Reality check

Things have been going pretty well on the eating and exercise front. I'm frustrated that the scale is not moving, but I know I just have to keep going. I had appointments this morning at the weight control center with the doc, nutritionist, and exercise guy. Everyone said to just keep going that something will give soon. The doc ordered a test to find my resting metabolic rate (which I am secretly nerdishly excited about), and the nutritionist recommended food logging (big surprise).

One thing that really been bothering me lately is that I seem to be getting a lot of compliments again about how great I look, blah blah blah. Don't get me wrong, I love hearing it, but I'm having a hard time with it knowing that I'm actually up a few pounds and my jeans have been feeling tight. Bah. Anyway, I thought today I would give myself a reality check. Off I went to T@rget to try on some jeans -- the same jeans in the same size that were hanging in my closet. And you know what? Damn if they didn't fit just fine -- a little big in the thighs even. Dang stretchy jeans -- they SHRINK!!! Well, at least I know the clothing situation isn't quite as dire as I thought. I even picked up a few new pairs of exercise pants.

Ain't no "X' on that tag, baby!

BYOC!

It’s Friiiiidddaayyy! That means it’s time for BYOC – Bring Your Own Crazy! A little ditty you can participate in on Fridays to get to know your fellow blogger better and to give your blogging brain a break.

Copy and paste to your own blog and ENJOY!! Special thanks goes out to my fellow Jedi Kittens – Linda and Stef – for supplying me with every single question this week! No theme today – just massively random!

 1. Do you have a favorite traditional “birthday meal”? If yes – what is it and what is the meaning behind it?

My parents used to let us go out for a birthday dinner. I usually wanted Mexican. I still love it. Go figure.

 2. If you’ve lost weight, has your style changed since you lost weight? Or what's your dream purchase when you do lose weight/hit goal?

I am still hopeless when it comes to fashion. Seriously, next fall in Chicago I need to let some of you guys dress me and take me shopping. I'm a t-shirt and jeans girl at heart, but I do like dressing up too. My style has only changed in that I no longer wear super baggy shirts, and I have started adding scarves.

 3. Pick one question of the following two to answer: Who is your favorite Muppet and why? Or who is your favorite Smurf and why?

I always liked Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker. I know that I just named two, but they kinda go together, no? They were a good comic team. Meep meep!

 4. When you buy a lotion or after bath spray or body spray or candle (not perfume) – what’s the “flavor” you always find yourself loving the most?

I don't really like food smells, so I usually pick something lightly floral. Although my mom just gave me some Korres Guava Shower Gel and Body Butter, and it is seriously to die for. I love it. For candles, I like those random outdoorsy scents like "Meadow Showers" or "Early Sunrise" from Y@nkee C@ndle.

 5. Repeat question. Summarize your week in real life and in blogland.

I'm still sucking balls at commenting. I'm reading on my phone a lot, so you know how that is. I need to set some goals for posting myself even. In real life, work has been busy, but good. I think we finally solved our yougest's sleep problem. Two nights in a row, we have all slept! It has been waaaaay to loooong.

Success Tip: The Gadget Bag

I realize I'm being a tad bit presumptuous calling this a "success tip", but you get the idea...

It's winter. I'm busy. Why does it matter? Because I need to have my exercise gadgets around me all the time to make sure I can get in a workout. Yeah, sure, I can exercise without these things, but it's so much more AWESOME when I can rock out to some Enrique or Motley Crue (diverse tastes, much?) while I'm running the stairs or walking the halls.

Enter, my gadget bag, as I like to call it. 

In it, we have my ipod with armband and headphones, polar monitor, and chest strap. Ready to go! Now, I don't have to worry about my electronics getting all funked up by the cold temps whilst sitting in my car all day, and I have zero excuse for not working out during the day. It's all kept nice and neat and untangly in my purse because I keep it in this little zippered pouch.

This came in handy today when I needed to get in my stair workout at lunch. Holy crap, it was hard. But I got my stats, and I had my music, so it really wasn't that hard. I may be singing a different tune tomorrow when I have jelly-legs. And tomorrow is strength day again. Yikes!

Git 'er Done

I cannot believe I just made that the title of my post. Ugh.

Anywhoozle, this is a big week for me. After a horrendous week or period cravings and other debauchery, tomorrow I start training for the American Lung Association climb. I also have decided to detox my diet and go paleo/primal. At least for this week (you know I'm fickle like that). I cooked up some sausage patties, baked some omelet cups (froze some too), cooked a pork roast (delish) and brussel sprouts, and made sure we had lots of fresh veggies and salad fixin's on hand. I'm ready. Tomorrow's food should look like this:
Pre-workout: 1 scoop Syntrax Nectar (not paleo, but nobody's perfect.)
Breakfast: 1 omelet cup, 1 sausage patty
Snack: another omelet cup, should I need it
Lunch: salad with red pepper, cucumber, sunflower seeds, turkey
Afternoon snack: cucumber slices, almonds, maybe a babybel cheese
Dinner: leftover pork roast and brussel sprouts

My training schedule for the next four week looks like this:
Mon/Thursday - strength training
Tues/Friday - stairs
Wed/Sat - off
Sun - random other cardio

The best thing? My hubs is on board. He's put on a few pounds over the holidays, so he's ready to buckle down too. No more crap in the house, no more beer, only good stuff.

I also took measurements today. I was pleasantly surprised to find that since July the only place I've increased is my hips. I totally knew this would be the case because my jeans have been tighter lately. Poo. Some of it has got to be bloat too. As soon as I get the processed food out of my life, I know it'll get better.

This is going to be an interesting experiment. The last time I trained for an event like this was back in 2001 - walked the Country Music 1/2 Marathon for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training. To make a long story short, I was about 230 at the time, thinking all that walking would be sure to slim me down. Ha. Do you know how hungry you get after a 10 mile training walk? In the dead of winter? Really, really hungry. I would have a bagel at the park after the walk, then I would come home and cook myself a giant omelet and then eat a giant spaghetti dinner (carb-loading, ya know). It was a disaster. Yes, I finished it. Yes, I was probably in better cardiovascular shape than when I started. But, I did not lose one single motherf-ing pound. Not one.

This time will be different. I have my band. I have my plan. I have you guys to cheer me on. I'm gonna kick this thing's ass! Let's do it!

A food tour of my desk

Cuz I'm bored. And it's Friday. It's almost the weekend.

It's been a long time since I had my own desk to call my own. My own place at work to keep goodies. That was one thing I was really excited about when I got this new job -- my own desk! Whee! So, let's see how I'm set up:

Here we have the requisite papaya tabs (Trader Joe's $2.99! Can't beat that with a stick. Thanks Amey!) and gas relief. Though I'm happy to say, I haven't needed that in a while. Next to that is my little glass bowl for mixing up some HMR protein pudding. Then my box of HMR shakes and protein chicken soup (it's actually quite tasty). Those little black things by the bowl are my LorAnn's oils, root beer and chocolate hazelnut flavor. Next row: wasabi lime almonds, my last lone packet of Go-tein (does the fact that it's still around tell you anything?), silverware, napkins. And last: baggie of Crystal Light, True Lemon, and Stevia packets, Mio, and baggie of Bariatric Advantage Calcium Crystals and calcium chews (I like to mix it up a bit).

Down in the bottom drawer, on top of all my technical manuals (and one issue of Martha Stewart Living) we have beef jerky, my shaker cup, a bottle of Solarcaine (yes, I realized summer was a long time ago), some soup, and cocoa roasted almonds. Oh, and some Dr. Norman Vincent Peale for when you need a little pick me up. Seriously, it's an oldie but a goodie.

So, what do you keep in your office food drawer? Anything interesting? Anything you think I'm missing or could benefit from? Anything you would take out? 

January Goals

Happy New Year everyone! We got lucky, and convinced my mom to babysit our kids for NYE, so hubs and I got to go to a friend's party. It was an awesome time. I drank too much, kicked everyone's asses at Just Dance, and had fun catching up with people. Incidentally, I also outed myself to one of the group. There is only one person in this friend group who knows about my band so far, so this was kind of big for me. We were sitting and talking and my friend asked me what size pants I wore and offered me a pair of size 14 Lucky jeans (awesome!). We got to talking about the weight loss, and, as always, she asked what I had done. So I just decided to be honest 100%. I told her how I hadn't told a lot of people at first because I was afraid of failing and really looking like an idiot. And she totally got it. She told me that is the exact reason she never tells anyone when she's trying to quit smoking! Anyway, I felt pretty good about having let the cat out of the bag.

Down to business... My goals for this month:

• weight sub-200 (sounds like a broken record here, LOL)
• twenty workouts, at least 8 must be strength training

Oh yeah... I picked my first quarter fitness event! I'm going to do the Climb Detroit stair race for the American Lung Association. It's in nine weeks, so there is plenty of time to train. It's a little scary, but I really need something like this out in front of me to stay motivated to workout. I'm trying to convince a few people to do it with me -- mostly it would be nice to have someone to drive downtown with that day!

On the organizing front, I finished the first 4 days of tasks. It was easy since I had already done two of them without even knowing it! Hubs and I also did this today in order to keep piles of crap off our kitchen countertops:

 

The countertop thingy is purple, so it doesn't exactly match the sage green and brown color scheme. One of these days, I may attempt to mod podge some scrapbook paper on it so it fits in a little better. I just liked this one because it had the perfect spots for cell phone chargers.

That's all I have for tonight. See you on the flipside with an official Jan 1 weigh-in!