Archive | June, 2011

The Panoptican and You

30 Jun

The Panoptican Theory is my favourite sociology theory, and my favourite Sociologist taught me about the implications of the Panoptican Theory in his published work from 1975 Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, oh, the sociologist is Michel Foucault. It wasn’t the book that introduced me to this theory, it was one of my many sociology profs at the University of Alberta – after learning what the class text book taught me I read Michel’s work to get a better understanding of it. In sociology I focused on crime, punishment and how these affect and are affected by society – mostly I focused on the criminal as I found that the most interesting. 😀

Before I go off on a tangent about something sociology related that you won’t care about let me tell you how I think the Panoptican Theory applies to dieters. 🙂

Oh, maybe I should give you a cliff’s notes version of the Panoptican Theory in case you haven’t heard of it, I’m thinking there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of it, unless you also studied sociology?

K, The Panoptican Theory: basically, it says that a person will self-regulate their behaviour if they are under 24/7 surverillance or at least think they are under 24/7 surveillance. Prisons were built based on this theory (not all of them obviously lol) but those prisons have a centrally located guard station that can see in to all the prisoner’s cells at all times, the guard station is designed so the prisoners can’t see the guards but the guards can always see the prisoners. By creating a scenario where the prisoner knows he may be monitored at all times he will adjust his behaviour accordingly.

This is a very basic understanding of the theory and doesn’t go in to the “whys” of it but it’s all you really need to know to be able to follow my new theory. 🙂

When people are dieting they either tell everyone or no one. I, when I started, told no one because I didn’t want people to know when I cheated (I was absolutely sure I was going to cheat) and I didn’t want people judging me when that happened. I eventually started telling specific people so I would have a support system of sorts and now everyone who knows me knows I am following weight watchers, lol. Quite possibly the worst kept secret ever! 😛

When I was around people who knew I was trying to lose weight I never cheated, I was able to resist all kinds of goodies and treats partly because I knew they would slow down my weight loss and partly because I was being watched. My confidants had become the guards and I was the prisoner – not that I felt imprisoned, or even really realized this at the time but I’m trying to make sure the correlation to the theory makes sense to everyone. 🙂

Last week my roomie was out of town, we almost never eat at the same time or even in front of each other, our timing just doesn’t work out that way. I have never consciously felt restricted about what or when I can eat by her being around somewhere in the apartment because we do not comment on each others foods. Same goes for exercise, she doesn’t have some little notebook somewhere keeping track of when I go for hikes or go to boxerfit or have a dragon boating session just like I don’t keep track of when/where/what kind of exercise she does.

But, when she was out of town last week I stopped exercising and started eating worse then normal. I ate out more then normal, I pigged out on things, ate flex points like they were going out of style…I even stood in the kitchen at one point while waiting for the kettle to boil and ate a spoonful of Nutella out of the jar – holy crap that was goooood! Would I have done that if I thought RN might come down the hallway at any moment and see me performing this insanely bad for me act? hmmm, to be honest, I might have but I wouldn’t have taken so long to indulge (I really drew out the moment) and no way would there of been as much Nutella on the spoon as there was that evening lol.

I came to the realization when she returned from her trip that she unknowingly acts as my Food Guard. I don’t fear punishment from her if I eat poorly, unlike the prisoners who worried they’d be punished by the guards if they did something they weren’t supposed to while in their cells but it seems that doesn’t matter, shrug. Just by knowing she may walk in the door or come down the hall I have more control over my food cravings and am more inclined to go exercise because I don’t want her to think (1) she’s living with a lazy butt who never gets off the couch (2) all I ever eat is junk food and (3) I can’t stick to a healthy living plan if my life depended on it.

Upon further thought I am sure that she wouldn’t think any of the above, and there are plenty of days when she’s not around when I leave for my exercising or when I get back so she has no idea I even did exercise but again, doesn’t seem to matter.

This made me think, do people who live in a household larger then mine, that is full of people (probably relatives) who probably would comment if they cheated on their food plan or stopped exercising have lower rates of cheating? Do they manage to exercise more often then those who will have no recriminations from anyone if they just don’t go? Or do they still cheat as much but are more subtle about it? Perhaps when making dinner they slip themselves snacks when no one else is in the kitchen, or maybe they sneak in some junk food once the kids and spouse are in bed? That archetypal image used in movies and tv where someone is in their nightclothes stuffing themselves with left over cake while standing in front of the fridge must come from somewhere, right?

So maybe all people are eventually going to cheat on their food plan, or maybe certain personalities are more prone to cheating, maybe our society created the situation? There are so many reasons for why people cheat on their diet (healthy eating plan, whatever!) and so many reasons why we don’t cheat.

Apparently I cheat less when my roomie is around, not in the apartment necessarily, but in the city at least so I know that there is a chance I may be caught gorging on cookies – just the possibilty I will be seen stops the behaviour, it’s not a permanent cure (as I discovered when she was gone, lol) but a situational cure…sorta like how the Panoptican style prison is a situational form of punishment and doesn’t work once the prisoner is released and realizes they are not under constant scrutiny.

Who would have ever thought Foucault would be relevant not only in an academic sense but also in a everyday kinda way…I knew there was a reason he was my fave! 😀

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What Happened There?

27 Jun

So I don’t know what happened but the entry I wrote on Saturday didn’t get posted, it stayed as Draft even though I clicked the Publish button. hmmm. Don’t know why that happened but nothing I can really do about it now – except for Publish it now, which I have done. shrug. 😛

Today was the first week back to Dragon Boating, well, technically the first week of the new training sessions was last week but I was in AB and KL was working so we both resumed our training this week. It was so much fun but way harder then our first chunk of training. This team is a lot more serious, it’s still fun but it’s not a “fun league” it’s a team that wants to win at the next festival which means lots of hard work has to get done. We focused mostly on technique tonight and a bit on timing. What I noticed was the most different was in our old team’s training we’d paddle for a short distance while the coach watched us then she’d stop and talk for a bit about technique, timing, tips, stuff like that – there was more resting and we paddled for shorter distances. Which kinda set us up for harshness at the festival since we weren’t used to paddling the full 500km but oh well.

So tonight, we’d paddle and the coach would yell tips to us instead of stopping and talking to us and as a result we’d paddle for way longer distances – which I know is good cause we need to get used to the distance and build our muscles but man oh man was it harder then what I was used to. lol. I am pretty certain I will be feeling the exertion of today tomorrow! 😀  <— how sick is it that I smile big at the thought that tomorrow I will feel muscle pain?? lol.

KL and I went out for sushi after boating to play catch up since first I was out of town and then she was out of town and it’s weird for us to go 2 weeks without seeing each other. I didn’t really bother with trying to pick uber healthy stuff, I just wanted to enjoy myself but I don’t think I did too too badly. 🙂 Before I went out I had my regular Special K and two pieces of toast, I didn’t get to have my fruit cause I ran out, oops. lol.

The sushi, let’s see, I got this eggplant appetizer that I thought didn’t sound too unhealthy, well, when it came out it turned out it was battered and fried so any health benefits from the eggplant or mushrooms that were in it were gone, lol. It was tasty but not so tasty I will order it again so that’s good. Oh, an even better part of it is that it was a small portion and KL had a piece so I didn’t really eat all that much of it – I think there were 6 little bite sized pieces total and I only ate 5. I had one cube of fried tofu (that was KL’s appie) so tofu = good, fried = bad…lol. I had a salmon maki roll, there were 6 pieces, man I love salmon!

My big bad was my specialty roll, I can’t even remember what was in it, lol, I know it had a mayo sauce drizzled around it and I am guilty of dipping my rolls in it. 😛 There was shrimp tempura and some other kind of seafood in the roll and it was topped with shredded seaweed, oh, there was cucumber in there, and I think avocado too…the shrimp tempura part is the worst part of it I think, I mean, hello? Deep fried? Bad! But sooooo tasty lol. Then, just to make it worse, we split an ice cream sundae which when we ordered it I envisioned a classic sunday in those long dishes, well, Japanese restaurants don’t do that lol. This was in a martini glass, the bottom had corn flakes in it, then three small scoops of ice cream, one on top of the other in the middle, surrounded by fresh strawberries and blueberries, a small amount of whipping cream and 3 cream puffs, oh, and the whole thing was topped off with a chocolate cookie. 🙂

The amount of ice cream used total for the sundae was maybe half a cup and one scoop I didn’t like the flavour at all so really, I ate about 1 small scoop total of the ice cream, I had 1 whole strawberry and I managed to snag about 4 blueberries, I will confess to eating the corn flakes, well those I could nab before KL ate them. lol. Oh, and I got half the cookie and 1 cream puff. *eyebrow wiggle* Only crazy people don’t eat cream puffs! 😉 So really, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been…bless restaurants that have small portions, they are a rarity but I love em. 😀

So sure, what I ate was more points then what I should have eaten, even with exercising today but it was tasty and it was nice getting to catch up with KL.

I was lazy all but one day over the past week, I am hoping starting this week with dragon boating will be the boot in the ass I need to get back to my daily exercising. I can’t believe I got so lazy about it! Ack! Weather permitting I will hike everyday this week, honest! Also, I will do my bestest to get to 2 boxerfit classes or more this week, I seem to have bad luck when it comes to getting to that class so I am aiming for only 2 classes this week in the hopes I will be able to manage that. lol.

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Breakfast Food Day!

25 Jun

I declare today a Breakfast Food Day – meaning everything I eat will be a breakfast food – Yum! 😀

The reason for this? I had to get up early today (well, early for me anyways) and when I was making breakfast rain started pouring down like crazy, it immediately made me think it’d be a nice day for staying in, wearing sweats, drinking tea and lounging and what goes better with that then warm breakfast foods? lol.

So for breakfast I had oatmeal and oh, you should try this! My mom got me eating this combo, you cook your oatmeal on the stove (oh yeah, this is real oatmeal not instant) then you pour it on top of yogurt – uh, in a bowl, not into the yogurt container 😛 It’s yummy! The yogurt stops it from tasting too bland and you save points by not putting brown sugar or syrup on it…or whatever it is you put on it. I had a 1/2 C of uncooked oatmeal which turns in to 1 C cooked, normally I have 1/3 C uncooked and some toast but I thought this time I’d just do the oatmeal and yogurt so 2 points for the oatmeal and 2 points for my yogurt, a 4 pointed breakfast, not too shabby. lol.

It’s only 2 pm so I haven’t eaten anything else yet (I ate breakfast at 11am) but I’m already looking forward to the rest of my food for the day. lol. I haven’t decided yet if I am going to eat eggs in some format, pancakes or french toast…so many breakfast food options! Obviously there are more options but those are my top three picks so far…I could always go for cereal, some turkey bacon, crepes….oooooh, crepes, hmm, now I have a top 4 to choose from! lol. Ah well, I’ll figure it out by the time I get hungry I’m sure. 🙂

As you have probably noticed, I am not dead, nor did I get robbed when the couple came to look at my desk today – this is why I had to be up early. *rolls eyes* I was asking $75, she offered $60, I wasn’t expecting to get over $50 so I feel happy about how much I got. My room looks a lot emptier now, it’s kinda sad, what is even sadder is that my poor computer is turned off, unplugged and sitting in pieces on my bed and by tonight it will be sitting in pieces on my floor! My poor computers! They will feel like I don’t love them cause of this treatment! Ack. 😉 Sorry…I’m way attached to my computers. 😛 One of them is never turned off, unless I go away for over a week cause well, why keep it on if I am not here? It is almost always downloading something though which is why it is always on. That is the one I am worried will be distraught, thinking I don’t love it anymore. hehehe. Heck, even my external hard drive is turned off and unplugged…it is so…weird…

My friend KL is selling me her old desk cause she is getting a custom made one. This may seem weird, selling mine just to buy another but it’s not. Mine is really big, can easily hold 3 computers (and it has!) and is really meant for someone who needs space to spread out text books, papers etc and I don’t need that space anymore. Also, the desk takes a lot of space in my room and I am feeling cramped in there so KL’s desk is perfect, it is smaller, it’s antique which is not normally my thing but I enjoy the rollertop lid part and it has lots of built in drawers whereas the desk I sold today doesn’t. It’s a good swap and since she’s charging me $50 and I got paid $60 for mine I have a super tiny but still there profit. 😀 Profit is goooood, even if it will only pay for a small amount of groceries, shrug. 😛

This is usually the time I would be getting up on a saturday but not this time, so far today I have sold a desk, gotten all groomed for the day, eaten, realized I can’t hike cause of the rain, checked and discovered there is no boxerfit class, spoken with my acting coach on the phone, spoken with my parents on the phone, had multiple text convos, watched Wimbledon, drank multiple cups of tea and well, now I have nothing to do. lol.

What the hell do people who get up early on saturday mornings do with their day??? *confused face*

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So Not My Fault

24 Jun

Alright, so I didn’t exercise today but it’s not my fault! It’s been alternating raining and sunny – it changes about every half hour or so and when it’s raining it’s pouring so the hiking trail is all mud, ew! and my shift got extended by an extra hour so I wasn’t able to get to boxerfit. shrug. So see? Not my fault I wasn’t able to exercise in my traditional manner.

However, I would like to point out I was not lazing around today and anyone who says hanging out with 4.5 year old twins is not exercise is, well…wrong! lol. 😛

They were great kids but come on, they are at that stupid active age where sitting and reading or sitting and well, just sitting, is not high on their list of things to do. *rolls eyes* So today, I have put together a princess tent, bandaged a scraped elbow, gone to the park and pushed kids on swings, twirled them on tire swings, held them while they pretended they could use the monkey bars etc, oh, and caught them as they came down the slide. There was also dragging the bike accross a wet grassy field and up various hills (with the child still on the bike!), protecting the poor going blind dog, and running a couple blocks intermittently so the kids didn’t get impatient waiting for me at the corners on their bikes. Busy!

What’s even better? I have only eaten 18 points today, I still have 2 points left! This is like the first day in ages where I will eat my points and only my points, no flex points happenin today, sweeeet! Also, even though it wasn’t really exercise it was still some activity so I don’t feel too too badly about that – my arms are freakin killing me, and different muscles then normal, apparently pushing 2 kids at the same time really high on swings uses arm muscles I don’t always exercise when I use my weights or go to boxerfit, go figure.

Today I have eaten:

29 g Special K = 2 points

1/4 C 1% milk = 0.5 points

2 pcs toast = 1 point

1/2 tbls whipped peanut butter = 1 point

1 banana = 1 point

1 Activia yogurt = 2 points

1 light babybell cheese = 1 point

1 apple = 1 point

1 pear = 1 point

2 pcs bread = 1 point

10 slices turkey pepperoni = 1 point

2 cheese slices = 2 points

1 3/4 C Red Pepper and Tomato soup = 3.5 points

Total points eaten = 18

So now I am going to desert my couch (so sad!) and go do some work in my room, I have a lady coming to look at my desk tomorrow (I am selling it on kijiji and craigslist) and hopefully (cross fingers!) she buys it. I have to tidy up the space so the desk looks it’s best (all uncluttered etc) and so if she does buy it there is room to move around and take it apart, lol. She says she is bringing her boyfriend and he is the one whose gonna be doing the manual labour which I am fine with cause no way in hell am I taking it apart but I am slightly concerned about having strangers in my place so I asked my landlord’s son (he’s in his 30’s) if he’d please make sure to be around when they show up just in case. He’s doing me a decent and changing some plans so he’s around cause as he says “safety first”. That is not normally my motto (where’s the fun in that? lol) but in this case I will opt with safety over recklessness – I have no desire to be robbed or worse while trying to make $75, just not worth it! lol 😛

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Slackers R Us…er…Me

23 Jun

So I have been such a slacker the past couple days, I honestly don’t know what has gotten in to me! It’s weird…I had such a habit of exercising at least once a day and all it took was 6 days where I wasn’t able to exercise to break that habit and put me back on the path of lazy. Who knew it was so easy to break a habit? I suppose since it was a recently developed habit that made it easier to lose it…not like I’ve been active daily for years – perish the thought! lol. 😛

When I was in AB there was never time to exercise, I was always meeting up with someone, going somewhere, and my plan to do at least some ab work and free weights at night before I went to bed went right out the window when it turned out I wasn’t getting to bed until 2am or later. Who wants to do ab work after a full busy day at 2am before going to bed?? Not me!

So when I got back here I thought I’d jump right back in to my routine, food and exercise wise. Tuesday I went for my hike, did some free weights and ab work and felt like I was gonna die lol. One week of not exercising really put me back a bit and the trail kicked my butt! I had acting class that evening so I wasn’t able to go to boxerfit but that’s ok right cause I have the whole rest of the week! Well, Wednesday I had a coaching session at 12:30p which was just that tiny bit too early in the day so that I could go hiking in the morning and not be freaking out about being late so I figured I’d go afterwards but it didn’t happen. sigh. Instead I ended up eating pizza and dessert breadsticks and sitting on my couch! Stupid right? Right! Then today (Thursday) I again was up and out to be somewhere for 12:30p, this time though I was meeting friends for lunch downtown and I ate Beef Teriyaki on white rice, oh, and a miso soup. It was gooooood! And yet, so baaaaaaad! lol. 😛 When I got home I was all heavy feeling from digesting so I thought I’d go hiking a bit later in the day but the feeling never went away and that combined with the chilly wind was a built in easy excuse for not going out again. Lazeeeeeeeeeeeee! Since that lunch I have eaten cookies, some toast with some whipped peanut butter on it, um, hmm, that’s it.

Not the most brilliant of food choices over the past couple days! *rolls eyes*

I keep eating large bad for me meals, feeling gross cause I am overly full and then barely (or not at all) eating the rest of the day cause I feel all icky. sigh. And cause I feel icky I am not exercising. What a stupid cycle I have gotten myself in!

I decided to change up my routine in the hopes of forcing myself out of this rut before it becomes a really bad rut so I booked a nanny job for tomorrow starting at 11am for 6 hours. This means I don’t have the whole day to exercise, I’ll have to force it in somewhere and for some reason I always seem to get more done in a day when I have more to do, if I don’t have a lot to do it’s easier to slack and next thing you know I’ve done nothing. Weird huh?

Also, since I will be away from my kitchen but not near a restaurant I will only be able to eat the food I take with me and if I only take healthy food well, guess I’ll be eating healthy tomorrow. lol. See how this just might work?

Now all I can hope for is nice weather tomorrow so when the nanny job is over I can hike…or have almost no traffic on the roads so I can make it to boxerfit on time…I’ll be happy with either. 🙂

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My Skinny Wrists

22 Jun

I don’t know if this is the same for you but my body didn’t get fat all over at the same rate, certain areas got fatter faster then others. This means that other areas stayed thinner longer then others and made it easier to trick myself in to thinking I hadn’t gotten that fat.

My arms have always been thin, when I was closer to being in shape (many many moons ago!) I never worked my arms out at the gym cause sure they didn’t have any great toning going on but they were skinny and that was all that mattered to me. My arms were also what made me realize I had gotten fat – I mean sure, I knew my clothing sizes had gone up an up an up and sure I knew I didn’t like how I looked and was uncomfie with people looking at me or wearing anything even slightly revealing or dressy up cause I felt it was wrong to bring attention to such an unattractive body but I still managed to delude myself into thinking it hadn’t gotten that bad – until I saw some pictures of my arms! ack!

Because my arms had always been thin if I dressed up in any way it was almost always with a spaghetti strapped or at least sleeveless top because I figured I might as well show off the one and only thin part of me, lol *rolls eyes* Then, it happened, dun dun dun, I saw some pictures where I was dressed up (in a spaghetti strapped empire waisted top) and my arms were freakin huuuuge! HUGE! And to make it worse because I am so crazy pale my big fat arms looks liked beached whales! When those pictures got put up on facebook I was horrified when I saw them. I couldn’t believe I had gone out in public like that, dressed like that!

What was worse was I couldn’t believe my arms had gotten fat – my one remaining thin body part! How had I not noticed they were ballooning out of the stratosphere? Oy! *rolls eyes*

I’d like to say that was the immediate turning point in my life and from there on out I was walking the Healthy Lifestyle route but it wasn’t, I kept on with my poor eating habits and no exercise for a while after that and my arms (and every other body part) kept getting bigger. shrug.

Well, now that I am losing weight it seems my arms are losing weight faster then the rest of me…I guess I should have expected that, *confused face*, but I am not exactly sure why I should have expected that…just, now that it happened it seems to make sense, lol, that doesn’t make any sense does it? 😛

Through all of this my wrists have stayed small, like uber small, I can’t wear bracelets because they fall off my hand they are that small. I always thought my small wrists on my fat body looked so odd – like they were a sign of how I was supposed to look but couldn’t quite manage. I kinda hated my wrists cause for a long time it has felt they like were taunting me, which yes, I am aware that sounds stupid but whatever, this is my blog! lol. 😉 Now my upper arms are getting not only thinner but more toned (thank you Dragon Boating! lol) and my thin wrists are no longer a taunting body part but part of a body part that is once again something I am sorta comfy showing off. 🙂

I say sorta comfy cause I still feel like I did at the beginning of this weight loss journey which means I still feel self conscious about my body and uncomfy showing it off and just as fat as I was back then…I know that I have lost 32 pounds but that is intellectual knowing, not deep in my body knowing. I keep thinking that once I lose all my excess weight all my body image issues will be solved but I think that theory might be wrong…I know! Shocking that I might be wrong! lol. 😛

If I am not already comfy showing off my upper arms when they are much smaller and more toned then they have been in a long time how will I be comfie and confident with my new body once it is finally revealed – uh, I mean revealed as in a sculpture that finally emerges from the hunk of marble not revealed like I am gonna strip my clothes off and show it to people lol. 😛

It is a new problem to ponder and I don’t yet have anything resembling an answer but perhaps as I continue to lose weight the answer will come to me, and if it does I will be sure to share it with you! 🙂

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Today I Became a Mom?

19 Jun

haha, ok, not a real mom – don’t go freaking out that I kept something huge like that a secret, I became a GodMother…only I think that makes me sound old so I prefer GodMom…or Auntie. 😛 I am not an overly religious person and really, neither are most of my friends but it seems once you pop out a kid or two you become more religious, shrug.

A friend of mine, JF, is a mom of 3 kids, the oldest is 3.5 years old. She asked me to be godmother to her youngest (who is not yet a year old) and I was floored; in a good way! I couldn’t believe someone would ask that of me…the weird slightly crazy friend who has not gotten married, not become successful in her career, has not popped out a kid or two…basically, I am the one who didn’t follow the same road map as everybody else and while people don’t overly judge me for that they do wonder when I am going to “grow up”. *rolls eyes* I think sometimes they also live vicareously through me cause while JF is going insane on a rainy sat when the kids are cooped up inside and she can’t get anything done I am giving myself a “pampering day” and indulging in mani/pedis and sitting quietly on my couch with a cup of tea and a book. lol. We have quite the opposite lives. 🙂

In case you’re wondering – I quite enjoy my life and would pick mine over hers anyday. 😀 lol

So here I am in AB, becoming a godmom to an adorable little girl and wondering when did this happen? JF told me ages ago, after her second child, she’d only ever ask family to be godparents because for her first child she asked her best friend to be godmom and the friend said yes but since then she hardly ever sees JF or her goddaughter and they live in the same city! JF’s oldest, LF, knows me better then her own godmom and sees me more often – faintly ridiculous when you think about how I live a 12 hour drive away. 😛 So when JF asked me I was stunned, never did I expect that. She said she realized she can’t limit godparent status to just blood family, it has to be asked of people she is close to and people she thinks of like family – kinda cool, she thinks of me like family. *sappy smile*

How does all this relate to my overarching theme of weight loss? Well, when I come to AB to visit my eating habits gets all screwed up. It is so easy to follow your points plan and eat the “right” foods when at home and in your normal routine – it’s a lot harder when you are out all day for days in a row and everyone wants to see you and hang out with you and they all suggest going out for food. Seriously, all of them!

I got here wed super late at night, on thursday I went for brunch with my mom to this great place where I didn’t eat too too badly and then the rest of the day wasn’t so bad food wise. But after that it went downhill. lol. Friday I had lunch at Red Lobster, YUM, and then had dinner at The Cheesecake Cafe, YUM again. 🙂 My only saving grace is at Red Lobster I got the lunch sized portion and at Cheesecake I only ate half the sandwich and half the fries, the rest came home to sit in my mom’s fridge, lol, however, MJ and I split the most amazing desert at Cheesecake (no, it wasn’t cheesecake lol) so that shot my points way in to the stratoshphere. lol. 😛 Saturday we had a family lunch and I didn’t make the best choices, shrug, that’s totally my fault, there were healthy foods on the table but I went for the not so great foods, oops. Then I went to a movie with my oldest nephew where I was thankfully too full to want popcorn or other junkfood but after that I went back to my parents where I ate a small but not awesomly healthy dinner (I had leftovers from lunch lol) then I went out with HB and she hadn’t eaten so we went to a restaurant where I got some slushy alcoholic thing that tasted really good, so good I had two of them, eek! and I had a fruit crumble desert. *groan*

I can feel myself getting fatter. *rolls eyes*

Today, Sunday, was the baptism so after the ceremony there was a party at JF’s mom’s house so I had half a croissant sandwich, raw veggies, cut up fresh fruit, about 10 shrimp with a very small amount of dipping sauce. Not so bad right? I mean, sure, the croissant isn’t good for me but I only had half so it could’ve been worse…well…it got worse! There were cupcakes for dessert, oh my! They were so prettily decorated with cream cheese icing, sooooo yum! 😀 I had 2.5 cupcakes – yup, that’s right, two and a half cupcakes, in under 4 hours! Ack!!

All this food is bad enough but I am always out doing stuff and haven’t exercised once! I brought my free weights and my yoga matt thinking every night before I went to bed I’d at least do something…nope. I am not getting to bed until 3am or so and by that time the last thing I want to do is a bunch of sit ups. ugh.

This is what I have come to expect when I visit – lots of food, lots of bad food choices, me going back with a couple extra pounds on me but this time it is bothering me way more then normal cause I am filming on Tuesday and I don’t want to feel fat on screen. An extra 2 pounds or so won’t show on screen so I’m not worried about how I will look – my concern is I will feel heavy in my tummy area and extra jiggly (both of which I am already feeling) and that will make me self conscious and affect my acting – which sucks. For me, I have to feel comfortable in my body for my acting to be good, if I am not comfie I don’t move as much and I look stuck in one spot, it’s highly annoying. If I feel heavy and fat then I won’t be moving around so much and it’ll affect my demo reel. Argh!

My only way to fix this, that I can think of, is to start right now with being stricter. I figure it’s a better late then never approach lol. I am still way full from the party after the baptism so when I do eat it will be small and healthy and then tomorrow while driving back to BC I will hafta be careful with what I choose. For in the car I have veggies and fruit, just like on my drive up, so I’m not too worried about that. I find though, that the last 2-3 hours of the drive are the hardest and I make it through by using caffeine, water and processed sugar. lol. That’s why I always have timbits on the car, for the last couple hours. But not tomorrow! Nuh-uh! Fruit! Natural sugar! Water! Veggies! Only healthy food is going in me so hopefully I won’t feel heavy on tuesday when I am filming…*scared face*…wish me luck!

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My Dragon Boating Weekend

13 Jun

Oooooh man, what a weekend! 😀 The 11th and 12th were the Dragon Boating Festival and for the first time I was a part of it. I can’t wait for next year!

Lemme tell ya, dragon boaters are their own special breed, lol. They work hard and they party harder – which is sweeeeet!

Both sat and sun KL and I (well, our whole team as well as other teams) had to be at the Paddler’s Village way early in the morning, on sat we were there at 7:30am and sun we got to sleep in and didn’t have to be there until 8:15am, oooooh, soooo late! 😉 hehe. We were there until 4:30pm or so on the sat, we could have stayed later cause the races weren’t all done for the day but we were finished with our races and we wanted to come chill at my place (she stayed the night), sunday we didn’t leave till after the paddler’s party in the evening so I got home about 12:45am…a looooong day! 😛

Keeping in mind this was our teams first time racing and we had only practiced together as a team 4 times so don’t expect this post to be a story of how we won a medal, lol, cause we so didn’t! We came in 88th out of 100 teams – my competitive side wants to say that totally blows and how embarassing but the realistic side of me says we could have done worse and hey, we were the least trained team there so at least we beat some teams! 😀

I’ve never been involved in a competitive sport like this before, where you go and compete against other teams from around the world and when you’re not on the water competing every team is friendly with each other because it’s this small community, shrug, it was weird but nice. Heck, even when on the water the teams are friendly towards each other, well, before and after the actual race, during the race you’re so focused on your boat you don’t even have time to look at the other boats let alone think of them. lol.

The weather on sat was cloudy but warm, the sun didn’t really come out until a bit before our second race, so around 2pm or so? I put sun screen on but sadly, I missed a couple spots near my hairline and just above my eyebrows so I got burned, sigh. That wouldn’t be sooooo bad but sunday was bright and sunny but coolish (figures! lol) and even though I had sunscreen slathered on all frickin day I burned! Totally ended up with racoon eyes, ow! What’s worse of all though is my freckles are darker, grr! I tried to be careful with my arms cause our team shirts had regular t-shirt length sleeves so I didn’t want part of my arms to be darker then the rest (by darker I of course mean the freckles are darker, not the actual skin, once the red fades from a burn it goes back to it’s normal uber pale colour). I almost managed it…almost…today I noticed in the mirror that the freckles below the sleeve line are darker, sigh, but hopefully if I keep them covered the rest of the summer they will go pale again quickly. Man I hate the sun. *rolls eyes*

Sunday night was the Paddler’s Party in the beer gardens, the ticket covered the price of 2 beers so everyone was drinking! Even though the beers were $5 each that didn’t stop people from goin crazeeee, oh, there was wine as well but nobody was drinking that, lol. So the beer was flowing, people are yapping away, then the bongs came out, yup, bongs. Two seperate teams brought them, one was a standard looking bong, the other had 3 spouts so 3 people at one time could chug – I’ve never seen that before, quite the contraption. 😛 I did not do the bong, it’s not my thing and besides, I was only drinking a tiny bit since I was gonna hafta drive later, lame but oh well, KL however was not driving later and she was already quite drunk by the time the bongs were pulled out so she decided she wanted to do one. lol. I of course, being the good friend that I am, took pictures that I am going to post on facebook. teehee.

Everyone had a killer time at the party, and sure, part of that was the beer, but a big part was just the comraderie of a group of people who may be completely different from each other in all kinds of ways but they have one awesome thing in common and that has brought them together for a weekend of fun. 😀

I woke up this morning feeling like death and all I wanted to do was sleep some more, lol, 4 races in 2 days is a lot for muscles that aren’t that used to it yet – plus the dancing at the party used all kinds of muscles cause lemme say, the dancing was not the tame kind at all! Oh yea, the party had a dj, sorry, forgot to mention that. Plus, my throat was way sore from all the yelling etc but it was all worth it and I’d do it again in a heartbeat! I’ll actually be doing it all again, but on a smaller scale, in about 10 weeks, yah! 😀

My food was not all that great this weekend – it started off ok and then tanked. KL is a great friend but a horrible food influence, sigh. Sat I had oatmeal for breakfast, but after that KL and I ended up at a pancake breakfast fundraiser (a team is trying to get the funds to go to a race in San Francisco) so I ate 3 pancakes, I didn’t really have lunch but I did snack on some grapes and had a small soft serve ice cream cone in a waffle cone with a half sized flake chocolate stuck in it – yum! I drank water all day so that’s all good at least. Now that may not seem so bad but after we left the racing area we decided to get dinner and neither of us had the energy to cook so we ordered food from White Spot, man I love that restaurant. I got a bbq burger with cheese, it came with yam fries, coleslaw and a root beer. Oh my. Then Sunday, started off with a Hearty Medley’s, I resisted the pancakes but we ate lunch on Sunday at the village and sadly, there were no healthy options, shrug. I did my best, got a wrap with taco style ground beef in it, lettuce, grilled veggies, salsa, little bit of shredded cheese and sour cream – way delish! Then later an even smaller ice cream then the day before, um, a bunch of beer, and then when trying to minimize the effects of the beer 2 apricots, a peach, a granola bar, a heck of a lot of water…and then KL and I (again) bought dinner, we went to this place she swears has the best burgers in the world, and it’s true, they are awesome but oh man, two burgers in two days? My tummy may never forgive me for this, *shakes head*. It was huuuuuge! And had crispy onion strings on it and cheese, oy, oh and of course it came with fries! lol. I couldn’t finish the burger but I ate almost all of it and had some of the fries, sigh. Way tasty but I told her it was so bad for me (the whole menu is horrible, it’s the only menu I’ve seen that doesn’t even attempt to have something healthy on it!) I would only eat there at most 2 times a year – cause, dude, that just so doesn’t fit in to my points! lol.

Today I was back to basics. I didn’t exercise due to scheduling issues but I am at 19.5 points for the day and not even tempted to snack on something to eat that extra half point – I think I may still be digesting from last nights dinner! hehe.

I’ll be hiking for sure tomorrow and then going to acting class in the evening – wednesday I will be driving to Alberta so no exercise that day and who knows what will happen food wise – I am hoping I’ll manage to eat fairly healthy cause I hafta be super good this week to make up for the weekend, *scared face* I finally managed to lose that weight I managed to put on when I was in Alberta over Easter (and just after Easter) and what do I do? I eat like a maniac over the course of 2 days and probably gained it all back. sigh.

The weekend was such a great time – who would have thought I’d enjoy it so much? Looks like I am becoming an active person after all…if that can happen, well, anything can! 😛

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Spic an Span

10 Jun

Today was a cleaning day – ugh. I hate cleaning, I hate the smells of the cleaning products, I hate how they affect my skin, I hate the effort I have to put in to make the place clean – there is nothing about cleaning that I like. Sure, I like the place being clean but I’d be just as happy enjoying the clean apartment but having someone else doing the cleaning. lol.

I’d like to say I don’t know anybody who likes cleaning but sadly, I do know one of those crazy people who like to clean. *rolls eyes* How the two of us are such good friends is baffling – well, ok, not really, we have lots of other stuff in common, but seriously? She likes to clean? That is so…wrong!

Why did I have such a big clean fest today? Lots of reasons! (1) neither my roomie nor I are all that enamored with cleaning so we tend to let it slide (2) I’m going away next week and I like to leave the place clean – usually because I like coming back to the place being clean but there are no guarantees about that when you have a roomie, sigh (3) my friend who likes to clean is staying the night tomorrow and there is no way in hell I could let her see how messy it got (4) I wanted to take a day off from formal exercising because the dragon boating festival is this weekend so I’ll be racing a lot both sat and sun and thought I should give my body a bit of a break but I still wanted to do something vaguely active, shrug.

Yes, you read that last reason right – even though I was giving myself a day off from exercising I still wanted to be active – I am slowly becoming “that person” – the person I have always mocked and sneered at – oh how we change, sigh. lol.

I am psyched for the festival this weekend – my team has two races each day and I am fairly certain we will lose each race. lol. This is not uber negative thinking, it’s factual, we have only been a team for 5 weeks and only get to practice together once a week – that’s not enough time to take a bunch of newbies and have them become a perfectly timed team. shrug. You should see the pro teams, they are amazing to watch. They are perfectly in sync, they can go crazy fast, you don’t want to look away when they are rowing cause they are truly captivating. If you youtube Dragon Boat Racing you’ll find lots of videos you can watch, if you watch a good team you will see what I mean. 🙂

I won’t get to weigh in like normal on sat or sun because I have to be at the racer’s village at 7:30 am – disgusting! So I weighed myself today and I lost, wOOt! I am not going to make the amount lost official until monday though when I will re-weigh in and see how that number compares.

Today I ate:

1/2 bagel = 2.5 points

1/2 tbls whipped peanut butter = 1 point

1 banana = 1 point

29g Special K = 2 point

1/4 C 1% milk = 1 point

1 apple = 1 point

1/2 pckg frozen stir fry veggies = 0 points

1 C brown rice = 4 points

1 pckg Stir Fry Tofu and Sauce = 8 points

1 Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich = 2 points

Total points eaten = 22

Exercise points earned = 9

I found by accident when grocery shopping this package of tofu and sauce meant to be put with veggies to make a stir fry. I guess it’s the lazy man’s way of making stir fry? I figured I’d give it a try. The tofu and sauce package contains two servings so normally I would have made it all but only eaten half but I won’t have a chance to eat left overs until monday and I wasn’t sure it would really last that long…tofu confuses me, shrug. Also, I was freakishly hungry, it was almost 9pm and I hadn’t had dinner yet so I figured meh, eat it all, it’s all good. lol. It was tasty but I won’t buy it again. I mean come on, it’s not that hard to throw in some meat or tofu of your own and toss some sauce from you fridge in the wok too – right? Maybe it’s cause I was making my own stir fry before trying this package thing – so I already know making it from scratch is stupid easy, I mean, if I can make it and have it taste good then anybody can lol. 😛

Now, the exercise points, I wasn’t sure what to do with that, I mean, I didn’t break a sweat and I didn’t do any traditional work out stuff so part of me feels like I didn’t work out but I was active for 4.5 hours and if I hadn’t been cleaning I would have just been sitting on the couch (or something similar) so maybe cleaning should count as activity? I decided it counts as Low Intensity Activity and wow, low intensity for 4.5 hours sure does add up in exercise points! lol. Yah! Oh, and don’t go thinking I was just doing a bit of dusting, I was scrubbing, moving furniture and my fridge and stove, stretching up to reach the high places – I cleaned it all! That is also why I feel it should count as activity – I moved furniture! That deserves something! lol. 🙂

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Twice In One Day??

8 Jun

My poor abused body – all my leg muscles are shaking mildly and the mere thought of getting up off the couch to go get a fresh cup of tea makes me whimper. lol. Today I did the unknown – I exercised…Twice! Two times in one day! I don’t know if hell has frozen over or if it was a miracle but I somehow managed to get my lazy arse off the couch and moving on 2 seperate occaisions today. *groan* I have a feeling I am so gonna be hurting tomorrow…but hey, who cares? That’s tomorrow! lol

I had wanted to do this crazy exercise-twice-in-one-day-thing on Monday but it didn’t work out so instead my first try at this was today. Freakishly enough, I just may do this again…maybe…we’ll see how I feel tomorrow lol.

I brought my mom and dad with me when I went hiking today, by this I mean my mom called me right as I was lacing up my runners and if I didn’t go hiking right at that specific time I wouldn’t be able to do it at all so I took my phone with me – something I never do! My hiking time is “my time”, I listen to my iPod, cringe whenever I come in to contact with nature, and basically take the time to focus on me, shrug. Somedays there isn’t much to focus on, lol, so I just enjoy the music, but some days you need some time to sort things out in your head, plan something that is coming up, figure out how you are gonna deal with something or say/write something. shrug. But yeah, so my poor parents had to hear me huffing and puffing while we were talking, it probably sounded like I was hiking to my death lol.

But I survived and had a yummy meal of salmon, mashed yam and mixed veggies while resting and reminding myself I wanted to exercise twice in one day, it was a goal, it would not kill me – probably. 😉

On my way to Boxerfit I stopped and picked up the parcel my cousin sent me from England, that boy, he’s so awesome! I got a box of Bristows Clotted Cream Fudge, a chocolate bar that is currently in the fridge (and if you think I’m getting up to read the name of it and pissing off my muscles you got another thing comin! lol) and a pair of socks with the Union Jack. The fudge has a picture of Will and Kate because it is a commemorate box of fudge for the wedding 🙂 I love it!

I had to leave earlier then normal for boxerfit because of having to make it to the post office before it closed so once I got to the gym I had about 45 minutes to kill which was perfect cause I had taken the sides for the second scene I want to do for my demo reel and I worked on the lines while waiting for 7pm to roll around. It’s nice to know you can practice your lines without someone overhearing you – at least for me, shrug.

I’m fairly certain the guy who runs the Boxerfit class is trying to kill me, well, not just me, all of us. lol. Todays class he had us doing these running drills, you run as fast as you can from spot A to spot B, at spot B you do 5 push ups, then you run back to A and do 5 full sit ups, then you run back to spot B and do 5 squats, then you run back to spot A and do 5 burpees. You’d think that was bad enough but then you had to do it all over again only do 4 of each, then again but 3 of everything…I’m sure you’ve figured out the pattern here…see what I mean about trying to kill us? *rolls eyes* He timed us and is gonna make us do it all over again in a month and apparently we will all have faster times…he’s nuts! This was on top of all our normal stuff so by the end of the class I was soaked in sweat, yeah I know, gross right? When I got in to my suv to drive home I really felt how wet my clothes were, ugh, I made sure to sit upright the whole drive home cause I didn’t want the sweat to soak in to the fabric of the seat. lol.

I have a job interview tomorrow morning for a law firm, can you get less artistic? lol. It’s at 10am which seems early to me cause I have been sleeping in almost everyday but I suppose it’s an ok time cause after that is done I will be running some errands and hopefully getting home by about 1pm – that’ll give me time to hike before meeting up with KL for our final Dragon Boat training session before the festival this weekend.

Oh what an active week this has been!

I have eaten 19 points today, and earned a crazy high number of exercise points – 14 of them! A record for me. 🙂 Sooo, since I have so many exercise points I am about to eat a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich (2 points) which will have me eating a whopping 1 exercise point. Not so bad that! 😀

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