Spinning on the Savannah

 Last night I participated in a 5 hour spin event to benefit Camp OO-U-La, a camp put on by the Georgia Firefighters Foundation for children burn victims. Each rider had to raise $100 to participate, and I rode along with my coworkers making Century Glen Apartment's contribution to the children a whopping $300! My manager, assistant manager and I all spin at the Spin and Fitness Gallery in Evans, GA- which was the host of the event. We were thrilled at the challenge of a 5 hour ride and decided to take the opportunity to do something philanthropic as a team and include our other coworkers and residents in raising the funds. Through generous donations from our maintenance staff, residents, vendors, friends and family we raised the $300 needed for us to ride.

view from my bike at beginning of event

  The event appropriately titled "Spinning on the Savannah" was truly awesome. About 35 bikes were placed on the amphitheater stage in downtown Augusta, GA directly on the Savannah river.
We were led by Ivan Trinadad the owner of the Spin Gallery and entertained by a DJ for the whole 5-hour ride. The type of spinning we do is dubbed "Tae-bo spinning" and you wont find it in most gyms. We straight up dance on our bikes. We work our arms, abs, glutes and flat out boogie down. If we didn't there is no way I would enjoy riding in place so much!! From 7pm until midnight last night a group of 30+ women (and a few token gentlemen) rode their butts off to support Camp OO-U-La and raise money for the children. The point of such a scenic and public location was for more than the view! The music and and event drew a lot of onlookers and supporters who all helped the cause by dropping off donations! With my girls in front of and next to me I successfully completed 4 hours of the spin....I feel certain I could have done the 5th hour had I not been nursing and infant I needed to get home to (4 hours is a long time to go-even when you're wearing two sports bras-lol)! Here are some pictures one of the event staff shot for me with my camera! We had a great time!! Hope you had a fabulous Saturday night, as well! Love, Layne

Jennifer and Me- hour 2

doing it Puertorican style...

the Century Glen staff...London (manager), Layne (leasing specialist) and Jennifer (assistant manager)

The week so far...

  So....day two of being a working mom. Not all it's cracked up to be. I'm loving being around my work fam again, but I definitely miss my baby girl more than I ever thought I would. Also- ridiculously small amount of time to do ANYTHING. Including blog as much as I'd like.

Working out and dieting this week hasn't gone as planned, but not bad- per say. Monday and Tuesday I didn't exercise at all but I stuck to my diet perfectly and ate VERY well. Wednesday I started a new work out plan....Insanity did NOT blow my mind. It was crazy boring. It was 90% plyometrics and 10% cardio and no music or fun- I could not focus or get into it. Instead I started doing Hip Hop Abs....it's by the same instructor and is a lot more my style. I get to dance and jam out and that makes exercising a lot more fun and something I'll commit to. Wednesday I got a great work out in, and went to work prepared to eat my healthy lunch of a salad, rice cakes and Oikos yogurt. Diet fail. I ate like 4 cookies- we had 3 different types made at work and then someone brought up two more types of homemade cookies, AND a resident brought us gourmet chocolates. Yikes. It was like the universe was telling me to indulge!!! Today I haven't worked out yet but plan on it, and I've done really well on my diet. Overall, I'm not on track to lose 3lbs like I was aiming for, but I will lose this week and not gain--we'll see how much on Monday morning.

Tuesday night I made an awesome White Veggie Lasagna that was really low fat and low cal! Here is the recipe!!!

Dice up your choice of fresh veggies! I used yellow squash, zuccini, orange and red bell peppers!

I shop at WalMart for all of our generic food, so this was affordable, too! Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and grease a casserole dish. 

You need a large box of noodles (I used about 11 strips). And  a pack of Alfredo and Garlic Herb Knorr sauce mix.

Follow the instructions on the sauce packets but use slightly less milk than it calls for. I used skim milk to keep it healthier and light margarine, as well. 

Next you need a container of Skim Ricotta, egg, shredded mozza, and shredded parmesan (fresh would be tastier but I went for convenience...)

Mix the entire container of ricotta with 1/4 cup of the mozza, 1/8 cup of the parm and the egg. Once the sauce is ready add your veggies to it. Now layer your lasagna: row of noodles, 1/2 the ricotta mixture, veggie sauce, noodles, other 1/2 of ricotta mixture, sauce, noodles, sauce and then top it with 1/4 cup of mozza and 1/8 cup or parm.

VOILA! The calorie content is 300 calories per serving with it yielding 8 servings!! Sorry I didn't get an after pic, but it was BOMB.

This weekend is my birthday weekend, hopefully I'll have some fun and good pics to share! Love, Layne

A new week...

So after week 1 of "insanity" I've actually gained a pound or two. I'm not surprised, though. I only did 2 of the Insanity workouts last week, and 1 walk around the neighborhood- then this past weekend was spent with Chad's family and included 2 birthday party and cakes with ice cream... I do think y'all should know that on Friday before we left town I finally trashed the cream cheese icing I had been snacking on all week. Down the drain it went, I didn't even put it in the trash because I didn't trust myself to not go back and pick out the chunks off of the top (gross, I know and sort of a jobe- but that is how good this frozen icing was.) My goal this week is to lose 3 pounds. It's a steep goal but here is my plan...

1. Continue to breastfeed every 4 hours and pump every 2 hours in between-this is normal but it is a help, regardless.
2. Insanity workout or power walk EVERY day.
3. Keeping to my menu plan.
4. Blog about what I'm doing.
5. Going back to work.

My plan this week (and we'll see how it works) is to be accountable. First, I typed up a menu plan and wrote down what I'm going to eat Monday- Friday. I printed it out and it's on my refrigerator and I'll cross off what I what I eat each day and write down if I add anything or cheat. Second, I start work back on Wednesday which will really help with my weight loss. It's super easy to over snack when you're in the house in your kitchen all day like I have been the past 6 weeks with Noah. Packing a lunch for work will help me stick to my diet. Third, I'm going to blog as often as I can and let y'all know how it's going. It's amazing how motivating typing out your failures and successes and then sharing them with the world can be. So, 3 lbs is the goal, folks!! Wish me luck, thinner thighs and a tighter tush! Love, Layne

First out of town trip with Cloth Diapers

      We spent the past weekend at the beach with my in-laws. This was Noah's first big trip, and our first out of town outing with cloth diapers. The trip was a breeze, I didn't encounter any serious issues, I learn a few things, and overall it was a great first vaycay experience.
    To begin I washed every diaper we had other than the one on Noah's tush. We have 12 newborn BumGenius diapers that we use consistently and about 8 one-size diapers from other brands (Oh Katy, Sun Diapers, Fuzzibunz) that we have worked into our cycle since she is close to growing out of the new born size. Then I came across our first small dilemma. We use a FuzziBunz hanging diaper pail at our house to store all of the dirty dipes until we wash them. It's big and can hold a bajillion dirty dipes, it hangs on our bathroom door knob and does a great job of keeping the odor out of the air. Other than the hanging bag, we have a small Kushie's wet bag that stays on our pack-n-play changing table and medium sized wet bag from Target that goes in our diaper bag and holds several diapers...the Kushies and target bags were not going to cut it for a weekend trip so we washed the hanging bag with the load of diapers and packed it, too. Then left the two dirty diapers from Friday morning in a small wet bag in our bathroom sink and that was that! I packed what looked like a ton of nappies, but ended up using all but one diaper between 2pm on Friday and 9pm on Sunday. The two other small issues that I stumbled upon were not having a diaper sprayer I didn't know how to pre-clean the dirties to prevent staining. I rinsed one under the tub faucet but there wasn't enough water pressure to do any good so all of the diapers stayed fully dirty all weekend. I am worried about staining from the poo soaking in that long. Additionally we took disposable wipes which at first you'd think would be easiest, but I didn't want to flush a ton of wipes and mess up their plumbing, and didn't want to toss smelly wipes in the bathroom trash, so they went in the hanging bag, too and I'll have to pick them out of the washer now. We haven't done a lot of cloth wipes so far, but we do have plenty and I do have a wipe spray solution prepared. Next time we should do perfectly! Here is a picture of Noah being held by her oldest cousin this weekend.

The Insanity Days 1 & 2

 So if you have been keeping up, you read my post that Chad and I started a new work out this week called Insanity. We started it Monday evening- because our plan to start that morning was foiled by Noah's feeding schedule. Actually, both workouts so far have been in the evening because I'm not getting enough sleep in between feeding Noah from 3ish-5ish in the morning and our alarm going off at 7:30. The first exercise is a fit test that you're supposed to do every 2 weeks throughout the program. It kicked our butt. I had no idea how out of shape I was. Chad and I finished the fit test and I wrote down how many of each exercise I was able to complete that way I can track my progress through out the duration of the Insanity program. After we worked out I headed upstairs to watch Gossip Girl and Heart of Dixie and left Chad downstairs to watch sports and hang with Noah. When my shows ended I came downstairs and walked into the kitchen to see Chad's back to me and the sound of a knife chop-chop-chopping. He turned to face me and I could see chopped up Butterfinger about to be dumped onto a bowl of chocolate ice cream. He smiled and said - In case you didn't know, Butterfinger sundaes are on the Insanity diet....sheepishly I pull a tupperware container and spoon out from behind my back and told him - I was glad to hear it because now I don't feel bad about the Cream Cheese Icing I'd been eating by the spoonful. We laughed and I silently promised myself that I would be more strict with my diet the next day.
  Tuesday morning I woke up and felt horrible. My body had taken a beating and I had relapsed a bit as far as my post-childbirth recovery. I felt extremely sore and achy and worried that I might not be able to handle the Insanity. For one, maybe I had jumped back into working out too soon. Second, this is a type of exercise I wasn't used to. In the past my go-to has been power walking, elliptical and maybe some Zumba. This is a lot of plyometrics and strength training. Yikes. We took Tuesday off because physically I was in a less than ideal state. Chad and I talked about it and decided maybe I would need to do the program every other day- or maybe my body was just in shock from the jump from barely any exercise into this intense work out program.
  Last night we did the Cardio Interval training. It was awesome. I struggled a lot specifically on squats and jumps. My thighs have little strength which surprises me since they've been carrying around so much weight over the past few months. Walking downstairs this morning I felt my calf cramp up a little, but I feel significantly better than I did Tuesday morning after day 1. I'm not sure if we will try and work out again tonight or if we'll continue on our every other day plan. Regardless, I think I'll stroll Noah today- help stretch out my muscles and get a little cardio in. Plus, if I do it early I can enjoy the fall weather before it heats up this afternoon! Yesterday my diet went very well, however I did indulge in the icing again...I'm going to throw it our today. I promise. Really. I promise.....layne

Bringing Sexy Back

    Tomorrow morning I embark on a journey. It will involve sweat, hard work, maybe some tears, hopefully some laughs...but most certainly results. Tomorrow morning at 7:30 am marks the beginning of a new stage in my life that I like to call: Bringing Sexy Back. I'm drawing my inspiration, of course, from the well-known Justin Timberlake song of a similar name. Ok, it's the exact same name, and I've been singing it non-stop since I cleverly came up with this idea. Here are the lyrics that are driving my ambition, they're deep and meaningful:

Let me see what you're working with
Go ahead, be gone with it
Look at those hips
Go ahead, be gone with it
You make me smile
Go ahead, be gone with it
Go ahead child
Go ahead, be gone with it
And get your sexy on 


My goal, of course, is to get back in the slammin' shape I was in before I went and got myself pregnant.

this was me last November-ish at a friends wedding

Now, I'm too self conscious to tell you what I weigh currently, but I will tell you that I gained 50 pounds (that's right, fifty) during my pregnancy. A real shocker to my OB who suggested I only gain 32lbs when I had already gained 20 and was only 5 1/2 months in. I didn't binge eat, and I wasn't lazy. I ate healthy and moderately and worked out hard core up until I was put on bedrest. Alas, like a lot of folks told me- I gained exactly what my little baby girl needed me to, and nothing I did was going to stop that. Tomorrow morning the hubby and I are starting a work out program called (dun dun duunnn) INSANITY. It's supposed to be like P90X but even more awesome. Obviously.
   Insanity features 10 workouts that vary in length and focus on different parts of the body and offer different styles of exercise, much like P90X. The program promises you an INSANE body in 60 days. I'm going to do my best. I have no problem eating healthy, so that will be a big help. The only thing I'm worried about is our schedule and making time to complete each day's workout. For the next week and a half I shouldn't have any trouble, but I go back to work full-time next Wednesday and at that point there will probably have to be an adjustment period. It's going to take us some time to get into a schedule for sleeping, nursing, getting ready for work, getting baby to sitters, and the insanity workout on top of all of that. However, I'm one determined lady. You may meet few people who hate being out of shape more than I do. I've been fiending like a crack addicted to workout and waiting very impatiently for my body recover so I could do so. I'm going to weigh myself tomorrow morning and every Monday morning from this point forward for the next 60 days as to accurately document my progress and the path to bringing sexy back. I'll check in and let y'all know how much I'm losing, maybe post some pictures and "fun" experiences- and certainly let you know how I'm liking the workout! Wish me luck! Layne