Category: Health

Last week, I hopped on the scale confident that I would see the results of the other people I am in this program with.  In general, things have always come easily to me, and I expected the results from this program to be the same way.  I knew I hadn’t been perfect with my nutrition or 100% “on” in my workouts, but surely my results would be as jaw dropping as so many I had seen online already. We’ve all been there, right?  We put in some of the work, but expect all of the results.

You see, I’ve been doing a program called “80 Day Obsession” that challenges me physically, mentally, and in my nutrition. The program is split into three phases and we just wrapped up the first phase.  I watched all weekend as people posted some pretty dramatic changes in weight, inches, and other non-scale victories as well.  It’s been a TOUGH program, but I’ve loved how it has challenged me in every area of my life.

I took my measurements and photos and wasn’t that impressed.  There were  changes, but not a ton. I felt defeated.  Thoughts ran through my head like “It’s your own fault.  You are terrible at staying on track with your nutrition,” and “You didn’t give every single workout 100%. You could have pushed more some days.”  Basically my brain was telling me I wasn’t enough and couldn’t be enough.

 

Mindset Shift

I knew I need a swift kick in the mindset. For the first time, I pulled out my photos from May 2016, when I first realized that I NEEDED a change in my life.  The differences between then and now SHOCKED me.   I’m down roughly 15 lbs and 17 inches (not to mention, fewer anxiety and depression symptoms, better sleep, and less sickness).  It took a year and a half to get to where I am now, and I am PROUD of that fact.  For some people, those results can happen in a much shorter time, but I keep reminding myself to stay in my lane and focus on MY journey.

My Journey, My Results

I didn’t end up at my heaviest, most anxious, most depressed state overnight.  Or even over a year and a half.  I got there from 22 years of not being active enough and growing up on almost 100% processed foods.  It was a result of emotional eating and negative self-talk.  It was my own fault, but it didn’t help growing up being told that I wasn’t “the active type” and by being told that I was young and could eat whatever I wanted. I got there because I didn’t treat my body the way God intends and expects me to.

Twenty two years of damage is not going to be undone overnight.  This journey is not dropping pounds with magic shakes, pills, or bars.  On this journey, I am training myself to make better decisions for better reasons.  I’m learning that this isn’t about deprivation or punishing your body. This is about creating a sustainable lifestyle where I train my body to crave healthy foods, where I put in the work to get the results I want, and where I learn to put God’s intentions for me before anything else. I’m staying in my own lane and not comparing my journey to anyone else’s!

To read more about my health journey click here!

“Try this shake and these at-home workouts! They’ll change your life!” I’d heard the spiel before, but I finally caved and decided to give it a try. Now, before you roll your eyes at me, hear me out.

“You’re just trying to make money off of me”

The whole business seemed a little sketchy to me. I was skeptical, just as I know many others are. I always understood that Shakeology would be good for my body. That part wasn’t confusing. What pushed me away was that for years, people tried to convince me to buy their shakes or purchase a program. I hated it. It was always a “cold message” from people I rarely talked to.

That’s why I didn’t do it. I wasn’t seeing the value, nor was I feeling valued by the people cold messaging me.

This time felt different

When Amber’s team came into my life, it was different. There were no cold messages. I had to come to THEM.

I tried Amber’s group once from a fitness side, because I was sick of my gym. I was paying for a monthly membership to a gym that I wasn’t getting results from. I even had a personal trainer, but once a week check-ins just weren’t enough to help me.

I had NO intention of sticking with it. It just so happened that there was a special deal that month where I could get BOD and Shakeology for cheaper than a month with my trainer and with his shakes that I didn’t like, so I figured I would do BOD for a month or two while we moved and I could find a new gym then.

But then I started noticing changes. I wasn’t snacking emotionally from my anxiety. I was hardly snacking at all. I was working out every day, and I had a community of women who stood by my side and every day pushed me to “press play” on a workout.

For the first time, I was consistently working out, eating healthy, and I felt better then I had in years.   

What happened when I stopped the shakes?

After the challenge group, I stopped drinking Shakeo, because, like many of you, I didn’t think it was worth the cost. Cody and I are hard core budgeters who spend very little on anything (except paying off student loans, woof).

I also started noticing changes this time too. Snacking was sneaking back into my life, even though I was still drinking shakes from my old gym. But there was NO WAY I was going to spend more on groceries each month by buying these shakes.

Another month passed, and I realized that I just didn’t have the same energy that I had in previous months. I felt SO discouraged. What was wrong with me? My husband (FYI, Beachbody’s biggest skeptic at the time), pointed out that I didn’t have my Shakeology and was instead snacking on other things.

I still didn’t want to give in completely

I decided that FINE, I’d buy the shakes once ever 3-4 months and only have them on days I was feeling tired. This happened to be the month that Take Back the Kitchen Launched.

The combination of all these things finally seemed to line up. Shakeology kept my snacking from going out of control. The meal plans kept us full of healthy foods and stopped us from eating out as much. We realized that even if we bought Shakeology every month and did the meal plans provided, we were only spending $80 a week including all food and shakes. It wasn’t a budget-buster like we assumed it would be.

Now we drink a shake everyday

Both of us have more energy to do all our day-to-day things AND workout. We love saving time on meal planning. But the best part by far is the community. Cody and I are

each in a fitness accountability group and a nutrition accountability group. These groups encourage us and push us to be our best.

Now, it still feels crazy to say that I’m one of those crazy Beachbody people that love drinking Shakeology, but it’s true. The difference between NOW and years past when people asked me is that I get so much added value in the form of meal plans, time savings, and community.

If you have questions about our health and fitness journey or want to know how you can get involved with Take Back the Kitchen, you can contact us here.

Disclosure: I am an independent Beachbody Coach. The postings on my site are my own and do not necessarily represent the position, strategy or opinions of Beachbody and its brands

It’s been said over and over that weight loss and overall fitness are 10% exercise and 90% diet. It sounds simple enough, but I have one major downfall when it comes to a healthy diet – snacking. I have a deep love for sweets and other junk food. In fact, I even worked in our college’s bakery for a few years. Sweets are my love language.

Junk Food Experts

Cody and I have been known to constantly have candy corn in the house during the fall. People also have commented on our wine bottle full of M&Ms. We even have been known to indulge in ice cream every single night.

For a long time I justified it, saying that it was “just” one snack a day. No big deal. I even was careful to snack within my calorie allotment for the day. Even with the calorie limits and working with a personal trainer, I still wasn’t seeing results. People kept telling me to cut out the junk food, but . . . I just couldn’t for longer than a few days. But it was time to see if a diet change would really help me see results.

Why moving was good for our snacking

May 2017 was a crazy month for us. We moved out of our fairly comfortable apartment and into our ideal location townhouse. Notice I said ideal LOCATION and not ideal sight, smell, color, etc (but more on that another time). At the same time, I quit my personal trainer, because even though I liked my trainer, I wasn’t seeing results nor staying motivated to actually go to the gym every day.

Before we moved, we tossed out ALL of our junk food. Leftover candy from post-Easter sales, marshmallows, chips, cookies . . . you name it, it was gone! It sounds like I probably just lost my mind, but really there were a few things that led to this pre-move junk food purge.

The things that helped

I wasn’t seeing results with my trainer, and a friend showed me how to sign up for an at-home workout program that uses portion control containers and helps you refocus your diet, so I already had a little bit of pressure to step up with the other people in my accountability group.

I was FED UP with feeling down. My anxiety and depression symptoms were reappearing with more frequency leaving me feeling tired and just “bleh”. I read that what we fuel our bodies with can make a big difference to not only our physical health, but our mental health.

I was so sick of packing. So the idea that I could toss an entire moving box or two’s worth of stuff made getting rid of the junk food that much easier.

But, Osegards, I’m not moving. . .

We hear you. You don’t have to move to do a junk food purge; that’s just what made it easier for us! In the four months since “the purge”, we have been doing a lot better. We still have some bad foods that sneak in – some pop, chips (we make homemade salsa, so we can’t help it . . . or at least that’s our excuse), and of course the occasional ice cream. However, after going an entire month without any junk in the house, we are now a lot more conscious of what we allow in the house and how frequently we are eating it.

What are your tricks to keeping the junk food to a minimum at your house? We’d love for you to share your tips in the comments below or on our Facebook page!  We love hearing from you no matter how you contact us!

 

When Cody and I got married in 2014, I was an embarrassment in the kitchen. I seriously knew NOTHING about cooking or meal planning. My best kitchen skill was boiling water, and my frozen pizza game was on point, but beyond that? I had never used a grill. Plus, I didn’t know how to steam veggies unless they come in the microwave steamer bags. Raw meat made me cringe, and I avoided touching it by any means possible. I couldn’t cut anything, or even use a grown-up knife. Literally, I used one of those giant plastic lettuce knives to cut everything from meat to tomatoes.

Cody on the other hand had worked as a cook and bartender at a restaurant for a number of years. Ladies – marry a bartender/cook. Trust me. However, because of our schedules, I was left making most of the meals, so I had to learn and learn FAST.

For the first few months, we would just make a few random things that I could figure out and maybe one or two complicated recipes that would leave me almost in tears while Cody finished them when he got home. I felt like a failure of a wife. Not only that, but we were spending SO MUCH on groceries and had no idea how to fix that.

Changing the focus to the budget

Cooking clearly didn’t come naturally to me, but I liked the idea of budgeting, so I figured out a plan.  Each week I would follow these meal planning steps to saving us money.

1. Check to see what we had leftover in the fridge and pantry and what meals we could make from that.
2. Pull together all the ads from local grocery stores to see what was on sale.  Zucchini? Great. We’ll have zucchini boats.
3. Add in a few other low-cost meals. You know, rice and beans and such.
4. Make a list of all the ingredients we will need and cross of what we already have or what we can make do without.
5. Grocery shop, often at three places just to get the best deals.
6. Inevitably forget something and have to send Cody out to the nearest store (which was crazy expensive).

It worked. We were spending $50 a week on groceries. The downside? This whole meal planning process would often take three or more hours plus shopping time. It became exhausting, and I knew there were so many other things I could be doing with this time. I started to resent Cody for it, because clearly he didn’t appreciate all the work I was doing to get halfway decent meals on the table without breaking the bank.

We followed this process for a few years. It worked, but it wasn’t super enjoyable. I did get faster at prepping the meals, but that was mainly because we rotated through the same 10-15 meals all the time. We were also only eating “healthy-ish” – it was all homemade, but not super nutritious. We spent all this time making homemade meals, but in all actuality, they weren’t much healthier than just eating out. Our lack of a balanced diet left me 25lbs heavier than in college and Cody 25lbs lighter (the man needed some protein).

Taking back the kitchen (and our health)

Now we are a part of an amazing program that gives us brand new meals each week, created by a registered dietician. She sends us the meals, a grocery list, and a list of what we can prep ahead of time to make dinner run more smoothly. That’s right – I do no meal planning!  We are getting a balanced diet with lots of protein. After one month, I am down a few pounds and Cody is building some muscle, just because we are getting the nutrients we need. We are spending a little bit more (roughly $80/week), but the health benefits and time saved is SO worth it! Plus the recipes are incredible and make me feel like my kitchen skills are amazing. We are taking back the kitchen, one healthy meal at a time!

If you would like more information on this way of meal planning or want to join us (we have a Facebook group with a week of free recipes you can test out), please contact me.  I’d love to help you take back your kitchen as well!