Toodles, November!

Today is the last day of November and it is closing with a bang since I woke up to no hot water in my apartment this morning. I am very unhappy about that! I feel all gross but I really don't want to take a shower in ice water. Meh. I contacted my Landlord so hopefully there is somebody out here pronto to fix this! I cannot be the only apartment without hot water as I share the water heater with another apartment. I thought I heard him in there but we shall see.

Anyway, onto more health related stuff. The New Body Makeover calendar has come out on Blogilates! I downloaded it, printed it off and it's now on my stats marker board so I can remember to do it. The only issue that I am having is that I eat 85% paleo and the meal plan is not Paleo. Not at all! I need to figure out meal replacements/substitutes for those ingredients because I don't want to eat edamame, oatmeal, peanut butter, quinoa, etc. Well, it's not that I don't want to eat those things, I just feel like I shouldn't! Plus, I'm not a fan of edamame...

The one thing I am excited to eat are the banana pancakes! These are definitely paleo being they are only 1 egg and 2 bananas. Yep. That is all they take! I can put some almond butter on top and mmmm! Delicious. I've actually never made them before because 1) I am lazy and 2) I am not a breakfast person. At all!

I just noticed the 'run 1 mile' part of the calendar. Um... that may be an issue. I get really bad shin splints when I attempt running, and I really dislike running especially on a treadmill. No way am I running in freezing temperatures either. I wonder if a mile on the stairmaster will work just as well... I love the stairmaster!

Well, I'm going to test the water again to see if it is still ice cold and then decide if I want to submerge my head into that to wash my hair. Wish me luck!

xoxo

Nena

The Kettlebelle

Thanksgiving Aftermath

So, we didn't end up having Turducken. Apparently you can buy pre-made Turduckens but that wasn't found out until after the fact. They are extremely difficult to make, apparently, so instead we had a turkey, a duck and two cornish hens. I didn't have any turkey (I don't know why!) but I did have some cornish hen and a piece of duck. Duck is... different. The piece that I grabbed was almost all fat. It was gross. I wasn't a fan of the duck flavor, if I am to be honest here.

I will say that I ate barely anything paleo yesterday. I consumed the following:

• - cornish hen
• - duck
• - bacon wrapped water chestnut
• - green bean casserole with mushrooms, french onions, water chestnuts, and bacon
• - mashed potatoes with bacon on top
• - two rolls
• - yams with cinnamon, brown sugar and marshmallows
• - stuffing
• - pumpkin pie with whipping cream
• - 2 budlights
• - margarita

I regret nothing! Well, maybe I do. I had an irritating headache on the drive back and I took a 30 minute nap but didn't feel much better when I woke back up. This caused me to go to bed around 10:00pm but at 11:30pm, I woke up with a gut wrenching stomachache. It was horrible! I haven't had that bad of a stomachache in a really long time. I'm not quite sure what caused it, to be honest. I just know that it happened and it was terrible.

To top it off, I woke up with a terrible migraine this morning. I popped three Excedrin Migraines and went back to bed which luckily made it go away. Now I have to plan out next week's meals! I am going to be doing the Blogilates New Body Makeover but I haven't received my Fit Journal yet. However, it comes with a 12 week meal plan and it's not Paleo, unfortunately. This means that I have to convert it to Paleo! This is going to take me a bit but I will do one week at a time. I'm going to make my boyfriend do it with me, even if he doesn't do the Blogilate workouts, he can at least eat healthy.

Now if it was only this easy to make myself healthy mentally. I have seasonal affective disorder which makes me very bummed out when the time changes. It gets dark so early now, I hate it! Plus, it doesn't help that one of my good friends decided that he wasn't going to talk to me this month. It sucks, so much! It is tied up there with my boyfriend (former) of seven years cheated on me with a coworker and then broke up with me by posting a photo of them hugging in a text message. Yet he keeps telling me that he isn't ignoring me on purpose or actively avoiding me. Mmk, well you aren't actively trying to be a friend either. I am trying not to make it a big deal but it's so not easy. Oh well... maybe December will be better.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

Tomorrow is the day of stuffing ourselves with Turkey, and I am looking forward to it! I haven't had a  real Thanksgiving in a really long time. I am trying to recall the last time that I got together with family & friends for it, and I am going to say... 6 years ago? 5? Not sure, to be honest. However, tomorrow I am going with Ryan to his sister's and we are going to eat a Turduckin. I had to Google it before I even knew what that was!

Apparently, a Turduckin (Turkey+Duck+Chicken) is a 3200 calorie full blown bird feast. It is a stuffing stuffed chicken, stuffed into a duck, stuffed into a turkey. The images on Google look gross so I am not going to post one, but maybe (if it doesn't seem too rude) I will sneak a camera pic of the bird creation tomorrow. We shall see! I am pretty sure that the stuffing part of this beast is not Paleo, but I guess that will have to go towards my 15% non-Paleo for the week. It's Thanksgiving, I'm allowed to. I'm 99% sure that there will not be one single Paleo dish at the dinner. I am hoping my stomach survives the whole ordeal.

Speaking of my stomach, I have had this aggravating cramp on my lower left side for a few weeks now. I had it back in September too but my doctor thought it was an ovarian cyst. They did an ultrasound (both types) and nothing came back from it as abnormal but ironically the pain went away the same day that I had it done too. I should probably go back to the doctor... I swear I live there sometimes. I've been to the dang doctor more times this year than I have in my whole 30 years of life!   Seriously. First it was the sinus headaches that were actually migraines so I had a bunch of stupid testing done for that, then I had to have a MRI done on my head and it turned out that my pituitary gland was too big so then I had to keep coming in for tests to make sure it wasn't a tumor, and now this. Thank God for insurance.

Well, I think that is about it for tonight. I will be working on some Paleo recipes after this whole Thanksgiving ordeal is over with! I'm excited for that. Oh, and I am also doing the Blogilates 12 Week Challenge which is supposed to start either December 1st or January 1st. I think I will start January 1st because I don't have all my stuff from Blogilates yet! That will be on this blog too. Anyway, I hope you all have a safe and fun Thanksgiving!

xoxo

Nena

The Kettlebelle

Let's Get This Started (again)

I have been wanting to start a journal/website that is completely fitness/paleo/clean eating related for quite sometime now. However, when it comes to blogging I am super lazy. I have had my personal blog since, gosh, 2007 and I will write in it maybe once or twice a month. Terrible! You'd think if I was shelling out $120/year to keep my domain up, I would be better at blogging. Guess not. That is besides the point though, isn't it?

Let me introduce myself. My name is Nena. I am from the cold state of Wisconsin which means that I really do love cheese. Seriously, it is the single hardest thing for me to not eat. I crave it so much! That is why I follow a 85% paleo diet. Cheese and beer are my two hardest to give up items. I KNOW, it's so bad for me! I can't help it. Do you know how hard it is to give up these two items when Wisconsin pretty much lives off of them? Exactly.


So, how did I start my journey? Well... it started all the way back in the fall of 2012 when my good friend, Brandon, introduced me to the Paleo diet. He showed me some scary articles about grains & legumes which convinced me that I needed to make a change. Plus, I have always had stomach problems. To the point where I was scared to try new foods! I was always getting sick to my stomach and the consequences of that were horrid. Anyway, I gave this paleo thing a try and I loved it! It was hard not to eat oatmeal and peanut butter all the time, plus fast food, but my stomach problems started to go away! Around February of 2013, even though I had been eating healthier, I decided to kick my ass into gear.

That is when I discovered Kettlebells! I am not going to lie, they are the most amazing pieces of equipment that I could have ever purchased. From February to March, I lost a total of 23 pounds and over-all 33 inches. Yes, you read that right. 33 inches. Shocking? I know!

This is my place to blog about the rest of my journey and I hope I can motivate/encourage others while I am on the path to my best version of myself.

xoxo

Nena

The Kettlebelle