kimmers for life

All you need is faith, trust and pixie dust!

Those of you who have been reading here for a long time know that I'm completely and totally ever so slightly obsessed with all things Disney. Nick and I make it a point to get down to Walt Disney World at least a few times a year, in spite of living in Connecticut. I dragged him to see Toy Story 3 this weekend. There may or may not be Disney songs on my Ipod. We even got engaged in Disney World last September.

It came as absolutely no surprise to anyone who knows me at all that Nick and I decided to get married in Walt Disney World.

When Nick first jokingly threw out the idea of a Disney wedding, I immediately rejected the idea. I mean, yes I'm obsessed with The Mouse and I fully embrace that, but did I really want a theme park wedding? Wouldn't it be over the top tacky and unoriginal? Wouldn't I have to listen to an endless stream of complaints and jeers from our guests, especially once they showed up and saw Mickey plastered all over everything? Wouldn't a destination mean sharing our honeymoon with all our guests? As much as I loved Disney, I felt strongly that a Disney wedding was just not for me.

The problem was, I couldn't find a wedding that was for me. In spite of countless hours spent online researching possible wedding venues, I couldn't seem to find anything I could get really excited about. I set wedding planning to the side because I was frustrated that nothing felt exactly right for us.

Then the Wedding Channel aired a special on Disney World weddings, and it was all over.

I had no idea that Disney World weddings could be so elegant and understated. I watched the special, and I recorded it and watched it again with Nick. Something just clicked for me watching that show, and from that point forward nothing but Disney ever felt quite right for our wedding. We were both blown away by the beautiful, meaningful, and yes - even original - weddings that so many Disney brides had planned. We talked about it and we realized that a lot of our great memories as a couple came from Disney vacations. We loved the idea of reciting our vows in the same place that we first made our committment to each other official. We were excited by the prospect of celebrating our marriage in our favorite place and sharing that place with our favorite people. We decided right then and there that Disney was the only place for our wedding.

After deciding we wanted to have a Disney World wedding, I found and joined the DIS, a great online Disney community. I started frequenting the Disney Weddings & Honeymoons board to get inspiration from past and present Disney brides. And I realized that yes - you can hold your Disney weddings inside one of the theme parks. Disney characters can join you for cake cutting and first dances. You can arrive at your ceremony in Cinderella's horse drawn carriage, and you can have a replica of her castle on your cake.

You can also have a perfectly lovely wedding in or around one of the Disney hotels, with no overtly "Disney" elements at all.

In the end, the more time we spent planning our wedding, the more Disney touches Nick and I decided to include in our day. We didn't choose to have our wedding ceremony at Epcot or the Magic Kingdom, and we likely won't spend the money to have a visit from Mickey and Minnie. I have zero interest in taking a ride in Cinerella's coach, and I doubt if her castle will appear on my cake. But somewhere along the way I stopped caring if our wedding came across as "themey" or "childish" or even tacky. The people who know us best will see our choices and know that we planned a wedding that truly represents us as a couple. Nick and I will look back on our wedding pictures and be thrilled that we stuck to our guns and planned something truly meaningful to us. We're both kids at heart, and I think that's one of the greatest things about our relationship - we always, always have fun together.

Last week our save the dates went out, along with a welcome newsletter that my maid of honor Jen helped me design. So far the response from our guests has been great, and a lot of people are already excitedly planning their trip. We've had a few visitors to the wedding website we set up to help our less DIsney savvy guests plan their trips, and I've received a few excited messages on Facebook.  

Oh, and we're heading to Florida three days early so we can hit the parks with friends and family before the wedding, and have a true honeymoon after.

Trimming the fat: week 4

I was pretty sick for most of this week, and the antibiotics I was on made me thisclose to puking twenty-four hours a day. I was not in good shape to be trying to get fit. I did 100 crunches a few days and we went for a walk or two but otherwise I did no real exercise. (Meanwhile Nick zoomed through week two of Couch to 5K, leaving me in the dust.) I fully expected to gain weight and I was braced for it.

I forgot, however, that I had a complete lack of appetite for most of the week.

Timely illness FTW!

New Weights:

Kim: 162.5 (-1 lb)

Nick: 205.5 (-.5)

This week we were both losers! (In the best possible way of course.)

Going forward, I have made a goal for myself to do 100 crunches every single day. I have three months and one week until my trip to Florida, and although I really could care less if I ever have a six pack or even a two pack, I would like to see a flat stomach and an absence of muffin top. I'm hoping 100 crunches a day is a good starting point for that.

(On a side note, I finally managed to bribe Nick into reading one of the greatest books of all time, aka Harry Potter and the Socerer's Stone: he agreed to read one page for every two crunches I do.) (I do not think he realizes that I have a goal of 100 crunches per day.) I have to say, finally getting him to pick up that book has been an even better motivator than getting a flat stomach! Every time I reallllllly don't want to do my crunches, it's the pages that get me through it.

I'm planning to start week two of Couch to 5K and continue with that program. On the days that I'm off from the program, I'll do a short power walk on the treadmill and some other targeted exercise (arms, abs, etc). I know that there will be days that I can't or simply won't get any exercise in, but I'm trying to make those days the exception and not the rule.

I still feel like apart from creating better habits, I'm not seeing a lot of progress yet. However, I am thrilled not to have gained this week so for now, I'll take it.

This week I want to know: what are some simple arm exercises I can do without equipment (except small free weights, which I have)?

Don't say push ups! I can't do these, at all. Not even a few.

No seriously, I mean it. It's almost comical to watch me try.

Trimming the fat: week 3

This was not a good week, you guys.

New weights:

Kim: 163.5 ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (+1 lb)

Nick: 206 (-2.5 lbs)

Overall Nick is down three and a half pounds and I am up half a pound!

This week I started Couch to 5K, and I ran that three days. I also went for a few decent neighborhood walks with Nick, and for a serious two hour walk with a friend. I definitely increased my activity significantly, so what the eff?!

Nick says I am snacking too much, and damn him, I'm inclined to agree.

The only other explanation is fiance sabotage, and I'm not prepared to go there just yet.

YET.

If I gain next week, I'm hiring a royal taste tester.

This upcoming week, in order to get this thing turned around, I am implementing a few changes.

1. I will be doing the Couch to 5K five times instead of three. (This was my intent last week, but things got in the way. And apparently, into my stomach. No more excuses.) (I just want to point out that today I seem to have a mild stomach flu, and I'm still planning to run tonight, so let it never be said that I'm not trying!) (Apparently I'm just exceptionally good at failing.)
2. As much as it pains me, I started tracking my calories on the Daily Plate at Livestrong today. I love this program and I hate it. On the one hand, I enter my height, weight, and how many calories I want to lose each week (2) and boom! I am helpfully told how many calories I can consume each day in order to reach my goal. I can easily search the (enormous) database to find the foods I eat, or I can enter calories manually. If I exercise, I can log that in and earn back some calories. (I like to call this part Getting Enough Calories For Ice Cream.) So when does this process start to suck? Oh, generally right around dinnertime, when I start trying to add up ingredients and divide by portion size and right around the point where I'm checking the calorie content in a tablespoon of margerine, my head explodes and I swear off the damn program.
The thing is, though, it works. Each time Nick and I have done this in the past we have lost weight without feeling deprived. (Frustrated, yes. Deprived, no.) I do find that I need to work out pretty much daily in order to feel totally satisfied (read: in order to earn dessert) but that's not such a bad thing! Clearly I am just not skilled at judging how many calories I consume in a day, so I'm going to need to suck it up and suffer through this.(Though I do need to remember to track each item as I eat it, and not log it all in hurriedly at 2 pm, lest this should happen:) Apologies for the horrible quality of this picture. I think I was in a state of shock when I took it.

3. I will actually start using my exercise ball, as opposed to just talking about using it.

4. I will drink even more water, gallons and gallons of water, basically until I either float away or get skinny, whichever comes first.

Ok, my eye is starting to twitch over the fact that my lovely numbered list is now strangely formatted, and that feels like enough goals for one week!

Now that I've had two lousy weeks out of three, I'm curious: what the heck do you guys do to stay motivated during a rough patch??

The summer of 30

I decided to join up with Mama Kat's writing prompt today and tell you 30 things I vow to almost definitely accomplish this summer.

1. Complete Couch to 5K. I just started this program on Tuesday but so far I'm pretty happy with it... that is if I ignore my complete shame at how utterly crippled two freaking days of the workout have left me. I give myself a lot of credit for jumping back on the treadmill last night in spite of the fact that I walked with a granny limp all day. 

2. Get down to 145 lbs (or less!) by the time we leave for Florida at the end of September. This would put me within ten pounds of my Desired Wedding Weight a full seven months before the wedding, so I wouldn't be stressing out trying to lose a ton at the last minute. It will also give me much better odds of being happy with my engagement pictures. I mean seriously, if I'm flying to Florida to get them, I may as well like them, right?

3. Stick to the new budget that Nick and I created with Saving For The Wedding in mind. The budget does not allow for random purchases like desperately needing a coffee/candy bar/manicure, but it does allow for luxuries like hilighting my hair, and going out to dinner and the movies several times per month. It's not poverty level by any means so there should be no reason why we don't follow it. Except I still think $50/week for personal spending money would be a lot more reasonable than $20. I mean seriously, $20 won't even keep me in nail polish and coffees, never mind clothes or books.

4. Find and test drive some new recipes. We are in a major food rut and I hate it!

5. Find some vegetables that Nick will eat, as currently the only "vegetable" he will even consider is corn, and that's not even a freaking vegetable even if it is delicious. I would like for him to be around more than the next five or ten years, so greens are a must. Any great recipes you guys know for preparing delicious veggies?

6. Work out in some way at least 5x per week. I'm hoping to do Couch to 5K five times each week, but I'm not sure if that will be sustainable as the weeks get harder. Either way, I also want to spend some time doing core work on my exercise ball to try and get back the flat stomach I never appreciated until it was gone. I'd like to get on the wii fit for some hula hooping and some downhill ski jumping. I'd like to let the little wii people mock my attempts at step aeorobics. I'd like to get out on our bikes as much as possible. And I would like to continue our walks around town, because I really enjoy them.

I'd also really like to accomplish #2, and I'm thinking that pretty much necessitates completion of #6.

7. Take Dunkin for walks! It's terrible to admit but we almost never do. He loves it when we do take him and he could use the exercise, so we need to make this a habit.

8. Develop my blog and in doing so, hopefully flex my writing muscles, because it terrifies me to admit this but I think they've gotten weak. I want to get to a place where I post at least three to four times per week. I want to write as many thoughtful, well structured posts as I do silly nonsense ones. I want to get more readers, and I want them to come here and stay because they love my writing.

9. Become a better blog reader. I used to be great about leaving comments but I have really slacked lately. I mostly blame my BlackBerry, which is great for reading blogs but horrible for leaving comments. I read your posts on my phone and tell myself I'll comment later when I'm on my laptop, and later comes along and I've completely forgotten about it. In the last week or two I have tried to focus on leaving comments again and I'm going to continue that.

10. Start a novel. There are a lot of reasons why I haven't yet - that's a post for another day - but I really need to sit down and just begin.

11. Start waking up earlier during the week. I always get up at thelastpossiblesecond and I kind of hate that about myself. I want to get up and actually have time to sit down with breakfast and a cup of coffee. I'd like to be able to do my workouts in the morning sometimes so my evenings are freer. This one is definitely going to be a major challenge for me so I may need to come up with some sort of prize for the days I accomplish it!

12. Get up earlier on weekends. I have a tendency to sleep until ten or even eleven and although it feels wonderful I always end up feeling like I've wasted half of a precious day off! I'd like to try shooting for nine for a while and see how that works.

13. Try quinoa.

14. Drink more water. I have been carrying a Nalgene bottle everywhere and that is helping.

15. Drink less soda. *sob* Even Diet Coke since some of you seem to think it's like drinking poison.

16. Eat lots of salads. I had fallen away from this because produce is expensive and I have a tendency to not be able to eat the salad stuff before it goes bad in the fridge. I always think I will eat salads every day for lunch, and three days in I'm completely over it and just packing leftovers. I'm trying to get past this by having a small salad every night with my dinner rather than trying to substitute salad for something more substantial for lunch. I'm also using less ingredients in my salads, so I use each one up faster and it doesnt't have a chance to spoil.

17. Spend more time outside. I have a tendency to start dreaming of couch + computer at about 3 pm. Summer goes by in a flash and I want to enjoy it while it's here!

18. Stop picking at my cuticles. I do this when I'm bored or nervous and it's so, so satisfying gross. When my nails are nicely manicured I don't do it, but weekly manicures didn't make the final cut of our budget.

19. Get caught up on scrapbooking and stay caught up.

20. Learn how to use my beautiful new DSLR. I'm not really sure how to accomplish this without spending money on a class, any ideas?

21. Learn how to edit photos. Is there a decent free program out there that I can download for this?

22. Take and edit a few photos that I like well enough to frame and hang around our apartment.

23. Choose a wedding hairstyle before I go down to Florida for my hair and makeup trial.

24. Become the kind of person who cleans a little each day. It just seems so much less stressful than being the kind of person who cleans frantically for eight hours every time they are expecting guests.

25. Fit back into my beloved True Religion jeans! Currently a solid 15 pounds away from buttoning. And the moment they do, I am running out and buying a pair of the True Religion Joey jeans with twisted seams , and I don't care where that money comes from!

26. Decide what to do with the china cabinet in my dining room. I don't have china, and we have not registered for any yet because a) I hate everything Nick loves and vice versa, and b) I get an illogical rush of guilt every time I think about registering for something so expensive when we already have perfectly functional plates in our cabinets. Seriously, even the lower end of "nice" dinnerware is shockingly expensive. I just don't know if I can do it. Although I really would enjoy having a nicer set for when we have people over for dinner. And that would solve the What Do I Do With My China Cabinet quite nicely.

27. I might want a blog redesign. I think my current one is really cute, but it has always bugged me that once you navigate away from the main page the design doesn't follow. I'd like the design to show a bit more of my personality, and maybe incorporate some photos or pictures into the header. I would also like to change up the layout a little. I keep not doing anything about this because I hate the thought of trying to find someone who could do it for me - it seems like a lot of designers can't do much with Typepad. Also, I have no idea how much it would cost me to get a redesign. See also: $20/week spending money.

While we're on the subject, can I please just say how freaking badly I also want to pay someone to make me a really great wedding website?? Ours is free, and therefore super generic and not very customized at all. See? But it's also free, and that's pretty much the wall I keep hitting. I'm about to send out my save the dates, at which point our guests will have the website link, and I'm mildly twitchy that it's so meh. 

28. I might also want a new blog name, and a clever tagline. "Kimmers for Life" is something I came up with on a whim when I was setting up my blog and super impatient to write my first post, and I sometimes wish I'd given it more thought. My only real criteria was that it contain the word "Kimmers" but seriously, that was the best I could do? I've thought about changing it a few times, but a) I'm not sure how to physically do that in Typepad, and if I did would I lose posts/followers? and also b) yeah, I still can't come up with anything clever to replace it with. So this is at a bit of a standstill right now but it's something I think about from time to time.

29. Go to the beach in Maine at least once. I really love the Moody/Wells/Ogunquit/York Beach areas, and I try to get up there at least once a summer, even if it's only for a day.

30. Reread The Seeker of Truth and The Wheel of TIme series, by Terry Goodkind and Robert Jordan, respectively. I love these books to death and I get ridiculously invested in them, so once I pick up book #1 I pretty much disappear into a reading nook for weeks until I'm finished with them. Lately I've been craving a reread so I think I need to carve out time for that.

All I want to say upon finishing this is that I seriously underestimated how difficult it would be to come up with 30 things. Hats off to anyone else who chose this prompt!

Trimming the fat: week 2

I can't believe it's already time for my second weigh-in post! This week was definitely more successful for me, which is great because it's left me feeling really motivated.

New weights:

Kim: 162.5! 162.5! 162.5! (-1.5)

Nick: 208.5 (+1)

(He weighed himself twice to be sure.)

(I did the same thing last week.)

Overall I am down half a pound and Nick is down one. At least we are both overall in the minus column.

This week I used the treadmill several a few times ok fine once. But! I also went for several walks around the neighborhood with Nick, and I tried hard to focus on eating healthier. I ate a lot less meat than I normally do, and I made a conscious effort to include vegetables with every meal. I bought stuff for salads and actually used it before it went bad, which is a huge improvement for me. (Generally my fridge is where lettuce goes to die.) (Even though I really, really like salads! It's just so much freaking effort to use everything before it goes bad, and carefully wrap up what's left after you make the first salad, ugh.) I snacked on baby carrots, pretzels and red grapes far more often than I snacked on junk.

And I lost a pound and a half!

You mean this shit actually works?!

This next week I plan to start using my big exercise ball to do some crunches and maybe some planks. I'm also starting the Couch to 5K today, and I plan to do that four to five times per week on my treadmill. Nick is actually interested in giving it a try too, so maybe we can keep each other motivated. We are both completely incapable of running for more than about a two minute stretch, so I'm really eager to see if this program works for us! (We're also both completely horrible at sticking to programs or plans of any kind... see also: Livestrong calorie counting, which we have started, successfully lost weight while doing, and quit at least four times.)

I'm in a great place right now. It's amazing how motivated I feel after losing just a pound and a half!

What do all of you do to stay motivated? 

Loving and loathing

Right now I'm loving...

• Joe's Jeans. I just got a pair for super cheap and they are So. Damn. Comfortable. They also have an adorable patchwork design on the back pockets... too cute!
• Wedding planning. Some days it just really hits me that I'm marrying the man I love best, in my favorite place in the world, surrounded by my favorite people. Remembering that makes even the silly little things, like ordering envelopes or thinking about font styles, into something exciting.
• Being back in West Hartford. I still have dreams of moving down to Florida, and maybe in a year or two we will give that some thought. But for now, I am really loving our new apartment, and being able to walk to dinner, the movies, the library, the smoothie shop... I can't get enough! I'm the kind of person who would always rather walk than drive, so this has really been great for me.
• Our treadmill! I was so excited when this was delivered. I just can't wait to start logging some miles and get on track with my fitness goals. I'm actually excited to get home tonight and work out, which is so unlike me. (I also bought cute new athletic shorts to run in. In my house, where no one will see me. This is much more like me.)

Right now I'm loathing...

• Getting up at 6:15 every morning. I am soooo not a morning person. For the last year I've been able to get up a lot later, and getting back into the routine of waking up early has been rough to say the least. To make matters worse, I've had major trouble sleeping the last three or four nights so I'm seriously running on empty right now. My crankiness is at an all-time high.
• Eating better and exercising. I've let myself fall into really bad habits and changing them is definitely a challenge. I know that I will start to feel more motivated when I see the first five pounds come off so I'm doing my best to stay the course!
• How far behind I have let my scrapbooking fall. Scrapbooking is something I love to do, but I get major anxiety when I let the stacks of photos pile up. Right now I have at least three vacations and a ton of random pictures that need to be done and it is really bothering me. I have a day off tomorrow and I have a set of goals for the day, one of which is to work on getting caught up on this! I need to just drag all my supplies out and go to town for a few hours.

What are you loving and loathing this week?

Trimming the Fat: Week 1

Well folks, it's time for the first Trim the Fat weigh-in.

I'm extremely a little embarassed about this, so I'm just going to throw the weights out there and get it over with.

New weights:

Kim: 164 (+1 lb)

Nick: 207.5 (-1.5 lbs)

All I have to say about this is damnnnnnnn it sucks to have to post that here!

(Ok actually I guess I have a little more to say after all. But that's what I want to say with the most Dramatic Emphasis.)

This week was a tough one for the fitness plan. Holiday weekends really are not conducive to weight loss. We had a few family parties to go to on Sunday, and we had a bunch of friends over for Game Night on Saturday, so clearly this week there wasn't a whole lot of dieting or exercising going on. (Although I want to point out that I literally spent about six hours heavily cleaning on Saturday getting ready for our party, and I totally think that counts as a decent workout.) (Clearly the scale disagrees.) (Maybe we need a new scale.) We did go for a few decent walks around town, but more often than not the walks tended to end in grabbing an ice cream or a fruit smoothie on the way home. Yeah, I know.

I would kill to know how Nick managed to LOSE almost two pounds, but when I tried to pry the informatio out of him, he said something ridiculous about "starving" himself and subsisting on 100 calorie granola bars. Which I'm taking with a grain of salt since he's drinking a Fanta right now. And I swear I saw Ben & Jerry's in the freezer. Goddamn men and their goddamn metabolisms. Or something.

I will say one thing Nick is great at is drinking a ton of water over the course of the day. I drink a decent amount of water, but over the course of the day I will usually also work in a Coke or two, and maybe an Arizona Green Tea or an orange juice or something. Nick drinks water exclusively, with today's Fanta being a very rare indulgence.

Part of my problem is that I have a very strong addiction to Coke, and I will admit that I frequently choose it as my beverage of choice in the morning. (I know!) Part of this is ridiculous, and part of it is that I have a fair amount of stomach issues, and on the (many) occasions that I feel sick, Coke is great for settling my stomach. Given that I want to lose a significant amount of weight in a short amount of time, I am making a monumental effort and switching over to Diet Coke. The real stuff just has too many freakin' calories. God help me, I am already anxious over the lack of Coke in our fridge. This does not bode well. 

Yesterday Nick and I talked about the fact that we really wanted to get on track with this whole fitness thing. Our engagement pictures seem frighteningly close, and by the time we get back from having those done? The wedding will be right around the corner... a corner filled with Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas hams, and plenty of other calorie laden holiday get togethers. We decided we could use a little motivation in the form of spending money we really can't afford to waste, so we went out and ordered a treadmill. Since that $1400 came directly out of our wedding fund, I'm thinking we can count on at least a few months of guilt-induced treadmill sessions.

We're still planning to go for walks outside as often as possible, but this way we can also work in some real pump-up-the-incline sweat sessions. I think we'll have the most success if we change things up as much as possible. I'm soooo not a runner, but I'd like to try doing some running/walking intervals too. I'm also planning to use my exercise ball to do some crunches and some other basic core exercises (which I will need to research). I have small weights to use for arm exercises, and I want to see if I can find a decent arm workout on our On Demand. I'm really determined to see a major difference in my self by October.

Hell, I'd like to see a difference a lot sooner! I'd like to be able to go to the beach this summer and feel ok about the way I look. I'd like to fit back into my cute little summer skirts. I'd like to pull out last summer's sundresses and strappy tank tops and feel pretty in them again.

Now let's see if I can get the scale going in a different direction for next week's weigh-in.