Adina’s Cute & Perky Blog!

I think it’s time for some tough love here today, people!

In case no one ever told you, let me be the first to advise: pizza is not a health food.

Now, at least once a month I take my boys to eat pizza.  I’m not saying it’s evil or of the devil!  I eat so healthy pretty much all the time that I feel the need to show them that it’s OK to eat pizza every once in a while.  That food is not drudgery.   That eating the way I choose does not mean you NEVER eat pizza again.  It just means you don’t eat it very often.

BUT…make no bones about it.  I know I am cheating when I set foot in the door.  I eat salad first, but there’s no way around it.  For that meal, I hop off my plan.

On my last visit to CiCi’s, which happens to be a buffet, I was witness to a very irritating conversation.

I was sitting next to an obese family.  Not an obese person, mind you, but an obese FAMILY.  There were five people and four of them were obese.  One lone little boy was not over weight. 

I know I should not be watching, but I kick into pep talk mode when I see something like this.  Like a cat ready to pounce, I am ready to talk health and fitness.  Ready to whip out pictures of me at 256 pounds.  To be an advocate of the lifestyle changes I have made.

The four overweight members of the family gathered their first plates of food.  They came back with mounds of pizza on each plate.  It was hard to look at.

The smallest member of the family came back with two pieces of cheese pizza.  He very slowly ate the two small slices, and then started to get up.  His mom asked him where he was going.

“To get a cinnamon roll,” he says.

And here is the reply that made me cinch up from the inside out in my chair…

“You did not eat enough pizza.  Go get two more pieces.  And no cinnamon roll unless you finish them.”

HELLO!  Earth to obese woman! 

This child has now learned a few valuable lessons from that brilliant set of commands:

Pizza is a health food.

You must eat a lot of pizza to get to the cinnamon rolls.

Get more pizza whether you are hungry or not.

Dessert must be eaten on a FULL stomach.

And…my favorite….dessert must be earned.

Make no mistake.  Sometimes, even when you make the best choices available, you are still way off the mark.  There are places it’s all but impossible to make healthy choices.

I wanted to tell that woman, “Do you understand that you just told your child that he couldn’t have cinnamon rolls until he had FOUR pieces of pizza?  So essentially, you just told him he can’t have carbs with icing until he has four pieces of carbs with cheese?  

I couldn’t even fathom a guess as to how many people have told me lately that they just don’t have time to do what I do.  When I hear this, it always makes me wonder…

You don’t have time to be fit? 

You don’t have time to be healthy?

You don’t have time to eat?  …..because certainly, eating healthy food at lunch takes more time than eating a cheeseburger…..and I can see how you can’t give up a sitcom to do cardio.  Time is of the essence after all.

(I just really need someone to explain this time thing to me!)

I was actually thinking about this because I was texting back and forth with Nurse Goodbody yesterday while packing my cooler for today, when an E-mail taped to my fridge caught my eye.  Nurse Goodbody is my hot friend from the plane ride back from New York.  I call him that because he’s a nurse, and he’s hot.  Seems appropriate and he doesn’t seem to mind.

The E-mail was from my hot friend Kevin.  A copy of my diet.  And I laughed, because I had totally forgotten it was there.

And, OK.  It’s not taped.  It’s up there with an Oreo cookie magnet, because he makes fun of me because we fry Oreos here in Texas.  But they were selling them at the street fair in New York too.  So, the gig is up.  I know it’s not just a Texas thing!

And I was thinking how when I started eating the way I do now, it DID take a lot of time to get everything ready, and I couldn’t text with anybody while I was packing my cooler.  I had to concentrate!  I had to focus!!!  I was after perfection here, people!

But eating healthy is just like a trusted recipe you make over and over.  The first time you make it, you read that recipe ahead of time.  Gather what you need. Refer to it often.  And keep it marked for future reference.

Then you get where you can gather the ingredients from the store without making a list.

And eventually you don’t even remember where you put that recipe…or that E-mail.

And that is the stage I am at with my diet.  Packing my cooler takes no time.  No thought.  Little effort on my part.

And really the same can be said for the gym.  When I first started, I made meticulous lists and charts.  Now it’s second nature.  I am in and out in 45 minutes…unless I’m being a Chatty Cathy…and that’s my own fault!

What took so much time in the beginning takes no time at all now.

BUT…I had to be willing to make it through the months where it seemed to consume every spare second of free time I had.

But boy was it ever worth it.  

And that E-mail will stay there with that cookie magnet, if nothing else but to remind me that I am no longer a cookie magnet!  I’m a hot people magnet!  WOOO HOOO!  Yea for me!

Don’t get discouraged because you think this lifestyle takes too much time or too much effort.  Just stick with it till it becomes your second nature too!

So I had someone approach me at church today who had not seen me in quite some time.  She had, however, just happened to catch me on the Today Show.

What she said to me was this, “You make me feel bad, because you can maintain.”

Then I went to the grocery store and a friend was telling me that someone who had lost weight through surgery had gotten so upset over seeing me on TV that she went home crying.  Even missed half a day of work!

I was riding with one friend to a sporting event, and I questioned her over what food would be there. 

So my friend Robert pulls me over at the gym the other day for me to give one of my famous pep talks to one of his PT clients…and OK, they’re only LOCALLY famous…but I do give a good one!

And I am ALWAYS happy to take a minute and do this.  But this time, I was the taker of the inspiration.  You see, Robert and I were talking to his client together.  I was telling her not to focus on the big event she had coming up, but rather to focus on eating healthy every day.  I told her she was setting habits and habits would eventually become routine.  And that routine would become her lifestyle. 

I also assured her that there would be so many other big events for her ahead.  You see, she’s barely in her 20’s.  Talk about some big events left!

But here is what Robert said that stuck with me.  He looked her straight in the eyes and said, “Two weeks ago, were you thin?”

She shook her head, no.  They he asks, “One year ago, were you thin?”

He gets the same response. 

He ups it and asks once more, “What about two years ago?  Or five?  What about then?”

And her answer was still no.  Unable to speak, she only shook her head.

Then he looks at her and says, “It took you years to get this way.  Don’t think you can get rid of it over night.”

And isn’t everything that seems at times to overpower us or weigh us down this way?  We spend days, months, weeks, or even years forming habits that become routines.  Eventually those routines become lifestyles.  Yet we expect to conquer them overnight?

Wars are won one battle at a time.

Every time I turned down a bag of chips; THAT was a battle I won.  Every time I ate an apple instead of cake; THAT was a battle I won.  Every time I went to the gym instead of KFC; THAT was a battle I won.  When I got over my fear of setting foot in a gym abounding with fit people; THAT was a HUGE battle I won!

Eventually, I won enough battles that I was winning the war.

The last battle for me was with salt.  Two years ago I could not have given it up.  I put it on everything.  But then I took a look around me.  I had won every other battle.  And what was a little salt?

Yet, had I started my battle with giving up salt, I would not have won.  I had to start with one, little, attainable battle at a time.  I had to start with battles I was equipped to fight.

You can choose one thing today to either add or take away.  YOU know what you need to do.  Do one thing, and win a battle today.

And thank goodness, what took me over 30 years to build was defeated in only 2….by fighting and winning one battle at a time.

And if Robert were to ask me, “Adina, two years ago, were you thin?”

My answer is yes, because I won the battle!

A few weeks ago I was on my way into town when I had to stop for a wreck they were clearing in the road.  I had that sudden, sickening feeling that you get when you know something isn’t right.  I somehow knew this wreck would affect me.

I used to teach 8^th grade English. I found out a few hours later that one of my former students had died in that wreck.  He had graduated from high school in May.

I was also his choir teacher at church when he was a little bitty fellow.  I remember four year old Clint coming to my door dressed in black cowboy boots, camouflage shorts that were too short and too tight, a red muscle shirt revealing absolutely no muscle, a plastic spider ring on his index finger, and a brown felt hat.  Have it pictured?!  Now picture this same little boy STOMPNG that boot down, pointing that spider-clad index finger at me, and proclaiming loudly, “Ms. Adina.  I am NOT singing today, and YOU can’t make me.”

Slightly irritating to me at the time, but beyond precious to me now.

The thing is, when they were in my class, I had them write letters to themselves in the future.  I was to send them out the week he died.  The letters were my way of reminding them they had goals. I wanted them to see if they stayed on track.  Jumped the track.  Maybe never even reached the station.  And of course, I was hoping some of them found something in themselves along the way that they didn’t even know they had.  I told them to write freely, as I would never read them.

I did add one side note to the promise of not reading the letters.  I told them that in the event one of them were to die, I would read it before I hand-delivered it to their parents to make sure it would be OK to give to them.

What you must know is this: by the time Clint reached me in 8^th grade, that boot-stomping little boy was stellar.  He was always polite, and he always did whatever I asked of him.  He was even working toward his Eagle Scout.

When I opened his letter, I was a little surprised at the length.  You see, they were supposed to congratulate themselves on what they did and remind themselves of what to look forward to.  So it should have had SOME length.  But just like his life, the letter was short.

As I read Clint’s letter, what immediately struck me was the fact that while it was short and to the point, he had achieved every single goal.  He had attained everything he set out to do in this world.  The two things most important to him were becoming an Eagle Scout and being accepted to the college of his choice.  Both had been achieved.

But that only serves to remind me….have I set goals for myself?  And am I striving to reach them?  Will I go out of this world like Clint?  Knowing I had achieved all I set out to do?  Or will I be like my students who blew off the assignment only to learn the value of even one missed assignment 5 years later when all their other classmates were opening their letter?  And they had missed that one assignment.  Way back in 8^th grade, yet it still came back to haunt them.

Today is a good day to set some goals and work toward achieving them, because this is your only life…and you never really do know when you have to leave your list behind.

And if getting healthy and fit is a goal of yours, whether that be by building muscle, losing fat, or both….then let’s get working on achieving it.

I hear a phrase from time to time that while I believe the basic context, I think it needs some tweaking.

“When life throws you lemons, make some lemonade.”

Being perky and all, I am sure you think I am the first to jump on that band wagon.  But you know…I’m really not.

I prefer to make one glass of lemonade, IF NECESSARY, and then throw those lemons out!

You can’t drink lemonade for the rest of your life.  It gets old REALLY REALLY fast.  I like it every once in a while, but certainly not every day.

When I was a little girl, you could say life handed me some lemons.  And I made lemonade for the next 20 years.  I held on with a white knuckle grip to my lemons.  I wore the fact that my father left me and I had a sad childhood like a badge.  It infiltrated my thoughts and my actions.  It became the biggest part of who I was. 

It defined me.

I became that pile of lemons.  I thought the few good moments I did have were me really rising to the occasion and making lemonade out of my lemons.

Until, one by one, I threw those lemons away.

I learned to put the past behind me one lemon at a time.

I grew stronger and no longer wanted to be defined by my lemons.

I wanted to be the healthy, strong, fit girl.

I wanted to be happy from the inside out.  But I could not do that while I held on to my lemons!

The day I realized I didn’t have to make lemonade anymore was a good day.

When life throws you problems, you don’t have to hang on to them.  You can let them go.  You can throw them away.  You can even refuse to accept them!   

For years, I was the obese woman who never got over her childhood.

Now I am the one who laughs so hard and so loud that people think I have always known joy.

And you know, that’s what it feels like.

It’s funny what a few days off will do to a fitness finatic!

I cannot wait to get to the gym today.  My schedule has been WAY off the last few days with the trip to New York.  I had a lot of stuff to do, and very little time to do it. 

The trip was so fast and furious that I had to skip a few workouts.  I say I skipped, but I did walk the streets of New York for five solid hours one day…and three the next.  The second day in heels!  Somehow… that counts.

But even with the excitement, I was ready to get back on track.

My body likes me being on track.

I did not cheat in New York, but it wasn’t MY food.  My food, free from salt and fat.

I didn’t get to go to MY gym.  My gym, where my people are!  Where I feel so good after a workout.

I missed my regular routine that my body is so used to.

A few days off may be good for the soul…but really it’s good because it makes me know….I like what I do.  I truly like it.  I don’t do it because I have to, I do it because I want to.

I like being healthy and fit.

I like the good choices I make each and every day.

I like feeling good.

And most importantly….I like the person I have become.  The dedicated person who sticks to her plan no matter what.

If you don’t work out regularly….try it.  It changes who you are…inside and out.

And you will like the person you become too!

Well….I am back now!  And I say it’s my last Today Show update, but it won’t be.  Joy told me she would pull me back for a reunion show!  So…I have more fun times ahead.

There are a MILLION things I could write about, but I will narrow it to just a few.

Everything about the experience was GREAT!

Everything was the same, but different…everything and everyone looked different for this girl from Texas, but…people are people.  And I LOVE meeting new people!  And while clothes and accents may differ…hearts are the same.

I met a woman on the streets from New York and talked to her for an hour.  We exchanged contact information, and we will keep in touch.

I met a man on the plane on the way back.  It was a serendipitous moment.  He had shown up WAY too early for his plane.  I was almost late, as the WRONG limo picked me up!!!  It was WAY scary at the time, but it was the reason I ended up next to my new HOT friend!  I told him I would Blog about him, because for the first time I met someone more hard core with eating than me.  I say that because he keeps a protein bar on his bedside table and takes a bite or two if he wakes up in the middle of the night!  Even I don’t do that!  And we have plans to cycle together when I am out his way.

The people on the set could not be nicer.  They all treated me with kindness beyond which I thought I deserved.  In fact, I felt like the Queen of NBC for that hour!

If you haven’t watched…I was thinking about all of you when I flexed my bicep!  I knew my bodybuilding.com buddies would be proud!

To those of you who have always been in shape, I feel humbled to get so many great things come my way for being what you have always been.  And you are who I continue to strive to be…someone who is just always in shape…and has been for a long time.

And together, we inspire each other.

Hey, Guys!

I’m currently in Dallas!  I’ll be back in my home town by this evening and will respond to all my sweet messages! 

The two neatest things which I will take a moment and tell you now…..

When the segment was over and Kathy Lee and Hoda were rushing to the next segment, they both stopped to tell me something really nice.

Kathy Lee said I was the first person on who you couldn’t tell was the weight loss guest.  And that is, of course, because of the lifting!  And yes, I told a few MILLION people they needed to lift heavy!

Hoda said I was the first person on who addressed the fact that you have to address your issues.  That made me feel really good.

I have a million things I could write about, and will write a better one later this eveing.  I just wanted to check in and tell you the segment in on nbc.com.  You can watch it there. 

I will leave you with this….overcoming your past is my thing.  When my plane was coming in for a landing in New York, I was struck by how beautiful everything was.  Then you get up close, and it’s just buildings.  And life is this way.  You look at it from a distance, and it all becomes beautiful.

Without my daddy leaving or years of being overweight, there would be no trip to New York to be on the Today Show.  And…I would do it all again. 

You can keep coming back to what hurts you and look at it up close….or you can soar above it and see it as part of the beautiful picture that is you. 

After all, if you like where you are now, it took everything you’ve been through to get you there and make you the person you are now.  And if you like who you are now….just don’t bring your plane back down.  Keep your plane high enough where everything is beautiful!

I miss my bodybuilding.com buddies!

Adina

Today is a good day to evaluate what you’re doing and make some changes!

My boss told me the other day that it looked like I had lost some more weight.   My gym friend Krista had said the same thing earlier.  And these are people that see me every day, so it’s harder for them to tell.  And, yeah, I had lost some more.  I rock!

So, I was thinking back about what I had done recently, because certainly, I want to keep doing it!

When I had the official date for my appearance (that makes me sound fancy, y’all!) on The Today Show, the first thing I did was to call my hot ISS friend Kevin.  I said, “I have to have a cut.”

When he first stepped in the picture, I was eating sub 1,000 calories a day for fear of gaining the weight back.  So, we added food back in to my program.