2011 in review, 2012 goals

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Today's topic at WW was about reviewing your accomplishments from the past year (scale and otherwise).

Here are my top 3 accomplishments of 2011:

1. I am 27.2 pounds lighter today than I was last New Years eve
2. I have gone from a size 16 to a size 10/12 since 2010
3. I've learned to like (even love) foods that I used to hate (cranberries and pineapple are just 2!)

Here are my top 3 non-scale victories of 2011:

1. I have found a LOVE for fitness - finally...it only took 2 years to find it, but I've done it!
2. I have found the confidence to go to the gym/fitness classes and not care about what people around me will think.  I've learned that everybody was new at this at one point in their life and probably everyone trips over their step aerobics step at one point or another!  And most of all...nobody is looking at ME!  They are too worried about their own movements :)
3. I have inspired other people to change their lives.  That means so much to me.  I've always wanted to "pay it forward" somehow.  Others have been such an encouragement to me these past two years and I love to encourage others with my words and my actions.  Seeing others inspired to change their lives after being inspired by my journey is such an encouragement to me.

Here are three goals for 2012:

1. Obviously I am looking to make it to GOAL in 2012 (hopefully it won't take all year to lose these last 5.4 lbs!!) and after that, LIFETIME at WW (free meetings!!!).  I have set a goal for myself to reach my goal weight by Valentine's day.  I think that is a realistic goal - 5.4lbs in 7 weeks.  Six weeks after that, I will hopefully reach lifetime at WW!
2. Find one new fitness activity to add to my list of LOVED workouts. 
3. This one is a bit vague and not a "for sure", but I would like to look into becoming a personal trainer. 

There you have it folks, my year in review and my plans for 2012.

I just realized something HUGE!

Pin It I've found my LOVE OF FITNESS!!!  It only took me 2 years, but I've found it!  I found myself asking them at the gym tonight to add some sort of cardio/strength class to their schedule for Wednesday nights because that was the only weeknight (besides Friday) that had no class (other than that awful kickboxing class I told you about before, which doesn't count)...she told me "well, we do have Step on Mondays and Zumba on Tues/Thurs" and I gave her a blank look...she said "well, Zumba is not for everyone!" then I laughed and told her I did all those classes but that there was nothing on Wednesday for me to do!  I can't believe that I, Tanya-fitness-class-hater, am asking for more! Feeling so  energized after a great Zumba class tonight!!  I could do another class right now...but it's getting late, so I should have supper instead :)

Yes folks, the biggest breakthrough of 2011...Tanya Loves Fitness... mark that one in the history books. 

New Year, New Me

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Even though my journey really has no end, my weight loss portion of it is almost over.  As of last Saturday I have 2.1 pounds to go to reach my goal.  I am confident that that will increase this week as I was NOT careful at all over Christmas weekend and ate things that I would normally never eat (at least not since my healthy eating journey began!).  I accept the inevitable gain coming on Saturday, but am hoping it is minor :)  I need something new to focus on in 2012 other than weight loss.  Weight loss, or rather healthy living, will always be at the forefront of my mind.  I think 2012 will be the year I focus on fitness and toning my muscles.  I amazed myself in 2011 by falling in love with group fitness classes, so I am anxious to find more of these to attend in the new year.  If someone had told me a year ago that I'd be attending 3-4 classes a week I would have scoffed at them...ME, exercise in a group??  Never! haha - now I can't get enough of them.  I think I may attempt a yoga class tomorrow morning after Step Aerobics class...I've tried yoga class once before and did enjoy it, so am anxious to try it again. 

For Christmas Mom and Dad got me the Wii Sport Active 2 "game".  I tried it last night for the first time and LOVED it.  I especially loved the boxing and the step aerobics activities.  I have some kinks to work out (figuring out how to get my activities in the right order....such as having my warm up at the start and not in the middle...same for the cool-down ;-) but I think it has real potential.  It comes with a heart rate monitor that goes on your left arm (I think this has a movement sensor in it too), a sensor for your right leg and you also use the balance board and wii-motes.  You can set up workout groups online so that you can "work out" with friends.  My brother and his family got one as well, so I have set up a LandryClan group for us :)  Let me know if you have this game and I can invite you to join my group!

Well, off to Zumba class shortly - hoping we have not been moved to the small room again like we were on Tuesday night - us Zumba-ers need our space!  It's unfortunate that they don't close the room once the class is "full"...we were tripping over each other the other night...oh well, maybe that helped to burn more calories :)

Almost there!!!

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I haven't been on the scale much this week, which is odd for me.  This morning was my first time on probably in about 3 days.  As you know, Saturday is my weigh in day.  I knew I'd done OK this week, but was concerned because I'd only worked out really once because of being under the weather.  So this morning once I'd dawned my birthday suit I hopped on the scale.  A shocking number appeared on my scale.  The second digit was one I'd never seen before (at least not in my adult life).  It was odd.  Funny enough, my first thought was "oh crap, now the scale is broken...something else to buy!!!"  The scale in my bathroom was showing a three pound loss.  Unheard of for me (and probably most folks who are as far into the journey as I am).  I was just praying that my scale was "sort of" right.  Even just a little bit right.  Even one of those pounds would be great.  So off I go to WW, cautiously confident (don't want to get my hopes up you know!) and wouldn't you know it?  I am down 3.8 pounds!!!  That's fully clothed (sadly they don't let me wear my birthday suit at WW)!!!!!  I don't think I've EVER had a loss this big throughout this entire 26 month journey.  All that to say, I am now 2.1 pounds from my goal weight...it hardly seems real!  Quick, someone pinch me....am I dreaming????  Merry Christmas to me :) 

Well folks, I'm off to prepare for Christmas with my family.  Looking forward to it - I will get to see some family I haven't seen in a long time, so that will be nice.  I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!!!!

Where's Waldo?

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Sorry I have been so absent lately (again!)...my spacebar on my laptop is still not working right (although much better today after taking the compressed air to it!!)  I thought I could blog from my Playbook, but it really isn't easy to type a blog post with two fingers :)

Not much new for me lately...things are crazy at work and in my personal life, although the personal life is more working out/grocery shopping/cooking...*sigh* if only I had Oprah's chef.....and her money!  I have still been going to Zumba (twice this week!) and Step (although I missed Monday because I was sick) and Super Power classes.  I am thrilled that the holiday schedule at the gym is keeping my classes the same!  I'm going to be able to fit in more classes because of the way my work schedule is over Christmas...I am aiming to go to at least 4 classes the week between Christmas and New Years.

This was my first week on the "new" Points Plus2012 program.  Not sure what today's results will bring.  I went to a Christmas party on Saturday night and used up a TON of my weekly points, then was sick Sunday and Monday (no, I did NOT party THAT hard!) and really didn't get my appetite back until Wednesday.  I stuck to the reduced 26 points as best I could.  Yesterday I had pizza...I can't even remember the last time I had REAL pizza.  I allowed myself one slice of Heart Smart Vegetarian pizza...when I saw it I struggled to see what was so heart smart about it - I'm sure there isn't a cardiologist in the country (world even) who would put their stamp of approval on this!  Soooo, all that to say that today's results are a crap shoot.  Not sure about the sodium in pizza, but I don't normally eat "off" things in the day or two before weigh in for fear of water retention...to counteract the pizza, I drank about a dozen or more glasses of water yesterday...fingers crossed!! 

I don't weigh in for a couple of hours yet, but my rude neighbor had me awake at 5:45am, so I thought I'd pop in here and see what was going on.  Busy day ahead - WW then have a few shopping things to pick up, then hair appointment, then tonight is my work Christmas party.  I'm not too concerned about the food tonight...I'm having salmon and asked them to hold the rice and replace it with a BIG PILE OF VEGGIES (as opposed to the 6 string beans that would normally pass as a serving of veggies there).  I will have dessert (it'll cost me 16 points!) and I will likely have white wine spritzers or just diet sprite to drink...I'm not much of a drinker - I'd rather EAT my calories than drink them!

My game plan over the holidays is to allow myself one day per week to splurge (within my allotted points).  Last week was a Christmas party, this week another one, next week is, of course, Christmas and the following is New Years, although I have no plans for NY Eve yet...I am hoping to at least maintain, but would be thrilled to see a loss...I would love to get to my goal weight by my 37th birthday...in 20 days.  Sounds do-able (6.5 pounds in 20 days)...but at the rate I've been losing, it could be Easter yet!

Happy Saturday everyone :)  I'll update my weightloss ticker in a few hours once I've returned home.

Blue Menu Chicken Chunks and Tiny Men

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St. Nicholas cookies are made and in the freezer :)






For supper tonight I made these Blue Menu chicken chunks.  five chunks for 5pts+ -a great deal if you ask me!!!  These are better than McDonalds nuggets by far!  I will be buying these again for sure.  They are all white meat chicken and are super moist.  I had them with some sweet Thai chili sauce...yummy.  I give these a 5+/5.



Another great PC product I tried this week is their diet mango soda...another winner!

It's not a Diet...it's a live-it!

Pin It Nope, have not forgotten about you all!  Having issues with my laptop keyboard...space bar only works sometimes...whichmakesthingshardtoread!  I've been avoiding my laptop, not my blog :)  I'm currently writing this post from my new Blackberry Playbook...I'm test-driving it for a while to see if it will be a suitable replacement for my laptop :)  They were on sale this week for 60% off!!!  If this works out, it will likely cheaper than fixing my laptop.

We had a sub leader at WW today and she was great!  Most of the time when we have a sub they are so-so. She was the one who told us to think of this as a live-it not a diet.  I like that!

I am pleased to report that I was down 1.9 today!!!  I am now only 7.2 lbs from goal.  I am excited about the new changes coming to WW next week and am hoping this is what I need to get me to the finish line.

Well I am off to do some Christmas baking.  May post photos and recipes later if I have time.

First snow of the year

Pin It and the city panics!  It's not nice out there...I think I'll stay home from the gym (since they closed @ 5pm due to the weather...oh and because I can barely walk after last night's Jillian workout!)

My name is Tanya and I have an addiction

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To PINEAPPLE that is!  Growing up I absolutely HATED pineapple.  I've gone 36 (almost 37) years refusing to eat it.  At a meeting at work last week I decided I was going to force myself to try it...why not, I've tried kickboxing, Zumba, Step and a whole host of other things lately, so what's a little pineapple over the lips?  Guess what??  LOVED it.  They are on sale this week (2 for $5) so I bought a cored one and ate the entire thing between Saturday and Monday and I'm ready to go back for another one!  It was like eating candy!  I think the problem growing up was that the pineapple that we had was canned.  I've tried "fake" pineapple this week (in some yogurt) and I still don't care for it, but I am a convert when it comes to the fresh stuff :)  Long live the pineapple!

Yesterday I saw Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2011 for the Wii at Costco for $18.99 and on a whim I bought it...what was I thinking??  Jillian scares me at the best of times (although I don't find her that scary on The Doctors...I miss her terror trips from BL).  I got home tonight after spending the day out of town with a friend (spa day, FOOD and more food) and I was too late for Super Power or Zumba, so I popped Jillian into the Wii and away I went.  I did the training part for 40 minutes working on Abs and upper body....man oh man!  I was dripping with sweat...woulda posted a picture for you but I'm too beat to walk across the room to get my Blackberry to take the picture :)  It was a great workout - much more effective (I think) than the Wii Fit Plus workouts...I was panting through most of it - there's no way I could have carried on a conversation, so I put it in my WW tracker as high intensity and earned myself 10 Activity Points (only 2 fewer than I would have earned at Zumba :) 

Back to work tomorrow...it's going to be hard after being off for 4 days...hoping to make it to water aerobics tomorrow night, but we are supposed to get a storm tomorrow (snow or rain, dunno which...hoping for just rain!) so we'll see how the weather holds up...that's all I want to do is walk the 15 minutes to the bus in the snow after doing water aerobics for an hour...

Blah and spicy

Pin It I made two new recipes this weekend - one blah and one spicy :)

The first one was from the Weight Watchers magazine for Red Curried Vegetables.  It was OK (6.5/10 maybe), but I doubt I'd make it again.  The recipe was single serving (waste of time if you ask me) and it didn't have much flavour.  I added onions and red peppers to give it some flavour, but nope... disappointing.

This afternoon I decided to try a recipe from Sparkpeople.com - Spicy CrockPot Thai Chicken.  I knew it was going to be spicy but when I removed the CrockPot lid and my eyes watered, I was concerned it would be TOO spicy (hard for anything to be too spicy for me!)  The recipe didn't call for the chicken to be shredded, but it seemed like a good idea :)  I served it over spaghetti squash with steamed carrots and broccoli on the side.  It was AMAZING!  Spicy, but not too spicy - a great 7 PointsPlus meal!  It would be great over rice or mashed potatoes, but why waste the points, eh?  I give this recipe a 10/10 (hmm, maybe even a 12?)  Super easy, super fast (well, except the cooking time - 4 hrs on high) and super yummy.  It left me wanting more.  Not because the serving size was too small - it was just that good :)

So my plan for this week for fitness is:

Sunday - deep water aerobics (done!)
Monday - Step
Tuesday - Super Power (no Zumba this Tues - I have physio after Super Power)
Wednesday - Cardio plus sexy arms aquafit
Thursday - Zumba
Friday - day off

My plan for Tuesday nights when I don't have physio is to do Super Power and then Zumba - if I can get my act in gear and plan a MAJOR snack for late afternoon and a lighter supper for after classes.

Tonight I joined the party!

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The Zumba Party that is!  And I loved it!!  Finally, after two years of my friend Cheryl trying to convince me to try it, I finally gave in.  They offer it at my gym twice each week and I've been considering it for a couple of weeks and tonight I decided to take the plunge, despite suffering the after-effects of the spinning class I tried last night.  Oh yeah, did I mention I did a spin class last night?  Well, I did a little over half of one..yup, 35 minutes was all I could handle, then I gave up and went home :)  Today my "parts" (yes, all of them) are sore...sorry for TMI here, but I want to warn anyone who THINKS they have enough padding to handle a spin class...um, no.  You do NOT.  Believe me, I have serious padding in the posterior and I've never been so uncomfortable in my life!  I've had "lady doctor" visits that were less invasive.  That's all I'm going to say on the spin class experience.  Let's just say I won't be going back to that class anytime soon..a.at least not til they put lay-z-boy seats on those bikes!

So far in the past month I've tried step class, super power class, spin class and Zumba, AND I've gone back to water aerobics...I'd say 5 classes isn't too shabby for someone afraid of group fitness!  What will I try next...hmmmm....rock climbing perhaps??  :)  I feel like I could take on the world.  Tonight when I got home from work I was half a dead dog and I took an HOUR (yes, a whole hour) to convince myself to go to Zumba tonight (I even bribed myself with a cookie...shameful, I know)...I was tired, sore and not motivated at all...but I am SO glad I went!

Hungarian Beef Goulash

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It's done!  I have to give this recipe a 10/10.  Super easy (don't bother doing all the prep stuff on the stove ahead of time - just toss it in the crockpot, meat first) and very, very tasty and only 4 points+ per serving!  I was going to have it over rice or noodles, but I had a hankering for roasted potatoes so I had my goulash in a bowl :)  I've never had this kind of goulash before.  I've always fried up hamburger, tossed in tomatoes,  spices and cheese and called it goulash in the past...this is totally different and totally yummy.  Click here to see the recipe.


WARNING:  Your home will smell incredible and neighbours might come calling....turn out the lights and hide behind the sofa - you'll want this all to yourself! ;-) 

Very lemony oatmeal

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I finally made a recipe from the Biggest Loser Family Cookbook, which I've had for um....a couple years :)  Decided to make the Very Lemony Oatmeal.  I love oats, love lemon, so it's gotta be good, right?  YES it is!  And to make it even better, I added some raspberries (love the combo of lemon and raspberries!!)  Here is the recipe (5 Points+).

PS - I cooked my oatmeal in the microwave - same amount of water, 2 mins on high