Search results for

weight

weight loss

Weight Loss Update – My First 5K

I am training with a friend for a 5K coming up on June 2nd! I’m not really focusing on weight loss right now. I am working hard, preparing for the 5K and we will see how things go from there!

weight loss

Weight Loss Update – End of Week One

Just a quick update of how things went this first week. It wasn’t really a full week since we just started on Tuesday – so we didn’t do a weigh in this week. Our first weigh in will be Friday, January 13th.

weight loss

Weight Loss History/Introduction

Here’s a little introduction video in regards to my weight loss history and goals. I just felt like I needed to share that my weight goal has been my normal weight range whenever I have lost weight. Sure I would love to get under 160, but for now…that is what I aiming for. It gets confusing with all the dates that I mention.

Basically I weighed 165 in 1999 when Ken and I got married.
After having 3 kids from 2000 to 2004 I went up an down in weight and by the time Karli was a year old I had lost all baby weight.
I weighed 160-165 in 2005.
I weighed 180-185 in 2007, I had gained back 20 or so pounds for no real reason. Mostly not eating healthy.
In 2007, I started gaining weight each year after Ken and I started our business. My lifestyle changed drastically with working again after being an active stay-at-home mom for all those years. Sitting behind a computer screen all day and focusing on work caused me to be lazy, stressed, and eating unhealthy.
In 2011, I weighed around 235 most of the year.
My starting weight for my LAST EVER weight loss journey is 237.4.
There ya have it!

weight loss

Weight Loss Journey Begins

The time has come where I needed to take some drastic measures to lose weight. I am officially at the highest weight of my entire life. Even 9 months pregnant I did not weigh this much. It’s sad really, when I think about how I have allowed myself to gain so much weight over the past 4 years. What’s done is done and I accept that all I can do is face reality and DO something about it.

I have tried joining several weight loss groups and blog, all anonymously, about my weight issues over the past couple years and I have never stuck with it. It’s hard when you are not receiving any kind of support and know that if you stopped trying tomorrow no one would really care. I have been amazed at the number of YouTubers that have been successful with documenting their weight loss journeys with the world. I think I have mentioned before in our blog before that I adore watching videos of the Shaytards family on YouTube. The father, Shay Carl has tried to lose weight for several years and has always been very open and honest about his struggle to lose weight. It wasn’t until this past year that Shay really put the effort into losing weight that he began to lose weight and keep it off. There were no gimmicks or quick solutions involved. Shay lost the weight the old fashioned way; the real way. He actually ate healthier and exercised. While doing so he documented his journey on his ShayLoss YouTube Channel. It is totally incredible to see his transformation in his videos. I love his attitude and he is so motivational and inspiring to me. I think the most amazing thing is that he is now able to go back and see himself and how he looked anytime he wants.

I would absolutely LOVE to have the option to go back and look at how far I have come once I reach my weight loss goals. I look back at old photos all the time and think about how I felt so much more confident about myself back then. The crazy thing is I have never really felt like I look. It’s almost like I can’t relate to the person I see in the mirror. I just don’t feel like that person that I see at all.

My 40th birthday is this September and I feel like it’s time. Time to get back to my old self. The past 4 years have been amazing in regards to building a great business with my husband and watching our kids grow. It’s so easy to focus 100% of my efforts and life into them and push my desires to the back burner. As I age I realize that not taking care of myself is only hurting my children. I want to be around to see my grandkids and even my great grandchildren. Much of this journey is about getting healthy and feeling more energized each day. I want exercise to be something I feel great about. I want my food choices to include fruits and vegetables and work on limiting the pastas/breads and high calorie foods and snacks. As time goes on I will share more about what changes I am making my diet and what types of exercise I do. I’ll probably post at least once a week an update with what has been going on and we will be posting weekly videos as well. I would absolutely love it if any of you would jump on board and do the same. Please let me know if you do!

The one thing I am the most excited about is that Ken is going to do this with me. He isn’t shy about this sort of thing and is all for my idea of utilizing the internet as a means for accountability. He has said, it’s not like anyone that sees us out in public hasn’t noticed that we have put on weight so why not own it and put it out there so we have no choice BUT to do something about it. Having Ken involved gets me so excited for both of us. We have done this together before 7 years ago and we were actually both at our goal weight at that time. We have decided to aim to lose 30% of our current weight since that is pretty on target when it comes to where we would like to be. We have sort of made it a competition between the two of us and I told him if he reaches his goal he can go get a gun. (This is a whole different topic that I will write about some other time.) I on the other hand don’t really want anything, the weight loss will be reward enough. However…after losing 70 pounds I just might need a tummy tuck. LOL!

We officially started today since it was the kids’ first day back to school and Christmas break is over. We made a short video of our “Starting Weight” and our first weigh in will be next Friday, the 13th. We will weigh in every Friday and the video and blog will get posted by Monday if not sooner.

Wish us luck!!! And be sure to vote in the sidebar who you think will lose 30% of their current weight first!

Welcome to Our Family Nest!

We are a Michigan family of 6 making daily vlogs on our YouTube Channel Our Family Nest!

LIVE.LOVE.RECORD is our motto ;)

We’ve been doing this for so long it’s hard even to remember the days when we weren’t capturing all of life’s moments on camera. We are living the dream on our 10 acres with a pond, pool, 5 dogs and 4 cats! We share our family life with our 4 kids (who are now all adults). Our videos are a lot of real-life moments, good and bad, along with some lifestyle content such as travel, shopping, cooking, cleaning, and other mundane but fun activities. Our weight loss / getting healthy journey has also been a huge part of our channel. We love sharing our typical American family life with you!

 Karli also has her own channel: YouTube Channel and Instagram. I’ve been her Momager since the beginning…it’s been a fun ride watching her grow!

Recent Happenings:

Our two oldest sons, Andrew and Blake, have moved out to embark on their own life journeys! Of course they still make it in our videos once in a while.  Andrew is working full time and planning a wedding with his fiance for Summer 2025.  Blake is working full time and pursuing a degree in IT Technology. We still have two at home who still keep us on our toes… Chase is working full-time and Karli is pursuing a college degree in Criminal Justice.

We embarked on a weight loss journey and together we have lost over 75 pounds and have enjoyed learning to eat healthy and making exercise part of our daily lives.

We built our dream home on 10 acres and have enjoyed sharing the building process.  Feel free to check out our other Playlists to get an idea of our channel’s content.

…Let’s Connect…

YouTube Channel
Instagram
Tik Tok
Facebook
Twitter

Additional Links Here

…Business/Advertising…

mail@ourfamilynest.com

Thank you for checking out our webpage!

Ken & Candi, Karli, Chase, Blake, Andrew

————————————

NOTE TO POTENTIAL BRAND PARTNERS

Feel free to use check out our Brand Portfolio and
We would love to hear from you – mail@ourfamilynest.com

blog

3rd in State – Youth Wrestling

The kids jump on the trampoline and Chase shares some of his wrestling matches from this weekend at States…he took 3rd place in the 65 pound weight bracket.

videos, weight loss

Nutrisystem Final Results #8

We have absolutely loved being part of the Nutrisystem Nation Program #nsnation!! It has been the best thing that could have happened to us to give us a great jumpstart on our weight loss journey. We have been through the struggle of losing and gaining weight twice before and it was a little bit depressing to have to face the reality of “here we go again”. Following the Nutrisystem program for the past 3 months has been losing weight so much easier in so many ways!

– Takes the guesswork out of “what do I eat today?” Just follow the plan, plain and simple. It really is super easy. It feels a tiny bit overwhelming the first week, but seriously after that it was so easy to know what you are supposed to be eating each day.

– No counting calories! There is no reason to count calories as long as you follow the plan Nutrisystem sets up for you. You will be eating no more than the allowed amount of calories each day without having to keep track. Of course you still can if you want to, like Ken did. But I said the heck with that and loved not having to worry about each and every calorie.

– You feel great on Nutrisystem! I don’t know about you, but some diets I have tried I have felt horrible; Jittery, headaches, tired, and even stomach pains! I felt like I had so much more energy, which was probably from the milkshakes, and overall just felt good about not putting junk food into my body every day.

– A great support system! Nutrisystem counselors are the bomb! They were amazing to talk to on the phone and so knowledgable about Nutrisystem. If they weren’t sure they absolutely found out for you. One time I was really struggling with chocolate cravings and my counselor worked with me on how to curb that craving each day or substitute it for the chocolate milkshake or one of the yummy snacks that are part of their meal plan. I never got active on the NS forums, but I heard that those are even more amazing and a wealth of information can be found there as well as a ton of recipes. I never got into all that part of NS only because I focused on keeping NS simple while I also had to prepare meals for my kids.

Seriously, I am not plugging Nutrisystem just because we received the plan for free. Yes, we were blessed with an amazing opportunity to receive NS in exchange for our HONEST opinion on the plan, but I would never recommend something to others that I didn’t totally believe in. I have tried the Atkins diet and felt sick eating all that meat. I tried the Dukan diet which was short lived because I had the worst stomach pains ever and feared I did major harm to my body. With Nutrisystem I felt like I was able to eat all the normal types of food that I LOVE…. HELLOS PASTA! There are tons of pastas….and lose weight in the process. There was ice cream, and brownies, and popcorn! Who gets to eat this kind of food when they are dieting? Well on NS you can. If you can make the investment on their meal plan and on your health it is so worth it. Ken and I both believe in the plan whole heartedly.

Okay, now onto the technicalities.

Our total weight loss on Nutrisystem:
Ken lost a total of 32 pounds and I lost 26 pounds.
I will admit I thought the number was going to be higher. When I lost 12 pounds the first month I thought for sure that I would lose over 30 pounds for the 3 months. But after some research I found that typical results are to lose 1 – 2 pounds per week. We were on the plan for 12 weeks so that would be no more than 24 pounds total. So really, I did great! And Ken losing 32 pounds was amazing! Each month our weight loss total did decrease and I would imagine for any diet or weight loss program that would be pretty typical. Also we did not exercise 30 minutes each day as suggested. I can only imagine how much better we would have done if we would have stuck to an exercise program. We are business owners though (meaning time = money) with 4 kids who take up all of our time when we aren’t working, so having an exercise routine that doesn’t take away from our work time has always been a struggle.

Pictures! Well I know what everyone wants to see when you lose weight is before and after photos. And we did discuss this briefly when we got started and never got around to taking formal photos of ourselves to “officially” share before and after photos. And I know we should have been better about this, but as I said in our video. This was never about vanity or appearance for us. We seriously know we need to be in better about our eating and weight for our health. We are both in our early 40’s and it’s serious business, especially when you have heart disease that runs in your family.

We did take after photos the day we filmed our last Nutrisystem Update video and we have the before photos that we shared when we started Nutrisystem. These were not taken the day we started Nutrisystem, but we were at the same weight range that we were when we started as in these photos.

Before Photos
Present

Present

IMG_0894

After Photos

IMG_1979

IMG_1973

Final thoughts:
I would most defiantly go on Nutrisystem again to lose weight. I don’t think I could have done more than 3 months in a row, but I would suggest maybe taking a month or two break and then get back on the program if it works for you. If I had the time I would be more active on the Nutrisystem boards if you don’t have a partner/spouse/friend that you are on Nutrisystem with. Going through this together made it that much more easy for the both of us.
And…drumroll. Here we are, over 1 month of being off Nutrisystem, and I have maintained my weight loss 100% and Ken is about 85% because he has gained a few pounds back. I’ve been getting on him for giving into some of those comfort foods that we all just love to give into, especially in these winter months. It’s not a myth that most of us pack on 3 – 4 pounds during the winter months. We are also so busy work-wise this time of year that it’s easy to give into the stress snacking. Anyways, I think for me I have gotten so used to the smaller portions that I certainly get full much quicker. I find it easy to keep portions small when eating at home. My only crutch is eating out, which we love to do. We are still both a work in progress. Thank you to everyone who has followed us along in our weight loss journey and we will continue to keep you posted on our progress! And who knows what we will try next. I would love to try crossfit, but I think I need to get into a little bit better shape first. Haha! :-)

Thank you most importantly to Nutrisystem for choosing us to be part of the Blogger/Vlogger Nutrisystem Nation!

Other Nutrisystem Posts :
#1 – Our Frozen Food Unboxing – http://ourfamilynest.com/nutrisystem-frozen-foods/
#2 – First Box Unboxing – http://ourfamilynest.com/nutrisystem-unboxing/
#3 – 2 Week Update – http://ourfamilynest.com/nutrisystem-2-week-update/
#4 – 1 month Results – http://ourfamilynest.com/month-one-on-nutrisystem-results/
#5 – 6 week Results – http://ourfamilynest.com/nutrisystem-6-week-update/
#6 – 8 week Results – http://ourfamilynest.com/nutrisystem-2nd-month-results/
#7 – Month 3, Week 2 – http://ourfamilynest.com/nutrisystem-10weeks/

Disclaimer: We are receiving 3 months of Nutrisystem in exchange for our honest opinion on the program. We are not getting paid by Nutrisystem. Everything shared on our blog and in our videos is our opinion and should not replace professional advice.

videos, weight loss

Month One on Nutrisystem Results

That month sure flew by! I feel like each week has gotten a little bit easier on Nutrisystem. The cravings for the foods you can’t eat happen less and less often. I am very happy with our results for Month One! Of course I would have loved to have lost more (who wouldn’t?) but I think that our progress has been very consistent which increases our chances of keeping the weight off when our 3 months are over.
Continue Reading