New Me Week 3

Happy Saturday...it's dreary here in Houston, cloudy, rain, not overly cold, but chilly. I had an interesting week. On Wednesday, I was doing my exercises on the machine, when it started making really odd noises, my husband came to take a looksee and said, "Stop exercising!" So, I did. Turns out that the bolt holding the foot paddles onto the rotator sheared off. Mind you, I got this machine for Christmas, so I've been using it less than a month. DH managed to get the sheared bolt out of the machine and find a replacement at work the next day. The machine still makes weird noises, but he looked it over as I exercised on Thursday night and said it looked okay.

Also this week, we started The Biggest Loser diet. I joined that website a year ago, did the diet thing for a while, then stopped, but on Monday, Jan. 11th, we started it again. It's not a bad diet, just time consuming. I belonged for years to ediets.com. I should kept up that membership. I was a charter member and only had to pay $5 a month to be there! No telling what I'd pay if I rejoined now. Both of these sites are great, because they prepare the menu for you. I don't have to do that myself. I do have to make changes on the menu, because there's just some stuff I'm never going to eat! The thing I liked about ediets.com was that they allowed you to write in 'pick my own meal' for a replacement, so you weren't stuck with having to choose one of their meals. They also let you replace a meal with a fast food meal. So say I wanted go to KFC for lunch, I'd plug that in and they'd tell me what I could order to stay within my diet. The Biggest Loser site doesn't do either of those things. It would be an improvement to their site if they did.

When I was on ediets about 10 years ago, and I exercised faithfully at Curves, I lost 15 pounds. I should have stuck with it.

So, here's the weekly update: I exercised 5 days for 20 minutes. On Thursday, I increased my time to 25 minutes and I'll stick with that for a week or so, then add another 5 minuntes. I also lost 2 POUNDS. I'm excited about that!

Weekly tip: From Dr. Oz - choose a lunch you like and eat that everyday. I'm not quoting him directly, because I can't find the article, but the idea behind this was that you'd know what you were fixing and wouldn't be tempted to grab a hamburger. If you like Caesar Chicken Salad, have that. If you like tuna on crackers with grapes, have at it. Make it simple and you're more likely to stick to the diet. And yes, I'd say, you can switch it up. One week, have the chicken salad, the next week turkey on whole wheat with carrots. Make this one change in your diet, if the idea of a whole new diet scares you.....change up lunch for now.

So, how are you doing? Any words of wisdom to share?

One more thing, on Sunday, Jan. 17th, I'll be Amber Leigh William's blog The Cozy Page. Stop by and say hi! I'll be giving away a copy of my historical SALVATION BRIDE.

Anna Kathryn Lanier
Where Tumbleweeds Hang Their Hats
www.aklanier.com