Intangible gifts I want to give to my children

-healthy eating habits
-love of being fit
-love of outdoors
-social dexterity
-love of reading
-happiness
-high emotional intelligence
-love of self
-love for others
-how to keep a clean living space

And of course, most importantly, a love for Heavenly Father and his son, Jesus Christ.

My Bucket List

Travel outside of the country to see something interesting (Machu Picchu? Mexican pyramids?)

Bike 20 miles at a time (or more!)

Go on a cruise

Become a temple worker

Get another college degree, possibly teach college

Find new information on Callie Nolan (ancestor)

See Providence Canyon; hike and take pictures!

Hike with kids in at least 5 different parks

See the Aurora Borealis

Vacation in Hawaii

Go to Yellowstone National Park and see Old Faithful

Visit Mesa Verde and tour the cliff dwellings

I ran a 5k!

So, waaaaaay back in October, Austin and I ran a 5k! When it was done, I kept bragging to myself that I'd done it. It's still kind of weird to think of myself as the kind of person who would run 5 kilometers without having a really urgent, possibly dangerous reason to do so.

Here I am with the fam before the race!

And this is right before the finish line:

It might not look like it, but it was really cold and even by the end of the race, I was eager to get back to a heated area.

I ran the 5k in 36 minutes, running the whole way, finishing 177th out of 392 :). Some people who had passed me at the beginning were walking closer to the end and I was able to pass them.

________________________________

It all started back in July or so, when Austin asked if I wanted to try a couch to 5k program with him. We had casually tried several other health programs, so I didn't think that it would go very far, but I agreed anyway. Amazingly, we took off!

It was very slow at the beginning, and I think that was the key to helping us stay with it; it wasn't too hard. The program we did had us alternate running with walking and slowly worked us up to running longer and longer, until we were running the whole 5k. It was actually incredibly easy at the beginning.

Other perks were getting to know the area around my house better and listening to General Conference and podcasts while running (with no interruptions from kids!!!). Also also! I didn't change my diet at all and lost 15 lbs, going from a size 10 to a size 6 (or smaller. Women's sizes are pretty inconsistent...) I had to get new clothes because my old ones were too big. I went from being borderline overweight to being comfortably in the normal range with some wiggle room. Yay! I weigh even less than I did when Austin and I got married!

Austin and I traded off with the kids--I usually went running soon after he got home from work while he stayed with the kids, and then he'd go running after I got back. It worked out really well until Daylight Savings Time ended... then it was too dark for me to feel comfortable running around outside, even though we live in a safe area.

Anyway, it was a really great experience and helped me to get into shape. I recommend couch to 5k to anyone who's wanting to get started with exercise but doesn't want to go overboard.

Future plans for being the coolest mom EVER!

Levi is right at the cusp of being able to play games and put together puzzles. It's been really fun working on those with him over the past month or so. Doing those things with him really makes me look forward to working on more complex puzzles and more interesting games as he, Cecil, and my future children get older.

I have visions of us being gathered around a card table working on a puzzle.

I see us playing Skip-bo, Phase 10, Uno, and Go Fish over and over again.

I'll teach them to love playing strategy games like Dominion, Settlers of Catan, and others.

We'll even get some sightseeing in--I think it would be really cool to line up a really nice weather day with a no test day in school, sign them out and go on a hike, have a picnic, or visit a museum. Doesn't that sound like fun?

BMI: reliable or outdated?

I realized just a few weeks ago that I was overweight according to my BMI (I was just barely overweight, at 140 lbs and 5'2"). I was surprised at that because of all the positive attention the media has been giving lately to people who say that models are overly skinny and "real women" are much bigger. The media (and my friends) had been giving so much support to this movement that I thought I was just fine as a "real woman."

So when I found out that I was overweight, I was taken off guard. I was so surprised that I figured that other people probably didn't know that they were overweight, either. I mentioned how surprised I was about being overweight in a recent conversation. The person I was talking to said that using your BMI to determine if you were overweight or not is outdated and inaccurate in many cases. At the time, all I could say was that it's really only inaccurate for people who have a lot of muscle mass. Since then, I've realized that BMI is what has been used in the studies about how weight and health are related. Therefore, even if it's an outdated and inaccurate means to determine your body's fitness, the average person's health risks can be determined by their BMI.

According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention - a government-funded organization), some health issues from being overweight or obese are these:

-Coronary heart disease
-Type 2 diabetes
-Cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon)
-Hypertension (high blood pressure)
-Dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides)
-Stroke
-Liver and Gallbladder disease
-Sleep apnea and breathing problems
-Osteoarthritis (a breakdown of cartilage and bone within a joint)
-Gynecological problems (abnormal periods, infertility)

This isn't about my vanity; it's about my health!

Also, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) states that "If you have abdominal obesity and most of your fat is around your waist rather than at your hips, you're at increased risk for coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The risk goes up with a waist size that's greater than 35 inches for women or greater than 40 inches for men."

On the flip side, I have a friend who is the same height as me, 5' 2". She stays at 125 lbs "no matter what" she eats, according to her. She says her ideal weight is 107. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't function very well at 107 lbs, and that for my very individual body, I would be underweight. (Just FYI - "normal" body weight for someone that's 5'2" is 101 - 136 lbs). I was surprised that the range for normal was 35 lbs apart from low to high. I think that alone factors in the differences between body types and shapes.

I think 120-125 is probably my ideal body weight, and not lower. You see, I have a very close relationship with food, and need my energy. I will also probably have a relatively slow journey to get to that ideal weight (I'm ~136 now, after 2 months of exercise and almost 1 month of eating better). However, one little-known fact is that most of the energy that you use throughout the day is energy stored in your muscles (from food you ate that day), not your fat. Prolonged exercise is what uses up your fat stores.

For your convenience, here are two BMI calculators, one from the CDC website, and the other from the NHLBI website .

Exercise, take 2

So, it's been about 3 weeks since I started exercising, and my heart is definitely in better shape. My body is a slightly better shape than it was when I started, but I'm still working on that. Not that it's a bad shape; it could just be better.

Anyway, shortly after my last post about exercise, I started to get tired of the video that I'd posted. I still wasn't up to speed on it, but I think my body was ready for a different kind of exercise. So for the past few days (except today), I exercised without a video, doing skip rope, sit ups, crunches, jumping jacks, and my favorite exercises from the Tae Bo video, with stretches before and after the whole thing. My goal was to keep my heart rate up for 20 minutes.

Since skip rope is a more demanding exercise than the one I was doing before, I would do sets of 60 skips (30 with either foot leading) with breaks of less-strenuous exercise in between to catch my breath. I'm no exercise expert, but I'm definitely in better shape than I was when I started this exercise late last week. Today I decided to work out to my Tae Bo video again, and I was able to keep up the whole time! I was hot and sweaty at the end, but I had done every exercise (except the ones when Levi needed my attention).

Wooo!

Exercise!

When I stopped breastfeeding Levi, I started gaining weight. I didn't notice at first, but then I couldn't ignore it when I didn't fit my jeans anymore. At first I tried limiting my calorie intake by eating less and of that, eating more fruits and vegetables. That helped some, but I needed something more. I knew exercise could help, but held back for one reason or another (I hate running, I didn't know any other exercises, I didn't want to buy/borrow an exercise video).

Finally, one of my friends mentioned she watched exercise videos on YouTube, and that doing Tae Bo helped her to lose all of her extra pregnancy weight.

I decided to try it, and it has worked out great so far! I've only done it for not even two weeks now, and I already have more stamina and am slightly slimmer than I was when I started. And I ate Thanksgiving dinner yesterday!

This is the video that I normally work out to. It's a cardio workout, and I still can't keep up with it, but it's good to keep my heart rate up for that long. There are other videos done by the same person (Billy Blanks, who developed Tae Bo) that target different areas of the body.

It surprised me how much coordination and balance I needed to exercise accurately with the video, but I know I'm becoming more graceful and coordinated as I do so.