1 Month In- How Ya Doin’?

Well it’s been a month since we all set out New Year’s Resolutions or “goals” if you will. How many have you broken so far? LOL. It hasn’t been that long since my daughter and I decided to do this weight loss thing together, but I was supposedly starting right after New Year’s.

One thing I’ve learned is that when you reach my age, that post-menapausal age, the body can start falling apart in a hurry! I was doing really well going to the gym, even if I don’t like how crowded it gets sometimes, that when I don’t go now my body hurts.

I’ve been involved in a couple of life altering projects this week, and I have sorely, and I do mean sorely, neglected exercise. When I get on these projects I go from “all out” to “burn out” and there is no in between. I have discovered this week that I can no longer do that.

I’ve always griped at my mother about not moving more, and she always says it hurts. My answer to that is if you would move more, you would work that stiffness out and it wouldn’t hurt so much. I know that’s good in theory, but I’ve often wondered if I would practice what I preached. I am. It has finally become more painful not to exercise, than to exercise.

While I know it’s much more rewarding to exercise, that has never been enough to motivate me. Neither has the fact that exercise helps to stave off Alzheimer’s, which worries me but I do a lot of constant learning, etc. so it probably doesn’t worry me as much as it should. I have a very low threshold for pain however and this just might be the answer for me.

As far as the diet part goes, I’ve done well. Not terrific, but well. I have not lost any weight yet, but I think a part of that has been stress, sitting a lot, and then yeah, not being as good as I should be. Once again I will return to Sparkpeople to track what I eat. One of my biggest downfalls is not planning ahead, then I don’t want to quit what I’m doing to go figure something out for dinner. I am still working on correcting that. I started this morning by pulling the ground beef out of the freezer at 8 am. LOL. Now on to find my WeightWatchers recipe to go with it.

If It’s White, Don’t Bite…

That seems to be the mantra these days. No white sugar, no white potatoes, and no white bread. For me, that’s a tuff one. I could probably do without the white sugar, I don’t eat that much sugar anyway, but I am a bread and potato freak! More than once I have had just a baked potato for lunch and I can’t imagine my life without mashed potatoes. LOL. What I have done is quit eating white bread.

Even when you’re trying to do the right thing, the food manufacturers have their own agenda. Obviously they will do anything to get you to buy their products, including “lie”. They say “whole grain” on the front of the package, but it may be a little whole grain in the middle of a bunch of processed white flour. I had to really hunt to get a truly 100% whole wheat that didn’t have “high fructose corn syrup”, another manufactured poison.

I was over visiting run4change this morning and he had a video up from RunnersWorld . This lady doctor is going through the pantry getting rid of stuff. It was a good video, but I think mostly stuff us dieters already know. They actually have several little short videos on RunnersWorld and I found it pretty interesting, even tho they’re geared more for runners than dieters. I decided this video below would be a little more useful for us.

Update: I don’t know why wordpress won’t let me embed the video, but it won’t, so if you click on the RunnersWorld link it will take you to the videos. There’s a really good one on snacking. You can eat quite a bit of candy for 250-450 calories. Of course the fat is another story. LOL.

It Has How Many Points?

When the Weight Watchers “Points Finder” doesn’t go up that high, you better not eat it. LOL. I love how most places have the nutritional info online now for most of their menu items.  I think that’s part of the reason I never go out for a hamburger anymore. What gets me is when you think you’re making a healthier choice, and it’s still 800 calories. I love the ‘mach combo burrito’ at our local Del Taco, but it’s 25 points. That’s my WHOLE DAMN DAY’S WORTH! It weighs a ton, and sometimes I just have to have one, so I stretch it over 2 meals, like one today, one tomorrow, then I don’t feel so guilty and at least I can still have something for supper. That’s where the list comes in handy that lists all the foods by point value. I just take from the “0″ and “1″ pointers.

All in all I’m back on track. I’m back to drinking my 1 part unsweetened cranberry juice to 7 parts water when I first wake up. I drink that while I’m waiting for my coffee. It sure wakes you up in a hurry when you’re not drinking a bunch of sugar. I never realized how tart those little red berries can be. It also hydrates after sleeping all nite, and most important, flushes the junk out.

I’ve been doing good going to the gym. I think I’ve finally found the right combination. It’s close to my house, I know what I want to do so I don’t have to rely on anyone, and the tredmills measure my heart rate whenever I want it to. I’m still working on when the best time is to go. For me it’s when I first wake up, but for the club it seems to be even busier in the wee hours of the morning than it normally is. There were a lot of older, older people there this morning early, along with the “get it in before going to work” crowd. I guess I’ll just keep trying different times until I find a time when it’s not so full.

It’s going to be a busy day around here today. My oldest daughter is coming up from central valley, and my middle daughter is moving out.  After today it’s “no more kids”. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. The first time my middle daughter left, it was fine. She was just out of high school and we fought all the time. After she learned what the “real” world was like and moved back in, we’re quite good friends now. I will miss her.

All the kids wonder in and out. My son doesn’t live very far away, so unless I’m bugging him to get a job or go back to school, I see him fairly often. My oldest daughter makes it up here every few weeks and usually spends a night or two, so that’s always nice. This daughter is moving about 8 hrs. away, so I doubt she will be coming home very often. The one good thing is the house she’s moving into (her cousin’s) is right across the way from a timeshare resort that I’m a member of, so I have a place to stay if I go down there.

I’m Pretty Excited!

My daughters

I’ve written here before about my oldest daughter going vegetarian. I really thought it was an ok idea as I know she’s not real big on fruits and veggies and I thought it would help her to eat more of the right things. Unfortunately she’s much too much like me and you can still eat a lot of the wrong things even going vegetarian, without any of them involving meat.(Bread, desserts, pasta with alfredo sauce).

She has a few health issues and she’s only 26. I bought both of us a new book by a Dr. Mark Hyman about healthier eating. He’s done some fabulous work with food and depression, food and autism, etc. He’s been on Martha Stuart and done some work with Oprah’s Dr. Oz, so he doesn’t appear to be some crackpot. When she was up here the other day, I gave it to her. She thumbed through it and was really interested. Score! Usually I give her self-help stuff and she’s not very interested.

While she was here, we also discussed the fact we had about the same amount of weight to lose (about 50 lbs). So I counted out 25 weeks, figuring for July 11, 2009 and we set that as a target date. We also decided we should have something to work towards as a reward.

When it comes to traveling there really aren’t that many places I would like to go (pretty crazy considering I’m a travel agent). She has never been to Hawaii, which is one place I would love to go back to, and she had a crappy time in New Orleans when she went with a girlfriend, which I would love to go back there also. So we  are on a quest to decide what our reward will be at the end of this.

The other morning she called and had actually gone to the gym. She’s had a membership for I don’t know how long, but only been a couple of times. I just hope she keeps it up. Her work schedule varies so I told her the same thing I wrote about here, that if she gets in the routine of going shortly after she gets up, it really wouldn’t matter what time that was. She belongs to a gym like I do that has restricted hours so it’s definitely going to take some scheduling and some effort, but she can do it. On days she has to be to work at 7 am, she’ll have to go after work, which is ok but it does screw up the regular routine a bit. The trick is on those days is to have everything with you and point the car to the gym instead of towards home.

I’m so happy she has decided to do this with me. It’s nice to have her back to where we can encourage each other. When we went to WW together before, we both did really well and she was so much happier with herself. It’s just a shame we’re both so damn self destructive. LOL.

Day 3 Still Here, All of Me

Doesn’t that sound familiar? It usually takes us awhile to gain all the weight, but we want it off NOW! LOL.

I skipped the gym yesterday, but not because I was wimping out or came up with excuses, but everything I’ve read says your body needs time to heal. I guess that’s why they always suggest working out 3 days a week vs. 7.  I actually did pull something in my neck and rotator cuff, so I thought the day for healing was probably a good idea. When you’ve been sedentary for so long it’s easy to pull something somewhere. I went this morning tho, and I discovered the machine that put the pull in my neck, so I’m either doing it wrong, or I need to wait to use that machine.

I also know an exercise with resistance bands that fixes the pain in a rotator cuff,  so I found a machine that does the same basic motion. It worked. I feel 89% better tonite than I did. What cracked me up is there is a promo going on at that gym and it starts with a “free” consultation for people who have pain there. If it’s done right, and the fact that it’s a consultation, I’m sure it leads to hiring a personal trainer. Whoo! Skipped that one.

Diet. Not perfect, but good. I had a lot of voluntary cooks the first week, and when I have to cook I do have a tendancy to grab the lesser of evils out of the freezer based on least amount of time to cook. I am using the cookbooks, but I probably would be a lot better at it if I planned ahead, which I know so now that I’m talking about that again, I may actually do it.

And then there’s just plain life. Why can’t we get the same credit for doing life things as exercise. Oh I know there’s a chart somewhere, but I take every opportunity to park far away from the store in a parking lot, walk like I’m in a race up to the store door, walk normal through the store, walk like hell back to the car, unload, walk like crazy back to replace the cart, walk again to the car like a madwoman, then squat into the car. That’s exercise. That’s interval training. LOL.

While Little Endorphins Dance In My Head

I thought this would be a great time to write a post, right after exercising! Yeah, I went. I joined the gym last Thurs. While I was there I saw a lady that could have been me. Standing on one of the machines like a treadmill but it has individual places to put your feet, like you’re really walking, trying to figure out how to run the darn thing. I felt sorry for her and knew right away I didn’t want to look like that. The unfortunate thing about a lot of these gyms is unless you’re paying for a personal trainer, you really have to ask for help. Nobody volunteers just because they see you in trouble. LOL.

Since then, Friday I didn’t go because I had a bunch of running around to do. I figure that’s exercise enough. Saturday and Sunday I didn’t go because it’s the weekend and I figured it would be too crowded. Yesterday I didn’t go because I had an early appointment on the other side of the hill, about 30 min. away and that turned out to be an all day excursion. This morning was it!

A business mentor that I follow quite a bit says you need to develop a routine to be more productive and take care of your health. My routine this morning was to not allow myself on the computer until I worked out, for starters. I had 2 cigarettes, a cup and a half of coffee and I was out the door by 7 am.  (I slept in a little today). I wasted some time getting going as I was looking up the routine I have chosen to follow. I needed a little refresher. I made the decision I was not going to be one of those people that pays notto work out. I did the treadmill slow and fast, slow and fast, for about 10 min. and 10 min. of circuit training. I feel like a tigress. grrrrrr. LOL.

WW Mustard Chops

I’ve also been doing pretty good with my WeightWatchers recipes, but I have discovered I’m quite the “ad libber”. I really don’t like to use oil to cook, especially if something already has a little bit of fat on it. I buy lean chops and usually use the little tiny strip of fat around the edge to grease the pan.

This was from their “Stir it Up: Super Skillet Cookbook”. I’m into “easy” and this certainly was.

You just fry up the chops until browned on both sides. Remove from pan.

Add 1/2 cup chicken broth, 1/4 cup of orange juice, and 2 TBSP dijon mustard. I used spicey brown. My Dijon had expired sometime in 2006. LOL. They also use 1 cup of orange sections. I did that this time, but I don’t know if I will again. I really didn’t care for them cooked.

Stir up everything with the pan drippings of the pork. Put the pork chops back in and finish cooking for 3 or 4 min. You’re set to go.

They were moist and delicious. I thought about serving sweet potatoes with them. I know some recipes for yams or sweet potatoes have orange juice in them also and I thought the flavor would carry through. Instead I did fried potatoes and onions, steamed veggies and applesauce.

WW uses a lot of “pork loin” vs. pork chops, but around here pork loin can get rather expensive so I just use pork chops, but make sure they are really lean or I trim them really lean. 1 average chop above is 5 points.

Last nite I lucked out and Tom cooked. He makes the best pork roast, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, but he was thumbing through my book and decided to use their recipe which adds apples and apple juice. It was wonderful and the apple didn’t make it too sweet like I was afraid of. Yum, yum. I just have to remember 1/2 cup of mashed potatoes really is enough. LOL

I Love This Weight Loss Time Of Year!

The grocery stores are playing to all the people who have made “losing weight” their New Year’s Resolutions. I am so lucky in the way that the WW meeting is just a couple of blocks down the street and a few of them have been voicetrous enough that the grocery store a block from the WW’s meeting caters to WWs. I don’t know what the grocery stores are like in your neck in the woods, but right now I am stocking up on WW frozen dinners and Smart Balance margarine and oil.

Tonite is also the first of “DietTribe” on Lifetime. I’m anxious to see how this goes. I don’t know what happened to “How To Look Good Naked”. I thought that was a great show, but it was positive instead of tragic, so I guess not enough people watched. Pretty sad, aye? They did so much for women’s “self esteem” instead of just the weight issue. Oh “weight”, maybe they didn’t like it because women felt good about themselves even if they were still heavy. Unfortunately, a lot of us have a hard time telling the difference between “self esteem” and “body image”. I can tell after watching this for the first 10 min. I totally identify with these girls. Their goal is 30 lbs. in 90 days. I personally don’t think that’s unreasonable. 

The one thing about it is they were all a group of friends to start with, so they have the “group” to lose it with. We all know it’s easier with a buddy, this should be a piece of cake, aye? EXCEPT, there’s usually one out of  the five that just can’t get there. I guess we’ll see.

WeightWatchers is bribing me and any one else that will listen to come back. No registration fees so I’m going to go back. I figure I can use all the help I can get! I also joined a gym right around the corner from WW (another bribe, no contract, no big sign up fee) so I’m pretty excited. Let’s see how good I feel about it in March. LOL. 

 Oh, I almost forgot. My first recipe out of the WeightWatchers cookbook was chicken stew with dumplings (6 pts). It was sort of cheating because I already make chicken and dumplings, all I had to do was add the veggies that I usually put on the side. Daughter cooked her favorite casserole, so I didn’t have to cook last night and tonite the BF is cooking. I think everyone’s afraid of the cookbook. LOL

Using Weight Watchers Cookbooks

I have probably over a half dozen WeightWatchers cookbooks starting clear back to the original which I bought when I was 16 ( a whole lot of years ago). When I bought that original book, a lot of the recipes in there were really odd, like cooking cauliflower and blending it for “fake” mashed potatoes. That’s just one memory I can pull off the top of my head, but trust me there were many more. Actually one thing that book did for me was introduce me to a lot of new foods I had never had before and ended up liking. A few years later when my mother was living with me she enjoyed not only some foods she had never had before, but also some dishes using foods she previously didn’t care for. By then I was probably on their 3rd cookbook.

Now WeightWatchers has come so far and while I haven’t kept up with buying every cookbook, I have quite a few. I informed the BF today that I think I’m going to start picking dinners out of one of them every nite. I might as well put them to good use. God knows I paid enough for them (the collection, I mean). So I thought I would take a page out of “365 Days of Crockpotting” and see what I can do. Unlike the crockpot lady, I probably will have “lazy” days where I just cook something I know is ok or whatever, but for the most part I’m looking forward to trying some new food ideas.

They say that one of the dieting downfalls is boredom. Well hell, I get bored with my cooking now! If you could see the collection of recipes and recipe books I have you would wonder how, but I basically always cook the same stuff.  I might as well be one of those “Oh it’s Tuesday we must be having meatloaf” of “Oh it’s Friday we must be having fish” kind of people. (I’m not Catholic but I was raised with the old rules. LOL). I have actually caught myself wishing there was another kind of animal besides just beef, foul, pork or fish.

I’m Ramping Up!

I know they say not to keep saying “I’ll start tomorrow” but I’m saying it. I am still getting set up to get serious for sure this year. I am finishing the last of the holiday food which includes a multi-flavored mini cheesecake, and I need the BF to hook up my son’s old VCR in the kitchen where I have all my gym equipment set up. I got a webcam for XMAS (actually 2 but took one back) that I need to get hooked up and learn how to use, and am taking more before pictures to do a sort of “journey in pics” thing.

I am proud to say I’m not starting this year any heavier than I have been for several months, so I don’t have to deal with added weight. That was the goal I had set prior to Thanksgiving, and I was able to make that one work without too much effort.

What I am not proud of is that I started this blog a year ago last Sept. to force a sort of accountability, but it really didn’t help. There is a certain anonymity in being in cyberspace and while I have told the truth on my blog here, I haven’t really had to face anyone but myself, and obviously I’m not my strictest disciplinarian. I’ve decided that has to change. I need to face myself and you and not with the same old story.

While I get motivated over and over again, I’m not consistently motivated which is for sure part of my downfall. Trying to combat that, I am scheduling in the beginning of my day to go thru the WeightWatchers and Sparkpeople’s message boards, participate in the tracking tools daily, and look more for motivators around me.

I figure I have 2 choices: be where I am a year from now or be where I want to be a year from now.  Right here and now, on this second day of January, 2009 I am choosing the latter!

What are you going to do different this year? Or if what you’re doing is working for you and you’re sticking with it, SHARE. LOL

Into The New Year!

Bear

Happy New Year Everybody! Here we go. Hold on tight it might be a bumpy ride!

The pic above is from the “Haz Cheezburger” site which is so cute. I got this in an email and it looks just like one of my cats I call Bear, so I just thought I would share. He definitely would share my champagne if I let him. LOL.

I also received the following from a friend, and I would like to pass it on to all my friends here. ‘God Bless Us Every One’ as the little girl in It’s A Wonderful Life said.  

My Wish for You in 2009

May peace break into your

house and may thieves come

to steal your debts. May the pockets

of your jeans become a magnet of

money. May love stick to your face

like Vaseline and may laughter

assault your lips! May your clothes

smell of success like smoking tires,

and may happiness slap you across

the face and may your tears be that

of joy. May the problems you had,

forget your home address! In simple

words …………

May 2009 be the best year of your

life!!!

After serious & cautious consideration…..your

contract of friendship has been renewed for the New Year 2009!It was a very hard decision to make. So try not to screw it up!!!

Lol.