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Vegetarian Lasagna

21 May

Tonight for dinner I made Vegetarian Lasagna. I got the recipe from a friend, she made it one night when I was over at her place and it was oh so yummy. She’s really good in the kitchen whereas I am so-so. I thought since I watched her make the lasagna, I had a copy of the recipe that she had sent me right in front of me, and there was no meat I could probably make this dish without screwing up too badly lol

Well…it wasn’t hard to make, though I made some rookie mistakes that I will correct next time (if there is a next time!) but despite it not being that hard to make it wasn’t anywhere near as good as when she made it. Le sigh.

The layers go like this:

Noodles

Sauce

Sliced yams

Noodles

Sauce

Ricotta cheese

Mushrooms

Noodles

Sauce

Zucchini

Red and yellow peppers

Onion

Yams

Mushrooms

Sauce

Noodles

Sauce

Ricotta cheese

Lots of layers!

I used the Compliments brand Oven Ready Pasta, the Compliments brand Six Vegetable Pasta Sauce and some randomly chosen brand of Ricotta cheese…I figured all ricotta cheese options would be the same, regardless of the brand. Actually, I figured that about the pasta and the sauce also so I chose Compliments brand because it was the cheapest lol 😛

2015-05-21 19.10.15

Side view

Side view

It didn’t plate well, at least the first piece didn’t…

2015-05-21 19.32.20

The first piece basically became a mooshed all over the place mess, there was definite structural integrity issues. sigh. I figured every piece would be like that but when I was putting the left overs in tupperware it held together a lot better so maybe the mess you see above is just a casualty of being the first piece taken out of the dish?

Like I said, it didn’t taste as good as when my friend made it, I’m not sure what I did wrong…maybe I missed some seasoning or something…I know I didn’t use as much cheese and sauce as her, she just sorta put it on until it looked right whereas I measured everything so I knew exactly how good/bad the end result would be calorie wise lol

Even though it wasn’t as good as KL’s version it was still good, all those veggies, how could it not be? 😉 I’m pretty certain you could use any combo of veggies you like, personalize it to your taste buds. 🙂 It took almost 40 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees. That’s one of the things I would change next time, I’d cook it at 350 instead because some of the noodles got really burnt, and I don’t mean burnt but still tasty, I’m talking burnt so they are so hard it hurt my teeth when I bit down. Not cool.

Despite some issues that stop the lasagna from being as good as it could be I am happy with it. It made 8 portions which is great because I froze some and put the rest in the fridge, I plan on using it as meals for when I am at work over the next 4 days, yay for pre-cooked meals! 🙂

Oh, and in case you are following the Weight Watchers Points Plus program, one serving is 5 points.

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A Healthy Muffin

26 Feb

Someone I know from work is following Weight Watchers and she was telling me about a muffin recipe she has, from Weight Watchers, that tastes good, is only two points per muffin, and the best part is the muffins are a decent size so you don’t feel like you’re wasting those two points.

She sent me the recipe and I gave it a whirl, it is dead easy! I’ll make a page for it under the recipe tab up top for easy reference but I’ll write it out here also so you don’t have to go searching for it today…

Chocolate Raspberry Weight Watchers Muffin

Prep Time 10 minutes, Cook Time 22 minutes, Serves 12, Weight Watchers Points per muffin is 2

Ingredients:

1 Betty Crocker Super Moist Devil’s Food Cake Mix

1 Cup Raspberries

8 oz Unsweetened Applesauce

2 Small Zucchinis

5 tbsp Water

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400F

Spray a 12 cup muffin tin, or use two 6 cup muffin tins. Place dry cake mix in medium bowl. Grate 2 small zucchinis and squeeze out moisture. Add 1 Cup of raspberries and the grated zucchini to the dry cake mix. Mix thoroughly. Add 8 oz of unsweetened apple sauce and 5 tbsp of water. Mix well.

Use a 1/3 Cup measure to measure batter in to muffin tray.

Bake for 22 minutes. Let muffins rest 5 minutes then take them out of the muffin tin and cool on rack completely.

Chocolate Raspberry Muffins

Chocolate Raspberry Muffins

Voila!

Chocolate Raspberry Muffins you don’t have to feel guilty about! 😛

Pretty decent size, don't ya think?

Pretty decent size, don’t ya think?

So ok, they aren’t the prettiest things but meh, it all looks the same in the stomach lol They are an extremely moist muffin, as in super moist, I’m thinking because of the zucchini. Even though I pressed the grated zucchini to within an inch of its life and took out a lot of it’s moisture I think I could have taken out more. I was worried about taking out too much, I have learned that is not a valid concern lol You don’t taste the zucchini or the applesauce, which was a pleasant surprise.

I made some slight alterations, well, just one come to think of it. I didn’t use the Betty Crocker brand of cake mix, and can I say, buying a boxed cake mix felt like cheating! I never bake using a box, I always bake from scratch, so that part didn’t sit right with me but the first time I use a recipe I try to follow it to the letter and I guess they were going for the easiest possible baking experience, instead of you know, actually baking…I tend to think of using a boxed cake mix as more science experiment than baking but ok, I’ll stop my little rant about that now lol

Anyways! I bought a different brand, called Compliments! The exclamation point is part of the brand name, not because I’m so excited about it lol It is the “healthier version” provided by Safeway. You can find Compliments! foods all throughout the store, burger patties (which I have and omg they are sooooo delish!), I’ve seen it as cookies, um, crackers and I’m sure many more things. I checked the nutritional information and it was slightly more healthy than the Betty Crocker version so I opted for that, figured any little way to make it an even healthier recipe has to be a good change, right? Oh, and it was cheaper lol

I took the majority of the muffins to work and the reactions from people were positive, everyone was really impressed with how moist the muffins are considering they are a “healthy” muffin. I’m going to make a second batch, use up the rest of the applesauce cause no way I’m going to eat that as is, ugh, and freeze them. That way I’ll have an easy to grab food item stored in the freezer when I’m in a rush. 🙂 I was originally thinking I’d use them as I was dashing out of the house in the morning if I needed a quick breakfast but they are a tad rich for a first thing in the morning food, in my opinion, so I’ll probably end up eating them as an afternoon snack or dessert which is not a bad thing at all. 🙂

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Care Package From Across The Pond

6 Dec

I have awesome relatives over in England whom I adore, and not just because they send me junk food, though that does help! lol 😉

My cousin sent me a care package that I received the other day. I wasn’t going to open it at first because I was thinking it was probably meant for Christmas but since I go to Alberta for Christmas I would of had to open it so I could pack the contents in my suitcase anyways so why not open it now?

She doesn’t use nearly as much packing tape as I do, which meant the opening process went super fast lol Here is what she sent me…

Junk food from the UK, score!

Junk food from the UK, score!

There are:

– two packages of Weight Watchers hot chocolate, flavoured like Jaffa Cakes

– two packages of Cheese & Onion flavoured crisps (those are potato chips)

– a Quality Street The Green Bar chocolate bar (hazlenut praline covered in milk chocolate)

– lots of Fox’s Party Rings (a type of cookie, a seriously delish cookie!)

– two packages of Weight Watcher’s cakes, one chocolate and one jam

– and a massive box of Jaffa Cakes (an even better cookie than the Party Rings, quite possibly the best cookie ever created!)

So yeah, talk about a box filled with magical wonders! 😀

I have already started in on the Party Rings, Mmm! I gave a sleeve of the Jaffa Cake cookies to a friend at work, she is from England but doesn’t have family there anymore so she doesn’t get lovely treats like I do. I am saving a sleeve of them for my trip home for Christmas, along with the chocolate bar, some of the Party Rings and both of the Weight Watcher’s cake packages. I’m not the only one on this side of the pond that likes these treats so I am opting to share them. Makes me sound so nice doesn’t it? It’s partly out of being nice and partly wanting to spare myself some calories *sheepish grin* lol

I sent the cousin that sent me these treats a care package also, it should be getting there soon-ish, hopefully it makes her as happy as her package to me made me! 🙂

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Back To What Worked

6 Dec

Waaaaay back, like 4 years ago, I started Weight Watchers. I didn’t go to meetings, I didn’t officially join, I got the books from my mother, the slider to calculate food points, a small notebook I could take everywhere and I started the program. If you really want to know how it went go to the very first post in this blog because that is when I started blogging. (First Post) I used this blog to hold myself accountable, since I wasn’t going to meetings or being an online member. I also blogged on an almost daily basis and listed each day what I ate, how many points it was, and if I was over, under or right on the dot with my daily points. Once I started exercising I also started blogging about that.

It was slow progress, as in suuuuper slow, my body did not want to lose the weight. I was hoping for losing two pounds a week and found I was lucky to lose one a week. Not because I was cheating, I was actually pretty good at following the plan, it was just how my body chose to be, shrug.

Well, after following Weight Watchers for hmm, a year and a bit I think, it stopped working for me. I hit a plateau and nothing I did would get my body to budge. It drove me nuts! And if staying at the same weight wasn’t bad enough, I started gaining weight! I wasn’t sure if what I was actually gaining was muscle since I was working out more, or if it was fat, all I knew was the number on the scale was freaking me out and I was having issues dealing with it.

That was when I realized Weight Watchers left me ill equipped to deal with eating healthy on my own. I didn’t really understand calories or fat grams since everything got converted to Weight Watchers points, I had no idea how many calories I should be eating, what I should be doing to get over the plateau, how or even if I should incorporate going no carb, or gluten free or any of the other fads out there. I felt adrift, with no rules to follow, no program to cling to and no idea how to continue on.

I know, I’m soooo dramatic! 😛 lol

Sooooooo dramatic!

Sooooooo dramatic!

I tried a variety of things once I stopped following Weight Watchers, none of them amazing. Mostly I focused on eating less, but ended up eating way under what I should be eating on a daily basis, and not really getting the right variety of food groups in my daily food, oops! A friend put me on a super strict eating plan, designed to get me lean, because the agent I had at the time wanted me 10-15lbs underweight even though I was at the low end of the weight range I am supposed to be at for my height. The problem with that plan was it is not possible to maintain long term. It was high protein, low carb, high healthy fat, which sounds great but the quantity I was allowed a day was quite small and left me hungry all the time.

When I started the job I am at now I fell off the wagon and fell hard. The plan is also strict about timing, timing between meals and timing of meals to when you exercise and my work schedule impeded that greatly. Combine that with being oh so amazingly strict and I’ve never been able to manage to get back on that plan.

Well, obviously the various things I have tried since falling off that plan didn’t really work. I am not as large as I was when I first started Weight Watchers all those years ago, but I am larger than I want to be, and I am pissed off at myself that I let myself gain some of that weight back. I worked so hard to lose that weight, and it took so freakin long to come off and what do I do? I let myself gain some of it back?? Idiot!

Calling myself names, and feeling bad about what I let happen will not create change. A friend and I have decided that instead of just talking about how we want to look different we are going to actually start working towards creating that change, novel idea huh? 😉

For me, this means going back to what once worked for me, that’s riiiiight, I am going to once again be Weight Watchering it! I know I said the program didn’t teach me how to lose or maintain weight or be healthy when not following the program, and I stick by that, however, when following Weight Watchers before it did work for a time. I am hoping it will work for me again and help me get a little more control over my eating plan and from there, well, I’ll have to figure something out lol 😛

So, I have dug out of the drawer my Weight Watchers books and also found the Points Calculator. I won’t be following the same Weight Watchers program I followed last time because there is a new program out, called Weight Watchers Points Plus and it works a little differently than the program I followed. There is a different way to calculate points, both the amount of points you get in a day and how many points a food is. I can use the calculator to track my points for the day and for the week, eliminating the need for the notebook, but I like being able to flip back and see my progress so I am sticking with using a notebook for tracking. Also, calculating how many points a food is will be a bit more complicated, in the old program you just needed the calories, fat and fiber but now you need more information, so its looking like the points calculator will become my new best friend lol

My Weight Watchers Stuff

My Weight Watchers Stuff

Don’t mind the cat’s leg in the picture, I couldn’t convince him to move, lol.

Today was my first day following the program, I can’t say for sure if I ate the right amount of points as some of the food didn’t have nutritional information so I had to estimate, but I figure it’s better to track and estimate and be close to my points than not be tracking or checking the food’s points values and leaving it all up to chance, right?

That being said, it is the end of the day and omg I am crazy hungry! *rolls eyes* I have a feeling I’m in for a rough first week…

im-so-hungry

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Halloween Candy Can Be Your Friend, Honest!

30 Oct

I know a lot of people who get all “omg keep the halloween candy away from me! danger! danger! ack!” but it doesn’t have to be like that, honest! 🙂

Unless you have the most amazing willpower ever you will, at some point, have a treat. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you aren’t over indulging and in general are eating in a healthy manor, treats can be your friend. If you don’t feel deprived, or like you aren’t allowed anything treat like, you’ll be less likely to ditch the diet or healthy eating plan (or whatever you want to call it) so that you can plow your way through a cake or a tub of ice cream.

The trick is to find ways to give yourself little treats that don’t completely derail your eating plan. There are lots of ways to do this! Think of small, portion packaged treats. 🙂

Weight Watchers makes all sorts of portion packaged treats, from chocolates to mini cakes to ice cream to, well, almost anything. I used to buy these…

So yummy. So hard to find.

So yummy. So hard to find.

They are by Whitman’s and it says right on the bag how many points per chocolate, within the bag each chocolate is individually wrapped so you don’t have to worry about the chocolates going stale if you don’t eat them quickly. They have a wide variety of flavours (as you can see from the above picture) and they are goooooood. Mmm! However, they are hard to find, at least where I live, sigh. There are a lot of Weight Watchers foods out there, but most of them are not in Canada. Why? I’m going with the world is a cruel place. 😉 lol  Really, I have no idea why every other country seems to have a wider variety of Weight Watcher’s foods in the stores than mine. When I would come across these I would stock up because there was no telling how long it would be before I would find them again.

Another option are these cute little mini ice creams. Ben & Jerry’s, Haagen-Daz and even Magnum all do mini sizes. I haven’t tried any of them because I have never seen them in stores. There is however a mini ice cream I have tried and really liked. It is by Nestle and looks like…

nestle sundae

Most of the flavours shown in that picture have not been in the stores when I’ve seen the Nestle ice creams lol and I can’t recall right now which of the flavours I have tried but they were good, and the perfect size. I would lean towards trying the ice creams that don’t have smarties or oreos or rolo etc in them as the added candy will just make it that much worse for you lol the ones I’ve eaten were more traditional flavoured ice creams.

Something I discovered at my friend’s place was a Costco find. I absolutely love the Brookside chocolate covered fruit, well, let’s be honest here, “fruit” pieces lol But whatever, they are so good! I have tried the pomegranate and the acai berry.

brookside

Only problem is they come in a fairly large bag and if you have problems with mindless eating, or aren’t good at portioning your food, or just kinda go over board, you could very easily eat waaaaaay too many of them. Well, my friend was at Costco and discovered Brookside sells their chocolate covered “fruit” in packages sized to put in lunch boxes. So you can grab one small package and have yourself a little treat while watching tv, or sneak it in to a movie theatre or have it as a snack at work.

I could go on with all these awesome mini food finds that are available year round but the point I am wanting to get to is this. Halloween candy is mini. It is perfect. If you are someone who likes chocolate bars, or tootsie rolls, or really, almost any type of candy, halloween can so be your friend. Think about it. Instead of indulging in a full sized Twix bar you can eat a mini one from the halloween candy stash, get the same yummy taste and enjoyment as the full sized bar but none of the guilt and nowhere near the same amount of calories. I know for a fact halloween candy can last an entire year. I don’t mean because of rationing it, I mean it will still be ok to eat in a year…which if you think about it, is kinda freaky…anything that lasts that long is unnatural, but hey, like that’s gonna stop any of us from occasionally eating it? Ha! 😛

So why not wait until the day after halloween, buy a big ol box of discounted halloween candy and use it throughout the year as your treat to yourself every now and then? When you really want that Kit-Kat, or Skittles or some other candy you can easily grab a mini version, enjoy, and not have any worries afterwards…just make sure to not eat it all at once! 😉

halloween candy

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The Smell of Stupid

2 Oct

You might not think that ‘stupid’ can have a smell, let me assure you, it can.

I was cooking dinner this evening and two things happened. The first is this semi-yummy meal…

Mmm, pasta, shrimp and veggies.

Mmm, pasta, shrimp and veggies.

It is Catelli Healthy Harvest pasta, no name mixed veggies, 9 frozen pre-cooked shrimp all mixed up with Classico Alfredo & Sun dried Tomato pasta sauce. I rate it a semi-yummy because I prefer a higher sauce-to-pasta ratio so to me it was a bit bland. I cooked 85 grams (1 cup) of pasta because the box said that is a serving, ummm, yeah, way too much! Next time I will half the amount I cook and that should be plenty, bonus is that I can keep the same amount of sauce (1/4 cup) and that should be a much better sauce-to-pasta ratio for me. 🙂

But really, the meal is not the most important thing that occurred during the cooking of dinner. This also happened…

How lovely, melted plastic!

How lovely, melted plastic!

Something you should know about my kitchen, I have almost no counter space. I don’t mean I have a normal sized counter and it is covered with stuff, I mean to the left of the sink I have a space wide enough to have two cups side-by-side (so, tiny space!) and to the right of the sink I have just enough space to hold a dish drainer…is that what it’s called? I mean the thing you put your just washed dishes in to so they can air dry. And that is it. That is all my counter space.

This means a lot of food prep happens on top of the stove because there is nowhere else to do it.

Soooo, this evening I have water in a pot coming to a boil on one front element, on a back element I have a pan heating up to eventually cook the shrimp in and on the other front element I have my kitchen scale, which I am using to measure out my veggies. The veggies are kept frozen so I kept having to pause in the pouring of them in to the bowl that is on top of the scale so I can hit the bag against the edge of the sink in an effort to break them apart.

Then…the smell starts. It doesn’t smell good. I couldn’t figure out what it was, none of my food should smell like that, but I don’t have any candles burning, nor is anything else in the apartment creating a smell, so what the heck is it?

Even though I don’t like the smell I can’t figure out what it is so I keep doing what I am doing, figuring whatever is causing the smell will stop eventually, or make itself known.

I take a look at the pan on the back burner and realize it isn’t warming up, which makes me take a look at the stove knobs which made me realize holy shit I’d turned on the front element and was cooking my kitchen scale! Ack!

I immediately pulled the scale off the burner and strings of melted plastic spread from the bottom of the scale to the element, like melted cheese on a pizza, but smellier.

Sigh.

I put the scale upside down on the edge of the sink, I couldn’t think of any better place it should be put to cool down lol and stared at it in horror. Horror! This oh-so-awesome scale was a gift from my brother yeeeeears ago! I’ve been using this scale at least 7 years…holy crap I feel old now…but that’s besides the point! This scale is awesome, and I cooked it! Who does that?!?! 😦

Not gonna lie, I started to get upset not only because I was stupid and cooked the scale but because now I was going to have to try to find money to buy a new scale asap so I can keep on with weighing out my food, sigh. Then I remembered I have a back-up scale, yay! Couple years or so ago my mom got given a scale from a friend and she passed it on to me, it is a Weight Watchers scale that can calculate the points of a food while it is on the scale, cool huh? I didn’t use it because I wasn’t following Weight Watchers at the time and if I did need to weigh something, well, I already had a scale, shrug. Me being me though I kept the WW scale, in the box, in perfect condition, in a rubbermaid container where it would be safe.

Point to me for keeping the scale! 🙂

I pulled the WW scale out of storage after I finished dinner and was so close to being relieved when I realized it didn’t have a battery and it takes a 9V battery, not exactly something I just randomly have lying around. I know, I’m so weird right? 😉 lol

But fear not! When I went to put my dishes in the sink I tested the scale. It had cooled off so I flipped it over and tried turning it on and holy crap it works! Wowza! 😀 I cooked the scale so much I can see clear through to it’s innards but that sucker still works! Talk about quality made! lol

Now all I have to do is figure out how to get the melted plastic that has become one with the burner off the burner…and ideas?

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Admitting The Truth

6 Jun

I didn’t think I was that person who lost weight, then gained it back. After all, I’m nowhere near the size I was at the beginning of my weight loss journey buuuut…I’m also not the smallest I have been on this journey.

I haven’t wanted to admit this to myself, let alone to anyone else, but it is time I faced the truth…I rebounded a bit. Does this mean I am now a yo-yo dieter? I dunno. Does it mean I am doomed to gain back all the weight I lost? I dunno. Does this mean I am destined to gain and lose and gain and lose for the rest of my life? I don’t know that either…sigh.

Seems there is a lot I don’t know.

I know that I have to get back on track, but I feel lost and not sure how to do that. I keep thinking I am not going to go back to Weight Watchers because I plateaued so badly on that program. Don’t get me wrong, I am super grateful for Weight Watchers, I lost 35 pounds with them, I learned about proper portion sizes with them, I learned I can happily swap out junk food for fresh fruit and enjoy healthy eating but I also feel there are limitations to that program and that I outgrew it. I don’t feel like going back to Weight Watchers is the right choice for me but that doesn’t mean that I know what the right choice for me is.

I also know I am not good at extreme programs. I can only maintain eating paleo, or the bodybeach program, or super restrictive low calorie eating plans for so long before I cave. Even if I like the food and am getting good portion sizes it is more about all the foods I am not allowed to eat. Knowing that on an extreme program having even one spoonful of peanut butter could be considered cheating messes with me. I need a bit of wiggle room, space so I don’t get all down on myself when I step outside of the food rules that I am following.

I need something realistic, and affordable!

My scale has been tucked away for over a year and I am scared to pull it back out, I am scared to see what the number will be when I step on it. I’d rather be back in boxing class getting hit during sparring than stand on that scale again. How pathetic is that?? I originally put it away because I was building muscle and the scale number was no longer an accurate way to measure my progress. It was sloooowly going up as I was getting more trim and it was messing with my head. For so long I relied solely on the number it gave me every week to know if I was doing well and to see it go up, even though I knew it was because of muscle gain, made me feel like a failure. I started gauging my success/failure by other means, how my clothes fit, what size I could now buy, every now and then I would check my size with a measuring tape. For a while these methods of tracking worked but then they didn’t work so well anymore and I was left with no solid way to hold myself accountable.

I’m thinking that is around the time I started to slowly go up in size. For a while it was easy to ignore, my clothes still fit, just maybe a bit tighter, I could still reach the same levels at the gym, even though I wasn’t at the gym as often, I was eating roughly the same amount calorie wise but the calories were coming from more processed foods than fresh healthy foods.  The pounds snuck up on me and now I have to face reality that I have gone up an entire size, so that’s what, ten pounds? That’s depressing. All that work I did to lose weight and I have gone and gained some of it back. What was I thinking?! 

What’s twisted is that even with the weight gain I am more active then before, just in different ways. Instead of going to the gym daily I will swap out gym visits for a hike, or a run or my dragon boat practice. I am still active just not in a regimented gym equipment kind of way, and I guess the activities I am doing now aren’t as good for weight loss or weight maintenance as following a gym program is. Kinda sucks cause I enjoy the hikes an such but if I have to choose between enjoying the activity and getting results from the activity I will choose results every time…well, except for dragon boating, I will always choose dragon boating lol.

I don’t want to be writing this, I don’t want to be that person that gained weight back. But ya know, I follow a lot of other blogs that deal with weight loss, healthy lifestyles etc and I’ve noticed over the years I don’t seem to be the only one this happens to. It seems a lot of people, before they reach their goal weight have a slip up and gain some of the weight back. Most take a while to admit it to themselves and the longer you take to admit it the more weight you have gained back. I know with me part of it was the way I was thinking about food, I started getting cocky, thinking I didn’t have to be as strict cause I’d lost so much, I could let down my guard a bit. Well, proved that idea wrong! I let down my guard and look what happened! 😛

Even though I’m feeling down because I am facing the truth about my weight gain I am glad I am facing this truth now rather than a couple more months down the road when I will have possibly gained back even more weight.

I don’t have a solution for this, I wish I was concluding this post with some great awesome plan that would get me back on track but I don’t have one…yet! For now I am going to aim to get a new battery for my scale (mine died) and I plan to stand on that scale Tuesday morning. I also have a 4 week eating plan that I am going to research a bit more, see if it is doable on my budget, and I am going to schedule exercise into my days instead of leaving it as an up-in-the-air thing that happens more sporadically then it should. Hopefully I can get myself back on track within 5 days or so and huh, look at that, I may not have a solution yet but it seems like I actually do have a bit of a plan, at least a plan in the making…I’ll cross my fingers it works!…Uh, anybody wanna step on that scale for me? 😉 lol

Must remember this

Must remember this

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Mail Day!

26 May

It’s not often I get fun stuff in the mail, usually I’m getting hounding letters from the student loan people, bank statements, boring stuff. But today I got two fun things, yay! 🙂

The first is a package my parents sent me, it had a letter written by both of them, newspaper clippings, some Weight Watcher info in case I wanna try again aaaaaand a package that came to them but is for me. That package within the package was the tab for my BMO Run medal! Yippee! The back of my medal has a spot that has been waiting oh-so-impatiently for the tab to fit in it. The tab shows my name and my official finish time, which is good cause otherwise I’d forget lol. 😛 I want to show you a picture but my full name is on there soooooo sorry but the picture of it won’t be put on here. Don’t be offended, I still love ya! 😉

The next package had this:

First is the postal envelope...

First is the postal envelope…

 

Then comes the pretty envelope...

Then comes the pretty envelope…

 

And finally the super pretty wedding invitation is revealed!

And finally the super pretty wedding invitation is revealed!

 

It is my cousin’s wedding invitation! I knew it would get here eventually, and I already knew I was going to the wedding, heck, I planned an entire trip to the UK around this wedding, but getting the invitation was still exciting lol It made it that much more real. 🙂

The mail was pretty much the highlight of my day today…is that sad? I’m gonna pretend that isn’t sad lol 😉 I had a super busy work day, I hate when I have to actually work at work, sigh. Then I did some quick grocery shopping, or at least it would have been quick if I knew what a zucchini looked like (don’t fret, I got help and now I know!), then homeward bound was I. My landlady was in the backyard when I got home so I chatted with her for a while then eventually made it inside to my little slice of personal space. I was hungry enough to want to gnaw my own arm off (well ok, not quite that hungry but getting there!) so I made a super fast meal of maple flavoured baked beans on toast. Mmm! I love how it is a classic British dish but I Canadian-ize it by using the maple flavoured baked beans, it’s the best of both sides of the pond! lol

Since then I have done nothing interesting which would be why the opening of mail was the highlight of my day *rolls eyes*. Never fret, I will have more interesting days later this week, I’m just getting a bit of a slow start to the week is all, resting up for the really good stuff…or something like that lol 😉

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What’s Your Goal?

13 Mar

Everyone has a different goal, sure they can often times be lumped in to groups but each person’s goal is unique. In terms of weight loss the main groups I have been focused on lately are:

– get skinny

– get strong

The reason I am focused so much on these two groups is because for the loooongest time if you had asked me my goal it was “to get skinny”. That’s it, end of story. All I wanted, more than anything, was to be skinny. I’m decently tall for a girl (5’8″) and feel it is grossly unfair I am not also skinny, aren’t tall girls supposed to be skinny? *pout* All my Weight Watchers, low calorie, paleo (and more!) eating plans were followed because of the promise I would lose weight and I interpreted that as “I would get skinny”, after all, that’s what happens when you lose weight, right? All my hiking, treadmill running, HIIT training, weight lifting, squat challenges etc were all done for the same reason, to get me skinny.

Obviously that hasn’t happened.

Over the past couple months or so my goal has, hmm, I don’t want to say completely changed but…shifted I guess? Evolved. Altered. Broadened.

Now when I think of how I want to look it’s not just “skinny” it’s a combination of words: skinny, fit, obvious muscle definition, strong.

I want to be strong.

Not body builder strong, *shudder* but my body’s version of strong.

I say “my body’s” because I firmly believe not every body can achieve the same “look”. I heard this from a trainer years ago and I have to say, it makes sense to me. My body has a natural build, that I sadly, covered in excess squishy-ness but under all my squishy-ness there is a body type that I have to work with. I have hips, not just cause there is fat on them but because my skeletal frame gave me curvy hips, some women have super slim hips sometimes referred to as guy’s hips, no matter how much I diet, how much I work out, unless I get plastic surgery I will always have curvy hips. Just like the woman with the super slim hips will always have super slim hips.  You can’t change what your bones are doing. You have to just deal with what you have and work with it.

fat grapefruit

As I have come to terms with this I took a look around for inspiration, for women who have the physical look that I am trying to achieve. Whereas before I used to think of Nicole Kidman or Julia Roberts or any number of runway models and obsess over how they are so skinny and I want to be soooo skinny but how the hell do I get to look like them?? Now I am thinking more along the lines of Michelle Rodriguez. She is slim, has muscle definition, nobody doubts she is strong (and not strong for a girl but simply strong), curvy, fit and feminine. The feminine part is important because I find the media forgets that women who are strong can also be girly.

Michelle Rodriguez - slim but with muscle

Michelle Rodriguez – slim but with muscles

Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman – sooooo skinny

I realized that a lot of the fitness activities I partake in were never going to get me to “skinny”, because while yes they provided cardio and burned calories the activities I lean towards also involve working my muscles and that will automatically strengthen my muscles…which, if I am lucky, will give me some level of muscle definition. Actually, I know it will give me muscle definition cause last dragon boat season my shoulders and arms had actual definition that I lost during the off season and am oh-so-hoping to get back soon. Muscle memory how I am relying on you!

For a while I worried that I was focusing more on getting strong because I thought I was incapable of achieving skinny, I was looking at my change of perception, my change of goal as a failure. But now, I don’t think that is what this is about. It’s not just about my being realistic for what I can achieve either. It is what I want. I could cut my food intake drastically, do nothing but cardio and let my body eat away at itself until I am super skinny but then what? I won’t be able to dragon boat, I’ll be too weak to compete. I won’t be able to make it up the side of a mountain when I go hiking, I’ll have no stamina or strength to manage the trails. I won’t be able to enter things like the BMO run. I’d never finish the course. For all that I want to be skinny, I want to be strong more. I want to be able to enjoy the various activities I take part in. I want to be able to sign up for a new challenge and know I’ll be able to work hard towards completing it. I want to not just keep up with others but pass them by – hey, what can I say, I’m competitive! 😉

The happy side effect of this new goal, this goal of attaining strength, muscle definition and being fit is that it will automatically make me look slimmer. A pound of muscle takes up less space than a pound of fat so if I can swap out my fat (obviously not all of it or I’d be dead lol) for muscle I’ll look slimmer, be stronger, get my muscle definition aaaaand manage to uncover the body that I hid underneath all this squishy-ness. And wouldn’t that just be fab? 🙂

sorry for the random girl in her underwear...

sorry for the random girl in her underwear…

sidenote: I didn’t put dragon boating in the list of activities I do to attain the goal of skinny because I dragon boat because of how much I love the sport…it just has the sweeeeeet side effect of being a fitness activity lol

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Run Turtle! Run!

4 Mar

I am not a runner. People think I should be good at it cause I have long legs. That’s like saying I should be good at basketball because I am tall. Neither of those presumptions makes any sense! *rolls eyes*

Despite this I decided to sign up for the BMO Run in May…I should not be allowed on the internet after midnight! lol So, due to a deep rooted fear I will either (1) not be able to complete the run, (2) be the slooooowest person in the run, (3) die while attempting the run or (4) a combo of all three, I figure I should do some sort of training. Ya know, run a bit, work my way up to the distance I will be running in May.

run meme

Of course there is the side benefit of (hopefully) losing weight while I take on this whole running thing. I may hate running but even I know it is wicked awesome cardio. 🙂

Tuesdays are my Saturdays and I usually spend them doing an amazing imitation of a sloth until I meet up with friends at night but this Tuesday I made no plans with friends for the night and gave myself a whopping two goals to accomplish.

(1) Eat healthy

(2) Exercise

Seems pretty simple right? I mean, it’s only two freakin things to accomplish in one day, who can’t manage that??

I feel that for the most part I ate in a healthy way, I’m not very good at judging if food is healthy or not due to the fact that I have so many “food rules” floating in my brain, some of them contradict each other, and I’m never sure which rules to follow. sigh. Why do there have to be so many rules?

My first meal of the day was a whole wheat wrap filled with two slices of turkey bacon, sauteed mushrooms, two scrambled eggs (seasoned with dill) and about 6 sweet pickles. Oh, and I spread two triangles of Light Laughing Cow cheese on the inside of the wrap. Soooo yummy! I also had a banana. I know I should have used only one egg but it was a big wrap and I accidentally added too much water to the first egg so when I poured it in to the pan it looked not-so-great, it seemed a wise decision to add a second egg…even if it is gluttonous. sigh.

I then procrastinated on the going for exercise part of my day, of course! lol 😛

I originally thought I’d digest for a half hour or so then either go for a run or go for a session at the gym. I was good with either and actually kinda wanted to do both. I wanted to run because of needing to train for the run in May but I wanted to go to the gym because I feel I have lost some of my upper body strength and I want to build it back up, what with it being dragon boat season an all.

It was sleeting so that made the decision for me, I’d jog to the gym, work out, jog home and feel righteous lol Well…I slacked, as is my way lol I watched tv, played games on my iPad, cuddled with the cat, thought about how I should get up and exercise but didn’t actually move from my seat lol convinced myself it was ok if I didn’t go right away cause my gym is open till 11pm today so I can always go later evening if I want.

The slacking lasted so long I got hungry, oops! I didn’t want a meal though so I made some toast with peanut butter and honey on it. Bad I know! CarbsCarbsCarbs, ugh, why do I have to love you so much?? I decided that if I was going to continue slacking then I had to increase my fluid intake, at least do something good for my body, so I made more tea lol and drank a couple big glasses of water. I used to drink water like it was going out of style but I somehow got out of that habit – I should really fix that…note to self, drink more water!…maybe that can be my goal for tomorrow? 😛

Eventually I got off my ass and got ready to go work out, it had stopped sleeting so I decided to go running, I wanted to use the MapMyRun App I had installed the day prior and I really wanted to use the ArmPocket I bought a bit ago. It didn’t occur to me until I was outside locking my door that it was pitch black outside, way past sunset. Did this deter me from running? Nope.

The MapMyRun had a route starting near me that was a bit over 5km, I thought that’d be a good place to start. If I’d gone in daylight the route would have been way better lol It took me on a non-lit, deserted path that had river on one side and forest on the other, I felt like I was in an episode of Criminal Minds and was half convinced I was going to die due to my stupidity but obviously nothing happened. The map route however, was flawed, erg. I got to this one section and it wanted me to cross the street to go do a loop through a park, well, the street it wanted me to cross was the highway, at a section there is nowhere to cross and I’m sorry but I may do a lot of stupid things but jaywalking across a highway is not one of them! Also, signs for the park the map said I would find across the street indicated it was actually on the side of the street I was on but farther down. I was mightily confused because oh man do I have seriously lacking navigation skills. I opted for turning around and heading home, not through the deserted scary trail section though, phew! I was around the 4km mark at that point and figured for sure I’d hit 5km by the time I got home, turns out I ran 6.80km. Which I am aware is super short for most people but I’m happy with it. At the end I felt like I could have kept going which I take as a good sign for my next run, and the run in May!

My dinner was a chicken breast stuffed with cheese and broccoli, sliced pan cooked yam, roasted yellow peppers, vermicelli noodles with a bit of sweet and sour sauce mixed in and some sweet pickles. Why the pickles? Cause I like em. 🙂 I think it was healthy, but again, not certain because while I can argue that it is, I can also find ways to argue that it isn’t, sigh. It was tasty though…if that counts? 😛

dinner - healthy? not healthy? who knows!

dinner – healthy? not healthy? who knows!

A couple hours after dinner I ate a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich, man those are good. In the world of Weight Watchers they are 2 points which makes it seem like not such a bad snack? I’m still feeling kinda hungry but no more food for me today, instead lots more water. Mmm water!…said no one ever! lol 😉

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