My Week in Pictures

Friday

Baby-sat my niece and nephew. 

This guy lost one of his front teeth

 while I was there. It was very exciting.

Saturday

Watched a lot of Harry Potter on ABC Family.

Sunday

Tried Grapefruit for the first time, blogged about it on Tuesday.

Monday

Participated in Red, Green and Bling week in
group fitness at the gym. This is our Turbo Kick/PiYo crew.

During my favorite weekly work-out, Tubo Kick.
 That's me on the far right in the red pants.

Tuesday

Ran outside in the freezing cold.
Left my hair down to keep my ears warm.
Didn't work.

Wednesday

Red, Green and Bling group fitness week continued.
That's me getting my groove on in Zumba
in the green shirt and Santa hat on the front left. 

Tried rock climbing for the first time!
It was great. I'll fill you in on more of the
details in Monday's blog post.

Thursday

Today was a weigh day! I've now
lost 97 pounds!

Enjoyed Red Velvet Cheesecake at office Christmas
 lunch! Took half of my lunch and half of my cheesecake home to enjoy later.

Galloping Grapefruits!

So this week's fruity challenge was a grapefruit.   I needed no help knowing how to eat it.  My mom used to eat this for breakfast all the time when I was younger.  I'm sure she offered me some from time to time, but something about it having pulp the color of flesh kept me away.  Plus, I never ate any citrus for most of my childhood.

It's also thanks to mom that I had this particular grapefruit to eat.  She had purchased some band fruit (note to non-band people, this is when the band sells crates and crates of citrus to friends and family to raise money for uniforms, trips, etc.  We sold a lot of citrus in the Stuckey house during the late 80s and 90s.), and suggested I take a grapefruit back with me from the visit at her house to try as a future fruity experiment.

Anyway, it was a lot like an orange, except slightly lighter in color and slightly larger. I sliced it open and dug into it with a spoon. It was SUPER juicy.  Each little divot I made with my spoon produced a flood and/or geyser of juice.  It was a good thing I was wearing my protective eyewear (i.e. my glasses instead of contacts), cause that sucker could squirt.  It made me wish I had just stuck a straw in it from the outside, like they used to show in the Tropicana commercials.

Also. it did not taste like the flesh it looked like.  It tasted very similar to an orange, but even more acidic.  I ended up just tipping it up like a cup and drinking a lot of the juice.  I don't know if they're all like that or if I just got an extra juicy one.  Anyway, I think that if I'm going to choose a citrus for a snack, then I will choose clementines.  No fuss, no muss, no eyewear needed for clementines.

Did you know there is a whole crash diet scheme built around grapefruit? From Web MD:

The premise of the Grapefruit Diet is based on an alleged "magical" ingredient in grapefruits, that, when eaten with protein, theoretically triggers fat burning and causes weight loss. The diet is designed to promote fast weight loss; unfortunately, the weight lost is primarily from fluids and not fat and generally returns as soon as the dieter goes off the diet.


Anyway, you have to eat half a grapefruit with every meal, so I don't think I'll be trying that any time soon! Just kidding, I know that the best way to lose weight is through a well-balanced diet and exercise.  

No Reason to Wait

This is the time of year when people want to lose weight, but decide there is no use in trying with all of the holiday food around, and so often decide to wait until January.  I even did a version of this myself in the week before Thanksgiving, knowing I needed to get refocused on my goals, but putting it off until I got back from travelling.

The problem with this line of thinking is, there is always a reason to wait.  If you say to yourself, “I’m going to wait until next week to achieve my goals because I have a party to go to this weekend,” you will likely find a new reason to wait by the time the next week comes around. This week it's the office luncheon, next week it's a neighbor's Christmas party, then an office party, then Christmas with family, etc. But waiting til the weeks after Christmas does not automatically make a diet  easy.  You will still have biunrthdays to celebrate, goodies brought in to the office to share, meals out with friends, etc., whether it's January or May or September.    

Putting it off is only going to make the situation worse. You’re going to have more pounds to lose when (and if) you finally get around to getting started.  A handful of parties or family gatherings spread out over two or three weeks won’t ruin a diet.  Espeically if you go into them with a plan to enjoy the food you love in moderation and to make up for these indulgences by eating a lighter lunch or adding an extra workout that week.

Today was our campus wide holiday drop in, where they have lots of good food.  I filled my plate with tasty fruit and two pieces of cheese, because I knew I will have more holiday challenges this week.  It wasn't easy, but it will be worth it when I achieve my goals. 

Time to Put Down the Peanut Butter

Another edition of memory Mondays...

Man, I love peanut butter.  It's such a rich flavor with a lovely aroma. It's creamy goodness. While peanut butter is high in fat, it is considered a healthy fat and because it is also high in protein, it is often a key ingredient in diet plans.  Many diets suggest a TB of peanut butter on a slice of bread, sticks of celery, an apple, etc. for a quick snack idea. It's one of the many reasons I love PB. It's so versatile, and it goes well with so many things, not just jelly.

This summer I adopted sort of an unhealthy addiction to peanut butter.  I was using it as a topping for my individual servings of ice cream or just eating it straight out of the jar.  I often had enough calories left at the end of the day for a spoonful of peanut butter to be an okay end to my dinner, and I told myself that the protein in it would help me stay full so I wouldn't snack at night.  The problem was that it was never just a spoonful (Betcha Can't Eat Just One could also be a great peanut butter slogan.).

I was telling my friend, Abi, about this one day on the phone when I was lamenting a weight gain.  I told her I knew what the problem was, it was the peanut butter. I was overindulging with it.  She said right then, "You've got to take the jar you have, throw it away and don't buy any more."

I don't think I really even tried to argue with her much, because I knew what she said was true.  I knew I was abusing it, and it's not low in calories so it was really packing a punch on my diet goals.  We both agreed that I could still have peanut butter if it was at someone else's house or as part of a meal out at a restaurant, but I haven't bought another jar to keep in my cupboard since.

It's kind of sad that I had to take this extreme measure, but .it was causing me to stumble on my way to achieving my goals.  Abi and I also agreed that when I make it to 100 pounds lost I can buy another jar as a reward.  Hopefully, I will have learned from my mistakes and won't let my relationship with peanut butter get out of control again.

Favorite Posts

To celebrate three months of posting, today I thought I'd catalog my most favorite posts. Sure it's a bit self-indulgent, but then what blog isn't?  Here they are in no particular order; check them out if you haven't already.

Pomegranate


The Happiest Post on Earth

Wasted Worry

Victory Boots

Thanks

Today=One Good Day

Huge

"I Did" Beats "I Will" Any Day

Swimming the Channel


Is one of these your favorite too? If yours didn't make the list, let me know in the comments section below.

The Week Ahead

I've got some challenges, food-wise in the week ahead.  It's that time of year for Christmas parties, Christmas lunches and just general tastiness.  Next week that will all coalesce for me into a lot of good food and a lot of extra calories to dodge.

I have the campus staff drop-in on Tuesday afternoon.  This annual event is famous in my mind for one thing: Peppermint Hot Chocolate.  That's just hot chocolate with actual ground up peppermint sticks spooned into it, but man, it is good.  I've been known to put away several cupfuls of it, but I know now that they are several hundred calories a piece.

Wednesday I have a goodbye luncheon for a coworker who is retiring. We're ordering in food from a local Vietnamese restaurant.  I'm not very familiar with the restaurant or Vietnamese food in general.  Perhaps I can order something healthy, but I just don't know much about it right now.

My office will be lunching at the Cheesecake Factory in celebration of Christmas on Thursday.  This place has both good food and, of course, amazing cheesecake. I will not say no to cheesecake this Thursday.

So, after a very successful week this past week, I'm nervous about the upcoming events.  I've been mulling it over and I've come up with a plan of sorts.
1) I will eat only fruit at the Tuesday drop-in.  They should definitely have fruit.  While a cup or two of hot chocolate would not be a horrible thing another time, this week I think I need to forgo it because of the calorie splurge I will be having later in the week.
2) I'm not sure what to do about the lunch on Wednesday. Their menu is online, but they're nutrition info is not.  I will just have to make an educated guess as to what is healthy.
3) Thursday I will be over my calorie count, but I'm okay with that.  I am going to eat cheesecake, but I will either split the slice with someone or take at least half of it home (true, this does mean I will still be eating it, but I'm thinking its better to space the calories out over a couple of days if possible).  In anticipation of the cheesecake, I think I'll try and save half of my meal as well. There is nutrition info online for Cheesecake Factory, so I should be able to make a wise choice.

The other meals of the week will be home made, and I should still be able to get all of my workouts completed.  It's Red, Green and Bling week in group exercise, which means that class participants are encouraged to dress in the colors of the season for our last week of workouts before the holidays.  Should be lots of fun!

Here's to hoping all my good work this week is not undone!

Five for Five

So it's Friday night, and the mood is right. Gonna have some fun, show you how it's done, TGIF!
(Anyone else remember that little jingle from the Full House/Show with Urkel whose name I can't remember/Perfect Strangers/4th show I can't remember awesome ABC Friday night line up from when we were kids?)
Anyway, I just started, and I'm already off topic.I'm five days into my diet reboot, and I've had five great days.   At the beginning of the week, I outlined my daily goals. In case you don't remember, here they are:

Eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.
Drink 64 ounces of water a day.
Exercise (cardio) five to six times a week for 45 minutes.
Weight train at least twice a week, although three times is preferable.
Eat between 1300 and 1600 calories daily.


And at the end of the week,  I'm proud to say.that I met each of these daily or weekly, depending on what the goals were. I especially killed it on the water. I drank extreme amounts of water.  Hooray!