Another Ab Product Temptation

How many products have there been? All advertising to be the BEST THING since sliced bread!

I was so close. I almost did the unthinkable--at least in my book. I mean, I was literally minutes away from putting the box in my shopping cart when a rationale voice on the other end of my phone unknowingly brought me back to my senses. It was after my son's soccer practice and I had made a stop at Target before picking my daughter up from drivers training. Let's see...I needed some dish detergent, sandwich bags, and a few other household products BUT my main objective was to purchase the Ab Lounger. Remember the Ab Lounger? Yes, I know this particular product is old news, however, I know too many people who swear by the results it produces--if you use it, of course. Anyway, as the product is old, it was no where to be found in the store BUT the Perfect SitUp was! Backstory: I was mildly interested in this fitness equipment when I first saw the infomercial but I always reminded myself of my firm rule against buying into the endless advertisements for abdominal exercise equipment. They all advertise the same thing, don't they? Providing money back guarantees, and everything to suck you in further. The key is--you have to use the equipment ALONG WITH A PROPER DIET in order to get the desired results and that's where most of us--okay, where I fail.


As my friend was advising me to check out the product reviews before I purchased the equipment, I was reminding myself of the Bender ball and the 8lb medicine ball for abdominal exercises that I had at home and had not been not using. "What makes you think you're going to use this?" I admonished myself. "Do you really want to spend $100 on something that's going to eventually end up taking up space in your house?" NO!

So, after about an hour browsing the fitness aisle I settled on a new jump rope. I figure I can use that while my son is at soccer practice before I walk the track and most importantly, it won't take up any space in my house.

Chicken--The Enemy

"Okay, honey. Looks like we have to cut chicken out of our diet." I announed to my daughter when I came home from another informative session at the beauty salon. The loctitians at the shop are always discussing informative and interesting topics, either with each other or with their clients. Anyway, my daughter promptly looked at me like I'd lost my mind FOR REAL and started cracking up! Only she didn't know how serious that I was.

Interesting enough this was the second time that I heard in the beauty shop of someone warning of consuming too much chicken. Difference is, the first time they didn't really say why. During that conversation, they'd only said it wasn't good to eat chicken more than once or twice a week. This time, however, the conversation went further into the why's, pertaining to the enormous amount of hormones injected into the chickens so they can grow faster or be bigger. Yes, I'd heard of this before, but I'd never tied it into why my daughter has always battled with her weight--besides the fact that we ate too much fast food & too many sugar filled sweets. I cut out beef years ago. We eat  more veggies. I switched to brown rice instead of white rice. I bake food instead of frying it, etc. Still, my daughter remains on the heavier side. And you know my belly issue.

Therefore, while she's on her weight-loss kick and I'm revving mine back up, I'm going to tweak our diets a tad bit and see what happens. Maybe with this, she'll be more likely to eat more fish.

3/17/11 1:00P.M.

So far so good. Dry Cinnamon Toast Crunch & coffee for breakfast. Snack: Apple. Lunch: Pizza slice. Could've done better with lunch, but I also brought a small soup to eat that late afternoon before I leave work so I can eat a light dinner. AND I plan to get my exercise on this evening before I go to the doctor to have my foot examined. Yes, after nearly 3 months of walking around with a sore, sometimes throbbing, big toe on my right foot, a couple of my coworkers finally convinced me to have my foot looked at by a doctor instead of going along with my self-diagnosis of a possible spranged toe. I'm hoping the doctors can do something to hurry the healing along so I can get back to performing the lunges correctly on my 10lb slimdown program. Lord knows I don't need anything to use as an excuse for not exercising.

Did I Do That???

3/16/11 7:30P.M.

How in the world did I end up shoving a chocolate covered donut in my mouth at the end of the day? It was bad enough that I ended up with a Burger King hamburger and small French fry(their rendition of the size) for dinner because my loctitian was running an hour behind schedule and when I left to get something to eat while I waited, I was too hungry to make a healthy selection. Sure, realistically, whether she started on time or not, considering I didn't bring any healthy snacks with me for the time I'd be at the shop, I probably would've ended up with something unhealthy for dinner anyway, but I was still mad as hell. Nevertheless, when I finally left the shop, I considered picking up a Carmel Mocha from McDonalds for the ride home. Craving a little sugar, I guess, but I disciplined myself and continued in route to my moms to get my kids. Somewhere along the way I lost that discipline because as soon as I caught sight of the YumYum Donut box on my mom's stove I almost knocked one of my nephews over trying to see what was left in the box! A chocolate covered donut! Oooh! Yummy! Perhaps that's why God led me away from the mocha because he knew I had another treat waiting on me, right? Anwyay, my mom--bless her heart--offered me the whole donut when I'd only asked for half of it, so I obliged :)Figuring in that I didn't get any exercise in for the day, the only thing I can congratulate myself on is not giving into the idea--can't call it temptation because I really didn't want anymore--of nibbling on more of those Keeble Fudge Stripe cookies that I conveniently forgot to throw away.

I went to bed praying for a better tomorrow.