Just. Breathe.

Another non-standard week (I'm beginning to believe that is the standard), but an overall decent eating and exercise one. I tracked almost exclusively calories (not WW points) to see how that went. I also upped my elliptical workouts. I use one of the hills programs, and took the resistance from 2 to 4 for the baseline. It bumped the calorie burn from around 450 to over 600 in the same 45 minutes! My thighs cuss at me regularly, but it's worth it! I finally did the math. If the elliptical reads the calories right, that means that more than half my food calories are being burned in one workout. I've been staying below 1200 calories a day pretty regularly. Result: down 1.8 pounds ! Whoot! That's the most in one week since the first two weeks. Total so far: 12.9 pounds ________________________________ The 5k I'm doing is March 24th - a little over three weeks away. My max distance so far (outside in the real world) is 1.75 miles without a break. This wee...

I have a Pinteresting problem. I love to cook. I love to eat. I love to see what other people are cooking and eating. Enter Pinterest and you have a recipe (get it? recipe?) for disaster. I have to be very careful when I go out there now -- all the "friends" I follow seem to have absolutely no problem with eating whatever they want. (I'm looking at you, Dee.) And they happily go around posting all the stuff that immediately makes me drool. No, I see absolutely no irony in t he fact that until this year's resolution to get this weight off kicked in, I was the one accused of posting my own food pictures and creating problems for others. Shut up. So now, when I do browse pictures, I try to stick with ones I can actually make and feel good about. This is such a recipe. Click here for the source recipe/site.  ohsheglows' Sweet Potato Oatmeal Breakfast Casserole I've never been much of an oatmeal eater -- something about the texture, I think. As ...

I started this post earlier, but now I'll just wrap it into my Monday scorecard. I did it. I took my before pictures. It's 6 weeks in, but I just couldn't make myself do it before. I don't like having my picture taken when I'm trying to hide my size - so taking them on purpose to show my size just goes against everything I believe. So after my run Sunday, I got the hubs to take pics. No, I'm not posting them. Yet. Sorry, I know you were waiting with bated breath. But I took them, and now, when I have "after" pictures -- ones that actually show a difference, that encourage me to keep going when I hit that wall -- I'm sure I'll be fine with posting them. Right? Right. Speaking of wall, I am coming up on my usual plateau - the one that I've hit more times than I can count. I'm hoping to just sneak up and pass it before it even knows I'm here. _______________________________________________________________ This week was ...

Finally. I'm trying really hard to be patient, but good Lord, it's taken me forever, it seems. But, this week... I just passed 10 pounds lost!  Whoop! Down 1.6 pounds this week. That's 1/6th of my overall goal (more or less) and a little over a pound a week. _________________________________________________________ I must be crazy, though. I made chocolate chip and iced sugar cookies this weekend. They all have a destination, but still. Chocolate chip cookie dough in the fridge for a day is just wrong. ____________________________________________________ I tried Zumba for the first time today. Thank goodness it was in the privacy of my own home. I used to be coordinated to some extent, but that was just scary. I chose to blame it on the Xbox Kinect not registering how perfectly I was doing the moves rather than my age-onset uncoordination. That's my story. ____________________________________________________ As soon as this insane weather (snow in Texas ...

I totally love cheese. On stuff. By itself. Any kind (except Limburger, of course). Melted, cubed, sliced, crumbled. If it weren't for cheese (oh, and bacon) I could probably be vegan. But anyway... If you've been on many diets, and especially if you've done Weight Watchers, you already know that cheese is not exactly friendly to most point-counting or calorie-watching plans. It does have an offset with protein and calcium, but I realized it's probably worth a little research.  First, a visual. This is one ounce of each of these cheeses. Generally, an ounce is a serving size - a sandwich slice, a string cheese stick, those single serve snacks in a bag -- most of those are one ounce. It's a little hard to tell in a picture, but the "bars" like Gouda and Havarti look like about the same amount in an ounce, but parmesan looks like a much more when it's piled up like this. Lesson #1 : All cheese is not created equal. It's hard to tell by ...

I don't want to, but I have to. Just suck it up and do it. It's time for pictures. Before pictures. I do not like taking my picture or having it taken or whatever. I never really have. I'm trying to convince myself that taking them now will be worth it later when I need encouragement or to show them to Ellen or Dr. Oz or something. But right now, I hate the idea. Figuring out how, and how many, and how close up, blah blah. What to wear, how to stand, where to stand...Arrrrgggggghhhhh. I get weirded out by the strangest things. I'd much rather just post this and claim it as me.

I have not been looking forward to this weigh in! I said before that because I'm a scale addict, I seeing numbers all over the place all week, then going through a celebrating weekend makes a Monday morning weigh-in a complete guess. Up, down, what will happen! Result : Stayed the same! Still 8.5 pounds down. I'll take it. And I did have a few highlights I need to remember to keep from getting discouraged or beating myself up. I did my personal best run on Friday. We have a 3.2 mile route mapped out, and I ran 2.5 miles of it in 32 minutes, and finished the 3.2 miles in about 46 minutes. Saturday morning, before we left for our anniversary getaway, I did 3.5 miles of rolling hills on the elliptical and burned over 500 calories. The food choices made while we were gone were actually not bad at all. I had chicken fajitas with borracho beans and jalapeno rice - only about 1/2 cup each -- and used corn instead of flour tortillas. I did NOT eat the entire bowl of chips!...

This weekend my husband and I will celebrate 24 years of marriage. [Obviously we got married when I was 10.] We're going down the road to a lovely hotel with great restaurants, wine, entertainment, wine, and an excuse to wear my new boots. I might have a glass of wine. I'm not a big proponent of "cheat days" or "it's a celebration - do what you want" kind of thinking when committed to healthy living. That sort of thing has derailed me more times than I can count. If you've been following this blog for the last month, you'll see that there haven't been splurges for the most part - a couple of unexpected outings, but nothing unmanageable. I think it's because I've known this weekend was coming. Even though it's not a "free" weekend, I have every intention of enjoying myself fully while we're gone. I've scoped out the restaurants, and know where we're going and what I'm going to have. It will be somewhat...

By request, here's one of my family's favorite sweet snacks. You may have had this years ago with chow mein noodles, but this update uses Fiber One Cereal. Easy to make, and lots of variations keep it interesting. The cast of characters: Fiber One cereal comes with two bags in each box - this recipe uses only one of the bags. Chips -- one small bag (11 or 12 oz usually) of whatever chips you like. I'm splitting this recipe and making a half-batch of white chocolate and a half-batch of milk chocolate with a secret ingredient. I've made them mixing chocolate and peanut butter chips in one bowl -- yum. Just get about 12 oz of chips and one bag of cereal and you're set. This will make about 48 haystacks . This recipe comes together really fast, so you have to be ready. Get cookie sheets out and line them with parchment paper or foil. Put the chips into a microwave-safe bowl. It needs to be large enough to be able to stir the cereal in. Because I'm ma...