Life's Little Challenges

Life is interesting. It’s amazing at what it throws at us and how we are “trained” to deal with the different situations. I guess our “training” is based on our upbringings and while there is a right and wrong way to handle most things, there is plenty of grey area in between the two opposites. I am missing working out/running and am making an effort to get back into it. Back in Colorado, I was well on my way to becoming a beef jerky eating hippie. I was hiking on the weekends and working out nearly every day. It’s hard not to get out and enjoy the outdoors when you are surrounded by such spectacular landscapes. It makes running that much more enjoyable when you have to make noise so that the deer grazing on your path realize that you’re coming and don’t freak out. Houston was a different story. It was hot, humid, and gross. Who wants to go outside then to only get attacked by the onslaught of cars and trucks and noise and mosquitoes? Yeah, my working out fell of the cliff in Houston. It also didn’t help I was travelling a lot and never allowed myself to get into a routine. There are no excuses, but my conditions were not favorable for me to be dedicated to a workout routine. Now, in Holland, faced with bad weather but an urge I have to figure out how to balance the two extremes. There is a nice park very nearby where I can go running. There are deer, granted in an enclosed fence, but deer none the less. Oh, and a pair of Shetland ponies. So we’ll chalk that up into the wildlife column. There are also other people to where I feel safe enough someone might find me if there was an attacker lurking in the trees but not enough people to feel claustrophobic. This might change when it’s not either raining or snowing.

So taking this new approach I signed up for Jillian Michael’s online program. Today marks the first full day, so no amazing stories or discoveries just yet. I do have some opinions (no surprise) though. Since my week hasn’t been exciting and I completely forgot to blog yesterday, you will be getting my rundown of the site today.

Likes: It gives you a shopping list for the meals that it assigns you to eat every meal of the day for every week of every month and so on and so forth. Handy. It also creates a work out for you each day. It changes things up, tells you exactly how to do it, and is generally dummy proof. It also has a food log where you write down what you eat. I know this is helpful as many weightloss programs have this, but I really don’t like it. It just takes so much tedious effort (I know, I could have (and did) write everything down in the same time I do this blog).

Dislikes: The food plan is clearly made for an American. Our European fridge can’t hold all of these foods that are “needed” for a week. I printed out the shopping list and it is 6 PAGES LONG. Now, it has everything on there from your oils to sugars fresh veggies. You don’t have to buy new oils every week, but still. Not a plan for the small kitchen. It also uses lots of things like jalapenos. I really like those spicy peppers and there are surprisingly lots of dishes made in restaurants with them but I have yet to see a pepper in the grocery store. They have canned/bottled ones but I don’t like those. Jillian also has recipes with Mole, like the Mexican chocolaty mole sauce. Something tells me that won’t be happening in this country. The recipe measurements are all also done in American measurements, not metric. While these are all big complaints coming from me, something tells me she isn’t after the European market. They are generally skinnier people as is. But being an American in Europe is frustrating. I can’t even put myself on a diet without running into all of these little issues that are just so difficult an annoying!

Ok, enough about that. We’ll see how I do. I might kill myself with my work out today. Hopefully Kelly will rescue me if necessary. I don’t know about this rigid menu stuff. There are so many other great things here that is not common in America. I feel I should take advantage of those things when I have them. One example, dark bread with whole nuts - the bread has whole sunflower seeds and oats in. I just love their breads and some aren’t totally unhealthy!

Ok, off to finish off my afternoon! Wednesday is on the downhill slide towards Friday! Can’t wait!