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So Far Not So Good

30 Jan

Ok, so I wrote in my last post about how I bought actual real food from the grocery store and my goal for the week is to eat in more then I eat out and to actually cook meals not just eat peanut butter out of the jar and to have an actual breakfast, lunch and dinner daily that involved food groups and were well balanced in every sense of the word…wellllll, I may not be doing so good with that, oops!

In my defence, it’s only partially my fault…oh who am I kidding, it’s all my fault lol. 😛

Yesterday I slept in so didn’t eat anything before I ran to physio, after physio I got a hot chocolate and an apple danish from the coffee shop near my physio because I was starrrrrving! then I did errands (all pertaining to my cat) and got my butt off to work. Exciting huh? Since I didn’t have time to eat breakfast I sure as heck didn’t have time to make something to take with me and eat at work so I ate a slight variation on what was made in the kitchen that evening. I ended up having two crab cakes (I said I only wanted one but I have noticed that chefs seem to all have this crazy urge to over feed you, sigh) and a nice big salad, yum!

Then today I woke up sick, ugh, not crazy flu sick but definitely sick so I ended up staying home in an effort to baby my body back to health, here’s hoping it works! *crosses fingers* Oddly enough, I ended up eating three meals today! Three! In one day!!! It’s like the world has tipped on it’s axis or something! For breakfast I had a piece of chicken, mixed grilled veggies (there were zuchinni, red pepper and onion) and sliced yam, it was all quite yummy! Lunch was a bowl of shreddies cereal with a cut up banana on top and dinner was a grilled cheese sandwich with a tuscan tomato and basil bisque soup. I love that soup! I buy it at Safeway in the deli section, Mmm! Normally when I am sick I don’t eat, I just have no appetite and even less energy and I basically just don’t wanna lol but for some reason today I decided screw it, even if I am sick and I don’t feel like being in the kitchen I have to eat and why not do my best to eat proper meals and not just snack on some carrots.

So sure, the grilled cheese sandwich doesn’t fit in to the new rules I gave myself about what makes up a meal but hey, at least I ate and didn’t starve myself right? I feel like I should get points for that even though in reality I know I won’t lol

I am thinking though some slight changes to my rules might be needed…originally I decided I had to have three meals a day, breakfast could be small (I’m not a big breakfast person) so maybe some fruit and yogurt, simple ya know? Then lunch and dinner both had to have a protein and some veggies. I had to make the food more often then I bought a meal and, um, I think those were pretty much all my rules. Buuuuut, on days I work I can eat at work and generally the meals are healthy and with minor variations fit in to my rules for having a protein and a veggie so I’m thinking on work days if I eat the food from work it shouldn’t count against my rule for cooking my own food more then eating out cause, well, it’s made from fresher ingredients then anything I make, there will be a protein and a veggie serving and it’s only costing me $2…this is my thought on the matter, I’m still pondering it though so I may yet change my mind, we shall see!

As for today, I was inside all day sick which means nothing of interest happened so I have no funny stories to regale you with. The cat seems quite happy I spent time at home today, I was pretty much pinned to the living room chair all day by his body being sprawled across my lap while he slept, it’s good to know I have a purpose in this life *rolls eyes* lol

Here’s my inspiration for the day:

Sacrifice is giving up something good for something better!

So put down the cookie and go for a run, throw out the bag of chips and buy some fresh veggies, remember that what seems like a sacrifice today will one day be a habit you don’t even think about. You’ll stop hitting up the fast food joints and automatically make your own healthy dinner, you’ll stop reaching for the chocolate when you’re sad and automatically lace up your runners. You’ll reach your goals, and have the healthy body you want, and you’ll wonder why you put up such a fuss about giving up those mass produced cookies. What feels like a sacrifice today is actually you making the choice to do what is right and healthy for your body, you are putting you first, and that’s where you should always be!  🙂

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I’d Forgotten

28 Jan

I have been banned from exercising, which is sorta why I stopped blogging…again, sigh. I was in a car accident right before my bday and Christmas and got some oh-so-wonderful neck and back injuries from it which has caused my doctor and my physio to say I’m not allowed to do anything more strenuous then walking…oh, and the limit to the walking is that I have to go slowly and for short distances. Laaaaame! 😛

I HATE it! I can’t believe I became that person that misses going to the gym but, I am totally that person. 😦

I tried to compensate for the restriction in my exercising by cutting way way way back on what I am eating…which led to me going for days with maaaaaybe a proper meal being eaten over the span of every two days or so and then caving on like day 5 and eating pretty much anything I could get my hands on, effectively screwing over my weight loss efforts. *rolls eyes* I just kept thinking “stop eating! for the love of carrots stop eating you have no way to burn it off!!!” so I scared myself in to not eating, or barely eating, and then I’d be so hungry for so many days I’d eat waaaaaay too much and then feel horrible about myself because I over ate a meal. Guess I can’t start wondering where my metabolism is since I just knocked it on its head and it is now slumped unconscious to the side of my body. *groan*

But! My physio said I could go snowshoeing as long as I stayed to the path…which yeah, ok, kinda makes it lame snowshoeing cause who wants to stay to a path? But hey, I’ll take what I can get…and surprisingly, even sticking to the path I got a good workout and had fun! 🙂 I went with some of my friends from dragon boating and I felt like such a lard ass! Usually I have good cardio and am decently good at endurance but over a month of no exercising has killed killed killed that! I am so bitter about that! I worked hard to get to a level of cardio I could feel proud about and now that is gone…I sure hope it doesn’t take as long to get back as it took to get in the first place…

The craziest thing happened after the snowshoeing though, something I had forgot about, I felt…brace for it!…good about myself…craaaaaaazy times over here! 😉

Since I haven’t been able to exercise I have been feeling like I am getting fatter everyday, and I’ve been feeling really down about myself, my stupid ass solution to feeling down was to eat badly. I got in this rut of “who cares, I can’t exercise anyways, I’m disgusting and fat, just keep eating, what does it matter…” fairly blah uninteresting thoughts (hence the no blogging about them). After snowshoeing though I was all “yup, worked up a sweat, burned calories, had fun, wanna do it again” and all of that turned in to feeling good about how I spent that day…a feeling I haven’t had in quite a while. I guess, without my really noticing it, things had pretty much gone to shit over here. Stuff bringing me down that I can’t control, and then also me bringing me farther down by not giving my body the proper fuel. So, instead of eating healthy normal portions of healthy normal foods and at least keeping the chemicals that pump out of my brain nice an steady I was eating junk that gave me sugar highs and lows, made me feel heavy and lazy and slow and once the high wore off from eating them I had the double whammy of feeling bad about my actions and feeling bad because of what the food was doing in my system…talk about a wicked bad cycle!

So there I was, after snowshoeing, headed home and I had to detour to the grocery store because I needed milk for tea lol Oh me and my tea! 😛 I decided to make an investment, an investment in myself and I bought groceries, real groceries, real foods that aren’t processed, in boxes, filled with extra sugar and salt and who knows what. I bought fruit, veggies, milk (hey, a girl still needs her tea! lol), yogurt (the healthy kind) chicken and then even more veggies lol I haven’t had a proper grocery shopping trip since before I moved in to this apartment (which fyi, was Nov 1/12), rather pathetic when you think about it!

I used to cook everyday, I always cooked my dinner, and my lunch was (when I was working) cooked by me the night before and later (when I was laid off) cooked by me the day of…breakfast was usually fruit with a side of fruit and maybe some yogurt or before I cut back on processed foods I would have a measured out portion of cereal with a measured portion of skim milk on it. There were healthy snacks thrown in there too by the way. I had a plan back then, a plan I followed, I maintained, I lived with. Sure there were some concession to my social life (I was that person who snuck fresh fruit in to the movie theatre and would grab a 6″ subway sandwich instead of getting sushi with my friends) but somehow I was able to look at the big picture, see that the small sacrifice now would be worth my greater happiness later. What happened to that? *raised eyebrow* Where did that go? Somewhere along the way I stopped being proud that I had lost over 30lbs in a healthy maintainable way and all I started focusing on was the amount of weight I had left to lose. The more I focused on that last 15lbs the bigger it seemed, the bigger I seemed in the mirror, the harder it became to accomplish, the farther away that end goal was. Eating stopped being about eating tasty healthy foods that were good for me and became about restricting and punishing myself for eating at all. I don’t like the outlook I have on food anymore, I don’t like that I see it as an enemy, something to hate, something to feel negatively about every time I eat (whether I eat healthy or unhealthy). This isn’t a battle I can win, I will always need to eat, it’s not exactly a substance I can quit. But now I have to learn how to come to terms with food, how to get back on a healthy level with it and remember that when I eat healthy meals consistently and exercise consistently (once allowed that is) I will feel better about myself, I might even start to feel confident again…after all, I have lost over 30lbs, which compared to where some people are in their weight loss journey doesn’t sound that impressive, but I can’t compete with them anymore, I can only look at myself, just do better then yesterday, push that little bit farther when working out, eat a little bit healthier, cut out a bit more of the crap food that I don’t really need, find my balance again. I had it before, now it’s time to get it back.

So now that I am stocked up on healthy foods my new goal is to cook more this week then I eat out or not eat…does that make sense? I want to make my meals more often than not and they need to be healthy, balanced meals. No more having ten baby carrots and calling it dinner after having no breakfast and a small bowl of cereal for lunch…my plate will have a protein, a veggie and well, ok, a protein and a vegg…I don’t eat rice or pasta or potatoes (unless they are a treat!) cause I cut waaaaay down on grains etc but a protein and a veg for lunch and dinner plus a real breakfast of maybe some yogurt and fruit (or something like that), that is my goal, to have that more often then not this week. I already know that a couple of the days will be hard to manage just cause I have a crazy schedule this week but that is where pre-planning comes in to play right?

Huh, this post became way more serious then intended, I was just gonna yap about how good I felt after snowboarding and how that inspired me to get healthy food in the supermarket, didn’t mean to go all woe-is-me I’m all down about myself on ya…I’ll be cheerful again next time…most likely! lol 😉

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I Threw It Out

23 Dec

I can’t believe I did it, I actually threw out a donut, a fresh purchased from Tim Horton’s less then 2 hours earlier donut…it was a vanilla dip with holiday red and green icing on top, it was so pretty…or was before it had an unfortunate encounter with a book, oops!

Here’s the deal, I was at the airport with my cat, my whiplash and my muscle strain trying to figure out if I was hungry or not. I had a while to go before boarding but the food court was starting to close (quite early in my opinion) and I was left with making a rushed decision about food. I wasn’t feeling particularly hungry at that moment in time but figured once I got through security and was cut off from the various food sources in the airport my hunger would kick in and I’d be pissed that I chose to not eat. So I did what any self-respecting Canadian would do, I went to Tim Horton’s! 😀 Ordered a sandwich and on a whim decided to get a donut as well, I wanted a steeped tea but was about to go through security and knew I wouldn’t finish it in time and No Way am I throwing out a cup of tea!

Once the cat and I got through the ordeal of security (fun fact, you have to take the cat out of the carrier and walk through the metal detector while holding the cat so that the cat carrier can go through the x-ray machine…not that I would let my cat go through the x-ray machine but what genius *read that as moron!* came up with the idea of taking a terrorized cat out of his carrier in the middle of a busy airport???) *shakes it off* anyways! Once we got through that and were settled at our gate I decided it was din din time, Mmm! Timmy’s sandwich here I come! It was good, as I knew it would be, I got the turkey chipotle on brown bread, can’t go wrong there! 🙂

I had started debating about the donut, regretting the purchase, thinking I shouldn’t have done it, it was late-ish evening so I shouldn’t be having so much sugar, I wasn’t hungry now that I’d eaten the sandwich and I’m heading home to a bday dinner (mine), a xmas dinner (with the family), and multiple eating out situations over the course of the next week…do I really need to start my week of food-related-activites with a donut? That donut might be the item that tips the scale, that takes me from eating a bit too much to complete over indulgence, it might be the starting point of a horrible food week versus a not perfect food week…I know I know, that’s a lot of pressure to put on one little donut but I have found that the way you start a vacation is how you tend to maintain and end a vacation…it’s all about habits ya know?

So I pull the donut out of my purse (uh, it was in a bag of it’s own, not like it was loose in the purse lol) and realized my book squashed it! One whole section of it was smooshed almost completely flat! Poor donut. 😦 Now yes it was still edible, and some foods, oddly enough, are more tasty when slightly destroyed or just plain messier (like burgers, a burger tastes best when it is messy, I don’t know why, it just does, shrug) and I’m absolutely positive that donut would have tasted delicious but instead…I threw it out. Didn’t even feel a twinge of regret. Sure, I wasted the money I spent buying it but luckily donuts are cheap and if it’s a choice between wasting a bit of money and saving myself un-necesarry calories, well, I’ll save the calories everytime!

Here’s to having a great birthday (today) where I don’t feel I ate too horribly (home made stir fry for dinner thanks to my mom) and homemade birthday cake to go with it (hey! birthdays deserve dessert!). I may go a little crazy on xmas day but hey, I managed to throw out that donut so maybe I won’t? Guess we’ll find out! lol 😉

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I Forgot Wordless Wednesday!

13 Dec

Geez, it would have only been my second Wordless Wednesday and I forgot it! Does this mean I am destined to not do Wordless Wednesday in the future? Nah, I think it’s just cause it’s a new thing so I have to get used to it…I hope lol

Yesterday was Wednesday, duh, so I was supposed to take pictures of what I did and ate that day so I could show you instead of tell you…well, that was an epic fail if ever there was one, sigh. Too bad too since I had an awesome lunch! I was at the mall with a friend and we stopped at the food court for lunch. Now don’t go getting all “uh-oh, you screwed up didn’t you??” cause I didn’t! So there! 😛

I went to one of those grill places where you pick your veggies and protein from fresh raw selections then they grill it in front of you using a hot grill (shocking huh?) and a bit of water so it doesn’t stick, they then add the sauce of your choosing (I chose teriyaki) and was pleasantly surprised at the minimal amount of sauce the guy used, then it is served with some rice. Not so bad huh? I was heavy on the veggies but did put some crab, tofu and beef in there cause hey, ya gotta have some protein! I can’t remember all the veggies I chose, I love places like this though cause sure I can make a stir fry at home but somewhere like this has every veggie you could think of so you’ll have way more variety for your meal. I won’t remember them all but I know I had: carrots, zucchini, green beans, water chestnuts, baby corn, pineapple, bok choy, mushrooms, yellow and red peppers, celery…hmm, I know I am missing something, meh, it’ll come to me later probably. I also put some peanuts on there cause I am weak and I love peanuts in stir fry. 😀 All in all tasty and (I think) healthy.

The rest of the day was spent hanging with my friend at the mall, we were Christmas shopping, then coming back to the apartment to check on the poor cat. Oy! The day prior was his first visit to the vet, er, first visit since I have known him that is, I’m sure he was taken prior to our meeting. Well let me tell ya, this cat does not like going out of his comfort zone, he’s a bit of a worrier, hides a lot and has really sharp claws…not a good combo for stuffing him in a cat carrier and driving him to see a vet he’s never met. Oh, and he’s quite dramatic, if this cat could write he’d be writing his story and it’d be coming off as a Greek Tragedy! I of course would be the villain…despite my feeding him, changing his litter box, buying him treats and toys and a bed, moving when he wants the chair, letting him have half my bed even though he weighs ten pounds and I weigh, er, let’s just say I weigh considerably more then ten pounds 😉 lol shrug, he’s adorable though, so oh well, I may bitch but I love him (which really means I am whipped and he knows it!) So yes, I had to check on him cause he was still recovering from the ordeal of the vet. He was extra clingy so I cancelled my evening plans and stayed home with him, I figure he’s my cat right? I took responsibility for him which means when he is not in top form and wants comfort I stay home and be there for him. He’s lucky he’s cute! lol

Not the most interesting day out there, I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t try to take pictures of the day cause what would you have seen? Mall Christmas decorations, my lunch, the cat, um…that’s about it, oh well, dinner, wait, did I have dinner last night? hmm…I had the stir fry, oh! I had a totally delish small milkshake, so because of the milkshake I didn’t do dinner…so yeah, not a lot of great pictures would have come from yesterday. I’ll attempt to make next Wednesday mildly more interesting so I have some decent images to upload.

For today I have to tell you about a yum dinner I made, a salmon steak with maple smoked apple something or other sauce with roasted sliced yam and roasted red and yellow peppers on the side. It was tasty and, the best part! *drumroll* I cooked it myself! Yeah, that’s right, you read that right, I cooked it! In my kitchen, with my stove, served on my dishes! Perhaps this is the start of getting back to normal eating? I’d like to think so. 🙂 Tomorrow I can eat dinner at work but I’m going to attempt to remember to cook an egg for breakfast, here’s hoping I remember and don’t automatically go for a Clif Bar lol. 😛

Oh, a little sidenote, I was watching the movie Oceans 12 today (watched Oceans 11 last night) and seeing Brad Pitt eating something totally delish looking in every freakin scene has totally made me hungry! So not fair! Grr Brad Pitt, Grr! (I don’t really mean the “Grr” I still luv ya! lol)

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Apps for Weight Loss Part 2

10 Dec

Finally! The second Weight Loss App blog review, I know you were all just diiiiieing for this! 😉 lol

This app is so much fun it makes me want to go to the gym just so I have an excuse to use it, talk about weird motivation to work out lol This app is:

Gym Goal

Because you’re wondering, it is free. I’m pretty sure there is an upgrade option so you can get it without ads but that would undoubtedly involve money and I am cheap…and poor… 😛

When you open it up the home screen gives you options to look at your workout routines, your history, a list of exercises for cardio and strength training, a body map, your measurements (eek!) and tools. There is a 4 step process that the main page tells you to follow, which I have partly done…hey, I said it made me want to go to the gym and workout not that I’d had time or the ability to get to the gym and workout lol It wants you to enter your workout routine (you can custom make one or tell the app what you want to focus on and accomplish and it will create a routine for you), place the routine into the front page schedule, log your workout and use the history button to track your progress. Fairly simple.

At first you might be all, so what? I can put in my measurements and it can help me design and track a workout, big deal, I could do that!

Here is the fun part!

It has videos showing you how to do all the different exercises, er, the weight exercises that is, not the cardio…if you can’t figure out how to run by now, well, I worry for you and not about your fitness level…

Soooo, if you hit Body Map it brings up a picture of a guy but it’s a muscle view, not a look-he-has-skin view, then you pick a body part and it brings up a list of exercises for that muscle. It gives multiple options for the same exercise, by that I mean for arm curls it gives you the option to choose arm curls with: barbell, cable, cable one arm, dumbbell incline, dumbbell seated, dumbbell standing…it continues on with different types of curls (ex. concentration, preacher etc) but I’m sure you get the point. 🙂 From there, I can select any of the versions of the exercise I am interested in and it will take me to a video that shows a guy (with skin and clothes this time!) performing the exercise you chose. The video plays in a loop until you tell it to stop and the dude moves decently slow so you can really see the form, there is also a written description of what you should do which will also help you get the right form.

There are also little things like daily tips, one is a Fit Tip, one is a Muscle Tip (well,  today anyways, I can’t remember if the tips are the same topics daily, guess I’ll find out tomorrow lol) todays tips are both things I already know but having knowledge re-enforced can’t be a bad thing, right?

In the tools section you can do all your backing up to server stuff but you can also read articles on how to work out to build muscle, how to work out to rid yourself of fat and information about protein…all good types of info to have access too. 🙂

In the measurements section you (obviously) can put in your measurements, not just for the normally measured body parts but also things like your neck, shoulder, forearm, wrist, calf…probably more important if you are looking to build muscle but also good if you are looking to lose weight cause if you are tracking not just via a number on a scale but by inches lost this will give you a better picture of where you are losing. There is also a lil camera icon so I’m thinking you can take a pic of each body part to help with the tracking of progress. A little lower down that screen you can put in your One Repetition Max, Target Heart Rate, Body Mass Index, Basal Metabolic Rate, Total Daily Energy Expenditure and Body Fat Percentage. Some of these provide you with information on how to officially get the data, like the target heart rate it says to get the Max Heart Rate you should ask your doc for a cardiac stress test, it also says if you want to do it yourself get a doctor’s ok first (I’m thinking because you’re kinda killing yourself to get this info and I guess if you fall off the treadmill cause you’re having a heart attack they don’t want to be liable lol). Some of them you just have to enter info and it will calculate for you, so, for your BMI you put in your height, weight and age OR your weight and body fat percentage and boom! BMI right there on your screen. Easy peasy!

This app is a lot of fun to play with, and when I discovered the videos showing the different exercises I was psyched, that was when I got all I wanna go to the gym now! The reason? Simple, my form when using free weights is always something I worry about so having the written description and the video to help me with that makes me want to go to the gym with my phone and see if I can perform the various exercises the way the information says too lol. I guess  I want to compare myself to the dude on the screen, *rolls eyes* go ahead, call me a geek, see if I care lol 😉

I tried the option of letting the app pick a work out routine for me, I told the app I wanted a full body workout, intermediate level, with free weights and I liked what it came up with. Most of the exercises it picked I know how to do and I agree they are what I need to be getting back to doing. There are a couple I am not familiar with but that’s good I think, I get to learn something new and I’ll be working muscles that I was possibly overlooking before…ok, to be honest I don’t think I was overlooking them cause the exercises it chose that I haven’t done work out muscles that I work out using different exercises, but like I said, change is good. 🙂

This app has a lot to play with and I’d recommend fiddling around with it for a couple hours or so to fully understand it and be able to utilize it to its full ability, or as full of an ability as you want to lol. I know there is a timer in there so when you’re working out it can let you know how long to rest between sets, I’m thinking I’ll find that when I actually you know, work out and tell it I am working out lol

There we have it, the two apps I am going to be using in an effort to get myself back on track with my weight loss and physical fitness. They are both fairly easy to use, informative, fun-ish and if you actually work out and use the apps I bet they will both be helpful…I can’t claim that yet though since I haven’t ya know, been using them all that much yet…oops? 😉

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Loss

7 Dec

I had a great post for today, inspiration came to me last night for the topic and I was all psyched to write it but today I got sad news and now I’m having trouble organizing thoughts in my head let alone write a coherent blog post about what all of a sudden seems so trivial.

Someone I know died, not today, one day ago, but today is when I got told. I didn’t know her an exceptionally long time, almost six months, but I don’t think the depth of our feelings towards someone always need an especially long time to form. Sometimes you just happen to meet someone you connect with. She was older then me, had lived a long and full life, spent the end surrounded by those who loved her and took care of her even while she managed to maintain her independence. She was a character, someone whose personality is so large you always notice when she enters a room, it’s amazing how large of a presence she has considering she is such a tiny lady…I guess that should actually be how large of a presence she had considering she was such a tiny lady…past tense sucks.

It’s not like this is the first person I know whose died, nor (obviously) will it be the last (unless of course I die in my sleep tonight before anyone else I know has a chance to beat me to the other side but odds are doubtful since I’m fairly healthy). I’m unsure of myself with this mourning process, when I got told I didn’t cry, I didn’t all of a sudden have to sit, I didn’t have any reaction other then a softly said “oh no” and a quick shutting down of all emotions. I was in public, at work, at the beginning of my shift, an outburst of emotion would not of been appropriate so I shut it down before I had a chance to feel anything. Now, hours after my shift ended I keep thinking about it, it revolves around and around in my head, my memories of her.

I don’t pray, I have no rituals to get me through this, no fake comfort to draw on, no one to turn to, it is just me, sitting with thoughts of her in my head, thinking about how I didn’t get to say goodbye and how our last conversation wasn’t anything special, just an ordinary short conversation. She most likely didn’t even realize how fond of her I was, I hope she maybe had an inkling, a tiny hint of how great I thought she was, every time I saw her a huge smile came to my face and she always had one in return, maybe she knew from my smile? I don’t know. I’ll never know.

She went from healthy to a little health scare to dead in a week and a half, how does that happen so quickly? Not giving anyone a chance to say goodbye. Not that I wish she had a long lingering death but maybe just one more day of health so I could have seen her and talked to her once more, and how selfish is that of me? Thinking of myself when I only knew her six months, how much worse this all must be for her family, those who knew her their entire lives, who had memories going back fifty years or more. How do you accept and adjust your life to the loss of someone you knew for so long? I had trouble each and every time someone I knew died, but for the most part those people weren’t daily or even weekly fixtures in my life so my day to day existence didn’t register a change, but her daughters who saw her all the time, talked to her on the phone everyday, how do they rearrange their thoughts to accommodate this change? I guess they just will, not like they have a choice. And while they grieve, loudly or quietly, in public or private, with others or alone, I hope they realize that others also mourn the loss of this wonderful woman, this lady who brought a smile to people’s faces, who took her own approach to life and screw anyone who tried to judge her, who was fearless and funny and quirky and who will be missed, even by those who show no emotion to the news and who in public anyways will seem utterly unaffected by her absence.

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Different People Different Portions

6 Dec

I find it interesting how who I eat a meal with can affect what I think a proper portion of food is. I know that all food can be measured out and the “real” proper portion size found but that doesn’t usually happen when eating in a restaurant or at a friends place or when a friend is eating at your place…in fact, there are a lot of situations where you can’t actually measure/weigh the food so you have to eyeball it and hope you are sorta right. Usually in those instances I tend to eat less just to be on the safe side, after all, I’d rather go a bit hungry and know I didn’t eat a ridiculous amount of food then feel overly full and wonder just how many calories I consumed…but that is not how everyone approaches food.

I ate lunch out today with three friends, my credit card was very happy that it was considered a “working lunch” so one of the guys paid for everyone so he can write it off in his taxes, go taxes! lol The group of us went for sushi and there I am reading the menu, my eyes being immediately drawn to some of my favourite dishes and trying to decide what to order. My first thought was I’d get some agedashi tofu (spicy of course!), sashimi and a sushi roll. Thank god I didn’t order first! The first person to order got a mango and avocado salad, now, we all know a salad in a sushi restaurant is not like a salad in say, Original Joe’s, her salad was super duper tiny, just some slices of fruit piled on top of each other with some sprouts underneath…not my idea of a salad but oh well. Thing is, when I heard her order that and only that I was all “oh crap, I can’t order three things, I’ll look like a freakin pig!” The next person to order got two sushi rolls and some miso soup, that made me feel a bit better, least she got two things (three technically cause she got two orders of rolls but she got the same kind twice so it doesn’t feel like it should count somehow…) My turn! Big breath, I can do this, I can order without looking like a pig, right??? I got an appetizer sashimi and one sushi roll, phew, that’s not so bad, go me! 🙂 The fourth person ordered two rolls I think…so, except for the person who just got the tiny salad we all got roughly the same amount of food, and of course in the spirit of sushi we all tried each others – don’t you love that about sushi? 😀

Afterwards though it really got me thinking, some friends I know would have looked at what we each individually ordered and been appalled at the lack of food. They would have ordered 3-4 items for themselves and expected everyone else to do the same, and even then they might still order a second round of food later because to them, that is normal portion sizes.

All foods are like this, not just sushi, people have different ideas of what is a “normal” amount of food to order or cook and it can be hard when eating with someone who has a drastically different portion size in mind because either someone ends up feeling starved or someone ends up feeling obligated to eat more then they want…neither is a good spot to be in. You’d think people could just be happy with letting the others at the table eat the amount they are comfortable eating but nope, generally that doesn’t happen…why can’t that happen??? *confused face*

I can actually divide the people in my life via portion sizes ordered/eaten at restaurants. It’s kind of funny, and really indicative of what career path that person has chosen. Everyone I know who acts orders small, just like today at lunch. We are all actors, we all have to think not only what do we look like in real life but on camera and so we all tend to order small. I think actors also tend to be more cautious about what they will eat in front of other actors just because you don’t want to be judged or thought negatively about because you ate too much. Hey, it’s a visual media, it’s just how it goes, shrug. But my friends who don’t act tend to order/cook larger amounts of food. So, when I am with my non acting friends if I am not careful I tend to match how much I eat to how much they eat which in the long term? not a good way to go. In the short term though, sooooooo nice to order a pasta dish and not ask for half of it to be automatically put in a to go box and to get a salad with dressing (even if I do put it on the side lol) I love going out to eat with my friends who aren’t going to look at my plate and judge me because I ate everything on it, or who might raise their eyebrows at me because I ate carbs, or used dressing or whatever. At the same time though, some people I know push food at me and it makes it really hard. If food is pushed at me I tend to eat even less of it because I don’t like having someone trying to force me to eat an amount of food they think is right. If my stomach holds less than yours, or I am less willing to overeat at a meal or eat a meal sized portion of something that is bad for me I don’t want you demanding, forcing, cajoling me in to eating more then what I say I want. Just respect my food limits and maybe I’ll stop judging you for eating what I think is way too much food. 😛

Sorry, this turned in to a bit of a rant and I didn’t mean it to, food is just a sensitive subject with me and since I’ve been trying to get my food balance back lately I’ve been more aware of just how out of whack it got due to the influence of others. Not cool. 😦

I know some people say eat whatever you want as long as you work it off, that is a myth and not a healthy way to live. Stuffing your body is not good for your body, it over taxes your system, you store too much of the food as fat (even if you don’t look fat you can have health issues related to obesity because you are a skinny-fat person…hey, totally a real thing!) and to top it off over eating messes with the chemicals released in your brain and your energy levels and all kinds of things. I know under eating isn’t good either but that’s why I am trying to find my food balance again, I used to have it, in the old apartment, when I had my eating plan and exercise routine all worked out…I’ve really got to get back to that because this up and down way of eating I am doing right now isn’t any better for me then under eating at every meal or over eating at every meal. Man, it sucks that food can be so hard sometimes, sigh.

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Wordless Wednesday – My First!

5 Dec
What I opened my eyes to, so cute!

What I opened my eyes to, so cute!

 

My oh so healthy breakfast; tea and a Clif Bar!

My oh so healthy breakfast; tea and a Clif Bar!

 

 

Shopping with a friend, man this store is dangerous lol

Shopping with a friend, man this store is dangerous lol

 

Lunch - waaaaay too much food!

Lunch – waaaaay too much food!

 

 

What I wasn't able to eat...

What I wasn’t able to eat…

 

Dinner, a yummy Tuscan Tomato and Basil Bisque and of course my diet coke.

Dinner, a yummy Tuscan Tomato and Basil Bisque and of course my diet coke.

 

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Fully Baked

4 Dec

No, not me! eesh, like if I was I’d blog about that?? 😉

The potato I had for a late dinner tonight, it was baked, in my oven, in my new apartment – the first thing to get put in the oven since I moved here, yah me for cooking! Well, ok, it barely counts as cooking, just like boiling some pasta and throwing a jar of pasta sauce on top of it doesn’t count as cooking either but hey, it’s the little steps! lol

It’s weird, I used to cook everyday, but since moving in to this apartment I barely use the kitchen, and when I do it’s to make tea, Mmm tea 🙂

First it was because when I moved my stuff in I blocked off the stove and could only open the fridge wide enough to squeeze out a small bottle of diet coke. You’d think I’d move the stuff in the kitchen so I could access those two appliances fairly quickly, but nope, not me, didn’t see the point. For the first week or so of living here I survived off of Clif Bars and diet coke, so healthy huh? Then I got some food in, actually wait, did I? Huh, no, I actually didn’t. I ate at work or grabbed take out or ate with friends and brought back left overs, but didn’t stock up the kitchen. I take some sort of weird pride out of my almost empty fridge, like the less items I have on the shelves the better. I don’t know where that mind set came from and really, I don’t care enough to track down its origin within my brain, it is just there, shrug.

But the other day I went grocery shopping, I was actually going specifically for milk for my tea (Mmm tea! lol) and while I was there I meandered on over to the produce section. I wasn’t really in a shopping frame of mine, well, food shopping, if it had been shoes or clothes or that ring I saw on ebay I really want then I’m sure I’d of dived right in to the shopping experience, but food? Nah. On a whim I decided to get a potato, I’d gotten the image of a baked potato in my head earlier that day and I guess it stuck enough that I was still semi-thinking about it when I was in the shop. Well, if I am going to bake a potato I need toppings for it right? Right! I already had cheese but I required maple flavoured baked beans to make this meal perfect. Don’t make that face! I can practically hear you making a cringy face and going “maple flavoured baked beans on a baked potato???? gross!” to that I say “don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!” 😛

I love anything maple, yummmm! and maple baked beans are a particular favourite, they are made by Heinz, go Heinz! lol They have other flavoured baked beans if maple isn’t your thing, but, well, how could maple not be your thing? *confused face* It had been so long since I baked a potato (I wasn’t allowed them on my most recent meal plan and they have remained on my personal list of “don’t touch that food!”) that I actually had to google how to bake a potato, lame. Luckily, I found a great site, not like baking a potato is hard *rolls eyes* but they had some ideas I hadn’t heard of before and I quite like how the potato turned out. Basically, oven at 425F, scrub clean the potato, stab potato, rub potato with olive oil, sprinkle some salt and pepper on it, place on tin foil that is on a baking tray, stick in oven. It takes 50-60 minutes in the oven, remember to turn the potato every 20 minutes and occasionally stab it to check on its progress. Easy peasy!

My addition of course is to heat up the baked beans so when the potato is done I can cut it open, put some cheese on it, drown it in baked beans and then settle down to a nice cozy yummy dinner. 🙂

The result had a nice crunchy skin and fluffy inside. 🙂 I think I will skip the salt and pepper next time though, I never use salt in anything, seriously, never. I am not that person who feels salt needs to be added to every freakin dish to provide some flavour. I generally like how foods taste when they taste like themselves, not when they taste like salty versions of themselves…this seems to be something not many people agree with me about, ah well, it’s good to be different lol.  I found the salt and pepper taste to be quite strong and I didn’t use all that much, I guess it is because I so rarely use pepper and never use salt that my taste buds notice them quite easily. For the most part though I could drown out the salt and pepper flavour by making sure some cheese and baked beans were on the spoon with the potato.

I suppose I should get back in to the swing of things cooking wise. Don’t really have the excuse of not being able to access my fridge or stove anymore but, sigh, I got so used to not cooking that the idea of doing it again, on a daily basis, *groan* is enough to make me take a deep sigh and contemplate living off of Clif Bars again. 😛 Well, Clif Bars and maybe a multi-vitamin or something…

😉

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The Skinny on Juice Diets/Cleanses

3 Dec

Ok, let me warn you right off I have no solution for this debate, the end of this post will not reveal the amazing truth about juice cleanses and if they are actually good or bad, this is really just me yapping about them and trying to figure out just how good or bad they might be…

The idea of doing a juice cleanse/diet came to me when out with a friend last night, she had read up on one (I’m not sure which specific one) and was saying how she was going to do this for a month or so just to get rid of that final bit of weight. Now, she is not fat, nowhere near! But like me she acts which means there is even more pressure to be super thin then what the average non-acting person feels, which is pretty freaky when you think about how much pressure the non-acting person feels, especially women, but that is a topic for another day! 😛

So, she’s talking a bit about this and it got me thinking, maybe that is what I need, something drastic, something I have never done, something that will get me over that bump in the road, and hey, even if it doesn’t work no damage done right? Welllllll, maybe not “right”, maybe, depending on which article you read, maybe really wrong! Oh dear.

I’ve read a whole wackload of articles, checked out a bunch of websites (that seem to be run by fanatics from one or the other side of the juice fence) and have ended up confused. What the hell? I am an educated, decently smart, grown woman, and yet, I can’t figure out which articles to put more faith in, which side to give my vote for, how is this possible?

Well, it’s possible because nobody seems to want to give an unbiased opinion or refer to unbiased research or references. The topic of juice cleanses/diets really seems to bring out the fanatics and everyone knows you can’t trust them, anyone who claims anything is all good or all bad and has no wiggle room and isn’t open to listening to other opinions is not giving you the whole truth, how can they be when they are blocking it even from themselves?

Which means, brace yourself for this, I’m on my own when it comes to making this decision, *dun dun dun* This is not a good place to be! If so many of the articles I read hadn’t said that doing a juice cleanse doesn’t only slow down your metabolism but can also stop it almost all together (a sentence that made my blood run cold!) and that your body starts using your muscle to feed itself (which means all that weight work down the tubes!) aaaaand that you only lose water weight which you will of course gain back once you start eating like a normal person again (or as close to normal as you get…although, with how obese North America is what is normal and do we want to be eating that way? hmm…) well, then I’d be jumping on the bandwagon no problem. I have no issue doing something that may be considered an unhealthy way to lose weight, I’ve done the healthy route, I lost a bunch of weight that way and am keeping it off (which is awesome) but I’ve been stuck at this weight for a year and no matter what healthy route I try nothing happens (or what does happen is so tiny of a change and reverts back if I even so much as look at a cinnamon bun) that there doesn’t seem to be any point, sigh. The problem with healthy routes to weight loss is that they are intended to get you to a healthy weight, well, I am technically aiming for being underweight (hey, don’t judge me, that is the industry I am in) and I’ve finally come to the conclusion that to get to a weight that health people say is unhealthy (I’m only talking like ten pounds underweight people so don’t go freaking out or anything as you read this) I’m going to have to do something unhealthy. I don’t know what took me so long to come to this conclusion, why I didn’t see the logical route to my goal a year ago, but I see it now. 🙂

The articles still don’t help me though…I am so pumped full of health and fitness information from all the books, articles, websites etc I researched and studied since starting my weight loss journey that I read the deets on a juice cleanse and all I see are the ways in which it is bad for me *rolls eyes* All that sugar, ugh, no protein, hmm, fruit and veg have lots of carbs, oh dear…and what about food groups? and portions? and sustainability? (by that I mean, can I do a juice cleanse everyday for the rest of my life? uh, by the way, the answer is no!) How is this a good option? What weight I do lose won’t be “real weight”, it’ll be water weight and loss of muscle mass, which means as soon as I start eating again, even if I eat super duper healthy my body will be so happy to have food in it again and so worried I might turn in to an evil dictator and force it to survive on just juice again that whatever I do eat will be tucked away as fat and held on to for dear life. Erg…

But! My brain keeps thinking, if I can manage to lose even just 5 pounds doing a juice cleanse who cares where the weight came off it’s off and surely there is some way to keep it off, extra gym sessions or cutting back on calories or something…

I keep circling around the same pro and con arguments in my head, I know logically why the juice route won’t help me long term, but I also don’t care about long term, I care about now and right now I need to lose ten to fifteen pounds and this seems a quick route to do it…yin and yang, up and down, black and white, I could argue both sides of the juice cleanse/diet for hours and still be nowhere…told you I wouldn’t have a solution for you! 😉

Lil sidenote, something I found entertaining, an article I was reading that was listing all the reasons juice cleanses/diets are bad had an ad on the side for some pomegranate drink that will apparently make me look better naked…gotta love the health/diet industry, even while they are saying a certain system doesn’t work they are making money from that system via advertising or whatnot. 😛

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