Of course, its a New Year.\u00a0 And I did nothing to celebrate it.\u00a0 For several reasons.<\/p>\n
One:\u00a0\u00a0 I had my kids.\u00a0 And they stand on ceremony-that-impinges-on-personal-time as much as I do!!\u00a0 Meaning, they didn’t want to stay up just to count backward for 10 seconds.<\/p>\n
Two:\u00a0\u00a0 I had my kids, so no fun adventure.\u00a0 Not even with Sex God as he spent the weekend with his kids & Ex.\u00a0 Lol… sometimes I feel like the “other woman”!\u00a0 (And before you all get worried.. I’ve MET his Ex & we get along just fine \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 )<\/p>\n
Three:\u00a0\u00a0 I was EXHAUSTED!\u00a0 Last\u00a0 two weeks of December seem to just kill me.\u00a0 Between Christmas, the kids being off school & it being End Of Year at work I’m usually juggling so much at once that the idea of “finding something to do for New Year’s”\u00a0 is beyond me.<\/p>\n
But once the New Year was actually here & I’d met my deadlines & Christmas was OVER!!\u00a0 (I swear people don’t realize that holiday was invented when people had NOTHING to do cuz they were trapped in the grips of WINTER & most likely housebound due to SNOW!!\u00a0 grumble, grumble.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then I was able to look at my future in 2012.\u00a0 And the first thing I did was download a new app to my iPhone.\u00a0 It was\u00a0 MyFitnessPal<\/a><\/p>\n Its a\u00a0 free app… and a basic calorie counter, but since this was the first time in my life I’ve actually counted the calories of what I eat I’m loving the whole thing.\u00a0 I set myself a modest goal of losing 15 pounds.. one pound a week.\u00a0 (Sexy Heather at Coachella here I come!!)\u00a0 And it tells me how many calories I can eat a day to achieve this goal.\u00a0 It allows me to search and add the foods I eat pretty damn easily!\u00a0 Plus it allows me to enter in my exercise which actually ADDS to my allotted calories for the day.\u00a0 SWEET!!\u00a0\u00a0 Kinda motivates me THAT much more to hit the gym!<\/p>\n But the best part, the thrilling part,\u00a0 is I also put the app on the iPod Touch of my heavy 12-year old son.\u00a0 With a modest goal of 1\/2 a pound a week, he’s got a good amount of calories to eat per day.\u00a0 And he’s learning the value of food and the trade offs we sometimes have to make to be able to have what we want.<\/p>\n For Example:\u00a0 We were in Vons & I usually let them buy, with their own money, a donut.\u00a0 Which Evan did.\u00a0 I had him enter the\u00a0 item in his MyFitnessPal.\u00a0 I heard him grunt & say, “Mmmm, guess I’m going to have to do some exercises today.”\u00a0 (300 calories for a handful of yummy goodness that isn’t going to do anything more but make you want another donut!)<\/p>\n But upon hearing his comment….. well, lets just say if I wasn’t driving a car at the time, I would have been dancing.\u00a0 The most challenging part of getting an overweight kid to slim down is motivating them and getting them to understand that no exercise = less food.\u00a0 Cuz realistically, its not always the food they eat or the portions (although those are often factors) its the fact that they are so sedentary.\u00a0 My other two move ALL the time!\u00a0 And they don’t have the snacking desires that me and my middle son do.\u00a0 So they stay amazingly skinny!<\/p>\n But Evan eats pretty healthy.\u00a0 Lots of fruit, yogurt, raw veggies when I pull them out.\u00a0 He just sometimes eats a lot of them.\u00a0 And the MyFitnessPal lets him realize that if he eats just 1 sausage instead of 2 sausages he might be able to fit in a snack later in the day.\u00a0 So its teaching him portion control…. something that he’ll NEED for the rest of his life, if he ends up a chunky adult!<\/p>\n Yesterday Evan and I calculated what we ate at the end of dinner to see if we could have my homemade chocolate chip cookies for desert….<\/p>\n “Do I get a cookie, Mom?”\u00a0 he asked.<\/p>\n “We did so well, we both get… TWO!”<\/p>\n After the high fives & dancing (burning calories.. YES!)\u00a0 I realized this app was teaching him the most important lesson of all…<\/p>\n EARN your reward through EFFORT.<\/p>\n I would have paid money if I’d known he’d be learning THAT!\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of course, its a New Year.\u00a0 And I did nothing to celebrate it.\u00a0 For several reasons. One:\u00a0\u00a0 I had my kids.\u00a0 And they stand on ceremony-that-impinges-on-personal-time as much as I do!!\u00a0 Meaning, they didn’t want to stay up just to … Continue reading