Momentous Monday

No, you are not the only one rockin' the blog.

It's a momentous Monday because I actually left myself time to eat breakfast at home! Granted, it was merely a bowl of raisin bran, and I ate it standing up, but I ate it! And I ate it at home! Not only that, but I emptied our garbage and pulled the trash out to the curb. In heels no less! I'm feeling pretty good about myself.

Also today I've eaten a 100 calorie snack of cookies, some edamame, and a handful of salt and pepper chips with cottage cheese. I've also had a cup of cranberry zinger tea, and no soda for 3 days!

And, here is the unveiling of my first prize:


It's a bracelet handmade out of Pride and Prejudice. I know, right? Amazing.

Monday weigh-in

Am I the only one rocking this blog right now?

I did my first official "weigh-in" this morning, so now I know my baseline from which to judge my departing poundage. I also discovered that there's a pretty cool pilates show on PBS at 5:00 a.m. Unfortunately, when I am up at 5:00 a.m. I am nursing Jonathan, so I guess I will not be doing pilates on PBS right now.

I'm having a great eating day today: Malt-o-Meal with milk for breakfast, a string cheese and half an apple for snack, and I'll probably eat a garden burger for lunch. Good times. I am still keeping my eating up, on account of the nursing, but I am doing a lot better, I think, about eating less junk. So Borders, here I come!

Prize number one

I thought of my first prize (see sidebar) and I am PUMPED. Solitude, here I come!

Well, it's been a day.

The day started out well enough. I started out with a 25 cal cup of Swiss Miss, and I dipped, get this, a 100 cal pack of grasshopper cookies. Mmmm. Then for my real breakfast I had a string cheese and a Fiber One Bar. Also, I drank a lot of water.

Then someone asked me if I wanted to go to a yummy restaurant, called the Bayou. It has delicious yummy Southern cooking, but in my defense, I could have been a lot more "deep fried" in my menu pick. As it happened, I chose a blackened catfish sandwich. It came with a side of sweet potato fries, which probably weren't the most diet friendly, but they were good. The best part was that the waitress forgot to put my order in the first go around, so I got my meal for 50% off. Awesome. Also, I drank probably 4 glasses of water.

I did have one cup of soda, but it was mostly ice, so I was proud of myself.

I didn't snack at all during the rest of day, on account of was full, and I was excited to eat the leftovers for dinner, but I left the to go box on the roof of my car. Needless to say, it didn't stay on the roof of my car all the way to my house. *Sigh.

Don't worry, the day gets a lot better. I finally heard back from the management company about the fence they want me to spend $2K to fix. So that's fun. It turns out I'm a major stress eater. So that means that I ate leftover waffles, some cold mac and cheese, and my roommate may or may not have taken pity on me and got me a frosty (small size!) and fries from Wendy's.

Tomorrow will be better. Also, I'm far too poor to buy any expensive food for the next week. I'll be scrounging off of canned food and leftovers. So by the time I get to your house on Friday, I'll be really looking forward to tasty food. Like Dinner in a Pumpkin!! Hooray!

So that was my day. I'll be better tomorrow.

100 calories and other news

I was opening up a new box of snack bags, and one of the panels says, "Make your own 100 Calorie snack packs." Good ol' Ziploc. How thoughtful of them to list stuff you can put in their little bags.

I actually thought it was an interesting and helpful little list, so I'm passing it along:

1 small orange
13 animal crackers (yes! 13!)
3/4 oz. cheddar cheese
1/2 C dried, unsweetened apricot halves
45 small soy crisps
2 Tbsp mixed nuts
3/4 C bran cereal (uh...yum?)
28 grapes
5 whole, dried, pitted dates
3 mini chocolate chip cookies (not very many, I'd say)
1 C blueberries
17 dry roasted peanuts
25 jelly beans
3 Tbsp raisins

I don't know why 100 calories is such a magic number, and obviously not all of these things are equally nutritious, but nevertheless, it does give a nice sense of proportion.

As for my eats today, I did pretty well. Oatmeal with dried cranberries and milk, one and a half canned pears, a thin slice of cheddar cheese, a breakfast sandwich (two eggs, one piece of bacon, two pieces of lightly buttered toast), six wheat ritz crackers, a small handful of sun chips, a mug of Swiss Miss, and one and a half zucchini/black bean/corn enchiladas. And a glass of milk and lots of water.

I will probably split with Jeremy the last truffle Mom and Dad bought us for a sweet treat. And there you go. No real exercise today, other than general kid wrangling. I'm hoping for another long walk tomorrow.

P.S. Your food sounds a lot tastier than mine.

NaNoWriMo

Game On!

In Return:

Well good job! And, as one who has cleaned up small children, sometimes it just a reflex to eat the leftovers from their plates.

My day went a little something like this:

• Breakfast A Yoplait/Fiber One Yogurt, and a string cheese
• Snack: 100 Calorie pack of Keebler Grasshopper cookies
• Lunch: 1 C. Olives and mozzarella cheese balls from the antipasto bar at Smiths, along with 3 small sourdough rolls.
• Snack: Apple
• Dinner 3 Waffles (made from the heart healthy Bisquick mix)
• Misc: Pumpkin muffins every now and then.

I too had a little bit less self control when it came to the soda, but I did drink a lot of water, and it turns out the water out of our cooler is delicious.

Also, I could have eaten less waffles, as it happens, but they were delicious.

Anyway, A good Day 1 for the both of us, I say.

Food report

I decided this morning that I'd confess all of my food at the end of the day, so here it is:

Breakfast: a bowl of farina (cream of wheat) with milk.

Snack: a string cheese.

Lunch: baked beans and 1/3 of Clara's garden burger/

Snack: 10 animal crackers and a mug of Swiss Miss.

Another Snack: 10 more animal crackers.

Another Snack: small handful of sun chips.

Dinner: spaghetti squash with mushroom marinara, and some green beans. And a piece of wheat bread with butter. And 1/3 of Clara's bread and butter. And two animal crackers that Clara left on the table.

So there you have it. I think that knowing I would be writing this down helped me to keep my snacking at bay. I am disappointed in my animal cracker intake. I know that animal crackers aren't horrible, but I think it demonstrates a lack of self control that my plan was to eat 10 and I ended up eating 22. Sad.

In more positive news, I went on a two mile walk with my kidlets. It felt longer, on account of I was pushing them in a rickety double stroller. I had fun though, and it felt good to move.

The Launch Part II

Well, to celebrate Healthy Living 2008 or whatever we're calling this shindig, I took a walk through the Avenues and through Memory Grove Park. I really am living the dream, I've decided. Memory Grove reminded me of Riverside Park. The autumn color was beautiful and I figure if I regularly walk down and up the hill that leads into the park and back out, my rear end is going to look fabulous.

While walking, I contemplated my goals and I've come up with some good ones, I think.

• Goal One: Give up fast food. It's expensive, it's fattening, and quite frankly, it doesn't taste too good anymore. And while it's convenient, I actually have drive farther to go to McDonalds than to go grocery shopping at Smiths. This does not, however, exclude "sit-down" restaurants. I will still enjoy a meal out every once in a while, but I will definitely be more sensible in my menu choices.
• Goal Two: Take a walk. I will go for a walk after work at least 3 times a week. Probably Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. And, until the weather gets horrendous, I think I'll walk to work on Fridays. This day seems the most conducive since it's "Casual" day and I can wear athletic shoes to work. Also, take a walk around the block twice a day during break.
  
• Goal Three: Drink more water than soda. This one's tricky, although it seems ridiculous. The thing is, however, there is a free soda fountain in the basement at work, and it's delicious. But even today I had a liter bottle of water that I kept refilling and I felt a lot more energetic throughout the day.

Well, here are the goals! I feel good about them. I'll obviously refine them (especially Goal Two as the weather gets snowy) and add more as I master these. I also like that they're doable and stretching at the same time.

Also, as far as harmless snacks go, I have two suggestions: Pumpkin Cranberry Mini Muffins and Chocolate Chip Fiber One Bars. The muffins are super easy: combine 1 box spice cake mix to 1 can pumpkin, stir really well, and then add a couple of handfuls of dried cranberries. If you have a convection oven, bake at 325 for 23-25 minutes. I don't know what that translates to for a normal oven. These are relatively harmless since you're not adding any oil or eggs to the cake mix.

Also, the Fiber One bars are only one point on Weight Watchers, which means I think they're pretty unoffensive. Also, all that fiber really does a great job of curbing hunger.

Well, that's all I have for right now! Go us!

The Launch

Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life. Yes, my friend, it is time to join me in the launch. Blast off to a lifestyle of health and fitness!

All cheese aside (in more ways than one), I am now officially on the road to baby weight loss and the general reshaping of my stretched-out physique. My primary goals at this point are to be able to wear more than one pair of pants and also to be able to wear my wedding ring again. (I had it re-sized last winter before I was pregnant, and now it's too tight.)

I don't consider myself a "dieter," so most of what I'll be doing is cutting out excess. All things in moderation, right? Sweet treats and snacks are my pregnancy nemeses, so they're the first and perhaps biggest food problem. I've decided, first of all, to be careful and deliberate about when I eat. Most of my snacking problems just stem from the fact that snacks are so readily available, so I find myself muching a handful of the dreaded animal crackers just because I'm not thinking. I think I'll stick to snacking and eating whenever I feed Clara. She eats breakfast, a snack/lunch before her nap, a snack after her nap, an afternoon snack, and dinner. If I only ate at those times, I'd be much better off.

Also, I am going to limit myself to two sweet treats (desserts) per week. If I need something the other nights, I'll eat fruit or yogurt or something along those lines.

As far as exercise, I'm going to take more time to figure that out. I'm planning on taking Clara on a walk this afternoon, so that's something, but I need to realistically figure out when I could go walking by myself or go ride the bike or whatever. When I have a better sense of that, I'll let you know, but for now I am planning to either walk (by myself) or ride the bike three days a week for at least 30 minutes. I plan to do core strengthening six days a week, building up crunches, etc. Maybe I'll bust out my Denise Austin video, which has an awesome ab workout that is challenging without being crazy or painful.

So there you have it! I finished up the weekend's leftovers for lunch, and now my eating for the rest of the day will consist of one more small snack then a dinner of baked beans and cornbread. That's it! I stand ready for your report...