however I could improve on my water intake. My goal will be 8 glasses of water daily + continue eating the way I do now.

• Fitness: I did great! I figured out that my reluctance to work out stemmed from lack of sleep. And now that Iam getting 11 hours again, I’m rocking it! Yesterday I went rollerblading as my usual work out and while showing off to hubby, fell and  bruised my side, wrists and skinned my knee and palms pretty bad. But I still went back to finish rollerblading after i got bandaged up.
• Water: I’m back to my KleenKanteen bottle and being hydrated.
• Food: The usual stuff, really healthy, never any meats. I tried to eat as much as I could this week, and snack on nuts in between, but it’s looking like I really can’t stuff myself with food. I’ll eat when I am hungry and stop worrying about not getting enough calories. I obviously get enough for me.

5. Failures and slip-ups: Not much really. We skipped work outs today, cuz it was so busy and I was doing the posts ( it happens every Friday), but I intend to make up for it tomorrow, like I always do.

6. Weekly challenge wisdom: I underestimated how much sleep my body really needs. I kept setting an alarm so that I could get more done, and sleeping about 7 hours a day. I was feeling like crap and couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to work out. One day I slept in, and it was absolutely amazing. I was a different me!
 
7. Advice to fellow GET FIT members: Prioritize! Very few things in life are more important than your family and your health. Concentrate on that and you’ll be happy.

8. Self Portrait: Bokeh {for more shots, go to my photography blog, Selfie Magic}

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<center><a href="http://www.shutter-mama.com/search/label/Get%20Fit/"><img border="0" src="http://i788.photobucket.com/albums/yy169/sonyamarie89/getfit.jpg" /></a><br /> <a href="http://prebabyblog.com/category/getfit/"><img border="0" src="http://prebabyblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/gethealthybanner.jpg" /></a></center>

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LINK UP

<center><a href="http://www.shutter-mama.com/search/label/Get%20Fit/"><img border="0" src="http://i788.photobucket.com/albums/yy169/sonyamarie89/getfit.jpg" /></a><br /> <a href="http://prebabyblog.com/category/getfit/"><img border="0" src="http://prebabyblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/gethealthybanner.jpg" /></a></center>

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Oh wow! Week 6 of Get Fit, Get Healthy, Get Confident Challenge! That’s a month and a half!
Most of you who started with us on Day 1 should be down by at least 3-4 pounds. If you aren’t, then you need to go over your fitness and food goals and make sure they are ambitious enough and you’re not eating more calories than you can burn off.

RULES:

1. If you haven’t yet, join the challenge here: GET FIT and GET HEALTHY
2. Every Saturday come back to The Art of Making a Baby and ShutterMama to read the tips on how to be fitter, healthier and more confident.
3. Weekly write a post about your progress, following the questionnaire below, take a self-portrait (optional) and link up with us.
4. Don’t forget to grab the GET FIT challenge button on the sidebar and display it proudly on your blog or GET FIT post.
5.  Link your post with Selfie Saturdays if you took your week’s self-portrait.

I will keep it very short today. It is 2:30 am and I am trying to get this post out before Saturday.

One thing I’d like to touch on very quickly is the importance of support when it comes to weight loss and fitness. If you don’t have a fitness buddy who is just a excited about the project as you are, make sure your family is on board with you. Your significant other might be in a decent enough shape, but he could definitely benefit from improved eating habits.

 Did you know that people that regularly consume fewer calories live a few years longer than those whose calorie intake is higher?

Explain to your family why it is important for you and for them to lead a healthier lifestyle. It might not sink in right away for them, but it’s important that they support you.

For this very reason I would like to start keeping a list of every participant currently using LoseIt.com (read last week’s post about counting calories) and twitter to log their progress and calories. It is  great support and motivation to see your fellow get fit members log their exercise and food intake daily, lose weight, comment to keep each other going during the work week, in between the check ins here.
Also, twittering when you’re about to commit a food crime or skip your exercise for the day will keep you on track and possibly save you from that piece of cake.

You can’t underestimate SUPPORT!

So if you have a LoseIt.com account and/or Twitter and would like to share and help others as well as get support from bloggers, email me (contact {at} prebabyblog {dot} com) or comment to this post with your Loseit email address and /or twitter name.

I will compile a list of participants and post it next week to make sure we all add each other as friends.  I would really love to have all of us there supporting each other.

I will start:
Loseit.com email address:contact {at} prebabyblog {dot} com
Twitter: girl_on_e

Comment below or email me @ (contact {at} prebabyblog {dot} com) 

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Now, my entry for week 6

1.  Height: 5’11?, weight: 131.6 lb  {-3lb, not good, need to get back to 133-135lbs}

2. Your  fitness challenge(s) for this week:  30 minutes of pilates every other day + 30 minutes of cardio ( rollerblading, running, swimming or treadmill) every other day. Special exercises designed for pregnancy to increase flexibility (daily) + Kegels (twice daily). A total of about an hour of physical activity a day.

3. Your health challenge(s) for this week: My eating habits are close to perfect,  however I could improve on my water intake. My goal will be 8 glasses of water daily + continue eating the way I do now.

• Fitness: Ok, I have to admit! This is the first week that I have really disappointed myself. During the previous two weeks, I was recovering from the wisdom teeth surgery and really didn’t had a choice but to take it easy. However this week, I felt good enough to exercise, but I do not feel I lived up to my goals.
• Water: Thanks to my new Clean Kanteen bottle, I have been getting plenty of water. It makes it so easy to drink.
• Food: I did really good with food this week. Being back on LoseIt.com is giving me the motivation to be really strict with my intake as far as nutrition goes. I have been trying to gain weight since the surgery and that meant eating over 200o calories a day which is tough for me since I eat mostly low calorie foods like veggies and fruits. However I did really good, got plenty of protein despite being a vegetarian and balanced my meals greatly.

5. Failures and slip-ups: I realized I let myself be weak. I got too used to being sick and not having to put in the effort. I did pilates only once and did 30 to an hour of cardio 3 times during the week. Which means I missed 3 days of work out for no real reason. I feel I really failed myself this week. But that is also  giving me motivation to be better, to be perfect next week. There are no more excuses! The pain from the surgery is almost non-existent and I can do my weekly pilates and cardio exercises no problem. It’s hard to make yourself work out when there isn’t a real tangible reason, like weight loss, to support it. But I need to keep reminding myself that it is about a healthy lifestyle.

I think the water intake also took a hit 1 or 2 days out of this week- again something to improve on.

6. Weekly challenge wisdom:  Self-control! It’s easier to have it when you’re 100% aware of what you’re doing. Keeping track of what you eat and how much you exercise is a great tool to use when you need to further motivate or restrict yourself.

 
7. Advice to fellow GET FIT members:  Make failures a reason for successes! Nothing happens in an instant. You will stumble and forget why you’re doing this. But the week will go by and there will be another week to make it better, to make it perfect. That’s how you develop habits, good healthy habits. You keep at it for as long as it takes… As long as it takes to start enjoying exercise. As long as it takes to stop cravings sweets. As long as it takes to acquire a taste for seemingly bland vegetables. Because you know what? Eventually…. You WILL!

8. Self Potrait: Clones

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RULES:

1. If you haven’t yet, join the challenge here: GET FIT and GET HEALTHY
2. Every Saturday come back to The Art of Making a Baby and ShutterMama to read the tips on how to be fitter, healthier and more confident.
3. Weekly write a post about your progress, following the questionnaire below, take a self-portrait (optional) and link up with us.
4. Don’t forget to grab the GET FIT challenge button on the sidebar and display it proudly on your blog or GET FIT post.
5.  Link your post with Selfie Saturdays if you took your week’s self-portrait.

Weight Loss = Diet+ Exercise

Today I would like to encourage you to completely rehab your eating habits!

Too often do I see a person desperately trying to lose weight only to find out that they’re doing it all wrong.

Weight Loss = Diet + Exercise

One can’t go without another! You CANNOT lose weight on exercise alone, unless you’re eating reasonably. And believe me, reasonable diet is not what most Americans eat. It’s not even close.

Exercise is great for toning and looking great, it’s important for our health as well as our mood, it’s great at speeding up our metabolism, it is amazing for maintaining weight loss and burning off a few extra calories. But when it comes to outright full out 10 or more pounds weight loss, it’s only a part of the equation.

Let me explain this! Remember from last week that 1 pound of weight gained or lost equals to 3500 extra or fewer calories than your body needs.
Now count this: it takes 2 minutes to suck an average large sized milkshake but 4 hours of treadmill time to burn it. At that point is it worth even drinking it?
Yet I see too many women, including some in this challenge, who literally SLAVE in the gym, or run miles after miles without making any changes to their eating habits.
Let me be blunt: You don’t eat as well as you think you do. No one does, I didn’t, my husband didn’t.

If you’re not seeing pounds coming off of you week after week, then you need to make changes. Exercising can be difficult and hard to fit it , yet  right nutrition choices can supplement your routine and help you by reducing the need to make your work outs so vigorous.

Too many people have a LOVE/LOVE relationship with food. Food is NOT your friend. You should NOT take too much pleasure in eating. We eat to survive, that’s it. And if you find that you’re enjoying food too much, craving things, thinking about food, looking forward to eating, AND you feel you’re overweight, then your relationship with food needs to change. I will be discussing this part in more details in the upcoming weeks, but what I want to stress right now is that YOU CANNOT LOSE WEIGHT WITHOUT MAKING DIETARY CHANGES.

One of the hardest working people in this challenge, in my opinion, is Sonya from Shuttermama . She exercises like a soldier and she has lost an amazing amount of weight, BUT she made changes in how she eats along with her exercise routine: no coke, mostly veggies.

So if your food challenge section says “increase water intake” and you’re looking to lose weight, you need to change that.
If it says “reduce portion size“, you need to make it more specific: To what size? 1 serving? Two? Fist size? Set a goal.
Is eating half a restaurant plate of Fettuccine Alfredo that much better than a full plate? Half of 2500 calories is still 1250 calories for dinner?

The reason why I am saying this right now is because everyone needs to be motivated, reminded what it is they are supposed to be doing here.

What I would like to suggest is very simple a easy to do. Starting this week, let’s start counting calories. For real!
Counting calories is probably the best exercise in weight loss you can ever attempt to do. My previous weight loss to model weight, as well as my husband’s weight loss of 30 pounds, all started from counting calories.

First of all, it teaches you to pay attention to what, when and how much you eat. If you eat consciously, writing down every bite, you’re less likely to splurge on something you know is a lot of calories. Calorie counting teaches you to pick and eat foods that are more filling but less calorie intensive instead of those that pack lots of calories in one small size.

You’re starving: would you rather have a massive bowl of cucumber and tomato salad or 1 piece of cheese? Calorie counting  gets you used to picking the right foods and eat less of them, because you’re suddenly aware where those pounds are coming from.

It doesn’t have to be hard. If you have an iPhone or Droid, there are a ton of apps that will do the counting for you, my favorite being LoseIt. You can start a food journal. You can use one of the countless websites that offer calorie counts. Again, I’d recommend using the web version of LoseIt Just make sure you write down exactly what you eat.

In order to start, you need to figure out your caloric needs. Use this daily calorie calculator to determine how many calories you’re supposed to ingest to lose weight. Use the number for weight loss or extreme weight loss ( I’d pick somewhere in the middle, if you’ve got quite  a few pounds to shed). Yes, you’ll be hungry at first, but overtime your body will get used to living off your fat ( sorry for being so literal) rather than all that extra food you eat. You don’t have to starve yourself though. Choose more vegetables, preferably fresh, they have almost no calories whatsoever. Give up calorie intensive meats and cheese for the time being as well as pasta and bread in large quantities (  you can have small servings of whole grain pasta instead).  Don’t do anything drastic. It has to be sustainable. You have to eat foods that you can see yourself eating while maintaining the amount of calories needed for weight loss. Make salads with nutritious Romaine lettuce, throw cucumbers and tomatoes ( virtually no calories) into everything you eat.

Count every calorie.

I dare you to try this out for a week. A week of calorie counting and not going over your “weight loss daily calorie limit”. A week of eating fresh veggies instead of mashed potatoes and cutting down on servings. A week of being responsible about what you eat, how you eat and how much you eat.

If you spend a week counting every calorie ( healthy, please!) you put in your mouth and not going over your limit, and you don’t lose at least a pound by the end of the week, then you can come back here and tell me I am full of shit!

Calorie counting is a powerful lesson in nutrition. You need to do it for a few months to really learn the lessons it can teach you, to learn how to eat right . The key is to NOT starve yourself! Eat every time you feel strong hunger or at least 3 meals a day, however those meals cannot exceed  400 calories per meal or the total of your daily allowance if you want to do it in a healthy way.

Try this out
you have nothing to lose but what you want to lose:
YOUR WEIGHT!

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Now, my entry for week 4

1.  Height: 5’11″, weight: 131 lb  {-3lb, not good, need to get back to 133-135lbs}

2. Your  fitness challenge(s) for this week:  30 minutes of pilates every other day + 30 minutes of cardio ( rollerblading, running, swimming or treadmill) every other day. Special exercises designed for pregnancy to increase flexibility (daily) + Kegels (twice daily). A total of about an hour of physical activity a day.

3. Your health challenge(s) for this week: My eating habits are close to perfect,  however I could improve on my water intake. My goal will be 8 glasses of water daily + continue eating the way I do now.

• Fitness: I am still in a great amount of pain from my surgery , however I felt strong enough to rollerblade every day this week for about an hour. I didn’t do any strength training, I didn’t feel I couldn’t pull it off yet, however I am pretty happy about having done cardio.
• Water: Thanks to my new Clean Kanteen bottle, I have been getting plenty of water. It makes it so easy to drink.
• Food: I was able to eat more solid foods this week, but not my usual stuff. I have also been focusing on gaining the 4 pounds I lost right back, so the food intake was a bit different this week with a lot of whole grain bread along with my soups and quite a few high calorie soft cookies.

5. Failures and slip-ups: I did slip up this Friday and somehow missed my hour of cardio and didn’t do strength training all week which I feel bad about, but hopefully next week I’ll feel strong enough to pick it right back up. Again, I don’t feel right about eating cookies to gain weight, but it’s that or soups, and you can’t really gain weight with homemade vegetable soups :)

6. Weekly challenge wisdom:  Be a little bit harder on yourself than you think you should. If you don’t push yourself to be better, no one will care enough to go through the trouble of doing it for you.

7. Advice to fellow GET FIT members:  Proper diet is a crucial part in losing weight. Do not get so concentrating on exercise and lose sight of how much you really eat during the day.

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Another week of being a better person has gone by and some of you had successes, some of you had setbacks. It’s expected. It’s understandable.

We fall down, we brush ourselves off and we keep on going.

For those who had the strength to join Sonya and I today, you’re awesome!

If you’re new, WELCOME! Feel free to put your name down on our virtual list of participants here.

RULES:

1. If you haven’t yet, join the challenge here: GET FIT and GET HEALTHY
2. Every Saturday come back to The Art of Making a Baby and ShutterMama to read the tips on how to be fitter, healthier and more confident.
3. Weekly write a post about your progress, following the questionnaire below, take a self-portrait (optional) and link up with us.
4. Don’t forget to grab the GET FIT challenge button on the sidebar and display it proudly on your blog or GET FIT post.
5.  Link your post with Selfie Saturdays if you took your week’s self-portrait.  

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So today I’d like to discuss something very important to me that changed the way I eat: Breakfast habits

I was never a big breakfast eater. None of that eggs, bacon, sausage patties + a stack of pancakes for me. I went through years of not eating breakfast at all ( not good), and then eating whatever I felt like (not good), until I finally stumbled onto a concept that made a lot of sense to me and changed my mornings completely.

That concept was introduced to me by an old book that my booker from the modeling agency gave me to read and follow before I could go to New York. A lot of things in that book shaped my current eating habits, but the idea behind the whole concept is what blew my mind.

Basically, as many of you might know, we eat for one reason and one reason alone: FOR ENERGY. Food shouldn’t be for pleasure or indulging. We were meant to eat food for survival. That’s why we have taste buds, and that’s why we find food so good tasting, because year after year of evolution  allowed only those to survive who were motivated enough to find their own food ( and honestly, would we want to hunt days and nights on end for food that doesn’t even taste good? I don’t think so). Actually sexual pleasure has the same reason. If sex didn’t feel good, how would we ever procreate in the stone age and continue our line?

So we eat food for ENERGY. Calories = Energy.

via Lisa Clark

However, 3500 unused calories equal 1 pound of fat. So next time you look at that scale and see that you’ve gained 1 pound, please know that it’s exactly 3500 calories that you ate that your body didn’t need and didn’t burn.

What many of you didn’t know is that there’s one process in our body that requires more energy (calories) to accomplish than anything else. It’s digestion. It’s a very complex and very important process, therefore our body puts a lot of priority on digesting your meal and extracting every possible nutrient and calorie it can. Have you noticed that how after a big meal ( Thanksgiving dinner, anyone?), every single person unbuttons their pants and goes into a coma. That’s your body at work prioritizing and taking the energy away from your body and giving it to your GI.

So that means we need food to have energy and we need energy to “have” food.

Now what happens in the morning is that we wake up from 8-10 hours of sleep without any expendable energy, because , well, we didn’t eat all night. Then most of us go ahead stuffing ourselves with eggs and bacon, and refined carbohydrates and syrup, mixing all that mess of protein and carbs and sugars in our tummy and expect it to digest. Except our body has no energy to digest it yet. The worst thing is meat has the toughest time digesting, especially when mixed with grains. We keep taxing our system like this day after day without even realising how much damage we’re doing to our colon.

Some people don’t eat breakfast at all, robbing their body of that needed energy to function first thing in the morning.

The solution is FRUIT. Fruit is the only thing that is partially digested in your mouth by saliva. So by the time it hits your stomach, it needs very little to finish digesting giving you a little burst of energy to continue functioning. Then in about an hour or less after the first breakfast, you can allow yourself to eat some of the heavier foods, being assured that your body can handle it.

Either way, it’s never a good idea to mix meats and starches and grains, they don’t digest well together, because they need different digestive juices. Meat and veggies, and grains and veggies is your best option. And I’d leave meat till later in the day anyways. So get up and before you even had your morning cup of coffee, have a fruit or two.

There’s a school of thought that believes that it’s important to have protein in the morning. That’s not a problem. Have the 1st breakfast of fruits (fruits alone, no sauces, no dipping, no sugar), and then continue in about an hour with your choice of protein.

I’ve been eating like this for 2 years now, and I gotta tell you, I’d never go back to no breakfast or heavy breakfast.

Cutting back on coffee is a good idea too, since most of you don’t realize how addicted your body is to the caffeine ( and anything that hinders your functions is never good). Apples has similar effects on a human brains as caffeine does, making you feel more awake in the morning.  My husband followed suit and quit coffee cold turkey after being a 2-3 cup drinker, and he had withdrawals for 5(!!!) days. He, as well declared that he’ll never go back to drinking caffeine after experiencing the kind of effect it has on your body. Coffee in itself isn’t that bad, but it’s the addiction and, how disabled it makes us feel if we don’t have it every morning, that is troubling.

Give me your thoughts on this!

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Now, my entry for week 4

1.  Height: 5’11″, weight: 132 lb  {-1lb, not good, need to get back to 133-135lbs}

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NOW LINK UP!