Inside Every Thin Girl ...

Another ...

2009-11-28T07:07:00.000-08:00

New blogs on my website. Don't forget to change your subscription to Eat to Live, Live to Run. I will be deleting this site soon. Thanks :)

New Blog Posted.

2009-11-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

I posted an entry on my new blog site.

If you haven't already made the switch now is the time. I will no longer be posting on Inside Every Thin Girl.

Follow me to Eat To Live, Live To Run.

Mental To-Do List

2009-11-16T06:43:00.000-08:00

Well, its Monday again and back to the grind for another 3 nights at the hospital. Since I work 12 hour shifts I don’t really have time to do anything around the house before I go back again, so I try to get everything done ahead of time.

I found myself making a mental To-Do list this morning while I was cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast. You know how I love my lists!

Iron scrubs for the next 3 nights.

Fold and put away the rest of the clean laundry.

Make fajitas for Tim and Lincoln for dinner.

Pack my dinner.

Elliptical training or Strength DVD this afternoon.

Straighten house as much as possible.

Before I get started on my list I had to fuel up:

Quaker Oatmeal Squares and Vanilla almond milk are quickly becoming one of my favorite go-to breakfasts. They taste great seperately, but put them together and magic happens!
I better go get down to work on my list. Have a great Monday!

Great Eight!

2009-11-15T17:29:00.000-08:00

After my overindulgence at dinner last night, I decided to have a simple breakfast this morning. An Egg Beaters Garden Vegetable omelet with sauteed red onion, spinach and red bell pepper and half a grapefruit. I like dipping my omelets (or eggs in general) in ketchup, is that weird?

About 10:00 I started getting really hungry again and when I typed in my points for breakfast and realized I had only eaten 1.5 points for breakfast (about 150 calories) I realized why. I normally eat about 5 points or 250 calories in the morning. Tim and I were getting ready to go running and I didn't want anything very heavy on my stomach so I had a chocolate graham cracker with 1 Tbsp of reduced fat peanut butter on it.

The peanut butter actually sat really heavy on my stomach and I felt like I had a rock in my belly the entire time I was running. I won't do that again! Stupid PB!

I've run 8 miles before, but only once so I feel super accomplished today. It was a really good run other than the heavy tummy. I wore my knee brace and I didn't have any pain. The weather was nice and the road was flat. We ran an out and back route (x2). On the first trip out I was feeling really good but I kept thinking, "Yeah, you feel good now, but you still have 7 miles to go!" Luckily the good feeling stuck around.

Mile 1 - 8:49
Mile 2 - 8:56
Mile 3 - 8:57
Mile 4 - 8:57
Mile 5 - 9:05
Mile 6 - 9:10
Mile 7 - 9:12
Mile 8 - 8:49

While I waited on Tim to finish up his run I made sure to stretch really well, so that hopefully I won't be too sore tomorrow.

I was really suprised to see how late it was after we finished running. It was already 3:00 and we hadn't had lunch yet. I'm never very hungry after I run for atleast 2 hours, so I decided we'd just skip lunch and eat a huge dinner. I made Shake N Bake Chicken, sauteed onions and squash, steamed cabbage and cheesy potatoes. It sounded like a really good idea at the time, but it turned out really .... yellow. Yellow and delicious! I ate an enormous plate and finished every bite.

It really bother me when the food on my plate isn't colorful enough. I never think about the color of things before I cook, but once I plate it up I make sure not to put things of similar color beside each other. Weird? Yes? No? The funny thing is that I almost made corn on the cob instead of the cabbage. What a yellow mess that would have been! That would have been almost unbearable.

Dont forget to make sure you switch to my new blog Eat to Live, Live to Run. I'll be double posting for a while, but not long! Have a great night! I'm off to watch a movie with the hubby.

New Blog Site!

2009-11-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

I've been working on getting a new blog site set up through Wordpress.com, but I haven't actually been able to follow through with it until today. Please take a minute to bookmark my new blog and subscribe to it at Eat To Live, Live to Run.

I will be posting in both places for a short period of time until all my readers join me on WordPress.

One of the reasons for this change is because I wanted a new blog name. I feel like "Inside Every Thin Girl..." served a purpose for a while, but the focus in my life has changed from losing weight to living a healthy life through diet and exercise. While I still have a few pounds left to lose I want to focus more on my life, my running, my recipes, my family, etc than only weight loss.

Thanks for reading what I have to say! I hope you will join me at Eat to Live, Live to Run.

Not In The Plan!

2009-11-14T18:30:00.000-08:00

Lets check in on the To-Do List for the day:

~~1 hour Elliptical~~
~~Buy fresh fruits and veggies (we have none!)~~
~~Make BBQ pizzas for lunch with leftover chicken.~~
Take Lincoln to the zoo or the park.
Clean and organize pantry.
~~Fold and put away about 4 loads of laundry.~~
~~RELAX!~~
Make Spaghetti Squash with meat sauce for dinner.

I definitely didn't accomplish everything, but I got a good amount done. I went to the Y and banged out an hour on the elliptical, it actually went by really fast. Ever since I wrote the blog about podcasts a while back I've been listening to them alot while I workout. My favorite one that I have found so far is called 2 Gomers Run a Marathon, but today I listened to one called Savage Love. It was ok, but not my favorite by any means. Basically people call in and ask advice on sex or relationship related things. I thought it might be funny, but it wasn't as funny as I expected.

After my workout I went to the grocery store and spent $50 on fresh produce (and a couple other things). It hurts my heart to spend that much money at the store now that I'm all into couponing, but I got ... apples, bananas, cabbage, green beans, grapefruit, asparagus, bell peppers, lettuce, spinach, onions, zucchini, squash and carrots. I should have taken a picture, it was a pretty impressive bounty!

The BBQ chicken pizza turned out pretty fantastic. I've never made (or eaten) BBQ pizza before so this was a first for me. It included: Raspberry Chipolte BBQ sauce, shredded BBQ chicken, mozzarella cheese, spinach, red onion and red pepper.

Toys R Us had a special sale going on today on all of their bikes so we thought instead of going to the park (it was getting dark anyway) that we would go see about getting Lincoln a tricycle for Christmas. It was pretty much a bust though because we discovered that an 19 month old (ours atleast) can't really pedal a trike. So we left empty handed.

I've been craving to go out to eat really bad for the past 2 days. Not any specific restaurant or any specific food really, just the experience of going out to eat. So we decided to go to dinner at Bonefish Grill. In hindsight it probably wasn't the best idea for our budget (financial or caloric). I had Grouper with Mango Salsa and asparagus with a side salad and .... key lime pie!

It was heavenly, but I'm definitely regretting it now. Its a good thing I'm running 8 miles tomorrow!

The Plan

2009-11-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

Happy Saturday! It feels so nice to be at home with the family on such a beautiful day. Lincoln even let me sleep until almost 9:00 this morning which is highly unusual, we are usually up by atleast 7:30.

For breakfast this morning I decided to have just a simple bowl of cereal. Quaker Oatmeal Squares with Almond Breeze Vanilla Milk.

I bought Almond milk a few days ago because I've been wanting to give it a try. I'm definitely not vegan (or even vegetarian) nor am I allergic to milk, but I love trying new things so I figured why not? I think it is now one of my new favorite things on earth!

There was a 5K this morning that I thought about running in, but I decided against it for a couple of reasons. I'm running in one next Saturday and didn't really feel like getting up super early two weekends in a row, and I have an 8 mile run scheduled for tomorrow so I thought I'd give myself a break today. I'm planning on going to the gym to do the elliptical today for a change of pace. I miss the elliptical sometimes.

As of right now the plan for the day is:

1 hour Elliptical
Buy fresh fruits and veggies (we have none!)
Make BBQ pizzas for lunch with leftover chicken.
Take Lincoln to the zoo or the park.
Clean and organize pantry.
Fold and put away about 4 loads of laundry.
RELAX!
Make Spaghetti Squash with meat sauce for dinner.

What are your plans for the day?

Sometimes You Need Simplicity.

2009-11-13T20:52:00.000-08:00

I finished up my third 12 hour shift for this week at the hospital, so now I have a little more time to write. Yay! I think about all these things I want to say but I don't have time to blog while I'm working so by the time I get the chance to I forget what I wanted to talk about.

I went grocery shopping this morning after I got off work (see receipt below, Yay again!), and got a really good deal on boneless skinless chicken breasts for $2.99/lb. I eat my fair share of chicken breasts, so I stocked up.

Tim has been craving this recipe for Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken Sandwhiches for a couple of weeks now since he ran across it on All Recipes one night. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to make it. You know I love me a crockpot recipe! But the wing sauce that we had was Thai flavored and I had forgotten that. I didn't know if that would be good or not and I definitely wasn't going back to the grocery store, so I decided to do something different.

Instead I made shredded bbq chicken. This is hands-down the easiest thing I've ever cooked (can you even call it "cooking"?). Two ingredients - chicken breasts and barbeque sauce. It doesn't get simpler than that. I cooked the breasts on low in the sauce for about 6 hours and then shredded it and served it on hamburger buns with some veggies.

I can't believe I haven't done this before! It was the easiest thing ever and it was DELICIOUS! I think I'm going to use the leftover meat to make BBQ Chicken Pizzas tomorrow for lunch. That will be another first for me. I'm loving the simplicity!

Coupons Rock, Part Deux!

2009-11-13T16:03:00.001-08:00

I'm officially addicted now!

Coupons Rock!

2009-11-10T09:28:00.000-08:00

I've been totally obsessed with coupon shopping lately since I've learned how to use them in a way to get things for free or nearly free. This morning I went out to Publix to get my deals before the sale items change tomorrow.

Here's what I got:

2 Bird's Eye Voila! meals
Almond Milk
Gallon Whole Milk
Aunt Jemima Frozen Pancakes
4 Boxes Betty Crocker Potatoes
Egg Beaters
2 Tylenol PM
1 Tylenol Arthritis
Kashi Frozen Meal
2 Campbells Select Harvest soup
Progresso Chicken Broth
Gorton's Grilled Shrimp
Lean Pocket
3 lbs Jonagold apples

Price before coupons and sales: $77.04
Price after coupons and sales: $19.37

Like I said, coupons rock!

Here are some good websites to get you going if you want to get in on the action:
Southernsavers.com
afullcup.com
iheartpublix.com
organicgrocerydeals.com
coupons.com

Enjoy!

Manic & Boring Monday

2009-11-09T16:45:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning at 6:20 in a panic because my husband's alarm was suppose to go off at 5:00 am for his business trip today. Oops! Lucky for him he was driving today instead of flying so he didn't have to worry about missing a flight.

I made a yummy Green Monster for breakfast.

Yep, I've used that picture before ... so sue me! I love Green Monsters, but one thing I don't like about them is that they don't keep me full until lunch. I snacked on some semi-stale Kashi Heart to Heart crackers around 10:30.

I ran around my house cleaning like a mad woman for about 2 hours after breakfast. I always get really behind on my housework when I work several 12 hour shifts in a row. I had about 4 loads of laundry backed up. I actually have a housekeeper that comes every two weeks on Monday and does the deep cleaning stuff, but I'm so self conscious that I pre-clean for her. I know I'm crazy! I just don't find it fair to make her do 4 loads of laundry and pick all my things up off the floor, so I do most of that stuff before she comes.

Lincoln took a nice long nap this morning, so I was able to run on the treadmill while he slept. I just did an easy 3 miles today. I swear I would rather run 7 miles outside than 3 on the treadmill anyday. It is soooo boring! But it comes in handy on days when the weather is bad and when I don't have anyone to keep Lincoln while I run.

For lunch I made a yummy homemade pizza. Its really becoming a staple around here. Yep, I've used this picture before too ...

It was really quiet and boring around the house without Tim here today, so Lincoln and I decided to go to the playground to work off some of his "energies". The poor little guy really took a beating at the playground. He fell several times and then went down the slide on his face. Before we left I pushed him on the tire swing for a little while and I made the mistake of grabbing his sides while I was pushing him (he's incredibly ticklish) and he let go of the chains and fell flat on his face ... again. He looked like he had been beaten by the time we left, but he had so much fun he never cried once.

For dinner tonight I decided to make one of my E-Mealz recipes. This one wasn't actually a Weight Watchers friendly recipe, but I altered it to reduce the points value as much as possible. It was called Italian Casserole. I used 96% Lean Ground Beef, Light Sour Cream, 2% Mozzarella cheese and Reduced Fat Crescent Rolls, but it still came out to 7 points per serving. But it was worth it! I definitely recommend checking out E-Mealz if you haven't already, their recipes are really simple and delicious.

Does anyone recognize a theme? Yes, I had spinach for every single meal today. I think I've definitely met my green leafy quota!

World Run Day 2009

2009-11-08T17:44:00.000-08:00

Today was World Run Day. If you aren't familiar with World Run Day, it is basically a day to bring the world together in running for charitable causes. I decided to dedicate my run to my son Lincoln and I chose The National Children's Advocacy Center as my charitable organization. If you would also like to donate to their cause please click on the link and donate online.

Tim chose the American Diabetes Association as his charity. He was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes a couple of years ago, since then he has lost over 70 lbs and has completely cured himself of Diabetes through diet and exercise.

I worked the last three nights from 7pm to 7am, and when I woke up this afternoon I really wasn't feeling like going to run, but I knew that the cause was important and I felt like this was really something I needed to do. I had commited to running 6.2 miles, and Tim commited to running 7 miles. I decided that because he was going to run 7, that I would also and it also fit into our Half Marathon Training program. So we got dressed in our World Run Day tshirts and headed out to the park.

The run went pretty well. As you can see from the picture I'm wearing a knee brace on my right knee. It has really been achey and sore lately after my runs. My last 7 mile run really did me in, and I bought the knee brace that day. My knee felt great today with the brace on. Unfortunately my right hip is starting to hurt also though, and it bothered me some during the first few miles but felt better after about the 4th mile. I ran 7 miles in 63 minutes.

I'm really glad I got up this afternoon and decided to fulfill my commitment to myself, World Run Day, and the National Children's Advocacy Center even though I was tired and didn't really feel in the mood because I felt so refreshed and invigorated afterwards.

Did you participate in World Run Day today?

My Early Birthday Present

2009-11-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

My birthday isn't for a little over 3 weeks, but I was in desperate need of a new iPod. I actually have two iPod Classics, but they have really been acting up lately. The first one randomly dies and says it has no battery power left when it has been charged in for hours. The second one started giving me a strange error message that I can't get rid of. I probably could have sent them back to Apple to have them fixed, but I figured this is a good excuse for me to get a new model.

I give you my new iPod Nano ...

My favorite colors are pink and purple, but I see those colors around all the time. I wanted something different so I chose green. I had read that the new 5th generation iPods had FM radio and video cameras built in, but I forgot about that until I bought mine. Super cool features I must say.

Caitlin over at Healthy Tipping Point wrote a blog earlier today about people who listen to podcasts while running instead of music. Several of her readers said they prefer podcasts for various reasons to music while running, so I thought I would give it a try today. I downloaded several different podcasts. One I was really interested in trying was called 4 Feet Running. I also downloaded The Biggest Loser Fan Podcast as well as a couple others. I started off my 5 mile run trying to listen to the 4 Feet Running, but I found the sound quality so bad that I couldn't deal with it. I don't know if it was just that specific episode, or if that is the way that all of them are but I had to turn it off. I ended up listening to the Biggest Loser podcast. It was pretty interesting commentary, the actual recap of the episode was boring because they are discussing the show from 2 episodes ago. I might start listening to podcasts more often if I can find some really good ones. I get bored with my music so quickly it would make for a nice change.

We planned to grill out BBQ chicken breasts tonight for dinner, but I'm still really confused with the time change and before we could get out to cook it was completely dark. Instead we made homemade pizzas. I've made these several times before, but they are always delicious. Tonight we didn't have any goat cheese since we ate it all last night, so we used regular ol' mozzarella instead. We had spinach salads with mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and apple slices on the side.

I've thoroughly enjoyed my 9 days off, but its almost time to go back to work. I have to work Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week. So I'll see you guys on Sunday! In the meantime ... what are some of your favorite podcasts to listen to? I need some ideas.

Back on Track and The Best Dinner EVER!

2009-11-03T19:19:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up and hopped on the scale to assess the damage I've done recently, and it was definitely as bad if not worse than I thought it would be. I gained 9 (yes, nine) pounds! Normally I would cut myself a little slack and chalk it up to being on vacation, but lets face it ... I was only on vacation for 4 days. There is no way I should have ever let 9 pound slip back on in 4 days! I think the bigger problem is that I temporarily lost my motivation as I discussed here.

The good news is that I had time to reflect on what was going on, and made a recommitment to myself. Sometimes I think that its necessary to backslide in order to ultimately keep moving in the right direction and not lose focus. Sometimes you just need a break! Whether it be from counting points, exercise, weighing and measuring food ... whatever the case may be. I came back from this hiatus with a brand new attitude and an excitement that I haven't had in a while.

The excitement came at a good time because I decided that today I would make up for my long run that I missed on Sunday. 7 miles! I've done 7 miles (and even 8) before, but its been a while and I wasn't sure how I'd do after such an off track week. I did really well though, I'm not saying it was easy but it was a good feeling to get back out there. My iPod died during my 2nd mile and that was a bummer, but after a little while I got used to listening to myself breathe and got caught up in my thoughts. It actually turned out kinda nice to not have the music. I compared my run time today to my previous 7 mile run and was very surprised to see that I beat my time by a full 6 minutes!

My splits for today were:

Mile 1 - 8:46
Mile 2 - 8:49
Mile 3 - 9:00
Mile 4 - 8:56
Mile 5 - 8:57
Mile 6 - 9:01
Mile 7 - 8:52

After our run we ate lunch at Roly Poly. I ordered a small Ultimate Veggie wrap with hummus instead of ranch dressing and a bag of Baked Lays. It was yummalish and very low in points!

Tim and I decided to let the little man spend the night at his grandma's house tonight so that we could have a little break and some time together at home alone. I wanted to cook something special tonight that I haven't made before. I browsed the internet for a while looking for something that seemed right, and then I remember the Eggplant Spinach Stacks that my fellow blogger Allison from Balance in Bites post a few days ago. I've been salivating over these since the day she posted them, so I thought this might be the perfect opportunity.

I went to the grocery store and got all the ingredients, plus stuff to make roasted fingerling potatoes and Proscuitto Wrapped Asparagus. I must say this was the best dinner I've made in a very long time if not ever.

I used goat cheese on both the Eggplant stacks and in the asparagus instead of the feta and cream cheese that was suggested. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a sucker for goat cheese and I'll fit it in wherever I can get it. The eggplant was the clear winner, but I have to say that the asparagus bundles were quite divine as well!

My husband would probably divorce me if I didn't show the picture of the eggplant that he picked out. Lets just say, it was happy to see us. My husband especially found it quite amusing.

And on that note, I think I'll say goodnight!

100th Post!

2009-11-02T21:45:00.001-08:00

I just realized today that I had written 99 posts so far, so this makes number 100!

We finally made it home from Gatlinburg. We left at 9:30 am and arrived home at 9:10 pm. I packed a big picnic lunch before we left the cabin this morning so we wouldn't have to spend any extra money eating out on the way home. We started getting really hungry about 11:45 and decided to stop at the next rest area to eat. When we finally saw a rest area sign it said CLOSED. There was nowhere else in close proximity to stop so we ended up eating our picnic lunch on the side off the hood of my car on the side of the road.

We decided to stop in Birmingham and visit for a while with my best friend, Vanessa, and give Lincoln a chance to play and stretch his legs. Vanessa has a son that is only 6 weeks older than Lincoln. We all ate dinner at my most favorite restaurant ever, Surin West. I had decided this morning that I was back on track 100% with my eating plan, but that went out the window as soon as I decided on Surin West for dinner. I could have definitely stayed on track, but as I mentioned before it is my most favorite restaurant of all time. I only get to eat there maybe once or twice a year. I ordered Surin baskets for an appetizer and Chicken Masaman with Avacado for my entree. It was divine as usual.

I was planning on going straight to bed as soon as we got home tonight (I actually fell asleep in the car). But when we finally got home I remembered that I had recorded the NY Marathon yesterday and I've been dying to watch it. It was absolutely inspiring! I don't know that I could ever be a marathoner, but I would have never thought I would have been able to run as far as I can now or that I would have ever lost over 100 pounds, so who knows?! Maybe one day!

I was so happy for the American that won for the first time in over 20 years. It was amazing to watch! I felt so bad for the British woman who was the favorite to win because she had some kind of hamstring injury and ended up finishing 4th. As soon as she crossed the finish line she grabbed her left leg and started crying. You could tell that something was wrong because she was so far behind the leader, but you couldn't tell from watching her run that her leg was hurting as bad as it was. I can't imagine running through that kind of pain. She never gave up though.

Anyway ... I'm headed to bed. Tomorrow is "get back on track" day. For real this time. LOL
Have a good night!

Creative Exercise

2009-11-01T07:13:00.000-08:00

I still haven't been able to find any decent places to run in Gatlinburg. I'm sure there are some, but I don't know where to look. I even tried to find a gym that might let me come use their treadmill without a membership for a few days. I can't even find a gym!

So after not working out yesterday and eating entirely too much last night for dinner (10 oz steak, bleu cheese grits, baked macaroni, spinach and cheese, side salad, spinach artichoke dip with tortilla chips, and 2 Long Island Iced Teas), I decided I definitely needed to find a way to exercise today. The best thing I could come up with was climbing the stairs in our cabin. So thats what I did ...

I made those stairs my bitch for 45 minutes! It was actually a really decent workout. I was afraid that my heart rate wouldn't stay high enough going down, but it stayed right around 160 the whole time. I burned 441 calories. It wasn't nearly as fun as my 7 mile run would have been today, but atleast its something and now I don't feel as bad about indulging last night.

So when I finished my stair climbing and was absolutely drenched with sweat, I came into the kitchen to talk to my husband about what he decided we should do for our last day in Gatlinburg. He says, "I want to go hiking!". DOH!

Pumpkin Cider Pancakes

2009-10-31T19:10:00.000-07:00

Sticking with the pumpkin theme from yesterday, I decided to perk up my pancakes a bit this morning with some pumpkin puree. I just threw a few things together and came up with a really great recipe. Actually my husband said they were the best pancakes he has ever eaten and suggested that I submit it to a recipe website.

One of my favorite websites for recipes is All Recipes. So this afternoon I submitted the recipe. The last recipe I submitted (in Dec 2004) never got reviewed or published, so I'm hoping that this one will. The link to my recipe for the Pumpkin Cider Pancakes is here. Give them a try and rate/review them on All Recipes. Hope you enjoy!

Greek Yogurt Giveaway!

2009-10-31T05:32:00.001-07:00

Go get your Greek Yogurt! Now! Do it!

Day 2

2009-10-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

I'm too exhausted tonight to write much, but I took some great pictures that I wanted to share. We went to the Smoky Mountain National Park today as I mentioned in an earlier post, these are some shots I got.

Tonight for dinner we decided to stay at the cabin and cook out on the grill. I was pretty nervous after seeing the 4 bears earlier this evening on the back porch but they decided not to join us for dinner thankfully. We made: BBQ chicken breasts, grilled mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and pineapple, creamed corn and leftover rolls from the steak place last night. It was delish! It was just exactly what I wanted and it was much cheaper and more nutritional than going out to eat.

After dinner I was craving something sweet so we drove down the mountain to Downtown Gatlinburg to find something to satisfy my craving. There were all kinds of fudge shops, ice cream shops, candy stores, and bakeries. I almost decided on a funnel cake, but at the last minute I changed my mind and we ended up at Ben & Jerrys. I've been craving pumpkin lately and Ben & Jerrys had Pumpkin Cheesecake Icecream.

It was heavenly! Now if I could just figure out a way to make myself not feel guilty for eating it. I keep going back and forth through my mind between "You are on vacation, relax! You can work it off next week" and "You don't need that and you are not hungry. Have you learned nothing?" I wish I could find a better balance.

I still haven't found any good running spots. I guess I'm gonna be doing some trips up and down the staircase tomorrow to get my cardio in if I don't figure out something quickly. I'd really hate to miss my long run for the week on Sunday, but if I can't find a place that I can safely run with a baby stroller then I'm just gonna have to put it off until I get back home.

But for now ... I'm going to retire to the bedroom with a good book. Goodnight!

Bears!

2009-10-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

Hot Tub + Sangria = Heaven.

Seeing 4 bears where you were just relaxing with your Sangria = super scary but super cool.

I had just gotten out of the hot tub and was drying off when I looked up and saw that! A momma bear and her 3 babies. They came really close to the porch and I was able to get a few decent pictures.

We went to The Smoky Mountain National Park today. We were planning on riding our bikes around Cade's Cove, running our 3 miles for our 1/2 Marathon Training and having a picnic in the park. Things didn't work out exactly as I had planned though. Turns out the road around Cade's Cove where bicycles are allowed is very narrow and its also a road shared with cars ... very slow moving cars. There is no way we could have had fun biking around at 2 mph pulling Lincoln in the bike trailer. It also wasn't a very good place to run for the same reason.

We ended up driving through the park and then heading to the picnic area. We ran laps around the picnic area to complete our 3 miles. I have to say that I was very disappointed. I really thought there were going to be lots of great places for biking and running in the park. I felt like everyone was staring at me the entire time I was running and it was really awkward and uncomfortable. I don't know what I'm gonna do tomorrow when I have another 3 miles to run and then 7 miles on Sunday. We aren't having much luck finding any runner friendly places around here, I'm sure there are some ... I just don't know where to look.

What do you do to find places to run when you are out of town?

Vacation Day 1 - Done!

2009-10-30T06:09:00.001-07:00

Tim and I woke up early yesterday morning at 4:30 am to get ready to leave for our Gatlinburg vacation. I wanted to leave home at 6:00 am, but of course nothing is ever on time when you have a baby. We didn't end up leaving until a little after 7:00, but who's counting?

The trip was suppose to take about 6-7 hours driving time, but I knew we would have to make fairly frequent stops to let Lincoln stretch his legs. The last time we tried to travel with him was to Destin, FL (only 4 hours) and he screamed a good portion of the way. I decided this time that no matter what happened I was going to make a conscious effort to be patient with him even if it took us 10 hours to drive.

I could not have been more impressed with the way the trip went. Lincoln slept for the first 2 hours of the trip, then we stopped for snacks and a bathroom break. Luckily we brought our secret weapon that we swore before we were parents we would never have ... a DVD player in the car. With that he was entertained until lunch time.

I really wanted to stop somewhere new and exciting for lunch that I had never been before. But hunger hit me hard and fast and the only thing nearby was Cracker Barrel. I ordered grilled chicken fingers, green beans, whole kernel corn and sweet potato casserole.

Excuse the hair, it was raining.

After lunch Lincoln fell back asleep and slept all the way to Knoxville, only an hour from the cabin. I took some random pictures on the way down out of boredom. Here are a couple shots of the pretty fall colors on the way and our first view of the mountains in the distance.

We finally found the way to the cabin thanks to TomTom our GPS navigation system. I was absolutely in love. I started getting worried on the way up the mountain because there were some pretty shabby looking cabins around, but there were some really nice ones as well. I didn't get any pics of the outside, but here are a few of the inside.

After getting settled in we spent a few minutes in the hot tub, and then got ready and decided on where to go for dinner. We chose The Peddler Steakhouse. It was rated the #1 place to eat in Gatlinburg so we thought we'd give it a try.

Tim and I both ordered the Blackened Tuna with Hollandaise sauce, and I got sauteed mushrooms as my side item. All entrees come with unlimited trips to their enormous salad bar and a basket of yeast rolls. We ordered a bottle of Kendall Jackson Pinot Noir to help us relax after a long day in the car.

I ordered my tuna medium rare and it was more like medium well, but it had good flavor and the salad bar, mushrooms, and wine made up for what the tuna was lacking. I also stole Lincoln's tartar sauce and it was HEAVENLY on the tuna. I've never had tartar sauce that tasted so good!

Unfortunately Tim and I ended up eating most of our meal alone because Lincoln was exhausted and finally had the meltdown I anticipated all day. While one of us ate the other walked him around the restaurant. A waitress (not ours) saw that we were having a really hard time and she came over and offered to walk with him while we enjoyed our dinner. Normally I would never let someone do that, but I was tired, frustrated and hungry and it sounded like a great idea at the time. We were able to finish up our meal and enjoy our wine. We really appreciated her help!

Today we are going to the Smoky Mountain National Park for a picnic, bike riding and my scheduled 3 mile run.

What's Going On?

2009-10-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know what the deal is lately, but I have completely lost my willpower when it comes to eating. Thankfully so far it hasn't caught up with me on the scale yet, but I'm sure my day is coming. Lately I have been eating anything and everything in sight, especially at work. I was doing so good at being strong and resisting temptation but all of a sudden I've been chowing down on cookie cake, Halloween candy, Chex Mix (OMFG the Chex Mix!!), and pretty much anything else I can get my hands on. I wish I knew what the problem was.

I wonder if I'm subconsciously sabotaging myself because I'm so close to my goal. Hmmm ...

Thankfully I've still been doing great on exercising. The 1/2 Marathon training program is going great so far. Today I did another 4 mile Fartlek, actually it was really only about 3 miles of Fartlek and 1 mile of easy running. I cut myself a break on that one though because I feel mentally and physically exhausted from some situations that I have been dealing with the last couple of days and not sleeping well, and I know thats why I tired out in my run so quickly.

The good news is that fall vacation begins NOW! Tomorrow we will be packing and preparing for our trip to the mountains. I couldn't be more excited! I can't wait to relax in the hottub with a glass (or bottle) of wine, picnic in the Smoky Mountain National Park, run in the mountains, grill out, and just spend time with my family without any other worries.

I don't have any food pics today so I'll leave you with this picture of my son and I snoozing in his crib together. Isn't he the cutest thing you ever saw? I love that boy!

This is Dedication!

2009-10-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

Getting up at 6:45 on a Sunday morning to go run 6 miles in 40 degree weather = dedication.

I tried out a new route today. I've been getting bored with running in the same neighborhood all of the time, so I thought I'd try something new. I parked my car at my mother in laws house and ran in her neighborhood. I drove the route in my car first to see it if would be safe and I saw that it was a little hilly, but nothing I couldn't handle. There was one stretch that was on a moderately busy road, but it was only about 1/4 of a mile or so.

I don't think I'll do this route again, atleast not anytime soon. The hills were hillier than I previously thought and really wrecked my knees, I got chased by 2 packs of dogs, and there was more traffic than I was comfortable with. I guess its back to the drawing board!

I like to think of my runs as being in one of three categories:

I could have run much longer.
I couldn't have taken one more step.
I could have gone farther, but I'm glad I didn't have to.

Today was definitely a 3. I could have gone farther, but I was really happy to stop also. I've never had knee pain before while I was running, but I think those days are over. For the past week or so my knees have been very achey, not excrutiating but just uncomfortable. I thought maybe its time for me to start icing my knees after my runs.

I wanted something really filling to eat for breakfast this morning and I've been really craving oatmeal (specifically oatmeal with pumpkin puree, but I haven't bought the pumpkin yet). I made 2 packets of Maple and Brown Sugar oatmeal and added 1/2 a banana, Agave nectar and 1 Tbsp of chunky peanut butter. I think it was the best thing I've ever put in my mouth! (It was 9.5 points though).

I'm going back to work tonight for 3 more nights, and then we are off on Thursday morning for our fall vacation to Gatlinburg. I'm so excited!!!

Great Pumpkin Race Recap

2009-10-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

My alarm went off at 4:30 this morning and I REALLY didn't want to get up. I stretched my legs in bed for a few minutes, and then the next thing I knew the alarm was going off again. I fell back asleep! Thank goodness Tim set his alarm clock also. He didn't want to get up at 4:30, so he set his for 5:00. If he hadn't done that we would have probably slept right through the race.

We got ready and drove the 45 minutes or so to where the race was located. We ended up getting there way earlier than we needed to. It was freezing cold and barely light outside. We picked up our race packs and headed back to the car to warm up before the race started. When it got close to starting time we jogged up and down the road to get the blood flowing and posed for a picture by the Spinners Park sign. Unfortunately we didn't have anyone to take our picture together so this is the best we could do.

This was both mine and Tim's first 8Ks. We were both really excited and nervous. I knew I could run the distance (5 miles), I just didn't know if I could do it in a decent time. Its funny how my thought process has changed over the last couple of months. When I ran my first 5K in September my goal was just to finish, now I want to beat my personal times. My personal goal that I set for myself before going into the race today was to try my very best to maintain a 8 minute mile pace.

Just before the race started we met up with a few friends that we know from Spin Class at the Y. It was nice to see familiar faces.

The gun went off without any warning and caught me off guard. The race route took us through downtown Prattville. There was one monster hill right where the 8K split off from the 5K, but for the most part the course was nice and flat. My only complaint about the course was that there were a few spots where the directions weren't very well marked, and I kept getting confused. At one point there was only one guy I could see infront of me and no one behind me. I started to wonder if I was still running the right direction, and just then the guy infront of me stopped and started stretching his legs on the curb. I pulled out my earphones and asked him if we were going the right way, he didn't know either. Thankfully we were.

I came across the finish line and made a conscious effort to try to notice the time on the clock. As best as I could tell it said 40:54 or something close. Of course I forgot to stop my Garmin again, so my information is a little off from the official race results (as usual), but here's what I got:

Distance - 5.17 miles (Not sure where the extra distance came from.)

Mile 1 - 7:55
Mile 2 - 7:54
Mile 3 - 8:04
Mile 4 - 7:58
Mile 5 - 7:56

After the race Tim and I walked around the Arts and Crafts Show and looked around until the Awards Ceremony started. It was a really good thing that we didn't bring any cash with us because there were Funnel Cakes, Gyros, Kabobs, Roasted Corn on The Cob, Boiled Peanuts and every other treat you can imagine being sold. Normally we don't stay for the awards ceremony but for some reason I thought there was a possibility that I might win an award today. I doubted I would, but I secretly hoped so.

Turns out I did win an award, I placed 2nd in my age division! Yay for my first award!

I've been needing some new running shoes for quite a while now. I bought a pair online a couple weeks ago and ran once in them and just really felt like they weren't for me, so I sent them back. Unfortunately we don't have a running store in my city, but I have heard that McClendon Sports has a very knowledgable staff when it comes to running shoes. I decided to treat myself and go check it out today.

I was very impressed with the woman who was helping me. She looked at my feet, asked me a few questions and brought out 2 pairs of shoes for me to try. I tried them on, she felt on my feet and watched me run across the store and back. The first pair I tried was Brooks Ghost 2, I loved them! My current shoes are Brooks and I have always loved them also, but they run small and I bought a 1/2 size smaller than I should have. The 2nd pair I tried on were Mizuno's. They were bright orange and I really loved the color and the way they looked. I tried them on and they felt weird, but I thought maybe I could make do since I liked the way they looked so much. I ran halfway across the store and knew I couldn't buy them. They felt horrible on my feet.

They aren't the prettiest thing in the world, but meet my new running partners:

Sundays are going to be my long run days with my new training program that I started, and tomorrow I'm scheduled to run 6 miles. I can't wait to break these babies in!

Convincing Myself.

2009-10-24T03:21:00.001-07:00

Its 5:20 am on Saturday morning, its barely 50 degrees outside, its dark, and I'm suppose to be getting ready to go run an 8K. It would be so easy just to get back in bed and be all snuggly and warm for a couple more hours. I need to convince myself that I really do want to go run this morning!

Freaked Out About Maintenance.

2009-10-23T12:54:00.001-07:00

I cheated and weighed myself this morning even though my weigh-in day isn't until Monday. If what I weighed today sticks around I'm only going to be about 5 or 6 pounds away from my goal weight. You'd think I'd be ridiculously happy about that, and I am in a way, but I'm pretty freaked out and a little scared too.

I've never in my life maintained my weight. I've either been losing weight or gaining weight as long as I can remember. I don't know how to do anything else! I'm curious about how much I'll be able to eat on my maintenance program. I don't want to slack off on my exercise, I'd much rather just eat more!

Most likely it will be a few more weeks until I have to worry about how its all going to work though because next week I'm going on vacation. I'm not planning on being super strict about what I eat while I'm on vacation, but I'm hopefully not going to blow myself out of the water either. I'm planning on staying on track with my half-marathon training while I'm gone also. I hope there will be some great scenic places to run up in the mountains.

So far my eats today have included:

Chobani Strawberry Greek Yogurt with Kashi Crunch cereal.

A ham sandwhich on Arnold's Sandwhich Thins with Laughing Cow cheese, sprouts, onions, lettuce and mustard. Stacy's Simply Naked Bagel chips, and baby carrots.

I also snacked on some Chex Mix (I'm telling you, I'm addicted!), a Gala apple and a Homemade Clif Bar that Tim made (more on that later). Tonight for dinner we are having Pork Tenderloin and some undetermined vegetables.

My First Fartlek.

2009-10-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

What is Fartlek? Well, I'm glad you asked ...

"Fartlek" is Swedish for "speed play" and consists of bursts of speed in the middle of a training run. Essentially, it's an unstructured interval session, the track without the rules. Fartlek gets your legs used to a variety of paces and in the process gives you an enhanced awareness of your ability to keep up those paces at various distances.

I finally started a half marathon training program, like I have been threatening to do for a few weeks now. I found one that I am much more excited about than the previous one I talked about. My program can be found here. I'm adjusting it to fit my work schedule and to add in a couple days of crosstraining a week.

The first run I did was a 4 Mile Fartlek session. Basically you warm up, then run fast intervals and recovery intervals. Its not a structured interval though, no set distance or time. I'd just run easy, and then sprint to the next telephone pole, or to the next mailbox or whatever. I have to say it kicked my butt! I was getting pretty tired by the middle of the 2nd mile, but I was able to stick it out and finish the 4 miles.

My splits were:

Mile 1 - 7:51
Mile 2 - 8:13
Mile 3 - 8:20
Mile 4 - 8:18

I need to find a new place to do my long runs that will be coming up. I get tired of running the same route over and over again, and especially doing multiple laps on the same route. I live on a main road though and there aren't alot of safe places to run on the road near my house. I need to do some exploration for new locations. It just seems silly to drive across town to go running.

This weekend I will be running my first 8K race. I know I can do it, but I'm a little nervous about it.

On a different note: Chex Mix is the devil! I made some homemade Chex Mix a few days ago to get rid of some stuff I had in my house and I cannot stay out of it. I really shouldn't be allowed to have it in my house. I have no self control when it comes to Chex Mix.

Green Plus Bar Giveaway

2009-10-19T11:19:00.001-07:00

Click here to find out how to enter for a great Green Plus Bar Giveaway!

Official Chili Trot Results and Leg Cramps

2009-10-19T10:28:00.000-07:00

I got my official results from the Chili Trot 5K that I ran this past Saturday. I was very surprised to find out that I finished 11th! That is out of 71 runners. My official time was 25:03. I was the 5th female to finish. Unfortunately I don't know how I did in my age category because the race results didn't have the ages listed.

I've been having strange leg cramps for a while now, and its really starting to bother me. It doesn't happen while I am running, but it happens sometimes after I run if I ran really hard. But for the most part it is happening at night. I've had Charlie Horses in my legs before occasionally, but never anything like this. Its gotten to the point where its happening multiple times a night. Any time I stretch my legs out and point my toes I get a cramp. Most of the time I can feel when its about to start and I can flex my foot real fast and make it stop. Everyone I've talked to says that I need to, "eat more bananas", but I feel like I have a really well rounded diet (including bananas) and I take vitamins every day. Maybe its time to see a doctor about it.

Have any other runners experienced these leg cramps in the night? If so what did you do about it?

I'm planning on starting a Half Marathon Training program today, but honestly I'm not very excited about it. I think with my strange work schedule I'm going to have a hard time sticking to the training schedule. I'm also not very excited about the runs in the first few weeks. I chose a program for intermediate runners, but the runs in the first couple of weeks are only 3-6 miles long. I've heard good things about the program though, so I'm going to give it a shot unless I find another program in the meantime that fits my schedule better.

Oysters Rock My World!

2009-10-18T17:59:00.000-07:00

Today we took my mother in law to lunch for her 70th birthday celebration. We went to Wintzell's Oyster House. I have debated for several days back and forth about what I would order when we went. Part of me wanted to try to be really good and get some grilled fish and vegetables or something of the sort, but most of me really wanted the Oyster Sampler Platter.

Ultimately I decided to compromise and order oysters, but to order only 6 instead of 16. I started with Sauteed Crab Claws. I thought I was doing good by ordering sauteed instead of fried crab claws, but I totally wasn't thinking about the fact that sauteed most likely means it will be sitting in a pool of butter. So one strike against me already! I tried to just eat the meat and stay out of the garlic butter.

Then I had a side salad with Light Ranch dressing on the side. Yes, of course it was covered in shredded cheese, but atleast it didn't have bacon or croutons.

For my entree I order a half dozen Oysters Rockefeller with a side of broccoli. I forgot to take a picture of my broccoli, but it was also sitting in a pool of butter. I was really disappointed, it didn't say anything about butter on the menu. I guess thats what I get for not asking.

The oysters were awesome! I definitely could have eaten 16 of them if I had let myself. All of that stuff would have probably been fine if I hadn't eaten about half of my son's fried shrimp and french fries that he wouldn't touch. Oh, and garlic bread ... my god, the garlic bread!

This was the real "the world is out to get me" moment though: Tim went to the restroom and while he was gone my mother in law ordered herself and him Bread Pudding. I told her I didn't want any. Well, when he came back he stopped by the counter and asked the waitress if we had already ordered dessert and she told him yes, that we ordered 2 bread puddings. So he told her to put in an order for him one too! So to my suprise she brought 3 HUGE servings of bread pudding to the table. Talk about a test of willpower! I failed!

This afternoon we took Lincoln over to my grandmother's house to visit with my mom, sister, Aunt and cousin that were in town to celebrate my Aunt's birthday. Of course there was cake and icecream! On the back of the lunch we had, it was really easy to say no to the cake and icecream though. I wasn't even tempted in the least, which I'm pretty sure pissed my grandmother off. She is one of those types of people that takes incredible offense if you don't eat what she provides.

Instead of eating we dumped Lincoln off on the family and decided to go for a run around my grandparent's neighborhood. I intended to run 7 miles, but I kept saying "I'm going to try to run 7 miles". I wasn't convinced that I could actually do it, even though I've done it once before ... especially after that big lunch.

I actually ended up running 8.16 miles! A new personal distance record. I intentionally made myself run at a slower pace than normal so that I could stretch out my run. It also helped that I got absolutely and utterly lost in the neighborhood. I just kept running until I found my way back.

I had planned on not eating again today, but after such a long run I really felt like I needed something. So I made what I'm gonna call "Boca Taco Pita". Basically it was a pita stuffed with a Boca Burger, lettuce, green onions, salsa and sour cream. I also had a side of baby carrots and Fat Free Ranch Dip. It wasn't very photogenic, but it actually tasted really good!

What is your favorite thing to do with a Boca Burger?

What A Difference A Year Makes!

2009-10-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I posted my family picture from October 2008. If you don't recall, this is what it looks like:

We picked up our new family pictures yesterday. Exactly one year later this is what we look like:

The photographer took a picture of just Tim and I without Lincoln, and that picture turned out waaaay better than this one. But I just couldn't see the point in buying a picture that didn't have my son in it. So we only bought these.

Chili Trot 5K Recap

2009-10-17T17:58:00.001-07:00

My alarm went off at 6:00 this morning, and I almost decided to blow off my race and go back to sleep. But of course I would never actually do that! So I rolled out of bed and got going. I ate a packet of Quaker Original Grits for breakfast. I figured it was about the only thing I could eat quickly that didn't have much fiber in it.

We got to the church where the race was being hosted and it was absolutely FREEZING. Kelli and Nicole were smart enough to wear long sleeves and pants, but I hadn't invested in any yet because the temperature hadn't dipped below 70 degrees all year long. I wore capri length pants and a short sleeved shirt with a jacket. I seriously considered running in my jacket, but I was afraid I'd start sweating and get it all gross.

We got going just before 9:00, and for the first mile I was really afraid I might fall. I was so cold that my feet were numb and I felt unsteady on them. After the first mile I started warming up and felt alot better although my nose was running and the cold air was burning my lungs. By the third mile I felt great though .. and then of course it was over.

I'm shocked to say that I once again beat my previous time! I hit the finish line at exactly 25 minutes. My previous best time was 26:08. I guess the cold weather made me get my ass in gear and go. My splits were:

Mile 1: 8:05
Mile 2: 7:58
Mile 3: 8:02

I can't believe I ran 3 consistent 8 minute miles. I really am getting faster and stronger!

After the race, Tim and I tasted some of the chili entries in the cook off, ate a hotdog and I may or may not have eaten a chocolate brownie that may or may not have been absolutely delicious. We didn't get to stay for the awards ceremony because Tim had to work this afternoon.

After I dropped Tim off, I immediately went and bought a pair of long running pants and a couple long sleeved shirts. I can't wait to wear them tomorrow morning.

Its Finally Fall!

2009-10-16T20:32:00.000-07:00

Thats right, its finally fall in Alabama! I walked outside this evening and it was a chilly 55 degrees. This is my absolute favorite time of the year. I love everything about it: the cooler weather, football, sweaters, pumpkin pie, the colors. Its all wonderful! I think I'm even generally in a better mood in the fall than I am any other time of the year.

To make matters even better there are only 12 days left until our Gatlinburg vacation. I can't wait to get up in the mountains and see the beautiful scenery, relax in the hottub with some wine, eat some good food and just have a great time. I really need it!

Tomorrow morning is the Chili Trot 5K. I've got my playlist all ready and all my clothes layed out. The only thing left to do is figure out exactly where I'm suppose to go.

My friends Nicole and Kelli are running with me this time, and my husband Tim of course. I'm not looking to set any personal records this time, just hoping to have some fun. After the race there is a chili cookoff. I haven't decided yet if I will participate in the judging or not. I had a few weak moments with some Oreos at work the other night that I'm still trying to repent for.

Tomorrow night we have the Fall Festival at the YMCA. I'm not sure what all will be involved but I'm excited to dress Lincoln up in his Halloween costume! Oh ... we also get to go tomorrow to pick up the proofs of our family pictures that we had made a couple weeks ago. I'm excited to see how they turn out.

Sunday we are taking my mother in law out for lunch for her birthday (which was actually today). We are going to Wintzell's Oyster House. I'm absolutely infatuated with oysters. They are one of my most favorite things on earth. I still haven't decided if I'm going to make an honest effort to "be good" or if I'm just gonna say F it. I really want the Oyster Sampler, but I'm sure it will set me back about 1000 calories or more.

The fair is in town this week, but we have decided instead of going to the fair and spending a bunch of money that we don't really need to, that we will forgo it. Instead we are going to take Lincoln to Zoo Boo on Sunday night. Another Halloween costume opportunity! Yes!

So the question of the day is ... should I be good at Wintzell's or should I go all out with the Oyster Sampler? Take a look at the menu and tell me your vote for my entree.

Back To Work

2009-10-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

I'm going back to work tonight for the next 3 nights. So I will see you guys on Friday for a pre-race post. Chili Trot 5K is coming up this weekend!

My Awesome Deals!

2009-10-12T19:09:00.001-07:00

I broke my challenge to go two weeks without going grocery shopping. But I've been doing some research into "couponing", and I found some really great deals. I had no idea that there was more to using coupons than just clipping them and saving $.45 here and there. Apparently you can stack manufacturers coupons with store coupons with BOGOs and sale items and really save a bundle (and sometimes even get things for free). Who knew?!

I spent a large part of the morning on the Southern Savers website researching some good deals, and decided I better "strike while the iron is hot" so to speak and snatch these deals up.

I did my research, made my lists, clipped my coupon and set off for some savings! The first place I went was Walgreens. Now I would have never thought to go to Walgreens for grocery items, but I got a couple really great deals that I'm excited about. Here is the loot ...

I got two packs of Huggies diapers, 4 cans of Progresso soup, and 2 cans of Campbells soup. The normal price for all these items at my store would have been: $38.10. Diapers are expensive, in case you didn't know!

The diapers were on sale for $9.99 each, I used 2 - $2 off coupons and got $4 in Register Rewards. So each pack only cost me: $5.99.

For the Progresso soup I used a Walgreens 4 for $5 coupon, and stacked it with a $1.10 off 3 coupon. Each can only cost me: $.97. They are normally about $2.25 each!

The cans of Campbells Soup were Buy One Get One Free. I also used a $1 off 2 coupon. Each can normally costs $1.69 and I got each one for: $.35!

All in all I saved $17.15 at Walgreens.

After Walgreens I went to Publix. Publix has one of the best coupon policys around. They accept competitors coupons, they double coupons under $.50, and they stack manufacturers and store coupons. You can also buy only 1 of their BOGO items for half price instead of buying 2. Here is my loot from Publix:

2 Pillsbury Crescent rolls, Wet Ones, Lysol Spray, 4 Clorox Wipes, 2 Publix Wipes, Colgate Toothpaste, Betty Crocker Mashed Potatoes, Quick Oats, Knorr Pasta Sides, Salad Pockets (Pita Bread), 2 Chex Mix, Muir Glen Organic Tomato Soup, Publix Coffee, Hunts Diced Tomatoes, PAM, 4 bags steamable vegetables, and Huggies Overnights.

I won't go through all of the prices of these items, but here are a few of the best deals I got.

Betty Crocker Potatoes (normally $1.69): BOGO + .40 off 1 coupon (doubled) = $0.04!
Chex Mix (normally $2.50 each): $1 off 1 Target Coupon + $.50/2 (doubled) = $1 each
Huggies Overnights (normally $10.49): $2 off Coupon + $3 off Publix Coupon = $5.49
Wet Ones (normally $2.59): on sale for $1.50 + $1 off 1 Coupon = $.50!
Clorox Wipes & Publix Wipes (normally would have cost $19.94 for all 6): B2G1 coupon + buy theirs, get ours deal + sale price = $6 for all ($1 each!)
Publix Coffee (normally $.299) = $.01 with Weekly Ad coupon
Lysol Cleaner (normally $2.69): BOGO + $.50 off Coupon (doubled) = $0.85!

I saved a total of $42.91 with BOGOs and coupons at Publix!

It definitely took some time and energy but with the amounts I saved I feel like it was definitely worth my time.

Oops, my bad.

2009-10-12T13:32:00.001-07:00

A few days ago in my post When Nutrition Labels Fail You, I orginally said that the product pictured with the incorrect information on the nutrition label was Stonyfield Farm Oikos Greek Yogurt. The product was actually Chobani yogurt.

I received an email today from a Stonyfield representative correcting my mistake and asking me to change the information on my blog. She was very pleasant and even offered to send me a few coupons in the mail and assured me that their yogurt that states serving size: 1 container only has "one serving per container".

So I stand corrected.

Healthy Food is EXPENSIVE!!!

2009-10-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still alive!

I'm 50/50 on my goals that I set for myself this week. I haven't weighed myself at all since last Monday morning, so tomorrow morning's weigh in will be a complete suprise. I feel like I did well this week though. My eating was really good, I stayed within my points for the week, and I exercised 6 days. So no matter what the scale reflects I know that I did good.

I wasn't able to completely follow through with my 2nd goal for the week though, which was to track all of my food on my Spark People account. I did really well most of the week while I was off work, but I wasn't able to keep it up with the crazy weekend I had. Working 12 hour shifts really doesn't leave time for anything else besides sleep, run, work ... repeat. I'm not disappointed in myself for not following through on this one, I tracked everything in Weight Watchers atleast so I pretty much know where I stand.

One thing I have been working on lately is a plan to help me save money and pay down my debts. I haven't quite gotten the plan completely in place, but I'm working on a budget and I've been clipping coupons and reading some websites and blogs about money saving tips.

I'm shocked at how much money I spent on groceries last month. I added up all my grocery trips and the total came out to a god-awful ridiculous amount that I'm too embarassed to even repeat because it's literally that shocking. I've definitely got to get that under control! I think once my two week ban on grocery shopping is over, I'm going to start doing my grocery shopping once a week when the new sales ads come out. I'm going to plan all my meals ahead of time for the week based on the items that are on sale at the stores I shop at.

I even made a coupon organizer complete with printed categories labels. Lookie ...

Do you shop with coupons? What kind of money saving strategies do you use?

When Nutrition Labels Fail You.

2009-10-09T06:05:00.001-07:00

Anyone see anything wrong with my Chobani Greek Yogurt nutrition information? Serving Size: 1 container. Servings per container: 2. Awesomeness!

Homemade Hummus

2009-10-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

I hated hummus when I first tried it. I'm not exactly sure when or how it happened but now I adore it! Tim and I both eat alot of hummus. The problem is that hummus can be pretty expensive, especially when you eat it like we do. There are only a few ingredients necessary to make your own hummus and its really easy and inexpensive to make at home.

Last night before bed I made a big batch. Its a Weight Watchers recipe that I adapted for the ingredients I had on hand.

In a food processor combine:

2 cans of Garbanzo Beans
5 cloves of garlic (I like alot of garlic!)
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
3 Tbsp Tahini (I used peanut butter, couldn't find my Tahini)
6 Tbsp Lemon Juice
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 cumin
1 1/4 tsp salt

Blend all ingredients for about 2 minutes or until really smooth. It makes 14 servings! (1/4 cup each). I wish I had some roasted red peppers to put in it, but I didn't. Next time I will try that for sure though!

In other news, I got my Amazing Grass in the mail today! Yay! I love getting treats in the mail. Its so exciting! I wasn't expecting it to come so quickly, but they shipped it Priority Mail at no extra cost. One thing I already like about Amazing Grass is that their shipping prices are included in the product price, so you don't pay anything extra for shipping when you order online.

We ordered 4 sample packs to try because we couldn't decide on which one to get.

I'll let you know my verdict after I try them. I did make Lincoln a smoothie with the Kidz SuperFood in it and he sucked it down!

Do you like hummus? What do you eat it on? What's your favorite flavor? Have you ever made it from scratch?

Goals for The Week

2009-10-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

First of all, there is something that has been on my mind that I want to discuss. For all you Biggest Loser fans, last night on the episode when they had to order all of their food out, did you notice that they said to make sure their fruit didn't contain any: bananas, melons, or grapes? I keep thinking that maybe I misunderstood what they were saying. Surely they don't have them on such a strict diet that they can't eat certain fruits! Or do they?

My personal philosophy on fruits and vegetables is that, I didn't get fat eating them and they aren't going to make me fat now. Unless of course, you fry them or saute them in butter. I don't normally count points for fruits and vegetables that I eat raw or cooked without additives.

Every week I like to set a couple goals for myself. My weeks start on Monday (as far as weigh-in goes), so I'm a little late blogging these but thats ok. My goals for this week are:

To only weigh on weigh-in day.
To track everything I eat on Weight Watchers and Spark People.

I signed up for Spark People several months ago, but I stopped using it because I felt like it was too time consuming and redundant to track my food on both Weight Watchers and Spark People. One thing I did like about Spark People though that Weight Watchers doesn't have is that you can track all of your nutrients. You can actually see a breakdown of your calorie, carb, fat, and protein intake and measure it against the recommended daily amounts. You can track any other nutrients you are interested in as well.

Lately I've been really interested in not only losing weight, but also healthy living. By this I mean that I'm more interested in the nutritional value of what I'm eating than the Points value. So that is why I wanted to start using my Spark People account again. So far I'm doing really good at staying in the correct ranges for calories, carbs, fat and protein.

My other goal for this week is to only weigh on Monday. When I was younger I was completely scale obsessed; I would weigh when I first woke up, after I went to the bathroom, after I ate, after I exercised, anytime I went into the bathroom. You get the idea. I think this stems from growing up in a househould with someone that had eating disorders. My mother struggled with anorexia and bulemia when I was a child. For that reason its really important to me not to be scale obsessed anymore. I usually want to weigh myself every morning when I wake up, but I realize that there will be normal fluctuations from day to day and that weighing on a weekly basis is much more reliable.

My eats for today included:

Kashi GoLean Crunch with Vanilla Oikos Greek Yogurt

A Gala apple, my fave!

Leftover spaghetti squash with meat sauce, and a side salad.

1/2 of a Green Monster (Yep, thats yesterday's pic again)

Steak with mushrooms, green beans, roasted cauliflower, and
a twice baked potato.

I also had a handful of Quaker Quakes Mini Rice cakes, a Crab Delight snack, and a piece of garlic toast. It really seemed like I ate alot today, but I came in at 1450 calories.

I ran 6 miles this afternoon, and it was extremely hard for me today. I don't know if it was because I ran in the afternoon and I normally run in the morning, or if I was just having an off day. I literally felt like I couldn't have taken one more step though, and I felt all weird and dizzy afterwards. I think my body needed the extra calories tonight because I felt much better after dinner.

My First Green Monster

2009-10-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

I made my first Green Monster this morning. Take a look at the website if you aren't familiar with Green Monsters. There are many different recipes to try. I made the Virgin Green Monster.

The ingredients are:

2 cups fresh spinach
1 Tbsp Flax Seed
1 banana
1 cup milk
ice

This is what it looks like when its all blended together.

Pretty intimidating looking! I have to admit I was a little scared of what this was going to taste like. I smelled it first, but all I could smell was the banana. So here goes nothing!

And the verdict is:

Its really good! I couldn't taste the spinach at all, it just tastes like a banana smoothie. I'm glad to find another nutritious breakfast. I've really been wearing out the yogurt and granola lately. Now I can mix it up with a Green Monster sometimes.

I ordered some Amazing Grass last night, because I've been curious about it lately. Tim and I sat down together and looked at the website and decided to buy a few sampler packets to try and see what we like. I think these will be good to add into my Green Monsters.

Spaghetti Squash Recipe

2009-10-05T17:24:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to try Spaghetti Squash forever it seems. I've seen it on all kinds of cooking shows, but I've never been able to find it in any store here. Yesterday on our "Grocery Shopping Gone Wild" trip, we were buying some things in the produce section and I turned around and saw the Spaghetti Squash! And .. it was only $.89

I had to do some research to figure out exactly how to cook these crazy things, but it really wasn't hard at all.

First of all, this is what a spaghetti squash looks like:

The first step is to poke holes with a fork all over the squash so that it doesn't explode when you cook it. Then pre-heat oven to 375 degrees and bake the whole squash for 1 hour. I turned mine halfway through.

Meanwhile I made my spaghetti sauce, which is really pretty much just basic meat sauce, but I'll tell you what I did anyway. I used 1 1/4 pound very lean ground beef (93% lean), a tablespoon of minced garlic, 1/2 onion chopped, and 1 large zucchini chopped. I like to add in extra veggies wherever possible.

I sauteed this mixture until the beef was all browned and the zucchine started to get soft. Then I added in 1 jar of spaghetti sauce. I let the sauce simmer on low heat for the whole time the squash was baking.

After 1 hour I removed the squash from the oven, sliced vertically and spooned out all the seeds from the middle.

Once the seeds were removed, I used a fork to gently pull out the strands of the squash.

Top the "noodles" with the meat sauce like you normally would. The texture is a little bit different from real noodles, so you won't fool anyone into thinking they are noodles. But they have essentially no flavor, so it doesn't interfere with the flavor of the sauce at all.

Tim and I both really liked this recipe. I served the spaghetti with a small side salad and we were both pleasantly full.

I was really suprised at the amount of "noodles" you can get out of one squash. I had almost half a squash left after serving us both fairly big portions. I don't know how it will keep in the refrigerator for reheating, but I'm gonna give it a try.

$13 Running Socks

2009-10-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

These babies are my $13 running socks:

Tim has been raving about these Wigwam socks for weeks now. We went to Kinnucan's a few days ago and I saw them for sale. Tim insisted that I should buy them.

So today I decided to try them out for my run. When I first put them on they felt like HEAVEN. They were squishy in all the right places, fit exactly like I like them, and weren't too thin or too bulky.

I ran 6.3 miles in them and honestly I have to say once I started running I couldn't tell a difference between these socks and my Champion socks that I normally wear which are $10 for 6 pairs.

I'm gonna have to say the verdict on these socks is a big thumbs down. There is nothing wrong with them really, but I don't think they were really worth the money.

Last Weigh-In Day Post

2009-10-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

I have decided that after today I'm not going to post my weight every week. I feel like the scale doesn't always reflect the work that I've done and I don't want anyone (including myself) to get discouraged by that. I've been bouncing up and down alot lately, and rather than focus on the ups and downs of the scale I would rather focus on my nutrition and activity.

The bottom line is that I have lost 100 pounds! Whether I gain a pound this week, or lose 3 pounds next week really doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. The important thing is that I'm active and healthy and that the scale continues to ultimately go in a downward direction. I have about 15-20 more pounds to lose and that might take me 6 weeks or 6 months. Who knows? I'll definitely let you know when I hit my goal weight though. I will also continue to update my weight tracker at the top of the page.

So ... for my final weigh-in post, I gained 0.4 lbs this week. I'm not surprised at all by this, if anything I'm surprised it wasn't more than that. I did ok on my activity this week, but I had a couple of rough days with my eating.

I've been thinking about training for a half-marathon. A friend of mine gave me this article out of a magazine that she found. The only problem I have with this training program is that it seems pretty strict. Because of my odd work schedule I won't always be able to do everything as its posted here. I think I could probably use this as a basis for creating my own custom training program though that would fit my work schedule better.

What do you think of this plan? Do you know of any other training programs that might be better? Would it be reasonable for me to change this around to comply with my work schedule better?

A Challenge

2009-10-04T17:11:00.000-07:00

I've attempted this before in one of my previous blogs and wasn't sucessful. But in light of our grocery trip today that turned from 2 items needed into a cart full of stuff we didn't need and a bill of $180, Tim and I have decided to not go grocery shopping for two full weeks. Some people do this regularly, but we go grocery shopping atleast once a week and sometimes several times a week. We are bad about deciding we want a certain meal and then having to go out and buy all of the ingredients instead of eating something else that we already have at home.

The rules of the challenge are: no grocery shopping until October 18th excluding fresh produce and household items such as cat food, toothpaste, etc. I figure I'll allow buying produce since it goes bad too quickly to be kept for 2 weeks.

The purpose of this challenge isn't only to save money, but also to use up some of the items we have around that we've had for a while. I also think with this restriction we will probably come up with some pretty interesting meals that might be fun.

Tomorrow I'm going to take an inventory of the things we have on hand in the pantry, freezer, and fridge and make a meal plan for the next two weeks.

Official Race Results

2009-10-04T14:11:00.000-07:00

This morning I ran outside to get the newspaper to check out the official race results from yesterday's Capitol City Half Marathon and 5K. I finished 67th out of 322 runners in the 5K. Not bad!

The newspaper listed my official time as 26:08. So that was even faster than I thought I had finished.

After lunch Tim, Nicole and I went out to Swayback Bridge Trail for some mountain biking. We did the 1 mile course just to try it out since Nicole hasn't ever been out there before, and then we did the 4 mile course. We had a really good time. This was actually the first time that I've been out there when the ground was dry. I didn't get all muddy for once! Yes!

When we finished the trails, Tim wanted to ride down the road a little to the bridge. I've never ridden on the road before and it made me really nervous, but luckily we never saw one car. Coming down the hill towards the bridge I got my bike up to almost 23 mph. I actually started to get scared because I was going so fast!

We stopped by the grocery store on the way home to buy dog food and salsa and ended up spending almost $180 on random stuff. Don't you just hate that?! But one cool thing we got that I've never been able to find before was Spaghetti Squash. I've been itching to try it. So tomorrow night I think I'm going to make spaghetti squash with meat sauce for dinner.

Do you cook with spaghetti squash? What kinds of things have you made with it besides ... spaghetti?

Capitol City Half Marathon & 5K

2009-10-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

Tim and I got up at 4:30 this morning to get ready for the Capitol City 5K. I slept pretty good last night though. After all the mexican food, two beers, and a sleeping pill ... I was ready for bed at 8:30 pm.

We drove downtown this morning as the sun came up to meet my friend Nicole and her mom who were running in the race also. It was very confusing with all the one way streets and the roadblocks, but we eventually all got where we were suppose to be.

The Half Marathon started right at 7:00 am, and the 5K got underway about 15 minutes later.

Poor Tim, he mistakenly had his iPod on "shake to shuffle" and kept wondering why he would only hear 10 seconds of a song before it switched. He didn't figure it out until more than halfway through the race. He got so frustrated that he actually threw his headphones away at one of the water stations.

I however, didn't have any iPod issues today. The race went great! I felt like I paced myself well, yet I ran as fast as I possibly could without overdoing it. I didn't get any side cramps today, and the hills that I worried about really weren't an issue at all. I actually wished I could have kept running. I was super jealous of the half-marathoners!

Of course I forgot to stop my Garmin when I came across the finish line again today. But these are my times according to my Garmin (the official results haven't been posted yet):

Mile 1 - 8:55
Mile 2 - 8:45
Mile 3 - 7:44
0.1 Mile - 7:06

My time according to my Garmin was 26:28, more than 2 minutes faster than my previous 5K time!

My father in law caught this shot as I came in to the finish line:

Tim came in a few minutes after me and we got a good shot of him right under the finish line.

After the race we went to the post-race party where they had Jim & Nicks BBQ, free beer, live music and massages!

I won't know my official results until tomorrow morning, they are suppose to be in the newspaper. I'm really glad to have my second 5K under my belt though, and I'm more than pleased with my time.

Tonight at dinner I asked Tim, "who would ever have thought that we would be runners?". Which brought up the conversation of "are we really runners?" What makes a runner? How far do you have to be able to run to be a runner?

What is your opinion? What makes a person a runner?

Fell Off the Wagon

2009-10-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

Tim and I went downtown this afternoon to pick up our race packets for the 5K in the morning. I hate to report that the t-shirt is really ugly, but its a nice comfortable material. There weren't very many goodies in the packet, a water bottle and a coupon book were about the best things.

When we got back home for some reason I was starving so I decided to have a snack. Somehow my snack turned in to a major binge! I ended up eating: a soft pretzel, Cheez-Its, string cheese, a trail mix bar and about 4 tablespoons of peanut butter straight from the jar. I wiped out the rest of my daily points and all but 1 of my weekly points that I had left.

To make matters worse about an hour later my friend Nicole called and wanted to go out to dinner at a mexican place. I talked myself into it even though I had no more points left to spare. I ate a full meal there as well and 2 beers. Although I will consider the beer a small victory because normally I would get a medium or large margarita. You know the ones that look like a fishbowl.

I hope I don't feel weighed down and bloated for my run in the morning. I wish I wouldn't do this to myself, but I always seem to justify it at the time.

On another note, I made my playlist for tomorrow. Its got a couple of songs from the previous 5K playlist, but most of them are new.

This course has several hills, some gradual and atleast one steep hill. So I'm almost positive my time won't be anything close to my last 5K time. I'm aiming for finishing in 32 minutes or less.

Family Pictures

2009-10-02T12:14:00.001-07:00

Every year we donate money to our local Volunteer Fire Department and in exchange they give us a free sitting for family portraits. They called today to tell us that the photos will be taken tomorrow afternoon.

I got to thinking about how different we will look in our photos this year than last year. Most years we didn't even take photos because I never wanted to see a picture of myself.

This is our family photo from last October.

I honestly don't hardly recognize those people. Its hard to believe that was only one year ago. Hopefully this year we will have some pictures that we can actually be proud of. Who knows ... maybe we'll make Christmas cards with photos this year.

I Love Lists.

2009-10-02T06:45:00.001-07:00

I make lists for just about everything from grocery lists, packing lists, to do lists, and everything else inbetween. This morning I started off by making a To Do List for today.

I keep a dry erase board on my refrigerator for my lists. And as a bonus you get to see some of my fat pictures that are on the refrigerator. We could barely fit into the photo booth. I was actually sitting in his lap and my boobs were just about choking me.

For breakfast this morning I had some GoLean Crunch with Chobani Strawberry Greek Yogurt.

I think I like the Chobani yogurt a little bit better than the Oikos. Or maybe its just because it was strawberry flavored. Who knows?

Well off to get started on that to do list!

What a day!

2009-10-01T20:06:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up and decided to spend the day shopping. I do this way too often, but when you are going through sizes as quickly as I have been its pretty much inevitable. I found some good deals on jeans and sweaters. And I'm happy to report that I got to move down another size in jeans! Size 10 baby! I never even wore a size 10 back in my "skinny days".

I called my grandmother to see if she wanted Lincoln and I to come over for a visit this afternoon, and she offered to meet me at the store and pay $50 on my new clothes. Score!

I took Lincoln to lunch at Zoe's Kitchen, one of my very favorite places to eat for lunch. I always order the same thing, Grilled Chicken Breast sandwhich with a side of salsa, slaw and Baked Lays.

When we got finished shopping and visiting with the grandparents I decided I'd like to go for a run. So I dropped Lincoln off at my mother in-law's house and got everything together to go running. I ran a great 5 miles! Nothing on my body hurt, the weather was nice, my clothes and my iPod cooperated with me, it was awesome. I probably could have run another couple of miles except that I was so thirsty and I forgot my water bottle at home on the counter.

I picked up Lincoln and went to the grocery store to find some inspiration for dinner. I wasn't sure what I wanted at all. I saw pizza crusts and remembered that I had some goat cheese at home that I've been wanting to use. So I bought some pizza sauce, fresh spinach, baby bella mushrooms, a red onion, and black olives.

Put it all together and bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 450 degrees and this is what you get.

It was AMAZING! The goat cheese was the star of the show for sure, but anyone that knows me knows that I'm obsessed with goat cheese. I can't wait to make this for Tim when he comes home tomorrow. Its definitely going to be a new regular in our house.

Have you ever tried goat cheese? What do you think of it?

Getting Excited About Vacation!

2009-09-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to get really excited about our Gatlinburg vacation! Only 28 more days to go. I have a countdown calender on my google homepage. We paid the last of our money today for our cabin rental. Here are some pictures of where we will be staying.

I love cozy little cabins. I'm super excited about having our own private hottub also. That will be nice after running up in the mountains. I can't decide if I want to make plans for what I want to do and see each day while we are there or if I want to relax and just do whatever comes up. Knowing me I'll end up planning out every minute of the time that we will be there.

I just finished up my last workday for this week, and now I'm off for 8 glorious days! I love having an 8 day break every 4 weeks. It just hit me that I have a 5K in 3 days. This one is probably going to be a bit different from the last one I did. The course is suppose to have a few pretty steep hills, so I doubt I'll be setting any personal records this time, but you never know. I need to get started on working on my playlist. There are certain songs like I like to listen to when I'm running hills.

What are some of your favorite songs to run to?

Callaway Gardens Trip

2009-09-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

We got up early yesterday morning to drive to Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia to spend the day. It was about a 2 hour drive, but it went by really fast. I haven't been to Callaway since I was a small kid so I really didn't remember anything about it, but I saw on the website that they had a 10 mile bike trail that I wanted to try.

It was almost lunch time by the time we got to Callaway, so we decided to eat at one of their restaurants in the gardens. I was really hoping it would be a nice little deli type place, but they only had just a very few items on the menu. Hamburgers, hotdogs, paninis, french fries ... things like that. They did have veggie burgers and veggie hotdogs, but I didn't know what kind they would be. So I ordered what I thought was probably the healthiest thing there.

After lunch we got our bikes all set up and cruised around the park for a while. We never could find the beginning of the bike trail, but we managed to get on it somewhere in the middle and just rode around to the different attractions.

We ended up riding just under 13 miles for the day. It was great! Lincoln was really good riding in his trailer behind my bike and he slept alot of the time. We stopped at the Butterfly Gardens and the Vegetable Gardens. I wanted to go see the chapel, but every time we rode by Lincoln was asleep. My favorite thing was the sundial, I was suprised at how accurate it was.

We left Callaway when they closed and headed back home. I was starving after riding so much on the bike, so we stopped for dinner at Mimi's Cafe. I went in planning to eat something light and healthy, but somewhere along the line one thing turned into another and I ended up with: a steak, potato, salad, bread, 2 beers, and dessert. For dessert I had the sampler thingy with bread pudding, a brownie and apple crisp.

I literally felt sick. I haven't felt that bad after I've eaten in a really long time. I can't believe I used to do that to myself pretty much every single day. And why I chose to do it the night before weigh-in is beyond me. Thankfully I was still down this morning when I weighed in, but not as much as I was the other day when I cheated. I weighed in at 159.8, putting me at 100.2 lbs lost!

The Voice Inside My Head

2009-09-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning just before 6:30 with plans of going to Callaway Gardens today. I checked the weather report last night and knew that it was probably going to rain most of the day, but my husband assured me that there would plenty of things to do indoors. I decided to take a look at the weather again while everyone else was still sleeping, and it looked about the same as expected. But tomorrow is suppose to be mostly sunny. So we are going to go tomorrow instead. I just hate to drive all that way and pay $30 for admission and not be able to do the bike trail or walk through the gardens.

I decided to go for a morning run since I was already awake. I drove to my normal parking spot and started my run. I normally do 2 laps around the neighborhood, which is almost exactly 5 miles. But today somewhere along the way I started thinking some crazy thoughts like, "what if I could do 3 laps today instead of just 2?", "what if I ran 7 miles?".

After my first lap I was already starting to feel winded, so I nixed the idea of running farther than normal. But for some reason this voice kept saying things to me ... "its Saturday, you have plenty of time ... the weather is beautiful, just slow down and keep going". Everytime I seriously wanted to quit I thought about how accomplished I would feel if I was able to run 7 miles. And somehow I pushed through and did it.

As you can see it took me 1 hour and 8 minutes to run the 7 miles. I was trying hard not to concentrate on my time, to just keep putting one foot infront of the other. But I'm a very competitive person so it was hard for me not to race myself.

Mile 1: 9:06
Mile 2: 9:19
Mile 3: 9:35
Mile 4: 9:57
Mile 5: 10:07
Mile 6: 10:09
Mile 7: 10:09

I was pretty sweaty and disgusting by the time I finished, but so happy and proud!

Suprisingly I wasn't very hungry when I got back home. I had to remind myself that I hadn't eaten breakfast yet. So I made some yogurt with Kashi Crunch and some melon for breakfast. Its my new favorite for the moment.

What is your go-to breakfast food? I'm always up for new ideas.

My Trip

2009-09-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

After my run this morning I got ready and headed to Birmingham (my hometown) to see my best friend, Vanessa and her son, Jackson. Its about a 2 hour drive from where we live now. The weather was really nice and Lincoln slept almost the entire way, so it was a peaceful trip.

We hung around at her house for a couple of hours and let the boys play together. They played very sweetly and had a great time. Then we decided they both really needed haircuts and I wanted an excuse to buy a new purse so we headed out to go shopping.

Lincoln did really good for his haircut and afterwards he got a Dum-dum.

After haircuts and shopping we went back to Vanessa's house to pack up and take a few pictures before heading home.

Lincoln fell asleep in the car and slept about half of the way home, and then the gates of hell broke open and he screamed the rest of the way home. But it was all ok, because when I walked in the door my sweet hubby had this lovely dinner waiting on me.

Melissa D'Arabian's North African Meatballs, Couscous with chopped dates and steamed baby carrots. I've been promising to make this dinner for weeks now, but he knew it would be really late when I got home so he made it for me. Wasn't that sweet? I really liked the meatballs, but I'm not sure about the couscous. I've never eaten it before, and although it tasted good ... it had a strange texture that I didn't much care for.

Tomorrow morning we are getting up early to go to Callaway Gardens. I've never been there before but they have a 10 mile bike trail that I would love to ride. Hopefully I'll get some great pictures of all the flowers and the butterfly garden.

I Cheated.

2009-09-25T07:43:00.001-07:00

This morning I woke up at about 6:15 for my morning run. When I was changing clothes I decided to hop on the scale. I really try to only weigh myself once a week, but I was feeling particularly light this morning so I decided to cheat.

The scale read: 158.2!!!

That means I have unofficially lost 101.8 pounds. Of course we won't know the official results until Monday, but I'm so excited! Lets hope it sticks!

I had a decent 5 mile run this morning. My iPod stopped working right at the halfway point, and I happened to be right beside my car at the time. It would have been easy to just stop right then, but I forced myself to keep going. Its hard for me to run without music.... I just feel heavier, slower, and I concentrate too much on my fast breathing and my pounding heart when I don't have my music. Also my shorts kept slipping down. I guess thats what I get for running in clothes that are 2 sizes too big.

I'm getting ready to head to Birmingham (2 hour drive) to visit my BFF that I haven't seen since March (and 58 pounds ago). This should be interesting!

Book Review: Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster

2009-09-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading the book Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster and I was going to write a review of the book for you guys. However, I just ran across this video that sums the book up perfectly.

I had mixed feeling about this book. I really loved Jen and the way she writes. She is hilariously funny and there were several times when I was literally laughing my ass off while reading this book. The thing that I didn't like about this book was that almost the entire book is about the process of her writing the book. It wasn't until about 75% through the book when she actually started losing weight. The majority of the book was her writing about why she didn't want to lose weight but she felt she had to so that she could write this book.

Overall I'm glad I read the book, although I don't think it was especially motivating as far as a weightloss memoir goes. But it was definitely good for some laughs.

I'm going to give this book 3/5 stars.

My Culinary Mistake

2009-09-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm finally off of work for a few days. I can't write much when I'm working since I work three 12 hour shifts in a row. I pretty much just work and sleep for 3 days straight.

When I woke up this afternoon I got some Parisienne Chicken going in the crockpot for my dinner tonight. I already had all of the ingredients at home except the mushrooms, so it was an easy fix.

I went to the Y this evening and did 15 minutes on the elliptical before my spinning class. Spin class was really good tonight. I've been feeling like it was a waste of time lately because I think my body is too used to it. My heart rate doesn't usually get high enough for me to burn enough calories in spinning anymore. But tonight was different ... my heart rate stayed higher than normal and I felt like I got a really good workout.

When I got home the chicken was smelling really good. But when I looked at it I realized something was wrong.

The sauce was all grainy and gross. At first I thought that it was just a bad recipe, but I just re-read it and realized I messed up. I was suppose to mix sour cream into the white wine and cream of mushroom soup mixture, and instead I just put it into the crockpot. Oops!

I tried to make the best of it by serving it with some yummy sauteed green beans and rice. And it wasn't actually that bad, but it definitely isn't a keeper. I don't think it would have been that great if I had done it correctly either, so I probably won't bother making this one again.

Oh well, lesson learned. What culinary mistakes have you made?

Just a Quick Hello

2009-09-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

We had a great night last night in Labor and Delivery. For some reason I didn't sleep very well today though. I woke up several times during the day and finally decided to get up at 2:45. I usually get up at 4:00. I packed a healthy dinner for work tonight: hummus and sprout sammy, edamame succotash and more cucumber dill salad. I did the Jillian Michaels No More Trouble Zones DVD and now I'm snacking on a pretzel with yellow mustard and honeydew.

I wish I could be home tonight to watch The Biggest Loser. I guess it will have to wait til Thursday night when I'm off work though. That is .. unless someone decides to post the results on Facebook. I hate it when people do that.

Have a great night everyone!

Official Race Results and Weigh-In Day

2009-09-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I forgot to mention in my last post that I got my official race results from the Big Brother/ Big Sister 5K today.

My official time was 28:50. So pretty close to my estimation. And I finished 38th out of 131 runners. Not bad at all for my first race!

I also forgot to mention earlier that today was weigh-in day. I gain 0.2 lbs this week. I don't know what's going on with my body. Its just bouncing back and forth right now. But I know that I'm eating well and exercising plenty so I'm ok with it.

How's That for a 4 Point Lunch?!

2009-09-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

Calico Bacon & Corn Pie, Sauteed Green Beans with diced Shallots and cantalope. Yummy!

Now I'm off to bed. I have to work the next 3 nights and help bring some new lives into the world.

A Great Run Today

2009-09-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up at about 6:45 and debated on whether to go running or not. My mind wanted to get up and go, but my body wanted to sleep in a little longer. I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and get it done. I knew I'd feel much better if I did, and I also wanted to make up for the pitiful run I had yesterday.

I had decided last night that instead of running from home like I normally do, that I would drive to this spot along my running route and park my car. That way I wouldn't have to run across the busy street near my house and run through the grass on the side of the busy road where I always get squooshy wet shoes. I couldn't find my car keys though. I eventually did but I had a few moments of panic where I thought I might have dropped them in the movie theater yesterday.

Once I finally got going it was a great run. I felt much lighter and free than yesterday when I ran with the jog stroller. I did two loops around the neighborhood for 5 miles. I really felt like I could keep going but I needed to get home so Tim could get to work.

After my run I had some Organic Greek Yogurt with Kashi Honey Almond Flax cereal and some cantaloupe chunks. It was yummy and really filled me up after my run.

For lunch I'm going to make one of my E-mealz recipes called Calico Corn and Bacon Pie and some veggies.

Homemade Granola Bars

2009-09-20T17:26:00.001-07:00

I've been eating a lot of granola bars lately, so I thought I might try my hand at making my own. I found this recipe online to use as a guide. I decided to make mine with dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. I also added some milled flax seeds. I made a few other changes as well; I used 1/3 cup of brown sugar instead of the 3/4 cups called for. I also used Blue Agave instead of honey to sweeten it with.

Mix all dry ingredients from recipe into a large bowl, make a well in the center and pour in all the wet ingredients. Mix well with your hands and spread on a 9x13 pan.

I put a piece of saran wrap sprayed with PAM over the mixture and had the hubby roll it out with a rolling pin for me so that it would be nice and even.

I love that he is wearing a shirt that says, "Let me drop everything and work on your problem" while he's rolling out my granola for me. :)

According to the recipe you are suppose to cook the mixture at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes, but I read several of the reviews that said that was way too long. I cooked it for 18 minutes and it turned out perfectly. After letting it cool off for a good 5 minutes I cut it into bars.

For 24 bars it works out to be 3 points per bar. Not bad! I might try one in the morning for breakfast. Lincoln ate a whole one tonight for dinner, and he rarely eats anything so they must not be too bad.

Originally I planned on making Melissa D'Arabian's Morrocan Meatballs, couscous with dried dates and steamed carrots for dinner tonight. But after eating some movie theater popcorn that I didn't plan for I decided I needed a lighter dinner. So I had some yummy sushi, edamame succotash and some of the leftover dilly cucumber salad.

My Loot and Yummy Lunch

2009-09-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

After my pitiful excuse for a run this morning, Tim and I decided to go to Fresh Market to get some ingredients to make our own homemade granola bars. Fresh Market is a very dangerous place for me. Not only can I spend hours in that store, but I could literally spend my life savings there as well.

So here is my loot from my Fresh Market trip:

Blue Agave, Frozen Shallots, Dilly Cucumber salad, Edamame Succotash, Wheat Germ, Flax Seed, Ezekiel Bread, Tuna roll, Vegetarian Spring Roll, Calamari salad, Clover sprouts, dried cranberries, Fig preserves, fruit sticks, and sunflower seeds.

As you can see most of what I bought has nothing to do with my homemade granola bars. But, I am weak for a good gourmet market.

I've seen several blogs with people eating sprout and hummus sandwhiches and it looked so good I have been craving it for days. So I made a yummy sprout and roasted red pepper hummus sandwhich for lunch with Dilly Cucumber Salad, the spring rolls from above, and some calamari salad. It was delish! Definitely the best lunch I've had in a good while.

Tim and I are going to take Lincoln to his first movie this afternoon. We are going to go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I hope he enjoys himself and is good. I'm afraid he's going to try to run up and down the aisles. I think we'll take his booster seat and get him a small popcorn and hopefully that will keep him occupied.

I used my jog stroller this morning on our run and I HATED it. I'm really upset because I spent alot of money on it and really wanted to enjoy running with it. I don't know what to do now. I don't know if I can even send it back. Its very hard to turn because it has a fixed wheel instead of a swivel wheel, and its like pushing an extra 50 pounds while you run. I did 4 miles, but I walked the majority of it. I'll let you know what we decide to do about the stroller later.

Race Day Review

2009-09-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

My morning started really early this morning. I set my alarm to go off at 5:00 am so that I would have plenty of time to wake up and get everything together before the race this morning. I actually ended up starting to wake up around 3:45, then 4:15, then 4:35 .. you get the idea.

Tim and I got to the race site about 7:20 this morning and met up with several of my friends from work who ran with us.

Me, Sam, Bailey and Bonnie

Before the race some military-type guy lead us in some stretching and calisthenics. Then we got going about 8:00. I made my way to the back of the crowd at the starting line because I was terrified of getting trampled after reading about that happening to people. As the race got going I weaved my way through the back of the pack and ended up fairly close to the front.

I breezed through the first 2 miles with no problem. Actually I was completely suprised at what my Garmin was saying my pace was. I didn't feel like I was running any faster than normal, but my heart rate was running in the 170s and my pace was in the 8:45 range. When I hit the beginning of the 3rd mile I got a side-stitch so bad that I almost couldn't run through the pain. It was sheer willpower that kept me going at that point. I kept telling myself that I knew I could finish and I didn't want to walk during my first race. At one point I was hurting so bad I seriously thought I was gonna puke on the side of the road. But somehow I pushed through and the pain eased off.

I forgot to look at the clock when I crossed the finish line, and oddly enough I also forgot to stop my Garmin for several seconds after I finished. I think my official time is going to be right about 28:45. But for now I'll give you the stats from my Garmin:

Total Time: 28:56
Mile 1: 8:59
Mile 2: 8:54
Mile 3: 9:24

Here are a few pictures from after the race:

Tim and I

As if running wasn't enough, Tim and I decided to go moutain biking afterwards because the weather was actually decent. Its been raining for about 2 weeks straight and this is the first clear day we've had in a while. We biked a 4 mile trail at Swayback Bridge Trail. After we got home from that I was exhausted and starving!

I heated up a Morningstar Spicy Black Bean Burger and chopped it up on top of some Tostitos Scoops and made a huge taco salad out of it.

Overall it was a really great day and I'm glad to have my first 5K behind me. Next up is the Capitol City 5K on October 3rd. That one's going to be a toughy, a good portion of it is up some pretty serious hills. I've also signed up to run a 5K called the Turkey Burner on my birthday, November 21st. I thought that would be a fun thing to do for my birthday.

Pre-Race Post

2009-09-18T17:54:00.001-07:00

Well, this will be my final post before my first 5K tomorrow morning at 8:00 am. I started off training with the Couch to 5K program several months ago and finished the program and kept going. At this point I have run up to 6 miles straight, and I do 4-5 miles consistantly several times a week. I don't have any doubt that I'll be able to run the whole 5K tomorrow which is what my original goal was. Now I'd like to finish in a reasonable time. I'd be happy to finish in 31 minutes or less. I think that is very do-able.

I worked on my playlist for my iPod tonight. I picked some songs that have good beats, a fast tempo, or are particularly motivating for me. So here it is:

Forgive the Kanye West. He's an ass, but that song motivates me when I need it. Thats why I chose to put it at the end. This playlist runs about 33 minutes, so hopefully I'll be well done by then.

I went through my race packet tonight. It contained: a course map, my t-shirt, my number, a pedometer, and a few pamphlets.

My tshirt is too big on me! I'm having a hard time realizing what size I actually am. In my mind I'm still a large. I'm hoping I can trade my large t-shirt in for a size medium tomorrow morning before the race. But I did put it on for just a second to take a picture.

Since I was out all day I didn't plan what I would make for dinner tonight, which is very uncharacteristic of me. I went through what we had in the house and came up with this:

Chicken macaroni, green beans and steamed baby carrots. The macaroni includes: diced chicken breast, diced tomatoes, artichoke hearts, black olives, green peas, cream of mushroom soup, cream of chicken soup, mozzarella and cheddar cheese, and bread crumbs on top. It ended up making 2 huge pans! It worked out to be 5 points per serving. Not bad at all. I'll have alot leftover to freeze. For dessert I had a Sedona Frozen Yogurt and Granola Sandwhich. They are so delish!

Have a great night! I'm going to try to get to bed early tonight so I can get a fresh start tomorrow. I'll let you know how the race goes.

Not As Planned

2009-09-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

Well so much for that lovely dovey, today is gonna be a fantastic day, nothing can go wrong business I spoke of this morning. For starters my cat barfed all over my house this morning. Awesome! And then when I ran outside to get Lincoln in the car to take him to Gymboree, my car wouldn't start.

So instead of taking him to Gymboree I got to take him to the car dealership and sit in the waiting room for 30 minutes or so while they replaced my battery and charged me $200.

Atleast Lincoln had fun playing with the toys.

And pretending to talk on my cellphone.

After we got that all straightened out it was lunch time. We met my friend, Bailey at Jason's Deli for some grub. I ordered the Mediterranean Wrap with Organic Blue Corn Chips, homemade salsa and a water.

The wrap was awesome! Oven roasted turkey breast, roasted Red Pepper Hummus, cucumber, purple onions, Kalamata olives, Roma tomatoes, and organic field greens in an organic wheat wrap ... whats not to love? The blue corn chips were good too, but if I had known that they were 5 points I probably would have just gotten some steamed veggies instead. I was anticipating them to be about 3 points. I guess thats what I get for not checking ahead of time.

Bailey wanted to make sure I included a picture of her in my blog, so here is a token picture of my friend Bailey with my food.

After lunch we went and picked up our race packets. I haven't really looked to see what's included yet. I also need to work on my playlist ... so more on that later.

Happy Friday!

2009-09-18T05:27:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate to get put on call last night from work. Which basically means that I get to stay at home unless they call me and tell me that I need to come in because they are getting busy. Well, I didn't get called in so I had the opportunity to wake up to this:

He can never keep his eyes open when I take a picture of him. But how can you have a bad day when you wake up to that?!

For breakfast I had a glass of milk, a banana and a Cran Bran Vita Top. I'm seriously digging the Vita Tops.

I just have a feeling today is going to be great! I'm going to take my son to his Gymboree play group, then maybe out to lunch for some Mother/Son time, then we are going to go pick up my race packet for tomorrow's 5K. My jogger stroller should be delivered today, which I'm super excited about. I also need to work on my 5K playlist for my iPod.

Any suggestions for upbeat motivational songs to add to my playlist?

I Want To Be a Granola

2009-09-17T16:30:00.001-07:00

Granola: An adjective used to describe people who are environmentally aware (flower child, tree-hugger), open-minded, left-winged, socially aware and active, queer or queer-positive, anti-oppressive/discriminatory (racial, sexual, gender, class, age, etc.) with an organic and natural emphasis on living, who will usually refrain from consuming or using anything containing animals and animal by-products (for health and/or environmental reasons), as well as limit consumption of what he or she does consume, as granola people are usually concerned about wasting resources. Usually buy only fair-trade goods and refrain from buying from large corporations, as most exploit the environment as well as their workers, which goes against granola core values.

(I stole that definition from Urbandictionary.com)

Most people who have known me for most of my life will laugh when they read this post. But in my mind, I'm a granola. I care about the environment, about animals, about healthy eating and living, energy conservation, pollution. Sometimes I want to be a vegetarian, except for the not eating fish part. That would just literally kill me. But if it weren't for that I'd probably do it. I'd like to cut all artificial products out of my diet. I'd like to eat only organic whole foods. In my head I'm a completely different person that I am in reality.

The problem is I don't know how. I live in a small southern city. We don't have Whole Foods or organic grocery stores. We don't have organic restaurants. We don't even have a recycling center for goodness sakes! I wish I lived in San Francisco or other places where these things are readily available. I have made some small changes though. I've stopped buying bottled water and instead started using a refillable Brita water filter to reduce waste. I've started using some meat substitutes like Boca Crumbles and Burgers and Morningstar Farms products in place of ground beef, sausage, etc. I try to eat products with no artificial ingredients whenever I have a choice. I've recently really starting loving the Kashi brand products. But there are only a few things available in my area. I've also recently cut out diet drinks and products containing aspartame.

Maybe one day my city will grow and these things will be easier to obtain. Maybe there is even something I can do to help. (Although I don't know what that would be.) Or maybe one day I'll move to a bigger city where this way of life is accepted or encouraged. But until then I guess I'll just have to keep taking the small steps I can with what I have.

I Eat Weird Food in the Mornings

2009-09-17T06:40:00.001-07:00

Its 8:39 am, and I'm sitting down to a bowl of salad, fresh fruit and a fat free hotdog. Most people think its super weird that I eat these kinds of things in the morning. I just got home from working a 12 hour shift at the hospital and for some reason I just can't eat breakfast food before I go to bed. It feels like dinner time to me. Apparently its just me though because everyone else I work with eats breakfast when they get off work. Just a little tidbit about me that I haven't shared before.

I have to say that I'm really getting irritated with people asking me "What's your secret?". I know people are just trying to be complimentary and get encouragement in their own journeys, but I swear to all that is holy that I'm gonna blow up on someone one day when they ask me that. It really not that difficult! Everyone knows the "secret" is diet and exercise, but no one wants to do the work. They want a magic pill to make everything better. This is really becoming a huge pet peeve of mine.

A New Toy and The Biggest Loser

2009-09-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

This is the new toy that I broke down and bought tonight. Its a Schwinn Joyrider jog stroller. I've been feeling guilty lately about the time that I've been spending away from my son when Tim and I are out exercising. We bought a bike trailer a few weeks ago so that we can take Lincoln with us when we go bike riding in the park. Now that we've both really gotten into running lately I thought it might be a good idea to have a good jog stroller as well.

Part of me feels really bad about spending all this money on the gadgets I've bought to workout with. But then I try to remind myself that although these things probably are technically necessary, they are all investments in my future, in our future, and in my son's future. Not to mention the fact that my husband encourages me. If I even have an inkling of an idea of buying something he's right behind me saying, "get it, get it!". Who can say no to that?!

I'm really looking forward to being able to go for runs in the park with my son. I think it will be a great family time, and it will give my mother in law a break from watching him every day not only while we work but also while we workout.

I did make a couple rules to follow regarding the stroller. I decided for safety's sake that we will only use it when we are in a park, on a track. I'm too afraid to use it out on the road, not only because of traffic but also because of the freaks that are out there in the world. I really don't want anyone messing with me while I have my baby with me. Its sad that the world has come to a point that you have to worry about things like that.

On another note I was super stoked about The Biggest Loser premiere tonight. That show has seriously helped change my life. Its so incredibly motivating! Every year up until now when The Biggest Loser would start I would wish that I could be on the show, that I could make those changes in my life, and be like those people. The ironic thing is that I'd usually watch the show while chowing down on a very unhealthy dinner.

It feels completely different to sit down and watch the show and know that I used to be where those contestants are starting out at, and that I have changed my life, instead of just wishing I could do it. Its hard to explain but my whole life, my way of thinking and everything I'm about has totally changed, and its amazing!

E-Mealz Review

2009-09-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I ran across a website called E-mealz. I can't remember exactly what I was looking for when I ran across this site, but it has really been an excellent resource that I wanted to share.

Let me explain. E-mealz is a weekly meal plan and grocery list. You start by choosing which grocery store you prefer to shop at, how many people you are cooking for and how many meals per week you want to cook, and what dietary restrictions you are following. They even have a Weight Watchers plan! For my family I chose: Walmart Points System for two people, 5 day dinner plan.

E-mealz will create a recipe plan and aisle-by-aisle grocery list based on your preferences. One of my favorite things about it is that they base their menu on the items that are on sale at your chosen grocery store for that week. On the grocery list they divide it up easily so that you can remove all the items for one meal if you decide not to make that one. You can also see how much all of your items cost individually and what your total cost will be, which for me is usually around $40 per week.

I originally decided to sign up for this program because I thought it would save me some money on my grocery bill, but I didn't realize how delicious the meals would be. I've only come across 1 recipe that I really didn't care for. The others have been excellent, and very easy to make.

So if this sounds like something you might be interested in take a look at the website. You can see a sample menu on the site of what you will get. The cost is about $5 per month, but if you google "E-mealz Coupon Codes" or "E-mealz Promo Codes" you can save a dollar or two.

Here are a couple pictures of some of my E-mealz recipes I have made:

Turkey and Eggplant Casserole

Turkey Mexican Skillet

Both of these recipes happen to be turkey, but they use all other kinds of meats also and even have a vegetarian option I believe. Tonight for dinner I'm making County Fair Chicken, which is cubed chicken, carrots and red potatoes with yummy seasonings and baked in the oven. Can't wait to dig into that tonight after my spinning classes!

A Very Sad Day

2009-09-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

On this day two years ago, one of the most important people in my life passed away. My Granny was an amazing woman, and she was always there for me even when it seemed like no one else in my life was. Her death was especially hard on me because she died when I was 10 weeks pregnant. I actually hadn't even told her that I was pregnant yet, although I suspect that she already knew.

I can remember every time we went to visit we would stay up late at night, laying in her bed and she would tell me story after story. I loved listening to my grandmother's stories of her life when she was a young girl. I remember her telling me about when she got the family cow so drunk on moonshine that it couldn't stand up and how she was so afraid that she had killed it. That was always one of my favorites.

I always loved the way my grandmother talked. She was from the deep south and lived way out in the country. She called paper towels - towlin' paper, and eggplants were called vegetable eggs. It still makes me smile to remember trying to figure out what she wanted when she asked for a piece of towlin'.

Granny always worried about me and my sisters. She'd call us every year and remind us when it was almost time to get our driver's licenses renewed. I still don't know how she kept up with all those dates.

I hope that I never forget all these things about my grandmother. It scares me to think that in 20 years I might not remember all these great memories. Its only been two years and I already feel like I'm forgetting things. It also makes me incredibly sad to know that my son will never get to meet my Granny. I can't wait to tell him about her when he gets older.

RIP Granny - You are loved and missed everyday!

That's What I'm Talking About!

2009-09-14T04:13:00.000-07:00

I made up for my gain last week by losing 3.8 pounds today! Yeah! I worked hard this week and I'm really glad that it paid off. Well, gotta go get ready for a class for work. Have a great day!

A New Personal Record and Coupon Shopping.

2009-09-13T19:35:00.001-07:00

Today was my only day off that I will have for 8 days, so I had alot of things to pack into one day. I didn't want to go biking or to the gym today because I wanted to stay home and spend the day with my husband and son. So while the baby took a nap this afternoon I just ran on my treadmill. Which is far inferior to running outside of course, but it gets the job done.

I thought since I wasn't under any time restraints like I usually am when I run on my treadmill that I might try to run 6 miles instead of my normal 5 miles. I'm very pleased to say that I was able to do it! It took me 1 hour and 2 minutes, but I did it. So that is now a new personal distance record for me. I also set a new weekly AP record this week; I earned 39.5 APs!

I needed to go grocery shopping today. Grocery shopping is always a big ordeal for me because I have to start by planning my menu for the week, sometimes I even have to clean out the refrigerator, search the sales ads for good buys, make a list, etc. And now I've added one more step to the mix. I've been clipping coupons and searching online for coupons for things we normally buy, trying to save a few bucks.

I saved over $60 on my groceries tonight! I saved about $15 in coupons and the rest was BOGOs. I got some really good deals!

After running and shopping we made some yummy chicken fajitas for dinner:

I ate two huge fajitas with cheese, sour cream, salsa and cilantro. I'm so deliciously full. I just hope it doesn't sit too heavy on me for weigh-in in the morning. I need a loss this week!

Freezer Meals and A New 'Do

2009-09-09T19:46:00.000-07:00

As promised I'm finally going to talk about my freezer meals. As I said before I bought a couple new books that I was really excited about that talked about cooking for a day and eating for a month. So I defrosted all my meat in the freezer thats just been sitting around and picked out several recipes to make one day that I could freeze in individual servings for my family when I'm at work and for lunches. Kinda like homemade Lean Cuisines. I actually couldn't end up making all the recipes in one day because I ran out of time and got absolutely exhausted, so I spread it out over two days. And here are my thoughts on the matter:

Pros:

My freezer is full of delicious looking meals.
I won't be spending money on Lean Cuisines, etc for a very long time.
I got rid of alot of extra meat that I've had sitting around for months.

Cons:

I feel like I wasted almost 2 entire days doing nothing but cooking.
I probably ate an extra 10 points over the 2 days tasting everything I made.
Every dish in my kitchen was dirty.
I was absolutely exhausted.
I never want to cook again, atleast not for a very long time and I usually love cooking.
Several of the recipes ended up being much higher points than I anticipated from a book that calls itself "Light".

Here are some pictures of the things I made:

Poppyseed Ham and Cheese Melts

17 of them to be exact.

Artichoke Chicken Bake (too many points!!!)

Mushroom Turkey Burgers

White Chicken Chili

Lemon Butter Shrimp

I also made: London Broil, Baked Penne, Chicken Enchiladas, Sweet and Sour Pork and Chicken Broccoli Skillet.

Although its a good idea if you have alot of time on your hands, I don't think I'll be doing this again. What I think I'll do in the future is just double or triple the recipes I'm already planning on making and freeze the extras instead of trying to do big cooking days like this again.

On another note, I got a brand new hairdo today. If you know me you would know that I've basically had the same hairstyle all my life. I get stuck in a rut with my hair just like I do with other aspects of my life. But since I've lost weight and gotten healthier I've found a brand new confidence I never had before and decided it was time for a change. So here are my before and after pictures:

Before

After

I love the cut and style and especially the color. I've never had highlights before. The things I'm not so fond of are that I can't put it in a ponytail for working out anymore and my bangs are in my eyes. But its a nice change and I'm super excited that I went through with it and didn't chicken out. (I almost did).

Well thats it for tonight. Tomorrow I'll tell you about my first Zumba class I did today. Goodnight!

Exhaustion

2009-09-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

I keep wanting to write about my freezer meals that I cooked from my new cookbook, but I'm so exhausted I'm not really up to it tonight. I did two back to back 45 minute spin classes tonight with 15 minutes of elliptical between the classes and I'm absolutely EXHAUSTED! I've also been ridiculously hungry lately. I had 2 big binges today ... one on chex mix, and one on tortilla chips. I've already used up most of my weekly points and its only Tuesday! I need to slow down or I'm gonna end up with another gain this week. Well, I'm gonna try to get to bed early. Tomorrow I'm getting my hair cut and colored. Still not exactly sure what I'm gonna do. I have a picture picked out but I keep thinking about chickening out on it. We'll see what happens!

Owning a Moutain Bike, Does NOT Make You a Mountain Biker!

2009-09-07T18:51:00.000-07:00

Tim convinced me to go Moutain Biking with him this morning at Swayback Trail Bridge. There are 5 different courses: blue, green, yellow, red, and black. We did blue, green and yellow. Blue is the beginner 1 mile course, green is 2.5 miles and yellow is 4 miles.

I have to say I was very scared at first. After all, I am the girl who when she got her new mountain bike was too scared to even ride it out of her driveway (only 2 months ago). I was also very self conscious around the other bikers who were obviously very hardcore and knew what they were doing. There were many times I had to stop and walk up or down a steep hill. I felt better though when I saw other people doing the same thing. Tim even fell off of his bike a couple of times, which of course I used as a photo opportunity.

We left covered in mud, exhausted, with ridiculously sore butts, and all kinds of bumps, bruises and blisters but we had a great day together. I never realized how close this trail was to where we live. We will definitely be going again soon.

Tonight we were ravenously hungry after burning so many calories on the trail today (800 for me, and 2200 for him, tell me how thats fair!?!) and we treated ourselves to Filet Mignon, Twice Baked Potatoes, and sauteed green beans. It was delish!

Have a goodnight! Tomorrow I'll tell you about my freezer meals I made today.

I Knew The Day Would Come

2009-09-07T03:43:00.000-07:00

I went to bed really early last night, and woke up really early this morning so I decided to go ahead and weigh in. I GAINED 3.6 pounds! I'm not that suprised that I gained coming off of almost a 7 pound loss last week, but 3.6 pounds seems excessive. I did good on my eating this week, and my exercising so I truly don't know what I could have done differently. I'm not going to stress about it though because I know I did my best. Lets just hope next week I get a ridiculous loss!

It probably doesn't help that we were planning to cook out steaks and twice baked potatoes for Labor Day tonight. But I'm going to do it anyway.

Well, I'm heading to the grocery store to pick up the things I need to make some recipes out of my Frozen Assets book. I'm planning on making 48 individual servings of food to freeze today. Have I gone insane?!

Biking in the Park and Another Race

2009-09-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

Tim and I went back to the Shakespeare Park this morning and rode our bikes around for a while. I think I ended up riding just over 7 miles in about 52 minutes. I was pulling our son in the trailer behind me so it was much more difficult hauling an extra 30 pounds or so. We had a great time though.

After our ride we had a little picnic and fed the ducks. I packed up Club Sandwhiches, fresh fruit, baby carrots with fat free ranch dip, and Quakes last night for us to eat. This is such a change from when we used to go eat picnics. Normally we would stop by Fresh Market on the way to the park and buy about $75 worth of sushi, pasta salads, paninis, chips or crackers, hummus, etc. Not that all that stuff was bad by any means, but it was definitely unnecessary. For some reason we thought we needed that much food though. Then on top of eating all that if we did anything else at the park besides eat and feed the ducks, it would just be to pull out a couple lawn chairs and read books or magazines.

I signed up for what will be our 2nd official 5K today. The first one is going to be September 19th, and then the second one that I just registered for will be October 3rd. There is a Labor Day 5K tomorrow, but I didn't sign us up ahead of time and it would be $50 for Tim and I to register at the event tomorrow. Not to mention we'd have to be there atleast an hour early to register and it already starts at 7:30 am. I think I'd like to sleep in atleast one day during this holiday weekend.

We went to Books-A-Million yesterday while we were waiting to get my bike tuned up, and I bought a couple books that I'm really excited about. One of them is called Frozen Assets Lite and Easy: Cook for a Day Eat for a Month and the other one is called Don't Panic Dinner's in the Freezer. As the names may suggest they are recipe books of freezable recipes to have on hand. I love those kinds of things especially since I work night shift and I'm not home alot of nights to cook for my family. The recipes in the 1st book look really good! Some of the recipes in the 2nd one look really good too, but because its not a light cookbook I'll probably have to tweak them some to meet my WW requirements. I'll let you know how they turn out!

A Busy but Great Day!

2009-09-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

Today I got up at 6:40 am (yes, thats right on a Saturday! What is wrong with me?!), to go running at the park with some friends of mine from work. Of course I was late as usual, and everyone was waiting on me, but such is life with a 1 year old. Tim and I met Bailey and Nicole at the entrance to the park, and we set out to run from one entrance to the opposite entrace and back again. I measured it out ahead of time on Mapmyrun.com to be approximately 3 miles. Bailey got a bad blister on her foot and ended up leaving after we made it back to our car, but I wanted to run some more so I ended up going 4.18 miles.

This was my first run with my Garmin Forerunner and it is FREAKING AWESOME! I'm so in love. It tracked my pace, calories, heart rate, time, distance and much more. I love the fact that I can just look down at my wrist to find out exactly how far I've run. It really frees you up to run anywhere. But my absolute favorite thing was that I could create a map of exactly where I ran!This is the map from my run today:

The run today was alot harder than my usual runs. The park has a couple ruthless hills that are killer. But I've never run with Bailey before today, and she is a beast. I could barely keep up. But I did. She was running at about a 9:20 pace, and I'm used to running at more like a 10:20 pace.

Here are a couple pictures of us from after our run:

Bailey and I

Tim and I.

Nicole and I.

After our run we came home and I cooked a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, turkey sausage, and Kashi Strawberry waffles. Yummy!

Then Tim and Lincoln took a nap and I decided to treat myself to a pedicure.

This afternoon we took my bike in to get it tuned up so that I can ride it again. Tim and I are planning on meeting Nicole again tomorrow at the same park and riding bikes together and having a picnic.

The only part of the day that sucked was that I got a Jury Duty Summons in the mail. I'm definitely not excited about that. I've never had to do jury duty before and I was kinda hoping to keep it that way.

Well, I'm gonna go pack up our picnic so that hopefully we won't be late tomorrow like we usually are. Goodnight!

Todays Food Diary - Picture Style

2009-09-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

For today's blog I decided to make a picture diary of my food. I definitely won't be able to do it everyday, because not only would that get monotonous but it would also be nearly impossible for me to take a picture of every single thing I eat at work since we don't get real meal breaks. Thats another story all together though.

But I figured this would be a fun way to keep myself accountable for the things that I eat, if I have to share it with (potentially) the whole world.

For breakfast I had: A Deep Chocolate Vitatop, 1 cup of skim milk, and apple slices.

Lunch consisted of: Homemade Veggie Black Bean Burger and a cup of Progresso Hearty Tomato Soup.

For a afternoon snack I had: Lowfat yogurt, a 100 calorie pack of Pringles, and more apple slices. I didn't take a picture of the Pringles because I didn't actually intend to eat them, but since my son didn't find them fit for him I HAD to eat them, right?

Dinner was awesome! I made Stuffed Bell Peppers, Sauteed spinach and onions with mushrooms, and Cauliflower in Cheese Sauce.

All of this came to a total of 24 points for the day. That leaves me 1 point left over to have a Sugar Free Jello Pudding for dessert. I think it was a pretty successful day food-wise. I got in alot of vegetables and fruit. I probably could have done better on my protein, but I eat alot of protein normally so one low day won't hurt.

Tomorrow morning we are getting up early to go running in the park with some friends of mine from work. I'll get to use my new Garmin Forerunner 305 that came in the mail today. More on that later. Goodnight!

Book Review: Julie & Julia

2009-09-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

Most people are probably familiar with this book because it was just released as a major motion picture, but if you are not I'll tell you the basic storyline. It is a true story of a woman who made it her mission to cook through Julia Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, all 524 recipes in exactly one year and wrote a blog about it. She speaks of how she risked her job, her marriage, and her cats wellbeing by taking on this enormous project.

I really wanted to love this book. I definitely loved the movie, and I thought that if the movie was great the book must be AMAZING. I love cooking and I love eating so I thought this book would be right up my alley, but I was very dissapointed. I found the book to be at worst, overwhelmingly boring and at best only mildly entertaining. In fact I almost decided to not finish the book because it was that bad in the beginning. Towards the middle it picked up the pace slightly and thats where the mildly entertaining part comes in.

Julie & Julia has very little culinary value and is instead focused on the author's crappy job, shitty apartment, strange friends, and her incessant whining.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed the book more if I hadn't just seen the movie, but most likely not. So read at your own risk, but don't say I didn't warn ya!

Progress Pics

2009-09-02T06:26:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I was going through my closet and found my favorite old pair of jeans. I almost forgot I had taken these pictures. These are my size 22 jeans that I used to wear almost every day when I was around 240 pounds.

WTF Weigh-In

2009-08-31T13:51:00.000-07:00

I normally weigh-in first thing Monday morning after I go to the bathroom and before I eat anything, butt naked of course. Every 4th week I have to weigh-in in the afternoon though when I wake up because I have to work on Sunday night, and I don't like weighing in after I've been up all night eating and drinking at work. I really hate these weeks because I feel like it skews my results and I usually don't end up losing much when I weigh in the afternoon, then the next week I'll drop 3 or 4 pounds.

Anyway ... I got up this afternooon and stepped on the scale and I lost 6.6 pounds this week! WTF! Other than the afternoon weigh-in I didn't do anything differently this week. I even gorged on that cake and icecream this past weekend. I'm not complaining though, I'll definitely take it.

In other news, I met my August goal of earning 130 APs. I just added them all up and I'm at 135.5 for the month and that doesn't include what I'm going to do today. So, yay!

Family Visit

2009-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Daily Activity: Ran 4.4 miles (5 APs)

As I mentioned earlier, we went down to my parent's farm for my niece's 5th birthday party this weekend. We drove down last night after Tim got off work and arrived about 9:00 pm. When we got there my niece, nephew, and Dad were all already in bed. Only my sister was awake.

I walked into the house first and my sister looked at me like I was an intruder. When my mom walked in behind me, my sister said "is that Amanda?" When she realized it was indeed me, she started bawling like a baby. I don't know exactly why she reacted so strongly, but she definitely did. At first she kept saying that she was so proud of me, and that I looked gorgeous, etc. But after a few minutes she kinda started interrogating me. She asked me: how much I weigh, how did I lose weight, how fast did I lose weight, how much I exercise, what exercises I do, what I eat, etc. It was almost like she was berating me. I'm not sure what that was all about.

We ended up having a pretty decent time though. Tim and I got up early this morning and went for a run around the dirt roads near my parent's house. We intended to come back home and put the kids in my bike trailer and take them for a loop around the 3 mile circle after we ran, but we had bike issues. At first my tire was flat, so we went to Walmart to get the stuff to fix it. Then when we came back Tim tried to fix the gears on my bike and ended up messing them up to where I could barely move the pedals. Then we noticed that his tire had a huge hole in it. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. It pretty much sucks that we made the effort to get a bike rack and haul our stuff all the way down there and then couldn't even ride.

For lunch my family planned on grilling out hamburgers and hotdogs. I was worried about what I would eat because I knew they didn't buy lean beef or lean hotdogs. I went to the store and bought all kinds of vegetables to marinate and make skewers to grill. I ate one hotdog, alot of vegetables, a small salad and a couple spoonfuls of baked beans. I felt like I did pretty good .... and then came the cake. I ate waaay more cake (and ice cream) than I needed to. Oh well, you win some you lose some. Although my family is probably wondering why the hell I made such a big deal about making sure I had healthy options to eat for lunch if I was gonna chow down on cake and ice cream for dessert.

Loving my Bike Rack!

2009-08-28T10:46:00.000-07:00

I bought a bike rack this week from Amazon, and it came in yesterday. Tim set it up for us this morning. I love it! It seems really sturdy and stable. It will actually hold 4 bikes even though we only have 2 right now. He drove around for a few minutes with our bikes attached and said that the rack didn't move or sway at all.

We are going out of town this weekend to visit my family in south Alabama. It will be my niece's 5th birthday, so we are going to celebrate. My family lives way out in the country on a dirt road and there are great places to hike, bike and run. I'm really excited! Usually when we go to visit I get bored very quickly because I've always been an indoorsy person. I don't know too many fat people that like to get outside and do much. But now I'm really looking forward to exploring new things to do on our trip.

We are also planning on taking our bikes when we go to Gatlinburg in 61 days, 19 hours, and 8 minutes ... give or take. I think we are really going to get alot of use out of the bike rack and the bike trailer that we bought for Lincoln.

I'll post some pictures of our trip when we get home tomorrow night. I'm planning on doing some fishing, grilling out, spending time with my niece and nephew, and of course biking and running.

Book Review of Half-Assed: A Weightloss Memoir

2009-08-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

Daily Activity: Ran 5 miles (5.5 APs)

So, I read Half-Assed: A Weightloss Memoir by Jennette Fulda a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to share my thoughts on it.

Basically the book is exactly what it describes itself to be, the story of a woman who literally lost half of her body weight through diet and exercise. At first I didn't really think I was going to like the book. In the beginning Jennette focuses on the ridiculously large amounts of hideously disgusting foods she ate. I don't know about you, but for me that was never my problem. Yes, of course I ate too much food also, but I couldn't identify at all with the things she literally gorged herself on. Actually, I didn't identify with the author much at all. Other than the fact that we are (were ... whatever) both fat asses, we are absolutely nothing alike.

I also didn't find her nearly as funny as I thought that she was going to be from the reviews I read of the book on GoodReads. She had some witty remarks, and some sarcastic humor, but I was expecting some ROFLMAO material and in my opinion that's not what was delivered.

Once I got into the book and stopped trying to identify with the author and realized that she wrote the book to tell her story and not mine, I actually started enjoying it.

If you read this book to get diet, exercise and weightloss tips you will be sorely disappointed. The author speaks very little about her "regimen", she refused to even mention which diet plan she followed. Once she explained why she made that choice I completely understood and agreed with her for it.

What I loved about the book was that it helped me to realize that more important than what the scale reads is how your life has changed. Jennette set out to lose a specific number of pounds but before she ever made it to her self-appointed goal weight, she found happiness in not only the way that she looked but more importantly from her new active lifestyle. That really hit home with me for some reason because I have recently been feeling that same way, that maybe there is something out there more important than the number on the scale.

I read alot of the book while I was working out in the gym on the elliptical and it really helped the time pass, and also helped put things into perspective about why I am doing these things and what I hope to accomplish beyond a goal weight.

If you want to read Jennette's blog, it can be found here.

Weigh-In Day

2009-08-24T04:57:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night that I gained 2 pounds this week. But I was ok with it in my dream because I knew I had done everything I could do as far as being active and eating sensibly.

In actuality, I lost 0.8 pounds, and I'm ok with that too. Of course I would have liked to lose more, but I think I'm getting to the point where my weightloss is really going to slow down and become much more gradual. I'm also to the point in my mind where its not as much about the weightloss anymore for me as it is about the lifestyle changes.

Being able to go out and run, take my son to the park to ride bikes, walk around the zoo, enjoy an active lifestyle with my husband and cook healthy and delicious recipes for my family has become my main focus. Now I'm not dissing my scale, please don't tell her I'm talking shit about her or she might seek revenge. I think I just have new priorities.

I'm a Former Fat Girl!

2009-08-23T08:49:00.001-07:00

Daily Activity: Ran 4.4 miles (5 APs)

I'm very happy to annouce that I have been featured as a "Former Fat Girl of The Week". Please take a look at Michelle's website. It is very inspirational!

I'm headed to the zoo with Tim and Lincoln this afternoon for some family fun time, before Tim has to leave us again to go out of town for work. I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Getting Ready for That 5K

2009-08-22T12:21:00.000-07:00

Daily Activity: Ran 4.4 miles outside (6 APs)

Tim and I got up early this morning to meet my friend Nicole at Fort Toulouse for a run. Fort Toulouse Rd is 4.4 miles down and back. The weather was perfect! Bright and sunny, but low humidity and a slight breeze. We strapped on our Camelbaks and our iPods and went at it.

My goal was to run atleast one direction (2.2 miles). I wasn't sure what running outside was going to feel like since I haven't done it in oh .... say ... 10 years or so. It was really great though! It help that Ft Toulouse Rd is nice and flat and it has a bike lane on the side so we didn't have to worry about traffic.

I made it one direction fairly easily. My iPod started acting up halfway through the first part of the run, so all I had to listen to was the sloshing water and ice in my Camelbak, which was pretty annoying. Once I got to the end, I stopped for a couple minutes to fix my iPod and let everyone get back together again. Then we headed off running the other direction.

I ran to about the 1 1/2 mile marker on the way back and I got a terrible stitch in my side. I tried to keep going, but I knew I needed to stop until it went away. I walked for about 1 minute and once the pain let up I started running again and was able to make it the rest of the way back.

Not a bad run at all for my first "real run"! Of course it would have been much more enjoyable if I didn't have to smell the stench of roadkill every quarter-mile or so, but who cares.

After the run, we came home and I made a huge brunch: eggs, turkey sausage, turkey bacon, hashbrowns, and fresh fruit. I ate a big 10 point serving. It was wonderful!

Jillian is Hardcore!

2009-08-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

Daily Activity: 36 mins of Jillian Michaels No More Trouble Zones (2.5 APs)

So today was a strength training day for me. I bought Jillian Michael's No More Trouble Zones DVD so that I could do it at home instead of going to the gym to do Body Pump. I only made it through 36 minutes of the DVD. I don't know if it was because it was really that hard, or if its because I suck. We all know how I hate doing weights. But when we get into pushups and planks, I just literally give up. And thats what happened today.

I'm not gonna let this get me down though. I'll just have to do better. Really the problem isn't that I couldn't or didn't finish the workout, the problem is that I gave up on myself. So my goal is to do that DVD from start to finish on Monday.

Tomorrow I'm not going to exercise, I'm going to take the day off and sleep after I get off work tomorrow morning at 7:00. Then tomorrow night I'm gonna go out to dinner with my hubby and son. Maybe to Bonefish Grill. I realized I've worked out almost every single day this month in one form or another and I need a break!

Saturday I will be back at it though. I'm going to take my running outside and see how I do. I need to get ready for that 5K in September. I'm excited but nervous. I haven't run outside since I started working out. I'm curious to see how its going to be compared to the treadmill. The good news is though that I'm gonna have a super cute Camelbak to wear. I'll definitely post pictures!

I Run Because ...

2009-08-18T07:42:00.001-07:00

I read a blog post yesterday where a runner asked people to respond with the reasons why they run. It made me think about why I like to run. So I made my own list:

It burns more calories than almost any other cardio activity.
It gives me time alone with my thoughts.
I love the way I feel after I run.
I love to sweat!
I can listen to really loud fast music.
Its impossible to be angry after a good run.
It makes me feel strong and accomplished.
Because I can!
Because so many others can't/don't.
It takes me away from the frustration, stress and responsibility of the day.
I like to see how far/fast I can push myself.
I like seeing how far I've come.
I like the way it makes my thighs look.
To be a role model for my friends and family, but most importantly for my son.

I felt so motivated to run after I made my list that I signed up for my first 5K. It will be on September 19th and will benefit the Big Brother/Big Sister organization. I'm so excited!

Note to Self.

2009-08-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

I really want to remember this next week when I have a few days off of work, so I'm writing a reminder to myself, but feel free to take advantage of it as well.

Don't forget to make Melissa d'Arabians North African Meatballs, Couscous with Dried Dates, and Glazed Carrots.

It looked super yummy and I think it could possibly be fairly low in points too. And if its worse than I think it is, I could probably adjust some things.

I'll let you guys know how it turns out!

Weigh-In

2009-08-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

Daily Activity: Get Chiseled Firm DVD and Ran 2 Miles (5.5 APs)

I wrote last week about how I had a feeling that I was about to hit a plateau. Well, I guess I was wrong. I lost 3.6 pounds this week and am at 172.4 pounds now.

I debated on going to Body Pump class tonight, but I ultimately decided not to. First of all I couldn't find anyone that could go with me. I'm such a wimp. I wish I was a more independent person, but so far I haven't found that inside myself. And second of all, I was so sore for so long last time that I really don't think I'm ready to go through that again just yet.

A fellow blogger that I read has been raving for days about Jillian Michaels DVD called No More Trouble Zones. So I decided I'd give it a try. It was only a little over $11 on Amazon and I have free shipping with our Amazon Prime account. So there you go, I should get it on Wednesday. It looks like it might be a good strength training option for me. And I'll definitely feel more comfortable working out in my own home rather than infront of a class of experienced Body Pumpers. Atleast for now.

Since I don't have the DVD yet I decided today to pull out one of my Firm DVDs. I went a little crazy a while back buying up every Firm DVD that I could get cheaply from eBay. Most of them I haven't done even once. But today I did one called "Get Chiseled". It was pretty good. It was definitely no Body Pump class by any means, but I don't think I'll be as sore tomorrow for it either.

After the 40 minute DVD, I decided I wasn't satisfied and 245 calories wasn't nearly enough for me today so I ran 2 miles on the treadmill. I had on the wrong shoes and I wasn't wearing my normal spandex so my fat thighs were rubbing together in a very uncomfortable way, but after I finished I had the feeling of satisfaction I was looking for.

Speaking of Jillian Michaels, I found out the other day that The Biggest Loser premiere is coming up in just over a month (September 15th). I can't wait! That show has been so inspirational for me and I'm sure millions of other people.

Non-Scale Victory!

2009-08-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

Daily Activity: 45 Mins on Elliptical (4 APs)

Today we went out shopping because I desperately needed some new pants. All the ones I have are literally hanging off of me. I remember buying them not too long ago and they were very snug. I've been trying to shop at cheap places for clothes because I am going through them so quickly. Some I haven't even gotten to wear more than once before they are too baggy.

Anyway, we went to TJ Maxx and Ross today and I bought a couple pairs of size 12 jeans. 12! I haven't worn size 12's in over 10 years! Its hard to believe that I've gone from a size 22 to a size 12 in 6 months. I literally did a happy dance in the dressing room.

Tonight we went over to a friends house and had a cookout. They were so thoughtful and called me several times to ask what kind of meat I wanted, vegetables, etc. I ended up having grilled chicken breast with spinach and mushrooms on top, with stir fryed veggies and some mashed potatoes (with butter and sour cream). I couldn't be completely boring!

I'm a little worried that the sodium from the soy sauce in the stir fry my effect my weigh-in in the morning, but it'll be ok. I just thought it was thoughtful of them to do something so healthy for me.

Here are a couple pictures of me in my new size 12's:

Just Overweight!

2009-08-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

Daily Activity: Ran 5 miles (6.5 APs)

I have always hated exercising. My entire life I can remember doing this diet, or that diet, counting fat grams, counting calories, counting carbs, etc. Of all the times in my life I've tried to lose weight the large majority of those times I focused strictly on controlling what I ate (or didn't eat is more like it). I rarely exercised. There was one point when I was in high school that I ran a little bit, but I hated every second of it. I have always had the outlook that I would "rather starve myself than workout".

When I started Weight Watchers (this time around) I originally started only paying attention to what I ate, as usual. I wasn't working out, or even being active in any way other than the walking I do up and down the hallways at work. For some reason I got really interested in Wii Fit though. I thought maybe it would be a way that I could get in some exercise that might actually be fun. So my husband bought it for me and I "played" so much the first day that I was actually sore. I kept that up for about 2 months, and between that and Weight Watchers I started really losing some weight.

Once I realized that exercising can actually be fun, I decided I needed to step it up a notch. So we joined the YMCA and started doing the elliptical and eventually spinning and running on the treadmill. But the point is that I would have never made that step without the thing that originally sparked my interest in exercise. Which was the Wii Fit.

It seems silly now because I doubt anything I could do on Wii Fit would bring my heart rate above 100 these days. But I loved getting up and weighing in everyday and doing my 30 minutes of boxing, hula hoop, or the step aerobics (my personal fave). When you step on the scale it tells you your weight and BMI and then tells you if you are underweight, normal, overweight or obese. Mine of course always said "That's OBESE!"

I stopped using the Wii Fit a long time ago, but occasionally I still like to get on and weigh and see how my weight and my BMI have changed over time. Today I got on just for the heck of it and I got a nice suprise, instead of obese it said "Thats Overweight!" As a matter of fact my BMI has dropped from 40 to 29.

I never thought I'd be happy to be overweight, but atleast its just overweight and not obese.

Is a Plateau Coming?

2009-08-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

Daily Activity: None (too freakin sore)

So as you can see I didn't work out today. I can barely walk. I thought doing the spin classes last night would help stretch my muscles out and decrease the soreness from the Body Pump class I did on Monday. WRONG! All it did was make me much much worse. So, lesson learned.

Its not that I feel like I have to workout every single day. I realize that isn't necessary. I just like to do it whenever I feel up to it. If I feel like working out 12 days in a row, then thats what I'm going to do. But I'm not gonna beat myself up when I need to take a day or 2 off either.

I think from now on when I do strength training to the point where I'm sore the next day I'll definitely take that day off and not even consider working out. Hopefully though if I keep up with the strength training it will get to the point where I don't get sore doing it.

For some reason I've had this feeling lately that I'm about to hit a weightloss plateau. I don't really know what makes me think that. Perhaps its because I only lost .6 lbs this past week, or that today when I peeked at the scale I was actually .6 above what I was on Monday or what. But I feel it coming.

So today I researched what to do when you hit a plateau and I found the Wendie Plan. Which I've actually known about before, but had forgotten. Its no magic regimine or anything, its basically just alternating high, low and medium point days to trick your body by shaking things up.

I've found 2 ways of thinking on the topic. One thought is that you should follow this strict points schedule ... eat this many this day, that many that day, etc. And the other train of thought is that you should make your high days the days you are hungrier, and low days the days you aren't as hungry and let your body guide how much you eat that day within your point range. Ultimately, you should end up eating the same amount of points per week either way.

I'm not sure which school of thought I'm a fan of just yet. I like the idea of letting your body naturally control which days are your higher days based on your hunger level, but on the other hand I'm a very structuralized (is that a word?) individual and I like having a plan and sticking to it.

I'm saving the Wendie plan as my secret weapon when I confirm that I've definitely hit a plateau. From everything I've read everyone has had great success with it, even after many weeks of no losses.

A Message From an Old Friend

2009-08-11T12:40:00.001-07:00

Daily Activity: 2 Spin Classes (8 APs)

I got this message on Facebook today. I was taking a nap when she messaged me so I didn't get a chance to respond, but it made me happy none the less.

You know, it hit me a while back that when I saw you at the gym and you said who you were and I looked at you all funny....later I realized who you were. It wasn't that I didn't remember you... I just didn't recognize you because you'd lost so much weight since I'd seen you last. You look awesome, and I know it's been a lot of hard work and dedication! Congratulations!

Going to do back to back spinning tonight if my legs will hold up after Body Pump yesterday. I'm super sore, but I think I can do it.

Making another delicious Crockpot Recipe tonight: Chicken Thighs with Corn and Green Chiles. (4 points/serving)

Moo Shu Chicken Recipe Review & Another Goal Met

2009-08-10T20:21:00.000-07:00

Daily Activity: Body Pump (3.5 APs)

Well, I did it. I went to the Body Pump class that I promised myself that I would do. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I wrote in a previous blog about how I've been stuck in a rut with my exercise routines. I've done nothing but cardio, cardio, cardio because I absolutely HATE strength training and weights. But I made a goal for myself to go to atleast 1 Body Pump class during the month of August.

I went to the Y planning on doing my normal elliptical routine tonight. When I got there a girl that I made friends with in our spinning class asked me about coming to Body Pump. I initially said no, because I wanted to go to my first Body Pump class when Tim was there to go with me. But she told me how good the instructor was that was teaching and I remembered my vow to myself, so I agreed to go. She was so nice to help me get all of my weights together and everything that I would need for the class.

I was in the front row of the class, which I would have never done if I had made the choice myself. It was really hard and I felt really out of place most of the time. My form SUCKED! I was really trying to concentrate on just making it through without looking like a complete douche. Everything was going ok, until we started doing lunges. I don't know what the problem was but my legs were shaking so bad it was obvious and I kept losing my balance. You'd think I'd have more thigh strength considering how much I run, do the elliptical, and spin.

All in all, I'm glad I went. I know I need to keep going so that I can gain strength. I'm going to seriously make an effort to continue working on my strength on a semi-regular basis. And eventually maybe even a real regular basis.

Tonight for dinner I made Hungry Girl Moo Shu Chicken. If you have never heard of Hungry Girl, be sure to check out the website. There are also 2 Hungry Girl cookbooks availabe. I find the recipes to be really good for individuals who are cooking for themselves or for one other person. They aren't usually very "family friendly" recipes. Some of the ingredients are quite strange, some of the recipes are quite strange, but there are some real jewels also.

I won't go into all the details of how to make this recipe since I provided the link, but here are the ingredients you will need:

Chicken breast, Broccoli Slaw, Bean Sprouts, Pepper, Corn Starch, Straw Mushrooms, Garlic, Rice Vinegar, Soy Sauce, Hoisin Sauce, and tortillas (not pictured).

Follow the directions in the recipe and you will have something that looks like this:

Cut a couple tortillas in half and microwave them for about 15 seconds, then spread a little Hoisin sauce on them and top with 1/3 cup of the Moo Shu mixture. Don't skip the Hoisin sauce, it really makes the dish.

One thing I love about this recipe besides the fact that its just good is that it tastes really fresh and not heavy at all. It would be a great lunch if you have time to make it mid-day, or make the mixture ahead and just wrap up the tortillas when you are ready. It is also a great recipe to get your veggies in!

That is all for tonight.