Rest Days?

Rosemary grilled salmon kabobs

Who needs em? Well, apparently me... I guess. Everyone knows I'm addicted to working out. Once I got on this roll I just couldn't stop. I look at my calendar every day and see all my work and I just can't stand to miss a day! It would make me very, very sad. So I choose to not have rest days. I know everyone says you need them, but I'm stubborn, what can I say?

Well, I think the no rest days finally caught up to me. That, coupled with the fact that I've been working overtime like a mad man! It started on Monday, I had worked at station 1 and went from there to station 30 to workout then do the CPAT conditioning class. I didn't actually think I was teaching the class that night but the person who was supposed to didn't show up, so I took over.

I came up with an awesome little routine for them. We did some pair workouts and then played with the bricks. Then someone decided to ask for more legs so that's what they got! We crushed legs! Wow, even MY legs were killing me. At the very end I even managed to slip some pilates in there!

Well, after an awesome workout, I got in my car to leave and noticed a little pinch in my throat when I swallowed. I didn't think much of it. It seemed to go away. I had some dinner and hung out with Charlie for a little bit then we hit the hay and it started coming back before I fell asleep. When he woke me up the next morning to say goodbye, I could tell it had gotten much worse. I could barely swallow and I was feeling pretty weak. I slept in a little longer and when I got up I took my temperature which turned out to be 100.4 Greaaaaat. So I made a doctors appointment for 1:45.

Egg whites with cocoa powder & strawberries

Well, unfortunately the doctor thinks its probably strep throat but I won't find out until tomorrow. Regardless, she started me on antibiotics. I had to call out of work today which sucks. Of course I feel guilty even though I know it was for the best.

So, besides not being able to do my usual killer workouts, I've been ok! I've mostly been working on eating "paleo" now. It's honestly not too bad. It's just hard to resist all the bread and cheese and dairy. Those are my weaknesses. But really, I didn't plan on being super strict paleo anyways. I still want to include grains and dairy in my diet, just not a lot.

Which brings me to the discussion of diets. I was thinking about it recently; how there are so many different "diets" people are on. Weight Watchers, Adkins, Medifast, whatever that shake diet is, and Paleo. I've chose to do paleo as well as still count my calories because counting my calories has always worked for me. It seems to be the one thing that keeps me on track with HOW MUCH I eat, at least. It may not always be the healthiest food, but at least I know it's not too much of a bad thing.

Now that I think about it, diets are almost like religions. Everyone has their own thing and they always think their thing is better. Certain diets seem cult like too. There's no way for me to say which way is the best way to go. My diet has kind of evolved over time. I didn't really pay attention to what I ate when I first started losing weight and I did still lose a lot of weight. But now I'm to the point where I want my body to be in it's prime. To be healthy and strong and energized! I want it to be happy with what I'm feeding it. That's why I chose paleo, because it seems to make the most sense when you read about it. By the way, if anyone is interested in learning about paleo, go to this website and read the 15 tips under "Paleo 101" https://www.paleodietlifestyle.com

That website also has great recipes that we've been trying. The first picture in this blog is a recipe from that site and it was amazing!! So delicious. And after you eat a paleo meal you feel so clean and satisfied and just healthy! I've already noticed some changes in my body and it's helping with my weight too, so I'm sticking with it!

Whichever way you are choosing to lose weight, just remember that it needs to become a permanent lifestyle change. It's not a temporary thing. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you have to stay consistent with the way you eat. I've already learned the hard way that if you go back to your old ways, the weight will come back, fast!

Another topic I wanted to discuss was exercise. Lately, I've had a few people approach me and ask for tips or help with working out. I've even had people ask me to basically personally train them, which is surprising because I definitely am not a personal trainer. I think it's very flattering that people would come to me with those types of questions, but I find it very hard to answer them.

People seem to ask me questions that come off like they are looking for a simple solution to their problems. They want to know some "quick tips" or my "secrets." I definitely don't have any secrets. I think I make it pretty clear that all I do is bust my butt working out every day. It is simple. Eat less, workout more. That's all it comes down to. But there's no way that I can physically give people the motivation they need to get started. Everyone asks me "What clicked for you?" and I just don't know what to say! I never had an "A-ha" moment where everything just made sense. It all just slowly came together for me and I began to develop a love and passion for working out. I just can't tell people how to feel that same way!

So I apologize to anyone who is looking for help from me. I wish I could tell you there was a magic pill, but there's not. It takes lots of hard work and dedication. Sweat and tears. Ups and downs. 2 steps forward and 1 step back kind of deal. But if you give it your all and never lose sight of your goals and dreams then you will get there, I promise.

Well I must be off to go lay on the couch and sulk about being sick. The best part has been watching "Orange Is The New Black" all day. That show is AWESOME! Highly recommend it!

Oh, by the way, I've reached over 1,000 views!!! Yay!! Thank you wonderful people:-)

Bro, Do You Even Blog?

Before you think I was just slacking and not writing any blogs, I'll explain! The charger for our laptop decided to die and stop charging, so we had to get a new one. We just slacked a little on doing that. Needless to say, I didn't have any other way to write and there's no way I was going to try and write a blog from my phone! So, sorry about that! Now I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on!

My last blog talked about going to Nags Head and how nervous I was. I was pretty optimistic in the beginning. Before we left I weighed myself and I was 151. Not my lowest, but I was pretty happy with that number. I really tried to stay positive and remind myself often that just because I'm on vacation, doesn't mean I need to stuff my face! I'd have to say that I did pretty darn good with my eating throughout the trip. My breakfast and lunch were always good. Dinner was the only big meal I would have, and I usually had some kind of dessert.

Of course like every day, 5 times a day, I had to check myself out in the mirror to see how I was looking. I can tell any little difference in my weight just by looking at my stomach. To my surprise, my stomach was looking better than before while I was on vacation! At least the first few days it was... haha. Not to mention, my tan was getting better and better.

In the end, I did end up gaining quite a bit of weight. I was a little disappointed because I felt like I tried my hardest not to eat too bad AND I managed to work out every frickin day of my vacation! It makes me wonder, what if I hadn't worked out? How much worse would it have been?

The nice thing about the workouts was I got to rediscover my love of running and I was able to do it without my knee ever really bothering me. That was a nice feeling, especially considering it was one of the few things I could do while there. But, I also discovered that we had bikes at the house and I did some riding. I forgot how fun it is to ride a bike! It's also sooo much easier than running! I was able to do 11 miles in about 45 mins. It was fun!

I scanned back through my older blogs a little to see if I ever wrote about my tire. Did I?! I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but if not, I got my own big tire at 32! See, even though the guys tease me about working out and call me crazy, I know they care because they got me my very own tire to workout with!:-)

This thing is HUGE. A lot bigger than the one we have at station 30. I'd say it's about 350lbs or so. I can only flip it about 10 times max, but I am making progress with it. I've discovered lots of other stuff to do with it though. Dips, push ups, box jumps, ab work. It's very versatile. That's one thing about working out, you have to get creative. Think outside the box. Besides the StairMaster, I really don't like using any machines to workout with. Using your own body weight is so much better than sitting around on machines and working one muscle group at a time.

I worked this 4th of July, so I decided to bring in some patriotic snacks. For breakfast I brought a fruit bowl filled with strawberries, blueberries and bananas. It was delish. I love fruit so much. I try to eat it whenever I'm craving a dessert, which is a lot!

I thought the 4th might be a little bit busier at work, but it was actually slower than normal! We barely ran any calls. I started to get bored! We did have a nice joint lunch with 21 though, that was nice. Bobby cooked us an awesome meal. I think I definitely ate too much that day!

Of course I still worked out that day, but I don't remember how good of a workout it was. I try to burn at least 500 calories when I'm at work. It's rare that I get to my usual 1,000! But I just try to remember that something is better than nothing!

I also made a cake for us! It was funfetti, my favorite! I think everyone liked it, considering it didn't last more than 20 minutes lol.

I worked 36 hours straight Sunday/Monday and that was busy! We ran 10 calls on Monday, which is pretty busy for us. It wasn't so much the call volume as it was the wait times at the hospital! We were there about 2 hours every time. I basically had less than an hour between all of my calls so my workout on Monday was lame!

Yesterday Charlie and I started renovating the back yard. We had kind of let it get messy and decided that it needed a makeover. When Charlie got the house, it had a little area marked off for a playground and we just left it there. It started off as wood chips but then ivy started growing all over it and taking over the whole area and surrounding fence. Some of the bushes back there were getting out of control and Chief had made a graveyard of poop and old toys.

We were able to rip up all the ivy, trim some bushes, pull up the tarp stuff that was under the wood chips, clean up the toys and pick up some sticks. We still need to get the wooden beams that outline the little playground area out of the ground but they're really nailed in there! Gotta figure out how to pull them out, then we need to find a way to get all the junk we pulled up out of the backyard and disposed of.

After that, which was a workout in itself, we went to our friend Potter's workout that he does at station 10. He started this group workout a couple weeks ago and Charlie had been going but this was my first time. It was pretty fun! We did box jumps on the tires, decline push ups, sledge hits, and walked the stairs with a hose pack on our shoulder. We flipped the tires some and did some abs as well. All in all, a good workout! I think the group is great for Charlie and hopefully all the guys will continue with it.

Later, we rewarded ourselves with a nice little dinner on our deck. We did a paleo recipe "Lemon chicken kabobs with grilled zucchini" and it was delicious! We also grilled some peppers and had an avocado on the side. It was really good!! I'm definitely going to try more paleo recipes. I like them because they're so simple with minimal ingredients which is nice for me because I'm really not the best cook!

After my two workouts yesterday and my awesome dinner, I'm feeling great today and I even lost some weight. I'm hovering around 154 now so I'm getting close to being back to pre-vacation weight. I'm not sure why it's taking so long, but I guess summer time is just hard. So many parties and cookouts, trips to OC, nights of going out drinking, etc. It's going to be tough. I guess all I can do to combat that is amp up my workouts even more!

Tonight is CPAT conditioning at station 30 and I'll be there, as always. I really enjoy those workouts. The group atmosphere is nice and the fact that all the girls who come seem to idol me is very flattering. It makes me feel so proud to be me! I'm really loving all this CPAT stuff I've been doing. It's become almost like a part time job and another passion of mine. Working out makes me happy! I know most people can't understand that, but that's what makes me able to keep pushing myself every day. Working out has to become a habit, not just something you HAVE to do but don't really want to. It just needs to be a part of your normal routine like showering and brushing your teeth. And I think the fact that for the past TWO months I haven't missed a single workout just goes to show that you CAN do it, no matter how busy you are. I always find time to workout, even at work. So... no excuses people!

I think that'll do for a catch up post. I'll try not to get so behind on my blogs again! There's going to be some exciting stuff coming to blog about so look out for some new posts soon!

As always, thanks for reading:-)

Anna