september mama

i think i mentioned i started watching some workout videos on netflix..? well, the one i'm going with for the long haul is awesome, if gimmicky. "10-minute solutions" carb killer or something like that; it's 50-minutes broken into super-intense 10-min segments with tons of jumping around and squats. she does a quick warm up, then right into fast and furious burn, then another 30-sec cool down. on to the next segment.

i thought it would be worth a try just because my time is often short and i hate the drawn-out blabbing in most videos, but as it turns out, i totally love it for the intensity and the amount of energy i have afterwards. she doesn't chat it up or waste time with long warm-ups and stretching, and by the time one segment is over i am so hyped up i want to do another. my energy level is staying high consistently too, which is awesome because i've been really tired in general most of the time. not so anymore.

i had heard that in order to truly make any metabolic difference, one has to work out for at least 20 minutes, but it turns out that's not true at all.

research shows (forgive the source):

While most experts keep telling us we need to exercise longer if we want to lose weight—we're supposed to exercise 60 to 90 minutes a day just to maintain weight loss—a fast-growing body of research indicates that intensity, not duration, is really the missing piece in our fitness puzzle:

• Last December, Canadian researchers reported that just two weeks of interval training boosted women's ability to burn fat during exercise by 36 percent.
  
  
• Levels of human growth hormone—which assists in building muscle and eliminating fat—skyrocketed 530 percent in subjects after just 30 seconds of sprinting as fast as they could on a stationary bike, according to a British study.
  
  
• Australian fitness researchers had 18 women perform 20 minutes of interval training on a stationary bike—eight-second sprints followed by 12 seconds of recovery throughout the workout, three days a week. The women lost an average of five and a half pounds over 15 weeks without dieting, while a similar group performing 40 minutes of moderate cycling three days a week actually gained a pound of fat over the same period. Two of the heavier women who did intervals dropped 18 pounds.

interval training is my new best friend.

in other news, we are converting back to farmer's market shopping for fruits and veggies as of this week. we were growing so much of our own, then when the garden was finished last season we sort of fell back to the usual (and loathesome) winn-dixie... but i've been going to publix again because it is a MILLION TIMES BETTER... but still not necessarily local. and given that i eat 90% of my diet in fresh fruit and vegetables, we need to get those things from our community, if not from our backyard. it's cheaper, fresher, and all the good things about giving back to the local economy and farms. i'm pretty excited to take the kids out - apparently there is a bounce house on location, haha.

my batch of chicks is fully grown now; the "babies" officially started laying just the other day. so we should be swimming in eggs sometime over the next month, which is both awesome and worrying (because i have to find uses for them). i am crossing my fingers that at least one of the hens goes broody so we can get a production cycle going and actually "harvest" some chickens every few months, but we'll see. our ducks are sitting on a nest right now, due to hatch around feb 22 or so. that should be fun again! :)

i love having a little farmette...

it's been a long time since posting! i'm always, always busy at work... but i like it here, so it's ok. i'm stealing time right now...

the kids are ridiculously grown-up. liam walks/runs/climbs everything, and he loves to dance. and play dress up. anything he can wear around his neck, his arm, or his head makes him literally prance around (it's so cute). i caught him a few weeks ago standing in front of their play kitchen with a shiny pink necklace on, holding a baby against his ear, stirring a pot on the "stove." he's going to make some woman verrrry happy one day, lol.

he's still not talking very well, but he is trying. he manages a few words clearly, but the rest is either garbled nonsense or "eh, EH." oh, and i gave him his first haircut last week... i've been torn because his pretty little curls were very girly, and i felt like he is too boyish for that. so i cut it into a sort of longish mo/faux-hawk with a tail at the end, because i just couldn't bear to cut off ALL the curls. so he looks a little bit like a redneck boy from the mid-eighties :). infant innocence has fully given way to mischievous BOY. alas, all with a few snips... i almost cried the whole next day over it.

rowan is little-miss-not-a-little-girl. i swear that kid is a grown up in a munchkin body 90% of the time. she's just so smart, and so with it, and she comes up with the craziest things. her imagination is a little bit out of control, in fact, but she got that honestly. she's counting objects these days, which is neat, and she can sound out many letters and recognize a couple of words. we went to her first movie a few weeks ago (beauty and the beast 3D), which was exciting for her. she didn't wear the glasses for most of it, but she stuck through the entire showing.

i have been making very good progress on my attempts at reducing the size of my ass (and thighs, and waist, and arms...). right around jan 1--by coincidence ONLY--i reformed my eating habits basically back to eating raw, without being too strict about that aspect of it. i'm counting calories extremely closely, however, and just this last week have started doing some silly online workout videos a few nights a week. sunday, i ran 2 miles. it feels great, and today i am ecstatic to say that i am comfortably wearing pants that were too tight 3 weeks ago. *happy sigh* i've lost several inches, overall, from various parts of my body. now i just need to work on toning and upping the metabolism. desk jobs are hard :P.

i managed to write a paper on the topic of unassisted birth for a forestry class i am taking... i thought that was a pretty big achievement, haha. something about behavior changes adopted in the past 5 years. it fit, so i used it.

i have to do work now, but i need to post some pics of the kids, especially liam's new haircut.