7 Little Facts

 I saw this on a fellow beauties blog, and thought I should participate! List 7 things other bloggers may not know about you:

1. I do not eat anything blue! I don't really know why, but I just can't do it.
2. I prayed really really hard recently for an answer about what to do with my life, and now I have an answer.
3. My favorite color combination is pink and zebra print or pink and orange.
4. Gerber daisies are my favorite flower.
5. I was a CA/RA for 2 years and worked a 3am - 6am shift for an entire semester. I loved being a CA!
6. I want to have roughly 6 kids - adopting some and birthing some!
7. I know all the words to the movie Moulin Rouge!
8. I have a technology obsession! (macs, iphones, nikons)
9. I love taking pictures of people and babies! 
10. I graduated from college before the age of 21.

I actually did 10, so you choose .. do 7 or 10! 

Week 24 - "Let's Hear It For The Boys!"

If you know me, I love taking pictures and when I saw that "Let's Hear It For The Boys!" was the category for this week I knew I would have just the perfect picture! Be sure to head on over to www.iheartfaces.com to check out all of the beautiful face entries this week!

Here is my entry for this week! A little boy whom I love to babysit! We just went outside one day and had a photo shoot! So much fun! I am in the process of learning photoshop so that I can make this picture even better! 

Work, Work, and More Work

Here are some pics from VBS!

• I love blogging but work just keeps me soooo busy! On top of work I took the kids back and forth to vbs all week. We took at least 10 kids each night! 
  
• Work is great and keeps me busy!
• This week I could not get control of my eating! I just had a week! I ate even when I was full and I just couldn't stop.  I gained 2 lbs this week! Today will be better! 
• Life is unwrapping many surprises for me and I am perfectly content with that! 
• I am excited about visiting my best friend this weekend! I will get to see her and some other people that I haven't seen in a while.

Other than that, not much going on! Have a great week!

I've been MIA

I started a new internship with the Office on Women's Health on Monday and I wake up at 4:45 leave the house at 5:30 and don't get home until between 5:30 and 6:00. I am so exhausted by the time the day is over, I do not even have time to get on the computer. I am really enjoying my internship and hope I can find a job similar to this when I graduate next May. 

I have started the second challenge and it is going good so far. I have worked out 8 times (I walk to and from the train station for work, about 20-25 minutes every day) and I have had 2 cheats, birthday cake and new york cheesecake ice cream. I am going on a low carb diet as of today as well. We will see how this goes. I have noticed that I take in too many carbs in a day. My first meal on a low carb diet was a omelet with green peppers and onions from my garden! Yum! I am going to get more onions to plant and I am also going to plant some other veggies today. Gardening is quite fun. My bell pepper plant disappeared and so did one of my tomato plants. I still have a habanero plant and tomato plant growing with the other onions we haven't picked. 

Things in general are going good, it's weird to live at home with all these rules but such is life! I am just not used to telling people where I ago and worrying about what time I come home. I am praying for some signs about things in life, like what I should do in regards to them, so we will see.

Can't wait to meet some fellow beauties on Thursday! I will try and post more often!

Went to the lake last weekend and it was so much fun! I had missed hanging out with my Texas Tech friends.

New York City

These are just a few pictures from our trip to NYC. It was very much eventful and a lot of fun! I got to try Magnolia's cupcakes (they are supposed to be the best) and they were toooo sweet for me! We ate a very late dinner at a place called Dallas BBQ. It was oh so yummy and very reasonably priced. On Saturday we went to FAO Schwarz and it was so fun! I got some smurf figurines and got to play on the piano from Big. All in all the weather was good. We were supposed to be rained out the entire weekend, but we maybe felt one sprinkle the entire 2 days in the city. 

Some thoughts on healthy food

The first Challenge is coming to an end and I am even more prepared now for Challenge 2.

Challenge 2 Details:

Monday June 1-August 22

SIGN UP BY WEDNESDAY, MAY 27th

12 weeks long

16 cheats (make your coupons)

Take a before picture

Check your weight before it begins

Take your inches (waist, hips, chest, arms)

Record your current size of clothing

No fried foods

No sweets

Only 12 ounces of soda per day

Exercise 3-6 times a week

We will only weigh in every 2 weeks

(you will email info on Fridays instead)

Email me the following: 

(tctummy@yahoo.com)

Name

12 week "pound" goal

(That is all I need to know this time. I have all the rest. You need to keep up with your weight, 

inches and all that because we will be seeing how those change)

WEIGH IN DATES 

(every 2 weeks on Fridays)

June 12

June 26

July 10

July 24

Aug 7

Aug 21

Email Tanna if you want to participate. You must email her by tomorrow. This was the first time in a long time that I have started and finished a weight loss program/diet of some sort. You should join even if you just have 5 pounds to lose! The motivation is awesome that the group provides!! 

Now .. some random information that has helped me to eat better. The School of Public Health and my Principles in Public Health class have forever made me think differently about food! 

1. Food that is good for you does not always taste good the first time. Try different veggies at least 3 different times before you decide that you don't like it. You can grill veggies, mash them, season them, boil them .. your options are endless. I have eaten butternut squash, eggplant, celery, and chickpeas all things that I have said "I do not like." They taste good actually.
2. Mix up your salad! Just eating a plain salad with lettuce will get boring, add avocado, celery, carrots, broccoli, chick peas, salsa, you name it you can add it to your salad!
3. Beef is not always a good choice. Make sure you know how your cows are being fed!!!!!!
4. There are other ways to fix your sweet tooth. Cantaloupe, frozen banana slices, oranges, apples, grapes. Limit the processed sweets in your diet.
5. Pesticides are not good for our bodies and are often alllll over the fruits and veggies we buy at the store. If possible by local from a nearby farmers market! 

Chartwells recently made a move in March to include more grass-fed beef into the dining halls.But wait, don't all cows eat grass? Well, they're supposed to. An overwhelming number of farms in the U.S. use confined feed lots, or concentrated animal feeding operations, to raise their livestock. The big fuss about grass-fed or free-range meat is that "it's not about how the animal dies, but how it lives," said University at Albany biology professor Gary Kleppel. Cows and sheep are supposed to have a diet of grass and other things like weeds that are typically found on open ranges and fields. In the feed lots, livestock are kept in cement confines, sometimes with more than 1000 other animals. These thousand-plus animals are force fed corn. Corn has a large amount of protein and fat, so it gets the cows really big really quickly. It is also a cheap and abundant resource. It seems fine, right? But, because of their specialized stomachs, called rumen, cows and sheep cannot process corn. Corn turns livestock with rumen's, which are normally neutral, acidic. This acidity leads to the cows getting sick. "Imagine having acid indigestion all the time," said Kleppel. "Giving cows corn is like putting diesel in a gasoline powered car," said Bill Kurtis, author of "The Prairie Table Cookbook." "It's wrong, wrong, wrong." According to sustainable.org, a website devoted to environmental sustainability, about 12 to 32 percent of all feed lot cattle develop liver abscesses as a result of a high-grain diet. In order to combat the various sicknesses, farmers then pump their livestock full of antibiotics. "Switching a cow from grass to grain opens the floodgates to a host of serious maladies," wrote Star Ledger reporter Beth D'Addono, "which only a constant diet of antibiotics can begin to counter. "It has also been reported that farmers also inject hormones into the cows. "It makes them grow quickly and hold a lot of water so they weigh more," said Kleppel.

The rest of the information can be found here or http://media.www.albanystudentpress.org/media/storage/paper1019/news/2008/04/28/News/Beef-and.Antibiotics.And.Hormones.Its.Whats.For.Dinner-3359116.shtml.

So, I am in a learning process of beginning to eat better for my body and trying new foods prepared different ways. My body feels better, I have lost weight, and I have more energy!! 

Back in Texas and loving it!!

I am back in Texas and loving it!! I have gotten to spend so much time with friends and family already! My sister and I are in close living quarters .. but it will do!! I got an email today talking about another internship that is paid .. I will know about it this week. I do start the one that I have already accepted tomorrow, and I will not know how to quit if that becomes necessary.

The challenge is going good. I bought my favorite dressing today (Drew's Roasted Garlic Peppercorn)! It always makes me want to engulf my salad and veggies!! I also bought some yocrunch yogurt!! I am in healthy food heaven!! I do not have a scale though, I left mine in NY. I plan on buying one on Friday. We will see what "the scale" says! ha! 

So I have decided to set some summertime goals!

1. Get below 200 lbs!!
2. Run a 5K!!
3. Make some decisions about what to do with the rest of my life.
4. Work out, Work out, Work out!
5. Get oober healthy!
6. Continue the challenge until I have reached number 1!
7. And make some decisions about what to do with the rest of my life.

What are your summertime goals? Are they health related? Either way, you can accomplish

whatever you set your mind to!!