The good news and the bad news

The good news is that my knee is better this morning, the bad news is that it is still not 100 percent okay. I stepped on to the treadmill this morning, walked for five minutes and began to run, at which point my right knee and the area around it instantly made it clear that this was an extremely bad idea. So, I stopped and headed for the eliptical machines. I spent about 70 minutes on the eliptical machines and had no problems at all. However, about all that I can say for the workout is that I stepped up the resistence one more notch, it was not terribly difficult. At that point, I headed back to the treadmill to give it one more shot. I then ran for 12 minutes (I slowed my pace down) and covered a distance of one mile. Not the workout I was hoping for but at least my knee felt alright after I was finished with the mile. I also snuck in 100 basic sit ups after I was finished with the cardio. Oh and by the way, seriously people, do I have a sign above my head that says “you can talk this person into taking your exercise class” ? Today, one of the instructors came up to me to tell me I should take her Thursday morning class (which is the only class I do not take at this point). Er, okay. I can’t tell if I have become a gym project (completely possible at my gym) or if I just look like someone who takes classes. I am considering it, but since I will be on a plane next Thursday and off-island for 10 days, it will have to wait for a couple of weeks. I am not that enthused about this particular instructor, I find her to be somewhat pushy and very set in her view of things. Still, I will probably end up taking the class at some point because it could be a good workout. I am currently having yet another debate with myself about switching around the order in which I eat my food to see if anything happens. Basically, I would switch my largest meal to lunch and then eat my salad for dinner. This would probably overall be a better plan, but the main issue is preparation. I would need to cook lunch the night before, or on the weekend and then reheat it at work. Not a huge issue given that a lot of nights I just reheat food anyway. I am going to stick with my current plan until I go on vacation and then reevaluate when I return and maybe rework everything. Still, my real issue today is that I really wanted to get a good run in and my body would simply not cooperate, I needed the stress relief but it was certainly a no win situation. Running would have completely aggravated my knee and then I really would not be able to work out. I logically know this, but it is still frustrating. Oh, and for the record I did wear ballet flats to work today to also aid in the leg recovery.

Oh ow

Ow, remember how I said earlier that my right knee was twinging. Well, really it is actually the back of my right knee and oh is it not happy at all. It is so unhappy that I have taken off my heels and switched to flip flops even though they are not appropriate office attire. I have no idea what I did this morning which aggravated my knee so badly (especially since I backed off the minute it started hurting). In fact, everything that we did in class was things I had done before, so there is no real explanation for the twinging and general pain. I was going to walk somewhere tonight, but I am going to put that off tonight and go home and just rest my leg. I am hoping that it will be better by tomorrow, otherwise I will have to re-evaluate the plan to run in the morning.

A holiday like any other day

Happy Independence Day! Actually July 4th was yesterday, but I was not near a computer. Yesterday was in fact a holiday from work (one of the eight holidays a year). I cannot say that the day was very different (except for the bit where I did not have to come into the office). I rolled out of bed at 4:29 am and headed out to the gym for my step aerobics/spinning class. After class I headed home and had copious amounts of coffee. Then I headed out to the malls and bought exactly one sweater before making it home at about 11:30 am. Lunch was my standard salad, since I packed up five salads for the week, no point in deviating from the eating plan. I will admit that I took a nap in the afternoon (to make up for the early morning wake up). Then, I made up my naan bread mini-pizzas for dinner, which were really excellent, and cooked up a batch of brownies for an office birthday party. I squeezed in 200 sit ups and a pilates video before heading off to bed at around 9 pm. Overall it was a very mellow day which is exactly what I wanted to have in a day off. This morning, I was back at the gym for my hip box class and now I am at work. I did have one issue this morning during class which consisted of a not so subtle inner thigh twinge/cramp in my left leg. Since I am planning on running tomorrow morning, I think I will have to take it a little easy on my afternoon workout and let my legs rest. It was not helped by the extra leg workout that my instructor added in this morning for the additional torture factor. I think my real problem is that I feel like I could always be pushing myself harder, and I have a problem realizing that sometimes I am already doing as much as my body will allow. Could I workout harder, eat a little bit cleaner (and some days a little bit less?) Yes, probably I could manage that if I tried hard. Would I go insane? Yes, I would go completely insane and my co-workers would be within their rights to kill me. So, I keep trying to remind myself that it is all about moderation. I feel I should note that the cramp has now moved to the back of my knee on the right side. This is not a good sign. So, I am just going to do sit ups tonight and skip any intensive stretching. I might lift a few weights if the motivation fairy decides to visit me, but anything with my legs is out of the question. I have no desire to get injured and then have to take time off from working out. I cannot actually imagine taking time off from working out and in order to prevent that I am trying to listen to my body and what it needs very carefully.

Somewhat squishy

I never made it to the gym this weekend, but other than that I was actually very productive which was a good thing. On Saturday I was fairly lazy, but Sunday made up for it. I managed to clean my apartment, scrub the floor with bleach, go through my clothing and get rid of items I am not longer wearing (or have never really worn), go to the grocery store, cook food for the week including the pre-packing of my salad items for the week, and go to the mall (where I did not buy anything). Sadly grocery shopping was once again far more expensive than last week, however I had forgotten that I needed to buy kitty food and litter, not to mention coffee supplies (neither of which are bought on a weekly basis). I figure that stuff added up to an extra 20 dollars that I would otherwise have saved on shopping. This week I decided to branch out a little bit in terms of cooking and try cooking with couscous and whole wheat pasta. I always find these substances a little scary because I do try to limit bread and pasta products in my diet. This is due to the fact that I love them and always eat too much and it is really tempting to just toss the pasta in butter and eat it without vegetables or other good things. However, I am giving it another shot and trying to be really careful with portion size. Also, this is a good reason to stay away from bread/grain products at work because I am eating them for dinner. So, last night I had whole wheat pasta with steak (left over from lunch) and Thai peanut sauce (left over from making salad supplies for the week). It was very yummy and fit in the plan. Tonight I am going to make couscous with roasted chicken, caramelized onions and garlic. I also bought organic naan bread (amazing to find it on island) which will be good if I actually decide to make curry this week. Otherwise I may toast it to make a mini pizza and top it with chicken and feta cheese (actually that sounds really good now I think about it). As part of my weekend prep, I roasted up a bunch of chicken thighs and legs and I am going reuse over the course of the week in a variety of dishes. I also hard boiled some eggs for salads and cleaned out my cupboards so I would have a clear sense of what food products I had in my house. Turning now to the exercise front, I am still on track (other than not going to the gym this weekend). It occurred to me this morning that my exercise schedule is a little bit insane for a normal person. This is the current plan- Mon a.m.- run 1 mile (warm up), 1 hour spin class, 20 minute leg work out with weights, 15 minutes eliptical machine (final cool down). Mon p.m.-30 or 45 minutes pilates or yoga tape, or if unmotivated 200 sit-ups. Tue a.m.-10 min. treadmill walk, 1 hour 30/30 class (30 minutes step aerobics/30 minutes spinning), 10 minutes ab workout. Tue p.m.-30 or 45 minutes pilates or yoga tape, or if unmotivated 200 sit-ups. Wed. a.m.-10 minute treadmill walk, 1 hour hipbox class, 20 minute arm workout with weights, 15 minute eliptical machine (final cooldown). Wed. p.m.-30 or 45 minutes pilates or yoga tape, or if unmotivated 200 sit-ups. Thursday a.m.-30 minute run, 10 minute walk (warm-up and cool down from run), 35 minute eliptical machine, 10 minute treadmill or step machine (final cool down) Thursday p.m-30 or 45 minutes pilates or yoga tape, or if unmotivated 200 sit-ups. Friday a.m.- run 1 mile (warm up), 1 hour spin class, 20 minute leg work out with weights, 15 minutes eliptical machine (final cool down). Friday p.m.-Free Saturday a.m.-ideally (although has not really happened yet) 30 minute run and ab work. Saturday p.m.-Free Sunday-Free day. That could potentially work out to around 10 (or more hours) of exercise every week. Not to mention the fact that most of these are hard exercise sessions. So, I think this demonstrates my current frustration with my lack of progress on the weight loss front right now. However, I know I am in pretty good shape from this routine since running an eleven minute mile is easy for me and I have really good calf muscles (even if the rest of me is somewhat squishy at the moment). However, I do look at this in amazement for two reasons. First, it demonstrates the amount of work that I do to remain a size 12 (or 10 on a good day) and second because this amount of exercise would have been unthinkable in years past. I never miss a weekday at the gym and neither do any of the other regular gym rats for that matter. Even tomorrow morning, I am getting up at 4:30 am to go the gym because (a) it is open and (b) they are still having the aerobics class. Tomorrow is July 4th here and it is a holiday so I do not have to go to work. My theory is that if I get up and go at 5 am then at least one workout for the day will be over and I do not have to worry about it or feel guilty later on in the day. All of this does prove the level of crazy which now exists in my life, but hey, at least it is healthy crazy rather than excessive eating crazy.

Have no motivation but will travel

I have not been feeling particularly motivated either this week or last week. Yet, I am on plan and have not really deviated horribly from plan at all. Further proof that planning is a good thing. It is hard to deviate if you already have a prepackaged lunch salad and dinner is easily accessible in the fridge at home. Plus, I know in the long run I am saving money which is a good thing right now. Anyway, I am fully aware that my lack of motivation focuses on the fact that I have been doing a lot of hard cardiovascular work in the morning and not seeing a lot of results. This is admittedly frustrating so I have been trying to find a way of dealing with it in a healthy non-sabotaging kind of matter. Err, still working on that by the way. However, I am incorporating additional workouts into my schedule on the weekend, I am going to go to the gym again on Saturday and just make Sunday my lazy rest day. Today, if I end up feeling really motivated, I am going to go back to the gym and do an additional 30-60 minute workout. I may end up in court late in which case I will not be very motivated to go to the gym. On the plus side, I managed to talk my body into an actual run this morning (well a thirty minute run on the treadmill). I decided that I would do a slow run at 5.5 mph for 15 minutes before move on to the eliptical machines. Instead, I ended up running for 10 minutes at 5.5. mph then running at 6.0 mph for the next five minutes, then dropping back down to 5.5. mph for the next 5 minutes, then another interval of 6.0 mph for five minutes, and finishing out with 5 minutes at 5.5. mph for a total run of 30 minutes. I have not managed to run in a couple of weeks and I really want to get back running at least twice or three times a week. In fact, this morning I skipped out on an exercise class so that I could run on the treadmill. So, I am going to try and make a point of running on Thursday mornings and Saturday mornings. This effort would be helped immensely by new running shoes but I am going to wait on those until I go back to the mainland U.S. in two weeks. In any event, my brain feels much clearer this morning now that I have done some running. I forget when I do not run for a long time that this is why I run, and why I actually like it as an exercise. I would like it better if I could run outside, but there really is not anywhere around here that it is safe to run because there are no decent sidewalks. I just realized how odd this entry would be to my old self, I am going on and on about how I like working out, and that would certainly have puzzled the 250 lb me. However, it is true, I am a complete gym rat and exercise nut. I think at this point I own more workout clothes than regular clothes and I tend to buy more expensive workout clothes than regular clothes. Frankly, that is a little bit disturbing on some level but hey, this is my life now. One final piece of news to report before I start doing my real job. Last night I discovered that I could actually see indentations on my stomach. Now, I hesitate to call them abs (all though they are in the right location) but I do think they are a result of all the ab workouts that I have been doing over the past month. I think for the record that if we did call them abs they would give me a whopping 1 pack, which would be a first. So, I am pleased about that, and about the fact that if I suck in my breath, I can actually see my rib cage. So, I am trying to go with the non-scale victories, but the frustration level is still there right now. Still, I am doing everything that I can and recognizing that this is going to take time. Apparently, I can gain weight in the blink of an eye but losing it takes a lot longer. Just another indication of the Universe’s cosmic sense of irony.

Monday Check In

Note to self, you are your mother’s daughter even if you spent your teenage years denying it. This means that any caffeine after 2 pm in the afternoon will make it impossible to sleep at night. Now, drinking coffee at 8 pm at night will absolutely make sure that you do not sleep more than 2 hours during the night. It is a great Monday morning, and spin class destroyed me this morning as a result. I am mainlining coffee (more than normal anyway) in a vain attempt to be semi-functional today. This week it is all about preparation, I decided to see if I could make a salad for the week that I am happy with for lunch. So I got all the ingredients, made some home-made dressing, cooked a couple of chicken breasts, and divided everything into individual bags. This way, I just have shred lettuce and dump everything into a portable container the night before and away I go the next morning. Plus, I saved thirty dollars in groceries this week. This is a good thing, because I am going to attempt to save this money and use it for groceries next weekend. If I could cut my grocery bill down from 70 dollars a week to 40 dollars, I would be incredibly happy. Eighteen days from now I am going on vacation for ten days which makes me happy. I have some fitness goals I would like to achieve between now and then, but we will see what happens over that time period. On the plus side, I found a dress to wear to the wedding I am going to while I am on vacation. I do not have shoes to wear (well I do but they are five-inch heels which is a little much). I looked at myself in it, and while I am not really pleased at where I am weight-wise (and I need appropriate undergarments), however I was impressed. I looked grown-up and mature and dare I say it, sophisticated. On occasion I am reminded of how long it takes to get my brain to catch up with my body. It is hard to remember that I am not 240 plus pounds at this point and that in fact I am really 80 pounds less than that in reality. This weekend was a good reminder and I needed that given my frustration with my fitness progress.

The cooking fest continues

I have done so much work this morning that it is rather frightening. I answered a ton of letters, responded to multiple motions, and moved a bunch of files off my desk. I am the Queen of Procrastinators, but sometimes I really manage to get a lot done. Usually it requires the right circumstances (a quiet office, time at my desk plus motivation) and then my entire desk gets cleared off in a flurry of activity. I am so much happier when I am organized and even a little bit of organization goes a long way in my world. The same thing applies to working out and exercise (Obviously). I am much happier when I am following an organizational plan, both in terms of diet and exercise. Right now is obviously a good example, I have been so much more mellow now that I am on plan. Well, I was bitchy for the first week but I am over that little problem. I am gradually getting everything organized and it is overflowing to the rest of my life. This is a very good and necessary thing. Plus, I am starting to cook again and really enjoy it which always makes me happy. Apropos of the whole cooking endeavor, here is my personally modified curry recipe based on several different variations in cookbooks. As always, amounts are not exact and everything is to taste.

One onion-roughly chopped

About 4-5 cloves of garlic-again roughly chopped

Sliced fresh ginger to taste (about 3-5 slices should do)

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

½ teaspoon Thai red curry paste

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon sugar (you could probably substitute Splenda)

2 tablespoons fish sauce

½ teaspoon salt

2 3/4 cups of water

13.5 oz can of coconut milk

Approx 1 lb of roasted chicken meat, alternatively one could just cut up some chicken and cook it with the curry

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1-2 cups chopped root vegetables (i.e. potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, or anything else which suits your fancy). Alternatively this is pretty good with corn or broccoli in it.

1 package of cooked orzo pasta (optional)

Cook the entire dish in a big pot. Saute the onion, ginger, and garlic in the vegetable oil until the onion is translucent. Then add the chicken and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add all the spices and the sugar, salt, and fish sauce. Cook for a couple more minutes. Add the water and bring to a boil and then reduce the heat to about medium high (i.e. a healthy simmer) and cook for around 10 minutes to let the flavors meld. Add the coconut milk, cornstarch, and the root vegetables. Cook for another 10 minutes or until the veggies are soft. Add the orzo pasta at this point and let it warm up for about another 5 minutes. It should serve around four unless you have really big serving sizes. Now, you could add all sorts of things to this-lemon grass for example (personally I hate the taste). Alternatively, you could substitute a different kind of meat and it would also work. There are a couple of caveats:

• There are about 720 calories in a can of coconut milk. (Yes, I actually calculated this at one point). That works out to 160 calories per serving. However everything else is relatively low calorie in this dish and you can also get reduced fat coconut milk some places.

• You might be able to reduce the oil even further if you tried (and were using a nonstick pan). Next time I cook this, I am going to try reducing the oil to approx ½ tablespoon and see what happens. Vegetable oil has 120 calories per tablespoon so dropping the amount drops the calories in the dish and you just need enough to coat the onion and garlic and help it saute.

• It is pretty darn spicy, Thai red curry paste is very hot so if you do not like it hot, only put a small amount in and then test it.

• I like thick curries but you could make this without the cornstarch for a slightly thinner curry.

Curries are comfort foods to me, so I love all variations of them. However, I only eat a small cereal sized bowl at any given time because otherwise they add up in terms of calories. Still, this is what I have been living on for the past two weeks and it makes me really happy. So, there you go, my chicken recipe of the week for the second week in a row.

Long Weekend

On Monday I took a much needed day off from work. I had some extra comp time I needed to use, so I made a three-day weekend out of it. However, I still got up at 4:30 in the morning and went to the gym for my morning spin class. I did fit in a small catnap yesterday afternoon which balances out getting up early. Actually, I spent yesterday morning running errands and cleaning up my apartment a bit but other than that it was pretty mellow. Scuttlebutt has it that being at work on Monday would have been very drama-filled and I am not sorry that I missed it. Instead, I had a relatively mellow day at home and came back to work today. Today, I spent all day in court which I suppose is pay back for having a day off. I discovered this morning that I could pick up the choreography in the step aerobics class pretty quickly although if I get the least bit distracted I totally lose track of what I am doing with my feet. It is however a good workout for the days that I feel unmotivated (such as this morning) and still need to get in a good cardio workout. My eating has been about 80-90 percent on track and that is pretty good for a long weekend. I did actually do some cooking this weekend, however nothing major. I roasted some more chicken, which I use as the base for a lot of my cooking. I was going to make risoto this weekend but could not find the appropriate ingredients so I improvised and made a dish with chicken and orzo pasta instead. Basically, I combined orzo pasta which was cooked in chicken stock for flavor with sauteed shiitake mushrooms and roasted chicken. Salt and pepper were add to taste along with a little Parmesan cheese. It was very much a comfort meal rather than something exciting and new. Tonight, however, it is going to morph into something new and exciting. Well, at least it will be new. I am going to create another curry (I love curries) with the existing supplies I have in my apartment. I have coconut milk, thai curry paste, an onion, garlic, and chicken. This is more than enough to create a basic curry and I am going to either pour that over the orzo pasta or in the alternative I am going to add the orzo pasta to the curry. I am probably going to tone down the spiciness in the curry a little bit, but I do like my curries to be reasonably hot. I figure that this will carry me through the rest of the week until Friday or Saturday. I am discovering that now I am back on plan, it is relatively easy at work but weekends are becoming more difficult because of a lack of structure and the fact that I am usually trying to finish out the leftovers in my fridge. I am definitely more at peace about the whole process which is nice. I think that the yoga and pilates I have been incorporating into my life are helping me become calmer and more balanced. I am less frantic about things in general and that is helpful in controlling my exercise and food. So, progress is being made slowly but surely and hopefully it will continue for the foreseeable future.

Friday Funny

Okay, this is just funny, this morning the very nice front desk person at my gym handed me my membership card. Why is this funny? I have been going to this particular gym for a year and a half, and today I got my membership card for the first time. Normally, I just saunter into the gym wave to the front desk and keep going on my way to the locker room. My hands are usually full with my purse, gym bags, car keys, and work clothes so I could not use my card anyway. Well, I could but it would involve a substantial amount of juggling on my part and possibly dropping things. However, I am looking at this as a sign from the universe that I really should try to make it to the gym on the weekend and get in a little extra cardio or lift a few weights. I may try that tomorrow if I feel really motivated for some reason. I might have overestimated the amount of curry that I had in my fridge. However, I had enough to eat last night and then freeze for later. I decided I would rather freeze a bag of curry than eat it tonight because I am always running into days where I am too tired to cook and end up eating something crappy as a result. Not any more, now I shall simply pull out frozen items and reheat them. I declined two lunch invitations today from coworkers. I am not trying to be anti-social but I do not really want to spend the extra money when I brought food and I do not want the extra calories in my body. I actually said to one of the co-workers “God no, everything at that particular restaurant has too many calories.” This made her really mad but I swear it just kind of came out of my mouth and was not intended to be insulting. Unfortunately, it was just really honest and not what she wanted to hear. I used to go out to lunch a lot with this particular person so I think she feels a little abandoned because I am no longer doing that anymore. Here is the thing, going out a lot always ends up with me not properly taking care of myself. I eat too much food, I gain back some weight, I slack off at the gym. All of these things are always interconnected in my life. So, one of the ways that I look after myself is by controlling what I eat, making sure it is healthy and not an enormous portion. Invariably, that means bringing lunch into work, watching my snacks, and not eating out very much (if at all). Does this translate to being somewhat anti-social, yes, but for right now that is a trade-off that I am willing to make in my life. I think it would be less of an issue if I lived somewhere with more health conscious dining options, but not here. There are not a lot of low calorie options at the restaurants and frankly that is a real problem for me when it comes to eating out. Also, I can tell that part of what is going on here is that my co-worker has lost a partner in crime on food issues. In other words, it is a lot easier to justify eating things if there is some other person eating them right along with you. Especially if you can say in your brain, well they are healthy so I must be healthy. Umm, no. Personally, I probably carry an extra 40 lbs or so on a very small frame, small bones and very short (ie. 5'2" on a really, really good day or in heels). Not to mention I am blessed with a body that stores all the excess fat around my middle which is the worst place to have it. So, while I am in reasonably good shape, I am not nearly as healthy as I could be and I notice this when I do new and different physical activities. I had the same person tell me she was fit but well padded. Umm no, and I don’t mean that in a mean way. I mean it in a “I have observed your eating and exercise habits and they are not good.” Not enough working out, too much alcohol, and far too much processed food. I have spent so much time finessing my own diet that I am really sensitive to other people’s diets and whether or they can be construed as healthy. Trust me, at some time I have tried every variation of every diet to find out which one works for me. I always end up back at a diet which incorporates everything in moderation. Generally this means less processed foods, small amounts of bread and white flour products, and lots of fruits and vegetables. In this line, I decided last night that I really did not need rice because I had eaten a bunch of crackers during the day and so I just stuck with my spicy curry and some fat free yogurt and fruit for desert. By the way, this is the longest I have been basically on plan for about the past 6 months or so and I am very pleased with myself about that fact.

Thursday Check-in

Today, my office is putting up dividers. It is perhaps an indication of various interpersonal problems or just an indication of the fact that people can only live without their own space for so long. I am going to end up in a fairly tiny windowless cubicle as a result. I was starting to fuss about it and then it occurred to me that my time here is rapidly coming to an end and so it really does not matter in the long run. Now, I feel very zen about the whole process and could care less about the results. Perspective is truly a wonderful thing. I should note that the office staff is already referring to it as my “cave” not a really good thing. As I anticipated, my workout this morning was very easy and not very exciting. My body was not up for anything challenging and I just wanted to get in and out of the gym quickly. I do realize that my version of getting out of the gym quickly is different than most people, since I still worked out for an hour and 35 minutes this morning. Tomorrow will be a harder workout since I have spin class at 5:15 am, plus I made a resolution that I would run a mile before every spin class. So far, that has proved relatively easy since it take about 10-11 minutes to run a mile and I get to the gym about 20 minutes before class starts so that I can get my favorite bike. Progress has been slow but relatively steady, a reminder that there are huge benefits to eating in and monitoring my food intake. Plus, I feel much better, no guilt about what I am eating and I am sleeping better at night. I am still slowly eating my way through the chicken curry I made a couple of nights ago, I may stop and get some brown rice tonight to pour it over. I could stand to have more whole grains in my diet, such as brown rice but I am bad at making sure that I eat them in moderation. Alternatively I am just thinking about thickening up the broth with a little bit of cornstarch since I tend to like thick curries. I will probably freeze some of the curry tonight and have it tucked away in the freezer for emergencies when I do not feel like cooking. I will probably be left with enough for dinner tonight and tomorrow and then I will figure out what to do with the rest of the roast chicken on Saturday. I am going to put some of it into the meal I am cooking on Saturday and I may whip up a few salads with the remainder. Last night I tested out yet another exercise dvd. This one I bought on a whim, it was a belly dancing dvd that I was really hoping would be fun. Instead, I was completely bored out of my mind and fast forwarded some bits. I was surprised, because I do not find my yoga tapes boring even though I have played them repeatedly over the past few weeks. I think it was the fact that the movements were very repetitive and not very exciting that bugged me. I am not sure. Either way, it will be put at the bottom of my piles of tapes and not dragged out very often. I will probably mostly stick with yoga of some description rather than branching out terribly far at this point. Tonight, I am going to run home and try to clean up my space, it is still pretty yucky and it is starting to bother me. I made an executive decision recently that since I get to work at 7:00 in the morning (1 hour before everyone else), and work during lunch that I am leaving everyday at 5 pm. It has been a really good decision and I don’t feel at all guilty about it at this point. Plus, I get a lot more accomplished in the early evening which is good because I go to bed by no later than 9 pm at night and usually closer to 8 pm.

Venting and a small rant

My legs are incredibly stiff this morning. I think that perhaps step aerobics followed by yoga and topped off by hipboxing class within less than forty-eight hours was probably not the best plan. So, unless I feel really inspired tomorrow morning, I am going to take it easy and just do a mellow cardio workout. I am happy to report that I am finally about 90 percent back to normal, the pain of the sunburn has faded into insignificance and as a result I got plenty of sleep last night which helped immensely. I do not think that I have had such a bad burn in over four years, clearly I need to start using a higher spf sun screen (and yes I did use it). Normally I try and stay out of the midday sun here as much as possible because it is harsh. Obviously that plan did not work out last Sunday. This weekend I am going to take it easy and just clean my house and get errands done (and stay out of the sun). The bad attitude cloud that is my co-worker has re-descended upon the office. She was out yesterday. It is amazing how the attitude permeates the office and makes everyone feel uncomfortable and on-edge. Yesterday was remarkably peaceful and mellow in the office, but I cannot say the same for today. I am always hesitant to write about my office and the people in it, they certainly have not volunteered to be blogged about on the world wide web, but this problem is so strongly influencing my stress management ability and personal state of mind that I cannot help myself. I work in an open office space, no real walls and no doors to close. There are not even real cubicles at this point. Thus, noise and by extension emotions bleeds right into my personal workspace. We have erected a wall between me and this coworker and that has helped enormously this morning (it only went up yesterday). Still, I am left with a deep desire to go over to her desk and suggest that she stop behaving like a four year old brat. However, it will not help the situation and so I am restraining myself and letting senior management handle the situation. Well, I am venting here, obviously. Okay, enough about work, moving on with my life and the day. I feel rather like offering some totally unsolicited advice to the blogsphere today. Also, I am feeling a little ranty today (in case you had not noticed). People, seriously, eating under 1200 calories a day is a bad idea. At least, for the vast majority of us who are working out and trying to lose weight the old fashioned way. If you are eating under 1,200 calories a day and working out, your body will assume that you are starving yourself and try and hold on to every single calorie it can find. Personally, I usually end up at between 1,500 and 1,700 calories each and every day. Frankly, I hit that number simply by eating a sensible breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This is my normal meal plan, breakfast is a bowl of oatmeal, I then usually have something when I get to work, either a piece of whole wheat bread or a little bit of cheese. Lunch is a salad with veggies, some cheese, and meat (usually chicken). I have about three cups of coffee with equal and fat free creamer in it, sometimes more or less depending on my stress level. That usually holds me until dinner, if I feel hungry I will hunt down some kind of healthy snack in the late afternoon. When I go home, I usually have a spoonful of peanut butter (and yes it is the healthiest one I could find in the store) then I start dinner cooking and I pop in an exercise dvd and workout for 30 minutes to an hour. Dinner is invariably some kind of protein (usually chicken) and hopefully veggies. I am working very hard at making sure I have vegetables with dinner. Recently, I have been eating a lot of black bean soup for dinner and a fair number of sweet potatoes. Last night for example, I had chicken curry which had sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, coconut milk, and chicken in it. I use small bowls for my meals, usually cereal sized bowls. Then I usually have a bowl of fat free yogurt which I combine with frozen fruit and splenda. If I am out of splenda I have been known to use sugar to sweeten the yogurt and fruit. Seriously, when I add it all up, at a minimum, on a really low calorie day, I have hit between 1,200 and 1,300 calories at that point and usually at least 1,500 calories. This is keeping in mind that people seriously underestimate the amount of calories they are consuming at any given time. So, people, please try and be realistic and sensible about the amount of food you need to put into your body to fuel it properly. I am not on a diet, I never have been except in the very start of my weight loss journey. I am on a plan that I personally believe I can live with for the rest of my life. Yes, sometimes I fall off it for month long periods with a loud bang, but I am working on the emotional issues that cause that to happen (and trust me it is always emotional issues for me). I am attempting to make sure that I live a long and healthy life. A life without the medical problems which come from being seriously overweight. I am only 28 years old (I will turn 29 in a little under a month). If I am lucky I will live into at least my 80's like my maternal grandparents. That is at least 51 years, hopefully more. 51 years would be a horribly long time to be on a really restrictive diet and I would not even contemplate such foolishness. You cannot live on 1,100 or 1,000 calories permanently, and you may gain weight when you go back to a normal plan. So, why not start out on a normal plan which will help you lose weight and which only requires the addition of a few hundred calories when you begin to maintain your weight. Okay, rant officially over, you may return to your regularly scheduled programing.

Evening Post

I was watching television tonight, and I ended up watching something called the U.S. Today Weight Loss Challenge. It is funny how something like this can push my buttons. First, I am not a big fan of programs which involve prepared meals for several reasons. Foremost among those reasons, they are expensive, and more importantly you do not learn how to manage your own food and calories. It probably is my own personal prejudice, but seriously how can you live on package food for your whole life? I cannot imagine doing that myself, so promotion of such programs tends to personally irk me for some reason. Perhaps it is because I have managed this whole process by myself, and so I see such things as a crutch that you will eventually have to learn to live without or being successful in the long run will be difficult. In a tangent, I should say that the chicken curry I made tonight was pretty rocking, if I do say so myself. The recipe is adapted from Nancy McDermott’s cookbook, Quick and Easy Vietnamese:75 Everyday Recipes which is published by Chronicle books. I am not reproducing it here because I don’t want to reproduce the work of someone else. I will say that it suffered from a problem I have run across in other curry recipes, it ended up with too much oil floating around in the mixture. So, I would probably reduce the amount of oil I used by at least half. However, it was good other than that, and I made it very spicy which helped limit portion size. Okay, so that kind of makes me sound like a freak, but I figure whatever works. I had more than enough so I don’t feel deprived, but not so much that I exceeded my daily calorie allotment. Weight loss for me has always involved some trickery and negotiation between my brain and my desires. Still, I forgot what a high it was to eat food that I had personally prepared. I was invited to dinner tonight, but I begged off because I was tired and wanted to come home and do some yoga and then go to bed. I know, I sound like an old fuddy duddy, but right now I am just really working on staying on plan. Once again I am ending a day only having eaten food that is good for me and with a really clear mind and two good workouts under my belt. Frankly, that is huge success in my book and it makes me very happy. I have not been this centered and focused in at least three to six months and as always it is a revelation to me how at peace I feel about the process. If I can manage this working under my current office conditions I imagine that this can only become better once I move on from here into a happier less stressful environment. One last thing, everyday at the end of the day I am asking myself two questions, and these are the questions: What have I done today that is good for my physical body? What have I done today that has improved my emotional well being? I know it sounds very new agey and overly holistic and that is not really who I am at heart. However, I think that these questions are really important for me right now. Most days the answers are very simple, I ate well, I wrote in my blog, I read a good book, I practiced yoga, I drank all my water, I talked to my family. Whatever it is that I did, I force myself to slow down and evaluate my day and see where my head it at right now. So, today, slow down and see where your head is at today, and let yourself be grateful for where ever that place happens to be right now.

The Festival Of Chicken

I am not a person who really likes group exercise classes (despite my unholy devotion to spinning classes). I feel that I should make this declaration immediately before proceeding with the rest of this entry. I always screw up the steps and look like a total idiot at some point during the proceedings (okay usually several times during the proceedings). It is the combination of a total lack of coordination with no musical ability and an occasional problem remembering which side is left and which is right, and trust me that is a problem which usually crops up during moments of high stress. I say all this as if it will somehow explain how I ended up in the middle of a step aerobics class at 5:30 this morning hopping around like the aforementioned idiot that I am in such classes. Actually, to be fair, it was 30 minutes of step aerobics and 30 minutes of spinning in combination with about 10 additional minutes of ab work at the end. I had no intention of taking this class when I went to the gym this morning, nope, I was going to have an easy day on the eliptical machine because my sunburn is still bothering me and then go on my merry way. However, not one or two, but three separate people told me about the class and insisted that I attend. Then to top it all off I ended up in the front row of the step aerobics class sweating like a maniac and trying to figure out how I had ended up there in the first place. I swear the morning classes in my gym are like a little cult, they are almost entirely made up of married women (I am one of the youngest people there) who come faithfully five days a week and take every single class and once they suck you in, well there you are in step aerobics at 5:30 in the morning. Now, it was an excellent workout, I enjoyed it and I will probably go back next week, not that I will have a choice, however I don’t have any clue how I ended up being one of the people who takes all the classes in the morning. If I am being honest, I have no idea how I ended up in any group exercise classes because I do not really like them. However, I have learned a few valuable lessons as a result, first the workouts will push you which is especially good when you feel like slacking off, and second, no one cares if you look like an idiot because they are probably worrying about the same thing or dying from the pain of exercising. Also, the classes are a reminder that my fitness level is really pretty good, because I could walk into the class without ever having taken it before and keep up with all the cardio with no problem (although I need to do more ab work). Last night’s workout was not very good but at least I did a few stretches and a few minutes of yoga which I needed to stretch my back which was tense. I did however manage to roast enough chicken for the rest of the week which was very exciting. Also, it tasted really good although I think you could experiment with more complicated rubs and have excellent results. So, courtesy of my father here is my roast chicken recipe and I swear that tonight I am make my chicken curry so I will report on that tomorrow. First, brine the chicken legs/thighs/breasts that you are using for thirty minutes to two hours. (I did for thirty minutes and I was using chicken legs and thighs). The brine I used was as follows: 1 cup Kosher Salt (you can substitute ½ cup table salt) 2 quarts water That is all you have to put in the brine, no really. Second, turn on the broiler in your oven and separate the oven racks, one should be high up under the broiler but not so close you can’t slide the roasting pan with the chicken on it under the broiler (minor technical glitch I had last night). The other should be lower and closer to the bottom of the oven, mine was pretty close to the bottom of the oven but I have an absolutely tiny oven. Now, on your roasting pan put all of your chicken, skin side down (unless you are being ridiculously healthy and roasting chicken with no skin). Season your chicken to taste. I just put pepper on both sides since the brine had salt in it already. Put the pan in the oven, on the lower rack and let it cook for 15-20 minutes, in a good oven it would probably only take 15 minutes to begin to brown, in my oven it takes 20. When the chicken has been cooking for 15-20 minutes and is turning a lovely golden color and smells really good, pull it out and flip it over. The skin side is now up if you are keeping track. Cook for an additional 10-15 minute until it reaches an internal temperature of around 160-170 degrees. If (like me) you are without a meat thermometer, this would be a good point to check and see if the meat is cooked and the juices run clear. Now, take the pan and move it to the top rack, directly under the broiler. Cook for a minute or two until the skin is crispy and slightly browned. Pull out the chicken and let it rest under a foil tent for at least 10 minutes. There you go, perfectly roasted chicken which if stored in an airtight container should last for between 1 week and 10 days. Plus, it tasted fabulous even though all it was seasoned with was salt and black pepper. As I say, you could go fancy with rubs but it is not necessary, I chose not to because I know I am going to use the chicken in my curry and also in some chicken salads that I am going to make this week, so I wanted to keep it very simple. So, there you go, the festival of chicken recipes have begun.

Monday Morning

Well, at least I went and bought cookbooks and groceries this weekend. I did not manage to get any actual cooking done. Instead, I spent all day Sunday diving and developing a lovely and rather painful sunburn along the way on my shoulders and back. Let me tell you, putting a sports bra on over a sunburn is really no fun at all. However, that is exactly what I did this morning as I dragged my tired rear out of bed and headed to the gym. I had a decent workout, not great but decent and given the circumstance that was a miracle. I almost went back to bed this morning instead of going to the gym because I felt vaguely ill and I did not sleep well last night due to the aforementioned sunburn. Tonight I must do my cooking for the week. I have decided that my theme is going to be food item rather than a region (mostly because it is easier to focus on a product). So, this month I am going to experiment with chicken because (a) I eat it all the time (b) it gets really boring cooking it the only way I know how right now, and (c) it is healthy and cheap. Ergo, I saved 30 dollars on groceries this week. So, tonight I am going to brine some chicken and roast it. In addition, I am going to make a curry which I found in my new cookbook (recipes from Vietnam) which will probably be dinner tonight. Oh, and I am happy to report that I only had a minor deviation from my plan this week and that was Sunday. My snacks were not exactly what I would normally have and neither was the restaurant grilled fish burger that I ate after the dive trip. However, since I did not eat dinner, I think it all evens out in the end. However, all last week and Saturday were totally on plan and today is back to normal as well. I have my water and salad chilling in the work fridge, I have had my morning coffee and I am headed back for a second cup. Tonight, I go back to doing my home yoga workouts at night and I feel pretty good about that as well. I am planning on brining my chicken while I am doing my workout and then cooking it when I am finished. Once I spend tonight cooking I should be set for the rest of the week and be able to get away with just reheating and combining things. So, overall things are going well and I have finally had a weekend of basically good eating, so I am pleased with myself.

Proof Exercise Works

I’ve said this before, but on the days where the stress gets really bad I have developed a new solution. I sneak off to the bathroom and do a round of 45-60 regular sit-ups. If I had an office with closed doors, I would just use my office but no such luck. I have discovered that with a couple of adrenaline spiking exceptions, the stress is unrelated to what I have to do at work. It has far more to do with other people imposing their personal meltdowns and frustrations upon those around them (including me). More and more I become intolerant of such outbursts, not that I haven’t been prone to my own personal work tizzies. However, those shrink in regularity the more that I workout and take proper care of myself. Frankly, currently there is one person in my office who simply needs to get a grip or go running or something. When I was a teenager I used to have tantrums of global proportions, slamming doors (to the extent that my father removed the lock from my door), throwing things and stomping off. Those have faded away, and to some extent I can point to the day I started to seriously work out as the day those fits faded away. My rage rarely gets inflicted on people now, rather it is expended through furious treadmill runs and upon defenseless spinning bikes. All of this is also helped by the fact that I am not eating over processed sugar laden food and sticking with healthy options. I have a feeling that the yoga is also assisting me in releasing stress and learning to be balanced in my life. When you are faced with the negativity that such outbursts produce it makes it more important to avoid them and behave like a reasonable adult. It seems funny to say that when the person having the most outbursts is quite a bit older than me, but it is still true. Today obviously involved a entirely unnecessary meltdown and when I realize that this was what was stressing me out, I went into the bathroom, closed the door and did 45 sit-ups. I feel better now as a result.

TGIF

I adore Fridays, especially Friday afternoon. The weekend stretches out ahead of one and there is the contemplation of sleeping as late as possible (well, at least until 8 a.m.). I am especially excited about the fact that I managed to have four hard cardio sessions this week (and one slacker day i.e. Thursday). Tomorrow is my day off from working out, I do plan on doing some kind of workout on Sunday but I am not sure what will be involved. I have not decide whether or not I will do a workout tonight, my body is pretty sore today and I may just give myself a rest night. I just realized that I have managed to avoid past and bread all week long (which is hard for me). Last night I was going to stop and pick up bread and have a sandwich for dinner but I decided against it at the last minute and reheated my black bean soup instead. Thus, I managed to not spend any money and stay on plan at the same time, I love when I talk myself into making good choices. I assume I will manage to make it through the rest of the afternoon without major problems and thus will have managed to survive a week on plan with only two minor deviations. This is possibly a reminder of how I can actually run my life when I try being organized and on top of things. I will also end the week with around 10 dollars in my wallet, which is not something that I ever manage when I am eating out during the week. All of this falls in line with my plan to live as simply as possible for awhile with no extraneous and possibly unnecessary purchases (well except for a few cookbooks). I would like to think that I will manage to live this way long term again, but right now I am only looking at getting through one day at a time. I will worry about long term later and stick to focusing on each meal right now.

The struggle continues

Yesterday and this morning involved some minor deviations off my food plan. Minor in that I could then recalculate what I was going to eat for the rest of the day and be fine. There would not have been any deviation this morning if my regular coffee shop had been open, but it wasn’t so I ended up at the fancy coffee shop and splurged on a correspondingly fancy caloric coffee drink. Yesterday, I ate some sugary food and that all started because I had a Luna bar when I got to work. I know it sounds odd, but I have discovered recently that the moment I add in anything like an energy bar to my daily food consumption I instantly veer off track. Probably because most energy bars are full of sugar themselves. So, no more of those in the diet for now. At least I can point to an actual reason for my dietary woes, I am trying to become really mindful of what makes me eat off-plan and what keeps me on track. I wish I could say I had made up for it with a fabulous workout this morning but my body was tired and insisted on taking it easy. I figure one easy workout morning during the week is acceptable and tomorrow will be more challenging since I have a spin class. Maybe I will make up for it tonight with an extra challenging yoga session at home, depends on how I feel at the end of the day. I have not had a day in a long time where work did not leave me emotionally drained and exhausted and I am trying to compensate with workout sessions which renew me. Some times it works and some times it does not, but I keep trying each and every day. Last night, I also proved that I should not try to make up recipes on my own. I tried to through together something involving a pureed sweet potato and a few other ingredients. It was horrible and instantly went down the drain (which was a good thing because I put entirely too much butter in it). Instead, I had chicken tossed in a little leftover alfredo sauce (don’t have any idea why I bought that, but most of the sauce got tossed anyway), and called it a night. This is why I have to start cooking food on Sunday and storing it in individual dinner containers so I don’t waste things when I cannot figure out what to make on any given day. I should know this by now, but better late than never. Some days, I just wish that this was easier. That I did not need to be so careful about what I put into my body and so focused on portion size. However, I do have to be this careful with my remarkably slow metabolism and long history of personal obesity. I have to remind myself that this is not about what other people can do, but about what I can do and my body can handle. It is an everyday struggle and probably always will be and I continue to learn how to live within that reality.

Where I am today

Last night, in my continuing efforts to shrink my rear end, I tested out a exercise dvd consisting of dance moves. If I am being frank, I purchased it solely because it was on sale at K-Mart. While it did make me sweat a lot, I cannot say that I was terribly impressed. Mostly because it was very hard to follow the moves and the instructor was excessively perky. So, I have a feeling that this will end up as more of a backup dvd than one I keep in regular rotation. I have noticed that one benefit of working out at night is that it keeps me from eating excessively when I get home. Last night, I heated up a can organic black bean soup and tossed in some cooked chicken. I only made it through half the bowl of soup and my blackberry lassi even though I could have eaten more and been fine calorie-wise, I just was not that hungry after working out. The rest of the soup has been carefully stored in a container in the fridge in case I feel like eating it tonight or at some point this week. I am slowly but surely accumulating a fridge filled with leftovers that I need to eat sooner rather than later. Right now tucked away in the fridge, I have a sweet potato, red pepper, olive and feta salad, an additional baked sweet potato, the aforementioned soup, and extra cooked chicken. I need to somehow use all these items up between now and Sunday when I go grocery shopping again. The problem is, I am brilliant at following recipes but when I attempt to throw something together it always turns out badly and excessively caloric. So, I am still racking my brain about what I am going to do with these items, I may just end up reheating them and eating them without further alterations. It will probably depend on how tired I am at the end of the day. I have noticed that my pre-planning is starting to pay off. This morning, I was horribly late in leaving my house (long story, but really I should not start searching for things at 4:30 in the morning, it never works out) and at a dead run. However, I was able to grab lunch with a minimum of fuss because I had water and my prepared salad bowls easily at hand. This is really my new goal, to prepare everything on Sunday so I do not need to fuss during the rest of the week. Oh, and I still made it to the gym in time for my class, although I did not get in the extra cardio I usually do before class. I will try and make up for it tonight by doing my fast-paced yoga dvd and also by running tomorrow morning. Also, (yes I am long winded today) I am still mulling over my recipe of the week and what kind of theme I will be choosing for the next month. It will probably be the cuisine of a particular country–either Thai food or Indian food but I have not decided yet. Either that, or I am going to spend a month preparing chicken in different ways. I am still deciding but I know that I want to pick a recipe where I can store the leftovers and reheat them easily in the oven (I do not own a microwave). Also, it needs to be low calorie and high protein. So this requires a fair amount of thinking and investigation over the next few days. I love projects.

An entirely food related post

So, here is my new thought. I have been reading a lot of food blogs with the theory that I need to expand my food horizons to items other than pasta (always a downfall). My thought is that I will try and cook one new dish a week and write about it. Thus, I will expand both my culinary horizons and also blog topics. Maybe I will try out themes, such as a month spent cooking with one ingredient or a month spent on one country’s dishes (although one month will not be enough for Italy). I am thinking of doing all the cooking on Sundays because that is a day that I am usually at home and also it is the day that I go to the store for my weekly groceries. Plus, I can cook extra and freeze it for dinner during the week. I know already that there will be issues along the way, especially in terms of ingredients. Fresh food costs a lot here, and it can be very difficult to find ingredients (unless the ingredients are used in Thai or Asian cuisine). Still, I am going to give it my best shot over the next month.

I thought that I would start early with one of my favorite things. I stole this recipe from somewhere (sadly I cannot remember where) and then I altered it. You might say that this recipe stems from a desire to revisit some old childhood memories. I can remember being very young and going berry picking with my older brother and parents in the delta area which is part of the San Francisco Bay. Whether the memories are accurate or not, I can remember us ending up with huge white buckets filled with blackberries and raspberries which would quickly be decimate leaving both my brother and I with berry-stained hands and mouths. My brother especially could devour half a bucket of berries in the blink of an eye or a five second turn of a parental back. I can distinctly remember the color of the blackberries, fading from true black to a dark red wine color. I can’t get good fresh raspberries or blackberries where I live now, so I have to settle for the frozen variety and admittedly they never defrost quite right. So, they require some work before being worth eating. A while back, I stumbled upon a recipe for a very good mango lassi and I began to wonder if it could be altered for other fruits. The answer was clearly yes after some experimentation. Thus, my mind turned to blackberries and raspberries (and this is better with raspberries) and I tested it out and was quite pleased with the results. I’m not much for measuring so you will have to approximate amounts.

1/4 cup nonfat plain yogurt (or you can substitute buttermilk)

around 1 cup of berries (I usually eyeball it and go with however many berries evenly cover the bottom of my food processor bowl)

either sugar or splenda to taste (I use splenda) usually two tablespoons is ample if not excessive

around 1/8 cup cold water to help the ingredients blend into a smooth liquid

The result is a tart cross between a smoothie and a lassi which more than fulfills my craving for fresh berries. I usually have this as dessert or a mid-afternoon snack, if I get struck by sudden hunger pains. If you eliminate the water, it turns into a thick semi-frozen berry sorbet without the excessive calories. All of the ingredients can be varied according to taste.

The Long Slow Run

This morning, for the first time in a couple of weeks, I actually did about a three mile run. Oof, I have to start running more often because it was pretty brutal and I was only running a 11 minute mile (as compared to my standard 10 minute mile). I did actually manage to run for a solid 35 minutes which was good and I probably could have kept going but I did want to be able to walk today. Anyway, it meant that I skipped out on what looked like a really good combination spin/step aerobics class but I was already 20 plus minutes into my run when the class started. Next week I may take the class but today I really felt like running so I prioritized that instead. Food and water were spot on yesterday (well I did eat an entire yam for dinner but it is a super food) and I even managed 20 minutes of yoga at the end of the day while dinner was cooking. Thus, I feel like monday was a complete success and I am ready for today. Part of what has been helping is going back to drinking tons of water, it fills me up and I am much better off reaching for one of my little 8 oz bottles of water than a snack. Yoga is also proving to be beneficial because it helps me to relax and unwind which is something that I have never been good at on my own. Now, my main goal is just not to go off plan on Friday or Saturday this week.

Friday/Saturday Problem

I seem to be developing this problem where my food falls apart on Friday and Saturday and then I recover on Sunday. I am working on fixing this, usually I think it is created by all the stress of the week coming to a head on thursday and friday. So, yesterday was decent in terms of food, today will probably be better. I have solved one little problem (excess calories in the form of sugar in my coffee) by simply bringing in fake sugar to work. Every little bit helps, and I am working on baby steps right now. I also brought bottled water to work for the first time in a long time. I am going to try and get in my eight glasses of water today. I am once again dragging myself back on track (for the nine millionth time) but this time I really need to make some progress. I am going to go back to running at least twice a week, because it is the only thing which is guaranteed to work and to really being careful about my food. Part of that probably will involve buying new cookbooks so I can have some variety in my diet, and researching some new ways to get more vegetables into my diet. I have always liked a good project so I am going to treat my diet as my new project and see if this works.

Power Outage

Oy, somedays I just cannot get a break. This morning, I was about 10 minutes into my hipbox class when there was an emergency power outage. Thus, class was canceled because the power outage lasted for about 20 minutes. I went and lifted a few weights in the dark and then when the power came back on I used the eliptical machine for 35 minutes and lifted more weights. I will also practice yoga at home tonight with one of my cd's (probably the longer slower one) and try and get in a hard cardio workout tomorrow morning. I am really enjoying the yoga dvd's (much to my shock) and I think increasing my flexibility will be a really good thing in the long run. Besides, I like the fact that I don't have to think about them and I don't need a lot of equipment to use the dvd's. I can just pop in the dvd while I am making dinner and start working out. My goal is to build up a stack of dvd's that I can alternate so that I don't get bored and stop working out at night. I am hesitant to declare success when I have only been at this new plan for two days, but so far it seems to be working.

Yoga Girl

So, the last few days have not been exactly perfect foodwise, not horrible but not great. However, I am back on track again and trying to stay balanced. I finally went and purchased a dvd player to attach to my television and in the process of installing it I totally destroyed my tv stand. Lord, I hate mdf built products. It is so dead that I am going to use a hammer and break it up into even smaller pieces and toss it. So right now my tv is sitting on my glass coffee table (which is the only nice piece of furniture that I own). However, despite the destruction of my tv table, the dvd player was a good purchase. I bought a couple of yoga tapes on sale at K-Mart, and last night I actually spent 45 minutes doing yoga. This proved definitively that I am the least flexible person ever ( which I already knew). I am also going to buy some pilates tapes over the internet. My goal is to go to the gym in the morning and do some kind of tape every night (either yoga, pilates, or other core conditioning). This will keep me busy at night and stop me from snacking as it did yesterday. Other than that, I am still drinking far too much coffee but I figure that is a minor vice in the grand scheme of things. I figure that every day is a new opportunity to be healthy and that is what I am trying to do right now.

Missed that Anniversary

As I was skimming through my blog archives this morning, I realized that I had missed an anniversary, actually more of a blogversary. The first post on this blog was on May 13, 2004. So, I have literally been bloging for two years at this point (with occasional month long breaks). So, documenting changes since then seems to be in order. Since May of 2004, I have lost at least 30 lbs, probably more like 50 (with some episodes of regaining in between). Since I started losing weight, I have maintain a loss of at least 70 lbs. I have moved three times, once about 200 miles, then cross country and then across the international dateline (a plane ride of 12+ hours), went to Australia on vacation. I started a new job (which I am leaving in October), had one boyfriend (who moved back to the mainland), got my first apartment, and first cat for that matter. I learned to dive, started running seriously and also stopped running seriously and started taking spinning classes. I have been going to the gym consistently five days a week for more than a year now. I have learned to get up at between 4-4:30 am during the week for more than a year now so that I can go to the gym. Whew, that is a lot of changes over the past few years, both personally and professionally. Sometimes perspective is a really important thing.

Coordination

I am probably the least coordinated person ever, and that is if you are being nice. So, I amazed that my hipbox instructor has not started hyperventilating when she watches me try to do the moves in her class. Then again, no one else is terribly coordinated either for that matter. Mostly I go for the really good ab workout and the weight workout which is part of the class. Plus, I sweat like crazy in there which seems like a good thing. I made curry last night, but I need to work on perfecting it, there was a little bit too much salt involved. I may try it again tonight, we will see what I feel like after work. I think yesterday I managed to do 120 situps (60 at work and another 60 at home) which is a major improvement over past weeks. I have been reminded again of the benefit of living in a place with no excess snacks, there is literally nothing to eat mindlessly because it all has to be cooked. This right now is a good thing (although it would be helpful if I could snack proof work) since I am stressed when I get home and stress invariably leads to eating in my world.

60 Sit-ups

The people in my office are eating lunch together. Only some of them (not all) are annoyed with me so I was not really invited to join them. Plus I brought lunch and ate it at my desk. It was a very tasty southwestern chicken salad. However, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and could feel the urge to snack rearing its ugly head. So I went into the bathroom which is the only enclosed private space on the floor and did 60 sit-ups. So now I feel better and the urge to snack has passed. Frankly, I have no idea why that worked, not a clue but it did and that makes me happy. Sometimes it really is just about the 60 second rule of finding something else to occupy my brain rather than food.

General Ramblings

Last night I did manage to do some situps at home and stay on plan foodwise. Although, I have eaten so many rice cakes in the last two days that I may start floating soon. I am absolutely aware that my stress level has been completely impacting on my food consumption and I need to find a better way of dealing with both of those problems. I have not figured out a great solution yet but I am working on it. I am thinking that maybe I will invest in some yoga or pilates DVD's and do those at night. Much as I would like to claim that I will make it to the gym every night, I am forced to admit that most nights it is easier to just hop in my car and drive home. Therefore, I would be well served by making sure I have workout stuff at home rather than worrying about making another stop at the gym at night. I already own a bunch of weights and a workout ball so these would just be additions. I am evaluating the finances (since I need to buy a dvd player) and will probably make a decision by this weekend. Tonight I am going to make chicken curry for dinner so that I have some good protein and then turn in early. Tomorrow morning I have a hipboxing class (which is always interesting because I am not terribly coordinated) and if I feel really motivated I will go to spin at night. Once again I am inching back to my normal food plan and I feel much better as a result.

Here we go again

Saturday morning, I packed up my cat, all of my clothing, and rapidly scuttled back to my own apartment. I have never been so excited to get back into my own space in my entire life. The last few weeks have been a debacle of too much chocolate and sweets, lots of coffee, and not enough sleep. The return to my own apartment meant a return to sanity finally and an extra 30 minutes of sleep everyday. Sunday and today were good food days, probably since I made it to the store and stocked up on premade salad bowls for lunch and low calorie soups for dinner. I have decided that I am simply going to lose the battle on drinking coffee and so instead I am just going to make sure I do not drink coffee with anything but low calorie creamers and small amounts of sugar. I will say this, work is ridiculous and horrible and insane. I walk into work and I want to eat chocolate, but I am not going to do that anymore. If I keep eating sweets, I really won't fit into my clothing. I am going to start working out in the evening ( I think I need to by a VCR and get tapes or something) even if it is just five minutes of abs and try to focus my stress on something positive. Oh, and last week, I got my hair cut into a short bob (about chin length) which will look bad if I gain any weight in my face so that is an incentive as well. I keep trying and struggling and failing and trying again, but I know as long as I keep trying that I am doing better than I could possibly have imagined a few years back. (Oh, and I am keeping up my morning exercise routine just fine).

Sleepy

I am really dragging today, getting up twenty minutes earlier every day is going to wear me down. However, there are certain benefits to house sitting, including having a roommate around who makes it worth cooking actual meals. I don't normally cook very much for myself, I should but I don't because I end up with ridiculous amounts of extra food. However, when I have someone else around who can eat the food that I cook, well then I have more incentive. Last night I made pasta with homemade tomato sauce, which was good and pretty healthy. Tonight, I am thinking about making a home made veggie pizza and maybe some corn. I have also discovered that the grocery stores are finally starting to sell pre-made salad bowls which is very exciting. I love these because I know exactly how many calories are in them and I can just throw them in my bag and take them to work for lunch. I did not have money to pick up any this morning, but I will probably stop tomorrow and buy a couple for the rest of the week for lunch. So, hopefully that will really help me get back to where I need to be over the next few weeks.

Where was I?

Er, right where was I ? Ahh yes, slacking off again. I am keeping up on exercise just fine but food is just killing me recently and I am so tired of saying that over and over again. Mostly, I know it is related to the fact that I walk into work and the stress and tension overwhelms me instantly (and everyone I work with for that matter). Add in the fact that I have had at least one party every weekend for the past month and it has been bad. So, I am struggling to keep my head above water, but I am still trying. This morning, I ran a mile, then did an hour long spin class, lifted weights and finished with 20 minutes on the eliptical machine and a ten minute cooldown on the treadmill. I am house sitting for the next two weeks so I had to get up 30 minutes earlier than normal to get to the gym on time for my spin class. I am not a big fan of getting up at 4 am and driving for 30 minutes but I did not want to miss exercising. Tomorrow, I will probably get up a little bit later and go run at the gym before I come into work. I am going to keep working on the food thing as well, hopefully I will get better over the next few weeks.

Holding by my fingertips

Yesterday, as I anticipated, was a very bad food day. A huge lunch out and then dinner at a restaurant as well. I find that this whole having a life thing tends to interfere with my workout plans and diet plans. This morning I have had some chocolate which is bad. I will try to be on track for the rest of the day. I was exhausted this morning and so I only managed a 15 minute run and 75 minutes on the eliptical. I would have preferred to run for 40 minutes but I did not feel up to it. My goal is to run at least three days a week and spin the other two days, so at least I managed that goal. Hopefully I will get food back on track today (after the chocolate) and be back to being pretty zen by the weekend. I will see if I can manage that it should not be that hard.

Head Trip

I was reminded again of the very wierd head games that losing weight can cause even in a reasonably sane person. Today is Secretaries Day (which disturbingly has been retitled "Administrative Professionals Day" but I'm not going there) and I have to go to lunch with my staff. I have a feeling that food will be a problem at this event (and not just because they are having a chocolate fountain). Therefore, I knew I needed to do some serious cardio to at least break even today. I did not want to run today, I in fact came up with a whole series of other options. I did however make a deal with myself, if I got to the gym and it was cooler than yesterday then I would run. So, since it was much cooler in the cardio section than the day before, I forced myself onto the treadmill and started running. The first 30 minutes of running were no fun at all but I kept going and at that point it became a reasonably zen experience and I kept going until I hit the 4 mile mark at 40 minutes. The rest of the workout was pretty decent but at least I managed a good run. It is disturbing how that would have not happened if I had listened to what my brain was telling me. So, right now I feel pretty decent.

Not completely off the wagon

I have been about 70 percent on plan since last time I was here. Eating was not good this weekend, there was a huge barbeque on Saturday, dinner out on Sunday, and rather a lot of slip ups in between. Yesterday was better, today has been better still, and if the pattern continues I may make it completely back on track by tomorrow. Also, the stress level at work has been rising over the past couple of days and got really bad this morning. I'm a prosecutor and when defense lawyers call and check on me to make sure I am alright, well that is when you know I am having a bad day. Food is definately a stress relief for me and so, since I can't just leave work and go for a run, it is really tempting to just eat. Still, I keep trying to stay on plan, and for the most part it is working. Add to that a decent run this morning (only 30 minutes due to the fact the air conditioning was broken at the gym and it was very hot) and I feel okay today. Hopefully, I can get through this afternoon without any problems and go home and feel better. I will see how it goes.

Middle of Week Two

I am still recovering from this cold, so running for 30 or 40 minutes was out of the question today. The last time I did that with a headcold, I ended up with a really horrible cough that lingered for days. So, I used the eliptical instead and tacked on a slow 10 minute jog at the end of my workout. It felt pretty good actually to jog, even if it was just for a few minutes. I hate not feeling 100 percent when I am decently motivated to work out, but I know in the long run it will be better if I ease off and recover over the next few days. I might go diving this weekend and if I do, I will want to be past this cold. I was thinking this morning about how it is always the same struggle, just different scenery. Now I fuss about my weight bouncing up into the 160's before I fussed when my weight went over 230. Despite the distance I have come, it is hard to get past the small details and see the big picture, but I keep trying. I am still on track with food, except for yesterday's wackiness and I plan to stay that way for the rest of the week. Plus, I have not really been snacking and that is a very good thing, plus no coffee or high-calorie drinks (one of my downfalls). So other than the cold, I am doing well in my second week on plan.

More or less on track

This is actually a late check in for me. Life as always is hectic, and I have to remember to post. I went to the gym this morning but I am still not entirely better so I took it easy. No running today, hopefully I will feel up to running tomorrow. I just used the eliptical machine today and did a few minutes after that on the stairmaster. My eating today was weird, no other way to describe it. Oatmeal for breakfast, two Luna bars, a small muffin, and five M&M's. This is not how I normally eat, but I just was not interested in food today. I figure at best, I am at around 900 calories today, and I have a feeling I am overestimating my calorie consumption. That leaves a minimum of 600 calories available for dinner, again way more than I will probably eat. Due to the amount I workout (1.5 hours a day) I aim for between 1500 and 1700 calories during the week and slightly less on weekends. I don't believe in starving myself but this cold has been messing with me for the past couple of days. I will try and be better tomorrow and at least have a big salad or sandwich for lunch. Still, I am looking at the positives, I am not snacking the way that I used to, and I have not had any coffee in the past two weeks, both of these are good things. Not to mention, that I am back down to a weight which does not thrill me but I can live with and work to make better. So, an okay but not perfect day.

I feel icky

The weekend was pretty decent in terms of food, well Saturday was better than Sunday. Today, I am coming down with a bad cold, sore throat, head hurting, deep desire to crawl back into bed. So, I did what I normally do in such situations, I went to the gym and exercised. I cannot miss work today, we are so low on staff, that bad things would happen if I were not here. So, here I am when what I probably should be doing is crawling into bed and not moving because I feel horrible. I have a salad for lunch and as always the goal is to stay on track for another day.

Belatedly checking in

I have had a hectic day (which is nothing as bad as Monday will be) and so did not have time to check in. I am doing fine, I took it a little bit easy in my spin class because my legs were sore. I am completely on track with food, although my office is begining to worry. I work in a place which to a certain extent equates food with love, and the fact I am not eating their food worries them. This is a small island and every celebration here centers around food and an abundance of food. Choosing to not eat rice is positively shocking and only having salad for lunch puzzles people. Still, right now, I am sure this is working for me. So, I am sticking to the plan and avoiding snacks. Oh, and I did file my taxes today which means that is another stressful activity which is done. Here, you have to file your taxes in person because you need a stamped copy of your return. This is because the local IRS has been known to misplace tax returns. It is actually pretty fast, I had everything stamped and turned in very quickly (less than 15 minutes). Anyway, I am tired and it is the end of the day so I am headed home now.

Doing well

Well, still doing fine. My legs are a little bit stiff from the running (which frankly is a reminder that I need to do it more often). I managed another 40 minute run along with a fair amount of other cardio. I am still completely on track with food which is nice, and has not been nearly as much as a problem as I expected. I do know how to do this, it is not physically hard on me, it just ends up requiring a fair amount of mental focus on my part. Little mental things are hard, like deciding to actually get on the treadmill in the morning and run, or like declining the good but fatening food my co-workers cooked and eating my salad instead. I have either been losing weight or maintaining for over two years now, and really I can manage to do this without problems when I put my mind to it. I imagine that I have more of a struggle with this given my long-term food issues but I do know even I can manage it.

Afternoon, Day Three

I have sucessfully made it through 90 percent of another day. Still totally on plan, plus I finally managed to drink 2.5 glasses of water while at work which is a good thing. My goal each day remains the same, if I can get through the workday, I will be totally fine. Once I get home, I just have to make dinner from whatever healthy food is in my apartment. This is not a problem right now, since there is not very much bad food available at home. I have learned overtime to keep trigger foods in forms that have to be manipulated before they can be eaten. For example, I have chocolate in my house, but it is unsweetened and bittersweet (neither of which are really appetizing until you bake them. I have butter and have never been tempted to eat a whole stick of butter on its own (at least to date), the same is true of sugar (I can't imagine just eating spoonfuls of it). I do not keep cheese in the house, because it is easy to wolf down tons of it, no crackers based on the same theory. I only have frozen bread which has to be reheated and that will be gone soon as well. No pasta, again because I have a tendency of eating far too much of it. I do have tons of frozen fruit for smoothies, vegetables, oatmeal, eggs, soy milk, some peanut butter (will not be replaced), plain non-fat yogurt, diet soda, black beans, lentils, fat free cooking spray and water. This along with a cupboard overflowing with spices is sufficient to keep me healthy and happy in terms of food. The problem comes with the plentiful supply of food at work that I simply should not be eating and I am working on just avoiding that food. We will see what happens (not that I do not contribute to bad food at work because I am a baker and I do). Still, for today, I am good.

Day three, morning check in

This morning I managed to run for 40 minutes straight. Since I was only running a 10 minute mile, that worked out to exactly 4 mile. Logically, this means I could probably run a 10k in about an hour or a 5k in about 30 minutes, this is mindboggling on some level since I could not even run a mile when I was a teenager. I feel better today, than I have in a while, I think it is the universe bonking me on the head and reminding me that I function much better when I am not eating sugar or too many carbs. I actually haven't felt hungry for the past few days, although I recognize that I am on the low end of the calorie scale right now. At the gym I am going to try and keep working on increasing my running times, rather than worrying about how fast I am running. I think part of the reason I stopped running is I did not like running super fast and so I am going to stick with a 10 minute mile pace for awhile. So, right now I am doing well and still focusing on just managing to get through each individual hour and each separate day.

Still doing okay

It is now approximately 4:20 pm and I think for today I can declare a small measure of victory over food. There is no real bad food at home in the apartment, I do not buy snacks or chocolate or anything like that, knowing my weaknesses. Not only has there been no coffee today, but there has been no snacking today. I sat down at lunch at my desk and very carefully ate my salad which had carrots, tomatoes and a little bit of salmon in it. So, today has been (so far) oatmeal for breakfast, two diet sodas, and the aforementioned salad. This is how I eat on plan (except I usually have two snacks during the day), when I am doing the really hard version of my plan. Well, except I drink water and not soda but I am not there yet, hopefully water will be added in after the weekend shopping trip to K-Mart. I am going to hazard a guess that I am too low on calories, but this week there is no snacking because I have been doing it constantly until now. Dinner will be a pretty decent size, and I expect it will compenstate for what I have not eaten during the day. I do forget, that I can be on plan and be completely okay with it, when I get really far off track. I lose my way and I feel like I am begining to find my way back. This is how it needs to be for a few months and I know I can manage it, day by day.

Day Two for the millionth time

One day at a time right now. Yesterday, with one minor slip in the evening was completely on plan. Well, I was extremely difficult during the day, but that is because I had a horrible headache. I would think it was a caffine headache, but I don't drink that much coffee on the weekends (if any) and I do not have that problem. I think it was more a combination of drastically limiting my food and working out hard. I probably ate around 1,500 calories but I know I have been exceeding that on a regular basis. I have a salad today for lunch, I have not had any coffee and other than a slightly lazy workout I am doing pretty well today. Of course, it is only 8 am in the morning so who knows what will happen over the rest of the day. However, it is the first time I have brought my lunch in over a month so that is progress.

You've been eating again

This morning, in a feat of either brilliant resolve or general stupidity (take your pick), I went cold turkey on coffee. Yup, we are back on that plan, the no bad food whatsoever plan. I usually drink a huge amount of coffee at work, so that is banned for the immediate future. I am going back to salads for lunch and no snacks in between until my eating is under control. I have cleared the vast majority of rice and bread products out of my house, only frozen homemade bagels remain and I do not eat nearly as much frozen food because it needs to defrost and I have no microwave and lack the patience to wait for it to naturally defrost. The no sugar ban remains in effect for the foreseable future. I have officially hit a weight I do not like, and until I see one I can live with, I am going to be really stringent on my eating habits. I may start adding more night workouts, but I can never seem to manage it and so I may resort to buying a vcr and using workout videos at home. Alternatively, I could just do more situps and core fitness stuff at home and that would be a good thing. I know that the problem is what I am eating more than anything else I am doing and so now I have to really watch what I put in my mouth and just work on a daily plan. I am trying though, and it is the first time in a long while.

Checking in

So, last night I actually skipped the grocery store on the theory I would eat everything in sight. I am contemplating whether or not to go back to the gym tonight and get in some cardio. I am definately going to go tomorrow night because I know the spin instructor. I am spending all day in court so that may cut down on snacking today which is one of my real problems recently. I only ran for about 10 minutes this morning plus an hour on the eliptical machine and I know I need to up the intensity. Using the eliptical machine is my cop-out cardio workout, it is what I do when I do not feel up to a hard workout. If I feel motivated I will go back tonight otherwise I am going to do a core fitness workout at home and some situps. I did finish cleaning up my bedroom, living room, and kitchen last night which just leave the spare room, bathroom and utility closet to conquer over the rest of the week. It is too soon to say I am back on track but I am feeling much closer this week.

To snack or not to snack

I'm having a late afternoon desire to snack. This is a bad idea, and I know it. So far, today has been pretty decent overall in terms of food, not great but decent. Thus, snacking would only serve to erode any progress that I have made by working out. This is all compounded by the fact that I need to go to the grocery store after work, which means I will be hungry and in a place with a lot of food. I have about an hour of work left, and I will probably delay leaving the office by 30-45 minutes after that because of traffic. So, I will debate the grocery store thing until then, because not going would really be a better plan if I can swing it. Alternatively, I could always go to the store later tonight and eat dinner before going which would diminish the desire to eat everything in sight. Anyway, I am still debating the issue and trying to restrain myself from eating at the same time. So far it is working.

"Hey Mr. DJ, Pick me up and move"

I have the music from my spin class stuck in my head from this morning. The instructor tried to kill us this morning with tons of jumps and sprints. I actually spent the weekend cleaning my apartment which is helping me to feel more organized and on track. I am not actually done cleaning, which tells you how disorganized I have been, but I am close. Tonight, I am going to clean out the closet and get rid of the rest of the trash that just needs to be tossed. I am a little bit of a pack rat, what else is new. I am always surprised at how much better I feel when I reduce the clutter in my life and being disorganized is usually a sign that I am under a fair amount of stress. I am going to try to make it to the gym at least one night this week in addition to my normal morning routine because I have better cardio workouts when I am awake and not tired. I am also going to try to go to bed by 9 pm at night because that will prevent me from feeling tired and makes it more likely that I will actually run. So, today I feel like I can get back on track, and I am just taking it one day at a time.

At least I'm still trying

I am not entirely out of my bout of not caring about things yet. I'm working on it, working on clawing my way back. I ran this morning at the gym, I need to do that more often because it clears my head and makes me feel like I have accomplished something for the morning. The real problem is that I cannot shake the exhaustion brought on by a poor work environment. The exhaustion makes it very difficult to actually feel motivated to work out at all, let alone at 5 am in the morning. However, right now, I simply cannot make myself go workout in the evenings. So workout time remains at 5 am and I keep trying to find motivation. Eating away from work is fine but at work it is not really very good. I have probably eaten my weight in jellybeans over the last week. I'm just trying to balance everything out as best I can right now. Balance is hard to achieve but I am doing my best and I don't want to thing about where I would be if I did not work out.

Not much to report

So, I'm at work, on a Saturday no less. I have been here since 9:30, I am about to go to court with the eight magistrates for the day and then head home. I need to go to the post office but I doubt that I will make it out of court before the post office closes. I need a nap among other things, and a chance to clean my apartment. Not to mention a few other things. The problem with working on a weekend is you lose an entire day to do things that you need to get done. Oh, and notice how none of this post is diet or exercise related, yup that is not going well either today. Anyway, I am off to court, I don't want to be late or the judge will be mad at me and then I will be there forever. Hopefully there will be posting on Monday, we shall see.

Well yeah

Yeah, don't ask where I have been or how I have been doing on plan. Not so well. When you almost quit your job three times in one week, it should give you an idea about the state of life in general. I have however been diving a lot and I am still working out, but other than that I can't say much has been going well in terms of diet.

Tired

I am still about 90 percent on track, despite various job frustrations. Honestly, there is just no way to shake the exhaustion at this point or prevent the desire to just go home and sleep. I did run this morning for about 30 minutes and did the rest of my cardio workout. Right now I am just waiting for traffic to clear out a little bit because I need to stop at the grocery store on my way home and buy oatmeal. I need to cut down on coffee and eating out, but it does not seem to be in the cards this week. Alternatively, I need to lift more weights at home, but so far that is not happening either. I could talk about the nastiness at work, but it isn't worth rehashing it here. Suffice it to say I am going to be glad to get out of here at some point soon. Anyway, at least I am posting today which is impressive given the day in general. Maybe tomorrow will be better at work, but I am not holding my breath. I am off to the store now.

Weight Loss Diving

This weekend I went on a night dive with some friends. Night diving is very different from diving during the day because you lose a lot of visual cues and narrow your field of vision. In a way, it is a good metaphor for the whole weight loss process. When you are really focused on losing weight, your field of vision narrows to the scale and and pounds lost or gained. You lose sight of the big picture, of where you have been and where you are now. Much as one can come to appreciate the multitude of things which can be seen in the small space of the flashlight it is not the whole picture of the universe around you. I am working on remembering everything I have accomplished and not just the scale. In case it is not obvious, I find diving remarkably spirtual on some level, and very calming. I'm not religious and never will be but being in the natural world calms and soothes me in many ways. It quiets my brain and lets me unwind which is a miracle given my personality.

The Baking Dilema

Last night I slightly went over calories, probably by about 100 calories or so. That was probably due to going out to dinner. Today is the retirement party for one of the people in my office and at the staff's request I made two coffee cakes. The problem is that I could not actually taste test the batter because it had sugar in it. I find it incredibly hard to bake that way, even though I did manage it. Hopefully they will taste all right although I won't know that either. I am going to be very careful at lunch and hope that everything will continue to workout over the next few weeks. Also, I did purge my kitchen last night so there is no butter, chocolate, sugar, or cream to be found (all of my baking supplies). I do have lots of good things like frozen vegetables, brown rice, and cooked chicken. I need to shop this weekend for things like whole wheat pasta and frozen shrimp but other than that I am now set.

Ramblings

I must admit, the fact people (immediate family excepted) read this blog always surprises me. I don't have much time durring the day to post, usually just five or ten minutes when I get a free second. I don't (as a result) respond to comments usually because there is no time. Especially for the last year or two, I have pretty much been treading water when it comes to weightloss. I have been hovering around 155-165 since I arrived on my little island. Too much food, not enough intense exercise. So, I wonder about that whole inspiration thing, especially due to lack of progress. Then again, I think that is the thing about weight loss, it is a constant struggle. The hard part is always mental not physical. If, like me, you have always had an unhealthy relationship with food, the struggle does not end when you figure out how to lose weight, rather it is just begining. So, more than two years from where I started, I still struggle with the same issues. Just on a slightly different level. Now, it is not did I exercise but how hard I exercised, now it isn't did I eat a whole bag of candy but I had snacked a little bit too much during the day. When I started, I usually bounced around between 236 and 242, now I bounce around between 155-165 lbs and in the end that is really good progress. So, maybe that is what I should go with despite my current frustrations.

Hanging on

So, here I am at day four of discovering that yes there is a wagon and I should be on it. I've clawed my way back down the scale by losing 2.5 lbs in the past four days, which still puts me higher than I would like to be (in otherwords above my comfort level on the scale). Still the speed with which I have dropped some of the excess weight is comforting to me. I did not run this morning, I tried to run but my hips were aching and I stopped after five minutes. However, trying to run was an improvement on my part, after the last month of general inactivity (and yes I realize my version of inactivity is not the same as everyone else). I even lifted free weights at home last night and did lunges and squats. I feel much better this week than I have felt in awhile as a result. I think part of what I need to begin doing is transitioning from someone who just works out because she has to into someone who works out because they are an athlete, thus the continuing thought that maybe I will train for either a triathlon or some similar event. I am not an athlete, at least I never have been, but I need to become one to keep my interest in working out from waning. In other news, I am keeping up with the no real sugar in my diet. Last night, I threw out pretty much all the coffee stuff in my apartment which includes mocha mixes and so on, and after tonight I am throwing out all of the sugar and probably all the butter in my apartment. Why after tonight? I promised to bake coffee cakes for a work party tomorrow and I need sugar for that, then it will go away. My goal is to only keep really clean food on hand for the next month or so and then to see where I am at the end of March. It is amazing the amount of food you can eat when all of the food is good protein and vegetables and not processed crap.