Highly motivated...

What a fantastic week I've been having! I didn't have an overly eventful week, but I've been really motivated this week to exercise. I have done some exercise or another every day since Sunday, which to me, is great! Usually I'm not motivated to work out every day, but this week has been different. Even on the days where I haven't felt up to exercising I've broke down and done something anyway. Yesterday I even took my kids out in the stroller for a five kilometre walk. I haven't walked that far at one time since February. It was nice. I was going to take the kids for a walk again this morning, but it's really windy and I didn't want to take them out in it (not to mention my double stroller is a pain in the rear to push under optimal conditions, let alone when it's super windy).

In addition to walking and/or riding my stationary bike, I've been using my Daily Workout app pretty much daily. I love that app! It's so easy to incorporate into my daily routine. At the moment, I only do about 10 minutes of "floor" exercises (I call them floor exercises because there are a lot that are done on the floor and for lack of a better name). Each day I do two of the four main sections for five minutes each. So one day I will do five minutes of arm exercises and five minutes of leg exercises. The next day I will do five minutes of each of the ab and butt (as the app so eloquently puts it...) exercises. When I'm feeling more confident in my ability, I'll increase each exercise's time increments to 7.5 minutes and then to 10, but for now five minutes works just fine for me.

I've been eating alright this past week, though I find myself really hungry lately. I'm not sure why, maybe because of my increased activity, I don't know. I've been trying very hard to make sure that I stay within my daily calorie budget and that I don't "eat" my exercise calories. This past Tuesday I was ravenously hungry, so I did break down and "eat" my exercise calories, but I didn't eat more than my calorie budget plus the burned calories (meaning, I was still in the clear for the day). Hopefully I don't feel this way for long. It definitely makes it hard to stay on track when I'm constantly feeling hungry. I've been trying to make good food choices when I am hungry, like snacking on an apple or some cucumber slices.

Speaking of apples, I came across a very tasty and not-so-bad-for-you apple recipe on Pinterest. It's called "Apples in a Bag" (the recipe is by Paula Rhodes). It's so quick and simple to make! Here's the recipe:

Ingredients
1 medium apple
1 packet of sweetener or a spoonful of sugar
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon water
Small handful of raisins, optional

Instructions
Peel or don’t peel apple, core and slice or dice. Place in freezer-quality plastic zippered bag along with remaining ingredients. Seal bag and shake well to mix ingredients. Reopen bag just a touch to vent. Microwave on High for 2 minutes – longer if you use a big apple. Carefully (it will be HOT and steamy) open bag and pour over plain or cinnamon-sugar pita chips, flour tortilla chips, oatmeal or ice cream.

Note: It is important that a freezer bag is used for this recipe. If a regular sandwich bag is used, it'll just melt and make a horrible mess in your microwave.

When I make them, I don't use the raisins and I use half a tablespoon of brown sugar, plus I just eat it on it's own (no chips or ice cream). I have tried both peeled and non-peeled apples. Because I have an issue with textures, I prefer the peeled apples because when you cook them, the apple's insides go soft (think of apple pie), but the skin remains hard and crunchy. It's just not a combination I find appealing. Once everything is combined and cooked, it's almost like you're eating apple pie or crumble, but without all the pastry. There are about 123 calories for this recipe and it's really quite filling and satisfies my sweet tooth. I actually need to pick up more apples so that when I have another sweet craving, I can make this again.

I've gotten in the terrible habit of weighing myself every day or every other day. I don't know why I've started to do this and it definitely plays tricks on my head. I don't record my weight on Lose It! every time I weigh, usually just on Monday (unless there was a pretty good loss). Since I recorded my last weight, which was 246.3, I have gone up to 247.2 and I have remained pretty constant on that number for the last few days. I'm not sure why that is. As I've said, I've been making sure to stay within my budget for the day. The only thing I can attribute the gain to is building muscle mass. I'm hoping that I can figure it out soon because not having a loss, especially when you're doing things right, is very frustrating. I also hope that when I take my measurements for the start of September that they will reflect a loss in inches to at least compensate for the lack of loss in weight.