Thirsty Thursday – My attempt to drink 100 ounces of water each day

I was challenged at the beginning of this year to drink 3 liters of water, which is roughly 100 ounces of water… and since tomorrow is the start of the 4^th month of this challenge, I have learned a few things.

1 – that is a TON of water!!  The first couple of days, I found myself wondering how I would ever get through 100 ounces of water… Think about that… That is 20 ounces 5 times!  That is approximately 6 standard bottles of water.  Thankfully, I got a really neat Superman cup for Christmas with the ounces marked on the size.  Fill it up and empty it 5 times a day, easier said than done!

2 – It took scheduling to get myself into the habit.  Here is my schedule:

                20 ounces: Between 9-12

                20 ounces: Between 12-1  (that is my lunch hour)

                20 ounces: Between 1-5

                20 ounces: Between 5-8

                20 ounces: Between 8-Bedtime

Now that I follow that schedule fairly closely, I am actually getting much more than 100 ounces sometimes.

3 – How much is too much?  This is what my doctor suggested:  Take your body weight, divide in half = How many ounces a day you should drink.

A 200 pound person should drink 100 ounces of water a day.  300 pounds means 150 ounces, and so forth.

4 – Too much can be too much!  You can actually die from too much water!  It’s called water intoxication.  Basically, what happens is your body is unable to keep up with the amount of water you are putting in, and can’t get it out fast enough.  This causes your electrolytes to get thrown out of balance, your potassium levels can get disrupted, and eventually the cells in your body start to swell.  Eventually, it can cause death.  So be careful out there kids!  Make sure you are getting enough water, but don’t overdo it!

5 – I got through my soda and tea addiction rather quickly!  Now, I don’t know if it was the water, my determination, or I just didn’t feel anything… But by day 3, not only had I not had a soda, I also hadn’t had the typically withdrawals: Headaches, crabbiness, cravings…  you get it!  I will admit, on Sunday (our cheat day) I have had a soda from time to time.  But it has only been 1 and on Monday I am right back at drinking water.

Do I sleep better?  I haven’t noticed.  Does my skin look better?  Meh, I still get break outs during those wonderful times of the month.  But I do know I am not drinking my calories anymore (recovering Dr. Pepper addict…)

I am not suggesting that you drink 100 ounces of water; I would suggest talking to your doc before that!  I would suggest that you trade out at least 1 soda for water instead.  Make a goal for you to switch out 1 soda for water each day, then up the amount to 2 sodas for water. 

Stay thirsty my friends!

People say “I’m going to sleep now,” as if it were nothing! – George Carlin

This rainy weather makes me want to sleep… I don’t sleep well at night.  I don’t think I ever have!  But the doctor tells me that sleep is important…

I have a hard time falling asleep… and when I DO fall asleep, I have a hard time staying that way.  I have a tendency to sleep walk – which is super fun waking up in random places all over the house.  And I have night terrors!  I see things standing over me, or coming into my bedroom.  Sometimes I will see things coming out of my ceiling, or even up from the floor! 

It’s really fun when my dream is so vivid, I think it’s real, that I start screaming and wakes my husband up from a dead sleep… That was super fun.  NOT!  What I saw was a zombie lying next to me in my bed, it snapped its eyes open, and started attacking (yes, we watch way too much Walking Dead!)  What do you do when you are attacked?  You fight back right?!  Well, in reality, my husband was lying next to me, sleeping and minding his own business.  Back to my dream… I started screaming and pushing said zombie away from me while it was pushing against my hands to take a big ol’ bite!!  My husband wakes to the terrified screams of his wife, and the first thing he thinks is that someone is in the house!  So he starts trying to roll over me to get between me and the alleged intruder.  Meanwhile, our dog is running around the room, because she has no idea what is happening! 

This is one of my favorite “Craziness while sleeping” stories.  And now, we get a good laugh when we talk about it.

But on a serious note, the suggested amount of sleep is 7-9 solid hours of sleep.  I average 5-7 each night.  I do sleep much better when my husband is home, but he works midnights during the week.  From what I read, and hear on different pod casts, sleep time is different for each person.  Some people can function on more sleep, some can function on less. 

When I do sleep, I sleep HARD!  To the point where my alarm clock has to be all the way up, or else I just won’t hear it.  Sometimes, when my husband comes home in the morning, he can hear my alarm when he is walking from the garage to the house!  And sometimes, he even has to come in and wake me up because I STILL haven’t heard the alarm go off.

On nights that I am wide awake and it’s almost bed time, I will take a melatonin to help usher me to sleep.  Sometimes it works in 30 minutes, sometimes it works in 2 hours, and the real kick in the head is when it doesn’t work… at all!

Please don’t misunderstand me… I LOVE sleep!  Once I am asleep, I could sleep for hours and hours!  I treasure my nap time too!  Sunday afternoon, we always take a nap; even if only for an hour.  Lucy likes her sleep too!  She is such a funny dog… she will sleep as long as we will let her!

So for those of you fortunate enough to nap on this rainy day… Enjoy!  Snore extra for me!

How long do you normally sleep each night?

Food...Food! FOOOODDD!

Food.  I don’t even know where to start!  It is something that you can’t live without, yet you can get addicted to it.  They put people in rehab for addictions… but breaking the addiction to food feels impossible!

In my experience, food has been an important part of my life.  Maybe yours too!

Hungry – eat

Bored – eat

Stressed – eat

Celebrations – eat

Date nights – eat

I could go on and on!  And I am sure you could too!

I used to eat like crap too!  McDonald’s was my kryptonite.  I watched Super-Size Me hoping it would turn me off of those beautiful golden arches… nope!  I paused the movie, went and got McDonald’s, and came back to watch the rest while I stuffed my face!

Pizza was its own food group in our household… Taco Bell was an every Friday night occurrence when my husband would get off of work.  I would have gotten up at 7:45 Friday morning, stayed up until midnight or 1AM waiting for him to get home, and then we would go and spend nearly $30.00 at Taco Bell…

We never thought twice about going to a different fast food place every night of the week, or buying processed “food” at the grocery store.  We didn’t care about the amount of sugar in the lucky charms!  We wanted those marshmallows!  And counting calories, or fat, or sodium??  NOPE!  I had the mentality of “I am hungry, I will eat what I want”

And then the problems started.  Isn’t it amazing how we don’t take care of ourselves until the problems start?  Sometimes, when problems start, it’s too late!

I started to get sluggish, and then I would need a 3 hour nap after being awake for 2 hours.  Other various symptoms started showing themselves...  So, off to the doctor I went.  After almost a year and a half of blood work, different medications, different specialists, I was finally diagnosed with PCOS – Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome.

This disease is another topic for another post, but I have to tell you that this diagnosis is what sparked our need for change!

The doctors all told me that with diet and exercise, it could be managed; along with medication.  So, we set out to find what we could do.

We had to start with baby steps.  In September of 2015, we started working on our food!  I figured that was going to be the hardest thing for me to overcome, so I might as well rip the band aid off!  We cut out fast food, down to once a week to start with.  Now we vary rarely go through a drive thru (except on a cheat day, but even then… not nearly as often!) We started replacing certain things with others. For example, we will have whole wheat pasta OR spaghetti squash in place of regular pasta.  We will buy organic or non GMO fruits and vegetables.  We try to get grass fed beef, on the rare occasion we eat red meat.  We even try to get free range eggs, when we can afford them and find them.  We replace bacon with turkey bacon, sausage with turkey sausage, and turkey meat for ground beef!  I promise, it really isn't THAT bad! 

This change was not easy, and it certainly didn’t happen overnight!  Here we are 6 months later, and we are STILL finding ways to make changes!  I met with my nutritionist last Friday, and she made some great suggestions.  This week, I have started on a very strict diet, but it is basically making the choices for me. AND it includes food I will eat!  No point in adding collard greens to my current plan, if I refuse to eat them in the first place!

We watch documentaries on food like crazy as well!  People don’t realize the amount of chemicals that go on our food, or the alterations into processed foods.  Some I would suggest are:

Cowspiracy

The Gerson Miracle

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead

Forks Over Knives

GMO/OMG

I could go on and on!  These are found on Netflix or Hulu.  Even YouTube has some great documentaries on food! 

Food is a Frenemy… you HAVE to eat it, but you don’t HAVE to eat crap!  Yes, it was cheaper to eat a $4.00 meal that included 1500 calories, way too many carbs, and filled our stomachs for about 2 hours… but the fresh fruits and veggies have more health benefits.

I choose my health; I choose my life any day…

Watch for my first product review at the end of this week!  If you have topics you want me to discuss or look in to, comment below and let me know!

Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?!

Time… oh my!  We all know there are only 525,600 minutes in a year (thank you Rent!) And boy do those minutes FLY!!  While I would LOVE to follow the suggestion of the song “Seasons of Love” and measure in love, I can’t exactly get love to schedule life!

Before we go any further, can I just say that music can be used for anything?  I reference music all the time!! And just to clear the air… we can’t be friends if you can’t use lyrics randomly in the middle of conversation… Just sayin!

Let me walk you through my typical day.  To make things easy, let me start with Monday.  Most people call Monday the hardest day of the week, so let’s just get it out of the way!

Monday, Monday (bah dah, bah dah dah dah! – You know you sang it too!)

7:45ish AM – Wake up and get moving for the day

8:20 AM – Out the door and start my 35 minute drive to work, should traffic cooperate

9:00 AM – Start work

And this is where the day starts to get a little tricky…  I try my best to eat at the designated times, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen.  And I am a creature of habit, so the more structured the better!

9:30 – Take a minute and make breakfast and eat

Noon – 1 hour lunch

3:00 – Take a break, and eat a snack

5:00 – Start to 1 hour trek home in St. Louis rush hour traffic

6:00 – Get stuff together to go to the gym for Muay Thai

7:00 – Muay Thai training

8:30 – Usually when we get home to start and eat dinner

10:00 – Get the hubs on out to work, since he works midnights, and get myself in the shower

10:30 – Bed

Now, please hear my when I say “bed” does NOT mean sleep… Depending on the day, it can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 4 hours for me to fall asleep.  Yes, I am aware that my training could be potentially keeping me awake, but there are no classes early in the morning.  Besides, I am NOT a morning person.  Even if I sleep for 12 hours, waking me up before 10am just causes a grump to wake up.  I am also aware that my shower could be keeping me awake, but again… do I shower before bed and sleep clean?  Or sleep icky and wake up earlier?!  I choose clean sleeping!

My days are usually pretty much the same until 5:00. 

Tuesday and Thursday is Judo, which starts at 6:00.  Thanks to traffic, which always seems to be so wonderfully AWEFUL on these days, I am usually sliding into class by the skin of my teeth.  Tying the white belt of my gi as I am running from the locker room. 

But, for the most part, this is my typical day!  Saturdays and Sundays aren’t as structured.  But for the most part, my entire week is structured almost to the hour.

The worst part about ALL of this… somewhere, my husband and I are supposed to have Family Time, we both like to play video games, we both have a fairly active social life, AND both sides of our families enjoy spending time with us!  And somewhere in this time we are also supposed to go to the store (grocery, big box, farmers market…) get laundry done, and keep a house together.

It’s exhausting.  I won’t lie!  Training, getting healthy, eating better… it all takes scheduling.  It takes amazing time management skills.  It also takes understanding from those around you.  If you AREN’T the person trying to get healthy, cut your family member/friend/spouse some slack!  Thankfully, my husband trains on Monday and Wednesday are along with me.  We count that as family time, because we both really enjoy the time.  And fortunately for us, our families understand our goals.  They sometimes think we are crazy for training Muay Thai and other various MMA aspects, but they love us anyway.

If you are getting healthy, you will have to make sacrifices.  You will have to sacrifice time with friends, you will have to sacrifice that show you watch on certain nights, and you will definitely HAVE to sacrifice the foods that you love that are bad for you!  My food sacrifice was McDonald’s… I love that place… but I also know that it is slowly killing me.

If you are NOT getting healthy, but someone near and dear to you is… please don’t take it personally if they choose to go to the gym rather than sit on the couch eating a bag of chips or other various diet killing foods.  Cut them some slack if they choose NOT to indulge in dessert on a day that may not be cheat day for them.  Try not to be too selfish if they say “sorry, I have gym time that night or day” I promise you, they are not changing their entire lives to hurt or upset you. 

Instead, ask them about their goals!  Encourage them when they choose a large salad instead of the cheeseburger during a late night Denny’s run.  Keep giving them high fives when they share a new achievement!  They work hard to get where they are!

From experience, the first time I was able to go 3 minutes with my Muay Thai coach and all we did was hit pads.  But as soon as I realized I was able to go a full 3 minutes, you would have thought I had just won the lottery!  I was so excited!!  And I am STILL excited!  Not everyone can do what we do.  But I can promise you that if you put in the work, you can ALSO do this!

Schedule your time; it really makes everything so much easier!

Much love!  And leave me a comment with questions or feedback.  This only works if we are ALL engaged!

Happy Monday!

New Beginnings

Hey there!

How are you??  It sure has been a while since I have graced the pages of the interwebs!

So... where are we?  Well, I have started over.  Which means, this blog is starting over.  Things have changed, including my weight.  I actually weigh more now than I did on my last post from 2010... BUT, that's ok!

Here is what I know for sure... I don't know anything!  I am far from an expert, I am not a doctor, and the only license I hold is a valid drivers license.  The opinions expressed in this blog, both in the past and in the future, are mine and mine alone.  I am not being paid by anyone to write what I write, or do what I do.

Should that change, you will be the first to know!

What have you been up to, Shanna?  Well, since my last post, I have met and married my wonderful husband and at the beginning of 2016, we joined a gym:

The Hit Squad

We are currently training in Muay Thai kickboxing, and I have taken some Judo classes.

My ultimate goal is to be able to hold my own in the octagon.  Notice, I did not say WIN, I am not even convinced I ever want to take a fight.  But how cool would it be to be presented with an opportunity AND be able to say YES?!

I can't promise you that this is going to be easy... in fact, I can almost promise you that this is going to be very very hard!  I am sure I will want to quit, but I won't.  Not this time!

But I will be real with you, no matter how hard the truth is.  I will be open, I will be honest, and I will do my very best to be the best I can be.

If I won't give up, you shouldn't give up!  You HAVE to start somewhere!  I walked into my first Judo class in February completely unable to do a somersault... yes, a head over heals somersault.  I was nervous, I was scared, and yes... I was completely embarrassed.  But my Sensei did not give up on me, and as of late I have completed 3 somersaults!

You have to start somewhere, and the best place to start is the beginning.

Here is to new beginnings!