Growing up is hard to do

Howdy folks. Well, it's a little over a week til the big day and life is absolutely insane. It's just chaotic and stressful and I just want to snuggle up with a bottle of wine and forget about everything. Where to begin? Okay, so my wedding dress has been at the alteration lady's forever it seems. It fit just right, then too small, just right, then too small, (weight gain, not her fault) and the last time I tried it on, it's way too big. I can see down the front. No bueno! I try it on again on Monday and am crossing my fingers it fits perfectly. Stress rating - 5

Next thing that might send me to a psych ward, I booked a DJ way way back in February and he said a few weeks before the wedding to fill out the song choices, etc. so I did that over a week ago. Nobody has e-mailed or called me. My mom has e-mailed him and nothing. I am going to be bridezilla if this guy flakes on us. Stress rating - 8

My darling daughter got the cutest haircut last week, it was growing kinda mullet-y so it needed to be cleaned up. And it looked great until yesterday when she decided to take things into her own hands and hack her bangs off with some scissors she found. She claimed that she couldn't see anything because they were in her face. They are so short, practically buzzed off kind of short, that it is beyond fixable. Stress rating - 100... not so much stressed about the wedding, she can wear a headband, but more stressed about the fact that I have to find a way to cover them up EVERY day until they grow out. F.M.L.



The damage is done... #shortbangsdontcare

So needless to say, life is throwing me these stupid little curveballs nonstop. It wouldn't be so bad but I'm also babysitting these other kids, and planning Kinsley's birthday party on top of finalizing wedding plans. I will be so so soooooo relieved once this is all said and done!!!! Although I am super nervous about being the center of attention all night. I am not a fan of having all eyes on me. If I make down the aisle without breaking out in hives, I will consider the day a success. Anyway, if you don't hear from me soon, it's because I've been shipped off to a mental institute. Toodleooo!

Oh PS- Smoothie Diet weight loss update: 6 lbs in 3 weeks. Not too shabby!

Berry Banana Nutribullet Recipe

This smoothie is currently ranked as my new #1 favorite. It is so delicious! But before I get too excited, let's talk a little. I currently inherited a TON of fruit from my best friend's parents. They are big on the smoothie's also, and they are lucky enough to own a Vitamix (jealous), so they buy their fruit in bulk and basically have a ton of fruit all the time. They decided to send a huge amount home with their daughter who then decided to give it to me because she knows I'm doing this smoothie thing. I got multiple bags of strawberries, pineapple, watermelon, grapes, and blueberries and decided to use some of that fruit for my smoothie today.

I call this one

BERRY BANANA SMOOTHIE

 

2 handfuls of Organic Girl "Super Greens"

1 banana

1 large handful of blueberries

1 handful of strawberries

1/2 handful of pineapple

water

 

All of this fruit, except the banana, was frozen. Not store bought frozen fruit, but fresh fruit that was then stored in the freezer. So what I'm trying to say is... well, lots of this fruit was frozen when I went to blend it. This smoothie is very nice & creamy and has a great consistency!

 

 

 

As you can see it isn't a green smoothie for once, there's so many berries it just kind of hides the greens which is awesome. This thing is packed with antioxidants and tastes like a sip of heaven. I strongly recommend you to make this asap. This is going to be a short post today, got lots of stuff to get done and I'm babysitting and there's only so much time in a day. Hope you guys enjoy!

 



Popsicle Workout

You guys are in for a treat. Two posts in one day!! Double your pleasure, double your fun! I mentioned this workout in my previous post and want to post it while it's fresh in my mind otherwise it won't happen.

 

THIS IS THE POPSICLE WORKOUT!

POPSICLE WORKOUT!

POPSICLE WORKOUT!

(echo, echo, echo)

My kickass coffee cup that I keep my workouts in.

 

I've started a little beginners workout program that I do in my home. I call it the Popsicle Workout because you're supposed to write all these down on popsicle sticks but who really has those laying around the house? Not I. So I cut a bunch of paper into strips and wrote my random exercises on those. I draw about 5 at random everyday, sometimes more if I don't feel challenged enough. But here is the list of what I have written down, this is EVERYTHING, so if anyone has anything they recommend adding please let me know down in the comments.
 

 

And here's the list:

• weighted oblique reach 10 reps, 3x on each side
• "the hydrant" 10 reps, 2x each leg
• front raises 10 reps 3x
• opposite arm & leg raise 15 reps, 3x
• shoulder press 10 reps, 3x
• standing diamond 10 reps, 3x
• single leg stretch 5-10 reps ea. side
• ballet twist 6-8 reps, 2x
• 25 jumping jacks
• 40 jumping jacks
• 50 jumping jacks
• plié 10 reps, 2x
• curtsy lunges 10 reps each side, 2x
• lateral arm raises 10 reps, 3x
• upright rows 10 reps, 3x
• bicep curls 15 reps, 3x
• shrugs 10 reps, 3x
• 10 push ups (i'm horrible at push ups so I'm starting low)
• chair dips 10 reps, 3x
• tricep curls 10 reps, 3x
• squats to overhead press 15 reps, 2x
• squats 15 reps, 2x
• 50 squats
• side leg raises 10 reps, 3x each side
• 30 sit ups
• 20 crunches
• 40 crunches
• lunges 15 reps, 2x on each side
• inverted leg raise 20 each side
   

As you can see, there are some multiples of things like jumping jacks, crunches, etc... I did that on purpose so I can incorporate those into my routine more frequently. When I draw my random "sticks" out of the cup, I put the ones I've completed aside so I won't redraw them. Does that make sense? Also, if I somehow draw ALL arm workouts or ALL abs or draw 2 of the jumping jack ones, I will put 1 or 2 back and draw again. I like to keep my mind and body confused.



I think if this cup could talk it would say "Don't fuck with me before my coffee or I will throw myself at your face"

Ok so there you have it. My workout plan. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and get them sit ups right and tuck your tummy tight and do your crunches like this....

BYE!

Nutribullet Smoothie Diet

I recently received a Nutribullet as a wedding gift and may I just say, I love it!? We've had a very short relationship (going on 3 days now) but I knew it would be the real thing the moment I drank my first smoothie. It was the most delightful thing I have ever laid lips on! We all know the wedding is in less than 4 weeks and that I've been having weight gain issues because of my thyroid so I decided to try this thing I call the smoothie diet. Basically I'm having about 2 smoothies a day, and sometimes a small one after dinner if I still feel hungry.

Isn't she a beaut?!

One thing you should know about me... I absolutely HATE vegetables. I can tolerate a salad here and there, but it has to be spring mix or leafy greens, I refuse to eat iceberg lettuce. Bleh. I will occasionally eat corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. That is it. That is all the vegetables I will eat. And not often AT ALL. I am more of a fruit lover, I will eat any and all fruit but my least faves would have to be raspberries, pears, and oranges. Aside from my love of fruit, I still don't eat the recommended daily servings of it. I want to be healthy and I want to eat healthy.

Another thing you should know about me, when I had a hyperactive thyroid I could eat ANYTHING I wanted and not gain a pound so basically all my life I've been eating crap. I would eat a frozen pizza daily, chips, candy, fast food all the time, I would drink like 6 sodas a day... it was a very unhealthy lifestyle but I could get away with it! Once my thyroid was destroyed I started packing on the pounds and I realized I had to do a major lifestyle change if I wanted to maintain my skinny body. Luckily my appetite has dropped tremendously, so I don't have the urge to snack constantly. I haven't had a frozen pizza since August! I haven't eaten a Dorito in about a month, and have had a TOTAL of about 7 cherry lifesavers this month. So needless to say, I am committed to doing this right. The only "unhealthy" foods I've been buying are for my daughter, lunchables, hot dogs, etc. Basic stuff that picky little 3 year olds eat. She has an odd appetite, she loves her hot dogs, chicken nuggets, mac n cheese and such but also LOVES eating fruit, veggies, salads, and soup just to name a few. I've even gotten her to drink some of my smoothies with me! So what I was trying to say is, No I don't constantly feed my kid crappy food. She has a good balanced diet, and honestly I'm trying to plump her up a little since she's so dang tiny!

So I started my smoothie diet, and it's going great! I'm actually down 2 pounds in 3 days, YES! Some people may think that it isn't a great idea to drink your meals or to substitute so many meals for smoothies but they fill me up and they taste amazing and it's actually a ton of food! So haters are gonna hate and all I can say is, this is my life and my body and I do what I want. And I want to drink smoothies damnit!!

Here is what I bought to make my smoothies: cantaloupe, 5 bananas, a package of strawberries, a package of blueberries, about 8 organic pears, 8 organic green apples, 2 oranges, golden flaxseed, Organic Girl kale, and Organic Girl "super greens".
I bought all of this Tuesday night and today is Thursday and I have gone through all the strawberries, blueberries, bananas, and the container of super greens. I've had about 2 pears, 1 apple, and half an orange as well. Now you may think, should she be eating that much fruit? It has a lot of sugar! Well, here's what I have to say. I JUST started this diet and I'm not a veggie lover so I am working my way up to less fruit and more veggies. I think in my next smoothie I will substitute 1 fruit for some carrots. This is a lifestyle change and I can't make myself LOVE veggies overnight, I'm going to transition into it and maybe one day I'll even enjoy eating my veggies whole and raw, who the hell knows?! But as of this day, that ain't happenin.

So maybe you'd like to see a recipe or 2? My base for each smoothie is 2 handfuls of greens and a banana. I like the banana because A. it gives it great flavor and B. it makes the drink nice and creamy.

The smoothie pictured below contains the following things:

• 2 handfuls of super greens
• 1 banana
• 1/2 navel orange
• 1/2 organic green apple
• A couple ounces of orange juice
• water & a little crushed ice



Looks weird, tastes ammmmazing!
 

The smoothie I am currently sipping on is:

• 2 handfuls of kale
• 1 banana
• 8 strawberries
• 4 pieces of cantaloupe
• water & a little crushed ice

It is a little darker than the one above, but they all look pretty similar.

 

On top of this diet I have started a little beginners work out plan I call the "Popsicle Workout". Basically I wrote down a ton of different exercise on strips of paper and draw 5 at random everyday, sometimes more if I don't feel challenged. But I am saving that for another post. Continue to be on the lookout for new smoothie recipes though. I plan on making a TON more and maybe I'll even whip out my professional camera instead of using my iphone for pictures. That'd be a treat :) Over and out!

 



YEAH, SCIENCE! (okay it's more about health than science but I wanted a Breaking Bad quote, sounded better than "Yeah, health!")

I may have been MIA for the past year, I have had a lot on my plate. Planning a wedding is way more work than I thought, and now I'm down to the nitty gritty (less than 4 weeks, ahhh!) and things couldn't be crazier. In the past year I have been planning a wedding, raising a 3 year old, babysitting a 1 year old and a 2 year old, have had a hospital visit, been diagnosed with Grave's Disease and treated for Grave's Disease, lost weight, gained weight...and well, things couldn't be crazier! I honestly don't even know where to begin. I think tonight I choose HEALTH!

So, Grave's Disease is an autoimmune disease, which commonly affects the thyroid. I was diagnosed with a severely overactive thyroid (hyperthyroidism) and had a pretty sizeable goiter. I was put on a cocktail of pills: anti-thyroid medication, which I had to take 6 of each day, and a medication for my heart. See, hyperthyroidism has a slew of shitty symptoms....

• Anxiety
• Irritability
• Difficulty sleeping
• Fatigue
• A rapid or irregular heartbeat
• A fine tremor of your hands or fingers
• An increase in perspiration or warm, moist skin
• Sensitivity to heat
• Weight loss, despite normal eating habits
• Enlargement of your thyroid gland (goiter)
• Change in menstrual cycles
• Erectile dysfunction or reduced libido
• Frequent bowel movements or diarrhea
• Bulging eyes

I was beyond exhausted, I looked like skin and bones (I am 5'7" and was weighing in at 127 at my thinnest - not a good look on me). I was eating constantly, pretty much every 3 hours on the dot or I would get nauseous and light headed, to the point of me throwing up. I didn't WANT to throw up, I enjoy food a lot, but my metabolism was ridiculously high and I couldn't constantly keep up with it ALL the time and if I let myself go too long after feeding time, I would just get sick.

Somewhere in time I got put on meds, got a good dosage and everything was cool. My doctor told me I had a very rare chance of my thyroid "correcting" itself, they call it remission, I call it "correcting" cuz I don't have cancer, it's just a stupid fucking disease. So anyway, my doctor told me I pretty much had the option of surgically removing my thyroid or taking radioactive iodine, but the thyroid had to go bye-bye cuz it was more trouble than it was worth. Before I even had time to research much about my options I ended up going into a "thyroid storm". Basically, my resting heart rate was 170bpm. I was sitting on my couch and I had felt like I ran a marathon when in all reality I was doing absolutely nothing. I woke my fiancé up at 1am and had him get our daughter up so they could take me to the ER. I was in atrial fibrillation. I was given a couple different IVs with a couple different things to bring my heart rate down and once they got the right meds, my heart rate dropped from 170bpm to something like 100bpm within minutes. I felt like everything was in slow motion and honestly, I felt stoned outta my mind. I felt like everything in my body just instantly slowed way, way down. So after about 3 hours in the ER (now around 4am) my fiancé & daughter are still by my side, we were told I was being admitted. So I sent my daughter off to the grandparents and Adam came back to hang out with me for the rest of the night. I ended up in the hospital for 3 nights (if you count coming in at 1am being one of those nights). Even though my heart rate was normal, I still had an irregular heart beat, which makes you more prone to clotting and heart issues, yadda yadda. They kept me on an IV, ran a trillion different tests, did EKGs, echos, all sorts of heart-related stuff. One cool thing they did was a sonogram on my heart and I got to see it in all it's glory. I loved that. I've always wanted to see my heart. I've also always wanted to see a picture or video of my brain... for no good reason other than just pure curiosity. Back on topic.... my heart rate and beat went back to normal and I got the go ahead to leave on the 3rd day. I was ready to get the F out, not even gonna lie.

So after my fun vacation in the cardiac unit at the local hospital I had to go visit my thyroid doctor again (Dr. Endocrinologist). They told me that my thyroid was coming out pronto. I opted to do the radioactive iodine because I didn't want a scar 4 months before my wedding and surgery scares me. So I went to the nuclear medicine place and walked on in, sat down in the room in the back and swallowed my RAI (radioactive iodine). I had to be quarantined at home for 3 days since I would be omitting radiation and that shit just isn't safe. So the family and the pets all went bye-bye and I was ALL ALONE, talk about boring. But my 3 days went fine and all was well until about 2 weeks after and I noticed my neck had swelled up tremendously. I looked like a linebacker without a chin. My neck came out to my chin, it was awful. I felt like swallowing was a little more difficult and I could barely move my head from side to side or up & down, it was just incredibly uncomfortable but not painful. I'll share my photos, no matter how unflattering they are. I just want to help out and share my story and if it helps someone who's going through the same ordeal, then my work is done.

This is my PRE radioactive iodine photo. Small, sexy little neck.

2 weeks post RAI. My chin basically melts into my giant neck. My face is swollen, everything is a mess.

2 days after the swelling started. Still a big neck, but not as swollen.

Not much of a change the next day. The area on my neck where my thyroid is started getting super super itchy.

Still swollen but it did go down a teeny tiny bit!
You can see the lower part of my neck is red, it felt like it was radiating heat and it was so itchy. Don't know why that happened but it sure did.

2 months post RAI. My little neck is back. Zero swelling and my goiter is even gone!
If you're having a reaction like I did, you really just have to power through but I promise everything will be FINE!

It took about a week and a half to 2 weeks for the swelling to go completely down. Now I am 2 months (to the day) post-RAI and my thyroid levels are low so I'm off all medication for the next 2 weeks, then I get more blood work done to see if I am becoming Hypothyroid (underactive). Right now I basically have NO thyroid, well I do have a little thyroid but it's not producing hormones like it used to and over time it will stop all together and I will be hypothyroid. So now I just wait and see how much time that is for me, Dr. Endocrinologist thinks that since I had such a severe case of hyperthyroidism that I will become hypothyroid much sooner than later (some cases it can take up to TEN YEARS), it's only been TWO MONTHS for me and I feel like a totally different person. And not in a good way.

So MY current symptoms go a little something like this:

• fatigue
• weight GAIN - too much weight gain (15 lbs in 3 months. Right before my wedding. FML.)
• sadness about the weight gain.. sometimes I cry when I can't fit into my jeans (maybe mild mild mild depression? Lady hormones? Stress? Who knows.)
• less of an appetite but I'm not losing any weight goshdamnit!
• I am cold all the fucking time
• and I think I've become more of a bitch.

So that's that and I feel like I just dumped a crazy ass story and I'm not going to proof read it so if you find grammatical errors and are the kind of person that's like "OMG becky, did you see she put "your" instead of "you're"? What a not-smart person she is." Well... you can S my D cuz I am still not proof reading this shit (there's that bitchiness I mentioned). I will update when I visit Mr. Endocrinologist again and let ya'll know how good life is treatin me! I feel like now is a good time to end this so Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight :)