starvingartist

Although, to be honest it isn’t one that I would recomend to anyone.  I’m looking on the bright side. I got the stomache flu the night of the twenty-third and it took until yesterday before I finally got the nerve to eat again. Although my appetite did come back by Christmas night, and I did hit the candy bowl, I probably ate a third of what I would normally have. 

So here it is 6 in the morning (thanks to my one year old) the morning after Christmas and instead of feeling bloated and crabby and miserable and still full from overeating, which is my normal after-event feeling, I am feeling really good and ready to get back on the diet and exercise bandwagon. Which is good because I still have three calorie-stress laden events ahead of me in the next two weeks.

So today, I probably won’t make it to the gym, but I am going to power clean my house to burn calories and recover the Christmas mess. And I am going to eat my 1200-1500 calories. 

So, while I wouldn’t wish the stomach flu on anyone, It has been a useful tool to not overeat.  And I am using the aftermath to my advantage, to slingshot myself back on track.

I really am trying not to lose right now, weird I know, but I’m just trying to make it through the holidays without gaining.  Unfortunately the holidays for me go through the middle of January. It is great having two large families living in the same area, but it makes for a really long involved holiday season. So my last holiday event is  Sat. January 10th. On Monday January 12th I’m getting back to losing again. In the meantime, my goal is to stay active, to get to the gym when it isn’t blizzard conditions or below zero temps. I would go in those conditions too, but I don’t like taking my babies out in really bad weather. And to stay on plan on non event days. If I can manage, I should make it through the rest of the season without gaining appreciably much.

The problem with long term dieting and weightloss is that it gets really boring.  About every couple of months I have to shake things up a little and give myself a new program, or goal, or way of looking at things. 

This time I’m trying to cut out snacking. I’m a major snacking person, a grazer really, I eat all day long. For the most part this works for me, I still count my calories and keep track of what I am eating, but lately, I’ve been getting a little too comfortable with my snacking and haven’t been keeping as close track as I need to. 

So to shake things up I’m going to quit grazing and go to meals.  My plan is to make my meal the exact calories I need, put it on a plate, sit at the table and eat it, and then not eat anything else until the next meal.

Groundbreaking idea I know, we’ll see how it goes, hopefully it will help and I will be  eat exactly the right number of calories instead of maybe sort of somewhere around the approximate number.

I’m going to do this until Thanksgiving to see how it works.

Today was a test for me, I ended up eating out twice, which generally means giving up counting and throwing the diet to the wind. But today I managed to do really well. I had breakfast this morning with two of my four brothers. We all live in the same town and have recently started to hang out again, which is really cool because we were close as kids and only drifted apart as we all got married and jobs and kids, and found that the stuff of life kept us busy.

Breakfast is always tough for me because I really like breakfast food. I like eggs and bacon and sausage, omelets and pancakes, waffles and crepes, and biscuits and gravy, and eggs benedict… I really should stop because I’m getting hungry. But you get the picture, I really like breakfast.

But today I was victorious, rather than give in to my usual “the heck with it” attitude, I planned out what I would order before I went, and didn’t even open the menu.  I had a vegetarian omelet with no cheese, plain toast, and fruit. And the best thing is that I don’t regret it. Later in the day, my husband wanted to meet for lunch, rather than tempt myself with fast food I chose subway, always a safe bet. So even with two meals out and a husband who requested chicken parmesean for dinner, I only went 4 points over my daily allotment. 

The best part of all this is that I don’t regret it, I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. I don’t wish I’d ordered something different. I put food in its proper place, eating out today wasn’t about how much I could eat, or what kind of food I could get, it was about hanging out with my brothers and enjoying a mid day visit with my hubby.

Recently I accomplished something that I had thought was so unattainable that I never even made it a goal. I jogged a mile. In 11 minutes. I know it’s not the world’s greatest time by a long shot, but for me, it’s monumental.

My gym is running this competition that is geared to get people to try new things, one of the areas to get points was to run a mile around the track.  I decided to give it a shot one day when I was feeling exceptionally brave. First I went up to the woman at the fitness desk and asked if I had to run the whole thing. I didn’t think I could do it. She sort of hemmed and hawed and said that I had to at least TRY to jog the whole mile, but if I had to stop to rest a bit, that would be ok.

Thankfully the track was basically empty, fewer people to see the humiliation I was sure I was in for. When I started at the gym almost 3 years ago, I was 70 pounds heavier and it had been years since I had done any exercising, but I went out on the track anyway. I guess at that point I wanted to see where I was at and what I could do. I lumbered off down the straightway and was in immidiate pain. My knees hurt, my hips hurt and I was out of breath and weezing before I came to the bend in the track.

Needless to say I stopped there and took it down a notch or ten. I remember thinking to myself that I would never be able to jog that track. I mentallt doomed myself to a lifetime of walking when I wanted to run. So I was nervous as I stepped on to the track, worried that nothing would have changed, that three years of hard work would turn out to be nothing and I wouldn’t make the laps I wanted to go.

But I did it any way. I started pumping my legs and arms and trotted off down the track. It didn’t hurt, I felt strong instead. I rounded the first bend and picked up a little speed, I couldn’t believe it! I was still skeptical about how far I would make it, each lap telling myself “just finish this one, maybe I’ll stop at the next one” But everytime I rounded the lap I kept going. I didn’t get winded until my third lap, and didn’t start to really feel it until I was within two laps, and then I knew I could do it.

I was beet red and totally out if breath at the end but I was grinning as I rounded the last lap. I did it! Since then I have cooled off from my workout jogging a half mile on the track, it’s addictive, I can’t get enough.

It’s evening, 7:31 to be exact, and I am facing a major case of the munchies, as I do most evenings. I’m looking for ideas, what do you guys do when the munchies attack? How do you keep from ruining the hard work of a whole day between the hours of seven and ten when all you want to do is eat everything in sight? 

When I was in Kindergarten I told my teacher that I couldn’t do the halloween craft because Halloween was the devil’s holiday. Apparently I made quite the ruckus because the teacher called my parents in for a conference thinking that they were raving fundamentalists who were warping their young impressionable daughter.  I’m not sure where I got the idea from, I probably saw some devil costumes or decorations and extrapolated from there.

But today, I’m starting to think maybe I wasn’t so far off. The day is full of temptation and pitfalls and if I can make it through without totally ruining my diet I’ll be surprised.  I decided that I can’t hand out candy to trick or treaters this year because last time I ate half of it. That’s half of the 5 bags of mini candybars I bought. And that year was better than the year before that, the year before that I made the fatal error of buying the candy 2 weeks in advance. So as you can imagine by the time Halloween actually rolled around there wasn’t much left and I had to buy more. 

Beyond not handing out candy, I can’t take my kids trick or treating. I have a three year old and a one year old, so I don’t think they will be scarred for life over my trick or treat phobia. We will drive to the grandparent’s houses where they can show off their costumes and get a piece or two of candy, but they can’t bring any home.

The basic problem is that I have no off button when it comes to chocolate, I take a piece thinking I’ll just have one, but one piece always leads to another. Then it’s a gateway drug to the harder stuff, by the time I’ve had 15 pieces of chocolate there is really no reason not to stop and get doughnuts on the way home, after all the day is ruined anyway, I may as well enjoy it.

So this year my plan is complete avoidence. I will not eat any chocolate this weekend, none, zip, zero. I don’t see any reason my enjoyment of the weekend will be at all diminished by the lack of chocolate, but Monday, ah Monday will be so much better.

I went to a Yoga class this morning for the first time ever.  The Yoga/Pilates classes have never really interested me but my Gym is having this competition to get people to try different classes and equipment. So meditation and self reflection and that sort of stuff doesn’t motivate me but competition? You bet. So anyway I got myself up very early and shivered my way to the car and all the way to the gym before the sun was up this morning, which, in my opinion, should get me more points.

I found my way to the yoga studio which is at the other end of the gym from all of the aerobics classes and settled in with the two other psychos who were up that early, and I realized something. Yoga basically means “stand really still”. We stood still in one position, and then another, and then another, and then we sat still in several postions, then, to top it off we laid still. The room was very dimly lit and there was soft music playing and I thought to myself “what the heck have I been doing sweating my bum off in step class all these months if I can exercise like this?!?!” The best part was the end where we did this relaxation pose for 5 minutes where the instructor turned off the lights and we were told to just lay still on our mats. I have to admit it was more than a little like nap time in kindergarten and I just about fell asleep.

When I got home I entered the 60 minutes into my activity tracker for WW and low and behold it actually was exercise and worth 3 whole points! SO do you think I can just do this for the next year and still lose the 60 pounds that I want to lose? Heck, I don’t even need a gym membership to do this, I can sit really still at home!

Yesterday night I got fast food with my kids, usually I avoid it like the plague, partly because I like burgers so much and partly because I don’t want the kids growing up thinking fries are an acceptable vegatable substitute.  Unfortunately the busy suburban lifestyle that we live means at least twice a month I’m driving away from home thinking “Oh crap, I forgot to feed them”.

Fast food and I have always had a strained relationship, I never had it much as a kid, I guess my mom felt the same way about fries as vegatables as I do, or more likely, they just couldn’t afford it. Anyway when I reached college had a job, pocket money and a car I made a fantastic discovery. You can have cheeseburgers for breakfast! The revalation changed my life. I would be heading to an 8 or 9 o’clock class and would stop at the Burger King on the way.

It started innocently enough, I was running late and grabbed just one. Then the next day I had class I drove through and got two, then I thought, More is always better and ordered three cheeseburgers for breakfast. Well a semester of three cheeseburger days is enough to pack on more than the freshman 15, so I finally came to my senses and broke off the relationship, it was becoming codependant.  Unfortunatly those heady days of glutony have forever scarred me.

So I pull up to the drivethrough speaker and after ordering the kids meals, dutifully order myself a side salad with light italian and a grilled chicken sandwich, hold the mayo. But every time I speed away after picking up my diet friendly meal at the window and “forget” to check the bag untill I’m at least a half mile away, hoping against hope that the 15 year old at the window mistakenly switched my healthy(er) meal for the trucker a car back’s tripple whopper with cheese, large fries, and large chocolate shake.  Alas it hasn’t hapened yet, but I keep dreaming.

For those of you who have an Aldi’s Grocery Store nearby, this post’s for you.  Aldi’s  is a fantastic store for people like myself who don’t like to spend their life savings on groceries.  Although in general I do like to cook there are plenty of nights, like tonight when I do not have the inclination to. This meal is a perfect one, It’s cheap and it’s easy, I mean really easy.

Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin Stir Fry

Ingredients: Aldi Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin 1 lb, and Aldi Teriyaki stirfry Vegatables

Directions: Cut up and cook the tenderloin in a pan or wok, add bag of vegatables and noodles, cook to directions on bag. Eat.

If you use a pound of the pork tenderloin, the numbers for half the recipe are: 620 calories, 5 grams of fat, and 12 grams of fiber. This also means you get 4 servings of veggies and it really fills you up.