becoming the odd duck

We're moving!

2010-02-02T10:37:00.002-06:00

This blog has now moved over to a new site so please go find me there!

http://OddDuckBlog.com

You should be re-directed to this site within the next 6 seconds. If not, please click over now.

Update your readers too please! Thanks!

Accomplishment takes hard work

2010-01-28T10:52:00.000-06:00

I get really frustrated by people that don't grasp that life is hard and that hard work IS necessary to make their dreams come true. You know.. the people who think they are the victim and nothing ever goes their way. They think everyone is SO much better off than them. These people generally feel entitled as well to an "easy break" or to receive help from others. They want other people to feel bad for them because of their lack of success in one area or another of their life. And sure, there are people in this world that got the longer straw in the draw and have a pretty "easy" life.. but even the easy lives still have hard times and most of those people have to work for the things they want. I get very frustrated by those that feel entitled and feel like they DESERVE for people to give them things when they did nothing to deserve it (no matter what their status is in the class structure by the way.) I also feel frustrated when people who are bitter about their lives project these feelings onto you, because they feel like you have everything and you aren't appreciating their lack of having what you have.

I get frustrated because I don't have everything and I work really hard for the the things that I've accomplished (or have) in my life. I was raised in a household where rewards were given for hard work but were not given if you didn't accomplish the goal. My dad assigned us chores to do and we were to do these particular chores until we had "mastered" the chore and then could be relieved of the duty. I can't tell you how many nights I was SO frustrated because I would wash dishes and my dishes weren't clean enough for him. Glasses still had spots or bowls had residue on the outside of the bowl. But looking back, we didn't have a dishwasher and thus our dishes HAD to be clean by hand washing.. so he had a very valid point. We had the same attitude towards education. I was very self motivated, but my dad always wanted more for me. I would come home with a 94 on my report card and he would push me to make a 96 in the next six week period. There was never a question of IF I would go to college, it was always where will I go and what will I study. Every lesson that my dad taught me was how to be independent, and how to be self sufficient and how to do things for myself, rather than depend on someone else to do it for me.

I grew up in a very poor household, but looking back, I don't feel like I'm entitled to anything now. I knew growing up and (I know now) that I would only be rewarded if I worked hard and stayed focused. I'm not perfect and there have most likely been times that I have been a brat and felt like I deserved something I didn't actually deserve, but overall I really try push myself to work hard to see success. I push myself to achieve the "unattainable things in life" because I know that I can accomplish anything through hard work because my Dad taught me that lesson.

To be frank, I have been noticing some people in my life that DO feel entitled and play the victim card. These "victims" think people who "have everything" should give to them and when the people don't, people are spending too much time thinking about themselves. I started thinking about it and I didn't feel like I could relate. I felt angry because these "victims" don't do the things necessary to have success in their life. When they have to face a challenge to meet a goal, they complain about the struggles rather than focus on the GOAL. And then their goal gets pushed off because they complained about struggling rather than buckled down and just DID IT.

And so I felt angry, threatened and frustrated that these "victims" don't take the necessary steps to "have everything". And I started to feel a little 'holier than thou' because damnit, I work for my goals and I'm NOT like these people. That is.. until I started thinking about my health journey. And then it hit me that I TOTALLY play the victim pretty often when it comes to weight loss. So I came down off my pedestal and really started to think about how I feel when I'm "doing the right things" regarding weight loss. Why is it that after 2-3 days of perfect eating and exercise I step on that scale and EXPECT the scale to have dropped 5 pounds? Why do I want to cry and give up when that scale actually shows the same weight or maybe even a pound up? I want to yell at that scale and say, "Scale how dare you say that number. Look at all the hard work I've done the past three days!" But in reality, three days is nothing. I didn't gain 80 pounds in three days did I? No, I gained 80 pounds in 6 years. I didn't even gain 5 pounds in 3 days, so why do I play that victim card and expect to be rewarded so soon for good work?

Sure, growing up I was rewarded for my hard work. But it didn't always happen immediately after I did this hard work. I didn't get rewarded for every day I woke up and went to school, did I? I didn't get rewarded when I scored an A on a quiz either. I DID get rewarded at the end of a six week period or the end of the year when ALL my good habits paid off and I made that A in that class. I have to view weight loss the way that I do school (because school is the one thing that I'm wholeheartedly committed to). In school I didn't make 100s on everything I turned in. I had bad days. But over time, the good days outweighed the bad and it paid off. I made that A. It's the same thing here folks. We will all slip up. We will all have bad days. But the more we are "present" and work hard, the more pay off we are ultimately going to see.

I know I have these type of revelations every so often, but really I feel like it's just a new way of approaching this journey. Since I've committed myself to healthy living for the rest of my life.. every now and then I need to be reminded of WHY I'm doing this. And I need to be reminded of WHAT the benefits are and sometimes that requires you to look at things a different way. I believe in hard work. I believe in setting goals. And I believe the only way to accomplish your goals is through hard work. This applies to my weight loss as well and I refuse to be the victim with weight loss. I refuse to feel entitled to lose weight. I also refuse to be upset when other's don't have to work as hard as I do to be thin. Thin does not mean healthy and that's something that often gets lost in my thought process.

So for right now, I'm going to view weight loss the same way as I do school. I'm going to remember it takes a little work every day and you won't always be rewarded for that work on a day to day basis. But, one day I WILL be rewarded and my hard work WILL pay off and I WILL accomplish the goals I have set for myself. And I will probably still be upset with those "victims" out there but I will not feel like a hypocrite because I'm committed to stop acting this way and to work hard for the things I want in life.

Do you believe in hard work?

School is in session

2010-01-22T11:05:00.001-06:00

Many people have been asking me about how school is going, and I just want to say THANK YOU! I really appreciate everyone acknowledging and asking about how everything is going so far. That shows that I have support and it makes me feel stronger than ever!

School has been.. interesting to say the least. Honestly this week has been a whirlwind! I have been inundated with realizations and flashbacks to my college years that are both positive and negative. I thought I would share some of the silly, simple ones with you guys and then hit you with some of the larger, deeper realizations I have had this week.

Things I have realized this week:

1. I still love school supplies. Especially ones that are bright colored.

2. Buying the nicer school supplies IS worth the money (I realized this after I spent $12 on my spirals for the semester).

3. I am still very OCD about my school materials. Every class has a binder (with divider for each lab/chapter) and a spiral and they are color coordinated. I also do NOT want my books getting written in or pages crumbled (Already had to scold Matt a few times with my chem book.. just sayin').

4. I still like to snack when I study.

5. I still need something going on in the background (TV, music, snacking) while I'm studying - otherwise I fall asleep.

6. Community College is glorified high school.

7. Community College is NOT for me.

8. I would rather pay 3X the tuition to take a class at a 4 year university rather than a Community College.

9. I have already had a major fight with a Community College professor, which has probably skewed my view of Community College.

10. Everyone IN community college has a kid. WTF?

11. My Type A personality comes out to the extreme when I am involved in something I really care about.

12. I miss my old university and wish I was back there :(

13. I have to buy a parking permit even though I take online classes at my 4 year school, which is LAME.

14. I have thought, "No wonder I gained so much weight during college" about 15 times since Tuesday.

15. Going to my job is a complete waste of time now. I have better things to be doing.

16. I wish my job would fire me.

17. I'm not going to exercise unless I do it as soon as I get home from work. Studying, then exercising, then more studying isn't working.

18. I still like to take starbucks teas to class.

19. No wonder I went to starbucks twice a day during college.

20. I haven't been in a chemistry class in 8 years (imagine a subsequent breakdown after this realization).

21. My preferred attire for class is STILL a hoodie, flip flops and athletic pants.

As you can see, there have been some MAJOR adjustments this week. Here are a few of these in detail:

1. I have really felt at home with school. Granted, I am going to two different schools than my Alma Mater, but just being in the school setting is comforting to me. I feel my best and my most productive when it comes to school. I have also realized how much (and for how long) I have really hated my job based on how much effort I have put into school this week. My type A personality DEFINITELY is the strongest when I truly want or care about something. When I don't care, I put forth minimum to no effort.

2. I also have been relatively shell shocked by Community College (could you tell??). I knew that most of my instructors had the chance of being an adjunct and they would not all be a "Dr." But I was not prepared to be treated like I am in high school. I haven't been in high school for 8-9 years, and I like it that way. Perhaps the greatest shock was the lack of a course schedule on the first day. I got into a fight (via email) with one of my distance learning professors because she would not send us a schedule of due dates for the course. [The first day of school is my absolute favorite because you receive a syllabus with your entire semester laid out for you - right? I spend the rest of the class writing all these deadlines in my planner and color coding with a highlighter all the assignments, quizzes, papers and tests (dude, you wish I was kidding).] She accused me of being "stressed out" (LADY.. we are not even shaking the tail of stress right now.. just send me the schedule) and sent me the first "UNIT"'s (again high school?) schedule before she released it to the rest of the class. This schedule gets me through February.. great.

There also were two different policies stated on tests in the class. Since it's an online class, the tests should be online - right? Well in one area she said that, but in our class orientation she said that we had to go to campus to take them in the testing center. You should know, I don't care either way.. but I need to know ahead of time so I can take off work to go take the tests. When I emailed her about which one was correct, she replied with a very snide comment about how I needed to read the schedule she emailed me. So I replied right back with both policies she had stated and she later apologized and FINALLY answered my question. Also she asked the entire class to make note of any mistakes in the lessons and let her know. Really!?

It's been a world of difference between what I am used to (and what level of care I am currently receiving in my 4 year university classes) and what's going on at the good ole' CC. I do not like it. I have one more class I could take at a CC, but I am seriously going to try to take it at my 4 year school because I just can't handle it. In college, you should have the expectations of the class laid out on the first day, regardless of who your professor is and how organized they are. Perhaps I am spoiled, but this is simply my experience so far and maybe I've just been unlucky?

3. Other than that, I have been pleasantly surprised to feel alive again inside and to feel like my days have a purpose. Each class has a purpose as well and I really have to soak up the information, because it's a stepping stone for my future classes. This has been a very different experience than business school. Business school classes all teach you theories and the theories apply to ONE aspect of a business. But now, I'm in science classes. And we have labs, and we have to learn everything in this class before going to the next level and that's been a little weird for me. Perhaps the greatest example of this is my Chemistry class. I knew, going into this semester, that Chemistry would be my hardest class and I would have to study the most for it. But I never really considered the fact that I haven't been in Chemistry for 8 years and that the classes I took 8 years ago were a prerequisite for the class I'm in now. I spent the first 5-10 minutes of our night class this week having a panic attack in my head because I had NO idea what the guy was talking about. Let's just say, I forgot the periodic table even existed - let alone what everything on it means. Since I am taking O-Chem this summer and BioChem in the fall, I HAVE to do well in this class.

Luckily for me, my boyfriend is a Chem genius (read: he had a fantastic Chem teacher in high school and remembers everything from the class), so we spent about 2 hours the other night reviewing what I learned 8 years ago. I'm feeling much better now and I have to keep remembering myself that I can do ANYTHING I put my mind to. Also, I'm hoping to find a gigantic periodic table poster and hang it on my wall in my living room. My theory is the more I look at it, the more sense it will make? (again, you WISH I was kidding).

4. Everyone thinks I am crazy and I think those people are stupid. Seriously. I've had almost everyone in my life (except Matt) tell me at some point the past few weeks/months that I've put too much on my plate. People have questioned my sanity and I've just wanted to stick my middle finger in their face. I WILL make it out of this semester alive, and well, and knowledgeable and successful. And if you aren't capable of what I'm doing, don't do it. But I AM capable of it and if you don't believe me - sit back, shut your mouth and watch me. The past few weeks I have been so busy doubting myself because everyone's comments have blown up in my face and I'm so sick and tired of it. I put more thought into the decision to go back to school than I have anything else in my life. I used a rational head and I spent weeks planning everything, keeping in mind my own abilities. I know myself better than anyone else and therefore, no one else can tell me what I am capable or not capable of doing other than myself. So I just wanted to let it be known that I'm not entertaining anyone else's doubt about my schedule right now. Also, I'm clearly NOT bitter about this (right?).

I keep thinking of this quote that says (roughly): "If you want to accomplish what you've never accomplished, you have to do what you've never done." I keep remembering that before I decided to go back to school, I had never made a decision for myself without taking into considerations someone else's opinion. If I decided I wanted to really do something, I wouldn't do it without the support of my family and my friends. I have been living a life that was designed by the people around me rather than by myself. Sure, I had a part in the decision but I've only done things that are "approved". Do you know how many opportunities I've missed out on because of this?? So even if I hate Community College and I'm busy and I can't go out every weekend with my friends, I know these things because I found them out MYSELF. I didn't listen to anyone else when I made this decision so why would I listen to them now???

(Clearly this is a pep talk for myself that I thought you all would enjoy!)

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That's really about it. I spend my days sitting at my desk thinking about school and all the stuff I have to do - and I spend my nights reading, doing assignments/labs and actually going to my Chemistry class and lab. It's definitely going to be a busy semester, but it's certainly do-able (no matter what anyone says to me). And most of all, it's worth it. Because I'm worth it and my dreams are attainable and I want it badly enough that I'll make the "impossible" sacrifices to make it happen!

It all changes tomorrow

2010-01-18T11:54:00.002-06:00

The day has finally arrived, and that day is tomorrow. School starts.

I can't tell you how many feelings I've been experiencing lately. I'm excited and anxious, hopeful and worried and a bundle of other emotions that come at me out of no where approximately every 2 hours. The past 2-3 weeks have been, frankly, unbearable. I have been literally up and down with no rhyme or reason and the mood switches without any warning whatsoever. I've spent approximately 50% of the past 2-3 weeks crying, 25% planning and getting ready and the other 25% going about my other daily business. I have spent 100% of this time, in my head, imagining how everything will play out and that is not a good thing. It's making me crazy because I'm literally believing these made up scenarios about situations that will happen weeks and months from now are happening RIGHT NOW. It's caused me to take it out on others in my life and get into fights, to get worried and to become somewhat neurotic. I'm SO happy that this is all going to end tomorrow.

This exact minute, I'm feeling ready and confident and just want today to fly by as soon as possible. I'm not sure how long this feeling will last, but for now, I'm liking it. I'm very lucky, in that 4 of my 5 classes are online. 2 of these classes have already posted syllabi, assignments and information online and I've been able to access all of this. Luckily, these two classes that have posted all of this are the classes I am the most interested in, but will take the most work. I actually completed part of the first assignment in one of these classes yesterday and I have a rough idea of what my weekly school schedule (taking quizzes, studying, reading and completing assignments) will look like based on these two classes alone. You have no idea how comforted this makes me feel.

The part that I find interesting and a bit funny is that although I've been planning in my head and spending all this time thinking about how much work school is going to be (on top of my job and personal life), I never took the time to think about WHAT I would be doing. I imagined reading for class and going to my one night class - but I totally forgot about taking quizzes, or the fact that one of my classes has an at home lab where I have to conduct experiments in my kitchen each week. I didn't consider writing lab reports or doing online discussion posts for the classes. I have been so caught up in all the TIME it will take for school, but I never stopped to think about what I'd be doing. I just find that funny. But, I have to remember that I am going back for a science degree this time and my previous degrees are in business. A little different class structure, huh? In business classes, you really just read, take tests and write papers. I have completely forgotten the work that science classes require!

Alas, I am ready and excited. I don't mind spending time on these classes because I'm interested in the material. The material means something to me outside of my future career because I can (and want to) apply it to my current personal lifestyle. There were very few business classes I took that applied to my life directly, right now, and were something that I was interested in outside of a career. Don't understand what I mean? I was a finance major and I have always paid someone to invest my money for me. I think that explains it, don't you?

Seeing my schedule come together and knowing when the tests, quizzes and assignments are due is comforting to me. I feel like several people have questioned my ability to juggle 16 college hours with my full time job and my personal life. At first I was defensive and said I could do it. But as time has passed, I have let these comments affect me more and more. I have had countless mental breakdowns in the past few weeks about IF I could do this and HOW I would find the time and WHEN I would be able to spend time with Matt. I have lost faith in my ability to schedule, plan and delegate tasks in my life. Seeing all the individual deadlines for these classes helps me tremendously. It breaks down these large goals (finish this semester, get As in my classes) into smaller, more attainable goals. If all I am focusing on is finish this lab by Thursday and comment on people's results by Saturday, write the lab report by Monday - it makes the goal more achievable. I have always done this with my personal goals (breaking a monthly goal into tasks to accomplish each day), but doing that with school is so difficult since you do not manage the coursework. Having these syllabi allows me to see the individual work that needs to be done over the next few months and restores my confidence that I can do this.

There are still a few loose ends to tie up, but I will be in the full swing of the semester by this weekend (save my in-person lab Monday nights). I have my first assignment due this Thursday, followed by another deadline Saturday night and a quiz on Sunday. Knowing things are truly going to pick up this quickly and as of tomorrow I am officially in school again takes a huge weight off my shoulders. There are no more internal struggles about 'if this is the right decision for my life'. There are no more arguments with those that think I'm making a mistake. There is a new direction to my life and every single day for the next 3.5 years will be working towards one common goal - becoming a RD. This all starts tomorrow and I am hoping to ride this wave of pure excitement and joy well into tomorrow and go from there.

From now on, the question of "Can I do this?" is gone and replaced by the statement - "I am doing it, so watch me succeed." I have been waiting for MONTHS for this moment and I'm so happy it's finally here.

How to: Eat healthy when away from home – Pt 1

2010-01-06T17:24:00.001-06:00

One of the goals I made for 2010 was to work on my blog. And one of my big plans for my blog (and the things I enjoy writing about the most) are blog series posts generally involving how-tos or tips and tricks.

Today I'm going to introduce a few things to you. The first is a tag on some of my posts that say: Tips and Tricks. This will allow you to easily search through my posts to find the informational blogs. While I won't do it today, at some point I am going to filter through all my tags and reduce the number of tags I actually have so it's even easier to find stuff. But that will have to wait for another day. I also will go back and back tag some old posts with this new Tips and Tricks tag so you can go back and find those too if you are newer to my blog.

Anyways, the second thing I'm going to introduce is a new blog series - Eating away from home. Since I'm about to start school and have night class and labs twice a week, I'm obviously going to have some dietary changes. The major change will be eating away from home the nights I have class or lab. The second change is making sure that I am prepared with breakfast and lunch for work the day after my class. But, we'll go more into that later. I'm going to share recipes, tips and show you what I'm doing when I'm eating away from home during this time period.

To introduce this I'm going to start with two introductory posts - one on eating at a restaurant and another on eating "convenience foods" at school or work (or even home) when you are short on time and can't make yourself a full meal.

Part 1 - Surviving the restaurant experience.

I think eating at a restaurant is one of the most stressful things about being a healthy lifestyler and watching what you eat. The only MORE stressful thing is probably eating at someone else's house where you don't have options, because at least in a restaurant you can choose from a variety of selections. But, nonetheless eating out was very traumatic for me when I started my healthy journey. I used to view it as a cheat time and that I could order anything I wanted because "it's a special time" or "I don't really like salad and that's all they have that is healthy", etc. etc. But what I've learned over time that eating out is everything that YOU make it to be and if you want to be healthy, it's actually pretty easy.

Now, there is a variety of general restaurant tips out there about menu key words to avoid and tips that tell you to only eat half your meal and take the rest home, etc. etc. Frankly, while I appreciate these tips, I'm going to assume you guys know them all and I'm not going to review them. If you are looking for these very basic tips about eating at a restaurant, SparkPeople has a WONDERFUL collection of restaurant articles that can help you here. Instead, I'm going to give you some tips that are outside of the normal advice. These are the things that REALLY helped me feel comfortable eating out.

1. Making eating out the special occasion, not the norm.

You know I have to start with this one. The easiest way to master the restaurant is to stop eating there as much! The easiest way to be healthy is to prepare food yourself and control exactly what you are eating. Next time you are going out to eat, think why? Are you being lazy and don't want to cook? Are you in a situation where you really need to eat out due to a lack of time, convenience or otherwise? If you are meeting friends could you just as easily have them over to your house and make a healthy dinner there? Is it a celebration and you are treating yourself? Ask yourself these questions to cut back on eating out. It saves you a lot of money and calories!

Make eating out a special time and you will be more inclined to stick to your healthy eating habits. If you are healthy at home, you will want to be healthy at the restaurant, right? Why does eating out ruin your "healthy streak?" It doesn't! Being healthy doesn't stop when you leave your house.

2. Never view eating out as impossible.

A lot of times that Matt and I decide to eat out, he worries that I "won't be able to find something to eat". And every time, I tell him - I will find something, don't worry. Matt's worries COULD be true of people with limiting diets, like vegans, vegetarians or people with certain food intolerances, but I am not on one of those diets. Therefore, I should be able to find something I will enjoy that is moderately healthy almost anywhere we go. And if I find myself in a situation where I can't find something healthy, then I can always say - I don't want to eat here OR practice moderation with what I eat.

Also in this mix is viewing certain restaurants as "off limits". The more you do that, the more you're going to crave those places. If no place is ever off limits then you will feel more confident with your abilities to choose a healthy meal (which means you probably WILL choose the healthy meal). Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule, but in general leave your options open.

I live in Texas and Mexican food is a HUGE deal down here. I used to throw all Mexican restaurants out of the mix because I didn't feel like I could eat a healthy meal. At the end of this post, I'll tell you how I've finally changed that mindset and now eat Mexican food without issue.

3. Take control of your decisions about the food and the restaurant.

Where you eat and what you put into your mouth is YOUR decision only and you have to remember that when eating out. Don't feel like you have to order a burger because everyone else is having one. Also don't feel like you have to go to a restaurant just because someone else suggests it. Always ALWAYS exercise your option to choose the place you go, what you order and how much you eat of your meal. If you find yourself ordering something that is a splurge for you, don't eat all of it. You don't have to be a member of the clean plate club. Take leftovers home. Leave it on your plate (if you don’t want to eat it again) or just share with someone. Restaurant portions are huge and sharing meals is the BEST thing that I do now.

4. Look at the menu differently

A lot of times the "healthy items" on a menu are boring because they are the same things as every restaurant, right? Grilled chicken with veggies and salads. So look at the other options with an open mind. See a chicken dish you like but don't like the sides? Look around for other sides you might like more and ask to substitute them. Also, check the appetizers. This is a HUGE tip that I have learned. We don't normally think of appetizers as entrees, but say you like crab cakes and see them on the appetizer menu. Ask for the crab cakes, with a side salad and steamed veggies. See what I mean? Pick and choose the things that you want and put them together. If all else fails, just ask for the waiter to make you a salad with whatever you want on it. If you start looking at what's on the menu and breaking it all down, I bet you can find something you will be really satisfied with.

5. Know what you want

These next two tips are a little conflicting, so I'm going to combine them under one number and give them both to you at the same time to make my point. If you don't want a salad or grilled chicken (like I mentioned before), then get what you really want. If you don't get what you really want, you're more likely to binge later. But remember moderation, remember the skinny girl rule, "You can have it all, but not all at once" and remember to make it healthy however you can. If you really want a pizza, ask for light on the cheese and swap the fatty meat toppings for veggies. If you really want a pan fried chicken breast, ask a friend to split it with you and order veggies as your sides (I've SO done this before with Heather). But remember, there are limits to this rule.....

Remember what else you're going to have (or had!) that day or week and ask yourself if you really need this dish you crave NOW or if you can have it at home. If you can make a homemade pizza at home that is JUST as tasty and will leave you just as satisfied, don't order a pizza when out. If you really want enchiladas but know that Amy's makes a frozen enchilada you love that is healthier, choose something else. So yes, order what you want, but also practice moderation and make trades where you can. You might not want to order a salad, but if you know you're having an indulgent meal the next day, just order it and enjoy your splurge tomorrow. You can enjoy your more healthy swap for the food you are craving at home the next day. Just because you have a craving doesn't mean you should give into it at that exact moment.

The day we flew to Jersey for Christmas, I had a starbucks oatmeal in the morning at the airport. Lunch was VERY indulgent because I had an authentic Philly cheesesteak on our way to our destination. It was worth every bite and calorie. That night we had dinner at a steakhouse and I really wanted steak. But, knowing that I had steak earlier in the day and knowing this was one of the few times I'd be able to order whatever I wanted while we were there, I chose a grilled chicken dish with spinach, a salad and mashed potatoes. Sure the mashed potatoes were also a big of a splurge, but I balanced it out with the rest of my meal.

6. Plan ahead

I've always been one that knew what I would eat before I went to a restaurant. Often, I choose to go to a particular restaurant because of one dish they have. But recently, I've started choosing what I'll eat before I go and make my decision final. (I track my food, so I usually enter my food before I go to the restaurant too.) Once arriving at the restaurant, I check the menu or with the waiter to make sure my previous selections are available and then I set my menu down and I don't look at it again. This keeps me from being tempted by items on the menu. Since I'm hungry when I get to the restaurant, I'm more likely to pick something that "sounds good" instead of what is really healthy for me. Making my selection in advance, when I'm not hungry, allows me to use a level head in my selection and I'm less prone to slip up that way. If you can't look at the menu in advance, search the menu for the healthiest options available and once you find one that you would enjoy, set the menu down. The more you look at that menu, the more you will second guess your choice or your first instinct.

7. Know your dining guests

I've mentioned sharing plates earlier. I am a big sharer and I will generally just eat off your plate without asking if I knew you well (sorry!). If I go to a restaurant and I know I really want something that isn't my best option but someone else is getting it, I'll ask for a bite. Or, I'll ask my dining companions if we could split plates, so I get to have some of what I want and some of what is healthy. I know this is probably hard to do all the time, but just try it and see if it works for you.

For example, tonight Matt and I are meeting a friend at a Mexican restaurant. The key to eating Mexican food for me is to order a small entree. Since I love chips and salsa, I know I will eat a lot of them. Ordering a small entree means that I have less food to eat and I can enjoy the chips and salsa without feeling stuffed or guilty. Today I'm really craving fajitas, but that is not a small entree. I know I will over-do it if I order fajitas. I know I should order black bean soup and a side salad because it's fantastic at this particular place. So I have probed my guests by asking what they will order. When they asked what I'm ordering, I told them my dilemma. Both of my dinner guests offered to split fajitas with me. Even if they change their mind and don’t want to split meals, I know I they would give me one fajita from their plate and I can order my salad and soup. And if they decide they don’t want fajitas, I will live with just my soup and salad! Yes, I'm kind of annoying - but I am eating a healthy meal and still having a small taste of what I really want. Plus, I guarantee you there are others in every situation that wouldn't mind sharing at all. There's no harm in asking, right?

So that's it... those are my tips for eating at a restaurant successfully. Sure you'll have triumphs and you'll have other times where you blow it. But don't worry, it's just one meal. One day, you will get more comfortable and more confident I promise. One book that really changed my views on eating out was Bethenny Frankel's Naturally Thin. It's a great read! To end, I'll share one last successful restaurant experience with you from this week.

I was invited to attend a friend's birthday dinner this week on a night where I had to work very late. The dinner was at a popular italian/pizza place. I decided that packing a dinner to bring to work the best in case I had to work late. When I was finished work with enough time to meet my friends for dinner, I remembered that my work group is treating me to a birthday lunch this Friday. We are visiting a different popular italian/pizza place where I have already planned to order a custom pizza (veggies please!). I ate my packed dinner at work and attended the birthday party, arriving just in time for everyone's food to come. I was full from dinner and didn't feel the need to eat off people's plates. I saved money by not eating out and I simply ordered a club soda with lime and enjoyed the company of my friends. Because really folks, it's about the company, not the food.

If I can do it, YOU CAN DO IT!

Things I love - Week 7

2010-01-04T19:29:00.000-06:00

Remember once upon a time when I wrote a list once a week of "Things that I love"?

Somewhere along the way, that tradition was lost. And today is the day it comes back.

Here are the things that I'm loving this week that are helping me live a healthy life!

1. Amy's Kitchen frozen dinners: I actually am planning a post dedicated to these later in the week (along with some notes on some diet changes upcoming for me), but these babies are letting me eating healthfully through this very hectic work week I'm having. I never eat frozen dinners, but Amy's makes plenty that not only taste fantastic, but have ingredients you can recognize and are not something you should be ashamed to have in your freezer. Sure, they have a few downfalls - but for a quick and easy meal in a pinch, these are working for me.

2. Club soda - sticking on the food bandwagon (which is personally my favorite), I'm obsessed with club soda HARDCORE right now. I'm so obsessed that I've been passing up alcohol to just drink club soda. I think I've gone crazy. I've always loved it, but usually mixed with my alcohol, mixed with cranberry or flavored (a la La Croix). But lately, I've been ordering it (and drinking it at home) plain with just a lime everywhere I go and my mouth has never never been happier. Oh well, it works for me. The only downside is the sodium in it, but since I cut sodium mostly everywhere else in my diet, I'm okay to have a little from my drink!!

3. Shorter, but intense workouts - If you missed my previous blog about my small victory of overcoming my "perfect workout" syndrome - I would check it out. Shorter workouts are something I've always strayed from in the past, but right now I am loving them and they are working for me!

4. Eggs - (we're back on the food bandwagon!). I've been eating a LOT less meat lately, which means my protein has been lacking. I've always had a love/hate relationship with eggs, but recently it's been more love than hate. With the recent addition of my boiled egg timer that I was given for Christmas and the rekindling of my like for scrambled eggs, I've been actually enjoying the eggs I've been eating! I've also had my eyes peeled for a mini muffin pan that is cheap and small so I can make mini crust less quiches with veggies. Ooo la la.

Small Victories: Overcoming the "perfect workout"

2010-01-04T19:13:00.000-06:00

I'm deciding to start a new blog series called Small Victories. These blogs will be dedicated to acknowledging and celebrating the small changes that are made in the transition to a healthy lifestyle. I don't think that people (myself especially) focus so much on the big goals (like weight loss), that we don't celebrate those small changes. Those small changes are actually the reason the big goals get accomplished, so acknowledging the small victories can help you see how much progress you have made. If you think you aren't making progress, keeping a list of your small victories to reflect on in down times will help tremendously!!

If you know me or have been following my blogs long enough, you'll know that I am obsessed with perfection. The strive to be perfect plagues me every day and really gets in the way of my goal setting. I tend to have a black or white view on perfection. If I can't achieve perfection, I normally just give up and don't try. Overcoming this perfection plague has been a priority for me as of late as I'm trying to live a more balanced life. I keep reminding myself that I have to practice what I preach. How can I be a successful RD and tell people to set achievable goals when I am not doing that in my own life? Obviously this is an area I am working on and I recently have been focused on my biggest struggle, overcoming the "perfect workout."

My "perfect workout" involves working out for 1 hour (minimum) a day, usually 6 days a week. This "perfect workout" involves a class at my gym - usually spinning, water aerobics, step aerobics, body pump or yoga. If not a class at my gym, I run for 2-3 miles and walk about a mile between my warm up and cool down. Now, obviously these are decent workouts right? I definitely need to add strength training (part of my January goals that I haven't posted yet), but other than that.. I'm really pushing myself hard with these workouts. And honestly, most weeks the "perfect workout" is completely achievable. But the problem arises when I have a scheduling conflict or generally burn myself out and I can't achieve a week of perfect workouts. As I mentioned above, I'm inclined to do nothing and usually - that's exactly what I do.

The holidays were emotional, busy and overall threw me off my routine and I found myself not working out at all when faced with the lack of time or drive to complete my "perfect workouts." Isn't that ridiculous? I had plenty of time some days to work out for an hour and more than enough times that I could workout for at least 30 minutes, but I chose to not workout instead! A big part of my problem is the lack of activities that I enjoy and find rewarding that don't last an hour. I am motivated the most by group exercise and slightly less (but still a lot) so by running outside. When it's cold, I don't want to run outside. I generally hate the cardio machines in the gym, so lately I've been leaving myself the option of a group fitness class only. If I can't attend, I don't work out.

That's just not acceptable and I have realized I have to make a mental change. Last week, I decided to suck it up and just GO to the gym and get on the elliptical. I absolutely despise the elliptical, but realistically I can tolerate it for 20 minutes maximum. I prefer 15 minutes :). Same goes for the treadmill, but I can make myself run a mile on it before I want to go insane. I'm trying to like the stairmaster, but that's still a work in progress. Continuing on this path, Saturday with the option of group exercise not available, I chose to take a long 4 mile walk with Matt and Lexi and just get outdoors. Sure, I wasn't running - but since I had company I had a great time.

The point IS that there are plenty of exercises I can still do when group exercise is not available. There also are times when a shorter, less intense workout is just as beneficial (if not more!) than my "perfect workout." The hard part is pushing myself to not over think the workout and just GO. With school about to start and my extra time about to be significantly crippled by the extra load of school, now is definitely the time to start re-evaluating my workouts and make sure that I have a plan that is both enjoyable and attainable. A week of "perfect workouts" on top of school and work is NOT achievable for this upcoming semester.

So where have my small victories been lately? Well, there have been several! As I mentioned, Saturday I went on a long walk for my workout. Sunday I chose to take my little sister (big brothers big sisters) ice skating rather than to a movie and we skated for 1.5 hours! These were both great victories for me since normally I would feel unaccomplished since my workouts were not intense or traditional. But perhaps the greatest victory occurred this morning.

This week is VERY hectic at work. I have conference calls that last most of the day today, tomorrow and Wednesday. This means some late nights that are going to interfere with my workouts (i.e.. too dark to run outside and no group exercise offered). Today, knowing that I would be at work until ~7:30pm, I asked my boss if I could come in a little later than normal. Mondays I normally come into work at 6:30 AM so I was very thrilled he let me come in at 9 AM. The SOLE reason I asked him for this favor was so I could start my day with a workout. I awoke this morning 1 hour earlier than necessary to go to the gym and get in a very short but intense workout on the elliptical/treadmill. Even better was the fact that I was running 30 minutes late compared to my original plan and normally I would totally blow off my workout due to the "lack of time". But today, I stuck it out and decided that working out and going into work 30 minutes later was NOT a problem and would be totally worth it. And that's exactly what I did! The entire time that I was at the gym, I felt accomplished and I celebrated my victory.

I thought afterwards about how my workout this morning took 30 minutes, in which I burned 425 calories. If I did ONLY 5 of these workouts a week, I would burn 2,215 calories a week, which is 8,500 calories a month. That is 2.5 pounds a month that I would lose simply from these easy workouts that I never have deemed significant before. So in the weeks when I feel rushed or like I have no time to workout, just getting to the gym to do a simple workout will really add up over time. This was very eye opening and rewarding for me to think about this morning and definitely motivates me to just GET to the gym, no matter what. Sure, I will still strive to fit in my "perfect workouts" when I can, but I also will try to integrate more of these simple workouts into my weekly routine.

The entire principle of SparkPeople is that any fitness is better than no fitness. They preach that even 10 minutes a day will make a difference and they have a large variety of 5-10 minute workout videos available on their website. While I've always believed their principle, I've never applied it to my own life. I am going to continue celebrating my small victory of overcoming my "perfect workout" in 2010 by applying SparkPeople's principle and getting in a workout anytime that I can. Any workout is better than no workout, especially when the only reason I'm not working out is because my workout isn't "perfect" in my eye.

What are some small victories that you have celebrated lately? How does celebrating these small victories help you accomplish the big goals? What is your "perfect workout" and what do you do when you can't achieve it?

2010 Goals

2009-12-30T20:36:00.001-06:00

I normally do not make New Year's Resolutions. But, in the past I never made them because I never would keep them. This year, it's very different. Spark has taught me the importance of goal setting and I know this year that I can complete anything I want. My plan is to make blanket resolutions (which I will call goals) for the year that will be easy to maintain. Each month, as I make my monthly goals, I will spend a little time focusing on these yearly goals and making monthly goals specifically tailored to them. So here are my goals for 2010!

1. Run a 10K.
This one is pretty self explanatory. I have a 10K lined up for July, so that's the race I am shooting for!

2. Take better care of my skin.
This is actually the ONE resolution I make every year. I am very inconsistent about taking care of my skin and that's AWFUL. I generally get lazy and tired and don't want to wash my face at night. If I do wash my face, I almost never moisturize or use eye cream, etc. I know I need to start doing these things in my 20s so I can have beautiful skin as I get older! Part of taking care of my skin is actually wearing makeup. I have very oily skin, so I use acne fighting foundation and powder and it keeps my skin SO much clearer! Wearing makeup also gives me an incentive to wash my face. So wearing makeup more regularly and taking care of my skin are priorities for me this year! If anyone has good recommendations on moisturizers/eye cream/etc let me know please!

3. Make a 4.0 in school.
I've never made a 4.0 in college and this year is the year I will do it. I have three semesters to accomplish this and I just want a 4.0 in one of them. The old me would put a lot of pressure on myself and said I needed to make one every semester, but not this year! Making a 4.0 just once is good enough for me and if it happens more than one semester, I will sure be thrilled!

4. Continue my work with stress/anxiety.
I have made significant progress with managing my stress and anxiety over the past 6 months, but I still have a long way to go and I'm about to enter a very difficult time in my life - going back to school! So keeping up with my work is imperative. Some of the things that help me manage my stress and anxiety the most are: exercise, planning and maintaining a routine. I'm not going to make specific resolutions for these things, but these will be a part of my monthly goals that I make.

5. Become more realistic with myself about my goals.
Everyone that knows me knows that I make RIDICULOUS goals for myself and I am really really hard on myself when I don't meet them. I have to be more forgiving and sympathetic to myself, without becoming a total softie and not pushing myself out of my comfort zone. So I will really work on this in 2010. The first step for me is recognizing that a 2 pound loss per week is not realistic for my body. I am moving my expectation to 1 pound a week and I will go from there. Although my focus is no longer on the scale, I still will weigh-in and shoot for 1 pound a week loss in 2010!

6. Build my blog.
Blogging truly is an emotional and spiritual outlet for me. It helps me to get my thoughts out of my brain and onto "paper" so I can focus on something else. It also is a means of analyzing my behavior and making plans for the goals I want to reach. One of my goals after becoming a dietician is to have a blog where I post food facts, new recipes, cooking demonstrations, general health news, etc. So this year I want to focus on improving my current blog and creating several blog series and maintaining them. As I build these series and become more dedicated to blogging, I believe it will be easier for me to have a successful blog as a dietician!!

That's it. Light and simple and focusing on the key aspects of my life that I would like to change and goals I want to achieve. Rather than focus on the bad habits I have now or the things that I feel like I need to fix, I just want to focus on the possibilities in my life and the goals that I have. Taking a positive approach is putting me in the right step for both #4 and #5! As I mentioned, these are my general blanket resolutions/goals for 2010 and each month I will spend time making monthly goals that reflect these yearly milestones.
One thing I did want to mention is my new reward system for 2010. Many of you know I used to put quarters into a jar based on specific goals (working out, calories and alcohol) for each day. I am done with this system because I was never giving myself anything! haha! I was just stocking up on the quarters with no reward in sight. So a few weeks ago we rolled all the quarters ($300 worth!) and put them into the bank.

The new reward system focuses on running, because I find when I'm focused on my running I'm the most successful. Now I will "pay" myself $1.00 per mile that I run/walk. I will have a reward set in my mind and once I have enough money accumulated to buy the reward, I will buy it and then start over and pick a new reward! The rewards must be things that I wouldn't buy for myself otherwise. My first reward is a dutch oven for my kitchen. These are very heavy cast iron stock pots and I have wanted one for the past 1.5 years SO much. They are approximately $50-$75, so now I just need to find the one I want and run for it! I have $2.00 accumulated since I started this new program!

Here's to health, happiness and love in 2010 to everyone!

Dinner + Random Pictures

2009-12-30T20:28:00.001-06:00

Well, I made it to the gym tonight! I was very pleased with my workout. I felt fantastic afterwards. I think it’s ridiculous how I sometimes don’t want to go work out, but I feel so great afterwards. I spent 15 minutes on the elliptical, 18 minutes on the treadmill (.5 mile walk, .5 mile jog) and about 5 minutes on the stair stepper. It was a nice easy workout to get me back in workout mode.

Then I came home to make a very easy, random and tasty dinner.

Seasoned brown rice with parmesan cheese, caramelized cabbage, celery with hummus and a hard boiled egg.

Random, I know. I seasoned the rice with dried chopped onions and this fantastic Mrs. Dash seasoning that I bought a few weeks ago. Then I topped with a little shredded parmesan cheese and mixed it all together.

It’s seriously good. I added the hummus and the egg for extra protein. I sometimes have big problems eating enough protein when I don’t eat meat. I’m trying right now to eat more eggs. Hard boiled is my favorite way to eat an egg, so I didn’t complain tonight. I grew up eating a lot of hard boiled eggs and we always had an egg timer to tell us when they were done. I had an egg timer at my house, but somehow it got lost in my move at the beginning of this year. I was very happy to receive a new one for Christmas this year!

If you’ve never used one of these, I really recommend buying one! I love it. I also had caramelized cabbage, aka my favorite veggie ever. I used a little less EVOO than normal today, which resulted in slightly more “burnt” cabbage. It was fantastic this way!

Dessert was a cup of Celestial Seasonings Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride (PS Candy Cane Lane is my favorite tea now) and a small bowl of peppermint ice cream. This peppermint ice cream is like my favorite thing in the world and I definitely should not be trusted around it. I’m really ~~glad~~ sad this container is almost gone.

It was an awesome dinner! My stomach is feeling a little off right now, but that happens with really intense exercise, so I’m just riding it out.

Now time for some random pictures! I uploaded pictures to my computer today and found several from the past few weeks!

My new Garmin with my first run/walk on the display

This stuff is incredible. I’m obsessed and bought a huge bag to last me through the year.

An authentic Philly Cheese Steak from Jim’s Steaks in downtown Philly. We had these right after we flew into Philly to get to Matt’s mom’s house in NJ for Christmas vacation. This steak was INCREDIBLE.

A random little casserole I made a few weeks ago. I roasted broccoli and added it to cooked lean beef and whole wheat pasta. I topped it with mozzarella cheese and broiled it in the oven. I definitely added too much cheese to this but I only had a tiny bit left in the package, so I threw it on there.

The Christmas Tree in Rockefeller center in NYC. Is it sad that I wasn’t really impressed? I thought it was going to be much bigger!

Carrie’s stoop from SATC. Yes, we went to find it while in NYC last week!!

Matt and me at the Yuengling Brewery in Pottstown, PA. It’s America’s oldest brewery!

Matt and me on my 24th birthday at lunch. We both look ridiculously tired because we got in very late the night before from Christmas vacay in NJ.

Lexi and me on my birthday. She didn’t really want to pose!

Coming up are my 2010 goals and tomorrow I’ll have my January goals up for you guys!!

Post Holiday Tips

2009-12-30T11:12:00.000-06:00

A quick note first:

The Spark came out yesterday. This is SparkPeople's first book and I recommend everyone buy it! I pre-ordered my copy back in September and will be receiving it next week! In case you aren't familiar with SparkPeople, it's the largest online diet and fitness website that teaches people to lose weight through diet moderation, exercise, goal setting and an online support community.

I've been a member of SparkPeople since October 2008 and I can't sing enough praises about how much this website has helped me. Although I've already been through the 28 day plan that is taught in The Spark, I will still read this book and be using it as a reference guide and as a refresher for some healthy habits I have slacked on as of late. I really recommend all of you to check out the book, or at the least check out SparkPeople. If you decide to join, let me know and I'll send you my information so you can look me up there!

And with that, I NOW can tell you that I'm REALLY excited the bulk of the holidays are over! I still have a few special holiday events planned over the next few weeks, but the majority of the holiday rush (and travel!) is over and it's time to get BACK on track. Unfortunately this year, I didn't do as great a job of maintaining my healthy habits and practicing moderation as I had hoped I would. But, I'm not going to let that get in my way right now. It's time for me to focus on my health again and start feeling fantastic as we all move into 2010 and I move into this next year as a 24 year old (still so weird!). In the past, I would feel like focusing solely on healthy habits would be difficult with the few holiday engagements I still have pending. This year, I'm choosing to remember that a healthy lifestyle is about balance and every little bit counts for something. I don't start school until January 19th, so until then I have to juggle these last few events with special conferences at work and can't really settle down into a solid routine until school starts.

So what am I doing to balance a healthy lifestyle with the next few weeks of spotty post-holiday engagements? Here are a few tips, plus how I am integrating these tips into MY life.

1. Take charge of the events you have left.

You still have a few friends you need to meet up with, right? And of course there is the NYE celebration, along with a few stray holiday parties in January or birthday celebrations you need to attend. When and if possible, take charge of these events and plan it yourself! There's no better way to control the menu, location and timing of these events than taking it on yourself. When you are in charge of the planning, you can make sure everything works for you! Plan a healthy menu, ensure the party will be somewhere convenient for you and time the party around your exercise routine.

I am definitely doing this! I had plans to go out to dinner with an out of town friend last night. Rather than going to a restaurant and being subjected to their menu, I asked my friend if she would like to come over for a home cooked meal! She of course obliged and I prepared a taco bar with healthy ingredients for everyone. I'm doing a similar thing for NYE. Instead of going to a party or worse, a bar, I invited a friend over to my house and suggested we stay in for the night. I'm planning a healthy menu as well as making my own cocktails. It's going to save me time, calories and the hassle of being out that night!

2. Resume moderation with the treats and drinks.

The sweet treats are mostly gone, but there may be a few strays left around your house or office. Or maybe you did a lot of drinking over the holidays and feel like you can still drink that way now. Think back to your summer self and recall that you practiced moderation with treats and drinks in your life and did not always indulge. Practice this mindset again! Obviously going from a treat eating machine to quitting cold turkey is a horrible idea (you'll SO binge!), so just resume your normal treat schedule. Freeze any left over treats in your house and you can enjoy them year round (in moderation of course)! If you feel the craving for a drink, try having a "mocktail" first. You might be surprised to find that you won't miss the alcohol in the mocktail!

Leftover chocolate and treats are in my freezer so that's a check for me! I did still allow myself a cupcake for my birthday that a coworker brought in yesterday. I am definitely on board with the mocktails right now. My birthday this year was the first birthday I've had in 6ish years where I didn't have a drop of alcohol. To be honest, I am alcoholed out from the holidays this year! In the past, I would feel obligated to have a drink at my birthday dinner, but this year I ordered what I really wanted - a club soda with a splash of cranberry juice and a lime. I DID NOT miss the vodka at all. It was refreshing and fabulous.

3. Hydrate.

Hydrate that body people. With all the extra salt, sugar and alcohol you put in your system over the past few weeks, your body will really appreciate the extra water. Try adding fresh limes or lemons to your water. It will not only boost the taste and vitamin content of your water, the lemons are a natural diuretic and it will keep your body from retaining the water. If you are retaining water right now, you definitely want to keep hydrating. It sounds counter-intuitive but your body is holding on to that water because it thinks it isn't getting any more. Show your body you will give it water and it will stop retaining!

Yesterday I had roughly 12 glasses of water - split across lemon/lime water, hot tea and club soda and today is chugging right along the same path!

4. Exercise.

Even if you think you don't have time, 10 minutes of exercise is better than 0. If you took off the past few weeks of exercise, then slowly build yourself back up this week and next. Even if it's a walk around the block, 20 minutes on the elliptical or a few sun salutations before bed, it's worth it and it will push you to workout harder when your schedule allows for it.

This time of year, I prefer to integrate a few shorter workouts into my routine so I don't feel SO busy. I have plans to spend about 20 minutes on the elliptical tonight at the gym, as well as walking 1-2 miles on the treadmill. It's light exercise, but it's still exercise and it's a lot more than I've done in the past week! :)

5. Set realistic goals

It's about to be 2010, which means a new year and new resolutions for everyone. This year, make goals, not resolutions. Make yearly goals that will require a little work each month and are attainable. Then each month, look at your yearly goals and make monthly goals based on what you need to accomplish to make these goals happen. Maybe a goal for you is to have an organized house. Each month, write down one or two areas of the house that you can tackle and by the end of the year, you'll have everything organized (also you should make a monthly goal to tidy these areas daily or weekly to keep them organized.. just saying). Make sure that you are setting goals that are realistic and meaningful to you. Can you devise a plan that will accomplish these goals but fit into your daily or weekly life? Is it something you will stick with? Don't just say you want to lose 50 pounds and drop off the goal by the end of January because you only lost 5 pounds and feel discouraged. You see what I mean?

My 2010 goals and my January goals will be posted on the blog today for you to read!!

6. Realize that most of the weight gain is temporary.

Most of the weight you gained (if any) over the holidays is temporary. It's from water retention, a little lost muscle mass from not working out and TOO MUCH SUGAR. It will easily come off if you give it a few weeks and don't do anything radical. Focus on the things I mentioned above and remember that the holidays are over and you can get back on track and be healthy.

I'm not even going to talk about my weight gain because I am focusing on this tip myself and remembering that it WILL come off soon ;)

Those are just a few tips that I have for getting back on track post holidays and starting the new year off right!

What tips do you have for the post-holiday weeks and how do you balance any damage you did to yourself over the holidays?

Never give up

2009-12-14T11:10:00.001-06:00

I'm still struggling. It's been an awful 2-3 weeks and I don't like what I see every day when I wake up in the mirror. I've been uber emotional, stressed out, pissed off, sad, crying, yelling and feeling disgusted. Instead of turning to exercise or talking to someone about what is going on, I've been turning to food. I feel bad in my clothes, I feel swollen, dehydrated, fat and gross.

So WHY can't I get my act together and stop this behavior?

I honestly don't know. I have made every excuse in the book for the past few weeks about WHY I can't do this. And about it's not good enough that I've only lost 30 pounds in the past year +. I've become hateful to myself and I keep putting myself down because my progress doesn't compare to what other people have done. I think I should be farther along than I am and thus, I just want to give up because I don't feel like right now I can keep going. What's the point I keep saying?

But I'm not a quitter. And as much as I feel like I'm giving up and I can't keep going, deep down I know that I can't let that happen. If nothing else, I'm about to give up my current life and career path to take one of the biggest risk's of my life and become a RD. Being a successful RD hinges on my own health and my own ability to motivate myself and others, and I can't do that if I give up right now.

As much as I've made excuses, I know what several of the reasons for recent demise are.. I just have no idea HOW to fix these problems. Recently I feel like I've lost a big portion of the really personal support I had for becoming healthy. If you aren't trying to lose weight right now, you have no idea the support you find in others that are doing the same thing as you - especially the people that are doing it the RIGHT way. Over the 1+ years I've been trying to lose weight, I've constantly had a huge support system in place via sparkpeople. Lately, I haven't felt like I had all of this support and I feel myself slipping because of it. Spark obviously offers a blanket level of support but I have been used to some really up close and personal support that has recently stopped. Without spark, it's mostly just Matt and he cannot support me the way I need him to when it comes to weight loss. And frankly, that's fine. He supports me through a lot of other things in my life and this is not one area. So clearly I need to get this support back, but it's not that easy. I don't want to dedicate time to challenges on spark.. those never really work for me. A lot of the friends I have on spark are much farther along than me and sometimes seeing their progress makes me feel depressed about my own. Lately in fact, seeing anyone's progress that is greater than mine puts me into a dark hole (so much in fact that Matt has forbade me from watching the newest season of Biggest Loser). I know I still have the broad level supporters and friends on spark that are there for me (as evidenced by my latest blog which I will discuss in a minute), but it's not the level of personal and instantaneous support that I have grown accustomed to.

I have to be my own person though and I can't blame my lack of progress on others. Ultimately it's my decision to be healthy, not anyone else's. I'm not doing it for other people, I'm doing it for myself and I just have to prove to myself I can do it. Matt and I have talked about my expectations and how my expectations are too high. As much as I THINK I should be someone that can lose 2 pounds a week, I can't. So we have talked about redefining what my expectations are and possibly taking a break from some of the things that are discouraging me right now (insert no more Biggest Loser). He suggested taking a break from spark. I'm not really sure if that's the best idea for right now. I still need the food tracker and fitness tracker to FEEL in control of my health. I still have a LOT of great friends and supporters on spark that are always there to offer me a kind word and I do appreciate those people more than I can say. I feel hesitant to make a lot of changes right now and would prefer to wait until I start school and have that situation figured out, but I know that I can't keep putting it off until then. I need to do SOMETHING right now.

The last time I hit a plateau and felt myself slipping and becoming discouraged, I focused all my energy back into running. I had taken a break from running at that point and I told myself that I WOULD run a 5K. I signed up for one, I trained for it and I felt amazing for the months I worked towards that goal. I ran a second 5K, shaved 5 minutes off my time and really felt incredible about the experience. But now, with no goals in sight other than weight loss, I just feel lost. I am discovering that I am definitely someone that NEEDS a goal to work towards and that goal has to be something tangible and something I can control, like a race, other than a particular weight loss goal.

SO the plan for now is to focus back on running. Dallas has a running club with a low membership fee that offers like 8 races for free in 2010. I think Matt and I are going to join. His goal has already been to run a half marathon before the summer is over, so I think I'll run a 5K in February and he'll run a 15K in preparation. I want to complete this 5K in 35 minutes. That means I need an average pace of 11:30 and right now I'm at 12 minute mile. Doesn't seem too hard right? Well that 12 minute mile pace is for ONE mile and not 3, but I'll give it a shot anyway. I am going to go ahead and order the garmim I've been wanting. I feel like it's going to help me tremendously and that's really what I need right now so I'm going to do it. In all honesty, I need to reward myself more. I have this reward jar that I have never emptied and I only have rewards based on weight loss, which is not working, so it's time to start reinstituting rewards. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to reward myself and for what accomplishments, but I know I'll figure it out. For now, I will come up with a reward for a sub 35 minute 5K and focus on that until I've completed it.

As far as the personal support goes.. I don't know. I spoke with spark BFF Stef this morning and we made a plan to make weekly goals and check in with each other more often. We both are swamped now and will be even more swamped as we BOTH start school next semester, but we're going to try. I hope we can both commit to it and help each other out. I think both of us have been missing the level of support we were used to and so we are going to try to fix things (as much as we can). I don't know if this is going to help me feel the level of personal support I need, but all we can do is try!

I want to end by saying that I don't write blogs to become famous. The point of my starting this blog is nothing more than getting my thoughts out there for my friends and family to read and if the occasional stranger pops in - so be it. I'm not longing to become blog famous and I definitely am not actively trying to gain new readership. I do, however, love to hear responses from those that I care about and love. Knowing I have the support of my friends and family means the world to me and it really pushes me through the difficult times. For those of you that responded to my last blog (mostly sparkers but there were a few others), I REALLY appreciate it. I appreciate anyone that took time out of their day to say kind things to me and to show me their support. I read everyone's comments and felt like I was not alone in my struggles. Obviously I love this support and I can't tell you how many nice things were said to me after the last blog. So thank you to all of you!

Fighting the fight

2009-12-08T09:44:00.000-06:00

When I said that I was excited about December and excited about the holidays last week, I was completely lying. In fact, I've been lying to everyone (and myself) for weeks about how excited I am for the holidays this year. The simple fact is that I don't even want to celebrate the holidays this year and I just want this time to be over. But in my quest to live a less anxious and stressful life, I tried to mask my anxiety about the holidays with excitement and it worked for about.. 2 weeks. And then it stopped working. And instead of acknowledging that it had stopped working, I just buried all my feelings inside of me and didn't talk about it and didn't think about them. This doesn't really work though because things have been ROUGH for me the past few weeks. I feel myself slipping into my old ways of not working out, eating whatever I want, eating all the time, eating to feel better. I tried to tell myself that I was just being hard on myself and I tried to make myself realize that healthy living is about balance and there isn't any reason to feel bad for having that balance. But, that didn't really work either because I still found myself slipping to the bad side too often. And I hit rock bottom this morning when I decided I was going to stop watching what I was eating and stop making myself work out when I didn't want to (which is every day, by the way).

I don't want to focus on what I've been doing and what I haven't been doing. I just want to tell you that the holidays are a really hard time for me every year. This is going to be my 6th Christmas since my dad passed away. And even now, 6 years later, I am still brought to tears as I type this. This particular year is one of the hardest years yet because I lost not only my uncle this past year, but my Oma (grandmother). Since my dad and my Opa have passed away, the two single most important people in my life have been my Oma and my brother. They are the only direct ties that I feel to my dad now. And now that my Oma is not here, my worst fears are being realized and I can feel my dad's family slipping apart. We didn't have Thanksgiving together this year. I'm going to spend Christmas with Matt's family, but even if I wasn't - I don't know if my dad's family would be celebrating together. I was always terrified that Oma was the only reason we still got together, and this year it's proving true. I know that everyone has had a horrible year and probably for some people - like my newly widowed Aunt (who also lost her mom a month later), putting together a holiday celebration is the last thing she wants to do. But unfortunately, for me, that's what I need. I need to feel as close to my dad during the holidays as I can and this year I am not feeling that.

But like I said, I haven't been acknowledging these feelings. I've been burying them. And so they are showing up where I don't want them to show up - in my dreams, in my habits, in my attitude and demeanor every day. My heart feels broken and I feel empty inside. All I want to do every day is go home and lay on either my couch or my bed and just sleep. All I want to do is eat. I can't be bothered to go to the gym. I don't want to do ANYTHING social. Yet, I've been fighting myself. I have still been attending as many social events as I can and I've been scheduling more. I still pack my breakfast and lunch for work every day and make a solid attempt to eat as healthy as I can. I still plan my menus for the weeks and shop as if I'm going to be my normal healthy self. And some nights I still prepare those healthy meals I've planned and purchased. But then I'll have times when I lose the fight with myself and I give in. I eat my emotions. I lay on the couch the second I get home and I don't get up until it's time to move to my bed to sleep for the night. I don't go to the gym. And worst of all, I've been consumed with fear and anxiety for the past few weeks about my own life and when I'm going to die and what if a tragic accident happens to me and feeling like every single day that I wake up is another day closer to the day that I die. It's been eating away at me. And of course, I didn't tell anyone because I just wanted it to all go away.

This morning I woke up and I cried the entire way to work. I cried because I know exactly what I NEED to be doing, I just don't feel like I have any fight in myself. I debated blogging and I debated how much I would share on my public blog. I debated if I could deal with everyone's comments about "how to get back into it" and I decided I didn't want to hear what anyone had to say about it because I HATE cheerleaders and I don't want to feel positive right now. Then I played the scenarios in my head and decided the best thing to do was to give up for right now. To stop tracking my food. To stop pushing myself to get to the gym. I told myself that I could eat intuitively and I could handle not losing weight right now, because frankly I'm NOT losing weight anyways. And when I started to think about what would happen if I GAINED weight from essentially giving up, I just stopped thinking about it and cried more because it was too hard.

And so I got to work and I opened my email and I had an email waiting from one of my very good friends that I do not speak to very often. She had sent me a link to an article talking about "diet" blogs and about how these bloggers show the world that you don't have to be perfect to be healthy. Because these healthy lifestyle bloggers share both the good and bad, it helped one blogger in particular to realize that everyone struggles and that we shouldn't give up. The one thing that really struck me as I was reading was the woman's pictures of her body where she had put the great things her body CAN do for her. When I read that on her stomach she said she had lost over 100 pounds I was immediately inspired. Reading that article helped me to realize how far I have come and how I'm not ready to give it up. I don't want to gain weight because I'm not paying attention. I don't to lose my fitness because I stop going to the gym. I've worked very hard to get to where I am and I still have a long way to go. I'm going through rough waters right now but it's not the first time I have and I can get through it. Giving up on myself and allowing myself to avoid my health is not the answer though.

You all know I have an extremely all-or-nothing personality. Right now I'm not all in. And that's an impossible feeling for me because when I can't give something my all I'm very inclined to give it nothing. I'm done being naive with myself and pushing myself to do things that I don't want to do right now. It's time to tell myself that right now is a time that is hard for me and sad and I need to be sad. I need to have some days where I indulge myself and just exert all my energy on making it through that one day. But on the good days, I need to focus on being healthy. So I'm just going to work at finding a balance between doing everything and doing nothing. I don't know how to do that. I have a bag full of tricks but none of the tricks have been working lately. I'm not ready to give up but I'm not exactly full of the fight that I have been in the past. That's an impossible place for me right now and I'm just doing my best to get through it as I can.

I know I'm not the only person having a difficult holiday season this year. And I know I'm not the only person that is struggling with my emotions and fighting myself to be healthy. I just want everyone to know that is what I'm personally going through and that it's okay. It's okay that I'm having these problems and it's okay if you are too. But if you aren't talking about it and it's eating you away inside, maybe it's time that you confront your emotions and try to process through them. I'd be lying if I told you I feel better right now after writing this because I don't. In fact I've been crying at work (yippee) as I write, but I know, for me, I just need to get it out. I need to acknowledge and share my struggles. And so I thank you for reading this and I hope that all of us have as safe and great of a holiday season that we can.

Foodie day 2

2009-12-02T23:20:00.001-06:00

Don’t laugh at me, but I forgot my camera this morning. The worst part about forgetting my camera is that I saw it on top of my computer last night and I told myself, “you’re going to forget that if you leave it there.”

And so what did I do? Yeah, I left it there and then I forgot it.

It’s okay, you really didn’t miss much. In fact, the only thing you missed was a banana and an orange La Croix because those were the only things different about what I ate today vs. what I ate yesterday while at work. I told you – I do this all the time. I eat the same breakfast for a month at a time. I eat usually the same lunch as my dinner the night before. If I don’t have the same dinner as the night before, I typically have a sandwich – like you saw me have yesterday. I don’t know why I do this but it works for me and I’m okay with that. I’m horrible at re-purposing leftovers, so I just make things that I won’t mind eating two days in a row.

So today – breakfast was Blueberry (okay another difference) chobani with 2 TBSP flax meal and 1 TBSP vanilla almond granola. I had spanish peanuts on the side and they were extra tasty!

I brought a banana for my early snack before lunch, but wasn’t really hungry so I didn’t eat it. This was a HUGE mistake because as soon as I found myself Christmas shopping at Target I was so hungry and eyeing all the delicious treats in the store. It took a LOT of convincing on my part but I stayed away from everything and waited to get back to the office to have my sandwich. Same as yesterday – hummus and cheddar cheese on WW toasted bread with pickles. Food should taste good sweet potato chips and carrots on the side. No kiwis today – I only had one left and was too lazy to peel it this morning.

I did have an apple and a string cheese for my snack. The apple was a weird variety I’ve never had before. I looked at the label before I got on here to write, but of course I’ve forgotten the name. I’ll get back to you with it. They were VERY soft, almost fluffy and I was not a huge fan. Sigh. I have 3 left so I guess I’ll eat them anyway.

Dinner was nothing short of brilliant but also random. I had originally planned to have Falafel and rice pilaf, but my rice that I pre-made yesterday was left out all night on the counter. Since I made it with chicken stock I was not taking that risk. I remembered I had most of a can of refried beans left in the fridge, so I should do something with them. I was also craving zucchini so I had to come up with something. The results?

That is a bean and cheese quesadilla, roasted broccoli and some very special zucchini on the side.

Let’s start with the quesadilla.

Very easy. I took refried beans (I buy Amy’s organics low sodium. My favorite are the black beans but I can only find pinto right now) and heated them a little in the microwave. I put some butter (the real deal folks) into a skillet and rubbed my tortilla in it. Then I put the beans and some 2% cheese on top and folded the tortilla over. I don’t eat butter on much besides toast, but anytime I make quesadillas or tostadas I use it. It makes the tortilla extra crisp and brown on the outside.

Next, roasted broccoli. Don’t know how to make roasted broccoli? It’s SO simple and so delicious. It’s the only way I’ll eat broccoli right now.

Just cut the broccoli and put into a 400 degree oven with some EVOO slathered all over it for like 20-30 minutes. Viola!

While the broccoli roasted, I also roasted a bulb of garlic. Yeah, just cut off the top 1/4 of the bulb, drizzle with some EVOO and wrap in foil. This takes a full 30-35 minutes to roast but I got impatient and took it out around 27 minutes. Next time, I’ll just suck it up and go a little longer.

You want it just a little more golden than this, so next time go for longer than I did!

I pulled two cloves out and minced them as much as I could and added it to some butter and melted it all in the microwave. (I promise, I usually don’t eat this much butter!) I drizzled this over zucchini that I had very very thinly sliced and steamed. It was DIVINE. Next time I will definitely roast the garlic more and probably make a paste of it and slather it on the zucchini.

I finished the meal with 2 dark chocolate hersheys kisses because I had been craving chocolate ALL day. I don’t really care for chocolate much so when I crave it, I always give in since it’s easily controlled. Lexi thought these were for her so she was all up in my face when I was trying to take the picture!

After dinner I went to the gym for 20 minutes on the elliptical then yoga. I HATE the elliptical but I can stand it for about 20 minutes if I’m pushing it. My heart rate was in the 160s the entire time. I’ve figured out that if I want to do extra cardio with yoga I should plan to be at the gym the entire time and not go home in between. I will never make it back to the gym. So going to the gym 30 minutes before yoga works perfectly and I think I’ll be doing that for a while now! Yoga for the FIRST time felt a little easier. I felt much more comfortable in my downward dogs and I actually did a real plank for like 5 seconds. Hey, that’s 5 seconds longer than I’ve been able to do. Suddenly, it’s seeming slightly more attainable!

After yoga I came home and had a yogurt with some grape nuts in it. Cascade Fresh is actually my favorite yogurt out there. It’s much more of a snacking by itself yogurt than greek yogurt it. It was SO tasty.

Also, I should tell you that I use pure salted whipped butter instead of any butter substitutes. I love that the only ingredients are cream and salt! Tonight between the quesadilla and the zucchini I used about a tablespoon, which is only 50 calories and 6 grams of fat since it’s whipped. Check it out if you like!

Also tonight I have typed both blogs from Windows Live Writer. It is DIVINE and has saved me so much time on the formatting. It easily picked up my blogger account and is beautiful. I’m using the new Windows 7 on the new laptop so this could be why – but if you are looking for an external blogging software check out this one. If you can’t see my test post from earlier tonight can you please let me know? I can see the blogs but I want to make sure everyone can.

Matt is out of town for work tonight so it’s just me and Lexi and it’s way past our bedtime! Goodnight!

You are worth the struggle

2009-12-02T22:53:00.001-06:00

One thing that I will never deny is the fact that I’m hard on myself. And I mean really hard on myself. I’m a perfectionist by nature and therefore I have ridiculously high standards I hold myself to. When I don’t meet these standards, I’ve been known to feel negatively about myself and put myself down.

Lately, I can’t help but feel like I’ve been struggling with the “healthy lifestyle”. And while most of this struggle HAS been due to no weight loss due to an obvious plateau, even more of the struggle has been all the negative self talk I’ve been giving to myself. I can even catch myself doing it. This morning is the prime example. I woke up with a little tummy ache and after finishing my weekly weigh in and seeing a 2 pound plus from last week, I just felt defeated. And I blamed the extra 100 calories I had over my max range from my snack attack after work. I also blamed the fact that I skipped my spin workout due to getting really sick the night before from pushing myself too hard during that spin class.

Let’s back up for a second. A few weeks ago one of my very good spark friends wrote a blog about how she has a hard time asking for help and was having trouble asking to work out with a trainer at her gym. About a week after she posted this blog, I responded telling my friend that I felt the same way! I told her I felt like everyone in my gym judges me because I feel larger than everyone in my classes. I told her I felt like a lot of people judged me because it took me one year to lose only 30 pounds. I also confessed to her that I had a breakdown a few days prior to my reply about how I didn’t see the point of this journey anymore because I've stopped losing. None of the thoughts I had during this breakdown were logical, so I will spare you the flawed logic I was experiencing.

You see, lately I have been struggling with these certain ideas I have in my head of what I should be doing and since I’m not doing these things, I’m not losing. Some of these things include eating at the bottom of my calorie range, which I physically cannot do right now. I’ve been at the top of my range for weeks because I’ve been SO hungry and I’ve been trying to meet certain nutrient goals that require more food. I also have this idea that I should be working out or doing something highly active every day. I make these overly ambitious workout plans for the week and when I’m feeling exhausted, I of course skip a workout (usually my runs) and then I feel guilty all day.

But I didn’t realize HOW flawed my thinking has been lately until earlier this afternoon. I received a sparkmail from a sparker I had never spoken with. I opened the email and the woman told me she read the comment I left on my friend’s blog. She said that she was judging me because of how much I have accomplished and how I am so determined to become healthy. She told me to keep up my great work and keep striving for my goal. After reading this message a few times, I took time to reply to the woman telling her, “Thank you so much. I really needed to hear this today. I’ve been having such a rough time lately.” The woman promptly replied to me, saying: “Becoming healthy is a struggle. But remember, you are worth the struggle. So keep working towards your health.”

An entire football field of lights came on in my head as I started to analyze what this woman had just said to me. I realized that I’ve completely lost sight of the goal: To become healthy. Yes, losing weight is part of the process of becoming healthy – but right now I’m the healthiest and fittest I’ve been in my life. For example, the first day I went to Curves in September 2008 my resting heart rate was in the 78-80 range. I hardly worked out then. Tonight, as we were cooling down in yoga my rest heart rate was 59. 59!!! That’s absolutely incredible.

Eating in my calorie range and working out are two tools that have led me to improved health and will continue to improve my health. But they are not the be all end all of becoming healthy. I HAVE to switch my outlook to one of a healthy person. There are no “on and off days” in a healthy life. Every day is an on day and some days are better than others, but that’s why “balance” and “moderation” are two of the most important principles of becoming healthy. My healthy lifestyle doesn’t stop the day I indulge myself with an out of the ordinary meal. My healthy lifestyle doesn’t stop because I take the day off of exercise. I have to give myself more slack and more time to relax. As of right now, I put too much on my plate and I typically become overwhelmed before I even start and mess up. I eat things I shouldn’t eat, because I know I shouldn’t eat them. I also skip workouts because I’m feeling so overwhelmed in my head about the rest of the workouts for the week. It’s unacceptable!

So, I want to thank the random sparker today that really made me take a step back and re-evaluate my outlook. I am worth the struggle. And so are you. So let’s stop being our own worst critic and start becoming our own best friend. You deserve a night off exercise. You deserve dessert or a glass of wine or that handful of chips. We deserve these things because we practice moderation and balance and we realize that having an indulgence one day does not mean that it has to continue.

You are worth the struggle.

Test

2009-12-02T21:49:00.001-06:00

This is a test post using Windows Live writer on the new laptop!

Is it going to work? Let’s see!

Foodie for a day

2009-12-01T20:27:00.000-06:00

I was such a good food blogger today (minus my snacks). I don’t know if it was knowing I could easily post a picture blog on the new computer, or what.. but I was all about it. So here are my eats for the day: (also apologizes that these are not very pretty - I eat over half my meals for the day at my desk at work!)

Breakfast: Strawberry Chobani with 2 TBSP flax meal and 1 TBSP vanilla almond granola. (BTW I love flax meal and I highly recommend you eat it. Also, it really cheap. I buy flax seeds in the bulk bins at the natural foods stores. I can get half a pound for less than $1. Then I grind it up in a coffee grinder myself at home and refrigerate the meal to keep it from going rancid). I also had some spanish peanuts on the side. I've been insatiably hungry the past few weeks and my doctor told me to add more fat to my breakfast. Since I naturally prefer non-fat dairy, I'm having to add it in the form of nuts. I don't mind! I ate this around 8:30 am

Then around 11, I had half a grapefruit. I’m really sad this is my last one! In Texas we grow GIANT grapefruits that are so sweet and juicy. I love them. I topped mine with truvia. Super yummy!

Lunch was around 12:45. This is not a typical lunch for me – normally I have leftovers from the night before. But last night’s meal (grilled bean and cheese/sweet potato fries) did not transport well so I had this instead. The star was a hummus/cheddar Sammie with pickles on toasted WW bread. Alongside I ate Food Should Taste Good (my favorite right now) sweet potato chips. I also had some baby carrots and two kiwis. I also had a pure La Croix on the side (yummm)

For the first part of my snack I had this baby apple I stole from sweet tomato’s dessert bar last Friday. Then I came home and couldn’t keep my hand out of the pantry. I hate having days like that! No matter what I ate, I didn’t feel satisfied. I had a few small handfuls of tortilla chips, a string cheese and some Spanish peanuts. I did not photograph these, I apologize!

Dinner was a frittata that I made for the first time. The recipe is from eating well and it’s a Potato and Zucchini frittata. I don’t eat white potatoes very often so it was nice to have them. I am trying to eat more eggs because they are cheap, full of protein and fat! I am running low on protein and fat since I’m not eating as much meat lately. So I’m working to like eggs more (I’ll tell you why I don’t really like them another day). I made the frittata with home fries, sausage and toast on the side. I originally didn’t plan on making the home fries, but found myself with two extra potatoes from Thanksgiving last week and thought they sounded good. This is a HUGE dinner for me normally, but I still thought I would share! It was GOOD!

This is 1/4 the frittata

Yummmmmy!!

New Computer!

2009-12-01T20:11:00.004-06:00

I know I have told you guys MULTIPLE times that I am horrible about taking pictures and uploading them to my computer. More recently, I explained that this problem was because my computer was so freaking slow. Also, it's because I usually forget to whip my camera out to take a picture (but that's besides the point). I generally don't get online at home anymore because of my slow computer. Thursday night (Thanksgiving) I had some time to kill so I logged onto my computer to download new music for running. To make a very long, detailed story short – I lost over half my Itunes library. This had nothing to do with my computer itself – rather some settings and my own lack of paying attention. I was devastated! Friday morning I had to work, so I lugged my laptop and all my CDs to work with me and started the process of uploading the CDs back to my library.

Imagine my dismay when I was notified that my CD rom drive was not working. Ummmm. Come to think of it, I had been seeing a "modular bay" warning pop up every time I started my computer, but I just ignored it. I don't know much about computers because my mom works on computers for a living, so I generally just hand the computer over to her and she fixes it for me. I was meeting my mom and brother for lunch and I asked my mom to bring her computer tools so we could take out my CD rom and try to re-position it inside of the computer. That did not work.

Over lunch, I was obviously feeling anxiety about a non-working computer. Furthermore, I was feeling anxiety over the computer itself – CD rom or not. My computer is 4 years old. It was a very nice computer at the time, but since then – it's gotten its fair share of wear and tear. It is a Dell and I am seriously convinced that Dell computers are some of the worst made (externally) and therefore have sworn to never buy another Dell. But, I am taking 4 internet classes next semester and I don't have the money to be buying a new computer. I'm very much a save and pay in cash kind of person when it comes to big ticket items. I like to make calculated decisions and weigh all my options before making a purchase. I also don't want to have ANY debt that I don't have to have. Therefore, buying a new computer wasn't an option for me.

I have to say though, as my mom and my brother tried to explain to me how important it was that we go look at new computers, I really started to feel swayed. I, also, felt VERY stressed out VERY fast and probably called Matt to talk over the decisions with him a thousand times. In the end, we went to Best Buy "just to look" and within 10 minutes of being there I found a computer I wanted. Luckily it was Black Friday so the deals were there. While I didn't get the exact computer I wanted, I actually bought a much nicer one that was a better pick for the price and spent a little more than I had hoped. I also opted to open a line of credit at Best Buy to get their 18 month 0% interest deal. At least if I'm putting this on credit, I'd like to not be losing money in the process. I'll only have about a $50 a month payment and as long as I pay it off in 18 months, I'll pay $0 in interest.

While this was definitely a purchase I wasn't expecting to make, I've decided it was a necessary one. I already have been on my computer more than I used to be. My blogging has improved! And really, there was no way I could take 4 internet classes next semester on my old computer. It took about 10 minutes just to boot up! Another 10 minutes to get the internet to boot up. That is not time that I have folks. Matt and I actually decided to keep my old laptop around for a while, until I quit my job, since it has my VPN access for work. I don't want to put that on the new computer so we'll just keep the extra laptop around.

So here is my new laptop – which we have named Jonathan. I wish I could tell you the specs, but I have no idea. I think it has 4 gigs of ram? It also has windows 7, which I haven't decided if I like yet. It has a wonderful touchpad that is ribbed. This is my favorite thing because my old touchpad would get hot and make my finger feel like my skin was melting off. Also it has a really really cool fingerprint technology where I can sign into my computer and websites by just swiping a finger! I love that and was really really surprised about the feature when I got home. It's already helping my blogging (3 blogs in one day, all three with pictures? Amazing!) and I know it's going to be a tremendous help with school. The computer is SO fast! I love it!

Also I have decided I need blogging software if I'm going to blog more. Blogging in the blogger website is horrific and I spend more time trying to get the formatting to look correct. See how the top font is different from the rest? I can't get it to change! It's awful. I'll have to research this!

That thing in the middle is the fingerprint reader

Dear December: I love you

2009-12-01T20:03:00.000-06:00

I am STOKED that today is December 1st! December is my most favorite month of the year. Why?

Well, first of all - it flies by!

Second of all, it has the wonderful holiday of Christmas in it. Christmas is actually my second favorite holiday (Thanksgiving is first), but it's the one I get the most excited about! I absolutely LOVE shopping for other people and finding the "perfect gift" for my loved ones. I spend all year making mental notes about things my friends/family mention that they would like or need and I save them all up for Christmas and surprise them with those perfect gifts!

Third, my birthday is December 28th and I love my birthday.
(on a side note: I think that everyone should make a big deal about their birthday. After all, that's the ONE day a year that everyone celebrates you and your life! Also I think you should really take time to be appreciative of your parents on your birthday. After all, you wouldn't be here without them and the day of your birthday should be just as special to them as it is to you! I have a tradition of NOT working on my birthday. Don't care what I have going on, I take off that day no matter what. It's MY day and I'm not letting anyone tell me what to do.)

Fourth, it's the final month of the year and I look forward all month long to the new year starting!

This year I'm especially excited it's December because it's the last month I have before I start school again. I'm sure you know I've been feeling a little anxious about starting school, but now I'm just making myself be excited. The sooner that school starts, the sooner the Spring semester ends and the sooner I can start FULL TIME to summer school and quit my full time job. I feel like quitting my full time job and actually attending all my classes (rather than taking them on the internet) is going to be the time when I REALLY feel like I'm making a change in my life for the better. So instead of focusing on the stress of taking 16 hours + working 40 hours in the Spring, I'm just focusing on how fantastic next summer will be! And since December is the only thing standing in my way of starting school, and starting school (and I guess being IN school) is all that is in my way of next summer - I'm READY!
Alas, I have 14 work day (after today) left until my Christmas vacation starts and I'm READY for these days to fly by! I made a brief to-do list this morning of the work tasks I need to accomplish in order to hit a huge deadline I have looming at the end of this month. I'm feeling good about it because it's totally accomplishable and as long as I stick to my (not ambitious) schedule, I'll be finishing early! Having that planned out and not over my head makes me feel not only more productive, but it gives me a purpose to be in the office each day. I'm loving that.

December will be busy. There are several major happenings in my life going on, including (but not limited to):

*Birthday parties (ALMOST all of my friends and a lot of my family was born in November/December/January)
*Holiday parties
*Holiday events with my little sister (Big Brothers Big Sisters)
*My mom is having major surgery (this one is kind of a bummer)
*Matt and I are flying to NJ to spend Christmas with his family
*MY birthday!

*and of course, New Years Eve!
There are a few other happenings like Christmas shopping, events with friends, etc... but they will all fit into my schedule with no problems. This December I am simply focusing on my 100 day challenge and to enjoy this time. I am determined to have a stress free Christmas!

Basically, as you can tell, I'm READY! I was so ready that I put up my Christmas Decorations the weekend BEFORE Thanksgiving :) Stef asked me to post pictures of my tree, which I am posting below. My tree is VERY special to me. About 95% of the ornaments on the tree have been given to me by my Grandmother over each year of my life. She has made it a tradition to give her grandkids hallmark ornaments every single year and even now, at the (almost) age of 24 I can expect 3-4 new ornaments a year. If you have kids that are young or maybe grandkids coming, this is a great thing to do with them. I will absolutely do this with my kids and my grandkids. Every year when I put up the tree and see the ornaments, I get reminded of my each Christmas when I opened each box. I have favorites, of course, and seeing those ornaments help me to relive those precious years of my childhood and it makes me even MORE excited for Christmas. (My grandmother's tip is she visits Hallmark the day after Christmas and buys the leftover ornaments that are 50% off and gives them to us the next year!). Some of the ornaments on that tree are as old as I am and it's incredible to be holding something that you were given at your first Christmas!

My beautiful tree!

Close-up of some of the ornaments

One of the oldest ones - from my very first Christmas

One of my favorites - Santa on a hammock watching, "All My Reindeer"

Another favorite - Ballerina Mousey

My fireplace set-up. Those are Matt's (we can't find his real one), mine and Lexi's stockings.

Boston recap

2009-11-27T14:44:00.000-06:00

So as you may remember, a few weeks ago I went to Boston for the weekend. My family lives there and I spent a lot of time growing up there, so it's definitely my second home. While I was there I met up with my spark besties - Heather and Stef. Stef lives in Boston and Heather in Albany, so they were both much closer to Boston than to Texas, which made perfect sense why we met up over this trip!

We really didn't get the ball rolling with picture taking (hey, we're all new bloggers!) until we ran our 5K on Sunday morning. Saturday we did spend part of the day in Boston.

Me and Stef (and my HUGE jacket because I was freezing!)

Heather and Stef

Heather and me

We really had a wonderful day in the city. We went to a neat little cafe called The Parish Cafe. It was incredible! Stef and I ordered the same sandwich and afterwards realized how stupid it was for us to not split it. We also walked around Newbury street and went into Paper Source and Victoria's Secret!

Sunday we awoke BRIGHT and early to run our 5K. We ran the Luv2Run Boston 5K in Soldiers Field park in Cambridge. This was Heathers and my second 5K and Stef's first. Let me tell you that I was SO nervous for this 5K. My previous 5K I ran with Matt back in September and I finished the entire thing without walking in about 45 minutes. But I had been training like crazy for that race and not so much for this race. Prior to this race, I hadn't been running consistently due to that little foot injury I had. My main goal for this race was to stick by Stef's side and NOT to walk.

When we arrived, there were not many people there. We checked in and received our race bibs and took some pictures in the parking lot. As soon I saw my race bib, I started feeling better about the race. I was #19, which is the number of my MOST favorite baseball player - Josh Beckett of the Boston Red Sox. Having #19 on my bib and running in Boston, I started feeling a little better about the race. This must be a good sign!

I was cold and refused to take off my hoodie until I had to!

Next we figured out that the race was sponsored by RoadID. Welllll, I had my RoadID on and so did Stef!! This was definitely sign #2 of a good race.

RoadID Power!

Stef and I sporting the RoadIDs together.

We finished taking our pictures in the parking lot...

Heather

The three of us!

... and then we walked briskly around the parking lot and stretched some. Everyone was lined up at the finish line which was NOT the start line, so right as the race begin everyone running the race had to walk together a little ways down the sidwalk to the start line. The buzzer went off and we started running! Stef and I stayed to the back as much as we could and let the rush of runners pass us. Heather was a little ways above us, but kept circling back to catch us. We three had already established that since Heather runs MUCH faster than Stef and I, that she would run ahead and we would stay towards the back. Finally I motioned for Heather to keep going and she went on her merry way.

Now it was just Stef and I and after the initial rush of people flew by us, I looked around and realized we were basically at the end of the pack. This was a little disheartening for me. I figured there would be people walking some of the race and we definitely wouldn't be the last to cross the finish line, but it sure started to look that way. I guess that's the difference with racing in Boston since it's SUCH a running town!

The other hard part about the race was the course layout. The course was NOT closed, so we had people whipping by us on bikes, with dogs, running, etc. There were no water stations, no markers to show you how far you had gone. We had no clue what time we would finish the race in until about 5 minutes before we crossed the finish line. It was really frustrating. Also, the two of us were definitely running too fast. We started out WAY too fast (I think we were trying to keep up with Heather some) and had to tell each other to slow down in the beginning. We definitely should have said it again to each other, but didn't. I didn't want to slow down or walk because I wanted Stef to have the best first 5K possible and she didn't want to slow down because she thought I was ALREADY running too slow. No way sister, I was trying to keep up with you!

Of course we didn't realize this until the end of the race, but it was good nonetheless. Neither of us walked and we were both able to sprint to the finish line at the end and pass a woman who was running/walking the whole race and being rather obnxious. Seriously when we would catch up with this woman, she would take off - only to walk again a minute later. She was being very rude about it too - we were NOT trying to beat her, we were both simply trying to finish the race.

So Stef and I crossed at 40:45, almost a 5 minute time difference from my first 5K. I was SOOOO proud of Stef. She did a fantastic job. I was also VERY proud of Heather, who finished in about 35 minutes. That's incredible and I definitely can't do that!

Post race after grabbing gatorade and some fruit to calm our stomachs

Stef's dog Tyson was there to cheer us across the finish line too!

It was a fantastic race and I am so pleased with the outcome. Even if only 2 people finished behind Stef and I, the three of us chose to wake up early on Sunday and run instead of sleeping in and eating room service. We also chose to stay in Saturday night and eat a healthy pizza dinner and go to bed early instead of staying out drinking all night. That's really all that matters. And I'll take 5 minutes shaved off my 5K time any day! Here's to hoping I can shave 5 minutes off the next one and be in Heather's time bracket!!

I can't wait for my next 5K!

Lexi's day in the park

2009-11-27T09:18:00.000-06:00

FINALLY I brought my camera up to work so I can put all the pictures on my work computer to upload. I can easily do this at home, but my computer is old and super slow compared to my work computer. Since I blog old school through the blogger website, it easily takes me about an hour to do a picture post at home - which is why you don't see that many of them. Now that I have it (somewhat) set-up to upload at work I can now put pictures on my blog MUCH more frequently!

So about a month ago (wow, I'm lame) Matt and I decided to pack some food, some beers and the dog up and head down to a park right next to our apartment. It was SUCH a nice afternoon. We had a really great meal and there were a few flag football games going on, so we were able to watch those games as we sat and talked. Lexi seemed to have a good time too, despite being tied to a tree. At one point she definitely tried to run off to chase a squirrel but didn't get too far because she was tied up! While we were there, we tried to take a few pictures as a family. Yeah, those didn't turn out toooo well - but here are a few of the highlights.

At first, she was pretty happy just laying there.

And then as we started taking pictures, she realized she wanted to be part of the happenings.

She decided she needed pictures with both of us!

Then we tried to take family portraits and she lost interest. Her face cracks me up SO much in this picture.

But once family portraits were done (there were a lot more but SO not flattering - sorry!), she was back to being happy again!

And she even decided she needed sunglasses to shade her poor eyes!

We really did have a great day and I know Lexi enjoyed being outside and being part of the family pictures, even if her face didn't really show it!!

The battles of the Type A personality

2009-11-24T14:45:00.002-06:00

As many of you may have figured out by now, I have an extremely type A personality. I have MANY of the classic characteristics: Ambitious, perfectionist, impatient, competitive, can't relax, consumed with time, needs to be in control, constantly stressed. Mostly, too, I'm anxious.. about everything. I'm consumed with nervous energy and it fills my entire body. I actually have a generalized anxiety disorder that I likely have had since birth, but has become more strong due to some personal circumstances I've gone through in the past few years of my life.

I've come to realize in the past few months that I actually feel my best and work my best when I accept these facets of my personality and use them as strengths instead of weaknesses. The times in my life when I've felt the best and been the most productive are the times when I've actually been the most type A. College is my best example that I could share with you. I thrived in college because I was completely in control of EVERYTHING and it was amazing. I find that when I'm not in control, or feel like I have control, I feel stress - almost instantly. So, in college.. I was able to let all of my type A characteristics come out and I felt safe. I was able to be a perfectionist with the notes I took in class, the assignments I turned in and my tests. I was able to be competitive and not feel like an overachiever. I could be ambitious and go for two degrees and take the hardest course loads. I hardly had time to relax because I was so busy, so I didn't have to worry about that! The point is that, for me, I was the MOST productive in college that I've ever been in my life.

One of the things that kept me grounded throughout my later years in college (the years where I really buckled down and worked solely on my degree work) was my day planner. I have had the exact same day planner for the past 4 years. Yep, since 2006 folks. Every year I go to Barnes and Noble and pick up a refill and I see the exact same format that I've seen the prior year. This planner has become such an integral part of my life that I think I would literally cry for a week straight if I lost it. It has birthdays, anniversaries, bills, paychecks, a structure for how every single paycheck will be spent. It has recipes, notes, papers sticking out out of random weeks of things I need to keep on hand at all times. My planner goes with me EVERYWHERE. Every day when I come to work I pull my phone and my planner out on my desk and they sit there with me all day. And every single year when I go buy a new one, I spend a solid hour writing down everything from the previous year into the new year and color-code where necessary (you wish I was kidding).

The planner is by week and each day is broken down into half hour blocks for Monday-Saturday from 8am-9pm. It has a section up top where the date is that I can write general reminders about that day. It has a section on the side for calls and emails for each day. It has a monthly section in the beginning (which strangely I don't use right now but I should) and a by day map out of the next year in the back. It has a little tab I can tear out as each week passes so I can easily find my way to the current week. And best of all, right now I have a red cover for it. It's stylish and it plans out every day of my life.

A few weeks ago I was feeling a little undue stress about certain events going on in January. I wanted to open my planner and start writing down these events, but thus my planner stops at January 3. So I went online to Barnes and noble and tried to find a refill on there. No luck. I talked myself off the ledge (figuratively of course) and told myself to wait closer to Christmas. They will eventually go on sale for 50% off and I should wait until then, like i do every year. Well fast forward to today and I felt this same stress. I thought about it today and reasoned with myself that if an extra $10 to buy the planner now meant I would not be stressed out periodically over the coming weeks when I felt the need to write down something, it was worth it. So over lunch I went off to Barnes and Noble. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I was so excited!!! Imagine how un-excited I was when I got to the store and could not find this planner anywhere! How in the world could I have bought this same planner for the past 4 years and now this year, they are not carrying them anymore? Once again, trying to avoid a panic attack I went to the help desk and handed over my trusty planner for the guy to find a serial number (or something on). I'm sure this man thought I was crazy, but I didn't care. I need a 2010 planner! He could not find anything in his system, nor in the store and told me to check back in a few weeks to see if more come in.

Not going to happen buddy.

I looked at their calendars but realized none of them would work. I preceded to drive down the plaza to an office_____ (depot? max? no clue) and look there. At first all I found were "At a glance" calendars, which clearly by the name you know that's not going to work for me. I did actually find one that broke down every day into 15 minute increments! Remember when I told you my weekly routine is broken down that way. I was almost sold when I realized it was missing two very important things that my current planner has: a tear out tab to know which week you are on, and the ability to hold papers, notes, etc in between the pages. This one was much larger than my current and had a ring binding instead of my current book binding. I left the store empty handed and sad.

I realize that telling you these things make me sound even more OCD than you thought I was at first, but I'm okay with that. Having this planner reduces my stress and that is all that matters. My planner is a huge part of my life and it's important to me. I will not settle on just any planner. I need something that is going to fit my needs. And an extra $10 to buy a planner now is worth it. Sometimes in life you need to pick your battles. My battle with stress is better combated by having a planner that works for me, and I recognize that it's a worthy investment.

Strangely though, after this series of events and revelations - I did realize today that I was being dramatic and my world will not end if I don't get this exact same planner. After looking at several other planners today, I noticed a few things that I don't like about my current planner. I also realized that if I wasn't going back to school in 2010, I could easily just buy a planner without the hours broken down - as I don't even use that feature right now. I work a desk job where I work in excel all day long. There is nothing I could write in the planner for work that needs to be there. I generally just make lists and arbitrarily assign them to a block of time for my personal things right now. But once school starts, I will be back to my old ways - writing down every class, study session, test and paper and color coding all of them. My planner will look alive again!

After remembering I'm about to go back to school, I knew that with all the change approaching in my life, I could not accept the change of having a different planner next year. It might seem silly, but this planner has been with me when I've been my best in life and I want it there for the next phase, one that I still feel very anxious about. After I came back from Barnes and Noble today, I searched online and finally found a refill from the companies website and paid $20 with shipping for the refill. But that is probably the best $20 I will spend for the next year because it has bought me peace of mind, a channel for my quirks and a means to survive through a time of change and uncertainty. I'll take it!

Welcome to the mind of a Type A personality!

100 Day Challenge

2009-11-24T09:52:00.000-06:00

The problem:

I am in a plateau. I have been for about 6 weeks. I am going insane and therefore not focusing on the important small steps to get myself out of the plateau. Instead I am choosing to not track my food, not work out and cry because I feel like giving up. This has been heightened by the fact that it's the holidays and I can't shake the feeling that I won't be able to lose during the holidays. It also is magnified by the fact that come January 19th, I start 16 hours of school plus 40 hours of work a week and I'm convinced I'm going to not make it and my health will be the thing that slacks.

The attack plan:

Join a 100 day challenge 3 of my spark friends are doing. We have set 5-6 goals of things to do every.single.day for the next 100 days. We are tracking these things every day and competing to see who has the most check marks. I have 6 goals, so I have 600 possible check marks to get.

The goals:

I have chosen achievable and important small steps so I can make it through the holidays, through the start of school and close to half way through the semester.

1. Drink 100 oz of water a day

2. Eat a minimum of 2 fruits and 3 veggies each day

3. No eating out unless for a special occasion (birthdays, work functions, meeting distant friends, etc)

4. At least 10 minutes of activity each day

5. Track ALL food

6. Weekly: Accomplish all weekly goals. If I miss a goal, I miss a day's checkmark. Two goals missed, two checkmarks, etc.

The reward:

We have a small reward for the group that we are still deciding on. My personal reward will be a Garmin Forerunner if I can get 90% of my checkmarks. I need 540 total.

The results:

I'm on day 2 and I am ALREADY down .8 pounds from my last low over a month ago. That means that I'm back on the low side of the 3-5 pounds I've been bouncing between and am making progress already.

THIS WILL WORK. I WILL BREAK MY PLATEAU.

Managing your life and your time

2009-11-18T14:08:00.001-06:00

I would love to tell you that I'm just having a rough time with blogging lately, but in all honestly, I'm having a rough time with everything in life! I'm not sure why - I'm not sure when it started.. I just have been off and it's been virtually impossible for me to feel caught up.

The truth is, there will never be a time when life runs 100% smoothly. There are many parts and pieces to everyone's life, and sometimes it's hard to manage all of them. This past summer I found that I was having a lot of problems with managing all these aspects of my life and I was feeling stress constantly with TIME. I always thought I was horrible with time and that I could never manage my time, but that's because I didn't know how. Since then, I've learned several tricks to manage time and lately - I've been slacking on them. Thus, I feel like things aren't getting done, I feel like out of control and that's making me feel a little stressed.

Everyone's life has some main categories of focus and everyone's focus is different. Here are MY main categories that I make time for (in no particular order other than family being the top priority):

1. Family (Matt and Lexi)

2. Friends/Social (this includes blogging and spark!)

3. Exercise

4. Eating well (cooking, shopping, planning)

5. Work

6. Keeping a clean house (cleaning, laundry, dishes)

7. Relaxing

8. Financial (budgeting, paying bills, planning)

9. And soon, school!

So at any given time, I don't feel like I'm managing one of these areas well. Right now, I feel like I've been slacking on family, blogging and exercise. Matt and I have had opposite schedules lately and it's been rough. I've been swamped at work, which is where I usually blog so the blog has been pushed aside. I realized this is a problem today because people have been bugging me about posting my 5K recap! As with exercise, I have been sticking to my plan of strength and yoga and doing a great job, but my cardio is slacking. Things have been coming up and I've been pushing exercise off to the side and that's NOT okay. So as I pick back up the exercise, I feel another area of focus start to slip away and I slack there. I'm not feeling very great about all of this lately!

I have two tools that I've used before, but haven't been 100% successful for me. I've got to find a way to get these things working for me!

One trick I have is to utilize a weekly goals sheet. This is a sheet with rows on the left side for big categories in life. Across the top in columns are the days of the week. Each week, you sit down with this sheet and fill out one thing you will do (and on which day) to maintain that aspect of your life. As you complete the tasks, you highlight them (so you can see where your strong focuses are) and over time you can look back and see where you are lacking. The sheet I use has these categories:

1. Social

2. Financial

3. Task/Chore

4. Work/Career

5. Self care

6. Health

7. Spiritual

8. Marital (Relationship)

I've filled out this sheet, week after week and I have not ONCE crossed off everything. One thing that I've realized (since I started writing this blog! I love epiphanies), is that my life doesn't always fit into these neat little categories. I'm not a spiritual person by nature, so maybe instead of focusing on a spiritual thing to do, I'll plan my blogging. Instead of just writing down "quality time" (something I always do) in the relationship row, I'll plan out a date for us. My life is a series of choices I make about what I want to do and I can't feel like I "should" be doing other things because that's the norm. This will be the first change I make.

Second, I have a weekly routine that I've built and try to follow each week. This routine is broken down into 15 minute blocks (because I'm THAT OCD) and so everything that I need to do in a week has a time and day. I have flex time built into the routine so that I can move things around or just have a spontaneous night and not have to worry about anything. The first step in me doing this was to write down the things I have to do and the things I want to do, and make time for them all. Things that I have to do, but never really would do, involved stuff like dusting, cleaning my mirrors, vacuuming, etc. I grew up in a very messy family and it's been a personal mission of my adult life to have a clean house as often as I can. I never want to relive not being able to invite people over because our house was such a mess. But since I'm not a cleaner by habit yet, I have to make a conscious effort to clean. The things that I want to do, but never make time for, involved reading, making cards, taking time to clean my car. The routine gives me the time and ability to tackle the big stressors in my life and make time for them each week. Each week as I maintain these stressors, they never build up and hence it never stresses me out!

This is such a great tool, in theory. But I've found as I put it in practice, that I got discouraged pretty often. I mostly get discouraged because I feel like I'm constantly busy. But I have realized that I didn't put enough time to relax into my routine. I also was a big overachiever about certain tasks. I wrote down that I wanted to read every.single.day for 30 minutes before bed. In theory, that sounds like a great idea and a great way to relax! But what if I wanted to watch TV one night and I missed reading? Missing the things on my routine was giving me stress and ultimately after a few months of using it, I threw it out the window. I haven't even looked at that routine in a solid month. I've got to go back and revamp this. Some things I will not do every single day, like reading. Some things I won't do every single week, like making cards. Ultimately this routine is going to give me the lifestyle I want and it's going to eliminate all the struggles between the areas of focus.

The main focus of getting back into these habits and utilizing these tools is so I can maintain my sanity come January 19th. I'm taking 16 hours in the spring on top of working 40 hours a week and I KNOW that if I feel stress right now about these areas of my life, I'm going to have a mental breakdown probably on January 20th. So right now is time for me to buckle down and to make my weekly goals, to re-do my routine and stick with these things every day. And if I can achieve this, I will no longer have to come on here apologizing to all my readers, with my tail between my legs, because I've been a bad blogger. I can tell you right now - blogging is a low priority for me and therefore, it's not going to happen every day like some bloggers can do. But I'm okay with that.

I can remember in college when I worked as a waitress, my boss told me one day the importance of the girls that could only work 2 days a week and gave away their other shifts versus girls like me who worked every day and picked up shifts on my off days. He told me that having a balance between the people whose job was a low priority and the people whose job was a high priority made the restaurant and the scheduling work more efficiently. You have to have both groups so that you always have enough people on the schedule. That's how I see bloggers. Instead of comparing myself to the super bloggers that blog multiple times per day and show you their every meal, I will just resign myself to the bloggers who blog when they can and have no set way of blogging and I'll become the best blogger in that category that I can. I'm tired of feeling like I should be apologizing to everyone!

I'll be working on revamping these tools over the next few days and come Monday, it's on! Anyone want to join me on this mission?

(All this being said, I will try to make some time to upload pictures to my home computer and do a 5K recap sometime soon. I AM sorry about that because people are apparently waiting on my pictures. Whoops.)

Changing the game

2009-11-13T09:26:00.000-06:00

After my totally lame, whining and borderline pity party of a post I wrote yesterday about yoga, I decided NO MORE. I have two options regarding yoga: I can give up, or I can make it my focus.

Guess which one I chose?

I won't lie - I'm in a rut. And sadly, I've been in this rut since the last week of September. I was so dedicated and focused to running my first 5K that it consumed me and once my 5K was over and I accomplished my goal, I started slacking. I stopped running as much and I really just lost focus of what I'm doing because I had no more BIG goals. I started spinning again, and while I LOVE spinning it's just not something that you can really focus solely on like you can with running. So I spin and I run and that's really all I've been doing the past 5-6 weeks. That also means my weight loss has like halted. It was going pretty slow regardless, but I mean I've been up and down that same 3-5 pounds for weeks. I'm done with it!

The next big step in my running career (other than improving my 5K time, which I'm doing without much effort) is to run a 10K. I'm just not quite ready to do that right now. I've been feeling frustrated with running lately because I want to go longer and farther but it just doesn't seem as interesting to me right now. I'm loving the 2.5-3 mile hilly routes I'm doing in my neighborhood and anything more just seems "blah". So clearly, it's time to focus on something other than running.

My new focus involves yoga (how'd you guess?!), but it's not solely yoga. In order to become better at yoga, I really need to improve my entire core and my muscles all over my body. Strength HAS to become my next focus. And to be honest, I'm really really scared and not excited about this. I love ridiculously hard, heart throbbing cardio. That's my thing. Strength is so NOT my thing. Strength hurts and makes me sore and makes me feel discouraged and I feel like I'm just bulking myself up. I KNOW that I'm not bulking up, it just feels that way. I feel like I have too much weight to lose still to focus on toning and building muscle. Don't worry, I know all the arguments about how muscle burns more calories than fat and building muscle will boost my BMR. I just have been choosing to ignore those facts, I guess until now :)

I reached out to my spark friends yesterday about tips for yoga and how I can get better and I had SO many great responses! I decided to do a little yoga each day (Sun salutations seemed to be the most recommended) and still attend the 1 hour yoga class Wednesday nights. There is also a 1 hour yoga class at my gym Monday nights, so I can always bump it up to two nights a week if I want. It also was suggested I try a body "pump" or "works" or what have you on the name, type class that involves strength training to music. My gym has one tonight that I'm going to attend and try. I am SO nervous, but I have serious issues with working out at home so I need to do some of this in the gym so I'll actually go! Unlike Caitlin, who recently admitted she relishes being the inexperienced newbie, I detest that feeling. It makes me anxious and I feel like everyone will stare at me because I'll be so lost and pathetic, but I'm going to push those fears aside tonight and just GO.

New Plan: I will make strength/core work my priority over the next 2 months. I am still working out the kinks to my new plan, but I believe it will look like this:

Sunday: Long run/strength (3-4 miles)

Monday: Spin

Tuesday: Short run (2 to 2.5 miles)

Wednesday: Strength/yoga

Thursday: Spin

Friday: Body works (or a run if I need it)

Saturday: Off/rec volleyball

I bought the book, Lift like a man look like a goddess, a month ago based on the excellent recommendation of Stef. It's just been waiting for me to read it, so I'm going to start reading that soon. My goal is to have this book read and start doing their strength plans by Thanksgiving. Until then, I'll just focus on some core work at home on the days I should be doing strength.

I also have been informed of the wonderful Oh she glow's Whittle my Middle challenge. This is probably the perfect thing for me right now with my new concentration, it's just a matter of doing it. I have a stability ball, but don't really want to inflate it and use it (it takes up SO much space when it's not being used), so I'm actually going to use Heather's modified plan of exercises. They look like they are more on my skill level, and frankly I'm too lazy to make my own plan! This is great too because I can track all these exercises on spark too since she gave us the spark demonstrations!

I'm super nervous about this plan but I'm also excited. I NEED this change. I just hope it can help me feel better and feel like I'm going somewhere again!

I'm also doing some revisions to my nutrition, but I'll save those for another post!

Namaste. I hate yoga.

2009-11-12T08:22:00.000-06:00

A little spark advice (from my spark calendar today):

"Say no to negative goals. If your goals say don't, never or stop, reword them. Focus on what you CAN do (like eat 3 fruit daily), not what you CAN'T do (eat sweets). You'll be more motivated and successful!"

This is EXCELLENT! Thanks spark!

Also, I am slated to talk about yoga today because I'm having major problems with it. I started doing yoga about two months ago when I joined LA fitness. I decided to start doing yoga because I don't have great balance and I am NOT flexible. Clearly these are two areas of my health I want to improve and I hear that yoga is the best solution. Also, (please don't lecture), I don't do strength training right now so yoga is the closest I get to a good strength workout.

(I KNOW, I KNOW, I need to do strength. I'm working on this...)

My gym offers two night yoga classes - Monday and Wednesday. At first, I tried going to both classes each week. I wasn't sparing any of my other workouts, so twice a week yoga meant 8 workouts a week. That wasn't happening. It's a lot less pressure for tell myself to go once a week instead of twice, so I brought it down to once a week. Then, you know, things came up and I didn't go. Last night I finally went for the first time probably a month.

IT. WAS. HARD.

Seriously, what did I expect? I haven't done it in a month, it's going to be hard. But, last night was only the third class I attended. Yeah, my body still sucks at being flexible. I have all the right excuses for why yoga is SO hard for me, but yet I'm having such a hard time believing I'll ever improve with yoga.

I've tried to relate it to running and realize HOW hard running was at first. And sure that's true, but I wasn't running for an hour at first. This yoga class I attend is one hour. One hour where all I do is mentally bash myself because I can't do what everyone else is doing. Then comes the pain. I know I shouldn't complete a pose to the point of pain, but there are so many things that cause my body to cramp up. My hips are the worst. I tried to do a side leg lift (one knee on the ground the other out to the side) and my hip just froze and cramped. We also had to sit in a backwards "W" last night and I can't do that - like, literally I can't do that. I am missing cartilage in my hips, so sitting in that position causes bone on bone contact and I was told from childhood that I should not sit that way.

It's frustrating. I want to give up every time I'm that class. But the competitive and ambitious side of me wants to stick it out because I'm not a quitter. And the healthy side of me wants to stick it out because it's unsatisfactory that I have no flexibility.

So, dear yogis, what is my problem? Is it that I am just not flexible and I will improve with each class? Or is my body just not meant to move in those ways? The problem with my hip has never, ever, bothered me other than not being able to bend and move in certain ways. I want to believe that the side leg lifts that I have such problems with is a matter of my hip flexors being weak. How long until these cramps go away? Should I be doing like 10 minutes of yoga every night before bed on top of this hour long class once a week? If so, which poses should I do?

Seriously, I'm lost on this and I'm frustrated and I know I'm being negative about it and I'm trying to stop. I just want to be flexible and have a stronger core. Why is this so hard!?!?!

Namaste. Right now, I hate yoga!

(hate is a strong word, but it's appropriate to describe my frustration at this point)

Back on track month

2009-11-11T11:47:00.006-06:00

I wrote this last week, on 11-2, but forgot to post. I've tweaked it a bit, but the general thought is still the same!

It seems like everyone and their dog is doing a back on track month for November right now. It's funny (to me) that people are trying to get back on track in November - because isn't that technically the start of the holidays? What has happened in October that has caused us all to feel like we need to get back on track? And can we even get back on track with the holidays approaching?

Don't get me wrong - I am not saying I'm not part of this group. I definitely need to get back on track too.

I feel like the holidays wouldn't be so bad if we could take out the huge build-up of anxiety that comes with it's arrival. It's like we convince ourselves that being healthy during the holidays is impossible. This makes us more susceptible to slip up because we've already established a negative connotation to the holidays in regards to our health. It's like telling yourself all day that you don't want to work out. Your workout is going to be awful because you've convinced yourself it will be a negative experience. Tell yourself all day you're going to have a great workout, and it will be a great workout.

Stupid mind and it's trickery and games.

So what's so bad about the holidays? You spend a lot of time with friends and family and that's great. Some of these people may not choose to be healthy, but so do a lot of other people we come in contact with every day. Sure there are some special holiday treats that we all have, but we face the temptation of treats all the time. You don't always have a set routine because events come up and people are off of school and work, but that's the same as the weekends - right? If you break down each of the challenges we all face in the holiday season, you are able to see that these challenges are the same that we face every day. So are the holidays hard because these challenges are more frequent and large scale in nature? Or because we enter the holiday season with the preconceived notion of how hard it will be?

I don't have the answer. I wish I did. But I'm going to approach this holiday season as if it's a mental battle. I will tell myself that I am in control of my body, my nutrition and my actions. I will apply my acknowledgement that when I have the option to be healthy I will take it, so I don't feel guilty if I don't have the option. I'm also going to simplify my life as much as I can. I normally make a long list of monthly goals, but I'm going to just focus on two things this month - consistent exercise and eating what I've planned to eat instead of what is just there. You know, you go into the office and someone brought in a huge bowl of candy? I'm not eating it unless I planned ahead to have it! I won't be going out/eating out unless I plan it in advance. I'll be in New Jersey with Matt's family for (almost) an entire week over Christmas and I will do my best then also because I'm in control! Even if they don't have the healthiest food I would choose, I still am in control of my portions and hopefully I can help his mom with some of the cooking so I can health-ify it a little!

I am going to grab the holidays by the horns and make my own path instead of following in everyone else's footsteps. For me, just sticking to these two little principles of exercising and controlling what I'm eating is going to make the difference. I don't need a long list of goals to get my head lost around. I don't need the disappointment of not meeting these specific goals or the stress of achieving them. I just need to tell myself every morning that I AM in control, that I CAN do it, and that I AM THE ODD DUCK.

I'm the girl that makes it through the holidays losing weight, not gaining

I've also joined two holiday challenges - one sponsored by spark and the other is the POTM challenge, so I can stay accountable. These challenges are small and simple in nature, just like my plan is.I'm the one that makes it through the holidays losing instead of gaining.

I will keep repeating these mantras to myself today (and the entire Holiday Season!):

*I am in control of my body, my nutrition and my actions.

*Change your mentality and everything else will follow.

*Pick the healthy option when it's available so you don't feel guilty when there is no healthy option.

*Don't approach healthy living as a diet. Approach it as a way of life. You WILL eat holiday treats, you will choose how many and which ones you have. And you will enjoy every single one that you have! Life is too short to not enjoy it.

Good luck to you all in this unofficial Back on track month!

What are you doing to stay on track (or get BACK on track) this holiday season?

From the store to your plate

2009-11-11T11:43:00.000-06:00

I just need to say that I haven been SO busy but I miss you all so much. I also really miss blogging. Blogging keeps me accountable, it keeps me aware and it keeps me connected to the people who support me the most. I think my google reader has like... 500 unread blogs?! OMG I have no idea how I'm going to get through that, but I will.

I wrote a really good blog last week about the upcoming holidays and how I'm planning to attack them, but I never posted it. Sigh! So don't worry, I'll probably re-vamp that entry today and post it. I plan to have my Boston trip and 5K recap up this week too. I would love to do it now, but I don't have my camera cord at work. Damn!

I also have been thinking of new ways to improve my blog. Since I don't really enjoy recapping every meal and every day of my life, I've been thinking of a few new series to start on the blog. I don't know why I'm not much of a recapper.. I guess I just don't feel like it's an adequate use of my time, you know? I was there, I saw what I did and most of it doesn't seem that special to share with the internet! But I've been thinking about starting a "Meals to eat cold" series, since I'll be in desperate need of these meals when I'm taking night classes next semester. I also thought I might start a series on budgeting and saving money. This is something I've been working on very hard in the past year and after speaking with Heather this weekend about it, I decided I might have some great tips to share! Also, I somehow managed yesterday to only spend $75 on groceries for the week (mostly just food for me, but some for Matt too!) and have a TON of food, so I'm feeling pretty proud and excited about my new budgeting tactics.

So that is what is on my radar right now. Also, you know, just getting back on track. I had not tracked my food for a solid week, week and a half before yesterday. Yesterday was a little rough because we had almost NO food in our house, so I had to rely on eating out for breakfast, lunch and snack. I had a hodge podge of leftover items that had to be eaten ASAP for dinner and made a big pot of chicken chili (if it's good, recipe to come soon!) that I'm having for lunch today. I also batch cooked a lot of rice. I'm really excited.

So here are the things I bought yesterday. I first researched what was on sale at a few local markets and picked the market that had what I wanted. I also kept my options flexible while shopping. Instead of being specific about exactly WHICH fruits/veggies I wanted to buy, I looked around the market and picked the ones that were cheapest. I also did this with cheese and granola. I bought my granola and some dried beans from the bulk sections (SO much cheaper!) rather than buying them pre-packaged. This allows me to get as much as I want, rather than being limited to what is in the bag.

At the "farmers market", Spouts (I LOVE this store) I spent $30 and bought:

Dried kidney beans

Dried pinto beans

Granola

Pepper jack cheese

Hummus

Cheddar popchips

Boneless pork chops

Chicken tenders ($1.97 a pound! I bought ~4 pounds and froze most of it)

Acorn squash

Pears

Honeycrisp apples ($.99 a pound!)

Tomatoes

Lettuce

Red bell pepper

Red cabbage

Then I went to wal-mart to buy the other staples. I spent $45 and bought:

4 lbs baby carrots (for our dog, she eats half dog food/half carrots twice a day.. on sale though $1.25 a pound)

Celery hearts (should have bought at farmer's market but forgot)

2 loaves bread

Bananas

Asparagus (I wasn't planning to buy this but it was on sale for $1.88 a pound)

Frozen corn

Skim milk

Canned tomatoes (for chili)

Enchilada sauce (for chili)

Dill pickles (seriously been craving these)

Chili beans (for chili)

Sliced ham (for Matt)

Shredded 2% cheese

Sliced 2% cheese

String cheese

2 bags brown rice

Grapenuts

Turmeric spice

It looks like we like cheese a lot, huh!? :) The pepper jack above is for me for hummus sammies. The string cheese is a great snack. The shredded and sliced 2% is mostly for Matt, though I will use a little bit.

So I bought ALL of this yesterday for $75. I was VERY pleased with myself and excited all at the same time. I have some great veggies to eat this week and have already made rice and beans for the week too. I bought some chobani earlier in the day so I can have yogurt/granola for breakfast. I have a plan, I have the right food and I have the will to cook. It looks like it'll be a great week!

I also hope (this week maybe) to start showing you guys what exactly I buy, and then how I use it to make meals. I think so often people tell you the things to buy (or the things they buy) but don't show you what they actually bought or how they put it all together. I can tell you that fruits and veggies are great for you until I'm blue in the face, but I think if I don't SHOW you how to use the produce, it doesn't really help you all.

Now what to do with my acorn squash... I know I'm going to stuff half of it. The rest, I'm not sure yet. I'll get back to you on this!

Eat that meat

2009-10-29T12:56:00.000-05:00

Get ready, because I'm about to pull stories from like a million directions.

Heather sent Stef and me an email last night discussing some issues she's having with protein and how she noticed that lately she hasn't really been eating meat. It's funny because Stef was a vegan at some point and Heather actually prefers meat substitutes (like boca burgers, etc) over beef. I have always been the stickler that says, "Guys there is no way I could go without meat for even a day. It's too hard." SO the two of them did a no meat challenge a few months ago and I politely declined my participation because I've ALWAYS said that giving up meat is not enjoyable for me.

So when Heather posted her blog about labeling herself a "flexitarian" this morning, I was just expecting to read it and go on about my day. But as I read her blog, I realized that the topic of meat has been on my mind lately much more than I actually thought it was.

I've always loved chicken. Chicken has been a staple of my diet and even before I started watching what I ate, I mostly ate chicken. I would have the occasional beef thrown in from time to time and very rarely I would eat pork (aside from bacon). Turkey was always on sandwiches or on holidays and other than that - it's been CHICKEN. I actually have been eating much more beef and pork since I started watching what I eat. My favorite way to eat chicken is grilled and when I sold my house, I sold my grill, and the foreman is absolutely no comparison for my old propane grill. Therefore, I've been a little bored with chicken as of late and needed to switch it up!

But here's the problem with chicken, and well meat in general. It's super expensive! And therefore, for about the past 4-5 months Matt and I have been buying the huge bags of frozen breasts at Costco. You can get a 10 pound bag for like $18. It's a steal of a deal. I've found that usually if you defrost the chicken in the refrigerator for a day or two, you probably wouldn't be able to taste that it was frozen. Or at least, that's what I thought (we'll come back to this.) So every time that I'm coming up with a meal, I usually pick a carb - pasta, bread or rice, pick a veggie and pick a meat. In the past month or so I committed myself to eating more vegetables, so lately it's been more often two veggies and a meat. Sometimes I have a carb, other times I don't. Well, frankly I get bored of this and more frankly, the meat has been my least favorite part of my meals lately because I've been eating mostly that frozen chicken. The chicken is so thin, it's hard to do much with it. Grilling has been boring. Baking I've done a few times and frankly I'm sick of the taste of sautéed chicken. I'm not a big sauce eater, so that isn't much of an option. I'd love to stuff some chicken breasts and bake them, but you can't do that very well with these frozen breasts. I've have been wishing some days that I didn't have to eat a meat at all. That's not fun, is it!

Also in the mix, I have been trying to empty my pantry and all the beans in my pantry in the past 3 weeks. I've had some DELICIOUS bean meals in the past few weeks, ones with a meat and ones without. Why did I think I didn't like beans? Beans are the perfect combination of protein AND fiber, and well they are pretty awesome nutritionally compared to chicken.

Do you see where I'm going here? No more frozen chicken, Laura.

The last indication that I need to stop eating this frozen chicken happened this past weekend. My mom bought some amazing fresh chicken breasts from Whole Foods. I forgot how great chicken can taste when it's fresh and simply seasoned and grilled. AMAZING. It made the foreman grilled breast I had yesterday with some BBQ sauce taste like fast food. My family started talking about how great the chicken was and my brother mentioned he can't eat those frozen breasts anymore because they are frankly, awful.

So imagine all of these ideas coming together in my head and being topped off with the realization Heather is going to become a "flexitarian". She really got me thinking about all these little cues that I hadn't put together yet.

Now let me be clear, I am NOT saying I'm a flexitarian. After all, I still love meat. I still hate meat substitutes (you won't be seeing ANY tofu on my plates anytime soon). I still live in TEXAS people - throwing meat out of my diet is out of the question and I won't do it. I love beef, pork, chicken and turkey (seafood? ick!) And I will definitely still be eating it. But I'm not going to eat sub quality meat any longer. I'm giving up those frozen chicken breasts cold turkey (haha). And since I'm saving for school and poor and still don't have a wonderful propane grill (I miss you grill), it looks like I'm not going to be eating as much meat as I used to. I'll start incorporating less meat into my meals at home. I'll just be checking the grocery store for meat on sale and either freezing it or using it that week. I know it sounds weird that I won't eat frozen chicken but I'll eat chicken I bought from the store that I froze myself - but trust me, the difference is unbelievable. But now it's more beans for me! I'm actually a little excited as I keep thinking about all the recipes I can make with beans! Who knew!

(as a side note, I never realized how fantastic it would be with Matt living with me - because I can make what I want to eat each night and he'll either feed himself or eat some of the stuff I batch cooked for him on the weekends. This was NEVER the case when we didn't live together. I always felt like I had to make him something and I just ate it too. Ick)

So now I need to figure out some ways to make tasty meals from dried beans. I've only made beans that were dried once or twice and I wasn't impressed. But canned beans are HELLA expensive (I buy the organic versions that have low sodium or no salt added), so this is my mission for November. I'm SUPER excited!

Thank you Stef and Heather for being my inspiration for non-meat meals!

My spark anniversary

2009-10-28T10:26:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are a few excerpts from my spark blog about my spark anniversary. Even though this blog is relatively new, I've been on spark for one year now and on a journey to lose weight and be healthy for 14 months at this point. I can't say enough about spark people. If you want to lose weight or just be healthy you can get support, advice, articles, trackers, etc at spark people. It's completely 100% free and FULL of information and resources and has a huge community of people trying to live just like you! If you decide to join, let me know and you can look me up! I'd love to help anyone with their spark journey!

So in true Heather form, I made a few lists to recap the things I've done over this past year and a look into the future. I debated several different types of lists because I realized that some of the things I wanted to say were negative, but then I remembered that there IS negativity in my life and I've found ways to defeat it with the power of positive. So even if there are a few negative things thrown in these lists, remember that I am choosing to NOT focus on them and I am focused on the positive. I picked 12 things for each category since I've been on spark 12 months.

In the past year on spark, I have lost:

1. 25 actual pounds and 15-25 pounds of weight I WOULD have gained had I not found spark.
2. Almost 2 full pants sizes. I will be in the next size down in a matter of weeks to a month.

3. Massive inches all over my body - but most noticeably in my waist, sides and arms. I wish I could find the original measurements from a year ago but I think I might have thrown them away.
4. Stress. I've made decisions to eliminate as much stress as I can from my life and I've worked reallllly hard on this task.
5. My house, because I sold it! That was such a huge decision for me and it has proven to be an excellent decision.
6. My tendencies to emotional eat. Or rather, I've lost the habit to emotional eat. I still feel tempted, but I'm able to fight this temptation a majority of the time and recognize that eating my emotions won't make them better. I have to cope and deal with them!

7. Two family members - my uncle and my Oma. Both losses were very hard on me, but I've been stronger and more capable of dealing with these losses this time than I have with any of my other previous losses.
8. My fear of running! Turns out, I LOVE IT!
9. My fear of failure and my obsession with perfection. Okay, so I still sometimes feel like I fail because I'm not perfect, but I'm learning that perfection is NOT attainable or even something that is measurable so I can't focus on it. This has been a huge win for me.
10. Some of my social anxiety. I still have social anxiety, but I'm doing MUCH better. I actually want to go out with friends now and I'm not embarrassed by my weight (most of the time) and worried what people are thinking of me. I'm able to focus on the people I'm with and what we are doing more than I am thinking about how I look or who is judging me. This is a more recent development, so I definitely have strides to make here!
11. The fear that I can't eat out. One year ago I didn't feel like I could successfully eat out or eat at someone's house. Now, I know that I can and I do it pretty often.
12. The feeling that I was always the fat girl. I'm NOT! I still have a long way to go, but the progress I've already made has made me realize I'm not the fat girl anymore. I'm just me!

In the past year on spark, I have gained:

1. WONDERFUL, incredible, amazing spark friends who I hold near and dear to my heart and love beyond words can imagine.
2. The title as a super hero. I can't describe to anyone how much my fellow Super Heroes - Stef and Heather mean to me. Not a day has passed since July that I haven't spoken to at least one of them at least once during the day (usually more!). These girls know me better than I know myself and I can turn to them for anything and everything and I love them so much for it.
3. A wonderful (but sometimes annoying) dog that Matt and I adopted. Lexi is a part of our family now and I wouldn't have it any other way. Sure, sometimes she annoys me - but I wouldn't trade her for anything!
4. A renewed passion for cooking - though this time it's healthy cooking. Cooking is stress relief for me and it makes me truly happy.
5. A new career! Well, it's in the works. But spark has helped me realize that the best way for me to stay healthy the rest of my life is to help others become healthy! I have already announced I am going back to school to become a Registered Dietitian and I definitely can attribute spark to helping me find my life's passion.
6. A new outlook on life. In this past year I have really focused on becoming happy and becoming a positive person. One year ago today, I was miserable and unhappy and full of heavy emotion that I wouldn't share with anyone. I was negative and thought I could not accomplish anything. I have changed all of this over the past year and I continue to work on improving these aspects of my life EVERY DAY. I never imagined that losing weight would open my eyes to many changes that were necessary to make my life better but I'm so thankful for all of these changes!
7. The title of Spark motivator. This was an incredible accomplishment for me and it definitely pushes me every day to be more successful.
8. A love and passion for exercise. Sure, this happened only recently (June/July) but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I love exercise and I realize that it is one of the top priorities in my life because it reduces my stress, improves my sleep, makes me feel better all around, forces me to focus on healthy eating so I can fuel my workouts, etc. etc. I could go on here, but I'll stop :)
9. Confidence that I can truly accomplish anything I want, all it takes is dedication from myself and hard work. This confidence has carried into all parts of my life and I couldn't be happier for it.
10. Motivation to be a better, healthier, happier person. I used to feel like I had no motivation but that was because I hadn't done any work. Motivation comes AFTER the hard work and hard decisions. Make those, see progress and you'll be motivated to keep going!
11. A slew of new recipes, new techniques and new foods that I really love. Who would have thought I would find a way to like oatmeal, yogurt, brussel sprouts, tomatoes, etc? I LOVE it!
12. The reputation as someone who lives life healthy. I've inspired friends of mine in real life, my family, Matt, spark members and random blog readers on the internet to live a healthier lifestyle by SHOWING them that it can be done and that it's successful and truly changes your life.

In the past year on spark, I have accomplished:

1. I ran an entire 5K, without stopping. This is one of the proudest moments of my life.
2. I have lost all the weight I gained since graduating college. Now I just need to work on the weight I gained DURING college :)
3. I set a goal to become a spark motivator, and I did it!
4. I admitted that I cannot do everything, I am not perfect and I do need help from others.
5. I have brought my blood pressure and resting heart rate down and am no longer pre-hypertensive.
6. I have decided to no longer let my thyroid be an excuse for being heavy. I never thought I'd be able to lose weight with a thyroid issue, but I've decided that's not true. It might take me longer, but I'll do it.
7. I have dealt with my fear of opening up to people and started a public blog where I talk about my weight loss and healthy living. Sometimes I still feel very anxious about putting personal details out there for everyone to see, but I know that I'm helping others and myself, so I keep writing.
8. I have found my own path for my life in this past year and I am no longer doing things because someone else feels that's the best thing for me. I am in control of all of my emotions and actions and I am the only one who decides my path and my future.
9. I have decided I am not happy in my current career and have carefully and thoughtfully changed my career path to one that is better suited for my lifestyle and my personality. I have applied to said program and been admitted and I will start this spring.
10. I have learned the knowledge of portion control and moderation and I have lost all of my weight WITHOUT giving up anything I love. I don't diet, I live.
11. I have learned to be my own biggest fan and to support myself. Instead of viewing myself as a failure, I now see myself as a dedicated and accomplished athlete that has many more successes in front of her.
12. I have NOT become a yo-yo dieter. This was a huge fear of mine as I've never tried to lose weight before, but I can successfully say that I am NOT a yo-yo dieter! WHOO!

In the NEXT year on spark, I plan to accomplish:

1. I will run a 10K.
2. I will weigh in the 100s again for the first time since I was probably 18.
3. I will be able to wear my high school ring on my finger again!
4. I will find a healthy balance between school and work, and school and my new part time job starting in the summer.
5. I will continue to work on myself and become a better person for myself, my family and my friends.
6. I will continue to motivate and inspire others to live a healthy lifestyle by keeping up with my outside blog and be more active on spark! I will continue to blog, both here and outside spark because it truly is my spiritual outlet and a way to connect with myself!
7. I will continue to work on happiness and reduce stress.
8. I will continue to see the positive aspects of situation and drown out the negative voices in my head.
9. I will, at least ONCE, follow my weekly goals to a T and accomplish everything on the days I should. This is such a hard task, but I will do it at least once!
10. I will try one new vegetable/fruit a month.
11. I will continue to exercise and track my food, as these are key contributors to my success.
12. I will make it to my 2 year sparkversary without dropping off spark and without yo-yo ing with my weight!

In the past year on spark, I have made several HUGE revelations:

1. I am in control of everything I do, eat, say, feel, think, etc.
2. Motivation comes AFTER the work, not before.
3. 90% of the battle of weight loss, becoming happy or any BIG change in your life is mental. The mental battle is by far the hardest battle in the world.
4. Being happy is wonderful and why did I ever feel like I didn't deserve this or need this?
5. You only have one life, so make it the best life that you can.
6. The stronger you are, the more you admit defeat, trouble and ask for help.
7. You can eat ANYTHING you want, just practice moderation and portion control. You can have it all, just not all at once.
8. Weight means nothing in comparison to inches, accomplishments and the way you feel.
9. There are people out there that feel the same way as you. You just have to find them.
10. No one has the right to make you feel bad and you do not have the right to make anyone else feel bad. Be nice, what's so bad about it?
11. Set goals. How will you ever accomplish anything without a goal?
12. Some days will be harder than others, but on those days you will test your real character and see how far you really have come! YOU CAN DO IT.

Thank you so much for celebrating my anniversary with me! Here is my present to myself, which I am SO excited about. I've never had eggplant before and I think this guy is SO super cute and I can't wait to try him! He will be my first new veggie of this second year on spark. Can't wait!

Updateeeee

2009-10-28T08:23:00.000-05:00

Some quick updates because I am SUPER busy today at work.

1. I realize I have not posted the Things I love this week, even though I promised. I apologize about this! I seriously haven't had the time to do it yet - so hopefully I will soon.

2. Please, everyone, think happy thoughts for Matt today. He is taking the GMAT this afternoon and I want him to have as much positive energy as he can while taking the exam!

3. Today is my one year anniversary on sparkpeople. I am SO excited and I'm working on a big blog post for my spark blog. I'm planning to cross-post some of it, so be on the look-out for that later today.

4. My friend Heather is having a starbucks give-away so if you like coffee or tea, please go check it out!

5. Also, I have joined the Pile on the Miles challenge for the Holiday season. This is a challenge among bloggers and blog readers to run/walk the most miles they can in November. Now, I'm not expecting to win this challenge at all as I'll be competing against several girls that are marathon training, but this is JUST what I need to get back into a consistent running routine. Since my 5K, my running has been all over the place due to many factors - trying to switch to outside runs only, it's been raining all the time here in the past month and I hurt my foot. I'm SO excited to start this challenge on Sunday!

6. I had an appointment with the Dietetics advisor for my program yesterday and got my school schedule hammered out (well, almost). She helped me pinpoint which classes I need to take when in order to finish the bachelors by Spring 2011. The good news is I know exactly what order I need to take the classes in and I definitely can finish in that amount of time. She also complemented me on wanting to take such a heavy load - she says she doesn't see many students anymore that are willing to take heavy loads so she appreciates my dedication and drive. The bad news is that I don't have much wiggle room at all in case a class isn't offered. This should really only be an issue for the summer - All the classes for the summer are pre-reqs for the fall classes, so there is a possibility I might need to take a few of them at a different school if my new school doesn't offer the classes. Oh well, I WILL figure this out!

That's all the updates I have. Off to work!

MIA

2009-10-26T11:12:00.000-05:00

My apologizes on being MIA. My family was in town this weekend and I had a lot of things going on so I was not home at all!

Unfortunately, my weekend didn't go as well as I had hoped it would. I've been basically on the verge of an emotional breakdown all weekend. I realize that I should talk about it, but I'm deciding not to today because:

1. I'm an internalizer. I keep everything in (I am working on this, I promise)

2. Some of the things that happened should remain private matters

3. I don't want to exploit myself or anyone on the world wide web (remember when we called it that?)

4. I'm exhausted and frankly talked out about everything

So, staying true to my current quest of not being a negative Nancy - I will leave you with a few realizations I had this weekend. These realizations (however hard some are), are going to help me become a stronger and healthier person every day!

1. Exercise is a much better stress reducer than alcohol or food ever were for me (If only I had exercised more this weekend..)

2. Sometimes the best "vacation" is living the life you live every day. Do you notice how much more relaxed and accomplished you feel when you stay in your typical daily/weekly routine? I am always more exhausted and more stressed after a busy week/weekend/time of friends, family or traveling. Give me my normal, predictable life any day (I am SO looking forward to this week and weekend because there is nothing special planned!)

3. You are the only person that controls your life, your emotions, your happiness, your sadness, your food, your exercise and your well being. Other people can be influencers of these things, but you have the final say of how you react.

4. Always live by the golden rule: "Treat others as you want to be treated."

5. Dallas actually has healthy and fresh restaurants that are not chains and serve more food I would eat than food I wouldn't eat. I experienced this myself Saturday night when my family went to The Dream Cafe for dinner. I can't wait to go back!

6. I'm sure everyone is getting tired of my vague, strange entries and pep talks I've had with myself lately, but it's my blog and I'll pep talk myself if I want to!

More realizations to come - stay tuned for Things I love shortly.

Quick and Simple Suppers #3

2009-10-22T22:49:00.003-05:00

Another Quick and Simple Supper.

Except, this is more Quick and Simple ~~Supper~~ Side Dish

I present you with: Mashed Chickpeas (aka warm hummus). This is a Rachel Ray recipe. I watched her make it once and I stored the idea in my head. Now when I make it, I just do my own thing - so feel free to look at her recipe too. I'm not sure what our differences are.

For this recipe you need the following:

EVOO
Garlic
Chick peas (also called garbanzo beans)
Chicken stock
Cumin (not shown)
Black pepper (not shown)
Lemon zest/juice
Tahini
Parmesan cheese (not shown)

1. Put a little EVOO in a pan and add your garlic. I grated my garlic instead of mincing it as I've explained before. I added ~1.5 tsp of EVOO.

2. Meanwhile, drain the chick peas and give them a rinse. Then add them to a food processor and pulse them.

After pulsing

3. Add chick peas to EVOO and garlic mixture. Next add chicken stock. I have no idea how much stock I added, but you want to add enough that it's a little liquid-y. As the chick peas heat up, they will absorb this liquid!

4. Next, add the following ingredients:

Black pepper (just eyeball it) and cumin - roughly 1 TBSP of cumin

Lemon zest and then the juice of the lemon

And the tahini. Man tahini packs some calories huh! I used roughly 1.5 TBSP of tahini - I eyeballed it.

Tahini added

5. Let this keep heating through and once the stock has been mostly absorbed and evaporated you are all done!! Now you are ready to plate and add your parmesan cheese. You definitely can add feta too, I just had parmesan on hand.

I had this warm hummus with .75 of a breast of chicken that I baked with garlic and sundried tomatoes. I also had carmelized cabbage on the side too!

Mashed Chick Peas. I realize that looks like a ton of cheese, but it's a little over a TBSP.

Baked garlic and sundried tomato chicken with a little parmesan cheese

Carmelized cabbage

All together now!

Happy eating!

I forgot to mention the nutritionals on this. I made 3 servings. One serving (including the cheese) has 226 calories; 10 g of fat; 7g total fat; 3g saturated fat; 22g carbs; 12g protein; 60g potassium; 496g sodium; 7g fiber

Drop that salt shaker!

2009-10-22T11:43:00.002-05:00

As a future dietician (I don't know that I'll ever get tired of saying this), I'm trying to stay more current on public health issues and am finding great joy in reading these articles. I read this blog this morning and it really got the wheels in my head spinning.

The issue of sodium intake is near and dear to my heart. When my doctor told me I had to lower my blood pressure and lose weight in order to prevent taking blood pressure medicine at the young age of 22, she told me first to lower my sodium intake. Lowering sodium intake is one of the best ways to lower your blood pressure, in addition to losing weight and exercise.

I used to LOVE salt. I don't think I can describe to you how much salt I ate. I not only ate ridiculous amounts of fast food, restaurant food and pre-packaged and processed foods, but I also added salt to all of these things. A few months before my doctor told me to lose weight and to cut back on the salt, I would have swollen ankles almost every single day from all this excess salt. I drank iced tea and cranberry juice on a daily basis to try to flush some of this extra salt out of my body. I never knew exactly what I was doing to myself until my doctor brought light to the issue and I began to learn about the ill effects of sodium and that sodium is added to almost everything you see advertised now.

When my doctor first presented me with some research about losing weight, she encouraged me to try the DASH diet. DASH stands for "Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension." This diet is focused ONLY on lowering sodium and lowering blood pressure, not losing weight. If you read information on the diet you will find that while they don't advertise weight loss with this diet, many consumers of the diet plan will lose weight simply because they are changing their eating style to one of fresh foods. On DASH you eat very little processed foods. I find this really interesting because in the previous mentioned blog I read this morning, the basic synopsis of the blog is that the nutritional evidence of lowering sodium in your diet does not match scientific evidence because it is impossible to complete an accurate experiment in the scientific community. Since everyone eats above normal amounts of sodium as it is, researchers are not able to populate a group of low sodium eaters who would provide accurate results. The only way to have a low sodium diet in America today is to follow a plan like the DASH diet that focuses on fresh foods and minimizes processed and pre-packaged foods. Obviously making this drastic change in your diet would provide many health benefits that are not the direct cause of lowering sodium, thus there is no statistical importance in regards to cutting sodium intake.

I believe that lowering sodium in diets starts with the preparers of food to lower the salt. As the Food Politics blog mentions, most of the sodium problem is coming from the foods we eat rather than what we are adding with our salt shakers. Restaurants, fast food establishments and food companies need to start lowering sodium in their products. While it is possible to eat a low sodium diet, the average American will not be able to because a majority of the food they eat is processed and pre-packaged.

Why aren't companies doing this though? Why is there so much added salt to these foods? The basic reasons are flavor and preservatives. Salt has long been used to preserve food and salt is much cheaper than adding other methods of flavor - like fresh spices. You can only do so much to a frozen, boxed or canned meal to keep it tasting "fresh" and edible. Take the salt out of most of these meals and you'll just end up with something bland and non edible and probably won't last as long as the salt helps preserve the food. The other problem is due to the vicious circle of the taste of salt. So, most people eat foods that have been processed or prepared with too much salt. Therefore, when they eat something that is not full of salt, it doesn't have the salt flavor they are accustomed to. Therefore, they feel like they must add salt to the food to regain that taste. How will you ever stop eating so much salt when all the food you eat is loaded in salt?

It was astonishing to me as I started to cut back the salt in my diet because at first it was SO hard. I bought salt substitutes and had to use them for every meal of every day. But slowly as I began consuming less and less salt, my taste for salt disappeared. Salt no longer tasted good to me and now I essentially cook with no salt at all. I will bring casseroles and rice dishes up to work and my coworkers will try them and tell me they need salt. But to me, it tastes perfectly fine! So just re-training your taste buds is a challenge because unless you are like me and prepare most of your own meals, you'll never be able to break the cycle of the taste of salt.

Honestly consuming only 2400 mg of sodium a day is very hard. It's hard even for me most days. I used to shoot for 1500 mg of sodium but that made me very upset and obsessive over everything I was eating and took the joy out of my food. So now I shoot for 2400 mg and most days I'm right around this mark. I made the decision some time ago that lowering my sodium intake to ~2400 mg is acceptable for me but I will definitely be over this limit some days. Pretty much anytime that I have a meal out, I can guarantee I will be over my sodium. But since I don't eat out that often, I have balance in my life and I'm okay with those few days that I am over. I also don't avoid deli meats or cheese like I used to. The occasional turkey sandwich won't kill me. I just have to watch the intake of sodium in my other meals that day. I treat my sodium intake now much like I treat my healthy eating balance - the times when I can eat low sodium or buy the low sodium/no salt added variety, I do. But those times when I can't or decide I want to have something that is high in sodium - I still eat it. For example, I still buy salted butter. But I buy unsalted chicken stock and unsalted canned veggies. I make trade-offs!

Here are a few of my tips for lowering your salt intake.

1. Obviously cut back on the salt shaker. Look to other ingredients to add flavor to your dishes. Invest in a spice rack, fresh herbs or add garlic/onion/lemon zest/etc to your foods. Fresh herbs go much further to add flavor to your meal than the salt shaker does. Start slow, but slowly wean yourself off the salt.

2. Try to avoid eating out as much as possible. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to eat out, look for the options that have the freshest ingredients. Fresh = generally low sodium. Salads, veggies, fresh fruit, yogurt, etc - these are all great options that will be lower sodium.

3. When buying canned and frozen food, look for the no salt added or low sodium options. Also, typically organic foods have lower sodium. If you are buying frozen veggies, avoid the ones with sauce already included. Sauce = full of sodium. As I said before, most processed meals have a lot of salt - so avoid frozen dinners, meals in a box and the processed shelf meals (like those Hormel Compleats). Always read the labels! Your eyes will pop out of your head the first week that you start tracking your sodium. Sodium is hidden in essentially everything. Other than calories, sodium is the #1 thing I look at when reading food labels. Just check the labels to find out for yourself!

4. Some things naturally have more salt - like deli meats, cheese and broths/soups. So for those items, decide what is important to you and what you can live without. If you can live with a more bland deli meat, buy the low sodium variety. If you don't care which cheese you eat, opt for Swiss as it's naturally low sodium. If you can make your own soups, buy the unsalted stocks (Kitchen Basics has the only line I've ever seen of unsalted stocks.) You will still want to enjoy some foods that are not low sodium, so pick and choose your battles. A reduction anywhere will help!

5. Eat as fresh as you can. The more fresh ingredients you use, the lower sodium your meal will be. If you choose to make your own rice instead of using prepared rice or boxed rice, you can control how much salt you add. Same thing with pasta - if you make your own pasta you can control the amount of salt you add to the water (I use none!). Cook your own meats instead of relying on pre-cooked varieties. Even going from a full fat cheese to a 2% cheese means you are consuming more sodium. Less fat = less flavor = more sodium added to make up for the lack of flavor. Fat free cheese is obviously even worse! Obviously fresh veggies and fruits will be naturally low sodium so add as many of those as you like!

6. Just pay attention! Like I said, just start watching your sodium. You'll be amazed how much you are eating. You'll also be amazed at how much lighter and skinnier you feel without all the extra salt. My ankles and fingers are now super skinny and never bloated! My weight doesn't fluctuate as much on the scale each day and I feel less sluggish each day because of the reduced sodium!

Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions or need help!

Cold Feet

2009-10-21T09:30:00.001-05:00

I think I've already told you guys that I'm a worrier and an obsessor. So that means that at any given time of every single day, I'm worrying or mulling over something in my head. Sometimes it gets so bad that I'll be hardcore worried about something and a few minutes later I can't even remember what I was worrying about, but the feelings of stress and worry are still my body. I'm consumed most days by worry over things that I can't control.

Sometimes, when a lot of hectic things are going on I'll have little fits where I become obsessed with ONE thing that I think I can control and I'll stop at nothing to complete this one task. This is what happened when I sold my house. I couldn't control when my house was going to sell, but I could control the new things I needed for my apartment. I seriously spent about a week freaking out about what shower curtain I should buy for the apartment I didn't even have.

sigh. I know, it's bad.

Seriously though, I'm learning to control it. I know I've mentioned several times that I'm working on my stress and I've seen leaps and bounds of progress just by changing the way I think. I've learned some basic stress management skills and when I find myself in a state of panic, I rely on these skills and I talk my way through the stress. Why else do you think I have SO many pep talks with myself!? I've learned that every time that I am on the "what if" ledge, that I should keep pushing myself and take the what if to the most absolute (but realistic) circumstance and then tell myself I can get through it.

I know I have these skills. I know that stress is nothing but a lack of confidence. I know that I cannot control certain things in life and that's okay. I KNOW these things and I tell myself these things, but it doesn't change the fact that sometimes the stress still seeps in. I started working on managing my stress in June or July of this year and I seriously have been doing a fantastic job. I have been feeling SO much better about life and I started implementing structure into my life and I was able to bring some of the quirks and characteristics of my old self back into my life and learn to stop being embarrassed about them. Instead of feeling like I was stuck in a miserable life with no way out, I decided to become a positive thinker and to decide what I really wanted in life.

One of those things is obviously a new career. But I have to admit, as excited as I am and as happy as it makes me to think about what my new life is going to be like with a fantastic job that I'm passionate about, that stress has been seeping in. I've been going through major bouts of cold feet regarding this decision. The cold feet started as soon as I considered going back to school. I kept throwing ALL these negative thoughts at myself and I was focusing ONLY on the negative aspects of making this change. This would be a pay decrease from a life in finance. I will be a poor college kid for the next 3.5 years. I will accumulate MORE student debt. What will my family think? Is this even feasible?

I even read an article this morning about the top 10 areas for job growth, expecting something in the dietetics/nutrition field to be present because of all the talk about healthcare reform and instead I saw "Senior Financial Analyst," which is the career path I'm on right now.

But as all of these negative thoughts keep flooding in, I keep thinking about my life now and how I'm not happy with where my career is going. The one saving grace for me when I start experiencing cold feet is to think about what I'll be doing. It's to read books about the profession, or read the blogs of RDs or to read about what Ellie Krieger does each day and how RD's help other people. Everytime I read those things, it's like my body is consumed with excitement and I just know in my gut that this is a great step for me and it's the right step. Then I give myself that pep talk and say, "I can do anything that I want and I will be successful because I define success for myself." I recognize that excitement and stress feel the same way to the body, so when I feel stress, I need to just convince myself it's excitement instead.

I have a fortune from a fortune cookie of many years ago on a picture of me and my dad on my nightstand. I actually completely forgot this was there until last night when I saw it again. It says something along the lines of: "Today might be the day to make some decisions based on your instincts." I realized my instincts tell me that I'm going to be a fantastic RD. My instincts tell me that helping people and sharing the gift of healthy living with other people is what will make me the most happy. My instincts tell me this profession is going to keep me motivated to continue my own healthy lifestyle. My instincts tell me a career as a RD it will give me the stability and safety that I need in life.

So today and tomorrow and every day in the future that I start to get cold feet, I'm going to turn to my instincts. My instincts tell me I'm getting cold feet because this is a big change and change is scary - not because I'm making a mistake. My instincts are MINE and therefore I will only listen to myself and not listen to everyone else. I don't care who supports me and who doesn't, I'm doing this for me and me only.

Becoming the Odd Duck

2009-10-20T15:10:00.000-05:00

Everytime I sit down to write today's blog I just have a big sigh and think wow.. all I want to do is be negative. You all have those days right? Where's its just really hard to not feel weighed down by the things going on in your life. And while a lot of the things going on in my life are super positive right now, it's just hard to balance them all and not feel BLAH. My mind is consumed with all these thoughts and everytime I stop to grab one and analyze it, it's another negative thought! One big thought that I've been mulling over for a few weeks is about my blog, so let's explore that one today.

I feel like I don't have a direction for my blog. I know there are a lot of readers (thank you mr. google analytics!) and I really don't want to disappoint you guys. I started this blog for ME and in the end, it will still be for ME - but who am I kidding? I'm obsessed with other people's opinions, to the point where I get anxiety over them, and then I start to plan around them. Also, frankly, I'm a little skeeved out by who is reading my blog. I know there are a bunch of you and I know where you guys are from and how you are finding my blog, but not enough to pinpoint WHO is exactly reading. And while I make a conscious effort to only post things I'd be comfortable with EVERYONE in the world reading, I still am a little weirded out by it. Maybe if I knew who some of you were??? Maybe you could leave me a comment? You don't have to! Just sayin...

But anyways, back to the direction of the blog. So many people have food blogs, or exercise blogs, or fashion blogs, etc. etc. And while food is a huge part of my life and exercise is a huge part of my life (and well fashion is not), I just don't feel like labeling my blog as in one category in particular. I'd like to think that my blog is just a direct extension of the crazy (crazy!) thought parties that go on in my head. Because frankly, sometimes I just blog in order to restore peace in my brain. If I can actually slow down my thoughts and grab a few and throw them out here after I've analyzed them, then I feel better about life. I feel like I'm not that crazy anymore. I just worry (again with the worrying) that you all don't appreciate my random and sometimes crazy thoughts and analysis. I don't always have the nice short blogs with the pretty food pictures that make my life look so uber glamorous like so many of the blogs that I read do.

In case you don't know this about me, I'm a compulsive worrier and when you mix that with someone who is obsessed with comparing myself to other people, you get some of the episodes of crazy ridiculous stress and nonsense thoughts that I rarely let leak out on this blog. Sort of like the one I'm having today! My entire life I've put so much pressure on myself to be the best at everything and to be perfect and to not seem weird that I've really muffled the person that I WANT to be. I've also muffled some of my quirks and I have been ashamed of some of the talents that I have. A part of me is kind of ashamed and nervous to tell all of you my plans for each semester of school because they are seriously aggressive and a schedule that not many other people could handle. But, school is my thing, it's always been my thing and I'm a rockstar at it. I love school and I'm super excited about going back and challenging myself with this new degree.

Anyway, the point I guess is (really, there was a point? ha) that I started this blog to force myself to be different. This is my spiritual outlet to help myself find the true person that I want to be. I want to accept the different qualities I have and learn to love them. I want to accept the person that I want to become and stop comparing myself to others to measure my own success. I am the only person that can decide whether or not I am successful - just like I am the only person that decides my happiness.

I never wanted to this blog to become famous. Honestly, sometimes I get a little embarrassed seeing how many people read it now! I never wanted to have hundreds of readers following me each day. I already feel some pressure each day coming up with a post for the few readers I have now. But blogging is not a chore. This is my choice to be expressive and it is my choice of what I write on here and what I tell everyone. It was my choice to start this blog and it's my choice to continue it. I could quit right now and close myself up and try to fit back in with the crowd, but I'm choosing not to. Even if I don't know who all of you are and even if I grow popular one day, it will be because I said the things I wanted to say and I finally figured out how to stop holding myself back. I'm different. I want to be different. I want to be the odd duck. I don't know why sometimes I stop myself from actually being different. Sure, I'm afraid some people won't like me - but as I've learned from my blog posts on spark - a lot of people actually love my brutal honesty and my ability to be frank with myself and that I wear my ridiculously damaged heart on my sleeve. I need to stop telling myself that no one likes me or what I have to say.

So today, I'm going to stop asking for acceptance. I'm going to stop asking approval from people. This is my blog and if I decide to write huge random, "I can't follow what you're saying" rambling - then I will. And if you guys stop reading, I guess mr. google analytics will tell me! But even if you do, I won't stop. I wanted to be different, so I will have a different blog. I'll post what I want, when I want and not worry about it looking like everyone else's. Now that I think about it, that would be pretty boring. I'm more than just a series of pictures of what I ate today or how many miles I ran today. I have random and deep thoughts and I analyze those thoughts and I have pep talks with myself and I love sharing those things. I like to stimulate others to ask themselves hard questions and to look within themselves to realize WHY they do the things they do. I like to analyze myself this same way and apparently the most efficient way of doing that is by writing, so I will continue. So I'm deciding today that my blog's direction is to follow my life's journey to become a happier, healthier and more loving person (to myself).

Wow, I didn't expect this is where I was going at all today - but I'm so glad that I did. I guess even when I think I have nothing positive to say, I can now find a way to spin it in that direction. That's improvement already!

Things I love - Week 6

2009-10-19T09:02:00.000-05:00

This week instead of posting things that I'm loving, I'm going to post 25 reasons I love being healthy. This is all a part of my big plan to get my a** back on track with eating.

I love being healthy because:

1. I sleep better

2. I have more energy

3. I feel better, overall

4. I get sick less often

5. My blood pressure has gone down

6. My resting heart rate has gone down

7. For the first time in my life, I actually lost weight in a year instead of gained

8. My clothes are getting bigger and I'm buying smaller sizes

9. I have set goals and I have met them. Once I meet these goals, I set new ones

10. I feel accomplished

11. I'm working to improve ALL aspects of my life

12. I have potentially found my life's passion - healthy eating and cooking

13. I will be taking this passion and making a career of it when I return to school in January to become a RD

14. I can eat anything that I want, in moderation

15. I am less stressed

16. Healthy food tastes better

17. I no longer have an upset stomach every day

18. I no longer have headaches every day

19. My skin is so much clearer with all the water and not all the greasy food

20. I am a RUNNER!

21. I know that with positive thinking, I can do anything I want

22. I've found a way to FINALLY be happy about life

23. I have made incredible and wonderful friends that are also striving to be healthy

24. I have set an example for the people in my life to also be healthy

25. I know that anything is possible now that I am healthy and my options will only grow as times goes by

To see the rest of the Things I love series, click here.

Why do you love being healthy? If you aren't healthy, do any of these things inspire you to pursue a healthy lifestyle?

Avoiding the excuse mill.

2009-10-19T08:44:00.005-05:00

I already admitted that I'm having a rough time lately. And despite posting that blog and admitting my mistakes, I still had a rough weekend. I just can't get it together and this really isn't normal for me at all.

But this morning I started thinking about WHY I've been eating so horribly. Granted, the not exercising part I haven't been able to help (foot is much better, going spinning today THANK GOD), but that should be a separate issue from food. And honestly, everything reason I came up with for my poor eating is an excuse. So I hurt my foot and can't exercise? Does that mean healthy living ceases to exist? No! I decided that there is absolutely no reason I should be so off track and I won't get back ON track until I acknowledge that healthy living still continues no matter what.

This is especially important for me as my family is coming in town this weekend. My family is not unhealthy, by any means. But that still won't change the fact that I'll be going out to eat with them Friday and Saturday nights, as well as attending a big family cookout Sunday. My mom and one of my aunts have serious food allergies (soy, caffeine, lactose, corn, wheat all between the two of them), so I know there will be plenty of healthy food available. It still is in the back of my head as an obstacle to succeed. Anytime that I'm not 100% in control of my surroundings, I just feel panic. That's not okay!

Everything boils down to self discipline. If you want something bad enough, you'll find a way to make it happen. I want to be healthy. I want to lose weight. I want to be a size 10. There are a lot of things that I want and everything requires work. You can't expect change without the work. So it's simply a matter of being strict with yourself and remembering all of these goals every time you make a decision.

Self discipline is such a bi**h huh? But, I've said it time and time again - you're biggest obstacle is yourself. It's all about those mental games in your head. It's always acknowledging that you ARE worth it and that you are in control of your actions and your life. At the end of the day, no one caused me to eat bad besides myself. And so what if I am going out to eat? Sure my sodium intake might be a little high, but that doesn't mean anything else has to be. I have to keep remembering one of my healthy living mantras that I use when I vacation, "I will eat the healthy option when it's available so I will not feel guilty when the option is not available."

Honestly, the option to eat healthy is almost ALWAYS there. That's pretty great!

So this week is dedicated to my self discipline again. I will stick to my routine. I will stick to my weekly goals. I will stick to my planned meals. I will hopefully have a good spinning class today and not feel pain in my foot and be able to continue exercising this week. I'm going to take is slow, but I will not let my exercise affect my food. There's no reason!

I'm going to keep working on these principles week and week again until I can get in a solid routine and build the healthy habits again. If I think things are hectic now, just imagine how I'm going to feel in January when I'm in school again! I know myself. I know that if I can't get this under control right now, I'm in trouble once school starts again. Healthy living can defeat anything though, as long as I make it my priority and my focus. I will do this. I'm not giving myself any other option.

Sometimes all you really need is a pep talk with yourself and a reminder why you are doing this. Being healthy is possible and it's actually a lot easier than it seems. You just have to beat those mental demons!

Confession Time.

2009-10-16T09:39:00.003-05:00

I have a confession.

This week sucks.

Between being suppper stressed out all day Tuesday and announcing my huge news to everyone Wednesday, and finally all of you on Thursday and a foot injury (that I don't think I've mentioned) it's been a bad week.

Recap on the foot:

Sunday I had a 3 mile neighborhood run scheduled. Towards the end of the run, I noticed my right foot starting to hurt right below my ankle and on the underside of the foot. Weird, I thought. Monday it was a little sore, but I still went to spin class. By Monday night, I couldn't walk. I was hobbling around and limping and in serious pain. The pain seemed to be coming from my bone so I was just SURE that I had a stress fracture. That really stressed me out, just adding to why Tuesday was such a hot mess. I decided on Tuesday that I would take a few days completely off exercise and if by Friday it didn't feel better, I'd go to the doctor.

But, since Tuesday I CAN'T keep food out of my mouth. Healthy or not healthy, I can't stop eating. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's mental, or emotional or actually my body thinks it's still working out so it needs food - but I've been AWFUL the past few days. And every day I wake up and vow that I'm done and back to my normal routine and diet, and I have a great breakfast, but then something happens and I just start eating. I haven't been tracking my calories, but thankfully I don't think I've been THAT high. I know I'm over my limits, but not by much. But the quality of what I'm eating isn't good. I'm not eating a lot of fruits/veggies. I'm definitely not getting enough water. And I'm way overdoing the salt because I've been nonstop swollen since Tuesday. I was so dehydrated yesterday and couldn't get water in my body fast enough that I had some gatorade because I was that miserable!

I get home every night and I can't work out and I've been exhausted so I just lay on the couch and watch TV ALLLLL night. I hate this! Why am I doing this? I've been so tired, so out of energy, haven't been sleeping at night. These are all blatant reminders of exactly why I eat healthy and exercise and have changed my priorities, but this week I just haven't been doing it. I can't wait to work out again. Seriously, I don't know if I'll ever take exercise for granted again. I've been moody, upset, depressed, negative because I'm not working out and not eating well. I can't take it anymore!

Today is hard for me. I decided this morning to stop hiding and just tell people. Tell everyone I'm having a hard week and hope that it gives me a reason to stay on track. Today is my day to get back on track. But tonight, I already have plans to go out for Mexican food before a concert with friends. Believe me, I can make my meal as healthy as possible - but it just makes me not want to! It gives me an excuse to feel like it's okay to eat poorly all day. BUT IT'S NOT!

Part of the problem, and I should have known this going into this week, is that I don't have much fresh food. Since Matt and I are trying to drain down our can and frozen veggie stash, I didn't buy much fresh food. Somehow when I don't have fresh food that has a "freshness window", and therefore needs to be cooked, I find myself slipping more. I can't wait to get some of this frozen food cooked so I can go back to my fresh fruits/veggies! Yes I need to have some frozen food on hand at all times, but maybe I'm not going to focus SO much on it because I'm just sabotaging myself now.

Today I didn't' bring my lunch. That was not a good idea, but seriously I couldn't think of a thing I had that I wanted to eat at home so I told myself I'd get a subway sandwich for lunch. But now I'm SO tempted to get pizza from my work cafeteria because it's only $1 a slice and I'm on a strict budget now that I'm going back to school. BUT I won't allow it. Subway it will be. Healthy (er.. I wouldn't call subway healthy really) food it will be. I will make dinner healthy. I am acknowledging my problem and I need everyone's help to get back on track please!

My foot, by the way, feels a LOT better. Actually, every day I stay off of it it feels even better the next day. Since I had already planned to take today off exercise I'm giving it one more day and will do something tomorrow. I'm not sure when my next run will be. I was supposed to run a very fun 5K next Thursday so hopefully I'm back 100% by then and can run it!

I just hate that everything for me is black and white. Either I'm working out hard and eating very well and things are great, or I'm doing none of it. I never feel like I can balance the food without the exercise. And since exercise is CRUCIAL for me and my well-being, I always try to eat well to fuel the workouts. But, I'll keep working on it. I'll remember that I'm not perfect. And I'll remember that in the long-run, this week means nothing. It's just a blip and I'll get over it!

Healthy life is a marathon, not a sprint.

VERY big news

2009-10-15T07:58:00.000-05:00

I feel really bad! Yesterday I posted some huge huge news on my spark blog to share with all my spark friends, but I didn't post it here. Part of me didn't want to make the news SO public, even though a lot of people already know. But then my friend Heather posted a reference on her blog to me announcing this big news, and I had a lot of visitors come over from her site - to a blog about stress but not a happy blog with my good news!

So I have kindly asked Heather to re-reference this news and decided to put up a short announcement of my news.

I'm going back to school to be a Registered Dietician!

For those of you who don't know, I have two bachelors degrees right now in Finance and Economics. I love both of these subjects SO much, but I don't really like the application of them in real life. Sure, I would love to go work for a hedge fund or the Federal Reserve, but that's just not something I'd be able to do and still balance my personal life. In addition, the office scene isn't for me. I like human interaction and making my own schedule and being on my feet. I had been playing around with the idea of going to Culinary School months ago, but decided I don't want to be a chef. Then I realized that being a Registered Dietician is even better because I can help people every single day make healthy choices in their lives and I can go above and beyond what the typical RDs do and SHOW people how to prepare delicious, quick and healthy meals. At some point I'd love to have cooking seminars or classes for patients to come in and all of us cook together. I'm very excited about it! Plus the fact that becoming a RD is no easy task appealed to me even more, as it's a prestigious occupation that not many people follow or achieve. I love a good challenge, so sign me up!

Here's how it will work. I'll take a few of my basics at night/online starting in January while I'm still working. At some point in the summer I'll have to take a pretty serious chemistry class that I HAVE to take in the summer and I HAVE to probably take during the day, as there will probably only be one section offered. At that point, I'll quit my job and go back full time to school. I imagine I will wait tables for income like I did my first time in Ugrad. I will finish my third bachelor's degree in Spring/Summer 2011 and start a Dietetic internship/combined Master's program in Fall 2011. I'll graduate from that in Spring 2013 with my Master's degree and be eligible to sit for the RD exam. From there, who knows!

I'm realllly excited. I'm reallllly nervous. But I really feel confident in my decision and I've weighed all the options, calculated everything and I know I can do this. I'm a little nervous about being a poor college kid again with crappy school health insurance, but it's only 3 years and I can do anything for 3 years. (well.. I can do this for 3 years). I'm super excited to be roughly 27 and have my masters already done! I wasn't planning to go back for my MBA until I was in my 30s and I could never really figure out how that would work, but I think that's because the MBA probably wasn't for me. This is do-able, I'm willing to sacrifice for it and I've shown myself how much I really want to be a RD.

I got accepted to the undergrad program yesterday, so that's why all of this kind of leaked out over the past few days. I'm really not looking forward to all the stress next semester with 12 hours of school and 40 hours of work, but I know I can do it!

A lesson in change

2009-10-14T08:54:00.000-05:00

Just a note: This blog is about stress just because it's what I'm dealing with, but you can just as easily swap stress out for whichever emotion plagues you and it will mean just the same to you. The general thought here is that becoming who you want to be and overcoming these emotions and issues CAN happen, but it takes work.

I've talked about stress before, but today I want to say that no matter how many times you plan, you will STILL feel stress. No matter how many times you have a talk with yourself and coach yourself through a situation, you'll still feel stress. But it's really how you deal with the stress that lets you know you are coping and if you are changing.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Stress is nothing more than a lack of confidence. You feel stress or anxiety because you are not confident with your ability to cope. You are not confident that other's will approve of the decisions you make. You are not confident in your ability to perform. The list can go on and on, but trust me - next time you feel yourself in a stressful situation think about what is realllly going on and I guarantee you'll be surprised and better able to handle the stress once you break the situation down.

So as much as I can tell you these tips and I can remember these tips for myself, it all comes down to the heat of the moment. HOW are you going to act in that moment when you feel stress? Are you going to throw yourself a pity party and walk around sad and crying all day? Or will you stand up to stress and use your tools and techniques and beat it?

I wish I could tell you that it's easy. That once you learn the techniques and you master the mental battle and you have the stress relief process down that you'll have no problems. But today, I'm here to tell you that it's not easy. It's a choice every single day that you have to make to be a different person - no matter what you are trying to change in your life. Every day if you wake up and just try to make it to the end of the day you probably aren't feeling very accomplished are you? Change takes work and that hard work will pay off if you can dedicate and commit yourself to it.

You'll never be the person that you want to be without some hard work, some sacrifices and some conscious choices every day to make yourself better.

I say all of this as mostly a reminder to myself that this is what I'm doing. I'm working to make my life better in a thousand ways. I am working to become happy. I'm working to become healthy. I'm working to become something that I never thought I could be. I'm working to control my own life, instead of letting my stress or worse, someone else, control my life. And every day I have to wake up and make those small changes and small adjustments to make these big goals happen.

Every day you probably won't be able to do it. And that's okay. In fact, it's better than okay because it shows you that it's work every.single.day. You think you have changed? Throw yourself in a hard situation and see if you can navigate on auto-pilot. Even if you can't, that's okay. We are not perfect, nor are we striving for perfection. I remind myself this every single day.

I had a bad day yesterday. It wasn't any single event that made the day bad, but rather just a series of situations that I did not control individually so they all snowballed together and threw me really off. I had a lot of stress and instead of dealing with my stress and using my techniques, I ate my stress. And instead of having one weak moment and picking myself back up, I threw myself a pity party and I blew the entire day. Am I proud? No. Am I okay with it? Yes, I am okay with it. I'm not perfect. Not every single day is going to be perfect. Some days I'll beat my demons and other days I won't. The best thing about yesterday though, is that it was yesterday. It's not today. It's not tomorrow. What happened yesterday, happened and now it's over. Today I woke up and I chose to make today better. I chose to swallow my hurt pride and my mistakes and I'm going to make today better. Is today going to be the best day ever? No, probably not. But I'll make it as good as I can given the circumstances and tomorrow, I'll shoot for an even better day.

That's what I want to do now. I want to make every day better than the previous day. Why wouldn't I? Every day I learn something new about myself, I test myself and I grow as a person. It only makes sense that I would wake up and try to be better the next day.

"A man who wants something will find a way; a man who doesn't will find an excuse." - Stephan Dolley Jr.

Which do you choose? A way or an excuse? Make today better than yesterday and make tomorrow better than today. Continuous improvement is the best gift you can give yourself.

The art of moderation

2009-10-12T14:37:00.002-05:00

I promised I would blog on moderation and here we go!

Moderation is probably one of the most difficult parts of being healthy for me. That seems weird, because in reality moderation is easy - ESPECIALLY the concept. People make it sound sooooo easy. You hear people all the time say, "Have a few bites of whatever you really want, then stop and move on to something healthier." OR "You can have any food you want, you just can't have it all." OR "If you don't want to exercise, just get to the gym and start your workout and if you really want to stop, then stop but at least you did something." I'm sure there are a lot of people that would tell you that practicing moderation in their lives is easier than running, or easier than learning to cook, etc. etc. And for some, IT IS - but for people like me, it's not. You can't tell an alcoholic to have just ONE drink and expect them to be able to control themselves. Same thing for someone like me with a self-proclaimed food addiction and definite tendencies to eat when emotional - I can't just stop. I've never been able to figure out how to stop. So, I've avoided.

Avoiding has been key for me since I changed my life. I have been avoiding the areas of my life I don't feel like I control. Eating is the big one for me, so I have been avoiding the foods I know will "trigger" me to bad behavior. I try not to eat out. I try to only drink on nights where I don't have to work the next day. I avoid sweets and treats that are brought into the office for birthdays, holidays, etc. And sometimes, avoiding is a great tool. Some days, I just really don't need to eat that cookie and avoiding it was the right thing to do (this was me on Friday FYI). But other times, I get upset because I feel like a hermit. I feel like I can never go out when invited and my social life is lacking and sometimes, I just feel defeated because I can't have all the things I used to love and eat constantly. So on those days, I go and I try to control myself. I try to moderate myself. Some days I do well and other days I don't. But I can guarantee you that almost every time that I've gone out and tried to control myself, I've felt guilty afterward. Why? Because even though I tried, I still overdid it. Even if I was in my calorie range for the day and had a great day, I still feel like I'm just slowing down the process of losing weight. Well, that's just not fair to myself now is it?

As I've been reading more and more entries on several healthy lifestyle blogs, I see the bloggers every.single.day. practice moderation. Some days these girls, who are maintaining weight losses and no longer counting all those calories, eat and drink things that I'm shocked to see. Other days, they have the most perfect food day and I feel like they might be starving themselves! I see some of them limit themselves to one glass of wine, or one cookie, or one half a cookie even! And every time I see someone else do it, I wonder, "How??? How can they be satisfied from that? How can they not want more? And even if they want more, how do they keep themselves from eating more?"

And then, it kind of hit me. The scariest part about what I'm about to tell you is I'VE TOLD THIS TO PEOPLE. I'VE SAID THESE WORDS. And yet, they still didn't latch on in my brain and stick around for the next situation I needed to hear these words. I finally told myself, "You don't need it." Think about it, do you really need a large french fry? Or would you be satisfied with a small? Think about the law of diminishing returns (I realize I'm just showing off my inner economics geek, but go with me here). The law of diminishing returns states that the return (satisfaction) on that second french fry is going to be slightly lower than the return on the first french fry. You really really wanted the first french fry. Now you've had one, so the second is still good - but not AS good. By the time you get to the 25th fry, you're just eating them because they are there. Your return is so low at this point, you would be fine just stopping - but most of us can't because they are sitting there.

So more light bulbs started going off in my head. I've realized that what these girls are doing that I'm not doing is completely mental (really, you can't be that surprised. I've said it before - most of this game is mental). They are eating half that cookie and drinking that one glass of wine and telling themselves, "Wow, that was great." They realize they don't need more than what they've given themselves and they say, "Brain.. we're done here." Because they have a completely positive attitude towards the experience, they are able to practice moderation. Contrasted to me, who is bitter because I can't have another cookie - or sad because that wine tastes SO good and I want another glass. The entire time I'm indulging myself instead of savoring the food and enjoying how the food tastes, I'm sad because I can't have more. Next thing you know, the cookie is gone and I forgot to enjoy it and want another - whoops.

I've played with this idea of needing/not needing the food for a while now, but it wasn't until this weekend that I felt completely in control of moderation. Friday I really wanted a glass of wine and I had one bottle in my house. I asked Matt if he would split it with me. We did and it was great. Now the old me would have said, "lets go buy another" or "I'll switch to beer" to keep that buzz going. But I didn't - I told myself that was great, switched to water and went to bed when I got "hungry" and couldn't find anything decent to satisfy myself with.

Saturday I met a friend for lunch. I really wanted to eat thai food at a restaurant in my old hometown, so I suggested we meet there. I felt bad though because I really knew exactly what I wanted to eat, and while it wasn't that bad - the chicken egg roll I also wanted was. I considered not getting it. But then I'd feel sad. I considered asking my friend to split it with me. Then I started remembering how much food is served at this restaurant and the last time I was there I estimated my meal was over 1200 calories. Yikes! So, I decided to do something I never do - I asked for a to-go box and boxed up half of everything (except the veggie) that I was served. I had half a chicken egg roll, chicken satay skewers with peanut sauce, brown rice and garlic sautéed green beans. I ate all of the green beans and asked for another order to go for the next day. It was fabulous, both days I had it!

After lunch Saturday, my friend and I were talking and I started craving frozen yogurt with rainbow sprinkles. My friend told me about a new frozen yogurt place in Denton that was like coldstone for yogurt - you serve yourself, you pick the toppings and they weigh your yogurt and you pay for it. That's reallllly want I wanted. So we went. These containers were HUGE. No lie, they probably would have fit about 4 cups of frozen yogurt and there was only one size available. Since you serve yourself, I was careful to put a lot of yogurt in my cup and eyeballed about 3/4 cup(145 calories) of froyo in my container. I went to the toppings bar and was struck by everything they had! It all looked SO good! I could very easily have put everything on my fro yo, but I stuck with my rainbow sprinkles and savored the entire thing. It hit the spot. About half way through, I was sad I didn't have much left. I wanted more. Then I told myself, eat what you have left! After I finished eating it, I drank water and listened to the radio while driving home and didn't think about more fro yo and was totally happy with what I'd had.

Saturday night I really wanted a beer. We had bought some Sam Adams Imperial White (soooo good) but it's very strong. I was careful to wait until I was done with dinner, wait until I had finished a lot of water and chilled my beer glass. Then I poured one beer into my glass and slowly drank it. I didn't even finish the entire beer! It felt wonderful! I felt empowered! And most of all, I felt satisfied.

It's amazing what a little mental shift can do for you. I had never felt in control because no one had every taught me how to. But, I'm so thankful that I figured it out on my own. Sure, I'll have days where I don't control myself but realizing everything I just shared has been an eye opener for me. I can have anything I want, I just have to be happy with my choices. I'll probably always want more, but I'll make the choice to not have more, just like I make the choice to work out and drink water and count calories.

Next time I'm feeling off about something, instead of telling myself, "I can't" or "I'm out of control", I'll just stop and disect what my brain is really thinking about. I'll evaluate the mental aspect first, because I'm learning that the mental aspect of being healthy is far more hard and scary than the physical aspects. You can do anything you put your mind to do - so start trying it!

Things I love - Week 5

2009-10-12T13:18:00.000-05:00

It's that time again!

1. Ke$ha - TiK ToK. For everyone who is not into the top 40 music scene (me) or into Itunes new music Tuesdays (me), this may be confusing. Apparently the artists name is Kesha or Ke$ha.. really I'm not sure. I didn't even know what to link for this song (ah I feel SO old!) It's #38 on the itunes top list and you should download it if you are looking for new workout music. The song is sooooooo not something I would normally listen to, but I love it - especially for running. I especially love how she says she brushes her teeth with a bottle of jack. You go girl!

2. Chobani Greek Yogurt - Well I'm officially back in a yogurt mood! Last week I posted about how Cascade Fresh Yogurt was on my faves list, and this week it's Chobani. I love it! I was very skeptical to try it at first, and I still haven't convinced myself to eat it without granola but it's full of protein and very smooth and creamy! I'm going to buy some more tomorrow! One 6 oz container is roughly 140 calories, 14 grams of protein and no fat. Again, I wouldn't mind the fat - but I'll take no fat for those calories!

3. Clif Z Bar - Spooky S'mores. I love Clif Z bars. I haven't told y'all about them yet, but they are fantastic. I'm not a huge granola/energy bar fan because generally they taste a little off and they are full of calories! Not Clif Z bars. Each one is approximately 120 calories, has fiber and actually tastes like a cookie! I'm totally okay eating these and knowing they are made for kids, because I actually like them! Spooky S'mores is definitely my favorite, but since it's seasonal I'm a little sad. I've been stocking up and I'll continue to stock up (hopefully they will go on sale after Halloween!). I keep these in my purse, in my car and in my gym bag for a quick snack that's both filling and tasty. And anytime lately I've been craving a big ole brownie or cookie, I go straight to my stash and have one! I bought a huge box at costco and it definitely was worth the money!

4. Moderation - I'm actually about to post a blog on this, so keep an eye out. But this past weekend I finally feel like I've mastered moderation and I wanted to share it with everyone today. Stay tuned for my latest blog on it (I'll post back to it once it's up) and work on moderating something this week - whether it's food, exercise, play time/work time, etc! You can do it! Moderation is the key to creating balance in your life, which will allow you to be healthy but happy at the same time!

Click here to see the other entries in the Things I love series!

The dilemmas of speeding up.

2009-10-09T15:03:00.001-05:00

I couldn't decide what to blog about today. I don't have any fun pictures to show you of my food... I had the same thing for dinner last night as I had for lunch and I'd already told you about that, so that was pretty boring. Lunch today I went out for my bosses' birthday with my work group and it was pretty boring too. And I have no idea what I'm having for dinner. So clearly, food was out of the question.

Then I thought about telling you about how I'm avoiding eating the birthday cookies right now. But that was a pretty short topic. See? we're done.

And so my mind started wandering (as it often does) and landed on a beautiful and wonderful topic - running! I knew today we needed to talk about some running, especially given how bad my last run was and how I need to make today's much better!

Since finishing my 5K, my goal was to speed up my runs. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I'm slow! One of my goals for October is to actually run a mile in sub 11:30 but I haven't yet. I have a hard time keeping track of my lap times since I don't have anything on me but my watch and my ipod when I run. I could just run one mile, but that's not fun. I won't burn any calories and I'll just want to go for longer. My first mile is never my fastest mile.

This is a really funny story and it's totally related to this topic - I promise. About 2 years ago I really wanted some knee high length boots to wear during the fall. I have very big calves, so clearly - it's really hard and embarrassing to try on boots that you can't zip up over your calves. I found some that were Jessica Simpson brand that were scrunchy, so even though I couldn't get them all the way up over my calve, it didn't matter because they were made to look scrunchy and didn't look that bad! As I was trying to jam my leg in the boot at the store, the sales woman was looking at me a little strange. I was mortified and I just blurted out the first excuse I could that wasn't, "Lady, I'm fat." I told this woman that I was a runner and that's why I had huge calves. She seemed very impressed and pleased with this answer (wow, she was stupid - as was I) and asked if I ran long or short distances. Well, I wasn't expecting this question and I blurted out, "Oh both.. I mix it up."

I've never felt more stupid in my life than that moment and clearly it's because I was TOTALLY wrong! First of all, runners have lean and long calves. Running tones your calves baby! Also, I've yet to hear anyone that both a short distance runner and long distance runner. Sure, long distance runners run shorter distances while training - but talk to anyone's who has ran a marathon and they will tell you they don't enjoy sprinting their heart out in the 400m.

(or at least, I assume. But I'm generally right so we'll leave it at that.) (kidding!)

So, the point of the story is that now I know I'm a distance runner. I love long distance running and even though running that first mile is like the hardest thing I've ever done, every.time.i.do.it. I LOVE those later miles. I am able to run slow, I can look at things around me and I can be all over my head for as long as I want. I'm not out of breath, I'm not hurting - I'm comfortable and SO happy with my life. Running long distance is my high and I can't wait until I can run more than 4 miles (soon - ish?)

The idea of running fast does not appeal to me whatsoever. Even now, when I tell myself to run as fast as I can for 1/4 a mile, I want to die after every time. I can run for 30 minutes doing HIIT and only burn half of what I burn in a long run. And I worked harder! That's not right people, it's just not right. Not to mention walking now is SO boring. Even when I'm warming up, I can't wait for it to be over so I can run. So I have a dilemma, clearly. I'm slow. I don't want to train for a 10K or work on improving my distance until I've improved my speed. But I HATE the speed workouts. Hate them. And lately, when the option of a speed run or no run comes up, I've been choosing no run. But given the choice or speed run or long run, I always choose long run. Same with long run/no run. Long run please!

I love running distance. It's my thing. I've been told as I run more and more I'll speed up, and I have some. The first mile I've ever ran was at close to a 14 minute pace and I'm down to about 12:30 right now, just from increasing distance. But at what point do I need to stop improving my distance and working on my speed? At the pace I'm at now, it would take me 1.5 hours to run a 10K and that sounds like it sucks. I just can't make myself do these speed workouts for the life of me! I have considered maybe taking parts of my long runs and runner faster then at a slower pace. Almost like HIIT with jogging intervals. But, doing that for 3 miles straight sounds like it sucks. And I don't have the capability (or mental math ability) to know my pace on my own. It sounds like asking for a Garmin forerunner for Christmas is a must at this point if I want to get faster.

I don't know the answers to these questions. I don't know if any of you do? What I do know is that I love to run and I love to run distance. So maybe that's what I'll keep doing, for now? I have another 5K coming up one month from yesterday! I'll just work on running the 3.1 mile distance as fast as I can outside and get ready for that race? I'm not sure.. I feel guilty for not doing speed, but I also will never make myself do something I don't like doing. We all know what it leads to and I can't afford to keep missing runs.

Help!

Good News Thursday!

2009-10-08T16:27:00.002-05:00

Remember this post about my eye?

Well, I went to the ophthamologist this morning to have it looked at. The way it's gone since I posted that blog is: I went to my family doctor to have my blood drawn and potentially a CT scan. My doctor ran all my normal thyroid bloog panels and everything came back normal. So she referred me to see an ophthamologist and that led me to this morning. In the past few weeks, the swelling of my eye has gone WAY down and I've been able to see a lot better with it. But you can never be too careful.

The appointment took forever! I was there about 2 hours total. But, he had very good news for me! I have none of the typical symptoms associated with Thyroid Eye disorder and it looks like the inflammation was just from a viral infection. I wasn't even sick, just had bad allergies, when this started - but nonetheless that's how he diagnosed it and said he could see some signs of a viral infection in my right eye (the good eye). He also told me that it looks like I've developed an allergy to my contacts, which is why I have such watery and itchy eyes! Obviously that sounds really scary, but it's not. He said that at some point in the future if I don't want to wear glasses I should look into LASIK. Eh, we'll give it a few more years. I"m a little scared of that procedure!

The only drawback was he dilated my eyes, or did something, that left me unable to see anything close up for a few hours. I came home after my appointment to change for work (his office is right down the road), but decided that I probably wouldn't be able to work for a few hours. I called my boss and he very very kindly said I could put in a few hours work at home and just turn in time for the rest of hours I was gone! Yes! I couldn't do much really while I was waiting for this stuff to wear off... so I made some breakfast since I hadn't eaten yet.

Yesterday I finally found Chobani at my local grocery story - so I picked up two containers to try and also a container of honey Oikos. I also bought some very yummy looking chocolate granola.

Here's my snack from yesterday afternoon.

I also stocked up on Clif Z bars - Spooky Smores. They are definitely my favorite flavor and I'm so upset that they are seasonal :( I might have to back and buy some more to make it until next fall.

For breakfast today I had the same granola with a strawberry Chobani. I have to admit, I was really nervous about trying greek yogurt because I've only had the plain kind and did not like it. But both kinds I've tried were really good. I think I like the strawberry better than the honey, so far.

I finally fell asleep but it only lasted about 45 minutes before Matt called me to tell me about his jalepeno eating contest at work (he lost. sad face) At this point I knew I had to wake up and make lunch and start working. I was starving!! I had planned on making homemade hamburgers tonight using some 93% lean ground beef I bought a month or so ago and froze. I don't eat beef that often, but when I do my #1 choice is a hamburger. I love them! I also knew I had some sweet potatoes that needed to be eaten soon. I didn't really want a baked sweet potato like I normally have. I also knew that if I wanted sweet potato fries, I should use use the frozen Alexis brand ones that I had. So instead, I made sweet potato chips. They were so good. I have to make these again. A few got burned because I obviously cut them much thinner than the others. I also popped them under the broiler to get them a little crispier, which burned a few. I didn't care! They were awesome!

I made an extra serving for dinner. Can't wait to eat them! I put a little EVOO, cinnamon and brown sugar on these and mixed in a plastic bag and baked at 400 degrees for like 25 minutes. Served with a little ketchup on the side.

Here's my burger on toasted WW bread with grainy mustard and 2% pepperjack cheese melted on top.

For the burger, I took roughly a pound of 93% lean ground beef and added grated garlic, Worcestershire sauce, dried onions, mesquite Mrs. Dash seasoning and no salt added Kroger steak seasoning. I made four patties and pan cooked them in a little EVOO. After they cooked I let the oil drain off on paper towels before adding some cheese to this one and microwaving for like 20 seconds to melt the cheese. I would have LOVED some fresh tomato, lettuce, onions and pickles on my burger like I always eat, but I didn't have any of that! Darn!

All together now!

I also snacked on this bowl (times 2) of blue tortilla chips and one string cheese while I cooked. I was a starving girl!

I don't think I could ever work at home only. I've been so distracted especially since my VPN is so slow on my computer. It's taking my computer twice as long to pull data, so everytime I try to pull something I switch over to do something else and get side tracked. Going back now to finish this one project I started yesterday! Spin tonight, can't wait!

*muah* LLB

Scariest night of my life.

2009-10-07T22:00:00.004-05:00

I am deeply troubled by my run tonight. It was literally the most scared, confused and terrible night I've had in a long time. Here's how it started.

Today my plan was to run and to go to yoga tonight. Normally I pack a bag and go to the gym straight after work and run on the indoor track. I had planned an easy run - 1.5 to 2 miles. I haven't had a long run since my 5K and I wanted to make sure I took it easy on my body. At some point during the day I realized that is was realllly nice outside and I would love to go on a long run outside. Since I ~~hadn't had time~~ forgot to pack a bag, this worked well since I could go straight from home. Matt was meeting me at home at 6:30 for dinner so I left right at 5:30 for my run and planned to be back right in time for dinner with him!

I headed out of my apartment complex and through the park behind it - towards the starting point of my usual neighborhood run. I typically run 3 miles in my neighborhood but walk about a .5 mile warm up and .5 mile cool down - 4 miles total. I was very close to my starting spot when I noticed the entrace for a neighborhood trail. I'd seen this trail plenty of times, as I often run on the streets that it goes under and I walked over to look at the map and see how long the trail was. I also had remembered a blog from Stef earlier in the day where she switched up her route and had great success and I thought this would be a great way to have my first long run in a while.

So looking at the map, I see this:

Click this and it will enlarge for you

Now I'm starting almost all the way to the right side. I'll show you in a minute exactly where. I notice that there are 1/4 mile indicators and if I run down to Bob Eden, I'll have a 2.5 mile round trip. PERFECT! So I start running on the trail. I instantly notice that the first part of this trail is not paved. Hmm. Also, the trail starts bobbing and weaving all over the place and it's in a thick wooded area. Great. In case you don't know this about me, I'm addicted to the crime section of CNN and therefore, I live life in fear that one day I am going to be a tragic victim like alllll these people I read about. This was the first time of the night I seriously thought I might not make it home. Thank goodness I had my road id on!

So the trail has lots of splinter trails that pop off and I have no idea where any of them are going or which trail to follow. Finally we get on pavement and go under the first street and I know exactly where I am. I start feeling much better about this. Around 10 minutes into the run, I start realizing that I haven't seen any trail markers yet. SURELY it has not taken me 10 minutes to run 1/4 mile? Then I tell myself, I know for a fact it doesn't take me a long - I've timed my 1/4 mile a million times in the gym and I can walk faster than that. So I keep going. Meanwhile, I'm feeling a little uncomfortable running. The first mile is always tough for me, but this one was hurting. I didn't feel comfortable until about 20 minutes in, then quickly I started getting side stiches and then felt like stopping. This wasn't good. But, I hadn't seen any mileage markers, so I kept running. By the time I hit 30 minutes running, I was in Bob Eden park. That means, according to this map, it took me 30 minutes to run 1.25 miles. So that's a pace of 2.5 miles per hour. I'm RUNNING. Granted, I'm a slow runner, but I was not walking. I was running at probably a 4.0. At this point, I'm getting really upset.

So I'm entering Bob Eden park and I have no idea what to do - turn around? Take another splinter trail? Keep going until I see another one of these maps? Well a woman who had started in front of me near my apartment was now right in front of me and I saw her taking a splinter trail. I figured she knew the path and so I followed her. BIG MISTAKE. This splinter trail was awful. There was mud EVERYWHERE. It was like wayyy in the woods and I was freaking out. I saw a man and a dog walking way off the trail and not towards me.. so I'm running and the next thing I know, something is jumping on my back. Yeah, it's that dog (scared the living sh&% out of me). The dog tackled me and got it's muddy paws ALL over my tights. Great. The guy doesn't even seem to notice that the dog isn't near him? So the dog runs away and I encounter a lot of hills, at which point I start walking. Then I notice the trail is ending?? Yeah, I now have ended up at the bottom splinter that dead ends into a residential neighborhood.

I've now labeled this for you.

So, clearly mistake #1 of the run was to go on this GD trail in the first place. Mistake #2 was definitely following that woman. And mistake #3 was not turning around and back tracking at the end of this trail. I just started walking through the neighborhood. At this point, I've been gone about 45 minutes and I have absolutely no idea where I am. I had no cell phone. I had nothing with me but a water bottle, a jacket and my runner ipod. I started freaking out. I don't know where I am. I'm in a not that nice neighborhood. Matt is going to be home in 15 minutes and he's going to freak out because I'm not there.

So I started running again. It was the only thing I could do to get home faster. I was running and I saw a sketchy-ish man standing in the front yard of a clearly abandoned house just standing there. He saw me, then started walking towards me, but on the opposite side of the road. And right about then, I decided I was about to die. I kept running, I didn't make eye contact, and thank the lord - he walked right past me. I must have turned around 25 times in the next 2 minutes to make sure he wasn't going to jump me from behind like that damn dog. By now, I was so upset, distraught, confused (that was 1.25 miles???) and upset that I don't even know what to do. I consider stopping at someone's house and asking to use their phone to call Matt. Then I decided that's less safe than still running. The sun is going to go down sometime in the next 30 minutes and I have no idea where I am, or what I'm going to do. I've honestly never been so scared in my life.

I walked for brief, brief bouts during the 15+ minutes I was in this damn neighborhood. At one point I was walking and saw cars going very fast by on a road perpendicular to the road I'm on and I took off. Sure enough, it was a street I know! And it was actually the end of the normal route I run. So I ran the whole way to the road, the rest of the way to my normal stopping point - walked briefly and ran the entire way back home. I was gone for 1 hour, 15 minutes and I burned 950 calories in that time. I did have a few walking bouts, but I estimate I ran at least 55 minutes of that entire time. My max heart rate was 202, which is 103% of my max. OMG that is awful. I've never EVER had my heart rate that high. I have no idea at what point that was - possibly the point I thought I was about to get attacked? Or maybe the time that I actually DID get attacked by the dog? I have to tell you - my feet hurt, my legs hurt and my sides hurt the entire second half of that run (when I was lost) but I kept running because at that time, that was the ONLY hope that I had of making it home before the sun went down and something bad happend. Adrenaline is pretty amazing huh?

I've never been so happy to be home. Lesson learned. I won't be doing that again. I will stick to the road. I will stick to routes I've mapped and driven before I do them. I haven't quite figured out the cell phone part yet, but I might be buying something to fix that problem.

I'm still very very confused about the distance. I mapped it on mapmyrun.com and while I can't see the entire trail, I can see the creek that it runs along and that creek is 1.7 miles from where I started to where I ended, lost. So yes, there might be some discrepancy but how in the world did it take me 30 minutes to run 1.7 miles? On the indoor track I run 2 miles in about 25 minutes. Hell, I ran 3.1 miles in like 40 minutes. I don't understand? I was definitely running my normal pace and I'm just baffled. According to mapmyrun.com my entire 1 hour 15 minute route was a little over 3 miles. Impossible! My normal 4 mile route takes me about 65 minutes and I walk a LOT more than I did tonight. I just really don't get it.

I'm happy to be okay and to be safe. I'm happy that I burned 950 calories. I'll never regret my workouts. But, I'll never do that again. Sorry City of Euless. Your trail is bull.

I will say that Matt has been bugging me for a few months to start mixing my water bottle with half gatorade, half water for my runs to alleviate my nausea IN my run. I never do it. Tonight, thank the lord, I did and that's probably one of the only ways that I got through the event without getting sick. Thank god for my boyfriend's wisdom and sort of harassment!

Also - I know I promised a walk through of how to make black bean tostadas, but frankly I've been a little shaken up all night and I completely forgot to take pictures as I made them. My sincerest apologies :( I promise I'll make them again soon and detail it for you.

Meal Planning

2009-10-07T10:11:00.004-05:00

Meal planning is so crucial for anyone trying to lose weight OR be on a budget. And imagine if you're trying to do both, how much you SHOULD meal plan.

I used to never meal plan. I would go to the grocery store, I would buy anything and everything I thought looked good and I would bring it home. Then when it was time for me to make lunch or dinner, I would almost always stick to the same things I was always eating and never really branch out. For that reason, I had a lot of food spoil and I amassed quite the collection of canned and frozen foods that always left me thinking, "What will I use this for?"

I briefly mentioned in a previous post that I now have an even larger can collection in my pantry since Matt brought a lot of his food over when he moved. Clearly, I need to work on reducing this food collection and save us some money in the coming weeks on our food budget.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at this. This is where meal planning comes in. I successfully meal planned all of September, making time each week to sit down and decide what I would make the next week. I made rough sketches of how the week would look and sometimes even entered this food into my food tracker ahead of time. Sure, I occasionally changed my mind or ended up not wanting what I had planned - but this is all a manner of self discipline and I'm working on it. The thing that really helps is to sit down at the beginning of the month and make a list of all the foods I want to make over that month. Then each week I can go in and pick and choose out of my master list I've already made. That way I make sure I'm eating everything I wanted to eat, new recipes included, while also having a choice of what I'm eating. If I've been really craving something the previous week, I make sure to incorporate it in the next weeks' plan. I leave my snacks up to me to choose that day. Snack time is really when I allow myself to indulge my cravings, so I don't feel quite so tied down and it keeps me from binging. Also I eat mostly the same breakfast every day, so breakfast I don't plan. This method is SO successful for me and I love doing it!

The past two weeks I have completely thrown my meal planning to the way side and I find myself slipping back into my old ways - except this time, I'm not buying THAT much food. Everything I have can be multi-purposed, but I don't have a plan and therefore every night this week I've stood in my kitchen thinking.. HMMM trying to decide what to eat and make. I also am finding myself making quick trips to the store several times through the week for one or two items and that isn't okay! I need a plan, I need a list for shopping and I need to start getting this can collection down!

I started thinking of what I have in my house right now that I could use to make meals to last me until the weekend. I am slightly OCD about making my meal plan for the next week and buying everything over the weekend.. therefore, if I do it today, I'll just feel off balance and most of the food I already have won't get used. So I made a mini meal plan for the next few days and only need to buy a few things today when I hit up the store. Then this weekend I'll have a big list and master plan and go into next week as a success.

I don't have a very elaborate plan over the next few days but the one I have involves using the sweet potatoes, ground beef, cabbage, brussel sprouts, tomatoes and tortillas I have. I've already decided to make black bean tostadas tonight (instruction to come!) and hamburgers tomorrow night. I've been kind of craving chicken salad, so that might be on the menu for lunch tomorrow!

But looking to next week, I currently have a few things in my pantry and freezer that I just don't know how I will use. Maybe some of you have some ideas? I have a ton of canned beans - black, pinto, etc. I'm imagining putting these into soups, pairing with rice or making beans and cornbread one night? I also have shelled edamame in my freezer. I bought a bunch after I first tried it because I thought I really liked it, and now, I don't. I've only made it a few ways though.. maybe there are better ways to make it? I find it's really dry when I sauté or roast it so I'm not that big of a fan. I sometimes put it in stir fry, but as I've said before - I'm really not a big stir fry eater. I also have some water chestnuts and canned pineapple. Not sure how to use those either unless I put them in stir fry - again, blah.

Throw me all your ideas and I'll start browsing recipes for ideas of my own. I'll be posting next week's meal plan this weekend so keep an eye out for it!

Dear this week:

2009-10-06T15:27:00.000-05:00

Last week was a really rough week for me and this week I'm totally, TOTALLY making up for it.

Frankly, I just didn't get to workout enough and now - that really shakes me up. So why didn't I get to the gym?

I don't know if I'm the ONLY person that does this.. but if not - feel free to make me feel more sane :) When I have a week that I KNOW I'm going to miss a few workouts due to other commitments, I tend to workout less on the days when I can workout. This really can be applied to all things in life because anytime I feel like I'm slacking in something, instead of making up for it 100 fold during the times that I CAN make it right, instead I slack more and blow the whole thing. I'm an all or nothing girl - if I can't give it my all, I tend to give it none :(

Last week I took Sunday off because I had worked out every day the week prior. My legs were DEAD. Tuesday I had an appointment and wasn't going to get home until late. Friday I went out for my best friend's birthday right after work and had evening plans as well. So that left me Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.. right? Well out of ALL those days - I went to spin on Monday and Thursday and called it a week. It's SO frustrating to me! I will work so so hard for 1-2 weeks straight, see the progress, then blow a week and feel like I'm right back where I started. Luckily that wasn't the case this past week, I actually managed to lose 1/2 a pound, but it still makes me really upset.

This week though, I've dedicated myself and re-focused myself. I have goals. I will achieve those goals. I will stop at NOTHING this week to see that damn scale move. Work hard, eat hard is this week's motto. I have my fitness plan all set out for the week and even a few extra little workouts to really push myself. I'm feeling good about it.

And instead of worrying about my calories like I ALWAYS do, this week I'm just listening to my body. When I'm hungry, I'll eat. When I'm not, I won't. I'm still tracking and still striving for my nutritional goals each day, but I'm not going to worry if I'm low one day and high the next. I'm putting quality, whole foods in my body this week and seeing where it takes me. Sometimes I get so caught up in eating enough calories to support my weekly burn that I just eat junk food to make up the difference. I'd rather be 100 calories short of my goal than eat 200 calories of crap and feel yucky. But some days I have no problem hitting my calorie goal. We'll see where this week takes me!

I'm also DYING to run. I haven't had a long run since my 5K. This week I'm going to have at least 2 long runs - just to build my confidence back up because lately I've been so worried that I've "lost" the ability to run since it's been a few weeks since I've logged any mileage. I know that sounds ridiculous but that's what's in my head! I know myself - I know that I really don't like doing these shorter, HIIT runs and I'd rather run 3-4 miles any day, so that's my plan for this week!

So what does everyone else do when they are faced with a rough week like mine? Do you make it the best you can or do you tend to blow it a little? What are your strategies? I'd love to hear them!

Things I love - Week 4

2009-10-06T15:10:00.000-05:00

I totally missed Things I love yesterday. Sorry people! I had a rough day and kind of just crashed when I got home from spinning and got caught up on Greys.

So here are the things I'm loving this week!

1. Cascade Fresh yogurt - I have long loved this stuff, but I have been off yogurt for a while because I've been eating cereal every day for breakfast. Well NO more folks! I bought three containers this weekend for snacks this week - peach, key lime and apricot/mango. I had one for a snack yesterday and I can't wait to have another today for a snack! This yogurt is the most perfect snack (well almost). It's sweet, filling (thank you protein!) and easy to eat in a hurry. I always buy the fat free kind because it's 110 calories for a container (perfect size for part of my daily snack). I wish that it had fat though :( I'm always super low on fat throughout my days and if this had a few grams of fat (for the same calories? Yeah, I'm dreamin').. it would be absolutely perfect! But for now, I'll call it perfect! These yogurts come in a ton of different fruit flavors and have all natural ingrediants as well as real fruit as the sweetener!

2. Emergen-C. I LOVE Emergen-C and I used to drink one every day. I stopped doing that because now that I'm exercising so much, honestly my body doesn't need the pick me up. Lately though - EVERYONE in the state of Texas is sick (um except me! yay!), so I've been loading up on this every day this week. This is a vitamin c supplement that you drop in a little water, stir and chug. It's nice because since it's mixed with liquid, the vitamin C gets in your system immediately as opposed to letting a pill dissolve in your stomach. Vitamins and my stomach don't like each other, so this baby is perfect for me. My flavor of choice is raspberry, but seriously any flavor takes getting used to. You want like 4 ounces of water and make sure you stir, then chug! And you'll feel great right after! One packet has 25 calories and is FULL of other vitamins and minerals.

3. Immaculate Baking cookies - Stef turned me on to these and I bought them for the first time last weekend. THEY ARE SO GOOD. My favorite cookie is sugar, but I never ever buy them because no one else likes them. Okay and also, I don't typically buy cookie dough. Too many nasty ingredients and way too tempting to have around the house. But these cookies are made with all natural ingredients (that you actually recognize) and only have 70 calories per little cookie! They are pre-portioned, which is perfect because I can't take a spoon to the container. AND they dont' taste fantastic when they are raw (yes I tried) since they don't have chocolate, so I'm not tempted to eat them that way! The cookies bake up in about 10 minutes and are fabulous. I'm going to stick the rest of the container in the freezer and only get one or two cookies out when I want one. Love it!

4. Personal Bill of Rights - so much of the journey to a healthy lifestyle is to improve ALL aspects of your health, mental included. A lot of people gain weight because of emotional distress that is left untreated or unrecognized. Coping with and facing those issues becomes one of the big struggles we all face when we try to start losing weight. Being an emotional eater, obviously this is something that I struggle with a lot! I was turned on to this bill of rights yesterday and I absolutely love it. I'll admit, some of the rights are very very hard to take in and also very hard to realize that you violate other's rights pretty often. So I want to share this with you today and hope that you can use it a little for yourself. If there are a few that you have a hard time with, take some time this week and work on them. One of the hardest ones for me is #5 "I have the right to make mistakes and not be perfect." I'm a perfectionist and over-achiever and so this right is very hard for me to internalize. I'll be working a little on this one this week and I hope you all can find one to work on as well. Good luck!

Check out the rest of the Things I Love series in case you missed them!

Pasta Fagioli

2009-10-04T22:41:00.001-05:00

My spark bestie Heather gave all her blog friends a challenge a week or so ago to participate in a soup swap. I immediately didn't want to participate because I don't really like soup that much, and also I suck at making it! Seriously, for some reason - all the soups I make are not that good. But then I remembered I had a Pasta Fagioli recipe in my recipe book that I was dying to make. So, I decided I would make this sometime before her deadline! Luckily while grocery shopping yesterday I remembered I needed to buy the ingrediants for it and I made it tonight!

The recipe is from Cooking Light - click here to see it.

Now as you may or may not know yet, I don't really follow recipes well. In fact, I'd rather just make up my own recipe. Typically even with a new recipe like this, I just use the recipe as a baseline for ingrediants to add and basic method of cooking. I often pick and choose from the ingrediants and sub what I like, as well as cook it my own way. This time though, knowing that I haven't ever made a soup that I liked and that I was going to post the how-to on here, I decided to follow the instructions and ingrediants as much as I could handle it. So I only made a few subs, feel free to just skip my how-to with the pretty pictures and make it for yourself! :)

Make sure you cook this in layers though like both cooking light and myself have done. If you cook in layers, you develop the maximum flavor and cooking from each item, thus making your dish DELICIOUS. Think about adding everything together in a pot.. some things are bound to be undercooked while others overcooked and all the flavors will be boring. Trust me on this!

Ingrediants:

EVOO
1/2 onion - chopped
Garlic
Sausage (I used chicken sausage, more on this later)
4 cups chicken stock (I used unsalted)
1 cup small WW pasta - preferably shell shaped (I used pipe rigate)
2 Zucchini - diced
1 can stewed tomatoes undrained
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
1 can kidney (red) beans, rinsed and drained
6 tbsp shredded parmesan cheese

1. Like any recipe of mine you'll ever see, I started with a large stock pot with some EVOO heating and a big cutting board of chopped onion and minced garlic. If you recall my last recipe, I usually grate my garlic. But since this was going to cook down in a soup, I just minced. Once the oil was heated, I added the onion and garlic and let them sweat it out a little.

2. While your onions and garlic are cooking, take your sausage and cut them out of the casings. You want to pick a sausage that is not cooked yet and in a casing for this recipe. To cut it out of the casing, just slice a knife along the length of the sausage and pull the casing off. The sausage will kind of sit in a bit lump and you will be able to ground it in your onion/garlic mixture. I bought homemade sausages in the deli section of Central Market (think Whole Foods) that were Hot Italian Chicken Sausages. They were INCREDIBLE and I can't imagine making this recipe with anything else. Forget whatever cooking light tells you - make this with hot italian sausage!

Beautiful!

Sans casings

Cooking up in the nectar of the gods - EVOO, garlic and onion :)

3. Okay, once your sausage is brown you're ready to add the chicken broth and the pasta. Remember, your sausage doesn't have to be 100% cooked since it's going to continue cooking in the soup. The original recipe calls for 1/2 cup dry pasta, but that didn't seem like enough for me. I added 1 cup pasta and 3 cups chicken stock (you'll see the extra 1 cup from above later). I use this rockin' unsalted chicken stock that is incredible. The sausage has enough sodium for this entire recipe, so really you can use an unsalted stock here and be fine on your salt levels. Try to find this stuff if you can - I use it for EVERYTHING.

Pasta and chicken stock are in!

4. Now, the instructions tell you to bring this up to a boil then cover it and let simmer for 4 minutes. This is just what I did! Next after you do this, you want to add your zucchini and your can of stewed tomatoes and all the liquid from that can.

Look at all those veggies!

Unfortunately, I fear my extra 1/2 cup of pasta is taking up a lot of the room these veggies were supposed to take. So I added an extra cup of broth to make up for it.

Literally, seconds later. SO MUCH BETTER.

5. You're going to cover this and let it simmer for 2 minutes. After you do that, add your seasonings and your beans. You are now supposed to let this simmer for another 3 or something minutes or until everything is tender. We weren't hungry yet and I wanted this to be extra tender, so I turned the heat way down and let it simmer another 15-20 minutes. It was perfection at this point.

Beans and spices are in.

After the extra simmer. Look how good that looks!

6. You're all done now! You just need to serve it up and add some shredded parmesan cheese on top! This pot made 6 servings for me and I added 1 TBSP of shredded parmesan to the top of each bowl.

My bowl!

Detail...

Seriously, I can't say enough about this soup. It was INCREDIBLE! I honestly don't know what I would do differently next time, and that's saying a lot because I mostly followed the original recipe and I usually have a million changes to make! It was SO filling. Seriously. This entire bowl was my dinner and it was only 275 calories for the whole thing (cheese included!). I can't think of any time in my entire life I've been full from that few calories for more than 2 hours. I ate this 3 hours ago and I'm completely satisified right now!

Here are the full nutritional stats per serving, 6 servings for the recipe: Cals: 276; Fat: 8g total, 2g saturated; 32g carbs; 19g protein; 181g potassium; 12g calcium; 642g sodium; 7g fiber

Definitely, definitely try this. And if you do and make any changes - please let me know so I can try them! I was thinking about adding some shredded carrots next time.

Also here is my lovely breakfast from today - I made homemade french toast, turkey bacon and 2 kiwis on the side. The french toast was WW bread, dipped in egg beaters, skim milk, brown sugar, cinnamon and flax meal. It was super super good! I'm really not a big turkey bacon fan, but we had some in the freezer that needed to be eaten, so I just made it all and we all split it. Next time, I think I'll buy center cut!

Yummy syrup on the side for dipping!