Welcome Back

Okay. So. We’re back at the start of a new year and new goals and new things to look forward to.

December was… hard. And not for any real good reason either. I’ve had an outpatient procedure done which I hope will help me and its spurred a two month trial of sorts to see if that will help in my goal to lose weight. Before you all get cranky with me, it wasn’t a weight loss procedure, it was a… hormonal one…

Weight wise, I’m back to where I was and I’m not quite happy about that. But given that I’ve had absolutely no luck losing weight with the implant but only succeeded in gaining weight, I think that with it removed I might be able to get better success?

I’m hopeful anyway. I’m planning on going back to Weight Watchers Meetings, rather then just doing it online. I’ll be tracking and exercising better and hopefully posting a lot more recipes as I’m cooking for only one now and on a stricter budget.

This is my New Years Resolution, not to lose weight (thought that is a hopeful side effect) but to get back into the method of Weight Watchers.

I’m not sure whats wrong

I really want to lose weight. I want to lose it and I have worked really hard to get my mind wrapped around the idea of losing weight.

But lately I have had the hardest time doing this. I know that there are underlying issues for this, and these are things that I’m also working on, but right now I cannot for the life of me concentrate on losing weight. And that breaks my heart, because it’s practically the one thing in my life that I can control and that control has been wrest from my grip. And I hate that.

So I just need you to know that I might not be posting here even weekly for a while. I need to figure it out and how I can move forward and hopefully, not gain to much weight in the meanwhile.

Weekly Weigh In: Sorry

OKAY So. Yeah. I’ve been silent the last few weeks. Unsurprisingly, I gained 2.4 pounds since last we spoke, given the dual Thanksgiving dinners, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I think it could have been.

I’ve taken to going to the gym more frequently (Friday/Saturday and this morning) and today I’m detoxing it out. So no caffeine, sugar or carbs at all today. My hope is that I’ll be able to do it with

It shall be a struggle, but I will en-devour not to partake. But I have flavored teas, none of which have sugars pre-added in to them. So this is good for me.

As I weighed myself this morning I had the unfortunate pleasure of looking in the mirror as I did it and it was just not a fun thing for me. I’m not a huge fan of the way my body looks. The whole image of me sans-clothing is not great. I feel like I look much better with clothes on, which is depressing and something that I’m really trying to work with in my mind.

But that said, I’ve also decided that it is a new month, and the start of a new week, so as has become a grand tradition on this blog, I’m starting over. And thats for everything from the diet to my budgeting.

All that said its become very clear to me that I need to have something for myself that isn’t volunteering and that I need someone to talk to that is going to be impartial about me and maybe tell me why I can’t stick with a diet…

I don’t like Stevia

The whole concept of fake sugar bugs the hell out of me. I have always been of the opinion that if I’m going to eat something, its going to be (generally) real food.

Getting rid of processed foods in my diet is a long time goal of mine, and it’s getting better as I get deeper into my health consciousness and dieting. But lets be honest here, those puffed veggie sticks and crackers are addicting and I doubt I’ll ever get rid of Diet Coke totally from my life.

But for what ever reason my dieting and health-nutting does not include is substituting sugar for things like Stevia or Truvia or the uber fake sugar in pink and blue and yellow packets…

This is not to say that people who do use them are wrong or bad, I just can’t be one of them. It just doesn’t taste the same and it makes everything else taste wrong. And I can’t stand that.

So for me, when diet recipes call for Stevia or Truvia or any other kind of sugar substitute in them I tend to roll my eyes and walk in the other direction and don’t even bother with them.

And for some reason, in a fit of ridiculousness, my mother bought a bag of Truvia baking sugar. Like years ago. And we used it once, and haven’t used it since. I’m pretty sure the expiration date was last year.

Honestly, its the same thing for me with margarine and other ‘healthy’ butters. I’m just not going to use it. I’ll use less of the real stuff before I move to using the non-natural stuff.

Also, I do the same thing with mayo, I’d rather use less and track it then use more of the low fat stuff.

I donno. It’s my own little idiosyncrasy. The reason this all came up was because I got incredibly frustrated when I found a recipe for a dessert that I really wanted to make but it had Stevia in place of the sugar and I got cranky trying to figure out if I could use real sugar instead and what that would do to the recipe….

Again, this is not me saying that people are wrong for using Stevia or Truvia, it’s a better option than Sweet and Low and Equal, but it’s just not for me.

Weekly Weigh In: A look ahead

I lost 5.3 pounds this week! Which is so incredibly excellent. I can’t even tell you what it means to me that I’ve lost 7 pounds.

I’m sure a lot of it had to do with the fact that Saturday and Sunday were very active days and that I actually started using the gym. I’ve gone to the gym twice more since Friday, on Saturday morning and this morning, and I’m planning on going a few more times this week. This doesn’t mean I like it, it just means that I recognize the fact that exercise is important. I earned 21 activity points last week!!

That said, I didn’t track well. And this week might not be a whole lot better for me. Mainly because I’m at a conference in from tonight through late Wednesday when I get back home. I’m really excited for the conference, but less excited for the whole disruption to my week. It seriously doesn’t help that I get back, have a day at home during which I have to make like two pies for Sunday and then on Friday I drive a bunch of middle schoolers up to a youth group retreat.

Which should be super fun but its not likely to be the best of food, so when I get home on Sunday I go straight into pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving with my fathers side of the family because they’ll all be in town for one momentous meeting. AND THEN I go down to my mothers brother’s house for A SECOND THANKSGIVING on Thanksgiving itself. The next two weeks are going to be crazy busy and thats just my personal life.

My work life is going to be just a bad. So I’m going to be on the look out for potential stress eating and not overdoing it like I have done in Thanksgiving’s past.

It’s going to be a challenge because I legit love Thanksgiving. I’ll write a whole post about it later, but it is seriously my favorite holiday.

But yeah, so that is it I think for today’s update. I’ll try to get one in during the conference and before the retreat.

I still hate exercising

not mine…

I really seriously do. I find nothing fun about it but, after eating all the zeppoli and pizza last night I opted to actually drag myself out of the bed this morning and go to the gym in my building.

It’s an infinity mirror…. its not that big.

And it is actually really nice. And its just downstairs and very open and available at all times and I’m paying for it in my amenities fees… There is absolutely no point in not taking advantage of it. That of course, doesn’t mean I like it.

So this morning, unlike the rest of the week where I woke up at 6 and after spending five minutes trying to convince myself to get out of bed and go to the gym before rolling back over and waiting till my next alarm, I actually got out of bed.

God only knows where I got the strength to do that, but I did it. I got dressed and I still went! Even after I couldn’t find my headphones so that I could listen to music or the TV.

I exercised in silence. Who’s proud of me? I sure as shit am. I did 45 minutes on the elliptical even after at 25 minutes I was like “NOPE NO MORE. I AM DONE” I kept going and finished the 45 minutes that I had put in to do.

Despite all my hopes and desires it was not empty when I got there, there were two other girls in there and about 5 minutes before I left a guy came in to do his thing.

I felt woefully inadequate doing my thing on the elliptical, but better for actually having been there.

All that said, exercise still does not make me happy. But it does make the little green lights on my ActiveLink light up getting me damn close to 100% for the day before 7 a.m. and THAT makes me happy. I reached 1 WW activity point before Noon. So I will take that and run with it.

Though not literally, I hate running.

Weekly Weigh In: A Plateau

Not the brewery but another bar I went to this past weekend…

I have plateaued. I probably would have lost some this past week from all my moving activities, but then I went to my favorite local brewery, drank beer and ate a lot of pizza on Sunday.

I really need to stop doing this actually. Seriously, its getting ridiculous.

Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m having such a hard time staying on plan when it comes to the weekend. My weeks are usually so good! I track, I pay attention, I don’t go overboard, but then the weekend comes and I loose track of everything.

Oh well. I figure it wasn’t a total bust, I didn’t gain anything but I didn’t loose anything either. Here’s hoping for a better result next week.

Also, I’ll be posting my move-in experience later today. Complete with how many Activity Points I got!

Its Roast Chicken Season

I get a lot of pleasure out of coming up with new ways to roast chickens. I tend to do this with out a lot of thought to recipes and just do it all by feel, and haven’t had a terrible experiment yet. So I’m usually pretty confident when I do that.

Last Sunday night I stuffed rosemary leaves under the skin of a 4 pound chicken, rubbed it down with salt and olive oil and then stuffed half an orange inside the cavity and squeezed the other half on top of it.

I then added in some Shipyard Pumpkin Beer (which isn’t too pumpkin spicy and mostly just pumpkin) for added moisture. And I cooked it for about 2 hours at 375F. I also took the jus of the orange, olive oil and beer and reduced it for a really lovely sauce.

I did not put points together for this as I was making it, because I’m stupid.

But to guess, it’s roughly 3 points for a 3 oz serving of chicken and I used about 6 fl oz of beer which is 3 points, the fresh orange were zero, the olive oil used was about 2 tbsp for 6 points, the one sprig of rosemary was also zero points. I estimate that with the jus from the pan (I took off a lot of the oil that was on top in the pan) one serving of the chicken it was equal to about 7 or 8 WW points.

And damn it turned out well. I was so pleased with how that chicken came out.

I served it with fresh pasta and vodka sauce, roasted onions and peppers and a big salad. Those sides all in were roughly 11 points. So it was a pretty hefty dinner but so, so good.

I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of it because my father is pretty against the taking of pictures of ones food, so yeah…

All in all, such a good Sunday night meal!

I’m so ashamed

I can’t even. Except to laugh about it. I don’t even know what happened with yesterday. It’s unbelievable honestly. I came home and tracked it all and just had to laugh.

My mother was helpful and laughed with me even while giving me the “wtf were you even thinking of?!” look that all mothers have perfected. And we laughed as I told her the crazy of my food day.

To be fair, it was kind of a crying laugh, but still. I’m just overwhelmed at how ridiculous this is.

For whatever reason my sweet tooth kept hounding me and I had no will power today to fight it. I’m seriously ashamed of myself. Especially after saying that I’d be better this week.

So in punishment I got myself up early and went on the machine this morning so that I could at least pretend that I did something good about it.

But oh my god. I had a slice of pound cake at lunch. And then I had a hot chocolate (small with no whipped cream I didn’t go overboard people) and then a glazed chocolate donut.

I’m shocked and disappointed with myself for even eating like that yesterday but proud that I tracked it and took responsibility for my actions.

Seriously though. I’m eating salad for the next six days for at least two meals a day.

Weekly Weigh In: A Sigh

I’m down 1.7 pounds. Which means I’m almost back to where I was two weeks ago. Which is fantastic and thrilling and just makes me feel so much better about life.

This past weekend was a lot of crazy in a ten pound bag, but not as regarding food! Which was a nice change for me after the past few weeks.

I didn’t make a huge dent in my activity, via the ActiveLink. I’m still not really moving a whole lot during the day, but I have scheduled little reminders through my WW app to remind me to move for a few minutes every hour. And its a nice little reminder to actually move.

The whole tree blocked my way into the end of the driveway.

Actually, if I’m being honest, I didn’t even make the 100% mark any day except Sunday, and I only made the 100% because there was a crazy big tree that fell across the driveway at my parents house.

It was basically not a lot of fun to fix that

That black spot at the bottom is my foot for comparison…

because it was just me who had to move all the branches out of the way. My parents said that they’d help later when they got home but I knew they wouldn’t be home from helping my sister move into her apartment in NYC until at least 6 p.m. and by then (thanks to Daylight Savings Time) it would be incredibly dark out and no one would want to do that. So I just moved it all myself, with the help of a rake, a hatchet and a hand cart for the big pieces.

After that I started putting Sunday dinner together. I got to make my favorite thing – Roast Chicken.

It turned out so well! I’ll be posting a separate thing about this chicken, even though I didn’t get a picture of it.

Other than that, this weekend was pretty good. I went to Ikea on Saturday, got my bed frame and a bookcase and some other things for my apartment. And its all coming together on that end.

I started packing up my books (I have so many freaking books) and cleaning my room before the move, which is emotionally exhausting. I threw away all of my old reporters notebooks that were full. I got some good advice early in my journalism career – never keep a notebook just in case you get sued for libel. They can’t take notes if you don’t have them anymore.

My parents were really shocked when I explained that.

Anyway, my goal for this coming week is to be better at moving! I want to try and get at least 6 activity points this week (outside of any I get on Friday from getting my stuff into my apartment). That’s one point a day, which I think I can do. I hope I can do it anyway.

We’re going to try.