The Amazing Shrinking Woman

Alrighty, so it is day three and despite the piece of bday cake placed before me at work I did not cheat! wOOt! 😀 One of the girls at work had her bday, duh, and so one of the other girls brought this huge wonderful looking cake. Home made, coconut dusted, buttercream icing, Mmm! She uses Splenda tho instead of sugar and when I learned Splenda has arsenic in it well, it made me not want to eat it. Not that I ate it before so it’s not like a big sacrifice or hardship to not include it in my food choices. And old roomie, she is henceforth dubbed R, used it and I am sorry but anything that fizzles and has some crazy way noticeable chemical reaction when you put it in your tea is just weird. *shudder*

I digress, so there was this cake, and even tho it was a splenda cake and not a sugar cake I normally would have eaten my piece and wished I could’ve had more, I mean hello? It’s cake! I kept myself very far away from the cake for a good chunk of the day in the hopes if I couldn’t see it I wouldn’t lust after it. I also had a part of my brain trying to find a way I could justify eating a slice; if there is one thing I can do it is find a way to make something that in unhealthy sound healthy. Here is an example; chocolate is good for you because it comes from a bean and beans are good for us. See? Easy! 🙂 What’s scary is I can easily make myself believe stuff like that, oy! So impressionable and easy to trick am I!

I digressed again, oops. So the cake, I avoided the cake thinking that was the easiest way to not cheat and then what happened? X (another girl at work) cut the cake into enough pieces for everyone and brought a piece to my desk, I was busy on the phone and didn’t notice so when I turned around there it was! It’s like it was stalking me! I wondered if it crawled it’s way over to me knowing I was the one person who didn’t want it – similar to how a cat sits on the lap of the one person in the room who doesn’t like cats – but someone mentioned X brought it so my paranoia went away. Once back on sane ground I put my slice of cake to the far reaches of my desk and then blocked my view of it with various tall items. For most of the rest of the day I was ok, didn’t even think about it…ok, that is a lie, I could smell the icing and kept thinking how I was hungry and one little slice wouldn’t kill me…that’s where this blog came in and saved me, phew, I didn’t want to have to explain/justify aka. make an excuse for why I ate it, I can’t believe the blog actually helped prevent me from eating a slice of cake. Go blog go! 🙂

I know on weight watchers you get what are called flex points, for anyone who doesn’t know those are extra points that are allotted to you on a weekly basis instead of daily so that you can fit those little treats into your eating plan. You don’t have to use them but you can if you need/want to. My mom uses hers every evening to fit in her night time glass of wine. I am trying my best to not use them, I think I will get faster results if I don’t indulge in those little extras which is one reason I didn’t want the cake. Another reason is that at work this coming Friday we are having “Fiesta Friday”  – I kid you not. It is s’posed to help with team building or something like that. *rolls eyes* We all have to bring in various ingredients (we picked from a list) and on Friday we will have a Mexican Lunch complete with a pinata…I wonder if they will actually allow us some kind of weapon to hit the pinata with, don’t know that I’d allow our group to vent our irritation with work matters like that! I can just see it now, candy flying everywhere while we all fight over the stick so we can beat up on something…mental health day anybody? So, because of Friday and my knowledge of the fact I am going to be surrounded by all kinds of wonderful foods (and alcohol!) I want to save my flex points to use them that day – if I do use them at all.

I checked in my weight watchers book and a fast food taco is 3 points, not bad actually. I figure since all our toppings are fresh and we are each making our own taco I will load mine with lots of veg and a smaller portion of meat and way small portion of sour cream etc. and it may not even be 3 points. I am still going to count it as 3 just in case tho. I also plan to take a salad with me and have that with my taco so I only eat the one. This should also leave room for a small sliver of whatever kind of dessert will be there, it is a suprise what it is so who knows how many points that’ll be!

Hmm, this post was supposed to be about water –  I didn’t realize I’d blab so long about the cake etc. Mmm cake…*shakes head* ok, enough of that!

Water…we all drink it, probably when we don’t even think we are drinking it since it’s in pretty much everything. We all know it is important to drink a certain amount of it although that amount seems to shift from 6 glasses to 8 glasses (per day) to whatever feels right, to a glass every 2 hours to drinking water whenever you feel hungry because you are more then likely dehydrated. So many different rules! It’s just water! I used to drink almost exclusively Diet Coke, tea, chai latte…um, I think that is pretty much it. There is water in all of those but they don’t really count as a glass of water each, too bad really. I have stopped drinking pop…well, on a daily basis, I still have some if I go to a movie, and I also stopped Chai Lattes (I got mine from Starbucks) because they are ridiculously high in points, 6 points for a grande!!! Thats practically a meal! I shall never give up tea, I was raised on the stuff, I will go to my grave crading a cup of it against my cold body. Since tea doesn’t have calories and I only put the tiniest amount of milk in it I figure this is ok. I realized though that if I get rid of my pop and my latte, where does that leave me? Only tea? Sure I love the stuff but there are limits…so water came in to my life. I was not happy to have it enter my life, it is boring, flat, tasteless, a big yawn really. I looked at it like medicine, I had to take it cause it’s good for me and will make me better…wait, that isn’t right, I wasn’t sick, there in was a problem. It’s easy to suffer through medicine when you know it’s only something you have to swallow for a week or two but this water thing is now for life? Oh geez, the thought is enough to make me want to quit and dive in to a swimming pool of diet coke with chai lattes spaced all around the edge so I can grab one easily. But ok, gotta suck it up, just make the change and maybe it won’t be so bad…right? Well, kinda. I used to chug a glass of water right before bed every night not realizing unti I was drinking it how thirsty I was – I am fairly certain that screams of “dehydrated!”, the past two nights I have about 1/3 of the glass and am perfectly fine. Throughout my day at work I set little goals, one glass of water every two hours. The first day I didn’t make it, lol, I think I got one glass within my first 4 hours at work and half a glass over the rest of the day, pretty pathetic really. And no, once I get home I don’t drink water so any hope of reaching my 6-8 glasses per day rests at the work place. Yesterday wasn’t as hard and today I drank about 4 glasses, practically a record! I know it isn’t my 6-8 but maybe drinking that much water is something that has to be worked up to, a gradual thing. I mean, if I chugged 8 glasses of water today I’d probably feel like I was floating, be peeing every 20 minutes and feel bloated. This way, by the time I get to 8 glasses of water I will be used to drinking larger quantities of the stuff and my body will be happy for the top up instead of feeling abused. That logic sound good to anybody else?

Also, we shouldn’t forget all the water our bodies absorb from our food. Our intestines are wonderful icky things, they suck everything possible out of everything we let pass through them – including water. If you noticed how much fruit I am eating now, and veggies, all those contain a large amount of water so not only am I drinking the stuff I am eating it too! It’s a good way to trick yourself into getting more  water throughout the day, just eat it. 🙂

Here is my food list for the day:

3/4 cup Honey Nut Cheerios = 2 points

1/2 cup 1% milk = 1 point

1 banana = 2 points

tea = 0 points

1 cup green grapes = 1 point

1 nectarine = 1 point

1 orange = 1 point

1/2 cup broccoli and cheese pasta = 4 points

1 salad = o points

1 tbls salad dressing = 1 point

1 cup Maple Baked Beans = 4 points

1 piece Safeway sandwich bread = 2 points

tea = 0 points

Total used today = 19 <— you might think this is good, being under your points, but in weight watchers is isn’t good, the points are an indication of how much fat, calories and fibre you are getting and being lower then your allotted points means your not eating enough and your body may go in to starvation mode. sigh. I still have 6 points and am not hungry (miracle!) and it’s late and I don’t feel like eating so I will eat something small but high in points like a cookie or two and 1/2 cup of 1% milk to use up those points quickly.

Tags: beans, cake, chai latte, chocolate, diet coke, intestines, pinata, points, splenda, starbucks, starvation mode, sugar, taco, tea, team building, temptation, water, weight watchers, work