Day 2 *ouch*

This is day of rest for the couch to 5k which means.. I am not on the treadmill... I am not running. Yet I am not going to do nothing on these days.... so today I did my sit ups and did some work with the resistant tubbing ( for the PT on my shoulder ) and then took of on an hour walk on the beach with the neighbor... yes I found some sea glass but mostly.. we walked ( pretty good pace) and talked.

Now I am doing some house cleaning... I was a little sore this morning in some muscles I am not sure were ever used before.. but now that I am cleaning.. bending and stretching... Ouch! I am very well aware now of the muscles I used yesterday that have never even been stretched at all before... and they are NOT happy. Even though it hurts a bit.. it is nice feeling some new soreness and knowing I am working out a new part of my body. Tomorrow I am do W1D2 and will see how it goes.

~Michelle

Weight Loss Wednesday ( W1D1 )

W1D1 is for workout one and day one for the couch to 5k (links below)

This last week has been good... we spent some time caching with some small hikes and are excited to get back into more hiking.. rain or not. We have all the gear for hiking in the rain and we are not sweet enough to melt so it should be fine. We also seem to have a LOT of fun when we are out playing in the rain. I am really looking forward to it. Found some great looking trails between here and Bellingham that I am looking forward to exploring more, there also seem to be a lot of caches along these trails :)

I also took up an empty gallon milk jug and filled it with water.. weighed it and learned I have lost a bit over 3 gallons.. which made me feel great. I have been stuck at this weight for awhile now and was looking for some new directions to help motivate me to get back to losing weight. I am now working towards adding another gallon of water to my collection :)

A friend of mine has started the Couch to 5K program and I have heard some great things about this so I went and spent some time reading up on it and have decided to give it a whirl. I am not looking to do any marathons or even to make running a big thing... ( I pretty much hate it, but have never really "ran" anywhere ever) I do LOVE the idea of being able to run 3 miles in 2 months. Ok.. not that it will take me 2 months to run it..(I hope) but that in two months if I follow this program I should be able to run 3 miles at one time.. which at this time seems impossible as the 1 minute of running this morning sort of killed me. Well not the first minute but by the end of the days workout I was thinking I might die. Now that it is done I feel great though... and I look forward to dying again in a couple of days. This is only done 3 times a week so for the other days I am going to do the floor and tube/weight workout. I will also be doing the hiking and regular walking too.

Still working on eating healthier... going to be having a lot less carbs.. which is my weakness... I love breads and pastas and I am going to hate this one. It gets really hard when we look at what we eat now and think about what we used to eat, a LOT of fast food.. super sized with refills on soda, and compared to that we should be super skinny now. From the lab work that has been done in the last year we KNOW we are getting a lot healthier which is the main goal.. and the fact that I can run at all on the treadmill...when we started 5 minutes of walking on it killed me....it would be so nice if the weight fell off as fast as it went on.

I keep reminding myself.. it is not about getting skinny it is about getting healthy.. and about changing our whole life style.. not just a quick fix that won't last... I want to be healthy and I want to the weight to stay off when it comes off.

Couch to 5K on facebook ( looks like a great place for support )

~Michelle

I LOVE the Beach!

School Started... and the youngest has moved to his moms full time. He was here every other week and now we will see him every other weekend... totally sucks in all ways... but.. if he ends up doing better at this school then I am behind him 100%. Personally I think that he will be taking his problems from this school with him until he admits what the problem really is. With that being said I do hope for the best for him.. and I will miss him horribly.. already am. With the other boy having moved out and the only one left here being our girl.... who goes to school and then to work every day... I am having a LOT of time on my hands at the house with no one here. After spending 12 hours cleaning the house yesterday... I am now lost as to what to do. Today I tackled the motor home and it is all clean so off to the beach I went.

Heart Rocks

I Love Love Love the beach... but.. not during summer time. I only went a few times this summer since every time I did go down there I would have a bad experience. Kids getting high on the beach... lots of garbage... so many people... lots of dog poops....bulldozers... just not a good time for me at all. So today I headed down there trying not to get my hopes up. I am happy to report that besides one spot that had a bit of garbage... that the beach is back :):):) I have learned this summer that I live on an island.. yes I knew that.. but... I had not really grasped all that it meant. Last year I had noticed that traffic was a lot worse in the summer... and this year I was rudely reminded that I do not own the beach and that I must share with other people who visit in the summer. So I have decided that I will visit the beach a LOT in the fall and winter and let others visit in the summer. I will also be more careful when I visit other places to respect that no matter where I am.. someone loves that space and is not happy they are having to share. I would never leave garbage, dog poop or a bulldozer, but I am one more person invading the space.

Drift wood star

Today was beautiful on the beach... I saw so many treasures. It was calm and peaceful and wonderful today. I took a bunch of photos, collected some shells, heart rocks and lots of sea glass. I sat and listened and smelled and looked... so very relaxing and calming. I am looking forward to many more walks this winter and many more treasures. I am also hoping to find some sort of work of some sort.... I just have way too much time on my hands right now and even with beach walks.. it is NOT enough. I am hoping maybe I can do a little bit of nanny type work again or something like that... maybe not full time but after camping with my sister and her boys last weekend I think I would enjoy spending some time with some younger kids again... I loved it when I was doing it before and I miss it a lot.

Yellow Sea Glass Treasure

Weight loss Wednesday... I am still the same.. have figured out that no amount of walking or eating less works if I drink on the weekends I just stay the same weight... no drinking for a couple of weekends and we will see what happens :)

~Michelle

Weight Loss Wednesday

or not... too much fun on weekends equals no weight loss. Still just staying steady with no weight gain either.. but this is not where I want to be... and having to write this today makes me really think about it... Now it is time to get seriously back on track.. drop the daily calories and really start working on some new muscle groups and up the walking into serious mode!

I have been doing some sit ups... it is a scary thing... and makes my tummy muscles hurt... I am sure it will take a long time to notice any difference in this area... but I will keep working on it. My shoulder hates exercising but at this point and time I really do not care... I had hoped that after doing things for awhile that it would start to help the shoulder... so far it does not seem to be working.

My attitude sort of sucks today.... this is just a lot more work than I want... I am well aware of the fact that that is my problem and how I got fat in the first place.. I would much rather do the work and I do not want to be fat... I will keep going.

~Michelle at 236

I LOVE Weekends

I just wish they were so much longer. Today is a hard Monday.. with my parents being here last week it feels as if I had an extra long weekend. Had such a wonderful time visiting with them last week and I am excited that they will be back the end of September :) Thursday night we went to dinner with them at Gerry Andal's, which happens to be one of my favorite restaurants and then my oldest son came over for a drink with us all after his shift at work, it just amazes me that I have a son old enough to sit in a restaurant and order a beer... I do not feel old enough for this. Then again my next youngest is married and in the marines..in less than a year my "baby" will be 18 and done with high school. Time really happens in the blink of an eye.

Patrick is 21

After we left the restaurant we decided we were not ready to go home so we headed to the casino for a bit... played a few dollars in the slots and then just sat in the bar for a bit and listened to some music did some people watching and had a couple of drinks. It was a nice night.. just relaxing and enjoying our time together.
English Boom

This weekend we spent time caching and hiking and playing in the woods and on the beach. We sat in restaurants and visited. We drove around shopping and talking and even went and visited some friends from years ago. It was a great weekend filled with time together. We did some hiking on Saturday on some trails near Stanwood, there are a bunch of trails in these woods and the trail we picked had four caches on it. After the last cache and a mile into the woods... I sort of decided I knew the way back to the jeep... which I did.. but the trail I picked ended up being not a really good one.. as in... it turned out to be an animal trail that did not go very far and we had to bushwhack for some of it...right through the berry bushes... which was not so horrible... the laughing while trying to avoid stickers was a bit harder.
Hidden Cache... or not so hidden :)

Sunday we ended up a bit closer to home even... we went after a couple of caches on the English Boom here on the island, this place is amazing and so beautiful. There is a nice trail to start out on... and then you come to a big ditch... well the tide was coming in and we knew from reading about them that we might not be able to get to these... yet looking around we were not sure low tide would help much. We decided to take a jump over the ditch... well there was a big stump in it so it worked out well, we stepped on to it and walked across then jumped over to the other side and carried on our way. The first cache was not so hard at all.. only so many places to hide it.. and then... even though we knew the next one would be impossible.. we had to go and check out the area... and yes it is impossible (without getting soaking wet) at high tide.. but low tide it should be easy enough.

There is a cache on that boat... but need low tide and boots to get it!

Heading back was a bit of an adventure.. well only in one spot.. the ditch... see the tide had been coming in the whole time we were out walking.. so by the time we got back to the ditch.. there was less of the stump... now I know in photos it does not look like much.. but... for me.. it was scary... the water was moving around this stump and it was yucky brown color and the stump was sort of floating a bit more now.. and I had to do some big jumping to get across.. basically I aimed to where I wanted to go.. told Dave he better catch me.. and closed my eyes and jumped.. with lots of praying (that sort of sounded like cussing out) I did it and it was not nearly as bas once I was done... this geo caching is bringing out the adventure side of me.. sort of... lol I tend to be so focused on getting to the cache that I get some tunnel vision and then when it is time to head back I have some different views on things.

This is the stump... lol not so scary looking now!