Have a Family Night!

When I was a little girl, family night happened every Wednesday, no excuses, and involved a game of Scene It, Yatzee, or Monopoly. It usually ended with my sister and I fighting and all of us having a bowl of ice cream.

This is not the type of family night I'm talking about. These days, most nights at home are spent on the couch, my parents indulging in a decadent dessert and flipping through the channels complaining that there's nothing on. It's taken weeks, months even, for me to try to change this behavior that's only increased their risk for heart disease and waistline over the years.

Two years ago, my mother bought me a Wii for Christmas, with WiiSports and WiiFit. We spent most of the day and the following days playing the games, my parents actually enjoying getting up and golfing, bowling, boxing. Then they got bored. Then they sat on the couch and had dessert.

In the past few months, I've been trying to get that to change. Little by little, I got them up. I versed my mom in a series of tennis games, until it became an all out grudge match, a Wimbleton. I boxed my father, who hates to lose. They ended up exhausted and my dad ended up changing the channel back to watching horseracing.

But hey, it's a start!

So how are you "family nighting?" WiiSports marathon? A basketball game of kids verses parents? A Just Dance dance fest? Sound off and share some of your own ideas!

Playlist of the Week!

Here are the top tracks I've been listening to in order to power through a workout lately! (I usually give you five but I feel guilty for not posting these in a while, so I'm giving fifteen)

SAIL- AWOLNATION
How to be a Heartbreaker- Marina and the Diamonds
Howl- Florence and the Machine
Prelude 12/21- AFI
In the Next Room- Neon Trees
Ghost in the Machine- B.O.B.
Brave New World- 30 Seconds to Mars
Demons- Imagine Dragons
Whispers in the Dark- Skillet
Jumper- Third Eye Blind
Who I Am Hates Who I've Been- Relient K
Amsterdam- Imagine Dragons
Thrift Shop- Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (beware it is explicit but it's just so much fun!)
Cool Down: Jesus Christ- Brand New
Shattered- Trading Yesterday

How to Make Your Workouts Longer and More Efficient

I'm sorry I haven't been on in so long, but somehow I actually ended up with more members! I'm so excited that more people are following and I'll do my best to help.

I've been trying something a little different lately, in which I've been extending my workouts. Now hold on here! Don't stop reading because you read "longer workouts." I haven't missed a workout in days and I can thank SDABHHFAN4LIFE of that. She makes videos on Youtube and they are incredible. For me, my favorite workout is biking. If I go running, I get bored, get tired, and give up. If I dance, it's fun for a time, but again I get bored. Now, I know this probably proves I have a short attention span but the only way I can work out for longer periods of time is to have my eyes occupied. So I tried watching TV, but that didn't work because I'd lose track of my speed. Without music motivating me, my speed would fall from 13 or 14 mph to 10 or 11 mph, which wasn't giving me the same results. Just out of curiousity, I decided to get the Youtube app for my I-pod touch and I'm so glad I did. I found SDABHHFAN4LIFE, who created videos with clips from Degrassi, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, and American Horror Story, all set to a wide array of music, all motivating. I go on the bike planning to do half an hour, but I always end up saying, "Ah, one more video," until I'm doing double that.

Not a Degrassi or Supernatural fan (or just don't ship Eclare and Destial), there were over 800 million Youtube users last year. Just type in what you like, click on a user with the same interests, and play their playlists. You'll be working out, singing along, all while enjoying your favorite characters and scenes. You won't want to get off the bike. Good luck!

Side note: I'm going to be more diligent on this blog this year, that's my resolution to you. And I check my emails daily, so if you have any questions or need some advice, I'll get back to you as soon as possible and will do what I can!

Teenagers vs. Weight

Recently I posted this blog on the forums of Seventeen.com. I probably should mention something I haven't yet mentioned. I am 16. I've been avoiding saying that but I don't particularly want to anymore. I'd like to make it more personal. I've been trying to lose weight for three years. It's a daily struggle and I've experienced several setbacks (hell I'm going through one right now).

Anyway, I'm 16 and attempting to reach out to girls out there just like me. I posted a link on the forums and ended up with hundreds of hits in just a few minutes. The forum reached the top ten in number of hits. While I was so excited to get so much attention, I couldn't help but be a little disheartened to see just how many girls are hoping to lose weight. I know some of those girls don't have to do it. I know I do, just to be healthy. I'm not looking to be 100 pounds. My goal is 140. That's all. After that, I'm not pushing it.

I was talking about health to my friends recently and these were the three girls' weights: 117, 130, 139. They are all aound the same height of 5 ft 6 in. The girl weighing 117 was more desperate to lose weight than the other (healthy weighted) girls because she is muscular without an ounce of fat on her and muscle looks bigger than fat does. The girl at 130 has been tracking her food intake for a year and has lost ten pounds (because she thought 140 was too big). The 139 girl hasn't tried too lose weight but she constantly complains about her weight and makes her more and more upset. And then there's me.

I've let myself go. I was 147 at my smallest which was about a year ago. Then came Christmas and I ate and I promised I would lose it. Then came Easter and I ate and I promised I'd lose it. Then came summer and one miserable thing happened after the other and I ate to make myself feel better. Now it's October and I've lose about two pounds in September and now I'm at about 180. Ask my friends what I weigh and they'd never be able to come up with a number. I never told them anything near my weight.

I have to lose weight. Why? Because I don't want to go to college looking the way I do. Because I don't want to go to prom no being able to fit comfortably into a dress without Spanx constricting layers of fat. Because I don't want to be winded every time I'm asked to run in gym class. Because I don't want my feet to hurt at the end of the day, every day, from walking between classes.

Anyone who's reading this, I ask you do please do a BMI calculator before going farther into this pursuit. If you're on the lower end of your BMI or even below it like the girl at 117 is, take a good look in the mirror. We are all beautiful, big and small. But you're skinny.Yes we, the overweight, probably envy you a bit, but you don't see it that way. You're not looking to be healthy, don't lie. You're looking to be skinnier. How far will you go? Eventually you will be even less healthy than those of us who are overweight rather than you who's underweight.

I'm starting a movement for us teens, or at least trying to. Stop looking for skinny. Stop praying for Twiggy's body and start looking for how you look best. Stop fighting your bodies. Some girls look better with curves like their mommas gave them. Some have an athletic body, the type that carries them for miles of miles on their marathon runs. Some have skinny bodies, few curves or muscles but at a healthy weight they still look like sticks. We are all different and we shouldn't try to fit some stereotype in a magazine. As long as we are eating healthy, exercising, and at a healthy weight for our heights, we should focus on staying who we are.

Eat Right at Night

I can't go to bed without dessert. I admit it. It's a bad habit, I know, especially after reading the latest Health issue. Turns out, those who eat after 8 P.M. rack up 248 more calories than those who finish eating after dinner. Well, duh. I actually thought it would be more. That's not the real killer. The killer is that your body wants to burn off fat at night, which is while people who get the full nine hours weigh the least. Your body is like a machine. Even when you're asleep, its gears are still working, but it needs fuel. It's not getting food so it takes fuel from fat. It's a great system.

Problem is this mode can't begin the second your head hits the pillows. It takes time to burn the calories. Health recommends eating dinner late and going to bed an hour later, so you don't have time to eat dessert. The body needs about twelve hours to convert that fat. Basically, eat dinner at eight, eat breakfast at eight. For the summer, sure I can do that. For the rest of the year, not so much. I wake up at 5:45 A.M. and eat breakfast at 6:00 A.M. Then I eat dinner between 6:00 P.M. and 7:00 P.M. I don't go to bed at eight. I usually go to sleep between ten and eleven. So no I'm not one of those people who gets the full nine hours.

Here's my rule: Don't focus on the 12 hours. Focus on the old rule that says no eating after nine. Before that I'm not giving you a pass. Don't eat whatever you want. Try to eat something with a little fiber content. If you get cravings at night, give in, but only a little. If you want chocolate, eat a Fiber One Brownie, not a giant hot fudge sundae. Dessert won't wreck your diet, as long as your careful of the time you eat and the content of your treat.

The Liquid Diet (and I'm Not Talking Cleanses!)

Thursday I had the misfortune of having all four of my wisdom teeth extracted. 10:00 a.m. I went in and at noon I walked out, feeling and talking like Kramer. For the next few hours I felt fine, numbness aside. Then, little by little, the numbness wore off and an awful pain started in.

The doc gave me a list of things I had to follow from Thursday to Monday: rinse with saltwater, don't drink anything carbonated, take the painkillers (which, evidently, are also sleeping pills, considering the fact that I've been sleeping at least fourteen hours every day). But the number one thing on the list was to eat foods that require minimal chewing. I stocked my fridge with sugar free chocolate pudding cups, Special K chocolate shakes, pina coloda protein shakes, cottage cheese, mac and cheese (one of my personal favorite foods) and Yoplait light yogurt. These are the six foods that I've been living off of. Doesn't sound all that healthy, right? Then why have I noticed that my jeans are fitting better, my stomach is smaller, and I've lost two pounds in the last two days (without exercising at all because doing so is off limits according to my doctor)?

Well this is why! For one thing, repetitious eating has been shown to limit the amount of food you eat. The reason for that is become your palette isn't being subjected to something new constantly. When you eat something tantalizing and new for dinner every night, your brain savors it and wants more, so you eat more. If you eat, say, mac and cheese like I've eaten for the last three nights, the first night your brain thinks, "Yay! This is good!" Second night it's like, "Oh ok, not exactly exciting but whatever it's still pretty good." By the third night it's saying, "This again? So boring!" When you subject your brain to food you like more often, you stop thinking of it as taboo. You stop craving it and you stop piling it on your plate.

Now take a look at the list again. The pudding is sugar free. The shakes are both less than 200 calories and are high in protein. The cottage cheese and mac and cheese are high in calcium and the cottage cheese is low in fat and calories. The yogurt is low in fat and calories and high in protein. While they all taste great, they are also all healthy takes on their original, high-calorie counterparts.

I'm also in a little pain and because of that I'm eating a lot slower, helping me get filled up faster and making my mind remind me to stop eating as soon as I'm full. I'm not saying that you should go take out your teeth to lose weight, but I am saying to eat repetitiously, sticking to healthier variety of foods and a healthier amount of each. It's way easier than you think!

Something that Should be Said

This isn't a tip or a workout. This is something I have to get off my chest.

Yesterday I watched my best friend die in front of me. She was my workout buddy, my therapist, my baby girl. I watched her lay on a surgical table, cleverly disguised to look kind by a flannel, midnight blue blanklt. My mother and father stood around her and I stood by her head. I held it between my hands and she looked up at me with sleepy, doe-like brown eyes. My mother stroked her ears and I smooshed her floppy face as my father held her steady and stroked her back. The doctor moved around us inconspicuously. She became too tired to lift her head and I didn't want to be looking into those eyes when they became unseeing. She laid her head against a towel covered pillow and grunted continuously and softly. Her eyes shut and her pink tongue folded out of her mouth like an unfolding accordian. She kept sniffing something and her tongue kept twitching.

I knelt down and rested my head on hers, something I'd become accustomed to doing, and whispered, "Do you have any idea how much I love you?" something I'd always asked. She grunted softly again and again. And then it stopped and my father said the obvious confirmation. But I stayed knelt down and asked her the same question again and again.

That same morning my mother woke me to tell me I had to take Jewel to the vet. Although it was only seven, I was up as soon as the words left her mouth. My mother was scared because Jewel wouldn't eat anything. If you'd ever met this dog (which would have made you a very lucky person) you'd know that she ate anything at anytime. More than once in the last week I'd told her to stop eating the grass and to stop eating random things she'd found in the carpeting.

But yesterday morning she wouldn't eat breakfast, wouldn't go outside to go to the bathroom, and wouldn't even get up from her corner where she slept the night. Yet when I came downstairs she greeted me at the bottom of the steps, lying down with her ears up and panting in contentment. My dad tried to give her a treat, just to see her eat something but she wouldn't take it. He left to look up her symptoms online and she climbed, slipping slightly, to her feet. I asked her to eat something, gesturing to her full bowl. She gave me what I can only call a quizzically look and looked at the food. It took no more prying to get her to eat half the bowl. Then she drank a ton a water and went back to the meal. Then she ate the treat, went outside, and came back inside, panting and wagging her tail. I looked at my dad and we were both thinking the same thing: Mom overreacted.

Nonetheless, we got in the car to go to the vet. Jewel got into the backseat without a problem and laid down with me sitting next to her, stroking her side. She kept giving me confused looks, as if to say, "Guys, I'm fine. Why are we going to the vet?"

When we arrived, she jumped up and looked out the window and then followed me, jumping out of the car. On the ramp up to the entrance, she went to the bathroom, much to mine and my father's embarrassment. But we cleaned it up and some nice people pet her, with her relishing the attention. "She's 13!" they said in disbelief. "But she looks like a puppy!" She always got that. Good genes, I guess. Always looked ten years younger than she really was.

Our vet, an old family friend, was quick to take us in. Jewel greeted her happily, until she saw that they had a thermometer and she looked to me for help as the vet...well you get it. I didn't reach in to pet her, afraid I'd bother the vet, but I whispered to her, "It's okay, baby. Everything's okay," like we were sharing our own little secret.

It wasn't four hours later that I was saying the same thing to her, but this time I knew it wouldn't be. It wasn't four hours later that I told her to rest her eyes and I'd see her when she woke up.

I've suffered from depression since sixth grade. I've lost count of the days when I'd come home and just cry, barely making it into the door. But she'd greet me everytime. I'd kneel down on the carpet and wrap my arms around her, making her beautiful gold fur wet and messy. I'd put my head on her shoulder and she'd rest hers on mine and we'd just sit like that. Other times she'd roll on to her back and let me rub her belly while I cried, until the tears ran dry. Did you know that petting an animal can alleviate feelings of sadness? She did.

I'd take her for walks, yes, but my favorite workout was lying on the floor, attempting to do sit ups or bicycles and failing miserably because she'd climb all over my head. Sometimes she'd just lie down by my head and I'd attempt to continue to situps, with my hands over my head reaching to pet her.

I couldn't even spend the night at home yesterday. I had to stay at a friend's house. But it's not as if I could hide away forever. Tomorrow morning, I'll get up. I'll come downstairs saying, "Where's my puppy?" like I always did. But I won't get an answer. And there will be no one to help dry my tears.