Calorie Counting

Okay, so the general rule of thumb when dieting for counting calories is 1200-1500 calories a day, broken down somewhat like this:

Breakfast: 300-400 calories
Lunch: 400-500 calories
Dinner: 500-600 calories

The hardest part about counting calories is getting "outside the box" of convenient frozen meals that give you all the nutritional info you need right on the handy-dandy packaging, and getting into making healthy, tasty, meals and including a little bit of variety in your life.

I learned of an awesome website today called www.CalorieKing.com

Here you can type in a food (either brand name, general food, or restaurant name) and it will bring you back the nutritional breakdown for that food by calories, fat, sugars, carbs, protein, etc., every little bit of info. you would want to know ... so you can figure out how each of the ingredients in your meal will contribute to your daily caloric intake.

To take it one step further, it even gives you an example of what amount of exercise you would have to do to work that meal/ingredient off (i.e. 50 minutes of walking vs. 20 minutes of jogging vs. 15 minutes of swimming vs. 27 minutes of biking).

Another fun thing to do is compare the unhealthy foods that we are used to with their healthy alternatives. Take "Soy Beef" vs. "Ground Beef 80% lean" ...
Per 3 oz. serving:
Calories: 118 vs. 231
Fat grams: 1.8 vs. 14.8
Cholesteral: 0 vs. 76 grams
Really, I know you love to tease me, but with stats like that, you gotta give it a shot!

I hope you find this as useful as I did! :) -Karen.

Mini Triathlon

So I am training for an event that will take place in Coronado on the last weekend I am here, on Sunday, July 27th at 7:30am. It is a "Mini-Triathlon", sometimes called a "Sprint-Triathlon" where you do swimming, running, and biking, just like a real triathlon, but with shorter distances.

The idea of doing this freaks me out but they do like to push us beyond our comfort zones, and they certainly are accomlishing that with me. It will be a 400 meter ocean swim, 4 mile bike ride, and 1 mile run. The ocean swim is what is making me most nervous. If I can survive that, the bike ride and run will be a cake walk! (mmmmmm.... caaaaaake ...)

We train every afternoon here with the swimming/biking/running. I haven't swam -- I mean real swimming like lap swimming with a real stroke) since I was about 8 years old taking swim lessons at little ol' Eatonville High School from the 'big kids' there. When I first got in the pool this week to do that, I had a total panic attack... something about putting my face down in the water wasn't something my mind could get past. Luckily there are phenominal coaches here, and she broke it down to the basics for me... down to the point where I was blowing bubbles in the water -- Alli and I have a lot in common this summer with our swim lesson stories! By the end of the hour I was swimming the crawl stroke as if I had been doing it my whole life, it just took getting over that stupid mental block.

Swimming is still something I don't have much endrance for yet, so I will have to work hard to build that up over the next 2 weeks. Soon we will start doing swim training in the ocean instead of the pool, so we can get used to that too.

Looking online, Lake Del Valle and Shadow Cliffs have several Mini-Tri type of events throughout the year, so it gives me a good goal of something to continue in the future (plus, the lake swimming will be so easy compared with swimming in the ocean (with the seaweed and the sharks!) here).

Pray for me!

3 Down, 3 To Go!

PHEW, what a week it has been. I definately needed this weekend to recouperate.

I'm so excited to hit the half-way mark of my time here. Several people went home on Friday after the 3 week mark (you can come to camp for 1, 3, 6, 9, or 10 weeks) and it made me a bit sad that I don't yet get to go home to my family. While I've been handling the homesickness well up to this point, it has put me in a bit of a funk this weekend.

I've been told to stay busy to keep my mind occupied, so though I'm giving my feet a rest to recover from some terrible blisters this past week, I'm doing some mild non-foot-needing workouts so I'm not in my room sulking! :-

Activities I took the past week include: Kickboxing, Body Burn, Zumba, Pilates, Yoga, Boot Camp Fitness, 5K Training, Step Aerobics, Core Stability, Butts and Gutts, Mini Triathlon Training (more on that in another post), and the 8.5 mile camp hike.

I'm really getting pushed to the limits now ... hurting never felt so good. (ugh)

Doctor Checkups

Dan had a DELIGHTFUL (!) time taking both kids to their doctor checkups this week all by himself! I'm so proud of him, taking both children out without backup support is a daunting task, and he handled it like a champ! They both tested his survival skills of course, but he conquered all challenges that were presented to him.

Anyway, here are how the kids measured up:

Alli (3-year check-up):
WEIGHT: 29 lbs 1.6oz (31st percentile)
HEIGHT: 3' 0.5" (29th percentile)

Woo-hoo, finally broke 3 feet tall! She can finally get on rides without having to stretch!

Charlie (9-month check-up):
WEIGHT: 21 lbs 6.6oz (67th percentile down from 80th % at 6 month check-up!)
HEIGHT: (54th percentile)

Hope Y'all had a great Independence Day!

Here are some pics of Alli and Charlie enjoying 4th of July festivities!

"mmmm... popsicles ... " ... Charlie's not so sure!

Parades Are Fun!!

Party-ing Is Hard Work!!

My first 5K!

Happy Independence Day!!!

I ran my first 5K this morning on Coronado Beach, down by the beautiful Hotel del Coronado. 3.1 miles doesn't sound like that far, but I despise running with a passion, and running this thing without stopping to walk was my goal, and I actually did it, and that was a major accomplishment for me! I got goosebumps as we crossed the finish line (I ran with one of the counselors from camp and another girl from my team).

Here's a pic from my cell phone ... not great quality, but had to leave the digital camera with Dan so he could send me pics of the kids every day! It was foggy the whole time we ran, the sun started peeking out just for the last 1/2-mile, or so.

Get a FREE Skin Cancer Check!

The Olay Skin Cancer Takes Friends program is offering free skin cancer screenings nationwide, now through the end of July. Log on to skincancertakesfriends.org to find a participating dermatologist in your area.

For all my friends up in the East Bay area, the closest one I could find is in Danville, but it's worth the outing to make sure you know where your skin health is. There was an interesting article in the Jund Redbook magazine about skin damage that was quite awakening.

So make an appointment and go with a buddy this month while it's free!!