Perspective

I got a free caricature at the Homecoming party last week! Thought I'd share. I really like how he accurately portrayed my short teeth, my eyes that are slightly different sizes and my amazingly bushy eyebrows. Plus,  he really captured my collarbone, which, by the way, is my new favorite body part!

Those Crazy Cranberries

At the store this week I could not figure out what to try for my fruity/veggie experiment this week.  While last week's okra strut turned out way better than I could've expected, it kind of scared me off trying vegetables.  They just don't look very appealing, when compared to fruits, and take a bit more work in preparation. 

This week when I saw a bag of cranberries at a reasonable price, I grabbed them. Have you ever seen cranberries? They're pretty cute little red balls. They look pretty tasty and I enjoy dried cranberries when they top a fancy salad, so I thought the fresh ones had to be pretty good.

Boy, was I wrong.  These little guys pack an incredible punch.  They are pucker yo' face tart.  The kind of taste that takes you about 30 seconds to physically to recover from.  I tried a bunch of them, thinking at first that I was just eating ones that were not good/ripe or whatever.  But, no, they all tasted like that.  Now that I'm thinking of it, I should've videoed it for you.  It would probably have been pretty funny to watch.  

So then I was thinking, "Well, great, now I'm stuck with a whole bag of these painful-to-eat little guys" when I noticed a recipe for cranberry sauce right on the bag. It was basically water, sugar and cranberries, all of which I had in my cupboards, plus I figured adding sugar to these berries was the only way they'd ever be edible.  

Now, you'll have to forgive me, but I'm not very familiar with cranberry sauce.  My mom doesn't make it for Thanksgiving.  So I got this liquid red stuff and then I wasn't sure what to do with it.  It wasn't thick like jello, but liquid. Was I supposed to eat it like soup? I felt like it should be put on top of something, like maybe ice cream, but I don't keep ice cream in the house any more.  So I put it over Cool Whip, and I'll tell you what, it was pretty tasty! No longer tart and not too sweet, but just right. However, I would appreciate it if someone could tell me how you're actually supposed to eat it.  Let me know - or if you have any suggestions on how I should cook the other half of the bag.

The Part of You that Chooses

Another edition of Memory Monday...
"Every time you make a choice you are turning into the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before."

I first read this quote from C.S. Lewis when I was reading his book "Mere Christianity" with my small group Bible study last winter.   Here Lewis is talking about how the sum of the many choices we make in our lives add up and slowly change us into who we are.

Not to oversimplyfy what Lewis was trying to say, but this really struck home with me when applying it to my weight loss efforts.  I'm often conflicted by the choices I have to make in order to be healthy.  Do I go for my scheduled run today or do I go to the campus center for lunch?  Do I eat dinner out with my friends tonight or eat the healthy meal that I have cooked?  Do I portion out the amount of tortilla chips I should eat, or do I take the whole bag with me to the couch and eat until I'm done?

Applying Lewis' quote made a lot of sense to me in light of these conflicts.  Each choice I make throughout the day is changing me. It's either changing me into a healthier person or it's changing me into a not so healthy person. If I make a lot of healthy choices, they add up to weight loss and a healthier life.  A lot of times you think of a bad choice as just a mistake, but when a lot of bad choices add up, they can change who you are.

This is another quote that stuck with me.  I put it on note cards and pinned one to the wall of my cubicle and put another on the wall of my bedroom so I would see them often.

By the Numbers

Even though I’ve struggled with my weight for years, I’ve never really been focused on the numbers.  I’ve never thought, “Oh, if I could just be X weight, I be the same size I was in college” or "If I could only lose 10 more pounds, I’d be at the weight I was in high school” or something similar.  

I hear people talk like that a lot, but I've never really paid attention to how much I weigh and I've certainly never remembered a particular weight  for years. It was easier to forget. For 95 percent of my life, I chose not to think about my weight, the problems it could cause or the struggle it would be to get it off. Even when I went through periods of trying to lose I don’t remember what I started at or at what point I eventually gave up.

I feel like that’s one of the things that has changed with me, because now I realize that I do need to pay attention. Not just to the number on the scale, but to how my clothes are fitting, how my lungs are working and how my energy levels are feeling.  Because if I don’t pay attention, if I go back to hiding from the numbers, things will go back to the way they were.  These pounds were too much trouble to go back and lose all over again. 

Eventually, I will be less tied to the scale. Actually, I've kind of already begun to say goodbye. It has less control over me because I'm happy with where I am.  Even after I hit my goals, however, I will continue to check in with my scale periodically to make sure I don't go backwards. 

Do You Weight Train?

I will admit, I was completely against doing any kind of weight lifting when I first started on this journey.   I was thinking I needed to burn as many calories as possible in order to lose weight quickly.  Lifting weights does not get my heart rate up the way cardio exercise does - things like running, walking, swimming, playing raquetball, etc. - and I needed to get my heart rate up in order to burn calories.  If I only had limited time to work out, I thought I needed to spend all of it on cardio activity.  I thought weight lifting was something I could do after I lost the weight, in order to tone up.  I thought like this for at least six months, even when I had several people try to extol the virtues of weight lifting. 

At Christmas my gym at school closed for a week and I got a free pass to go to a local Rock Hill gym in the mean time.  At this gym they offered a class called BodyPump. BodyPump is a weightlifting class that uses barbells and the latest music to get you hyped.  You do lots of reps and it lasts for 60 minutes.  One of my good friends has been teaching BodyPump for awhile in Florida and she makes it sound like a great progam, so I decided to check it out at this local gym. 

Even though I only made it to one or two BodyPump classes that week, it got me thinking about weight lifting again.  I read that weight lifting (also known as resistence training) has all kinds of benefits, including building muscle, which burns calories when you are at rest.  So while it doesn't burn as many calories as cardio activity when you are performing the exercises, it burns more calories for you in the long run. 

I stuck with the weight training.  After just a few weeks, I could feel a difference in my "guns" (read: biceps).  In about a month, I could tell a huge difference in my shoulders (they're pretty sculpted). Now I can tell a huge difference all over. I'm not big and bulky like some professional weightlifter or body builder (turns out its really hard for women to "bulk up" that way), but sleek and toned. In hindsight, I think it really helped that I was lifting weights as I was losing, helping my body and skin adjust to the new size.

Now I look forward to the weight lifting sessions almost more than cardio (don't worry, I still do a lot of cardio). I love being in the weight room, doing my thang, right alongside all of those big bulky men. The routine I do only takes me about 30 minutes. I aim to do it three times a week, but often bump it down to two.  And it doesn't take that long for it to make a big, noticable difference in your body.
 
If you're not doing any weight lifting or resistence training, why not?  Don't think it's important? (It so is!) No time? Not sure what to do? Don't have a membership to a gym? Intimitated by the whole thing?  Let me know, I'd love to see if I can help. 

Okra Strut

 I lived about one third of my life in a town called Irmo, where every fall they celebrate the Okra Strut. This two-day street festival celebrates all things okra, but mostly the fried kind.  We went every year. Between the Friday night block party or the Saturday morning parade it was a big deal in my young life.  They always had an okra-eating contest, but in all those years I never once tasted any okra. A typical kid, green vegetables were not exactly my favorite food.

So I was excited to try okra until I saw it in the grocery store (actually, mom had to point it out to me). I didn't know what it looked like, and when I saw this knobby little thing I was not eager to cook it. First, with the fruits I've been trying lately, I've only bought a couple. With with the okra, I had to buy a whole carton. It was intimidating.

Tonight armed with not one, but two, suggestions on how to cook it, I sliced up the whole carton. Half I sauteed with a little extra virgin olive oil (a suggestion from April) and the other half I baked on cookie sheet (a suggestion from Britt).  Let me tell you, it was really good both ways.  The baked ones tasted really fresh, while the sauteed ones had a different flavor.  It's hard to say which method I found tastier, but I think it would be the baked variety.  I ate almost the whole carton, which is not bad since each pod is only two calories.  

Here's what they look like, in case you don't know either.

Correcting Misnomers

So I read this blog the other day, "It's Not a Half - It's a 'Fun Size' Marathon".  The author was inspired to rename the length of races by his Halloween candy, calling a 5k a "Bite-size" marathon, the half marathon a "fun-size" marathon and an ultra (100-miles) a "king-size" marathon.  It's a cute article, and you could read it if you have the time and the interest, but that's not what this post is about (although, you can bet that when I do start training for a half marathon, I will refer to it as a "fun-size marathon.")

No, this post is about clothing sizes and their nomenclature.  See, I was thinking today how happy I am to be in size large clothing and how crazy it would be if I ever made it to a medium.  That was beyond my wildest dreams when I started this journey, but now it seems highly possible.  

This got me thinking, though. I don't classify myself as 'large' any longer, but clothing stores still do.  Wouldn't it be nicer if we could get rid of whatever connotations are associated with sizes like large, extra large and extra-extra large, just by changing their names?  When I was wearing those larger sizes, I didn't like to be reminded every time I put on clothes that I was not just overweight, but extra-extra large.  We could name the sizes after flowers or days of the week or famous U.S. generals for all I care.

What do you think, am I making a big deal out of nothing? If we renamed clothing sizes to something that had nothing to do with size, is that total chaos? Would those new names also adopt a stigma?  And does it work the same way for those individuals who have to wear smaller sizes?  Do you like being labeled small or extra-small?

P.S. Friends, I bought Okra this week as my first veggie experiment but I am loath to cook it.  Hopefully I will muster up some interest in it tonight and tell you about it tomorrow.