My comment to Jennifer’s post:

Thanks so much for bravely posting this post. It’s a battle I’m sure most have experienced at one time or another. I personally didn’t start my struggle with weight until after my 2nd pregnancy. And my attempts to lose were always only partially attempted until a few years ago when I started running. In fact I started running because I noticed that every thin person I knew ran. Surprising to me was the fact that running did in fact not change my size or weight one ounce.

Running, however, has done a lot for my spiritual and mental health, but my body keeps rejecting a lot of my runs every time I try to amp up or do more that I’m doing. The weight blended with the strain of running was just too much for it. So 2 years ago I started watching what I ate very carefully to give my joints, etc. what they needed so that I could keep running. I finally started using the tools my health nut mother taught me as I was growing up. And I studied, and studied, and studied to learn more about fueling my body.

Now I could probably tell most people more about nutrition that most nutritionists, and yet the weight still clings to my body. I keep playing with the numbers…eating more, eating less, eating different things, trying different plans, tracking my calories, studying my metabolic rate, talking to doctors, and on and on and on.

Then this morning, as you know, I discovered a health issue I’ve been having may be the cause to all of my worries. I worry that I’ve waited to long to take care of my body, and that I will forever be the size I am now forcing me to quit running.

At the same time I’m ashamed not to be grateful for the body that I do have. There are always others to compare yourself that are worse off than you are, and that is a burdon. And there are always others to compare yourself to that are better off than you are, and that is also a burdon. Letting go of the burdon I think is the biggest challenge. And some day I hope to be able to conquer that part of me.

But I think for a while I’m just going to have to mourn time wasted and mistakes made. I just have make 100% sure that there aren’t options I’m unaware of out there to help me. And I have to do all of this without making myself insane. Perhaps it’s time for another run.

Kelly Kinkaid

The post Beautiful Weight Loss Blogging appeared first on Kellyology.

Rain in Oklahoma never seems to start slowly, one drop at a time slowly picking up speed as it is sometimes shown in movies giving the actors time to take cover. Instead the rain reminds me of how I used to feel as a teen when I would play the piano. I would drill through a couple of loud demanding scales warming up my fingers for what I knew what was coming next, a barrage of crazy notes flying from my fingers as I opened up my emotional fire hose drowning out the angst of my teen filled day. That is what rain in Oklahoma is like. Thunder comes slowly rolling in commanding your attention, and then suddenly with every ounce of force that a rain cloud can muster you are enveloped with its wetness as if you have chosen to jump up into the rain cloud itself.

Thunder is passionate and forceful. It is loving and bossy. It is strength at its finest and intimidating to the weak among us. It is outside, and I am inside sinking deeper into my cozy white chair, listening to the thunder and knowing what is about to come.

Kelly Kinkaid

The post Thunder and Rain appeared first on Kellyology.

For this next half marathon I’m hoping to do better, and I’ve spent December and January trying to build my base. My plan includes running 3 times a week, a day of alternative cardio, and I’m also trying to get in a couple of days of strength training in as well…mostly because strength training is my absolute favorite. If I could only do strength training and run a half marathon I would be completely in my happy place. Unfortunately I cannot, and I have to get my runs completed.

Last week, however, I had one of my weeks like before…only getting in two runs. It’s weird what my brain does when I have one of those lazy weeks. I can come up with all sorts of excuses why I shouldn’t run. My daughter wanted me to stay and watch her swim practice. My running buddies were all unavailable. I should really take a rest day to rest my poor knee. But really I only had one legitimate excuse last week regarding all of the runs I didn’t show up for. The rest of them? I had allowed my old way of thinking, my old 40-year-old habit of self sabotage, to get in the way. I allowed myself to go back to the part of me that doesn’t like to run.

So why do I keep signing up for these half marathons if there’s a part of me that doesn’t like to run?

Well…to put it simply, I want to be able to run half marathons.

For me wanting to be able to finish a half marathon is the same as saying I want to be able to live a certain lifestyle. I want to have a certain type of marriage. I want to raise children that turn into certain types of adults. All of these things take work, sacrifice, and yes sometimes you have to do things that you do not want to do in order to get them. Sometimes you have to wade through the minutiae of every day living with only that goal in front of you to keep you going. And that is how I see my training for my half marathon.

For me my training is about the final race.

It’s about the medal.

It’s about the fact that I’m running my 3rd half marathon, and I will be 43 years old when I’m doing it.

It’s about when you look at me, you don’t necessarily see what you imagine a runner looks like, and being a runner despite of it.

It’s about the beer after the race with friends.

It’s about the laughs you have during the race with the same friends.

It’s about feeding my body and being confident in the power that it contains.

It’s about the celebration of life.

It’s about seeing the morning sun and feeling the crisp morning air blow past you.

It’s about the smell of the salty sweat drying on my skin.

It’s about the exhausted joy of tired muscles.

It’s about getting lost in your running music.

It’s about those few times when you get that rare runners high, hitting you like a bang and sending chills throughout your body.

It’s about the quiet you feel when you see a memorial sign on a runners back as they run for those who no longer can choose to run.

It’s about the joy you get for the rest of the day after the early morning run.

And sometimes it is about losing the joy of running for a while, forcing yourself early one morning before you have time to talk yourself out of it to run to exhaustion.

Back on track is where I am today after having forced myself to run hard this morning. Sure I still feel the failure of that lazy week nagging at me as I wallow in being my own worst critic. But for now I have this morning’s run. And tomorrow I’m meeting friends for strength training and a walk. And that’s my favorite. I’m really looking forward to that time.

Kelly Kinkaid

The post Half Marathon Buzz appeared first on Kellyology.

However, a couple of weeks before Christmas I decided that I need to throw away some of my independent ways, especially when it comes to my independent diet. At the very least I needed to start planning my food for the day and start focusing upon nutrition more. I think it has something to do with my age or my femaleness, but for the past couple of years all of my former tricks for losing weight, like tracking calories and fat, have stopped working. I’m not really gaining weight, but I’m not losing either.

Now maintaining my weight would all be OK if I didn’t start training to run a couple of years ago to help me lose 20 pounds. But as I still need to lose 20 pounds I’m not OK with the fact that I’ve been on this several year plateau in regards to my weight.

The Independent’s Diet

So a couple of weeks before Christmas I decided to start really concentrating on eating better. I’m not worrying about quantity, but I’m worrying about quality. This change in diet is going to require me to start cooking more, a task I utterly abhor. This change in diet is going to require that I start tracking my food again on Fitness Pal…at least until eating better becomes second nature to me. And this change in diet is also going to require me to change my independent ways and start meal planning a bit better.

I’m hoping this change in diet will also include feeling great. I’m hoping this change in diet will also include finally making it past this plateau. And I’m hoping this change in diet might actually stick this time. What’s the saying? It takes 21 days to create a new habit. Well here’s to hoping.

In the mean time I’d love for your support. Follow me on My Fitness Pal or The Daily Mile where I’ll be tracking my progress.

And for you I’ve created a couple of Pinterest boards with some of the things I’ve been or will be cooking. (I actually have a ton of food Pinterest boards if you just want to make it easier and follow all of me on Pinterest.)

When I Cook shows recipes I’ve recently tried, and what I or my family thinks about them.

Healthy Recipes shows healthier recipes that I’ve found in the Interwebs.

And what’s good nutrition without smoothies crammed with healthy stuff?

Kelly Kinkaid

The post The Independent’s Diet appeared first on Kellyology.

I’m thoroughly enjoying my time with my kids home from school, and despite my public complaints about the husband spending so much time at home this holiday season, I have to say I’m sad to be seeing him off to work tomorrow. I’ve enjoyed bonding like we did back in college in which we spent our days figuring out what we were going to do that day the moment we woke up, so much unlike our regular days in our current past and our current future. I think it’s important that we find a way to have our some of our spontaneity back. I suppose we could schedule the days for spontaneity, but I’m not that ironic.

Next week my kids will go back to school. I’m conflicted about them returning so soon, and yet they’ve been out longer than most. This holiday season with them has been filled with truly good times, and like with most back to school also means back to busy schedules, less time for the creativity and silliness that can only come with being bored, and struggling to find time listen and hear all of what is going on with their lives.

Speeding down upon me right after the return to school, my daughter will be turning 11. Eleven seems so old, and in her pictures this last holiday season she looked so old. Though not as old as her 13 year old brother whose voice is changing into this weird falsetto place, not quite a man’s voice but no longer a boy’s.

And at the end of this month it is time for my next birthday, 43. I’ve barely gotten used to 42, and 43 is staring at me in the face. I was looking at the pictures from my birthday last year and the pictures from this holiday season. A lot has changed from 42 to 43. My hair is longer, I’ve gotten bifocal glasses, and my body has developed oddities that weren’t there the year before. I recently discovered a machine at the gym that promises to get rid of fine lines and wrinkles, cellulite, and provides magical weight loss. I’ve added standing in that machine a few times a week to my workout routine. I’ll take whatever magic I can get. Perhaps when I look at the picture from my 43rd birthday next year right before turing 44 time will move backwards instead of forwards.

Of course then the pictures will show my son more handsome and most likely taller than me, my daughter more beautiful and fighting with me about wearing make-up too young. I have to say that it’s an odd place to be if you think about it, looking forward to watching your children rush towards the place in which their outsides match their inside beauty, and at the same time watching yourself trying to keep your outsides matching your insides.

And all those items from this January brings me to this meme floating around Facebook in which people are picking a word for the year. It’s supposed to represent what you hope to accomplish or be or something like that. I think after reading over my past few words in this post as an outsider I’d pick the word “acceptance” as my goal word for 2013. Though as an insider I know that for me picking only one word for 2013 would be an oversimplification of what I hope to accomplish this year, of what goes on inside of my head as I look over my past year. But one part of what I hope to see next year when looking over the pictures of 2013 would be the word acceptance, as would joy, beauty, growth, love, strength, peace, and miracle, miracle from the red light magic machine to be exact.

Hey? Who said the word had to be about something super deep?

Kelly Kinkaid

The post January 2013 appeared first on Kellyology.

The lasting thing that works regarding my husband and I is the agreement he and I set up many moons ago. It goes as follows.

He works a job that pays money.
I do everything else.

So basically he can never ever have a moment in which he gets overcome by some unhappiness in his career, comes home, and says, “I’m done with this shit. I’ve quit my job.”
And I can.

Now this may seem unfair to outsiders looking in upon us, but then we go back to the fact that I do everything else. It’s a give and take game we play together. And for us it works.

However, a long while ago I started writing things for other people to see on the Internet.

What happens when you have written things for people to see on the Internet for such a long time is that you develop some expertise in things such as backends of blogs, SEO, online marketing, etc. Then you see people who started after you who you know for a fact are well…aggressive panderers who couldn’t entertain a crowd with an original good story or thought if they tried but they have suddenly convinced people enough that they can so that they make tons of money writing simple minded pieces about things like, oh I don’t know, how to use the shift key on your keyboard (why don’t you people already know how to use the shift key on your keyboard?).

These people cause you to pause (and write seriously long run-on sentences), and that along with the whole pressure you feel to make something of your life even though you know that the doing everything else role you play in your marriage is something important creates this one thought in your head that just won’t go away.

I could do that.

And that’s what I decided to do a few years ago…do that. I made some money writing about things that you people by a certain age should probably already know how to do. And I liked it for a while. I even had one boss that I absolutely loved, a rarity these days or so I’ve heard.

But then a few months ago I started having some health issues. I’m still being monitored now, but it looks like it might be nothing super serious. Don’t freak out. But while I’ve been being tested and prodded horrible thoughts started popping into my mind about legacies, my children, what mark I was leaving behind. One question wouldn’t go away.

Is this what I wanted to really be doing with my life?

And the answer was a solid no.

I wanted to be doing all of the things that fall into the everything else category that my husband and I set up retro style back in the 90′s. I like doing everything else. I love the everything else and all that it entails. The only part of the everything else that I didn’t like was the lack of financial freedom it gave me. However, here’s the thing.

My husband and I have been together since 1991. And we’re what you call frugal. And when you’ve been frugal since 1991 you have some financial freedom to do the things in the everything else category while your husband fulfills his role of working a job that pays money.  Another thing happens when you have been together since 1991. You pretty much know whether or not you’re lifers. Sure you may try to fool yourself into thinking you’re lifers when in fact one of you clearly is not a lifer, but deep, deep down you know whether or not you and your spouse together are lifers. And David and I? We’re lifers. And we made a commitment to each other back in the early 90′s.

He works a job that pays money.
I do everything else.

Sure it may not work for everyone, but it works for us. So I quit my job(s). I quit most of them pretty easily and very quickly many months ago. This last one was super hard to quit because as I’ve mentioned before my boss was as good as bosses get. It took me a lot longer to get the nerve up to quit that job. But I did it. Yesterday. And I feel good about it.

Well I feel good about it mostly.

I still can’t figure out why you people by now don’t know how to use the shift key by yourselves.

Kelly Kinkaid

The post I Quit My Job(s) appeared first on Kellyology.

What I love about this family favorite recipe is that there is minimal chopping, most of the ingredients are inexpensive or can often be bought on sale, and it makes a huge portion that could easily feed a family of four for two nights in a row. And on top of that? It takes very minimal time to prepare and cook. So without further ado here’s my recipe, Easy Corn and Potato Chowder.

Easy Corn and Potato Chowder

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbl Olive Oil
• 1 Medium Onion – chopped
• 13 oz. smoked sausage cut into bite size pieces
• 1 lb bag of frozen kernel corn
• 1 lb bag of frozen hashbrowns or shredded potatoes
• 5 cups of skim milk (or whatever milk you like)
• 1.5 tsp garlic powder
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Optional: Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Directions:
Add olive oil to a heated soup pot and then add chopped onions. Cook until clear. Add sausage after cut up to bit size pieces and brown a little. Then add frozen corn, hash browns, milk and garlic powder. Bring to a slow simmer, reduce heat, and cook for 30-40 minutes stirring frequently until thick and creamy. Salt and pepper to taste. Optional: Top each serving with shredded cheddar.

What do you love to eat on cold winter days?

Kelly Kinkaid

The post Easy Corn and Potato Chowder appeared first on Kellyology.

My son this past weekend went to an audition for a state band thing. I am a former musician, and being pretty decent myself back in the day I know what a good audition music is supposed to sound like. I had a really hard time listening to him practice the night before because quite frankly he hadn’t learned the music well enough. Sure he practiced, but he hadn’t practiced to the point in which he was what I knew to be acceptable enough to get into an audition only band. Today he found out that he hadn’t gotten into the band and was pretty disappointed.

When I asked him why he thought he hadn’t gotten into the band he said in a sullen 13-year-old way, “I don’t know. Luck?”

I spent the next 30 minutes explaining to him what good music was supposed to sound like.  I finally ended up with, “You have to practice the music to the point that when you are playing the music, you don’t even realize that there are notes making up the piece.” Good music creates a feeling, tells a story, paints an image, brings up a memory, etc. When you hear something that you think is good music, you aren’t thinking about the notes any more. You are having a moment. Each song is a moment in time that adds dimension to your life.

And to me that is perhaps the one of the top five feelings in the world I love to have.

That is why I introduced my kids to what I consider real music instead stupid kiddie music. That is why they both are required to do some sort of music along with all of their sports. And that is why I watch shows like the Voice with my kids. Most of the people on the voice have good voices, but few transport you. Every once in a while, however, you hear a musician go to that place that pulls something out of you, and it makes it worth getting passed all of the others.

Tonight among the talented pop stars, an awesome country singer, a mariachi singer that gave it all he had, came Amanda Brown. She sang Aerosmith’s Dream On. Honestly that song never really took me to the surreal emotional place that certain music does. I like the song, but yeah…it never took me to that place. And then Amanda Brown belted it out in a way that only a rocker chick can.

When she finished there was a brief silence in our living room, and then my 10-year-old daughter stood up, her eyes glistening, her body practically vibrating, and she yelled fists pumping in the air, “YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!” as if she were a transported into a much older body of a grown women metal head who was attending a wickedly loud, incredibly awesome rock concert.

Rocker chicks man. Sometimes they’re hard to find, but they’re always easy to recognize. And sometimes they’re standing in your very own living room living in the body of a very funny 10-year-old.

Amanda Smith’s Version of Dream On Found on You Tube

Kelly Kinkaid

The post Rocker Chick appeared first on Kellyology.

When I tell them that whatever they can find in the kitchen themselves is what they get for breakfast  I get a look, a look that tells me my lazy Sunday has come to an end.

Kelly Kinkaid

The post Lazy Sundays appeared first on Kellyology.

Some runners stay motivated to run by the pressure of future planned race. Some runners stay motivated to run through positive peer pressure. Some runners need to run because they use the run as a stress reliever. And then there are runners like me, runners who run because they are grateful that they can. I wasn’t always able grateful to be able to run.  It took me a long while to figure out what really motivated me to run. But I’ve battled through, and now I’m happy to find my zen run more often than I find a horrible run.

Today I had a great  12 mile run. I’ve actually been having good runs for a couple of weeks now, so I’m thinking that I’m on my way to a cruddy run with odds being what they are and all. I have the Route 66 Half Marathon and the Route 66 Marathon Relay on November 18th, and I’m hoping that’s not the day of the hard run. Last year I didn’t run this race as I was running my very first half marathon in Las Vegas a couple of weeks later. I was barely surviving those big training runs at that time, so the idea of doing the Route 66 Half and then two weeks later doing the Rock and Roll half blew my mind. I just didn’t even consider it.

I did, however, go to the Route 66 Marathon and Half Marathon to cheer on a couple of my friends who were running their first halves. It was a big year for those in my running group. We were all running our first halves together, and last year’s Route 66? The weather was miserable. The day before had been like today, sunny and in the 50′s with minimal wind–perfect running weather. And the year before that I heard that the race was similar to today as well. However, last year’s Route 66 was miserable. The wind was blowing, the temps were in the 20′s and about 30 minutes into the run it started sleeting intermittently. My poor friends were frozen by the end of the race, and I’m just hoping that this year the race will give me the good weather that I want.

But one thing I’ve discovered is that no matter how much preparation you have you can’t really control whether or not you will have a great or horrible run. Sure you can decrease the odds of cruddiness through good nutrition, proper training, and getting enough rest, but you can’t control things like the weather. Oklahoma’s weather average per the Weather Channel for November 18th in Tulsa, OK is a low of 36 to a high of 61. Anywhere within that range would make me super happy. But another thing I’ve discovered is that the weather predictions in Oklahoma? They are never predictable. Though I do have to say, that’s OK. I’ll still be grateful to be able to run.

Kelly Kinkaid

The post Grateful to Run appeared first on Kellyology.