Sugar...Sugar Everywhere

A couple of weeks ago I decided to try to lose the last 10lb of baby weight by May 7. My plan is to use exercise to "tone" my left over baby flab and diet to help in losing the extra weight. I have found this awesome FREE app for my iphone 4 called MyFitnessPal it counts all my nutritional value during the day.
This app is crawling fast up my list of favorites, I use it through out the day and it really has been a huge help to me. One thing that has always been hard for me when it came to counting calories is looking up the information for my food. But not with my new app!!!!! It is loaded with tons of information on foods form major brand, chain restaurant, as well as homemade recipes so as you can see it is easy as pie to count calories... ummm pie.... NoNoNo not in my diet plan :-)

My Second reason why I am falling in love with this app is I have realized that I am over shooting my daily intake on other key weight loss factors such as sugar, fat, and carbs. Right know I am concentrating on calories and sugar, which brings me to my topic. I am starting to realize that there is sugar in EVERYTHING! Did you know that you are only supposed to have about 24 grams a sugar a day!!! That is insane especially since one piece of fruit is 17+ grams of sugar and a teaspoon of sugar is around 5 grams. As you can see your sugars (even if you thought you were eating a healthy diet can add up quick. So what is a girl to do if she wants to eat a some what normal diet and be healthy? I have decided that natural sugars that occur in foods like fruit and milk are free but what about everything else? I am and have always been against artificial sweeteners, so that is out of the question. That just leaves me to cut sugars out of my diet where I can. A few simple things that I have done is gone from 4 tbs of creamer down to 1 tbs, cutting about 15 grams of sugar! I also switched from flavored oatmeal to plain oatmeal with a spoon full of peanut butter saving me another 4+ grams of sugar. My next step is to take my high sugar yogurt and swap it with plain yogurt saving me almost 15 grams of sugar. My goal, as with anything that I do, is not to become the sugar Nazi but to become aware of where the empty sugars are hiding. How about you what are your sugar saving tips?

This is not My Body

Yesterday as I was getting dressed I looked in the mirror and thought to myself "ugh this is not my body" I know and understand that I just had a baby so I need to cut myself some slack and I do. With that being said, I know that I will feel so much better if I start to do something about getting by body back to its pre-baby weight. The saying is that it takes 9 months to put the weight on, so it will takes 9 months to get your body back. Aj is 4 months and 3 weeks, so if we stick to the old adages of 9 months on 9 months off, that gives my project a deadline of May 7.
So what am I going to do to accomplish this goal. Well let see, I am going to do a lot of trial and error to see what will work with my new families schedule but here are my thoughts:
1. Because I am nursing I have to be careful with my diet. I need to make sure I intake between 1800-2000 calories a day, but I will make sure that they are all good and healthy food :-)
2. Annie my border collie mix also gained baby weight with me and is in need of a little body make over as well. My goal is to start running/ walking with her 4-5 a week
3. Renaissance offers a great 45 minute ballet stretch / tone class twice a week that works perfectly in my schedule
4. Lifting weights twice a week at 21 minute fitness is Walnut Creek (great workout!)
5. For fun and to get me active on the weekends I thought I would try a new class every weekend at Renaissance
These are just a few ideas. I will make sure to let you know how it goes