Archives for August 2017

Whether it’s summer, fall break, Christmas, or spring break, getting back into the school routine is never easy. Sometimes even a long weekend or a couple of sick days can throw off both your daily routine and your mental attitude toward it. And of course if you’re a mom responsible for keeping the rest of your family on a schedule, you don’t have much time to listen to your own inner complainer because you have to give everyone else a pep talk.

Here are 8 creative ways to readjust after a break from school (and work):

#1 Shock your sleep schedule – it’s typically advised that you take a week or two at the end of a long break to get back into your normal sleep schedule. While this is ideal, it can cut into the length of time you have to slack off from said schedule. Another approach that can work well with younger children is to plan a long outdoor activity near the end of the break, something that will wear your kids out. We find taking our kids to run around in the waves at the ocean works well, as does swimming in a lake, taking a hike or going to a local park to kick a soccer ball around, chase a kite and play on the playground. Run them hard, feed them well, then put them to sleep at their target bedtime or close to it, and wake them up on the new schedule. Continue with the target bedtime and wake time until school starts up again.

#2 Plan a special event – give your kids and the whole family something to look forward to a few days or a week after school has resumed. If you just enjoyed a long weekend, plan a special dinner for Thur night. This year as the end of summer break was approaching, we decided to plan our next family camping trip for Sept instead of Oct. My boys know that after the first 9 days of school they get to go camping.

#3 Add a new element of fun into your routine – find a practical way to add a new element of fun to your daily routine. In the summer an easy way to do this is to let your kids pick a few of their school supplies. Anticipating enjoying using them provides a distraction from any anxiety about going back to school. If the weather changes over fall break or Christmas break, buying some cold weather gear your kids like will give them something to look forward to. Apply this to yourself too – buy a new mug or box of tea, or make a ritual out of pulling out your favorite sweaters and throw blankets when the weather changes.

#4 Invite help solving problems – if your kids express concerns about going back to school after a break, don’t be too quick to dismiss their feelings or to solve the problem. Listen for a concern that is actionable and then guide them toward a solution that will help them feel better. Even better – let them help you solve one of your problems. This is one of my favorite strategies now that my boys are a bit older (the oldest are 7 and 5) and it helps when I don’t want to get out of bed either.

For more on this strategy, read how to get out the door with kids.

#5 Establish clear consequences – this is necessary with some temperaments. When you get strong resistance to the new (old) routine, it is mentally draining to decide how to deal with it on the spot. Setting up rules and expectations about what will happen if your kids do not do their part to get ready for school in evening or the morning is difficult but worth the effort. Once you decide what they are it can be very effective to state them positively rather than negatively. For example I am going to tell my boys, “Boys who go to school get to go camping.” That sounds much more pleasant than “If you don’t go to school you might stay home with grandma.”

#6 Make observations instead of giving directions – ok, I love this one so much I decided to make it its own number. Making observations encourages your kids to think, it gives them a chance to problem solve, to connect the dots, to feel ownership of ideas and decisions. Here are some examples of things you might say to your kids:

Wow, if we start another game it’s going to be hard to wake up in the morning.

It’s 8:00. (they know bedtime is 8:00)

Your homework is on the table.

You have a field trip today.

You have a test tomorrow.

You’re still in your pajamas.

Resist the urge to tell your kids what to do, and instead make observations that will let them come to the conclusion of the action they need to take.

#7 Look at the big picture – count down the days to the end of the break on a wall calendar, talk about the fun memories you made recently, pull up photos and talk about your last family activity, talk about why school is important and how much time there is until the next break. Talking through these things gives your children a sense of the bigger picture and of the rhythms of life.

#8 Add humor and sympathy – when you’ve done the rest of these tips, it’s fun to mix it up and add some humor. When one of my boys says he’s not going to get out of bed, I might respond in half-seriousness with, “Me neither!” Then my boys will look at me quizzically because I am out of bed, I’m in their room, and I’ll follow it up with, “Maybe I’ll go back to bed, what will happen if I do that?”

Then they’ll laugh and say something about what I need to do and why I can’t go back to bed. Sometimes my stronger-willed son will forget that he was not going to get out of bed, other days I do have to fall back on consequences for lack of cooperation, but dialogues like this one lighten the mood and validate their feelings.

This post is part of Motivational Monday at AFreshStartonaBudget.com!

For many of us, we’ve either never joined a gym before, or we stopped going when we had kids. While gyms are getting better at catering to families, and some of my friends enjoying going with their kids, for many of us we need another option. The solution is to set up your on home gym, which you can do on any budget.

If you can’t make it to the gym at all, or even for a season or during bad weather, I recommend starting to set up your own home gym at home. All this really means is taking a little time and money to slowly acquire equipment you love and know how to use, and maintaining a space in the house where the furniture is out of the way so that you have space to set up when you’re ready to work out.

The three most important things to know about creating your own home gym is that you can do it, you can get started for cheap, and that you can add as you go along. I think it’s actually the most fun and reward and productive that way. Get a few basic pieces of equipment that are inexpensive multi-taskers. Learn how to use them. Then add a few more, learn how to use them, work them in your routine, find a few more, and so on.

Start Here: The First Four

To get started I recommend a weighted jump rope, a set or two of neoprene dumbbells starting at 5 or 8 lbs, and two types of resistance bands: loop exercise bands and resistance band with handles. You should be able to buy a jump rope, a set of dumbbells, a set of loop bands and one resistance band for less than $50.

My favorite places to buy exercise equipment are Amazon, Target and stores like TJ Maxx. Look around and compare prices, and don’t be shy about choosing items based on color and not just price! If you enjoy looking at your equipment, if the colors coordinate or just make you happy, that is a factor that matters and is not to be underestimated! Personally I usually just try to avoid anything I think is ugly or manly, but sometimes I find a color choice that makes me really happy. At the same time everything doesn’t need to have color. When you pull your equipment out, you want the room to feel happy but not visually cluttered.

To get started with these, you can look up exercises online. I also recommend these 5 books for your home gym, and several include exercises to use with bands and dumbbells.

Adding to your collection

If you have a wood floor you like to work out on, getting a high density foam mat will open up a lot of additional options without having to go to another room to find some carpet, if that’s even an option. I find if my kids are awake and leaving me alone it’s best to stay right where I am so I finally invested in a pretty purple one for my office floor. I had a classic yoga mat but it was two thin. If you want to lay on the floor get one that is 1/2 in thick.

The next two items I’d recommend are weight lifting gloves and a vinyl coated kettle bell. Either start with 5 lb each dumbbells and an 8 lb kettlebell, or 8 lb each dumbbells and a 10 lb kettlebell. I started with 5 and 8 and worked up to 8 and 10. And you’ll find the others will still be useful, you’ll just use them for different exercises. If you want to lose weight and build some muscle, don’t skip the gloves. I just got new gloves, size medium for $13 on amazon, because I lost the old pair somewhere in this last pregnancy. I find wearing gloves helps me feel strong and confident, and more apt to try a heavier weight for an exercise when I should challenge myself. Wearing gloves never occurred to me before I joined the gym (***add link) for a while and now I love them. If kettle bells seem expensive, watch for a sale or shop stores like TJ Maxx; I really prefer the vinyl coated metal ones over the ones filled with sand. They are less bulky and the weight feels more steady.

Two more items I love that I forgot to add in this picture are a high density foam roller and a classic deck of playing cards. The foam roller was a part of our routine at the gym, and it really does wonders on sore muscles. I use mine at home before I exercise, and the morning after if my muscles feel sore.

When you want an interesting workout, but don’t really want to think about it. Or if you don’t have the time to pull up a video or write down a workout, here’s what you do.

5 Minute Quick Work Out

Pick four different exercises, that use different muscles and/or different pieces of equipment. Get a piece of paper. Draw a heart, diamond, spade and club in a vertical row, and then write one of the four exercises next to each one. Shuffle the deck, set the cards down. Flip over the first one and do that many of that exercise. If your diamond is push ups, and you get the 4 of diamonds, then do 4 push ups. Flip over the next card and repeat. You can do it for any set amount of time, until the deck is done, or until you get tired of those four exercises.

I love this one for maximum use of a short window of time.

Taking Your Home Gym on a budget Up a Notch

Once you’ve established a routine of finding time to exercise, I think it’s fun to reward your efforts with some slightly larger pieces that are well worth the investment and that give you more options. However, make sure that you have space to store bigger items where they won’t be in the way.

The next three items I’d recommend are awesome partly because they are more kid-friendly, both because your kids can learn to use them, and because your kids are not likely to hurt themselves with them, since they have no cords and are not made out of heavy metal. These are the mini trampoline, the adjustable step platform, and the soft-shell wall ball. The wall ball is my absolute favorite piece of equipment. You can throw it against the wall or floor in many different ways. You can hold it in your hands in front of you or above your head while you do lunges. You can incorporate it into sit ups and push ups. It is the most expensive item I’ve bought for working out, but it makes me really happy.

Another item you can add at this point (or earlier) is the balance ball. I have one but rarely use it because my kids are so eager to play with it that it usually causes more problems than it is worth when I get it out. I do still have it, I haven’t given up. I guess I’m waiting to see if my kids will grow up and let me use it, but I should really either use it or pass it on since it takes up space in a closet when not in use.

How to Pick What to Start With

If you’re not sure which items to invest in, here’s my best tip: go test them out! Most gyms offer a free 7 day trial period. Take them up on that and go try the equipment. Look a little online before you go so you have some idea how to experiment. Then go at least once or twice during the 7 days and try all of the free weight type of equipment that I talked about above and figure out which ones you’d like to invest in and use at home. If you have time and want to you can also try the machines to get an idea of one you might want to try to find used. I know I enjoy the elliptical and so eagerly took my in-laws up on the offer to adopt theirs when they decided to get rid of it a few months ago.

However, I want to encourage you that you don’t need a machine, and my experience at the gym taught me that the best exercises are the ones without a machine. The ones where you use simple forces and weights to work your body in different ways. Using free weights, body weight, band and cords lets you fully engage in the process, you focus your mind, you’re in tune with your body. And if you want to listen to music, just get yourself a sports armband for your phone and plug in your ear buds. I love mine; any time I think I have a bit of a window to get away  mentally I strap it on, turn on Pandora, and see how many songs or exercises I can get in before someone comes to find me. My children are starting to recognize my arm band and ear buds. They’re learning that I can’t hear them and am not supposed to be “available” while I’m exercising. But the best exercise I usually get in is that first bit of time before anyone notices that I’m gone. Or if my husband is home they’re getting used to leaving me alone. Of course this is only as long as the baby is still asleep. See my list of things to do while the baby is sleeping here. I should add exercise.

Ideas for Exercises

I usually find once I start looking my main problem is too many options, not too few. But here are my favorite sources for exercise ideas: my list of 5 books for your home gym, the booklets that often come with the above products, and searching for the product on youtube, for example “basic exercises with kettle bell” or “how to use the kettle bell”.

Just for fun

A few more options include: small medicine ball, the balance disc, a heavier kettle bell (useful for the farmer’s carry), the sports armband, and gliding discs for working your abs. With the gliding disks, get in push up position with your toes on the discs. Then bring your knees toward your chest one at a time. I enjoy the balance disk more for idle posture exercises than when I’m working out. I keep it by my desk and will occasionally stand on it for a couple minutes. It’s fun to feel your muscles work simply to keep your balance as your weight shifts.

I recommend setting a starting budget for your home gym, beginning with a few pieces of equipment and maybe one book, and then as you prove to yourself that you will take the time and use them, add more items to your collection to keep it interesting and give yourself more options. Switching up your work out can also help you break through a weight loss plateau, and that’s easy when you get new equipment that lends itself to new exercises.

Now you know that setting up a home gym on a budget is easy, fun, rewarding, and effective. I’d love to hear which equipment you enjoy using the most.

After I lost the baby weight the first time, which was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, I was really proud of myself for accomplishing that goal and getting back into my old clothes. But a year later I had two fun little boys, a 3 yr old and a 1 yr old and was back to a few lbs over my normal weight, but still didn’t feel good, or at least not great. I didn’t feel like me, I wasn’t energetic. Something was missing. When I told my husband how I was feeling, he suggested that I check out the gym and consider joining. It was December, which always seems like a good time to join the gym. This would have never occurred to me (I don’t know why, I just felt like going to the gym was something other people did), but I went to check out the one down the street, loved it, found room in the budget ($70 a month let me leave my two little boys in the play area any time I came to exercise), and signed up on December 27, 2013.

At the Gym

After a month of running on the treadmill and elliptical by myself I joined a new program my gym was starting that made personal training more affordable. It was a group training program where you had small classes and still got the benefit of personalized attention and accountability. At an extra $100 a month I was nervous but excited to try something new. This was the best monetary investment I ever made in my physical health. I began to learn all about nutrition, diet, and exercise in a practical, hands-on kind of way. Pieces of information I had gathered reading about food all fell into place in a way that made more sense, and I learned a ton about muscles and different types of exercise, how to work with your body, and develop it with reduced risk of injury. I was so excited.

And you’re reading this story right here in this post because the next month I found out I was pregnant. And my trainers were amazing. Once I got to about 13 weeks they started modifying my exercises and made sure I had a version of every routine that I could do. I was able to stay with the class until I was about 7 months pregnant. Then I picked back up with them again about 12 weeks after the baby was born in Nov. I had a c-section again (for the third time – a third big boy!) and I could tell that my time at the gym helped me to recover faster. It also helped me lose the baby weight faster, because I was able to start exercising sooner without being afraid of hurting myself.

I was able to simply reverse the process I had taken while pregnant in modifying my exercises, and as my muscles recovered I was able to incorporate exercises back into my routine and do modified versions as needed throughout the process. This was such a different experience from losing weight the first time. Whereas then I was lonely and focused on what I was eating, this time I was surrounded by community and ate similarly but also incorporated a whole new element of exercise into my life, learning how to use various equipment to work toward different goals and to keep it interesting. When my trainers moved on and the gym revamped the course that May, I decided to cancel my membership, save the money, and try everything I had applied to my own routine at home. During my time in the class I had been slowly collecting my favorite of the various equipment we used in our routines so that by the time I quit going to the gym, I had my own home gym ready to keep going with what I had learned.

Through my experience at the gym, I learned my own strength. I learned to love the days that we were able to go outside and do sprints. It’s a great feeling to push yourself to the limit. I saw myself progress in how much weight I could lift. I got definition in the muscles of my upper arms. And before I canceled my membership I got back on the elliptical a few times and could clearly see how much stronger my legs had gotten.

I’m sharing my story to let you know that you can do this too. You can look for a program to join if you have the money in the budget for it. Or you can learn everything you need online, and just find the right accountability partners that will help you have the camaraderie and support that you need.

Watch for an upcoming post about what equipment I have in my home gym and how you can get started for less than $40.

Counting Calories

Part of our class’s routine involved counting calories regularly and turning in our sheets every week. I chose the option of using MyFitnessPal and loved it. In this app you can scan the bar codes on what you eat, or search in their database of ingredients. You add what you eat each day, and then it shows you totals for each macronutrient. For carbs, protein fat, fiber, and sugar you can see your daily totals. Our trainers gave us ratios to aim for, and we each figured out what our own totals should be based on our height, weight, and fitness goals. During my time in the class I hit 100 days in a row of logging my meals, definitely enough to make it a habit.

I don’t do it consistently anymore, only when I need a boost with weight loss or a reminder of what is in the food I eat. But now I eat healthier just from having that season where I saw what was in everything I ate and I saw how some choices led to too much sugar or not enough protein.

Once a month our trainers measured and recorded our weight, as well as our measurements for our shoulders, biceps, stomach, hips, and hamstring. I recommend getting a cloth measuring tape and doing this at home. (If you get one that is meant for sewing, they are just a few dollars.) I don’t do my arms and legs now, but I will if I start doing more weight lifting regularly.  When I’m losing the baby weight, sometimes the scale seems inconsistent, and in addition to that, when you lift weights the gain in muscle can even make the scale lag behind, but taking measurements can let you know when you’ve really made progress.

And for most of us it’s not really the number on the scale that actually matters, it’s looking and feeling good and fitting into our beloved pre-pregnancy clothes. Donating/storing/selling my maternity clothes is a favorite task for me in my regular cycle of pregnant and ‘not’ and I’m so excited to be doing it for the final time. I have a stack of pregnancy clothes I just added to my garage sale pile. (Until this year I had given up on garage sales as a waste of time, but it has become an important strategy in my current effort to conquer the clutter in my home.)

Here in 2017

Now I’m struggling once again to slowly lose the baby weight – for the third and final time. I’m revisiting what worked before and trying to find the umph to do it one more time. I’m hoping I can find some wisdom and guidance not just for myself, but also for other moms that want to lose the baby weight and feel like themselves again. I know how hard that is. Now that I have four boys (7, 5, 3 and 1) I’m finding the challenge of finding time to take care of myself is greater than ever. But we all find time for what really matters, so I’ve determined all I need is a plan.

I’ve been making steady but slow progress. With 20 pounds left I think I’m going to find a way to combine the way I ate the first time I lost the baby weight with everything I learned about exercise and fitness from the second time.

Reading regularly about nutrition, health and exercise was instrumental for me in being both educated and knowledgeable. I’ll sharing soon my top 5 books that most helped me, that I recommend for any home gym/healthy kitchen.

What You Should Know

Here are the biggest things I learned:

1. Paying for personal training is worth it if you maximize the experience, give it your best effort, and learn everything you can with an eye toward being independent and able to do it on your own after a year or so.
2. You don’t need machines. All of the best equipment is affordable and easy to buy, and use and store at home.
3. Nutrition is key. You need to eat differently depending on how much you exercise. You can exercise and eat the right amount, without eating extra calories that ‘cancel out’ your efforts.
4. You can eat well without counting calories, for example here is one way to eat 1800 calories a day on a whole foods, plant-based diet.
5. My body is powerful. I am strong. (and so are you!) Exercise clears my head. Lifting weights, and doing free weight and related exercises build muscle, and are really fun and easy to do at home.
6. Learning about nutrition and fitness helps you stay informed and motivated. It also keeps it interesting and helps you learn how to deal with weight loss plateaus. I’ll be sharing soon the core books in my home gym.
7. An effective home gym is easier than you might think. Read about what it is in mine and how you can set up your own home gym on a budget.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Learn more here

The first time that I lost the baby weight was in 2012. I had just finished having two little boys in 2 years. I was ready to feel like myself again. After beginning to read about exercise, diet and nutrition in a few places I came across Mark Hyman’s book, Ultrametabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss. I had heard that our bodies naturally want to hold onto weight and body fat as a survival mechanism but I also knew that women were supposed to lose the baby weight that we gain during pregnancy.

His book promised to explain how to work with our bodies, give them the right food to manage food allergies, to detox your system, and to lose weight. I waded through all of the science and technical chapters, and started researching and buying some of the clean foods he recommended for the diet, such as this Brown Rice Protein Powder and this Flax and Borage Oil. When I’ve revisited the diet, those were the only special ingredients I bought – for the smoothie. Otherwise you just buy more/different produce, meat and grains. Exercise is not a significant part of the diet but he does recommend walking a few times a week. However you can follow this diet and lose the baby weight without exercising. (The second time I lost the baby weight I did learn about a lot about exercise, including how to set up your own home gym.)

The UltraSimple Diet

Then I also discovered that he had written a simpler book, focusing on the details of the diet, called The UltraSimple Diet. I got a copy of this book to keep long term and gave Ultrametabolism to my dad. In the UltraSimple Diet you do a really strict whole-foods diet for 7 days, and then begin to add back in healthy foods one kind at a time.

My favorite thing about this diet is that you basically eat the same thing every day. I’ve seen so many promising-sounding diets that I started to learn about and I was honestly just turned off by the ones where you have to try so many different new recipes. It’s just too much to add to my life at once. I know they are trying to keep it interesting, but for me, if I can figure out 2-3 new recipes and get a 7 day diet out of that learning curve, and it works – that is what makes me happy, and why this is the diet I come back to when I’m trying to lose weight again – in this case, the baby weight from my fourth and final boy.

Back to the diet: you eat fresh vegetables, fish, chicken, legumes, brown rice, nuts, noncitrus fruits, fresh vegetable broth. This diet is unique in that it cuts out typically healthy food that cause some people problems, so you eliminate common allergenic foods in addition to sugary and processed foods. You don’t eat sugar, artificial sweeteners, natural sweeteners, alcohol, caffeine, citrus fruits or juices, yeast, dairy products, eggs, gluten, corn, beef, pork, lamb

Over Memorial Day weekend that year I went on a camping trip with my husband, our two little boys and some good friends. (Total side note: never go camping on that weekend, our target campsite filled up and we had to go to a private one that was full of obnoxious noisy (read: drunk) campers. First and last time staying at a private campground.)

But we really did have a great time in the Outer Banks. And then I got home and looked at our photos from the trip and suddenly all I could see was how much heavier I was. I had sort of been trying to lose weight for a few months, with really slow progress. All I could think was “this isn’t me” and “I’m not that person”, “I’m not going to live life like this”. I finished gathering the ingredients I needed, I prepped some vegetables and bought others to make the homemade broth. The day after the last item came in the mail from vitacost, I started.

A Day on the Diet

Wake up and journal (he has a few questions you answer every morning, to help you reflect on the process, and to learn to listen to your body)

Lemon juice and hot water; green tea; smoothie (he calls it an UltraShake)

Vegetable broth for morning snack

Sauteed vegetables with brown rice; some berries; UltraShake if you’re still hungry

Rest for 30 min or take a walk

Sauteed vegetables with brown rice; fish or chicken or tofu or beans

Journal; take a bath (this actually important, see below)

Hardest. Thing. Ever.

In the book he says to take a week before the diet to eliminate sugar, processed food, caffeine, and alcohol from your diet. I mostly did that. The hardest one for me was sugar (and chocolate). But I was desperate for a change, so I did it.

So. Hard.

I drank the homemade vegetable broth. Most of it. To make it I had bought funny looking and sounding vegetables that I had never noticed in the grocery store before, much less purchased and brought home to cut up and bowl in a big pot. I bought turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, kale, chard, daikon and winter squash. You basically boil them with other more familiar ingredients such as onion, carrots, cabbage, seaweed, garlic, and mushrooms. Boil them for an hour, strain the vegetables out, store the broth in a glass container in the fridge and drink 3-4 cups a day.

I drank it for a few days. Then I gave the rest to my mother-in-law to try. Then I tried some organic boxed vegetable broth which he says in the book is much inferior but better than nothing, and then the last day I gave up on the broth and ate the other snack alternatives – carrots and hummus, leftovers, nuts and seeds.

Why It Worked

This is where I can testify to the diet strategy of investing time and money and picking a date to start and end, and telling people. Okay, maybe that is 3 strategies. I had invested time reading the book and prepping ingredients, and a little extra money from our food budget on some special ingredients, so I figure I’d better see it through for at least 7 days.

I also think the novelty of the ingredients and the process was helpful. While I got tired of the taste of the broth and fairly unhappy about it, I think mostly I was just going through sugar withdrawal, and following the details of the diet actually gave me something to think about, to occupy myself. By the time I had figured out the diet and was forming an opinion about it, I had almost made it through the week.

The funniest thing to me looking back is that I started a little list of what food I really missed, and it was mostly healthy: things like honey, dark chocolate, oatmeal, oranges. So after the week was up I added back in those first. You’re supposed to add gluten and dairy back in first, each a couple of days at a time, so you can identify anything that is bothering you, but I could already tell I didn’t have any food allergies or sensitivities. I think my main ailment was my sweet tooth.

Over the years I have become less and less addicted to sugar, but I still find myself having seasons where I know I am eating for emotional reasons, or eating sugar for the sugar high, and usually only when I’m lonely or stressed.

So the diet worked, and I was elated. I lost a few pounds the first week and then 1 pound a week for several weeks afterward. Then my weight loss started to plateau and I had to mix it up a bit in a few ways, but Dr. Hyman’s book was the primary influence in my weight loss that summer.

I refrained from processed and sugary foods and added back in most of the whole foods, watching my portion size. From June through November I lost 20 lbs, getting back to within a few pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight from before my first son. Whenever I needed a boost I would go back to a less strict version of the diet for a few days, but I never made the UltraBroth again. (But I might try it again in the fall of 2017, stay tuned! lol)

The Best Part

Okay, so I almost forgot to mention the third part of the diet. You’re supposed to take a bath. Yes, you heard me. Go on this diet and you can take a bath every other night and tell your husband it’s an important part of the new diet you’re trying for the week.

But seriously, he describes the “UltraBath” as a “key component” of the program. You add Epsom salt, baking soda and lavender essential oil to hot water, and soak for 20 minutes. This relaxes your nervous system, lowers the cortisol (stress hormone) in your system, helps you detox, and enhances your sleep afterward. He says the increased circulation and heart rate even serve as a passive form of exercise.

Looking back on this now, after years of attempting to lose weight with varying degrees of success in certain seasons, I think I can say that stress is a definite factor that can interfere with your efforts. Whenever you are making a serious weight loss push, you should think in terms of managing three aspects of your life, not just two: nutrition, diet and stress.

Back in the here and now – 2017

I’m doing all right losing the baby weight this year. I’m incorporating a lot more exercise than the last time I followed this diet specifically and strictly. But I feel like I need a boost, and I don’t like how much processed food I end up eating and I need some structure that will reset my palate and keep me away from sugar.

I think I’m going to try The UltraSimple Diet again when the boys go back to school in the fall. It’s too hard to do it with them home. Anyone want to join me?

If you want to learn more, I highly recommend the book:,The UltraSimple Diet by Mark Hyman.

Once you are ready to incorporate exercise, here is how to set up your own home gym on a budget.