back from the cold

Actually, it's pretty cold here too but it was really really cold in Montreal on the weekend. Our winter has been so mild so far that I forgot how icy the winds can be, particularly in those wind tunnels that are created in large cities by tall buildings.

Over the weekend, my eating was bad. There is no other way to say it, it was bad. We did do a lot of walking but I don't think we did enough to counter what was eaten. I won't get into an itemized list but just know that there was dim sum, there were timbits and there was smoked meat involved. Yeah, I know.

Back to "normal" today. I'm still feeling a little tired (we didn't get back to the hotel until 12:45 a.m. on Sunday - I'm usually in bed by 8:45 p.m.) and slightly remorseful about the weekend today.

Tomorrow, I'll get back onto my exercise routine (totally slept in this morning and missed the window). I will be moving lots of boxes up and down a couple of flights of stairs later on this afternoon though, so that will count for some cardio.

Bad eating and cold winds aside, the weekend was wonderful. We had a really great time, Belle and Sebastian were amazing. It was a lot of fun. Tomorrow, I start my new job so this is kind of a crazy week for me. Crazy but good, I'm looking forward to starting the new job and to getting back on track.

better!

Yikes.

Yesterday was so weird. By 9:30 a.m., I knew that I couldn't stick it out at the office any longer. I got in touch with the folks who had organized the training session and made alternative arrangements. It was very odd, I felt stuffed up, had a sore throat, was feverish and had an upset stomach.

When I got home, I pulled my jammies on, grabbed a blanket and lay on the sofa for a while. Eventually, I went back to bed and slept for the entire afternoon. When I woke up, I felt groggy but better. I didn't expect to sleep much last night but I didn't have a problem so I must have needed it.

This morning, when I woke up, I pulled on my workout clothes and sat in front of the computer. I could tell I felt well enough to ride for maybe 5 or 10 minutes and I kept trying to convince myself that I shouldn't. Eventually, the inner fit girl in me won that particular debate. I went downstairs, did my stretching, got the on the bike and started my 5 minute ride. I stuck with it though and rode for 5 miles. I feel much better now for having done that. I'm not sure what kind of bug I had yesterday but it seems to be gone now. I'm happy that I exercised and will work really hard this weekend to keep my eating under control. We're heading to Montreal on Sunday but I'm not going to let that little trip throw me off track, I'm going to do my best to make good choices when we eat out and I know that we'll be getting in a fair bit of walking so that should help too. So, happy weekend kiddos. Wish me luck!

the day after hump day

Yesterday, my guns were stuck to. I exercised before work, ate on plan all day. I ate on plan when it would have been really easy to stray in my diminished capacity (I've been sleepy all week, seems like most of the folks I work with are suffering from the same thing -- must be short week syndrome). At lunch time, I took my home made lunch to the cafeteria in the building next door and ate it with my friend. This particular cafeteria has a Tim's in it. Home to yummy donuts and cookies. I was strong though and stuck to my healthy lunch.

After work, we had to get an oil change for the car. We get them at Costco so usually, you have to wander around the store for 30 to 45 minutes while you wait. Now, last night, we were shopping for a new digital camera (my old one was on it's last leg). This took up a goodly chunk of our waiting time. When we were finished though, as we stood in line to pay, the "should we have a hot dog here" discussion began. It was a pretty short discussion though, I vetoed it. I saw no reason to a) eat fatty crap for dinner or b) spend money on crap food when we had a butt load of fresh food at home, just waiting for us to cook it.

Small victories I know, but after the weekend, and the bad choices I'd made, I felt good about it. This morning though, I'm not off to such a good start. I've had a really tough time getting going in the mornings this week. This morning, when I looked in the mirror, my right eye was so puffy, I could hardly see. Eventually that went away but I didn't exercise. I felt really nauseous and generally bad. I'm at work right now. I felt like calling in sick but I have a training session this afternoon that I can't miss, so I'm sticking around. Hopefully, as the day goes along, I'll feel better. Part of me feels really crappy about not exercising but the other part knows that it would not have been good for me. Tomorrow's another day right? I'm sure I'll feel well enough then, to get back on the bike.

wednesday wrap-up - week 7

I'll be having a crazy day today so this is just a quick one today. I'm honestly shocked to have maintained this week. I thought for sure that I'd be up some. Next week though, things will be back to "normal" and I'll be making better choices. I'm not sure what happened this week but I know that PMS is in the air so that could be what shoved me over the edge this week.

And now...here is my latest weekly wrap-up:

summary - week ending February 21

• did intentional exercise every work-day morning and continued to work some weights into the mix. So far, I have put 145.49 miles on our recumbent bike.
  
• I took my vitamins 7 out of 7 days this week - I even remembered on the weekend!
  
• met daily water intake goal 6 out of 7 days. Slowly, this is getting better!
  
• successfully avoided coffee all week, again. This means that I have been coffee-free for seven weeks now!!
  
• Once again, I've successfully avoided carbonated beverages, all week!!
  
• did not have any evening snacks 7 out of 7 days - had a couple of afternoon ones on the weekend but no evening snacks!
  
• continued to post here every work-day since my re-start
  
• tracked every morsel of food I've eaten, at fitday - good and bad. Honesty is not always fun!
  
• I maintained this week. This puts me at 21 pounds lost in seven weeks. I'm relieved to have not gained this week but really want to get back into losing this week.
  

...and our daily photo today is a bowl of pretty oranges!!!

overdosed

As I feared and yet, did not prevent, the weekend was an exercise in bad food choices. I am beginning to hate the weekends, seriously. For a moment, I considered moving my weigh-in day to Friday from Wednesday so that if I did slack off on the weekends, I'd have the whole working week to get it together. Needless to say, I didn't do that. I'm sticking with Wednesdays. I kept jumping on the scale over the weekend and didn't see any evidence of a gain but then, it wasn't going down either. I am not looking forward to tomorrow.

Now, don't think I went bananas and just pigged out, I really didn't do that. What I did do though, was eat too many fatty foods. I stayed at the high end of calorie allowance all weekend and, on Saturday, went over. I often say that it could have been worse and yes, it could have been but, it could have been better. Much better.

This weekend will be a struggle too because we are going out of town. Fortunately, it's only an overnight trip but it's to Montreal. Home of smoked meat and gorgeous bagels. It'll be a struggle to avoid overindulgence.

On an up note, I'm back on track so far today. 100% low fat food all day so far. It's so much easier for me when I'm at work and I can only eat what I bring with me. Being at home for three days, with easy access to the kitchen or restaurant meals makes it so difficult. Oh well, onwards and upwards, right?

artichoke you glad it's friday?

It feels like I've been fighting a cold for weeks now. Part of thinks that I might be allergic to something in my office. It's located in the basement of an old building and I'm not the only one who feels like this. Fortunately, in less than two weeks, I'll be moving to a new office, on the second floor. The air quality is definitely better up there (I've worked in the room I'm moving to before).

Each night this week, after we finish eating dinner, I can literally feel my body winding down. My back gets sore and I can't find a comfortable spot anywhere but in my bed. This morning when I woke up, my back was still really stiff, I was hobbling around a fair bit, sneezing and coughing. I looks pretty pathetic. I exercised despite this. I think I sweated some of the germs out and I definitely felt better afterwards.

LOG has had a cold all week so we haven't seen him since Monday. Last night, he was still feeling really crappy, I hope he doesn't have the flu. He just doesn't need that on top of everything that he's got going on recently. I can empathize with him though, if what I've been fighting is the same bug that he has, it's persistent. My hunny told me that maybe I should stop fighting it and just give in, get sick. The problem is that I can't do that. There's just so much stuff going on at work these days that I cannot have a sick day. Sometimes I feel okay, other times, my head feels all tingly and full and it feels like I'm outside of myself somehow. Weird huh? ...and right now, I'm fading. All I can think about is a nap. This isn't good. I have a two hour training session this afternoon. Staying awake through that may be a stretch. Who schedules training for the Friday afternoon of a long weekend?? Yikes. Oh well, if it's a valuable session I suppose it'll worth it.

I'm looking forward to nicer weather and wide open windows and fresh strawberries and the end of cold season. I can't imagine how much crappier I'd feel if I wasn't eating healthy stuff and getting the exercise in. I'm sure I'd be a giant mess.

gingery

Here is a picture of some ginger root. It is known to be full of gingery goodness:



I'm thinking about emailing the folks at Produce Town and telling them about the photos I took. As a direct result of my photos, two of my coworkers have started shopping at Produce Town. That must be worthy of a free bunch of bananas for yours truly, shouldn't it?

We stopped by there last night on our way home. We intended to get some more oranges and we ended up finding a fabulous deal on grape tomatoes. We also grabbed up some more carrots, some lemon juice, lovely skinless/boneless chicken breasts (we discovered last night that they have a gorgeous meat department too), olives and fair trade coffee. I just finished off some grape tomatoes with my lunch. They are so juicy and sweet, they taste like summer.

I know that it's easier to stay on track when I'm in the routine of a working week. I'm not sure why I can so easily get excited at the prospect of a healthy snack through the week, and my brain sends me chocolate and chip messages on the weekends. My wiring must be faulty I suppose. I'll have to figure out a way to sort that. I want to have a "clean eating" weekend this weekend. It's a three day weekend for us so I really don't want to get off track for three whole days. I can't have it. I am so excited to have lost 21 pounds, I can't stop thinking about the next 9. Sad huh?? I just cannot wait to have lost 30 pounds. Originally, according to the goals I'd set for myself, that would have taken 15 weeks. I'm already four weeks ahead that schedule (I had thought 2 pounds a week, 20 pounds would take me 10 weeks to lose). What I really want is for my pants to fall off of me when I pull them on in the morning (it's getting close but not quite). Hopefully, by easter, I'll be at least one pant size smaller. I'd love that, seriously. Ooh...that outta help keep me on the straight and narrow this weekend!!

wednesday wrap-up - week 6

I have the best guy in the world, seriously.

He picked me up at work last night and I was feeling terrible. My head was pounding, my eyes were watering, I was all stuffed up. All I wanted to do was go home and sleep. He was so sweet, he offered to buy me a bowl of my favourite noodle soup and I took him up on it. The soup has the most amazing healing powers. I felt so much better when we left the restaurant, I couldn't believe it.

When we got home, I discovered that he had planned this gorgeous dinner for us, he was planning on cooking (he usually cooks - he's a chef) but put it off because of my cold symptoms. I think he had this whole evening planned out but we ended up going to bed early, watching American Idol and falling asleep within minutes of it being over. Today I'm feeling much better. The soup and a good night's sleep have done me a world of good. Tonight we'll have our belated "V-Day dinner" and I'll make it up to him for flaking out last night.

And now...here is my latest weekly wrap-up:

summary - week ending February 14

• did intentional exercise every work-day morning and continued to work some weights into the mix. So far, I have put 125.6 miles on our recumbent bike. I'm still walking a bit but not nearly as much as I'd like. I need to work on this!
  
• I took my vitamins 7 out of 7 days this week - I even remembered on the weekend!
  
• met daily water intake goal 5 out of 7 days. Slowly but surely, I'm working on this!! I find that days when I have a lot of meetings, I the water thing goes out the window because I can't run to the loo as often as I'd like.
  
• successfully avoided coffee all week, again. This means that I have been coffee-free for six weeks now!!
  
• Once again, I've successfully avoided carbonated beverages, all week!!
  
• did not have any evening snacks 7 out of 7 days - yay!
  
• continued to post here every work-day since my re-start
  
• tracked every morsel of food I've eaten, at fitday
  
• I lost two more pounds this week! That means that I have lost a total of 21 pounds in six weeks. Yay!!
  

...and our daily photo today is some lovely looking lettuce!!!

for the price of a cup of tea

Don't you just wish you could jump into these sprouts?? They look so yummy!!



There has been a weird mix of bugs in our office over the past couple of weeks. Colds, tummy bugs, pink eye, you name it! I keep feeling like I'm getting sick, and then I fight it and don't get sick but boy, fighting germs is exhausting. Last night, on the way home, I had a huge coughing fit. In the middle of dinner, I had a big sneeze attack. This was followed by a general body ache. Not good huh??

When I woke up this morning, I was a little stiff and stuffy but I exercised anyway. I really pushed myself too and felt much better when I was done. I'm so glad that I did that instead of crawling back into bed. I made it into the office and it's turning out to be a nutty/busy day. My eyes are still a little watery and I'm slightly congested in my head but it's not anything I can't handle.

My eating has been perfectly 100% on plan for the past day and a bit. Monday morning, we had a departmental meeting. Our Executive Director is a real sweetie and she bought us each a huge, heart-shaped cookie with our names in icing on them. They looked amazing but I couldn't eat mine. I brought it back to the office and gave it to one of our student helpers. Turns out, she couldn't eat it either (because she didn't want to eat my name apparently). Luckily, I found another colleague who wasn't as choosy. She broke my name up into little pieces and ate the cookie. I was happy to see it gone, even happier that I hadn't eaten it. I have also successfully avoided cinnamon hearts and chocolate truffles this morning. Honestly, they didn't even tempt me, which was weird. I guess I'm getting back into the swing of this thing.

My hunny gave me a couple of CD's for "love day" so, yay, no calories and some beautiful music (the new Belle and Sebastian - deluxe version with DVD and the Antony and the Johnsons disc). We're not really big valentine's day people (I gave him a copy of the Aristocrats DVD). I joke and say "that's because every day is love day in our house" but that's true. We don't need a hallmark holiday to tell us how we feel about each other. I also don't like how this holiday can try to make single folks feel weird about themselves and that's just not cool in my books. Love yourself every day I say!! If you don't love yourself, goodness knows no one else will. Happy V-Day everyone!!

pant-o-meter reading

Mixed veg on a Monday!



The weekend was very very weird. Weird in a bad way, weird in a "hey, I ingested too much fat" way. I can blame it on a couple of things, if I want to blame it on anything other than me. The first was, of course, "hey you got a new job" celebrations. After work, on Friday, we needed to do a couple of errands. When the errands were done, we discussed going out for dinner but opted to go home instead. As a compromise, we had frozen pizza with salad. Not the healthiest option in the world, I know, but not as bad as going to "the hut."

Yesterday, there was a bit of stress/emotional eating. LOG's other son was in town for a visit, for the day. This guy hasn't visited once in the five years that LOG has lived here. We think he had a loopy phone call with him (because LOG's been a little out of sorts) and he figured that he'd swoop in and grab some cash before LOG dies. Nice huh?? That is the kind of sociopath we're dealing with here. He did not speak to either of us and when he walked into the room, he started telling LOG that he looked terrible. Nice huh? The last time he saw his dad was in May 2002. After we left LOG's, we went straight home.

We both felt sick and numb and horrible. I put my head in my hands and said, "oh goodness but I could eat right now!" My hunny looked at me and said, "what?" I said, "I don't know, one of those piles of temptation food from 'biggest loser'" He said, "but what specifically?" I looked at him and said, "well I will take the Blue team's pile, you can have the red team." We both laughed but didn't feel much better. He was so stressed and distressed that his back went out on him. It was almost mid-afternoon, we'd not had lunch. I grabbed my purse and keys and left the house. I promised to come back with KFC. KFC?!? Luckily, there is a Mr. Sub between our house and the KFC. I pulled in, grabbed us each a sub. I also got some chips and a small container of dip. When I got home, my hunny was sitting in the living room, watching a movie. I asked, "can you smell the hot grease?" He sniffed and said that he couldn't. I swung the sub bag in front of his face and he looked relieved. We had the subs and some chips and a diet soft drink. It was so filling that we didn't eat dinner last night. Even though when I added it up, way too many of my calories came from fat this weekend, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have and I guess that's important.

For the past two weekends, we've had culinary excursions from what has once again become normal / healthy eating. I guess it's all about degrees though. We didn't go nuts and eat a bucket of chicken with sides of poutine. My stomach does flip flops when I think of how bad it could have been. Could have, but wasn't. Overall, averaged over an entire week, it doesn't seem so bad. I know that my good choices outnumber the not so good ones. Even the not so good ones aren't nearly as bad as they once were. I'm learning. What I really look forward to is the day when I don't even think about chips or pizza.

An aside to all of this is a lovely NSV that I discovered this morning. A couple of years ago, when I was on my way down the scale the first time, I bought a pair of pants that were in a size much smaller than I'd wore in years. They were officially the size smaller than what I've been wearing for the past year or so. Now, I think it was a fluke, that they were labeled wrong but still, it felt good to have them in the closet. Toward the end of last year, the waist band had become uncomfortably tight and I would only wear them when I had a sweater on that completely covered my stomach and butt. This morning I pulled them on for the first time this year. The waist band didn't cut me anymore (it felt just right) and I'm not wearing a super long sweater with them. I can't wait until these pants are too big for me. Right now though, I'm enjoying just how good it feels for them to fit!!

if I could do just one near perfect thing I'd be happy

Have a peek at some leeks:


A little while ago, my office mate pulled her lunch out of the fridge and realized that she'd put her banana in too. Her husband had packed her lunch (lucky girl huh?) today. Now I don't know about you but she and I agreed that a cold banana is not very good. I like mine to be room temperature. As I told her my cut-up-over-ripe-bananas-and-freeze-em-for-smoothies trick, the third office mate piped up with, "well I've never tried this but I have heard that if you dip a banana in chocolate and freeze it, it tastes just like ice cream!"

I'm thinking, but that totally defeats the good of the banana. I said as much, that I didn't think pouring chocolate over fruit was a good thing to do and she started to tell me about all the health benefits of chocolate (I'd said that it was bad for you, it's bad for me, I love the stuff but I can't eat it...once I start I can't stop!). I sort of feel bad because I cut her off mid-sentence and said, "you'll never convince me that it's good for me, I'm sorry."

I'm sure that she was a little surprised but I just couldn't hear about 80% chocolate, blah blah blah. Sadly, most of us don't eat the stuff that is supposed to be not-so bad. We eat the mars bar variety, which is actually chocolate candy, I know. It's not good for me. It's full of caffeine too, which I don't need. I know it's all about moderation but I don't think I'll ever be able to eat chocolate in moderation. I've tried in the past and failed miserably. For me, what works best is abstinence.

Other than that, there isn't much to report. LOG was having a bad day when we visited yesterday. He was absolutely convinced that three couple were having sex in his room through the night on Wednesday evening. I tried to explain to him that if that were true, we'd have been able to smell it and most likely, there would be some "evidence" on his velour covered chair (where one of the couple were going at it, in a very tiny area between the chair and the wall). He just wouldn't accept that the dreams he's having lately aren't real. I offered to leave him a camera, so he could take photos (he also claims to see other folks in his room at night) but he refused it. He told us that he'd rather just buzz for the nurse on duty as his backup. To make matters worse, the guy in the room next to is backing up his story about seeing young kids running about at night. It's a little disturbing.

This weekend should be a lot smoother than last weekend. I haven't felt 100% all this week so I plan to get outside for some fresh air this weekend, oh and sleep. Lots of sleep. I hope that everyone out there in the blogosphere has an enjoying, healthy weekend, free of frozen chocolate bananas and mixed up LOG's!

you are working for the joy of giving

As I'm sure you can imagine, the past week or so has been a little stressful for me. On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday evenings in particular, by the end of the day I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. I had a headache, muscle aches in my hips and legs, just basically really crummy.

This morning, I got up and was moving really slow. I felt sort of crappy again but I made myself exercise. I didn't want to, I tried to talk myself out of it but I kept going and eventually the time had passed and I was done. I showered and felt better. After I'd been at work about 20 minutes, I started to feel like crap again. I knew it was no longer nerves, I am fairly sure that I'm getting sick.

Fun times huh??

My office mate is also feeling exactly the same way. A coworker of ours is out sick today, two other girls from next door are sick as well. I'm not sure what it is but it's nasty.

In other news, it's a little weird at work because my promotion still hasn't been posted to the intranet so I can't talk about it openly yet. It's good and all, just an odd feeling to have good news and you can't talk about it. Soon, I know. Hopefully by tomorrow at the latest. And if I'm lucky, by then, I'll have gotten rid of this untouchable headache and the rest.

wednesday wrap-up - week 5

Today has been a great day, seriously.

Earlier today, I was offered the job that I'd interviewed for. Obviously, I was thrilled and instantly accepted. Tentatively, I'm scheduled to start in my new position on March 1 (my grandma's birthday!!). Right now, I'm filling in a bit (in addition to my regular duties) for the person who vacated. When I move into my new job, I'll have to fill in a bit on my current job until they fill the vacancy. It's all good though, I'm really pleased about it.

Almost as good as that, I had an amazing weigh-in this morning. After my workout, I hopped on the scale. I seriously hoped to maintain. Given the way we ate over the weekend, to maintain would have been fantastic. TOM must have had me all bloated last week or something but I had a terrific loss this week (see below for the numbers). Between the new job and the happy scale news, today has just been terrific so far!!

On that note...here is my latest weekly wrap-up:

summary - week ending February 7

• did intentional exercise every work-day morning and continued to work some weights into the mix. So far, I have put 101.02 miles on our recumbent bike.
  
• I took my vitamins 6 out of 7 days this week (once again, I forgot on Saturday - I blame this on the fact that we were out all morning and part of the afternoon doing errands so my schedule was a bit off)
  
• met daily water intake goal 6 out of 7 days. Slowly but surely, I'm working on this!!
  
• successfully avoided coffee all week. This means that I have been coffee-free for five weeks now!!
  
• with the exception of one fizzy lemonade on Friday night, I successfully avoided carbonated beverages, all week!! Thank you Crystal Light individual packets (I use them to make slushies in the blender for a treat!).
  
• did not have any evening snacks 7 out of 7 days (although I did let myself have some yummy lime sugar free jello for dessert last night - that's not really a snack!)
  
• continued to post here every work-day since my re-start
  
• tracked every morsel of food I've eaten, at fitday
  
• I lost four more pounds this week, 4! That means that I have lost a total of 19 pounds in five weeks. Yay!!
  

...and our daily photo today is a shot of our dinner from Monday night!!!

update

So, a couple of weeks ago I wrote some vague stuff about work. I deliberately have not written about it, primarily because I didn't want to jinx it. In fact, I only discussed it with my hunny, my mum and 3 co-workers. Oh, my boss too. I talked to her about it before I did anything. I applied for a new job in the same department I'm currently (different functional unit though, new team of people). It would be a promotion if I got it, I had an interview this morning. I'm notoriously bad at judging things like this but I have a good feeling about it. I'll know for sure by the end of this week I've been told.

One of the nice things about situations like this is that the nervous stomach thing keeps your appetite at bay (good thing too or I may have thrown up!!) until it's over. Now, it's over, and I'm eating lunch, thinking about how I'm not going to think about it all too much. I don't want to freak myself out over-analyzing everything. Either way, I'm pretty proud of myself. To go through this process is always good and it definitely would have been easier to just stay at my current job and let someone else go for it. Yeah, whatever happens, I feel good!

thank goodness it's Monday!

This weekend was a struggle, let me tell you.

Friday night, things started out well. We had a lovely healthy home-made dinner. It was delicious, I did the no-evening snacking thing, not even a piece of fruit. I felt great and thought, "okay, this weekend will be easy!"

HA! Easy!? Crap!! LOG is not doing well these days and it's taking it's toll on us. My hunny particularly is stressing about the situation, big time. He really wanted to go out on a binge on Saturday. We went to visit LOG and the poor fellow kept falling asleep mid-sentence. It was a little upsetting for my hunny, seeing his dad like that. When we left the nursing home, I pulled my "to do" list out. We aren't usually out and about so early on Saturday morning and I wanted to take advantage of it.

We went to the pasta place to get some fresh spinach pasta and some whole wheat pasta. After that, instead of moving the car, we took a walk to the next couple of places we needed to go. I thought that the fresh air and exercise might snap my hunny out of his funk. When we got back to the car and were figuring out our next stop, I asked him what he wanted to do about something to eat (we'd not had breakfast yet and it was fast approaching lunch). He joked about devouring the McD's drive thru but I wouldn't agree to that. Instead, we did a couple more errands and ended up at this buffet place for lunch. It was a compromise, he could have something "bad" but in a small portion and we could also get huge salads there. Of course, once we got there, we both ate too much. So much that we decided that the fresh pasta, salmon and asparagus dinner we'd planned for that evening wouldn't be happening.

Later on that day, we had to go out again to replace our cable modem. While we were out, we had "the dinner discussion." Neither of us were actually hungry so we kept suggesting and then saying no to different restaurant suggestions. As a compromise, after we had been to the cable store, I suggested that we stop at the drug store. I needed to pick up a couple of things and we could buy something really decadent for a treat. I don't know why I was feeling so "bad" but I was. We get to the store, I pick up the items I need and then we go to the chips / cookies / candy section. I muse over the chocolate bars, wander past the cookies. Nothing interested me. I met my hunny at the chip aisle and was immediately drawn to the baked section. We ended up getting some Sun Chips and I got a tootsie roll. In the end, much later that day (like around 8 p.m. -- which is really late for us to eat) we made wraps for dinner and munched on some of the chips. It's weird, I was craving salt and chocolate and TOM was almost over. Delayed PMS?? Temporary Insanity?? I'm not sure.

Yesterday, we hibernated. There was a storm brewing outside and we decided to stay home. For breakfast, we had salad and scrambled eggs and some sauteed portabello mushrooms... I had a turkey sausage too. It was really good, super filling. No need for lunch...right? Um, wrong! Popcorn for lunch sounds good, afterall, we are vegging out in front of the tv. I'm not sure what happened but the popcorn just made us more hungry. The lovely loaf of multigrain bread I baked on Friday night was the next target. Toast anyone?? Yikes. My stomach hurts just thinking about this. Eventually we stopped nibbling but seriously, it was a snacking nightmare.

When the dust settled, I counted up my calories. I was shocked to see that I stayed within my range. I was at the highest end I could be at but still, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I don't expect to see a loss this week, given that performance but hey, it could have been much worse:

1. I could have said "hell yes, McD's it is!!"
2. I could have gone to the bulk barn and bought a huge-ass bag of chocolate covered almonds instead of the tootsie roll (single)
3. I could have bought chips and dip instead of smart pop microwave popcorn
4. I could have ordered pizza for dinner last night
5. I could have made my toast from nutrient free white bread

See, some of the choices I made weren't horrible but I made a deal with myself. If I'm going to go "off track" it can only happen for one day and it'll only happen once a month. Sound fair? We'll see. In the meantime, here's a photo of pears:

finally, friday!

What a day, I can't believe that it's over.

I was at work from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. today. It wasn't planned, it just worked out that way. I managed to weasel out of a couple of meetings this afternoon and actually got a number of things crossed off of my "to-do" list. Of course, this meant that I had to make a whole new list to start on again Monday. I did not bring any work home with me this weekend though. I plan to do some cleaning of the house this weekend, a few errands tomorrow morning and that's about it. We're supposed to get some big ass snow storm this weekend but I'm not holding my breath.



Despite everything that has been going on at work, I've kept my workouts up. A few mornings, I was tempted to pull the covers up over my head and stay in bed for the extra 30 minutes but I resisted the temptation and I moved my bum instead. Eating has been very very good all week. Overall, it was a much better week than last was I think. Considering it's been TOM all week, I'm really happy about it.

As always, the weekend is a concern but I'm finding that if I keep myself busy enough, I don't do that absent minded snacking thing. Yikes, as I typed that, I yawned, loudly. I'm guessing that it is now official "past my bedtime."

Happy weekend everyone, I'm heading to bed!!

bread and pineapples

Today's fruit is pineapple:



I spoke a little too soon about TOM not kicking my ass. Last night, by the time I got home, I felt just terrible. I was doubled over with the heating pad. Not good. Around the same time that this was happening, my hunny got a sharp pain in his hip. Both of us were sort of crawling around the house and we'd not had dinner yet. Ordinarily he cooks. He planned to make Pad Thai for dinner, had the noodles soaking and the shrimp defrosted, but couldn't stand at the stove long enough to do it. Eventually, I cooked dinner. I use the word "cooked" in the loosest sense of the word, I made us huge salads and made us each a scrambled egg. It was fast and filling but it wasn't Pad Thai. We'll have that tonight.

A couple of you asked about the bread I made. Now, I didn't mention this but I use a bread machine. It's a cheat but I don't care. If I had to find time to make bread manually, it would never happen. Here is the recipe I use, if anyone is interested:

Multi-grain loaf:

Put ingredients into the bread machine in this order, select whole grain setting:

1.5 cups water
2 tbsp shortening (I use olive oil)
2 tbsp skim milk powder (I use soy milk powder)
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 1/3 cups unbleached white flour
1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup 12 grain cereal (although you can use any multi-grain cereal)
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp yeast

It makes a nice, dense loaf. The original recipe didn't call for the milk powder but I found that it didn't rise up, at all, without it.

wednesday wrap-up - week 4

My lunch rocks! I'm enjoying a bunch of baby carrots and a gorgeous sandwich that I made with bread I baked myself, 12 grain bread, no white flour, no white sugar, no lard (I used olive oil). It's really tasty and nutty and sliced super thin. I haven't baked in ages and I'm so glad that I took the time to do this on Sunday.

Things are going well. I found my old hand weights the other day so I'm doing a bit of arm work now (just restarted that today). I also noticed this morning that I can definitely pull the belt/tie thing on my bathrobe, much tighter than before and I have more belt to spare on the end than I noticed even just two weeks ago. Boy I tell ya, it's those little NSV's that keep a girl going!!

I'm having kind of a busy day so I'll just do this really quickly ...here is my latest weekly wrap-up:

summary - week ending January 31

• did intentional exercise every work-day morning and re-introduced some weights into my regime. So far, I have put 79.96 miles on our recumbent bike.
  
• I took my vitamins 6 out of 7 days this week (I totally forgot about taking them on Saturday for some reason)
  
• exceeded daily water intake goal 5 out of 7 days. I'm still working on this one, and slowly, I'm getting better.
  
• successfully avoided coffee all week. This means that I have been coffee-free for four weeks now!!
  
• once again, on the weekend, I allowed myself a couple of cans of diet cranberry soda but otherwise, did not drink anything carbonated during the work week.
  
• did not have any evening snacks 7 out of 7 days
  
• continued to post here every work-day since my re-start
  
• tracked every morsel of food I've eaten, at fitday
  
• continue to work on my nails and even gave myself a facial this weekend. My nails are looking gorgeous and my skin is definitely looking better (could be a lack of junk food too - I only had one TOM related blemish this month!)
  
• I lost three more pounds this week, 3! That means that I have lost a total of 15 pounds in four weeks. Yay!!
  

...and our daily photo today is some yummy mangoes!