Blog Dog

My ovaries are shooting out rainbows right now.

I want to make a kid solely for this purpose. I DIE. Love this song.

Weekly Weight Goal = OWNED

Yay! It's only Wednesday and I've met my weight goal for this week! (My goal is to lose one pound per week for 10 weeks, and then maintain). I was 129.8 on Sunday and now I'm 128.8. If I could lose another pound by the end of this week, that would be awesome sauce. Of course, I know that right now it's probably just water weight that I'm losing from a week of crappy/salty eating, but I'll take it.

Wanna know how I'm doing it? Here are some things that are helping me:

• Writing down everything I eat (so I can't disregard that cookie, etc)
• Taking pictures of meals - I only do this occasionally, but it helps
• Measuring. It's really easy to misjudge measurements and food portions. For example, a serving size of my cereal is 3/4 a cup, but its easy to put 1 cup or more in the bowl without realizing
• Smaller plates and bowls - a half cup of cottage cheese in a big bowl looks like nothing, but it feels like a perfectly satisfying amount if you eat it from a cute ramekin. Same goes with plate size, I'm trying to eat off of 8" salad plates
• Weigh myself EVERY day. I'm better with short term goals because I'm so impatient. Its much easier for me to take things one day at a time. If I weigh myself every day, I also can't trick myself into believing that I can take the day off, because I see the results. 
• Eating IN. This is a huge one. We got rid of all the junk food in our house and stocked it up with healthy options. Its better that I don't have the choice between french fries and an apple (like at Wendy's) because I have no will power. I'm also not being bombarded with delicious crave-inducing french fry aromas.
• Taking note of what's on Oprah. Because I cannot survive for 45 minutes on the treadmill without something good on tv. If Oprah sucks that day, Keeping Up with the Kardashians (shh, don't tell anyone) will suffice.  My gym has an individual television on EVERY piece of cardio equipment, which is AMAZING.
• Keeping stress in check. I'm an emotional eater and a stress eater, and everything stresses me out (just ask my husband). That's a bad combination. I'm doing my best to do the things that I know will ease stress, like getting my work done on time, keeping the house clean, going to bed at a decent time and waking up early before 9:00. 
• Inspiration. This means staring at pictures of hot healthy women, visualizing the beach, reading your blog posts about healthy eating, etc. 
• Keeping it reasonable. My husband, Frank, does things to the extreme, like 24 hour cleanses, super-intense workouts, super-strict dieting. This works for some people, but not for me. If I starve myself, go too hard at the gym, I just burn out, get overwhelmed, cry it out and then eat a pizza. Instead, I'm trying to stay under a certain daily calorie count, get in at least four good workouts per week and generally eat healthy foods. 

Here's lunch: 

Tuna salad, hummus and celery, blueberries, creepy dark weird cell phone pic

Sorry, I don't want this blog to become all about food, dieting, etc. Craft post coming soon!

Boob Rant

I went to the Victoria's Secret semi-annual sale tonight with a friend. We go every year and spend and unnecessary amount of money on all the after-holiday clearance stuff.  Usually, I steer away from their bras but today I actually found a decent one, for $20, and bought it.

Here's what gets me. It's an entire store filled with bras and they have so few that are appropriate for anyone over a C-cup. Even 75% of the D's are so padded that they're actually meant for someone with an A-cup. If you have D-sized boobs, you don't want padding! Grrr, it's so discouraging.

Anyway, I stocked up on a bunch of lotion/fragrance/makeup items that I don't need. Of course.

I'm also completely stressed, as usual. One of my clients wants to give me two more social media accounts and I really just don't have the time. But I don't know how to say no. And I'm the only social media person they have, so i'm worried that they'll just find someone new who has time to handle all the accounts, someone full-time probably. 

I made an appointment with my therapist, who I see every three months. She's awesome, and she keeps a little teacup Yorkie in her desk drawer (opened of course). It wears dresses. I think I'm going to talk to her about trying to get a light therapy lamp. Hopefully my insurance will cover it. Not sure if it will help, but I definitely get a touch of seasonal depression. The months between New Year's and spring are really hard for me because it seems like a big stretch of cold, dark nothing. Its kind of worse since I work at home now though. I'm home all day, home all night, and it feels like I'm in hibernation, so I get down sometimes. 

My Food Journal

I'm using Sparkpeople.com to record my daily food and exercise. Anyone else on here? Anyway, today was pretty decent, eating-wise. The thing is, according to this, I only ate around 800 calories, which is ridiculous. I should be getting like 1400, maybe 1200 at the least. But I don't feel like I restricted my food very much, and I was never hungry throughout the day. So is this okay? I also worked out on the treadmill for 40 minutes (walk for 5, run for 5, repeat). I need to stop being lazy and start adding weight training. 

BREAKFAST:

Hard Boiled Egg, 2 large 155 1 11 13 Regular Coffee, 1 cup (8 fl oz) 2 0 0 0 Coffeemate Creamer French Vanilla, 1 tbsp 35 5 2 0

BREAKFAST TOTALS: 192 6 12 13

LUNCH:

Kraft Mayo Light Mayonnaise (Mayo), 1.5 tbsp 75 2 7 0 Tuna, Canned in Water, 3 oz 99 0 1 22 Egg white, 1 serving 17 0 0 5

LUNCH TOTALS: 191 2 8 27

DINNER:

Sour Cream, reduced fat, 2 tbsp 41 1 4 1 Salsa, 2 tbsp 9 2 0 0 Romaine Lettuce (salad), 2 cup, shredded 16 3 0 2 Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, year round average, 0.5 cup cherry tomatoes 16 3 0 1 Perdue, Lean Ground Turkey, 5 oz 200 0 10 30

DINNER TOTALS: 281 9 14 34

SNACK:

Musselman's Home Style Natural Unsweetened Apple Sauce, 0.5 cup 50 13 0 0 Snack Factory Pretzel Chip, 5 serving 50 0 0 0 Blueberries, fresh, 0.5 cup 41 10 0 1

SNACK TOTALS: 141 23 0 1

CLICK TO ADD/EDIT EXTRA MEALS

			CALORIES	CARBS	FAT	PROTEIN
			805	41	34	74
			1,340 - 1,690	179 - 258	35 - 62	60 - 139
			535 - 885	138 - 217	1 - 28	0 - 65

New Year's Eve

We got up super early on Friday morning (okay, 8:00) because we had tickets to see an art exhibit that I have been wanting to see for a long time. It's called "Vatican Splendors" and features artwork from the Vatican. I'm not Catholic or even religious, but I DO love Italian Renaissance art. It was kind of disappointing though. There is so much demand to see the exhibit and they let in way too many people at a time. It was claustrophobic and hot, and people were being pushy. I think the $40 we paid to get in should have at least included air to breath. Ah well.

Then we went out to lunch at one of our favorite sandwich shops which has the best fries on earth. We knew it would be a long time before we got to chow down on greasy carb-filled foods so we took advantage. So long 2010.

That night we just went to my friend's apartment for yummy food, board games and Guitar Hero. I love having relaxed and casual New Years Eves.  I've done the "get dressed up, pay a million dollars to go to a packed and sweaty club" a few too many times. The girls played nerdy word games, the guys sat around and talked about man things, we ate things wrapped in bacon. This was the perfect night. Did anyone else see Dick Clark struggling to speak because of his stroke? It made me so sad, the end of an era. I made it past midnight but at 1:15 all I could think about was my bed. So my DD (husband) drove us home. This cell phone pic pretty much captures my night:

Champagne, Champagne of Beers, jello shots

On New Year's day, we sat around all morning/afternoon, watching movies and drifting in and out of consciousness. In the evening, we went to a friend's house to watch the hockey game. These are our best guy friends, who we refer to as our children. We love them, but they have a lot of growing up to do. We walked in the door and our jaws dropped. There were beer cans, pizza crusts, half empty bottles of liquor and cigarettes strewn all over the place. Everyone was in various states of undress. There were two strange girls draped across the couch and everyone was out of control drunk.  It was kind of hilarious to be a sober witness to this. I'm kind of glad that we decided NOT to hang out with them on New Year's eve. We did last year, and the year ended with one person in the hospital, an apartment covered in blood and the worst hangover ever.

Resolutions: Part 3

Check out Part 1 here and Part 2 here .

3. Get in shape. How original, right? Well, I was doing okay until the holidays came around and kicked my ass.  For some reason, I treated it as a free-for-all and ate every delicious/horrible thing you can imagine. I won't even get into the specifics, it will make you sick.  So starting today, I'm going to record everything I put into my body. This way, I'm accountable for everything. Hmm . . . maybe I'll post it in here?  Anyway, I've been over this before, but I just keep gradually putting on the pounds year after year. I'd like to get down to a weight that I feel is better for my body and try to STAY there. Especially if I plan on having a baby within the next couple years. I want to start it with a healthy in-shape body and already be used to healthy eating habits, so that I have the best chance of not gaining too much during pregnancy.

My husband is in on this with me, which makes it a lot easier and more fun.  He's training for a half marathon so he's motivated. I'm training for bathing suit season, which is also motivating. My plan is an hour at the gym at least four days a week, writing down everything I eat, low carb, high protein and tons of water.

4. Get my writing career on track. This year was full of big accomplishments for me. I actually started making money! I got a lot of new clients with some awesome contracts. The problem is, I still have to learn how to say no. Which means that I'm completely overwhelmed with social media work. I have mixed feelings about it. Ultimately though, being a writer is my goal. I need to get out of the mindset that I should take whatever is offered to me. I can afford to be a little pickier now.

5. Be a more patient person and a better wife :)