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.