So, I was reading through all of my past blog posts, and I realized that I really like to use the word fabulous.  A lot.  Maybe you could say to the point of overkill.

It’s an interesting word.  It comes from the word “fable”, and basically means that something is so extraordinary and wonderful that it seems like it could only be a myth or legend.

Sometimes the idea of losing a lot of weight can feel like that.  When setting a weight loss goal, going for the ultimate result which would put you at an optimum level of health can seem totally unrealistic.  (For my sister Melinda, it really was.  She had talked herself into the idea that she would never be in a healthy weight range and was destined to be overweight because of her genes.  But now she’s only a pound away from her ultimate goal!)

You have to be really careful about setting those kinds of goals.  It’s great to have a big dream and to go for it, but if that is all you are focusing on then reaching that goal can become very daunting.  Just remember the saying from Lao Tzu, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

That first step could be as simple as deciding to take the stairs instead of the elevator.  Or drinking water instead of soda.  Or anything which would start you on the path to reach that destination at the end of the thousand miles.  And you need to have little interim goals to get you there.  One really great one is to go for losing 10% of your weight.  If you don’t want to look at the scale so much as your fitness, that is totally fine too!  My sister Natalia wanted to run 5K as a goal.  And that is a great one!

When setting a goal for yourself, try to use the S.M.A.R.T. system.

S=Specific.  Don’t set a goal that is too vague like, “I will eat more healthily.”  It’s better if you say, “I will cut out trans fats from my diet.”

M=Measurable.  Instead of “I will work out every week” make it “I will work out for 30 minutes three times a week.”

A=Achievable.  Can you realistically do it?  If you can truthfully answer “yes”, then great.  If not, don’t set yourself up for failure.

R=Relevant.  Is this truly something you want for yourself?  Not something someone else told you you should do?

T=Time-bound.  If you set a goal for yourself to reach a certain condition, then set up a timetable for when that goal will be accomplished.

It’s kind of funny to me that all of these words like “fabulous”, “wonderful” and “fantastic” have this same kind of idea behind them that it is something so great that it can’t be true.  Believe me, it can be done!  And you can do it!

I can’t believe it has been so long since I updated my blog with everyone’s progress!  We had a family tragedy occur which was devastating for all of us, and so I have been guilty of neglect.

Despite this happening, my sisters have all kept their weight off (maybe not lost as much as we would have liked, but just the fact that there was no re-gaining makes me very proud!) and they all look fabulous.  Here are some cool before-and-after photos that I made them all pose for tonight!

Melinda before:

and Melinda now: (lost 43 pounds total)

Giselle before:

and Giselle now: (lost 77 pounds total)

Natalia before:

and Natalia now: (lost 35 pounds total)

I’m so proud of them!

Stay tuned… we’re back on the air!

One word on this one says it all:  SLEEP!

There are lots of good reasons to get enough sleep, but when you’re trying to lose weight it’s even more important to do so.

When you don’t sleep as much as you need to, it causes you to be drained of energy.  Which means you don’t do as much activity, which means you don’t burn as many calories throughout the day.  Ugh!  This alone is enough of a reason to make sure to get plenty of shut-eye.  Another thing which is affected by sleep and controls your metabolism is your hormonal stability.  There are hormones which help your body metabolize food, which can be inbalanced when you don’t get enough sleep.

Another result:  Sleep deprivation causes many people to be somewhat irritable, and if you’re an emotional eater well–there you go!  Bye-bye self control!

But there’s more–studies have shown that people who don’t get enough sleep tend to eat a significantly higher amount of calories per day than people who are not sleep-deprived.  This is caused by a couple of hormones, namely Leptin and Ghrelin.  Both of these hormones help regulate your appetite, and studies show that production of both may be influenced by how much or how little you sleep.  Have you ever had a really poor night’s sleep, and then the next day you felt like no matter what you ate, you still weren’t satisfied?  That’s something that could be caused by an inbalance of Leptin and Ghrelin.

Now, I’m not saying that if you start sleeping a lot more then the pounds are going to just melt away–but it could make a significant difference in your weight loss success.

So do your best to get those 40 winks!

I just realized how long it’s been since I’ve posted something new–eek!  My husband and I have been working on purchasing a new home and so I’ve been a little distracted…

But I wanted to post some updated photos of two of my sisters–they are looking fabulous!

Here they are when we started in December:

And here they are now:

Don’t they look fabulous!  Melinda has lost over 30 pounds, and Giselle has lost over 50 pounds now!  I am so proud of them!

So, I originally wrote an article a couple of months ago about why you should drink enough water.  But since it really applies to this topic, I wanted to go over some of the information again.  I apologize if you’ve already read this and now I’m boring you!

Okay, we’ve all heard about how important it is to drink water for wellness-especially when trying to get fit and lose weight.  But sometimes it’s hard to motivate yourself to get in your eight cups or 100 ounces or however much you are going for.  (There are lots of theories about how much water everyone needs, but it really depends on the person.  I usually stick with 64 to 80 ounces per day.)  And I was thinking about how drinking enough water is kind of like having enough dish soap in the sink when you’ve got really greasy dishes to get clean.  It’s almost like you’re loosening the fat so that it can leave your cells and body.  Now, physiologically it doesn’t really work that way, but I like the metaphor for a way to motivate myself to drink.  The mental picture really helps me!

Here are some of the reasons that drinking enough water is so important:

• Lots of metabolic processes depend upon having enough water for them to work properly. If you are dehydrated, these body processes don’t work effectively, and that can do all kinds of things to you-like make you feel less energetic.
• Drinking cold water has been shown to elevate your calorie-burning level. Studies have shown up to a 30% increase in calorie-burning rate for an hour after drinking a liter of water (that’s a little over 16 ounces.)
• Water has a lot less calories in it than soda, juice, sports-drinks, etc. and can help you feel more full.
• If you’re eating a high-fiber diet as part of a weight loss program, having enough water is important to promote regularity. It also helps prevent your stomach from being upset if you are just starting to eat more fiber and aren’t used to it.
• When you add exercise to your routine, you lose water when you sweat, and you’ve got to replace it. Also, if you’re strength training, you need the water to help your body build more muscle (muscle tissue is made up of mostly water!)
• If you don’t drink enough water, strangely your body will retain it. Once you get into the habit of drinking more, your body won’t feel the need to hang onto it and you’ll lose that retention. Although the weight you lose isn’t actual fat loss, it’s nice not to feel bloated!

These are just a few reasons to drink plenty of water.  Just a warning though, you can drink too much water, so don’t go guzzling a gallon in the next hour.  Here are some great resources for information on water:    

12 Tips to Drink 8 Cups a Day

H2… Oh!

Water: How much should you drink every day?

There are so many things you can do to get your metabolism revved up!  What is metabolism? It is basically the rate at which your body burns calories. There are so many things that effect your metabolism; some of them you can do something about, and some of them–like your age, gender and genetics–you can’t.

One of the most important ways (in my opinion) that you can increase your metabolism is by strength training. Muscle is one of those lean body tissues which is much more metabolically active than fat tissue.  Have you ever heard that a pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day?  Well, that’s not exactly true, but it has the potential to burn 50 calories a day.  In reality, a pound of muscle adds about 6 calories a day to your resting metabolic rate.  That’s only 4 calories more than a pound of fat.  But that’s looking at resting metabolic rate.  Are you planning on just resting all day once you build up your muscles?  I hope not!  Obviously your muscle tissue is the tissue doing all of the work when you move your body around.  So you will burn more calories when you use more muscle.  It’s just really difficult to estimate how many calories that will be.

Another way that strength training increases your metabolism is by burning calories while you are working out.  It’s another one of those things that is difficult to estimate, but you can get a round about idea by wearing a heart rate monitor while you do your work out.  It’s just not as good for burning calories during the workout as cardio exercise.

But wait!  Here’s another thing that happens–most types of resistance exercise will increase the rate at which your body creates and breaks down protein.  This increases your caloric expenditure for hours (and sometime days!) after you work out.

Oh, and if you are a woman who doesn’t want to “bulk up”, don’t worry.  It takes an amazing amount of time and effort and sometimes unusual genetics for women bodybuilders to look the way they do.  For the average woman, you have nothing to be concerned about.

There are also so many other benefits to strength training that it’s just a really great thing to do if you aren’t doing it already!

So today I wanted to highlight my sister Melinda.  She is one of the most amazing people I know!  She is the oldest of my younger sisters, and she inspires me to be a better person.  She’s one of you people who takes care of others instead of herself.

But now she’s doing something to take care of herself–and she’s looking fabulous! 

Like most of my sisters, she’s struggled with her weight for most of her life.  About 10 years ago was when she reached her highest weight, and she realized back then that she needed to do something about it, and so she changed her eating habits and lost around 40 pounds!  She was still overweight, but definitely healthier than she had been.  She maintained that weight for several years, and came to the conclusion that she was destined to never be “thin” or at a “normal” weight.

But she has certainly changed her mind now!  When we started our weight loss program in December, she wasn’t sure what kind of a weight goal to set for herself.  She thought that maybe it would be unrealistic to try to reach a weight that was in the standard normal range.  But then she decided to go for the gold… and now she’s halfway to that weight!  She’s lost almost 25 pounds now, and she’s still going strong!  We also just went to Utah Valley University and had our body composition measured using hydrostatic weighing  (that’s where you get weighed in a big tank, and it’s supposed to be about the most accurate way to check your body fat percentage) since we want to make sure that all of us are losing fat and not muscle.  Her results showed that she is now within an acceptable range of body fat percentage!  Yay!

You’re doing great Minda!

Losing weight–for good–requires a BIG change in your life and lifestyle.  So how do you know when you’re ready to make that change?

According to a popular behavior change theory called the Transtheoretical Model: Stages-of-Change Theory, there are five different stages that a person may be in with regard to changing their behavior.  Depending on which stage you are in, you are more or less ready to make the change.  Some questions you might ask yourself to see if you are ready to do this are:

• Am I making the decision to change my behavior for myself?
• Will my friends and family support my changing?
• Besides the potential to improve my health, do I have many other reasons to change my behavior?
• Do I really believe that I might compromise my health if I continue my current behavior?
• Am I willing to make the commitment to change, even through very tough and challenging times?
• Am I willing to make this change a top priority?
• Have I ever tried to change this behavior before?
• Am I committed to being patient with myself and persistent when I encounter obstacles?

The more of these questions that you honestly answer “Yes” to, the more ready you are to truly commit to the lifestyle change that needs to happen for you to reach your goals.  But don’t worry!  If you answered “No” to several of them, it doesn’t mean that you are destined to never change–it just means that you might need to get more support, or even learn a little more about how much it effects your health and life to have unhealthy eating habits and be inactive.  Just because you’re not ready right this second doesn’t mean that you can’t be ready tomorrow!

Because I can tell you first hand that change is possible!

Sorry I haven’t been blogging this past week… I’ve been a bit busy with some work and family stuff!

I really wanted to do another sister feature, and so this week it’s my baby sis Natalia!

She has done spectacularly!  She is super-active and is on an independent Color Guard team called Urban Expressions.  I went to one of their competitions last night and they were the most fabulous team out there!  (I know, you’re thinking that I have to say that since my sister is on the team, but really it’s true.)  Natalia had a solo where she threw a saber about a hundred feet into the air–okay maybe not quite that high–and caught it in one hand as it was spinning back down.  Amazing!!

So anyway, Natalia has lost over 25 pounds now since December–and she looks marvelous!  She is always telling me stories of how people are mentioning how good she is looking.  I think they are absolutely right!

Doesn’t she look great!

Today I want to post some photos of my sister Giselle, and say how proud of her I am!  She has lost 37 pounds now since December, and she is looking fabulous!  She has really been sticking to her nutrition program, and has been working out several times a week.  She’s been doing lots of karate and some weight training.

Giselle is also our resident baker.  She made my wedding cake for me last year, and it was scrumptious!  (And super-calorific.  But wedding cake can’t be low-calorie!) 

She is now using her powers for good instead of evil, and has come up with a ton of nutritious variations on yummy recipes which have been taste-tested and proven to be delicious as well as good for you!  She made me a birthday cake last month which was amazing–and only 175 calories per eighth-of-a-cake slice!  It was a small 6-inch two-layer cake, which was perfect, since leftover birthday cake can be very dangerous.

Isn’t it beautiful?  And it was so-o-o-o good.  She used her low-fat brownie recipe, filled the middle with sugar-free pudding and then used light whipped topping flavored with rum extract instead of frosting.  The sugar-free chocolate syrup and a few mini chocolate chips on top were a perfect touch!

You go girl!  You totally rock… and so does your Tiramisu!