In honor of a former name....

I know this blog is called "Becoming the Spencers," but as most of you know, before that happened, I was a Becton. There was a lot of pride attached to the Becton name and we even had a town on the map in Texas. Please enjoy this story from the Lubbock Avalanche Journal about my former life and ancestry. Just for reference, I am related to all the people quoted in the article. Polly Wampler is my aunt (dad's sister), Gail Wilson is my cousin (Polly's daughter), and Ute is my dad's cousin.

http://lubbockonline.com/stories/032910/loc_597672050.shtml

P.S. I'm thinking of keeping the name Ute alive...look for little Ute Spencer coming in approx. 4-6 years.

Fiddlers, Fun and Fat Loss

As an intro, I’d just like to point out that I really love alliteration (see title)!
This past weekend packed in a lot of events in multiple categories. After some work travel last week, I came home to a few days of in celebration of “Spring Break.” Since my boss is on a cruise and out of pocket completely, he let us all share some time off so I got Thurs-Wednesday of this week as a mini spring break from the office! I’m still doing some work from home, but mainly trying to catch up on various maintenance issues, doctor’s appointments, and chores that are difficult to complete outside of the 9-5 work schedule.

We kicked off the weekend by attending "Fiddler on the Roof" with William’s family on Friday night. William’s mom got his step-dad tickets as a Christmas present and so graciously included the whole family in the outing. The musical was great and we even saw the final performance of on the most acclaimed actors in the lead role of “Tevyah”. As somewhat of a musical expert (and by that I mean I played some roles in community and school versions of musicals), I thought he was great in the role, but you can tell his voice had seen better days. Despite that, it was great and so much fun to spend time with all the fam.

Saturday was a day of yard work and errands but concluded in celebration of our great friend Justin’s birthday in the Bishop Arts District. We had a great time hanging out with some friends and browsing all the fun shops in the area. Since William and I are still cleansing, we knew we couldn’t eat pizza at the party so tried to fill up on salmon and broccoli before we got there. Even though our healthy meal was delicious and satisfying, I think it was the toughest challenge either of us has faced so far to turn down Eno’s pizza! Pizza is somewhat of a passion at our house and a weekly meal staple. We’ve both done great on the cleanse though and are feeling and seeing some great results! I have even had more energy and stamina in my work outs this week!

Sunday was a great day of church, soccer and browsing for landscape designs. We will hopefully have some fun landscaping updates to the backyard later this month! I’ll post pics when it happens.

All in all, it’s been a great few days and with only 2.5 days to go on the cleanse, I’ve lost over 5 pounds and probably some inches too. I’ll keep you posted on total results from the cleanse after I do final weigh and measures on Wednesday…Until then…

The Challenge

Today, William and I started a 24 day health and nutrition challenge through AdvoCare. The program is a 2 part challenge starting with a 10 day “cleanse” and then followed by 14 days of a “lean and trim” process. I thought by posting this to our internet audience, we could create a little bit of accountability to stick with our goals and complete the full 24 day program.

As some of you know, I’m actually a distributor for AdvoCare products after falling in love with some of the products during our annual Texas vs. the Nation game, and I’ve been told this is one of the best ways to get started in AdvoCare and become familiar with some of their top selling products. So, here’s the breakdown of what the next 24 days look like for William and I.

Days 1-10- “Herbal Cleanse”
About a month before William and I got married, I did a “natural” 7 day cleanse that was recommended to me from a fitness instructor. Basically, I ate fruit every 2 hours until 3pm then I switched to raw veggies. On day 3, I got to add in a small amount of lean protein. It was miserable and I was starving most of the time, but I did lose weight. The problem with this was that the meal plan was completely unrealistic for everyday life so it was a quick, temporary fix to the extra pounds I wanted to get rid of pre-wedding. When someone first recommended this cleanse, I was scared of the word altogether but after doing some research, I found it to be MUCH better and more maintainable than others I have heard of in the past.

Basically, we have a few shakes and mixes we take in the morning and replace our normal breakfast with a meal replacement shake. The shakes by themselves aren’t bad, but can be made even better by blending in some ice and frozen fruit. It’s actually a better option than my normal breakfast, which is usually some kind of bar and a banana.

You can have a mid-morning fruit “snack” and hardboiled eggs if you’re really hungry. For lunch, you eat some veggies and lean protein and can even have a complex carb (so for this meal we are eating turkey sandwiches on whole wheat bread w/ mustard and baby carrots/fruit.

Afternoon snack is nuts/fruit and you also get a yummy spark drink to give you a little energy boost for the afternoon. For dinner, it’s just a matter of picking healthy options such as lean proteins (chicken, fish etc) and fresh, steamed veggies. You take a pack of cleanse tablets before bed and make sure you’re drinking LOTS of water throughout the day and that’s it.

So, that’s what we’ll be doing the next 10 days. I’ll try and keep posting updates and will explain phase 2 when we get there. I’ll also kick this off by listing a few of our goals over the next month or so…
1. Tami to lose 12-15 lbs and keep it off!
2. To get in at least 4 good workouts a week
3. To develop better eating/cooking habits for both of us!
4. To feel better and have more energy day to day
5. To feel confident and comfortable in a swim suit (there will be before and after pics but I’m not feeling like I’ll be able to post those online at this point. Maybe if my results are good…I don’t know.)

Wish us luck!