Jen's Blog

I have had several people ask me lately about my Sunday meal prep day.  This is something I have been doing pretty consistently for a while, not just since I joined Weight Watchers.  I spend a few hours in the kitchen on Sunday afternoon and prep as much food as I have the time and energy for.  Some weeks I am able to prep a lot, and some weeks just a little.  At the very least I prep my snacks for work and at least a few of my work lunches.  On a good week I can do all of my lunches and some dinner prep too.  Sometimes food prep just involves planning. I eat pretty much the same snacks every day.  My morning snack is a light string cheese, 7 almonds and an apple.  That is easy to prep.  I put the string cheese and almonds in a snack size bag and grab an apple each day.  My afternoon snack varies a bit more, but usually I have vegetables in some form so I chop as many fresh vegetables on Sunday as I can.  Easy to grab.  Somet...

I have been living with the Weight Watcher Smart Points plan for a little over three weeks now.  I shared a bit last week about my new journey.  It was hard (and a little embarrassing) but the wonderful and supportive comments I received made it worthwhile.  I know, despite how it feels sometimes, that I am not the only one who struggles with eating right, staying active and losing weight. My son  hunting eggs  So I decided to go ahead and keep sharing, if I motivate just one person it's totally worth it.  And since it's currently cold, cloudy and rainy at the end of April when I am writing this, it might just motivate myself to go down to the basement and hop on my elliptical. I weighed in Saturday, my third weigh in since joining, and was happy that I was down another 1.2 pounds, for a grand total of 7.4 pounds in three weeks.  Since it was Easter week and my goal was to stay the same I felt super happy to have a loss.  Especially since ...

Before picture...with my boys in Grand Cayman!  April 2017 Anyone who knows me knows I have always struggled with my weight and that in the last few years I have developed diabetes.  In 2009 I successfully lost 30 pounds with Weight Watchers, and my fasting blood sugar went down quite a lot without medicine.  While I have successfully kept almost half of that off since then I have gained the other half back, and my blood sugar has gone up as well. Although I haven't had to go on insulin, I am currently on three medications to keep my blood sugars low.  That along with exercise and fairly healthy eating habits has helped keep my numbers in control. But...I love food.  And I love sugar.  I know it's a little bit of an obsession and addiction but there you go.  When my blood sugar went back up the last few months I wasn't surprised.  Winter was rough for me this year, not enough sun, I made some bad food choices and I wasn't as active as usual....

As many of you know I am a reference librarian at my local library.  One of my duties, shared with the reference department, is writing blog posts for our reference blog.  I am pleased to share some of my blog posts here.  Topics range from  the personal, my life with diabetes, dieting and taking better care of myself to new authors I am falling in love with and genres that I want to share with others. Please visit my libraries webpage and take a look! Planning you Perfect Summer Vacation Beach Reads Women's Fiction Eat, Run, Live Keep Moving, Body and Soul Running Playlist Chick Lit Amish Romance

I am not going to lie, the last few weeks have been rough!  The cold weather, the snow and my week long cold.  I did not exercise at all last week!  And I have been dying to run outside but I just can't bring myself to do it in the cold and the snow!  Add into that the home renovations we have been doing and the fact I started graduate school in.  Crazy! I did however get back on track this week!  I restarted week 3 of my 5k to 10k program, and I could tell I took a week off!  So far this week I have been active everyday except Sunday. Monday - Ran 20 minutes, 5 minute warm up and cool down, 10 minutes arm strength Tuesday - 50 minutes yoga, abs workout Wednesday - 40 minutes elliptical Today my plan is to get in 25 minutes of running, 35 minutes total.  Friday is elliptical and maybe yoga and Saturday is my long run for this week, 40 minutes. Also this week I decided to do something about the 10 pounds I gained over the holidays and I t...