Midnight Sin Chocolate Cake

Clearly this cake isn't something I would eat on a regular basis (considering that I'm trying to become a more fit individual), but I had to share it because it's a beautiful, decadent cake, and something that could be a great holiday treat for my family (and a small slice for me!). I don't talk about it often, but I love to bake. I haven't experimented with cooking and baking, and it's time I start over and learn to love food. Food is an essential component in fitness and if I want to lose weight and become ripped, I have to fuel my body with something. Loving to cook could help me gain some ground in this area.

On that note, I want to let my readers know that I've decided that the Paleo Diet isn't for me. This past week I've been reading the pros and cons of selecting this diet for health and fitness and have determined that it adheres too rigidly to the idea that all simple carbs are unhealthy. While I found that reducing my dependence on gluten produced good results, I recognize the difference between reducing gluten and rejecting all simple carbohydrates. We are not a wealthy family and therefore depend on some simple starches to complete our meals.

With that being said, I do intend to continue eating minimal gluten and as little processed food as possible. My goal is to process our own foods at home (including bread) so that our family is conscious of the foods we eat. I will continue to exercise and will maintain healthy eating habits including a diet rich in vegetables. If I fail to meet my goals with this plan, I will re-assess my plan and explore other dietary and nutritional options.

A little bit of cheating won't kill anybody in the meantime, and this cake seems like a wonderful place to start cheating!

Get the Recipe!

What's your favorite "cheat food?"

I Believe, Therefore I Achieve

Fitness is, at least in part, a mental game. It takes a certain power of will to get up every day, lace up those shoes, and get moving. You have to first believe before you can achieve. This is the most important key that I have found to keep me moving through from day to day. If I want to be able to achieve the strength goals that I've set for myself, I have to believe that I can meet those goals. If I don't believe, why should I try?

This list is intended to serve as a reminder to myself of what I believe, so that I can come back every day and read this so that I will never forget that it's worth it to keep going. I've given up before, but I'm not going to this time! Here's why:

• I believe that it requires consistency to build strength. Skipping one day might not kill me, but it can be a disaster to my motivation. Unless I'm so ill that I can't get out of bed, there is no excuse for me not to get up and get moving that day. This pertains to all life goals and no just to fitness. "Strength" comes in many forms and not all of those forms are physical.
• I believe that it requires pain to produce strength. The pain I feel in my muscles means that the strength training exercise is building muscle that I will feel later in the form of increased strength. To (mis) quote Luke Bryan, "Pain is a good thing." (Please note that I'm not pushing myself to injury, just the usual muscle soreness that accompanies working out.)
• I believe that sometimes "get up and go" requires a pair of sneakers. This might be a rather odd one for some people, but fitness buffs will know what I mean. Getting up and getting dressed, putting on a good pair of sneakers and clothing that you feel good in can make all the difference to motivating you to actually doing something. I don't start the day in my pajamas! I start it in full clothing!
• I believe that tears are cleansing. It's okay to cry if crying means continuing on even when you're not sure that you want to. It's okay to cry if the pain is bad but you're willing to push through it. It's okay to cry tears of relief when you realize that you're shedding away the old lifestyle and reaching for something new. It's okay to cry. I do it sometimes. You should too.
• I believe that the scale is my enemy. I'm not weighing myself. This is something that a lot of people in my life don't understand. "If you want to lose weight, why aren't you weighing yourself?" Because the weeks that you gain, or lose only a small amount of weight, are very discouraging for some people (myself included). Because I'm not doing this to lose weight and have a hot body. I'm doing it so that I can go for a run, hold a bow, go kayaking. I'm doing it for strength, not for weight-loss. Weight-loss is a side-effect. Strength is the goal.
• I believe in tracking my days. It's not just about what I do, but how long I do it. Tracking allows me to keep up with a streak of fitness, doing exercises every day for the rest of my life. The particular exercise matters less than the fact that I got up and got moving (at least at this point) and I believe in giving myself a visual representation for how long I've continually worked at achieving strength and fitness!
• I believe that baby steps still take me toward my goal. The size of the progress doesn't matter; it's that there is progress which is important. If I can increase my reps on a strength training exercise by two, or add another set; if I can walk another block before I get too tired to continue; if I can carry my daughter for a longer period of time before her weight is too much, these are all small steps to a much bigger and more important goal.
• I believe in small goals. One of the reasons that I don't want to use the scale to measure my success is that huge goals (that 175 pounds I want to get rid of forever!) are enormous feats that are going to take incredible time to reach. Smaller goals are more reasonable, and my small goals include things like cutting gluten out of my diet or being able to talk to the park. These are easy. And if I can reach small goals, I can set larger ones as I achieve the smaller goals. That simple!
• I believe I can achieve! Whatever I set my mind to, I can achieve, but I must first believe that it is possible. I know that all things are possible through Him who gives me strength, and when I don't have the strength to stand up on my own, I lean on God to get me through those times and to help me to stand up and do what needs to be done even when I don't feel like it. Every. Single. Day.
• I believe I'm worth it. Yup. I am.

(Base Image is courtesy from Andrew Malone on Flickr.)

Re-Read: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

My friends all know that I have an odd sort of love-hate relationship with Harry Potter. In the beginning, I hated the series, and it took my purchasing the boxed set of the first four books (before Order of the Phoenix had been published) before I was able to read through Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I wanted to love the books because so many friends adored them, but I fought hard with the first book in the series, primarily because it just isn't very well written.

Before you tar and feather me, Harry Potter is one of my favorite book series to date. I love the series as a whole and have read every one of the books and am working through them for the second time right now. That being said, I don't believe one can argue that Rowling improved her writing skills dramatically as the series went on.

Regardless of what I think about the writing and particular habits of Rowling's that drive me crazy, I have to say that I absolutely love Harry Potter. Rowling has created a tremendous world and a story that will live in the hearts of those who have read it until they die. I'll be passing this book and those that follow it on to my children in the hopes that they will pass it on to their children. There's been controversy, but there's a lot of love for Harry Potter in the world and I am definitely a fan.

I have all of these books on my Kindle through Pottermore, but you can get your copy on Amazon! I'll be reading through all seven books between re-reading The Hunger Games Trilogy, the Divergent trilogy and the Mazerunner trilogy as well. I'll keep you up to date on what I'm reading and enjoying!

Get Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on Amazon!

Top 5 Reasons I Won't Stop until I'm Done

A little more than two years ago, I started on a weight-loss journey, promising myself that I would never again be as heavy as I was that day. 

Unfortunately, it didn't last. I was eating the same foods day after day, getting bored with exercise and I wasn't feeling any progress. A major life event caused my motivation to crash and burn and I stopped working at it.

Two years later, I'm working on it again, pushing myself forward because I have to do this for myself and for my family. By focusing on the reasons why I want to lose the weight and concentrating on individual reasons every single day, I'm keeping myself pushing forward so that I don't lose the motivation the way that I did the last time around.

I like lists. Lists make me feel like I'm organized and doing something. They also make a very good reference, for me and for anyone who reads my blog. So I'm going to make a quick list of the top five reasons I'm not going to stop until I'm done.

1. Pain means I'm getting stronger. The pain and the soreness in my muscles means that it's working. If it's working, that means that I'm getting stronger. Getting stronger means being able to do some of the things I've been dying to do for quite a while now. Being sore is worth it in the long run if it means that I can do things I've been unable to do for years.
2. The pain I feel today I won't feel next month. I realize that I'll still have pain next month, but it will be a totally different kind of pain than what it is this month. The pain I experience next month will be progress toward the pain I'll feel the month after that, with each month building on the one previous until I've reached a state of fitness that I can maintain for the rest of my life.
3. Pain reminds me I'm focusing on building muscle and not on losing weight. There's no denying that there's weight to lose, but I don't care about getting skinny or what I'm "losing." My focus is on what I have to gain and not on what I have to lose. Pain means that I'm looking forward and not backward, and every ache that I feel day by day is something to focus on with forward motion.
4. Pain means I'm doing it right. If it doesn't hurt, I haven't pushed hard enough. Pain means that I'm doing it right. If I stop when it starts to hurt, the absence of pain means I'm doing it wrong. So I'll keep doing the full set of reps until I'm finished instead of stopping as soon as it hurts. This is a hard lesson to learn.
5. A year from now I'll be able to go on hikes. But only if I don't stop now. I miss hiking so much that it hurts. I want to get out there with nature and take a break from the city sometimes. I can't do that if I don't gain the strength necessary to make hiking a plausible possibility. In order to be able to do this a year from now, I have to start now, and keep pushing through the pain.

These are my reasons to keep on going even when it hurts. I'm going to learn to embrace my soreness. What are your top reasons to keep pushing through the pain even when it hurts? What is your motivation to gain strength?